Grendar

There's a Hero Corps Representative/Fortunata in every zone, and there's a map setting that makes them show up on your minimap. I always thought there was just the one of each, it's so much easier being able to quickly scale the difficulty up for grinding or down for tips/arcs.

Brawl doesn't use any endurance, which is perfect for low level filler attacks on a Brute to build fury.

I have several brutes, from my first incarnate (Claws/Fire) to my current mini-project (War Mace/Shield). Brutes are probably my favorite of the melee AT's, which, given how clustered the melee AT's are (I could be a tanker and be extremely durable and hit moderately hard, or a brute and be very durable and hit very hard, or be a scrapper and be moderately durable and hit very hard, or be a stalker and be moderately durable and hit very hard WITH MASSIVE BURST!), says a lot about the AT. About the only issue they have is that unlike Scrappers they need rage to do good damage, so at the start of a pull or on a slow moving team they'll have trouble matching the burst of the other AT's. Small price to pay for being able to take a hit from an AV and survive even if you aren't built for tanking.

The main reason I switch away from them a lot is that while they're fun, they can be a hassle in groups with knockback or AoE root happy members who don't let the melee AT's cluster them for melee AoE's. Much less of a hassle on my Corr who has very wide range AoE's and can fall back on his buffbot role if he's outmatched.

If they reduced the KB in AR (seriously, considering how many AoE's AR has KB is the last thing the set needs) and fix the sniper so it's actually worth taking, AR would be an awesome set without being overpowered. Frontloading the damage on Flamethrower would be nice too, but even without it, if they removed the KB or downgraded it to KD it would be a fine set.

Corrupters are easier to get through the painful 1-21 slog due to having a higher damage modifier and better power selection early on, and the damage advantage is still noticeable after that. If you can DFB a Defender into the 20's they're pretty decent, much better than more broken AT's like Blasters. If you have to solo your way to 22, it will be painful, which makes it harder to get one started on lower population servers. Meanwhile, the Corrupter's support disadvantage is unnoticeable in raid content due to overlapping powersets, and in team content it's more than sufficient unless you're trying to keep a squishy tank alive with a weaker healing powerset.

That said, they're a solid AT. The only buff I would give them would be to have Vigilance reach the 30% cap at level 10 instead of 20. The pre SO levels are agonizing on them with your damage buff still working its way up and your powers slogging along on borderline useless TO and DO enhancements.

Yea, I think Musculature is it. Depending on which route you take, you're looking at either a moderate boost to your damage and utility or a hefty bonus to damage, which is perfect for Fire/Time. It's almost like Musculature was designed with this combo in mind.

The problem with Cardiac for range is that your best buffs and debuffs are PBAoE's, meaning unlike other secondaries you really want to be closer to the action so your team can benefit from Times Juncture, Farsight, and Chrono Shift. Musculature's bonus to Endurance Modification makes the Endurance Reduction less of a trade up, so the only thing that it really nets you is Damage Resistance. Overall Cardiac has a heavy opportunity cost for something you probably don't want to use much anyways. I wouldn't mess with it.

I like the idea of Beam/Rad Corr personally. Not only does it fit thematically (what other energy source could actually power such an inefficient design), but it's mostly toggles and fire and forget abilities, and solid ones at that. Fairly solid.

Easiest? Probably a bots/ff MM. Even with the bog standard controls (Passive, Aggressive, Defensive), soloing +0/x1 content is easy - stand back, tag one enemy, and send in the bots. It's also boring. Painfully so. But easy.

I'd strongly recommend against a Blaster. On a Corrupter, Scrapper, or Brute I can routinely turn my difficulty up to x3 or even x5. On a blaster, I get smeared at +0/x1. Granted, I'm no expert on Blasters, but it's indicative of the AT if it can't meet the same challenges as other AT's. It does teach you how to gauge a pack of enemies and how to rely on others, but absolutely nothing else - you have no defenses so you don't learn about those, you have no major buffs to speak of so you don't learn about those, you have few if any toggles so you don't learn about those, you have little to no control so you don't learn about that. The only real advantage of starting with a blaster is that everything else seems tolerable after that, and for that you run the risk of scaring the newbie off for good.

It could probably be done. SoA's are forbidden from taking multiple copies of the same ability to prevent stacking, so the technology does seem to exist.

Why don't I design? It's just not really my thing. I've considered it, but with how dead AE is aside from farming there isn't really a market for it, and it's not worth the work to create arcs just for myself.

Why don't I play? I do, a little. Aside from farming a claws/fire brute for disposable cash and an easy 50, I've run a few arcs. A few were great, most were mediocre. I think if they would improve the search and rating aspects of AE and do more Dev Choice arcs it would be much better. Even better, if you really wanted to breathe life into it, would be to make a Weekly Player Arc that gives double rewards and that freebies can play. I guarantee with that you would see the AE community spring to life again.

Ice has better mitigation. Most of your attacks have -rech attached, which stacks with the -rech from time to basically force your enemies to never attack. Fire does absurd damage, and it's AoE's have a ridiculous cap (Fireball hits 16 enemies, Fire Breath hits 10, RoF has no cap to my knowledge). For solo, I'd be tempted to go fire. The damage is just that good. Especially once you get incarnate abilities it's an AoE powerhouse.

Vahzilok are one of the enemy groups I've never had issues with, so I can't weigh in here. They do do some hefty damage, so you probably need to spread out the pulls a bit more, keep them from all beating on you at once. Not a big fan of dominators though, so I can't go beyond that.

Life Drain or Gloom have their uses. For a necro/dark it adds another set of -acc, which is great for taking down bosses (presuming you can keep most of your team up during the alpha, they can floor the tohit of an EB). Definitely inferior to demons or beast attacks but probably worth taking one. Generally speaking though, I would only advise taking personal attacks from demons, beasts, or necromancy, and then only for the rider effects. Everything else isn't really worth the time.

Fighting is probably the most common on everything but MM's. MM's start with 80% damage reduction from Bodyguard Mode, so I generally don't bother with it.

Leadership is a big one for any character that will be doing a lot of grouping. Or MMs. Or someone trying to softcap defense.

Speed for Hasten is probably my next pick. Even without perma, its still a great power, you just have to learn two different attack routines for when it is and isn't running.

Leaping is probably my choice for a travel power, but it falls low in the list because I have the Rocketboard, so I generally don't take this pool anymore unless I find I need more immob and hold protection. I suspect I'll drop this one after I can get Clarion though.

Everything else is situational. I took Medicine on my Bots/FF MM to have a healing power (and subsequently deleted him because he was bo-ring), generally ignore flight because its powers are lackluster, and don't think I've ever even dipped into the Presence pool.

/signed. Anyone who's played a pet heavy archtype like a Mastermind knows how important that trackable health bar is for keeping track of the less-than-brilliant pet AI. Having that button to quickly heal, buff, and otherwise track them down is a godsend for MM's and would be incredibly useful for the suicidal mission additions.

The number of waves isn't a problem so much as the length of time in between each wave. 30 seconds between the end of one wave and the start of another should be sufficient, a minute if you're paranoid about groups needing to recover. The current eternity between waves is what makes it such an unbearable TF.

Though while we're on the subject of the TV respec, MM pets don't last very long in chamber if you don't have a heal power (sonic, FF, and dark all lack out of combat heals). If you were to set the radiation shield buff to be an AoE rather than a single target buff, it would make MM's actually able to contribute beyond being a gimped defender or spending half the fight resummoning henchmen who are going to die in 15 seconds anyways.

As a Scrapper, I saw a breakdown of the group. Herd the melee over next to the ranged to get them all in the cone, blow Build Up and burn down the debuffer quickly, and FFS get a hold on the sapper pronto.

As a Mastermind, I saw the group as a series of dangers and counters. Boss runners can't be finished quickly, call off your minions when they flee and catch them when they come back. Grab the aggro from an AoE enemy and stand away from the group, you've just reduced the damage they do by 90%. Drop your debuffs on the biggest group of enemies and immediately queue up a heal to patch up after the alpha. It was surprisingly tactical for an MMO.

As a Blaster, I saw each group as a serious threat. Imagining each contingency, planning for possible complications, waiting those endless seconds for Rest to come off cooldown so I could go into combat without risking instant death. Being a Blaster was very binary, either you kill it or it kills you, there's no long, drawn out tactical battle with you weaving combos of buffs and debuffs to overcome incredible odds. Just very quick pulls or very long walks.

As a Stalker, I saw each group as a combination of hard and soft targets. Open up and pick off the hard targets with AS, then slog your way through the softer ones, using the new and improved AS to one shot them as it comes back up. If a group is too threatening, just ignore them. The world isn't very dangerous when you're a Stalker.



I always plan a build at around level 40, then burn a vetspec at 50 and get into my endgame build. Before that I usually don't know enough about the AT and power sets to make an effective build. I enjoy the storylines though, while a lot of them are the generic "stop villain group A's generic villainy" there were a few, like the Freaklympics or the Crystal Thorns, that were really enjoyable.

I haven't quite had the same issue, but I have noticed that sometimes it seems like the "heel" command gets queued rather than overriding their current behavior. If I notice one of my minions chasing a runner (which is another piece of AI I think needs to be "fixed", runners may be realistic but they certainly aren't fun) and start spamming follow, heel, or even passive sometimes they still insist on getting that last attack off before they come back. Like trying to control a team of 12 year old blasters after a few Red Bull's. Luckily they haven't decided to solo an AV yet, but on an ITF one of my zombies (for reasons unbeknownst to me) decided to join a group that was clearing out one of the side pockets next to Romulus. The rest of my minions stayed put, he just kinda wandered off. And again when the pulled a second group.

My suspicion is they decided to base minion AI off of the enemy AI, so as they make changes to the generic villain/hero AI to make them more challenging for the players they also further break the behavior of MM pets. If they could at least get passive mode working and set up Bodyguard Mode so it triggers on passive+follow (for those maps where you're constantly being tagged by low/no damage debuffs from targetable enemies) it would be fine for the moment, Masterminds are really one of the more balanced classes if you don't count AI problems.

Depends. Some players don't play redside because they genuinely hate being a villain. Some players don't like the zones or the quests. And then there are some who don't play villains because finding a team prior to the coop zones is like pulling teeth. A 2XP weekend for villains would help the third category tremendously, and possibly have a cascading effect as more villains make their way into the endgame and become available for SF's and Trials.