Hart

Er.. it's easy to 'tank' stuff that can't hit back?

I've had pretty good luck using local MeetUp groups to find people to play with. Maybe fork over the $10 or w/e and start a MeetUp group for CoX boardgamers.

If you're on Virtue, Virtue LFG Alpha helps some. Redside team forming is still miserable though.

I'd say a Bane spider or Claws/Energy brute is probably a closer comparison than a Claws/SR. You get stealth included, but it's not vital.

Widows lack Assassinate, Placate, and random criticals, but do good base damage and have quick attack chains that consist of a handful of powers.

Just curious - why would you farm PVE mobs in a PVP zone?

I initially came to the threat thinking there was some way to farm PVP IOs, which would've been awesome.

Gravity is probably the latest-blooming control set, and Energy has weak ranged attacks and strong melee attacks. While there's no 'better' or 'worse' power combination, the one you selected will have some challenges in the early levels.

I just leveled a Gravity/Storm controller up, and I have a 40+ Plant/Energy dominator, so here are a few tips.

On the Gravity side, you can use your hold in combination with Lift to keep two enemies out of the fight all the time.

If you took Propel, try using Lift before casting Propel. Propel takes 3.5 seconds of animation time before it does it's damage, which is usually time spent being hit by whatever you're propelling at. Stuff you lift has to get back up, which takes about 3 seconds - and then the target gets hit in the face with a street lamp and knocked back away from you. By the time they're back in melee range, Lift is recharged and you can repeat the process.

I would actually recommend NOT getting the AOE immobilize as a new player. It's very expensive endurance-wise, and in groups it's a good way to get yourself a ton of attention from the enemy - which isn't good for dominators.

Make sure to pick up Bone Smasher when you get the opportunity. It's your bread and butter attack until around level 35, so it's worth getting used to playing with it.

I'd also consider taking Air Superiority from the Flight power pool. Air Superiority is a guaranteed knockdown if you hit a target with it, which can help if you're fighting a boss.

Between Air Superiority, Lift, and your single target hold, you can keep two targets juggled and one held. Most groups of enemies are two or three targets when you're solo, so you should be able to keep entire groups locked down long enough to defeat them.

I have, use, and love my Naga. I'm worried that I've spoiled myself for other mice.

The only 'problem' I've had so far is that I find it difficult to use the 7-9 keys accurately. My thumb rests between the 2 and the 5, which I have mapped to Mouse4 and Mouse5. Moving it up or down slightly gives me easy access to the 1/4 set or the 3/6 set. I map these keys to commands I use in combat.

The 10-12 row I map to non-combat commands - 10 is permanently mapped to 'M' which is the map key in Dragon Age, WoW, CoX, and most other games I've played. The 7-9 keys, and the two foremost keys near the very front of the left mouse button, I just ignore; I've got 11 mouse buttons already and it's too hard to hit them precisely due to the shape of my hand.

There can be some set up required to get the mouse working with your game. The software now allows you to remap the buttons from the "1"-"=" default setup, but if you do so you'll also need to remap the keys in game. I have mine bound to the numpad keys and rebind in game commands to numpad in whatever game I'm playing to assign them to mouse buttons.

While we're on anecdotes, how about "Money can't buy you happiness, but it can sure make misery a lot more comfortable"?

I've led guilds in a bunch of different games over the last decade, and the best way to recruit quality players is always to do it one on one. That's what I'm doing now.

I did the broadcast thing at CoV release. Back then there was value in having numbers because PvP mattered and having an Item of Power in your base meant having enough good players to protect it from raids.

When the devs killed IoPs, they gutted guilds. At this point they're a shiny label, possibly a place to find good groups, and secure storage for enhancements and salvage.

1) I tried this and found it to be pretty ineffective. I never noticed it actually hold anything and eventually respecced out of it.

2) This works really well for my /Cold. In theory you'll get more out of your resistance debuff and subsequent resistance debuffs, since resistance debuffs are resisted by resistance.

No idea on #3.

I've played this to 20, and while I knew it was going to be a late bloomer, there are some powers in the set that just don't make sense to me.

For example, the Hold has a -knockback component. I loved doing Dominate -> Levitate -> Dominate on my Mind dom to get a hold on bosses before they could retaliate. Gravity can't do this, which makes me a sad panda. Tossing a hold also neutralizes Propel's 100% chance of knockback, which is the main reason I see to use it.

I like using the AOE Immobilize with Freezing Rain to create a knockdown field. It does seem to interrupt the 'fleeing' status so targets keep shooting at you at a normal rate, but as much as they fall down it's still pretty solid protection and they can't just make it to the edge and start hitting you normally again. IIRC the only other set that can do this is Elec/.

The 'extra' powers in Grav/ seem to be a bit of a drag, though. Lift, Propel, Dimension Shift and Wormhole don't compare well as a group to the 'extra' powers in most other control sets. Even Fire's anemic combination of Flashfire, Smoke, Bonfire and Hot Feet seems more effective; there's some damage there, and Smoke can complement the defense in steamy mist.

I'm sticking with it because I want to see what I can do with Wormhole + Hurricane. As I understand it, Wormhole always teleports any non-AV it hits. I plan to slot Hurricane up to 40% -tohit, wormhole things into a corner, and stand on them while they whiff at me and fall down. I hope I'll even be able to make good use of Tornado since the Hurricane will prevent any targets from being tossed out of the corner - particularly nasty stuff I can throw a hold at to negate the knockback.

If you're using the 'buy recs with Amerits, sell crafted items for inf' method, value them at around 65m profit. Cost of selling through the BM is disregarded in a lot of these calculations.

I figure the true value at around 70-75m, but you have to give up ~10% of that to make it liquid.

I think this is a Virtue thing.

I see Soldiers without TT:Maneuvers. I see Kinetics toons who skip speed boost. I see Force Fielders who skip Deflection and Insulation shields.

I don't kick them, but I do try to subtly make them aware that people notice when you skip powers that are individually more powerful than everything else you bring to the team.

My Elec/Kin troller definitely has sapping down to a science, especailly post-35 when you can nearly sap a +2 boss in one shot. Thermal and Cold also have end drain powers, but /kin has the most spammable end drain between Transfusion and Transference.

..but her damage is just outright terrible compared to a corrupter. Elec/Kin corr isn't the way I'd go; it doesn't have a 3rd single target attack and IMO Short Circuit hasn't been worthwhile as end drain since ED. Even with /Mu it's only a moderately effective setup; I deleted this toon at 47 and rerolled her as a DP/Kin.

If I understand correctly, resistance debuffs are resisted by resistance.

For example, let's say you've got a 50% resistance to smashing/lethal damage and someone hits you with a 10% resistance debuff. The actual effect will be resisted by your resistance - in this case, 50% - so you'll end up being debuffed by 10%. You'll go from 50% resistance to 45% resistance.

The other side of the coin is that you'll go from taking 50% damage to 55% damage - effectively increasing damage taken by 10%. If this works the way I think it works, it means that a 20% resistance debuff is exactly as effective as a 20% damage buff, barring the respective caps.

Yes.

If you go for a G13, don't plan on using the Joystick forever.

My first one wore out in about 9 months and started randomly moving my character to the right. I purchased a second, and at the 8 month mark i'm starting to see the same behavior.

This could be remedied if Logitech included a utility for calibrating the joystick, but such a thing doesn't seem to exist. Tech support's no help.

Last I checked the brute damage cap was pretty high.. something like 700%? I doubt my brutes hit their cap when fulcrum shifted inside a full pack of mobs. Maybe this is different with something like stacked rage or popping crazy amounts of inspirations, but that's part of a different argument than blaster vs buffer.

I already have an Ill/Rad, and honestly, the chaos level seems pretty minimal on the Ill/ side. PA mainly causes things to group up around itself, and I rarely notice Phant's knockback.

On the other hand, my wife's Grav/Energy dom ends up causing chaos with her singularity pretty frequently. Just running into melee results in the thing charging through packs and repelling stuff in several directions.

Based on what I've heard I think I'll go for it. I tried Fire/Storm and just about yawned myself to death, but Gravity has Propel and more ways to leverage Storm's chaotic nature.

Thanks all!

Has anyone played Grav/Storm to 50?

I'm curious about how this combo would work. The immob doesn't prevent knockup, but does it turn knockback from tornado and thunderstorm into knockup or do they just fling mobs around? Is the ability to throw stuff into a corner and hurricane it as awesome as it sounds?