HellTouched

Thanks. The build plan has Dwarf and its powers all well-slotted - everything else basically gets leftover attention.

I went with a warshade for it so as to combine pretty solid protection, some AOE damage, and a self-heal on a reasonable recharge. (All the rest of the warshade fun stuff is gravy.) I haven't seen a tanker set combination that would deliver all that. I'm also playing a SD/DM tanker and a ice/axe one, which are both satisfying but don't have that staple AOE in the first case or the fast self-heal in the second. I can't quite believe I'd get dwarf protection out of fire, electric, or dark armors.

I'm playing a warshade with the idea of tanking on TF's with friends. Is it going to work out? I know Eclipse will do wonders, but when it comes down to a long fight on a single target when I can't afford to drop out of dwarf to trigger it, am I going to get smeared and let the whole team down?

I've heard conflicting things about the Rage crash and the defense penalty. Specifically, I've sometimes heard that stacking Rage will eliminate the penalty, and sometimes that it will not.

So I'm asking here in case I get a unanimous forum consensus and/or authoritative data.

Thanks!

I'm sure someone will or has started one, and the same goes for AR/TA corruptors now. Entangling Arrow and Ignite even would be a fine way to punish single targets. The redraw will be fairly annoying, but hopefully you'll have an attack cycle that starts with TA effects then switches to AR ones to deliver the damage.

As usual, if you go TA, Tech and Magic origins are good for origin powers that can ignite the Slick without using up a real attack. Thematically, Tech is quite likely for that combo anyway. If it happens that you would be using Ignite on top of the Slick, or Flamethrower where you put it without going out of your preferred power cycle anyway, go for it. But a careful origin pick means you've got the option of another cycle instead.

The nice things about TA for AR are that (1) it will keep targets from coming at you too well while you unleash cones on them, (2) AR is unusually good for Slick ignition if needed, and (3) the -resistance effects can help with the somewhat higher enemy resistance AR's lethal damage has to get through. But (1) and (3) are covered as well by dark miasma, rad emission, traps, and storm summoning. So while TA is a fine set and, if you put aside redraw issues, a fine pairing with AR, most of the synergy can be had with other sets as well.

Is there any known quantitative value for redraw times? If so, what is it, or are they, in case they differ from weapon to weapon?

Are there even genuine redraw times at all? It's been a long, long, long time, but I seem vaguely to recall a redname post once, most likely BAB, saying that the redraws were fitted into animation times so as not to produce any net increase in animation times. If so, that doesn't seem to have made a difference in the discussion since then.

Thanks.

I too like being able to use Virtue LFG Alpha from Pinnacle. Also, the Architect channel seems to be developing a use for complaining about uses/misuses of AE, complaining about complaining, and so on. It seems to be better avoided than colonized for general LFT purposes.

The game does cry out for a proper server-side LFG channel without having to use global channels to do it. Virtue LFG Alpha is a kludge, obviously, but at least it offers cross-server notification and can weed out people just interested in axe-grinding.

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Grav's been one I've wanted to like but I've never been able to grasp a reliable use for it outside of ticking off your own team.

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Trapping spawns inside a knockdown zone (and keeping them flopping)? Pulling spawns and placing them exactly where you want them, in total safety? (For bonus giggles, combine the two - have your teammates set up their Tar/Oil/Ice/Earthquake/etc. patch in advance, then drop an entire spawn onto it and lock them in place). Tanking psi AVs while the Invuln/ tanker makes the run back from the hospital again?

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I'll concede there's a lot a talented grav controller with an understanding team can do in particular circumstances, especially in theory.

However - Knockdown zones do a pretty good job of keeping the targets in them themselves, unless your team knocks them out - which grav can't do much to prevent, unlike the sets with an AOE immobilize that does cause the knockback resistance. So it's a trade in utility and while I can appreciate what grav does get that way, I'm more impressed with what it loses overall.

Wormhole doesn't in my experience place spawns right where you want them safely. It routinely scatters plenty, misses others, and faceplants the grav controller/dominator. I've seen exceptions to that - they're in the minority.

Tanking psi AV's - ya, that I'll believe after I see it, and I'll believe it's not a fluke after seeing it a lot.

I've seen some very good grav controllers doing as well as typical controllers in different and intriguing ways, so there's a temptation. But that's not yet enough of an endorsement for me to try it again.

Grav's single-target hold has a -KB component so you could use Tornado with it to be even meaner to single targets with grav.

I've been very happy with most other controller sets, or at least excited about possibilities (mind, ice). Grav's been one I've wanted to like but I've never been able to grasp a reliable use for it outside of ticking off your own team.

I've heard a lot of answers about whether or not set bonuses from powers in one form carry over to others, and another lot of answers about human form auto powers carrying over to nova and dwarf forms. (Strangely, no one has claimed that nova or dwarf auto powers carry over to the others....)

I was pretty sure from way back that neither set bonuses nor any auto powers carry over, but the chaotic responses I've seen on Help channels has me wondering.

Any authoritative answers here?

Boxing's chief benefit over Kick to my mind is the fast animation time. At worst, it can replace Brawl for easy fury building - and punchvoke effect. At best, it's a perfectly fine fast attack, good for proccing.

The Kinetic Combat set someone suggested would give you nice bonuses and more mitigation. I'm not happy with the accuracy you get with it, but you can't have everything, that won't make a difference for fury building value, and set bonuses elsewhere may help that out.

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FF is far and away the most boring secondary to play on a MM.

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Trying to manage ninjas means that some boredom in the secondary isn't a bad thing. And as another poster said - Force Bolt will provide constant occupation as desired.

Assuming it doesn't have any strange, exceptional features the text does not mention - you'll have a 10% chance with each strike of one of those attacks slotted with it to get a 100% recharge boost for 5 seconds. If you're really excited about that, you may do better with Battle Axe, with more attacks that take knockback sets.

Are there any out there?

I played merc/traps once, early on, til the mid 30's, when CoV first came out and before my interest in villainy eased off. It went fine. (I've had other mercs too, but never since that high.)

I'm confident that mercs would do fine with /TA, /traps, /storm, /dark, /poison, and /FF. Other people have had better experience with /pain than I have had, and based on that, I can't rule it out either.

It's a solid if not flashy primary. Pick a secondary with a playstyle you'll be happy with and of some interest to you. That sounds more like /storm than others, but really, the field is wide open.

And if she skipped Tar Patch and Darkest Night, she had to have picked up both the single-target attacks in the primary. *twitch*

/Dark can heal nicely. It's good to have that healing ability. But for it - and for every other set in the game with heals - there's so much else in it that some people just blank out on in order to be "healers". It's even worse for villains, when your healing is always in a secondary.

I've noticed that the Virtue villain AE pickup groups at least seem to suffer for lack of controls and lack of heals (among a lot of other things...). But really - one or two powers out of a whole set and a little attention would do the job nicely, and "pure healers" sacrifice far, far too much else to be worth the team slot. (Subtract one 'far' and it'll apply to blueside too.)

I haven't been able to locate the answer to this anywhere else, so I'm going to risk looking silly asking here:

Do set bonuses (the bonuses, not pet-specific globals like the defense in Edict of the master) carry over to pets, including henchmen?

I've believed they do not, but I can't remember the basis for that.

Thanks for your help.

Re 1) - the exclamation mark indicates that not all your pets have the same stance.

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If /Pain heal/buff wasn't enough to keep you Pets alive, your are doing something really wrong.

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Could be, could be, though I haven't had such a bad time with any other MM secondary, or with thugs/ otherwise.

I hate not developing any support set - it's a personal mission to get a character with every defender primary and controller secondary to 50. As of now, I'm not there yet for storm, empathy, thermal, and cold domination. (Characters working those up are at 44, 20, 35, and 26 respectively.) If I could stand it, it would give me a sense of satisfaction to get someone with /pain to 50 too.

If I feel like venturing that again, do you have any primaries to recommend? Or PD guides? The last I looked, they were meager and generally bad. I suspect I'd be aiming at the team healer role, so a primary that didn't take micromanagement may be preferable.

Given how slow, held, inaccurate, and kittenish the rest of Poison makes the enemies, even Alkaloid is sufficient for the healing needs. Given how utterly free to do all they want to my poor henchman PD left the enemies, even its far better healing ability was unable to keep up with the damage they took.

How's that?

Others have spelled out the playstyle differences between /pain and /poison. I tried a thugs/pain MM to around 20 before I couldn't stand it any longer and deleted him; my thugs/poison MM is 41 and going strong.

For soloing - regrettably, I never got a team for the /pain MM - the /pain heals were simply inadequate to keep my thugs alive against un-debuffed, un-controlled enemies, and the ability to heal myself was simply inadequate to keep me alive after they died. I haven't had such a problem with /poison, and soloing EB's isn't a problem.

Alkaloid is pretty well able to serve the healing needs of my thugs. I went into Medicine for Aid Self to have a bit for me, and I use Aid Other to supplement Alkaloid in serious situations. Alkaloid's enough to make a meaningful contribution to team healing needs too. It's absolutely not enough to support identifying yourself as a healer or conceiving of the character as filling chiefly that role, but it's enough when slotted to make your ST heal another contribution to a team.

If I were to make a tankermind, I'd consider Pain for the AOE heal. Even then though, I'd remember Dark and Twilight Grasp and would quit thinking about Pain for that purpose.

If your goal is to be a team healer/buffer and you'd rather do it with a MM than a corruptor, I can see Pain as the secondary of choice. Based on my own experience at least, that's the only time I'd touch it again.

Get a Tech or Magic origin. (Tech fits TA well anyway.) Your origin power can ignite the Slick. Then make a macro that targets any nearby oil slick and fires off the origin attack. Failure is rare, though you can't be a great distance from the Slick.

I like the set, but thematically it can be a bit of a stretch for a lot of MM's. Then again, that doesn't cut down on the number of Bots/Dark MM's....

It's been said already, but MM's can often find better power selections than Leadership abilities, and the MM Leadership bonuses tend to be small.

What hasn't been brought up so much is that, if you're planning on 8 MM (or whatever) teams, then Leadership is up to 8 times more useful. So-so times 8 is often quite impressive. That's not a matter of what every one gets, either - it's simply a matter of how much buffing you're providing.

I'm envious if you can actually pull off the organization and cooperation to get seven other people regularly on, all playing masterminds, and playing together. It's not something I'd expect to happen successfully in my gaming life at least.