Ivan

nice guide

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2) Skittishness: Back in the day, even low-level tankers had a good deal of survivability. However, with the Global Defense Nerf of I5, base resistance and defense values were slashed for many of the tanker primaries. This has led to a lowering of survivability in the lower levels for Tanks. What this means is that low level tanks may have had several experiences where, in doing their job, they died many times. This leads them to believe that they can’t handle the aggro for their teams, and so they don’t try to get all the aggro. It is not their fault, and it is not them being selfish, it is merely a reaction to the way they’ve seen the game work out for them.

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Taunt actuallly increased my survivability in the early levels. There where quite a few times where there were mobs that were close enough together where I would have aggro'd both of them had I charged right in. By taunting one of the mobs and ducking behind something I was usually able to pull just one of the mobs so that I was in a situation where I could handle the aggro (i.e. one mob rather than two). In addition, by ducking behind something you usually get hit less than you would if you just charged right in.

Out of curiosity has anyone experimented with Hover + Combat Jumping. One of the dom guides mentions that Combat Jumping actually reduces your inertia which helps you turn quicker while flying. I was toying around with the idea of using the two together on the test server after my last respec (and this was before they put I8 on test) and it "felt" to me like my base flight speed was actually a little bit faster with combat jumping on than without it. One thing that I have noticed that it is a lot slower to turn with Hover on (via the Q or the E keys) than it is to just strafe right or left (via the A or the D keys) so there may be the "inertia" that makes Hover feel like it is so slow.

To be honest I would like a second opinion on this one as I am a little biased on this one as I am looking at this combindation more from a defensive standpoint and am just looking for another reason to justify this combination.

Another question that I have is if "inertia" makes hover feel slow would the inertial reduction power from the kinetics pool make a difference?

THANKS for this guide. I am so glad that this guide didn't use the "you have to have a /stone Brute and a team of corruptor on your team" in order to to beat this thing as my impression has been that the developer's meant for this to be something that you can do with a balanced team. Your post tends to reinforce this one.

I try and avoid the dom boards these days because most of the posts there sound like one big "pity party" whenever somebody mention's the RSF. Since you mentioned that Synapses likes to run then that tends to reinforce my opinion about the developer's wanting this to be something that a balanced team can do. Sleep and Immobilization control powers are the only ones that I am aware of that bypass the "resistances" that the Triangles (when they are up) grant AV's/Heroes. Having a dominator along would be very useful here as they could stop Synapses from running while the rest of the team deals with Numina.

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This is just a personal observation but I find players who invest heavily in thier primaries to be a bit more team oriented.

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I find the exact opposite of this to be the case on the villains side of the game. Most of the team oriented powers are in the secondaries on villains. On villains the team oriented players tend to be the ones that generally have an even mix of primary and secondary powers.

One of the reasons why PUG Masterminds get a bad rap is that they tend to neglect their secondaries even though some of their buffs/debuffs are just as good if not better than the corruptor versions. In my opinion Masterminds get the most benefit from "team-oriented powers"...even if a power says "you cannot use this power on yourself" masterminds still benefit from those powers when then they solo because they improve best attack powers (their pets).

Hey I just re-read the Arcana's Guide to Defense post and noticed that I missed somthing.....
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[/ QUOTE ] Special Note on Power Boost

The power Power Boost (both the blaster energy manipulation version, and the epic power pool version) boosts defense powers while power boost is active. The boost is equal to the base value of the defense power being boosted. For example, if you have hover running (2.5% defense) and you trigger power boost, hover gains 2.5% additional defense. If hover was 5-slotted with defense SOs (net 5% defense) the boost would still be 2.5% (to 7.5% total defense).
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I wonder if this apply's to the patron armors as well?

I have a question on defense versus resistance. When you stack a power like Hover or Maneuvers where the description just says defense with a power like Toxic Shield do those general "defense" powers stack on top of the numbers for Toxic Shield (i.e. is your smashing defense # the sum of the Toxic shield # + the Hover # + the Maneuvers #)?

If this is the case then I could see a reason to actually slot these powers for defense if I have the extra slots even though every single guide I've ever read tells me this is a waste.

Awesome guide.

Awesome post

Awesome guide. Until I read this guide I couldn't figure out why my heals weren't always working because I thought it worked like twighlight grasp where you give off the healing aura...I made it all the way to level 20 clueless to the fact that it was my enemies that were giving off the aura. After reading this guide and trying this out last night I am kicking myself for not figuring this out sooner.

Morale = Stop being a pansy and get in melee range

Excellent Guide

Excellent Guide...a couple of questions on slotting...

Once you hit your 40's, the missions seem to always have an elite boss/hero at the end (sometimes more than one). Evidently, according to this post, Powe Boost alone won't be enough to toss around an Elite Boss so you will need to have either knockback SOs or domination up in order to toss them around. While I haven't personally tried this I have a hard time soloing elite bosses and my build is based upon your guide. I'm wondering if knockback SO's would make any difference in this situation?

Secondly, have you ever tried slotting confuse with range enhancements? One thing I noticed that the range on confuse sucked compared to mezmerize and almost always required me to get in "perception range" of mobs in order to use it which pretty much negates the fact that confuse doesn't aggro. I've found that by adding range enhancements to confuse I was able to lock down bosses by hitting them twice with it before the fight even starts.