Jim_G

I spent most of my time during the 2xp weekend taking a fire/traps corrupter to level 30. I read several guides about traps, all of which commented on the -regen portion of Poison Trap as a great advantage when soloing AVs or GMs. I just got spanked by my first AV today (not surprising, still no IO sets) but the -regen didn't seem to be very effective during the 45 seconds it took me to face-plant.

I just took a closer look at the power and the description says it lowers regen for just 10 seconds even though it has a long recharge! Am I missing something? Why would all these guides talk about the -regen component when it last for a few seconds?

Many computer RPGs have the same inflated price differences between the lower and higher levels. When you first start out the higher level equipment seems to have impossible prices. Clearly the designers who are setting these numbers are thinking very abstractly.

I must have played a dozen games where you go into the first store and see something like this

Terrible dagger (level 1): 5 copper pieces
Poor dagger (level 5): 10,000 silver pieces
Average Dagger (level 10): 1,000,000,000 jewel-encrusted platinum mega-pieces

CoX is no exception, and I can see why new players would balk at some of the prices they see in the market. It's a good thing that "Inf" is an invisible, intangible non-money thing, or we would need big animated wheelbarrows in the game to cart it around.

I think it would be easier for us to give feedback if you said more about how you plan to play this character and what you are trying to accomplish. Your defense seems rather low if you plan on soloing much, but if you are primarily acting as a support character this might not make a difference.

There also look like a few oversights--I notice that you have 6 endurance enhancements in Stamina. I would expect to see just 3 in there if you don't want an IO benefit, or to have actual IOs in there from a set if you plan to 6-slot it.

Hmm, I will take a look at sonic/rad. I suspect that it would be better for the AV soloing and more safe than fire overall.

So far I am enjoying fire because of its high AoE damage. In large groups the xp gain rate of fire is so high that even though I die more occasionally the debt is not a problem.

This shows me that my goal of “not dying much” is not as high a priority as I thought. “Mowing through foes like death incarnate” is more like it.

Thanks for the comments. The fire/traps is going very well and looks like what I want right now. Unfortunately since I play almost exclusively solo I don't have anyone to pl me to 32. However, I am finding that a fire/anything corrupter is able to use the methods from MA farming even at a low level in Praetoria. You can buy medium purples, and with two of those you are at the def cap. If the mish is set to -1 / X8 you can farm the first few rooms and then reset. It’s a little tedious, but more reliable than the PUGs I’ve been in recently.

Well, anything at X8 is not really “tedious” but it does get repetitive.

I find it interesting that there are very few guides to traps corrupters or defenders. The MM guides are written from a very different perspective than we have.

I just took a fire/rad to 20 and he was a lot of fun, but now that I am in Paragon City he is getting mezzed a lot. I just started a fire/traps and it looks like he might be better solo character. The fact he gets mez protection and +15% def means he should be a lot easier to softcap, and he'll have enough -regen to handle AVs. I sure miss the easy heal from rad, though!

Whoops, looks like I might have missed my chance. Oh well! I am certainly still interested if things don't work out with Exxcaliber.

Dirike, I play almost exclusively on Freedom. Thank you for your generous offer, and I would be honored to take over the SG. Is there a good time this evening or in the next few days that might work for you?

I am interested in trying out a Corrupter. I have Fire/Kin and Ill/Rad controllers, but I’ve gotten tired of hiding behind pets and confusing my enemies. I’d like to get into battle and do some direct damage myself for a change.

In descending importance, I would like to be able to:

1) Do good to excellent AoE damage and decent ST damage. I tend to play at -1/ X 2 or higher even at low levels.
2) Eventually be able to take on X8 maps.
3) Not die much, either by buffing myself or debuffing my foes
4) Solo AVs

I know that emphasizing AoE over ST damage goes against the goal of soloing AVs.

I have around 500 million in the bank and plan on getting lots of hero merits, so I can get LotG recharge and other “middle-class” enhancements. I might be able to afford purples someday.

After reading a number of posts I decided to go with fire/rad. I considered running a defender since they now get a 30% damage buff when solo, but since they don’t have fire a corrupter seemed to be the better choice. I started this fire/rad last week and so far I have enjoyed him A LOT. Fireball and RoF for the good times! The –to hit from radiation is effectively doing the same things as giving me +30 defense, so with just two purples I can nearly soft cap myself as long as I am careful with how I manage my anchors.

I was hoping this character might be my AV soloer, but I checked the math and learned that AVs have strong resistance to debuffs. As in, a level 50 AV will ignore 85% of the -to hit debuff, so that 30% debuff gets reduced to 4.5%. That suggests to me that staying alive while taking down an AV might be a real challenge.

I am considering rerolling him as fire/traps since traps has good –regen, +def that can be soft-capped, and mez protection. Would a fire/traps fit my goals? Are there other builds that would do better?

I should mention that for some reason fire/dark is not very appealing to me. Maybe it’s the flavor-of-the-month aspect. If it really stands above other builds I would consider it.

I wish that dual pistols had more damage oomph and AoE effects at earlier levels because I like the way it looks and it fits with traps, but oh well.

What do people think? If fire/rad is an otherwise strong build I might get over my desire to solo AV and GMs, but there’s something appealing about taking on the biggest challenges in the game single-handed.

Thanks for the responses. I decided to alpha slot for +end and so far I've been happy. I still occasionally run into endurance issues when spamming AOE attacks at difficulty +2 / X8 so I am still undecided on whether I will respec into Fire. I suspect that I would need to take the difficulty down a little so each group doesn't take as long to eliminate.

I am really not sure what to put into the Alpha slot for my hero-side brute. Currently he has Energy as his Epic but I am open to changing. He is soft-capped on def for melee, not quite on range and AoE but he will be when I go through the second respec and buy a few more sets. Over the last month I have been buying LotG +recharge and the Numena and Miracle +recovery and regen so the brute is already a very reliable solo toon. It’s really easy to keep a purple inspiration up at X6 .

Currently I am mainly soling missions on +1/X6, I could probably bump it up to X8 without it being much harder. I find when I get too many mobs around a hostage it’s almost impossible to SEE them so X6 seems to be the sweet spot.

I see three main options:

1) Stay with Energy for my Epic but go with Spiritual for the +recharge boost. The thing is, there is a diminishing rate of returns on +recharge and this toon already has a global recharge of about 35%. I would hate to slot this and find my AoE powers recharge .5 seconds faster.

2) Change my epic to Fire to get another AoE attack. In that case I would probably go with the Cardiac for the +endurance since I will be losing the benefits of the Energy epic power

3) Change to Fire, but go with Musculature for the +damage.

What are other people doing? I know that SS/Shield is a popular combo so I presume there are plenty of other players who have are facing this decision.

You might also want to check out this thread “Help me solo heroes” at http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=215361 .

I must say that Issue 19 has made me reconsider things like this. OwtS has the big advantage of not requiring many slots to be useful. I will probably take it as one of my three freebie powers when I respec this week.

Are you taking "One With the Shield" on your /shield brute? There are only two guides written since I13 on /shield, and those are both by the same person, so there's surprisingly little data here on the boards. He doesn't like the power, but I don't know.

If you have a reasonable global recharge (say, more than 25%, which I do) and Hasten then this might be an excellent damage mitigation power if you are fighting +1 or higher bosses that can be up most of the time. I'm torn between OwtS and taking Fireball.

I think part of the problem is the really wide range of enjoyment levels when it comes to working the market. I have more than once told my wife I was logging in "for just 10 minutes" and spent an hour crafting and looking for deals. If I do that a lot the game feels more like shopping at a flea-market than it does like being a superhero. I happen to like shopping and making stuff, but I understand the people who don't.

That's another reason why farming a-merits is nice. I'm actually DOING MISSIONS instead of just sitting in Steel Canyon figuring out crafting profit margins.