Justaris

I think the reason for the change (both for Windfall and for XP Booster) was simply that players were having trouble working out how to find and activate the temp power once claimed. Get enough support tickets on that and I can understand their decision to change the way it implemented.

Personally I don't like it, but I've had enough people on Lambda trials who seem completely unable to find and use a temp power to believe there were people out there who couldn't figure this out easily on their own.

As others have said, it's only mildly more inconvenient to claim it from the email menu - and until you do, it is 'saved for later' as there's no expiration on how long things can remain in the Character Items menu. It's a bit irksome, but if it saves the GMs a lot of headache I can understand it.

The weapon sets aren't bad. The newer ones (Staff Fighting and Titan Weapons) include a power that helps you defensively, so that's very handy when going for a tough character. I actually have Tankers of both types as current projects. Working on a new Dark tank that's DA/TW and an Electric tank that's Elec/Staff. As these two powersets are relatively new, I don't have as much experience with them as some others (hence the project characters).

As for the other weapon sets such as Battle Axe, War Mace or Dual Blades, they each bring their own flavor to the mix. Battle Axe offers a lot of mitigation via knockdown. War Mace has a good stun (and a bunch of customization options for just looking good). Dual Blades has the combo system, which offers several different effects including damage over time, mild debuff and knockdown.

You'll get into the redraw issue with weapon sets, but in my opinion that's really an overblown concern. It can be a bit annoying at times but isn't going to hurt the character in a huge way. It's also worth noting that not all of the weapon sets are compatible with Shield if you choose to go that route for your primary (a Shield tank cannot take Titan Weapons, Staff Fighting or Dual Blades - any of the two-handed weapon sets).

It's in reference to buffs from other players.

I think that's one of the better comparisons of the two sets I've read. I was actually considering including a comparison to Electric in my reply, but it was a pretty long post already.

As for the overkill aspect of Dark Regeneration, it's absolutely true. It's not a Healing Flames type of heal that you'll want to use to top yourself off, and many times its full power will be unnecessary - where it really shines for me is once I've built up the other Defenses. When I have Resilient alpha-enhanced Resistances and soft-capped Defense in place and Darkest Night running on top of that, it takes a lot to make a significant dent in my health. I've got to the point now where I often don't need to use Dark Regen at all, but if I do I'll usually fire it off at around 1/3 or so health or less, which is something on the order of 1600-2000 hit points per activation.

It occurs to me that I'm somewhat hijacking this thread though, so unless the OP asks for further clarification I think I'll let the matter rest here.

That's a good point. I should have remembered that, I reviewed it not all that long ago when I was doing research for the PvP beginner's group I was involved in.

I find that 12 points of knockback protection is sufficient for the vast majority of knockback in the game, but you're quite correct that anything above that would affect my DA tank and wouldn't affect another armor with a traditional protection toggle.

Edit: By the way, Easily_Noobed, you should probably count every word of Arcanaville's as worth about a hundred of mine.

All of the defensive powersets have pros and cons. Dark Armor is in a somewhat unique position in that nearly all of its shortcomings can now be mitigated or entirely eliminated using Inventions. This is what gives Dark Armor such strong potential.

Generally speaking, there are three paths to survivability - Defense (don't get hit), Resistance (get hit for less damage) and Regeneration (heal back damage faster than it can be dealt to you). On top of this you have Healing, which is active and by its nature reactive, but can supplement the other three.

Dark Armor combines strong resistances with modest Defense and the most powerful self-heal power in the game. It has very strong resistance to Psychic damage (the weakness of many other sets) and can be made very strong against Smashing, Lethal and Negative Energy damage as well. It has extremely good resistance to endurance drain (not immune but nearly so - Sappers aren't a problem) and offers some control options to further supplement its survivability. Self-rez powers garner mixed reviews, but of the self-rez powers Dark Armor has one of the best - Soul Transfer, which restores your health and endurance based on the number of enemies surrounding your body and deals a mag 30 (yes, thirty!) AOE stun.

So what's the downside? Some of the powers (Dark Regeneration, Cloak of Fear and to a lesser extent Death Shroud in particular) have high endurance costs. The powerset has no knockback protection. The Resistances are weak against Energy damage (one of the most common damage types in the game, especially in Incarnate content).

That sounds awful! Why is this my favorite defensive powerset?!? It's simple. The endurance costs can be mitigated. Dark Regeneration can be slotted with the Theft of Essence: chance for +End proc which makes the key power of the set much easier to use (sometimes it'll even gain you endurance!). The other powers can be slotted for endurance reduction and Incarnate powers such as Cardiac alpha, Ageless destiny and/or Support hybrid further take the edge off.

But no knockback protection? That sucks! Also easily fixed with -KB IOs. I use three for 12 points of protection, which is on par with what you'll get from powers that do include that protection in other powersets. Problem solved.

Weak against Energy? Noooooo! This is a big one, but again this is where Inventions come to your rescue. If you've spent some time making builds you'll have noticed that it's a lot easier to rack up significant Defense than it is Resistance. So starting off with good Resistance and then building Defense gets you further than going the other way, and Dark Armor already comes with some modest Defense in Cloak of Darkness to get you started. Popular build choices are Smashing/Lethal/Energy/Negative Energy softcap or Melee/Ranged/AOE softcap depending on the offensive powerset and what it lends itself towards (for example Titan Weapons gives a significant help towards Melee Defense, so you would likely go positional if using TW). Either way, the Defense will shield you from most Energy attacks and anything that does get through you can easily heal back using Dark Regeneration. Those numbers for Tankers - for more offensive-minded characters like Scrappers or Brutes, generally I'll go for the 'almost soft cap' of 32.5% rather than the softcap of 45% - that's softcap with one small purple inspiration active. This allows more of a build focus on damage output. That said, my DA tanker routinely does just what you described above - runs up to containers in Lambda and wails on them, sometimes all by himself.

The end result is a character with strong Resistances combined with capped Defenses, immune to the 'kryptonite' damage types, highly resistant to endurance drain - and if anything does manage to get lucky and spike past all that, he can heal himself back up from a sliver of HP to full health every 8 seconds or so. And if you do somehow manage to kill him, he'll just get right back up, hitting you with a mag 30 stun in the process, and you'll have to try and do it AGAIN.

I do love me some Dark Armor.

The first question you need to ask is whether you want to leverage yourself more towards recharge / DPS or whether you want to go for more Defense and survivability. Right now you're sort of in the middle but your only really good Defense numbers are in Melee Defense. You could retool this build to get positional Defense to 32% in all three positions (softcap with a small purple inspiration), but you would have to give up some of the recharge and accuracy bonuses you're going for now to do that. If you want to be tougher, I would recommend going for Mako's Bite six-slotted in a few of the attacks to get your Ranged Defense up. Aegis will help with AOE Defense. More important, you should take Cloak of Darkness and slot it for Defense and you should better slot your existing Defense powers (especially Weave!). Purple recipes don't really have much of a place if you're going for Defense. You can pick up another 5% melee defense easily by 3-slotting the Brute's Fury ATO in two different powers, however. Also of note, the PvP IOs have recently come down sharply in price due to the introduction of enhancement converters, so you could probably procure a Gladiator's Armor +3% IO without much trouble.

That's if you want to be tougher. An alternate way to go might be to abandon attempts towards survivability and instead try for a recharge-intensive machine in the hopes that you can flip out and SMASH everything in sight before they manage to kill you back. If you want to go that route, purples will help. The high enhancement values will help you put out more damage and the strong recharge bonuses will keep you dishing out the pain.

Some general comments regardless of which way you go:

Don't slot Dark Regeneration for heal. It's already a ginormous heal. You don't need to enhance the heal aspect much if at all. Instead you want to focus on endurance reduction, recharge, endurance reduction, accuracy, and maybe some endurance reduction. Even with the excellent Theft of Essence proc in the power, it's still a high endurance cost click and sometimes the random number generator will screw you on the proc even with tons of targets around you.

You've massively overslotted Stamina. I realize this is an endurance-hungry build, but several of those slots could be better used elsewhere. Same goes for Health.

Overall, I would recommend you choose a direction and commit to it. Once you reach your goal you can go back and add on the back end (for example, if you go Defense, you could plop in a few LOTGs with whatever you have left over once you hit your goals to bump up the recharge a little), but in my experience you get a more effective build if you aren't trying to do too many things at once. Have a primary goal and consistently favor that over anything else. Personally, I favor the Defense route, but I have a tendency to play my Brutes like Tankers. In fact, my current Dark Armor/Titan Weapons project is a Tanker. YMMV.

I think the key was preparation. We were an entirely +3 league with all Longbow/Cimeroran lores, plentiful Ultimates, several team Acc/Dam inspirations, large individual damage inspirations, slotted Diamagnetic or proc interfaces, Ageless/Rebirth Destiny powers and slotted Hybrids.

We also practiced good tactics, most people moving clear for the Air Crackles phase, but I think it was the strict entrance requirements that really won the day for us.

Thank you, MP, for organizing a smooth and successful run!

I've got a Necro/Dark myself and I ended up going mostly for recharge on his build. I like being able to use Howling Twilight on nearly every mob if I want to. Such a great power, an autohit stun that has the side benefit for being the best rez in the game!

Hope some of all this was helpful to you, and good luck on IOing out your MM!

As with most things in the game there's no One True Way to go with this, but here's a few approaches I've seen with respect to Masterminds and IO Sets:

1) The Tankermind approach. Some powersets are better-suited to this than others. The basic idea here is to make yourself as tough as possible using a combination of Bodyguard mode and +Defense from IOs (and to a lesser extent, +HP and Resistance. Avoid Regen because its effectiveness is tied to your total HP, which is never going to be all that high) so that you can effectively tank for your pets. You'll still have low hit points, of course, but you don't need to tank for very long, just long enough for your pets to demolish whatever you're facing.

2) The high-recharge approach. This is kind of a staple across the board and it really depends on what your powersets are (especially your secondary), but having very high recharge allows you to quickly replace your pets cannon-fodder style as well as keeping any very powerful click powers you may have in your secondary coming back fast (Howling Twilight comes to mind). This is the approach I took for my Mastermind. Most of the Purple IO sets offer good recharge, so that can be a factor in a build like this.

3) Frankenslot. Ignore Set Bonuses entirely and take Set pieces from many different Sets to enhance your individual powers in extraordinary ways. I typically do a bit of this no matter what I'm going for, but if neither of the above really appeals to you then this is another great way to a very effective character.

Nearly all Set Bonuses will be for the Mastermind only and not the pets, with the exception of certain IOs like the four aura IOs and the Soulbound BU proc that explicitly state they are for pets.

Always a joy to read an update in this thread.

On the subject of Wonder Woman, if they haven't seen the excellent animated film that Bruce Timm & co put out a whlie back, I'd highly recommend it and it appears to be on sale at Amazon. Couldn't resist plugging it, I love all the DCAU films but that one's my favorite.

The trick is that fun to play is so highly subjective that's it's hard to really pin down. I can tell you what I have the most fun playing, but that's no guarantee that you'd have fun playing it - heck, you might actively hate it. I do recommend trying many different things, especially if you mostly just PL your chaacters rather than really play them, since there are probably whole ATs and playstyles you've never sampled. The only way to see if you'll like it is to try it.

For me, what makes a character fun is partly the powersets and partly the concept. I spend a lot of time on my names and costumes, because that helps me get into my characters and want to play them. So for me it's only partly about the game mechanics. I'd mentioning this because my list of favorites is colored by that preference. I couldn't pick just one, but I'm going to cover my top five and some reasons why I play them as much as I do. In no particular order, here goes:

1) Iscariot, my tri-form Warshade. I've always enjoyed Kheldians, though there are many people who are turned off by the complexity of the shapeshifting mechanics, the increased difficulty in making a good build and the loss of a unique look when in one of the other two shapeshifted forms (one Dark Nova looks just like another). I love my Warshade precisely because of how complex he is to play. If I'm on my toes, I can have a character who's a death-dealing AOE damage machine with instantly-restoring health and endurance coupled with capped resistances to all forms of damage. I'm a tankmage! If I mistime my powers, however, I go splat. I love walking that knife-edge. It's never boring and it's extremely rewarding to play, especially when I team with players who labor under the misconception that the AT is a joke. I take a certain pleasure in making those folks' jaws drop now and again.

2) Tetujin, my Rad/Rad Defender. A robot wielding the power of radiation, this is the character that started my romance with debuffers, and he's still my favorite. This character can and has single-handedly turned the tide of battle for a team and he really pulls his weight on an Incarnate league. Over the years I've refined his build to the point that he can lockdown large spawns and neuter anything that gets anywhere near him. Although many inexperienced players may think they need healers for serious play, it's my Rad that's often been the key to victory. I enjoy that.

3) Legerdemain, my KM/WP Brute. Carnival-themed and Praetorian, his powers are visually a lot of fun and I never get tired of running him. He packs quite a punch and he can hold his own in a fight, and he's only getting stronger as work towards the higher Incarnate tiers on him. The appeal for this character is his ability to play different melee roles - I can tank, I can scrap, and I nearly always lead the charge. It helps that he also has what I consider one of my best costumes.

4) Tin Mage Mk. V, my Dark Armour/Elec Tanker. This character is part of an entire stable of themed characters based on the in-game lore of a spellcasting robot called the Tin Mage. I really liked the idea and rolled up the character years ago, and now I lead a themed supergroup called the Tin Mage Corps. As with most of my Tankers, I built Tin Mage for survivability over all else. He has good AOE with Lightning Rod, but his damage output isn't a match for Legerdemain's above. Instead, I enjoy being one of the toughest Tankers around, able to main-tank in any situation. I prefer DA to Stone because with a high-end build I can be very nearly as survivable (more so against some things) with none of the drawbacks imposed by Granite. I enjoy being a reliable, sturdy and at the same time quick and maneuverable tank.

5) Shallow Graves, my Thugs/Dark Mastermind. The only villain on the list, rolled up before it was possible to have Masterminds heroside, he's a villain through and through, an undead Old West character who runs his gang just like he did his outlaw band a hundred years ago. As with the Warshade, I enjoy the complex challenge of managing my pets well - it's easy to just spawn the pets and set them on Aggressive and let them wreak havoc, but more difficulty to keep things under control. Masterminds are one of those things that's easy to do but hard to master (if you'll pardon the pun). Having an army-in-a-box also makes for very easy soloing.


I hope at least some of that was inspiring or helpful for you. It's my experience, take it for what it's worth. YMMV.

I do find a certain ironic amusement in random_person having an imperfect understanding of the word 'random' though.

I've got quite a few team inspirations I can bring to bear for this as well.

I'm in. I have a static team on Thursdays that starts at 9pm EST, so I'll only be able to stay for the first run, but I'll be there. I'm also wide open on Friday if you end up running it again then.

Tin Mage Mk. V
Dark Armour/Elec Tanker
@Justaris

• +3 character, that means alpha, lore, destiny are all tier 3 or 4 - check
• a slotted interface and judgement (priority is on diamagnetic and any proc dmg) - t4 radial Diamagnetic, check
• tier 3 or 4 CORE longbow or cimeroran lore (preference on longbow tier 4) - t3 Longbow core Lore - check
• at least 7 ultimates - check
• large or super reds - check
• rebirth or ageless destiny (a few people can have barrier, but those are best) - have both, t4 ageless and t3 rebirth
• Slotted Hybrid (Support or Assault preferred) - t3 support slotted - check

If you're looking for an endgame raid/PvP culture like some other 800 lb gorilla MMOs out there have, this probably isn't the game for you. We have the VIP-only incarnate content which is starting to move in that direction, but the culture of the game remains one focused on community and alts rather than on endless carrot-and-stick grinding on a 'main'.

That's not to say you can't have one or a few characters you enjoy and play predominantly - I know many people who play their level 50s all the time and have for years even before Incarnate content opened up progression for 50s. There's fun to be had here. Personally I love the customization and the depth of the game, its inclusiveness, and its lack of endgame raid culture.

If you're the type of person who only has fun when they level up, has the best +10 sword of pwnage, or needs a lot of pvp to hold your interest, then this may not be the game for you, and that's fair. I do think, as Ironblade said, it's a bit premature to dismiss the game without ever really playing it through, but that's your prerogative.

Tin Mage Mk. V
@Justaris
DA/Elec Tanker

As I said upthread, I may not be able to make it right at that start time as that's usually right when I'm leaving work, but I'll do my best to be online as promptly as possible.

Can't promise to make such an early start time either, but if you end up doing a second run sometime after 7PM EST, I would be interested in this. I am planning on trying to get Hybrid unlocked tonight.

Dark Armor/Electrical Melee Tanker

There's not much commentary that can be done on an empty build (one without any slotting), but a few things do stand out to me.

1) Do you have Inventions? If so, you can easily get Knockback Protection from IOs, eliminating the need to have Acrobatics in the build. I'm assuming from the gold name that you are VIP now, but if you don't plan to remain so and want an SO build then Acrobatics may make sense. Otherwise I'd get the -KB IOs and drop Acrobatics.

2) I'd recommend Fighting. Tough and Weave can be very helpful to make you a tougher tank. I take them on all my Dark Armor tankers.

3) As mentioned above, you'll want to read some guides if you haven't already. The Theft of Essence proc is another very important IO for a Dark Armor character since it makes your signature power, Dark Regeneration, much easier to use effectively.


That's really about all until you can make a build with some slotting so we can see what IO Set bonuses you're going for and what your overall goals seem to be. Often, as a DA tank you'll aim for either typed Defense (smashing/lethal/energy/negative energy) or positional Defense (melee/ranged/AOE), since layering softcap or near-softcap Defense on top of your already respectable Resistances and your amazing heal makes for an extremely tough Tanker.