Katten

Went the other way (non-concept, all technical) with my /rad, colored the Radiant infection yellow and purple, and enervating field Orange/Red, so the team would be able to visually tell what things were being debuffed.

Also made the sonic resonance "Disruption field" red. Partially so the team could finally appreciate that little gem of a power (since they knew it existed) and partially because I could refer to them as the red rings of death rather than the sonic donut.

One thing I've noticed and started to have a problem with (noticed especially as a blaster) is that many tanks are substituting taunt for taunt auras+gauntlet.

Generally speaking, a tank with taunt is NOT going to care what gets knocked around (if it's not completely out of hand) since they'll be running back shortly (due to the -range in debuff in taunt)

What is annoying, if he was one of the tankers that took taunt though, is a team with multiple controllers and otherwise heavy in KB, because you can quickly wind up with a bunch of scattered immobilized mobs where all benefit of debuff and control are lost... so the blame can't be strictly laid on the person doing the knockback, it's the fault of somewhat unskilled, impatient, or listless players magnified in a team setting.

*However, sometimes, PA's can block doors... man that's annoying. Rare. But annoying.*

I'm interested Chaos, lets see a picture!

Thanks for all the input guys.

I took a nice long look over the slow sets (short look actually there's only 4) I was amazed at how bad the bonuses were. I had envisioned them being in the same category as stuns and confuse (lesser used non damage/heal sets) and expected them to have similar awesome bonuses and procs associated with them.

Turns out slow seems to be some of the worst sets in the game.

Likely I'll go with Fury's slotting, but nix the multistrike for straight up accuracy (I've got a good amount of recovery) until I can get my hands on bucket of Obli's.

I have a spines/regen that's just now hit high enough level for IO's and I like her enough to throw inf in for it to get them.

So question's about quills, whats the most effective way to slot, damage or slow?

Would I be losing out on any decent bonus if I made a combination of the two? Is it worth a large number of slots? (I'm not totally slot starved since I don't have end issues... but I'm forseeing a future where I have to put slots into powers that don't need em just for the bonuses.)

Also, are procs great? or does the 10 second tick make it unnoticeable? (could double up the proc's)

Beyond the alpha, yea, DP is awesome, like instant healing for blasters should work well with recharge slows. May only be truly great post epic armor though.

Don't know if it's already up but.

Power Set: Spines
Power: Quills
Visual Problem: Quills are no longer appearing to hit the enemies like they used to.
Audio Problem: Quills no longer make the sound of striking enemies also.

Is this a change I'm unaware of or a bug?

As one that just got MoG for the first time, Take it .

You'll be pleasantly surprised, remember how those big nasty rikti swords would tear you apart? Jump into the mob with MoG running and the most damage they'll do is 4, and you get to laugh as you keep seeing "absorbed" pop over your head.

The ONLY downside is duration now, it might only be 15 seconds, but that's long enough to be a true scrapper again, jumping into groups, getting way over your head and coming out swinging.

I went immediatly from dying 2-3 times in a mission (due to random and unfortunate swings of aggression from purple rikti chiefs) to dying not at all, with no change in reckless attitude.

The key point to invulnerabilty, which I don't see mentioned (maybe I missed it) is the large defense bonus invincibility gives you. That is absolutely key in considering it in comparison, having several enemies around you (taunt aura, quills) gives a ton of survivabilty, because that overlaps the selfheal/resists.

Generally speaking (as in discluding psychic enemies) invuln will be more survivable, and is easier to soft cap (consider "I need x amount of enemies to hit soft cap + Bonuses") and also think about what true soft cap to melee is, as the surrounding enemies take a tohit loss.

However, spines is end hungry due to quills (if you intend to run it all day) If you choose WP, Choose it for that reason.

Willpower and spines can also mesh well since quills lowers recharge time of your enemies, thus allowing you more time regenerate.
----------------------------
Bottom line, Invuln can handle an alpha better, Willpower can handle a longer sustained fight.

Both are survivable and mesh well with spines, neither is strictly superior

I hope Silverado and Imaheroe discuss, because that advice was "Give up building for defense" followed immediatly by "Build for defense" and when I see things like that I start getting scared of making a /elec myself.

I'd love to say buckshot is awesome, because I used to use it all the time, but now with Full Auto I find buckshot to be mostly unnecessary, because nothing survives long enough for me to need the extra AoE.

I find more and more often the best attack combo is m30(first)then immediatly after FA, because of the delay to your grenade hitting, you will hit all the mobs you've lined up for FA and likely significantly delay their retribution due to knockback, if not kill them out right. After that flamethrower does more damage so why use buckshot. and also, if they're not dead it might mean there's few enough that single targets attacks are the way to go.

But then, I play an AR/EN so rangeboost is on all the time, meaning Full Auto is going to cover the regular cone whole more easily (as the narrow cone means nothing at long range)

Eventually, you can drop something, it'll be a hard choice because all the AoE's are very good. With Full Auto recharging every spawn (or multiple times per) there won't be need to have em all AFTER that point though.

Also beanbag PFFT, bean bag never got me anywhere (solely opinion, not advice) you ARE going with munitions mastery though, this means you can pick up a hold that you don't need redraw for either, and hold and stun don't stack. [which one do you want (stares intensely) a stun? WRONG! (ignites you while you're held and NOT running away)]

just kidding, that's right, you have an immob with devices. But ask yourself "do I need more control?" if you solo often, taking two mobs out of the fight is better than just one. If you don't solo often, holds better than stun any day.

Lastly, Hurdle will get you what you want out of combat jumping, that is easy indoor speed. At about level 25-30ish it will have scaled up enough that you can clear the 1 floor up bridge railing no problem.

It's safe, sure the enemies likely wont have enough recharge to punch through your regeneration, but beyond drain psyche, you only have one PBAoE, PSW. It would make no difference if you fought in melee range or fought at actual range after jumping in and doing DP+PSW.

So safe, good combo, but definitely not blapping, especially since the only melee attack is a wavy soothing hand(suck out yo brain) motion.

Now /Ice on the otherhand, then you benefit from chilling embrace's incredible -rech and have several melee attacks. or /energy for melee attacks and the powerboosted recharge slows.

*by the way, your avatar is excellent*

Invuln plays nicely with spines drawing them close to your quills debuffing them and buffing you, if that matches your concept more closely, than great, because you'll be quite survivable.

SR can be nice for ease of softcapping, but that's not going to happen for the majority of your game time with that character, unless you really see your self sticking with it for the long haul.

Lastly... /WP is very... very effective with spines, RttC does the same thing invincible does, but WP also supplies you with the endurance to run quills forever without worry for most of your leveling time (rather than post epics). It's also an incredibly boring defense set, but you know that.

Just expect a little more endurance slotting whichever way you go.

Sailboat, that's awesome.

I find the new spines a lot easier to build around, have a character now that's pretty wicked, using red thorns and dark red regen powers, it looks like the characters run off blood. What makes it better is that in the heat of battle with dull pain/instant healing running the red aura gets thicker and thicker.

So plant types are in now, my blood demon worked out incredibly well.

I'd suggest either broadsword or spines for pvp, spines for the ranged attack/immob/-fly/slow or broadsword for heavy burst damage and parry stacking.

You'll have trouble with elec/ due to the lack of an ability to keep enemies from staying out of range, and the lack of single target high burst damage.

In two levels with willpower you'll be able to pick up quick recovery, you wont have endurance issues after that (the reason you were having end issues had nothing to do with claws, more likely it was constantly running RttC which uses a good bit of end)

Other than that, Catwhoorg's advice is solid, and DONT THINK ABOUT SKIPPING FOLLOW UP alot of people skip follow up, they're wrong. You'll agree after running several levels with it, other than the damage, you'll come to feel like every attack is missing without followup running, because with it running you almost never miss. Later, you get to double it up, and it's almost like running build up all the time.

If you do go regen, make sure you pick up shockwave in the end, the area knockdown will allow you to survive the alphas regen has trouble with.

Well, I doubt this thought is likely to be echoed much, but Sonic Resonance could be a decent pairing, you would be able to make her much more survivable, backing up defense with solid resistance is great.

The true synergy comes from the telenukes and the sonic donut though (disruption field) 30% -res toggle centered on her, and she would most certainly be in the center of the mobs soaking up AAO, so it fits perfectly.

This would be very easy on your end, toggle up, 2 bubbles every 4 minutes and the rest can be devoted to offense.

Comes at a price though, extra survivability vs extra speed/recovery.

Thanks for the answers, and yea hahah, I was actually thinking siphon as not being remotely related to it's definition.

Perhaps the devs once had plans for you to steal resistance from the enemy, then decided against it, then decided to make it live.

I'd say go for shields, /willpower would get you the survivability, but it is a couch potato secondary (I've seen afk /willpowers get ambushed and attacked for 5-10 mins and be fine)

With shields you'll get a couple of things, that damage buff is as incredible as you'd imagine, possibly moreso (and the -damage on enemies gives a little mitigation too). You'll also get shield charge, shield charge is a ridiculously heavy hitter AND you have a second AoE of the same nature in Lightning Rod. I've seen what good elec/shields brutes do and it's godly powerful against 8 man spawns.

The mitigation from shields is mid range, it's easy to push your values to 30% def at least, at that point you'll feel relatively safe between that, shield bashes knockdown, and the resistances/true grit/OWtS. Positioning your self relative the team to give them grant cover, or to get phalanx fighting, or to get max AAO gives you the active feel.

What you wind up with is an offensive powerhouse with 2 telesplosions, with adequate defenses and interesting utility. due to shield charge/lighting rod it really has unique character.

Do the sonic debuffs/buffs have any available sets to choose from or do they simply get nothing like it would seem?

Powers in question:

Sonic Siphon
Disruption Field
Clarity

I'd just slotted for end redux... but that does seem like a lot of powers to have not be able to get any bonus from.

Should I just get my bonuses elsewhere and ignore the problem, or does sonic siphon allow for something like ranged damage for no reason?

*edit* I guess while sonic resonance is in question, where is the siphon part of sonic siphon?

If there were two things I'd like to see it would be:

-A higher resistance cap for most classes (scrapper 85,offensive squishies 80)
I say this because hitting the resistance cap of 75% means little to high level enemies, who basically go from killing you in one hit to killing you in 4 (which is very little time difference in an 8 man spawn). The res cap at 90 is high survivability, but it may be even more overpowered than the defense soft cap due to stability were it easy to achieve for everyone.

-IO's with higher resistance bonuses of more varied types, or with even higher bonuses but only to single damage types. (the goal being achievable resistance capping given enough money.)

I'm not sure how this would actually effect things though, as it stands defense sets benefit hugely from defense bonuses, and the resistance sets also benefit greatly from defense bonuses.

Perhaps something that would help resistance defense sets atleast would be generalized mez RESISTANCE to make up for the constant onslaught of debuffs a resistance based melee faces.

Yea, in my experience WoC needs these two things to be truly useful.

1.) The Purple IO set w/contagious confusion. (Relatively cheap, and worthwhile bonuses)
2.) A blaster that can perform well in melee range.

I know with my Sonic/mm it can make a very noticeable difference, but that's due to sleep + drain psyche, what the WoC lets me due is wake them all up with PBAoE's since most of melee range is confused the alpha is diminished enough that the ranged attackers cant punch through the regeneration.

However... pre-50, and without any other safety catch, it might be difficult to use effectively, and without any blap/AoE strength there's no point anyway.

Except as the above post mentioned, for looks. (and it does look cool)

*tip* It IS a fun power, being the only blaster confuse it's your only chance to play tricks on say, rikti guardians so they use accelerate metabolism on you.