Local_Man

Welcome Back! We have been seeing a lot of old friends returning in recent months.

In addition to Hyperstrike's good advice and excellent links . . .

I just finished taking a Defender from Hero to Villain, then through the Patron Power Pool arc, and then back from Villain to Hero. You first have to get Tip Missions -- they can drop from any foe who is level 20 or higher, even if they are much lower level than you. My level 50 characters usually do Tip Missions in Talos because if I run out, I can hunt low level foes and defeat them quickly to get more tips. Some tips will send to you other zones, however.

When you choose a Tip mission (as a hero), you can choose to reinforce your Hero status or go towards Vigilante. You are limited to 5 Tip Missions per day -- any more don't count. After completing 5 one day and 5 the next, you then have to get a new type of Tip for a "Morality Mission." Complete that mission and you become a Vigilante. You still have access to your Hero base, but you can go to the Rogue Isles through Pocket D, the Midnight Club, Vangard Base and a couple of submarines. So it takes two days to go Vigilante.

Go to the Rogue Isles, and do 5 more tip missions per day. After two days, you can get the Morality Mission to become a full-fledged villain. Note that you lose access to your Hero-side base and the Ourobourus portal will take you to the villain side only. You also will not be able to go back to Paragon City as a Villain. Then choose a Patron in Grandville and do the Patron arc. Once complete, you will have access to the Patron Power Pools . . . even if you go back Hero, the PPP is unlocked on the character. It will take you 4 days to go back Hero. Then if you want access to the Rogue Isles while still having access to your hero-side base, you will have to go Vigilante again.

The Mission Architect has been a mixed blessing. Many people found ways to make missions that let people farm low level characters and gain levels stupidly fast . . . and some people were leveling up to 50 only running AE missions. As a result, there were a lot of "AE Babies" who were level 50 but knew nothing about how to play the game. Most of these exploits have been closed. Many of the experienced players kind of soured on AE as a result.

Some of the AE missions are very good . . . most aren't. AE missions award Tickets, a different form of reward, that can be cashed in for various things including random recipes, or you can buy specific Invention Salvage items. When prices get out of hand on the market, I will usually run over to AE to buy some salvage items that I need without having to spend too much.

Some other new things in the game include the ability to e-mail items between characters . . . which make it much easier to make characters by consolidating your stuff.

The newest stuff in the game is mostly incarnate content, so a LOT of people are working on their level 50 characters rather than lower level characters. You'll see a lot of folks hanging out in Rikti War Zone's Vangard Base (or Pocket D on some servers) waiting to get into one of the new Trials. But there are new Task Forces for level 20-40. Keep an eye out for the "Weekly Strike Target," as it awards extra bonus XP and Merits for characters leveling up and an extra incarnate salvage item for Incarnates.

Enervating Field should be slotted with two EndRdx and that's it.

If you can get them, Radiation Infection can be slotted with 3 Enzyme Hami-Os. You give up set bonuses, but you can ED cap slotting in all three aspects of the power -- ToHitDebuff, Defense Debuff and EndRdx.

Depending on how often you use it, your global bonuses and how you do your slotting, EM Pulse can get by with 4 slots. I use 4 Basilisk's Gaze in my builds where I am trying to maximize Recharge. If Frankslotting, you can use 3 Acc/Hold/Rech and a common Recharge. EM Pulse doesn't have the 20% Accuracy penalty of controller AoE controls, and the hold duration is already long.

If you have a ton of global Recharge and Accuracy, Ling Rad can get by with a single accuracy in the default slot. Otherwise, you mainly need to slot it for Accuracy and Recharge. The main thing you look for out of this power is the -Recharge and -Regen, neither of which can be enhanced.

Fallout is a very situational power. It can do a lot of damage, but if you are tight on slots, it can be skipped or even used with minimal slotting just for the massive debuffs it does. I have a few characters where I picked it up at 49 and just threw an Acc/Dam Hami-O into it. Before Inherent Stamina, I almost always skipped it.

While I have an Elec/Rad, I'm still trying to figure out the best way to slot up the Electric powers.

Publishers and editors provide a valuable service to make a writer's work much better. All you have to do is read a lot of the self-published dreck out there to realize how important a good editor can be. I can't tell you how often I see some self-published work, some of it with some good imagination and underlying talent, filled with ignorant, silly and inexperienced errors. (I recall going through an entire 3 book series where the author didn't understand the difference between "your" and "you're." And the story was actually a fun read with interesting characters. A good editor could have improved it immensely to the point where it might have been worthy of actually being published.)

I have met a number of good, published writers who are very thankful for their editors. Most of them know that a good editor can help them write a better story. Most of them seem to have a love/hate relationship with their publishers, however.

Making money on writing is very hard. (My wife is working at it -- she is currently working on writing and re-writing school books. She is working with a "book packager" who has collected a team of authors, artists and experts to put together a good series of textbooks.) It takes a combination of talent, experience and technical expertise. Self-published books almost never make any significant money -- they just don't have the distribution channels needed (and usually aren't very good or a publisher would have accepted the work). The main publishing houses produce quality product or they don't last. These publishing houses have the experience and connections with the best distributors -- major booksellers and trade groups that service the independents. Publishers have the experience to know what kind of books sell. Publishers know how to advertise books. Publishers know how to distribute books. And publishers can provide the capital needed for advertising, printing and distributing books. These publishers take the financial risk, so they reap much of the reward.

Things are changing, and exactly how the various roles in the publishing game work out is not yet known. But there is a role for people who know the business and how it works.

Since you don't have a Defense-based shield, Maneuvers isn't doing much for you. You might want to consider changing to the Earth APP with its Defense-based shield, fast-recharging AoE and single target heavy-hitter (seismic smash). You don't HAVE to softcap to S/L defense, but getting a decent amount of S/L defense allows the foes to miss you more often, so that your healing should be enough to handle the damage you take. I found my Plant/Kin (named "Flora the Explorer") to have a weakness with bosses -- Seismic Smash includes a Hold in it so you can Hold those bosses with one application of Stranger and Seismic. It really helped fill that single target damage need.

If you know you are dealing with a group that tends to put a lot of damage on you, you may want to include Transfusion into your "attack chain" so that you are healing yourself up before they can do all that much damage on you.

Another trick is to use Twoey as a aggro-magnet . . . turn on your invis (SS+stealth proc) and lead Twoey into the group. As they turn to focus on him, you can get in the ideal position to fire off Seeds+Roots. You can try to heal him up, but he probably won't last long. Still, it gives you a few seconds to get out your controls and may even help gather the foes into a tighter group as they gather around him. (I call him Twoey after the plant in "Little Shop of Horrors." Seymore called him "Twoey" because his name was the "Audrey II.")

Both of those are pseudo-pets, and they work differently so you can't really compare them.

My understanding is that Volcanic Gasses is a pet that then spawns a total of 6 other geyser pets. Each of the pets has a chance for the proc to hit. (I personally have not tested this . . . this is how it has been discussed on these forums.) So it has lots of chances for the proc to hit.

Poison Gas Trap isn't a controller power. If you are talking about the Defender version, I suspect that the proc can only go off when the trap is set off. But again, I haven't tested it. I know that the Lockdown +2 Mag proc is often suggested for Poison Gas Trap.

Earthquake is different because it has a chance to go off when the power is first cast and then every 10 seconds thereafter.

Is it worthwhile slotting the damage proc in Volcanic Gasses? After you have slotted up enough hold and recharge, it probably is worth slotting if you are trying to get some damage in your build. The purple Unbreakable Constraint Chance for Smashing Damage is worth slotting.

My Earth/Rad that I based my guide on was leveled up before IOs, and I haven't gone back to fully IO him out . . . sadly, he is on a server where we don't play all that often anymore. I have an Earth/Storm on my main server, but I haven't taken the time to IO her out yet . . . working on too many others.

If Traps ever gets 'ported over to Controllers, expect to see a LOT of Grav/Traps Controllers. The idea of Wormhole onto a pile of Trip Mines is just sick.

My Ice/Ice Blaster stays in the air most of the time. I use the Speed-On-Demand binds in CityBinder, so I don't have to slot Hover for Flightspeed. I also have Superspeed with a stealth IO for when I want to stealth, but he spends most of his time overhead out of melee range. I didn't take any of the melee attacks but have some of the melee control powers (Ice Patch, Freezing Touch), so that I can stay at range even in tight quarters.

Shiver is wonderful for a Hoverblaster. The -Recharge keeps foes from shooting at me very often and gives me time to pick them off.

My Dual Pistols/Dev blaster just hit 50 the other day. I understand the dislike of Devices, but it is not nearly as bad as many folks say . . . but I don't use some of the Devices powers much when teaming.

This was mainly a concept character . . . as soon as Dual Pistols was announced, I decided to make "Pepe LePewPew" mainly because I found the name amusing. He soloed a fair amount, but I have found that I enjoy setting up large groups of Trip Mines and then luring foes to their deaths. It is not fast, but the big BOOM is satisfying. I found Devices appealed to my strategic side more than my "Kill-em-all-NOW" side. I doubt that Pepe will ever get fully IO'ed up or get a full set of Incarnate abilities (too many other level 50's), but he was fun to level up.

My first Blaster was an Ice/Ice, who is still my favorite . . . but I'm mostly a controller at heart and Ice/Ice is virtually a Dominator without Domination.

Warshades are such a roller-coaster of fun. As previously mentioned, as you level up, there is always another milestone power to look forward to. Stygian Circle makes a huge difference . . . you can be nearly dead, nearly out of endurance, and you pop StyCir and BOOM, you are at full health, full endurance. This makes for one of the more enjoyable nukes in the game, because you can run in, Mire, hit the nuke, pop a small blue and then StyCir and you are ready to mop up any survivers. I suggest planning to get Super Speed or a Stealth IO by 14-18 -- it makes running in for Mire/Eclipse much easier.

I think that Fire/Ice is a great Blaster combo, especially on teams. Fire just kills stuff fast. Ice gives you some good control/mitigation, especially Shiver and Ice Patch. Another combo you may want to consider is Fire/Mental -- that added cone and the great buff from Drain Psyche make a big difference.

It is a chain power. That means that you cast it at one foe, and if it misses that foe, the entire power misses. If it hits, it then chains to others (I think it splits to go after two nearby foes.) Then it goes from foe to foe in the area.

There are advantages and disadvantages to chain powers. If you miss the first target, you are out of luck (so it is a good idea to aim for lower level foes). The chaining takes a short amount of time to affect the group. HOWEVER, it also works on irregularly shaped groups. You are not limited to a certain radius around your initial target.

Another key aspect of Synaptic Overload is that it does not draw aggro, making it a great opening power. Strategicly, it is often a good idea to run slightly ahead of the rest of the team to use Synaptic Overload on a group of foes before the rest of the team gets there.

I don't have access to Mids at the moment, so I can't see all your numbers. You didn't really explain anything about your playstyle or how you use your character -- solo? Team only? General use? Like to solo AVs? But there are a few things I would do differently.

I have been unimpressed with Frostworks. I don't have it on my Ill/Cold. So, try this -- Replace Frostworks with Flash. Move the Unbreakable Constraint set to Flash. Slot Blind with 4 Basilisk's Gaze, an Acc/Dam Hami-O and a common Damage. That will get you more Recharge, and add a lot of damage to your single target attack chain. And, of course, give you an AoE Hold for control and to set up Containment.

The Zephyr -Knockback in Combat Jumping is an unnecessary expense. You don't need a second -knockback most of the time, but if you want it, move that slot to Arctic Fog and put a Karma or Steadfast -Knockback in it -- they are much cheaper.

I prefer the Ice APP over the Mace PPP. Why? Ice Blast is a fast activating, fast recharging power that lets you get a great attack chain of Blind-Spectral Wounds-Ice Blast-Spectral Wounds. Ice Blast has a base 8 second recharge, compared to a base 25 second recharge for Poisonous Ray. That Blind-SW-Blast-SW attack chain takes foes down fast and lets you take advantage of the Illusory damage in Spectral Wounds to substantially increase your overall damage. You get a choice of two AoE damage powers, a S/L Defense armor and Hibernate, a great "panic button" power to recover health and endurance. I admit that I haven't tested the overall damage comparison between the Mace PPP set and the Ice APP set, but the speed of Ice Blast really makes a difference. (My Illusion/Rad guide discusses Illusory damage and its importance.)

Another vote for Broadsword/Shield. If you rely upon Parry to cap your Melee Defense, you can focus on sets for general Defense, Ranged and AoE. That how I did it with mine, "Bull Shield." Shield Charge makes a significant improvement in your AoE damage. Besides, Broadsword + Shield just looks like they go together.

On the other hand, Martial Arts and Super Reflexes just seem to go together.

This is a nice, well explained and well-reasoned question . . . and one I have been thinking about myself. I also have an Ice/Storm/Ice with the Cardiac Alpha. The nice thing about Cardiac is that not only do you get the Endurance reduction, but the buff to Resistance helps Steamy Mist without having to slot for Resistance. That's a nice added bonus.

My inclination is to go for Recharge bonuses . . . and damage procs. Ice/Storm has lots of opportunities for damage procs, so adding a bunch of them could increase your otherwise weak damage.

Personally, I skipped Thunderclap -- I find Thunderclap more useful when I have another Stun to stack with, as on my Earth/Storm or Grav/Storm. With Inherent Fitness, I added in Shiver for those times (like the Incarnate trials) where I may not want to stay in melee. I have been finding it more useful than I thought . . . with AA, Shiver and Snow Storm, I can slow huge areas to a crawl with lots of -Recharge. Add some Impeded Swiftness procs in there, and the bits of damage will add up.