Local_Man

This is a very friendly community and we like to encourage new players. We see them as soon-to-be friends. You will run into an occasional bonehead, however. Feel free to come to the forums with questions, and most of the answers will be helpful. If you have questions about a specific Archtype, you may want to put that question into the AT-specific forum. In addition to the wonderful Paragonwiki and Mentor project that have already been mentioned, there are a lot of good guides in the Player Guides section. Some of the older ones are out of date, however.

Praetoria actually makes this kind of confusing because there are really six zones -- the surface and the underground for each area. As far as Accepting a Mission, you can do that anytime that you are not actually IN a mission. Read the text to see if it is underground or above ground, and to see which zone your mission may be located in.

As others have said, the number on the enhancement is its LEVEL, and not a stack of single enhancements. Enhancements are one of the more complex subjects in this game, so it is OK to get confused. Most experienced players don't buy Training Origin enhancements (TOs) -- the value is so low that they may slot some that randomly drop, and sell the rest at the Vendor. I mostly slot Accuracy in low levels.

There is also a way to combine enhancements of the same type to extend their life. However, most of the time, it is better to sell than combine.

Dual Origin Enhancements (DOs) are twice the value of TOs, so they are often worth buying, starting at level 12. If you get short on Inf. (money), you can go to the market and "play the market" to get easy money -- You can buy salvage and some recipes for far less than they sell for at the vendor. It takes some running back and forth, but it is a no-risk way to make some Inf.

Hitting Level 22 means a huge improvement to your character because you can slot Single Origin enhancments (SOs). This is where the "no more than three" comes into effect. SOs are twice the value of DOs. You can only slot the type of SO that matches your origin (Magic, Mutant, Natural, Science or Tech), so you have to locate the vendor/store selling your type. Read up on some of the guides for recommendations on how to slot your powers -- or ask questions here.

Invention Origin enhancements (IOs) are pretty complex -- you can read up on them in Paragonwiki and the guides. It is a good idea to get to understand how the common types of enhancements work before messing with IOs. You can easily wait on IOs until level 32, and using them is entirely optional.

As others have said, in addition to the up-to-six MM pets you get (that you can control with commands), there are a lot of other pets in the game. Some primaries have additional pets, and some secondaries have them. Plus, there are temporary powers that have pets, from giant glowing radioactive jello monsters to werewolves to zombies to small robots. My Thugs/Dark Miama has his 6 Thugs, plus a fluffy Dark Servant, and can call a "gang" of 10 other temporary pets with a power called "Gang War."

Don't worry much about alliances. Pretty much avoid anybody on the street other than civilians and other players. Just imagine that you are like a lawyer -- everybody hates you.

Some of us have been in this game for a long time. We have seen a lot of changes -- most of the changes have made the game better and better. The Developers listen to the players and try to give them what they want, within game-play and financial reason.

Oh, and in this game, instead of saying "not so blonde," you can say "not so Fusionette." She is an NPC who is famous for not being very bright. (If you start a character in Paragon City, you should run the missions in Faultline starting at level 15 to get an introduction to Fusionette. She shows up again later on.)

I don't recommend Choking Cloud on an Illusion/Radiation. See my Ill/Rad guide for why. The guide discusses the power in detail and explains why I think it is not a good fit -- In my opinion, Ill/Rad is better played at range.

However, there are a few folks who disagree and like it on their Ill/Rad. And I don't claim to know more than them . . .

Not weaker, just different.

Brutes are halfway between scrappers and Tanks -- kind of. Building fury encourages a go-Go-GO style.

Corrupters are bass-ackwards Defenders -- more damage, less debuff. Better solo than Defenders. In some ways like Blasters but with survival tools. A team of Fire/Dark Corrupters can do an obscene amount of AoE damage.

Dominators are what folks who play an aggressive style with Controllers want to be -- control + damage, but missing out on the buffs/Debuffs.

Stalkers are sneaky melee blasters -- they die a lot in larger groups, but can do a lot of damage. Stalkers can be played with a kind of "minimalist" style, focusing in on mission objectives rather than "kill lots of foes."

And Masterminds are unique pet wranglers. Some people find them boring. My first level 50 Villain (after quite a few level 50 heroes) was my Thugs/Dark, who was really easy to solo. I tended to be more of a fight manager than a fighter.

If you play solo a lot, I suggest try the MM or the Brute first. Corrupters and Doms for teams. I prefer my Stalkers on teams, too, but they can solo if they are careful.

Concept wins over practicality, most of the time. And yes, I agree that Power Boost does a lot more for Empathy than Rad. I actually had the Primal APP set on my Ill/Rad for quite a while, and found that Power Boost had limited benefits. Yes, PB'd EM Pulse is great, but I just don't use EM Pulse all that much. I generally stay at range, use PA and ST for my ranged control and use my ranged attack chain.

You might want to consider changing to the Fire APP. Fire Blast does more damage (DoT) than primal and activates faster. Fireball is a targetted AoE rather than a cone . . . no need to get in just the right position. The other powers in the set have some nice utility, but if you are only keeping the Blast and Cone from Primal, then Fire is probably better.

Actually, to say that Fire/Rad, Ice/Rad and Elec/Rad controllers are not supposed to play in melee when all three have melee powers in their primary? That is flat out wrong. Je_saist may prefer to stay out of melee, but those three each have a specific power for staying in melee. Conductive Aura is useless if you don't stay in melee long enough to drain endurance. Hot Feet's damage is minimal unless you stay in melee long enough to toast those feet for a while. And Arctic Air will result in aggro to the controller unless foes stay in the area.

And I don't use the Baz Gaze set in CC. And I don't generally use mules -- but that is a personal preference. I prefer to take effective powers that will actually do something. If I'm not going to USE Choking Cloud, I won't take it. If I really want a mule, I'll take something for a single LotG Recharge for the same amount of Recharge -- at least Combat Jumping or Hover have some use.

I suppose. It kind of reminds me of Mohinder on Heroes. His superpower was "always choose wrong."

I find it kind of sad, since je_saist seems to put such good effort into giving answers that seem to usually have something significantly wrong in them. Sometimes I wonder if he/she does it on purpose.

<Sigh>

The assertion that all Controllers are not supposed to be in melee is just plain WRONG. Fire/Rads, Ice/Rads or Electric/Rads all have other melee powers showing that the character is supposed to be in melee and STAY in melee. For example, Hot Feet would be otherwise useless. The "afraid" component in Hot Feet and Arctic Air combines with the Slow to act as another form of damage mitigation. Others can certainly fight in melee, too.

Choking Cloud allows characters to HOLD foes in melee range. This bovine fecal matter about being designed to allow the character to get out of melee range is just wrong. CC stacks with other powers to allow the foes to be controlled and defeated. While I personally prefer to stack CC with another form of control or debuff, lots of folks feel Choking Cloud is effective even without the secondary PB AoE aura -- they take it and actually use it.

I agree that if you stay out of melee, Choking Cloud is not worth taking (duh!), but the bolded, colored and intalicized statement above is wrong.

The Contagious Confusion Proc turns single target confuse powers like Illusion's Deceive and Mind's Confuse into periodic AoE confuse powers -- making them much better to use for every battle. It is really fun to try to stack Confuse or Deceive on an AV, and hit all his minions around him with the proc so that they start attacking him (or her).

But even better -- put it in Ice's Arctic Air. It seems to almost double the effectiveness of Arctic Air, since the duration of the proc's confuse is longer than the power's confuse. Sadly, the AoE of World of Confusion is just too small.

I'm really looking forward to trying it in Electric's Synaptic Overload.

A player's "beautiful" is usually a Dev's "overpowered."

You have a build you like, right? So leave that one alone, and use your SECOND build to experiment with IO sets and types of slotting. That way, even if you mess it up, you still have your favorite primary build.

Spend some time with Mid's builder to see how IO sets and Frankenslotting can improve your character. One example: you have a defense power currently slotted with 3 Defense IOs and one EndRdx IO. That's good slotting with capped Defense and good EndRdx.

Now replace it with 4 Gift of the Ancient: Defense, Defense/EndRdx, Defense/Increased Run Speed and Defense/EndRdx/Rech. Now you get capped Defense, good EndRdx plus some added Recovery, a small increase in Endurance and a small increase in run speed. On its own, those bonuses are not much, but when you stack those bonuses with others, it all adds up to a significant improvement to your character.

In some cases, certain powers can benefit from a mix of enhancements because one set doesn't have everything that power needs. One example is Hot Feet from Fire Control -- it uses a lot of endurance, so you want as much EndRdx as you can get. It is a damage power, so you want as much damage as you can get. It needs at least some accuracy. It can also slow foes, causing them to stay in its area to take more damage. Standard SO or common IO slotting is 3 EndRdx, 1 Acc, 2 Damage. Unfortunately, you get less than full damage, not really enough accuracy and no Slow. You'd need 10-12 slots to get all that.

With Frankenslotting, you can get a lot of that. Scirocco's Dam/EndRdx and Acc/Dam/EndRdx; Tempered Readiness Dam/Slow and Slow/EndRdx/Rech; a Acc/Dam (Nucleous) Hami-O and a common EndRdx gets you capped EndRdx and Damage, good Accuracy and some Slow. Plus a couple of small bonuses.

It takes some experimenting (in Mids) to see what works. Not sure? Feel free to come here to the forums and post what you are considering, and some of the helpful people here will make suggestions.

It takes some practice, but you can learn the range of aggro for your Fire Imps, and use that as an invisible leash. Sometimes, you can pull foes around a corner to avoid having the imps aggro another group.

One important quesiton. Do you or either of your buddies have Tactics? Tactics includes a Perception buff that actually increases the aggro range of Fire Imps, causing them to run around in a wider area.

This is one of those Dead Horse topics that comes up every couple of months. Masterminds are a Pet class, so they have control over their pets. Controllers are a control class with pets to supplement their damage and control. MMs were designed around controllable pets, with weaker powers in their primaries. Controllers were designed around their uncontrolable pets.

I can imagine how amazingly powerful an Earth Controller would become if you could micro-manage Rocky. He would be able to aggro and lead foes into the patch AoE controls that Earth has. That would be overpowered.

As PJFry said, with two Empathy Defenders buffing you, you could easily be the aggro magnet and tank in melee. Follow the strategy I outlined, run into melee and pan-fry the foes while your buddies keep you buffed and healed. Hot Feet + Choking Cloud will provide a huge benefit. A Fire Controller's main benefit is that AoE damage, and you get most of it from Hot Feet. Remember that it gets Containment's double damage 75% of the time if the foes are held, stunned or Immobilized -- which should be most of the time.

And as PJ said, Ling Rad's -Recharge can provide a nice benefit by reducing the damage you take. EF will also reduce that damage while buffing your own. You'll only need RI for when the Stun in Flashfire runs out.

Just be aware that Kinetics does not get its key powers, Transference and Fulcrum Shift, until levels 35 and 38. It is a very late-blooming set. Another reason for Rad's popularity is that most of the great Rad powers come early.

The basics of an Illusion Controller: Take Blind, Spectral Wounds and Deceive as your first three powers. Choose between Superior Invis (toggle invis with high endurance cost) or Group Invis (clickable group Invis that won't actually be able to made permanent untill level 22 and SOs), but not both unless you need to for a special build (those who take both use GI as a set mule). Most people take SI. Phantom Army at 18 -- Spectral Terror at 26. PA should be slotted with 3 recharge first, then Damage and some accuracy. My Ill/Rad guide can give you a suggested build for an Ill/Rad, both leveling up and final.

That is not true. The majority of Ill/Rads never make it there. It takes a fair amount of extra Recharge to make a Perma-PA build, and that tends to be expensive or take a long investment in time.

Illusion is such a good set that it actually works well with ALL secondaries. There is no bad choice. Ill/Rad is my favorite, but after that, I like Ill/Storm and Ill/TA. Both of those sets have good Debuffs, but do not have the Recharge buff. I have both Ill/Storm and Ill/TA at 50, as well as my two Ill/Rads. Illusion/Cold is supposed to have very strong debuffs for tough single foes -- I haven't played one yet, so I have no personal experience.

Kinetics is a great secondary, as long as you like to click a lot. It still works great with Illusion if that's what you want to play.