MaHaBone23

Dark melee/Shield before Soul Drain -- :-|
Dark melee/Shield after Soul Drain -- :-)
Dark melee/Shield after Soul Drain + Shield Charge -- 8-D

hey, what not a team of /Storm Masterminds? More pets than a Crazy Cat Lady!

I think the devs can create smarter scenarios without coding something that will grind servers to a halt.

It always seemed incredibly ridiculous to me that all of these sinisters groups and cabals actually spend the vast majority of their time standing around in warehouses and sewers, smacking hand to fist, or striking Captain Morgan poses on crates.

What if, instead, they hiding behind piles of junk, bracing for your attack (giving them some +def and giving you some cool structures to trash)?

What if they're watching TV, giving them -percep until you attack? You could stealth by a mob if something good was on!

What if the last living minion in a mob always became a runner, and would auto-taunt the nearest mob to the last person who attacked them? Basically they're calling in their backup.

What if other villain groups could hide and ambush the way the DE do? A bunch of Hellions popping out of crates, springing their trap. Clockwork dropping down from the ceiling on your head.

Or to combine the last two, a runner could lead you into a debuff/KD AoE you can't see until you're in it.

What if mob aggro was slightly weighted based on your origin? Clockwork prefer techies, CoT go after magics, Outcast prefer to whale on the Naturals that scorned them, and maybe cut a break on a fellow mutie.

I quit City of Heroes for TWO YEARS after ED dropped. I'd say ED was 70% of my reason for quitting, the other 30% being that the content was getting extremely dull and repetitive. So, giving me a boring grind, and now making it take longer with my gimped toons was simply insult to injury. It was like adding speed bumps to a boring Nebraska highway. (sorry Nebraska.)

The impression myself and many others got from the developers was that they felt players were leveling too fast, they were too powerful, and there needed to be more grind. Whether or not it was true, i have no idea. That was the general feeling, though, and the developers did little to dispel it, including locking out threads discussing the topic on the site.

The invention system did do a lot to alleviate and rechannel a lot of players' ambitions and energies. Had they introduced it along with ED, I'm sure the mood would have been considerably nicer.

...but my god... if you could
>:-D

Ugh, I've always felt that people that try to solo on a controller are trying to punish themselves to appease some sense of guilt. Every troller build I've ever played feels slow and painful, even with pets.

I'll usually street sweep a little with whatever troller I'm in love with at the moment, while I'm waiting for a team to get together. It's fine to pass away a few minutes, but it always reminds me why I never solo. It's slow, and because I've locked down and nerfed my enemies, it's pretty dull as well.

I don't mean to turn you off to controllers, and I salute your consideration of your teammates. However, I'd hate to ruin what little time you might get to play with an AT that feels slow and frustrating on solo play.

You might want to try an Ice/Ice Blaster (awesome solo build, useful on teams, and some trollerish abilities) or a Dark/Dark defender.

Detonator reads like it should be a fun power. Can anyone confirm? I've never had enough patience with /traps to get to it.

What Panzerwaffen said. CC + HF are the peanut butter + chocolate combo of the set. They work even better with IOs, especially the Lockdown Chance to Hold proc in CC.

Be warned, Frads aren't for the lazy or careless. It's a glass steamroller, and it takes some learning to use the powers together effectively.
It was been my experience that:
"If I get reckless... I die."
"If I get cocky... I die."
"If I get distracted... I die."
That said, if I pay attention and use my head, I can go where Tanks fear to tread, nerf the most formidable foes, and turn the most pathetic, useless PuG into GODS.

Out of the box, the power is garbage. I have it on my Psi/MM blaster. The confuse duration is extremely short, much less than the power pulses.

HOWEVER, from what I have been reading on the power, a contagious confusion IO proc really makes this power shine. The Proc lasts for 10 seconds, iirc, which adds some much needed duration.

Bots/Dark. I have yet to play a villain combo that even comes close. High resistances + massive -tohit + AoE heals (yes, multiple) + massive AoE carnage + defense bubbles.

Fire Imps make the best entrance of any pets, with their gleeful pirouettes as they pop out of the ground. The Flytrap, however, easily gets the award for best death scene. Stumble to the left, stumble to the right, legs tremble, shake vines at the Heavens aaaaaaand you're dead. Flytrap is the Troy McClure of pets.

Bots make a pretty good entrance, too. I could watch them unpack from those crates over and over again.

Lamest pet entrance:
A tie between Thugs and Jack. What the hell was that guy doing in the sewers, anyway?

I'd put Singy on this list too, but he/she/it's got enough PR problems.

By "fun" I mean, well, fun to use. Not necessarily useful or effective or making lots of pretty orange numbers. Powers that look neat or some quirky effect that's fun to abuse on gray-con enemies.

My pics:
Most Fun
Propel: I just got this power on my grav troller. Even though I've seen in action for years, it just now dawned on me how awesome it is to smack an enemy in the face with a dumpster.
Fearsome Stare: Your skull pops out of your face. YOUR SKULL. POPS. OUT YOUR FACE. Win.
Repel: Sucks up end, annoys the melee folks, and scatters mobs. Still, casually jogging through a mob sending them in every direction is a jolly good time.
Hurricane: in some ways not unlike Repel, but a little more control. Lets you shove around big ol' Freakshow Tanks like they were Chess pieces. Also fun for scraping CoT off the rooftops in KR
Cloak of Fear: You drape yourself in a miasma of screaming terrors. A power so badass, it actually makes my wife uncomfortable to look at.
Lightning Storm: Looks cool. Sounds cool. Is cool. Also: fun to summon on inappropriate places on the many statues around town.
Shield Charge & Lightning Rod: I'm grouping these together, but each in crazy fun. I've wasted way to much time just charging and electrocuting inanimate objects just for larfs.

Least Fun:
Blackstar: A power with a graphic so bleh and uninteresting, it killed my interest in my D/D Defender.
Midnight Grasp: Works Great! Looks lame. You sorta wave your hand at an opponent. For a Tier 9 power, you should reach down through a miasmic portal to yank through a host of unholy monstrosities to devour your enemy.
Liquify: The descirption makes it sound like you will transform the ground into some kind of churning, throbbing membrane of bass, like some corn starch experiment run amok. The reality is sadly less.

Add yours, trash mine.

Cool. I'm actually more interested in getting IW perma than anything else. I hate hate HATE getting mezzed!

Thanks for the help!

Thanks Panzerwaffen!

There's some great ideas in here. I'll open it in Mids when I get home today. The only thing that catches my is some possible endurance issues creeping back, like losing the more potent IO end reds in CC and HF, or extra endurnce reduction in RI and EF. Then again, I can't see the set bonuses right now, so there might be some offsetting there.

If I did have a few extra slots, i would probably throw a couple in Fly. I'm sick of being the last one to the mission