Magentrix

Yes, the latest tier of Incarnate content is basically a huge repetition-driven reward schedule, and the powers they've introduced are largely unimaginative, homogenizing tripe:

Everyone now gets a Tier9 so awesome it makes the actually Tier 9 powers look like a joke. Everyone now gets a summonable pet, nevermind if you didn't want to play a pet-based hero/villain. Everyone now gets a giagantic AOE team buff, regardless of whether their concept was for a support character.

And of course to earn it, everyone has to run the same pair of trials over and over and over.

If you're a resistance-based tanker and you're NOT taking Cardiac, you're doing it wrong.

For an invulnerability tanker, Cardiac Core Paragon gives you:

+1.333% smash/lethal resist from Resist Physical Damage
+4% smash/lethal resist from Temp Invulnerability
+1.333% fire/cold from Resist Elements
+0.666% smash/lethal resist from Unyielding
+1.333% fire/cold/energy/negative/toxic resist from Unyielding
+1.333% energy/negative resist from Resist Energies
+2% smash/lethal resist from Tough (You did take tough, right?)

That's all bypassing ED, for a grand total of:
+8% smash/lethal resist
+2.666% fire/energy/cold/negative resist
+1.333% toxic resist

This is all in addition to the huge endurance discount you get, and whatever fractional improvements you get from the ED-affected bonuses you'll get as well.

For my money, Plant/Fire. It's got function and style, plus Fire/Psi is dull flavor of the month architect farm fodder.

Defenses are really not that useful for a dominator, imo. Let the melee toons concentrate on being able to suck up punches, your job is to make stuff stand still and die. I'd stick with the Fire APP.

Then let me nudge toward Radiation. Traps and Dark are both effective and powerful builds, but IMO, radiation is the most fun. Traps/Dark are both arguably safer: Traps is easier to soft-cap defenses, and Dark has a much stronger heal, and the fear cone is amazing. But Radiation really brings more raw offense potential. You've got a damage debuff and resist debuff in the same powerset, which really leverages your team's damage. Stack enough global recharge and you can get perma-hasten/am, and let me tell you, it's awesome. Pick up an immobilize from your patron, I recommend Black Scorpion, and you can root, toggle up and melt huge groups of enemies, and there's very little they can do to stop you.

Why would it be any different than in any other TF? Your toolset doesn't really profoundly change just because you're level shifted and fighting level 54s.

I suppose I can see the logic of taking Nerve basically for hold duration, but if you're on a team at the damage cap, your added hold duration is likely to be window dressing anyway, as everything will quite simply be dead before your default holds run out. My Gravity Distortion lasts 37+ seconds in domination, there's very little that will survive that long against a team operating at the damage cap.

Running permadom takes the sting out of enemy status effects, so gearing up for the hit cap just doesn't have the urgency it has for other squishies. Also, if you think damage buffs are easy to get in a party, it's got nothing on +defense, and let's not forget that you're not really expected to tank anything in a party situation anyway. And if you're running solo, Musculature owns Nerve HARD.

That's right. There are now exactly 2 good Alpha categories: Cardiac and Musculature. Skip the other two.

Judgement powers are dumb. You heard it here first. This game is already ridiculously AoE happy, the last thing we need is to give everyone in the game a Tier9 style nuke.

I'm not wild about Lore pets either, to be honest. More homogenization = bleah.

You really want to annihilate stuff? Double Ice/Radiation controller. Double Arctic Fog and Choking Cloud will neutralize virtually all minions and lieutenants in range. Anything that gets to act unhindered can climb through double Radiation Infection and Enervating field. Ice slick gives you good ambush protection, as do your AOE sleeps. With double AM, your damage and recovery are boosted insanely, and holds/stuns/sleep durations are almost nothing, assuming they get lucky enough to hit you. And damage procs in your AOE toggles will continually sandblast your enemies in a way that will make even /Fire brutes jealous.

At this point, there are exactly 2 Alpha slots worth taking for PVE, period:

Cardiac if you're a tank or VERY endurance heavy, or Musculature if you're not. Nerve is just utterly useless, since it's trivial to cap accuracy with IOs. Spiritual used to look okay, but now that's it doesn't effect Judgement powers, it's a non-starter. It's also far easier and more effective to stack global recharge from IOs and use Musculature to boost your damage than it is to stack damage from IOs and use Spiritual to boost your recharge.

I worked to get Spiritual rank 3 (actually I'm about 20 shards from rank 4) and now I basically have to start over.

I have to say, I'm very disappointed with the scope of options for Judgement slots, aesthetically speaking. For a game that's as graphically customizable as City of Heroes, it seems like having only 4 judgement effects to choose from (Fire/Cold/Lightning/Negative) is quite a let-down.

Is there any hope of getting some more judgement options, so that people who aren't Fire/Cold/Lightning/Dark themed characters can have a Judgement power that's aesthetically appropriate?

Regarding defense, I disagree with Brimmy. Defense in any amount is good, and stacks multiplicatively with resistance, and while high HP/Regen also do, HP/Regen don't protect you from the bevy of ugly secondary effects out there, like -resist, -regen/recovery, -defense, stuns, holds, etc. Defense does.

Slotting Radial Musculature will help out on the Endurance front, and I personally find that getting recovery buffs in a group environment to be quite common, and popping blues an the odd rest will serve well enough solo.

Irrelevant. Corruptors don't get hot feet.

OP: If you don't mind giving up a slot to boost hover's speed, it's quite nice. You do lose immobilize resistance, and hover costs 3 times as much endurance to run, but the advantage of being able to hang out of melee range is quite nice, and it also provides resistance to -fly effects. For example, air superiority takes -1.6 to fly, and hover provides +4 fly, so you'll have to get hit with 3 air superiority attacks to actually get shot out of the sky. Web Cocoon from a Bane Spider, on the other hand, has -10 to fly, so it will drop you regardless.

Whoops. I was only reading the Patrons, thinking Mu Mastery. Silly me. :P

Mutation, Choking Cloud, Fallout and EM Pulse are all the skippable powers, IMO. First, Mutation and Fallout are cute, but predicated on a teammate dropping, which should not be happening on a good team. Choking Cloud really shines for Controllers but is highly mediocre on Defender/Corrupters, imo. The main issue is you don't have a hold in your primary to stack with it, and without that, a Mag 2 hold will only hold a minion, and a mag 1 hold does basically nothing.

EM Pulse is arguably the best of the worst, but the LOOOONG recharge and endurance crash really makes it impractical to use.

Yes, you get access to your Patron Arc choice at level 40.

Yes, Electric Fence is single target, but it's not available to Corruptors, iirc.

Go Black Scorpion for the Mace Mastery Patron Pool. Kin is very light on defenses, and relies on a lot of active powers to stay alive and effective, so the Smashing/Lethal/Energy defense on Scorpion Shield really helps keep you out of trouble. I'd also grab Web Envelope, having an AOE immobilize helps keep everyone in the effect of your Flamethrower/Full Auto cones. I'd also recommend tough/weave and maneuvers, again, to help yourself avoid damage, as well as boosting your team's defense. Tactics is also a good pick, as protects your team from to hit debuffs and blind effects. I'd probably skip Assault, however, since as a Kin you'll probably be able to keep your team at the damage cap most of the time.

If you really want to go heavy on support, consider slotting Increase Density for Damage Resistance and Speed Boost for Endurance Modification. Smashing and Energy are really common attack types, so against most enemies they'll see use, and Speed Boost properly slotted will give your team all the endurance they could want, and you won't have to worry about positioning for Transference.

IMO, you went WAAAAYYYY overbudget on defense. You're miles above the softcap, even with Cloak suppressed. Better safe than sorry may be true, but you're not really measurably safer than someone who opted for a more balanced build. IMO Acrobatics is a complete waste for a class with high defense, stealth and status protection. A bit more slotting toward making your targets dead faster will serve you better, both in terms of endurance recovery and safety. Plus blues drop an awful lot, at least when I play.

You did get me thinking that I was way overslotting Surveillance on my Bane Machine build, however. I rearranged the slots to pick up some more recharge, and I think the build is much better for it:

|-------------------------------------------------------------------|
|MxDz;1404;668;1336;HEX;|
|78DA65935B6F12511485CF149072875E28BDD0422B82B49D8 2ADCFA62AAD8DAD694|
|2D3076F645246184306328389BEF92FBCBD7A7D51FBA2F1F2 53FC0B5E121F6D8B7B|
|F63A542AA4E53BACD973D63E6BCF6CDDBF1C14E2E105A1C42 F3534DBAEAC5ADA5ED|
|D6CDA9572B3513574CB7B4D6BDFB3B446F0A266EAA92DBA68 98BA570891F9BFD256|
|9D924AB9655475AB2B66762CCD300DB35659D7AA35BD7DB2A 87B31B661D6754B37D|
|B6A7711D86E361BEA5AC3A8D5DB21AC9D25D546F8D7A6AED1 0676DD68F9F977B9A5|
|EBD578A965ECA9BBA5D59D0A35AAD397DDD6AD0709A75BFA1 F14DD4FC723AE13B26|
|2E006709371FA16709B51AC30DE06080ADFE516E7695114EE 1560993158040A8C0F|
|54AEA05C2863B4488A8F24B920795C7EAE0A078010632AC29 80E33F2A30C1F85ECC|
|15D039E03964E1D0273C28142055E1C47783BF4119FC8C827 8D7C30F2C3C88FADA7|
|E0370DBF251885A93E20630920962062092296C4895896104 B80AC43D23DF46DC0D|
|928465244DA47601F857D34D47BC02CEC17611FA1FA183672 C7EEF0C9866A409D91|
|3018E9BB0C17990CCB710C23F2110C60E21CB6C55496E48CA 87C54F6348A9EE2E82|
|98E9E26D0531A3D15D1D33BCA634C1E6E2CCDBE5F491A9773 1DC700DE933429AB26|
|E759FA4C5252562571A373B61919EFCC010795FA031C02478 C748791172E07FBB4D|
|1AC4C657683AFCC958035609D51BCC2F842E51979CCCC7396 CEBC005E02AF18D9D7|
|C01BC66FB2CA4993DC231EEBD9C7C013E02923FF8CB14FF39 E97E5F398D40226B58|
|0492D60528B98D41045AFCA2C5464E13C6605995801894DB9 8F5F4AFA739EE27C9F|
|52E8538A7DCA729FB2D2A75C751FBFCA9DCDBEABDB6E79D17 97359F9EEEF799731F|
|39FBDD22E3F2C3F7AA51C57FDFA27294A8AA511C01715CE80 B985BF16B4E7A7|
|-------------------------------------------------------------------|

As ever, these things often come down to taste and playstyle, but I definitely would rather dish out 10% more damage than be 10% safer. I guess it comes of my long history of playing squishy classes, I'm quite used to popping the odd purple inspiration when I need to. I've said it before, but it bears repeating: Banes are stalkers with some utility powers, trading damage for an excess of survivability doesn't play to their strengths. Their best defense is standing on the shattered corpses of their enemies.

Ultimately, you want Musculature Radial Paragon. More end from Stamina, more to hit debuff from, well, everything, and more DAMAGE.

I hate seeing Controller Single Target holds slotted with Hold Duration. Put DAMAGE and recharge in that puppy. Slotting for damage means more effect from containment. It means you want to use the power whenever its up, instead of 'the bare minimum necessary to neutralize my target'. It will also make you solo much, much faster.

Don't think of your single target hold as a hold. It's a blast with the best secondary effect in the world. Save the hold sets for Cinders.

5 positron's blast with the energy proc, and the smashing proc from impeded swiftness. It's not going to compare with Fireball or anything, but it's got a huge radius, recharges fast, and with the procs actually averages some decent damage. That said, AOE is not your specialty. Focus on spamming your controls and neutralizing irritating mobs like healers/buffers.