Master_Armantus

You scared them off???

If you really want to fight Malta blueside, get Crimson as a contact. Or redside most contacts 45-50 have a mish or two involving them.

Not refuting any of this advice, just adding in my 2 cents here and there. Everything is a response directed towards the OP, just adding to what Reptlbrain stated:

Fire/Kin's are so 2009...

My opinion on the matter is.... nvm I wore myself out on the issue several months ago with the 100th thread on the topic...

Like the other posters said, just search "vehicles," and you'll find tons of beaten to death threads on the subject.

Having played an Ice/Storm for 2 years now just be warned... you'll be tempted to respec it everytime you get one, and not in a bad way! There are just so many possibilities out there for this build, as others have covered already in this thread, and most of them work just as good as the others. This build belongs to my main, and as much as I suffer from "altitis" (36 character slots filled on Virtue) I ultimately come back to this character everytime because it's such a fun and versatile build.

I wouldn't even worry about getting to 44.5%, honestly. I've noticed that survivability is about the same on my /SR scrapper whether I'm at 36% or at 43% def. This was against +2's and +3's as well. YMMV, unless you run into heavy def. debuffs then you've got very little to be concerned about. And if you're using /SR then debuffs aren't a problem for you anyway.

I have a level 50 Ice/Ice Dom myself. I can't tell you how many times I've respec'ed the character looking for just the right "all-around" build, but what I finally ended up with in the Ice primary is I took everything except Frostbite and Flash Freeze. In the secondary I took all of the ranged attacks, Power Boost, and Ice Sword Circle. I went with Ghost Widow as the patron, and took Dark Consumption (Ice/Ice can be end. heavy), Soul Drain (for that extra damage and +to hit boost), and the Fortunata pet (for extra damage and mitigation).

My strategy is basically throw out Ice Slick, run in and hit them with Soul Drain, Ice Sword Circle, and pick off stragglers with the ranged attacks. When Soul Drain is down, I'll hit Power Boost and run in and use Glacier, Ice Sword Circle, then lay Ice Slick for when Glacier wears off, and pick off stragglers with ranged attacks. By the time I'm done, Soul Drain is recharged and I repeat from the beginning, alternating Soul Drain and Glacier for every other mob.

The key component to my survival is I have AA running, which I cannot stress enough mitigates HEAVILY on incoming damage. The slows and the -recharge alone of this power would make it worth taking, but throw in the confuse and fear effects and you've got a really awesome power working for you. The 25' radius of effect also means you can have a little breathing room in case melee range gets hairy.

There's also the age-old argument about whether to take Shiver or AA, because many feel it would be redundant to take both. My humble opinion is that having both can only be beneficial if your build can fit it. I use Shiver on teams when taking down AV's or other difficult enemies. It keeps my squishy toon at a safe distance from all of their AoE attacks, and I can still affect them with the slows and -recharge.

Needless to say, this build is helped out immensely by global recharge bonuses. I managed to make my Ice/Ice perma relatively cheap (70% recharge + hasten). About 50 mil inf. all around, and then 1 LotG +7.5% proc (which can be bought via 200 reward merits). It was also pretty easy to fit in several recovery bonuses, which will make the build seem like a breath of fresh air. Overall, Ice/Ice is a great build if you give it time.

EDIT: Also, putting procs into AA from Confusion IO sets can be extremely beneficial. I have mine slotted with Coercive Persuasion: Contagious Confusion, Malaise: Chance for Psionic Damage, and Cacophony: Chance for Energy Damage. I also put in the Confuse Duration/End. Redux. enhancement from each of those sets, and the set bonuses gave me an overal 8% boost in recovery (4% + 2.5% + 1.5%).

Just want to get the best possible understanding of what happens when using a PBAoE power while in flight (or at least in mid-air):

Let's say I'm using Arctic Air, which has a 25 ft radius of effect... is this to be taken literally as a spherical radius around my character? Assuming this, the best use of the radial range would be to remain at ground level at all times, but I've been making use of it mostly by hovering just above melee range. So by doing that, I'm basically losing 10 ft or so of the potential range of the power. I'm about 90% sure this is how it works, but correct me if I'm wrong?

EDIT: This question also applies to PBAoE melee range attack powers, with a smaller radius.

I don't think the veteran badges need to be changed because.... there's hundreds of other badges to choose from!

I would like to point out, however, that some players before me tried to argue that even villains follow ideals. This is true to an extent, but if you take a villain like the Joker then the argument crumbles. True, he is loyal to the concept of chaos, but this also makes him 'Unreliable' instead of the original badge title of 'Reliable.' Chaotic Evil types (to steal a D&D term) would be able to use the modified titles that the OP suggested.

But as I said in the beginning of this post, I don't think anything should be changed because there's so many other badge titles out there...

Agreed on logic. Same general idea spans across tankers in general, since their powers involve being super strong to the point of hurling a gigantic boulder 80+ ft. or flinging large maces and axes around. But as always, it's simply a balancing issue.

In the end, even if the devs were to implement this change for Granite Armor, it would probably even itself out to where if you average the extra number of times you miss a target with the extra damage you'll be doing, you're back at doing the same amount of damage over a period of time anyway.

If this change were to take place, it would be strictly for RP purposes, just so a stoney can walk up and say, "Hey, I'm not a weakling anymore... but I do whiff a lot more than I used to..." On a tangent, my only grievance with GA is that you can't yet modify any aspect of it in character creation.

...At least according to Mids', referring to the scrapper Super Reflexes power. I checked the game and there is no psionic def given by Focused Senses. Unless I'm not reading it correctly?

....or is it just a bug in the market? None of them have any history available, and I've never seen 51 or 52 IO's even listed, it just sometimes skips up to 53 for certain sets.

If I'm not mistaken, the only thing that really affects drop rate is the rank of the enemies you're fighting. In other words, bosses are more likely to drop something than minions. But of course they also take longer to defeat.