Miladys_Knight

I wouldn't call them gimmicks certainly, there is a time, place, and playstyle that fits all powers.

Damage Auras are a staple for those blasters who's playstyle have them living (and dying) in melee range the majority of their play time. Lots of folks call these blappers and a well played one deals more damage and survives better than an average scrapper.

If you play as all range or a mix of range and melee (especially if you are light on melee and only use it for finishing stuff off) then damage Auras will give you almost no contribution at all.

Frozen Aura is an awesome power when you are solo or on a team of folks who are either single target damage focused or know how to use AoEs. Frozen Aura (the blaster version anyway) has no damage component. It's duration is greater than it's recharge time out of the box and can be easily slotted to double stack with just SOs this gives you a power that will stop even bosses until you are ready to deal with them. When coupled with a primary that has a sleep in it (like Sonic) you can put an entire spawn to sleep, and keep them asleep while you pick them off one at a time.

Time Bomb which you call a gimmick power is one that goes real well with sleep powers. Put the spawn to sleep, set the time bomb, and move on to the next spawn. Yeah it takes patience to play devices but it's one of the safest blaster secondaries.

World of Confusion is another one of those type powers. It goes very well with Drain Psyche. The majority of mobs that you meet in most (non-AE) missions are minions. Against an unarmored blaster even multiple minion damage can be dangerous. WoC gives you the mitigation you need to maximize DP. Jump into a swarm of minions, drain them, and jump back out before the confusion wears off. Once you've drained them your regen rate should be high enough that, that same swarm of minions can no longer deal enough damage to defeat you.

Except that the market is the greatest idea ever for the casual 2 - 3 hours a week person. 5 - 10 minutes each week is all it takes to have the low time available casual rolling in dough. A couple minutes at the beginning of your session and a couple at the end for clean up is all you need.

The rest of the time while you are off line the market works for you. You can literally buy and sell the exact same item for a ridiculous sum by taking advantage not only of the hourly high/low price swings, the daily high/low price swings, and the weekly high/low price swings.

The longer you know you are going to be away the greater your potential for profits since you can offer less for buys and demand more for sells. With low time availability you don't have to worry about high/fast turnover on your slots.

I would also suggest that you re-examine your play style. Tough on a bubbler is a completely un-needed endurance drain especially once you have your epic armor.

PFF provides you with resistances as well and the nice thing is all you have to do is watch your icon tray.

If a hit icon appears in your icon tray that means the attack has all ready been rolled and "will hit". Damage, however, is not applied until the attack resolves. PFF provides 40% resistance to all but toxic. You can turn on PFF when there are several hit icons in your tray (it's all ready too late for the defense but not for the resistances) and the resistances in PFF will reduce the damage. You can then use aid self or a couple respites and drop PFF again and PFF costs about 2/3's the end cost of Tough.

Again re-examine your play style.

First go get all the accolades that give +Max Hit Points and +Max End (if you haven't all ready done so) this will give you increases of 20% and 10% respectively (Freedom Phallanx, Portal Jockey, TF Commander, and Atlas Medallion).

Secondly use PFF for offense. Turn it on and eat the alpha (very high defense and excellent resists) then drop it and start attacking. After the alpha has splashed only bosses will cause you much trouble.

This point I agree on. Defender DPE is really low and is usually the reason that defenders go bankrupt on endurance so easily.

Defenders are one of the few damage dealing Archtypes that don't get some form of endurance free bonus damage. (Tankers and now Dominators are the other). I don't count vigilance because of the variable effects due to primary/secondary, skill, team compostion (or lack of a team) and because of the broken mechanics of it (one of the few "brilliant" Emmert ideas left in the game).

Tankers (with the possible exception of Fiery Aura) have enough personal mitigation to survive for the amount of time that it takes their low damage values to finish a fight. Debuffing Defenders pretty much have the same ability since their debuffs work for themselves as well as the team. It is the buffing sets that have difficulty since many of their buffs don't work on themselves only teammates and pets.

Scrappers and Stalkers get endurance free critical hits.
Brutes get end free damage from Fury.
Blasters get the defiance buffs as end free bonus damage.
Corruptors get endurance free damage in Scourge.

Controllers, which aren't even a damage based AT, get a 50% damage boost from containment which is all end cost free.

Dominators used to get end free damage AND a full blue bar from triggering Domination prior to the revamp (you could get this bonus with a greater than 50% up time with just hasten and SOs). Now they pay full end cost for every point of damage and they have endurance woes especially soloing for the non-permas.

Strange I have 6 in my stable alone:

1 Earth/TA/Primal on 3 of the 4 servers that I play on. (Yes they are just that good).

1 Plant/TA/Fire

1 Fire/TA/Ice

and a poor lonely TA/A defender

FF is one of the best sets to use to protect the team against Vahz especially in the early levels.

Here's the power description on Deflection Shield:

Defense Smashing - 15%
Defense Lethal - 15%
Defense Melee - 15%

Resistance Toxic - 40% (unenhanceable)

Ah, ok. 33 month vet badge fixes that problem for /Dark since you get either nem staff or blackwand.

There are lots of /TA controllers around. /TA is the go to secondary for any controller that wants LOTS of control.

Annnnd you don' have to get to melee range even then, "close" range is enough. Hot feet has radius 20' and Cinders is radius 30'. You can use fire cages and decide where you are in relation to the mobs. Even though you are close you can still effectively use your ranged attacks while preventing the mobs from using their melee attacks.

That's how my hurricaneless fire/storm/stone plays. For Fire/TA stacking the debuffs in Smoke and Flash Arrow let you get close with few worries.

Hi Black_Strike

That's good because the supply of Flame Retardant Anti-Troll Rant spray is really really low. Seems no one is doing missions under the bridge to create any. They are all off playing skee ball in Pixie Hollow.

ok.................

/e Shoots an arrow at the game.
Hmmm it's still alive.
/e Shoots another arrow at the game.
Hmmm it's still alive.
/e Shoots another arrow at the game.
Hmmm it's STILL alive.

Hmmmm.... Hey guys did the devs finally put Healing Arrow into the Trick Arrow set? No?

I guess that must mean that control of whether the game lives or dies is in the hands of those whose daily bread is provided by it and not by the players. It would also seem to be in their best interest to keep the game alive.

Since I have absolutely no control over that why are you asking me?

Adding Villians and siphoning off Heros didn't kill the game.
Adding PvP didn't kill the game.
Nerfing defense and adding ED didn't kill the game.
Adding Inventions didn't kill the game.
Adding the market didn't kill the game.
Changing PvP didn't kill the game (unless you were only here for base raids in which case it's dead for you)
Adding AE didn't kill the game.

Last time I checked this wasn't SWG NGE. Our Devs haven't screwed up. The game seems just as lively and busy (busier actually) than when I first signed up more than 4 YEARS ago.

Imaginary money, for an imaginary doohicky, that goes in an imaginary slot, in an imaginary power, in an imaginary hero. I'm hoping your outrage is imaginary too.

If it's that expensive do you really need that extra .05% performance boost from slotting it or will the 20,000,000 rares work for you instead? If so spend about 8 hours playing level 50 content, get an Ultra rare purple drop and sell it for craziness and then turn around and buy a crap ton of rares to slot ALL your powers and live with them being .05% less enhanced.

Plan better.

Respec Recipes to me are just a crap ton of free money because I plan ahead.

Copy your toon to the test server and try the power out before taking it on live. That's one of the reasons that the test server is there.

There's been a freespec handed out every issue since as far back as I can remember.

You can get 3 free ones from playing the game plus all the ones they give out as vet rewards.

You still need more? You wouldn't be a US Senator or Representative by any chance would you?

Normal players should be slotting Normal enhancements (SOs).
Common players should be slotting Common IOs.
Uncommon players should be able to slot Uncommon IOs.
The Rare player should be able to slot Rare IOs.
Ultra Rare players should be able to slot Ultra Rare IOs.

So you want NORMAL players to jump the que by 4 magnitudes and slot Ultra Rares with Normal effort. Here's a brilliant plan for you..................

WORK FOR IT YOURSELF. Do what ever you do best and make influence at it. The longer and harder you work the higher up the ladder you go all by yourself. Some people have a sense of accomplishment by working toward a goal. The tougher the odds the sweeter the victory. If you want maximum rewards for minimum effort then may I suggest Candyland as a more appropriate pass time?

As far as buying from spam sites..... Cure a problem (that doesn't exist by the way) by throwing money at it? Are you sure you aren't a politician?

/e turns out left front pocket.
No spam.
/e turns out right front pocket.
No spam.
/e pats left rear pocket.
No spam there either.
/e pats right rear pocket.
Ah ha!!! ........ nope thats just my wallet. No spam, influence or (alas) real word cash there. Just some finger prints left by the politicians.

<brilliant idea!> /e runs to check the pantry...... Doh! no spam there either. I guess you are just out of luck. I'm not an INF provider for Spam. Why? Were you wanting to buy influence perhaps?

Um....... here's a list of organizations that give. American Institute of Philanthropy

That's amazing! Me too!

Perhaps that's the point. If you could just get the best of every thing by clicking a button you'd all ready be done and bored by now. I know I would.

Why not? It takes the same amount of damage and effort to drop a mob for everyone. Pick an AT that works well and quickly for you and go get some drops. That's how supply makes it to the market in the first place. If people are buying for those prices that means someone is selling for those prices. If that someone is you, then suddenly you can afford all that stuff too.

Well we went 9 Issues without any IOs at all and people played then. I still have a couple of 50s that are all level 53 SOs except for a handful of HamiO and one toon I haven't played in ages that has a TitanO. All the old stuff is still there and so is all the old content it was designed to work with and, amazingly, it even works with all the new content..... So yeah I think people will still play. SOME PEOPLE even use that little setting on the Flashback system so that enhancements have no effect ZOMG!!!! How can they do that? No IOs? No enhancements at all? Where can I download the Hack called SKILL?

/e facepalm

Slotting battle agility for defense isn't very effective at TO or even DO levels.

3 Slotted TOs takes you from 11.3% to 12.9% defense.

3 Slotted DOs takes you from 11.3% to 14.6% defense.

The problem is that slotting for end reduction isn't very significant at those levels either.

3 Slotted TOs takes it from .21 end/sec to .17 end/sec. Saving 2.4 end/min(that's not even enough end savings for an extra parry in 60 seconds)

3 Slotted DOs takes it from .21 end/sec to .14 end/sec. Saving 4.2 end/min.

Your attacks will use more end/sec than your toggles so you are always better off concentrating your end red slotting in your attacks.

As far as Battle Agiity goes your best bet is to go to the market and get 3 defense/end enhancements (1 from each of the different low level sets) and slot them.

Edit - to clarify