MriBruce

My first level 50 was a dark/dark defender, years back on an account for which I lost the access info and couldn't pry it out of customer service. In the time remaining to us, I figure I have the time to run up 1 or possibly 2 new characters to 50, incorporating what I've learned over the years and giving it all a final touch. Today it became clear to me that if I can only do one, I'd like it to be dark/dark.

What I'd like is folks' thoughts about a good archetype for it. I'd like to be able to solo well, including if at all possible some GM/AV fighting, and to be a good teammate. Back in the day (when CoV was brand new), defenders tended not to be good soloers, but these days they can do fine. How much difference would I notice going for a corruptor, though? Obviously weaker support and more personal oomph, but how much at (say) 20, 40, and 50?

Also, I love controllers, but they do tend to mature really slowly relative to a bunch of other types. How does dark/dark do along the way, and at 50? (Yes, I know it's also an option for dominators, but I don't like the Domination mechanic. Just not so fun for me, so I leave it for others to have that much of it.)

Thanks kindly.

Just for the sake of completeness...

In World of Warcraft, as of the current patch (5.0.4), Demonology-specced warlocks can get a lot of pet action going. Unfortunately you only have real control over one, as usual; it's just that you can bring in some additional ones and have others triggered by procs, and it's possible to have quite the crowd in big fights.

I'm enjoying it, though it's no true substitute for the glory that is the mastermind.

I haven't tried out gravity/ since its overhaul, and would like to. The character will mostly solo. What would be a good secondary with it?

I've started dabbling in beast mastery/nature affinity, and so far it's been fun, and feels very solid. We'll see how things go as I get the additional tiers of pets and all, of course, but so far so good.

Thanks, both of you. That's reassuring and liberating.

With that kind of intro, I'm curious about your Mids, if you don't mind doing the text dump. (Mac user here who keeps forgetting to set up an emulator.)

Energy aura looks way cool. I'm wondering how well it holds up in incarnate action, with all that psi getting thrown around. What do you to make it hold up?

I should note here that I'm looking for or at least hoping for an intermediate answer. Not "IOs lol", nor full Mids builds, but something like "3 sets of Psi Be Gone, and two solitary Blankominds in mule slots somewhere", if it's feasible to do so. Thanks!

I got hit by that one in a bad way on pretty much all my characters with pets, when issue 22 went live. Is it still being a problem, or did they find some kind of fix?

Well, just about any set of minions can benefit. It's a matter of how active and in what ways you want to be. I'm kind of sluggish at the best of times, so buffing my pets and party mates works well for me for all the times I don't feel super coordinated.

At low levels, melee pets will benefit more, unsurprisingly. Genin like bubbles. So do wolves. Robots and demons don't dislike them, but it's less of a big deal. Higher up, Repulsion Field is great for tankerminding with any set at all. At incarnate levels, force field is nice but sonic really shines.

Just to add some data, I ran into the pets-running-after-new-spawns trouble on the Positron task forces. It's not just incarnate trials affected.

Does this affect controller pets as well as mastermind and lore ones?

/Time proved more fiddly than I feel up to at the moment, but I've run Beast Mastery/Force Field through the first few task forces and found it very satisfactory.

Wow, someone mentioned /sonic in a not entirely disparaging way, and here's Reppu to rant! Though admittedly not about the /sonic as such this time.

Oh, I know. It's mostly a matter of how much I want to bother with more trials right now.

I went with Spiritual and Reactive, but am thinking about something else for the Alpha slot now that Dreamshine is up to 182.5% recharge just with her Hasten auto-firing. Alternatively, I could swap out Ageless destiny for something else, but it's popular with groups, and sensibly so, and I do like it.

The controller proc doesn't enthuse me. The controller recharge does! Come to me, sweet recharge, says my illusion controller.

Did Sonic mug Beauregard, or something? It seems like I keep seeing him in threads where it's being discussed, always presenting bogus figures and arguments to make it look as bad as possible.

What may not be clear from the earlier answers is that the emote needs to be in angled brackets: <em popdance>, for instance.

This tripped me up for a while, because I figured it was just a typical documentation kind of convention indicating "put your specific thing in here".

Hoping I can ask this without launching a full flamefest or anything:

Will there be a female version of this? I have at least one female character who'd use a retro space suit and isn't suited to typical space-bunny gear.