MriBruce

Wow. Fantastic info. Thanks!

To the character generator...

I've been poking around with demon summoning lately. I have utterly fallen in love with the whip, gotta say. Now, I've read Catministrator's excellent guide, but it has a bit of a hole in discussing secondaries, and discussion since then has kind of been all over.

I could ask "What's the best secondary for demon summoning?", but that's dumb. Such questions bring rage to the strong and sorrow to the weak. So instead I'll ask, "What does each secondary do best with demon summoning?", and maybe also which you like best and why, if you have a preference.

In the back of my head is the hope to someday go soloing archvillains and giant monsters, but honestly, I'm not doing that right away and won't be, so...more relevant concerns, in about this order: simplest soloing, sturdiest soloing, simplest grouping, most useful grouping, all presuming a budget of SOs and some IOs, no more than a few hundred million max. If one secondary covers two, three, or four of those priorities, so much the better.

Thanks! I must whip them, into shape, shape them up, whip them good!

The dominating option really paid off tonight. I took Cognix on a Positron 1, since she was up to 13. We started off with a full set of 8 characters, but lost 2 along the way...and found ourselves facing all 8 shadow simulacrums. Several wipes later, I suggested and the others agreed that I see how far I could get with Confuse. It took a good 10 minutes or so, but I was able to confuse 3 of them into killing each other, and we could wipe up the rest.

That was weird but fun.

Thanks to the folks who encouraged me to try both. I find them both a lot of fun, and scratching somewhat different itches. The blaster is faster on single targets, the dominator kind of fiddly (I'm not wild about Domination) but great at the area action. Speed seems about comparable overall, over the course of several missions.

The new sewer trial is indeed nifty. One run gets you to 7, two to 10, three to 12. And there are folks doing the lower-level task forces quite often, at least on populous servers. (Not slamming the others, just noting the limits of my knowledge. Others are welcome to add more, since I have known gaps in my knowledge.)

The new signature story arc's first installment is level 15-20 or so, in Skyway City, takes 20-30 minutes tops, and is easily worth a level and some fine loot, too.

This is purely a taste thing, but I like Radiation over Kinetics because rad doesn't require to-hit checks. I just seem to have bad luck with those when they're most needed, even with good slotting and boosting. But not everyone has my affliction, and not everyone's bugged by the same things; I just note it.

OK, you two have convinced me to take fortunata Montressor out for another spin.

I do have one, actually. Just haven't really gotten much into him (and did stick with it long enough for the respec and actual fortunate powers) - I should take another run, maybe.

I've been a fan of psychic heroes forever, or at least since well before Jean Grey became Phoenix and when Saturn Girl and Lightning Lad were newlyweds. Recently I've been having a, er, blast with the blaster version of the concept, thanks in large measure to Ordius' great guide to the topic. I've been thinking about trying out the dominator counterpart, and am interested in folks' experiences.

Assume here that I do know about the problems with Carnies, Rikti robots, and such.

How fast is the dominator version in overall speed, when compared to the blaster? How long does it take to build up a good roster of powers for an attack chain? How much more or less endurance-heavy? Any particular strengths and/or weaknesses that might surprise me if I didn't have you nice folks tipping me off?

Ones I'm happy about:

Anansi, crab spider
Montressor, fortunata
Psignifier, illusion/radiation controller

For me it's illusion/radiation controller. Not the fastest or most ideal at every particular thing I want to do, but all-around fine and just really comfortable and happy for me to play.

This is @AmazingBruce. I'm aiming to be there with Doctor Dawn, who's 33 and SO slotted right now. I'd like to have him up some by Saturday, but he certainly won't lose any levels. (Even I don't get debt that bad.)

Great, thank you!

As it says on the tin: I'm just kind of puttering along getting a feel for various power combos, and I wonder if anyone wants to point out pitfalls or opportunities for speccing while leveling. Thanks!

Local Man: Yeah, it's true, some /rad debuffs are up very quickly, and those I do use a lot.

I know about changing power colors, but fine particulate haze in any color at all is bad for me - optic nerve damage from diabetes and an obscure immune problem, so I have special-needs kind of eyes. Good reminder, though!

Drat! I'm sorry to have missed this. I hope you'll consider more events like this with a bit more lead time in announcement, as I'd love to bring Doctor Dawn to them.

Illusion/radiation is, by a wide margin, my single favorite combo of powers in the game. It's true that the anchored debuffs are impractical in many fights, but they do great things to bosses, most particularly elite bosses and arch-villains and such, so I just think of them as "extra oomph when needed" powers - much like I feel about a good rezzing power, a welcome thing to have even though I seldom use it very much. Also, as a matter that's partly moral and partly aesthetic, I'm happiest with heroes whose powers clearly aren't killing the bad guys.

/Storm is also an awesome secondary, and everyone should try it out. I did and ended up not liking it for a reason I doubt will be an issue for most people - I just dislike the visual clutter, with too much of my screen feeling obscured and hard to make out. (I have this problem with warshades, too, which is a shame because I think they're just awesome, too.)

Gravity/ is very cool but a bit underperforming, which is a shame, as the kid in me who grew up reading comics in the '70s loves the concept to bits.

I only recently dabbled in Electric/. It was fun! Watching the endurance drains kick in, and opponents flailing around for lack of endurance is almost as much fun as opponents deceived or knocked down. I'm too hooked on invisibility to just give up on Illusion/, but Electric/ seems a really worthy companion affection for me.

My new Crab Spider is Cupid's Shadow; he'll be going heroic and I wanted something with a bit of change of pace in the name.

Lobster, I'm loving the heck out of your guides. The Fortunata one has gotten me the psychic death-dealer I've long hankered for, and now it's crab time.

What would you recommend in the way of a relatively cheap build that emphasizes defense and AOE over pets? Is that the Mastercrab sort of thing you already posted, or would there be other considerations?

Ooh, excellent tip about the credit card, thank you.