OhGodtheRats

I play a Rad/Traps Corrupter fairly regularly and I'll second the fact that Cosmic Burst is awesome. Radiation Blast has what feels like a crazy amount of Area of Effect attacks that synch really well with team play because it'll debuff entire mobs as you fire them off one after the other.

To be fair, this looks like a pretty good combo. With Radiation you'll be able to debuff higher level enemies so that the team can hit them, and your secondary will keep your team alive/running strong. So for going after enemies that might be a little too high in level, you'll be welcome company. And despite the stigma, don't be afraid to be the healer once and again. I've a Fire/Thermal corrupter my Brute partners with regularly...as a duo she's able to keep my alive so well its insane, even when things go very, very badly.

Oh and the Radiation Blast Versus Sonic Debate:
Radiation debuffs the enemy so you can hit them more easily. More hits = more damage.
Sonic debuffs the enemy so that they take more damage when you hit them. Fewer hits = more damage.
Both would work really well for a team /thermal...but I'd go with Radiation if you want to be going after purple/red enemies with some regularity. I prefer it and it doesn't come with a lot of annoying train noises (as Sonic does). I'm not a fan of fire as while it's great for AoE damage...that's all it has going for it. And lots of Aggro. So the mobs aren't debuffed and you have their undivided attention if the team doesn't already.

Who is Cherry Fusion and where can I get a Slushie in that flavor?

I'm actually curious to see what the PVP regulars say here. If it's a roll call of the "Flavor of the Month" doom builds, could be interesting.

And if we were placing bets, I'd say someone is going to tell you to be a stalker or a blaster. Because those are the most common things I see in the PVP zones running around in God Mode. (God Mode = killing me with one shot and before I realize I'm being attacked)
-jared

PS: If I were you and was new to the game, I'd start off by making a toon that seemed fun on PvE first...and then take it to the PVP zones. Since you're not interested in the "ultimate pvp toon", I'd say just have fun. A lot of the pvp builds I've seen people suggest are HYPER focused and don't have room for a lot of the fun powers...if that makes much sense.

From what I've seen, taking Teleport as your travel power totally annihilates the "granite mobility" problem. I watched Reptile Wrath (stone/stone) simply teleport in Granite form straight into Malta Mob after Malta Mob. Was pretty impressive, really.

As for what to do with yourself pre-granite, I'm not sure what to tell you. I can't fathom a brute without a self-heal, but that's only because I play a Dark/Dark brute, who pretty much survives by out-healing his enemies in combat...so I'm on the flip side of having too much healing in my build.

Personally, I would totally go for the Elec/STone combo. I haven't seen it yet and the AoE Electric attacks look brutal once fury is built up. That and the Idea of an Electric Granite just sounds nightmarish. But with style.
-jared

OK I have to ask: Where do I find this mythical Channel where people organize SFs?
Because I really don't do them often enough...
-jared

Where are your Imps?
Your fire imps? The only pets that charge into combat and do not sit around being lazy and doing a bunch of ranged attacks?

I'm not sure how useful they are around level 50, but they ALWAYS impress me when I team with Fire Doms. Maybe its because the power gives you three of them or maybe its because the damn things look MOTIVATED to hurt things.
-jared

I like Siren's a lot because no one has all their doom powers yet. Makes things....more interesting. Warburg is great particularly the dueling community. Seriously there's a code of honor amongst the regulars and its hilarious to see someone break it and get slaughtered sometimes. Then again, it really depends who's in warburg. If there's not many people and you want to do the Nuke Mission, NEVER EVER broadcast it. Seriously...my friend was goofy and asked if anyone knew where the entrance to The WEB was...there were like 4 stalkers down their waiting for us within 2 minutes. Bah.

Nihilism kicks in.

Still, if you come to the zone only to duel and cause chaos amongst your friends, it's awesome.

Siren's Call? If the heroes would stop sitting in their base all the time, it would be interesting more often. The only time I've seen heroes out of the base is when the unstoppable Empath & Blaster Duo decide to one-shot me.

Yeah, I need to make a better pvp toon, I know.
-jared

By the way Shadow Mass... it seems my group finally did complete that damn Respec Mission. The issue ended up being the level difference...since you were 4 levels higher than anyone else in the team, the mobs scaled themselves to you. Which explains the level 27 and 26 guys having a LOT of trouble killing those level 32 vines fast enough.


And man, is it just me or does that Vine room make everyone on a team snarky? My 2nd shot at it was going great up until that room where social order imploded....again.
-jared
(Player of Longbone)

((PS: If you're still hunting an SG, I'm pretty active in two of them...one fun and into RP, another super-supporting and much more heavily populated. For some reason I thought that I saw you were in one already last night, but I can't remember to save my life.))

All I can say is that whenever I've seen a Forcefield Mastermind, I'm always super jealous of the containment field FF power. If only because there will be a mob with two bosses then suddenly one of them can't touch us. It's a nice surprise and seriously helps trim the doom in particularly troublesome mobs.

That is assuming it's slotted for accuracy something crazy...or so I've been told.

Oh and Force Bubble? If you get that (and it's awesome) be prepared to be told people just can't team with you if you can't use it selectively. We had to fight wailers in an office building with a FF Mastermind with it and....well....none of the melee toons could CATCH any of the damn wailers because the mastermind kept moving and all the enemies would be suddenly repelled in another direction. It's a great power that I wish I had, but definitely not something you should have on all the time as this guy did.

While my experience in normal masterminds is limited (see the other stupid thread), I can say that trick arrow is pretty much like traps when it comes to endurance and your desire to spam effects. You're going to want to and if you go crazy and don't plan, you will run out of endurance. My mastermind has Stamina and, while it doesn't happen often, once every few missions a fight will go on just a little too long and I'll run dry of endurance. Trick Arrow isn't endurance heavy...but since you'll be motivated to Glue/Ice/Acid/Oil Slick arrow the world, it might as well be.

Great post, Privates. And yes, resting in a pvp match is a sign of awesome. See you in Warburg very soon.
-jared

Sorry I missed this week guys...Got pulled into a very-needed respec mission in Nerva that took a lot of time, didn't go well at all, and ultimately couldn't be completed because after 20k of debt we decided we just couldn't kill the damn vines fast enough. Seriously, we spent well over an hour just trying to kill vines. It was very, very sad.

So what's the plan for next week?
-jared

I always thought we left Mercy Island as fast as possible because you can only kill so many snakes before you go insane. That said:

I really don't get the whole CoV is poo for teaming thing. Now, I don't have Heroes so maybe teaming is golden there (maybe because it looks like some Archetypes NEED to team for their powers to work, the poor bastards) but on Union the longest I've ever had to go without a team is something like 20 minutes. If none of my friends are on and putting my settings to "looking for anything" doesn't help, I usually just send a few polite tells to people near my level and soon I'm crushing some skulls in-character.

I understand maybe the CoV teaming thing: We've got a brute that needs the aggro charging ahead, a Mastermind who is a team on his own and when he's around everyone complains about his pets blocking doorways, stalkers who assassinate and then run hoping the team can handle the doom he's just brought upon them, and, well, I can't think of silly examples for Corruptors or Dominators. But still, you can get it to work...you just have to think more about team dynamics.
Bah, I'm rambling. All I'm saying is that I don't solo at all...Union is poo for teaming just means you need to make more friends or actually send a nice tell to someone that contains more than "Brute lv4 lft" because that [censored] is stale man. Old hat, even.
I've found my tell "sorry to intrude but things seem quiet right now as far as teams go. Mind some company?" to be the rather successful solution to forced solo-tude.
-jared

I'm just looking forward to roleplaying with heroes in the co-op zone something fierce. Since I mostly like doing missions "in character" as opposed to Pocket D, it should be interesting.

So screw hiding in Pocket D or the Base. I'm going to find a place to dig in and hold off some invaders. Nothing makes in-character friendships quite like battlefield experience.
-jared

I think I can wait a week to get horrible killed in Warburg....no problem.
-jared
(Character: Billy Horrorshow, my global: Billy Horrorshow)

If someone would like to test the "follow the teleporter while having superspeed+superjump" thing on Union, I'd love to see it. My dom's been spending a lot of time in Warburg as of late and, while he hasn't killed ANYTHING, he's spent a couple hours there with only betting faceplanted about 3 times. Which isn't bad since he's spending most of his time hovering on the beach of death giving out fear effects like candy.

So far the Teleport immediately away after getting hit by an assassin's strike is doing the trick when the going gets rough...and being able to still teleport while immobilized has also kept me standing. That said, I haven't found anyone in normal CoV with the SJ+SS combo...if anyone on union has it I'd love to confirm that it works.

-jared

You rock. Now stop only logging in while I'm asleep.
-jared

By the way, if you can convince her to make her primary sonic, she'll be debuffing everything she hits for you. So less buffing and more debuffing. Inherent to all her attacks too.

Damn it, I want to build the perfect partner now too.
-jared

D'oh. Blizzard, Artic Fog, Snowstorm....they all blur together.
I was talking about the level 4 power, Snowstorm from Cold Domination.
-jared

Yeah...by level 15 you should be able to start slotting in IO's. By level 17 I was fully equipped...so I don't have to worry about anything expiring. That's the real strength of IO"s at early levels. Nothing sours the victory of getting a new level quite like realizing all your enhancements don't work anymore and you have to buy new ones with infamy you don't have yet.
-jared

Hey Echo! Look forward to teaming with your corrupter again sometime. That said, 2 comments:

1: My only comment in regard to your build is that I'd take Blizzard a lot earlier. It's one of my favorites on my Fire/Cold corrupter on defiant (may he rest in peace) and while it will bring you a bit of aggro if you're not careful, it literally makes the enemies retarded and pretty much just stand there waiting to get shot in the face. Even better, it only gets worse with IO sets. (The Chance for damage proc in Blizzard makes my brain explode with its awesomeness) Which brings me to point #2:

Congrats, you've grabbed one of THE builds for stacking Slow IO's. While they're not as flexible as a lot of the other categories, almost ALL your Ice Blast powers take Slow Movement Enhancements. If I were you, I'd choose a couple IO sets and start collecting. You'll be able to easily reach the 5x IO stacking ceiling, and still have room for more IO sets. You haven't even taken all the slow movement powers available to you and you can still easily get a set bonus of 30+ % to all your slow powers if you wanted to. And that's with you skipping oodles of Ice Blast powers that would let you stack even more.
(Keep in mind that number is much more realistic than most IO Set dream builds. You only need 3 of any slow set to get the global Slow bonus from it, which means
a) you're free to take the "common" recipes in the set and let the other kids squabble over the expensive ones and
b)assuming you six slot your slow power, that means you can put 3 of one set and 3 of another in there.

I made an Ice/Traps character built on this concept...while I'm taking more slow powers than I need, each one lets me exponentially increase the usefulness of the others.

Alright, I'm done. It's out of my system. I just really like Ice sets and what they can pull off with IO's.
-jared

Hammerfall's PVP knowledge fills me with terror. Usually because I remember his words as I slowly explore the PVP zones, hoping not to meet anyone.
-jared

Sounds like a plan. I might not make it next week due to double xp burn out (which I was introduced to a few weeks back). On the other hand, I'm thinking I may want to focus on my Ice/Traps guy...the lower levels should fly buy with a little help and dedication.

You know, because while I hate focusing on YET ANOTHER character, I really think that Ice Storm would just jive with the all-traps assault perfectly.
Stupid temptation.

Either way, I'll definitely be up for the Respec Trial. That thing owned me the last time (and first) I tried it...I'm looking for a little payback in the form of TNT.
-jared

Best.
Mission.
Ever.



That is all.

Update: Holy [censored], Shannon. You were right. My Dark/Dark hit 18 tonight and I finally got a taste of the Dark Regen/Dark Consume combo. Sweet Lord, it's awesome. Both of them aren't slotted anywhere near where they should be (or at all in Consume's case) and still I see what you mean about not needing stamina. I was skeptical, but I can see that with a bit of slotting and IO tinkering, I really don't need it. Nothing made me happier tonight than being out of endurance and almost out of life and bouncing back to almost full on both by just switching on those two powers at the right moment. It's not perfect yet, but man, I went through a very long mission only having to endurance rest once. Considering how I used to have to do that after every mob...
(The other trick was I did a bit of IO slotting to sort out my endurance/accuracy issues, that helped, but not as much as having dark consume on tap)

Thanks again.

Kite?