Phaer

What's wrong with Lackey'ing a 33 to a group of 40+ er's? You have most of your main abilities already at 33, and they'll be SO'ed, so you shouldn't be down too much in effectiveness on a character at the proper level...

Don't agree with slotting CJ for jump rather than def... personally I've never needed more jumping than CJ already has unaided. It adds a noticeable bit of defense, and it's worth slotting for that, the immobilization protection is nice too. The endurance cost is minimal though, really not worth reducing.

I hate to keep posting to the same thread, but I can't resist adding a few last thoughts, since I respec'ed a while back, dropping Frost Breath, Aim and Howling Twilight in favour of Darkest Night, Hasten and Freezing Ray (very happy with the new spec, Hasten is *hugely* better than Aim, it boosts your single-target damage output by a lot and lasts much longer, as long as your end can take the strain).

Shadowfall's been a bit of a surprise - I reckon the numbers in the strategy guide which say it contributes more +def than combat jumping or some tank shields are correct, it's a very noticeable boost in surviveability when slotted with 2x +def. I know most people recommend slotting it with +dmg resist, but that only contributes to a few types of damage, and with the I7 changes to defense I reckon +def is a better bet for it.

Here's a list of top tips:
* Darkest Night kicks ^backside^... solo'ing +1 bosses and elite bosses becomes so much easier - their damage output drops to almost zero when Darkest Night gets stacked with Shadowfall slotted for defense watch out for the long-ish cooldown if your toggles drop though, it's nice to be able to drop Ice Storm centred on yourself as a defensive barrier in that case
* other than on bosses Darkest Night is a bit situational because of the long triggering animation, and you can easily do without it before lvl 25-26 (while Frost Breath's extra damage is pretty useful at earlier levels)
* slotting one damage + one recharge is better than two damage, or 2 recharge... it's because multiple slottings of the same type add percentages, while rchg multiplies the effect of your damage slotting as well as the base damage
* slotting rchg also increases the slow effect of the ice blast powers, which is a nice added bonus
* above lvl 25 it is not worth having more than 4 slots in Ice Bolt because you tend to have many other powers which you use; that means that the incremental increase on the low-dmg bolt is not used as often... for the same reason it's not necessary to slot end-rdx in Ice Bolt
* slotting your most end-heavy powers with end-rdx is the way to go... I'd recommend 2x end redux in Twilight's Grasp, Bitter Ice Blast, Darkest Night and Freezing Ray (if you use it often), and at least one in Ice Blast and Shadowfall
* with the above and Stamina with 2x end-mod you won't run out of end except on Elite boss fights, where you might need one or two Inspirations
* slot Freezing Ray (and Fearsome Stare also) with +duration instead of +rchg... it means you get longer holds for the endurance cost and have more time for using damage powers, while being able to use Freezing Ray on more than one target at a time is not that useful because of the time you waste switching targets
* slot Fearsome Stare and Tar Patch with at least one recharge each, preferably two, on top of duration extensions... the cooldown is quite long, so they'll be used at most a couple of times per fight, but they're great crowd control, and you'll want them to be up as often as possible... beware of Fearsome Stare's surprisingly long range, you can pull other groups quite easily with it
* Ice Storm gets a big +acc bonus, so slot for +dmg and maybe one end rdx or rechg (here also Rchg increases the slow bonus for some reason)
* when using Ice Storm a big group, switch targets continually between blasts as they scatter... taking a chunk of the health off each member as they run can increase Ice Storm's damage output a lot as Scourge starts to trigger
* whenever possible use Tar Patch and Ice Storm together... not only do the slows stack, preventing mobs from running out of the Storm, but Tar Patch's dmg resist reduction boosts Ice Storm's damage and causes Scourge to trigger earlier... great for taking down big spawns
* if you don't take Superjump for travelling, keeping Health on the way to Stamina (rather than Hurdle) is a good thing... slotted with a +heal SO it regens a surprising amount of health, and you should certainly be able to tackle 3-4 minion spawns without using a heal

Hopefully that's useful to someone at some point I may pick up Howling Twilight again later, it's a great res even though it has a long trigger animation which makes it quite hard to use under pressure.

Oh and btw, I very much recommend re-specc'ing at lvl 28 in particular - at lvl 29 all your 25 SO's go inactive, and by respec'ing at 28 you can cash them all back in for infamy, then you add a chunk of extra infamy to re-buy all lvl 30 SO's... and that problem never re-occurs, because once you've done this once you should be able to earn enough infamy by level 32 to fully upgrade to lvl 35 SO's, and so on. Funnily enough dying once in a while helps with this, because it slows down your rate of xp gain vs infamy gain (which is otherwise at a fairly fixed ratio).

Hmm, only one Acc on most of the main offense, I'd go for 2x Acc 2x Dam rather than 1x Acc 3x Dam. But I guess that's a personal preference for steady, reliable damage over bursty damage, if the levels you fight are mostly low, 1x Acc is probably ok, especially if one of you has Tactics.

Lol, had I had a real blast today kiting a melee-based Elite boss around half a mish The slow from Ice combined with Swift means that even if Tar Patch is down, they never get more than one hit before you can get away... Ice Storm worked really well too, in getting them to run away when Tar Patch is down. Great fun!

It's pretty hard to create a 'broken' character in CoV, and most types have pro's and con's. If you're going to solo a lot, I'd avoid the buff-heavy powersets though, since you can't use those powers on yourself.

You might want to try a few things out... i tried a Fire/Rad corruptor first and found out i hate standing toe-to-toe with the mobs, and Fire/Rad has no way to keep distance... so I fell in love with Ice/Dark, which has a bit of everything - decent damage and heals, but it can also be played like a semi-Dominator with the holds from ice, tar-patch and fearsome stare.

If you give some indication of your playstyle I'm sure people will come up with a few suggestions

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Mr 5p Krz is now very angry at you for bringing the spambot-demons down on him.

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Thanks for making me laugh! Doesn't happen that often when reading game boards ;D

Actually, Dark Miasma's heal - Twilight's Grasp - has the same regen-decreasing effect as Lingering Radiation, and has the extra bonus that since TG's recharge is fast you can keep it on them continually... just thought i'd mention it

According to the Prima strategy guide, the regen debuff from LR lasts 30s after applying it, and it's on a 90s cooldown, while TG is 20s and on an 8s cooldown - i tried it out against Sea Witch yesterday and it seemed to work fine.

Hey, I'm certainly not knocking the Ninja's... as i said, they are very easy to solo with, as long as you look after them (and make sure they don't charge off to kill stuff when they run and then drag half the mish to you)... I've not played another MM above lvl 10, so I've not much basis for comparison

But it sounds like you're doing what I did for the first 18 lvls or so... besides keeping the dps focussed, what annoyed me most was the tier-1's dashing in on Boss mobs as main melee and getting wiped, and making the whole fight a lot harder than it would have been if the tier-2 had tanked with the tier-1's doing secondary melee. It's especially annoying because the tier-2's ranged is so weak that he can't take aggro from tier-1's doing melee, and they don't move closer of their own accord. Once you notice that you end up spending so much time making it happen that you have little time to do other things... maybe that's just me tho.

I think Robotics is maybe just a bit easier to manage, because of the good and long ranged damage, and consequently them not chasing after mobs when they run. But the whole thing of summoning a second set of minions when the first get killed mid-combat is just such a great get-out-of-jail-free card, if you time it right it makes it very hard to die as a MM on solo mish's.

I've done a Ninja/Dark MM to lvl 23, and I have to say it was very easy going solo'ing - easier than the corruptor... the henchmen function like a mini-team, which means you end up doing debuffing and healing in support of them, and the second-tier henchmen have little trouble tanking leuits or bosses... Then later the third-tier henchmen adds area damage and debuffs, it's very cool. I even solo'd a couple of equal lvl elite bosses pretty easily at lvl 10 - one at a time - you just have to keep the heals coming ;D

But: in order to get good damage output (especially from the ninja's) you really need to micro-manage their movement carefully... the powers they use to attack are keyed by range, and so you're constantly making sure the second-tiers stay in melee range, because their damage drops by about 2/3 when they're using missiles.

It doesn't matter so much up to about lvl 18, but after that it became a problem, and that's what in the end made me decide to try something else.

So if you do try a MM and don't want to be mouse-clicking like a caffeine-addict on speed, i'd advise against Ninja's )

Fire/Dark is not a bad suggestion I've tried Fire/Rad, Rad/Rad, and Ice/Dark, tho only up to lvl 20 or so, and I have to say of those I've enjoyed Ice/Dark the most...

Fire/Rad worked well for a while with Radiation Infection as a way of mitigating damage, but as soon as you come up against mixed range & close damage dealers it starts to break down.

I've found the key thing to solo'ing as a corruptor is having ways to keep distance without too much hassle, and Dark Miasma is perfect for that with Tar Patch and Fearsome Stare. And Air Superiority has been good for me - I don't like Hover but want Fly - as it gives you a chance to move back during the knock-down if they did get close.

Having some form of self-heal is important too, so that cuts down the choices of secondary a bit. And Freezing Ray from Ice complements the distance-keeping nicely... it's a toss-up between that and the extra damage from Fire.

It's not as easy to solo as a Mastermind, where you always have the option to summon a second batch of minions when things go bad, but it's a lot more controllable... Some bits can get quite challenging, like taking on an equal or +1 boss and leuit at the same time and trying to kite them around a tar patch around lvl 15 ;D

Well it looks to me like the whole thing of "no healers" in CoV was done on purpose to try and spread the healing load. Brutes with self-heals, mm's and corruptors with area-heals but no single-target ones, general heals in power pools...

The bottom line is lots of players don't like looking after other people, which means a real, purpose-built healer class is probably going to be rare (as it still is in WoW). But that does mean everyone ends up having to do their bit in the healing, and corruptors not using their heals is a bit crazy, imho.

Almost as crazy as corruptors not doing damage, lol.

Thanks for that Cyber, really good feedback ;D I'll probably end up dropping Frost Breath - the long animation is annoying - and taking Darkest Night instead, and Hurdle instead of Health... then one more Hold and I'll be set. I still have the respec from the last patch, so I'll probably end up using that when I've worked out all the slotting.

As far as End goes, I currently don't have the toggles or Bitter Ice Blast, and have slotted some end redux in Ice Blast and Twilight's Grasp (my most used, most end-heavy powers) and it's not really a problem running without Sta. I find I'm resting once, maybe twice per mish... bit more when I'm pushing the pace... which i can live with

You guys know about the strategy guide you can download here - http://cov.primagames.com/ - right? It contains numbers for damage, end use and animation time of all the powers as well as descriptions for them... some of it pretty surprising. I mean, there's not a lot of point in Bitter Freezing Ray when it takes longer to cast, uses more end, does less damage, and holds for the same amount as Freezing Ray and Ice Blast together... ok, maybe if you had to have one more hold

Ok, so here I have my 21 ice/dark corruptor. What I've got at the moment is this:

Ice Bolt / Ice Blast - main single target offense
Freezing Breath / Ice Storm - decent AoE damage
Aim - boost for either single target or AoE when it matters
Twilight's Grasp / Howling Twilight - groupie healing & mass crowd control
Tar Patch / Fearsome Stare - regular debuffs & keep-em-off-me
Swift - helps with the levelling
Air Superiority / Fly - close-up-offensive-defense & movement

What I'm pretty sure I want to add later:

Freezing Ray - at least one hold
Shadow Fall - a defensive power, and in area too
Bitter Ice Blast - to round out single target damage
Health / Stamina - for the extra end
Dark Servant - super source of debuffs and good for taking alpha strike too
Blizzard - gotta have the nuke...

That leaves me with one more power before lvl 40... whaddaya think? Are there any major holes in that? Maybe take another hold? Or combat jumping for some extra defense? Or some utility like Recall Friend?

I'm slotting my main single target offense 2 Acc/2 Dmg/1 Rchg/1 End... just 2 dmg on the aoe stuff so far... how much do i need acc on that later on? Or am I better off boosting the debuffs? I'm playing mostly PvE at the moment, PvP has never been a real focus of mine.

Advice from more experienced corruptors would be much appreciated ;D

Blender, lol.

I've got a 21 ice/dark corruptor, and one of the things I really love about it is that you're both healer *and* do good ranged damage... imho corruptors have the best heals on the villains side, and so every corruptor should be taking the heal if they have one and make it useable (by slotting some Acc and Heal in the case of Twilight's Grasp).

But then ice/dark is good for that, because most of the attacks cycle very quickly and you have time left to take a peek at the team window and heal away if people have low health.

I played quite a bit of wow before joining CoV, and it's a really interesting contrast so far - the class roles in groups seem to be a lot less clearly defined here.