Phosphorescency

Not a stupid question at all... generally, easiest way is simple though. Beat up a whole load of stuff, and sell the drops.

You're actually at a pretty good level for one of the closest things there is to a hazard zone red-side where you can defeat a LOT of things quickly.

Try this--clear your inventories. Go to St. Martial, head to the far southeast. There's a hill in The Hard Way that's almost entirely large spawns of Freakshow. Dive into one and cut loose with Pendulum, Whirling Axe, etc. Assuming you're the only one around, the spawns should be mostly level 40s, so not terribly hard to kill, but there are lots of them. You'll be at full Fury in no time, and as soon as you finish one spawn you can circle the hill to the next. You can basically head around the hill at 70%+ Fury non-stop!

Fill up salvage or recipes, and head to the Black Market.

If you can find a good mish in the MA, you can do similarly with bronze recipe rolls or salvage rolls from tickets, and you can run the MA at any level.

If you're selling all your drops and you price toward the high end of the range stuff sells at (not necessarily AT the high end, just up there a bit) you can make loads of cash. It's not hard to get 20 million or so, especially with a couple of good drops scattered in lots of stuff selling for 10-50K. And you don't need 100 million to get some decent IOs as long as you don't pay the Right Now price.

Basically, vendor all your drops, getting an above average price, and get a feel for how far stuff swings (some stuff varies INCREDIBLY in price) so when you're buying stuff you don't pay the high end price you sold stuff at!

As for your build, looks good and I'm glad it's not a clone of mine! I would have gotten Rise to the Challenge slotted up earlier, but at 40 you've got all the essentials, slotted decently. Now you get level 42 and 43 to get things slotted really really well.

I hope you're having fun, I found it a great Brutish build with lots of SMASH.

I'll take a look at an IO build tomorrow if I can! What kind of budget do you have to operate with?

Depends what you're fighting. Fire has more damage, and high recharge Healing Flames is great against most things. Fire's lack of resistance to psi, cold, toxic, slows, and end drain will be felt against mobs that do such things.

DM/WP is a bit overkill on mitigation and +recovery, but a valid build. DM works with really everything. DM/SR is a great build, the -ToHit debuffs are basically pointless once you've soft-capped the build, but those and the self-heal make leveling DM/SR fun and easy. It's a powerhouse from level 22 on up.

You have to be on the ground, pretty much. I've been knocked back/down while jumping plenty of times with Grounded running. Elec has solid resist numbers, but no self-heal at all, which is where Siphon Life is nice.

Looks good. Might tweak it a bit myself, since you're so far over the top on ranged defense, but it looks very workable. I'd consider pulling a 6th slot out of a Red Fortune set to get Soul Drain's recharge better, and maybe replace the dam/end/rech in Gloom with an end/rech (check the tohit debuff sets).

But picking nits at this point, looks good, won't be an unstoppable killing machine until late, but it'll be darn close as soon as you get a melee defense bonus or two.

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Snares reduce MOVEMENT speed while slows reduce RECHARGE speed...
An example of a slow power that is purely a snare would be quicksand, I can't think of any that are purely slows offhand.

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Lots of psychic attacks?

Just noticed that in your previous build you didn't have CJ turned on, so you're WAY over the cap. Try pulling one Touch of Death set, and replacing a Scirroco set with 6 of Multistrike, will be as good and a whole lot cheaper.

Looks good, but pull the 4th IO from each of the passives, juggle things, and get Gloom 4-slotted. That 4th IO in each of them does you almost zero. Heck, the third in those plus CJ gets you very little.

I'd pull all of the 4th Def IOs, and I'd pull the 3d IO from Agile and CJ (since you're well over cap in Ranged defense) and get a recharge in Soul Drain plus slotting for Gloom and maybe some end and acc in boxing if you use it for Fury building.

If you use Brawl, drop an End reduction in there and call it good.

Then go have fun, and earn some money to pay for all this, Touch of Death is a bit pricey red side!

If you get soft-capped, you'll rarely use Touch of Fear. Great for leveling, but once you're at 45% defense, it's pretty unusual in normal PvE to need to put -ToHit on something, and generally as a brute you'll just kill it instead of Fearing it.

But if you don't have good slotting for Gloom--at least 4 total-- you might not want to mess with it.

It'll give you the idea, it's a scrapper guide so a bit different, and it pre-dates the large buffs that Siphon Life, Soul Drain, and Midnight Grasp got, as well as the small nerf that Shadow Punch got.

SR isn't much changed other than the brute power order being different and Evasion is a taunt aura for brutes.

I need to revamp it!

The "soft cap" for defense is 45%. Short form, critters your level or close have a 50% chance to hit you, minus your defense, then they get accuracy bonuses based on level and being bosses or whatnot. The minimum level for initial ToHit is 5%, so anything above 45% defense is rarely useful, it only serves as overhead for critter ToHit buffs (very rare outside of MA) and defense debuffs (which SR resists at 95%).

So a common goal for defensive sets especially is to get to 45% defense or so. Maybe 47-48% if you can manage it for SR, no more is really needed.

Your build takes you to 50% ranged defense, which is a bit over what is needed, and has almost no set bonuses for melee or AoE defense. Melee attacks are usually what kill you, but ranged bonuses can be nice because those protect you from most mez attempts, outside of a half-dozen psi based attacks that are psi only, not typed as melee, ranged, or AoE.

The "Rule of 5" says you can only get the exact same bonus 5 times. Visible in Mid's under "view active sets"

A DM/SR at the soft cap (or barely above) for melee, ranged, and AoE with Siphon Life is nearly unkillable outside of multiple AVs. Aid Self is unnecessary and just slows you down. The Fighting pool is much more useful, especially for Weave.

Levelling build or respec build? Would hate to level to 32 myself with the only attacks as Smite, Siphon Life, and the three second Shadow Maul.

Not sure I'd be be quite comfortable with zero accuracy in either Dark Consumption or Soul Drain, you'll be OK on fair-sized teams since you'll hit enough targets regardless, but solo or small teams you'll want some acc I think.

Why the heavy emphasis on Ranged defense and no melee defense bonuses? Ranged at 50% is significant overkill, especially at the expense of melee bonuses. Solo, you can use your debuffs to cover you OK, but teamed you'll get hammered at only 33% melee defense.

If you get to 45% to all, you won't need Aid Self, Siphon Life even barely slotted for heal will be plenty.

Your last set of Red Fortune isn't giving you many set bonuses, since you've exceeded the rule of 5 for most of them.

QR--

I would say that especially if you're taking Aid Self, and slotting Energy Drain for Heal, that Siphon Life should be slotted as an attack. Especially since you don't have much of an attack chain for most of the game.

Siphon Life is now your 2nd most damaging attack, and I'd slot it primarily for damage vs. heal in a soft-capped build, especially one with two alternate heals.

Crushing Impact would be nice there, for the recharge and the +acc, at that point you probably have enough +acc set bonuses (25%) to replace the generic Acc IOs in your sets with Kinetic Combat with something like an acc/dam/end or acc/dam

QR--
It seems as if IOs have in general made other controllers more appealing. With SO slotting, a Fire controller couldn't usually have a good control power available every spawn, where an Earth controller could.

Get enough global recharge and accuracy bonuses, and you don't need much more than Flashfire now, which is a great control power. With Cinders in reserve.

So IOs have made it easy for Fire to have "enough" every spawn control, but haven't done nearly as much for +damage in Earth. Not that damage procs in Earthquake and such aren't fun, but if a Fire controller has sufficient control for the vast majority of situations and far more damage, I see the appeal.

Must not be consistent on DCing in last mish then, I had a total ISP breakdown early in an Eden trial once, couldn't stay connected for more than seconds, and eventually gave up. Never made it to the first wall. Logged in the next day, and had the badge and recipe roll. Haven't had it happen since merits came out, though.

Exactly how are they slotted, how much acc/dam/end/rech in there? Hopefully at least one end red in everything, probably two in Smite, or the IO equivalent. And an end red in Brawl if you use it as a starter.

How are your attacks slotted? Any IOs or end reduction? Some of your attacks, especially Shadow Punch, can burn a tremendous amount of end if you're spamming them.

From what I've seen, you have to be there for the start of the last mission. If you log before then and the team finishes, you get nothing. If you enter the last mission and then DC at some point, you should be fine.

If you do lock down a tough target and hit melee, you'll probably want to do as much damage as you can, as fast as you can. Total Focus is your 4th best attack by those standards, behind Energy Punch, Bone Smasher, and and Bitter Ice Blast.

If you replace the Mako's set there with 6 of Gaussian's, you're still soft-capped, though with a bit less overhead for defense debuffs. Bit more recovery and melee/AoE defense, though.

Just my thoughts, it's a good build as it is but that big damage buff from Aim would be great if you could work it in.

Ice Storm is the other power that's iffy, since without a huge slow or immob behind it it's always prone to scatter. But I love Ice Storm when you do have one of those things.

Big thing that I see is that there's rarely a good reason to skip Aim. The heavy selection and slotting of melee attacks seems to be a bit contradictory with a build so strongly choosing set bonuses to build ranged defense. Personally I'd either drop Bitter Freeze Ray, even though it costs you the ability to lock down bosses, or drop one of the blaps--my choice would be Total Focus, but many love it despite the eternal animation.

Any scrapper will work, Spines is your AoE king by a good margin. Spines/Dark is a classic for AoE madness. Katana is a good scrapper choice for above average AoE and above average single target. Katana's Divine Avalanche gives great survivability.

A Fire/Fire blaster is great for this if you don't mind dying...you'll often kill everything single-handed, but it's a high-risk high-reward player. Fire/Energy if you don't like the dying.

Brutes are great, almost anything/WP is a good starter. SS/WP is the most popular starting brute. Strong and very tough.

Doms are interesting...currently godly in domination and a bit lacking outside of it, and it looks like some significant changes are on the way. Try fire/fire and avoid the AoE immobilize.

I personally start looking at IOs in the late 20s early 30s. Usually not with an eye at set bonuses, but even purely "frankenslotting" a mix of cheap IOs from cheap sets and generic IOs, my powers are significantly more effective than using SOs, and buying a set of cheap IOs at, say 32 and leaving them there is long run cheaper than replacing them every 5 levels anyway.

Frankenslotting sets include, for Fire/Kin, Essence of Curare, Harmonized Healing, Tempered Readiness (acc/dam/slow and acc/end for hot feet), Rope A Dope...you get the idea.

Then I'll replace the cheap stuff with sets that get better bonuses as I move through the forties. Really little reason in most powers to wait until you hit 50 unless you're slotting purples, the total enhancement for slotting 43s vs 50s isn't dramatic in most cases.

If you have a respec available, you can even respec at some point, pull out those cheap IOs you crafted early, and often resell them for far more than it cost make them in the first place.

Invoke Panic really should be better. Invoke Panic, with 6 slots, is almost as good as Fearsome Stare, with just the base slot. Except for the part where Fearsome Stare is mag 3, and also carries a huge ToHit debuff.

It's fun, but as a fourth power in the pool, it's pretty crippled in every way possible. Not recommended for pure effectiveness.

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I like fear. Mostly due to lower end requirements (alot les healing needed) but also alot due to liking the multi floating skulls

Great for damage mitigation as even those not feared are hit with nasty -acc

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Also, never looked this up but always assumed the cloak stacked with touch for some nasty uber fear for the big guys

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ToF + CoF do stack.

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TY for this confirmation

I was pretty sure they did by the look of fear in my enemies eyes.

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CoF also stacks nicely with Intimidate or Invoke Panic... I have a concept Claws/Dark with the Presence pool.

Not saying the Presence pool is spectacular or anything, but it's fun yelling at things. Kind of a scrap/tank/troller build, not as good at any of those things as a specialist, but can Fear a whole spawn, or taunt to hold aggro as needed.

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"This whole complaint is just...well...bs."

Please explain.

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It doesn't match the experience of the rest of us. Either you had the most evil luck ever, you were quite far below the level of the mobs on the ITF, you were mistaken in some way, or there's a new bug in the game (for example, something only effecting people that actually achieve over 150% defense).

Edit--or you have a wonky build, for example you didn't take all SR's toggles and passives and slot them up and so don't have the full defense debuff resistance.

A +2 boss does get a 7.8% chance to hit, and eventually it will hit three times in a row... about 0.047% of the time. Having a self-heal for those incredibly rare instances is quite nice, so it takes something fairly insane to bring down my dm/sr.

It would take quite a lot to reduce my defense down to 40% where I'd really start to notice. For those occasions, I could use a purple that otherwise sits uselessly in my tray.