Psylenz

Drop your seekers on the spawn. While the hilarity of the stun -tohit debuff takes effect, I run in (best if done with forcefield generator ) and drop the trap next to the biggest baddest guy. Then, I pop out and hit the mortar. I do it in this sequence to avoid the spawn from separating.

If you want to make a tank a sonic resonance believer, just put the sonic disruption on him and target through him with sonic siphon.

I won't dispute sonic resonance is awesome sauce.

I did a KHAN TF on my FF defender with a sonic resonance teammate. The only 'healz' we had were from a Stormy's O2. The stormy informed us at the beginning she wouldn't heal for the whole team, but she must have enjoyed her bubbling because I caught her healing my defender. By the way, this was one of the most awesome steamrolling teams of Kahn I have experienced, pre-Incarnate abilities! Buffing and debuffing in spades from FF, sonic and storm.

I played a Bots/storm up to 50, duo'd 90% of the time with a Necro/Storm. This was before the adjustment to pet AI prior to the Demon Summoning debut. By the way I have a tp stealth proc in TP to stack with the steamy.

My Bots/storm made a living off tp'ing to a position 90 degrees from my pets in respect to the direction of the spawn. Hit gale FIRST and it blows them into a better position, kick off the Freezing Rain, fire up the hurricane, and the cornered/floored/flopping foes responded well to the AoE stuns from the protectors and the AoE from the first tier guys. Positioning first to the foes' indefensible position is what makes this work so well. Your attacks are separate in the pets and assist the mastermind with his smackdown.

Necro Storm is scary good. Scary, because on paper it shouldn't work. Use hurricane like a surgeon's knife and the grave knights and zombies clean house very successfully. The steamy mist protects the crew from fire, cold, and energy - no small support.

Welcome to the game!

I am sure you read the game description of the archetypes, but I will repeat for emphasis.

Blasters are mostly ranged damage - BIG damage, but they do get some weaker controls and successful melee range damage in their secondaries.

Controllers have the good control powers hard and soft to make battles manageable. They also have buff and debuff abilities in their secondary second only to defenders.

Defenders are your team multipliers - big buffs, foe debuffs and heals with secondary powers that are ranged damage that is weaker than blasters. I am biased, but a team of 8 various defenders can handle anything thrown at them in the game.

Scrappers are the melee damage dps guys. The crackheads, disembowel foes and have secondaries second only to tanks for their self-preservation.

Tanks are the meatshields. They do damage melee style like scrappers but not the same oomph. They also have defense/resistance auras that gather aggro along with taunt powers to keep the foes focused on them.

Kheldians are specialists, they can be like blasters, tanks, and scrappers to a degree, mostly not as effective but the availability of the three options is a great strength.

the 'red side' villains are corruptors, dominators, stalkers, masterminds, brutes, and soldiers of arachnos.

Corruptors are basically defenders with the primary and secondary reversed. They also have an inherent ability called 'scourge' that increases the damage foes take when they are being defeated.

Dominators have the controls of controllers and the blasts of blasters. This is an AT that I am still mastering. Their special inherent ability is domination which refills endurance and provides a mesmeration protection. This is a lot of fun, but I am not sure I would tackle it first.

Stalkers are assassins. They the ability to sneak up unawares on big game and use 'assassin strike' out of the hide/stealthy stance and thereby do bonus damage. They are like scrappers with melee damage, but a bit more vulnerable.

Masteminds are the pet class. The mastermind is allowed some personal attacks, but the most damage is from his pets. The mastermind gets buffs/debuff similar to defenders.

Brutes are similar to scrappers, but they have the inherent 'rage' ability that increases the damage they dish out the more that they are attacked. Melee range damage, a littler weaker than tanks on aggro control, brutes do most of the crowd control by attacking and killing foes.

Soldiers of Arachnos is a 'jack of all trades' kind of archetype. There are some pet-casting builds, some builds like dominators, most soldiers of arachnos take the auras that buff their teams. An 8-man team of soldiers is extremely formidable.

I probably left something out. This is an overview not intended to be all-encompassing.

Hmmm, I usually suggest a FF/sonic to herd a posse of blasters through missions with glee. Corruptor side, you could get similar results with Sonic/sonic, Sonic/Thermal, or Sonic/cold!

The steadfast protection enhancements are not really 'procs' per say. They will benefit the caster, and you don't have to actually cast to get the bonus. They are bonus enhancements.

Well, I learned something, speed boost DOES take universal travel and yet siphon speed does not. It functions like increase density, it is a bonus to the player not the teammate or ally he buffs.

I totally agree with Major Tractor. The chance to receive a shard is greater on bosses/EBs and such compared to lower level spawns. The only way to increase the likelihood of more shards on a TF that drops shards to eligible teammates is to defeat more spawns.

Omegalith, I would work to get one more recharge slot in Howling Twilight and more -tohit in Dark Servant.

edit: by the way, which alpha slot? You are way overslotted for damage in Assault Bot w/o musculature.

Oh, get the popcorn. I like this debate. Yes, more talk of my precious storm set.

I do wonder about Storm/Psy defeating an AV when it is doubtful he could solo a sky raider jumpbot before running out of end. Those nasty spawns are tough for defense psychic blast.

Late to the party again...

I see lots of level 40 Banished Pantheon, right in Dark Astoria. It just happens to be the friendly faction ambush during the Numina TF.

Alright, I can see why you don't think that being a sociopath, kicking puppies for kicking sake, is necessarily evil. I do want to point out that Westin Phipps has a motive for keeping the poor slobs in Grandville downtrodden. He wants them to be dependent on him. He's a classic control freak kind of lackey to Lord Recluse. He is against changing the current order of things: Freakshow being educated to become self-reliant and independent of outsiders. He is a petty miniature version of Stalin in post-revolution Russia. As they said in Animal Farm, he is more human than humans.

I have a Traps/Dark defender. There is a special synergy that is hard to measure statistically, but it plays well. The corruptor version should be nice once things come together in the 20ish levels.

I have a Sonic/Kinetic corruptor that is all about sonic and kinetic debuff. He is very useful on teams. The knockback, sleep, and stun in sonic blast are great soft controls. Who doesn't like speed boost and fulcrum shift?

You can build for recharge in the pets' SUMMONS, it just doesn't affect the recharge of the pets' abilities.

Well, if pole arms are difficult to animate because it's so new with two handed wielding, then slingshots are in the same boat.

Westin Phipps is a villain, Themari is a villain, the contact that has you round up people to hand over to the vahzilok is a villain. Working for them as a lackey, maybe not so much.

But yeah, poisoning food so children go blind. Destroying books for people in recovery or a half-way house. Feeding humans to zombies. Passing people over to the Devouring Earth to be devoured. That's wicked wicked stuff.

I want a repel power that affects teammate's pets only

Forcefields is taken for granted. The level of defense from forcefields has been static for some time. People build their incarnate characters with more defense and resist in response to tougher content.

Forcefielders have been said to be situational. Perhaps, but individual situations seem to crop up regularly in different occasions. The ITF has a bunch of defense debuffing npc's intent on skewering heroes and villains alike. So, extra defense above 45% seems redundant until it's being chipped away. The statesman task force has a situation with an incredibly buffed AV at near hax levels. A good tank and team have worked around this, but in a lot of situations being able to use detention field (or sonic cage and others) on the towers makes the ordeal faster and easier. I have found a killer combination in Force Bubble and Insulation shield that minimizes damage received and protects against sapper drains and Malta in the Tin Mage II task force.

I am sure there are other 'situations' that are more frequent than not. Forcefields isn't mandatory, neither is empathy or radiation, but all buff/debuff sets bring something to a team.

In short, force fields were once the dike behind whose defense a team could operate pre-incarnate levels. At the later levels, it's more like the finger in the dike that prevents the extra considerations from getting through a team's defense and resistances. In such teams, there isn't imminent collapse looming, but it makes the event smoother with that added layer.

Seriously aren't most first tier pets "recharge intensive pets"?

I am revisiting this thread to explain yet another reason I took musculature on my Electric/electric/chill dom. On the radial side, rare, you get additional boost to endurance modification, additional help for super sapping!