Psylenz

I guess it boils down to speculation by red names "on the calendar" "soon", "will it or won't it", by red names in tabloid threads that shouldn't matter. Are all players expected to read the drivel anyone posts in For Fun! on the off chance an official announcement is made? I still cannot find in the Announcements sections where it says "staff melee is released April 17th", the first official word I discovered was today on the open forum on the Facebook event.

@Electric Knight, I was mistaken when the official word was released on staff fighting, but as they said in the 4/3/2012 post WHY NO ANNOUNCE THREAD?

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=287278

That was what I was referring to as no calendar. I do see buried in some thread Zwilinger did state on April 10th that Staff Fighting is coming April 17th. IMHO that announcement would best appear IN THE ANNOUNCEMENT (buried under the weight of dozens of outdated stickied threads) section not some paparazzi general discussion reply.

I give NO credence, not one whit to speculative thread, hardly ever bother with them.

Ordinarily, this would be a time to rejoice. It's a boon from the developers. Players have waited a long time if not patiently.

I am neither comforted nor excited about the timing of this announcement. There was a thread discussing heatedly about the date this becomes available. I am in general, a fanboy. When the content is released, I play it. If it's good, I do my best Oliver impression and ask, "more, sir". I do NOT mind when representatives say, we are unable to announce the day such and such becomes available. I am excited by the SoonTM meme. I also understand that there is a business strategy of staggered releases of content in a pay for points system.

Do NOT tell the community an announcement is not on the April calendar and within 3 days announce it's coming next Tuesday. This management of the release date is capricious and unprofessional. It is also very unlike our player community practices and policies in the past. Such manipulations of their audience would best be left to Snookie and the Situation.

I expect this thread will be nuked like the last one. Just don't pee on my leg and tell me it's raining.

It has come to the attention of the reconnaissance team 37-D that in the Hamidon wars, many of the hostile swarms utilized by the Hamidon and Devouring Earth are indeed extant and possibly hazardous to Syndicate properties. The assessment of the upsurge in swarm activity can only be surmised as a hostile event.

Are you all-in for the medicine pool? It is a combination I never cared for much on /rad, Rad/ buffers. Especially the interruptible feature makes it less impressive. I dare you to try an alternate build with assault and manuvers to compare experiences. I made alternate builds on my rads for pug groups (more fallout/vengeance please )

I like the power mastery epic powers. Power Build up seems short on slots. I see the high recharge build. Power boosted AM, power boosted lingering radiation, power boosted EM Pulse, oh wait, another discrepancy. I fully understand why EM Pulse is opted out of many builds.

I think you want to stack lingering rad, too. I would squeeze more recharge directly into the build over the 3.75% in the set bonus.

Accelerated Metabolism needs some end mod in there. It's a good quality to boost for the team.

Does the enzyme do anything for the -resist in enervating field? 3 generic endurance reductions would be cheaper.

All the defense debuff, and not a spare slot for achilles heel in irradiate?

I like Rad/Rad defenders. My third defender was Rad/Rad back in the day when they first boosted the toughness of red cons, my defender would street sweep red con bosses. It was death by a thousand cuts, but they always died >

1. Taking an attack power is good on any mastermind. Often there are targets with 5% or less health and it saves endurance to finish them. I have the Sands of Mu power due to my length of playing months. At level 32 with both buffs, every single pet will be able to do more damage than the mastermind himself.

2. Leadership provides benefits in addition to defense, tohit, and damage. Confuse protection, taunt protection are two of the extra perks. Vengeance can NOT be activated on a pet, just an ally or teammate.

3. You will want the acid mortar, poison gas trap, and seeker drones as soon as possible. The acid mortar will increase the damage your pets, allies and teammates do on an impressive scale. Poison gas trap is the power that you will use to debuff the regeneration of the hardest targets. The hold is nice as well, but -regen makes it indispensable. Seeker Drones actively approach targets, debuff accuracy and chance for stun, but the biggest factor is that they are a major distraction while you are setting up the other important traps where you want them.

4. You didn't mention it, but web grenade actually gets better with archvillains and elite bosses the resist other mezzes. It recharges quickly so you can stack the effect on hard targets, then charge in to drop the poison gas trap on the immobile bad guy. It's got a substantial amount of -recharge as well, more damage mitigation by slowing the pace of incoming damage. Ideally with caltrops and the webnade, you can maximize the damage from the burnpatches laid out by your arsonist.

5. Dark Miasma is certainly a first rate secondary for Thugs, but I wouldn't rate Traps lower. Traps just plays differently.

Another good bonus from thugs is they do primarily 3 types of damage: lethal (gunfire), smashing, and fire. Any particular foe that spawns may resist one of the type but not all three. With traps, the acid mortar will negate the resistances to damage types.

You may not know this, but stacking leadership with multiple thugs masterminds is a very effective synergy -- unless this was modified recently.

Specifically at low levels, I duo'd with my friend's beast/time (farsight is wonderful). A Dark/dark controller with the dark debuffs (-damage, -tohit, added slows) plus shadow fall and FADE are an incredible if not obvious fit with the beasts and the FORTIFY power. Plus, you will get haunt, umbra beast, and dark servant for your own darkity minions

I have some /time masterminds and time defenders, but not the two combos you show. I do have an Ice/Cold corruptor. There is a TON of mitigation you can get stacking slows and holds. Time stop and freeze ray mean most troublesome foes can be held and killed at your pleasure. Time Juncture, distortion field, time crawl, the ice secondary means so much slow you will notice how much less you get hit.

Also your nuke in ice is targetted AoE. Chain some debuff, ice storm, blizzard from relative ranged safety

Coming from the perspective of playing poison since CoV beta, envenom is the -regen power. At one point on the mastermind version, it was my understanding that the debuffs in envenom do not stack EXCEPT for the -regen. Even on base recharge of 12 sec, you could get around 3 stacks in 30 seconds with modest recharge enhancements. That is nowhere near the burst numbers from EM Pulse, Howling Twilight, or Lingering Rad, but it can be steady -regen.

Poison functionally works better with masterminds since you can put noxious gas on your pet: bruiser, demon prince, commando, grave knight. With the debuff on a pet, your character can spam the -regen in a safer non-melee distance. The devs made it PbAoE for the ranged sets with no pets to utilize it better, but imagine having noxious gas on a fire imp, jack frost, or stoney instead of the more squishy controller.

The sonic tutu is ally based, I think the poison noxious gas should have been as well.

The discussion about which targets siphon speed actually is irresistible is a valid discussion point. It's been passed around in general that AVs do not resist siphon speed in the proven experience of kinetics users. In a long AV fight that -recharge -speed can be critical.

As Beauregard noted previously, certain "old school" spawns, not under the usual AV resist caveat, do still indeed seem to resist siphon speed. He noted the council/5th warwolves. It's been my experience that these spawns "cheat" as do some of the carnie spawns.

Beauregard was discussing Warwolves. I tend to agree. I think on the old spawns that it's a case by case basis which siphon speed will actually slow. Obviously to me, on a kin/sonic, Screech is the appropriate mitigation for the ravaging bad doggies.

I looked at the totals. You have a lot of +recharge in there even without all 5 LotG +recharge. What I might offer is to clip off a slot from time stop and put a fifth slot for more recharge set bonus, more boost to tactics.

With the defense from farsight, fast recharge on temporal mending, and bodyguard mode, your mastermind should survive most alpha strikes.

I am new, didn't test in beta, fortify pack. I can't see where to scrounge up more slots for pet defense, and I don't know how much it would help to enhance defense more.

The new ATO has shaken up the thinking at least to include the extra combinations possible. Five Blood Mandates for the set bonus in Demonlings seems reasonable, as well as getting Acc and Damage up to 90% enhanced.

The Demons are their own problem. After you get your MM to level 50, in my personal opinion, at LEAST 3 Hami-Os should be utilized for resistance, endurance and heal. Personally I don't like gimping my demons damage. They have some good AoE and can flatten minions. I was using the centriole trick before they fixed the unintended exploit between damage/resist Hami-Os. I haven't really maxed out my demon/thermal since the update. I want 60% acc, 60% dmg, around 50% resistance buff, 60% endurance reduction (remember the pet damage enhancers don't mitigate the demons heal end usage), 80% heal (2 golgis?) and some pie.

I frankenslotted my Demon Prince. I have 4 Pacing of the Turtles. All the abilities that affect slow are benefitted by the accuracy, damage, and endurance reduction aspects. I have and Acc/Dmg/End Enhancer and a generic damage enhancer slotted at present. A damage HO wold boost my damage more. Currently slotted: 63% accuracy, 75% damage, Endurance reduction 60%, slow 63%, and Recharge debuff 18%. His frosty aura is a formidable slow.

I can get more Damage into the Demon Prince, but I want to keep some endurance reduction if I am overlooking a damage abilility that does not slow.

@MechaCrash, I want DEMONS/COLD NAO1!!1!!!

Storm... Bots... and of course Bots/Storm

The synergies with psy blast IMHO should include resistance debuffs because when certain foes resists psy damage, they resist it like no other. So, my suggestions would be storm, cold, radiation, time and dark miasma. Storm, Rad, Dark get their significant -resistance powers earlier.

Indeed, Brilliant Leadership is bargain basement with modest set bonuses but very effective, much better than SO only.

There are four special specific enhancement bonuses (edict of the master bonus, sovereign right bonus, expedient reinforcement and call to arms bonus). I suggest you put them in the hell on earth power. The bonuses will be worth more than the damage living hellfire does. I also suggest six slotting hell on earth and getting some accuracy in order for the little hellfires to keep attention on them and not on you.

Alignment merits doing hero/villain reinforcement and weekly signature story arc runs will get you the good stuff very soon.