PunkRolex

I usually try to make sure that attacks that recharge the fastest get decent values for EndRed and Acc before I worry about anything else. I also tend to favor slotting AoEs over ST attacks since there's usually more bang for the buck, especially with the 5 Going Rogue procs all my toons start with.

Has anyone ever discussed the fate of either the Outbreak zone or what remains of Galaxy City? One assumes there's a never-ending stream of young heroes fighting there of course, but it basically doesn't exist after the tutorial, right?

* Play support classes. No, really. I've done iTrials where 20 of 24 players were some kind of melee-type and one of the others was a Blaster. Make somebody else's Blaster or Dom into the star for a while. I got "Oh Thank God you're a /Cold Dom!" three different times tonight.

* Don't be afraid to start a team in the first place. I hate doing it, myself, but I'm also used to playing on low population servers on off-peak hours.

* Use Player Notes so you can remember which are the fun people and which are the weirdos who want to hot chat.

* If people are unfun, just leave. You're not married to a PuG and if the are idiots or drama or drama with idiots, find a different group or just go play some other toon. If it's miserable for you it's probably miserable for the rest of the team, too.

* Play along with role play if you can figure out their deal. Usually the RP-types are happy to explain their characters and I've actually seen it infect an entire team.

* Long-time vets can get a lot of mileage out of knowing long-time vet stuff: "Hey, we're only about 100m away from an exploration badge at this mission door." I've spent free time on PuGs and TFs explaining to someone-or-other on a team how IOs work or what Gladiators are. Not everyone reads the forums or knows about Paragonwiki.

* When all else fails: hoorb

Hi people.

I have a Dark/Cold Controller and I just dinged 32 tonight. To date my slotting has mostly focused on getting Haunt out as often as I can and to get the best balance of enhancement vs. damage procs in the AoE immobilize. My main spam powers, the ST hold and AoE immob, are both well slotted for Accuracy and End reduction (the hold is also slotted for damage), but I seem to have fairly ridiculous end issues. Every click power I have with more than one slot has at least some End reduction in it. I'm not sure if this is just a characteristic of these sets or if I just don't have the slots yet to fully address this aspect of my toon.

At any rate, I figure I'll probably throw around a billion inf into getting this character whipped in to some kind of shape. I suspect I could get some reasonable level of defense, but at the moment I'm not seeing a compelling reason to build for ridiculous levels of recharge; Benumb is always going to take forever to come up and Dark's AoE hold is just as gimpy (long recharge, short duration) as every other set's.

I'm not going to post a build (and I'm not explicitly asking for some giant Mid's listing) because I'm more interested in advice about where I should try to be at level 50. For the moment, everything I have is basically just frankenslotted IOs. Is it worth it to take Frostworks? Should I keep my ST immob? I skipped Snow Storm on the basis of its End cost. Am I going to want to pick that up at some point?

Those of you who have made the trek to 50 on Dark/Cold already, what did you wind up doing for your APP and Alpha? Did you skip any powers from your primary and secondary? Were there any IO sets that really made a huge difference for you?

I have nearly 300 levels of Kinetics spread across Defenders, Corrupters and Controllers.

For solo play, Kinetics is a rough choice for Corrs and Defs. The heal, damage boosting and sapping aren't as much mitigation as more solo friendly sets like Rad or Storm. I'm sure it can be done but it's not something I associate with the set. This impacts defenders slightly more due to their bonuses while soloing.

Defenders get Speed Boost, Transference and FS A LOT earlier in their careers. Prior to SB, Kinetics is a bit lackluster for a buff set; ranged damage types have a particularly hard time deriving benefit from it since the Kin heal is centered on an opponent. If your goal is to make a team better, it happens sooner with a Defender. Experienced players LOVE Kins the way newbies love Empaths and you'll get that love earlier on a Defender.

On the other hand, above level 30 or so, my defender experience is usually longing for Scourge or Controller powers instead of plinky defender damage (FS does alter one's perception of "plinky", but in comparison to teammates it still is). Almost no one is going to notice that you're delivering a little extra smashing resist with your Increase Density or healing a few more points with Transfusion, because your SB and FS are subjectively about the same for Controllers and Corrs as Defender.

I found Archery particularly rough, since my damage-capped teammates were slaughtering things long before my RoA landed. Not a lot of synergy there. Radiation attacks work quite well because it has a decent number and types of AoEs and quick-animating powers while Ice has its nifty bonus in the Blaster-class nuke and Fire is, well, Fire. I've seen Kin/Elec sappers do good work, but sapping itself sometimes seems to have questionable utility since many foes seem to be able to attack without much endurance.

All in all I think I'd prefer a Corr or Controller unless I knew I was going to be in a dedicated group, and probably a Corr above a Controller because of Scourge and the high probability of working at or near your damage cap.

For simple, brain-dead easy play, I think a Claws/WP Scrapper would win. They get Quick Recovery, have no essential clicky powers in their secondary and Claws has a good mix of single target and AoEs, with no really bad powers AND it has that one ranged attack.

Easy control? Probably Earth. Lots of useful AoEs, a useful secondary effect and it's generally all team-friendly.

Easy buff? Force Field. "Stand in the middle of everybody and tap two keys every four minutes" is ridiculously simple. Sonic adds a few extra wrinkles but also feels less effective as a player most of the time.

Easy ranged? Radiation or Fire. Fire for the extra damage and radiation for being so fast animating and recharging. Both have a good mix of AoE and single target options compared to other sets.

Easy Pet: Robots. They're tougher than the other pets. They have decent resists and some built in defense and healing. It's hard to make a bad Bots MM.

For actually learning game mechanics, something like a Mind or Dark /Empathy controller would be pretty huge. Emps have a bunch of strategically useful powers on long recharges, and Mind and Dark control both have a good mix of control effects to play with. Mind control is particularly interesting because it has confuse at a low level (which is just good clean fun) and also has something not unlike a single target attack chain, which is unusual for a control set.

Fortunatas and Crabs are particularly suited to a wide variety of roles on a team and when built well they aren't really vulnerable to anything, either.

Tanks or tank-y Brutes (well built Invuln or Stone, especially) and quality Defenders or Corrupters are always going to be able to coalesce a team around them if they want. I always find I'm really, really popular when I log in with Kinetic buffs, for example.

Every toon gets Hasten. Almost every toon gets SS. I even have a couple toons with Whirlwind because it matches a speedster concept.

Almost every toon gets Flight. *Most* toons get and use Air Superiority, at least while leveling. Controllers and MMs usually have it slotted heavily. On my MMs (who generally don't NEED hasten), I use it as their auto power.

Melee types get boxing, tough and weave. They usually get CJ as well. I'm not all that fond of Super Jump.

Support types get at least a couple leadership powers.

I have a few toons with Medicine pool powers, which I think fills a giant hole in some builds.

I hate TP mechanics in this game so I won't take that pool.
I've never made a toon that took any part of Presence or Stealth.

I prevented Mot from Devouring the World on 4x8 on my itrial def-capped Fortunata. I really didn't have any problems, though my standard practice was to just use Confuse while invisible until spawns were whittled down to just a confused boss or EB... mostly because I think confusion is just that funny.

My DA/SR scrapper gets flatted by 4x8 spawns in Dark Astoria, which I suppose is the difference between the itrial defense cap and the regular defense cap. Stuff just hits a little more often and there are enough tough mobs around that something eventually takes her down. She's not dying like a blaster but she definitely doesn't have the air of invincibility she had against 50+ blue-side content either.

My namesake Rad/Dark defender spent more time mezzed or dead than anything else against 0x1s in DA, but her build is still mostly common IOs. I came away from my efforts to solo on her with the idea that I needed to hook up with something that could either give status protection or completely didn't need it. Everyone who says DA is too easy should try running it solo on a Defender that doesn't have an IO'd out build.

I've never played Gravity myself because the power order has always been horrid. At first it didn't even have a pet. It's slowly been brought up to par.

I always liked Battle Axe and Mace for their cool animations. I have about 95 levels of Battle Axe and yes, it's a slog to get to the best powers and yes knockdown/knockback is more of a curse than a blessing. But it's thematically appropriate and it looks cool. You're unlikely to play on a team with a bunch of other people using those sets, so there's a uniqueness factor as well.

I feel anything that does Psi damage is underpowered because of how incredibly common and strong late-game opponents' psi resists are and how underwhelming the -recharge effect is most of the time. At least the lethal and smashing folks get a break sometimes.

Ice stuff is usually third fiddle to other sets. Cold Domination is great and I understand Ice Armor has a place, but Ice Control and Ice attack sets are also-rans to other stuff. Like Battle Axe, it seems like it's more something one chooses for flavor than utility.

There might be an argument for Electric Blast and End drain but I'm not going to make it. As a blast set I think it mostly serves to give people who took ice blast a group to feel sorry for.

Force Fields need something. It's the set you take if you know you want to hit the pool powers really, really hard, and that's just painful.

Blaster - Energy/Energy. Mostly because of the glowing hands of doom.
Brutes - SS/WP. Not quite indestructible but I think all the mechanics of those sets just mesh into something that says "brute."
Controller - Mind/Empathy - I think of someone like Professor X, not a pet-wrangler.
Corrupter - Fire/Dark - The sets are thematic for a villain and are all about bringing the pain.
Defender - Rad/Psi - Rad is sort of jack of all trades buff/debuff set. It meets all expectations. Psi was unique to Defenders for a long, long time and I think it works thematically.
Dominators - Plant/Fire - Plant was the unique Dom set and again, Fire is about bringing the pain.
Kheldians - Most people made PBs first, because they got Fly.
MMs - Bots/Traps. Sets that leverage the best of each other and well-loved by the people who play 'em.
Scrappers - Claws/Fire. Lots of fast attacks and tons of damage. Leaning on resists and heals makes for shakier play than Tanks or Brutes
SOAs - Probably Crabs, mechanically the closest thing in the game to a generic tank mage.
Stalkers - Who cares? OK fine. EM/Nin. Because nothing says stealthy assassin like glowing pink hands.
Tanks - Inv/SS. Everyone's first Tanker.

I usually pick Natural. I have a longstanding fondness for Agent Six, and at one time there was something about doing extra damage with both the Blackwand and Nemesis Staff. And also something about it having a nebulous impact on Auction House sales.

Whatever. I don't think anyone else pays any attention anyway. One of my latest new characters even mentioned the natural ability to emit inky blackness and control minds that all women have, or something similarly silly, in her bio.

Thematically, I could see something like a "bumbling sidekick" or "senior henchman' in generic street clothes, where the pool power selections slightly altered his available powers. Given low hit points and basically the option of basically the snowball or rock power, he'd amount of an alpha-absorbing taunt (which, hey, is exactly what I use my vet pets for anyway), but with investment up to tier 4 he might have brawl, ranged fraction-of-brawl and some extra hit points.

Thing is, there are some ATs and power combinations that could still do a lot of good work with that guy. A solo buffer-type would have something to buff. A blaster could have a volunteer to eat an alpha. An MM might have a spot to put the Recharge Intensive pet uniques if they don't have another power that allows 'em. But melee toons would really get nothing except a dead pet on a long recharge timer.

Anyway, I'm OK with with this. I think it could work, be balanced and be appealing.

One of my biggest annoyances with CoX is that the game remembers your UI settings based on the resolution of the last system you used. I have four machines I might play on and each of them has a different resolution - 1600x900, 1920x1080, 1920x1200 and 2560x1600.

So my bars move around. I leave some of my machines in windowed mode just so I don't have to deal with stuff moving around.

I'd like it very much if CoX supported multiple display configurations. I'd probably move at least the chat window and extra power trays to a second screen if II could.

Generally:

Target - top left corner
Nav - top Center
Toolbar - top right
Map - As small as possible, right below the toolbar and buff icons.
Chat - bottom left
Monitored attributes - immediately to the right of chat
Extra power/macro trays - bottom center, in rows of 3x3 boxes.
Normal power trays - bottom right (tray 1 - attacks, tray 2 - buffs or control powers, tray 3 - toggles or defensive powers)
Inspirations - right above the three power trays.

I don't think getting upper-tier slots crafted is that big of a deal. You get a rare or very rare drop for doing a successful Underground Trial now, and at least on Liberty and Victory it's usually possible to run the usual suspect itrials once a night during "prime time" to pick up at least two salvage drops and a couple Empyrean merits. Working like that, I was able to T4 my scrapper within about three weeks of unlocking incarnate.

That seemed like pretty reasonable progress to me, but maybe I got lucky drops.

I typically think Alpha > Destiny > Judgment > Interface > Lore.

I don't even remember I have the Lore pets except for the few times they get used in itrials when I see other people bringing them out.

I call mine Woofy.