RemusShepherd

I'll have to test this. I thought I saw a difference when using siphon power with PBU up, but in the midst of battle I may have been mistaken.

Ack, you're correct, I was wrong about that. Shame. Still, Dominate and Telekinesis synergize nicely with DP.

The problem is that the Scorpion shield offers typed defense against Slash/Lethal and Energy. That means you're only going to cap those types, and you'll never cap positional defenses. That's still useful on LGTF, but not so much on STF (lots of Toxic damage) and on parts of the ITF you'll be essentially naked (Neg. Energy). If I was positional defense and applicable to everything then I'd say go for it. As it is, I don't think it's worth choosing an otherwise unhelpful patron pool.

But again, those are just my opinions, and I'm not as experienced with maximizing a character's potential as some are.

My kin has Power Mastery and the leadership pool, and she uses Power Build Up before Vengeance or before using her snipe. It also works with Transfusion, Transference, and the damage debuffs. It will also work with all the holds and stuns and debuffs that DP brings. (But note: Not the knockbacks.) Power Mastery also has Force of Nature, which is a great emergency button. You could do worse than Power Mastery.

That said, there are other options. Psychic Mastery brings two holds that stack with the hold you get in DP, and it also has status protection that can be on about half of the time -- I think it'll be permanent if you get perma-hasten. Electric Mastery or Mu Mastery brings Power Sink and other tools to help you sap enemies. Mace Mastery brings the defense shield and Focused Accuracy. Accuracy is at least as important as recharge for a kin.

However, I don't think the defense shield is worth chasing after. It's only Smash/Lethal and Energy, and as you said the incarnate game is becoming brutal for defense-based characters. Focused accuracy is also a heavy endurance drain, which can be a problem for a kin who relies on Transference.

I'd say that if you want to maximize your endurance sapping, go for Electric or Mu. If you want to maximize your controls, choose Psychic. Stay with Power Mastery for FoN or for all the neat tricks Power Build Up gives you. If you really want to softcap defense then Mace is your method, but that would be a type of build I'm not qualified to advise you about.

No amount of recharge is enough for a kin. But there are diminishing returns. Perma-Hasten is desirable but not necessary. My kin is tricked out for team damage buffs first, recharge second (she doesn't have hasten) and defense as an afterthought.

Spiritual also increases heals and stuns (which DP has). It also improves to-hit buffs if you run leadership, and jump if you're relying upon inertial reduction as your travel power. It's a fine alpha boost for any kin.

Nerve is an option. Accuracy is always useful, and your kin will have several holds and possibly some defence buffs. Musculature gives you nothing (you're a kin, you should already be living at the damage cap.) Cardiac can help you if you have endurance problems or if you want to hard-cap Slash/Lethal resistance (you'll need Tough for that). But I'd strongly suggest Spiritual, as it helps you in so many ways.

Sounds as if your friend's kin is doing fine. If she's having survival problems it may be a playstyle issue. You want to duck in and out of combat, to deliver buffs then get out of the line of fire, and remember that your primary role is to buff your team rather than fire your own aggro-inducing attacks.

It's not 'a character' fulfilling 'a role' that makes a boy band. It's the roles the writers chose to give them. They are a group of teenagers having fun while doing their job, with some small, pre-packaged personality differences between them. I feel that they warped the original personalities of the characters to fit into a boy band dynamic -- I'm certain they have for Robin, but I don't know enough about the others to say for sure.

I do like the show. But I get the impression when I watch it that I'm watching a show meant for teenage kids. That's not the impression I get when I watch the old JLU series, or the Timm Batman series, or hell even Invader Zim.

Maybe it's just that the training wheels are still on. Static Shock had the air of a kiddie show at first, but it became more mature and more interesting in its later seasons.

Did you watch Criminal Minds on Wednesday, 2/9? They featured candle-making of a sort on that show.

Generalist. An AT able to take any of the powersets in the game. To balance it there would be two flavors -- Ranged Generalist, and Melee Generalist.

You know how controller secondary powersets are the same as defender primaries, but work at about 75% the strength? That's how you balance an all-powerset AT. The Ranged Generalist gets 90% strength for ranged attack powersets (the blaster and corruptor primaries and the defender and dominator secondaries), but only 25% strength for melee powersets (tank primaries, all melee powersets, etc.) The Melee Generalist would be the reverse -- 90% strength for melee attacks and defenses, but 25% strength for ranged attacks. Both generalists would get the intermediate powersets like the controller primaries, the defender primaries, and the mastermind primaries at only 50% strength.

This AT would be weaker than others, especially if you build it wrong. But the trade-off for that is incredible flexibility. You can make the all-attack glass cannon, or the all-debuff team-only pacifist, or the ranged-attack tankmage. But none of those combinations would be strong enough to threaten any of the standard ATs. That tankmage has 90% of the offense of a blaster and 25% of the defense of a tank (or vice versa!). That's good enough to play the game but it's not going to make anyone feel insecure.

Just a thought. I think it would work. But it would be the Final Powerset Proliferation, and I don't know where you could go from there.

You know, this would be a great idea for City of Heroes. An animal pack that cost $3 extra but with $2 of that donated to the ASPCA would make even more money, and more importantly than that it would make great publicity. Getting the word out about the game is a good thing.

Might be a little late to get that kind of charity feed into the pack, though. So think about the next one. An Alien pack with a share of proceeds going to SETI research. A Superscience pack with a share of proceeds going to disease research. A Steampunk pack with a cut landing in Nemesis' pockets...er, I mean, donated to a museum foundation. I think this is a win/win idea with a thousand possibilities.

Penny Arcade proved that gamers can be altruistic with their Child's Play program. We have a game full of players who want to be heroes -- giving us an outlet for philanthropy is a terrific idea.

An interesting sociological question.

Emile Durkheim proved that there is a 'sweet spot' betwixt anarchy and totalitarian order where human beings feel most comfortable. In particular he showed that people were more likely to commit suicide in either too-liberal, anarchic societies or in too-confining societies with strict social control.

If we extrapolate that into the society of a MMO, and redefine 'suicide' as 'cancelling one's account', we can see a similar mechanism at work. If a game has too much to do and no sensible reason behind any of it, then people will quit the game due to a lack of clear goals. But if a game has strict boundaries, is too 'grindy' before rewards are achieved, or arbitrarily limits player choice and behavior, then people will quit the game in frustration.

In any event, I'm sure that CoX is somewhere in the happy medium and we needn't worry too much about shifting the balance in one way or another. For the most part our devs know what they are doing. I was merely stating my opinion that the WST was a step in the wrong direction.

I think you completely missed my point. This isn't about how it affects me personally. I think the WST was a bad game management strategy. I think herding players into re-consuming the same content over and over is harmful to the high-level experience for all players. It's much better if they give us choices and let us decide what to do. The WST, as delivered, reduces the choices available to players in the game. It makes one zone difficult to play in (thankfully this time it's not a high population zone) and reduces the pool of players available to do other activities.

I have a background in sociology, and I'm looking at this as an experiment in managing human behavior. Framed that way -- and in my opinion -- the WST is detrimental to the game.

The effect is has on me personally is just minor annoyance. In general, I don't post on these boards about minor annoyances. If I did, I'd swamp the forum.

I'm not sure. Look at Hami. I can't speak for every server, but on Virtue there is a Hami raid every day. It provides a reward (Hami-Os) that is better, for less effort, than any other content, so the players make it a point to schedule it at least once a day.

The mission arc that unlocks incarnate content does not give a reward for doing it a second time. It faded in popularity once every character had run it once.

The WST/WTF won't fade in popularity like that; with double merit rewards and the Notice of the Well, it will be the most profitable thing to do. Powergamers will make it a point to run it once a day. That will draw population from other activities. The question is whether it'll supplant the daily Hami, or be added to it.

I can see the management decision at work here. They're giving long-time players a bribe to play a TF at least once a week, and thus to keep their accounts open. I just don't think it's wise to herd player behavior like that, because it hurts those who aren't in danger of quitting but who want to be part of a vibrant community. Retaining players with new content is a much better way to go.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to give that impression. I write with authority, but I'm only stating my opinion. We won't be able to tell the facts until years from now, when we'll be able to look back with 20/20 hindsight.

In my opinion, the WST/WTF is poor game management.

A strawman argument, and a bad one. I did not know the details about i19.5 until I got into the game to play it. Not everyone scours the forums for advance notice of a new issue, and even if I did there was not much detail to be had. Indeed, I expected i19.5 to have additional incarnate-level task forces in it, or some other form of new content. And with every issue I'm expecting them to bring out new or revamped power pools, because that game mechanic is totally FUBARed right now.

As for adjustable difficulty and double merit rewards they mean almost nothing to me, and I'm not convinced they're good game design either. Adjustable difficulty is a smoke screen that lets the devs ignore balance. Doubling merits is a short term bribe to the players that's just going to accelerate the price inflation going on. Neither of them is good game management or design.

The developers of this game have a history of doing detrimental things and then fixing them later. (I offer in evidence ED, fixed by IOs much too late for most of the playerbase then.) I feel that they're doing the same thing here. I just wanted to say -- make it right as soon as possible, please.

No, it's worse, much worse. That's my point.

i19 came with new content and a new game mechanic. That was a draw for new players and an enticement for old and returning players to stay with the game.

i19.5 came with an extrapolation of a (now) old mechanic, and the necessity to grind old content to get it. This does not help retain or draw in players. It is an ill-conceived event that is not good for the health of the game. Some manager screwed up when they proposed and okayed this.

Yeah, I know. I just felt the need to say something. In the history of this game I've spoken up several times about things that I felt were detrimental to it. I don't think anyone has ever listened, but I feel the need to sound off anyway.

Note that you can slot a 'chance to heal self' IO in Frozen Aura. In a big combat, you're almost guaranteed to pull some health out of the minions around you.

I'll second this. Dark is a tricky set for someone new to tanking.

For a while he was Bane Wayne. Thank god *that* got retconned away.

I wonder if Nolan is drawing more inspiration from the comics than we give him credit for. Bane's later career involves a nonsexual but intense relationship with Scandal Savage, who is pretty much a lesbian version of Catwoman.

Nolan could make this an incredibly rich character tale by splicing Catwoman and Scandal together. Bane is a drug addict; Catwoman/Scandal helps him through his withdrawal. Catwoman then goes out to steal or clean up the city or both. She runs afoul of Batman, and that draws Bane's ire...

This could work. There's a lot of ways it could work. I think Nolan has a lot of credit with the fans, so I'm sure everyone will be happy to wait and see.

Well, you can tell who the alt-aholics are.

And yet this is what Hollywood runs on.

Hollywood studios want stories of existing franchises that are already popular and thus guaranteed to sell. Hollywood directors and screenwriters want to tell their own stories. The only way to keep them all happy is for studios to buy the rights to a franchise, then allow the director and screenwriter to change it to their satisfaction.

It's an issue with how the industry is run, nothing more.

All the advice given above by Local_Man is excellent.

I have the Lockdown proc in all my holds, because I have a complete set of Lockdown in all my holds, because I wanted the set's defense bonuses.

I have the Devastation proc in my single target *immobilize*, along with the Gravitational Anchor proc. Together they turn my immobilize into a third single target hold that's semi-reliable.

I love my Plant/TA. She may not be as strong as some other powersets, but she's a swiss army knife hero, with a tool for almost any situation.

Can't comment much on your build, because mine is build like a scraptroller -- tough and weave, and I've slotted Boxing and AA to up the damage output. With the epic Temp Invulnerability and some IOs, she has capped S/L resists and a fair defense. Yours looks to be more team-oriented, with lower damage but more control. All I can suggest is to make a couple extra slots for the Fly Trap, to give it a +Defense (or +Resist) IO and the Achilles Heel Chance for Resistance Debuff proc. Those make the Fly Trap into a pretty capable threat. If you need to free up slots I'd take them from Spirit Tree, it's useful in fewer situations than most of your powers.

Acid Arrow is better and it is awesome and you will practically have it on auto-fire. Disruption Arrow is inferior, and if you have to skip one skip DA. But if you can keep it do so -- it stacks with Acid Arrow, letting you put even more hurt on tough bosses and AVs. The best part is that DA doesn't need additional slotting at all.