Reptlbrain

It is a dilemma I faced, and solved by using ... Chillblain.

Since you have Shiver, I would say O2 from your choices.

If I had your build, I would steal a slot from Ice Slick (difference: 1 second recharge) and Hover (the BotZ), though I'm not sure how much difference that would make.

One other possibility: take Snowstorm, drop Shiver, grab Flash Freeze (after swapping places between Shiver and AA) and throw the Sleep purple in there. An extra 6.5% recharge there...

A few other things:

--The critters in Praetoria are more difficult than most of the beginning critters in Paragon and the Rogue Isles. Long-time vets are complaining about their harshness.

--It's often much easier to get through 10-22 on teams than alone. You won't learn to control your toon, or understand its capabilities quite so well, but you'll likely have more fun and most of the time it will go faster. You can build the team yourself (hint: a few defenders offer +endurance powers by lvl 12; a good way to build your team is to grab a number of "support" classes together, defenders, corruptors, MMs, controllers), put up your looking-for-team flag, or respond to a broadcast.

--Acid Mortar, the new bot at 12, and (level 16) Force Field Generator will ease your job considerably. (Poison Gas Trap at 20 is a good defensive tool, too.) As recommended, Aid Other is very handy on a Mastermind, and can be grabbed by level 8 (6 goes to the pet upgrade).

--I didn't catch anyone precisely describing pulling. When you see a clump of enemies that look too dangerous to take on all at once, you can find a nearby corner that cuts line of sight--or just backup if no suitable corner exists--and lay your traps at the corner. Use the controls to put the pets in passive and on a location. Shoot the dangerous lieutenant with your long range single target weapon and run back around the corner, then switch your pets to aggressive or defensive/follow (to allow you to take more damage through the bodyguard ability). If more than one critter comes, have the bots focus fire on each, one at a time (this means you're not in bodyguard), and web-grenade one of the others so that it will be trapped out of line-of-sight while you finish off the first.

--Short of cash? Use the market to earn money for you while you play.

Looks like you know what you're doing fine. I would enjoy playing this character as slotted.

A few changes I would probably make if it were mine.

Drop Maneuvers, Snowstorm, and Hibernate for Box, Tough, and Weave, and squeeze a Kinetic Combat into Box, to nearly softcap you versus Smash/Lethal. Snowstorm is probably your most redundant power, though you would lose some tactical flexibility without that and Hibernate. Soft-capping does take away many of the Hibernation needs. Once you did this, you might then switch both your Lockdowns to 4 Basilisks, for the recharge, and whatever else was needed to shore up the power (like acc in Glacier, damage in BoI, since it will be basically half your single-target attack chain).

(Another possibility would be to focus instead on even more Ranged/AoE defense, since that's where a lot of mezzing that gets you comes from. This would require a lot more rejiggering the build, and probably losing or weakening a favorite power. A better pet set for this approach would be Blood Mandate for Jack, which would cost you +recharge.)

Smaller changes:
I would probably swap Frost Breath for Ice Storm, since the breath is so narrow (and equally costly per use, much more so over time) and the storm lays down so nice on every other application of Sleet.

I would probably steal a slot--for whatever needs--from Arctic Fog (an LotG) and get some accuracy in Sleet. The only thing this is really important for is the first procking of the Achilles and Lady Gray, and truth be told, the -res in Sleet is only more useful than a straight up damage proc--barring specific resistances--when it strikes an Lt or Boss. (The amount of damage to kill a minion with the -res is equal to the amount of damage to kill a minion with the standard proc damage of said level, and the damage proc is "burstier".) The Shield Breaker proc is expensive and rare (though it seems a bunch of people saved this up to sell after the market merger, so I saw some for sale recently), but could be used maybe to squeeze out another set bonus or two; the Posi proc would be the "cheap" option.

One last thing: with Heat Loss does this toon need the Numina's? I would save that IO for a slightly endurance-needier toon, unless you have health uniques coming out your ears (probably not with no fifties).

I find the empath (disclosure: highest empath mid-20s, most other buff/debuff sets 40+) a little trickier than most of my defenders, mainly because of the target-switching and the different timers on the powers. I find it harder to get into a good offensive rhythm.

For a rad/dark something like RI - Tentacles - Dark Pit - EF - Nightfall, repeat cones til dead maybe firing off Radiant Aura when AoEs all recharging.
For a dark/rad Fearsome Stare - Tar Patch - unleash AoEs, maybe heal as needed between attacks, or stun troublesome Lt.
For FF (or Sonic Resonance), shield up and shoot, moving to encompass most in bubble.
Traps goes seekers - rush in - drop necessary traps - release AoEs.
Storm goes unleash stuff; don't take O2 Boost to avoid the dilemma of caring about, er, targeting teammates.

But on an empath, the irregular reappearance of Fort and CM (and needing to remember who gets what by touch), the targeting and re-targeting for individual buffs, the changing targets for offensive activity, because invariably the person you're targeting for heal/fort/CM isn't targeting the LT you need to mez, or the enemy that would be ideal for firing off your cone/AoE: all these make the empath--to me--among the most difficult of toons to play fully effectively. (I think the powerset itself, with the targeting and timing issues, and the fact that none of your primaries affect enemies, tends to push people toward pureness.)

I've found Kinetics and Cold to run into similar issues (I'm looking at you Increase Density), though I really enjoy Cold (probably because skipping Snowstorm and Frostworks reduce the difficulties).

thanks. Dang.

What and where are the equivalents of Field Analysts and Fortunatas in Praetoria?

Energy Torrent is knockDown, and, of course, a great opener at least when Lightning Rod is down. Only drawback is that its cone doesn't quite match with the spheres of your other AoEs. (I would take it over JL.)

I'd suggest more endredux (in lieu of heal, do you ever fight only one critter?) in Dark Regeneration, and a +end proc in PP, since it's on average worth more than a regular endmod IO in that power.

Basically, as a quasi-copy of Fury Flechette's recent experiment, a response to some claims in recent threads, and because I was curious about actual influence earnings over time, including market usage, I emailed away all the worldly possessions of one of my brutes and ran him for one hour in AE to see what he could make by selling what he earned.

The brute is a 50 Mace/Willpower, completely bedecked in IOs, but not that many really fancy ones (couple sets of Kinetic Combat, two +end procs); no purples or LotGs. The mission was one with a clicky ending and lots of ambushes, so I'd earn about 750 tickets, hit the glowy, and restart. I didn't keep separate track of infamy earnings for killing, though I'd estimate it was a little over 10 million. I rolled my first batch of tickets Bronze 10-14, and then realized I wanted a chance at Kinetic Combats (did not happen), so rolled the rest Bronze 25-29. I bought all salvage at an easy to type price: 1,111 or 55,555 or 2,222,222, or whatever was a bit over the going rate where I didn't have to lift my finger from the numpad key. I sold only a couple recipes uncrafted (a +res/def for a start up cushion and something negligible which had an outstanding bid); everything I found profitable--i.e., more than a million inf earned--I crafted and sold. I usually priced the IOs a bit under the going rate. I kept nothing and took nothing from the supergroup bins or other sources. I let the experiment run 10 days, since I only had so many market slots, and I wanted to give a few slower selling items a chance to move.

After
60 minutes of AE fighting and
86 minutes of marketeering (includes: time rolling and deleting recipes, checking worth on the market, buying salvage, crafting IOs, putting up items for auction, collecting infamy)

the brute had
238,123,673 infamy

(There are still 6 IOs for sale totalling ~20 million.)

Are you talking Bronze or Gold rolls?

10-14 for bronze can have a pretty high payoff: you're fairly likely to get the nifty armor recipes--Karma -kb, Steadfast -kb and +def, Kismet +acc--or the Eradication/Basilisk rare "A's" or the Regenerative +regen proc. The trash is very trashy at this level, but the weighting of attack and defense recipes means your chances of these decent ones are less diluted at 10-14.

This will mean you are missing out on some very useful pool A's, though. Things like the Performance Shifter +end proc, or the Kinetic Combat or Touch of Death dmg/ends are only available in higher rolls than 10-14. You can see--sort of, it's a lot of info to digest--where certain recipes drop in and out of the rolls here: http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Bronze_Class_Recipe_Roll

Rolling 30-34 has the most possible recipes available, if you like variety, but also the most trash, of course.

If you're rolling pool C's (gold rolls), 35-39 covers most of the big scores, though leaves out a few highly valuable available in the 30 and under range (Basilisk acc/hold/end/rch, Theft of Essence +end, Cloud Senses proc, Eradication acc/dmg/end/rch, and others). Rolling 30-34 will reduce your odds for a big score on pool C's (LotG +rech, Miracle or Numina proc, Celerity +stealth, BotZ -kb), but allow you to grab almost all the possible C's available.

Spin does more damage than Footstomp, recharges faster, and is available at lvl 6. It does not have the mitigation or the radius of Footstomp (which is huge).

Tremor does less damage, but recharges faster.

I would certainly scrap Life Drain for Nightfall. As a defender, your main addition to team damage is through AoEs. (Other reasons: you also have a heal already that's much more powerful than Life Drain and an AoE and a better debuff, your two single-target blasts recharge very quickly, and the Devastation bonuses aren't that sweet.)

Darkest Night's absence is also probably not helpful for high end stuff. Although it's a long cast, and its -tohit is resisted to near uselessness by AVs, the -dmg is not resisted by AVs, and, due to a programming quirk, improves any -res powers against AVs, I think.

I'd put the Numina's proc in Health for more benefit.

The Ragnarok in Howling Twilight is a curious choice (it's autohit and the damage is tiny). The Proton Particle--I think, unless there's a useful bug--is not good slotting for Assault. Just a 50 endredux will do.

You should switch to Archery/ to be more properly historical...

Kidding aside, thanks for showing off another niftily backstoried toon of yours. (I toyed with Atilla the Honkey for a bit, but, yeah, not as funny as yours.) Of all the weapon sets I've played--though I haven't played Battle Axe--War Mace was the most satisfying. Make sure to figure out another nifty character concept so you can experience the delightful crunch of Shatter and Crowd Control.

P.S. History T.A.s never get any action!

Recently happened twice to me, too. Zoning into outdoor instances.

Logging--quickly at least--did not help in the one attempt at that.

Solved the problem by dragging nearby enemies to kill the pets, then resummoned them.

What a *****. Rip someone off, then try to publicly get more of the ill-gotten gains.

Seriously, if you craft and carefully sell every worthwhile recipe drop on your way up to 50, you'll easily earn loads and loads of loot. Common IOs 20+ that folks use all the time often sell for more than a quarter-million a pop crafted. I get hundreds of acc, dam, endredux, and rech recipes on a toon by the time I reach the level cap.

It takes a little extra time, storage management, and occasional patience in waiting out common salvage price spikes.

Plenty of uncommons and rares are worth crafting and selling as well, but it will require poring over the market some.

Or, once you have a small stake, you can merely purchase recipes on the market cheaply, craft, and sell IOs dearly, without ever having to "earn" them yourself by arresting critters.

Helpful, cash-earning tips repeated here weekly:
-Play a level 50 lots (purple drops, highly marketable uncommon/rare recipes, vendorable commons).
-Play a character with AoE damage, the ability to survive lots of critters at once, and solo (try -1s--your drop rate will be faster).
-Collect merits by running TFs/your own arcs/grabbing all the explore badges in a zone. Turn those merits into cash. (~1 million/merit if you save 200 for a 25 LotG +rech; perhaps even better return using that for 10 rolls in the 35-39 range.)
-Create an AE mission that helps a certain toon of yours level fast, garner lotsa tickets and convert them into bronze rolls.*

*As a test of earning rates in AE recently, running less than an hour's worth of a suitable mission (4 runs--700-800 tickets from critters, then click finishing glowy), rolling bronze tickets level 10-14, buying the salvage and crafting the good ones, a toon of mine produced well over 130 million in sales, and the tickets aren't all rolled yet. (This character is 50, and kitted out nicely already, so initial earning rates would probably be lower.)