Rigel_Kent

Have you thought about Fire/EM? Old-school blaster build for old-school steamrolling. Fire Ball plus perma range boosted Fire Breath more than covers your share of the tab each spawn. Plus you can get your blap on against AVs.

Although Fire/Fire looks good on paper, I'm not sure how much click PBAoEs on top of two ranged AoEs + your incarnate nuke do for you. Spawns just melt so fast anyway. During the steamroll segments, because I have to go from ranged to melee, my Sonic/Fire really only has time for Howl and Combustion before the LTs melt from iNukes, then just ST attacks and Hot Feet to clean up the bosses. If you do go with /Fire, Hot Feet is probably the main attraction, if you can supply the endurance, since damage without animation time is the next best thing to a pet.

To be honest, Fire/Dev might as well just be your primary plus Trip Mine as far as the iTrials are concerned. A Trip Mine with Aim and Musculature is wonderful for one-shotting minions from a fresh even-level spawn, but against a hard single target (like iAVs), Ring of Fire spam out-DPS's Trip Mine spam.

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Oops, I forgot Gun Drone! Gun Drone plus Trip Mine spam might out-DPS Ring of Fire spam, but not by much. The inability to boost the recharge speed on Gun Drone's attack really hurts.

An in-universe character can misuse and abuse words all she likes, within her own dialogue. It's out-of-universe text that must conform to standard use.

For instance, if Praetorian Penelope Yin asks your character, in-universe, if one of his powers is Super Hopping, that's OK. If the game interface, which is out-of-universe, lists your power as Super Hopping, well, now we have a problem. One is a slightly cuckoo character speaking in-universe to your character. The other is the devs speaking directly to you, the player.

Dictionaries provide simple definitions of words. They don't commonly point out differences between similar words, even when the differences are well known.

"Poisoning someone with venom" should sound off to any American English speaker with a standard K-12 education. "Poison" vs. "venom" is no more jargon than other pairs of subtly different common words, such as "recite" vs. "repeat".

Perhaps the distinction between "antidote" and "antivenom" is clearer?

This goes for Defenders and Corruptors as well.

No crash, and scaling damage based on the user's HP. Used at 100% HP, it's like a crashless tier 3 blast to each target, about twice the strength of a Fistful, Irradiate, or Fire Ball. A little lower HP, it's like sniper damage or Full Auto to each target. A little lower, Rain of Arrows. At 50% HP, average crash nuke damage (Nova, Wail, etc.), without the crash. At 1% HP, it should affect the Earth's axial tilt.

Yeah, I still kind of miss Defiance 1.0.

Anyway, this would shift the comparative balance between tier 9s from "much faster recharge AND no crash, versus more damage" to "much faster recharge, versus potentially much more damage". The faster recharging tier 9s probably would still be better overall, but at least the HP-scaled nukers would have a situational edge.

Usually, single target debuffs in this game are horrible for two reasons: 1) the two types of enemies big enough to bother with a single target debuff, AVs and GMs, have near immunity to most kinds of debuffs, and 2) most single target debuffs are unstackable. (This is why nobody plays Poison.)

Twilight Grasp is an exception to the rule, since it averts both those problems: 1) AVs and GMs don't have special resistance to the -damage part of TG, and 2) it's very much stackable. So I agree with Madadh, spamming TG as a debuff against hard single targets can be worthwhile, I just caution you that this is the exception and not the rule, don't expect single target debuffs in other sets to perform as well as TG.

(Benumb is the only other exception to the rule I can think of off-hand.)

Okay, normally the answer is Corruptor.

But in the case of severely late-blooming buff/debuff sets like Time Manipulation, Defenders do have that edge of being able to access powers at lower levels. Specifically, Farsight at 18 instead of 28. Going Corruptor means ten more levels of your buff/debuff set doing roughly zilch for you, and problems exemplaring below 23. This may or may not be worth the tradeoff of extra damage output.

But if you only care about level 50 performance, then yeah, I'm with Turbo, the answer's definitely Corruptor.

At very low levels, some recharge enhancements in Tar Patch to get it recharged faster is the only real priority for Dark, really. Every other spawn slowed to a crawl and taking 30% more damage? From a tier 2 power? Yes please.

A bit of tohit debuff enhancement in Darkest Night is optional but nice, as that will cover your defenses until you get Fearsome Stare. If you do enhance Darkest Night, you might bump up your difficulty to +1 to keep things interesting, since +0 enemies get a serious case of the sucks under defender-grade Darkest Night's effects. Something like hitting you half as often and half as hard. Go ahead and tank if you want.

Twilight Grasp, at low levels, is fine with just enough accuracy to hit; heal enhances can come later. Slots in Shadow Fall aren't worth a damn until SOs. If you like mezzes, a bit of stun duration and recharge in Howling Twilight adds another trick to your playbook -- use it for the mez, don't save it for the rez.

This frees up a whole ton of early level slots for your secondary blasts, which I hadn't thought of earlier, but it's a nice bonus.

Once you get Fearsome Stare, the game breaks-er-I-mean-changes, of course.

Hello, welcome to the wonderful world of defender...ing.

I always recommend a player's first defender should be Dark Miasma. Two reasons:

1) It contains a little bit of many gameplay elements. A targetable pet (fluffy), a mousebind-friendly drop (Tar Patch), an anchored toggle debuff (Darkest Night), a green numbers maker (Twilight Grasp), sneakiness (Shadow Fall), a cone attack (Fearsome Stare), and a couple of obvious skippable powers for good measure. So if you get a Dark Miasmist to 50, you can apply your experience to many other sets, becoming an "instant expert" from level 1.

2) Dark Miasma is a really good set for both soloing and teaming.

You may find somewhere around mid-levels that Dark Miasma isn't for you. That's okay. Because you've tried a little of everything in Dark Miasma, you'll have a good idea which buff/debuff set is more your style. If you're good with Tar Patch, you'll be good with Freezing Rain, Sleet, etc. And so on.

Storm.

Things are a little rough until you get your first gamebreaker power at level 16 (level 8 if you're a defender). But after that it's all downwind from there.

The devs are putting in an archetype IO that rocks the aura as a proc. Maybe we can ask for the devs to take that whole concept to its logical endpoint and add an IO that removes all damage from powers?

Storm.

Any time I spend explaining is time you're not rolling a storm already. Go!

Charisma, uniqueness, nerve, and talent!

I might be reading into things too much, but...

The fact that it's been announced as a Dominator set rather than a Control set, or a Controller & Dominator set, seems to be significant. It might be a set the devs have no intention of ever proliferating to Controllers. And the most likely reason the devs would make that decision? If it's a rethemed version of an existing Controller set, a la Empathy vs Pain.

So, yeah, my bet's on Dark Illusions.

But something trapsy like you've suggested would be a pleasant surprise. I'd give it a thumbs up.

If you don't want attacks, better roll mastermind.

Some notes from test server:

A lot of Time powers are lookalikes to famous great buffs and debuffs existing in other sets. It also features a combo system that makes its buffs and debuffs more effective on certain targets. This makes Time look awesome on paper: 1/2 empathy plus 1/2 rad plus 1/2 storm plus critical heals and debuffs on demand equals godly.

In practice, the Time version of these powers often have double the recharges of their lookalikes in other sets, and/or greatly reduced effectiveness. Also, the extra numbers added by its combo system are small. 1/10 empathy plus 1/10 rad plus 1/10 storm plus better heals on 1 teammate at a time and marginally better debuffs on 1 enemy at a time equals meh. Conventional wisdom on the test server is that Time is okay for soloing, though it needs changes if it's going to be on the same level, soloing or teaming, as the other debuff sets.

Also, anyone who gets Grav/Time to level 50 without powerleveling, I will buy you a beer if you're ever in town. And then have you committed. Have a nice day.

My 2 thoughts on the issue:

* Any new secondary needs to be put together from powers that are not stolen from blaster primaries. We've had enough of that. Umbral Torrent and Will Nerfination can kiss my grits.

* Melee damage powers are high on cool factor and high on fun factor. They are also highly redundant with any blaster primary, if they lack utility, and can lead newbies and casuals into bad builds.

These two issues shouldn't be huge obstacles to designing a new secondary, really, but they're important in my view.

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Re: Natural Archer

Is there any concept or gameplay reason you couldn't go another AT with Trick Arrow instead? Blasters aren't always the best idea for concept. Or gameplay.

Probably the most unusual values are for end drain and recovery debuff.

In PvE, everyone shares modifiers for end drains and recovery debuffs. Blasters, Controller, Defenders, Corruptors, Dominators... all the same.

But in PvP, Defenders drain better than Dominators/Corruptors/Controllers, and Dominators/Corruptors/Conrtollers drain end better than everyone else. Huh?! The defender version of Voltaic Sentinel drains end better than everyone else's. Huh?! Also, the defender version of Lightning Storm drains end and debuffs recovery better than everyone else's version. Double huh?!

I have a feeling non-pet powers in PvE got accidentally overlooked when the devs tried to make Defenders better at end drain than other ATs.... and then the current devs decided to keep it that way since they think end drain is powerful enough already. (That's why there are soooo many elec blasters, don't ya know.)

Roll Storm. Pwn Croatoa. Sell Alchemical Silvers. Done.

Sure we can't talk you into Cold/Ice?

Storm isn't quite a match for a winter concept. Hurricane season on the U.S. east and gulf coasts is June-November. (You may have heard of a little something called "Irene" recently.) Tornado season in the U.S. averages around April-July. Winter storms aren't about extreme wind speeds and huge amounts of atmospheric energy. They're about cold fronts moving in, squeezing the moisture out of the air and dropping it as ice and snow. And "steamy" mist? Fuhgeddaboudit.

Cold also has a few buffs. If you like Empathy, you'll also like cold buffs, or at least the +def part, and Heat Loss, or at least the +recovery part. If you like Storm, you retain Snow Storm, Sleet (an icier-looking version of Freezing Rain), and Arctic Fog (an icier-looking version of Steamy Mist with res cold instead of res confuse).

All things being equal, you want a ST hold rather than an ST stun. Won't make any difference soloing, but when teaming, your teammates will more likely have ST holds than ST stuns, so you'll want to stack with them. Versus AVs, for instance.

To get through the low levels with your endurance bar and sanity intact, pick one favorite single target attack. This does not have to be "the best" minmax optimized DPS attack, and in fact probably shouldn't be. Just pick a power you think is fun. For example, I might pick Flares or Ring of Fire or Fire Blast, but really, any early single target damage attack will do.

Now, slot that power for Dmg, Accuracy, and EndRedux before slotting any other single target damage powers. (Slotting non-damage powers like Aim, Build Up, and Stamina is ok. Slotting up one AoE power is also ok.) This power will be your designated DPE power. That way, when endurance runs low, you're still capable of using your most endurance efficient attack continuously, perhaps even getting net positive recovery as you spam this efficient attack. (If this reminds you of a certain other superhero MMO, then you get the picture.)

Once you got your DPE power slotted, DOs will be available and you can start working on becoming a DPS monster. Now start slotting up those DPS beasts like Fire Sword and Blaze and AoE attacks: Dmg, Accuracy, and Recharge (and Range, in Fire Breath). You won't be able to use these attacks continuously, but if you use them strategically for when burst damage is crucial, falling back to your DPE attack for cleanup, you'll have no problems getting to that oh-so-important level 22 and cheap SOs.

Once you get SOs, you can have your cake and eat it too. You can start slotting all your best attacks for both recharge and end redux. And you have more endurance coming in from Stamina as well. No respec needed, just overwrite your old DOs with a more varied mix of SOs and cheap IOs: damage, accuracy, recharge, endredux (and Range, in Fire Breath).

You may also want to take a few sessions to slow down and observe buff/debuffing in this game. Good teamwork with a buff/debuffer is often the difference between facerolling every spawn with hardly a dip in your end bar, or debt drama and despair. Simple tactics like pulling around corners, saving the debuff-anchored enemy til last, and not fearing melee when you've got support, work miracles at low levels.

100% knockback is good on paper, and it's certainly good for soloing.

But if 100% knockback doesn't save the lower-damage-but-faster-recharging Shockwave from "skip this power" status in builds, how does it save Umbral Torrent? Or, if people start saying Umbral Torrent is the bee's knees, should Shockwave still get the cold shoulder?