Robotech_Master

Tagged with "I12," but I can't see the base principles changing much from issue to issue.

http://cityofheroes.wikia.com/wiki/R...eam_Leadership

Please feel free to leave any comments/feedback here.

Hate to say it, but I'm somewhat unimpressed.

A "special event" in which only 300 out of the 25,000 plus CoH subscribers will be able to participate? Up to this point, CoH's special events have been somewhat egalitarian, with effort made to be as inclusive as possible. For instance, the CuppaJo farewell party, where a dozen different Pocket Ds were instanced and the devs were present in all of them. This kind of leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

$10 for a couple of costume pieces and emotes that I honestly can't see much reason ever to use? (I get into RP, but not that far into it.) As someone else said, the Good vs. Evil $10 pack got you costume options, a badge, and two very useful prestige powers. $10 for palpable benefits in the game is one thing. $10 for mere frippery is quite another.

I can't say I wouldn't ever buy it—perhaps if someday I have enough disposable income that I wouldn't feel foolish blowing it in that way—but it doesn't really tempt me right now.

How about some advice on how to figure out what recipe groups are hot? I checked some of the examples given in the guide, and none of them seemed to offer much in the way of profit opportunity, with the crafted enhancements going for about the same as the recipes + salvage + crafting. Obviously, what's hot-or-not will change with market pressures.

What, specifically, do we look for?

Assuming my plans don't shatter into jagged little pieces, I'll be there. My brother lives in town, so I don't have to worry about hotel accommodations.

IHNJ, IJLTS "Essence of the Furries."

I liked the City of Heroes comic book. It was nice to get to see the various depictions of the signature heroes (especially Mynx…rowr!) and the writing definitely was improving toward the end of its run. And it was nice to get the sense that the signature heroes were actually doing something rather than just standing around handing out task forces or training all day.

Yeah, Statesman was a jerk and that was kind of annoying. On the other hand, so is Captain America lately. And the other heroes were kind of cool. I'm going to miss finding out whether Positron is able to make War Witch a bit more solid.

It's too bad they can't at least continue the book as a webcomic series.

Oh well. Guess I'll just have to keep writing RP Congress stuff for my CoH story fix.

[ QUOTE ]
You didn't mention that you can run to the Arena and buy inspirations there too.

[/ QUOTE ]
Nor did he mention that the Pocket D bartenders sell all Inspirations—including the Awakens that the Arena doesn't have.

Edit: Well, OK, he did later in the guide, but not at the beginning where he's talking about stocking up.

R_M's I9/I10 XP Gain/Debt Loss Guide (How to gain XP and lose debt fast.)

R_M's I9/I10 Energy Melee/Energy Aura Brute Guide

R_M's I9/I10 Robotics/Dark Miasma Mastermind Guide

R_M's I9/I10 Robotics/Dark Miasma Mastermind Guide

Inspiration is Where You Find It

Knowing how to use your powers and minions isn't the only important part of being a Mastermind. The proper selection and use of Inspirations can make a major difference too. Let's look at the various colors and how and when to use them. Formerly, most of these Inspirations were thought to confer their benefits on a 25%/33%/50% scale, but research by Arcanaville and pohsyb has shown this to be incorrect in many cases. The values given below are those that are correct as of the beginning of I7; _Castle_ has said he will be examining Inspirations with an eye toward rebalancing them at some point.

It used to be that Inspiration stores were entirely unavailable to participants in a Task/Strike Force. However, the Arena stores and Pocket D bartenders will now sell to anybody, regardless of whether they are on a Task/Strike Force or not. The Arena sells everything except Awakens; the bartenders sell those too. And every Inspiration that's ever dropped is buyable from Wentworth's or the Black Market.

Rage (Red): Damage (25%/33%/50%). This is probably one of the most useless Inspirations to you. The problem is that where everyone else's total damage capability increases by 25% on taking one red, you have to use up to six reds to increase your total damage capability by that amount--one for each of your henchmen. It's generally not worth bothering. The exception is your Assault Bot, given that he's the largest single chunk of your overall damage. If you get reds from random drops, you might as well use them on him.

Insight (Yellow): Accuracy (7.5%/18.75%/37.5%). Well, technically "To-Hit" because they are applied to the left side of the to-hit equation in the same place as To-Hit buffs (see next section) rather than the right side with Accuracy Enhancements--which actually makes them a more powerful than if they just conferred Accuracy. In PVE, these will be most important to you early on, before you've been able to slot for Accuracy really well--but may also be handy against enemies such as the Circle of Thorns who debuff your accuracy any time in the game. Insights also have a secondary effect: they increase your Perception, counteracting enemy Stealth or Blindness powers. This will be most useful against Stalkers in PVP, and against mobs who use smoke grenades (such as certain Arachnos Bosses) in PVE. If you're going up against Thorns or Arachnos, or into a PVP zone, be sure and carry a few with you; otherwise, you shouldn't need them too much once you get DOs. Again, these suffer from needing six to cover all your bots--but you can at least get some benefit out of them for your own powers, especially for those times when you really need Twilight Grasp to hit.

Respite (Green) and Catch a Breath (Blue): Health & Endurance (25%/33%/50%). Because your Twilight Grasp is capable of missing, and summoning and buffing pets can use a huge amount of Endurance, these will be your Special Friend. You're going to want to devote at least half of your Inspiration tray to these early on--not just for yourself, but to drag onto the name bars of henchmen who need them in emergencies.

Luck (Purple): Defense (12.5%/25%/33%). Although the Defense boost in I7 makes these little buggers more useful than they ever were before for avoiding getting hit (remember, it only takes a total of 45% Defense, or a bit less than 4 small purples, to cap you against anything), sometimes you're not going to want to avoid getting hit. Remember that Bodyguard mode means your henchies won't attack back unless something hits you first. Purples may also be useful for your bots in some circumstances (especially when stacked with your Protectors' bubbles) but still suffer from needing 6 to cover all your bots, and a 7th for yourself.

Sturdy (Orange): Damage Resistance (10%/15%/20%). These may be more useful to you than they would be to some; they can stack on top of your Shadow Fall and your henchies' innate resistances to make you all a little tougher, so they mitigate overall damage taken even more than a Defense Inspiration might. They do still suffer from needing 6 to cover all your bots, and a 7th for yourself. But note that oranges could be extremely useful in PVP; one of the I7 changes is that even the smallest orange Inspiration will now confer 100% immunity to enemy teleportation effects (e.g. Teleport Foe, Starless Step, Wormhole). It may pay to carry some when adventuring in PVP zones.

Break Free: Anti-Mez (remove current mez state; protect for 30/60/90 sec). You won't generally need these in PVE if you let your bots draw most of the aggro. However, as stated above, it's worth carrying one around to pair with an Awaken if you happen to fall in the heat of battle. They will handily take care of the residual wakey-woozies. You may also wish to carry a few of them when going into PVP zones, or into battle against foes you know to have End draining or toggle-dropping powers, such as level 40+ Longbow, Carnival of Shadows, or especially Malta.

Awaken: Self-Rez (progressively more health/end and shorter disorient by size). Some people don't believe in carrying rez Inspirations, figuring it's better to use the space for something that will help keep you from dying. While there's a certain amount of sense to that, sooner or later you're going to end up dying anyway--it's unavoidable. You might as well have the ability to recover from it when it does happen. However, I generally advise just carrying one, maybe two at most, and restocking between missions--if you die more often than that, you should probably rethink what you're doing on that mission. (An exception is Strike Forces, where it might pay to stock up with more Awakens if few teammates have rez powers.)


ON THE LEVELS

Level 1-10

Get through the tutorial as fast as you can; don't forget to go upstairs for the Jail Bird badge. The tutorial shouldn't present you with any problems you can't handle; if you've done it enough already to be really sick of it, you can skip the first few errands and just run straight out to Saki, the ninja-masked orange-clad convict in the courtyard, and start from there. Make your choice of contact at the helicopter--I personally tend to prefer the mercenary contact, Matthew Burke, because his missions are a lot more fun (especially the snake hatchery--zap-zap-zap-SPLORTCH!). If you want to experience as much content as possible, keep your missions on Villainous and solo them; they'll complete faster and you won't get as much XP, meaning that you're less likely to outlevel contacts. Otherwise, feel free to join teams and do all your missions together; you'll be level 10 before you know it.

Much has been made of the fact that a Mastermind can make his first few levels just by standing on the wall of the fort and sending his henchman out to kill things while he waits in safety. Sure, you can do this--but where's the fun in that? Don't forget that if you make too many levels too quickly, you won't have time to do the missions for all of your 5-10 contacts on Port Oakes. Better by far to hook up with a bunch of other newly-created villains who are also just getting to Mercy Island, and run their missions together. You'll get them done faster and earn more XP that way. Don't forget that you can crank your difficulty up a notch or two for even more XP!

You should do all of your first contact's missions, at least until you get to level 5. If doing Kallenda and Mongoose, you should only do Mongoose's first job, the bank heist. You actually don't even have to do that one, but I recommend it anyway because bank heists are just so much fun. The rest of Mongoose's missions are more annoyingness with Snakes plus a timed Hellions job; they're all quite boring, not necessary to get your next contact, involve a lot of running all over the island, and if you do them you'll get enough XP out of them that you could have a hard time doing more than one of your 5-10 Port Oakes contacts when you get them.

Dr. Creed's missions seem a good deal more fun, but if you want to outlevel as few arcs as possible, either skip them or try to complete them for the least amount of XP possible, skipping to the end of non-defeat-all missions and defeating as few mobs as are necessary. This is the only way to make sure you don't outlevel, since below level 10 you can't get debt.

Go on to Port Oakes once you've hit level 5, and make your way to your first broker there. Do your paper missions and take the mayhem missions until all three contacts are available to you, and then do as many of your contacts as you can before you outlevel them. I'd advise doing Bocor first to get that nifty 5-shot zombie temp power, then Billie Heck for the imp temp.

Mercy Island and Port Oakes were formerly very frustrating to get around without travel powers when your contacts seem to delight in sending you to all corners of it; however, the annoyance has been lessened considerably with the jet pack and jump pack temp powers from the first couple of mayhem mission sets and/or Good vs. Evil. However, you do have to be at least level 5 to take advantage of the mayhem missions.

There is also another workaround that is effective all the way from level 1, though it requires a bit more effort. If you can tag along with a higher-level character who has the Sharkhead Isle Sky Raider contact Lt. Chalmers's timed mission to save their base from Longbow, you will be able to get a 60-minute jet pack from one of the blinkie crates near the entrance. You will have to make your way in safety to Sharkshead Island in order to do this, but that one long journey will save you many other long journeys afterward.

(If you should get this mission on a higher-level character yourself, you can actually get any or all of your other characters this pack off of that mission. Just get them in position on the island before you accept the mission from Chalmers, and invite a friend to your team to go into the mission and hold it open for you while you switch characters and then have him reinvite you to the team. Repeat as necessary for all your characters until it runs out of blinkies, then relog to the original character to reset it. If you're soloing or duoing the mission, you should only need about 15 minutes to complete it anyway, so you can run down half of the hour-long timer doing this with no worries.)

If you use this jet pack sparingly, you should be able to get around with much less frustration all the way up to level 14. However, do be sure you have used it up entirely by the time you encounter Chalmers for yourself; if the jetpack still exists in your powers list, you probably will not be able to get a fresh one.

Level 11-20

From here on out, there are two paths you can go by for levelling.

If you're concerned for content, then be sure to do all of your missions on a fairly low difficulty setting. You may want to solo them, and may even want to be sure to die every now and then so you carry debt to slow you down. Do only as many newspaper missions as are necessary to get you to your next round of contacts. There are an immense number of contacts, even not counting the unlockable ones, so you may have a hard time fitting everything in.

Continue your arcs on Port Oakes, and thence to Cap au Diable. If you're concerned about missing content, then continue soloing missions on the Villainous difficulty setting. Do only as many newspaper missions as are necessary to get you to your next round of contacts. There are an immense number of contacts, even not counting the unlockable ones, so you may have a hard time fitting everything in. You may even want to make a habit of intentionally getting killed a few times to carry additional debt; this will also have the side-effect of earning more Infamy with which you can buy Enhancements and make progress toward the Bling badge.

If you have an aversion to debt even though you know it's good for you, another thing to try is finding someone at least 3 levels lower than you who is about to start a contact you also haven't started yet. Take the same missions (as much as you can), exemplar to the lowbie, and do the lowbie's instances of the missions. Make sure to click "yes" at the end when the dialogue box asks if you would like to clear your own instance of the mission at the same time. You will get only Infamy instead of XP (and what's more, you'll get Infamy as if you completed a mission 3 levels higher than you!), but will still clear the mission and see the content.

If you're just concerned with levelling speed, see if you can put together a big team averaging 2 to 4 levels higher than you are. If you can construct it in such a way that there is one lackey slot too few and you get left as the "odd man out," then so much the better for your XP. Even if you have to lackey up, do mainly "retrieve item" or "kidnap person" newspaper missions, and make sure the others let you unlackey one full minute before saving the hostage or clicking the glowie so you can scoop that bigger bonus. While not as lucrative as it once was, you can still get a good chunk of additional XP over what you ordinarily would have in this way. You might also want to read this guide to earning XP as fast as possible; the fellow who wrote it seems reasonably clever.

If you're into unlockable contacts, remember to go farm 100 ghosts at Fort Hades between levels 10 and 14 to get the badges and unlock Veluta Lunata; she has a couple of fun arcs and some useful anti-ghost temp powers. You'll probably need a team and/or higher-level helpers to do it safely, as ghosts will respawn as level 15 when the traps get full.

Once you hit 14 or 15, scoot off to Bloody Bay and do the meteor quest. With Shadow Fall and a travel power, you should be able to scoop the meteor samples relatively unmolested. (I suggest starting with the ones near the hero bases and working your way back to villain territory, so that if you do get ganked near the hero HQ, at least you'll only have lost one or two samples and not the whole thing.) For advice on how best to solo the meteor mission, see this mini-guide, which was also written by that clever R_M fellow. You might want to grab Hyper Stealth while you're at it. Even though Shadow Fall makes it redundant, it's still free, and can be used when exemplared lower.

You'll probably want to come back and do the meteors repeatedly; the 5-shot renewable Shivan pet makes a nice panic button or hero-killer in conjunction with your henchmen, and its Radiation powers will make it easier for you to overcome the Defense of tough enemies. Since I7, Shivans are no longer capped at level 25, and can thus help you with tight spots all the way up to level 50.

If you're not concerned about missing out on content and don't mind risking ganks on the way in or out, the PVP zone door missions are a great way to earn some levels. Longbow give 110% of "normal" mob XP, and the mission completion bonus is a good 25% bigger than normal (or at least it is once every half hour; the rewards have been limited to prevent abuse), even if they tend to be a bit monotonous. The Listening Post missions are particularly recommended, as their warehouse-based layout is less annoying than the standard Longbow base map.

Whatever you do, be sure to do Marshall Brass's first 15-19 arc in order to get the Goldbrickers flight pack--especially if your travel power is Super Speed. I also recommend doing the Tarikoss Strike Force before you hit 20; it's got a fun storyline to it, especially if you do Marshall Brass's second arc as a sort of prelude.

Level 21-30

You'll be moving on to Sharkshead Island and the Nerva Archipelago now. Much of the general-purpose advice from 11-20 holds true for this section, and all of those further on in fact. But here are the high points.

The 20-25 Silver Mantis Strike Force is only available to villain groups with a mission computer. But if you're not in a villain group, don't worry. It only takes one person who is in such a villain group, and whose base is set to permit teammates to enter, to offer the SF to everyone. So if you're not in such a group, maybe you can find someone who is and do it that way. If you lose the final bad guy during the last mission of this Strike Force, don't despair! He's just flown off into the sky in some remote part of the map; get a flier to hunt for him.

Also during this time comes the first supervillain respec, which is in some ways easier and in some ways much harder than the City of Heroes version. Entire guides can be and have been written about this mission, so I will refer you to them; my advice is to take a party size of no more than four to five people, period.

If you're into unlockable contacts, remember to help take down Scrapyard for the Hammer Down badge to unlock Crimson Revenant. Also, if you are in a supergroup, you will also want to start playing outside of Supergroup Mode at level 25 (and perhaps also exemplaring a lot) until you get the Bling badge for earning Infamy in order to unlock the Doc Buzzsaw hidden contact. It took me until level 28 to earn Bling with no supergroup at all, and if you don't earn it by level 29 you may not get to do both the Doctor's arcs.

Be sure not to miss out on Lt. Chalmers on Sharkshead Island for his 60-minute Sky Raider flight pack! You'll have to do all of Captain Petrovich's missions to be introduced to him.

If you're still doing missions on Villainous, you may run out of contacts early for the first time before hitting 25--especially if you frequently solo and/or stealth them. Just make sure you've done all of the unlockable ones, and then do some newspaper or PVP jobs to get you the rest of the way.

Level 20 grants you entrance into Siren's Call--and if you're strapped for cash and enjoy (or at least tolerate) PVP, I advise spending some time there taking down heroes and earning bounty. Every 6,000 bounty points means a free +3 SO in your origin, so have a blast. It might be simplest for you to find a team of Stalkers who can use you as a stalking horse, and mooch off of the points they get from their kills to earn your rewards. But be careful; there are enough NPC mobs around, especially at the hotspots, that it's a good way to see just what the debt cap really looks like.

As with Bloody Bay, Siren's Call PVP-zone door missions are a decent way to grind for XP. The Supply Depot mission, in an abandoned-office-building map, is one of the easier ones to do. Also, don't forget to do the patrol mission to grab the Hyper Invisibility temp power. Even though Shadow Fall makes it redundant, it's still free, and can be used when exemplared lower.

You may want to start adjusting your difficulty up a notch or two in the mid to late 20s, once you get your SOs on. This will give you a little more of a challenge, and will also narrow the gap between completing all your contacts and getting the next set.

Level 31-40

Congratulations, you're almost there! As you pass 32 and start getting the final powers from your sets, it's probably safe for you to crank the dial up to Relentless. You're going to be working both in St. Martial and Nerva for this phase of your career. Apart from the newspaper missions you do to unlock your contacts in St. Martial, you may find you prefer grinding with them in Nerva, as Nerva's paper and bank jobs are all spaced a lot closer together (with only the occasional job that requires a trip all the way north), unlike St. Martial which routinely sends you all over the map.

The 30-38 PVP zone is Warburg, which is different from the earlier zones in that it is a free-for-all: if you're not teamed with someone, they're the enemy even if they're a villain just like you! This can make adventuring there "interesting" in the Chinese sense--and yet it's lucrative nonetheless. Rescuing the scientists from the underground labs can provide you with some nicely potent one-shot super-nukes that make great Archvillain/Monster/Hero-killers; you can carry one of each of the three kinds. And once you hit 32 and get that super-firepower upgrade, you'll be fully capable of owning the spiders in the underground labs. (And a nice side benefit if your origin is Technology is that those spiders drop mostly tech SOs, and drop them more frequently than just about any other mob I've ever seen.)

Some Warburg regulars (Warburgers?) hold to a kind of code of honor that says they don't mess with people doing scientist saves. Others, however, do not, so don't take your safety for granted; each time you get ganked, you'll lose one of your three codes, not to mention any scientist who might have been following you at the time. Try to do Warburg during "dead" periods, like early mornings or afternoons when there's nobody else around to interfere with you. Learn the ins and outs of the underground corridors so that you can navigate with your scientist to whichever tunnel exit is closest to his bunker of choice. (Vidiotmaps now has these passages marked on its map, which is a great help.) Since Warburg scientists don't lose track of you if you're stealthed, stay under Shadow Fall to get him there; turn off Superspeed and Sprint (if you have them) so you're less likely to outdistance him. Bear in mind that you don't actually have to take him up the ramp to the bunker door most of the time; his "thanks for saving me, here's the code" will trigger if you can get within about 25 feet under the door with him on the ground level. Once he's saved, hie yourself back to the nearest tunnel entrance at all possible speed to get the next one.

As always, the PVP zone door missions continue to be a reasonable way to grind for XP--but after you hit 37-40 they become a good deal harder thanks to the Longbow Flamethrowers' and Special Ops' upgraded powers (see the next section). Note that the Recluse's Victory PVP zone does not have door missions, so the Warburg contacts will give you door missions all the way up to level 50. Favorite Warburg missions include the Supply Depot (which has no Bosses in it, so you can run through it quickly and with minimal risk) and the Kidnap Longbow Agent mission (as the agent is apparently bugged, and will fight at your side with radiation attacks after you "kidnap" her, grumbling about it all the while--or at least this was the case through the last few updates of this guide). The Patrol mission will give you a "Hyper Phase Shift" temp power, which makes a great panic button and, given that it can be used when malefactored to any level, is probably better than having the real thing for as often as you're likely to need it.

If you haven't yet gotten your Gangbuster badge (for taking down 200 Marcone Capo Bosses) to unlock the Slot Machine (one of the more fun contacts in the late game), you should go to Port Oakes and do it before you hit 34. The best time to do it is when the zone is really busy; the more people are in the zone, the more Capos are spawned. Ideally, you should get a team of high-level characters together who are also looking to earn their Capo-hunting badges, split up, and hunt the zone individually--you will each get credit for everyone else's Capo defeats in addition to your own even if you're not in "XP-getting" range. You will most often find them in the streets or on top of buildings in Marconeville or the Docks, or on top of the warehouses in the west part of town. Sometimes they will step out of doors along the street, and if you don't get them fast they'll go back inside. The Capos are easy to spot because they are always either wearing dark suits with white fedoras, or wearing white suits and completely bald. In Port Oakes, you don't generally need to worry about cleaning up the rest of a spawn after you cherry-pick the Capos; the others will usually run to a nearby door and go inside, thus cleaning up after themselves.

Level 41-50

As I have not played a Mastermind very far into the 40s, I can offer only limited advice. You will be doing missions in Grandville, where you will meet some nastier adversaries than in any of the other zones. Watch out for Bane Spiders, who have stealth and Assassin Strike abilities. Your Good vs. Evil jump pack will come in very handy in this zone.

Recluse's Victory offers a unique way to earn XP, if you can go there during "dead" hours when no one else is around. Go check out a "Heavy"--one of three robots you can "check out" if no one else is using it--and hunt the PVE Longbow enemies in the zone. The Heavy's additional damage and mez capabilities will let you cut through those enemy Longbow like a hot knife through butter. Watch out for enemy players, though.


CAN-OPENERS

It seems like every class has foes who are specially designed to pose a specific danger to that class--"can-openers" who can open up your defenses as easily as your power can-opener opens a can--and Masterminds are no exception. Luckily, there are only three major foes who cause hair-tearing levels of frustration. One of those is quickly outlevelled; the other two are usually found together.

"Don't mess around with the Demolition Man"

Perhaps the most infuriating mob in the entire game to us Masterminds, the Scrapyarder Demolitionist has packs of dynamite that he chucks about with wild abandon--and each one sprouts a burn patch when it hits. If you go up against a Demolitionist unprepared, you will be amazed at how quickly your pets' health bars go from green to red and then fizzle. Even if you're on the ball enough to Goto-command your pets out of the flames, the Demolitionist will just chuck more.

Possible solutions include mezzing the Demolitionist first (if you have a Dominator along who can Confuse the Demolitionist, you'll have a grand old time watching him take out his teammates) or having someone with a long-range Snipe take him out from a distance. Group Fly might be another interesting possibility--you'll have that 20% Accuracy penalty, but ground-based burn patches won't be able to touch you in the air so you'll have the leeway to miss a few more times.

Luckily, you won't see another Demolitionist once you've outlevelled Sharkhead Island. However, you'll still have to deal with...

"The Longbow of the Law"

All through the first half of your career, you may sneer at the Longbow agents--somewhat-ineffectual red and white do-gooders who are fairly easy to take down, even if some of them can cloak. But at levels 30 and 40, some things change. At 30, the Longbow Flamethrowers get Ignite; at 40, the Longbow Special Ops get EMP Grenade.

Ignite is a Burn-patch attack that you may not even notice at first (due to Burn's special effect having gotten a lot harder to see in recent patches), until you smell Mohican burning. It's the Longbow version of a silent-but-deadly; it will either melt your robots right down to scrap or cause them to run screaming and not attack. This, in turn, can lead to faceplant. EMP Grenade is an annoying area-of-effect sapper attack, which can stop you dead in your tracks with just a few shots. It's not fun when you're chugging merrily along and suddenly all your toggles are dropping and all you can do is stand there and look dumb (and frantically pop blues and purples if you have any)

About the only solution is to try to mez or take out the worst ones first--but since both the Flamethrower and the Special Ops are minions, you can have more than one of them, and even more than one of each of them, per spawn. In a case like that, all you can do is try to mez the worst ones (usually a Flamethrower) and take them all out as quickly as you can. Fearsome Stare will at least help cut their attacks and accuracy down, though not by as much as you might hope given that all your attacks will be AoE after you hit 32.

"Don't boss me around!"

Bosses and Elite Bosses can be pretty tough in general, but special mention should be made of certain Longbow bosses, such as the spines-equipped Longbow Officers, and the elite Ballistas. These guys are tricky, particularly once you get past 30. If you get too close to the spine scrapper Officers, you may find yourself lacking a few 'bots thanks to pesky spine bursts. Ballistas are similarly nasty and tough, and a bit tricky to solo. This is where all those dark debuffs you've got really earn their keep, but it doesn't hurt to pop Inspirations like candy either.


SAMPLE BUILD

The following is a build that is very similar to the build I currently have on my own level 40 Robots/Dark Mastermind. I include it not as a prescription as to what kind of build you should make, but more as an illustration of what a build that has been reasonably successful for me looks like.

The build is not completely identical to my own, as I did not keep track of exactly what levels I got what--don't take the slotting levels as gospel. Also, I'm pretty sure that in my original build I took Vengeance at 28 and Petrifying Gaze at 35, rather than the other way around.

Some parts of the build I'm not entirely happy with; I'd like Shadow Fall to be slotted more for Damage Resistance instead of just Endurance Reduction; I may steal a slot from Group Flight to put there if I ever respec. I'm also pretty sure there's an End Reduction in Equip Robot and another To-Hit Buff in Tactics that isn't shown in the build. But it's close.


Exported from version 1.5C of CoH Planner
http://joechott.com/coh

Archetype: Mastermind
Primary Powers - Ranged : Robotics
Secondary Powers - Support : Dark Miasma

Level 01 : Twilight Grasp
Accuracy ( 01 )
Accuracy ( 3 )
Healing ( 9 )
Healing ( 11 )
Healing ( 21 )
Endurance Reduction ( 27 )

Level 01 : Battle Drones
Accuracy ( 01 )
Accuracy ( 3 )
Damage ( 5 )
Damage ( 5 )
Damage ( 11 )
Knockback Distance ( 23 )

Level 02 : Tar Patch
Recharge Reduction ( 02 )
Recharge Reduction ( 7 )
Recharge Reduction ( 19 )

Level 04 : Darkest Night
To Hit DeBuff ( 04 )
To Hit DeBuff ( 7 )
To Hit DeBuff ( 40 )

Level 06 : Recall Friend
Interrupt Time ( 06 )

Level 08 : Equip Robot
Recharge Reduction ( 08 )
Recharge Reduction ( 9 )

Level 10 : Hover
Defense Buff ( 10 )

Level 12 : Protector Bots
Accuracy ( 12 )
Damage ( 13 )
Damage ( 13 )
Damage ( 15 )
Endurance Reduction ( 25 )
Disorient Duration ( 37 )

Level 14 : Fly
Flight Speed ( 14 )
Flight Speed ( 15 )
Flight Speed ( 17 )

Level 16 : Shadow Fall
Endurance Reduction ( 16 )
Endurance Reduction ( 17 )
Endurance Reduction ( 19 )

Level 18 : Howling Twilight
Disorient Duration ( 18 )

Level 20 : Group Fly
Endurance Reduction ( 20 )
Endurance Reduction ( 21 )
Endurance Reduction ( 23 )

Level 22 : Fearsome Stare
Accuracy ( 22 )
Recharge Reduction ( 25 )
Recharge Reduction ( 31 )
Fear Duration ( 33 )
Fear Duration ( 33 )
Fear Duration ( 33 )

Level 24 : Assault
Endurance Reduction ( 24 )

Level 26 : Assault Bot
Accuracy ( 26 )
Damage ( 27 )
Damage ( 29 )
Damage ( 29 )
Knockback Distance ( 31 )
Knockback Distance ( 31 )

Level 28 : Petrifying Gaze
Accuracy ( 28 )
Recharge Reduction ( 34 )
Recharge Reduction ( 34 )
Hold Duration ( 34 )
Hold Duration ( 36 )
Hold Duration ( 36 )

Level 30 : Tactics
To Hit Buff ( 30 )
Endurance Reduction ( 36 )

Level 32 : Upgrade Robot
Recharge Reduction ( 32 )
Recharge Reduction ( 37 )
Recharge Reduction ( 37 )

Level 35 : Vengeance
To Hit Buff ( 35 )

Level 38 : Dark Servant
Accuracy ( 38 )
Recharge Reduction ( 39 )
Recharge Reduction ( 39 )
Recharge Reduction ( 39 )
Immobilize Duration ( 40 )
Immobilize Duration ( 40 )


Here's a new, post-I7 sample build that I put together as an exercise in figuring out how to respec to add Stamina to the powers I already had. It goes up through level 48; at level 49 I would probably take one of the Patron Pool powers, or perhaps Black Hole if nothing else. (Actually, I would probably take the Patron at 47 and leave Vengeance for 49, since it does not require much slotting.)

One interesting thing I found as I put this sample build together was that, thanks to taking a bunch of no-slotting-needed powers in the 30s, I had considerably more Enhancement slots by my 40s than I had places needing slotting. I found myself slotting things I would normally never bother with--putting Slows in Tar Patch, Defenses in Shadow Fall, Disorients in Howling Twilight, and so on--just because I didn't know what else to do with them. I probably will end up respecing into this build, or one like it, sooner or later.

---------------------------------------------
Exported from Ver: 1.7.5.0 of the CoH_CoV Character Builder
---------------------------------------------
Name:
Level: 49
Archetype: Mastermind
Primary: Robotics
Secondary: Dark Miasma
---------------------------------------------
01) --> Battle Drones

2. Accuracy(1)
3. Accuracy(3)
4. Damage(7)
5. Damage(7)
6. Damage(9)
7. Knockback Distance(23)

01) --> Twilight Grasp

2. Accuracy(1)
3. Accuracy(3)
4. Healing(9)
5. Healing(11)
6. Healing(19)
7. Recharge Reduction(33)

02) --> Tar Patch

2. Recharge Reduction(2)
3. Recharge Reduction(5)
4. Recharge Reduction(11)
5. Slow(34)
6. Slow(37)
7. Slow(40)

04) --> Darkest Night

2. To Hit DeBuff(4)
3. To Hit DeBuff(5)
4. To Hit DeBuff(25)

06) --> Recall Friend

2. Interrupt Reduction(6)

08) --> Equip Robot

2. Recharge Reduction(8)
3. Recharge Reduction(19)

10) --> Hover

2. Defense Buff(10)

12) --> Protector Bots

2. Accuracy(12)
3. Damage(13)
4. Damage(13)
5. Damage(17)
6. Disorient Duration(17)
7. End Reduction(31)

14) --> Fly

2. Flight Speed(14)
3. Flight Speed(15)
4. Flight Speed(15)

16) --> Swift

2. Run Speed(16)

18) --> Health

2. Healing(18)
3. Healing(43)
4. Healing(46)

20) --> Stamina

2. Endurance Modification(20)
3. Endurance Modification(21)
4. Endurance Modification(21)

22) --> Shadow Fall

2. Damage Resist(22)
3. Damage Resist(23)
4. Damage Resist(25)
5. Defense Buff(27)
6. Defense Buff(34)
7. Defense Buff(34)

24) --> Group Fly

2. Flight Speed(24)

26) --> Assault Bot

2. Accuracy(26)
3. Damage(27)
4. Damage(29)
5. Damage(29)
6. Knockback Distance(48)
7. Knockback Distance(48)

28) --> Assault

2. End Reduction(28)

30) --> Tactics

2. To Hit Buff(30)
3. To Hit Buff(31)
4. To Hit Buff(31)

32) --> Upgrade Robot

2. Recharge Reduction(32)
3. Recharge Reduction(33)
4. Recharge Reduction(33)

35) --> Fearsome Stare

2. Accuracy(35)
3. Accuracy(36)
4. Fear Duration(36)
5. Fear Duration(36)
6. Fear Duration(37)
7. Recharge Reduction(37)

38) --> Dark Servant

2. Accuracy(38)
3. Recharge Reduction(39)
4. Recharge Reduction(39)
5. Recharge Reduction(39)
6. Immobilize Duration(40)
7. Immobilize Duration(40)

41) --> Petrifying Gaze

2. Accuracy(41)
3. Accuracy(42)
4. Hold Duration(42)
5. Hold Duration(42)
6. Hold Duration(43)
7. Recharge Reduction(43)

44) --> Howling Twilight

2. Recharge Reduction(44)
3. Recharge Reduction(45)
4. Recharge Reduction(45)
5. Disorient Duration(45)
6. Disorient Duration(46)
7. Disorient Duration(46)

47) --> Vengeance

2. Defense Buff(47)
3. To Hit Buff(48)

---------------------------------------------
01) --> Sprint

2. Run Speed(1)

01) --> Brawl

2. Accuracy(1)

01) --> Supremacy

2. Empty Enhancement(1)

02) --> Rest

2. Recharge Reduction(2)

---------------------------------------------



PARTING THOUGHTS

I hope you've enjoyed my guide, and that I haven't put you to sleep too badly. Hopefully you haven't found too much to disagree with--and if you think I'm wrong about something, you'll (politely) let me know why. I'm always looking to improve the guides I write, so I'll at least listen to what you have to say.

Playing City of Villains is a constant learning process--you'll never know everything there is to know about it. (This is even more true with the way the updates often force us to redesign our characters entirely, but oh well.) With that in mind, you shouldn't stop with just my guide. Check out other guides, too, to see if they have information I might have missed. Not just other Robots/Dark guides, but other Robots/* (particularly BlackestNight's Ultimate Robots/FF Guide--though some of the information is dated, he catches some things I missed or has different opinions on the Robotics and Power Pool sides) and */Dark guides too--and even check Dark Miasma Defender and Corruptor guides; we share some of the same powers after all and they might have more ideas for useful ways in which to use them.

Welcome to the world of the Robotics/Dark Miasma Mastermind. May your mastery bring you much merriment.


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Special thanks to the fine folks on the Mastermind forum who helped me catch little glitches in the preview posting I ran for them, especially BlackestNight for coming up with the Accuracy table, and also to _Castle_ for coming through with the Supremacy Accuracy buff value and hinting toward the correct Leadership Tactics value for Masterminds.


PRIOR VERSIONS
<ul type="square">[*]R_M's Robotics/Dark Miasma Mastermind Guide, v1.0[*]R_M's I7 Robotics/Dark Miasma Mastermind Guide[/list]

EXPECTO PATRONUM: PATRON POWERS AND YOU

I have not had the chance to experience Patron Powers yet, as I have not yet levelled my Mastermind past 40. However, much of what I said about them in the first edition of this guide still holds true.

As Issue 7 was being worked on during the first half of 2006, preview information about the I7 patron powers was released. More recently, hard numbers for these powers were made available--marking the first time ever the developers have ever committed to give the complete information about what powers do. The numbers are in the downloadable Prima Guide, and will be available on plaques in the lobby of the Grandville Arachnos building. They should be perused before final selections are made.

I will probably rewrite this section further once I have actually played through the patron powers; alternately, I might just point at someone else's guide to them when it becomes available. Since the Patron power pools can't all be taken on the same character, it could take a great deal of time to test them all for myself.

Unlike CoH's Ancillary Pools, which can have different types of powers depending on what pool is chosen, all four of the CoV Patron Pools are largely identical except for damage types and secondary effects. Available at 41, 44, 47, and 49, the powers include:
<ul type="square">[*]a cone or AoE blast[*]an armor toggle[*]a cone or AoE Immobilize[*]a single-target hold[/list]Ghost Widow and Scirocco have the Blast as the first power and the Immobilize as the third; Black Scorpion and Mako reverse the two. For descriptions of each Patron pool, click the above link; no need to make a long guide even longer by copying and pasting them all in.

Given that the powers are all so similar, the choice of which Patron to pick will probably be decided by the secondary effects. It could also come down to a matter of roleplaying and character concept--if your character is most sympathetic to Ghost Widow, for instance, then becoming her pupil would grant much the same general abilities as any of the other Patrons. Nonetheless, since a Patron, once chosen, is permanent, your choice of Patron is something that should be given serious consideration--including viewing the numbers for each power when they become available. And it could be a tough decision, as the secondary effects of each of the Patrons' pools has something to offer the discerning Dark/Dark Mastermind.

Ghost Widow's powers' secondary effects are the traditional Negative Energy Accuracy Debuff (on some powers, anyway), and may stack well with the Dark effects you already have. The FX are a ghostly white rather than the traditional Dark black, however, which may put some people off.

Black Scorpion's Mace Mastery blasts are Energy damage. These blasts do Knockdown, and his Immobilize, while doing no damage, does slow enemies' attack rate and prevent flying and jumping--a potentially useful adjunct to Tar Patch. This could help keep you from getting in over your head.

Captain Mako's shark attacks, while somewhat silly in concept, nonetheless do a variety of different damage types--Lethal, Negative Energy, and the infrequently defended or resisted Toxic. If you're just interested in dealing raw damage and don't care as much about secondary effects, this could be the pool for you.

Scirocco's powers are the Mu Mystics' red lightning. Some of them claim to drain End and pass it back to you, but they only have a fairly low percentage chance to do that and would never return very much to you anyway. Best not to consider this a determining factor.

Whether these powers are useful to a Robotics/Dark Miasma Mastermind depends on your playstyle. The AoE blast power could provide a little bit of extra damage and debuff help; however, what was said about the Robotics blast powers applies here as well: it costs Endurance and your robots will still do more damage than you ever could even with this blast. The armor toggle could be useful, especially if used in conjunction with Bodyguard to cut your damage taken even farther. The AoE Immobilize will provide a good backup to your Dark Servant's in terms of locking down enemies preparatory to your robot firing off its burn-patch missiles (Black Scorpion's in particular also looks like it might be useful in PVP), and the hold might stack with your own and your Dark Servant's Petrifying Gazes for easier locking down of the occasional boss. But whether these benefits are worth the expenditure is an open question.

As with City of Heroes's Ancillary Power Pools, the Patron Pools can be looked at in two ways. They could be seen as a chance to round out your character, by giving him access to abilities that he would not normally have. However, they could also divert you from the main focus of your character--trying to be a budget Blaster or Controller does not necessarily make you a better Mastermind. It may be that your particular build could get more benefit out of taking more Primary, Secondary, and Pool powers in the 40s (especially if you choose to spend power slots on Stamina) than taking Patron powers.

Note that you can choose a Patron, and experience that Patron's story arcs, without ever taking a single one of his powers. However, once you choose a Patron, you're stuck with him whether or not you take his powers.


GOOD VS. EVIL: NOT A DIFFICULT CHOICE AT ALL

If you do not have it yet, go and purchase the Good vs. Evil box set or power pack right now. The powers that come with it are so incredibly useful that there is absolutely no reason to be without them.

The Good vs. Evil pack provides two incredibly useful prestige powers to every character you play or create. They may not seem spectacular at first, but once you've used them you'll wonder how you got along without them. (It also provides some other things, but the powers are the important part.)

Jump Pack: This jet pack provides you with 30 seconds of vertical thrust before needing to recharge for a couple of minutes; you will continue moving forward at your usual speed. This is most useful with Super Speed or Super Jump; when used with Flight it provides you with a slight boost to your forward speed for that period. The usefulness of this pack to a Super Speed character cannot be overstated; it provides the speeder with a way of getting over vertical obstacles that does not require taking another travel power and will not run out. Super Speed just got a lot less annoying.

Pocket D Gold Club Card: Once every 25 minutes, with a 15-second interruptible activation time, this temporary power will allow you to teleport from wherever you are into the Tiki Room of the Pocket D (and will also allow you to enter the Tiki Room via the door within Pocket D). Since Pocket D provides access to three different villain zones (as well as four different hero zones, for your hero characters), this can cut down on travel time considerably--especially if you do not belong to a supergroup, or have not earned the teleport-to-supergroup-base Veteran Reward power yet. This also means that a bartender who will sell you Inspirations even while in the middle of a Strike Force is just a 15-second teleport away, and that you no longer have to spend five minutes getting back to civilization from a mission in the middle of nowhere, such as at the far north end of Nerva (or the backside of Boomtown or Crey's Folly, for your heroes). You can, of course, obtain similar benefits with the Base Teleporter vet reward power, or the one-shot Wentworth's/Black Market teleport power, but the vet power has the same 25 minute recharge, and the Wentworth's costs money. Best to have as many options as possible.

The Good vs. Evil pack can be purchased for $30 standard price in retail stores, or you can get just the in-game items for $10 at NCSoft's online store. The retail bundle includes a free month of gameplay, a DVD-ROM installer of the I7 version of the game, and some tzotzkes like a printed map and so forth (for which you are essentially paying $5 after deducting the $15 month and the $10 in-game items). If you can get the retail bundle for $25 or less, it is a better deal than buying the code online; either way, $10 to obtain two incredibly useful powers for all your characters is an immense bargain that you should not pass up.


VETERAN'S DAY

There are two sets of Veteran Rewards with which we should concern ourselves: the 12-month ("Loyal") reward, which provides a choice between permanent versions of the Sands of Mu and Undead-Slaying Axe (actually Ghost-Slaying Axe) temp powers, and the 33-month ("Unswerving") reward, which provides a choice between permanent versions of the Blackwand and Nemesis Staff temp powers.

Unlike ordinary powers, these powers do exactly the same damage (depending on your level) regardless of what AT wields them. (There is an exception for the Nemesis Staff and Blackwand based on origin, but we will get to that in time.) They have no "brawl index." Therefore, I have chosen to present comparative damage in terms of damage points at level 50, thus making it comparable to the stats given in the Prima Guide. Also, for reasons of AT balance, these powers' damage cannot be enhanced by any means--buffs, Build-Up, Inspirations, Fury, etc.

Mu vs Axe

At level 50, Sands of Mu does 4 ticks of 28.85 smashing damage and 4 ticks of 28.85 negative energy damage to each even-level (white minions) target it hits. This is a total of 230.8 damage altogether, provided none of it is resisted. The Ghost-Slaying Axe does 141.35 points of Lethal damage to all targets, plus another 141.35 points of unresistable Special damage to particular targets (the undead and ghosts) for a potential total of 282.7. These targets include Circle of Thorns Spectrals, Tsoo Ancester Spirits, ghost ship passengers, ghostly pirates (Bloody Bay &amp; Port Oakes), Croatoa ghosts, Banished Pantheon zombies, Shivans (who knew jello blobs were undead?), Adamastor, Johnny Sonata's Soul, and possibly more. By comparison, my Fire Tanker's 3-damage-slotted Greater Fire Sword does 86.74 Lethal and 124.91 Fire damage, for a total of 211.65.

It is interesting to note that while Sands of Mu deals more damage in most situations, to ghost/undead targets it often deals considerably less than the Axe. For example, Circle of Thorns Spectral Knights have 30% resistance to Negative Energy, 40% to Smashing, and 50% to Lethal. To a Spectral, Mu would deal a total of 150.02 damage after resistance, while the Axe would deal 212.03. (However, this is counterbalanced by Mu being able to hit more than one enemy at once, if they are lined up properly.)

While these numbers make the powers at first appear impressive, this does not take into account the fact that this damage cannot be enhanced by any means (save for decreasing the enemy's Damage Resistance with Tar Patch). No matter how many reds you pop, the Veteran Reward powers will still do 230.8 or 141.35/282.7 damage per hit. Furthermore, both of these powers have quite a long recharge time (though Sands of Mu has the longer recharge of the two and requires more Endurance to use). In the end, neither of them is exactly going to be a world-shattering power after the first half of the game. The Sands of Mu is better overall, but if your character has an in-character reason to take the Axe (such as an intense hatred for the Banished Pantheon or Circle of Thorns), he can do so without feeling he is missing out on much. (Also, characters from classes that do primarily negative energy damage may want to take the Axe just so they have a non-negative attack--but since you've got all those energy-blasting 'bots, this probably does not apply to you.)

As a Robots/Dark Mastermind, Sands of Mu is probably going to be the more attractive power to you. It does more damage overall, and its accuracy debuff will stack nicely with the rest of the debuffs from your secondary set. However, it will not provide more than a tiny fraction of your overall damage regardless, and would require you to get into melee range of the enemies to do even that. You would not be missing out too severely if you chose the Ghost-Slaying Axe instead for reasons of character backstory--or even didn't bother choosing either one.

Wand vs Staff

Unlike the other Veteran Reward powers, the Blackwand and Nemesis Staff powers receive damage bonuses based on their origin. Blackwand will do more damage in the hands of a Magic, Mutant, or Natural character than in the hands of someone of a different Origin; Nemesis Staff will do more damage in the hands of Technology, Science, and Natural.

I do not presently have the level 50 damage figures for these weapons (as the Training Room is currently unavailable to me for testing), though I believe the damage to be theoretically identical (leaving aside the Origin effect), albeit of different types. We also know the following:<ul type="square">[*]Blackwand has the standard negative energy accuracy debuff secondary effect. Nemesis Staff has knockback for better control. (It does not have Disorient; this was removed from the power when its effectiveness was scaled back early on while it was still just a temporary power.)
[*]Nemesis staff has 25% greater range, but requires more End per use than the Blackwand.[/list]At first glance, the choice appears to be a "no-brainer" for anyone except Natural Origins; you take the one that does more damage for your Origin. Their damage is actually pretty impressive, especially with the Origin damage boost, assuming the power manages to hit. However, given that their damage cannot be increased (and will thus always take a backseat to your Primary and Pool attacks) and they will probably have a fairly long recharge time anyway, it might be best to base your decision more on secondary effects. (Of course, Natural Origin Masterminds don't even have the quandary of which one does more damage, the smug bastards.)

Blackwand does have the benefit of the negative energy Accuracy Debuff effect, which will also stack with your debuffs. However, I do not currently know how potent or long-lasting the (unslottable) debuff is, and it does come with a fairly lengthy recharge compared to your other powers. On the other hand, the Nemesis Staff's knockback can be a very convenient tool in a number of situations, especially when fighting on a ledge or balcony such as those found in office building or cave maps. Knocking an enemy over the side can buy you precious time to recover in mid-battle, and it will synergize nicely with your robots' own knockback abilities. Even if your origin does not confer a damage bonus for it, the knockback alone may make taking the Nemesis Staff more worthwhile.


TWO ACC, OR NOT TWO ACC?

Now it's time for a little lesson in just how buffs and SOs apply to our actual chance to hit things.

The equation used when you fire a power off at a foe is this:

(base to_hit + buffs - debuffs) * (1 + accuracy SOs)

base to_hit = your base percentage chance of hitting a foe of that particular level relative to you. Numbers recently given by _Castle_ are

+0 = 75
+1 = 68
+2 = 61
+3 = 55
+4 = 48
+5 = 41
+6 = 34

buffs = percentage buff from any powers that increase your accuracy, such as Supremacy, Tactics, Fortitude, Build Up, Aim, etc., and also yellow (Insight) Inspirations

debuffs = percentage debuff from any powers that decrease your accuracy, such as dark energy blasts; also any Defense value the enemy might have against your attacks

Let's say you're just starting out at level 1, with your first robot henchman at your beck and call.

Your single Battle Drone's chance to hit a yellow mob (+1 level over you), without slotting any Enhancements yet, is thus

68% base + 10% Supremacy = 78% * 1 = 78%

Slot a single Training Enhancement in it, and it becomes

68% base + 10% Supremacy = 78% * 1.08 = 85%

With two Trainings it becomes 90%, and with three 95%. By the time you have four Training Accuracies in your Battle Drones, you can do Ruthless missions with ease.

If you ever want to calculate your exact accuracy with a given power at any given time, simply plug the numbers into that equation. Since your Enhancement Management screen will now display your total percentage from slotted SOs, this becomes easier than ever: no more adding up enhancements and making allowance for how many levels yellow or green they are.

The explanation has taken a while, but this brings us to one of the more important questions a Mastermind can consider: how many Accuracies to slot into his henchmen? For Battle Drones, Protector Bots, and Assault Bots, I have recommended 3, 2, and 2 SOs respectively without Tactics; 2, 1, and 1 with. But how does this stack up against the enemies you're likely to be facing? Since we know how much of a bonus Supremacy gives (7.5%) and how much fully-slotted Tactics gives (12%) we can now find out. (Note that if it should come out that Tactics gives 10% base instead of 7.5%, you'll be doing 5-10% better depending on how many Acc SOs you have.)

Thanks to BlackestNight, we have these numbers for our henchmen when affected by Supremacy.

Note that these tables apply to robots at their final relative levels (Tier 1s at -2 levels to you, Tier 2s at -1 level to you) and with SO slotting. If you are concerned about calculating how to slot earlier on, you can use the formula to run your own numbers at a given level, or just use the appropriate numbers below for bots at earlier levels (i.e. for Battle Drones from level 1 to 5, use the Tier 3 figures) remembering that each SO is equivalent to two DOs or four Trainings.

The first number is how many levels the enemy cons higher than you; the difference in level to your robot is included in the calculation. The second number is the henchman's base chance To-Hit against that level of foe, taking into account the level difference between you and him, with Supremacy included. The next three numbers are your final percentage accuracy with 1, 2, or 3 Accuracy SOs respectively, assuming no Defense or To-Hit Debuffs on the part of the enemy. Note that any number higher than 95% is effectively 95%, since there is always a 1 in 20 chance to miss.

The numbers in parentheses represent your final accuracy if you also have Tactics with 3 SOs in Accuracy.

(Note that if you are able to use Level 35 or better Invention Enhancements, your numbers will end up somewhat higher.)

Tier 1: (-2)___1 Acc________2 Acc_______3 Acc
+0 – 71______94.43________118_________141
+1 – 65______86.45 (102)___108_________128.7
+2 – 58______77.4 (93)_____96 (116)_____115 (137)
+3 – 51_______68 (84)______85 (105)____101 (123)
+4 – 44_______58.5 (74)_____73 (93)_____87 (109)

Tier 2: (-1)___1 Acc________2 Acc_______3 Acc
+0 – 78_______104________129_________154
+1 – 71______94.43_______118_________141
+2 – 65______86.45 (102)__108_________128.7
+3 – 58______77.4 (93)____96 (116)_____115 (137)
+4 – 51______68 (84)______85 (105)_____101 (123)

Tier 3: (+0)___1 Acc_______2 Acc________3 Acc
+0 – 85_______113________141_________168
+1 – 78_______104________129_________154
+2 – 71______94.43_______118_________141
+3 – 65______86.45 (102)__108_________128.7
+4 – 58______77.4 (93)____96 (116)_____115 (137)

Assuming that the highest-level foes you will be facing most of the time will be +3s, the lowest number of slots needed to cap your accuracy (or at least come within 2% of the cap in the case of using Tactics) will be 3, 2, and 2 without maxed Tactics, or 2, 1, and 1 with.

Note that even the parenthetical numbers assume just one application of Tactics--your own. With two or more Tactics-users in a party, your accuracy becomes even better, and you will be potting +4s with ease.


IF YOU'LL BE MY BODYGUARD, I CAN BE YOUR LONG-LOST PAL

The biggest change in Issue 7 for Masterminds is the new Bodyguard system. This seemingly simple change provides Masterminds with an entirely new way to play--a way that will not necessarily be obvious (especially with the lack of documentation Cryptic habitually provides), and may take some getting used to.

Bodyguard mode divides the incoming damage you take into shares. The total number of shares varies depending on how many henchmen you have near you and in Bodyguard mode at the time. You take 2 shares of damage, and each henchman takes 1. Needless to say, the more henchmen you have, the lower percentage of that damage you will take.

No. Henchmen_____Total Shares_______Damage You Take Damage Each Henchman Takes
1________________3__________________66.7%_________ ___________33.3%
2________________4__________________50%___________ ___________25%
3________________5__________________40%___________ ___________20%
4________________6__________________33.3%_________ ___________16.7%
5________________7__________________28.6%_________ ___________14.3%
6________________8__________________25%___________ ___________12.5%

Note that you only get the benefit of henchmen who are in Bodyguard mode and near you at the time. If only one of your six Henchmen is bodyguarding you, you will take 66.7% of damage; if none are, you take the whole amount.

However, when you have all six henchmen bodyguarding you, you take only 1/4 of the damage from every attack, as long as you are in Bodyguard mode. This means you can tank better than you ever could before--certainly better than a Brute, and possibly even better than a Tank. And if you've taken a pounding and you and all your henchmen have lost health, a well-placed Twilight Grasp can restore you all at once. It's just sick how much more effective Bodyguard can make a Mastermind--especially one with Dark Miasma.

It's not all fun and games, however. For a henchman to act as your Bodyguard, he must be in Defensive Follow mode. This means that he will tag along with you and not attack anything unless it attacks and hits you first. In short, your henchmen can only take a bullet for you if they're not doing much of anything else. However, if you have binds set up that will let you attack without leaving Defensive mode, you can direct them to attack a target manually. They will not be guarding you while they execute your attack order, but they will resume guarding you immediately once the target is defeated. For maximum effectiveness, you may occasionally wish to consider keeping some of your Henchmen (for instance, your Minions) in Bodyguard mode while setting the others to Active.

This makes it more important than ever that you have a good system of binds set up (see the bind section immediately following this one); you can't rely on the macro buttons if you want to get the full benefit out of bodyguard mode. Clicking the green and yellow attack macro button will not only cause your pets to attack something--it will also put them in Active mode, meaning they won't Bodyguard you anymore even after the target is dead. (You can right click and edit the macro button to change "active" to "defensive," just as you can edit the "heel" button to change "passive" to "defensive," but these will only be a partial solution at best.)

I have little doubt that there are many different tricks and techniques that Bodyguard promotes that I have yet to discover; however, one of the first ones that I did discover is that it allows an entirely new method of pulling. Formerly, my preferred pull was to open with Fearsome Stare and hope that I could survive the alpha of the ones whom the fear did not affect. However, Bodyguard makes everything much simpler. Here's my new three-step Bodyguard pull technique:

1) Engage Bodyguard mode on all Henchmen. With the proper binds, that's as easy as punching a couple of numeric keypad buttons.

2) Approach to within Darkest Night range of the enemy spawn and drop it on a good target. Lieutenants are usually a good choice, or bosses.

3) Drop Tar Patch just in front of the enemy spawn. They'll run right into it and be slowed on their way to get you. You may then use Fearsome Stare or other effects if you choose.

Darkest Night will cause the enemies to alpha strike you, but its debuffs will prevent many of them from hitting or doing much damage, and Bodyguard will lessen the effect of those that do. And once someone does hit you, your henchmen will start attacking back. (In the event that the alpha misses entirely, you may need to issue a manual attack order to start things off.)

Bodyguard mode is also a blessing in PVP; as long as you keep your Henchmen with you while you travel, you can't be one-or-two-shotted by Assassin Strikes anymore. You might lose your Minion-class henchies, but you'll still be alive. The reduced recharge time on Minions makes them good Bodyguard cannon-fodder anyway.

Note that Bodyguard mode may become less effective at the higher levels where AoE attacks are more frequent. When you and your henchmen are hit by an AoE attack, they take the attack's full damage in addition to their share of your damage from it. This can result in your entire squad of robots being reduced to spare parts on the floor faster than you can blink. Don't think that Bodyguard mode makes you completely invincible, because it does not.


THESE ARE THE BINDS THAT TIE

So you've rolled up a Robots/Dark Mastermind and are sitting in the Zig, customizing the controls the way you like them and getting used to your robot. And that's good. But there are two things you need to do right away.

1) Name your henchman/men. Do this by right-clicking on the henchman's name in the pet display and selecting rename. You can rename your henchmen as often as you want, but it would be a good idea to settle on some that you will keep for the duration, because they will be an important part of your binds. If you can, name your pets so that the first few letters of each of the names are different, so you'll be able to use shorter binds. Note that if you are sidekicked to level 18 or higher, you will be able to summon all three of your Battle Drones--and after you reach level 12, if you are sidekicked to 24 or higher (or enter Bloody Bay) you can summon both of your Protector Bots, so you can rename them before they are usually accessible to you.

2) Set up binds. You can type up a memo or a letter with two fingers and hunt-and-pack, but to type the Great American Novel you're going to need to touch-type. Likewise, the macro buttons Masterminds get will work for the first few missions, but they lack the finesse that you're going to need to be the best Mastermind you can. A full set of binds will let you quickly give orders to your robots individually and in subgroups by type, sending them in different directions to perform different tasks as the need arises. Furthermore, if you plan to make extensive use of Bodyguard mode, the existing macros simply won't do. I cannot emphasize enough that you should configure a full set of Mastermind binds as quickly as possible.

The best place to start is with Sandolphan's bind guide, Khaiba's Mastermind Numeric Keypad Pet Controls. This guide and its followup thread tells you everything you need to know about configuring your numeric keypad to control your robots. It works so well that I always imagine that if you could see a closeup of your Mastermind's left arm, you'd see a little numeric keypad there, too. I'm not going to retread the same ground Sandolphan has so ably covered in that guide, but I'll summarize so you have a basis for following the rest of this section.

The binds Sandolphan advises make use of the keys in the following ways:

numpad / * - select your first, second, or third Battle Drones, respectively.
numpad + Enter select your first and second Protector Bot, respectively.
numpad 0 selects all robots.
numpad 1 selects all Battle Drones.
numpad 2 selects all Protector Bots.
numpad 3 selects your Assault Bot.
numpad 4 sets all currently-selected bots to Aggressive Mode.
numpad 5 sets all currently-selected bots to Defensive Mode.
numpad 6 sets all currently-selected bots to Passive Mode.
numpad 7 gives all currently-selected bots the Attack My Target command.
numpad 8 gives all currently-selected bots the Follow command.
numpad 9 gives all currently-selected bots the Goto command.
control+decimal dismisses all currently-selected bots.

The bind configuration is a bit complex, and involves bind files that bind keys to load other bind files, but does it ever pay off once you have it set up!

But in my opinion, the binds he gives make a good starting point. I have tweaked Khaiba's binds to be even more useful to me (and more complicated). The changes I have made include
<ul type="square">[*]adding a /tell mycharactername statement to confirm to me what pets I have just selected.[*]adding a shout-out "local All units, engage Battle Mode!" etc. to some of the functions. This is entirely up to people's individual tastes, of course.[*]configuring Alt and Control plus the henchman select keys (/ * - + Enter) to select each henchman and then apply the Equip or Upgrade power respectively. This saves a huge amount of time when it comes to cranking the pets out and slapping upgrades on them at the start of each mission. The only problem with this is when it comes to the Assault Bot, who is selected by hitting 3. I try to leave the Shift, Control, and Alt chords of 1 through 9 on the keypad free because I will use those for setting up party member heals and buffs for my characters that have them--such as my Robots/FF Mastermind. But then I noticed that the Alt and Control chords to zero (select all robots) weren't being used--so Alt and Control plus zero became the upgrades for my Assault Bot. If I were doing it over, I'd probably rebind 3 to select all and zero to select my Assault Bot to begin with so as not to have to split the key like that, but I've gotten into the habit of doing it this way.[/list](If you think even that is complicated, you ain't seen nothing yet. For my Robots/FF Mastermind, I use the decimal key as a toggle to load yet another bind file that turns Ctrl and Alt plus henchman-select key into bubble buffs. But that's outside the scope of this guide.)

Rather than make this guide even longer by pasting everything into place, I've zipped up the set of binds I use for my Robotics/Dark Miasma Mastermind and placed them here, to serve as an example. If you want to adopt these binds for yourself, you'll need to go through and change the names of all the henchmen, the target of the various /tells, and the file directory of each of the /bindloadfile commands.

There's another set of binds I made that aren't in those files. I happened to realize that just as there are three chord keys--Shift, Alt, and Control--there are three robot summoning powers. So I made the following binds...

/bind shift+mbutton "pow_exec_name Battle Drone"
/bind control+mbutton "pow_exec_name Protector Bots"
/bind alt+mbutton "pow_exec_name Assault Bot"

With these binds, summoning my bots is as simple as holding shift and clicking the middle button, then clicking the left button to position them where I want them--then repeating the procedure with the next chord. (I also use shift+lbutton to cast Tar Patch, ctrl+lbutton to summon the Dark Servant, and alt+lbutton for the Group Flight goto command.)

The above binds, or something like them, will take a lot of the frustration and a lot of the hunt and click nature of summoning and upgrading out of your inside-mission setup. You may not fully appreciate how simple this makes things until it comes time to summon three sets of robots and buff them twice.


FILLING A ROLE

Old City of Heroes hands just getting into CoV may be a little confused about what role the Mastermind is supposed to fill. The others have fairly obvious CoH counterparts, but the Mastermind is the odd man out. It seems kind of like the illegitimate progeny of a Controller and a Tanker, having the Controller's Defender secondaries and pets, but no mez powers in the primary and and the pets are like mini-Tankers themselves--even more so than the traditional Controller tank-pets, Illusion Army. And that's not even taking the new Bodyguard mode into account. But there's one thing that Controllers and Tankers have in common, and that makes them somewhat interchangeable in a CoH team: crowd control.

Statesman has said that Masterminds are intended to fill the "meat-shield" role that Tankers occupy in City of Heroes. However, they do it in a different way. Where a Tanker throws himself into the fray, counting on his toughness and superior hit points to see him through, the Mastermind throws his henchmen into the fray instead (now more than ever, thanks to Bodyguard mode). If they fall, he can simply resummon them. While they take enough time and Endurance to set up that they should perhaps not be treated as entirely disposable, it is nonetheless true that a robot doesn't run up debt if it is defeated but a living teammate does.

But like the Corruptor, the Mastermind is also half-Defender. And since City of Villains doesn't have any "true" Defenders, (or, for that matter, any "true" Tankers either), this can sometimes lead to confusion over what role to play within a group. Do you tank and fight, or do you heal and defend? Mastermind secondaries that involve applied buffs, like Force Field's bubbles or Poison's Alkaloid heal, have to worry about this the most, since they're always being pulled both ways: should they keep their henchmen protected and alive, since their henchmen represent their only fighting and defending strength--or keep their teammates protected and alive, since their henchmen don't get debt and their teammates do? Force Field Masterminds have the hardest time of this, with their own pets to bubble, plus up to 7 teammates, and optionally their teammates' pets--by the time they get done bubbling everything, it's almost time to start all over from the beginning again.

Happily, as a Dark Miasma Mastermind, you can largely bypass the whole dilemma. Your powers will be used in exactly the same ways whether you're teamed or soloing. You don't have to worry about whether to cast that buff on your friends or your pets, because the only real buff you have is a PBAoE aura that's always active as long as you have it toggled on. Everything else is just debuffing the enemy--except for your heal.

Twilight Grasp is a very powerful heal--the most powerful available to any Mastermind. But it also has a very short heal radius, so you're going to need to stick to your robots like glue if you want it to be effective on them--and your teammates are going to need to stick to you. Going running after a dying teammate in order to Twilight Grasp them is a recipe for trouble--especially with Twilight Grasp's fairly-long-for-a-heal casting animation. By the time it goes off, he may already be dead anyway. Remind your teammates that if they're low on HP they need to get close to you, and be sure to cast your heal fairly often--that's all you can really do.


TIPS AND TRICKS

There are many useful techniques you can develop with your Robotics/Dark Miasma Mastermind. Many of these, you will have to learn for yourself--I have no doubt that there are many of them that even I haven't learned about yet. But here is a useful place you can start.

Zen and the Art of the Corner-Pull

Pulling has historically been considered one of the more dangerous occupations on a team, unless you're a Tanker or maybe a Scrapper: if you make a mistake, then suddenly the alpha-strike aggro lands on your head. This is why it's good to be a Mastermind: you've got your own little robot army who will happily throw their lives away for you--and who don't get debt if something goes wrong.

Here's what you do.

1) Find a convenient corner. Warehouses and office buildings are good for this, futuristic laboratories so-so, caves pretty lousy, but you take what you can get. Make sure the corner is between you and the group of mobs you're trying to pull from.

2) Position all your bots on your side of the corner, and put them on Passive Mode. It's important that they be in Passive Mode, otherwise they'll all rush out to assist the puller when he takes fire.

3) Select one of your bots with the numpad key select bind. Early on, you'll probably want to use a Battle Drone, as they're fairly disposable--but when facing tougher mobs, you may want to use a Protector Bot or even your Assault Bot instead so they'll last longer. Once your bot is selected, step around the corner for just long enough to put a targeting bracket on one of those distant enemies. Then step back around the corner, even if you have Shadow Fall on, and issue the "Attack My Target" command.

4) Call it back. As soon as the bot fires its first shot, use either the "Follow" or the "Goto" command to bring it running back around the corner to safety. (Or, if you want to be fancy, you can use Recall Friend on it--if you're going to do this, you should have the power activated and the target marker on the ground when you send the bot in.) The aggroed foes should follow it right out to you. Be sure to set your pets back to Defensive or Active mode once the enemies approach.

5) Cast Tar Patch on the ground just behind the corner. If any of your teammates have Caltrops, Glue Arrow, Oil Slick Arrow, etc. have them put those here as well. You can actually do this at any time while setting up, but I like to wait until just before they run around the corner so it lasts longest. They'll run into the Tar Patch, slow down, bunch up, and be perfectly positioned for your team to whale on them.

You can also use this technique without a corner--just give one or all of your bots the attack command from far away, and once they've gotten close enough to fire off their lasers, pull them back to you. Using a corner is much safer, though.

Note on Single-Pulling: It's a common misconception that snipe is the best power for pulling. Actually, it's one of the worst powers you can use if you want just a single foe to come quietly. The rule of thumb is the lower the damage, the smaller the aggro radius--so if you want to try to single-pull with a bot, use a Battle Drone. Preferably one that hasn't been Equipped, definitely one that hasn't been upgraded--if your Drone decides to fire off his Full Auto Laser, you're going to get the whole spawn no matter what.

In actuality, a much better tool for single-pulling is Twilight Grasp, since it does no damage at all. This does entail putting yourself at risk to take the alpha rather than one of your bots, but Bodyguard mode does mitigate that risk somewhat.

Never Let Them See You...At All

As a Dark Miasma Mastermind, Shadow Fall is one of your best tools--not just for damage resistance, but for conferring stealth as well. Thus, you are well-suited for stealth-completing missions by sneaking to the end, then defeating the enemies or grabbing the glowing objects. The safest way of doing this for a Mastermind is not to summon until you reach the end of the mission; trying to sneak through with henchmen in tow, even on passive, is a recipe for trouble.

Completing missions, and thus arcs, rapidly is one of the fastest ways I've found to level a character up quickly. (For more information on this sort of thing, see R_M's I9/I10 XP Gain/Debt Loss Guide; the fellow who wrote it seems to be reasonably clever.) Although you do not get as much total XP per mission by leaving so many Minions undefeated, by completing missions and arcs faster, the big bonuses come closer together. Thus, your average XP per minute is higher and you level faster. As a fringe benefit, getting less XP per individual mission means you are less likely to outlevel your contacts before you finish all their missions.

Of course, speed-completing missions also means that later in the game you're likely to run out of contacts a level or two before the next ones open up. However, you have newspaper missions and PVP zone missions to fill in the gap--and any paper mission that doesn't involve kidnapping someone can be speed-completed too. You should never be reduced to street-hunting in order to level up.

(Note that since I7 went live, stealth and phase powers will suppress for 10 seconds (if a toggle) or cancel out entirely (if a buff) when clicking a glowing item. This means that, when stealthing missions, you may have to take out enemies in the vicinity of the item before clicking it. However, many of these items are placed so that it is possible to retrieve them without entering the enemies' line of sight.)

[Continued in next post]

DARK MIASMA

Power: Twilight Grasp
Description: You channel Negative Energy from the Netherworld through yourself to a targeted foe. Twilight Grasp drains the power from that target and slowly transfers it to you and all neary allies. The targeted foe's Accuracy and damage are reduced, while you and your nearby allies are healed.
Effects: Ranged Foe -Acc -Dam; Team Heal
Unslotted: 20-second 3.75% To-Hit Debuff; 20-second 7.5% Damage debuff; 50% regen decrease vs critters; 90% regen decrease vs players; heals value equal to 24.2% of caster's HP.
3-slotted: (x1.55) 5.8% To-Hit Debuff; (x1.95) 47.19% heal
Activation Time: 2.37
Endurance: 7.75
Recharge Time: 8
Range: 80
Heal Radius: 10
Enhancements: Endurance Reduction,Recharge Reduction,Range,To Hit DeBuff,Healing,Accuracy
Available: Level 1

Viewpoint: Due to the way the power selection system is set up, you are forced to take this power starting out. Luckily, it's not at all a bad power to be forced to take.

Twilight Grasp is one of the greatest set-defining powers of the Dark Miasma Mastermind. It's the power that makes every other Mastermind secondary set turn green with envy. Of all the other available sets, only Poison and Traps get anything that could even remotely be considered a healing power--but Poison's Alkaloid is a fairly weak single-target heal, and Traps's Triage Beacon is really just a buff to regeneration and not an actual "heal" at all. Only Dark Miasma gets a strong aura heal that can bring every henchman at once (and any nearby teammates as well) back from the brink of forced obsolescence. And son of a gun, you get this amazing power at level one!

And not only that. This power also decreases the accuracy, damage, and regeneration rate of whatever target it is cast upon--assuming it hits. Many Dark Defenders (and Corruptors) find it worthwhile to use it as a little extra incentive-to-miss against whomever they've dropped their Darkest Night--especially now that ED has lessened DN's overall effectiveness and I7 has cut the effectiveness of Debuff Enhancements. The -regen aspect is particularly helpful against archvillains and monsters--especially considering the regeneration buff that was granted to them in Issue 7. Also, as a zero-damage attack power, it is one of the more useful powers in your arsenal for single-target pulling.

A couple of caveats should be noted, however: First of all, the heal relies on being able to hit a target in combat, so it will need to be slotted for Accuracy and will be pretty useless if there isn't a hittable enemy around on whom to cast it. Also, bear in mind that you're not going to have the advantage of that 10% Supremacy Accuracy bonus that your bots have, so you will need to slot more Accs than in your bots.

Secondly, the heal-effect radius on Twilight Grasp is substantially smaller than the Defender's version; in fact, it's downright tiny. The Defender version would essentially heal anyone close enough to be protected by Shadow Fall, but you're going to need henchmen and teammates to be practically rubbing shoulders with you to get a heal off on them.

Apart from the 3 Heal SOs that should go without saying, by the time you're using SOs, you should be slotting at least 1 Accuracy and perhaps 2, depending on whether or not you have Tactics and what color conn of enemies are your usual targets. Remember that if it doesn't hit, it doesn't heal, and missing a heal could sometimes be the difference between life and team-wipe.

What to do with the 1-2 slots left over? A Recharge Reduction could shave a couple of seconds off of the cycling time; a To-Hit Debuff would help lower the accuracy of whatever you're fighting; an Endurance Reduction will lessen the wear and tear of spamming heals repeatedly--if you don't have Stamina, this is practically a must. Or you could save the slot and use it on other things.

Suggested Slotting:
1-11 (TOs): Acc x4/Heal x2
12-23 (DOs): Acc x2-4/Heal x2-4/(Optional: EndRed x1-2)
24+ (SOs): Acc x1-2/Heal x3/(Optional: Rech x1-2, HitDeb x1-2, EndRed x1)


Power: Tar Patch
Description: This power drops a large patch of viscous Negative Energy which dramatically slows down enemies that run through it and reduces their damage resistance. Affected targets stuck in the Tar Patch cannot jump or fly.
Effects: Ranged (Location AoE) Debuff -- 90% run speed decrease, anti-jumping/flight, 22.5% decrease to enemy damage resistance (irresistable in PVP) while in area of effect
Activation Time: 3
Endurance: 7.75
Duration: 45
Recharge Time: 90
Range: 120
Enhancements: Endurance Reduction,Recharge Reduction,Range,Slow
Available: Level 2

Viewpoint: Another set-defining power, and this one is available to you the moment you step out of that helicopter onto Mercy Island.

Back before I4, Tar Patch wasn't considered all that great: sure, it slowed the enemies down, but the power could be better spent on something that actually helped you kill faster. But then, lo and behold, Tar Patch suddenly gained anti-flight properties and a fairly significant damage resistance debuff as well. And now this power is going to be one of your bestest friends when it comes to taking down tough foes--especially when it comes to keeping your enemies too far away to pound on your fragile robots while they get slowly laser-fried.

Tar Patch has many good uses to a Mastermind; I like to use it in corner or doorway pulling to slow the enemies down just as they come into range of the waiting guns. The fact that it makes them also take more damage from my bots' weapons is not exactly undesirable, either. It's also good to drop to slow pursuit if you're fleeing for your life with just a sliver of health, if you can spare a couple of seconds to cast it.

Personally, I've never seen too much point to slotting Tar Patch for slow. Sure, it would keep the enemies in the patch a little longer, but they've almost always stayed in there long enough for me to dispose of them as it is, and there are always other powers that could use the slots. I would suggest not to put more than three slots in Tar Patch from the outset unless you do intend to add a Slow SO or two down the road.

Suggested Slotting:
2-11 (TOs): Rech x3-6
12-23 (DOs): Rech x3-6
24+ (SOs): Rech x3/(Optional: Slow x3)


Power: Darkest Night
Description: While this is active, you channel Negative Energy onto a targeted foe. Darkest Night decreases the damage potential and Accuracy of the target, and all foes nearby, as long as you keep the power active.
Effects: Toggle: Ranged (Targeted AoE)
Unslotted: 22.5% decrease to enemy damage, 11.25% decrease to enemy Accuracy within radius of target while maintained
3-Slotted: (x1.55) 17.44% Accuracy debuff
Activation Time: 3
Endurance: 1.25/s
Recharge Time: 10
Range: 70
Enhancements: Endurance Reduction,Recharge Reduction,Range,To Hit DeBuff
Available: Level 4

Viewpoint: Golly, Dark Miasma sure does have a lot of set-defining powers, doesn't it? Darkest Night has long been both blessing and curse to Dark Miasma users everywhere. The blessing is that it provides a substantial accuracy and damage debuff, even capped by ED. Although the pre-I7 Debuff schedule change reduced its effectiveness even further, the change to the way enemy accuracy is calculated in I7 brought its effectiveness back up again, so it all balances out. The curse is that one's teammates can make it hard to use.

Darkest Night works by placing a power on an "anchor"--a single foe who will then radiate the debuffing effect to all the other foes around him. Ideally, the rest of the team should then not defeat that anchor until all the others are down. The problem is that it's often very hard to tell exactly who the anchor is. The only visible sign that a foe is Darkest Night's anchor is a blob of darkness around his ankles--but if the group of foes is standing in the middle of a Tar Patch, they all have blobs of darkness around their ankles. And even if they don't, the blob can be hard to make out, especially in darker maps.

One solution to this is to create a power casting bind advising the rest of your team what target you've selected: for instance

/bind u "local Leave the $target I'm targeting alone--he's my Darkest Night anchor!$$pow_exec_name Darkest Night"

The problem with this is, there may be more than one of that particular type of mob in front of you, and your teammates are not likely to take the time to click onto you to see which one your targetting bracket is around. Still, it is better than nothing.

After a good deal of experience playing a Dark Defender and a Dark Mastermind, I have come to the conclusion that there really isn't any good way to prevent your teammates from taking out your anchor along with the rest. From time to time, you may luck into a supportive and understanding team who take care to determine which mob your anchor is and leave it alone--but on the whole this will be rare. The best way to get the most out of Darkest Night is to be careful when picking your anchors.

The first rule of thumb in picking an anchor is to pick Lieutenants--minions fall too quickly to AoEs, and Bosses are usually the first enemy in a spawn that the rest of your team will concentrate on taking out. Lieutenants will usually stay around at least long enough for the boss to be taken out. The only exception to this is if the Lieutenants have some particularly annoying special ability, such as being able to rez other enemies, in which case they'll often be taken out before the bosses.

The second rule of thumb is to try to pick an anchor far away from your Brutes and other melee damagers, so they'll be effective for at least as long as it takes for the meleers to work their way to him.

Even so, most of your benefit from Darkest Night will come early in the game. When you get into the late 20s and 30s, everyone has so many and so well-slotted attack powers that all the anchor-choosing care in the world won't help them last much longer than a few seconds, because everybody goes through the enemies so darned quickly. By level 30 or so, Darkest Night will see the most use on Elite Bosses, Heroes/Archvillains, and Monsters.

On the whole, one of the best parts of being a Dark Mastermind is that you're blessed with a "team" who will always listen to you when you tell them not to attack a particular target. All you need to do is direct them to attack some other target than your anchor.

When you have SOs, you may want to slot an additional Endurance Reduction or two into this power--especially if you run a lot of other toggles (such as Leadership) continuously, and especially especially if you didn't take Stamina. Conversely, you may want to just cap debuffs and leave it at that, if you don't think you're going to be using it all that often. Regardless, it would be a good idea not to place more slots into it during the Training and DO phases than you'll need once you've got SOs, to keep from having to respec.

Suggested Slotting:
4-11 (TOs): HitDeb x3-5
12-23 (DOs): HitDeb x3-5
24+ (SOs): HitDeb x3/(Optional: EndRed x1-2)


Power: Howling Twilight
Description: Activating this power channels the power of the Netherworld to weaken your foes, in an attempt to revive all nearby fallen allies. You must stand near your defeated allies to revive them, then select a foe. The selected foe and all nearby foes will be Slowed, Disoriented, and drained of some life. Revived allies suffer no ill effects.
Effects: Ranged (AoE); 50% decrease to Movement Speed for 30 seconds; 50% decrease to Attack Speed for 30 seconds; 7. 64 Negative Energy damage; 15- second Disorient of 2 strength versus critters only; 10- second Disorient of 3 strength versus players only (this will suppress for 15 seconds on affected targets); 50% decrease in regeneration rate versus critters only; 90% decrease in regeneration rate versus players only; 15-second Fear of strength 3 versus critters only; resurrects allies within the area of effect with full Health and Endurance.
Activation Time: 3.17
Endurance: 26
Duration: 30
Recharge Time: 180
Range: 80
Brawl Index: Negative Energy(0.8333)
Enhancements: Endurance Reduction,Recharge Reduction,Range,Healing,Endurance Recovery,Disorient Duration,Slow,Damage
Available: Level 10

Viewpoint: Howling Twilight is arguably the best rez in the game. It's the only mass simultaneous rez, and thus the only rez that can bring an entire team back from a wipeout all at once. (Recall Friend is particularly useful with Howling Twilight, for arranging fallen teammates in a handy little stack so they all get rezzed at once.) Regardless of what the power description might say, it does restore all Health and Endurance to those it rezzes. It requires an enemy target but it hits automatically, and it even has an AoE slow, -regen, and low-magnitude Disorient effect on those enemies. As the icing on the cake, it also has a brief period of double-dip-debt protection, so resurrectees won't be any worse off if they accept it only to die again a moment later. This rez power will make you the Special Friend of anyone who wants to run a Strike Force. (Oh, and sorry, guys: it won't work on henchmen. You'll just have to resummon.)

The question is, when to take it? There are so many good powers available in the 1-10 range that you simply may not be able to fit it in the moment it opens up. In the end, it's up to you; my own build waited until the 20s to take it, simply because that is the time where enemies really start getting tougher and it will be needed a great deal more. Until that time, I judged it better to concentrate on keeping my teammates alive than on raising them once they'd fallen.

Howling Twilight is more than just a rez, of course; it can be used as a slow/-regen/disorient attack even if nobody is dead (although some find that 1/3 of their Endurance is a bit too much to pay for such an attack). However, this generally works better for Dark Defenders and Corruptors with the Dark Blast set because they have the Dark Pit disorient power that can stack with it for more disorientation magnitude. Your bots will have the Photon Grenades and Swarm Missiles, of course, and you can take Photon Grenade yourself, but these all have relatively short disorient times and are mostly not under your control, so you can't rely on them coming at the same time and being able to stack.

With that in mind, there's really not much point in slotting it beyond the base. You could put a Recharge Rate or two in there, but you're not going to get much good out of it as an attack and if you're dying frequently enough to need it up more often than it already is, your team's doing something wrong.

Suggested Slotting: Rech x1-3 and/or Disor x1-3


Power: Shadow Fall
Description: Envelops you and your nearby teammates in a shroud of darkness. Shadow Fall does not grant Invisibility, but it does make you harder to detect. Even if you are discovered, Shadow Fall grants a bonus to Defense while reducing Energy, Negative Energy, and Psionic Damage. Shadow Fall reduces your movement speed, but not your allies'.
Effects: Toggle: PBAoE
Team Stealth (35' vs critters, 389' vs players), +DEF, +Res(Energy, Negative, Psionics)
Activation Time: 2.03
Endurance: 0.3 per activation (.6/sec?)
Recharge Time: 15
Defense: 3.75%
3-Slotted Defense: (x1.55) 5.81%
Resistance: 129% status resist vs Fear; 15% vs Energy, Negative Energy, Psionic damage
3-Slotted Resistance: (x1.55) 23.25% vs Energy, Negative Energy, Psionic damage
Enhancements: Endurance Reduction,Recharge Reduction,Defense Buff,Damage Resistance
Available: Level 16

Viewpoint: Another excellent power for the well-dressed Mastermind--stealth not just for you, but for all your henchmen and teammates as well, provided they stay close to you. This has a few beneficial uses, such as moving your henchmen around a PVE or PVP zone in relative safety, getting in good close cone range of a spawn of mobs before attacking, or stealthing through a mission to the last room before summoning your bots and going to town. The fact that it provides decent damage resistance versus energy, negative energy, and psionic damage to you and those around you is just the icing on the cake (though the resistance to psionic damage does stack nicely with your robots' inherent psionic resistance, making you one of the few people who are actually glad to see Carnival of Shadows).

Don't expect Shadow Fall to make you totally safe in PVP zones. As invisibility powers go, it's the lowest of the lot; it doesn't take much, just a yellow or two, to see through it. It will help, but you're nowhere near the Stalker's ability to hang out without fear of getting ganked. It does really shine in PVE, though--if you can keep a leash on your robots (i.e. Defensive or Passive mode) until you get really close, your enemies will never see you coming. It's easy to get used to this...perhaps too easy, as I frequently find myself scooting up right next to enemies on non-stealthy characters and being surprised when they put the smack down on me. But bear in mind even so that Stealth does not make you completely invisible to the enemy--it just narrows his detection range down. If you get right next to him for longer than a split second as you pass by, he will see you.

Also, Shadow Fall really does slurp down the End. It's not so bad by itself, but when you're running toggle and travel powers you really start to notice. End Reductions are the order of the day if you don't take Stamina.

You will notice that Shadow Fall also provides a small Defense bonus. This is nice, and it will stack with your bots' bubbles, but at 3.75% it's not really worth slotting for. Go with Damage Resistance all the way. (Ironically, on my own build I never had the slots to spare to slot for Defense or Damage Resistance; I have 3 End Reductions in the power and that's it. The stealth has been much more important to my playstyle than the resistance. I hope to change that once I get into the 40s.)

Note: The old number for Shadow Fall's Defense, from the previous edition of this guide, is 2.8% unslotted. It is possible that the statistical tests run to obtain this figure--or else the patch notes, if it was obtained from these--were wrong. It is also possible that the figures in the current guide are wrong, or at least overstated. The numbers in the guide do assume Level 50 characters, and Defense may increase with additional levels. Either way, the difference between 2.8% and 3.75% is not a terribly large one.

Suggested Slotting:
16-23 (DOs): EndReduc x3-6
24+ (SOs): DmgRes x3/EndRed x1-3


Power: Fearsome Stare
Description: This power instills tremendous Fear within a cone area in front of you, causing all affected targets to tremble in Terror uncontrollably.
Effects: Foe Fear, -ACC
17.88-second Fear of strength 3 versus critters only;
20% chance of 11.92-second Fear of strength 1 versus critters only;
17.88-second Fear of strength 3 versus players only ( this will suppress for 15 seconds on affected targets);
Debuff: 11.25% decrease in To Hit chance to enemies for 20 seconds.
3-Slotted Debuff: (x1.55) 16.88% decrease in To Hit chance to enemies for 20 seconds.
Activation Time: 2.03
Endurance: 8.5
Duration: 17.88 sec (fear); 20 sec. (debuff)
Recharge Time: 40
Range: 70 (Cone)
Enhancements: Endurance Reduction,Recharge Reduction,Cone Range Increase,To Hit DeBuff,Fear Duration,Accuracy
Available: Level 20

Fearsome Stare is still very useful to Masterminds, especially in the early 20s; you may wish to consider taking it as soon after it becomes available as possible. However, given that Bodyguard mode has made its primary I6 use--alpha-strike breaking--largely obsolete, you may wish to put it off for later, especially if you are taking Stamina early and want to take only the most vital powers first. Fearsome Stare is a cone that causes every foe it hits to become afraid and unable to attack unless attacked first, and to have a slight debuff to their Accuracy when they do attack. If they are attacked, they will retaliate once, then go back to cowering.

The perfect use should immediately suggest itself: cast fear on a large crowd of foes, then direct your robots to attack only one of them at a time (starting with any foes the fear attack missed). Using Fear precludes feared enemies from attacking, so it makes a great alpha-strike defuser. For as long as your robots have only single-target attacks, this works wonderfully as an aid to soloing. However, when your Assault Bot shows up, with its cone-effect flamethrower, this slightly loses its effectiveness--and at level 32, when everyone gets AoE attacks, Fearsome Stare's main use is relegated to alpha-strike absorber and To-Hit Debuff. (Although everyone--myself included--tends to forget about the debuff effect of Fearsome Stare in preference to its more obvious Fear effect, even the unslotted 11.25% debuff is nothing to sneeze at, especially if you stack it with Darkest Night's debuff and Shadow Fall's Defense.)

A potential non-combat use for Fearsome Stare is as a sort of "ghetto stealth" power, or stealth-enhancer. If there is a group of foes blocking your passage and you can't just stealth past them because they're too close together, cast Fearsome Stare and sidle past them while they're unable to attack you. Problem solved.

As with other needs-to-hit powers from the secondary, remember your Supremacy bonus will not be in effect. Note also that, as with most group-mez powers, this power has a -20% inherent To-Hit penalty, which can only partly be overcome by Tactics, so you will need to slot well for Accuracy and/or pop a yellow or two before firing it off.

Suggested Slotting:
20-23 (DOs): Acc x2/Fear x3
24+ (SOs): Acc x1-2/Fear x3/Rech x1-2


Power: Petrifying Gaze
Description: Petrifies a single targeted foe with a terrifying gaze. The victim is Held and defenseless.
Effects: Ranged Hold
Activation Time: 1.67
Endurance: 7.8
Hold Strength: 3
Duration: 9.53 sec vs critters; 7.15 sec vs players
Recharge Time: 16
Range: 70
Enhancements: Endurance Reduction,Recharge Reduction,Range,Hold Duration,Accuracy
Available: Level 28

Viewpoint: Petrifying Gaze, a single-target hold that holds anything up to a Lt. in one application, bosses in two, is another useful power to the solo Mastermind. It won't stack until it's slotted up, but the value in it is not necessarily in in long-duration holding. The value is that it lets you neutralize the most annoying foes in a spawn--Lieutenants or Minions with particularly annoying attacks--for long enough to take them out. Your Dark Servant will also have this hold, and you will find you can sometimes stack yours on its to lock down bosses quickly. Again, remember Supremacy does not affect this power.

Suggested Slotting: Acc x1-2/Hold x3/Rech x1-2


Power: Black Hole
Description: This power opens up a Black Hole to the Netherworld that temporarily pulls in all foes within its grasp. The victims become phase shifted and are completely intangible. They are hard to see, and cannot affect or be affected by those in normal space.
Effects: Ranged (Targeted AoE) Foe Intangible/Immobilize
Activation Time: 1.03
Endurance: 13
Duration: 30 vs critters; 10 vs players
Recharge Time: 120
Range: 50
Enhancements: Endurance Reduction,Recharge Reduction,Range,Intangibility,Accuracy
Available: Level 35

Viewpoint: I have never actually used Black Hole, only seen it used and read discussions of it, so take this for what it is worth.

Black Hole is the power from the Dark Miasma set most often described as "situational." Since practically every power is more useful in some situations than others, "situational" in this context is usually a polite way of saying "There are some people who like it, but I think they're doodieheads." There are certain situations where Black Hole might be useful--but often other powers such as Fearsome Stare could stand in almost as well, and Black Hole might be seen to cause more problems than it solves.

The idea is that Black Hole will cause your target and some of the surrounding enemies to become involuntarily phase shifted--they can neither hurt nor be hurt by you. In theory, this can be handy for splitting a large spawn into two "subspawns" that can be defeated in detail, and as a panic button for when you find you've bitten off a few more mobs than you can chew (and in fact I have been saved a time or two in that very circumstance by a teammate who had taken it). In practice, there is a very large problem with the implementation that can lead to teammate friction.

Much as with the Darkest Night anchor, it can be hard to tell when one or more mobs have been Black Holed into intangibility--especially in some of the darker indoor maps. To make matters worse, the game will not prevent someone from attacking someone who is phase shifted, even if the attack will have no effect. So if someone Black Holes in the middle of a battle, his teammates may select what they think is a perfectly good target and expend the Endurance and recharge time to fire off an attack--only to receive a big, insulting "UNAFFECTED" after it goes off. This does not tend to lead to group harmony and feelings of joyous good fellowship toward the Black Holer. It might be best to concentrate on some of the other mez powers and leave this one aside.

Some clever people have suggested a few other potential uses for Black Hole, such as putting a mob or two "on ice" for when your Howling Twilight is almost but not quite up and you want to be sure to be able to rez after the battle is mostly done. Whether these other uses are enough to make taking the power worthwhile is something you will have to decide for yourself. I left it out of my own build.

Suggested Slotting: Acc x1-2/Intang x3/Rech x1-2


Power: Dark Servant
Description: Summons a Dark Servant to your aid. The Dark Servant possesses an assortment of dark powers to weaken your foes. The summoned entity is not a willing servant, and it is only your power that binds it in this realm. The Dark Servant can be buffed and healed.
Effects: Summon Dark Servant: Ranged Debuff Special
Activation Time: 3.17
Endurance: 26
Duration: 240
Recharge Time: 480
Range: 60
Enhancements: Endurance Reduction,Recharge Reduction,Taunt Duration,Hold Duration,Immobilize Duration,To Hit DeBuff,Healing,Accuracy
Available: Level 38

Viewpoint: The Dark Servant, aka "Dark Fluffy," is the penultimate power of the Dark Miasma set. It may not be as powerful as the Dark Defender's version even now, let alone in days of old, but it still makes a very handy addition to the Robots/Dark Mastermind's bag of tricks. Once you've gotten it fully slotted, you'll wonder how you ever got along without it.

The Dark Servant is like a miniature Dark Defender that you keep in your pocket. It casts Tenebrous Tentacles to immobilize, has a debuff aura and its own version of Darkest Night (that may be even stronger than your version) that it applies randomly, fires off Petrifying Gaze, and casts Twilight Grasp. Interestingly enough, since the Dark Servant's attacks and debuffs are primarily cast at range, this makes it even more compatible with Robotics than with the primary that would appear to be the best thematic fit, Necromancy. Although the Servant is not under your direct control, it will often choose to stand near your henchmen anyway, because they attack from about the same distance. This is handy when the Servant's attack cycle pops up the Twilight Grasp heal--suddenly your robots stay healthier than ever before, even when you can't intervene. The Dark Servant is not a solid entity, so you can stand right up inside it if you want to.

The gripe that many Masterminds have with the Dark Servant is that they have to blow half of its slots on Recharge Rates if they want to have it around nearly all the time, whereas Dark Defenders and Corruptors can slot it however they want because they can already recast it as soon as it goes away. This does seem a bit unfair, but on the other hand, we don't have to rely on our Dark Servant nearly as much as they do. Dark Servant is the mainstay of the Dark Defender and Corruptor's Miasma set, whereas for us it's merely a handy adjunct to the main event.

When you first get the Dark Servant at level 38, you will want to slot it with an Accuracy and bring it out only when you especially need the extra healing power--large spawns, boss fights, and so on. At 39, you should put all three of the slots you get into Recharge Rates, so you can have the Dark Servant around perpetually (with only about a 10- to 15- second gap due to ED). Then the last two slots come at 40.

The question of what to put into those slots is an interesting one. Every primary will probably have a different answer, depending on that primary's effective strengths and weaknesses. If you don't have Tactics, of course, you might want to stick another Accuracy in, to help with hitting higher-level foes--though since the Dark Servant is your own effective level, just as your Assault Bot is, it will probably be all right without.

Some people might favor slotting for Heal, so the Fluffy heals more on a Twilight Grasp. But the thing is, you don't really need more healing power than it already has. You've already got your own slotted Twilight Grasp, and your Prot-bots' Repair, and they've been enough to see you through all the way up to now. And the Dark Servant heals for over 200 points in an AoE without any healing slots in it at all--which is already about 33% more than your own Twilight Grasp would do unslotted. Fluffy makes a very good backup healer without needing slotting, and will allow you to conserve End by spamming TG less often.

Hold Duration and To-Hit Debuff are also less than necessary for a Robots Mastermind. Most of the time your bots are going to take your foes down before the Servant's default hold has expired anyway, and over that length of time the debuff isn't likely to make much difference either. There's something a lot more useful you can do with those slots.

What I favor for Robots/Dark is slotting with Immobilize Duration Enhancements. The reason for this is simple. You can't control when your Dark Servant fires off its Tenebrous Tentacles, or when your Assault Bot fires off its Incendiary Missiles. By increasing the duration of the Immobilization effect, you make it more likely that they will coincide--i.e., that those tentacles will still be in effect over a good portion of the spawn in front of you at the same time as your Assault Bot lets loose with those multiple burn patches, so the enemies can't run out of the flames. That's a synergy you really want to promote.

And yes, you can choose to leave off one or more of the Recharge Reductions and slot with something else instead, trading faster recharge for more effective powers while you have it out. But all in all, why would you really want to? The Dark Servant is good enough with 3 in Recharge, and it seems to me that it's better to have "good enough" perpetually than to have to wait longer for "better."

Note: The Prima Guide claims the recharge time for Dark Servant is 240 seconds. It is lying through its teeth.

Suggested Slotting: 1x Acc/3x Rech/2x Immob


POOL POWERS

Assuming that you've skipped the powers I indicated above were skippable--Pulse Rifle Blast &amp; Burst, Photon Grenade, Repair, and Black Hole--you will have 7 powers left over, prior to 40, for Pool Powers and such. Some of the pools are more appealing to Robots/Dark Masterminds than others.

Several of the pools, such as Flight, Super Speed, Fitness, and so on contain attacks, which I don't go over in detail either here or in the Travel Powers section that follows. The reason for this is that, as I explained under the Pulse Rifle Blast section above, extra attacks are the last thing that a Mastermind needs.


Concealment: Redundant and/or unnecessary. You already have a group stealth power; you have very little need for single-person stealth, invisibility, or grant invisibility. Phase Shift might be useful as an emergency "oh-censored" button, except that Black Hole would be an almost-as-useful panic button and would not require taking two generally useless powers to get.


Fighting: Unncessary. This pool gives you one or two additional attacks (which you don't need; see the Viewpoint on Pulse Rifle Blast) and additional Defense and Toughness toggles. Not only do you not need to the end drain running more toggles, you also don't need to be putting yourself in the kind of situation where those toggles would be necessary. You're a (bot-)lover, not a fighter. Besides, the new Bodyguard system is far more effective at mitigating damage to you than any of these toggles could ever be.


Fitness: Ah, the most controversial of the Mastermind power pools. Practically every day there is a new thread on the Masterminds board where someone asks whether such-and-such Mastermind "needs" Fitness. Sometimes they even try to claim it is a "poll," as if the needs of any one individual character can somehow be decided by majority vote.

The answer is a definite "maybe," contingent upon build and playstyle. Some Masterminds do need Fitness, some don't. One suggested rule of thumb is that if the Mastermind takes his attacks as well as his henchmen, he does; if not he doesn't. However, this is only part of the equation. The other part is not so much the MM's primary as it is his secondary. Some secondaries--and by "some" I mostly mean Force Fields--are much higher in End expenditure than others. These secondaries probably will need that additional boost. Others may not. I would be inclined to say that, unless he takes attacks, the average Bots/Dark MM does not need Fitness, for the following two reasons:

Firstly, it used to be that almost everyone "needed" Fitness, simply because there was no incentive not to take it. If you didn't take it, you'd be slotting End Reductions into powers that would be better off six-slotted. It was seen as a better bargain to blow three powers and five Enhancement slots on Stamina than to weaken otherwise-six-slottable powers by putting End Reducs in them. However, that changed with Enhancement Diversification, which effectively capped Enhancement effectiveness at 3 SOs. Suddenly all sorts of powers that could only take one useful kind of Enhancements besides End Reduction had all these Enhancement slots to spare. (And the 13% reduction in End usage of all powers didn't hurt matters either. It was as if everyone had been given a weak version of the "old" Stamina for free!)

Back in the "good old days," the only exception to "needing" Stamina (aside from form-specialist Kheldians, who are weird) was generally support-oriented Defenders, who do not blast and consequently do not use End as quickly as those who do. Which brings up the second point: Robots/Dark Masterminds don't (necessarily) blast either. They summon robots, Equip and Upgrade, and then let them do all the work. They don't need to blast, nor do they need to spam bubbles or other buffs periodically. They can hang around doing nothing but running toggles and casting the occasional mez while their robots blast all before them to smithereens.

In the end, whether to take Fitness is, as is all power decisions, strictly up to the individual. However, it is worth noting that taking it will use up 3 out of the 7 pre-40 pool power slots otherwise available, so the enFitnessed Mastermind will need to give something else up for the sake of those powers.

My own Level 40 Bots/Dark Mastermind, who uses a similar-but-not-identical build to the one I will include toward the end of this guide, did not take Stamina. I have been able to get by without it, but lately I have started to consider re-thinking my build to include it. It is true that as long as she keeps her use of powers to a minimum, she does not tend to run out of Endurance in mid-battle even while running Shadow Fall, Assault, and Tactics. However, Stamina would provide a good deal of additional battlefield flexibility. Given the lackluster nature of the Patron Power Pools available to Masterminds, taking Stamina early and pushing other powers back to the 41-50 range might well be a better use of those 4 extra slots--especially since Patron Power Pools failed to include the Endurance recovery power for which I had hoped.


Flight: See section on travel powers, below.


Leadership: Probably the second most controversial power pool for Masterminds, this one also sees a number of posts every day asking whether it's necessary or really all that great. And the answer again is...maybe!

One thing to note first is that many people consider a Mastermind plus his henchmen, taken together, to have roughly the same damage potential as a single hero or villain of another archetype. This means that a buff, such as Tactics or Assault, applied to all of those henchmen, would have the same overall effect as a single other hero or villain using it on himself would. In short, being a Mastermind doesn't make Leadership magically more effective just because your damage potential is split across multiple bodies. (And if you think about it, it makes buff Inspirations less effective than they are for normal heroes or villains, since you have to use six of them to equal someone else's use of one.)

That being said, Leadership is a reasonable pool choice for the aspiring Mastermind, especially if he teams, and even more especially if he teams with other Masterminds who have it. The endurance drain is not prohibitive if each toggle is slotted with an End Reduction or two.

Here are brief suggestions for the individual powers.

Manuevers: 2.75% Defense Buff; .4026 End/Sec

Skip it. A 3% Defense buff is generally not worth having or slotting even under Issue 7. If you do take it anyway, you'll probably want to slot it with Def x3/EndReduc x1-2.

Assault: 12% Damage Buff, resistance vs Taunt/Placate; .4026 End/Sec

Take it as a necessary prerequisite to the other useful powers in the set. (The resistance to Taunt and Placate will come in handy in PVP as well, but should not be a major consideration.) This isn't one you need to slot much at all, since there's no way to enhance a damage buff; put an Endurance Reduction in it and leave it alone.

Ironically, before Issue 5's Defense reductions and Issue 6's Enhancement Diversification, Assault was considered the Leadership power to skip and Maneuvers the one to take. Since then, however, Defense values have been slashed, Assault's damage buff was increased, and ED has made any additional buff to damage a worthwhile investment.

Tactics: 7.5% Accuracy Buff, Perception bonus; .4026 End/Sec

(Note: There is some uncertainty over whether Tactics is 7.5% or 10% base; it seems most likely for a number of reasons to be 7.5%, so that is what I will assume for the purposes of this guide until proven otherwise)

Even unslotted beyond the default, adding Tactics considerably surpasses the effectiveness of Supremacy alone, and makes it less necessary to slot overwhelmingly for Accuracy. Fully-slotted, Tactics plus Supremacy is almost the equivalent of having a yellow Insight inspiration permanently popped. Tactics is also good to use when sidekicking lowbies up while doing high-difficulty missions; the extra 7.5-12% To-Hit buff will mean they can hit even purple mobs more easily. (See the section further down on figuring Accuracy.)

The Perception bonus is handy in PVP zones, and against Arachnos and other foes who throw smoke grenades, but not enough by itself to spot the very well-hidden; popping a yellow or two (or having more than one Tactics-user on a team) is still necessary to spot a Stalker. Slot this with To-Hit Buff x3/End Reduc x1-2 if you can spare the slots.

Vengeance: Minor heal, 28% Acc/Dmg Buff; 20% Def Buff (All Forms); mez, taunt, knockback resistance; 120-sec duration; 300 sec. recharge

The power that is the bane of your existence in the hands of Nemesis becomes a very helpful little boost for you. Sad to say it can't be used from a fallen henchman--but if you use it on a fallen teammate when your henchmen (not to mention still-living teammates) are around, you become even more of a damage machine than usual. The one caveat is that you will need to make sure everyone on the team knows that you have Vengeance and will be using it beforehand, lest you find your fallen teammate rezzed or self-rezzed before you have the chance to cast. Also, multiple castings of Vengeance no longer stack.

Some Masterminds don't feel inclined to take this power, since it is fundamentally useless for soloing. Still, one "useless" power out of twenty is not bad compared to some Defenders' and Corruptors' power sets, and when it is useful it is very useful.

Since you can't slot it for Recharge Reduction, you might as well just stick a Defense or To-Hit Buff SO in the default slot and leave it at that; no point spending further slots on something that's good as-is and won't help you in soloing.

Note: The Prima Guide says Vengeance has a 35% Acc/Dmg Buff and 25% Def Buff; however, the Prima Guide does not include class-based modifiers that give the power pool different effectiveness for different classes. Even my reduced figures may be slightly high.


Leaping: See section on travel powers, below.


Medicine: Largely redundant. You already have one of the best self-and-other heals in the game, and one of the best rezzes; adding Medicine to this is definitely gilding the lily. The one possible exception is Stimulant. For Dark Miasma Defenders--and Corruptors who emphasize their secondary--Stimulant is sometimes taken to cover the Dark Miasma set's status-protection gap. However, your job is not so much to be a dimestore Defender as it is to look after your henchmen, and your henchmen won't often get mezzed.


Presence: Two taunts, two fears. Prior to issue 7, drawing aggro onto yourself and away from your pets or teammates was something that Masterminds specifically did not want to do. However, I7's bodyguard mode changes that. Since your pets can now mitigate up to 75% of your incoming damage, this means that you can take on the part of a Tanker more than you ever could before--and to play a Tanker, having a Taunt or two in your arsenal could be helpful. It all depends on how much you want to tank, and how tight your build is. Regardless of whether you wish to taunt or not, the fear powers are generally redundant to your Fearsome Stare, however.


Speed: The one Speed power that merits special mention here is the non-travel power that everybody used to take and many still do: Hasten. No longer perma'ble, Hasten has now become a sort of emergency adrenalin button, enabling you to speed up for short periods of time at a stretch. When fully-slotted, it can be active for two minutes out of every three.

However, a Mastermind's primary attacks--his henchmen--can't be affected by Hasten. Sure, the summons and Equip/Upgrades could be speeded up--but once the bots are out there, nothing you do to yourself is going to make them fire any faster. Thus, Masterminds lose a lot of the benefit of it right there.

Some Masterminds advocate taking Hasten expressly for use during the summon/equip phase, to get it over with faster so you can get into the mission faster--and that is a viable decision to make. Likewise, it will still help with cycling powers from the Dark Miasma set--though with the possible exception of the rez and Dark Servant, they all cycle pretty much fast enough already--and long-recharge powers such as those from Accolades.

The biggest problem with Hasten is that it makes your End-usage-per-second balloon--because more powers are firing off faster, and because it takes a bite out of your End bar when it crashes. My summon-and-equip cycle already requires the use of Rest partway through it; Hasten would just make me run out of End faster and have to rest sooner, so in the end I wouldn't gain that much time overall. If you want to take Hasten, I would advise taking the Fitness pool along with it; that extra end usage is probably going to require Stamina.

As for the other powers, Flurry is an attack, which you don't need, and Whirlwind on anyone squishier than a Brute, Scrapper, or Tanker is a good recipe for faceplant.

For Super Speed, see the section on travel powers, below.


Teleportation: See section on travel powers, below.


TRAVEL POWERS

One of the big questions any Mastermind needs to decide, and fairly early on, too, is what travel pool(s) to dip into. Of course, every player has his favorite pools to take, and generally speaking any travel power will work well enough for a Mastermind. Most of the time a MM is travelling across normal zones, he won't have his henchmen out--and when he does have them out, all he needs to do is get far enough away fast enough for the henchmen to teleport themselves to his present location.

However, there are some travel pools which have particular benefits to a Robots/Dark Mastermind. Let's look at what each travel power has to offer in turn.

Flight: Flight was my own primary travel power of preference. It's the slowest of the travel power sets, but also the most versatile--good horizontal and vertical movement, without teleport's minimum travel distance restriction. It lets you hang in the air out of range of melee attacks while still lending Supremacy to your henchmen and even picking up a couple of percentage points of Defense from Hover.

Some people have recommended, in the past, foregoing Fly and just six-slotting Hover, since Hover's flight speed when sixed was equivalent to unslotted Flight and did not have Flight's Suppression--the temporary decrease to unslotted-Hoveresque flight speed when you fire off an attack. However, this is no longer as feasible since Enhancement Diversification capped the effectiveness of SOs to three and cut Hover's maximum speed by 1/3. If Hover is your only Flight power, you might as well resign yourself to moving very slowly. My personal recommendation is to take Hover and Flight, and then the power for which they are a prerequisite: Group Fly.

Group Fly is a very useful power to a Robotic Mastermind. It is not necessarily a must-take power, as its overall effectiveness depends on the individual Mastermind's playstyle, but it is definitely up there. Group Fly has several things going for it: it allows enhanced mobility, letting you take your robots from the bottom of a cave or office to the top, without having to navigate the stairs or annoying twisty/hard-to-see passages in caves. It lets you send your bots after flying targets that might otherwise be out of reach, or keep them safely out of lava in which they might otherwise be inclined to bathe. It lets you travel safely en masse in PVP zones when you have some reason to want to keep your robots out with you instead of resummoning and rebuffing inside a mission. (For example, moving from hot zone to hot zone in Siren's Call, or returning from scientist rescues in Warburg.) It may even occasionally be useful for transporting teammates (such as lowbie sidekicks who have no travel powers of their own yet). And last but not least, Group Fly makes your robots use the trez cool foot-rocket animation from when you dismiss them or when the Assault Bot arrives.

When Group Fly is toggled on, it grants the power of flight to every member of your team, and every pet or henchman of those members, within a 60-foot radius. You are able to move slowly around, and all your teammates and henchmen can fly about, as long as they stay within 60 feet of you. Group Fly lasts for about ten seconds after you turn it off, or after getting out of range, on everyone it affects except you (as you will stop flying the moment you drop it).

There are some caveats to this power, however. First of all, for as long as it remains active, anyone who is affected by it suffers a -25% To Hit penalty. For your robots, this is not necessarily the end of the world, since they have that 10% Supremacy bonus and possibly a 7.5% Tactics bonus to help make up for it--but teammates, who cannot choose not to be affected the way they can with teleport, may become justifiably annoyed. Second, while it is engaged, people who are affected lose access to powers that require being on the ground, such as Rooted or Burn--another annoyance to teammates. Third, it is End-intensive (with a base cost of 2 End/sec), and more End-intensive the more people are in it with you. If you run out of End in the middle of it, you drop like a stone, and your teammates join you ten seconds later. Finally, your bots fly slower than you do, and you will find yourself having to pause frequently to let them catch up--unless you use the following bind.

/bind ctrl+lbutton "petcom_all Goto"

You can also choose to bind it to alt+lbutton instead if you prefer. (Shift+lbutton is the default fast bind for Teleport; see the section on Teleport below.)

Click on one of your pets and hit the "Follow" button ("F" by default) and then hold down control (or alt if you bound it to alt) and left-click. Your robots will go flying off to the point you chose, and you will follow right along behind them. If you hold down control and keep left-clicking continuously, you will fly right across the zone for as far as you want.

If you take the Flight powers, Hover should be slotted with 1 Defense SO, Flight should be slotted with three Flight Speeds and optionally one or two End Reduction SOs, and Group Flight should take either two or three Endurance Reductions (though of course you can go fewer EndReducs on both Flight and Group Fly if you have Stamina). I also strongly recommend finding a good run-walk/hover-fly bindkit (such as CityBinder; see the later section on binds) to automate switching between Hover and Flight; it will save a good deal of Endurance and frustration. I do not recommend slotting Group Fly with Flight Speed, because there is a bug with this power at the present time that makes Flight Speed Enhancements only affect the speed of the person who has Group Flight. (Or so I wrote in an earlier version of this guide; I do not know if it has been fixed as of yet.) In effect, this means you would only outdistance the rest of your party even faster.


Leaping: At first glance, this pool seems like a natural fit for the Mastermind, since Battle Drones have Super Jump inherently. However, they are the only ones of your henchmen to have an inherent travel power--and it's not as fast as your own Super Jump would be--which means you will frequently leave them all behind if you use it. This is not necessarily a bad thing, of course; when they get far enough away they'll automatically catch up to you by henchman-teleport. But if you don't go quite far enough away to have them catch up with you by teleporting, they will attempt to run directly to you--either dying or bringing every mob they encounter with them on the way. And by and large, the only times that you'll have your pets out in city zones, as opposed to travelling without them, will be in places like instanced outdoor missions or PVP zones where you need the safety of having them with you the most.

Even though I love it to pieces on my Tankers and Scrappers, Super Jump may not be the best travel power a Mastermind could choose. But I should point out that the travel with henchmen problem may be balanced out by another factor: the mez protection from Combat Jumping and Acrobatics. The only mez protection inherent in the Dark Melee set is called "not getting hit"; if staying mez-free is important to you, taking the Leaping set to get Acrobatics might be a good idea. If you do get Acrobatics, putting at least two End Reductions in it if you do not take Stamina would probably be wise.


Speed: Although Super Speed does share the same "henchman-outdistancing" problem as Super Jump, it should be noted that Super Speed's pseudo-stealth effect does have very good synergy with Shadow Fall. Super Speed is about the only type of stealth effect that will stack with another, so if you're running SS and SF together, you're the next best thing to invisible. This can be very beneficial for "stealthing" to the end of missions in order to grab a blinky, summon bots and clear a boss room, or teleport teammates in. And the lack of verticality in Super Speed can be overcome through judiciously limited use of the three jet pack and one jump pack temp powers available through the game.


Teleport: All four Teleport powers may have a good deal of usefulness for the Robots/Dark Miasma Mastermind, though some more so than others.

Recall Friend is one of the first powers in the pool that you are able to take, and I would advise taking it right as soon as it becomes available, at level 6, even if you don't intend to take any other powers in the Teleport pool. It's simply too useful to pass up. Recall Friend is a versatile power with multiple uses, and teleporting teammates to the entrance or end of a mission is only the most obvious. Let's not forget arranging fallen teammates close together so a single Howling Twilight can get them all up.

However, this is not one of those powers that can only benefit you when you're teaming. Recall Friend can also be used for retrieving robotic henchmen that are too close for the auto-teleport but otherwise unable to reach you, or that get stuck somehow. Recalling a 'bot is a lot less time and End-intensive than dismissing, resummoning, and re-Equipping it.

For most purposes, you'll want to slot Recall Friend with just the default slot; a Reduce Interrupt Time is a good use for it. It is possible that in larger zones you would want to slot a Range instead, to increase the 10,000 foot default range so as to 'port teammates two miles or more away.

Teleport Foe is a power I do not have much personal experience with using, but I have seen it used. If it hits, it can summon a single foe to a spot you designate. It can be useful for single-pulling to thin out crowds of foes in PVE, or for grabbing a single subject to use as Twilight Grasp or Howling Twilight fodder, but where it really shines is PVP. Teleport Foe allows the Mastermind to set up a trap, with Tar Patch laid down and robots standing ready, just waiting for their new special friend to arrive--and once it is ready, the Mastermind simply teleports a hapless foe into it. Although it has become slightly less useful in I7 with the increased defensive abilities against it, if you are planning to do more PVP than PVE this is likely to be a power you will want. It would probably best be slotted with two to three Accuracies and perhaps one to three Ranges as well.

Teleport is an interesting travel power. Unlike most other travel powers, where you can pick a direction, hit "run," and then take an AFK secure in the knowledge that by the time you get back you'll have either reached your target or else have overshot it and be nuzzling a War Wall, Teleport requires concentration: you hit the teleport power, click the location, and you go. And then you do it again. And again. And keep doing it, or else you'll fall out of the sky. Of course, if you're smart then you've bound shift+lbutton (or control+, or alt+) to pow_exec_name Teleport so that all you have to do is hold the shift button down and click, click, click.

Teleport has several drawbacks and a couple of benefits. One drawback is the aforementioned necessity of continuing to port or falling out of the sky; another is that due to the way the target selection mechanism works, you have to teleport the maximum range with each hop unless you can find a convenient wall or other object to fetch up against. Teleport is also very Endurance-intensive, requiring a base of 13 End per hop. As you have only 100 End, unless you slot for reduction that means you can make about 8 or 9 hops (allowing for End regeneration as you hop), or about a half mile at the base 300' range (a little less than a mile if you 3-slot for range) before gasping exhaustedly for breath.

But in return for this, you get one of the fastest long-distance travel powers in the game. At a continuously-teleporting sprint, with range slotted to max, you can cover a a mile in about 20 seconds--definitely faster than Flight. Whether it is currently faster than Super Speed over a straight line distance, I do not know (it was before ED, when it could be 5- or 6-slotted for Range). But taking into account the potential for vertical movement, avoiding ground-level obstacles 'speeders have to detour around, it is almost certainly faster at actually getting from place to place most of the time. And it is worth noting that it is fast enough that your bots, if they're out, typically won't have time to get in trouble by trying to follow you before their auto-teleport kicks in and drags them right along with you.

Most of the problems are, if not solvable, at least manageable. Falling out of the sky can be avoided easily enough by taking Hover or Flight (or a temp power jet pack) also and keeping that active while porting. End usage can be brought down to reasonable levels by slotting for it. The only solution for the maximum-range-hop thing is to learn to live with it, of course (or to take Flight as a secondary travel power and use it for short distance travel after your last hop), but two out of three ain't bad. Suggested slotting: Range x3/End x2-3 (or less if you have Stamina).

Finally we come to the second group travel power, Team Teleport. Much like Group Fly, this power affects everyone on your team within a certain radius--and like Group Fly, your teammates don't get the choice to opt out. As long as they're located reasonably close to you, they get ported right along with you.

For most non-Mastermind archetypes, this power is basically a non-starter. Firstly, by the time you can take Team Teleport, just about every other hero or villain who isn't either rabidly in-character or else mentally impaired has already gotten and slotted up a travel power of their own. Secondly, Team Teleport has all the same problems Teleport does, only more so, only has 3/4 the Range (and hence speed), and is much harder to use effectively.

Nonetheless, there are some Masterminds out there who absolutely swear by it, saying that it's easier to keep all your bots bunched up together while moving than it is with Group Fly, and you can pick your destination more precisely. They talk about how much fun it is to port your entire group of henchmen right into the middle of an unsuspecting mob spawn and take them completely by surprise, how you don't have to worry about pausing for your henchmen to catch up to you in flight, and how much faster it is than Group Flight.

That certainly does sound like fun--if you can manage it. The problem is that Team Teleport has the same problems as Teleport--the falling out of the sky, the End usage (20 end base rather than 13), the no-shorter-than-maximum-range hops. And while End usage can again be helped via slotting, and the max-range thing can be lived with, the falling-out-of-the-sky problem is a big one--because if you're not fast enough to port, not only will you fall out of the sky, but so will everyone else on your team. What's more, if you have Hover but the rest of your team does not, and you're a little slow to port, you could leave the rest of your group behind on your next jump. (Though, to be fair, the port works based on who's close to you at the start of the animation; if they fall out of range only after you've executed the power, they'll be right up next to you again at the next jump.) Taking Group Flight in order to be able to carry everyone with you while you Team Teleport isn't really a tenable solution, as you'll have just spent six of your twenty power slots on travel powers. (Though if someone else you frequently team with took Group Flight, there's nothing to say they couldn't run it at the same time you ran Group TP to make things easier for everyone.)

[Continued in next post]

R_M'S I9/I10 ROBOTICS/DARK MIASMA MASTERMIND GUIDE


CHANGES FROM PRIOR VERSION
<ul type="square">[*]Added sections on Invention Enhancements and Veteran Reward powers.[*]Made other necessary updates relating to I8/I9 changes.[/list]NOTE: Although I do not know any more about I10 than anyone else who is not in the closed beta, from what the preview page says it does not seem likely to have any major mechanical changes. Unless there are, I will be making any I10-based updates in the form of replies to this thread rather than making a whole new revision.

Whether you've got a Robotics/Dark Miasma Mastermind already, are thinking of making one, or just wandered in off the street because it's raining out there, welcome to my Robotics/Dark Miasma Mastermind guide. I hope you've got an hour or two to spare, 'cuz I'm gonna go way in-depth here.

I'll start by going over the overall reasons to choose Robotics, Dark Miasma, and Robotics plus Dark Miasma. Then I'll touch on Invention Enhancements and what they can do for you, then go one by one through each power in both your sets with my commentary and viewpoints on what they do and how to use them most effectively. After that I'll discuss Power Pools and Travel Powers, and say a few words about Patron Pools, Good vs. Evil Prestige Powers and Veteran Reward attack powers. Then I'll talk about how Accuracy is figured, make some suggestions concerning binds, discuss the new Bodyguard ability, and address use of Inspirations. After that I will discuss a blueprint for how to advance level by level, and talk about some particularly pesky foes you need to watch out for. I'll close out with a build blueprint I tend to favor.

At this point, I don't really have a lot to say beyond the basics regarding Patron Powers or Invention Enhancement sets; I haven't really had much time to research them enough and I don't know if I ever will. And at any rate, they are largely optional when it comes right down to it; you don't have to have them to build a good character. So this guide will continue to focus on the core of how to make a good basic Mastermind build, and you'll just have to get that other stuff from other guides.

Bear in mind that I'm writing what I've found in my 40+ levels of Robo/Dark experience, and it's possible my experiences don't match yours. I'm committed to making this the best guide that it's possible to be, though, so if you think I'm wrong on some point, or left something out, don't just call me a doodiehead--write an explanation of why you differ with me, and if it makes sense I'll incorporate it into the guide so people can make up their own minds.

Furthermore, when writing this guide, I drew information from a number of sources, including version 1.6.9.0 of the Hero Builder program (which is known to have some inaccuracies; if that particular version conflicts with something written here, what's written here is probably the accurate version) and the new downloadable Prima Guide (which is also known to have some inaccuracies). I'm not completely positive of all my numbers; if you have information from a reputable source (including Herostats hit testing and so forth) that contradicts what I say in here, please let me know.


WHY ROBOTICS/DARK MIASMA?

This is a valid question, but when you think about it it actually breaks down into three valid questions: why Robotics, why Dark Miasma, and why both together.

Both Robotics and Dark Miasma seem to be very popular choices for Masterminds--what some posters are inclined to call "flavor-of-the-month," or "FOTM" for short. FOTM is usually a derogatory term, and refers to power sets or character builds that are popular because they offer, or seem to offer, some sort of marked advantage over other sets and builds. You see this on the boards all the time, with thread titles like "If you are Robotics/Dark - welcome to Powergameing" (sic) or, my personal favorite, "If your MM and dont have Dark Miasma, your a donut" (sic). Some people feel that, given that Robotics is technological and Dark Miasma is usually magical, taking the two together is hard to justify in-character and is usually done solely for the purpose of powergaming.

To be fair, there is something to the powergaming accusation. Both Robotics and Dark Miasma have some very powerful options in them, and they work surprisingly well together. I would not be at all surprised to see their power levels trimmed back sooner or later--although it hasn't happened yet. In fact, we received a couple of highly-effective boosts in I7, additional goodies via Veteran Rewards in I8, and now with I9 the Invention sets have come along to make us even better.

Why Robotics?

Aside from in-character/roleplaying reasons, which exist for every set out there, there are a number of attractions that robots have ranging from in-game to out-of-game. A not-necessarily-complete list (gathered from a thread asking this very question) could include...
<ul type="square">[*]Their attacks are predominantly ranged, and feature Knockback, keeping the enemies at arm's reach from the Mastermind.[*]Due to AI issues, ranged henchmen (Robots, Mercs, Thugs) are easier to control than melee henchmen (Ninjas, Necromancy).[*]Robots attack with Energy (and, later, Fire) damage, which is less-frequently resisted than the Mercenaries' and Thugs' primarily Lethal damage.[*]Robots have decent to good inherent damage resistance to Lethal, Cold, and Psi damage--the latter two of which are known to be among the game's worst "can-openers" to normal heroes. Though this Resistance can't be slotted, it can be stacked with other Resist-conferring powers (such as Sonic/Thermal Corruptors' pseudo-bubbles, or Dark Miasma's Shadow Fall).[*]Robots have two Lieutenant-class "medics," as opposed to Mercenaries' one Minion-class Medic and Thugs' lack of a medic altogether; Bots also get their first "medic" at level 12, whereas Mercs must wait until 18.[*]At level 32, Robotics's Upgrade power includes the ability to fire remote Burn patches, one of the most lethal forms of AoE in the game (although, until this upgrade is received, they are arguably the least damaging Mastermind primary set).[*]Robots are very different-looking from all the other sets. Whereas Ninjas, Mercs, Thugs, and Necro all make use of body parts from the existing character designer, Robots are completely different and new. (Well, they may borrow a couple of body parts, sound effects, and animations from Malta Titans, but what the hell, Titans are cool anyway.) Furthermore, robots get a variety of cool new animations and geegaws--crates or upgrade platforms for arriving in, rocket boots to fly or dismiss with, and if you watch closely you can see how they change when they're upgraded. (If it recharged faster, I could dismiss and re-summon my Assault Bot all day, just to watch him hover in on his thrusters and then feel the ground shake when he lands.) And the sound-and-light-show of a team of post-level-32-Upgraded bots firing everything at once is a spectacle of which many never tire.[/list]Why Dark Miasma?

Dark Miasma is the Mastermind secondary that makes other Mastermind secondaries turn green with envy (and turns their wielders into "donuts"). Benefits of the set include:
<ul type="square">[*]It offers Twilight Grasp, the only AoE heal available to Masterminds--a 24.2% aura heal that is over twice as powerful percentage-wise as a Thermal or Radiation Corruptor's 11% aura heal (in relation to one's own hit points, anyway; considering the higher number of hit points Corruptors have it probably balances out)--and it offers it at level one. Twilight Grasp does still have to hit a target successfully in order to heal, but Enhancement Diversification means it can be fully-slotted for healing and still have ample slots left over for Accuracy. This aura heal means that you can heal your entire group of henchmen at one time--a feat which no other Mastermind secondary can duplicate.[*]Another early power, Tar Patch, makes it harder for enemies to move and easier to damage them.[*]It includes several mez, debuff, and other such powers that can effectively make enemies attack less, hit less, and do less damage--a definite bonus for a class as thoroughly squishy as Masterminds and their early pets.[*]One of these powers, Shadow Fall, is a form of group stealth, making teaming safer and removing the need to take the Stealth pool in order to stealth missions.[*]It comes with Dark Servant, one of the most effective non-Mastermind pets in the game. Thus, the Mastermind gains a 7th helper (or 8th if the MM's primary is Necro or Thugs), which has some very powerful abilities of its own--including a cone-effect Immobilize and its own Twilight Grasp aura heal.[/list]Why Robotics and Dark Miasma?

Like chocolate and peanut butter (mmmm), Robotics and Dark Miasma are two great tastes that taste great together. As good as the powers may be on their own, they're even better together thanks to some great synergies that exist between the two sets. For example:
<ul type="square">[*]Since the robots have primarily ranged attacks, the Mastermind (and Dark Servant when he gets it) can sit in the middle of the group of robots in relative safety, firing off his aura heal to aid the robots when they need it and firing his ranged debuffs and mezzes--rather than having to swoop in amidst a bunch of meleers and putting himself at greater risk. (Though to be fair, this benefit is shared by Mercs/Dark and Thugs/Dark (except for the Bruiser), too.)[*]When Shadow Fall is fully slotted with 3 Damage Resistance SOs, all three robots have an unbelievable 44-50% (depending on level) damage resistance vs. Psi (as well as 23% vs Energy/Dark Energy), as long as they stay within the Shadow Fall--not to mention their inherent 21-27% vs Lethal and Cold. Even unslotted, the total resistance to Psi is a still-quite-respectable 36-43%. This makes Robotics/Dark Miasma a great choice to tank a psi-AV/hero, not to mention the Carnival of Thorns.[*]The Dark Servant's cone immobilize can most satisfyingly root entire spawns of enemies in place, unable to flee, just in time for the Assault Bot's burn-patch missiles to roast them all.[/list]In short, two sets that are both quite effective on their own can become even more effective when put together.


INVENTION, NECESSARILY, IS A MOTHER

Before we get into powers, I would be remiss if I didn't at least touch upon Invention Enhancements and their uses. This is only going to be a basic grounding in the concepts so you know what they can do for you; for more depth, look for an Invention guide, or browse ParagonWiki's Inventions section.

Invention is the new crafting system introduced with Issue 9. To craft an Invention, you need a recipe, the pieces of Invention salvage required for the recipe, and Influence/Infamy. You also need access to an invention workbench (at a university or in a supergroup base) to do the inventing. Recipes and Invention salvage will drop over the course of your adventuring, or you can buy them from Wentworth's/the Black Market.

There are two types of Enhancements that you can Invent. (There are also inventable costume pieces and temporary powers, but those aren't relevant to this discussion.) The more common type of Enhancement uses the same symbols as the equivalent Trainings, but has a hexagonal border instead of the round Training border. For the sake of avoiding confusion, I will henceforth refer to these as IOs, or "Invention Origin" Enhancements.

IO Enhancements are similar to SOs in that they enhance only one aspect of a power (Accuracy, Damage, Recharge Rate, etc.); in fact, there is an equivalent IO Enhancement for every Training, DO, or SO. However, unlike "normal" Enhancements, IOs never decrease in effectiveness or expire as you gain levels. If an Invention Enhancement provides a 35% buff to a power's Accuracy, it will always provide that 35% no matter how many times you level up after you slot it.

The bonus an Invention Origin Enhancement provides varies with its level. Level 10 IOs are slightly better than Trainings, level 15 IOs are slightly better than the Level 10s, and so forth. The utility of having these Enhancements is obvious; every IO you have slotted is a TO, DO, or SO you won't have to re-buy when it goes red. However, in terms of recipe cost, crafting cost, and ingredient cost (if you purchase ingredients via auction house), they are often considerably more expensive than equivalent Training, DO, or SO Enhancements--and you will still want to replace any IOs you buy early on with more effective DOs, SOs, or higher-level IOs once you are able to get them.

It becomes worthwhile to start slotting IOs permanently when Level 25 and 30 IOs are available for powers you plan to 3-slot, such as damage on your attacks (Enhancement Diversification means that the difference in effectiveness between three 25 IOs and three higher-level IOs is only a couple of percent). For powers you 1- or 2-slot, you should wait until you can buy Level 35 IOs, which are the first ones to be better than a +3 green SO. (And 40s, 45s, and 50s are even better still; a Level 50 IO is roughly 125% as effective as the equivalent SO.) Until then, it would generally be best not to use IOs unless you can get them very cheaply. (And you often can get them very cheaply; if you keep an eye on Wentworth's, you can sometimes find them less expensively than normal Enhancements because of people dumping them on the market after making them to earn their crafting badges.)

The other kind of Invention Enhancement are the Invention Enhancement sets. These are sets of 3 to 6 different kinds of Enhancements that enhance one or more different aspects of a power at the same time (such as Accuracy/Damage, Recharge Rate/End Reduction, etc.). Some of them provide other benefits instead, such as a chance for an attack to do negative energy damage. There are many different types of sets, providing buffs for almost every kind of power.

Apart from the special effects provided by individual set Enhancements, Enhancement sets will also provide additional benefits if you have more than one different Enhancement from each set slotted in the same power. Most of these benefits are minor, on the order of a couple of percentage points, but they stack up over time. Some of these effects will help close or at least reduce the seriousness of your class's "can-opener" vulnerabilities. (See the section on can-openers, below.)

I have not had sufficient time to experiment with or study many of these sets in great detail, so I am not able to advise on which ones are particularly good for Robotics/Dark Masterminds in this guide. (Also, I didn't want to have to go through and retrofit Invention stuff into everything I'd already written.) All you really need to know is that mid-to-late-game IO Enhancements are just like SOs only better, and Invention Enhancement sets can add many interesting effects to your character's powers--but neither one is in any way necessary to building a successful character.


POWERS TO THE PEOPLE

A Mastermind is only as good as his powers--and with a Robots/Dark Mastermind, that can be very very good indeed. Here's the rundown.

Note about Recommended Slotting: For my recommended slotting under each power, I have given the slotting you would use if you decided that one power was one of the most important powers in your build--i.e., if you were going to six-slot a particular power (save for powers that don't gain any worthwhile benefit out of being six-slotted), what you would put into it. I did this even for powers I recommend skipping, just so if you feel you need them you'll know what I think the optimal slotting would be. In practice, if you tried to slot out everything with the number of slots I list you would quickly run out of slots. My goal here is to give you information about each power, not to lock you into any one particular build.

Note about Power Values: Some of the values given in the following guide sections may actually start out at lower than the value given. These values were often taken from the Prima Guide, which gives values as what they will be at Level 50--with no indication which of those values are constant and which scale up over time (as do robotic damage resistances and speeds of travel powers for instance). So if you find through testing that you are getting slightly less than the values listed here, that is probably the reason.


INHERENT

Power: Supremacy
Description: A good Mastermind knows how to manage his Henchmen. The Mastermind imparts a bonus to his Henchmen's Accuracy and Damage only if he is nearby.
Effects: PBAoE, Henchman +10% ACC, +25% DMG
Available: Inherent

Viewpoint: This inherent ability is the power that separates Masterminds from other classes right at the outset. You can't slot it, it doesn't give you any kind of a bar, and the only indications that it's working are the little grey icons under your health bar and on your pet window--but make no mistake, this power is one of the Mastermind's biggest advantages right at the outset. From the moment your character first appears in Ziggursky Prison, your primary attack abilities--your Henchmen--have a power that's better than Leadership Tactics effective on them, and the equivalent of 3 Damage Training Enhancements slotted in them, as long as they stay close and in line of sight of you. That's the equivalent of 3/4 of an SO of damage, and more than a Training in Accuracy. While every other starting villain class is struggling to hit whites and yellows, you'll be set to hit them easily without slotting anything more than the default slot. This is a big benefit for the beginning and mature Mastermind, and it stacks nicely with Leadership, down the road.

The upshot is that as long as you're handy with Twilight Grasp, you can easily raise your difficulty a couple of notches (or hang out with villains 1-2 levels higher than you) as soon as you hit Mercy Island with few problems, and rake in the faster XP gain. (But bear in mind that this applies mainly to soloing or teaming with other Masterminds--if the other non-MM villains on your team are the same level as you or lower, they'll have trouble with higher difficulty settings and not be able to pull as much of their weight, which could mean more deaths and frustration for all of you.)

Note that Supremacy works much like the Leadership auras: it has a PBAoE effect, and if henchmen are blocked from line of sight of you, they are also blocked from Supremacy. Get in the habit of keeping an eye on your pet window for the presence of that grey icon; if you see it vanish from one or more of your pets, you may need to issue some movement commands or change your position to give it back to them.

For more details on how Supremacy affects your Accuracy, see the section on Accuracy calculation further on in this guide.


ROBOTICS

Power: Pulse Rifle Blast
Description: This Pulse Rifle can fire a long-range laser pulse. Deals moderate Smashing and Energy damage.
Activation Time: 1.87
Endurance Cost: 6.5
Recharge Time: 4
Range: 80
Brawl Index: .694 Smashing Damage, 2.7778 Energy Damage
Enhancements: Accuracy,Damage,Recharge Reduction,Endurance Reduction,Range,Knockback Distance
Available: Level 1

Viewpoint: The Mastermind's attack powers are a matter of some discussion on the boards. Are they really necessary? The answer, as with most yes or no answers concerning Masterminds, is a resounding "maybe" in general, shading toward a "no" for Robots/Dark. Other Robots Masterminds might find it useful--for instance, a Robots/FF Mastermind might find that the the Knockback of the pulse rifle blasts or bursts has good synergy with Force Bolt. But Robots/Dark Masterminds will probably need to emphasize other areas.

It is possible that a beginning Robots/Dark Mastermind might think he should take at least the rifle burst to help out his robots in the early levels of the game when they do less damage, and then respec out of it in the 20s. But by and large, the damage the blasts do is a pittance compared to what the robots will do over time (especially after the upgrades), unnecessarily draws aggro away from your robots and to your squishy little self (though this is less of a problem in I7, with Bodyguard), and requires attention and Endurance to use, both of which can be better spent on your secondary--particularly on keeping your robots healed up.

Furthermore, it does not gain the benefit of the Supremacy bonus that amps up your robots' accuracy and damage as long as they're near you. And even if those didn't matter, it's always better to build your character right the first time so you can save the respecs for in case power changes down the road require a respec but don't come with a free one. Skip it.

If you do have your heart set on the pulse rifle, bear in mind that blasting takes a lot of Endurance--so you'd better go ahead and take Stamina, too.

Note: On page 86 of the downloadable Prima Guide, the Pulse Rifle Blast's help text and attack types column claim it does Smashing &amp; Energy. The damage listing claims it does Lethal &amp; Energy. I'm going to assume that it meant Smashing. The Smashing damage here is an estimate, given that the Prima Guide gives damage in "amount done by an unslotted Level 50" rather than Brawl Index.

Suggested Slotting:
1-11 (TOs): Acc x6
12-23 (DOs): Acc x2/Dmg x4, or Acc x3/Dmg x3
24+ (SOs): Acc x1/Dmg x3/Rech x2, or Acc x2/Dmg x3/Rech x1


Power: Battle Drones
Description: Constructs 1-3 Battle Drones (depending on your level) to do your bidding. Drones start out with only basic weaponry, but can be upgraded with heavier energy weapons. Drones can Super Leap. You may only have 3 Drones under your control at any given time. If you attempt to construct more Drones, you can only replace the ones you have lost in battle. If you already have 3, the power will fail.
Effects: (LvL 6--2 Drones)(LvL 18--3 Drones), Inherent (Laser Burst, Super Leap), Res (21% (at L1) through 26.67% (at L50) Cold/Lethal/Psi; 1-point Disorient protection; 4-point Sleep protection; 50% Sleep Resistance; 4-point Fear protection; 50% Fear Resistance)
Activation Time: 2.03
Endurance Cost: 19.5
Recharge Time: 60
Range: 60
Enhancements: Endurance Reduction,Damage,Accuracy,Knockback Distance
Available: Level 1

Viewpoint: This is the first of the five bread-and-butter powers from your primary. Some people have made "petless Mastermind" builds as a joke, but if you're serious about Masterminding, there's no question: you'll take this little fella at Level 1.

A few things need to be said about the suggested slotting given below.

From level 1 to level 5, you will have one of these Drones; it will be the same effective level as you, and receive the benefit of the 10% Supremacy To-Hit bonus. With that in mind, you don't need to worry too much about slotting--you're good "right out of the box" as it were (watch the summoning animation if you don't get it).

But at level 6, you get your second Drone--which means they both bump a level down, and are at one level below you. This is the point where slotting a couple of Accuracies starts to pay off. To what extent you slot accuracies and what extent damages depends on your intentions. If you plan to stay at Villainous or Malicious, you will need fewer Accuracies, and can slot a few damages to increase the effectiveness of your Drones' weapons. If you plan to go higher, a couple more Accuracies will make sure that you frequently hit your target. I would recommend at least four Accuracy trainings or Inventions as soon as you can get them. (See the section on Accuracy later in this guide for more details.)

At level 18 your third Battle Drone shows up, and your drones are now two full levels below you, meaning that the enemies they face will usually be anywhere from 2 to 6 levels higher than they are. This means they will need a good deal of accuracy. It's all right to slot just 2 or 3 Accuracy DOs up to that point, but when you hit 18 you're going to want to have 4 Accuracy DOs to make sure you're hitting what you need to hit. You can scale back to 2 SOs and pump up the damage when you hit 24. (This does assume, by the way, that you're taking the Tactics power from Leadership; if you're skipping it you may want to go to 3 Acc SOs if you plan to be fighting many higher-level foes.)

Unlike your Protector and Assault bots, your Battle Drones have no slot-requiring special abilities outside of Damage and Knockback. Equip Robot bestows upon them a weak sniper attack; Upgrade Robot gives them a full-auto laser (cone-effect minor damage attack that doubles as a pretty lightshow). Some folks advise spending no more than 5 slots total on them--for 2 Accuracy and 3 Damage SOs. If you're going to go this route, then you'll want to put no more than 5 slots in the Drones as you level up, to prevent having to burn a respec to drop a slot once you get SOs. However, I tend to favor sticking that sixth slot in to eke out every little bit of benefit during the Training and DO periods and then putting a Knockback SO in it when the time comes. Since your robots are primarily ranged and not terribly sturdy against smashing damage, it makes sense to leverage your bots' knockback power to try to keep enemies as far away from you as possible.

After getting both Protectors and the Assault Bot, some Masterminds favor not summoning the Battle Drones when on a large team--they note that it cuts down on the lag, and allows their Protectors to concentrate their heals on each other and the Assault Bot. Other people favor not bothering to buff the Battle Drones because "they'll just get killed anyway." I am mildly inclined to disagree with these strategies: while it is true that Drones are the most fragile of your army, they are three additional sources of damage--especially with the Equip and Upgrade attacks to fill out their cycle--as well as three more damage sinks for Bodyguard mode. You will have to experiment for yourself to see what technique works for you.

In Issue 7, the base recharge time of Drones was shortened from 90 seconds to 60 seconds, in light of their more disposable nature.

Note: Resistance numbers have been changed to what is given in the Prima Guide; they were formerly given as 28/28/42 for Lethal/Cold/Psi. After testing, I have determined that these numbers are apparently correct--within limits. The numbers the Prima Guide gives are what you will have at Level 50, and Damage Resistance scales up from 21% at Level 1 to 26.67% at Level 50. I tested this at L1 and at L40; at L40 the resistance is approximately 25.08%.


Suggested Slotting:
1-11 (TOs): Acc x2-4/Dmg x2-4
12-23 (DOs): Acc x2-4/Dmg x2-4
24+ (SOs): Acc x2-3/Dmg x3/(Optional: KB x1)


Power: Pulse Rifle Burst
Description: This high powered laser pulse from your Pulse Rifle takes more energy to fire, but causes much more damage than a standard pulse and has a very good chance to send your foes flying.
Effects: Ranged High DoT, 40% chance of 12' Foe Knockback (suppresses for 10 seconds in PVP)
Activation Time: 1.87
Endurance Cost: 10.66
Recharge Time: 8
Range: 80
Brawl Index: 4.2223 Energy Damage
Enhancements: Accuracy,Damage,Endurance Reduction,Recharge Reduction,Knockback Distance,Range
Available: Level 2

Viewpoint: See under Pulse Rifle Blast, above.

Note: The Prima Guide claims the burst does Smashing and Energy Damage, but only gives a figure for Energy.

Suggested Slotting:
2-11 (TOs): Acc x6
12-23 (DOs): Acc x2/Dmg x4, or Acc x3/Dmg x3
24+ (SOs): Acc x1/Dmg x3/Rech x2, or Acc x2/Dmg x3/Rech x1


Power: Equip Robot
Description: Equip your Robots with the latest gear and weaponry. This power permanently bestows new powers and abilities to your Robot Henchman. The powers gained are unique and dependant upon the target Robot Henchman that is Equipped. This power only works on your Robot Henchman and you can only Equip any given Robot Henchman once.
Effects: Drones (Snipe/Knockback), Protectors (Snipe/Knockback, Repair), Assault (Blast/Knockback, Flamethrower)
Endurance Cost: 16.25
Activation Time: 2.03
Recharge Time: 6
Range: 50
Enhancements: Endurance Reduction,Recharge Reduction,Range
Available: Level 6

Viewpoint: Your second must-take power--though you have a little wiggle room as to when you "must" take it. It becomes available at level 6--but you may wish to wait for level 8 so as to take Recall Friend at level 6 instead; the levels fly by quickly when you're that low, and Recall Friend could be more useful to you if you're doing much teaming at that point. (See the entry on Recall Friend in the pool powers section below.)

Equip Robots provides a useful upgrade to each of your classes of robot. Your Battle Drones gain a weak (compared to a Blasting class's) sniper attack; your Protector Bots gain that attack and the ability to repair any of your own or your teammates' bots besides themselves, and your Assault Bot gains a cone-effect flamethrower and a nifty double-barrelled blast attack. Naturally, when you have them, you will want to upgrade your bigger robots first and then your smaller ones.

The power description may be a little misleading to first-time Masterminds. The description seems to imply that it is an inherent power that, once purchased, is always in effect. However, the way the power actually works is that every time you summon a henchman, you have to use this power to upgrade it, and the upgrade is permanent until the henchman is defeated or dismissed.

This power marks the earliest appearance of your start-of-mission downtime: no longer can you simply summon and go; you now have to summon and then equip what you summon. Unslotted, the recharge time of Equip is about six seconds, which means it will now take you about fifteen seconds to get your two bots up and fully equipped. This will increase as you get more robots and more upgrade powers, until you may find yourself waiting for a minute or so before you're ready to get started.

For as long as you are slotting Trainings and DOs, the base slot with one recharge in it should be sufficient to your needs. But over time, the number of robots you're going to have to work with will increase: three at level 12, four at level 18, five at level 24, and six at level 26. By the time you start getting SOs, you'll find that both the amount of time it takes to equip everything and the amount of Endurance you're burning to equip everything at once at the start of the mission may start being a little overwhelming, especially if you skip Stamina. For my own personal build, I have two Recharge Reductions and one Endurance Reduction slotted.

Some people may consider slotting a third Recharge Reduction, but I see this as overkill. Due to the diminishing-return nature of Reduction SOs, the E.D. cap that kicks in partway through the third SO, and the already-short recharge timer on this power, the most you'd gain would be a second or two per casting. Best save it for another power instead.

Suggested Slotting: Rech x1-2/EndRed x1 (in mid-20s)


Power: Photon Grenade
Description: This launches an Energy Grenade at long range from your Pulse Rifle. The energy from this explosion can Disorient some targets in the affected area.
Effects: Ranged AoE Foe Disorient (40% chance 4.7-second strength 2 Disorient vs PVE; 40% chance 3.5-second strength 2 Disorient vs PVP)
Endurance Cost: 18.98
Activation Time: 1.87
Recharge Time: 16
Range: 80
Brawl Index: Energy(1.2223),Smashing(0.5556)
Enhancements: Recharge Reduction,Endurance Reduction,Damage,Accuracy,Disorient Duration
Available: Level 8

Viewpoint: What I said about Pulse Rifle Blast goes double for this power: avoid it at all costs (at least in the pre-30 game; see below). It might seem desirable to have an AoE disorient, especially to stack with Howling Twilight's effect on your Dark side, but the base disorient for Photon Grenade is really quite short (about 4.7 seconds) and the 40% disorient chance is not all that great. To make matters worse, it brings with it the traditional "alpha strike" syndrome of aggroing entire groups away from everybody else--including your own robots--and onto your squishy little self (though this is made significantly less chancy with the new Bodyguard ability). By and large, this is something you do not want to happen.

However, after level 32, this power might become more desirable. Your Protector Bots will eventually get a more powerful, longer-lasting version of this attack with their level 32 upgrade. As your other robots will by then be doing enough damage to lessen the aggro magnetism, there will not be as much danger for you in using it--and having that extra disorient to stack onto your bots' might result in more disorients for longer. On the whole, though, I would be inclined to suggest using Howling Twilight for that must-have disorient stacking, and leave this one to the MMs without a disorienting power in their secondary.

If you do get it, best forget about slotting it for damage; you will want to make the miniscule disorient last as long as you possibly can.

Suggested Slotting:
8-11 (TOs): 5x Acc
12-23 (DOs): 2x Acc/4x Disor
24+ (SOs): 2x Acc/3x Disor/1x Rech


Power: Protector Bots
Description: Constructs 1-2 powerful Protectors (depending on your level). They can defend your army by placing Force Fields on you and your allies. They can even be equipped to repair your other Robot Henchmen. Protector Bots are well equipped with energy weapons. You may only have 2 Protector Bots under your control at any given time. If you attempt to summon more Protector Bots, you can only replace the ones you have lost in battle. If you already have 2, the power will fail.
Effects: LvL 24 -- 2 Protector Bots, Inherent (Force Shield, Laser Burst), Res (21% (at L1) through 26.67% (at L50) Cold/Lethal/Psi; 1-point Disorient protection; 4-point Sleep protection; 50% Sleep Resistance; 4-point Fear protection; 50% Fear Resistance)
Activation Time: 2
Endurance Cost: 19.5
Recharge Time: 90
Range: 60
Enhancements: Endurance Reduction,Damage,Accuracy,Disorient,Knockback Distance,Heal,Defense,To-Hit Debuff
Available: Level 12

Viewpoint: Protector Bots are the third of the five "take it or people will point and laugh at you" powers for the Robotic Mastermind set. Aside from being a bit tougher than the minions due to their lieutenant status, Protectors have some unique special abilities. From the outset, each Prot-bot will cast protective force bubbles on all your (and your teammates') robots other than itself. When upgraded with Equip Robot, they can fire off a heal to other 'bots once every two minutes as well. Down the road at level 32, Upgrade Robot gives them versions of Photon Grenade and the Traps set's Seeker Drones to further help defend their fellow 'bots from the enemy.

There seems to be a perception among some people that Protectors are the Defenders of the Robot set, and should be slotted heavily for Defense and Healing like a cross between a bubbler and an empie. Now to some extent the comparison to a Defender is an apt one, as Prot-bots do get a FF bubble and a robot-only heal. However, the comparison only goes so far. Unlike Defenders, who gain strong damage-mitigation abilities at the cost of relatively weak attacks, Protector Bots have relatively weak damage-mitigation abilities, while firing off the exact same laser burst and snipe attacks as your Battle Drones (not to mention getting a couple of very handy weapon upgrades down the road). Furthermore, they will always be at least 1 level higher than your Drones (2 levels higher from 18 to 24), so will do that much more damage and hit that much better. In fact, when fully slotted, your two Protectors are quite capable of outdamaging all three of your Drones taken together. Thus, it might be more valid to think of the Protector Bot as your very own pocket Corruptor instead.

The Protector's bubbles protect against everything including Psychic attacks, meaning they cover a slightly broader spectrum than both of a Force Field bubbler's small bubbles combined. This is well and good, but tests have shown their effective value to be approximately 3.5% at most. (The Prima Guide writeup claims 7.5%, but either it increases over time and only reaches 7.5% at level 50, or else they copied and pasted the Force Field text from elsewhere without adjusting the actual value of the powers. In that light, I'm sticking with the 3.5% figure, which was arrived at via actual statistical testing.) If you 3-slotted Protectors with Defense SOs, you'd get 5.6% Defense per bubble--assuming the most optimistic projection--out of each bubble. Adding insult to injury, due to some glitch in the AI, you will only ever be bubbled by one of them at a time, even if your henchmen get two. You can make up your own minds, of course, but trading half of your total Enhancement capacity for a mere ~4% of extra defense on your robots (and 2% on yourself) does not strike me as an equitable tradeoff. The new Defense upgrade with Issue 7 does make more Defense a bit more desirable--but not that much more.

As to the Protector bots' heal, it is a nice bonus effect, and has saved some of my robots' lives more times than I can remember, but it's not something to count on exclusively. It will only heal about 1/4 of your Battle Drone's health bar at base effectiveness, and is on a two-minute timer; furthermore, the bot will not heal a damaged robot unless the robot is damaged enough to get the full benefit out of the heal. All in all, it pales beside the effectiveness of your Twilight Grasp. Slotting it up will heal more damage at a time (and, ironically, cause it to wait longer before healing since the bot will now have to be more damaged to get the full benefit), but there is no way to decrease its cycle time short of keeping a Kinetic or Radiation Corruptor in your pocket--and for lengthy battles, two heals every two minutes might almost as well be no heals at all. You can judge for yourself whether spending slots to increase the benefit from an infrequent heal (that you can already top several times over with just one Twilight Grasp) is a good deal, but I would advise against it unless you've already got all the damage and accuracy you need.

An interesting side-effect of the Protector powers is that when you're in a group with more than one Robot Mastermind, all Protectors will heal and bubble all robots, regardless of whose they are. This means that everyone's robots will be better-protected than they are alone; there really is safety in numbers. Also, do not forget that Protectors will neither bubble nor heal when in Passive mode; put them in Defensive if you want them to keep doing their non-combat jobs.

Now that I have demolished slotting Protectors up with Defense or Healing, how should they be slotted? Well, from the time you obtain your first Protect or at level 12, up to the time you switch to SOs, your Protector will be at the same level you are. This means they will be able to hit things about as well as you can--or even better considering that 10% Supremacy bonus. So, you don't need to worry about slotting them too much for Accuracy beyond 1 SO-equivalent, two DOs. Put the rest into damage; your Enhancements are too weak right now to think about dividing them further.

You get your second Protector, and their demotion to 1 level lower than you, at the same time as you get to start slotting SOs. At this time, you are able to slot your maximum useful Damage capacity--3 SOs under Enhancement Diversity--and then either 1 or 2 Accuracy SOs. (If you take and slot Tactics, slot 1; if not, slot 2. See the Accuracy section later in the guide for more explanation.) And that's all you really need until level 32--either 4 or 5 slots.

At level 32 you get your Upgrade Robots power, which brings with it Photon Grenades and Seeker Drones...and a problem. Once they're upgraded, Protector Bots get so enthusiastic about spamming those grenades and drones that they run out of Endurance halfway through the battle and can no longer fire off their attacks--or heals, or bubbles. Happily, this problem is easily solved: just add a slot for an Endurance Reduction SO. Since SOs within a henchman power apply only to the henchman's own attacks, not to the summoning power itself, an Endurance Reduction will lower the cost of a Protector's attacks enough that they don't find themselves gasping for breath anymore.

(It has been suggested that if you regularly fight mobs nearer your own level, or wait between battles to let your 'bots catch their breath, this out-of-breathness won't happen as often and the End Reduction won't be needed as much--but where's the fun in that? My own playstyle benefited immensely from an End Reduction slot; your mileage may vary.)

So what should you do with the sixth slot? Up to you. I personally slot a Disorient Duration in mine, to lengthen the effectiveness of the level 32 Photon Grenades' 25% chance 9.24-second Disorient, but this is strictly optional; some people might prefer to slot a Heal, Defense, or other Enhancement, or even leave it off so they can spend the slot elsewhere. You could also slot a To-Hit Debuff, for the benefit of the 5% debuff on the Seeker Drones, but given the sometimes-erratic firing of the drones, you might get a bigger benefit going with Disorient.

In any event, since you don't need the 5th (assuming you 1-slot Accuracy) or 6th slots until 32, you may choose either to leave the Protectors at 4 or 5 slots until level 31 so you can slot other powers faster, or to 6-slot them early and just put Heals, Knockbacks, Defenses, etc. in as placeholders until you hit 32.

Suggested Slotting:
12-23 (DOs): Acc x2/Dmg x2-4
24-30 (SOs): Acc x1-2/Dmg x3/(Optional: Def, KB, or Heal x1-2)
31+ (SOs): Acc x1-2/Dmg x3/EndReduc x1/(Optional: Disor, HitDeb, Def, KB, or Heal x1)


Power: Repair
Description: Repairs one Robot Henchmen for full health and restores some of its Endurance. This power only works on your Robot Henchmen.
Effects: Heal; restores 25 Endurance
Endurance Cost: 10.25
Activation Time: 2.03
Recharge Time: 120
Range: 80
Enhancements: Endurance Reduction,Range,Recharge Reduction,Endurance Modification
Available: Level 18

Viewpoint: Repair is more necessary to some Masterminds than others. Masterminds with Force Field, Traps, or Trick Arrow--who lack a meaningful healing power in their secondaries--may need this power to help them keep their robots on their feet. Even Poison MMs may want it as a backup to their single-target Alkaloid heal. (Though some suggest taking Aid Other from the Medicine Pool instead; it won't heal as much or restore End the way Repair does, and it's interruptible--but it can be used on one's teammates as well as one's robots, refreshes much more quickly, and if a Mastermind is doing his job properly, he shouldn't be likely to be interrupted anyway.) You, however, have Twilight Grasp, which is the greatest healing power available to any Mastermind--and at 38 you will get a Dark Servant, which has a Twilight Grasp of its own. Between these powers and your Protector Bots' 2-minute minor heals, you should have all your healing needs covered and can thus use the power slot on something more useful.

The one aspect of this power that might be particularly helpful in the late game is that it restores some Endurance to a robot as well as healing it. In the late game, Longbow Special Ops soldiers (most often seen in PVP zone buff/debuff missions) gain access to EMP Grenade--a short-circuit-like sapper attack which can drain all of the endurance from as many robots (or villains) as it catches in its AoE. However, at only 25% base restoration, with a base recharge of 120 seconds, you would be better off to carry blues instead.

Suggested Slotting:
18-23 (DOs): Rech x5
24+ (SOs): Rech x3/EndMod x1-3


Power: Assault Bot
Description: You can build one massive Assault Bot. Simply put, the Assault Bot is a killing machine. There is nothing subtle about its weaponry. You may only have 1 Assault Bot under your control at any given time. If you attempt to summon another Assault Bot, the power will fail.
Effects: Inherent (Plasma Blast), Res (21% (at L1) through 26.67% (at L50) Cold/Lethal/Psi; 1-point Disorient protection; 4-point Sleep protection; 50% Sleep Resistance; 4-point Fear protection; 50% Fear Resistance)
Activation Time: 2.03
Endurance Cost: 19.5
Recharge Time: 120
Range: 60
Enhancements: Endurance Reduction,Damage,Accuracy,Disorient,Knockback Distance
Available: Level 26

Viewpoint: Assault Bots are the last step in your unholy trinity of raw bot power, and are the one gotta-have-it power that every robot mastermind aspires toward--at least until they find out what Upgrade Robot will do for them in a few more levels. The Assault Robot is your Big Gun--the one you pull out first and upgrade as quickly as possible, and Inspire for damage before any of your others. It may or may not be responsible for the majority of your damage overall, but it certainly does the most at one time. It will certainly do more damage than you would, even if you took all the attack powers.

One CoH forum poster has a signature to the effect of, "Don't buff me, buff the frigging Assault Bot!" While this is merely amusing at first glance, it brings to light an important truth about the way Masterminds work. Since it will not be you who is doing the most damage, and putting your body in the line of fire, it would be a good idea to ask any buff-casters in your party to cast any buffs they would otherwise have cast on you on the Assault Bot instead (or better yet, also)--they will be more beneficial that way.

The Assault Bot comes with a single-barrel Plasma Blast similar to the one Malta Titans fire. When Equipped, it gains a double-barrelled plasma blast, a flamethrower cone-effect weapon, and a melee Smash attack that has a chance of Disorient. When Upgraded, it gets a big horking shoulder missile launcher that fires Swarm (AoE Damage/40% chance of 32' Knockback) and Incendiary (multiple-burn-patch) Missiles.

Since it has the most hit points, highest relative level, and greatest firepower of any of your bots, the Assault Bot should probably be your choice to serve as "Tanker" for absorbing the aggro of large groups of enemies (unless of course you use the Bodyguard ability to spread alpha damage among yourself and all your robots). Do be ready to step in and Twilight Grasp or drag some green Inspirations onto it, however; for a big guy its hit points can still drop surprisingly quickly.

As it will always be at the same level as you, all the slotting the Assault Bot needs to be an effective fighter is 1 Accuracy SO (if you have a fully-slotted Tactics; 2 if not)and 3 Damage SOs. As you will see, this leaves one or two slots to spare. Some choose to spend those slots on other powers, but you could also slot for Disorient (to lengthen the effect of the melee Smash) or Knockback (to increase the Swarm Missiles' effectiveness). I formerly recommended Disorient, believing that the missiles did Disorient as well as Knockback, but have since learned I was mistaken. If you're going to put anything in those last two slots, it might as well be Knockback.

In Issue 7, the recharge time of the Assault Bot was lengthened from 90 seconds to 120 seconds, in keeping with the heavy firepower and toughness of this robot. Which is just as well; if you need your Assault Bot again sooner than 120 seconds after casting it, you are probably doing something wrong anyway.

Note: Resistance numbers have been changed to what is given in the Prima Guide; they were formerly 42/42/42 for Lethal/Cold/Psi. I mention the old numbers here because I do not entirely trust the Prima Guide's figures; it has been wrong on other things before.

Suggested Slotting: Acc x1-2/Dmg x3/(Optional: Knockback x2)


Power: Upgrade Robot
Description: Upgrade Robot will permanently bestow the most powerful and high-tech gear and weaponry to your Robot Henchman. The Upgraded Robot will gain new abilities, powers and weapons. The powers gained are unique and dependant upon the target Robot Henchman that is Upgraded. This power only works on your Robot Henchman and you can only Empower any given Robot Henchman once.
Effects: Drones (Full Assault Laser); Prot (Photon Grenade, Seeker Drones); Assault (Incendiary Missiles, Swarm Missiles)
Endurance Cost: 22.75
Activation Time: 2.03
Recharge Time: 10
Enhancements: Endurance Reduction,Recharge Reduction,Range
Available: Level 32

Viewpoint: This is it. The greatest power to which a Robotics Mastermind can aspire. This is the power that changes your robots from cheerful zappy-zappy wear-'em-down-over-time fighters into Hell's Threshing Machine. This is the power that changes what you see overhead from a few scattered orange numbers here and there into literal clouds of orange and grey numbers. The first time you manage to get all six of your 'bots Upgraded at once, you will stand there slack-jawed, all but forgetting to cast your secondaries, as you take in the sound and light show. As I am fond of saying, when every fully-upgraded bot fires off at once, it's like being inside some kind of evil disco. You're still not going to do quite as much damage overall as a Brute or Corruptor--but on the other hand, you are doing several different types of damage at once, meaning they probably aren't going to resist all of it.

Of course, all this glorious mayhem comes at a price, and that price is spending a minute or so at the beginning of every mission upgrading your robots into effectiveness. Since I7 reduced this power's recharge time from 60 seconds to 10 seconds, that period is substantially shorter, but it does still take a whole minute to upgrade all six of your robots. There is an element of strategy and resource-management involved--choosing how to allocate your limited resources (time/endurance) by choosing which bots to upgrade first. If you don't like this kind of challenge (and let me tell you, compared to other team-command resource-management strategy games like X-Com or Starcraft, this is really kindergarten stuff), you'd probably be better off playing some other class.

Some people don't hold with "wasting the time" to Equip and Upgrade Battle Drones, since "they're just gonna get killed anyway." I disagree. They don't have to be upgraded super-quickly, but every new attack power they get helps your overall damage per second, and it's not like you're going to do anything else with that power. Furthermore, taking a little care with your Drones and not just throwing them away needlessly will keep your damage per second higher and your Endurance and time-usage lower.

And of course, you don't have to spend even that much time upgrading at the mission start; you can simply throw in what upgrades you can and attack away, waiting for your End to recover on its own enough to make more upgrades as they come. If you should faceplant in mid-mission and lose all your robots, that's pretty much what you'll have to do when you get back up anyway. Still, spending a couple of minutes getting everything in order can make for a smoother experience through the rest of the mission.

Since I7's recharge time reduction, you don't need to put quite so many recharge rates into this power anymore--though the truly impatient may still wish to do so.

Suggested Slotting: Rech x1-3

[Continued in next post]

ON THE LEVELS

Level 1-10

Get through the tutorial as fast as you can; don't forget to go upstairs for the Jail Bird badge. The tutorial shouldn't present you with any problems you can't handle; if you've done it enough already to be really sick of it, you can skip the first few errands and just run straight out to Saki, the ninja-masked orange-clad convict in the courtyard, and start from there. Make your choice of contact at the helicopter--I personally tend to prefer the mercenary contact, Matthew Burke, because his missions are a lot more fun (especially the snake hatchery--whack-whack-whack-SPLORTCH!). If you want to experience as much content as possible, keep your missions on Villainous and solo them; they'll complete faster and you won't get as much XP, meaning that you're less likely to outlevel contacts. Otherwise, feel free to join teams and do all your missions together; you'll be level 10 before you know it.

You should do all of your first contact's missions, at least until you get to level 5. If doing Kallenda and Mongoose, you should only do Mongoose's first job, the bank heist. You actually don't even have to do that one, but I recommend it anyway because bank heists are just so much fun. The rest of Mongoose's missions are more annoyingness with Snakes plus a timed Hellions job; they're all quite boring, not necessary to get your next contact, involve a lot of running all over the island, and if you do them you'll get enough XP out of them that you could have a hard time doing more than one of your 5-10 Port Oakes contacts when you get them.

Dr. Creed's missions seem a good deal more fun, but if you want to outlevel as few arcs as possible, either skip them or try to complete them for the least amount of XP possible, skipping to the end of non-defeat-all missions and defeating as few mobs as are necessary. This is the only way to make sure you don't outlevel, since below level 10 you can't get debt.

Go on to Port Oakes once you've done Mongoose's bank job or Creed's missions, and make your way to your first broker there. Do your paper missions and take the mayhem missions until all three contacts are available to you, and then do as many of your contacts as you can before you outlevel them. I'd advise doing Bocor first to get that nifty 5-shot zombie temp power, then Billie Heck for the imp temp.

Mercy Island and Port Oakes were formerly very frustrating to get around without travel powers when your contacts seem to delight in sending you to all corners of it; however, the annoyance has been lessened considerably with the jet pack and jump pack temp powers from the first couple of mayhem mission sets and/or Good vs. Evil. However, you do have to be at least level 5 to take advantage of the mayhem missions.

There is also another workaround that is effective all the way from level 1, though it requires a bit more effort. If you can tag along with a higher-level character who has the Sharkhead Isle Sky Raider contact Lt. Chalmers's timed mission to save their base from Longbow, you will be able to get a 60-minute jet pack from one of the blinkie crates near the entrance. You will have to make your way in safety to Sharkshead Island in order to do this, but that one long journey will save you many other long journeys afterward.

(If you should get this mission on a higher-level character yourself, you can actually get any or all of your other characters this pack off of that mission. Just get them in position on the island before you accept the mission from Chalmers, and invite a friend to your team to go into the mission and hold it open for you while you switch characters and then have him reinvite you to the team. Repeat as necessary for all your characters until it runs out of blinkies, then relog to the original character to reset it. If you're soloing or duoing the mission, you should only need about 15 minutes to complete it anyway, so you can run down half of the hour-long timer doing this with no worries.)

If you use this jet pack sparingly, you should be able to get around with much less frustration all the way up to level 14. However, do be sure you have used it up entirely (or delete it from your power window) by the time you encounter Chalmers for yourself; if the jetpack still exists in your powers list, you probably will not be able to get a fresh one.

Level 11-20

Continue your arcs on Port Oakes, and thence to Cap au Diable. If you're concerned about missing content, then continue soloing missions on the Villainous difficulty setting. Do only as many newspaper missions as are necessary to get you to your next round of contacts. There are an immense number of contacts, even not counting the unlockable ones, so you may have a hard time fitting everything in. You may even want to make a habit of intentionally getting killed a few times to carry additional debt; this will also have the side-effect of earning more Infamy with which you can buy Enhancements and make progress toward the Bling badge.

If you have an aversion to debt even though you know it's good for you, another thing to try is finding someone at least 3 levels lower than you who is about to start a contact you also haven't started yet. Take the same missions (as much as you can), exemplar to the lowbie, and do the lowbie's instances of the missions. Make sure to click "yes" at the end when the dialogue box asks if you would like to clear your own instance of the mission at the same time. You will get only Infamy instead of XP (and what's more, you'll get Infamy as if you completed a mission 3 levels higher than you!), but will still clear the mission and see the content.

If you're just concerned with levelling speed, see if you can put together a big team averaging 2 to 4 levels higher than you are. If you can construct it in such a way that there is one lackey slot too few and you get left as the "odd man out," then so much the better for your XP. Even if you have to lackey up, do mainly "retrieve item" or "kidnap person" newspaper missions, and make sure the others let you unlackey one full minute before saving the hostage or clicking the glowie so you can scoop that bigger bonus. While not as lucrative as it once was, you can still get a good chunk of additional XP over what you ordinarily would have in this way. (See that guide I linked in the section on stealthing missions for more advice like this.)

If you're into unlockable contacts, remember to go farm 100 ghosts at Fort Hades between levels 10 and 14 to get the badges and unlock Veluta Lunata; she has a couple of fun arcs and some useful anti-ghost temp powers. You'll probably need a team and/or higher-level helpers to do it safely, as ghosts will respawn as level 15 when the traps get full.

Once you hit 15, scoot off to Bloody Bay and do the meteor quest. With a good travel power--especially if it's Super Speed--you should be able to scoop the meteor samples relatively unmolested. If necessary, do the patrol mission first to gain the "Hyper Stealth" power. For advice on how best to solo the meteor mission, see this mini-guide, which was also written by that clever R_M fellow.

You'll probably want to come back and do the meteors repeatedly; the 5-shot renewable Shivan pet makes a nice panic button or hero-killer, and its Radiation powers will make it easier for you to overcome the Defense of tough enemies. Since I7, Shivans are no longer capped at level 25, and can thus help you with tight spots all the way up to level 50.

If you're not concerned about missing out on content and don't mind risking ganks on the way in or out, the PVP zone door missions are a great way to earn some levels. Longbow give 110% of "normal" mob XP, and the mission completion bonus is a good 25% bigger than normal (or at least it is once every half hour; the rewards have been limited to prevent abuse), even if they tend to be a bit monotonous. The Listening Post missions are particularly recommended, as their warehouse-based layout is less annoying than the standard Longbow base map.

Whatever you do, be sure to do Marshall Brass's first 15-19 arc in order to get the Goldbrickers flight pack--especially if your travel power is Super Speed. I also recommend doing the Tarikoss Strike Force before you hit 20; it's got a fun storyline to it, especially if you do Marshall Brass's second arc as a sort of prelude.

Level 21-30

You'll be moving on to Sharkshead Island and the Nerva Archipelago now. Much of the general-purpose advice from 11-20 holds true for this section, and all of those further on in fact. But here are the high points.

The 20-25 Silver Mantis Strike Force is only available to villain groups with a mission computer. But if you're not in a villain group, don't worry. It only takes one person who is in such a villain group, and whose base is set to permit teammates to enter, to offer the SF to everyone. So if you're not in such a group, maybe you can find someone who is and do it that way. If you lose the final bad guy during the last mission of this Strike Force, don't despair! He's just flown off into the sky in some remote part of the map; get a flier to hunt for him.

Also during this time comes the first supervillain respec, which is in some ways easier and in some ways much harder than the City of Heroes version. Entire guides can be and have been written about this mission, so I will refer you to them; my advice is to take a party size of no more than four to five people, period.

If you're into unlockable contacts, remember to help take down Scrapyard for the Hammer Down badge to unlock Crimson Revenant. Also, if you are in a supergroup, you will also want to start playing outside of Supergroup Mode at level 25 (and perhaps also malefactoring a lot) until you get the Bling badge for earning Infamy in order to unlock the Doc Buzzsaw hidden contact. It took me until level 28 to earn Bling with no supergroup at all, and if you don't earn it by level 29 you may not get to do both the Doctor's arcs.

Be sure not to miss out on Lt. Chalmers on Sharkshead Island for his 60-minute Sky Raider flight pack! You'll have to do all of Captain Petrovich's missions to be introduced to him.

If you're still doing missions on Villainous, you may run out of contacts early for the first time before hitting 25--especially if you frequently solo and/or stealth them. Just make sure you've done all of the unlockable ones, and then do some newspaper or PVP jobs to get you the rest of the way.

Level 20 grants you entrance into Siren's Call--and if you're strapped for cash and enjoy (or at least tolerate) PVP, I advise spending some time there taking down heroes and earning bounty. Every 6,000 bounty points means a free +3 SO in your origin, so have a blast. Considering the PVP Fury bug, it would probably be simplest for you to find a team of Stalkers who can use you as a stalking horse, and mooch off of the points they get from their kills to earn your rewards. But be careful; there are enough NPC mobs around, especially at the hotspots, that it's a good way to see just what the debt cap really looks like.

As with Bloody Bay, Siren's Call PVP-zone door missions are a decent way to grind for XP. The Supply Depot mission, in an abandoned-office-building map, is one of the easier ones to do. Also, don't forget to do the patrol mission to grab the Hyper Invisibility temp power. Even though Energy Cloak makes it redundant, it's still free, and can be used when exemplared lower.

You may want to start adjusting your difficulty up a notch or two in the mid to late 20s, once you get your SOs on. This will give you a little more of a challenge, and will also narrow the gap between completing all your contacts and getting the next set.

Level 31-40

Congratulations, you're almost there! As you pass 32 and start getting the final powers from your sets, it's probably safe for you to crank the dial up to Relentless. You're going to be working both in St. Martial and Nerva for this phase of your career. Apart from the newspaper missions you do to unlock your contacts in St. Martial, you may find you prefer grinding with them in Nerva, as Nerva's paper and bank jobs are all spaced a lot closer together (with only the occasional job that requires a trip all the way north), unlike St. Martial which routinely sends you all over the map.

The 30-38 PVP zone is Warburg, which is different from the earlier zones in that it is a free-for-all: if you're not teamed with someone, they're the enemy even if they're a villain just like you! This can make adventuring there "interesting" in the Chinese sense--and yet it's lucrative nonetheless. Rescuing the scientists from the underground labs can provide you with some nicely potent one-shot super-nukes that make great Archvillain/Monster/Hero-killers; you can carry one of each of the three kinds. And once you hit 32 and get Energy Transfer, you'll be fully capable of owning the spiders in the underground labs. (And a nice side benefit if your origin is Technology is that those spiders drop mostly tech SOs, and drop them more frequently than just about any other mob I've ever seen.)

Some Warburg regulars (Warburgers?) hold to a kind of code of honor that says they don't mess with people doing scientist saves. Others, however, do not, so don't take your safety for granted; each time you get ganked, you'll lose one of your three codes, not to mention any scientist who might have been following you at the time. Try to do Warburg during "dead" periods, like early mornings or afternoons when there's nobody else around to interfere with you. Learn the ins and outs of the underground corridors so that you can navigate with your scientist to whichever tunnel exit is closest to his bunker of choice. (Vidiotmaps now has these passages marked on its map, which is a great help.) Since Warburg scientists don't lose track of you if you're stealthed, stay under Energy Cloak to get him there; turn off Superspeed and Sprint (if you have them) so you're less likely to outdistance him. Bear in mind that you don't actually have to take him up the ramp to the bunker door most of the time; his "thanks for saving me, here's the code" will trigger if you can get within about 25 feet under the door with him on the ground level. Once he's saved, hie yourself back to the nearest tunnel entrance at all possible speed to get the next one.

As always, the PVP zone door missions continue to be a reasonable way to grind for XP--but after you hit 37-40 they become a good deal harder thanks to the Longbow Flamethrowers' and Special Ops' upgraded powers (see the next section). Note that the Recluse's Victory PVP zone does not have door missions, so the Warburg contacts will give you door missions all the way up to level 50. Favorite Warburg missions include the Supply Depot (which has no Bosses in it, so you can run through it quickly and with minimal risk) and the Kidnap Longbow Agent mission (as the agent is apparently bugged, and will fight at your side with radiation attacks after you "kidnap" her, grumbling about it all the while--or at least this was the case through the last few updates of this guide). The Patrol mission will give you a "Hyper Phase Shift" temp power, which makes a great panic button and, given that it can be used when malefactored to any level, is probably better than having the real thing for as often as you're likely to need it.

If you haven't yet gotten your Gangbuster badge (for taking down 200 Marcone Capo Bosses) to unlock the Slot Machine (one of the more fun contacts in the late game), you should go to Port Oakes and do it before you hit 34. The best time to do it is when the zone is really busy; the more people are in the zone, the more Capos are spawned. Ideally, you should get a team of high-level characters together who are also looking to earn their Capo-hunting badges, split up, and hunt the zone individually--you will each get credit for everyone else's Capo defeats in addition to your own even if you're not in "XP-getting" range. You will most often find them in the streets or on top of buildings in Marconeville or the Docks, or on top of the warehouses in the west part of town. Sometimes they will step out of doors along the street, and if you don't get them fast they'll go back inside. The Capos are easy to spot because they are always either wearing dark suits with white fedoras, or wearing white suits and completely bald. In Port Oakes, you don't generally need to worry about cleaning up the rest of a spawn after you cherry-pick the Capos; the others will usually run to a nearby door and go inside, thus cleaning up after themselves.

Level 41-50

As it has been a while since I played through the 40s, I can offer only limited advice here. You will be doing missions in Grandville, where you will meet some nastier adversaries than in any of the other zones. Watch out for Bane Spiders, who have stealth and Assassin Strike abilities. Your Good vs. Evil jump pack will come in very handy in this zone.

Recluse's Victory offers a unique way to earn XP, if you can go there during "dead" hours when no one else is around. Go check out a "Heavy"--one of three robots you can "check out" if no one else is using it--and hunt the PVE Longbow enemies in the zone. The Heavy's additional damage and mez capabilities will let you cut through those enemy Longbow like a hot knife through butter. Watch out for enemy players, though.


CAN-OPENERS

It seems like every class has foes who are specially designed to pose a specific danger to that class--so-called "can-openers" who can open up your defenses as easily as your power can-opener opens a can--and Energy/Energy Brutes are no exception. Some of these foes are the same no matter when you encounter them; others only become a true pain around level 37. If you're soloing or duoing, there are generally few enough of these that you can handle them safely, with a little extra caution. On a large team, however, look out: if a couple of can-openers are bad, a half-dozen of them will be even worse. You may want to reconsider taking the alpha in these circumstances, and discuss strategy with the team before engaging.

"Psyyyyyche!"

There are three damage-type holes in your defenses--two major and one minor--that you will have a hard time patching over no matter what you do (though I9's Invention Enhancement sets will help somewhat). These are your high vulnerability to Psychic and Toxic attacks, and your weak protection against Negative Energy attacks. Your only real Psychic/Toxic defense is positional, that is, defense to ranged attacks of all kinds, which can be found within Energy Cloak and any pool Defense powers you take such as Combat Jumping or Hover. Even Overload's description proclaims that it protects against everything except Psychic (and there's no Toxic defense in the game save for positional). This means that you're going to be quite vulnerable to many attacks from Psychic, Toxic, and Negative-Energy-using enemies--including the Hero Aurora Borealis, the Carnival of Shadows (who will also steal your Endurance when they die), the Devouring Earth, and especially the Circle of Thorns. Engage with care. A friendly Force Field Corrupter/Mastermind or Ice Corrupter could come in really handy.

"De Buff! Boss, De Buff!"

As a Defense-based Brute, your Defense is usually the one thing keeping you alive. When you get hit, you get hit for full damage. So when something debuffs your Defense, so you get hit more and more often, it is not a pretty sight. Your Shields provide pretty good resistance versus Defense Debuffs, all the more so if you have Overload on, but it's not enough--it's never enough. When you go up against enemies who debuff your Defense, it doesn't take long for you to get in big trouble. Defense-debuffing enemies include the Shivans with their radiation blasts, and the bane of Super Reflex Scrappers everywhere, the Rularuu. Fortunately, you only go up against the Rularuu in one arc and a couple of odd missions in the pre-40 game.

"The Longbow of the Law"

All through the first half of your career, you may sneer at the Longbow agents--somewhat-ineffectual red and white do-gooders who are fairly easy to take down, even if some of them can cloak. But at levels 30 and 40, some things change. At 30, the Longbow Flamethrowers get Ignite; at 40, the Longbow Special Ops get EMP Grenade.

Ignite is a Burn-patch attack that you may not even notice at first (due to Burn's special effect having gotten a lot harder to see in recent patches), until you smell Mohican burning. It's the Longbow version of a silent-but-deadly; it has a high base accuracy so it will often bypass even the best Defense, so you'll need to keep on the move to keep it from causing you more damage than necessary. (Scrapyarder Demolitionists on Sharkshead have a similar attack, but at least you would expect something like that from someone who chucks dynamite around.) EMP Grenade is an annoying area-of-effect sapper attack, which can stop you dead in your tracks with just a few shots. It's not fun when you're chugging merrily along and suddenly all your toggles are dropping and all you can do is stand there and look dumb (and frantically pop blues and purples if you have any).

About the only solution is to try to take out the worst ones first--but since both the Flamethrower and the Special Ops are Minions, you can have more than one of them, and even more than one of each of them, per spawn. If this is the case, consider the Special Ops more dangerous and take them down first. For more than one enemy, use your cloak to get in position, Build Up and Energy Transfer the first one, then Total Focus the next one; even if it doesn't knock him all the way down, it should leave him stunned for long enough to take care of before he recovers enough to attack. Air Superiority is another good method for keeping them distracted long enough to finish them, if you have it; also, Teleport Foe could be handy for taking Spec Ops down separately from their companions so the toggle drop from End drain is not as dangerous to you.


SAMPLE BUILD

The following is the build that I had for my Energy/Energy Brute as of level 40. It is not my first build; it is actually my third, having burned both of my respecs to make up for my mistakes and set it up this way. It probably isn't the best possible Brute build, and it could probably be improved a number of ways. (For example, dropping Taunt and instead taking Air Superiority at level 8 instead of Build-Up, then taking Build-Up at level 22 and pushing Aid Other and Aid Self back to 24 and 26 might be a viable option--but then I would have to steal slots from other powers to put into Air Sup...and so it goes.) I don't offer this as a prescription for what your build should necessarily look like. It's just a way of showing what's been viable in PVE for me.

If you're interested in PVP, well, you'll just have to come up with your own build.

---------------------------------------------
Exported from Ver: 1.7.5.0 of the CoH_CoV Character Builder
---------------------------------------------
Name: Pouncetta Purrfect
Level: 41
Archetype: Brute
Primary: Energy Melee
Secondary: Energy Aura
---------------------------------------------
01) --&gt; Energy Punch==&gt; Acc(1)Acc(3)Dmg(5)Dmg(7)Dmg(9)Rechg(11)
01) --&gt; Kinetic Shield==&gt; DefBuf(1)DefBuf(11)DefBuf(13)
02) --&gt; Bone Smasher==&gt; Acc(2)Acc(3)Dmg(5)Dmg(7)Dmg(9)
04) --&gt; Power Shield==&gt; DefBuf(4)DefBuf(13)DefBuf(15)
06) --&gt; Hasten==&gt; Rechg(6)Rechg(15)Rechg(23)
08) --&gt; Build Up==&gt; Rechg(8)Rechg(17)Rechg(17)
10) --&gt; Entropy Shield==&gt; EndRdx(10)
12) --&gt; Hurdle==&gt; Jump(12)
14) --&gt; Super Speed==&gt; Run(14)
16) --&gt; Health==&gt; Heal(16)
18) --&gt; Total Focus==&gt; Acc(18)Acc(19)Dmg(19)Dmg(23)Dmg(25)Rechg(25)
20) --&gt; Stamina==&gt; EndMod(20)EndMod(21)EndMod(21)
22) --&gt; Aid Other==&gt; Heal(22)
24) --&gt; Aid Self==&gt; Rechg(24)Rechg(27)Heal(27)Heal(29)Heal(36)
26) --&gt; Taunt==&gt; Rechg(26)
28) --&gt; Energy Drain==&gt; Rechg(28)Rechg(29)EndMod(31)EndMod(33)Rechg(37)EndMod(40)
30) --&gt; Energy Cloak==&gt; DefBuf(30)DefBuf(31)DefBuf(31)
32) --&gt; Energy Transfer==&gt; Acc(32)Acc(33)Dmg(33)Dmg(34)Dmg(34)Dmg(34)
35) --&gt; Whirling Hands==&gt; Acc(35)Acc(36)Dmg(36)Dmg(37)Dmg(37)
38) --&gt; Overload==&gt; Rechg(38)Rechg(39)Rechg(39)DefBuf(39)Heal(40)Heal(40)
---------------------------------------------
01) --&gt; Sprint==&gt; Run(1)
01) --&gt; Brawl==&gt; Acc(1)
01) --&gt; Fury==&gt; Empty(1)
02) --&gt; Rest==&gt; Rechg(2)
---------------------------------------------


PARTING THOUGHTS

I hope you've enjoyed my guide, and that I haven't put you to sleep too badly. Hopefully you haven't found too much to disagree with--and if you think I'm wrong about something, you'll (politely) let me know why. Even if my preferred playstyle is not your own, you should at least be able to use the information I've provided with yours.

Playing City of Villains is a constant learning process--you'll never know everything there is to know about it. (This is even more true with the way the updates often force us to redesign our characters entirely, but oh well.) With that in mind, you shouldn't stop with just my guide. Check out other guides, too, to see if they have different opinions, or information I might have missed. For example, Inspector6's An EM/EA Brute's Guide to Level 40 disagrees with me on the usefulness of Taunt, favors building for damage resistance rather than healing, and is more interested in PVP than PVE. It also has a potentially-useful template of when you should take the "must-have" powers that I was very tempted to steal for this guide, but thought better of. There's no One True Way to build a CoV character, so read and learn and make your own decisions.

But don't just read other Energy Melee/Energy Aura Brute guides--guides to Energy/* and */Energy Brutes, and even Energy/Energy Stalkers and */Energy Tankers might have some useful hints to offer as well. We share some of the same powers after all, even if the order and uses are a bit different.

Welcome to the world of the Energy/Energy Brute. May you have a brutally good time!


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to all the members of the Brute forum and friends from elsewhere who read the draft version of this guide and provided some excellent feedback, corrections, and helpful information. Thanks especally to Sable_Blaze for his kind comment, "I was seriously considering an EM/EA guide myself, but after seeing this...well...no point in it now!"

Extra-special thanks to Dragonov for providing _Castle_'s Fury equations, and anarchicgorilla for simplifying them and saving me many headaches.


PRIOR VERSIONS
<ul type="square">[*]R_M's I6 Guide to Energy Melee/Energy Aura Brutes[*]R_M's I7 Energy Melee/Energy Aura Brute Guide[/list]

EXPECTO PATRONUM: PATRON POWERS AND YOU

All right, I admit it: I still haven't gotten around to trying Patron Powers. I suppose the non-Patron powers I took on the way to 50 just worked well enough for me not to want to bother. I'll look into them someday, honest.

At the time this guide was first written, preview information about the I7 patron powers had just been released. More recently, hard numbers for these powers were made available--marking the first time ever the developers have ever committed to give the complete information about what powers do. The numbers are in the downloadable Prima Guide, and are also available on plaques in the lobby of the Grandville Arachnos building. They should be perused before final selections are made.

I will probably rewrite this section further once I have actually played through the patron powers; alternately, I might just point at someone else's guide to them when it becomes available. Since the Patron power pools can't all be taken on the same character, it could take a great deal of time to test them all for myself. I expect that I will wait until I have levelled my Brute to 50, then try them all out on the Training Room.

Unlike CoH's Ancillary Pools, which can have different types of powers depending on what pool is chosen, all four of the CoV Patron Pools are largely identical except for damage types and secondary effects. Available at 41, 44, 47, and 49, the powers include:
<ul type="square">[*]a ranged blast[*]a cone or AoE Immobilize[*]a cone or AoE blast[*]a pet[/list]For descriptions of each Patron pool, click the above link; no need to make a long guide even longer by copying and pasting them all in.

Given that the powers are all so similar, the choice of which Patron to pick will probably be decided by the secondary effects. It could also come down to a matter of roleplaying and character concept--if your character is most sympathetic to Ghost Widow, for instance, then becoming her pupil would grant much the same general abilities as any of the other Patrons. Nonetheless, since a Patron, once chosen, is permanent, your choice of Patron is something that should be given serious consideration--including viewing and comparing the numbers for each power. And it could be a tough decision, as the secondary effects of each of the Patrons' pools has something to offer the discerning Energy/Energy Brute.

Ghost Widow's powers' secondary effects are the traditional Negative Energy Accuracy Debuff (at least on some of the attacks). Taking this pool will give you a taste of the synergy that Dark Melee/Energy Aura stalkers enjoy, with the accuracy debuff stacking onto your Defense to make you even harder to hit. Depending on slotting, this could bring you a lot closer to flooring enemies' chance to hit you without having to resort to Overload. However, the fact that the Immobilize attack is a cone does mean you will have to position yourself outside of the group of enemies to hit most of them, then move inside to hit them with the rest of your attacks.

Black Scorpion's Mace Mastery blasts are Energy damage, like your own attacks. These blasts do Knockdown, and his Immobilize, while doing no damage, does slow enemies' attack rate and prevent flying and jumping. This is a larger-scale version of the same sort of attack-mitigation effect for which many Brutes take Air Superiority; it could help keep you from getting in over your head.

Captain Mako's shark attacks, while somewhat silly in concept, nonetheless do a variety of different damage types--Lethal, Negative Energy, and the infrequently defended or resisted Toxic. If you're just interested in dealing raw damage and don't care as much about secondary effects, this could be the pool for you. However, the fact that both the AoE attacks are cones does mean you will have to position yourself outside of the group of enemies to hit most of them, then move inside to hit them with your melee and PBAoE Whirling Hands.

Scirocco's powers are the Mu Mystics' red lightning. Aside from being Energy attacks like your own, they will drain Endurance (though not very much) and the first attack will perhaps even add it back to you. This will synergize nicely with Energy Drain to drain your enemies even more, and perhaps provide you with a little more Endurance (though not very much) to keep you going longer.

Each of the four powers in the pool could be useful to you, some more so than others. The ranged blast is simply another single-target attack to add to your chain, especially useful for pegging runners before they can get away. The immobilize won't be as useful to you as it would be to a Fiery Aura Brute with Burn, but it will still hold them still for you to use Energy Drain, Whirling Hands, and/or the AoE or cone attack, and then knock down one at a time. (In PVP, depending on its effectiveness, the Immobilize might be just the thing to use in conjunction with TP Foe.) The AoE or cone attack should stack nicely with Whirling Hands (the AoEs more so than the cones, since you won't have to worry about positioning; you can just attack the nearest guy and let the AoE radius hit the others), and the pet will be another handy source of damage and aggro gathering and management. (Some Brutes complain that the pet might steal aggro, and thus Fury, from them, but I expect the amount of loss to be negligible overall.) The pet will not be perma-castable, even with 3 recharge rate SOs in it, but for those times it is out, it should come in handy.

But both the immobilize and the AoE blast will serve another, even more important purpose than just holding enemies still: assuming Brutes' Patron powers include the single-target punchvoke like their melee powers do, they will be two more AoE taunt-equivalents to add to your aggro-getting/Fury-building arsenal. If you use Taunt for team-based aggro management, you may well be able to respec out of it when you get these.

To a certain extent this is guesswork, as I haven't had the chance to play with these powers yet.

As with City of Heroes's Ancillary Power Pools, the Patron Pools can be looked at in two ways. They could be seen as a chance to round out your character, by giving him access to abilities that he would not normally have. However, they could also divert you from the main focus of your character--trying to be a budget Blaster or Controller does not necessarily make you a better Brute. It may be that your particular build could get more benefit out of taking more Primary, Secondary, and Pool powers in the 40s than taking Patron powers.

Note that you can choose a Patron, and experience that Patron's story arcs, without ever having to take a single one of his powers. However, once you choose a Patron, you're stuck with him whether or not you take his powers.


GOOD VS. EVIL: NOT A DIFFICULT CHOICE AT ALL

If you do not have it yet, go and purchase the Good vs. Evil box set or power pack right now. The powers that come with it are so incredibly useful that there is absolutely no reason to be without them.

The Good vs. Evil pack provides two incredibly useful prestige powers to every character you play or create. They may not seem spectacular at first, but once you've used them you'll wonder how you got along with out them. (It also provides some other things, but the powers are the important part.)

Jump Pack: This jet pack provides you with 30 seconds of vertical thrust before needing to recharge for a couple of minutes; you will continue moving forward at your usual speed. This is most useful with Super Speed or Super Jump; when used with Flight it provides you with a slight boost to your forward speed for that period. The usefulness of this pack to a Super Speed character cannot be overstated; it provides the speeder with a way of getting over vertical obstacles that does not require taking another travel power and will not run out. Super Speed just got a lot less annoying.

Pocket D Gold Club Card: Once every 25 minutes, with a 15-second interruptible activation time, this temporary power will allow you to teleport from wherever you are into the Tiki Room of the Pocket D (and will also allow you to enter the Tiki Room via the door within Pocket D). Since Pocket D provides access to three different villain zones (as well as four different hero zones, for your hero characters), this can cut down on travel time considerably--especially if you do not belong to a supergroup or have not earned the teleport-to-supergroup-base Veteran Reward power yet. This also means that a bartender who will sell you Inspirations even while in the middle of a Strike Force is just a 15-second teleport away, and that you no longer have to spend five minutes getting back to civilization from a mission in the middle of nowhere, such as at the far north end of Nerva (or the backside of Boomtown or Crey's Folly, for your heroes). You can, of course, obtain similar benefits with the Base Teleporter vet reward power, or the one-shot Wentworth's/Black Market teleport power, but the vet power has the same 25 minute recharge, and the Wentworth's costs money. Best to have as many options as possible.

The Good vs. Evil pack can be purchased for $30 standard price in retail stores, or you can get just the in-game items for $10 at NCSoft's online store. The retail bundle includes a free month of gameplay, a DVD-ROM installer of the I7 version of the game, and some tzotzkes like a printed map and so forth (for which you are essentially paying $5 after deducting the $15 month and the $10 in-game items). If you can get the retail bundle for $25 or less, it is a better deal than buying the code online; either way, $10 to obtain two incredibly useful powers for all your characters is an immense bargain that you should not pass up.


VETERAN'S DAY

There are two sets of Veteran Rewards with which we should concern ourselves: the 12-month ("Loyal") reward, which provides a choice between permanent versions of the Sands of Mu and Undead-Slaying Axe (actually Ghost-Slaying Axe) temp powers, and the 33-month ("Unswerving") reward, which provides a choice between permanent versions of the Blackwand and Nemesis Staff temp powers.

Unlike ordinary powers, these powers do exactly the same damage (depending on your level) regardless of what AT wields them. (There is an exception for the Nemesis Staff and Blackwand based on origin, but we will get to that in time.) They have no "brawl index." Therefore, I have chosen to present comparative damage in terms of damage points at level 50, thus making it comparable to the stats given in the Prima Guide. Also, for reasons of AT balance, these powers' damage cannot be enhanced by any means--buffs, Build-Up, Inspirations, Fury, etc.

Mu vs Axe

At level 50, Sands of Mu does 4 ticks of 28.85 smashing damage and 4 ticks of 28.85 negative energy damage to each even-level (white minions) target it hits. This is a total of 230.8 damage altogether, provided none of it is resisted. The Ghost-Slaying Axe does 141.35 points of Lethal damage to all targets, plus another 141.35 points of unresistable Special damage to particular targets (the undead and ghosts) for a potential total of 282.7. These targets include Circle of Thorns Spectrals, Tsoo Ancester Spirits, ghost ship passengers, ghostly pirates (Bloody Bay &amp; Port Oakes), Croatoa ghosts, Banished Pantheon zombies, Shivans (who knew jello blobs were undead?), Adamastor, and Johnny Sonata's Soul. By comparison, my Fire Tanker's 3-damage-slotted Greater Fire Sword does 86.74 Lethal and 124.91 Fire damage, for a total of 211.65.

It is interesting to note that while Sands of Mu deals more damage in most situations, to ghost/undead targets it often deals considerably less than the Axe. For example, Circle of Thorns Spectral Knights have 30% resistance to Negative Energy, 40% to Smashing, and 50% to Lethal. To a Spectral, Mu would deal a total of 150.02 damage after resistance, while the Axe would deal 212.03. (However, this is counterbalanced by Mu being able to hit more than one enemy at once, if they are lined up properly.)

While these numbers make the powers at first appear impressive, this does not take into account the fact that this damage cannot be enhanced by any means. If you hit build-up, pop some red Inspirations, build Fury, and so on, your "normal" attacks can be doing several hundred points of damage per hit--but the Veteran Reward powers will still do 230.8 or 141.35/282.7. Furthermore, both of these powers have quite a long recharge time (though Sands of Mu has the longer recharge of the two and requires more Endurance to use). In the end, neither of them is exactly going to be a world-shattering power after the first half of the game. The Sands of Mu is better overall, but if your character has an in-character reason to take the Axe (such as an intense hatred for the Banished Pantheon or Circle of Thorns), he can do so without feeling he is missing out on much. (Also, characters from classes that do primarily negative energy damage may want to take the Axe just so they have a non-negative attack--but this obviously does not apply to you.)

As an Energy/Energy Brute, Sands of Mu is probably going to be the more attractive power to you. It will provide you with a second multiple-target attack to supplement Whirling Fists (even if you do have to take the time to line the targets up just right to see the most benefit), and the secondary accuracy penalty effect will stack well with your defenses making you that much harder to hit. However, it will not provide more than a tiny fraction of your overall damage regardless, and you would not be missing out too severely if you chose the Ghost-Slaying Axe instead for reasons of character backstory--or even didn't bother choosing either one.

Wand vs Staff

Unlike the other Veteran Reward powers, the Blackwand and Nemesis Staff powers receive damage bonuses based on their origin. Blackwand will do more damage in the hands of a Magic, Mutant, or Natural character than in the hands of someone of a different Origin; Nemesis Staff will do more damage in the hands of Technology, Science, and Natural.

I do not presently have the level 50 damage figures for these weapons (as the Training Room is currently unavailable to me for testing), though I believe the damage to be theoretically identical (leaving aside the Origin effect), albeit of different types. We also know the following:<ul type="square">[*]Blackwand has the standard negative energy accuracy debuff secondary effect. Nemesis Staff has knockback for better control. (It does not have Disorient; this was removed from the power when its effectiveness was scaled back early on while it was still just a temporary power.)
[*]Nemesis staff has 25% greater range, but requires more End per use than the Blackwand.[/list]At first glance, the choice appears to be a "no-brainer" for anyone except Natural Origins; you take the one that does more damage for your Origin. Their damage is actually pretty impressive, especially with the Origin damage boost, assuming the power manages to hit. However, given that their damage cannot be increased (and will thus always take a backseat to your Primary and Pool attacks) and they will probably have a fairly long recharge time anyway, it might be best to base your decision more on secondary effects. (Of course, Natural Origin Brutes don't even have the quandary of which one does more damage, the smug bastards.)

Blackwand does have the benefit of the negative energy Accuracy Debuff effect, which will stack with Energy Aura's Defense bonuses. However, I do not currently know how potent or long-lasting the (unslottable) debuff is, and it does come with a fairly lengthy recharge compared to your other powers. On the other hand, the Nemesis Staff's knockback can be a very convenient tool in a number of situations, especially when fighting on a ledge or balcony such as those found in office building or cave maps. Knocking an enemy over the side can buy you precious time to recover in mid-battle, and this will probably be the only permanent knockback-granting power you will ever be able to take. Even if your origin does not confer a damage bonus for it, the knockback alone may make taking the Nemesis Staff more worthwhile.


TRICKS OF THE TRADE

The Fast and the Fury-Us

According to equations from _Castle_ (as provided by Dragonov):

CurrentFury increases by 5 * the lesser of 80 or ((100-CurrentFury)/20)^2) points each time you attack

CurrentFury increases by 2.5 * the lesser of 80 or ((100-CurrentFury)/20)^2) points each time you are attacked

CurrentFury increases twice as fast vs. Lieutenants

CurrentFury increases three times as fast against Bosses, players, EBs, AVs and Giant Monsters

Damage increases by CurrentFury * 2%

CurrentFury decreases by 2 points per second

(Note: _Castle_'s formulae originally placed Bosses in the "twice as fast" category, but testing suggests that they actually belong in the "three times as fast" one, so that's where I list them.)

The ^2 in the preceding formulae does not mean "squared," it is a logical wedge to imply that the value has to be "greater than or equal to" the value of 2.

I am indebted to anarchicgorilla for greatly simplifying the above formulae to the following simple ones:

For a CurrentFury value of no greater than 80:

(100 - CurrentFury)/20 = Gained Fury from YOU attacking MINION

(100 - CurrentFury)/40 = Gained Fury from MINION attacking YOU

Multiply Minion value x2 for Lieutenants, or x3 for players, Bosses, Elite Bosses, Archvillains/Heroes, and Monsters

For CurrentFury values of 81 or greater, calculate as if CurrentFury equalled 80.

Each Fury point = an additional 2% of damage.

If you attack a Minion at 0 Fury, you gain (100-0)/20 = 5 Fury. If you attack the Minion again before that Fury decays, you gain (100-5)/20 = 4.5 additional Fury, and so on.

If you attack the same Minion when you have 80 or higher Fury, you gain (100-80)/20 = 1 Fury each time.

If you attack a Boss at 0 Fury, you gain ((100-0)/20)x3, or 5x3, 15 Fury. If you attack the Boss again before that Fury decays, you gain ((100-15)/20)x3, or 4.25x3, 12.75 Fury.

If you attack the same Boss when you have 80 or higher Fury, you gain ((100-80)/20)x3, or 1x3, 3 Fury each time.

Although _Castle_'s formula above just says that Fury deticks at a rate of 2 ticks per second, this does not actually seem to be correct. Based on observations by anarchicgorilla, these figures are probably closer to correct:

from 1-49 CurrentFury, 1 pt deticks per second
from 50-99 CurrentFury, 2.5 pts detick per second
at 100 fury 5 pts detick per second

Even these numbers are not necessarily accurate; it seems likely that 80 Fury should be a threshold point for faster decay as well as slower build, but I have not been able to test this. At least they provide a ballpark estimate.

In short, what these formulae mean is that your Fury goes up slower the more of it you have (but gets no slower per attack once you've reached at least 80%), but goes up twice as fast if the attacks come from or are directed against Lieutenants, or three times as fast against players (3), Bosses, Elite Bosses, Archvillain/Heroes and Giant Monsters. Your Fury also goes up twice as fast for a single attack that you make on one of these as it does for a single attack made by one of these against you. AoE attacks and damage auras do not build Fury directly, but they help in Fury generation by getting the enemies you attack mad enough to attack you back. And the more Fury you have, the harder you have to work to keep it up; at the high end, you can lose 1/4 of your Fury bar in ten seconds of inactivity.

((3) However, testing has shown that Fury is not currently building as we had been told it should against other players in PVP. _Castle_ has researched the matter and found that the Boss/Archvillain bonus for PVP does not kick in until the 80% diminishing-return point. Castle wrote: "That's not exactly what we wanted, nor is it exactly what you folks were told. I'm sorry for that. I'm uncertain at this time what can be done to improve how this works, but I'll be exploring possibilities." Subsequently, the Fury bug was supposed to have been fixed in I8, but evidence suggests the fix has not entirely worked which is why I'm leaving this section more or less unchanged.)

What all this means for you is that in order to build Fury the fastest, you should make sure to concentrate first on Bosses or Lieutenants, or if there aren't any, get as many Minions as you can safely handle mad at you. If you are soloing on the first, third, or fifth difficulty levels, you will probably only have two Minions per spawn, and no Lieutenants or Bosses except in the final room. Thus, you may need to herd two or more groups together in order to get enough attacks coming in at once to help you build it faster.

When you attack, make sure to have Brawl (or some other attack if you use it instead) on auto-fire and (unless it's a tough Boss or worse) start out with your least damaging attacks--permatemp, Barrage, Energy Punch, any pool-power attacks, and Bone Smasher. If you have Hasten available to you, you may want to use it first, depending on whether you think there are other enemies to be fought soon whom you might rather save it for. If there are several enemies but not enough to overwhelm you, you might also want to throw in Taunt, Whirling Hands, and perhaps the Patron Pool attacks if you have them. These powers all cycle reasonably fast, so you can get a good attack chain going that will keep the Fury building; they will also do fairly small amounts of damage so you can keep whaling on the same enemy for a while, until you've built up a lot of it. Once your Fury bar is mostly full, then you can start unleashing Total Focus and Energy Transfer.


Building Fury on Teams

Building Fury is a tricky balancing act. You have to get just enough aggro to keep your bar full, but not more than your defenses can handle. For Energy Aura Brutes this is particularly important, because you're not like a Resistance-based Brute who gets hit more frequently for smaller amounts and thus can better balance the load. The hits you take will be rarer, but they will generally be for the full amount of damage, so your life bar will drop in large chunks. This can make it harder to judge when to heal, pop a green, or run.

When you're solo, this is not so much of a problem; your spawns will be relatively small and you would have to herd two or three together to get more than you could handle. But teaming is the real challenge; when you put a large number of people together, especially pickup-team people who've never worked together before, your Brute will either be overwhelmed very quickly, or else be unable to build Fury at all due to everyone else drawing all the enemy fire. The problem is exacerbated if you only rarely team, so do not get much practice at dealing with team aggro situations.

The first thing to remember when teaming is that a Brute is not a Tanker. He may look like one, having a Tanker's melee power sets and more hit points than a Scrapper, and he can tank reasonably well in a pinch, but that's not his main job--his defenses are only Scrapper-level so he can easily be overwhelmed. His job is to draw enough aggro to build his Fury, not enough to protect the entire rest of the team--so if he tries, he's just going to get in trouble. A Brute is more akin to a Scrapper--he goes out and hits things a lot. If City of Villains has a meat shield, it is actually the Mastermind.

The next thing to keep in mind is that Tanker or not, you do still need to draw a reasonable amount of aggro to get your Fury on. Probably the easiest way to do this is to take the alpha strike--that is, draw the attention of all of the enemies in a not-yet-aggroed crowd simultaneously, before anybody else on the team does. This will result in all those enemies attacking you at once, and each attack will raise your Fury by the amounts shown above. However, taking the alpha with a Defense-based character can be a gamble--with your normal levels of Defense, each enemy still has a nontrivial chance of hitting you with his attacks, which can include mezzes, debuffs, Endurance drains, or other effects. And the more enemies are hitting you at once, the less likely it is you will be able to use Aid Self to recover. Fortunately, if you are on a team, you will likely have support types (such as Kinetic or Thermal Corrupters) who can back you up with heals. If not, make sure you have a good supply of greens and your health insurance is paid up.

If you can frequently take alpha for your team, and survive it (a Luck Inspiration or two should help, or Overload if you have it, not to mention buffs from Masterminds or Corrupters), you should have few problems getting your Fury bar up and keeping it up. The Fury you get from the multiple attacks should carry you through the rest of the fight without even needing to Taunt or use Whirling Hands all that much.

However, this need to take alpha puts you in conflict with Dominators, Corrupters and Masterminds--because if they break alpha by casting AoE Holds, Sleeps, or (to an extent) Fears on the crowd of enemies before you can aggro them, the enemies are not going to attack you and you're not going to get much Fury at all. (Of course, you can break Sleep and temporarily break Fear with Whirling Hands, but breaking Sleep could cause your teammates to yell at you.)

Another potential problem to watch out for comes when teaming with the only class who has a higher single-target damage attack than you do: Stalkers. When Stalkers meet a spawn of foes, their usual tendency is to assassin-strike the toughest member of that spawn first--the Boss or Lieutenant. This is only the natural thing for them to do, of course; being weaker at taking damage, their inclination is to take out the biggest damage source as quickly as possible. However, you would ideally like to dance with that Boss or Lieutenant for a while as a fast way to build Fury. You can't do that if he's 1- or 2-shotted by an Assassin Strike before you ever get there.

So, in order to build maximum Fury, you should discuss alpha strike strategy with the rest of your team. Ask mezzers to let you draw the alpha for a few seconds before stepping in with their mezzes. Ask Stalkers to Assassin Strike some other target, or else wait a few seconds until you've traded a few blows. That should give you a good head start on your Fury and might possibly even rescue you from taking too much damage at just the right time.

If working with a Mastermind, who is more of a "meatshield" class than you, you may wish to share the alpha duties. If the spawn looks particularly nasty, you could have him send in his henchmen first to draw the alpha strike, then follow right behind them with Taunt and Whirling Hands to draw the enemy onto you. This will lessen the danger to you from the alpha, but should still ensure you get a decent share of the aggro. Otherwise, you will want to try taking the aggro first and then having the Mastermind's pets go in behind you to make sure it does not spread uncontrolled to the rest of the team.

If you're not able to take the alpha strike, you may have trouble gathering Fury during the battle that follows--especially if there are Masterminds in your team doing damage from every which way. This is when you most need to use Whirling Hands, Taunt, and/or Patron Pool AoEs if you have them. Just attacking single targets isn't enough; you need to make sure the "pokevoke" effect from Whirling Hands and the Taunt effect from Taunt are hitting as many foes as possible, and turning their attention back to you. The AoE immobilize and attack powers from your Patron Pools will come in handy for this, too, when you have them. You may even wish to consider temporarily turning off Energy Cloak; as a stealth power, it makes you harder to notice, so without it you will draw more attention. But on the other hand, leaving it on could help keep you from getting more attention than you can safely handle.

(One thing that was discovered during the Valentine's Day missions, where heroes and villains could team up, is that a Brute who teams with a Tanker often ends up unhappy. The Tanker's Gauntlet and Taunt override the Brute's single-target "pokevoke" and Taunt no matter what he does, so building Fury becomes difficult. The only thing to do in such a circumstance is ask the Tanker to let you take the alpha and have aggro for a few seconds before he taunts; that will at least give you a good chunk of a bar, so will be better than nothing. Bear this in mind when Issue 10's cooperative content comes into play.)

One common situation that comes up while Brutalizing on a team is the dilemma of the Fury fall-off. You've just finished taking out a big spawn, your Fury bar is maxed out, and you don't want to lose that damage rush. You want to find something else and hit it, hard, before your bar goes down again--but the rest of your team is still busy recovering from the battle, recasting Mastermind henchmen, re-issuing buffs, and so on. You can tell it's going to be at least a minute or two before they're ready to move on again--by which time you'll be starting from zero again.

The great temptation is just to rush off and find another spawn of mobs and start attacking them by yourself while you've got that Fury bar on, let the others catch up when they're ready. And on small teams, it may be possible to do this and get away with it--but on larger teams, it's one of the biggest mistakes you can make. Unless you've got Overload or plenty of purple and green Inspirations (and maybe not even then), you don't have any chance of surviving a 6-8-person-team-sized spawn for very long.

Furthermore, even if you don't get faceplanted, your running into the group is likely to trigger the misplaced maternal instincts of the rest of the team, who will then run in before they're ready and get themselves faceplanted trying to save you, rather than using an organized strategy. This can lead to a decrease in your reputation among the other members of that particular team--especially if it happens more than once. At the extreme, it could even get you kicked from the team.

If you find yourself in this situation, the best thing to do is ask your teammates, "Hey, can we get moving before my Fury bar falls too far? I'm a much more effective fighter with it than without it." If they are not inclined to agree, then just grin and bear it; Fury isn't that hard to build back up again, and it's better to wait and not accumulate more debt than to charge in blindly and get it for everyone. This is why some Brute players, myself included, tend to prefer playing solo--once they build their Fury bar to the maximum, they don't need to slow down for anybody but themselves.


Building Fury Solo

Playing solo, you can set your own pace much more freely than playing on teams; you can run to the end of the mission bypassing all the enemies, or you can move from enemy to enemy fast enough that your Fury bar never falls very far. You can complete your own missions as quickly or as slowly as you want, and you don't have to worry as much about outlevelling your contacts due to the extra XP team play gets you. (This is especially important down below level 10, where you can outlevel contacts just by sneezing.)

Early on, soloing may be a touch challenging. When you start out, you will want to divide your Inspiration tray between greens, blues, and purples; you'll need the greens and blues to recover from the hits you take and give, and the purples to bolster your relatively weak Defensive powers before you're able to get SOs. (See the Inspirations section below.) No matter how many blues you carry, you will find yourself taking advantage of the "Rest" power sooner or later. It will cost you roughly half your Fury bar, but there's no way around it--so it would be best to save the greens and blues for in-combat emergencies and use Rest for in-between battle recovery.

Hitting level 12 and getting DOs will make soloing a good deal easier (assuming you have someone from whom you can sponge Infamy to slot out all the way; otherwise, slot your attacks first and your shields when you can manage it). Once you hit level 14 and get your travel power, soloing can become easier if you take Super Speed and thus can zoom past the majority of the enemies clear to the end of the mission. Even if you take some other travel power, your between-mission travel time will still become much smaller so levelling will become faster regardless.

Once you get Total Focus at 18 and Stamina at 20, you will really start to kick into high gear--able to deal more damage at a time, and last longer while doing it. SOs at 22 will make another huge difference in effectiveness, as you can finally start slotting your attacks for full damage. Energy Cloak will add to your defense, and make mission stealthing and shedding unwanted aggro easier. Aid Self will let you replace some of those greens you carry with more blues and purples--and your ever-increasing number of Inspiration slots will give you room for yellows and reds, too. When you get Energy Drain at 28 you will be able to solo non-stop, and pauses to Rest will be a thing of the distant past. Energy Transfer at 32 will let you crank your difficulty to Relentless. Overload at 38 will let you survive Bosses, AVs, and huge crowds without recourse to purple inspirations--just the icing on the cake, but mmm, what tasty icing it is. Finally, your Patron powers (if you take them) should give you a bit of extra versatility and aggro power to help you on your way to level 50; otherwise you can go back and take those pool powers you didn't want quite badly enough to take earlier.

Until you have some of your most powerful attacks, it's best to be conservative in your use of the difficulty slider, staying on Villainous or Malicious possibly even after you get DOs. Villainous missions will be faster to finish, as the "Boss" at the end will be a Lieutenant instead, but Malicious missions may help you build Fury better and be good for a little more XP since there are more enemies and a Boss. Staying Villainous will ensure that you are able to complete more contacts' arcs, since you will outlevel them more slowly. On Villainous missions (and Vicious, and Relentless), you may need to herd two or more spawns of Minions together in order to get enough of them beating on you at once to build Fury quickly. (Check out this guide for some tips on how to use corners and terrain to herd enemies together.) You may want to move up to Vicious or Ruthless once you hit 18 and get the major burst-damage boost of Total Focus.

Once you get SOs, you can move up to Vicious, Ruthless, even Relentless if you do it with care. Vicious or Relentless should go faster with the smaller number of enemies; Ruthless will help you build Fury faster with more enemies. You may wish to stay at Ruthless until you hit 32 and get the big DPS boost of Energy Transfer. With that in your arsenal, you should be able to mow down the toughest enemy spawns quickly; just make sure to carry plenty of purples for the Lieutenants and Bosses. Overload will be your Boss- and Elite-Boss-killer.

To a soloist, Elite Bosses can be tricky, though some are harder than others. A lot of Elite Bosses are just tricked-out versions of normal Bosses with more hit points and another attack or two, and can be handled easily enough. However, the special ones such as Longbow's Ballistas and Elite Boss versions of Archvillains/Heroes are almost as tough as archvillains in their own right. They're not impossible to defeat solo, with the right combination of powers and Inspirations, but you should be prepared to pop at least 2 to 3 purples (or Overload if you have it by then) and any reds and yellows you might have before engaging--and hopefully you're carrying plenty of greens and blues too.

Thanks to the Archvillain-to-Elite-Boss change from I6, AV missions no longer impede your ability to solo. Just make sure your Difficulty is set no higher than Ruthless when you're on a mission against an Archvillain or Hero, so that they will appear as Elite Bosses. (If on Relentless, they will always be an Archvillain even solo.) On the other hand, you may wish to get a team together specifically to take that AV down for the higher XP award, +3 SO, and Tier 3 Inspiration that they grant on defeat. If you're strapped for cash, passing up any opportunity to get a free, potentially useful SO is not the best idea.


A Slight Case of Over-Aggro

Sometimes in your quest to build Fury, you may discover you have too much aggro lovin' from your adoring fans. There are a number of ways to deal with this.
<ul type="square">[*]Get away. If you're not entirely surrounded, you might be able to run around a corner and buy a little breathing room. This will be easiest to do if Teleport is your travel power.[*]Hit Overload, or pop a purple Inspiration or two if you don't have it yet. Even if you don't have Overload, your Defense is good enough already that you'll get more benefit out of Defense Inspirations than most classes; it should be enough to buy you enough breathing room that you can take out the worst damagers, use Aid Self, or just make a break for it.[*]Use Total Focus, Stun, Whirling Hands, and/or Air Superiority, if you have them. These are your best powers in terms of stopping enemies from attacking for a while. Total Focus and Stun will definitely apply a Disorient effect that should stop most Minions or Lieutenants (or even Bosses if stacked) for a few moments, Whirling Hands will probably Disorient about a third of the enemies it hits, and Air Superiority will put an enemy flat on his back for a while.[*]Panic. It doesn't usually work, but it might make you feel better.[/list]Sometimes no matter what you do you won't be able to lose all that aggro, or the dice will just break the wrong way, and you'll end up kissing carpet. Just chalk it up to a "learning experience" and move on; as fast as you defeat things, the debt will be gone before you realize it anyway.

I tend to make a point of carrying at least one Awaken and one Break Free at all times, so that if I fall in a safe enough spot (far enough away from where the enemies were hanging out that they walk back there and aren't watching me anymore) I can rez, de-mez, and Rest or pop greens/blues back to full health/end, without needing to take a hospital or base trip. (Sometimes this can even be done with the enemies standing right over you, if there are few enough that you'll have time to pop greens, blues, purples, Energy Drain, and/or Aid Self before you re-faceplant. And if it's unsuccessful, the double-dip debt protection means you generally won't get more debt from it.) This is especially crucial before travel powers, when a hospital trip can mean five or ten minutes of walking to get back to the mission.


It's Just Overkill (Day After Day, It Reappears...)

Energy Melee is characterized by attacks that do a great deal of damage, are fairly slow to recharge, and cost a great deal of Endurance. In terms of Endurance per damage per second, every attack save for Energy Transfer is roughly equal (unless slotted for End Reduction); the amount of End you spend is directly proportional to the damage you do over time. Therefore, if you waste less damage, you also waste less Endurance--and it also doesn't slow down your attack chain as much.

This brings me to a problem that is commonly observed among the CoH/CoV damage classes: over-damage. I'm not talking about one-shotting enemies with power attacks; if the enemy is close to your own level, you probably didn't one-shot him by very much. I'm talking about using stronger attacks where weaker, less expensive ones will do. For example, if you knock an enemy down to a sliver of his health, you should not then use Total Focus on him. It wastes the extra damage (if you could have tabbed over to a nearby mostly-full enemy and Focused him instead, then switched back to hit the first guy with a lower-power attack), as well as the extra Endurance you just used. It also also means you don't have Total Focus available to you again for at least seven to ten seconds, and you might need it in the meantime. On a lesser scale, this also applies when you use Bone Smasher when Energy Punch, Air Superiority, or Brawl would have sufficed.

One of the best Endurance-conservation techniques you can practice is learning just how much of the average enemy's life bar each of your attacks will account for, and then getting in the habit of chaining attacks so as to just barely defeat him, wasting the minimal amount of damage (and hence Endurance). This is especially important below level 20 when you don't have Stamina, but it is a good habit to keep all through the rest of your career.


Never Let Them See You...At All

Energy/Energy Brutes, especially those who take Super Speed, are uniquely equipped to complete most missions extra-fast. They do this through the expedient of stealthing and/or superspeeding to the mission objectives, bypassing most of the enemies within the mission and earning the mission completion bonus (and hence, arc completion bonuses) extra-rapidly. About the only missions where this can't be done are "defeat all" or rescue/kidnapping missions--and even then, Energy Melee has the single-target damage to clear them out quickly. (4)

Completing missions, and thus arcs, rapidly is one of the fastest ways I've found to level a character up quickly. (For more information on this sort of thing, see R_M's Comprehensive I7 XP Gain/Debt Loss Guide; the fellow who wrote it seems to be reasonably clever.) Although you do not get as much total XP per mission by leaving so many Minions undefeated, by completing missions and arcs faster, the big bonuses come closer together. Thus, your average XP per minute is higher and you level faster. As a fringe benefit, getting less XP per individual mission means you are less likely to outlevel your contacts before you finish all their missions.

Of course, speed-completing missions also means that later in the game you're likely to run out of contacts a level or two before the next ones open up. However, you have newspaper missions and PVP zone missions to fill in the gap--and any paper mission that doesn't involve kidnapping someone can be speed-completed too. You should never be reduced to street-hunting in order to level up.

((4) Since I7, stealth and phase powers will suppress for 10 seconds (if a toggle) or cancel out entirely (if a buff) when clicking a glowing item. This means that, when stealthing missions, you may have to take out enemies in the vicinity of the item before clicking it. However, many of these items are placed so that it is possible to retrieve them without entering the enemies' line of sight.)


Inspiration is Where You Find It

Knowing how to use your powers and Fury isn't the only important part of being a Brute. The proper selection and use of Inspirations can make a major difference too. Let's look at the various colors and how and when to use them. Formerly, most of these Inspirations were thought to confer their benefits on a 25%/33%/50% scale, but research by Arcanaville and pohsyb has shown this to be incorrect in many cases. The values given below are those that are correct as of the beginning of I7; _Castle_ has said he will be examining Inspirations with an eye toward rebalancing them at some point.

It used to be that Inspiration stores were entirely unavailable to participants in a Task/Strike Force. However, the Arena stores and Pocket D bartenders will now sell to anybody, regardless of whether they are on a Task/Strike Force or not. The Arena sells everything except Awakens; the bartenders sell those too. And every Inspiration that's ever dropped is buyable from Wentworth's or the Black Market.

Rage (Red): Damage (25%/33%/50%). You would think this would be one of the most important Inspirations to a Brute--except that Brutes, due to their low base damage and huge damage cap, actually get less benefit out of these, relatively speaking, than any other class (except Masterminds). Adding an extra 25% of base damage to a Build Up-using Scrapper cruising at 300% increases his current damage by 1/12, but adding the same amount to a Brute with Build Up and Fury at 500% increases his damage by only 1/20. Nonetheless, reds can still provide a decent damage boost, especially if you manage to pop several of them at once. When your Fury bar is full and Build Up is on, any extra damage is a good thing. Conversely, they can also give you a little boost at the start of a fight when you don't have any Fury built up yet. Not really worth stocking up until you hit 25 and have more Inspiration slots to spare.

Insight (Yellow): Accuracy (7.5%/18.75%/37.5%). Well, technically "To-Hit" because they are applied to the left side of the to-hit equation in the same place as To-Hit buffs (see next section) rather than the right side with Accuracy Enhancements--which actually makes them a more powerful than if they just conferred Accuracy. In PVE, these will be most important to you early on, before you've been able to slot for Accuracy really well--but may also be handy against enemies such as the Circle of Thorns who debuff your accuracy any time in the game. Insights also have a secondary effect: they increase your Perception, counteracting enemy Stealth or Blindness powers. This will be most useful against Stalkers in PVP, and against mobs who use smoke grenades (such as certain Arachnos Bosses) in PVE. If you're going up against Thorns or Arachnos, or into a PVP zone, be sure and carry a few with you; otherwise, you shouldn't need them too much once you get DOs.

Respite (Green) and Catch a Breath (Blue): Health &amp; Endurance (25%/33%/50%). Until you're able to add Aid Self and Energy Drain to your build, these will be your Special Friend. I strongly suggest keeping half your tray full of greens, half blues (with a couple of spaces left over for other things like purples and Awakens), through your teens and early twenties. Once you get Aid Self you can back off on the greens, and Energy Drain will let you back off the blues. You should still carry 2 or 3 of each, though, for emergencies.

Luck (Purple): Defense (12.5%/25%/33%). These will be another of your special friends (especially after I7 hits). One small purple will double or almost double your beginning defensive capabilities; two of them (or one medium-sized) should bring them to the defense cap once they're fully slotted with SOs. Either way, purples will greatly enhance your survival should you meet up with tough crowds, Bosses, archvillains, and "can-openers" (see Can-Openers section below). Of course, up through the time you get SOs, if you're running at the difficulty level you should be you won't need them as much, and carrying too many will cut into the number of greens and blues you can keep around. By the time you hit the mid-20s, you'll start having Inspiration slots to spare to carry more.

Sturdy (Orange): Damage Resistance (10%/15%/20%). Outside of PVP zones, these aren't really worth keeping around, unless you went the damage resistance route and have inherent resistances to stack them on. In order for them to be most useful, you have to be hit by an attack--and the whole point of your Defense-based secondary set is to keep that from happening as much as possible. In the end, the amount of damage they allow you to resist is so small that if you just dumped them and replaced them with purples you'd be much better off in terms of damage avoided over time. The only PVE exception would be if randomness of drops gives you a couple of medium-sized or large versions; it might be worth keeping them around to use when facing an archvillain or particularly nasty foes. Otherwise, use 'em as soon as you get 'em. However, PVP is another story; one of the I7 changes is that even the smallest orange Inspiration will now confer 100% immunity to enemy teleportation effects (e.g. Teleport Foe, Starless Step, Wormhole). It may pay to carry some when adventuring in PVP zones.

Break Free: Anti-Mez (remove current mez state; protect for 30/60/90 sec). You won't generally need these in PVE thanks to your inherent mez protection. However, as stated above, it's worth carrying one around to pair with an Awaken if you happen to fall in the heat of battle. They will handily take care of the residual wakey-woozies. You may also wish to carry a few of them when going into PVP zones, or into battle against foes you know to have End draining or toggle-dropping powers, such as level 40+ Longbow, Carnival of Shadows, or especially Malta.

Awaken: Self-Rez (progressively more health/end and shorter disorient by size). Some people don't believe in carrying rez Inspirations, figuring it's better to use the space for something that will help keep you from dying. While there's a certain amount of sense to that, sooner or later you're going to end up dying anyway--it's unavoidable. You might as well have the ability to recover from it when it does happen. However, I generally advise just carrying one, maybe two at most, and restocking between missions--if you die more often than that, you should probably rethink what you're doing on that mission. (An exception is Strike Forces, where it might pay to stock up with more Awakens if few teammates have rez powers.)


TWO ACC, OR NOT TWO ACC?

Now it's time for a little lesson in just how buffs and SOs apply to our actual chance to hit things.

The simplest form of the equation used when you fire a power off at a foe is this:

(base to_hit + buffs - debuffs) * (1 + accuracy SOs)

base to_hit = your base percentage chance of hitting a foe of that particular level relative to you. Numbers recently given by _Castle_ are:

+0 = 75
+1 = 68
+2 = 61
+3 = 55
+4 = 48
+5 = 41
+6 = 34

buffs = percentage buff from any powers that increase your accuracy, such as Supremacy, Tactics, Fortitude, Build Up, Aim, etc., and also yellow (Insight) Inspirations

debuffs = percentage debuff from any powers that decrease your accuracy, such as Negative Energy blasts; also any Defense value the enemy might have against your attacks

For most PVE purposes, you're going to find that two Accuracy Enhancements per attack are sufficient to defeat anything you'll face on your own--provided that they don't have Defense bonuses or Accuracy debuffs.

In a solo mission, on Relentless, the maximum level of enemies you fight will be +3. You have a 55% base chance to hit +3 foes. Multiply that by 1.66, for base accuracy plus 2 Accuracy SOs, and you get 91.3%--only a few percentage points below the 95% cap. (And if you're able to use Level 35 or better Invention Enhancements, you may well be able to cap even that.) Anything lower than that, you are capped against. (Of course, this does assume that the enemies do not have Defense bonus or To-Hit Debuff powers, but you'll have Build Up to add an additional 50% to the base to-hit to counteract those.)

Of course, on team missions you may encounter +4 or +5 mobs, which you'll only have a 79.7% or 68.1% overall chance to hit--but that's what Build Up, yellow Inspirations, and teammates with Tactics are for.

Note that in PVP, you will only have a 50% base chance to hit other players--which works out to 83% with two SOs. It will take three Accuracy SOs to cap you in PVP.


STRADDLING DEFENSE

As a Defense-based class, every Brute player needs to understand exactly how Defense works--especially since it changed radically in Issue 7. The very best way to study up on this is to read Arcanaville's Guide to Defense v1.3, and the posts that follow, so you can get it straight from the horse's mouth. There's a lot of mathematics in there, and it may be a little complicated to understand. So I'll just hit some of the high points here, and hope I don't get them too far wrong.

In I6, Defense did not scale adequately. The following example is an oversimplification for the sake of explanation; if you want the complete story, read Arcana's Guide and the comments that follow--if you can understand them.

Take the examples of a level +0 Boss and a level +4 Boss, and for the sake of simplicity let's say you have a 30% Defense to their attacks. Under Issue 6, a level +0 (orange) Boss had a 65% base chance to hit you. If you subtract your 30% Defense value from that, you drop his total chance to hit you by about half, to 35%. However, a level +4 (triple-purple) Boss had an 88.4% base chance to hit you. If you subtract that same 30% Defense value, then you only cut it to 58.4%--or by about a third.

But this changed in Issue 7. Instead of enemies' Base To-Hit being increased as they go up in level, their Base To-Hit is staying 50% and instead they gain Accuracy multipliers for relative level and type. Thus, your Defense is taken off their chances before the level (and type) modifiers are applied, rather than after as it used to be--meaning that they will lose the same percentage chance to hit you at level +4 as they do at level +0. Furthermore, your defense against even +0 level enemies will improve; that same 30% Defense will bring a +0 Boss down to 26% Accuracy instead of 35%, and a +4 Boss down to 35.4% Accuracy instead of 58.4%. Thus, the effectiveness of Defense now scales.

Furthermore, 45% Defense is sufficient to floor the accuracy of anything--Minions, Lieutenants, Bosses, Archvillains/Heroes--up to +5 levels above you (assuming they don't have To-Hit buffs such as Vengeance or Tactics in effect). 50% - 45% = the 5% floor. (No chance to hit anything in City of Heroes can ever go below 5%.) However, that floor will no longer necessarily be just 5%, since Accuracy buffs are applied after the 5% floor has been reached. (For example, if you had 45% or more Defense, that level +0 Boss's final Accuracy would be 6.5%, and the +4's would be 8.84%.)

If all these numbers confuse you, I apologize. Suffice it to say that things are much better for everyone with Defense since Issue 7 than they used to be.

If you like the numbers and you want a more detailed explanation (as I may well have oversimplified into incorrectness), check out the Arcana's Guide thread linked above.

[Continued in next post]

Power: Total Focus
Description: Total Focus is complete mastery over Energy Melee. This is a very slow, but incredibly devastating attack that can knock out most opponents, leaving them Disoriented. Due to the exhausting nature of Total Focus, recharge time is very long.
Effects:
Activation Time: 3
Endurance Cost: 27
Duration: 10
Recharge Time: 20
Range: 5
Brawl Index: Smashing(2.7778),Energy(7.1111)
Disorient: 100% 10 sec @ Magnitude 4
Enhancements: Endurance Reduction,Recharge Reduction,Disorient Duration,Taunt Duration,Accuracy,Damage
Available: Level 18

Viewpoint: Energy Melee Stalkers don't get this power until level 32. Energy Melee Tankers don't get it until level 38. You get it at level 18--aren't you lucky?

This is the first of your two "ultimate power attacks". In fact, for the other two Energy Melee classes, it's the ultimate power attack (which is where the "complete mastery" in the power description comes from). However, for some reason Brutes get this one early and Energy Transfer becomes your level 32 attack instead.

Total Focus has a fairly long, albeit impressive, animation (which I like to call "the Bouncy-Bouncy of Doom") and a lengthy recharge time that together put it toward the low end of the damage-per-second scale of Energy Melee attacks. However, that doesn't really matter, because the damage it does in one lump is surpassed only by Energy Transfer, making it a great one-shot or finishing attack. A fully-slotted Total Focus is easily capable of one-shotting white or yellow minions, especially with a full head of Fury and/or Build Up behind it.

In keeping with its original ultimate-power-attack nature, Total Focus has a 100% chance of applying the highest-magnitude longest-duration single Disorient effect you get: ten seconds of Magnitude 4 stunnage. This makes it good for neutralizing pesky Lieutenants, such as Longbow Nullifiers, until you can finish them off--and if you can stack it with another Disorient (such as from Stun), it will even keep a Boss stunned for a while. Note that Total Focus does not Disorient you upon using it, even though its power descriptions in some places may still imply that it does.

Endurance-wise, this is your "thirstiest" power in the Melee set--Energy Transfer does more damage, but uses much less End as it takes most of its power from your hit points. Even when you have Stamina it is going to suck down a big chunk of your bar with each use. With that in mind, you would do well to consider devoting a slot or two to End Reduction, at least until you get Energy Drain and can replenish faster. I would advise putting End Reduction in the 6th slot until Energy Drain, then swapping it out for a Recharge Rate so you can damage faster. This power is a prime candidate for slotting with Dam/Acc Hami-Os so Endurance use (or recharge time) can be reduced still further with the benefit of the freed-up slots--or using an Invention set that includes Endurance Reduction capabilities.

You should plan your power picks so you can take Total Focus the moment it opens up. You can get by without it--my original build waited until level 26 to take it--but once you've seen what it can do, you won't want to. If you're getting Fitness, then I would suggest you take Swift or Hurdle by 14, Health at 16, Total Focus at 18, and Stamina at 20.

Suggested Slotting:
18-21 (DOs): Acc x3-4/EndReduc x1-2
22+ (SOs): Acc x2/Dmg x3/Rechg or EndReduc x0-1


Power: Stun
Description: By focusing your internal energy on your fists, you can turn them into personal tasers. This Stun attack deals minor damage, but has the best chance to Disorient a target.
Effects: Melee -- Foe Disorient
Activation Time: 2
Endurance Cost: 14.5
Recharge Time: 20
Range: 5
Brawl Index: Smashing(0.4167),Energy(0.2778)
Disorient: 100% 10 sec @ Magnitude 3
Enhancements: Endurance Reduction,Recharge Reduction,Disorient Duration,Taunt Duration,Accuracy,Damage
Available: Level 26

Viewpoint: This power does almost no damage, but has a 100% chance of conferring a Disorient effect just as long as Total Focus's at 10 seconds, and only slightly lower-magnitude, at Magnitude 3. This would make it a natural candidate for a one-two Total Focus/Stun double-whammy that will mez Bosses immediately and put Archvillains/Heroes well on the way to wooziness.

Stun will be most useful in PVP, where stacking Disorients on enemies to get their toggles to fall is the key to an easy victory--especially given that toggle-dropping from detoggle-powers has been toned way back in I7. With so few 100% chance stuns, you'll need every one you can get.

There is no question that it can be useful in PVE, as well, for quickly mezzing bosses and AVs to keep them from hitting you. The question is, is it useful enough to spend the power and Enhancement slots on? For most PVE-focused players, the answer seems to be no. In PVE, damage is key, and even tough enemies tend to go down too quickly for stun effects to matter. The extra mez power would be handy, there's no denying that--but there are enough better powers out there for you to take that it's probably not worth the opportunity cost. However, Stun is definitely worth considering in your 40s if you choose not to take the Patron Power Pools; I have found it to be quite helpful in pacifying bosses or enemies who have can-opener effects.

Suggested Slotting:
26+ (SOs): Acc x2/Disorient x3/Rechg or End Reduc x0-1


Power: Energy Transfer
Description: Mastery of Energy Melee begins with the ability to transfer your own Hit Points into a punch that deals extreme damage.
Effects: Melee -- Self -HP(10%)
Activation Time: 1
Endurance Cost: 14.5
Recharge Time: 20
Range: 5
Brawl Index: Smashing(4.3333),Energy(8.3333)
Disorient: 30% 5 sec @ Magnitude 3
Enhancements: Endurance Reduction,Recharge Reduction,Taunt Duration,Accuracy,Damage
Available: Level 32

Viewpoint: Available at level 35 for a Tanker but level 26 for a Stalker, this level 32 power is the Energy Melee Brute's "ultimate" attack. More damaging and with much less Endurance expenditure than Total Focus, it also has a very short animation time and a decent recharge rate that puts it in the top three attacks a Brute has in terms of overall damage per second. This uberness does come at a price, however: you lose 10% of your hit points (calculated as a percentage of your total capacity, not your current HP level) every time it is used successfully.

For an ultra-super-duper power attack, "Energy Transfer" has a rather dull name, doesn't it? Whereas other classes have impressive "nuke"-sounding attack names, an Energy Melee Brute's sounds like he's jumpstarting a car. And the animation is rather unimpressive, also--unlike Total Focus's "Bouncy-Bouncy of Doom," Energy Transfer is just an ordinary-looking punch. It's over before you even know it. However, so is the target's life-bar.

With build-up and Fury behind it, Energy Transfer is a one-shot "you-can-die-now" button for anything short of the tougher Lieutenants and above. The first few times you use it, you'll be amazed. "Hey...I just punched him a little, where'd his life bar go?"

Energy Transfer has a 30% chance of a 5-second Magnitude 3 stun on a hit target--on a par with Energy Punch, just a little stronger.

The cost of using Energy Transfer is, of course, 10% of your total hit points if you hit--in the 100 to 140 range for level 32-40, depending on what level you are when you use it. (If you whiff, no hit points are subtracted.) This is actually not as bad a thing as it seems. 140 hit points at a time is about the same as a decent smack attack from an average bad guy--substantially less than a Boss will do. Most of the time you'll hardly even notice it. Besides, if you have Aid Self or greens in your tray, you can erase the effect of multiple Energy Transfers all at once. (Energy Transfer is one of the best arguments for fitting Aid Self into your build; sooner or later all those greens will run out in mid-mission.) And as a side benefit of this health cost, Energy Transfer takes hardly any Endurance to use--so you can use it when your blue bar is almost empty without worrying you'll cause your toggles to drop.

It is apparently not possible to Energy Transfer oneself to death directly any longer--if you use ET when at 10% or less of health, you will bottom out at 1 hit point, just as if you had fallen off a skyscraper. However, when you're at 1 hit point, a hit by anything else will kill you, so it would be best to avoid that circumstance if you can.

Suggested Slotting:
26+ (SOs): Acc x2/Dmg x3/Rechg x1


ENERGY AURA

Note: These powers have been updated with figures from the downloadable Prima Guide update that was made available at the start of I7. For the most part, the numbers were quite similar to what were already here, and I consider this to be a tribute to the efficacy of the myriad testers through the ages who have determined the numbers through careful trial, error, observation, and statistical analysis. In the few places where the Prima numbers and the other numbers I had differed substantially, I say so.

Power: Kinetic Shield
Description: Kinetic Shield creates a harmonic Energy Aura that can deflect physical attacks. Your Defense to Smashing and Lethal attacks is increased as weapons and powers like bullets, blades, and punches tend to deflect off the shield. The Energy based nature of Kinetic Shield also offers minimal Defense to Energy attacks. Recharge: Fast.
Effects: Toggle: Self +DEF(Smashing, Lethal), Minor +DEF(Energy), +RES(Debuff Def)
Activation Time: 0.73
Endurance Cost: 0.39/s (.13 per activation cycle)
Recharge Time: 4
Base Defense: 12.75% vs Smashing/Lethal; 1.8% vs Energy
3-Slotted Defense: (x1.55) 19.76% vs Smashing/Lethal; 2.79% vs Energy
Resistance: 17.3% vs Defense Debuffs (unslottable)
Enhancements: Endurance Reduction,Recharge Reduction,Defense Buff
Available: Level 1

Viewpoint: The power that you are forced to take on starting out, the Kinetic Shield is going to be the mainstay of your defensive lineup. With this power running, you become somewhat harder for the average foe to hit with Smashing or Lethal attacks, and a little harder for Energy attacks.

This power also provides a 17.3% resistance to Defense Debuffs--that is, if a Defense Debuffing attack hits you while you are running this shield, it loses 17.3% of its effectiveness. Energy Shield has an identical effect, so that if you have both of them running at once, defense debuffs lose over 1/3 of their effectiveness on you.

The .13 End/Sec drain of Kinetic Shield seems small at first, but when you consider the other toggles you will be running, sooner or later you may want to add an End Reduction to it if you can spare the slots.

Note: The Prima Guide says the shield toggles are all three .13 end per activation cycle; HoshiAdam notes that a lot of classes' shields seem to have an end/sec about double this, which means their activation is likely twice a second. However, the old information I had said .38 for Kinetic and Power Shield and .4 end/sec for Entropy Shield, which would have put their activation at three times a second instead. Given that the old figures were more than likely a result of careful observation, and all three of them matching so close to 3 x .13 is probably not coincidental, I'm going to err on the side of caution. If it does turn out they activate only twice per second, the cost will be .26, not .39.

Suggested Slotting:
1-11 (TOs): Def x3-4
12-21 (DOs): Def x2-4/End Reduc x0-2
22+ (SOs): Def x3/End Reduc x0-1


Power: Dampening Field
Description: Your body resonates a mild Dampening Field that absorbs kinetic energy from physical weapons. This auto power permanently reduces all incoming Smashing and Lethal damage. This power is always on and costs no Endurance
Effects: Auto: Self +Res(Smashing, Lethal)
Base Resistance: 7.5% vs Smashing/Lethal
3-Slotted Resistance: (x1.55) 11.63% vs Smashing/Lethal
Enhancements: Damage Resistance
Available: Level 2

Viewpoint: Dampening Field, and its sibling Energy Protection, are two powers that represent a divergence in Energy Aura Brute build strategies. Many Energy Aura Brute players consider them undesirable; they provide a maximum of about 12% Resistance fully-slotted, and they only protect against Smashing, Lethal, Energy, and Negative Energy attacks, leaving Fire, Cold, Toxic, and Psi unresisted. They would rather spend the two power slots on the Medicine Pool to get Aid Self, which is effective against any form of damage.

Some Brute players do go the Resistance route, however, at least in part; on the positive side, the Resistance powers are not toggles, so do not require End expenditure to run and cannot be knocked off by detoggling effects. When fully-slotted and stacked with Tough, Dampening Field can provide a quite respectible 25% or so resistance to Smashing and Lethal. However, that does require 3 power slots (Dampening Field, Boxing, Tough) and 4 Enhancement slots that might be better spent somewhere else. Energy Protection is less desirable, having nothing else to stack with and protecting against types from which the Energy Aura Brute is generally well-defended anyway.

Personally, I incline toward the Aid Self school of Energy Aura Brutality; 12% Resistance to a handful of damage types is not worth two powers and four slots.

Suggested Slotting:
2+: DmgRes x3


Power: Power Shield
Description: This Power Shield creates an Electro-Magnetic shield around you that can deflect non-physical attacks. Your Defense to Fire, Cold, Energy and Negative Energy attacks is increased as these attacks are refracted off the shield. Recharge: Fast.
Effects: Toggle: Self +Def(Fire, Cold, Energy, Negative), +Res(Debuff Def)
Activation Time: 1.67
Endurance Cost: 0.39/s (.13 per activation cycle)
Recharge Time: 4
Base Defense: 15% vs Fire/Cold/Energy; 10% vs Negative)
3-Slotted Defense: (x1.55) 23.25% vs Fire/Cold/Energy; 15.5% vs Negative)
Resistance: 17.3% vs Defense Debuffs (unslottable)
Enhancements: Endurance Reduction,Recharge Reduction,Defense Buff
Available: Level 4

Viewpoint: Complementary to Kinetic Shield, Power Shield provides the rest of the Energy Aura Brute's primary defenses. Between the two, the only types that completely lack Defense are Psionic and Toxic damage; these are covered somewhat by Energy Cloak's positional Defense. It should be noted that Negative Energy has a substantially lower level of Defense than the other types that are covered; this makes Dark-using foes such as Circle of Thorns a bit more hazardous.

Although available at level 4, Power Shield is not necessarily a must-have until the teens, as lower-level villains will face relatively few foes who use these types of attacks. Certainly if you do take it early, you will want to leave it off unless you are up against enemies who are known to use its damage types; the energy drain on top of all your attack powers can be moderately debilitating prior to Stamina and Energy Drain.

Suggested Slotting:
4-11 (TOs): Def x3-4
12-21 (DOs): Def x2-4/End Reduc x0-2
22+ (SOs): Def x3/End Reduc x0-1


Power: Entropy Shield
Description: Entropy Shield diminishes and dampens the energy of controlling type effects. The shield makes you resistant to Knockback, Disorient, Hold, Sleep, and Immobilization effect, for as long as you can keep this toggle power active. Recharge: Fast.
Effects: Toggle: Self +Res(Knockback, Disorient, Hold, Sleep, Immobilize, Debuff Def)
Activation Time: 0.73
Endurance Cost: 0.39/s (.13 per activation cycle)
Recharge Time: 10
Enhancements: Endurance Reduction,Recharge Reduction
Available: Level 10

Viewpoint: This is yet another toggle that you will need to run; however, since it is one of those rare powers whose main effect cannot be slotted, there is plenty of room to drop Endurance Reduction Enhancements into it. Entropy Shield is one of the best anti-mez toggles in the entire Brute class; certainly the one that Fiery Aura, Dark Aura, and Stone Armor Brutes can only wish they had. In addition to the "standard" mez types, it also protects against knockback and knockdown, so there is no requirement that Acrobatics be taken as well. You will definitely want to keep this one running, so End Reduction is the order of the day.

Entropy Shield is also significantly slower to recharge than your other toggles (except for Energy Cloak); you might also want to consider slotting a Recharge Rate in it to get it back up sooner after End crash or toggle-dropping effects, especially if you PVP.

Suggested Slotting:
10+: EndReduc x1-2/Rechg x0-1


Power: Energy Protection
Description: Your ability to channel energy makes you naturally resistant to Energy and Negative Energy damage. This power is always on and costs no Endurance.
Effects: Auto: Self +Res(Energy, Negative Energy)
Base Resistance: 7.5% vs Energy/Negative
3-slotted Resistance: (x1.55) 11.63% vs Energy/Negative
Enhancements: Damage Resistance
Available: Level 16

Viewpoint: See Dampening Field, above. Generally considered the less desirable of the two Resistance powers, due to protecting against Energy which is already well-Defended anyway. The extra resistance versus the more weakly-defended-against Negative Energy might come in handy, but probably not enough to merit taking it.

Suggested Slotting:
16+: DmgRes x3


Power: Energy Cloak
Description: The Energy Cloak bends light around you so you become partially invisible. While Cloaked you can only be seen at very close range. If you attack while Cloaked, you will be discovered. Even if discovered, you still have a good Defense bonus to all attacks except Psionics. Unlike some stealth powers, Energy Cloak will not work with any other form of Concealment powers.
Effects: Toggle: Self Stealth, +DEF
Activation Time: 0.73
Endurance Cost: (0.13 per activation cycle)
Recharge Time: 20
Base Defense: 3.75% vs All (incl. Melee/Ranged/AoE)
3-Slotted Defense: (x1.55) 5.81% vs All (incl. Melee/Ranged/AoE)
Enhancements: Endurance Reduction,Defense Buff
Available: Level 20

Viewpoint: This stealth power won't make you into a Stalker, but it'll make you into the next best thing: a nearly-invisible Brute, able to complete missions that don't require defeating everything in record time. (See the section on mission-stealthing, below.) It is the cherry on top of your shield toggles' sundae, providing an extra little defensive boost that will help mitigate your damage when you have it on. It also provides the only Positional defense--defense effective against Psionic or Toxic attacks--that you will get from Energy Aura. (You can add to it with pool-based defensive powers such as Hover or Combat Jumping, however.)

One noteworthy feature of Energy Cloak is that it is, apparently, the one form of Stealth in the game where neither the defense bonus nor the concealment bonus suppresses when you attack. This is helpful in that it is sometimes possible to attack individual members of a spawn without the rest noticing (though it may cause teammates to get attacked by enemies that don't aggro onto you). However, it is uncertain whether these lacks of suppression are intentional or not; if not, they will probably be fixed in some future patch. It also has no penalty to movement as other stealth powers do, which apparently is intentional.

As with all forms of Stealth, Energy Cloak does not mean you cannot be seen; it only lowers the detection range of the enemies. If you get right up next to them for longer than a split-second, they will notice you. It will stack with Super Speed's PVE pseudo-stealth effect to lower the detection range still further (though this does not apply vs. PVP enemies, of course).

Some Brute players are disappointed with this power, calling it "anti-Brute." They point out that whereas every other Brute secondary has a damage aura to help build Fury, Energy Aura's stealth actually makes it harder. Still, harder does not mean impossible; once stealth is broken, you will be attacked as usual.

And some Brute players consider Energy Cloak a must-take power, slotting it into their builds at level 22, right after Stamina. If you have the Super Speed travel power, you can probably get by without it for a little longer if you need to; I didn't take it until 30 in my own early build.

Note: The information I had from other sources for the first version of this guide indicated that this power cost 0.75 End/sec. The Prima Guide claims it costs .13 per activation cycle, but does not say how many activation cycles per second the power has. If it had 5 or 6, that would make it cost .65 or .78 end/sec, which seems in line with the .75/sec measurement. If it only has 2 or 3, like the shields, that would make it .26 or .39 instead.

Suggested Slotting:
20+: Def x3/EndReduc x1-3


Power: Energy Drain
Description: Energy Drain leeches energy directly from the bodies of all nearby foes, draining their Endurance. Each foe you draw from increases your Endurance. If there are no foes within range, you will not gain any Endurance. Recharge: Long.
Effects: PBAoE; Restores 25 End (base) per enemy in range; 30% chance for 100% End recovery for 4 seconds
PVE: drains 33% (base) enemy End
PVP: drains 10% (base) enemy End
Activation Time: 2.37
Endurance Cost: 13
Recharge Time: 60
Enhancements: Endurance Reduction,Recharge Reduction,Endurance Recovery,Accuracy
Available: Level 28

Viewpoint: Welcome to non-stop Brutality! Energy Drain will change your play-style like no other power has before it. Up to this point, you were dependent on munching blues to keep going, or else having to Rest and let your Fury bar suffer in the middle of a mission. Even with Stamina, your powers were draining enough that you could only go for so long and then you had to slow down.

But now all you need to do are find two or three enemies spaced reasonably close together and fire off Energy Drain among them. With a mighty glowing blue slurp, you're full up again. Unlike Consume and Dark Consumption, Energy Drain is an auto-hit power--it is not possible to miss, unless you're too far from your target. It will also drain a decent-sized chunk of the Endurance of those whom it hits. When fully slotted for Endurance Modification, it will drain enemies dry in just two applications--a good method of control for enemies with powerful attacks that require Endurance to use.

Unslotted, three to four enemies are required to fill your End bar all the way up from the minimum safe level to cast Energy Drain. With three Endurance Modification Enhancements, it only requires two enemies--and if you only have one, you'll still end up 3/4 full.

The one major drawback to this power is that you need a good bit of Endurance left in order to be able to use the power to get more. If you're not careful, by the time you're ready to cast it you may be too low, and be treated to the sound of your toggles dropping just as your Endurance fills up enough for you to continue running them. Plan on using it when you've got about 20-25% of your blue bar left, and using an End Reduction in it might be a good idea as well.

Suggested Slotting:
28+: EndMod x3/Rechg x2-3/EndReduc x0-1


Power: Conserve Power
Description: You can focus for a moment to Conserve your Endurance. After activating this power, you expend less Endurance on all other powers for a while.
Effects: Click: Self Endurance Discount
Activation Time: 1.17
Endurance Cost: 7.8
Duration: 90
Recharge Time: 600
Enhancements: Endurance Reduction,Recharge Reduction
Available: Level 35

Viewpoint: Although it's usually a great power choice when offered to any other class, for most Energy Melee Brute builds Conserve Power tends to be a fifth wheel. You've already got Stamina and Energy Drain to keep you topped off; adding the ability to cut your Endurance costs by half for 90 seconds out of every five minutes (when fully-slotted for recharge) is probably redundant, and the power could be better spent elsewhere. There have been a couple of times that I have wished I had Conserve Power, even with Stamina and Energy Drain, but those are mostly few and far between.

However, there are some proponents of a Fitnessless build for Brutes, leaving off (or respecing out of) the three Fitness powers to save power slots and taking both Energy Drain and Conserve Power instead. While I have never personally played with such a build, there are those who swear by it. However, it would seem to me that surviving without Stamina long enough to get Conserve Power would be an exercise in frustration (as would malefactoring below levels at which one had it). It might also be possible to take Stamina and Conserve Power while skipping Energy Drain, though I'm not sure what advantage this would confer; Energy Drain is much more versatile as it has a much shorter recharge so can be used more often.

Another potential use for Conserve Power would be alternating its use with Overload (which also has a +Recovery effect) and thus having enhanced Endurance for up to four and one half minutes at a time (or six minutes, with about a thirty-second gap--or less, if Hasten is used).

By and large, Conserve Power is skippable. However, one thing I have discovered is that, like other skippable powers, it isn't bad to take in your 40s rather than a Patron pool. It comes in handy when your Overload is just about to crash, or when you're low on energy but don't have enough enemies near to Drain.

Suggested Slotting:
35+: Rechg x3


Power: Overload
Description: You can Overload your Energy Aura and dramatically improve your Defense to all attack types except Psionic Attacks. The Energy Aura is so powerful, that it can even absorb some damage, effectively increasing your Max Hit Points; however, when Overload wears off, you are left drained of all Endurance and unalble to Recover Endurance for awhile. Recharge: Slow.
Effects: Click: Self +DEF, +Max HP, +Recovery
Activation Time: 3
Endurance Cost: 2.6
Duration: 180
Recharge Time: 1000
Base Defense: 45% vs all except Psionic
3-Slotted Defense: (x1.55) 69.75% vs all except Psionic
Base Hit Point Bonus: 20%
3-Slotted Hit Point Bonus: (x1.95) 39%
Resistance: 34.6% vs Defense Debuffs (unslottable)
End Recovery Increase: 100%
Enhancements: Endurance Reduction,Recharge Reduction,Defense Buff,Health
Available: Level 38

Viewpoint: Welcome to God Mode for Energy Brutes! It's kind of a "small god" mode, as it's only available for 3 minutes at a time and then gone for much longer, but while it's up, you're practically unhittable by anything except psionic and toxic attacks--and you have a higher number of hit points (20% unslotted, add 6.67% for each Healing SO) to handle the attacks that do get through. You'll recover Endurance faster, too, so you can really let loose with the attacks. Even against psionic and toxic foes, the extra hit points and Recovery rate will still help you survive longer.

Furthermore, Overload has a 34.6% resistance to Defense Debuffs--as much as both your shield toggles put together. If you have Overload and your toggles up at the same time, then any Defense Debuff that hits you will be blunted by almost 70%. This is major protection from one of your class's worst vulnerabilities.

When you hit Overload for the first time, you may be surprised that your health bar does not appear to change; if you were at 3/4 of your hit points before you hit it, you'll be at 3/4 after. There's a temptation to wonder, "Hey, is this thing really working?" But Overload's HP boost doesn't work like Dull Pain's, where you get healed for those additional HPs. Instead, your current HP are increased proportionately to the increase in your total HP. If you were at 900/1200 HP (3/4 bar) before you hit the boost, and you boosted yourself up to 1600 total HP, you would now be at 1200/1600 HP (still 3/4 bar). Oddly enough, any percentage-based heals you might have, like Aid Self, are not increased by the same proportion...so it would be most efficient to fire off that Aid Self before hitting Overload.

Base recharge time is just short of 17 minutes, which can be cut to about 8 by fully-slotting for recharge--that's 3 minutes on, about 5 minutes off. You can cut that recharge time still further with Hasten, which makes Overload one of the best arguments for including Hasten in your build. (For more on that, see the section on power pools below.)

When Overload crashes, your Endurance will drop to about 1 (and then crash when your toggle powers hit their next tick), and you will be unable to recover End naturally for about 20 seconds (though popping blue Inspirations will still work, and so will Energy Drain if you take a blue first to prime the pump). Conserve Power will not prevent this crash (though it can help you survive on just a blue or two afterward for the next 20 seconds of zero recovery).

For this reason, it is vital to keep track of that three minutes somehow--with an egg timer or stopwatch on top of your computer if you have to, but preferably with the more convenient HeroStats timer tracker. Even if you do not use those, you will still receive about ten seconds' warning if you watch for the icon starting to blink on your buffs bar. When the icon starts blinking, retreat from the fighting if you can, take a few purple Inspirations if you can't, and drop your toggles; this will give them time to recharge so you can have them up as soon as possible again after the crash.

It is possible to fire off Energy Drain a second or so before the crash, so your bar will fill up right after the crash. However, this is somewhat dangerous, since you'll be running without toggles for the amount of time it takes you to get them back up. It is even theoretically possible, if you time it exactly right, for you to Drain so that the refill comes between your End falling to 1 and the next tick of your powers draining it to zilch, and thus avoid crashing at all. (I've only ever managed to do this once, and it was largely by accident.) It may also be possible to avoid the crash by popping a blue Inspiration during the half-second or so your End bar takes to drop from full to empty. Whether you use them during or after the crash, keeping at least a couple of blues in your tray at all times for Overload recovery is a good idea.

Leaving aside the three Recharge Rate Enhancements, which are pretty much a given for a god-mode power such as this, you will have three Enhancement slots to split between Defense Buff and Healing Enhancements. The temptation is to go all-Defense--because after all, "the more Defense, the better," right? However, you really aren't going to need to.

Considering the Defense changes that went in with Issue 7, I advise slotting with Recharge Rate x3 and Healing x3, and not slotting any Defense at all. Why? Because 45% is all that is necessary to floor the accuracy of anything up to +5 levels higher than you. Minions, Lieutenants, Archvillains/Heroes, Monsters, anything. And by a peculiar coincidence, the base Defense level for Overload is 45%. Add the Defense from the toggles on top of that and you've got more than enough left over to counter most To-Hit buffs like Vengeance or Leadership that bad guys might have on them, or any Defense Debuffs that they might use on you. Therefore, the extra Defense would just go to waste, so you'd be better off just enjoying those extra hit points instead. (See the section on Defense later in this guide for more on the I7 changes.)

Overload does have one major drawback in PVP play: like all Defense-based powers, it can easily be overcome by To-Hit Buff powers like Aim, Build-Up, and Rage--or even just by popping a fistful of yellow Inspirations. Even 3-slotted for Defense and run at the same time as the Defensive toggles, that's only a total of about 100-120% Defense, which is mostly or completely cancelled out by a combination of well-slotted Aim and Build Up--and many PVP players slot these powers to the max for that very purpose.

Suggested Slotting:
38+: Rechg x3/Heal x3


TRAVEL POWERS

For Energy/Energy Brutes, as for most classes, travel powers are largely a matter of personal taste. You aren't practically forced into taking the Jump pool for Acrobatics's knockback protection like Fire or Dark, or the Teleport pool for increased mobility in heavy armor like Stone. Energy Brutes are free to choose any travel power they like--which is good, because we all have travel powers we love, and travel powers we love to hate.

Nonetheless, I do feel that some travel powers offer more benefits than others--so let's look at them now.

Flight: Flight is one of the slowest and most End-using of the travel powers (which is why most who take it 3-slot it with Flight Speed, and perhaps an End Reduction or two), but also the most versatile--offering good horizontal and vertical movement, without teleport's minimum travel distance restriction. For classes with ranged attacks, such as Corrupters or Blasters, Flight is one of my favorite pools. However, for meleers, the travel power is not quite as good--it loses the advantage of being able to hang out of reach of melee attacks, since you have to close to melee yourself in order to attack.

However, even if you don't end up taking Fly, there is still a very good reason to dip into this pool: the pool attack Air Superiority. Believe it or not, I didn't take Air Superiority on any of my characters until late in Issue 6--I suppose I have a tendency to think of pool attacks as being "second-rate," and I just couldn't fit it into my build with all the other powers I took. But I soon discovered that, as my friends who play Brutes and Tankers (not to mention countless forum posts) told me, Air Superiority is an absolutely top-notch attack for Energy Brutes. Its knockdown effect mitigates attacks far more effectively than Disorient alone, its fast recharge means you can keep multiple enemies, even Bosses, flat on their backs and not attacking into perpetuity--and on top of that, it has very decent damage. Some consider it to be a good replacement auto-attack for Brawl, and I gather that it is also really handy for those missions where you have to defeat an enemy before he can run away. I reached level 40 without it...but looking back, perhaps I could have gotten there faster and easier with it. I have to admit that it is a very impressive and useful attack, and soon after the I7 version of this guide I went ahead and respeced my Level 50 Brute to put it all the way down at Level 6. It's just that good.

If you take Air Superiority, it is just one more power pick to take Fly. Since the change to Flight to make it suppress instead of penalize accuracy, you don't even need to take Hover as a prerequisite--you could have Fly on all the time (although it sucks down End like a boom box sucks down batteries). However, Hover is also a reasonable power pick since it provides a small Defensive bonus that stacks with all of your other Defensive powers when you have it on (including additional Positional defense to stack with Energy Cloak). And if you're going to take Fly anyway, you might as well be able to use CityBinder's Speed-on-Demand binds so that you can be in Flight while moving but Hover while standing still, for the lower End use and Defense bonus.

Some people have recommended, in the past, foregoing Fly and just six-slotting Hover, since Hover's flight speed when sixed was equivalent to unslotted Flight and did not have Flight's Suppression. However, this is no longer as feasible since Enhancement Diversification capped the effectiveness of SOs to three and cut Hover's maximum speed by 1/3. (Recent changes have given a slight speed boost back to Hover, but it's still not exactly super-speed.) If Hover is your only travel power, you might as well resign yourself to moving very slowly.

Group Fly doesn't typically merit consideration for a Brute.


Leaping: Even if you don't end up taking the Super Jump travel power, you may still want to dip into the pool for the sake of Combat Jumping. Combat Jumping provides a small defensive bonus (about on par with your Energy Cloak), including Positional Defense, costs very little End to run, and adds some height to your jumping abilities. Every little bit of Defense can be helpful, especially if you're facing off against higher-level enemies or Psionic/Toxic types that are only covered positionally. I have also heard that properly-slotted Combat Jumping and Hurdle combine to form a very fast travel power, if you don't mind leaping like a frog wherever you go, but I have never tested this.

Super Jump is a very fast mission-to-mission travel power, with good horizontal and vertical mobility (second only to Teleport in terms of point-to-point speed--it may well be faster than Super Speed over the average distance, thanks to vertical obstacles), no need for additional Enhancement slots beyond the default, and a fun power animation. If it weren't that I feel Super Speed offers some additional benefits over and above Super Jump, I would have no reservations about recommending Super Jump as the travel power of choice for Energy Brutes. It's still a very good pick, even if Super Speed is better.

Thanks to Entropy Field, you don't need Acrobatics; Jump Kick is also redundant as it offers no advantages over the attacks you already have.


Speed: Now we come to one of the more useful pool powers to an Energy/Energy Brute: Hasten. Sure, it's not possible to permanentize it anymore, but you can still have it active for two out of every three minutes (when slotted with three Recharge Rate SOs). While it is active, it substantially decreases your powers' recharge rates. You can get by without it, but you can get by better with it.

Hasten is helpful in building Fury early in fights by speeding up your attack chain (though to an extent this is limited by the lengthy animation times of some of your lower-powered attacks), will let you get in more Total Foci and Energy Transfers faster against Bosses and AVs/Heroes, will let you recover health and end more quickly as Aid Self and Energy Drain come back faster, will make Build Up available more often, and will get your toggles back faster in case of a drop. You may find yourself using it even outside of battles, just to get Overload (and Accolade powers) coming back faster. The only downsides are that it takes a bite out of your End when it crashes, and that when you get used to attacking faster, that one-minute come-down is pretty rough.

On most classes, it's best to put Hasten on auto-fire, so that you'll have that two-minutes-out-of-three recharge bonus without thinking about it. However, Brutes need to use auto-fire for their Fury-building melee attack (Brawl or Air Superiority), so you will need to resign yourself to using Hasten manually whenever it comes up, or else saving it for use right before going into battle.

If you're going to take Hasten, you might as well take Super Speed--it's just one more power slot, and there are several reasons that I feel it is the best possible travel power for an Energy/Energy Brute.
<ul type="square">[*]As the only travel power that is fully as useful inside missions as outside (except for those damned caves, of course), it can help you get from spawn to spawn fast enough to stay maxed out on your Fury bar--and escape when you've bitten off more than you can chew, if you can outlast its suppression.[*]Its pseudo-stealth ability enables you to start completing missions rapidly a half dozen levels before Energy Cloak is available. Indeed, with Super Speed you may be able to put off taking Energy Cloak for a few levels. And once you have EC, the stealth effects should stack well enough to make you the next best thing to a Stalker (for PVE; Super Speed doesn't have the pseudo-stealth effect in PVP). Note that if you use a speed-on-demand bindkit, such as CityBinder, you will need to make sure to disable speed-on-demand mode and have Super Speed on continuously while inside missions; if the bindkit drops it while you're standing still, the enemies will immediately notice you.[*]It doesn't require slotting beyond the default to be useful, meaning there are that many more slots to spare for the rest of your powers.[*]The glowy animation effects match the glowy effects of your Energy powers pretty well. (Well, all right, so that's not a major selling point, but it is at least a fringe benefit.)[/list]"But wait," you say, "there's no vertical movement ability, unless you take Hurdle, and even that isn't very much." And it's true; anyone who's played with Super Speed has experienced the frustration of running headlong into a fifty-foot wall that requires lengthy circumnavigation--and let's not even talk about Faultline or the Shadow Shard. This would seem to make Super Speed a less attractive choice than any of the other travel powers.

But on the villain side, there are some very big mitigating factors to this problem:

First, the new-in-I7 Level 5-9 and 10-14 Mayhem missions offer a temporary jet pack and temporary superjump ("zero gee") pack, respectively, upon their first normal or exemplared completion. These will start helping you well before you're even able to take superspeed--Mercy Island and Port Oakes are annoying to get around without travel powers.

Second, there are two missions in the 15-25 level range range that each provide you with an extended-duration flight pack: Marshall Brass in Cap au Diable (15-19) gives you a 90-minute Goldbricker pack early in his first arc, and Lt. Chalmers (20-24) on Sharkshead Island has a timed mission that gives you (and your teammates, via blinkies) a 60-minute Sky Raider pack.

Be sure to get these contacts and do their missions, and you'll get a total of two and a half hours of flight time--and if you're careful only to use the packs for a few seconds here and there to bypass vertical obstacles, you can make them last practically forever. You will also be able to get the Sky Raider pack again after you run out of it, by finding someone on Sharkshead who happens to have that mission available and exemplaring down to grab a blinkie. (Beginning-level characters can get the pack in this way, too, thus speeding up the all-over-the-island slogs of the Mercy Island and Port Oakes contacts; see "On the Levels" in the third part of this guide for more details.) These packs come in very handy in Grandville, more than offsetting the difficulty a superspeedster has in getting around that predominantly vertical zone.

Also, the 30-second Jump Pack prestige power included in the mid-I7 Good vs. Evil bundle is at its best when used with Super Speed (see Good vs. Evil section later in this guide).

Rounding out the pool, Flurry is redundant with your other attacks, and although I do not have any experience with Whirlwind, I have been told that it is a power best avoided for meleers in general and Brutes in specific. It offers no protection against the increasingly strong ranged attacks you will face later in the game, it prevents you from attacking so that you will lose Fury while you have it on, and its knockback throws enemies away from you so you just have to chase them down to hit them. I expect it might be helpful for getting you out of troublesome over-aggro situations, and I understand it might be able to knock toggles off in PVP, and I know that some roleplayers have found it useful as FX for a rapid costume change, but all in all it doesn't seem to be what a Brute really needs.


Teleport: This pool is probably not as advantageous to Brutes as some of the others, though there is no particular reason not to take it.

Even if you do not use Teleport as a travel power, Recall Friend might still be useful--especially after you have stealth abilities. It is terribly frustrating to stealth to the mission objective in order to save time on fighting, and then realize you're the only team member to have that ability. Recall Friend would let you bring in the rest of your team after you got there.

For most purposes, you would want to slot Recall Friend with just the default slot; a Reduce Interrupt Time is a good use for it. It is possible that in larger zones you would want to slot a Range instead, to increase the 10,000 foot default range so as to 'port teammates two miles or more away.

Teleport Foe is a power I do not have experience using, but I have seen it used. If it hits, it can summon a single foe to a spot you designate. It can be useful for single-pulling to thin out crowds of foes in PVE, or for grabbing a single subject to use as Energy Drain fodder, but where it really shines is PVP. If you are planning to do more PVP than PVE, this might be a power you would want. It would probably best be slotted with two to three Accuracies and perhaps one to three Ranges as well. (It has become less useful in PVP with I7, as Energy and Ranged Defense now defend against it and orange (Damage Resistance) Inspirations provide temporary immunity.)

Teleport is an interesting travel power. Unlike most other travel powers, where you can pick a direction, hit "run," and then take an AFK secure in the knowledge that by the time you get back you'll have either reached your target or else have overshot it and be nuzzling a War Wall, Teleport requires concentration: you hit the teleport power, click the location, and you go. And then you do it again. And again. And keep doing it, or else you'll fall out of the sky. Of course, if you're smart you've bound shift+lbutton (or control+, or alt+) to "pow_exec_name Teleport" so that all you have to do is hold the shift button down and click, click, click.

Teleport has several drawbacks and a couple of benefits. One drawback is the aforementioned necessity of continuing to port or falling out of the sky; another is that due to the way the target selection mechanism works, you have to teleport the maximum range with each hop unless you can find a convenient wall or other object to fetch up against. Teleport is also very Endurance-intensive, requiring a base of 13 End per hop. As you have only 100 End, unless you slot for reduction or have Stamina, that means you can make about 8 or 9 hops (allowing for End regeneration as you hop), or about a half mile at the base 300' range (a little less than a mile if you 3-slot for range) before gasping exhaustedly for breath.

But in return for this, you get one of the fastest long-distance travel powers in the game. At a continuously-teleporting sprint, with range slotted to max, you can cover a a mile in about 20 seconds--definitely faster than Flight. Whether it is currently faster than Super Speed over a straight line distance, I do not know (it was before ED, when it could be 5- or 6-slotted for Range). But taking into account the potential for vertical movement, avoiding ground-level obstacles 'speeders have to detour around, it is almost certainly faster at actually getting from place to place most of the time.

Most of the problems are, if not solvable, at least manageable. Falling out of the sky can be avoided easily enough by taking Hover or Flight also and keeping that active while porting (or if necessary using the 30-second Good vs. Evil Jump Pack over a long journey). End usage can be brought down to reasonable levels by slotting for it. The only solution for the maximum-range-hop thing is to learn to live with it, of course (or to take Flight as a secondary travel power and use it for short distance travel after your last hop), but two out of three ain't bad. Suggested slotting: Range x3/End x2-3 (or less if you have Stamina).

For Energy Brutes, teleport might be particularly useful in combat for popping into the middle of crowds of enemies and drawing their attention away from the rest of the team, or as a quick escape button when enemy attention gets to be too much. All that being said, it is likely Super Speed or some other travel power might be more useful overall.

Team Teleport doesn't typically merit consideration for a Brute.


OTHER POWER POOLS

Concealment: By and large redundant. You might want to take Grant Invisibility in order to grant your teammates the ability to stealth missions with you, but it would be more efficient to take Recall Friend instead so you only need to put yourself at risk. Phase Shift might make a good panic button, but it's not worth three powers in a build as tight as an Energy/Energy Brute's--and at level 30 you can get a Hyper Phase Shift temporary power from Warburg that will work just as well and not cost a power pick.

The one exception is that if you have already made up your mind to respec into a different build at 24, you might want to consider taking Stealth very early and respecing out of it at 24 in favor of Energy Cloak; this way you could start getting the benefit of stealthing missions early on. As I have already said, however, I do not advocate intentionally building for respec.


Fighting: Possibly desirable, depending on whether or not you have space in your build to fit it in. While Kick is by all accounts skippable, Boxing is a decent attack, with a chance of Disorient that would fit in well with your Energy Melee attacks' Disorient effects. But you would really only be taking it as a prerequisite to the other powers from the pool: Tough and Weave. If you are taking Dampening Field, Tough will stack on top of it to provide you with a decent amount of Resistance. Weave would add a few more percentage points of Defense to your shields, getting you that much closer to the 45% cap, but it is hard to say whether this is worth spending the extra powers and slots, or the cost of running another expensive toggle.


Fitness: Take it. Love it. As an Energy/Energy, you are going to need faster Endurance recovery more than you need anything else--and if it's annoying that it's going to cost you three power slots to get it, well, it's still worth it.

Whether to take Swift or Hurdle depends on what your other travel powers are; if you're taking Super Speed, then you will want Hurdle for the added vertical mobility. If you're taking anything else, you'll probably want Swift for the extra running speed in missions. Some people take both Swift and Hurdle and skip Health, but I generally can't recommend that; even with only one slot in it, Health provides a decent boost to your regenerational abilities that is worth more than being able to run a little faster as well as jump a little higher. I suppose it is possible that someone who takes Teleport as a travel power might wish to take both Swift and Hurdle for the additional in-combat mobility Teleport does not provide, especially in PVP situations, but Health will probably benefit you more all in all.

Some players, especially those who go the path of the Resistance powers, advocate 3-slotting Health and skipping Aid Self. While this would save a couple of power picks, I am doubtful that the increased regeneration would be quite as effective as being able to self-heal at need. Perhaps coupled with the increased damage resistance from Dampening Field and Tough it might enable decent survivability of Smashing and Lethal damage, but it still leaves the other types relatively unresisted. Of course, if you have the slots to spare, nothing is keeping you from 3-slotting Health and taking Aid Self; some people feel Health should be 3-slotted regardless. A 3-slotted Health won't save you in the middle of combat, but it will help decrease your between-combat downtime. Nonetheless, I generally feel that overall Enhancement slots for Brutes are tight enough that they could find a better use elsewhere.

Stamina, the crown jewel of the Fitness set, should be taken as soon as possible and 3-slotted with Endurance Modification right away. Energy Melee/Energy Aura is a very End-intensive combination, and you need that extra juice as soon as you can get it. On my first Energy/Energy Brute build, I waited until 24 to take Stamina--and even having waited on Total Focus until 26, I still found I had a hard time keeping up with my attacks until I had it. My final respec build put it back at 20, where it belonged.

Some Brute players suggest either building from the beginning as or respecing into a Fitnessless build once you have Energy Drain and Conserve Power. This would have the benefit of saving those three power picks spent on Fitness in order to spend them on some other use. While such a build might be feasible, if you were willing to Drain and Conserve Power more often than usual, it would become much less so if the Brute in question ever had to malefactor down below level 28 where those End-management options aren't available. In the interest of being playable at all possible levels, I recommend a Fitness-based build.


Leadership: For Brutes, the Leadership powers stack up thus:

Maneuvers: 2.5% Defense Buff; .4 End/Sec (.2 per activation cycle)
Assault: 10.5% Damage Buff, resistance vs Taunt/Placate; .4 End/Sec (.2 per activation cycle)
Tactics: 7% To-Hit Buff, Perception bonus; .4 End/Sec (.2 per activation cycle)
Vengeance: Minor heal, "Moderate" Acc/Dmg Buff; 25% Def Buff (All Forms); 300 sec. recharge

For PVE, these powers, while moderately useful, are not useful enough that they would be worth the power slots, Enhancement slots, pool choice, and End per second to run. .4 end per second and two Enhancement slots for an additional 4% Defense seems a bit weak, even if it is to everyone in your party (though given that it's stacking on top of your already potent Defenses, it might be worth having after all to get you that much closer to the cap). Assault and Tactics might be a bit more useful, especially if you're mentoring lowbies, but again, not enough to be worth taking in PVE. As for Vengeance, forget it; you're not a Corrupter or Mastermind.

In PVP, Tactics might very well be worth having for the perception bonus. Whether you can justify putting it in your build is up to you.


Medicine: One of the few fundamental flaws of the Energy Aura defensive set is that it does not include a self-healing ability. This is somewhat ironic, since a set that is based on Defense is going to need that "burst healing" much more than a set that is based on Resistance--you may not get hit as much, but when you do get hit it's going to be for a lot. Furthermore, your most potent attack, Energy Transfer, will take off 10% of your total hit points every time you use it. If you don't have some way of self-healing at need (and those green Inspirations will run out sooner or later), you will find yourself needing to stop and Rest (and thus lose Fury) for health reasons long after you've ceased needing to Rest for endurance.

Fortunately, there is the Medicine pool to make up for this shortcoming. Aid Self is a very good self-heal, capable of restoring 20% of your hit points every 20 seconds unslotted. (It also provides a short period of protection from Disorients, though with Entropy Field you generally won't need this as much. It could be helpful in PVP, however.) With my preferred slotting of 3 Heals, 2 Reduce Interrupts, and 1 Recharge, it will restore 40% of your hit points every 15 seconds (or less, if you have Hasten on). PVPers may wish to slot 2 Heals, 2 Interrupts, and 2 Recharges instead, trading off bigger heals for more frequent ones and firing off Aid Self continuously to stay healed up and mez-protected. Either way, that's an awful lot of healing, and it can easily make the difference between life and death.

Aid Self is interruptible, if you are hit by an attack while it is firing off, but the interrupt period is remarkably short--especially if you put one or two Reduce Interrupt Time Enhancements in it. There have been claims that it can even be fired off between ticks of a damage-over-time attack--and since Energy Aura is Defense-based, you'll be getting hit less frequently than most other classes anyway so there will be fewer interruptions. In my experience, if you're in battle with no more than 2 or 3 enemies at a time, you can usually get an Aid Self off with no problems; 4 or more make it more of an iffy proposition. Even when you have Aid Self, you should still carry a couple of green Inspirations at all times; they'll save your life when you're low on health and taking too much fire to get an uninterrupted Aid Self off.

There are some who advocate skipping the Medicine Pool and using other powers (such as Resistance or 3-slotted Health) to make up for it; they say that having to pause in the middle of a battle to heal breaks your rhythm and costs you Fury--not to mention that if you're taking enough hits, you may not be able to heal at all without being interrupted. I happen to feel that the ability to self-heal in an emergency--or after several uses of Energy Transfer have brought your health bar down--justifies taking it; you lose a lot less Fury from one use of Aid Self than you do from a 30-second Rest--let alone from faceplanting.

Being the third power in the Medicine pool, Aid Self requires taking another power as a prerequisite, and here is where a tough choice comes in: Aid Other, or Stimulant? The answer depends on your intentions for the character.

If you plan to solo most of the time, there is no question that Aid Other is the more useful pick. You may be scratching your heads over how healing someone else is useful in soloing, but the reason why is simple: pets. And not just the temp power pets, like Bocor's zombies or Bloody Bay's Shivans, or even the Patron Pool pet either. Every so often, you'll get a mission that requires you to rescue not some docile hostage you lead back to the door, but an honest-to-god fighting villain--with a suicidal streak a mile wide. (Seer Marino's mission to rescue Wretch, for instance.) If they keep charging into battle and getting banged up, sooner or later they're going to be down to a mere sliver of health and die the next time they run into an enemy--and you'll fail the mission, and possibly the arc. Even unslotted beyond the default, Aid Other will allow you to heal them back to full strength with two or three applications between battles, so you can actually make it back to the door with them.

Aid Other will also be useful for tossing a bit of extra healing about if you should end up on a team now and again, or shepherding a less-capable lackey. (And if you're a badge completist, it will let you work on the healing badges too.) Note that since Aid Other's effectiveness is based on a percentage of its user's hit points, and Brutes have the highest hit points of any CoV class, slot for slot a Brute is actually the best Aid-Other healer on the villain side of the game (just as a Tank is on the hero side); it may even be worth putting an extra slot or two in it if you should decide you want to take a back-up healing role.

If you're going to be teaming the majority of the time, then Stimulant will probably be more useful; there will often be a Corrupter or Mastermind on the team who can heal like crazy (including healing those suicidal pets I mentioned), but a little bit of extra mez protection/mez cancellation can come in very handy when someone cries out "ZZZ!" It could also be especially helpful if you do a lot of team-based PVP.

If you've got two Medicine Pool powers already and team a lot, Resuscitate might also be useful, especially if your team is doing missions way out in the wilds of the Nerva Pensinsula where a hospital trip can mean several minutes of travel, followed by finding your way back into that damn jungle mess. It's just a question of whether you have the power slots to spare in your build. It might be something to consider for your 40s, if you decide against a Patron Pool.

As for when to take these powers, there is a bit of a dichotomy between wanting to take them as soon as possible--so as to be able to stop carrying so many greens and carry more blues instead--and wanting to put some of the more useful powers in. In my first Brute build, including the two Medicine Pool powers in the teens was what made me have to push Stamina off until 24 and Total Focus off until 26. In a later respec, I moved them to the early 20s in order to take Total Focus and Stamina at 18 and 20.


Presence: Redundant and/or unnecessary. You've already got a better Taunt than the first two powers in this pool, and in most circumstances you don't want to subject your enemies to Fear because you want them attacking you to build your Fury. It is possible that Invoke Panic might be useful in some circumstances, but you would have to take either two lackluster taunts or one lackluster taunt and a single-target Fear to get it; the power is not worth spending three powers on.

[Continued in next post]

R_M'S I9/I10 ENERGY MELEE/ENERGY AURA BRUTE GUIDE


CHANGES FROM PRIOR VERSION
<ul type="square">[*]Added sections on Invention Enhancements and Veteran Reward powers.[*]Made other necessary updates relating to I8/I9 changes.[/list]NOTE: Although I do not know any more about I10 than anyone else who is not in the closed beta, from what the preview page says it does not seem likely to have any major mechanical changes. Unless there are, I will be making any I10-based updates in the form of replies to this thread rather than making a whole new revision.

Whether you've got a Energy/Energy Brute already, are thinking of making one, or just wandered in off the street because it's raining out there, welcome to the I9 iteration of my Energy Melee/Energy Aura Brute guide.

If you have or plan to make an Energy/Energy Brute, an Energy/* Brute, a */Energy Brute, or some other kind of Brute, you'll probably find something in here you can use; for example, the sections on understanding and building Fury apply equally to all Brutes. Even if you don't have a Brute, you might find this guide helpful for understanding their needs so you can work better with them on a team.

Before we begin, you might want to glance at these other two guides, which cover Brutes in general:

Brute = SMASH! - An intro guide to the Brute AT

The Art of SMASH! - Basic Training for Brutes

Some of the information in them is out-of-date (such as a quote from _Castle_ giving Fury's percentage boost as 300% when it was changed to 200% at the end of the CoV beta), but by and large they offer a good foundation for understanding who it is Brutes are and what they do.

I hope you've got an hour or two to spare, because I'll be covering En/En Brutes in considerable depth. I'll start with the overall reasons to choose Energy Melee, Energy Aura, and Energy Melee plus Energy Aura. Then I'll touch on Invention Enhancements and what they can do for you, then go one by one through each power in both your sets with my commentary and viewpoints on what they do and how to use them most effectively. After that I'll discuss Travel Powers, Power Pools, Patron Pools, Good vs. Evil Prestige Powers, and Veteran Reward attack powers, then I'll spend some time discussing how Fury is figured and how to build it and manage it, and other miscellaneous tricks of the trade. Next, I will talk about how Accuracy and Defense are figured, and how Defense changed in Issue 7. After that I will give some tips for how to advance level by level, and talk about some particularly pesky foes you need to handle with care. I'll close out with my own Brute's current build as an example.

At this point, I don't really have a lot to say beyond the basics regarding Patron Powers or Invention Enhancement sets; I haven't really had much time to research them enough and I don't know if I ever will. And at any rate, they are largely optional when it comes right down to it; you don't have to have them to build a good character. So this guide will continue to focus on the core of how to make a good basic Brute build, and you'll just have to get that other stuff from other guides.

Bear in mind that I'm writing what I've found in my 50+ levels of EM/EA Brute experience, and it's possible my experiences don't match yours. There are all sorts of playstyles in this game, and I can only write definitively about the way that I personally play--though I try to give a good accounting of opposing arguments when I know a lot of people prefer a different style.

It's possible you may find some of the tips in here don't work with the way you'd rather do things, and that's fine. You may even find I'm completely dead wrong about something (though my ego rebels at this notion). In any event, I'm committed to making this the best guide that it's possible to be, so if you think I'm wrong on some point, or left something out, don't just call me a doodiehead--tell me why you differ with me, and if it makes sense I'll incorporate it into the next version so people can make up their own minds.

Furthermore, when writing this guide, I drew information from a number of sources, including version 1.7.5.0 of Sherk Silver's Hero Builder program (which is known to have some inaccuracies; if that particular version conflicts with something written here, what's written here is probably the accurate version). I was also able to check some figures with the new downloadable Prima Guide update--even though it does not actually list Energy Melee for Brutes in it for some strange reason. I'm not completely positive of all my numbers--especially the Prima Guide numbers, since they are known in several cases to be either incomplete or dead wrong; if you have information from a reputable source (including Herostats hit testing and so forth) that contradicts what I say in here, please let me know.


WHY ENERGY MELEE/ENERGY AURA?

This is a valid question, but when you think about it it actually breaks down into three valid questions: why Energy Melee, why Energy Aura, and why both together.

Why Energy Melee?

Energy Melee is the highest-damage single-target set that Brutes have. If you're interested in taking down enemies quickly one at a time, this is the set for you. For Tankers, in the pre-Enhancement-Diversification golden days of yore, Energy Melee used to be referred to as "the archvillain-killer" because its single-target damage was far enough above other classes' to allow an Energy Meleer to defeat archvillains single-handedly over time. It's still a pretty strong Tanker set, and the Brute's version does not suffer by comparison.

A side benefit of Energy Melee is that most of the attacks have at least a 30% chance of applying at least a 5-second Disorient effect. Over time, these Disorients can stack and result in enemy stuns (and toggle drops in PVP).

The downside of Energy Melee is that it tends to use a great deal of Endurance, and has only one mediocre multiple-target attack. (Some would class the "pink pompom" glowing fist effects and the "ka-smacka" sound effects as a downside, too, but that's largely a matter of personal taste.)

Why Energy Aura?

Energy Aura is a primarily Defensive (with some minor Resistance also available) Brute set, brought in to replace the Ice Armor set that was removed from CoV during beta. First of all, it provides excellent Defense against every type of damage except Psionic, Toxic, and Negative Energy (and mediocre Defense against Negative Energy) and optional Resistance against several of the more common damage types. Furthermore, it includes a mez-defense toggle that covers knockdown and knockback in addition to the usual types, a Stealth power that does not slow movement or (currently) suppress on attack, not one but two Endurance recovery/conservation options, and a panic-button/"god mode" that combines some of the better aspects of Elude, Dull Pain, and Stamina.

The downsides are that, as a Defensive set, Energy Aura suffers from the same at-least-1-in-20 chance of taking a hit for full damage (or 9/10 damage if the Resistance is fully-slotted) as Super Reflexes. More than any other Brute set (except perhaps the semi-Defensive Stone Armor), Energy Aura is vulnerable to runs of bad luck--if an EA Brute takes too many hits in a row, he can go from full to no hit points faster than the player can react. Also, Energy Aura is a toggle-intensive set, meaning that a good deal of Endurance-management is required--especially when used in conjunction with an End-intensive primary such as Energy Melee.

Why Both Together?

Energy Melee and Energy Aura don't have any huge synergies beyond those that Brute power sets get in general, so the choice of the two together largely boils down to an individual choice to take each one. (If synergies are what you're looking for, a better choice might be Dark Melee/Energy Aura; the to-hit debuffs in DM stack nicely with the Defense of EA to make you even harder to hit.) It might simply be that you feel obliged to match primary and secondary types when two matching types are available. However, Energy Melee's Disorients do provide a helping hand to the Energy Aura set's Defense hit-mitigation: if a foe is disoriented, he's not attacking you.

Well-built Energy/Energy Brutes are extremely good solo characters, being capable of dealing damage, avoiding damage, healing damage (if their build includes Aid Self), and (at level 28) recovering Endurance rapidly, so they can tear through missions without ever having to slow down. In fact, since the patch that changed Archvillains or Heroes to Elite Bosses for small enough teams on given levels of difficulty, there are very few missions that would require an EM/EA Brute to team at all if he did not want to.

EM/EA Brutes are particularly good at rapid mission completion through the expedient of superspeeding and/or stealthing to the mission objectives; for those missions where this is not possible (such as "Defeat All" or "Rescue/Kidnap Hostage" missions), they can still do damage fast enough to clear the entire mission in a very short timeframe.


PVEVPVP

One of the biggest flaws with the City of Heroes combat system is that there is a fairly wide gap in effectiveness between PVE combat ("player versus environment"--going up against computer-operated enemies) and PVP ("player versus player") combat. Due to the difference in the way accuracy is calculated between PVE and PVP, a build optimized for PVE will usually get handily spanked in PVP by a build optimized for PVP. This means that, by and large, PVP is a binary proposition: either it's what you do, or you don't do much of it at all.

As I'm not all that fond of PVP, and so never bothered to optimize my character for it, the main focus of this guide is on PVE. Nonetheless, I will touch upon the differences in selecting or slotting given powers for PVP and PVE when they come up (though, given my lack of experience, this will generally be based on observation and thread-reading rather than experimentation); this should let you come up with your own optimizations for PVP.

As a general rule, a PVP-focused Energy/Energy Brute will have three Accuracies in his attacks rather than two, and will have Build Up slotted with To-Hit Buff x3 in addition to the recommended Recharge Rate x3 (see the Viewpoint on Build Up for full explanation). He may also carry more Disorient Durations in his attacks to assist with stacking to overcome mez resistance.

Brutes in general, and Energy Aura Brutes in particular, may not be the best choice for PVP, overall, for two main reasons. First, Fury generation currently does not work properly in PVP--instead of generating Boss/AV levels of Fury when in combat with a fellow player (as we had previously been told), you only generate approximately Minion levels (until you reach the 80% diminishing-return threshold, when you start generating AV levels of Fury), making it very hard to generate and keep full Fury. And without Fury, you're worse off than even a Tanker when it comes to dealing damage. It is not certain when or if this PVP Fury problem will be fixed. (See the section on the Fury Inherent power below, and the section on calculating and building Fury later in this guide.)

Second, Energy Aura is a Defensive-based set, and Defenses can be overcome in PVP as simply as hitting Aim or Build Up. In fact, just one use of an unslotted Build Up (20% To-Hit Buff) is capable of counteracting about two-thirds of the benefits of an Energy Aura Brute's stacked toggles--and unslotted Aim (42.5%) by itself can counteract the toggles and half of Overload combined. Put them together and slot them and your poor Defense-based set doesn't stand a chance. The Developers have said they will be looking into ways to adjust for this discrepancy, but it is unclear when or if it will be fixed.

In forum posts, I have read that when playing an Energy Aura Brute in PVP, it is best to play like a Stalker--striking and fading, rather than trying to stand toe-to-toe like a Tanker. How effective this strategy would really be, I cannot say, as I have never been an extensive PVP participant.


INVENTION, NECESSARILY, IS A MOTHER

Before we get into powers, I would be remiss if I didn't at least touch upon Invention Enhancements and their uses. This is only going to be a basic grounding in the concepts so you know what they can do for you; for more depth, look for an Invention guide, or browse ParagonWiki's Inventions section.

Invention is the new crafting system introduced with Issue 9. To craft an Invention, you need a recipe, the pieces of Invention salvage required for the recipe, and Influence/Infamy. You also need access to an invention workbench (at a university or in a supergroup base) to do the inventing. Recipes and Invention salvage will drop over the course of your adventuring, or you can buy them from Wentworth's/the Black Market.

There are two types of Enhancements that you can Invent. (There are also inventable costume pieces and temporary powers, but those aren't relevant to this discussion.) The more common type of Enhancement uses the same symbols as the equivalent Trainings, but has a hexagonal border instead of the round Training border. For the sake of avoiding confusion, I will henceforth refer to these as IOs, or "Invention Origin" Enhancements.

IO Enhancements are similar to SOs in that they enhance only one aspect of a power (Accuracy, Damage, Recharge Rate, etc.); in fact, there is an equivalent IO Enhancement for every Training, DO, or SO. However, unlike "normal" Enhancements, IOs never decrease in effectiveness or expire as you gain levels. If an Invention Enhancement provides a 35% buff to a power's Accuracy, it will always provide that 35% no matter how many times you level up after you slot it.

The bonus an Invention Origin Enhancement provides varies with its level. Level 10 IOs are slightly better than Trainings, level 15 IOs are slightly better than the Level 10s, and so forth. The utility of having these Enhancements is obvious; every IO you have slotted is a TO, DO, or SO you won't have to re-buy when it goes red. However, in terms of recipe cost, crafting cost, and ingredient cost (if you purchase ingredients via auction house), they are often considerably more expensive than equivalent Training, DO, or SO Enhancements--and you will still want to replace any IOs you buy early on with more effective DOs, SOs, or higher-level IOs once you are able to get them.

It becomes worthwhile to start slotting IOs permanently when Level 25 and 30 IOs are available for powers you plan to 3-slot, such as damage on your attacks (Enhancement Diversification means that the difference in effectiveness between three 25 IOs and three higher-level IOs is only a couple of percent). For powers you 1- or 2-slot, you should wait until you can buy Level 35 IOs, which are the first ones to be better than a +3 green SO. (And 40s, 45s, and 50s are even better still; a Level 50 IO is roughly 125% as effective as the equivalent SO.) Until then, it would generally be best not to use IOs unless you can get them very cheaply. (And you often can get them very cheaply; if you keep an eye on Wentworth's, you can sometimes find them less expensively than normal Enhancements because of people dumping them on the market after making them to earn their crafting badges.)

The other kind of Invention Enhancement are the Invention Enhancement sets. These are sets of 3 to 6 different kinds of Enhancements that enhance one or more different aspects of a power at the same time (such as Accuracy/Damage, Recharge Rate/End Reduction, etc.). Some of them provide other benefits instead, such as a chance for an attack to do negative energy damage. There are many different types of sets, providing buffs for almost every kind of power.

Apart from the special effects provided by individual set Enhancements, Enhancement sets will also provide additional benefits if you have more than one different Enhancement from each set slotted in the same power. Most of these benefits are minor, on the order of a couple of percentage points, but they stack up over time. Some of these effects will help close or at least reduce the seriousness of your class's "can-opener" vulnerabilities. (See the section on can-openers toward the end of the guide.)

While I will not cover invention sets in any detail, you would be well-advised to study the Invention Enhancement Sets listing at ParagonWiki with an eye toward obtaining sets that add set bonuses to the various kinds of Defense--not just Defense sets, but melee attack, stun, anything whose set bonuses include Defense. Remember that although the numbers look small, each percent you add to your Defense will stop several percent of attacks from getting through.

Apart from that, I do not really have room to talk specifically on which ones are particularly good for Energy/Energy Brutes in this guide. (Also, I didn't want to have to go through and retrofit Invention stuff into everything I'd already written.) All you really need to know is that mid-to-late-game IO Enhancements are just like SOs only better, and Invention Enhancement sets can add many interesting effects to your character's powers--but neither one is in any way necessary to building a successful character.


POWERS TO THE PEOPLE

Note about Recommended Slotting: For my recommended slotting under each power, I have given the slotting you would give it if you decided that one power was one of the most important powers in your build--i.e., if you were going to six-slot a particular power (save for powers that don't gain any worthwhile benefit out of being six-slotted), what you would put into it. I did this even for powers I recommend skipping, just so if you feel you need them you'll know what I think the optimal slotting would be. In practice, if you tried to slot out everything with the number of slots I list you would quickly run out of slots. My goal here is to give you information about what I believe each power needs to be at its individual best, not to lock you into any one particular build.

Remember that powers can be slotted all sorts of different ways depending on what effect you are trying to achieve. Just because the slottings I suggest make sense to me does not mean they are necessarily the right thing for you. Also, these slottings assume you are optimizing for PVE; as mentioned above, PVP will often have different slottings.

Note about Invention Enhancements: Invention Enhancements are a kind of enhancement that is constructed out of invention salvage and money. They do not expire, meaning they will always provide the same effectiveness without needing to re-slot them; however, they are often considerably more expensive than equivalent Training, DO, or SO Enhancements. In the early stages of the game, they will provide more benefit per slot than Training Enhancements (or DOs, depending on level); however, they are considerably more expensive, and you will want to replace them with more effective DOs and SOs when you level up high enough. It would generally be best not to use them unless you can get them very cheaply, at least until about level 30 to 35 when they are more effective than green SOs. But in the early stages of the game, if you can get them cheaply, they will beat a Training Enhancement every time.

Note About Percentage Calculations: For many of the calculations that involve 3-slotting powers, I originally used the rounded up values of 60% and 100% for simplicity's sake, even though with Enhancement Diversification they're likely to be closer to 55% and 95%. This might make a difference of one to two percentage points in the final calculation--not really enough to be important, but something to keep in mind if exact accuracy matters to you. (I have since gone back through and changed a lot of the 100%s and 60%s to 95%s and 55%s, and indicated where this is the case.)

For calculations that involve 2- or 1-slotting, I use the base, "white" SO values of 20% and 33% per SO depending on schedule. If you stay green they'll be a couple percent higher; if you go yellow they'll be a couple percent lower. If you use Invention Enhancements, in the late stages of the game they could be a lot higher.

Also, I commonly refer to maxed-out Fury as being +200% base damage. In actuality, Fury decays so rapidly at the high end that you are unlikely to experience more than +190% very often.


INHERENT

Power: Fury
Description: As a Brute engages in combat, it unleashes his Fury. The longer he remains in combat, attacking and being attacked, the more damage he deals.
Effects: +0% to +200% of base damage
Available: Inherent

Viewpoint: This inherent ability, along with the 850%-of-base-damage cap, is what gets Brutes the reputation of being infernal damage machines--to the point where some people seem to believe that it isn't necessary to slot attacks for Damage, because Fury will take care of that for them.

While these are good effects, they're actually only part of the story--because that is only 67% that of a Scrapper. That's right, 67%. Tankers are a smidgin better off at 71%, but Brutes have to make do with only two thirds of the Scrapper's base Brawl Index value, which means that Fury is no longer a neat extra, but rather something that is required to do our job. However, when we have it running, we can outdamage just about any other class in the game.

The version of this section that appeared in my I6 guide was a maze of mathematics and footnotes, and more than one person complained that it was moderately incomprehensible. Furthermore, due to a misreading on my part, it was mathematically wrong on top of that. I intend to do better this time. Therefore, I have rewritten the section to be several times as long, and even more complicated. If you only find it moderately incomprehensible this time, let me know and I'll get someone to rewrite it in Swahili.

But if you'd rather not risk mathematical confusion, here's the executive summary: Brutes can outdamage Scrappers in many situations, especially if they can get full or mostly-full Fury. If that's all you need to know, feel free to skip ahead. If you'd like to know by how much, read on.

There are two aspects of Scrapper versus Brute damage we will look at: base damage percentage, and attack Brawl Index.

Base damage percentage compares the damage that each class could do if they used an attack that would otherwise do exactly the same amount of damage--for example, Brawl. By having a character from each class use these attacks and comparing the amount of damage, we can discover how much more damage ability some classes are granted than others.

Because until recently, the only attack that every single character in City of Heroes and Villains had in common was Brawl, Brawl has become the standard unit of measurement for comparing the effectiveness of attacks. Thus, it has become common practice to measure how much damage an attack does in terms of "Brawl Index." (Except, of course, for the Prima Guide, which lists amount of damage done by a level 50 character. But if it made sense, what would we complain about?) If a power is listed as having a Brawl Index of 2.7778, that means a character using that attack, unslotted, does 2.7778 times as much damage as the same character would do using unslotted Brawl.

Base Damage

When we investigate base damage, this is what we find. Using the Blaster as the standard against which other damage-dealing classes are measured (don't ask me why), we have Blasters' melee damage set to 100%. By comparison, Brutes do 75% and Scrappers do 112.5%. (The numbers for ranged damage are different, but we aren't concerned about those for the most part.) Thus, Brutes do 75/112.5 as much damage as Scrappers. At first these numbers look kind of ugly, but if we divide both sides by 37.5, we find it reduces to Brutes doing exactly 2/3, or 66.67%, of the base damage of Scrappers. (See this guide for more information than you could possibly ever want to know about base damage percentages.)

What this means is that, if we invented a made-up melee attack that could be taken by both a Scrapper and a Brute that always did 100 points of damage for the Scrapper, it would do 66.67 (which I'll round off to 67) points of damage for the Brute. This assumes, of course, that the attack is not slotted and none of the above ATs are using Build-Up, Aim, Fury, or any other damage-boosting powers on them.

Imagine a Brute and a Scrapper have just been created with this mythical 100-point attack, and have just exited their respective Training Rooms. The Scrapper will not have access to Build Up or any other damage-enhancer--but the Brute will have his Inherent Fury, which can add up to 200% to his attacks (1). His base damage with that attack (67) is lower than the Scrapper's (100), but he only needs to get his Fury bar up to about 25% full (50% extra damage) to equal the Scrapper's base damage--and if he gets his Fury bar all the way full, he will be doing 200 damage compared to the Scrapper's 100. The calculations look like this:

Brute: 67 * (100% base + 200% Fury) = 200
Scrapper: 100 * (100% base) = 100

This means that, from the very outset, a Brute can do twice as much damage as a Scrapper if he gets Fury built up all the way. This, in turn, means that a Brute has no real need to slot for Damage until he reaches level 22. His attacks will do a significant amount if they hit, just on Fury alone--and it is far more important, thus, to be sure they do hit and deliver that damage (by slotting as many Accuracies as possible), rather than risking them not hitting as often but delivering a tiny amount more if they do.

Now let's imagine that the Scrapper and the Brute both advance several levels until they can both take Build Up, an 80% damage boost over the course of 10 seconds. If they both use Build Up, and the Brute still has full Fury, then over the course of that 10 seconds they're kicking it up a notch to where the Brute does 255 points of damage with this made-up attack and the Scrapper does 180. The damage gap has narrowed, but it's still there.

Brute: 67 * (100% base + 200% Fury + 80% Build Up) = 255
Scrapper: 100 * (100% base + 80% Build Up) = 180

Let's now imagine that they both hit 22 and can take Single Origin Enhancements for their attacks--and they slot 3 Damage SOs, to add another 100% to their firepower. For the 90% of the time they will not be using Build Up, but assuming the Brute still has max Fury, their numbers will be slightly higher than the above: 267 Damage for the Brute, 200 for the Scrapper.

Brute: 67 * (100% base + 200% Fury + 100% 3 DMG SOs) = 267
Scrapper: 100 * (100% base + 100% 3 DMG SOs) = 200

Now let's assume they both use Build Up. For the next ten seconds, their respective damage rates will be

Brute: 67 * (100% base + 200% Fury + 100% 3 DMG SOs + 80% Build Up) = 322
Scrapper: 100 * (100% base + 100% 3 DMG SOs + 80% Build Up) = 280

And thus at the maximum rate of damage they can do unassisted, the Brute is still outdamaging the Scrapper by 44 points. (And note that if we were discussing a Fire/Fire Brute in the above equations, with both Build Up and Fiery Embrace, the numbers would look even worse from the Scrapper's point of view.)

There is one last measurement to compare before we move on to Brawl Index: the damage cap. Scrappers have a 500% cap--meaning that no matter how many damage-enhancing effects are stacked onto them, they can never do more than five times the base damage of their attacks. Brutes, on the other hand, can reach 850%.

Let's assume that our Brute and Scrapper both receive infinite Fulcrum Shifts or pop infinite Enrage Inspirations, or at least enough to reach their respective damage caps. If they used the same imaginary attack we've been using so far, their caps would be:

Brute: 67 * 850% = 567
Scrapper 100 * 500% = 500

Thus, at their caps, a Brute still does more damage than a Scrapper can.

It should be noted, however, that a full-Fury Brute actually requires more Fulcrum Shift icons or Enrage inspirations (15 if using Build Up along with full Fury, 18 with full Fury alone) to hit his cap than a Scrapper (9 if using Build Up, 12 if not). So, if both the Brute and the Scrapper received 8 Fulcrum Shift icons or popped 8 Enrages, while using Build-Up, the Scrapper would actually outdamage the Brute. This is the only situation that I am aware of where an equally-buffed Scrapper would outdamage a Brute using the same attack.

((1) In actuality, due to the way Fury falls off faster the more you get, you probably won't ever see more than a 190% (95% Fury bar) damage boost from Fury--just as you won't see more than a 95% damage boost from 3 Damage SOs due to Enhancement Diversification. In both cases, I have rounded up for simplicity's sake.)

Brawl Index

However, base damage percentages only tell half the story. We have been assuming, for the above examples, that the Scrapper and the Brute are using an attack that does an identical amount of damage--that is, an identical Brawl Index. However, the only attack for which this is really the case is Brawl.

Let's compare one of the Scrapper sets to Energy Melee in terms of brawl index for its attacks. We'll look at the Broad Sword set, which is the highest-damage Scrapper primary. However, its damage is entirely Lethal, which is heavily-resisted in the late game, and it is also the slowest-animated Scrapper set. Still, it is only fair to compare the highest damage Scrapper to the highest damage Brute.

These are the Brawl Index values of the attacks for Broadsword, as taken from this post:

Broadsword
Hack - 4.5556 Lethal
Slash - 2.7778 Lethal
Slice - 3.4444 Lethal
Parry - 2.3333 Lethal
Whirling Sword - 2.7778 Lethal + (0.2778 * 3) Lethal = 3.3334 total
per target
Disembowel - 5.4444 Lethal
Head Splitter - 7.2222 Lethal

Energy Melee
Barrage - (0.6944 * 2) Smashing + (0.2500 * 2) Energy = 1.8888 total
Energy Punch - 1.9444 Smashing + (0.8333 * 2) Energy = 3.6106 total
Bone Smasher - 2.7778 Smashing + 1.7778 Energy = 4.5556 total
Whirling Hands - 1.6667 Smashing + 1.1111 Energy = 2.7778 total per target
Total Focus - 2.7778 Smashing + 7.1111 Energy = 9.8889 total
Stun - 0.4167 Smashing + 0.2778 Energy = .6945 total
Energy Transfer - 4.3333 Smashing + 8.3333 Energy = 12.6666 total

This comparison shows us that the Broadsword Scrapper's lower-damage attacks tend to be more powerful than the Energy Brute's--but this is probably balanced by their recharge times, since Broadsword is a slower set. The thing that is the most noteworthy, however, are to compare the sets' two most powerful attacks. It has already been shown that a Brute can outdamage a Scrapper on an attack with an equivalent Brawl Index. Consider now that the most powerful Scrapper has attacks that do 5.4444 and 7.2222 times their (100%) version of Brawl--but the most powerful Brute has attacks that do 9.8889 and 12.6666 times their (66.67%) version--and 2/3 of that is in a less-commonly-resisted damage type.

Let's compare brawl values adjusted for the differing base damages. We'll take the most damaging attack from each side, multiply the Brute's version by 2/3 for a direct comparison, then plug them into one of the equations above in place of our fictitious equivalent attack.

Head Splitter = 7.2222 Lethal
Energy Transfer = 12.6666 * 2/3 = equivalent of 8.4444 Smash/Energy

Assuming the Brute has full Fury, and both he and the Scrapper have
popped Build Up, the attacks would compare as follows:

Brute: 8.4444 * (100% base + 200% Fury + 100% 3 DMG SOs + 80% Build Up) = 40.533 times the damage of the Scrapper's unslotted Brawl)
Scrapper: 7.2222 * (100% base + 100% 3 DMG SOs + 80% Build Up) = 20.222 times the damage of the Scrapper's unslotted Brawl

So, assuming Fury is full, each respective attack is fully slotted, and Build-Up is running, Energy Transfer can deliver twice the actual damage in a single hit that Head Splitter does--and two thirds of that in a damage type (Energy) that is significantly less commonly resisted in the late game than the Broadsword Scrapper's (Lethal). And if they both hit their respective damage caps, the numbers look even worse: 71.7774 for the Brute, 36.1110 for the Scrapper.

Of course, this comparison is not completely fair, since it doesn't take into account recharge times, Endurance cost, and so forth. What it shows is that a Brute is capable of dealing a much higher amount of damage in a single blow than the highest-damaging Scrapper can; it does not compare relative damage per second rates or any other comparative performance over time.

But all of the above calculations are contingent upon your being able to obtain a good head of Fury and keep it there while dealing your damage. It's not usually too hard to get it up--there will be specific tips on that further down in this guide--but keeping it up can be a challenge, especially if you are on a team. However, if you can keep your Fury up, no class in the game except another Brute can outdamage you.


Power: Brawl
Available: Inherent

After the first half-dozen or so levels, Brawl tends to be considered a useless power for almost every class, and is often removed to a secondary tray to make room for more useful icons. It does very little damage when it hits, and there is usually something better that can be done with the Endurance and time spent casting it when you have later powers.

But Brutes are the exception. Brutes actually need Brawl, to help fill out their attack chain--and that's just as true at level 40 as it is at level 1. As an attack, Brawl builds Fury, and prevents Fury from dropping, every bit as much as any other attack. As such, it should be set on automatic fire (by holding down control and clicking the icon so that a green circle appears around it) in most circumstances. As a fire-and-forget attack, it builds Fury for you even when you don't realize you're using it. This can sometimes be the difference between a mostly-full bar and an empty bar, and the extra damage capacity attained thereby.

For what it does, Brawl does a trivial amount of damage, but uses a fairly high amount of Endurance--and since it builds Fury equally well whether it hits or misses, you don't need to worry about Accuracy. Once you get into the teens, you may wish to slot it for Endurance Reduction instead. On the other hand, if you're doing PVP, you might want even more Accuracy for that chance of knocking off the other party's toggles if it hits.

I have discovered that it is possible to stop bothering with Brawl and instead use autofire with another power, such as Barrage, Boxing, or Air Superiority, that fires off about as fast but has more damage or some other useful effect when it lands. Whether this is feasible for you depends on whether you have enough powers in your attack chain that you can afford not to use your "freebie". It is true that auto-firing Brawl can be more End-intensive than using some other power, but it also means more attack powers are available to use in your manual chain. On the other hand, I have found that Air Superiority is a remarkably useful autofire power. (More on that later.)


Power: Origin-Based Permatemp Powers
Available: Inherent

With Issue 7, the level 1-10 Origin-based temp powers were made permanent. These unslottable weak attacks are not anything worldshaking, nor is their secondary effect terribly powerful or long-lasting, but for a Brute they make a good chain-filler no matter what level you are.

You may also wish to consider setting them on automatic fire rather than Brawl. This is certainly a feasible idea; however there are a few minor issues that make the permatemp powers less desirable to use as an auto-fury-builder than Brawl. Firstly, their recharge time is longer than Brawl, which can mean more of a gap between attacks, and slightly slower Fury build. Second, their animation time is longer, which means more of a break in your chain every time you fire them off. Third, they're ranged. Thus, you can run into the situation where you target onto a mob from across the room just to con him--and then when you stealth by him to get to the next room, your automatically-firing permatemp power dutifully goes off, even though you're still too far away for Brawl to have hit him. It is probably better to stick with an autofiring melee attack in most situations.

However, there is one thing for which the permatemp powers are especially useful: pulling. They are a nice ranged, low-damage attack which you can use when a cluster of enemies are near a corner and you want to try pulling just one or two. Step out from behind the corner, zap, then move back out of line-of-sight. With any luck, only one or two of the enemies will aggro onto you and follow.


ENERGY MELEE

NOTE: In the downloadable Prima PDF guide, the table for Brute's Energy Melee is inexplicably left out. The table for Stalkers' Energy Melee is included, with some of the same powers, and with different statistics than are shown here--but with no way to be certain that the end costs and recharge times are not different from those for Brutes, for better balance in the Stalker class, I am hesitant even to try to extrapolate from them. One thing they do note is that PVP mez times are generally about 2/3 of PVE mez times. However, I cannot be certain this is correct for Brutes as well as Stalkers, or even that the mez times are identical. I'll have to wait until they produce an errata to know for sure.

In the meanwhile, just accept that these figures may not be accurate to the last decimal place, but they are the result of sufficient observation and testing to be at least in the ball-park.

Power: Barrage
Description: You perform a quick punch that deals minor damage. Coupled with other energy punches, Barrage can Disorient a foe.
Effects: Melee -- Foe Disorient
Activation Time: 2
Endurance Cost: 5
Recharge Time: 2
Range: 5
Brawl Index: Smashing(0.6944*2),Energy(0.2500*2)
Disorient: 10% 5 sec @ Magnitude 1
Enhancements: Endurance Reduction,Recharge Reduction,Disorient Duration,Taunt Duration,Accuracy,Damage
Available: Level 1

Viewpoint: Barrage is one of the three most damaging powers over time, in terms of damage-per-second output (obtained by adding animation time and recharge time together and dividing this by the attack's Brawl Index), in the Energy Melee set. However, this calculation can be deceiving: the attack's too-long-for-its-damage two-second activation time and its short two-second recharge time mean that if you're obtaining the maximum damage per second out of this attack, you have very little time to fire off anything else. As a "basic" starting attack, Energy Punch is much more effective--it has the highest overall DPS of any Energy Melee power other than Energy Transfer, and a long-enough recharge time that there's room for throwing other things between.

Barrage has a 10% chance of applying a 5-second Disorient. However, it is a stun of only Magnitude 1, not enough by itself to overcome the mez resistance of almost any other NPC or PC enemies--and at 6 seconds' base duration, it doesn't have all that much time to stack with other powers.

I formerly thought Barrage had a stun magnitude of 100%, based on Sherk Silver's Hero Builder. However, others had said there were times when two attacks failed to stun as they should have if it built reliably. The 10% figure comes from the Prima Guide's listing for Stalkers. As I said above, I have no way of knowing if it is the same for both classes, or even if it is correct at all--but it seems likelier than 100% for such a low-powered attack.

Some have claimed that Brutes' Fury gives players a reason to take that first attack in their melee class--the one that they always wished they could avoid when they were playing Tankers with the same sets. They say that all the attacks are vital for building an attack chain that will grow their Fury bar faster--especially a quick-cycling energy attack that you can set on automatic. In theory, this may be right. However, with a 2-second-long animation time, Barrage is not that attack. Energy Punch has the same animation time, but at least it does more damage. Also, at least for Energy Melee Brutes, by the time you put on a dozen more levels you will have enough stronger attacks that you can fill out your chain without ever needing to hit Barrage--which makes Barrage a wasted power. And besides, the Origin-based permatemp powers make having an extra weak attack at the start less necessary to the chain.

Furthermore, I have become convinced that a good attack chain is only about 1/4 to 1/3 of what's required for successful Fury generation. By far more important is getting the bad guys to attack you and keep attacking you. Even though Fury builds twice as fast for an attack you make on a foe as for that same foe attacking you, getting several foes to attack you at once can still build Fury several times as fast as you can just by hitting one of them. You can punch a Minion forever without getting much more than half a fury bar to show for it, but if you're under fire from several enemies (regardless of whether or not they actually hit you)--especially from Lieutenants or Bosses--you can get a full bar very quickly without throwing a single punch.

From my point of view, you have two options where Barrage is concerned: skip it in favor of Energy Punch, or else take it for attack-chain-building on the way up and respec out of it at 24. I would be highly inclined to suggest just skipping it, as I am not a believer in the practice of building with the intention of respecing to a different build down the road--it squanders a valuable, nonrenewable resource that you might later need to use due to unforeseen power changes or a mistake in build, and respecing into a new build without thought given to lower-level survivability can cripple you if you ever need to malefactor down to those lower levels again. Better to do it right the first time.

Thus, I advise you to forego Barrage; if you really must have another low-level melee attack besides Energy Punch, wait until level six and take Air Superiority or Boxing. At least Air Sup will have a useful knockdown effect, and Boxing will serve as a prerequisite to Tough and Weave if you are putting those in your build.

Note, by the way, that I do not suggest placing a Recharge Rate in Barrage--for the simple reason that it will gain you a lot less benefit there than elsewhere. Reducing 2 seconds to 1.5 seconds on a power that takes 2 seconds to cast is not a worthwhile expenditure of a slot--especially given that most times you won't be able to use Barrage as fast as it recharges anyway.

Suggested Slotting:
1-11 (TOs): Acc x6
12-21 (DOs): Acc x3-4/End Reduc x2-3
22+ (SOs): Acc x2/Dmg x3/End Reduc x0-1


Power: Energy Punch
Description: You perform a powerful Energy Punch that deals moderate damage. When used with other Energy Melee attacks, Energy Punch can Disorient your opponent.
Effects: Melee -- Foe Disorient
Activation Time: 2
Endurance Cost: 7.5
Recharge Time: 4
Range: 5
Brawl Index: Smashing(1.9444),Energy(0.8333*2)
Disorient: 30% 5 sec @ Magnitude 2
Enhancements: Endurance Reduction,Recharge Reduction,Disorient Duration,Taunt Duration,Accuracy,Damage
Available: Level 1

Viewpoint: A good attack that deals a decent amount of damage, has a fairly short recharge rate and animation, and thus will be one of your mainstays in terms of overall damage-per-second (it has the 2nd-highest DPS rate in the Energy Melee set, just behind Energy Transfer). Take it as your Level 1 attack power. Until you get the more powerful clubs for your bag, such as Bone Smasher, Total Focus, and Energy Transfer, this is going to be how you deal the majority of your damage.

Energy Punch has a 30% chance of conferring a 5-second Magnitude 2 Disorient on a succesful hit. While this is not something that should be counted on to save you from getting injured, this Disorient is nonetheless helpful in mitigating attacks if it happens to take effect--and as an Energy Aura Brute, you need all the attack mitigation you can get.

The suggested slotting I give below assumes that hitting with Energy Punch and doing the maximum damage when you use it are important to you--as they will be most at the low levels where it is one of your only attacks. However, there is an alternate philosophy of slotting the first few powers, when you have your harder-hitting powers in, that reduces the number of Accuracies and Damages in exchange for slotting more Recharge Rates and End Reduction. The idea is that, if you're just using your low-end attacks as Fury builders anyway, you don't need to hit as often or do as much damage with them; they're just raising your bar so your more damaging attacks do more damage, so you should fire them off as often as you can.

This is certainly a legitimate choice. However, Energy Punch's recharge rate is short enough that you can use it every six seconds anyway; spending a slot to bring it down to every five seconds is not the best use of resources. Best to 5-slot it for Acc and Dam and put the 6th somewhere else.

Resource use in recharge rate is also a concern when slotting fast Power Pool attacks, such as Air Superiority or Boxing; however, since I do not list their stats in this guide, you will need to check a Hero Builder program or other guide to find out what their activation and recharge times are.

Suggested Slotting:
1-11 (TOs): Acc x5-6
12-21 (DOs): Acc x3-4/End Reduc x2-3
22+ (SOs): Acc x2/Dmg x3/Rechg or End Reduc x0-1


Power: Bone Smasher
Description: A Bone Smasher attack can be slow, but it compensates by dealing a good amount of damage and having a better chance to Disorient than Energy Punch.
Effects: Melee -- Foe Disorient
Activation Time: 1
Endurance Cost: 12
Recharge Time: 8
Range: 5
Brawl Index: Smashing(2.7778),Energy(1.7778)
Disorient: 60% 5 sec @ Magnitude 2
Enhancements: Endurance Reduction,Recharge Reduction,Disorient Duration,Taunt Duration,Accuracy,Damage
Available: Level 2

Viewpoint: Bone Smasher will be your first "finishing move" attack. Its recharge rate is slow enough that you will be able to hit several times with Brawl, Energy Punch, and your Inherent Temp for each Bone Smasher attack. Nonetheless, don't count it out; its ability to deliver an extra chunk of damage quickly at the right time means it can finish fights before they finish you.

As a stronger version of Energy Punch, Bone Smasher has a 60% chance of delivering a 5-second Magnitude 2 Disorient effect, which can be helpful in taking some of the heat off if you haven't quite finished the foe yet.

You will note in my suggested slottings for these attacks I do not include any Disorient Durations. The reason for this is that you really don't need them. As an Energy Melee Brute, you have the highest single-target damage of any Brute in the game--you're going to finish off most of your PVE foes before that Disorient runs out anyway. In PVP, where Disorients may need to stack to a magnitude of 15 or more, it might be advisable to forego some damage in favor of Disorients on some of your attacks. When you get to the point where you can do the Lord Recluse Strike Force for the Synthetic Hamidon Enhancement reward, replacing Accuracy with Acc/Mez or Damage with Dmg/Mez could be beneficial in some circumstances (or, conversely, looking for an Invention set that includes both Damage and Disorientation). But for plain PVE, you should be good without.

Suggested Slotting:
2-11 (TOs): Acc x6
12-21 (DOs): Acc x3-4/End Reduc x2-3
22+ (SOs): Acc x2/Dmg x3/Rechg or End Reduc x0-1


Power: Build Up
Description: Greatly increases the amount of damage you deal for a few seconds, as well as slightly increasing your Accuracy.
Effects: Self +DMG, +ACC
Activation Time: 1
Endurance Cost: 6
Duration: 10
Recharge Time: 90
Enhancements: Endurance Reduction,Recharge Reduction,To Hit Buff
Available: Level 6

Viewpoint: Build Up provides a decent boost in attack effectiveness (plus 80% base damage, plus 20% to-hit bonus), and is best used with a full Fury bar and a couple of powerful attacks ready to fire. Build Up plus Fury plus Total Focus and/or Energy Transfer can quickly equal a dead Lieutenant or Boss. The only question is when to take it.

When taken early, Build Up can help make up for the fact that you aren't able to slot your powers with the optimal combination of damage and accuracy until you get SOs at 22. However, because Build Up works by multiplying the effect of the attack powers with which it is used, its overall effectiveness with powers like Energy Punch and Bone Smasher is going to be much smaller than with Total Focus and Energy Transfer--and there are all sorts of useful powers vying to be taken early. Nonetheless, if you're planning on a PVP build, you should probably try to fit it in as soon as possible.

When you are playing PVE, three recharge rates are all that you need in Build Up, to bring it back on-line as quickly as possible. By itself, without any Accuracy Enhancements in your attack powers, Build Up's 20% To-Hit boost would, for the 10 seconds in which it was in effect, cap your accuracy against white enemies. (Base chance to hit = 75%. Add 20% and you're at 95%, the cap.) If you use Build Up in conjunction with an attack power 2-slotted for Accuracy, you'll be capped against levels of up to +5 and within 5% of the cap for +6 for those ten seconds--assuming those enemies don't have defense bonuses or accuracy debuffs. As you can see, there's no need for any further To-Hit Buff Enhancements for taking on the +2 to +4 enemies that are what you will commonly face in PVE.

But if you're playing in PVP, your base chance to hit is only 50%, and defense bonuses and accuracy debuffs are far more common than among PVE enemies. Therefore, in order to squeeze every last bit of competitive PVP advantage out of Build Up, you should probably slot it for 3x To-Hit Buff as well (bringing its To-Hit boost up to about 38%).

Suggested Slotting:
6+: 3x Recharge Rate


Power: Whirling Hands
Description: By focusing your energy into the muscles in your arms, you can launch a dizzying flurry of attacks against every foe in melee range. Some foes may be hit hard enough to be Disoriented as well.
Effects: PBAoE Melee
Activation Time: 3
Endurance Cost: 19
Recharge Time: 14
Brawl Index: Smashing(1.6667),Energy(1.1111)
Disorient: 30% (against each target) 5 sec @ Magnitude 2
Enhancements: Endurance Reduction,Recharge Reduction,Disorient Duration,Taunt Duration,Accuracy,Damage
Available: Level 8

Viewpoint: Whirling Hands is the Energy Melee set's only multiple-target attack, a Point-Blank AoE that uses a similar animation to Fiery Melee's Fire Sword Circle. This attack deals a moderate amount of damage to all the enemies surrounding the Brute, as well as having a 30% chance to confer a 5-second Magnitude 2 Disorient on each one. In practice, this means that if used in the middle of a crowd of foes, it will briefly stun about a third (on average) of the members of that crowd whom it hits (assuming the foes are not mez-resistant). In a critical situation, this can give the Brute a little breathing room to recover from being pummelled.

It will also serve as one of the centerpieces of a team-oriented Brute's Fury-management strategy, as each foe who is hit with the attack will be effectively taunted onto the Brute for a while. (See the Viewpoint on Taunt for more information on Fury management in teams.) Since this is not a highly-damaging power anyway, you may wish to consider slotting some Taunt Durations in place of Damages to make the single-target punchvoke last longer.

The question is, when to take this power? Because the focus of an Energy Melee fighter is on single-target attacks, and there are no other AoE attacks that support or depend on Whirling Hands (at least until the Patron Pools come in at 41), it is not a critical power that must be taken as soon as possible. Leaving its role in team-based aggro management aside, it is never going to be more than a support attack; your actual defeating is going to be done with the single-target punches. Therefore, there is no real rush to take it as soon as it becomes available. Indeed, some Brutes never end up taking Whirling Hands at all, seeing it as a distraction from being the best single-target Brute they can be. (It is also not a very useful power for PVP, so should generally be left out of PVP-oriented builds.) However, after playing for some time with Taunt taken in my teens and Whirling Hands in my 30s, I swapped the two powers and found I was happier with Whirling Hands available to me earlier.

Either way, the single-digit levels are best spent on making sure the basics (such as single-target attacks and shield toggles) are covered. My own original build didn't take Whirling Hands until level 35--though if I respec to drop Taunt in favor of Air Superiority, I'll probably fit it in much earlier.

Suggested Slotting:
8-11 (TOs): Acc x5
12-21 (DOs): Acc x3-4/End Reduc x2-3
22+ (SOs): Acc x2/Dmg x3/Rechg or End Reduc x0-1


Power: Taunt
Description: Taunts a foe, and all foes around him, to attack you. Useful for pulling villains off an ally who finds himself in over his head. Taunted foes tend to ignore other Heroes and focus on you for quite a while, so use this power cautiously. An Accuracy check is not required to Taunt your foes.
Effects: Ranged -- Targeted Taunt
Activation Time: 3
Endurance Cost: 0
Recharge Time: 3
Range: 70
Enhancements: Recharge Reduction,Taunt Duration,Range
Available: Level 10

Viewpoint: When soloing, Energy/Energy Brutes rarely have trouble getting and keeping Fury up. All they need to do is pick some bad guys and whale on them for a while with their weaker attacks, taking the hits the bad guys put on them in return. Sometimes they may have to herd two or more spawns together to raise the Fury bar high enough, but that's not usually problematic.

However, teams are another story. Many Brutes find it hard to keep aggro (and thus Fury) on teams, when everyone is dealing damage to and drawing the fire of the enemies.

Despite having some of Tankers' melee and defense sets, Brutes are not Tankers. In particular, they don't get Tankers' Gauntlet (aka "Punchvoke") inherent, which allows Tankers to smack one enemy and get five enemies aggroed onto them. Gauntlet is what allows a Tanker to keep enemy aggro on even the largest of teams.

According to the developers, Brutes actually do have a weak form of "punchvoke" (which is why their attacks are also slottable for Taunt Duration)--but it only affects the target of a given attack, not the target and several others like a Tanker's. (I have suggested calling this "Thimble," for a gauntlet that only covers one finger; however, others seem to prefer the term "Pokevoke".) This means that a Brute actually has to hit an enemy to keep his aggro. For most Brute primary and secondary sets, this is not a problem; many Brute primaries have AoE attacks (especially Fire), and many Brute secondaries also have damage auras (such as Blazing Aura or Lightning Field). A Brute with those can wade into the middle of a group of enemies secure in the knowledge that he's going to hit enough of them to keep their aggro.

However, not only do Energy Melee/Energy Aura Brutes have only one AoE attack (at least until the Patron Pools become available at 41) and no damage aura, but part of their Defense is an invisibility power which makes keeping aggro even harder. Without aggro, they build up very little Fury no matter how many punches they throw--and without Fury, Brutes do even less damage than Tankers. This is where Taunt comes in.

Brutes get much the same Taunt as Tankers do: auto-hit, affects up to 5 targets at a time. The duration may be a little shorter, but that doesn't matter; getting the enemies' attention is the important part. Once you have it, keeping it (and building Fury) is generally easy. You don't really need to slot Taunt beyond the default--after all, you're not a Tanker.

On any given day, you can usually find at least one thread in the top few pages of the CoH.com Brutes board dealing with whether or not to take Taunt; it's one of the class's biggest ongoing debates. Detractors claim that it's a power that could be better spent on another attack, that Brutes aren't supposed to try to soak up damage like Tankers, and that Energy Aura Brutes in particular are so flimsy already that they really have no business drawing more fire than they can handle. But on the other hand, Brutes do need to be able to keep their Fury up on a team, or else they're less damaging than Tankers as well as less durable.

It is possible that a teaming Brute may be able to get by on just Whirling Hands to keep the enemies around him occupied. But Whirling Hands is a point-blank AoE attack, requiring the Brute be right next to the enemies in question to hit them. Taunt has range, so it can be spammed before the Brute even closes with the enemies.

It is also possible that if a Brute is able to take the alpha strike of a team-sized spawn, his Fury bar is going to go from nothing to possibly over half-full in the space of just a couple of seconds. If a Brute can manage to survive through that many attacks, he should have little problem keeping Fury during the rest of the battle, without needing Taunt at all.

In deciding whether to take Taunt, you should first figure out whether you plan to be primarily teaming or soloing. If you don't plan to team much or at all, you can probably get by without Taunt. If you do have teaming in mind (especially for things like Strike Forces and Trials), you might find Taunt to be handy--but you might also find you do not need it after all.

And believe it or not, Taunt actually can be useful for its stated purpose, too--if you're teaming and a weaker ally is in trouble, you can use it to pull multiple enemies off of him so he gets a little breathing room. That's another valuable ability for teaming that cannot be understated.

Suggested Slotting:
12-21 (DOs): Rechg x1
22+ (SOs): Rechg x1

[Continued in next post]

POWERLEVELLING HALL OF SHAME

This section looks back at rapid XP gain techniques that used to work, before the developers added patches to make them less possible.

1) "By Grabthar's Hammer, You Shall Be Avenged!" or "Stop Dragging My Corpse Around"

From v3.0 of the Guide:

There is a trick that I have heard described on City of Heroes forums using Vengeance, the fourth power in the Leadership power pool. Not a toggle like the first three Leadership powers, this is a click with a fairly lengthy recharge time that is activated by using it on a fallen team member; it immediately provides big Defense and other bonuses to the still-living members of the team. (Note that the power description suggests it has to be used when the person who has the power dies, but this was changed in beta and is no longer accurate.) I have not actually seen this power in use, but do plan to get it eventually and try it out.

The trick involves getting two or more people with Vengeance and at least one with Recall Friend on the team and and inviting a lower-level player (within the 9-level XP window) to the team. The lower-level player is then allowed to be defeated, and left that way--he does not revive, just lies there. Before each battle, the teleporter recalls him to their current location, then the two party members with Vengeance take turns (to ensure continuous group coverage) casting it on their fallen companion. The team is then able to beat up enemies remarkably effectively, and the defeated lowbie gets the debt worked off and then powerlevelled very quickly.

This technique will no longer work in Paragon City itself due to the new XP Range/dead XP gain timeout system introduced in I4, which means that dead characters will no longer receive any XP for group kills within a short period of time after dying. The XP range/death timer change is not in effect within missions, but most missions are small enough that the Vengeanced lowbie may not even work off the debt he took from dying, let alone gain powerlevel-worthy XP. However, there is nothing preventing a below-level-10 player from joining the team just to die; he will not earn any XP, but he will not accrue debt from the death either.

Also, during I6, Vengeance was changed so that it will not stack; only one casting of it will be effective at a time.


2) The Seasonal Event was the Event of the Season!

From v3.0 of the guide:

Every so often, City of Heroes has a Seasonal Event (related to holidays, anniversaries, and so forth) whereupon hordes of special mobs show up and start attacking the city, special temporary powers may be granted, and badges are given out. Some of these events can be lucrative powerlevelling opportunities.

For instance, the Winter event that took place over several weeks in January, 2005 featured a frequently-spawning Giant Monster named the Winter Lord. The Winter Lord would appear in the vicinity of five or six preselected spawn points per zone, get killed, and then spawn again right away. Unlike most mobs, Giant Monsters are worth a specific amount of XP per level, that does not change as the level of those who fight it goes up or down. This meant that if the Winter Lord was worth 2,000 points (note: I'm making these numbers up for the sake of the example; I can't remember exactly what the WL was worth) to a L50, he would also have been worth 2,000 points to a L20.

He would also have been worth 2,000 points to a L1, except that the devs had recently added a stricture that the maximum amount of XP that a character could get from any one kill was limited to 5 bubbles' worth at their current level. However, this stricture meant that a low-level character really didn't have to do that much damage to get his maximum benefit of XP out of a given monster. If a low-level character was limited to, for example, 200 XP points from a single kill, he (or his team) only had to do 1/10 of the total damage capacity to a 2000-XP Winter Lord to get the full benefit out of it. Up to about level 10 or so, it was quite possible to earn one level per two Winter Lords killed...and by the end of the event, Winter Lords were spawning in droves all over the place.

An awful lot of new players (and alternate characters of old players) were levelled up into their 20s on Winter Lord XP. The howling of the anti-PL contingent on the web boards could surely have been heard all the way over to World of Warcraft.

The developers have stated that the Winter Lord's cornucopia of XP was a big mistake, and one that they do not intend to repeat. As it is now, giant monsters provide little enough XP for the time that they take to put down that they tend to be considered not worth fighting.

It should also be noted that earlier, before the devs had emplaced the 5 bubble limit for monster XP, high-level players were able to get low-level players several levels of XP at once by fighting monsters in Peregrine Island with them.


3) "Just follow your nose! It always knows!"

From v3.0 of the Guide:

Much fuss has been made on the boards about Kora Fruit missions and Phase Shifting. Detractors are claiming that, the way Phase Shift currently works, Kora Fruit caves amount to a free pass to powerlevel; others reply that there's nothing wrong with Kora Fruit caves as they are now and powerlevellers are a relatively tiny percentage of the people who make use of them--and leave my Kora Inspirations alone, if you please.

For those who haven't yet reached level 40, a little explanation may be required. Kora Fruit is a kind of vegetation that grows in certain caves in the Shadow Shard, a set of zones restricted to level 40-plus heroes. Once you've done a couple of missions for Dr. Boyd, your second contact in the 'Shard, you will be introduced to a Dr. Huxley (located in Mole Point Charlie in the Cascade Archipelago). Dr. Huxley will send you on a never-ending chain of missions to gather Kora Fruit in caves (full of Rularuu, the zone's primary mob faction) that may have anywhere from 1 to 15 fruits in them. The fruits appear as "blinkies" in these missions--and in addition to fulfilling a mission goal, each blinkie you click gives you a 50%-effectiveness (that is, the largest of the three possible sizes of) Health, Endurance, Damage, Accuracy, or Defense Inspiration, provided you have room in your tray to receive it. A cave may contain all the same kind of fruit, or some of each of the five; Dr. Huxley will say which when the mission is offered.

Where the controversy enters into this is that it is possible to click on blinkies (and receive fruits) while Phase Shifted. Thus a character who has the Phase Shift power can go into a Kora Fruit cave, phase shift, and walk merrily around picking fruit for as long as his Endurance holds out while the Rularuu whiff ineffectually at him. Not only does the shifter get the 50% Inspirations essentially for free, he also gets the end-of-mission XP bonus--which is what the detractors focus on. It's XP for free, they say, available in a constant and never-ending stream. (NOTE: Dr. Boyd will give you a stream of "examine the monument" missions, another form of "click the blinkie" which you can do while phased--however, these are interspersed with "rescue the scientists" missions which do require fighting, so are not as reliable as fetching Kora Fruit.)

The problem with this theory is that doing one's own Kora Fruit missions with the hope of levelling really takes too long to be effective. Even assuming that you've worked up to be able to call Dr. Huxley instead of having to visit her in person, and even leaving aside the time it takes to travel from mission to mission in the Shard (which is one of the most difficult-to-travel areas in the game for anyone lacking teleport and/or flight), the XP-per-minute of soloing Kora missions simply isn't an effective way of powerlevelling. If you divide the end-of-mission XP bonus by the five minutes or more that it can take to clear all the fruits out of one of those twisty-turny caves, you begin to see that you can get much better XP by doing ordinary missions or just by street-hunting.

Of course, if you gather together four or five phase shifters in one place, and concentrate on doing the kora missions of the highest-level member of the group, missions can be cleared faster and the lower-levels can get the magnified end-of-mission XP for completing a higher level mission. But even so, I have my doubts that this XP gain is much (if any) more lucrative in terms of XP per minute than simply doing missions the old-fashioned way (such as the Flynn missions I will go over in a few paragraphs) with the same group.

That being said, I have a hard time justifying the ability to click blinkies while Phase Shifted. It seems like a pretty solid recipe for exploitation. While the exploitation is relatively benign (top-tier Inspirations for free, hoorah), I still wouldn't be surprised if, sooner or later, the devs take away the ability to click blinkies while phased.

Shortly after Update 3 went into effect, the developers added a "defeat boss and his minions" requirement to all Kora Fruit missions after the first one. This meant that the missions could no longer be completed without combat simply by collecting all of the fruit; a boss and minions had to be defeated as well. This may not necessarily be an obstacle to rapid completion by large teams; part of the team could go to the end and take out the boss while the rest collects the fruit (especially if they use the disband-and-scout trick discussed in "Farming the Newspaper" in the Powerlevelling section). Still, it requires more time and effort than the old way.

This change is actually a good thing for people who consider the availability of the fruit, rather than the end-of-mission XP bonus, to be the primary benefit of these missions--now they can collect every fruit in a mission without worrying about ending it, instead of having to leave one as in the past.

Three further changes took place during I6 and I7. Early on, phase shift was changed to have a 30-second time limit on its use, which will prevent its full-mission-long use as was done by Kora farmers in the past.

Shortly before Update 7, Kora Fruit missions were revised to only provide 2nd-tier (medium-sized) Inspirations, rather than the large version. With the forthcoming availability of supergroup base Inspiration storage lockers, the developers did not want them being filled to overflowing with maximum-sized Inspirations by Kora Fruit farmers. This makes Kora Fruit missions substantially less desirable to save and farm. Positron has promised that as soon as they have technology to make Kora Inspirations unstorable, they will return them to the maximum size. However, given the developers' varying priorities and multitude of features that need to be implemented, when or if this will happen is anybody's guess.

Finally, in I7, stealth and phase shift powers will now either suppress for ten seconds or be removed by the act of clicking on a glowing items, so even if Phase Shift were not on a time limit, it would be suppressed by the act of picking a fruit.


4) "Monster Ranching": Let's Get Kraken!

From v3.0 of the Guide:

For players in the 36-42 range, there is one source of XP available that is better than any other I have yet seen in the game. There is a monster who can be defeated who has the potential to be worth, depending on character level, literally hundreds of thousands of XP per defeat. Better yet, six of these monsters can be found together in one place! Sounds too good to be true, doesn't it? Well, in some ways it is. I am referring to the infamous Abandoned Sewer Trial, otherwise known as the Hydra Trial. For this trial, it is necessary to get the mission from Maren MacGregor (trial contact 2 on this map) in Founder's Falls, traverse miles of Hydra, Rikti, and Circle of Thorns-infested sewers, defeat 150 Rikti there, get out of the sewers and back to Founder's Falls, then get all the way back into the heart of the sewers again--and that's just getting to the start of the actual trial itself! It can be a daunting task, but there are ways to make it easier.

In Update 4, the XP from Hatched Krakens was cut by 90% or more; reportedly the end-of-mission XP bonus has been increased to compensate, but I have not yet been able to complete the trial since I4 so I do not know if this is true, or if so how much the increase was. At any rate, it is no longer farmable for huge quantities of XP the way it was through I3. Also, though not directly related to using the Hydra Trial for powerlevelling, the loophole that allowed Controllers to hold the Hydra Head through the forcefield was closed.


5) Herding: Rikti Portal Milking

Whereas I5's defense cuts and target caps have reduced many forms of herding, the only one that has been made completely obsolete is:

Rikti Portal Milking was mentioned in a response by Humanist to a previous version of this guide. It is based on the fact that Rikti summoned through a portal created by a Rikti Communications Officer are worth full XP value for mobs of their type (unlike the demons summoned through demon-summoning portals in certain Circle of Thorns missions, which are worth nothing). Read the post for a complete explanation, but the technique involves aggroing every Communication Officer on a Rikti map ("The best way to aggro them is to simply walk up next to them unstealthed (but with other non-taunt defenses on), wait until they start the portal animation (won't take very long at all), then get out of there."), waiting 10-15 minutes (during which time you should defeat the groups of Rikti that have no Communications Officer to free up mob count), then going back and taking out the mobs that have teleported in while you were waiting. If you've done it right, enough mobs should have teleported in to hit the limit of the maximum number of mobs that can be generated in a single mission--and as you go around defeating the ones that have come in, more will spawn from the remaining Communication Officers as the count is freed up. Humanist points out:

[ QUOTE ]
Since the groups coming through are entirely minions, they give better xp/time than herding an 8-man wolf mission (once the killing starts). Also, it's unnecessary to gather a large team for these, both because the minions are easier to kill than the mixed groups and because the number of members you bring in does not affect the maximum number of mobs the mission can contain.

[/ QUOTE ]
I have not had the opportunity to test this technique myself, but the theory sounds solid. The only caveat is that, considering the amount of time you have to spend as a whole (in terms of setting up the spawns), the XP/minute may not be as good as you could obtain by other methods.

In Issue 5, Communication Officers' portals were adjusted to spawn only a set number of Rikti, and in I6 the Rikti were changed to be worthless with the XP value in the portal instead.


6) PVP-zone hunting

From the I7 version of the guide:

No, not hunting for other heroes/villains, hunting mobs. A mob taken down in a PVP zone will provide 25% more XP than the same mob taken down in a non-PVP zone would. Also, mobs in PVP zones drop Enhancements at the drop rates for their maximum level--which means that a level 15 character hunting in Bloody Bay would get the frequent DO drops that he would if he were 25. As an added bonus for Masterminds, the auto-sidekick to level 25 in Bloody Bay means that they can summon all five of their minion- and lieutenant-class henchmen, even if they would not have access to them yet normally (this only applies outside of missions). Thus, hunting and herding in a PVP zone could be potentially more lucrative than the same behavior in a hazard zone. (Especially since City of Villains does not have Hazard Zones.)

In Issue 7 or 8, the 25% XP bonus for PVP-zone mobs was removed, making them normal in relation to the amount of XP given.


7) Miscellaneous

These other changes have also been rolled into the main guide itself, but since they fall into the area of closing powerlevelling loopholes, they merit a repeat mention here:
<ul type="square">[*]I3: Addition of ranged Disorient powers and mission timers to Wolf-herding missions in 40-50 arcs.[*]I4: Implementation of XP range/character death XP gain timers to curb powerlevelling in Paragon City areas: characters must be within 300' of a mob and dead for no longer than one minute to receive XP for the mob's defeat; these changes are not effective within missions (including outdoor missions).[*]I5: Phase Shift, Quantum Flight, and Nebulous Form have all been given limited durations (30 seconds to 2 minutes) of effectiveness, meaning that high-low game powerlevelees will have to rely on other means to keep safe. The devs seem to feel that these powers were intended only to be used for emergency escapes, not slipping harmlessly through entire missions and obtaining hard-to-reach badges. Also, Defense levels are cut across the board (with mob accuracies also decreased in partial compensation) and caps are placed on the quantity of mobs that can be affected by AoE powers.[*]I6: Enhancement diversification makes everyone less effective. XP-earning level spread is contracted from up to 9 levels to up to 5 levels and must (supposedly) be no more than 2.0 levels below team average. Glowing items within missions are changed from giving equal amounts of XP and Influence/Infamy to giving 2x the old amount of Influence/Infamy. Kora Fruit are revised to middle-tier Inspirations.[*]I7: Stealth, Invisibility, and Phase Shift powers will suppress for ten seconds (for toggles) or be removed (for one-shot buffs) upon clicking a glowing item. Structure of XP awarding in PVP zones is changed, making it less desirable to hunt PVE enemies there.[*]I8: PVP zone mission bonus XP reduced to once every half-hour. End of mission XP bonuses capped at +3 levels to the character.[/list]

DEBT CLEARED FOR EXEMPLARY CONDUCT

Exemplaring has several very handy uses for debt removal. The most obvious is, of course, that by exemplaring, you artifically become a lower level--so you can apply the "High-Low Game" or other powerlevelling techniques to getting debt removed instead of to gaining XP. (Exemplar to a low-level character teamed with a higher-level character; let the higher-level character do the hunting while you earn debt-clearing XP as if you were the lower character's level--as long as you stay within 300' of the mobs, of course.) But there are a couple of creative twists that may not be so obvious, and they are both based on the fact that the "High-Low Game" level-based XP adjustment does not just apply to mob kill XP, but to end-of-mission XP as well.

These techniques do not work as well as they used to, given the 3-level cap imposed on end-of-mission rewards in I6. Where you used to be able to get double, triple, or more the usual amount of debt worked off as you would have gotten XP, now it's more like 140% or 150%. But that will still provide a slight boost, which won't hurt.

1) A-Hunting We Will Go

I originally stumbled onto this technique by accident. I had taken a mission to hunt Banished Pantheon in Dark Astoria at level 29, and exemplared to some level 22s to get the job done because I couldn't find anyone my own level to help me hunt. When the end-of-mission bonus came through, it was so high that it almost entirely cleared my debt. This was when I first realized that when you exemplar down to complete a mission, the game thinks you completed a mission as many levels higher than your own level as the number of levels you exemplared down (to a limit of 3 levels' difference, since I8). Not only does the entire experience reward go to debt-busting, but it is also multipled by a decent amount over the amount it would otherwise have been--and since XP debt is nothing but negative XP, this means that you have effectively multiplied your positive XP benefit (in terms of XP earned later that doesn't have to go to pay off debt) from that mission. Also, the Prestige bonus you receive (if in Supergroup mode) is also increased--so even if you have no debt, it might still be worth doing if you're willing to sacrifice XP to build Prestige for your supergroup more quickly.

Before the 3-level cap, this was probably the easiest method of clearing debt I had ever discovered. After all, defeating X mobs is just as easy to do if you're level 16 defeating level 16 mobs as if you were level 20 defeating level 20 mobs; the only difference is you got a bigger reward at the end. Almost without exception, every new contact you make will offer at least two and often three "hunt X mobs" missions the first few times you first speak to him, and at least one of those is usually a "hunt this type of mob anywhere." So, if you get a "Hunt Council Anywhere" mission from a contact in Independence Port, you can exemplar down a few levels and hunt them in Steel Canyon (or on a few-levels-lower character's Council indoor mission) instead. If you get mobs that don't spawn below your own level, or have to be hunted in a specific high-level zone, you simply need to find a buddy your own level to do the actual hunting (or at least to defeat the last mob; you get the same end-of-mission bonus whether you defeated all the mobs while exemplared or just the last one, as long as you waited for the XP freeze timer to run out before defeating the last one) while you're exemplared to another buddy several levels lower.

Note that this technique also works for the XP bonus from "Fed-Ex" missions--missions that involve taking something to or getting something from a particular contact.

2) "Don't Blinkie Or You'll Miss It!"

A slightly less easy but more convenient variation on the same technique can be used when you are doing a mission which has interacting with one or more glowing, blinking objects (colloquially known as "blinkies" or "glowies") as one of its mission goals and you have at least one character who is up to 4 levels below the highest-level member in your party. You can tell these missions because after you enter them they usually have "Retrieve 2 files" or "Destroy 8 crates" or some other "do something to X objects" message in the subtitle under the main mission goal. (You can also use this technique when you have to "rescue X hostages" but it's a bit more difficult.) Why are these missions so important? Because having that blinkie there essentially gives you control over when the mission gets completed.

So, while you are doing this mission, it is important to leave at least one blinkie untouched until after you have cleaned out all the other mobs in the map (or in just the boss room, if it's a "defeat named boss and his minions" mission, or a steal-item newspaper misson). Or, conversely, if it's a kidnapping mission, stop about twenty feet before you get to the exit door. Make sure the other members of the team know and agree to this stipulation going in, or else the mission might be ended prematurely. After the map is cleared, it is time to rearrange sidekicks and exemplars. If you have at least one team member who is up to 4 levels below the others, there are two basic tricks you can do with this.

The most obvious is to let the lowbies unsidekick for a higher XP bonus. This can add 40 to 50% to the amount of end-of-mission experience they receive, and that isn't bad at all. If nobody on the team has debt or a pressing need for more Influence, this is the extent of what you will do.

The other trick is a bit more devious: exemplar a team member to an unsidekicked lowbie. This gives the exemplar debt-clearance (or Influence) as if they had just completed a mission a number of levels above their own equivalent to the amount they exemplared down. As with the exemplared hunt method above, this can clear 40-50% more debt than without exemplaring.

IMPORTANT: After sidekicking and exemplaring has been arranged, you must wait for the XP freeze timer (which prevents people from almost-killing a mob and then exemplaring to get big XP gain for it) to run out before clicking the blinkie and ending the mission! You must wait at least 1 full minute to clear the timer.

You can actually make use of a modified version of this technique if you are soloing. Simply get to the point where you would need to exemplar in order to clear the mission, then find someone an appopriate number of levels below you. Get them to join your team and have them type /ex YourCharacter'sName into their text box. Once you're exemplared, wait the full minute then complete the mission--the other person doesn't even have to move from wherever they are. Once that's done, the other person can leave the team and you can continue on as usual.


IS THERE LEVELLING AFTER 40?

Most of the techniques in this guide so far have been aimed at powerlevelling someone who is relatively low-level. However, once the powerlevellee gets into the last ten levels of the game, things change a bit: with each level closer you come to the level 50 ceiling, the high-low powerlevelling game becomes progressively less effective. Going from level 49 to level 50 can take a very long time.

This section will look at a couple of the specialized methods that have been found to work for levelling after 40 in City of Heroes.

1) The 40+ Grind

There really isn't any "magic bullet" for getting through the 40s to 50; the only thing that can be done is to apply the same techniques that have already been covered, accepting that those techniques grow less effective as the range between your own level and the highest possible level who can help you shrinks. Since the largest benefit of most powerlevelling techniques relies on that range, by the time you reach the late 40s you will find that simply grinding through challenging adversaries and missions (but not challenging out of proportion to the XP they provide) is the most effective form of levelling you can do.

With Issue 7, the availability of PVP-zone missions in Warburg has been extended up through level 50, so that now both heroes and villains on the 40-50 grind can grind out these missions to their hearts' content. Likewise, hunting in Recluse's Victory with the aid of a Heavy (during off-peak hours when it is relatively safe to do so) makes whacking mobs as easy as shooting fish in a barrel.

But what are some things you can do if you'd rather stay out of PVP zones?

One technique, for heroes, is to play the High-Low Game in the Storm Palace, the farthest zone of the Shadow Shard, accessible only to heroes who are level 44 and up. This is where the highest-level free-roaming Rularuu can be found. If you have a good level 50 Lethal-damage (such as Katana or Broadsword) Scrapper who can deal with Psi attacks (Regen, Dark, and Super Reflexes seem to be the best at this) and focus on Wisps (which are weak against Lethal) you should be able to earn XP at a decent rate (not to mention collect many L51-53 Enhancements, which can be either used yourself or traded to someone who can).

Thanks to the new portals that were added in I5, the Storm Palace is easier to reach than ever, so that is no longer an obstacle to your adventuring. However, thanks to the non-Wisp Rularuus' heavy resistance to damage and all the Rularuus' many annoying mezzing and debuffing powers, the Rularuu are hands-down the toughest and nastiest mobs in the game--unless you are able to stick to Wisps exclusively, the XP reward is often not worth the hassle of obtaining it. And this method became much more dangerous with I4, since the lower-level character now has to stay fairly close to the higher-level character while they fight, and I5, since the lowbie can no longer rely on Phase Shift to stay safe.

Fortunately, there are better ways...

2) In With Flynn (and Volkov) (hero side)

In Mole Point Charlie, standing not too far away from Dr. Huxley of the Kora Fruit, is Colonel Flynn, another member of the Shard Expeditionary Force. It is necessary to do a couple of missions for Dr. Huxley before Flynn will speak to you. When he does, Flynn will offer you a choice between two of the following three types of missions, located in the Cascades, in a never-ending stream:
<ul type="square">[*]Defeat 50 Nemesis or Circle of Thorns [*]Raid a Nemesis base and destroy crates [*]Raid a Circle of Thorns cave and free hostages[/list]Lieutenant Volkov is another contact, in Firebase Zulu, who is obtained by doing some missions for General Hammond. He offers a choice of three timed missions to rescue soldiers, in the Firebase Zulu zone:
<ul type="square">[*]A small Nemesis base, with a 45-minute time limit[*]A medium-sized Nemesis base, with a 60-minute time limit[*]A large cave system full of Rularuu (which probably should be a Nemesis base, but isn't for some reason), with a 90-minute time limit[/list]What makes Flynn and Volkov so valuable is that these are the only non-Rularuu missions you can reliably obtain in the Shadow Shard--and thus the easiest missions you can reliably obtain in the Shadow Shard.

Ignore the hunts (though they can be useful if you have debt and a lower-level character handy for an Exemplar). Get yourself a good Level 50 Scrapper (or other damage dealer(s)) with mission difficulty set to Unyielding or Invincible. Have him take the base/cave raid missions from Col. Flynn or the timed missions from Volkov (Volkov's missions tend to be easier to get to without travel powers, being located in Firebase Zulu) and go along with him. At Unyielding, the missions should be full of a lot of L52 and a sprinkling of L53 mobs, which provide a decent amount of XP but can be put down decently quickly. The end-of-mission XP bonus doesn't hurt either.

Let the damage-dealer do his thing while you help as best you're able while not getting killed. (If you're 48-49 and a damage-dealing-or-tanking class, you can probably do this reasonably effectively. Otherwise, you should still be able to buff or heal from the sidelines.) Even at level 49, it is possible to earn two bubbles' worth of XP per hour in this way if you and your mentor keep at it constantly.

If you are able to get a full-sized team together to run these missions (in accordance with "Safety in Numbers" above), the gain should be even faster.

Needless to say, you can also run any of the level 50 character's missions from normal contacts and get similar XP benefits, but Flynn and Volkov's missions are uniform with no nasty surprises and will never run out.


DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME...IN FACT, DON'T TRY THIS AT ALL

After thinking about this for some time, I concluded that this guide wouldn't be a truly "comprehensive" guide if it didn't look at some of the less legitimate methods of powerlevelling--the ones that may violate TOS or, at the very least, draw an especially large portion of ire from other players if they find out you're using them.

I am NOT condoning or recommending any of these methods. I am simply listing them in the guide in keeping with my goal of a reference guide about powerlevelling in all its forms, legit and not. I should note that only two of these methods are actually illegitimate as per the terms of service; double-boxing is a perfectly legitimate method of levelling, if you have the money to support it--however, some people still do regard it as cheesy, so it may not make you many friends.

What do these methods have in common? Money. Real-world cash money, not Influence. Whether people are paying extra monthly to double-box, or are buying stuff on eBay, they are parleying dollars into an in-game advantage. Many players, even those who aren't opposed to non-monetary methods of powerlevelling, don't like that at all, because they feel it spoils the egalitarianism of the game. They believe an MMORPG should be a level playing field, where everyone has an equal shot at success or failure. Buying one's way in with real-world money introduces an external factor that not everyone is able to apply equally. (The buyers will argue in return that they are not able to apply the same amount of time to the game as the non-buyers, so the field isn't level to begin with, but it isn't the point of this guide to argue the case.)

1) Double-Boxing

Double-boxing, or dual-boxing, takes its name from the fact that you have two computers, "boxes" in geek parlance, that are each running a City of Heroes account. (Or it may be because you had to buy two "boxes" of the software to play the game on both computers, but I think the other explanation is more likely.) Unless you have four hands, you are only actually playing on one of them at a time; the other is in "zombie" mode with a character either left in a safe spot or slaved to follow you (and perhaps auto-spam attacks, buffs, or heals while doing so). You then use whatever powerlevelling tricks you like from earlier in this guide, using the higher-level character that you're playing to level up the lower-level character. This is a favorite method of some of the fastest PL'ers.

The advantages include that you never have to worry about finding someone willing to PL you--just a bridge to bring the lower level character into PL'ing range, if that--and you get double the usual number of characters per server. The disadvantages include that you're paying twice the usual amount per month, and your characters are split between two different accounts.

Of course, this method could also be used if a friend or family member were to give you access to his account for a while, as with one of the eBay methods of powerlevelling below, but that would technically be a violation of Section 3 of the Terms of Service. (A violation everyone whose kid, spouse, significant other, or roommate makes a character on his account commits, but a violation all the same.)

Unlike the other methods in this section, there is nothing in the EULA (that I know of; I'm not a lawyer so don't take this as legal advice) against double-boxing, as long as they're both your own account. It's a completely legitimate technique; I'm just listing it here because it has the money factor in common with the others. However, if some other players find out that you do it, you may earn yourself a special place on their personal schist-lists. Even players who condone ordinary methods of powerlevelling may not be terribly fond of people who do it with money, "legit" or not.

2) eBay

Aside from never-opened game boxes and time cards (both of which are perfectly legit), there are at least four City of Heroes-related things you can (but should not) buy on eBay: used accounts, Influence, loot such as Hamidon or Invention Enhancements, and powerlevelling services.

Accounts might be sold by people who powerlevelled their character to 50 with the intent to sell, or people who just want to get out of the game and move on to something else. Influence is often sold by level 50s who no longer have anything to do but earn money. Hami-Os are sold by the same people, taking advantage of the fact that Hami-Os are relatively easy to come by these days. Powerlevelling services are sold by people who are really good at PLing because there's money in it. (And quite a bit of money, too--last I checked, the fee for PLing a character from L1 to L50 was around $800!)

All of these violate the City of Heroes terms of service.

Selling accounts falls under Section 3 of the City of Heroes EULA, which states in part, "You may not sublicense, rent, lease, loan, or otherwise transfer the Software for profit." Sales of Influence or loot are forbidden by Section 6, which indicates that everything on City of Heroes servers is the property of NCSoft, so by selling it you're actually selling something that isn't really "yours" to sell. And powerlevelling services--which work by you temporarily giving the service-runner access to your account--fall under Section 3 as well.

Don't fall into the trap of thinking, "Oh, they'll never know." NCSoft runs the servers. They can track what IP address you regularly connect from, not to mention whether the name and address on the account should suddenly change. They can see if the same IP address shows up on lots of different accounts. It would be easy enough to set up scripts to watch for changes in these things and flag the accounts for investigation.

If NCSoft determines that you've bought an account on eBay, they will cancel that account--no ifs, ands, or buts. This is why it is so important to make sure, when buying CoH on eBay or other on-line flea markets, you're buying a sealed box, not one someone's already been playing. Even if you delete all the characters on the account and start new ones, NCSoft will still cancel it. This is a certainty; I've read forum posts from people who bought accounts on eBay and deleted all the characters, only to have the account cancelled when it came out how they got it. Even if NCSoft did not delete the account, the original seller of the account could regain control over it at any time by using the serial number on the game to access it. I'm less certain that they'll cancel you for using a pay-PLing service, but I wouldn't take the chance (or spend the money, for that matter--the rates those services charge are highway robbery!).

As to whether CoH watches Influence or Hami-O auctions to try to divine the in-game identities of sellers and buyers, this is unclear. It seems like it would be a petty thing for NCSoft to spend manpower tracking down, but I wouldn't take the chance--especially since the need for extra Influence vanishes entirely once you have a character in the late 30s, and Hami-Os are easily acquired by the time you're actually able to use them.


IN CONCLUSION

Often, when I'm asked by someone to powerlevel him, or asked for tips on the best way to get powerlevelled, I'll plant my tongue firmly in my cheek and say, "Make a really good friend around your own level, then go away and play another character for a few weeks--then come back and get your now-higher-level friend to help powerlevel you." I can say this because in all likelihood someone who wants to be powerlevelled is going to be way too self-centered to be able to make many friends--and if he's trying to make them them only so they can powerlevel him later, it's even less likely. The dichotomy is that someone who wants to powerlevel himself instead of relying on others is probably the most likely to be able to make friends along the way who will want to help him.

Some of the techniques I've recommended may seem slightly mercenary--but hey, nobody is ever 100% altruistic anyway. Is there really a difference between inviting someone to a team because he's higher level than you so you get bonus XP, and inviting someone to a team because you need his help to beat a tough mission? Is it "taking advantage" if all parties involved still have fun? Mercenary or not, the low man in a Task Force will still give his all to seeing that the Task Force succeeds, because he has the same stake in it everybody else does--and that benefits everyone.

I hope that this guide sparks some worthwhile discussion. If folks have any other tips or observations about powerlevelling, poweradventuring, or debt removal, I hope they'll post them; likewise, if folks have any corrections or clarifications, I'd be happy to incorporate them.

Thanks for reading this far. Let's be careful out there!


EARLIER VERSIONS
<ul type="square">[*]R_M's Comprehensive Guide to Powerlevelling[*]R_M's Comprehensive Rapid XP Gain/Debt Loss Guide[*]R_M's Comprehensive XP Gain/Debt Loss Guide v3.0[*]R_M's Comprehensive XP Gain/Debt Loss Guide v4.0[*]R_M's Comprehensive XP Gain/Debt Loss Guide v5.0[*]R_M's Comprehensive XP Gain/Debt Loss Guide v6.0[*]R_M's Comprehensive I7 XP Gain/Debt Loss Guide[/list]

6) Hitting the Reset Button

Mission resetting is the practice of leaving a mission partly unaccomplished, exiting, and restarting it with all mobs restocked. This is accomplished by retreating to and departing through the entrance before all mission goals are accomplished, and then, when everyone is safely outside, selecting a different mission from the team mission display. A dialogue box will appear asking if you wish to abandon the current mission; click "yes" to do so, then reselect that mission from the team missions display. The mission will be reset--the map will be obscured and all mobs will have respawned--and can be entered and fought again. Although resetting a mission does not usually constitute a powerlevelling technique by itself, it is often used in combination with another technique (usually the mass-pull, since by using the same mission over and over they don't have to find another one with the same easy-to-kill or needed-for-badge mobs in it).

Mission resetting is most commonly used in four situations: 1) the mass-pull powerlevelling technique mentioned above; 2) when farming mobs within the mission to get a badge (such as the hard-to-find Banished Pantheon Masks); 3) when farming blinkie artifacts (such as Vahzilok corpses) that provide some Influence (or other, non-XP benefits, such as Kora Fruit's 50% Inspirations) to the gatherer; or 4) when new team members join a team shortly after they have entered the mission (so that spawns will be adjusted for the latecomer and he will receive the end-of-mission XP bonus). Of these, situation 1 has already been discussed and situations 2 and 4 are outside the purview of this guide. Powerlevelling by blinkie is no longer feasible since they no longer provide any XP whatsoever.

Some might consider a few of these powerlevelling methods to be exploits, chiefly because they tend to reward lower-level characters entirely out of proportion to the work they do for the party. However, I contend that this is balanced out by the requirement that the powerleveller character be willing to grind XP for the lower-level powerlevellees, when he could be running missions and enjoying other new content instead. This isn't something that people are going to be willing to do for just anybody--which is, again, why asking for a complete stranger to powerlevel you is so asinine.

Thus, in a way, powerlevelling is self-selecting for people who are actually good players already--the creep who panhandles for powerlevelling usually won't get it, whereas the fellow who goes out and plays the game and makes friends and proves he's an all around cool guy will have plenty of folks willing to help him gain a few levels. (However, I have seen a few offers to powerlevel for Influence cash--and have even had friends who have taken them up on it--but it seems to me that surely can't be too lucrative for the powerleveller; by the time he's high enough level to powerlevel effectively, he's going to be making his own money a lot more easily than the people he's powerlevelling would!) High-Low powerlevelling is seen most often among RL friends or supergroup members, people who are willing to help each other out.

In the end, people who want to powerlevel are going to do it with or without this guide. Still, for those who dislike the idea of passively earning XP off of someone else's work (or for those who just don't have the knack of making friends), there are some other good ways of earning XP, which I'm going to call "Poweradventuring" just because I feel like it. They may not earn as quickly as powerlevelling, but they aren't as exploity or as much of a boring grind either.


POWERADVENTURING

This section is for some play tips that I've found help me earn XP (or earn off debt) reasonably fast when I'm interested in doing it without deviating from my ordinary play style. I refer to these tips as "poweradventuring" to differentiate them from "powerlevelling." The word "powerlevelling" has taken on a negative connotation, through the use of techniques that some may consider to be exploits. The tips I describe in this section are well within the bounds of good and polite gameplay, and sometimes there's not much more to them than ordinary common sense. These aren't so much "tricks" as they are slight changes you can make to the way you already play.

Some may feel that the word "powerlevelling" should still apply even to these less-cheesy methods. However, I wanted to draw a distinction in this guide between play methods that draw jeers and play methods that draw appreciative looks for their cleverness, and since many people already view the word "powerlevelling" in a negative light, coming up with a new term seemed the obvious choice.

The biggest key to levelling fast is also the most obvious: AVOID XP DEBT. XP debt is negative XP, plain and simple. They show it in the form of a brown segment added onto the end of your pink XP bar, but they might as well just have chopped that length off of the end of your pink bar instead for the practical effect it will have. That debt has stolen XP from you, XP that you will never get back. Sure, you'll get a pretty badge when you pay off enough debt, but is that really something for which you should strive? Here is a LiveJournal post full of very helpful tips for avoiding debt.

I'm not just mentioning this to state the obvious, but to remind you to keep it in mind when evaluating the rest of the tips in this section. When you plan to put one of these techniques to use (or, indeed, when you plan to try anything in the game), evaluate the situation and ask yourself if using the technique is likely to lose you more XP (in the form of debt) than it earns you. If so, and if your goal is to level as fast as possible, then don't do it.

Another tip that may seem obvious is this: NARROW YOUR FOCUS. Many City of Heroes players suffer a bit from "alt-itis"--there are so many different classes and variations on classes that you just have to try them all. Early in the life of the game, it even surprised the developers; they found far fewer level 40s and 50s than they had expected because so many people were creating and playing multiple characters.

The fact that City of Heroes is capable of offering such a diverse range of experiences is a good thing--it means people are less likely to get bored, because they can always switch to a character who plays completely differently if they do. However, if reaching the high end of the level scale quickly is your goal, alt-itis is your enemy.

For the sake of example, let's say that it takes 200 hours of non-powerlevelled play time to get a character from level 1 to level 50. (Yours Truly's Fire/Fire Tanker got there in about 174.) If you are able to play that character for an average of 4 hours per day, it will only take fifty days--approximately 1 and 2/3 months--to reach that goal. Even if you can only play for 2 hours a day--a more realistic figure for people who have to balance social and family lives with game time--that still works out to just a bit over three months to level 50. But if you split your time between multiple characters, at the end of that same period of time all you will have are a bunch of teens, twenties, and thirties at most to show for it.

If the idea of playing just one character for several months does not appeal to you, then compromise: play two. Have a "grind" character and a secondary backup character who is different enough from the grinder that you can switch over and play differently when you are starting to get bored. If you're willing to spend the time, you could even grind both of them at once.

It took me a little over one month from the time City of Villains was released to grind out my first level 40 character (and that was after putting 15 levels on an earlier character before I decided I wanted to try something different). I continually encounter people who are surprised I advanced so quickly--when to me it did not seem as if I had levelled all that much faster than normal speeds. When I thought about it, I realized that the secret was that during that time, I simply played that one character to the near-total exclusion of all others. It was so simple that I had not even thought to list it in this guide--but now I am. If you focus like a laser beam on just one character, you may be surprised how quickly that character advances.

As you might expect, this technique will be even more effective when applied to a character class that is already naturally fast to level. (See "Earning XP The Classy Way" below.)

Here is my listing of "legitimate" fast-levelling techniques.

1) "Big Brother/Big Sister"

Search the LFG list until you find a character 1-2 levels higher than you, of a complementary archetype to your own (i.e. if you're support, get a damage-dealer; if you're a damage-dealer, get a Tanker or another damage-dealer, etc.) who is looking for a team. Invite that PC to your party, and, if he comes, do his missions exclusively--not your own. (Needless to say, this also works if you have a friend or SG-mate in the right level range, but you may not be able to find one when you need one, and LFG-find is always there.)

At the core, this is a very weak version of the High-Low Game technique described in the last section; the difference is that you're going to be an active contributor to the team instead of a leech. Because missions spawn at the level of the player whose mission they are (as adjusted by his Reputation setting), this will get you missions full of yellows and oranges, and perhaps some reds and purples (to you; they'll be the standard white/yellow/orange/red to your partner). Since there are just the two of you, they shouldn't spawn in numbers too excessive for your partner to handle with your help, and they'll earn you more XP than you'd get doing white/yellow missions by yourself. Also, the end-of-mission XP bonus will be that much higher.

The downside is that you'll probably only be doing your partner's missions, because yours will be green and blue (and boring) to him. This could lead to you outlevelling those missions and their becoming green and blue (and boring) to you. (However, the Reputation system means that this can now be remedied to an extent.)

It is important that you make sure you and the character you invite will be an effective duo; if not, it will just lead to more debt. If you plan to do this, you should slot your attacks with more Accuracy Enhancements than usual so you'll be able to hit the higher-level mobs more often. This technique works best with Defenders and Controllers whose ability to buff or heal the higher-level member of the team is unchanged by the relative level of the mobs he is facing; it is also helpful if one of you has Tactics to help you hit better.

And just to note, even if you don't team with a higher-level character, duoing with an even-level or even a lower-level PC can still be an effective method of levelling without debt, provided that other PC's abilities complement your own. If so, you can be more effective together (and tackle missions at a higher Reputation setting) than either one of you could alone. (See the section on Synergies, below.) Also, the overall principle works for teams larger than just duos; if your character is the lowest-level member on a team that does mostly higher-level missions, he will still get more XP than he would on a team of heroes his own level (and will level even faster than in a duo due to the higher XP adjustment modifier.)

This technique is less necessary since the advent of the Mission Reputation adjustment system (see the section describing it below) so you can now have yellow or orange enemies in your own missions without needing someone else's help, but can still be used to good effect or even combined with that method (by having the Big Brother or Sister set a higher Reputation on his or her missions).

(A variation on this technique is to be sidekicked to a much-higher-level player and do his missions; you will be effectively one level lower, just as above.)

2) Safety in Numbers

Fighting higher-level enemies is the most obvious method of being able to earn good XP. But another excellent method is to be a part of a large team. It may seem counterintuitive--after all, XP on large teams is split in more ways, so you get less XP per mob defeated. However, there are three other factors to consider.

First of all, there is an XP multiplier that is applied to the XP given by individual mobs, depending on the number of people who are on the team. The larger the team, the more actual XP per mob is generated by the team, even if it is split more ways.

Second, larger teams are usually capable of defeating mobs faster than smaller teams, which leads to more enemies defeated in the same amount of time.

Finally, larger teams cause more mobs (and higher-level mobs for a team of six or more) to spawn inside of missions, meaning there will be more to defeat, and more XP gained by defeating them.

Combining large teams with the "Big Brother/Big Sister" technique and a good Mission Reputation setting, can thus lead to rapid XP gain for lower-level members of the party. However, bear in mind that some enemies seem to get tougher out of all proportion to the difficulty setting as the team grows larger--particularly Longbow, Malta, and Circle of Thorns. It may be better to lower the difficulty for a larger team, lest you risk receiving more than enough debt to offset the XP gain.

It's also worth noting that the XP benefit of large teams also depends in part on how fast the team is. If it's a slow team (for example, full of Masterminds who take longer than they should in getting ready), you could probably be earning XP faster alone with rapid mission completion (see below).

3) Task (or Strike) Forces, Care and Feeding of

Task Forces--or at least successful Task Forces--have a reputation for gaining people at least one, and often two levels over the course of an evening's adventuring (at least at the lower levels, where levelling is more rapid; by the 30s and 40s a successful Task Force may earn 9 or fewer bubbles). Why is this? Simple--the Task Force is a series of missions set at a particular level that may be undertaken by anyone up to five levels (six in some cases) below that. As the High-Low and "Big Brother" techniques show, if you do higher level missions, you get more XP. This isn't meant to be a comprehensive Task Force guide, so I'll just hit the high points of how to get the most XP out of a TF while getting the least debt.

a) If at all possible, put the Task Force team together yourself. This will give you enough control over the quantity, level, and archetypes of the other participants that you can implement the rest of my suggestions. If you don't want to lead the TF, then arrange to promote one of the other players to the leadership slot before you start.

b) Take no more than five members, unless the task force specifically requires that many--and even then, take as few as you can. For most normal missions and TFs (there are exceptions for things like the Abandoned Sewers Hydra Trial; ask an experienced player if in doubt), adding that sixth member bumps all the mobs in the mission up by an additional level of difficulty, and more members than that add more bosses to the mix. This means the TF will take much longer to complete, be more likely to have crucial people drop as they run out of play time, and be much more difficult (and likely to engender XP debt). Note that most Task Forces can be completed with fewer than the minimum quantity of players, so if you wish to do a TF requiring 7 to start with only 5 people, you can have two people join for long enough to start and then drop once the TF is underway. Conversely, if you are experienced and powerful enough to handle anything the Task Force can throw at you, and you don't mind it taking longer and having higher risk of debt in return for the chance of greater XP gain, you may wish to go at it with a full team of 8 (as per the "Safety in Numbers" method above). You simply need to decide whether the increased gain is worth the increased risk.

Also, try to be as balanced as possible in your selections; one character per "main" archetype (i.e. one each of Blaster, Controller, Defender, Scrapper, Tanker) has worked very well in Task Forces I've run, but isn't always possible to get; Kheldians can serve as surrogate Blasters, Tankers, or both in turn depending on their build. See other folks' Task Force guides for more suggestions on picking the ideal team.

c) Be aware of your party's Reputation settings. There are conflicting reports as to what effect Reputation settings (see the section on Reputation settings below) have on Task Forces. When this guide was first written, there was some question over whether the difficulty of everyone on the team affected Task Force difficulty, or just the leader's; this has since been fixed so that only the leader's counts. Depending on your party composition, you may want to make sure everyone sets his Reputation as low as possible, for the same reason that you want to have 5 or fewer members as per b); however, the higher the difficulty, the more experience (and the higher-value Enhancement drops) you will get. If you have a sufficient number of high-level characters who feel they can handle it, you should set to Invincible for maximum XP gain. (This is particularly true if you have a number of characters exemplaring down from higher levels--especially if they are levels 47-50 and kitted out with Hamidon Enhancements.)

d) Make sure most of the party members are toward the high end of the level range (or can be sidekicked that way)--except you. In order to be an effective team, you're going to need some heavy hitters (especially if you have more than 5 members and/or a high Reputation setting). If you're going on Positron's (L10-15) TF, for instance, at least 3 out of your 5 members should be at least L14. You're going to need that firepower to take down the masses of L15 and L16 mobs as fast as possible with minimal casualties. A Task Force will only help you out if you don't get killed much during it.

Note that since late Issue 4, characters who have outlevelled the Task Force now have the Arena-style automatic exemplar when participating in it--meaning that they do not need to rely on a lower-level character to be eligible, and that they do not get dumped from the Task Force if they or a lower-level character should disconnect. Higher-level heroes who are willing to exemplar for a Task Force with you are generally better and more capable than heroes of your own level, because they will have more slots and better enhancements (possibly even including Hamidon Enhancements) than heroes of your own level, even if the effectiveness of those enhancements is reduced proportionately in the exemplar process.

So, you should have as many high-end-of-eligibility or exemplared heroes as possible on the team. However, in order for the TF to be of the most benefit to you experientially, you should be in the lower to middle part of the level range--either naturally, or, if you must be, SK'd up to it. The ideal level for people who need to make successful to-hit rolls in order to be effective (as with attacks, or with targetted heals), in my opinion, is minimum-plus-two--12 for Positron, 17 for Synapse, etc. This means you're high enough to be able to land some hits (especially if you've put extra Acc enhancements in your powers) without having to be sidekicked, but low enough to get a lot of XP from the level adjustment. Defenders whose main effects are no-roll-required buffs or heals (Emp, FF, Sonic, etc.), can probably get away with starting at the minimum level for the TF if the rest of the team is amenable. If you can get by without debt, you'll probably earn at least two full levels before you're finished (depending on the level range of the TF) if you run the TF at this point. This does work better for Defenders, of course, since they're not expected to attack as much. If you plan to do this, you should be sure to put at least two Accuracy Enhancements in your attacks so you will at least be able to hit the higher-level targets reliably.

(And, of course, this is strictly optional and may not always be possible depending on the situations your team runs into; if your team is getting creamed, you'll take your sidekicking and you'll like it. You'll still end up ahead in the end.)

Done the right way, a Task Force can lead to rapid experience gain (and the SO you get at the end ain't chickenfeed either). Even if you aren't able to apply all of these tips, you'll still come out ahead as long as the Task Force ends successfully.

4) "Want Some Candy, Little Girl?"

One technique that is clever, if obvious in retrospect, involves getting around the limits on the number of Inspirations you can carry by buying them from a street contact located near spawns of tough mobs, immediately popping them, then buying and popping some more, then tackling the mobs while the inspirations are still good. Although I have not tested this technique extensively myself, one poster found that it allowed his Scrapper character to solo crowds of red mobs for good XP gain. It might offer similar promise to other archetypes as well. Even if a Rage is only good for 25% of base (that is, unenhanced) damage, popping enough of them at once will still bring you to the damage cap.

5) The Sliding Scale of Justice

With Update 3, a system for adjusting mission difficulty was introduced; it has been tweaked in subsequent patches. It is only possible to make missions more difficult, not less, because the developers do not want people blowing through their missions too quickly (since it is already possible to run out of missions from all contacts as it is). The more difficult a mission is, the higher-level the mobs are, and the higher the end-of-mission XP bonus is.

Levels are adjusted by talking to a Hero Corps Field Analyst (usually found in the vicinity of a Trainer, as well as a few other spots such as by the Portal Corps sign in Peregrine Island) and paying some Influence to set your "Reputation" to one of five levels. This new ability to make a mission more difficult, and thus face higher-level mobs, means it is no longer as necessary to use the "Big Brother/Big Sister" method to get the challenge of, and higher XP for facing, mobs that are higher-level than yourself in missions.

These are the five levels (listed by CoH/CoV name), and what they apparently mean (there are some reports suggesting that these descriptions may not be entirely accurate):
<ul type="square">[*]Heroic/Villainous (formerly Hard-Boiled): The default setting. Foes are 0/+1 of your level. Normal spawn quantity.[*]Tenacious/Malicious: Foes are 0/+1 of your level. Spawn quantity is calculated as if there were one more person on your team.[*]Rugged/Vicious: Foes are +1/+2 of your level. Normal spawn quantity.[*]Unyielding/Ruthless: Foes are +1/+2 of your level. Spawn quantity is calculated as if there were one more person on your team.[*]Invincible/Relentless: Foes are +2/+3 of your level. Normal spawn quantity.[/list]There is a special case involving the Heroic/Villainous setting when soloing. In order to make missions more solo-friendly, named Bosses in solo missions set to Heroic/Villainous will instead appear as Lieutenants with the same appearance, powers, and description. They will still be Bosses as usual for Tenacious/Malicious on up, however. Elite Bosses, such as Heracles or Longbow Ballistas, will still spawn as Elite Bosses no matter what the difficulty setting.

There has been some discussion about what is truly the most efficient setting for maximum XP gain. The Unyielding setting has the highest quantity of moderately-tough mobs, which means more XP on the hoof for herding and the like. Unyielding mobs are easier to defeat than Invincible, and there are more of them to defeat. However, according to an analysis one player did, counting up the quantity of each type of mob per mission and XP thereof, the total XP per mission is actually slightly higher for Invincible than for Unyielding; the higher level of the fewer mobs combined with the larger end-of-mission bonus pushes its count over the top.

The upshot is that if you are actually completing the missions, you will get slightly more XP for completing an Invincible mission than for completing an Unyielding one. The assumption I made in prior versions of this guide was that since Invincible mobs are harder to defeat than Unyielding mobs, the Invincible mission itself could take a longer period of time (particularly if your main method of damage is AoE), meaning that you would not earn as much XP per minute overall.

However, upon more recent testing, I recognized a factor I had not taken into account before: bosses. The Unyielding setting has a higher quantity of bosses than Invincible. For example, a Freakshow instanced portal mission that has no bosses in its Invincible spawns for a 6-person team will have 1 boss in each spawn on Unyielding. And bosses take more time and effort to defeat--a length of time that is usually out of proportion to the higher amount of XP you get from them. If XP per minute is your goal (for example, if you are herding and resetting a mission), you may find it faster and more lucrative to take out higher minions and lieutenants on Invincible than to take out lower-level bosses on Unyielding.

6) Earning XP the Classy Way

If you want to earn XP as quickly as possible on your current character, the other methods in this guide are for you. But if you are not averse to creating a new character, one of the best ways to level quickly is to make a character from one of the fastest-levelling character classes--characters who are able to use the PBAoE Mass Pull techniques described in the Powerlevelling section while soloing, for example. Being able to manage Hazard Zone-sized spawns of mobs by oneself leads to much better solo XP than a class that can only take out a few mobs at a time. If you've never played such a class before, the difference can be really amazing. Plus, once the character reaches a high enough level, it can easily be used to powerlevel others.

The two fastest-levelling character types in City of Heroes were at one point Spine Scrappers and Fiery Aura Tankers. Given the number of changes that have taken place in the intervening updates, it is uncertain whether this is still true, though both types do still have some elements in their favor.

The Spine power set has a variety of AoE and PBAoE attacks of different types, and each of these includes a slow effect. Spines/Regen Scrappers were at one time considered by some to be "the" class for powerlevelling; another possibly good class is Spines/Dark Armor because they have two PBAoE damage toggles (one each from their primary and secondary sets).

Another extremely popular fast-levelling class at one point was the Fire Tanker, who had the toughness to stand amidst a hazard-zone-sized spawn and the PBAoE damage to take them down quickly. Prior to I5, the Fire Tanker was arguably the best powerlevelling class in the game due to Burn, a fire attack that could take out a crowd of enemies while the Fire Tanker did nothing but stand there. Issue 5 reduced Burn's damage, lengthened its recharge rate, and magnified its fear component to make enemies run away when it was used. Issue 6's Enhancement Diversification reduced the amount of damage it could do, as well. Since I5, I6, and I7, the Fire Tanker is still decent, but now requires help from a Controller or Dark Blast Defender for the best use of Burn. The most popular variations include
<ul type="square">[*]Fire/Fire -- Good all-around PBAoE class; early-game Blazing Aura and Burn coupled with Fire Sword Circle and Combustion later on.[*]Fire/Energy -- Energy Melee has the highest single-target damage of a Tanker set; reportedly able to solo monsters and AVs.[*]Fire/Ice -- The Ice secondary provides Ice Patch, which has very good synergy with Burn and helps to counteract the terrorize/Taunt changes introduced in I4 and I5.[/list]See Mephe's Fire/Fire Tanker Guide v2.0 for good advice (though largely outdated by Issues 5 and 6) concerning Fire Tanker building, slotting, and playing, which can easily be adapted to other Fire/* types as well. Also, Yours Truly has written an expanded guide to Fire Tanking in I4 and I5 that you may find worth a look. (Someday I'll bring it current again, maybe.)

The changes in Issue 5 added a formerly unlikely class to the list of possible fast levellers: Controllers. With Issue 5, Controllers received the inherent ability Containment, which allows them to do double damage to held enemies. If you pair a high-damage Controller primary, such as Fire or Ice, with a Defender secondary that includes damage resistance debuffs, such as Radiation, Storm, or Sonic, you have the potential to do a great deal of damage to many enemies at once simply by combining the damage resistance debuffs with the group and single-target holds--and because they're held, they can't attack you back at the same time. Once the pets come out (for every class except Mind), the damage gets even better.

On the City of Villains side, it is somewhat hard to say what the fastest-levelling class is; due to CoV's emphasis on more damage with most of its classes and its reduced travel time, the levelling process in City of Villains is noticably faster overall than in City of Heroes. However, the all-around fastest of the fast classes are probably Brutes and Masterminds.

Brutes are City of Villains's version of Scrappers, but with access to Tanker sets in addition to or instead of the usual Scrapper--and with an insanely high 850% damage cap and the Rage inherent to help them reach it. Once they get going, Brutes are basically juggernauts; they may not be true "Tankers" in the CoH sense, but if they can take down enemies faster, the enemies won't do as much damage to them anyway. Brutes with superspeed or stealth (such as Energy Aura's Energy Cloak power) are particularly fast to level, being well-suited to the rapid mission completion technique described in one of the following section. (Stalkers are also decent at stealthing missions, but are hampered by their slower fighting speed.)

Masterminds do not have a City of Heroes equivalent as such; they are the leaders of tiny armies who do (and take) most of the damage for them. They can be a bit slow starting out, but once they have all their minions fully upgraded, they can do insane amounts of damage. Masterminds are good in groups (particularly to have their minions open attacks and take the aggro) but can also solo pretty quickly (though they do have to spend a couple of minutes at the start of a mission getting their pets out and upgraded). Thanks to the new Bodyguard ability that was introduced in I7, they are also significantly safer than many other classes; they can now take alpha strikes even better than a Tanker.

Some Mastermind primary and secondary sets are better than others. Probably the best all-around damager is Robots, who have decent ranged and melee attacks using energy and (for the Assault Bot) fire, and a good chance at disorienting once the final upgrade is in; Necromancy is good in melee and for the sort of control effects that come with Dark Energy power sets. According to calculations someone posted in the Archetypes forum, Thugs are actually 1.4x more damaging than Robots--but since much of their damage is Smashing or Lethal, it is more readily resisted in the late game.

It is generally agreed that the Dark Miasma secondary power set is one of the overall best values for a Mastermind secondary. Dark Miasma offers the only aura heal available to Masterminds, decent control and damage-boosting powers, and an extra pet. Traps also has some benefits in terms of a regeneration-buff AoE beacon, powerful trip mines, and a Disperson Field toggle that doesn't go off if the character gets mezzed. Force Field is also decent if you don't mind bubbling like a madman every four minutes; the bubbles make your pets a touch more slippery, Force Bolt can knock pesky foes on their backsides or off of balconies, Dispersion Field provides personal mez protection, and Personal Force Field is an excellent debt-avoidance panic button when you bite off more than you can chew.

7) Adversity Builds Character--and So Should You

Even if you have picked the fastest-levelling class ever, you've only done half of what you need to ensure success. The other half is building the best version of that character you possibly can--because the difference between a good build and a bad build can mean the difference between levelling rapidly and hardly levelling at all. And thanks to some of the developers' decisions, coming up with a good build isn't necessarily easy.

Back when City of Heroes was in the planning stages, there had never been a truly large-scale successful MMORPG. Jack "Statesman" Emmert thought that part of the problem might be that other MMORPGs gave their players too much confusing information--so City of Heroes would provide only simple summaries of what powers did, with none of those confusing numbers. (Subsequently, World of Warcraft, which discloses all numbers for all powers, became the biggest hit MMORPG ever, causing a chagrined Emmert to admit that perhaps he had been slightly mistaken.) And so we have the system City of Heroes has now, wherein power effects are given vague descriptions, which really don't mean too much of anything.

(More recently, the numbers actually have been released, in the Prima Guides and downloadable update for same. However, many of the numbers given are inaccurate or incomplete enough to cast doubt upon the rest, so it is uncertain whether this is actually an improvement.)

Admittedly, this system does avoid the confusion of overloading a player with numbers. However, it causes the confusion of not really telling a player much of anything, which is arguably worse. This means that, when building a character, you can't trust the power descriptions you see on the training screen. A power that sounds like the best power ever might turn out to be the worst power in the set. For example, Fiery Aura's Temperature Protection power is a power that no Fiery Aura player in the know actually takes; half of its effects are completely redundant with the shield toggles, and the other half are mostly unnecessary. Yet a newbie player reading the power selection list would have no way to realize this.

The only way to find out what powers are good and what are stinkers is to learn from experience. Fortunately, there are enough experienced players out there that you do not have to rely only on your own experience. Obsessive number crunchers and statisticians with statistical analysis programs have discovered or extrapolated likely numbers for just about every power out there. Obsessive programmers have compiled these into character-creating programs like Sherk Silver's Character Builder and obsessive guide-writers have written guides around them. All the wisdom you need to figure out your own optimal build is right at your fingertips.

Here are a few recommended places to look for guides, numbers, and advice, in order from most to least recommended.
<ul type="square">[*]The City of Heroes official board's Guides &amp; FAQs category. This is where guides are placed that are meant to stick around a while. You may even be reading this guide from there (although since some people have mirrored my guides on their own websites, this is by no means a sure thing). You can find guides by browsing the subject lines, searching on key words, or checking the Guide to Guides. (A guide referencing the Guide to Guides...recursive enough for you?) The Guide to Guides may be your best bet, since some guides don't actually mention their subject in their subject line.

The best guides will be informative and will make recommendations about what powers to take and what to avoid, but will not try to lock you into one specific build. They will also include suggestions for strategies in the use of powers, and may even give you a few tips you didn't learn here. (For examples of what I modestly consider the best sort of guide, see my own guides to Robotics/Dark Miasma Masterminds and Energy/Energy Brutes.) Be advised, however, that since the Guides board does not expire old posts, it is possible you could find guides dating all the way back to when City of Heroes first came out.

To make sure the information is the most valid, look for some indication in the subject line what Issue a guide was meant to cover, or else check the posting date. The most modern guides will say I9 or I10. Given the number of changes in each issue, obsolete guides may not necessarily have the best advice. Anything before I5 will not take into account I5's Damage Resistance and Defense reductions, and anything before I6 will not include Enhancement Diversification. Anything before I7 will not cover the Accuracy/Defense calculation change. Ideally, you want something at least I7 (June 2006) or later. Anything before I8 won't cover Veteran Reward powers. Anything before I9 won't deal with Inventions. Anything before I10 won't cover the cooperative missions and new Rikti war content, and so on.

Even if you don't find an exact guide to your particular power set combination, you can still pick up useful information by reading guides that are partial matches. For example, if you were playing a Spines/Super Reflexes Scrapper and couldn't find a Spines/Super Reflexes Guide, you could still learn about the Spines set by reading a Spines/Regen guide and about the Super Reflexes set by reading a Katana/Super Reflexes guide.
[*]The City of Heroes board for your archetype. Whatever archetype you're making, check that board. If you're making a Scrapper, read the Scrapper board; if you're making a Brute, read the Brute board, and so on. You will find lists of guides for that specific archetype there that may be more current, or have more links, than the Guides Guide to Guides (whee, more recursion!), but you will also find threads discussing important aspects of powers and power sets that can help you figure out what to take and what to skip. If you have any particular questions, don't be shy about asking them. Remember, there are no stupid questions...only stupid people who ask stupid questions.
[*]ParagonWiki. A relatively recent site, it is nonetheless very well updated, and some of the information I've incorporated into the guide came from there. And, since I am planning to try to put my guides on there as well, you may even be reading this there.
[*]Other advice sites. There are plenty of other fansites and advice sites on the 'net for City of Heroes, such as City of Heroes Warcry, that used to have a lot of good character-building advice; however, the game has changed a great deal and some of the information may not necessarily be current any longer. The warnings above about checking the issue or posting date apply doubly here.
[*]Character-building programs such as Sherk Silver's Character Builder. These programs, which provide an interface to let you build a character's power selections and slots from scratch, have their good aspects and their bad aspects. Good aspects include letting you try out sample builds for your character before he even leaves the training zone, and letting you see the numbers for each of your respective powers. Bad aspects are that the numbers in the version you have may be outdated or otherwise wrong due to updates to the game (or statistical discoveries) more recent than updates to the program, and they also do not give you advice about the powers beyond their printed descriptive text and what Enhancements they can take.[/list]However, sometimes all the guides and good advice in the world will not be enough to keep you from making a mistake in your build. If you have a pre-existing character, you may already have. However, you will have the chance to correct that in the form of the three "normal" and one "freebie" respec you are granted over the life of your character. For information on how best to use those, see R_M's Guide to Using Respecs.

8) Play to Your Strengths (and Their Weaknesses)

Whether hunting or doing missions, getting the most XP per minute (and the least debt) requires making the most defeats as quickly as possible. To do this, you should start to become aware of enemies' strengths and weaknesses. For example, the two main enemies you will encounter on the streets of Perez Park are Skulls (west side) and Hellions (east side). Skulls are resistant to Dark Energy; Hellions are resistant to Fire. Thus, if you are playing a Fire Tanker and want to find the mobs you can burn down as quickly as possible, you should concentrate on Skulls because they will take more damage from your attacks and go down more quickly. If you are playing a Dark Scrapper or Dark Blast Defender, however, you would be better off concentrating on Hellions.

Some enemies have weaknesses that can be exploited to take them down even more quickly. For instance, Freakshow are weak against energy attacks--so if you have an Energy, Electricity, or Radiation Blaster/Corruptor, Energy Melee Tanker/Brute, Robotics Mastermind, or Peacebringer Kheldian, you will find you have an additional advantage in hunting Freakshow or taking Freakshow missions. You should try to avoid, as much as possible, mobs who are strong against your attacks, because they will take longer to take down--and also avoid mobs who have attacks against which you are weak.

9) Synergies

It's no secret that many City of Heroes character classes and power sets complement each other. This was largely what the developers intended when they created the game, to give people more reasons to adventure together: Tankers get the enemy's attention, Scrappers beat on them up close, Blasters zap them from afair, Controllers hold them down, and Defenders grease the wheels of the machinery and perform necessary repairs.

But there are certain power combinations that provide a higher level of synergy than the average--powers that stack with other classes' powers, or make other powers easier to use or more effective. If you can find such a combination, it will make advancement for the both of you that much easier.

Of course, the usefulness of this technique is somewhat limited, since it is not always possible to find a "perfect" match among random players looking for teams. However, if you and a friend are starting characters at the same time, you might want to consider choosing a complementary pair.

The following are some combinations that I have thought of or seen in play, or have been suggested by readers. This is not meant to be an exhaustive list; you will probably figure out other good combinations on your own.

Defense Melee Classes (Super Reflexes, Icy Armor, Stone Armor, or Energy Aura) plus Force Fields: After the Defense nerfs of Issues 5 and 6, Defense-based melee classes were a bit down; their Defense was what they depended on to survive and as of I6 they had less of it than ever before. This has largely been alleviated by the changes to Defense calculation in I7. However, an application of fully-slotted Force Fields can still make a good thing even better--all the more so if there's a second bubbler around to double-stack them. In fact, any decent team with two active bubblers on it will be pretty nearly invincible, and should put Defense-based characters at or near the 45% effective Defense cap.

Fiery Aura (Tankers, Brutes) plus Dark/Dark (Defenders, Corruptors): Since I5 and I6, the Burn patch--formerly the Fire Tanker's mainstay--has become progressively less powerful and harder to use. (It has subsequently regained a bit of power through the I7 inheritance technology that lets it be affected by damage buffs that are on the caster when it is cast, but this still does nothing for its panic invocation.) All the same, it can still be a decent part of a Tanker's (or Brute's) arsenal with the help of a Dark/Dark Defender (or Corruptor), whose Tenebrous Tentacles can lock down a crowd and whose Tar Patch can make them take more damage from the Burn patch (and Combustion, Fire Sword Circle, and Blazing Aura). In addition, Shadow Fall provides a boost to damage resistance from Energy and Psychic attacks, Darkest Night means the Tanker takes less damage in general, and Twilight Grasp makes a good backup heal to the Tanker's own Healing Flames. The same can also be said for */Dark Masterminds, especially Necro/Dark, but they will have somewhat less control since it is their pets/minions that have the tentacles rather than themselves. Another good partner for a Fire Tanker might be a */Sonic Controller, who will also be able to lock the mobs down and debuff their damage resistance, plus increase the Fire Tanker's own with his sonic bubbles.

Minor Synergies: There are all sorts of minor synergies that may not necessarily increase XP per minute but can at least make things easier. For instance, Force Field, Kinetic, and Sonic characters with the repulsion powers are handy with ranged-attack Masterminds (Mercs, Bots); Sonic Resonance's Disruption Field would work well with melee-attack Masterminds (Necro, Ninja)--especially since it's a toggle that can be placed right on a minion.

10) Rapid Mission Completion

It has long been known that burning quickly through missions you can do over and over could be useful in powerlevelling; the hall-of-shame Kora Fruit and the current newspaper-farming powerlevelling techniques are only the most obvious examples. It is common sense that the more of those large end-of-mission XP awards you can cram into the same amount of time, the bigger your overall XP per minute will be.

However, you don't have to get together a full team and disband it at every mission in order to do this. Repeatable missions can easily be harnessed for reasonably fast XP gain in soloing or duoing. All you need to do is take a mission that you can complete as quickly as possible and repeat infinitely, and then do it again and again and again. If you can stand the monotony of doing the same mission over and over, you can grind out the levels pretty quickly.

As it stands, there are currently three sets of infinitely-repeatable missions in the game: City of Heroes's level-40-plus Shadow Shard contacts (including Kora Fruit), City of Villains's Newspaper/City of Heroes's Police Scanner, and the PVP zone missions.

Barring Kora Fruit and Nemesis hostage-rescue missions, most Shadow Shard missions are probably not as suited to this technique as the others due to taking an excessive length of time to complete, even solo. The best missions possible (except, perhaps, for Stalkers) used to be the PVP zone missions because their end-of-mission bonus was 25% higher than the same level and difficulty of mission outside of a PVP zone. However, this was apparently being abused, so it was limited to one bonus reward every 30 minutes starting in Issue 8.) The "destroy the supply depot" PVP-zone missions are the best candidate, as they do not seem to have lieutenants or bosses in them at all when soloing or duoing on Heroic/Rugged/Invincible (1/3/5). (It used to be that the bomb defusal or planting missions were considered the most desirable, due to the extra XP provided by the clickable bombs; however, during I6 the XP award was removed from these items in favor of doubling their provided Influence instead.)

Stalkers, or other fighters with good stealth (or a stealth temp power) or superspeed, may find the newspaper missions more lucrative--particularly the "steal item" or "defeat boss and underlings" missions, which only require that the last room be cleaned out and do not require leading a hostage back to the entrance. Thus, one can sneak all the way to the end, quickly clear the room (especially on Heroic/Villainous where the Boss will be a Lieutenant), exit, and proceed to the next mission. Energy Aura Brutes are particularly good at this, having the stealth power to get to the end and the damage and defense to clear it easily once they get there.

These missions are best done on the Heroic/Rugged/Invincible (1/3/5) levels of difficulty--the ones that only spawn the normal quantity of mobs--with just one or two people. More people and other difficulty levels will spawn lieutenants or even bosses, making the missions that much harder (especially for the Longbow PVP-zone missions).

Note that you can get the most out of this technique when you combine it with playing to your strengths and the enemies' weaknesses, as above--when given a choice, take missions against enemies you're strong against, rather than weak against, and you'll complete them even faster.

Note also that rapid completion is good for more than just repeatable missions. A stealthed Scrapper or Brute can easily speed-stealth any mission that does not require defeating all or rescuing/kidnapping a hostage, and can quickly fight his way through even those. If you complete as many of your regular contacts' arc missions as quickly as possible, you will receive the larger end-of-arc bonuses more frequently, as well as the end-of-mission bonuses, which works out to higher XP per minute and a faster levelling rate. This will also allow you to complete more of your contacts' arcs without outlevelling them due to the XP received for defeating all the enemies inside the missions.

11) Double XP Weekends

As of the writing of this section of the guide, there have been three "double XP weekends," whereby all numeric rewards (XP, Inf, Prestige, etc.) are doubled from Friday morning to Sunday midnight. Obviously, this also doubles the effect of every other powerlevelling and poweradventuring tip in this guide. Keep an eye out for the announcements of these weekends, and be prepared to take full advantage of them when they come.

[Continued in next post]

CHANGES FROM PREVIOUS VERSION
<ul type="square">[*]Moved PVP-Zone Hunting to Hall of Shame.[*]Removed "Rock and Reroll" debt-removal method, as the more I think about it the more I just can't see how that would work at all.[*]Updated "Debt Cleared for Exemplary Conduct" to note the significant reduction in effectiveness due to the level-difference cap that was imposed.[*]Updated Hall of Shame with I8/I9 changes.[*]Changed various sections to adjust for game changes, grammar, and clarity.[/list]A NOTE ON ISSUE NUMBERS: Although I do not know any more about I10 than anyone else who is not in the closed beta, from what the preview page says it does not seem likely to have any major mechanical changes. Unless there are, I will be making any I10-based updates in the form of replies to this thread rather than making a whole new revision.

A NOTE ON TERMINOLOGY: This guide contains some advice specifically for City of Villains, and most of the other techniques will probably work just as well on the City of Villains side as they do in City of Heroes. However, since this guide was originally written for CoH, and I think it would be extremely silly to go through and S&amp;R every instance of "sidekick" with "sidekick/lackey" and so forth, I will mainly be using the City of Heroes terms for things like Influence (Infamy), sidekicking (lackeying), exemplaring (malefactoring), Task Forces (Strike Forces), and difficulty slider settings (Heroic = Villainous, etc.). The one exception to this are the Newspaper/Police Scanner missions, which I started out describing on the villain side and see no reason to change the names all around now. I apologize if this confuses any of those folks who got into the game with City of Villains and have never played City of Heroes.


FOREWORD

So, you're sick of being stuck down at at a level you don't have to take both shoes off to count to, and you want to be up there playing with the big boys. But whenever you ask someone to powerlevel you, they look at you like you've got a big ugly wart on your nose. (Apologies to those of you who really do have big ugly warts on your noses. They have surgery for that, you know.)

Or, conversely, perhaps you've just come off of a bad Task Force experience (or otherwise had bad luck on your missions) and want to get rid of that nasty brown stain on your level counter so you can once again make rapid progress toward that next level and the shiny new superpower that comes with it.

Or maybe you're reading some thread about why powerlevelling stinks or why wolf-herding missions were nerfed and you just don't understand any of it. Or you heard someone refer to "dual-boxing" and don't know what it means, or want to know why buying pre-levelled characters from eBay is so bad.

Well, in any of these cases, this guide is for you. I'm going to explain what powerlevelling is, why some people hate it, why others do it, and so on. I'm going to lay out a few common-sense techniques I've observed for accruing XP and/or dropping debt without ticking other people off--including a section on tips for getting through the mid-40s-to-50 grind. And I'm going to go over the known "illegal" methods of power-levelling--not because I condone them, which I most certainly do NOT, but because everyone should know what they are and why they are so bad.

Let's begin.


INTRODUCTION

What is powerlevelling?

According to Wikipedia, powerlevelling is "the process of sustained, fast leveling in computer role-playing games." When used in an MMORPG context, it usually refers to using secret tips, tricks, and possibly even exploits to gain levels far faster than the game designers actually intended.


Why is everyone so down on powerlevelling, anyway?

It is easy to get the impression from the message boards that a good many people think powerlevelling is (to put it mildly) not a good thing. Its mere mention can engender such extreme suggestions as level-restricting higher-level non-hazard areas such as Peregrine Island, or limiting the number of times a given mission can be reset and repeated. Even Statesman is on record as not particularly liking it (although he has also said in the past that he doesn't see anything wrong with players trying to outsmart the developers, which is something that is most often done for the purpose of powerlevelling, so go figure).

Clearly there is a lot of built-up frustration here. But why? A perusal of message board threads on it can give you a pretty good idea--but to save you the trouble, here is a digest of what I've seen in my own perusals. There are several fundamental reasons.

1) "Where's the 'Any' key?"

The City of Heroes designers and developers have been particularly clever in the way they've laid out the levels of their game. By doling out new powers every other level (then every third level starting in the 30s), they give players rewards to work for and look forward to--but they also give players plenty of time to learn to use the powers they already have. Mission after mission, mob after mob, task force after task force--it may seem like "grinding," but it's also learning. Time and again, it has been shown that human beings learn the best not by reading or studying, but by doing repeatedly. By playing through the game, we also learn and understand how to play better.

If someone just starting out in the game gets powerlevelled to a high level before he barely even gets his feet wet, he simply does not have the time to learn how to play properly and well. He looks competent on the outside, from the level he's attained and all the powers he's gotten--but he will not know how to play his character as well as someone who took the "long way" up. He may not even know how to play his character at all (let alone the strategies for dealing with various types of villains that only show up at the higher levels)--which makes him the team's "weakest link" and can spell the difference between failure and success.

One poster told a story of encountering a level 25 Emp Defender who wasn't healing at all--and when she asked about it, the Defender's player confessed that she didn't know which one was the "heal all" button.

[ QUOTE ]
After talking with her for a few minutes, she told me she had gotten this game for Christmas, but hadn't been able to activate her account until last week. Her friends came over, made a character FOR her, then proceeded to get her in game, and pushed her from 1 to 25 in less than a week.

This poor girl was left with a character she was now trying to play, on her own, with no understanding of what her powers were, how to use them, nor even the basic mechanics of the game.

[/ QUOTE ]
Others have told of meeting Kheldians--an Epic Archetype which can only be unlocked by reaching level 50--whose players are somehow ignorant of the most basic facts of the game, such as where the stores are in Talos Island. (This was before the stores were marked on the map to make them easier to find.) And almost everyone has a favorite "my team was torpedoed by a PL'd n00b who didn't know his donkey from his elbow" story. There's a lot of frustration there.

Not all powerlevellers are bad players, of course, just as not all bad players have been powerlevelled. Nonetheless, there is still a good deal of correlation between the two sets--enough for a stereotype, anyway.

2) "Hey, buddy, can you spare a dime?"

The surest way to get powerlevelled is to have friends who will do it for you.

The surest way not to get powerlevelled is to pester everyone you see about it. However, this doesn't stop just about every newbie in the game from trying. And in their rush to garner undeserved XP, they trample all over their manners. Rude and/or annoying behavior often seen in would-be powerlevellees includes:
<ul type="square">[*]filling broadcast/request channels with requests or sending /tell requests for powerlevelling. (Sometimes to characters who have no possible way of doing it. "I'm a Mind/Emp Controller. What am I supposed to do, make you think you're higher-level? Heal you some XP?") The l33tsp34king n00b is a cliche, but it's only a cliche because it's so true.[*]filling said channels or /tells with requests for people to join/bridge for wolf-herding or Kora Fruit-plucking teams, or other such ventures.[*]spamming unwanted /invites.[*]standing around in "safe" but high-traffic areas such as near the Peregrine Ferry or the Talos Tram while teammates wander around killing things, causing area lag levels to skyrocket. (The "XP range" change in I4 ended this practice.)[/list]And I'm sure there are others that I just can't think of at the moment.

Ironically, it's mostly only the unsuccessful powerlevellees who give powerlevellers a bad name in this respect; the truly successful ones have high-level friends to help them with it, and thus no need to broadcast requests. Anyone who panhandles or otherwise annoys for powerlevelling is not too likely to get it; the higher-level people who could do it have much better things to do with their time than help out rude newbies.

3) "Content? What content? I think I blinked and missed it."

In regard to powerlevelling, Statesman once said this:

[ QUOTE ]
I have to say that I'm not fond of PLing. It ends up cheapening the game experience. Someone is quickly and unnaturally leveled up--and then complains that the game has "no content."

[/ QUOTE ]
Inexplicably, there seems to be a certain class of powerlevellers who will race to the end of the game like a VCR on super-fast-forward--and then, when they get to the end, claim that the game was "too easy" and there's "not enough content." Well, sure it's easy when you don't actually have to do anything to get there, and you bypassed 95% of the content in your mad rush to level 50.

(To note, this complaint can be considered legitimate if it comes from people who have already made multiple high-level characters in more "legitimate" ways and have experienced the only available lower-level content until they're fed up with it. It's the people who have never bothered to play the game at all who are the culprits here.)

Now, the City of Heroes developers engage in "data mining" on their server logs. That is, they analyze the logs to see what people are doing and how they are doing it. This way they can tell if certain powers are too effective or not effective enough, if the game is too hard or too easy, and so forth. Some players are afraid that powerlevellers, by getting to level 50 faster than people who advance without powerlevelling, can somehow skew the data mining statistics to make the game look easier than it actually is--and this, when taken together with their vocal complaints of "too easy" and "no content," could cause the developers to make City of Heroes unplayably hard in response. These players will often point to such things as the difficulty increase of higher-level bosses in Update 3 (thankfully rolled back in a subsequent patch) as proof. Others are concerned that this skewing will lead to more endgame content being developed at the expense of lower-level content, as has happened in other MMORPGs. However, the City of Heroes developers have not as yet showed any tendancies in this direction; if anything, there is still much less endgame content than there is early- and mid-game.

It's not this guide's intent to opine whether or not these concerns are founded, just to point out that people do feel this way. Nonetheless, the devs do at least claim to base their decisions on more data than just that which they mine.

4) "Hey! No fair! You're not supposed to have more than 12 items in an express lane! The speed limit is sixty, you bum! If I have to follow the rules, then you should too!"

Finally, whether they admit it or not (even to themselves), and whether it's their main reason or not, a lot of players seem to be upset that they aren't the ones being powerlevelled. This can take the form of indignation at someone else getting so easily what they had to work for, or of envy at the PLers' high levels while they're still stuck down in the oughts or teens. It isn't so surprising, really; it's human nature to feel resentment toward a perceived injustice. Still, non-PLers should try to remember that though the powerlevellers may have attained a higher level, they did it at the cost of some of the very things that make the game so much fun for non-powerlevellers like them.


So Why Shouldn't I Powerlevel?

The intent of this guide is to present a balanced view of powerlevelling in all its forms--not to serve as a promotion of or indictment of powerlevelling. That being said, let us look at the reasons why you should not powerlevel. Depending on where you are in the game and what you are looking to get out of it, these might not apply to you.

1) City of Heroes as a Learning Experience

City of Heroes starts out pretty easy, then ramps up the difficulty slowly. Likewise, you gain your first few powers pretty quickly, but more powers increasingly slowly after that. The idea is to give you a chance to learn and grow into your powers, working out as you go along exactly how they all work and how to integrate and combine their effects with each other. Yes, it takes you a long time to play up to where the "good" powers start coming, but that's actually a good thing--by the time you get them, you'll have learned everything else pretty well and will only have to worry about learning one power at a time.

Even if you're a CoH veteran, no two archetypes--or even variations on the same archetype--play exactly the same. It would still be a good idea to play through at least the first few levels to be certain you know what you're doing.

If you haven't taken the time to learn how your character's powers work and to develop good strategies for using them, sooner or later you will get to higher levels where it's expected of you--and when you let the other members of your team down because you don't know what you're doing, they aren't going to be very happy with you.

2) Content Contentions

You're paying $15 a month for City of Heroes. (Unless you're getting discounted Auto Assault game cards from somewhere, but that's as may be.) Some people use this as a justification that they should be able to do whatever they want. After all, it's their money. Ironically, this is almost always a red flag that they're in the wrong; such people are usually willfully ignoring that whatever it is they're wanting to do impinges on the enjoyment of other people who are also paying $15 per month for the game.

But this is beside the point: you are paying good money for this game. Enough money that, for what you spend on it in a year, you could have bought a used video game console of recent vintage and had cash left over for a game or two. What, then, is the point of not getting your money's worth?

One of the buzzwords that people use a lot on the forums is "content." It's a media term; it used to refer primarily to TV shows, then webpages, and now MMORPGs are included, too. It means, basically, the stuff that you watch the show, read the webpage, or play the game for. In this case, new adventures, new mobs to fight, new things to do.

There is content all through the game, starting the moment you first appear in the Outbreak parking lot (you could even argue that the character creation process counts as content, but that's getting a bit too fiddly for this guide) and going all the way up through level 50...and then you roll another character and start all over again.

Inexplicably, some players don't want to spend the time to play the game for the first time, to experience the content all the way from the beginning to the end--and that's a real shame. Apparently all that matters to this particular type of powerleveller is having a high-level character. And if that's how they enjoy the game, I imagine that's up to them. But this sort of racing through the game is like renting a movie then fast-forwarding to the end, or checking out a library book only to read the last few pages. Sure, you get to see how it ends, but it's ultimately unsatisfying.

What's more inexplicable is that a lot of these powerlevellers will then turn around and complain that there should be more content, or that the game is "too easy." Well, the reason there's not enough content is that they skipped it all, and of course it was "easy," they didn't actually have to do anything.

Furthermore, even if you have played one character from the beginning all the way through to the end, there are enough missions out there that you still probably haven't experienced all that City of Heroes has to offer yet. And even if you have, more new zones and content are being added with each expansion, and even old missions can become "new" when you play through them with a different archetype.

If you powerlevel, you may miss out on contacts, missions, badges, temporary powers, and other things that could be helpful to you. You might end up having no contacts at all in a particular city zone (one of my characters, who levelled several times doing other peoples' missions, has no contacts in King's Row at all. This can be quite inconvenient if she has missions there); you might end up having to backtrack and broadcast offers of money for a particular badge mission that you have to have for an accolade. This can be a pain; I speak from experience.

Ultimately, a hero's career is like a journey, but getting there is not "half" the fun--it's 99% of the fun. You can choose to skip it if you want--it is your $15, after all--but you should understand that you're passing up a lot of what makes the game worth playing.

3) "Hey, buddy, can you spare another dime?"

When you level the normal way, you earn a lot of Influence along the way--not just from mob defeats, but from carting mob-dropped Enhancements back to the stores and selling them. Debt also serves as an "Influence buff," because you are earning Influence at the same time you're earning the extra XP necessary to pay it off. This is how you finance the Enhancements that fill out your slots. However, when you powerlevel, you may not get as many of those drops, as much debt, or or as much defeat Influence--which means you could find yourself at level 20 and not able to afford even a full set of Training Enhancements.

Of course, if you've got a Level 50 helping you to powerlevel, chances are money isn't going to be a concern for you no matter how you do it.

4) "No dogs, tinkers, or powerlevellers allowed."

Finally, if people find out that you powerlevel--no matter how "noble" your intentions--many of them may hold you in a certain lack of esteem, for the reasons given in the section before this one. There are supergroups that don't allow powerlevellers, and players who won't have anything to do with them.

If you're inclined to powerlevel, you're probably going to do it regardless of what anyone else thinks. All the same, it's something to keep in mind.


Then Why Would I Want to Powerlevel?

Up to this point, I've said some pretty negative things about powerlevelling. Nonetheless, there are several reasons that people have found that are, at least to them, good justifications for powerlevelling. Here are the ones that I know of.

1) "Just one or two more levels..."

There are certain threshold points in a hero's career where he gains an especially useful power. Level 14's travel power, for instance, or level 32 and 38's final primary and secondary slots. Sometimes, when a hero has only a level or two to go, he might get impatient and want to get that power as quickly as possible. In such a case, he might get himself powerlevelled to that one particular level, and play on normally from there.

2) "I don't want to play a baby hero, this is boring."

Sometimes experienced players simply don't enjoy the lower-level content (especially after having played three or four characters through it), and want to get up to a level they remember as being particularly fun. In this case, they will deliberately powerlevel through however many levels they consider to be the "un-fun" part, and then stop. (Level 20, where the Striga Island missions begin, is a popular threshold point.)

3) "Hey! Wait up, I'm almost there!"

Sometimes someone will discover that a friend from real life has made a higher-level character...on an entirely different server from his own. This means it's time to make an alt on his friend's server and do the best he can to catch up, level-wise.

Sure, the sidekick/exemplar system makes it possible to assist each other on missions, but only if those missions are outside a hazard or trial zone where the lowbie can't go. Likewise, they can't go on the highbie's Task Forces together, and the lowbie will never be as effective on high-level missions as an unsidekicked character of the same effective level. Thus, powerlevelling provides a way the lowbie can catch up, and a way the highbie can help him catch up.

4) "Come back when you're a little older, kid."

Heroes, especially those who don't ordinarily powerlevel much, can sometimes find that they've done all the missions that all their contacts have available for them, but none of their new contacts will talk to them until they put on another level or two. At this point, the only thing to do is street-hunt, team up and do someone else's missions or Task Forces, do newspaper missions (if a villain) or PVP zone missions (if high-enough level to get into one), or add the necessary level or two through powerlevelling. Heroes who want to get back to doing their own story arcs as quickly as possible will sometimes find powerlevelling to be the least objectionable alternative.

5) "I knew this TF was a bad idea when the leader started bragging about his debt badges..."

Sometimes even the best player can have a run of bad luck (or bad teammates), and wind up with one, two, or even all two and one half possible bars of debt. Some people find that seeing all that brown debt can be very depressing, and they want it gone as quickly as possible. They may not be inclined toward powerlevelling to gain XP--but getting rid of debt is a whole different ballgame. After all, XP debt feels unfair at the best of times, so even the most ardent anti-powerleveller might feel no qualms over getting rid of this penalty that they don't think they really deserved. (There are some special tips later in this guide expressly aimed at getting rid of debt, by the way.)

6) "Shake your moneymaker!"

There have always been advantages to having a high-level character other than the obvious acclaim of the lower levels. In particular, money matters. Due to Influence inflation as levels increase, level 50 characters can earn astonishing amounts of Influence just over the couse of normal adventuring--and at level 50, they have all the Enhancements they will ever need to buy (barring respecs, of course) so they have no further need for that Influence themselves.

Someone with a level 50 character can pass excess Influence using an intermediary, or "mule," to his lower-level alternate characters so they can buy the best Enhancements right away. He can even pass it to alts on entirely different servers than his own if he can find a trading partner with a high-level character on the other server and a low-level character on his own. At the rate at which a level 50 can earn Influence, he can support a number of lower-level characters easily.

Issue 6/CoV's introduction of supergroup bases and Prestige added a new wrinkle. Starting at level 25, staying in Supergroup mode to earn Prestige takes a bite out of the Influence a character earns for mob defeats and mission accomplishments; at level 34, a character in Supergroup mode earns only Prestige and no Influence whatsoever save for what he receives by selling Enhancement drops. However, level 50 characters in Supergroup mode earn pretty much the same Prestige for mob defeats as level 1 characters. Thus, the smart thing to do is have the supergroup's level 50 characters play outside of supergroup mode to earn Influence to subsidize lower level characters who play in supergroup mode.

7) "You're SO dead in PVP!"

Hard as it is to believe, there are some CoH players who don't care about PVE content and are solely interested in PVP. These players may be only too happy to blow off PVE content in order to get to level 50 as fast as possible so they can begin creating their ultimate PVP battler. Because of the differences between PVP and PVE, a character built for advancing in PVE will never be as good at PVP as a PVP-optimized build, and vice versa. Thus, once a PVPer's character is level 50 and no longer has to worry about levelling up in PVE, he is free to respec it into a total PVP machine.

Because of the way Exemplaring works, exemplared level 50 characters will usually be more effective in both PVE and PVP than unexemplared characters of the same level. There are several reasons for this.

First of all, the level 50 characters may lose the use of their later powers when they exemplar down--but they keep all the slots on powers they do still have, even if they were added later. For example, a Fire Tanker with 6-slotted Burn can exemplar down to level 18, which is when lower-level Fire Tankers get Burn, and still have the use of all 6 slots in it--even though a level 18 Fire Tanker will only have the one slot.

Second, when Enhancements are scaled down to be equivalent to DOs or Training Enhancements while exemplared to levels in the far lower ranges, the scaling is not exact: the level 50's Enhancements will perform better for him than Training or DO Enhancements will for an unexemplared character of the same level.

Third, level 50 characters can have Hamidon Enhancements, which act like two SOs in the same slot. Even scaled down, they will still outperform SOs, DOs, or TOs in an unexemplared character of the same level.

Thus, exemplared level 50 characters are quite desirable as teammates when doing tough PVE missions or Task Forces--though, since they cannot get new lower-level content themselves (aside from Task Forces), their utility here to their player is somewhat limited. However, getting new content is not as much a concern in PVP; due to the nature of the PVP zones and the Arena, a level 50 character will never lack for something to do in PVP.

8) "I wanna be UB3R!!!!!11!!1!!oneoneone!1!!"

And then there are those people who, for whatever reason, just want to have a high level character. They don't know and don't care how fun playing a lowbie might be, because they've never bothered to try it. They're the ones you used to see standing around tram stations and ferries--the ones who get their character levelled to 50, then make a Kheldian and powerlevel it too. These are probably the same people who use god-mode cheats on single-player games. Why? Who really knows. Perhaps they feel that having a high level character gives them a degree of control over one thing in their otherwise-uncontrollable lives; maybe they want to see "the ending" even though there really isn't one in City of Heroes.

These are, needless to say, usually the ones who give powerlevelling the bad name that it has today. They frequently don't know how to play those high-level characters, and just as frequently have terrible manners.

There may also be other reasons; if so, I will add them as they come to me.


What NOT to Do

Do not ask random strangers if they'll powerlevel you, or broadcast/request chat (or, for that matter, post on a server's message board) asking for a powerlevel. Frankly, in my experience powerlevelling a lower character is a chore and not very much fun at all. I have the utmost respect for those friends of my characters' who have shown a willingness to do it in the past, and even those I try not to prevail upon too much.

When you ask someone to powerlevel you, you are asking them to give up some of the fun and enjoyment for which they are paying good money in order to give your worthless keister a boost up. That's something you should think twice about asking even your best friend to do, let alone a complete stranger. Thus, asking for a powerlevel is not likely to endear you to anyone at best--and, at worst, it's likely to get you invited by some joker who thinks it'll be funny (not to mention deserved) to drop you into a cluster of higher-level mobs and earn you a half-bar of experience debt.

In other words, just don't do it.

Also, don't use the illicit methods for powerlevelling I describe later in this guide. Which I warn there, too, but it bears repeating.


POWERLEVELLING

The current methods of powerlevelling that are in vogue rely on taking advantage of the way experience is parcelled out among party members. To oversimplify the process, when a group of PCs kills a mob, the mob's "base experience" is divided up proportionately by level among the PCs in your party, then the base XP that each PC gets is modified up or down depending on the difference in levels between the PC and the mob. (Yes, I know there is also a "party bonus" XP multiplier depending on how many people are in the party, especially if there are 4 or more party members--I'm oversimplifying, okay?)

For instance, if a party consisting of a Level 2, a Level 3, and a Level 5 PC kills a Level 4 mob, first the base XP from that mob is divided into 10 parts (2 + 3 + 5 = 10), and then the Level 2 PC gets 2 parts, the L3 3 parts, and the L5 5 parts. Then, since the mob was level 4, the L3 PC's XP award is adjusted up slightly, the L2 PC's is adjusted up more, and the L5 PC's is adjusted down, because he was higher level than the L4 mob. Who got the best end of the deal here? It's probably the L2--even if he got the least pre-adjustment XP, he still got the higher upward adjustment and also has the shortest XP distance to go before levelling. So out of all three of those PCs, the L2 earned the most distance, proportionately, toward his next level.

There is a limit to how far apart in levels this will work, however, and they were tightened up with Issue 6. It is now necessary to be a) within 5 levels of the highest-level member on the team, and b) supposedly no more than 2.0 effective levels below the team's "average" effective level in order to get experience. Characters below this level must be sidekicked up to within the level in order to receive XP.

However, I have been on teams where my characters were getting XP even when they were 5 levels below the entire rest of the team; the average level should have been significantly more than 2.0 higher than my character. It may have been that the average effective level checker has been removed or broken in a recent patch, or that it figures the average in some way other than human beings do. Regardless, if you are within 5 levels of the highest member on your team and not getting XP, you may need to sidekick up.

1) The High-Low Game:

The most common form of powerlevelling, and the one people are usually talking about when they refer to powerlevelling in general, is what I call the High-Low Game. It involves teaming two heroes, one up to 5 levels above the other, unsidekicked, so that the higher-level hero can kill "easy" mobs and the lower-level hero cashes in on that level-adjustment bonus.

There are two basic configurations for the High-Low Game:

a) The duo: One PC teams with another PC up to 5 levels his junior. For example, a L40 might team with a L35. Subsequently, the higher-level PC goes around killing mobs around his own level, experiencing no great amount of difficulty in doing so, while the lower-level PC hangs back and tries not to get himself killed. The lower level PC gets extraordinary amounts of XP and Influence, as his less-than-half share of the base is increased by several levels' worth of difference adjustment. (He will also receive a lot of bling in the form of Influence, Inspirations, and sellable higher-level Enhancements.)

b) The trio: If a PC wants to power-level another PC who is outside the 5-level limit, the two of them find a "bridge"--a third PC, who is 4 or fewer levels lower than the high-level PC. Subsequently, this bridge sidekicks the lowest PC, then the highest-level hunts while both the lower PCs hang back and soak up the XP. The lower-level PCs get less XP than if there were only one of them, but they both get more than they would hunting solo. (Sometimes several PCs are power-levelled at a time this way--1 or 2 higher-levels do the killing for 3-4 lower-levels.)

These methods may also be used for obtaining defeats badges, such as those needed for accolades, for characters who would otherwise be unable to obtain them at their current level since the mobs for whom they are awarded spawn outside their level range.

It used to be that the higher-level character could hunt on his own while allowing the lower-level character(s) to wait in a safe place such as the tram and rake in XP while doing nothing. However, in Issue 4 the developers instituted an XP range limit so that characters have to be within three hundred feet of a mob to gain XP for its defeat while in Paragon City. This means that to play the high-low game outside of missions, the lower-level character will need to stick close to the higher-level, and have means of preventing either drawing aggro or taking damage (stealth, invisibility, flight, etc.). It was formerly possible to use Phase Shift for this, once it had been slotted such that it could be run continuously. However, time limits were added to all Phase Shift-like powers in Issue 5, so that is no longer feasible.

This range limit does not apply within missions, even instanced outdoor missions. Although this change will not affect mission-herd-and-reset powerlevelling, it has decreased the level of lag near trams from powerlevellers clustering there.

As noted above, Issue 6 added the 5-level-difference, 2.0-levels-below-average restrictions on the levels of people in a team. Even at this smaller level spread, the high-low game will still work, and bridging is still possible--however, it will not be quite as lucrative as it has been in the past.

2) "Just Me and My Shadow":

One method of powerlevelling I've seen talked about, though not experienced so much myself, is to have an unteamed higher-level Defender or Controller shadow your character around and cast buffs and heals on you, and mezzes on your enemies, when you're in combat. You can even invite him to your team temporarily to bring him into a mission with you, then drop team and continue as before (although this may no longer be possible given that kicked characters are automatically ejected from missions). I gather that this was particularly in vogue before Exemplaring came around, as it was the only way a higher-level character could help a lower on one of the lower's missions.

I can see that this would be at least somewhat effective; indeed, I've often had my high-level Emp Defender hang around in places like the Hollows or Perez Park to help out lowbies in just that very way--drive-by buffs and heals. But even though this method would theoretically let a low level character kill mobs as fast as he could, and perhaps kill mobs 1 or 2 levels higher than he could usually hit, he would still be limited to the mobs that were within his power to take down--even if he could hit a mob 7 levels above his own effective level, he would do only miniscule damage; if the mob landed one hit on him it would probably one-shot him--and would still take a fairly long amount of time in doing it. (Although, if the class being buffed was a class that already kills killable mobs rapidly, such as a Fire Tanker, the bump in effectiveness would be that much greater.) I don't consider this to be the most effective way to spend either your or your helper's time if you're really interested in rapid powerlevelling.

3) "Why don't you pull the other one, it's got bells on":

Another method of powerlevelling is what's known as the "mass pull" or "herding." Before I5, the form this took was that one hero, often (but not always) a Tanker or Scrapper with Invulnerability and Tanker Taunt or Pool Provoke, runs through a whole mission, aggroing every mob he comes across, then, once a galloping horde of mobs has been assembled, they can be taken care of by massive AoE attacks. The mission would then be reset and it would be done again.

However, in Issue 5 Defense was reduced dramatically, and caps were imposed on the number of targets that attacks and Tankers' Taunt could affect. This means that there is no longer as much benefit to rounding up a massive herd: more of them will be able to hit the Tanker, they cannot all be damaged at the same time, and Tankers can no longer hold the aggro of the entire group should someone else in their party attack. To add insult to injury, Issue 6's addition of Enhancement Diversification means that a Tanker no longer has the Defense, Damage Resistance, or self-healing recharge rate necessary to survive even a moderately-large herd on his own.

I have debated moving this section to the "Hall of Shame," given that it is no longer possible to do the sort of solo herding in safety that could be done in days of yore, but I have decided to leave it here for the present; there have been times in the past that I believed herding was dead, and I was mistaken then. It is possible I might be mistaken even now. If you do use these herding techniques, bear in mind that you should keep one or more Defenders or Corruptors on hand to heal you up while doing it. Kinetics work well for this, as they can also increase your own damage rate and perform other useful tricks.

It is still possible to herd on a small scale, on the order of two to three full-team-sized or hazard-zone spawns, or a larger number of smaller-team spawns. It must be done slowly and with care, and is ideally done by a Tanker with a good attack set who is able to deal with the mobs without outside damage help that could draw aggro away (but with support from Defenders or Controllers who can buff and heal since he will probably not be able to survive long on his own without it). And since XP per enemy was actually increased in Issue 5, small-scale herding may actually be more lucrative than large-scale herding was before--if the herder can survive.

It used to be that a series of wolf-related missions in the 40-44 and 45-50 Praetorian arcs were considered to be the archetypal mass-pull missions; wolves were fast enough to keep up with a character at a run, did not have any particular resistances, and only dealt basic smashing damage--a sure recipe for easy gathering and disposal. The broadcast channels in Peregrine Island echoed with the cries of people requesting additional players to fill out wolf-herding missions, bridge on wolf-herding missions, or even supply wolf-herding missions for powerlevelling. People would be blind-invited for wolf-herding missions, page-spammed for wolf-herding missions, and so on.

This constant spam resulted in a great deal of ill-will toward powerlevellers, which was in turn responsible first for wolves gaining a ranged mez attack, and then for most of the wolf missions (including at least one archvillain mission) having timers added so they could not be kept and reset-farmed. (Heroes who currently had the mission in their mission list were unaffected--meaning that someone who never completed the wolf-herding mission would still have it available to him untimed to this day.)

More recently, the Freakshow portal mission to defeat Dreck--another favorite for herding--also had a timer added.

However, almost any mission, especially instanced outdoor missions, can be herded by the right player with the right character. The loss of the wolf and Dreck missions was not really a permanent setback to mass-pull powerlevellers.

a) Tanker-Blaster Mass-Pull: In this variation, the Tanker (though I suppose a Scrapper (or, on the CoV side, a Brute) could be used in a pinch, their version of Invulnerability is slightly weaker than the Tanker's and could thus lead to a bad case of carpet-examination), optionally buffed to a fare-thee-well by a convenient Defender, scampers hither and yon getting mobs mad at him, then runs them all back the mission entrance, or to a conveniently tight spot (in ruined city maps, the long rectangular bins are a favorite for this) like a rabbit being chased by greyhounds--where a bunch of AoE Blasters and Scrappers wait to rain fire and death. (Controllers or Dark Defenders are helpful, too, to lock them all in place. Tenebreous Tentacles work very well in this situation.) Note that since Issue 5, it is no longer possible to hold the aggro of massive herds, so it would be best to limit this to two or three groups at a time on large teams, or their equivalent on smaller.

b) PBAoE Aggro Mass-Pull: You usually hear about this being done by a Spines Scrapper, but any melee class with a PBAoE attack (Spines Scrapper, Dark Armor Scrapper, Fiery Aura Tanker, etc.) can do it. There are two variations to this technique. In one variation, the puller's AoE aggro powers are used primarily to draw and hold the the aggro of the mobs to lure them back to Blasters in wait, as in the Tanker-Blaster Mass-Pull above; in the second variation, the puller is also the damage-dealer who puts the mobs down solo once they've been gathered. Since Issue 5, the latter technique is the safer one.

The latter variation on this technique was immortalized in a movie-capture that someone posted a while back, as an advertisement for selling his character on eBay. The movie showed a Spines/Invulnerability Scrapper wandering through an instanced outdoor mission filled with werewolves, hopping into the middle of a group of wolves, firing a PBAoE spine burst to aggro it, and moving on to the next one. Before long, he had a herd of wolves milling about him that would have done credit to an old-west cattle drive ("get along big doggies" instead of "get along little dogies"?)--at which point he proceeded to serve up an extra-large batch of doggie sashimi. (Or maybe shish-ka-bob.) This movie polarized the audience who saw it--half of them demanded that Spine Scrappers should be nerfed, and the other half pooh-poohed the feat but probably secretly went and rolled up a Spine Scrapper themselves.

The easiest classes with which to accomplish this feat are the aforementioned Spine Scrappers (due to their large selection of AoE spine/toxic attacks whose slowing effect helps keep the Scrapper safer) and Fiery Aura Tankers (whose Blazing Aura's punchvoke serves as a PBAoE taunt to keep mobs stuck to the Tanker like glue). I have also seen Dark Melee Scrappers pull huge clusters of mobs into a narrow fenced-in area and use Shadow Maul to eliminate them all once they had bunched up, though this takes some skill (and is no longer as possible due to the target cap on AoE powers).

c) Debuff Anchor Aggro Mass-Pull: Dark Miasma Defenders, Radiation Defenders, and Radiation Controllers have debuffs (for instance, the Dark's Darkest Night) that are placed on anchors--specific mobs--and radiate a debuffing effect to the mobs around those anchors. Any mob that is touched by the debuff effect is immediately aggroed on the hero who cast the effect. The hero casts a debuff on a mob, then runs around a corner (meaning that the mob can no longer stand in place and use ranged attacks, thus has to close to melee range), forcing the mob (and any surrounding mobs) to run to him. He then leads those mobs past another group, aggroing them too, and repeats the process until he has a fairly large crowd following him. Given that, when the debuffs are properly slotted, a debuffed mob cannot hit the debuffer very well, the debuffer can actually serve as a decent stand-in for a Scrapper or Tanker (as long as he is able to keep all the mobs within the debuff's area of effect). This technique is often used by solo-capable Defenders to bunch up as many mobs as possible for more effective AoE attacks. Note that since Update 3, the Defender or Controller must remain within two hundred feet of the anchor for the debuff to continue its effect.

Sonic Defenders and Controllers have a a PBAoE-on-ally toggle, Disruption Field, which can be cast on a tougher character but draws aggro not to that character but to the Defender or Controller casting the power. This could be used in a variation on the above technique, having the anchor walk around the corner to draw fire while the rest of the team waits with the Sonic character to take them down.

These methods are impressive, but a few things should be noted about them. First of all, the build of the Spine Scrapper in that movie (as mentioned in a forum post on some other CoH web board) was very skewed, with certain powers chosen and slotted in such a way that the Scrapper was optimized for this one specific task, and would have done poorly soloing (or perhaps even in groups when there were not massed hordes to kill). This led some people to speculate some kind of weird conspiracy theory in which the Scrapper was made and powerlevelled just to make that movie to cause divisiveness in the CoH-playing community (though I may be misremembering some of the details). PBAoE mass-pulling can still be done with a more all-around build, but it really should have the help of Blasters and other damage-dealers as with the Tanker variation to be safest and most effective.

Second, herding techniques work best on certain types of mobs--ones like Skulls, Hellions, and War- or Werewolves that only have fairly ordinary damaging, mostly melee, attacks. Try to go up against Tsoo or Thorns or others who can mez and unless he has plenty of Break Frees or a pet Emp Defender (or both), your aggro-magnet is faceplanted before he ever knows what hit him. (Of course, this is true mainly for the Defender mass-pull variation; Scrappers and Tankers get decent mez protection from their defensive power sets, though less so since I6 decreased their effectiveness.)

Third, there is a tradeoff inherent in mass-pull mission situations. In order to spawn the masses for you to pull, you have to have a fairly large team going in--because mission mob spawn count, even for instanced outdoor missions, is based on the number of people in your team. Even that spine Scrapper from the movie had to have seven other people along, hiding outside of camera view, to cause that many wolves to spawn. (One of those other people chimed in on a forum thread about the movie to note how impressive it had been to witness.) The more people you get on your team, the more mobs (and the higher the "party bonus" XP), true--but the more different ways the experience is split, too. (Of course, this particular drawback does not apply to Hazard-Zone Herding.)

(An interesting method of getting around this drawback was suggested in a post by LiveJournal user bittercupojoe: the Tanker or Scrapper goes to a lowbie area and invite six or seven lowbies join his team and up the spawn count--then fights all the mobs himself. Since they don't go into the mission, the XP and Inspirations from mob kills all go to the Tanker or Scrapper in question--who can then reward the lowbies with an Influence payment or other compensation for their time. bittercupajoe writes, "An hour of this at level 45 with a fire/ice tank can easily net me 4-5 bubbles. And the newbies get a nice little nest egg to start their careers with.")

Since Issues 5 and 6, it is no longer possible to do a true "mass" pull; the largest mob count that can typically be handled safely by one Tanker is about a dozen. Any more than that, and some of those will make a bee-line straight for anyone else who fires an attack into the herd. If the Tanker must have others' help, it would probably be safest to stick to the non-aggroing buffing and healing varieties--or else use Scrappers or Dwarf Kheldians, who will fight at close range and thus not split up the herd.

For this new, more limited form of pulling, expertise in how to get the enemies locked onto you is more important than ever. This guide goes over the basic Tanker techniques for initiating battle, including the importance of breaking line-of-sight to cause the enemies to bunch up and give yourself a few seconds more of recovery time.

It is sad that the era of huge pulls is over; it was quite an impressive sight to watch a single Tanker gather literally dozens of mobs all around him until he himself could not be seen. But at least it is still possible on a smaller scale--and thanks to the XP buffs on individual mobs, it may even be a more effective gain of XP for the amount of time spent.

One caveat about successful Tanker pulling: If the Tanker dies in mid-herd (often by getting overload-mezzed and losing toggles), there is a natural impulse on the part of less-experienced party members to rush in immediately and try to "save" him, and/or take out the mass of mobs while they're all still packed together. This is something that should above all else not be done--with the Tanker down, there is nobody left to hold the aggro of the mobs he's pulled together, and the would-be rescuees will be joining him on the floor before they know it. Better to cut your losses and teleport the Tanker to safety for a rez, or let him go to the hospital and pick up more Break Frees and Awakens on the way back.

And as mentioned in the PBAoE mass-pull variation, certain classes such as Spine Scrappers can both pull and kill multiple groups of of enemies by themselves. For soloing, this is usually done in Hazard Zones, where the mob spawns are large enough to make it worthwhile without needing a team.

City of Villains lacks a true Tanker analog--Brutes are essentially Scrappers, with Scrapper-level resistance and defense. It may be possible to herd with a Brute, but for herding on any sort of large scale, he would probably need plenty of buff and heal assistance from local Corruptors and Masterminds.

The Gold-Herd Variations

Herding is really more of a meta-technique--something you can do at the same time as you do other powerlevelling techniques, such as high-low missioning. That being the case, there are undoubtedly dozens of ways to apply it. For example:

Six is the magic number of people to have on a team for mission-herding--no more and no fewer. Six people (on diff settings Heroic, Rugged, or Invincible) is the required number for an optimal spawn count. 6-man spawns will be bumped by one level over normal spawns for that difficulty class of mission; they will spawn with a couple of lieutenants and a big bunch of minions who all go down pretty quickly. Adding one party member also adds one boss per spawn group; adding two for a full team of eight adds two bosses per group--which would mean that if you herded three groups together, you would have to deal with six bosses beating on you at once. Before I5 and I6's double-whammy of Defense cuts and Enhancement Diversification, all this would have cost you was extra time (which is bad enough on the XP-per-minute rate), but now it has a very good likelihood of being downright lethal as well. Avoid this problem by capping your team size at six.

Hazard-Zone Herding adapts the Tanker-, PBAoE-, or Debuff-pulling techniques to play in a Hazard Zone rather than a mission--a puller aggros several large groups of mobs and herds them to the waiting Blasters, or else to a boxcar or dumpster where he can eliminate them himself. This has the advantage of not requiring a large team to get a good spawn count (though hazard zone spawns are affected by the number of people on a team, they are less so than mission spawns), so the XP is split fewer ways. If doing Hazard-Zone Herding, take special care not to herd the mobs onto unwary uninvolved heroes who happen to be in the same hazard zone. This is terribly impolite, and will not improve your reputation. In fact, it's best to try to stay away from other heroes altogether; if some other hero attacks your herd, gets wiped out, and petitions you, the GMs will take the other party's side--even though it was their own fault for attacking--because your herding produced an unnatural concentration of mobs in the area. See this guide for more information about Hazard Zone herding etiquette.

Bins and Boxcars: In hazard-zone herding, as well as herding instanced outdoor missions in city or ruined city zones, it is good to make use of terrain features. A couple of particularly useful terrain features are the bins and boxcars (often erroneously called "dumpsters" by players) that are scattered around.

Bins are long metal train cars that are open at the top; boxcars are closed at the top with an opening on the side. (There are also boxcars with no openings whatsoever, but they are generally not useful in herding.) They have similar, though slightly different, uses depending on the types of mob you are facing and whether you are in a mission or a hazard zone.

The use of bins and boxcars is a specialized form of corner-pulling--it takes advantage of mobs' tendency to try to keep the object of their aggro in sight at all times. Thus, after attracting several groups of mobs' attention, the herder jumps into the bin or runs into the boxcar, causing the mobs to follow him in where they can be dealt with AoE or PBAoE attacks, such as Blaster level-32 "nukes." Since I5 and I6, these attacks will probably not hit every enemy, but they will hit enough to thin them out such that the next attack will be more succesful.

Bins are useful when fighting non-flying mobs, such as Trolls or Council in Boomtown. Aggro several spawns, run back to the bin, and jump in, breaking line-of-sight. The mobs will pursue and jump right into the bin with you, grouping up nicely for you and others to take out and giving you a good overhead view of the action. The only problem with using bins is that they do not break line-of-sight for most flying mobs--meaning that they will cheerfully hover overhead, just out of reach, and continue to pelt you with their attacks. This is not so much a problem when you are fighting enemies with only a few fliers (Outcasts, Clockwork), but when you are facing enemies like Freakshow that are about half fliers it is a different story.

Boxcars are what you need when facing fliers. When you run inside the boxcar, out of sight through the doorway, the fliers will lose sight of you, and the only way they can regain it is to come down and enter the boxcar themselves. This will bunch them up nicely and keep them from getting away while you put the smack down on them. The downside to boxcars is that you have very limited visibility while inside them, and it is not always easy to tell when enough of your herd has moved into the boxcar with you for you to begin. If you turn at exactly the right angle to put the door to the boxcar behind the camera you can get a view from behind yourself to outside, but it can be tricky to do, especially if you're being jostled by the mobs who are already inside. Also, some people's graphics cards go crazy with lag inside boxcars.

When herding instanced outdoor missions in city or ruined-city environments, you will have to move from dumpster to dumpster as you clean up spawns. You should familiarize yourself with the locations of the most convenient dumpsters and nearby spawns. This will let you work out herding patterns ("herd these three spawns to boxcar A, herd those three spawns to bin B...") that you can repeat from mission to mission for the most efficient completion and quick repetition for maximum XP.

However, there is a technique you can use in hazard zones that will let you center yourself on a single boxcar or bin and not have to go very far away at all until you're ready to go sell.

Hazard zone boxcar ranching: First, find yourself a bin or boxcar that is situated in an area with decent spawns all around it. Put the rest of your team in that bin or boxcar (or near it; squishy types may prefer to wait on top of, behind, or above it so they are less likely to get pinned in and trapped when the herd comes home), then strike out in one direction from the boxcar. Gather up a few good spawns and bring them back, pull them inside, and beat the stuffing out of them. Then, go in the opposite direction--if you started out east, go west; if you started north, go south. Gather up some spawns there and bring them back. By the time you finish with this second batch, the spawn points you visited the first time should have respawned, and you can get them again--and the same will hold true for the spawn points you visited second when you finish with the third batch. Thus, you should be able to go back and forth, back and forth, non-stop, until you tire of it, without ever having to go far from the same boxcar.

4) City of Villains technique: Farming the Newspaper

One of the new innovations in City of Villains is the newspaper mission--a constant, neverending stream of missions that are available once a villain leaves the newbie area of Mercy Island. It has subsequently migrated to the City of Heroes side as well, in the form of police scanner missions. The repeatability and similarity of these missions has given rise to an interesting technique reminiscent of Kora Fruit farming (see the Kora Fruit section in the Hall of Shame). This technique could also be used with Kora Fruit missions to an extent, and will probably work as well with whatever City of Heroes equivalent to the newspaper is introduced in the future. (It could also be adapted to PVP zone missions if the team was willing to take long enough to defeat all instead of just clearing the final room.)

The team forms up consisting of one or more high-level characters, and the lower-level characters to be powerlevelled (and bridges as necessary). The leader--who is a Stalker or someone else with good invisibility or stealth--takes a newspaper mission that is either a "defeat boss and his minions" or a "steal item and clear the room" mission. (Kidnapping missions require additional time, and this method is all about speed in completion.). The team travels to the mission, and then disbands.

The leader goes inside the mission and runs through it to the final room. This causes the mission to spawn the number of mobs associated with a 1-person team; once they are spawned, the spawn points cannot respawn even if more people join the team. Once the leader has reached the final room, he invites everyone else in the team back on, they enter, and the higher-level characters quickly clear the end room. All members on the team receive the end-of-mission bonus. The team leaves the mission, the leader takes another newspaper mission, and the cycle repeats.

What this has going for it is that it produces a fairly large mission-completion bonus for the lower-level players, and produces it fairly frequently--travel time is the only delay, especially if the leader can be scouting the mission while the rest of the team is being teleported in. However, I have my doubts that it is all that much faster in terms of overall XP per minute than simply running the mission from start to finish, and the whole rigamarole of disbanding and reforming the team with every mission seems like too much complication to me.

Newspaper farming has also become less effective since the mid-I6 change that limited the maximum end-of-misson XP bonus to equivalent to a maximum of 3 levels higher than one's own level. The reward is still decent (about 140-150% of what one would get if sidekicked for it), but not out of all proportion as it used to be.

I will address some less-complicated and less-cheesy techniques involving rapid mission completion in the Poweradventuring section below.

5) Archvillain Ranching

Although I have not experimented with this technique, it seems as though it would be feasible--at least as of early Issue 7.

Certain missions in City of Heroes and City of Villains feature two archvillain (or archhero) class enemies--one situated at the beginning of the mission and the other at the end. It is necessary to defeat both of them to complete the mission.

During I6, archvillains were upgraded to provide a larger amount of XP, an SO in your origin that is 3 levels higher than the AV's spawn level, a tier-3 Inspiration, and an item of salvage when defeated. It stands to reason that it would be desirable to defeat the first archvillain and then reset the mission; not only would this gain XP at an accelerated rate, it would provide a font of SOs, Inspirations, and salvage.

However, in response to this sort of farming, the loot rewards for the first archvillain of a two-or-more AV mission have since been removed. It will still provide a decent amount of XP, however.

[Continued in next post]

My City of Heroes live talkshow podcast, "Exploring the Heroes' City" on Wednesday the 25th at 10 p.m. Eastern Time will focus on roleplaying in City of Heroes/Villains. It is my intent to have a discussion of why people enjoy roleplaying, roleplaying's connection with fanfiction, where you can go to roleplay, how to get started, and so on.

I am really hoping that I can get a number of roleplayers to call in and participate in the discussion. If you roleplay, won't you please join me? You could look at this as a chance to attract new people to RP'ing, and also give advice to people just starting out, as well as promote your own RP'ing or writing circles. I really hope I will see you there.

Anyone who wishes to call in to the show to listen or participate will be welcome to do so.

I've written a comprehensive page on the various methods of connecting to TalkShoe at http://terrania.us/talkshoe/ that covers in detail all the ways to listen or participate, but I will summarize:

If you just want to listen, you can do that via streaming audio from the TalkShoe page itself, while the show is airing: http://terrania.us/heroes/ Also, the complete show will be downloadable as an MP3 file (you can also use RSS to syndicate it to your podcast-sync software of choice if you like) starting about half an hour after the show ends. No registration of any kind is necessary to listen.

If you would like to listen and have the opportunity to converse with other listeners and askquestions via text chat, you can register at talkshoe.com (it's free) and download their Java-based text chat client, which includes the ability to listen via streaming audio at the same time.

If you would like to phone in and listen that way, as well as having the opportunity to ask a question on the air, you can register at talkshoe.com and phone in to (724) 444-7444. (It is a Pittsburgh number, so it will be a long-distance call for most people.) You will be asked for the show's ID number, which is 7022, and your PIN number, which you set when you register. You can phone in with or without also using the chat client, though you should use the chat client if you wish to be able to signal that you would like to be unmuted to ask a question. (You can also phone in via Voice Over IP applications, for free, which I cover in detail on the tutorial page mentioned above.)

Well, as far as I can tell, the number of presents per zone is the same for all zones, which means that with larger zones, those presents are spaced out considerably wider. In a smaller zone like Galaxy City, you don't have to travel as far to get a present. And if you're having to do 200 presents, you want them to be as close to each other as possible so you can get them the heck over with faster.

Something just occurred to me.

Wasn't a Santa hat given out for the save or ruin Xmas mission last year?

Is it the same hat? If so, that would explain why some of my characters didn't get it, as I did that mission on as many as I could at the time...

I'm annoyed by the presents.

I've had two characters open the 200 presents necessary to get the Toy Collector badge--and neither one of them EVER got the Jingle Jetpack or Stocking Cap. Near as I can tell, all the mystery gifts they ever found were just Influence/Prestige.

That's really ticking me off.