Robotech_Master

Right...the RP Congress recently migrated to a different web board system and the links went all squirrelly.

Regardless, bear in mind that these guides are only up to date for I4/I5, and we're now in I8 and the changes have been HUGE. There's no mention of Enhancement Diversification, which came in with I6, for instance. Most of the advice on things like hunting and what powers to take still holds true in a general way, but slotting and the maximum numbers are completely out the window.

<ul type="square">[*]Infurno's Informal Instructional Interlude[*] Infurno Public-Access Cable Fire/Fire Tanker Lecture #1[*]Infurno Public-Access Cable Fire/Fire Tanker Lecture #2[*]Infurno Public-Access Cable Fire/Fire Tanker Lecture #3[*] Tigerbright Public-Access Cable Fire/Fire Tanker Lecture #4[/list]

Well, judging from the latest training room patch, it looks like our prayers may at long last have been answered (it's near the bottom).

[ QUOTE ]

• Brutes attack powers will now generate Fury faster against high ranking enemies (including players in PvP)

[/ QUOTE ]
Get out there and give it a test!

All you have to do is go in, then come back out again. They'll come running up to you, go into the mission door, then a moment later come right back out, and as long as you're not stealthed they should see you after a moment and start following you again. It's worked for me almost every single time.

This guide has now been superceded by the I8 version.

R_M'S GUIDE TO USING RESPECS [I8]

Even with all the excellent guides and good character-building advice in the world, you will probably make a mistake in building your character sooner or later—or maybe you already have. But never fear—that's what character respecification, or respecs, are for. A respec gives you the chance to rebuild your character from the ground up, correcting any mistakes you might have made along the way.

You will have access to three "normal" or "earned" respecs over the life of your character, from doing the Terra Volta Reactor or Nerva Archipelago Thorn Tree Task or Strike Forces, one respec from choosing a Patron if you are a villain, one "freebie" respec (often referred to as a "freespec") that comes along at irregular intervals (such as at major holidays or some new Issue releases), and possibly one or more bonus respecs that come from the new Veteran Rewards system introduced in Issue 8. If you have used your previous freebie, it will be refreshed when the next freebie is issued. However, if you have not used it by then, you will lose it; you can only have one freebie respec at a time and the new one will replace the old one. Likewise, you should only "claim" (i.e. redeem by pressing the "claim" button in the Veteran Rewards badge screen) one Veteran Reward respec at a time, as it appears that claiming a second will cause the first one to be lost if it has not been used. The Patron respec does stack with the earned respecs, and is used in the same way. Note that it is not possible to use a respec of any kind before your character reaches level 3.

If you have obtained or been given at least one respec, you may be wondering just what to do with it now that you have it. That's where this guide comes in.

This guide will be divided into three sections:
<ul type="square">[*]Considering the Respec will cover things you should consider before you ever begin the respec procedure.[*]Performing the Respec will cover planning, testing, and then committing your new build.[*]The Respec Interface will cover things you should be aware of while actually using the respec system.[/list]CONSIDERING THE RESPEC

Before the question of how to respec, there are a few things to think about in regard to setting up for the procedure.
<ul type="square">[*]Always use your "freebie" respec, if you have one, before using one of the ones you earned from a Task Force, Strike Force, Patron, or Veteran Reward. Your freebie will eventually be replaced, but the others will not—and it's always possible you might need them someday if you make a mistake in choosing a new power, or a change to a power important to you comes with no freebie granted.

To find out if you have a freebie, as well as to use it if you do have it, type /respec into the chat box. If you have a free respec available to you, the respec screen will appear (and you can simply click "Cancel" to exit from it until you are ready to use it for real); otherwise you will receive an error message and will have to visit your respec contact (Jack Wolfe inside the Freedom Corps HQ in Galaxy City for heroes; Arbiter Lupin standing just east of the trainer in Nerva for villains) to respec. Note that if you have a freebie available shortly before you know another one will be issued, you may wish to go ahead and use it even if you do not wish to make any extensive changes (for example, to unslot and sell back slotted enhancements, as explained below).[*]Before you begin the respec procedure, you may want to take a screenshot with the user-interface windows enabled. (If you do not already have a macro set up for this, type /screenshotui 1 and then hit print-screen and then type /screenshotui 0 to set it back to no-GUI again.) After you respec, the order of the powers and macros and so forth in your trays will be scrambled up, and having a screenshot handy will help you remember what powers went where.[*]Some people are very careful to plan their respecs to come only when they have reached levels that end in 2 or 7. (22, 27, 32, etc.) This way, they can sell off all the white or yellow Enhancements they currently have slotted and buy completely new green ones of the next rank up after the respec. This has the benefit of "recycling" all the otherwise wasted slotted Enhancements for a much-needed monetary infusion. (Some people will do this even if they do not otherwise need a respec at all, to recover the cash that would otherwise be lost—especially if they have a freebie available and know another one will soon be replacing it.)

If this is your first character on a particular server, or you make a habit of playing exclusively in Supergroup mode past level 25, then this money you recover may well be an important consideration for you. Even if not, you might wish to postpone a power-changing respec you are considering until you reach a ?2 or ?7 level to obtain the extra benefit from something you would be doing anyway (not to mention avoiding the tedium of dragging and dropping dozens of Enhancements into place during the respec). It would probably be most worthwhile to do this at levels 27 and up, when the sold-off Enhancements would be SOs.[/list]PERFORMING THE RESPEC

Given the rarity of respecs, you should make utterly certain that you do not make a mistake before you burn one. This can take a bit of effort and thought, but in the end the feeling of utter certainty that you have done it right is worth the extra trouble. You can, of course, skip any of these steps that you want to, and you probably will once you get more experienced building your characters. If this is your first respec, however, you had better take as much care as you can.
<ul type="square">[*]Plan first. Use a character-building program such as Sherk Silver's Character Builder to spec out your prospective new build. While doing this, pay special attention to the order in which you select your powers. Remember that you will probably be exemplaring or malefactoring to lower levels more than once in your career—for helping friends, adventuring in PVP zones, doing Task/Strike Forces, and so on. Make sure that you take your most important powers as early as possible so you will have them when you exemplar.

Once you have put together your prospective build, use the export function and copy and paste it into a post on the archetype's forum, asking other people to critique the build for possible weaknesses. Make any changes you feel are warranted based on their suggestions, then when you're ready, print out a final version of the build to keep next to your computer for reference when you do the in-game respec.[*]Test next. Copy your character over to the Training Room, and run the respec there. You may wish to copy your character multiple times if you think you will be testing more than one potential build. (If you are using an earned, Patron, or Veteran Reward respec, you may want to position your character on next to Jack Wolfe or Arbiter Lupin on the live server before you copy, so you can start the respec as soon as you load up the Training Room; if you are using a free respec, you might want to position next to your origin's Enhancement store so you can buy what you need after you finish your /respec.)

Slot all your new powers completely, rearrange your power trays, and then go run some missions. This may seem like a great deal of wasted effort, but having the chance to play your build before you commit to it can uncover potential weaknesses you hadn't ever considered. If you find the build doesn't work out as well as you had hoped, return to the first step and try again.[*]Commit last. After running through as many iterations of planning and testing as you feel are necessary, use the respec on the live server. Be very careful to make sure you make no mistakes. After that—you're done![/list]THE RESPEC INTERFACE

When you start to respec, you will be presented with a power selection screen similar to your training screen. You will get to choose each of your powers first, then where to put each of your Enhancement slots after all powers are selected. Next you will get to slot the powers with the Enhancements that were removed from the powers, then sell off any that remain and you'll be done. Here are some things to remember to make the procedure easier.
<ul type="square">[*]Because the interface doesn't tell you what level's power slot you are selecting, you should select the powers in the order they're printed out on that Character Builder print-out you made earlier. You may also wish to say aloud to yourself what level you are filling as you select it, to help keep from getting confused. Remember that if you do get confused, you can always click the back arrow until you get back to an earlier power—or even until you exit out of the respec entirely.[*]The order in which you add Enhancement slots to the powers does not matter for purposes of exemplaring; a power has all the slots you put on it, though their effectiveness may be reduced proportionately when exemplared lower down. You may nonetheless have to add slots to powers in something reasonably close to the order in which you slotted them on the build sheet, to keep from finding yourself with slots available to place but the place you want to put them not open yet. If you make a mistake, you can click the back arrow to reverse your slotting decisions step by step.[*]When it comes time to slot the Enhancements into the Enhancement slots, be sure and move any Enhancements you want to keep but not slot into the 10-space row that represents your inventory. You should put any unslotted Hami-Os, Hydra-Os, Titan-Os, or Invention Enhancements in there, even if you have outlevelled or do not intend to use them; you won't get any money for them in the buy-back, so you might as well give or trade them to someone else. And, of course, you do not have to re-slot any Enhancements at all; you can simply sell them all back to buy new ones (especially if you have just hit a level ending in 2 or 7).[/list]CONCLUSION

The respec is a great mechanism for straightening out character foul-ups. However, it is a limited resource, so it is important to be sure you get it right the first time. With the advice given in this guide, you will hopefully stand a much better chance of that.

[/ QUOTE ]Changes from prior version: Updated to mention Patron &amp; Veteran Reward respecs, added note about the importance of the order in which you choose powers, minor tweaks here and there for clarity.

Got a PM back from _Castle_. He says that it's a code bug, and won't be able to be fixed until a programmer has time to address it.

Anyone know what the sound file is for Icicles? I just got that power, and already it's driving me batty.

I do have to admit, it would be rather nice to get this fixed. Or at least to hear in more detail why it hasn't been.

When someone chooses cat, wildcat, rat, or rabbit ears, they still have human ears too.

Could this possibly be changed, and perhaps add an option for no ears at all?

Just think...only three more issues 'til we can say &lt;fake British accent&gt; "This one goes to eleven."

Yay, thanks for the superspeed power sounds...I use a runwalk bind and that constant BZOOM! every time I moved was driving me batty.

How about the sounds for the various Energy Melee shield powers--startup and looping? (I rather suspect that Forcefield5 will be one of them, but any others...)

At some point--probably when I8 comes around--I will want to revise this guide to mention things like the importance of choosing your powers in the right order, with attention paid to what you want available at which level. (The Hero Builder programs work great for this purpose.) I'll also make note of the fourth respec you get, if you're a villain, when you get your Patron (which apparently is counted as an additional "regular" respec, and thus used in the order in which it is earned, rather than a freebie-like).

I need to remember to find out what the required number of people on teams is for AVs to spawn as AVs at each level of difficulty, and add that to the difficulty slider section for the next iteration of this guide. Anyone remember where such information might be found? (Hmm...maybe the patch notes, if they go back that far.)

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outside maps are not a designed part of the game

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These ones are, as the Prima Guide was written by Statesman himself.

Another thing: If you're feeling a bit of a time crunch and don't have time to destroy anything, aggro one of the ambush mobs that you don't intend to defeat and then run outside of aggro range. (The jailbreak mob works fine for this, since you don't need to fight them to get into the jail.) Once they've been "activated," they'll start destroying anything near them, much like the jailed villain will.

Maybe not enough to buy you very much time, but it will help.

Nice guide, but it's wrong on or leaves out a few points. Here's my annotations.

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First rule, DON’T PANIC. There is no need to run straight to the bank. That is a bad idea on many levels. The mission is timed but there are many ways to get more time and lots of ways to get yourself creamed by rushing.

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Note that, down the road, once you've gotten all the side quest badges and just want to get to the bank and get out, the best way to do this is with teleport or a flight power, and second-best is with super jump going along rooftops; it's running through crowds of civilians on the ground that triggers the ambushes. If you bypass the civilians, you bypass the additional ambushes. If you're a superspeeder, well, hopefully you've got a flight pack.

[ QUOTE ]
- destroying objects can get you lots of extra time. Most objects only require 1 or 2 destroyed to get the bonus like bus stops and police cars. Regular cars require quite a few but carry a 3 minute bonus. Larger items only make sense to destroy if they are easy to destroy. At low levels avoid red and purple objects they aren’t worth the trouble. Also be careful of cars at low levels as they can injure you when they explode. At higher levels they will seldom hit you anymore and do little damage. Go for the exploding objects first if they destroy something else you get credit for that too. You only get the bonus once so don’t keep destroying the same things unless you are going for badges.

[/ QUOTE ]
However, one thing I discovered is that if you exit the Mayhem mission and reset--that is, select another mission, tell it you want to abandon the current mission, then re-select the Mayhem mission again--you will still have as much time remaining on the clock as you did before, but your bonuses for all the destructible items will have reset. (Any side quest missions you've already completed will stay completed, however.) So if you're running low on time and already destroyed a bunch of stuff, go outside, reset, come back in, and start destroying the same stuff all over again. This is a particularly good tactic to use with objects that only require a single smash to grant the time bonus when soloing, such as police vans, trucks, fire hydrants, newspaper machines, mailboxes, etc.

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- stay on the ground. Bad things happen to villains who try to Fly to the bank and avoid all the mobs on the ground. They Top of the screen is full of Longbow Eagles just waiting for people trying to cheat.

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Never had this happen; I fly and port to the bank all the time. But I stay just at rooftop level, I don't try to go all the way to the top of the map.

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Side missions are controlled by villain groups running loose in the outdoor area the trick is finding them. [...]

BIG SECRET: If you have turned off the mob text, turn it on again! This is the best way to find the side mission mobs.

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Actually, it's not.

The best way to find them is to look in the downloadable Prima I7 Guide, because it has a couple of pages with the maps of all the Mayhem missions in it, including colored markers for the locations of both the key-holding mobs and the doors. With a printout of that in hand, you can find the keyholders you want every time.

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The Pawn Shop: [...] Then in back of building is a door you can break down (which also triggers a ambush) when you enter back area and trigger another ambush, there are 3 more safes and more lights and more ambushes.

[/ QUOTE ]
Actually, there are just two safes in the back room I believe, but they're big ones. Note that getting these safes also has a pretty good chance of giving you a DO or SO enhancement, so make sure you have slots clear.

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The Wanted Poster: This is the exception mission. No new area to enter and this mission is best left until after you are done with the bank.

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Conversely, it may actually be best to do it well before you do the bank--because if you die and hospitalize, the jail is right where you end up. Clear it out ahead of time, and you've got your own portable hospital right there inside the mission.

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You get a powerful ally who will follow you (poorly) after that. Unfortunately the AI for you ally stands for Artificial Idiot and you will be lucky if you can drag him anywhere. [...] If you free them before doing bank and do bank mission when you come out they will be gone. I have never been able to get one to follow me all the way to bank that is hopeless.

[/ QUOTE ]
There's actually a little trick to this.

Go into a side quest or the bank door and then come out of it right away. This will make the henchie spout off his "I've been captured" dialogue, and then come running right up to you. He'll go into the mission by himself, then come right back out again immediately, and as long as you're not invisible, he'll say "Where were you?" and start following you again. (If you are invisible, toggle your invisibility off for him to notice you, then he'll follow you even after you turn it back on.) As near as I can figure, this is a side-effect of the code that makes pets and henchmen follow their caster through doors or into elevators.

[ QUOTE ]
THE BANK:

[/ QUOTE ]
Only one thing to add to your comments about the bank job itself: Some heroes are tougher than others, especially at higher levels. As soon as you grab the money, you'll hear dialogue from the hero indicating which one it is. If it's one of the tougher ones (the hardest one, I've found, is Holo Man, an Illusions/FF controller who has a nasty habit of terrorizing you), you may want to be ready to load up on Inspirations, pull out a Shivan, or pop your panic-button power if you have one.

Best of luck with it!

Yeah, they fixed the 25 cap thing some time ago. I should probably update the FAQ with that and the other thread suggestions, but it's "good enough" as it is.

And I think Recall Friend generally doesn't work on temp power pets; dragging Inspirations onto them doesn't seem to work anymore either.

Just the person with the sample.

Anyone who has collected the six fragments and uses the amber-screened computer gets a sample. This is true whether they destroyed the turrets themselves, their team did, or someone else's team did and they just nipped in after that team left.

So if you're on a team, everyone should grab the fragments from the six meteors before you start.

An update, having just hit 46.

I've since found that Stun can be very useful in the 40s, especially against Bosses and Elite Bosses, when used in conjunction with Total Focus, and also with the Megalomaniac (2x mez duration) Accolade. I took it and six-slotted it because I didn't really have anything else to do with the slots, but I am finding it was a pretty good decision.

I have also become an enthusiastic convert to the school of Air Superiority. After using it for a while in the 40s, I became so accustomed to it that I ended up respecing it in at level 8. What makes it so great as a Brawl substitute is not just its knockdown effect, but also the damage it does--a quite decent amount, perhaps as much as Bone Smasher. And it does this repeatedly. I have slotted my Air Superiority with 2x Acc, 3x Dmg, and 1x Rech and now use it on automatic continually.

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I couldn't have said it better myself.

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Furthermore, Archon Voss has explicitly stated that Boomtown and Faultline are going to get rebuilt sometime in the near future.

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Why Taunt? I've yet to have trouble maintaining aggro.

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Because I didn't take Whirling Hands 'til much later in my build.

Hmm. Come to think of it, maybe I should swap Taunt and Whirling Hands in the build order.

When I get to 50 and try out the Patron pools, Taunt probably will be what I drop to make room for all four powers. But it's still useful for me, both in getting aggro while on teams, and for pulling bad guys off of squishies with whom I'm teaming.

As I said in the guide, you could make a pretty good case for not needing it, but given EA's lack of a taunt aura and EM's lack of many AoE options, it makes a good backup.

Here's another build I've whacked together in my spare time, that I'm considering respec'ing my currently-level-43 Energy/Energy Brute into. It's a respec build, so if you want to use this build from the beginning you'll probably want to slot in a different order on your way up, but the order of powers and final number of slots of the powers should be the same.

One thing I found while creating this build was that there are just so many good powers, it is hard to decide what to take when. Good powers and sometimes even great powers have to get pushed back in favor of what you want to have available when you're exemplared down to particular levels. This build takes into account how I want to be at level 25 (Bloody Bay), level 30 (Siren's Call), and level 40 (Warburg). I wish there was room to squeeze Build Up in earlier, and it would be nice to have Energy Cloak closer to 20 than 30, but we take what we have to when we have to.


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Exported from Ver: 1.7.5.0 of the CoH_CoV Character Builder
---------------------------------------------
Name:
Level: 44
Archetype: Brute
Primary: Energy Melee
Secondary: Energy Aura
---------------------------------------------
01) --&gt; Energy Punch==&gt; Acc(1)Acc(3)Dmg(3)Dmg(5)Dmg(9)
01) --&gt; Kinetic Shield==&gt; DefBuf(1)DefBuf(23)DefBuf(25)
02) --&gt; Bone Smasher==&gt; Acc(2)Acc(5)Dmg(7)Dmg(7)Dmg(9)Rechg(11)
04) --&gt; Power Shield==&gt; DefBuf(4)DefBuf(23)DefBuf(25)
06) --&gt; Hasten==&gt; Rechg(6)Rechg(11)Rechg(13)
08) --&gt; Air Superiority==&gt; Acc(8)Acc(13)Dmg(15)Dmg(15)Dmg(17)Rechg(17)
10) --&gt; Hurdle==&gt; Jump(10)
12) --&gt; Entropy Shield==&gt; EndRdx(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(27)Dmg(27)Rechg(29)
20) --&gt; Stamina==&gt; EndMod(20)EndMod(21)EndMod(21)
22) --&gt; Aid Other==&gt; Heal(22)
24) --&gt; Aid Self==&gt; Heal(24)Heal(29)Heal(31)Rechg(31)Rechg(31)Rechg(33)
26) --&gt; Taunt==&gt; Rechg(26)
28) --&gt; Energy Drain==&gt; EndMod(28)EndMod(33)EndMod(33)Rechg(34)Rechg(36)Rechg(36)
30) --&gt; Energy Cloak==&gt; DefBuf(30)DefBuf(34)DefBuf(34)
32) --&gt; Energy Transfer==&gt; Acc(32)Acc(36)Dmg(37)Dmg(37)Dmg(37)Rechg(39)
35) --&gt; Whirling Hands==&gt; Acc(35)Acc(39)Dmg(39)Dmg(40)Dmg(40)
38) --&gt; Overload==&gt; Rechg(38)Rechg(40)Rechg(42)Heal(42)Heal(42)Heal(43)
41) --&gt; Build Up==&gt; Rechg(41)Rechg(43)Rechg(43)
---------------------------------------------
01) --&gt; Sprint==&gt; Empty(1)
01) --&gt; Brawl==&gt; Empty(1)
01) --&gt; Fury==&gt; Empty(1)
02) --&gt; Rest==&gt; Empty(2)
---------------------------------------------


Edit: And here's an alternate version of that same build, swapping the positions of Whirling Hands and Taunt. I may actually use this one instead of that, and eventually perhaps drop Taunt altogether. Just depends.

---------------------------------------------
Exported from Ver: 1.7.5.0 of the CoH_CoV Character Builder
---------------------------------------------
Name:
Level: 44
Archetype: Brute
Primary: Energy Melee
Secondary: Energy Aura
---------------------------------------------
01) --&gt; Energy Punch==&gt; Acc(1)Acc(3)Dmg(3)Dmg(5)Dmg(9)
01) --&gt; Kinetic Shield==&gt; DefBuf(1)DefBuf(23)DefBuf(25)
02) --&gt; Bone Smasher==&gt; Acc(2)Acc(5)Dmg(7)Dmg(7)Dmg(9)Rechg(11)
04) --&gt; Power Shield==&gt; DefBuf(4)DefBuf(23)DefBuf(25)
06) --&gt; Hasten==&gt; Rechg(6)Rechg(11)Rechg(13)
08) --&gt; Air Superiority==&gt; Acc(8)Acc(13)Dmg(15)Dmg(15)Dmg(17)Rechg(17)
10) --&gt; Hurdle==&gt; Jump(10)
12) --&gt; Entropy Shield==&gt; EndRdx(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(27)Dmg(27)Rechg(29)
20) --&gt; Stamina==&gt; EndMod(20)EndMod(21)EndMod(21)
22) --&gt; Aid Other==&gt; Heal(22)
24) --&gt; Aid Self==&gt; Heal(24)Heal(29)Heal(31)Rechg(31)Rechg(31)Rechg(33)
26) --&gt; Whirling Hands==&gt; Acc(26)Acc(39)Dmg(39)Dmg(40)Dmg(40)
28) --&gt; Energy Drain==&gt; EndMod(28)EndMod(33)EndMod(33)Rechg(34)Rechg(36)Rechg(36)
30) --&gt; Energy Cloak==&gt; DefBuf(30)DefBuf(34)DefBuf(34)
32) --&gt; Energy Transfer==&gt; Acc(32)Acc(36)Dmg(37)Dmg(37)Dmg(37)Rechg(39)
35) --&gt; Taunt==&gt; Rechg(35)
38) --&gt; Overload==&gt; Rechg(38)Rechg(40)Rechg(42)Heal(42)Heal(42)Heal(43)
41) --&gt; Build Up==&gt; Rechg(41)Rechg(43)Rechg(43)
---------------------------------------------
01) --&gt; Sprint==&gt; Empty(1)
01) --&gt; Brawl==&gt; Empty(1)
01) --&gt; Fury==&gt; Empty(1)
02) --&gt; Rest==&gt; Empty(2)
---------------------------------------------

(I don't know why this got cut off. I swear I checked it and it was fine! Here's the missing part of the first section, starting with Shadow Fall. I'll repost the whole thing at some point I guess.)

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, where as 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 lover (of bots), 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: 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 when one of your henchmen dies--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.

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. 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.)


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.

Please remove the I6 version and replace it with this one.

R_M's I7 Robotics/Dark Miasma Mastermind Guide

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. 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 presently have for my level 40 Energy/Energy Brute. 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[/list]

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.")

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 other hero-villain crossover opportunities inevitably arise, as they reportedly will in the next paid expansion.)

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 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, unlike in City of Heroes, 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 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.)


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.

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. 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.


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. 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 is going to be changing radically come 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 has 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 in 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. It looks very much as though Issue 7 is going to be a great time in which to play an Energy Aura Brute (or, for that matter, a Super Reflex Scrapper or Ice Tanker).


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. However, you do have to be at least level 5 to take advantage of these.

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

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, 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. 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 great 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 great 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). 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 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.

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.

[Continued in next post]