Rodion

Howling Twilight, from Dark Miasma, is the only rez power that I can justify taking. Why? It doesn't require a dead ally. It can be used under any conditions, stuns the enemies and provides a huge -regen debuff that is superb for AV combats.

If you're doing your job as /Thermal controller, team deaths are going to be rare. Between your control powers and your buffs and heals, the percentage of time that you have dead allies around is going to be exceedingly small: perhaps less than 1/10th of 1% of the time.

The missed opportunity cost of a power that can be used 100% of the time is simply too great to justify a rez power that can only be used on dead allies. Practically any other power, no matter how marginal its use, will be more worthwhile than a power that can only be used when there are dead allies around.

Furthermore, there are at least three other methods for resurrecting downed allies: the Day Job rez, the new Resuscitator temp power, and giving allies awakens combined from insps obtained from the rest of the team.

Originally it wasn't safe to store items in WW on a permanent basis because the system would delete them after 60 days of inactivity. The devs have since removed that behavior and documented the new behavior, so now it seems safe to store items in WW on a permanent basis.

The purpose of email attachments was to send influence and items to global email addresses. It was not intended to be an expansion for recipe, inspiration, salvage and enhancement storage, nor was it intended to be a way to circumvent the 2,000,000,000 influence/infamy limitation.

Until the devs officially state that the email system is intended to fulfill those functions, it's safest to avoid using them for undocumented purposes.

The ability to use tabs to see just your bids, just your stored items, just your items on sale, is also very useful. However, the graphical implementation of this should be changed to make the distinction between the tabs more obvious.

Generally, the interface would be a marked improvement if several smallish user interface tics were fixed.

It's probably a perception thing. If I'm teamed I never get purple drops. If I'm running solo at x8, they seem to drop a lot.

There was a bug that drastically reduced the number number of purples that dropped. This bug was fixed quite some time ago, so it was probably responsible for the dearth of purples before I16. But after that (I think it was right after I16), purples started dropping at the intended rate.

To create the optimal conditions for purple drops: get a level 50 brute. Turn on chat logging so you can get a count of the mobs you defeat. Run level 50 regular missions (contacts or papers are both fine) solo at +0/x5, or -1/x8, or whatever number you can do easily, for a few hours. If you have an easy time with bosses, be sure to turn on bosses with your difficulty settings; they have a better drop chance. If you're having trouble with bosses, don't turn them on because they'll just waste time.

I find I'm getting one purple every 2,000 to 5,000 mobs. It's random, so you aren't guaranteed anything. Since we don't know the exact drop rate, the only thing we can say is that it's unlikely you won't get a drop after 15,000 solo defeats.

With the ability to email items to any of your characters on your account, we effectively have account level banks. Create an SG for one of your villains and slog through enough levels to get the prestige to put an enhancement table in it. Now you have your account wide IO bank, at least for villains.

If you have enough free character slots on the server, you can get a friend to invite your alts to get the free prestige for the initial SG members. That can drastically reduce the time needed to get enough prestige for getting the bin.

Aggelakis and Willowpaw are giving good advice. The only thing I'd add is that their approach is good if you're actually interested in playing your character and doing the missions for content from level 12-22.

If, however, you're the sort of person that just wants to rush through those levels through some form of PLing (getting PLed, or just cranking through radio missions at maximum speed), you'll probably just want to buy DOs at 12 and use those until level 22. At that point level 25 IOs are good enough to last forever, though you may want to use a few level 30s or 35s here and there to bump the numbers up to the practical max enforced by ED (having a 25 and a 30 acc, and two 25s and a 35 damage in an attack power, for example).

The build I have is below. It's not soft-capped to all damage types and super optimized, but it's fairly robust against certain villain groups. I bought the Kinetic Combats three years ago when they were still cheap, and only recently got the character to 50. The suggestion to get Smashing Haymakers and replace them over time as you can afford Kinetic Combat is a good one.

Villain Plan by Mids' Villain Designer 1.707
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Aethereal: Level 50 Technology Brute
Primary Power Set: Energy Melee
Secondary Power Set: Energy Aura
Power Pool: Flight
Power Pool: Fitness
Power Pool: Medicine
Power Pool: Fighting

Villain Profile:
Level 1: Energy Punch -- F'dSmite-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(A), F'dSmite-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(3), KntkC'bat-Acc/Dmg(3), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx(19), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(27), KntkC'bat-Dmg/Rchg(37)
Level 1: Kinetic Shield -- RedFtn-Def/EndRdx(A), RedFtn-Def/Rchg(7), RedFtn-EndRdx/Rchg(17), RedFtn-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(27), RedFtn-Def(40), RedFtn-EndRdx(42)
Level 2: Bone Smasher -- F'dSmite-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(A), F'dSmite-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(5), KntkC'bat-Acc/Dmg(5), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx(9), KntkC'bat-Dmg/Rchg(15), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(15)
Level 4: Power Shield -- S'dpty-Def(A), S'dpty-Def/EndRdx(7), S'dpty-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(17), S'dpty-EndRdx(33), S'dpty-EndRdx/Rchg(40)
Level 6: Dampening Field -- S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(A), ResDam-I(33), ResDam-I(50)
Level 8: Air Superiority -- C'ngImp-Acc/Dmg(A), C'ngImp-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(9), C'ngImp-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(31), C'ngImp-Dmg/EndRdx(31), C'ngImp-Dmg/Rchg(31)
Level 10: Whirling Hands -- Oblit-Dmg(A), Oblit-Acc/Rchg(11), Oblit-Dmg/Rchg(11), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(13), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(13), Oblit-%Dam(19)
Level 12: Entropy Shield -- EndRdx-I(A)
Level 14: Fly -- Flight-I(A)
Level 16: Swift -- Run-I(A)
Level 18: Health -- Heal-I(A)
Level 20: Stamina -- EndMod-I(A), EndMod-I(21), EndMod-I(21)
Level 22: Total Focus -- F'dSmite-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(A), F'dSmite-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(23), KntkC'bat-Acc/Dmg(23), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx(25), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(25), KntkC'bat-Dmg/Rchg(36)
Level 24: Aid Other -- IntRdx-I(A)
Level 26: Energy Cloak -- RedFtn-Def(A), RedFtn-Def/EndRdx(34), RedFtn-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(42), RedFtn-EndRdx(43), RedFtn-Def/Rchg(45), RedFtn-EndRdx/Rchg(45)
Level 28: Energy Drain -- H'zdH-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(A), Efficacy-Acc/Rchg(29), Efficacy-EndMod/Rchg(29), H'zdH-Heal/Rchg(39), Heal-I(40), Efficacy-EndMod/Acc/Rchg(45)
Level 30: Build Up -- RechRdx-I(A), AdjTgt-Rchg(37), AdjTgt-ToHit/Rchg(50)
Level 32: Energy Transfer -- C'ngImp-Acc/Dmg(A), C'ngImp-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(33), C'ngImp-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(34), C'ngImp-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(34), C'ngImp-Dmg/EndRdx(36), C'ngImp-Dmg/Rchg(36)
Level 35: Aid Self -- IntRdx-I(A), Mrcl-Heal/Rchg(37), Mrcl-Heal(39), IntRdx-I(39)
Level 38: Boxing -- Acc-I(A)
Level 41: Tough -- Aegis-ResDam/EndRdx(A), Aegis-ResDam/Rchg(42), Aegis-ResDam(43), Aegis-EndRdx/Rchg(43), Aegis-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(48)
Level 44: Weave -- RedFtn-Def/EndRdx(A), RedFtn-Def/Rchg(46), RedFtn-EndRdx/Rchg(46), RedFtn-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(46), RedFtn-EndRdx(48), RedFtn-Def(50)
Level 47: Overload -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(48)
Level 49: Taunt -- RechRdx-I(A)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Fury
Level 0: Ninja Run

The best use of merits would be to outfit the character in the style to which you are accustomed.

If you're already level 50 and have everything you want, random rolls are the best thing for pure cash. You can also give them to your alts through global emails.

If your character is pretty much complete, but you're broke and you just need that one LotG: +Recharge, you might want to go for the sure thing instead of chancing that you'll get enough decent recipes to afford a LotG: +Recharge on the market (a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush...).

I also find it a little jarring when the author tells me what I think. But practically speaking, they're always telling us what to think. They are the only source of information about the events in the game.

If they did rewrite this mission instead of saying, "You think that X is Y," it would say something along the lines of "It seems that X is Y," or the contact would say that he thinks X is Y instead of putting those thoughts in your character's mind.

It's probably a conscious decision in the writing guidelines for the new missions to use the second person when you have choices. The conceit is that it makes you feel more involved. The illusion of immersion is probably the goal. Unfortunately, different players react differently to certain wordings, and what immerses one player may alienate another...

Crank the recharge up on Heal Other, Regeneration Aura and Adrenalin Boost as much as possible, and get as much global recharge as you can. I've never taken Absorb Pain, and I've never had problems keeping tankers alive with Heal Other and Healing Aura. Even with controllers.

You've got four powers that should give a tanker crazy amounts of regen and healing. If you're keeping Fortitude, Regen Aura and AB on the tanker they shouldn't be having any problems staying alive if you're also spamming Heal Other on them.

Players who run brutes and scrappers at +0/x8 usually run Tough and Weave and have a lot of defense bonuses from IO sets. They often pick a particular damage type to get high defense against (often Smash/Lethal), and then selectively run missions that contain enemies that play to their strengths (do mainly S/L damage).

I have a SS/Electrical Brute which is probably a little squishier than your SS/Inv brute will be when you've properly outfitted it, and I have Hand Clap. I run at +0/x8 almost exclusively, and when I start taking damage, Hand Clap is great for scattering and stunning them for the duration of, say, a Rage crash. I imagine that the Hand Clap was originally part of the overall design decision to to mitigate the Rage crash. (a tip on Hand Clap use -- to minimize scatter it's best to use it in a small room or narrow corridor, or by first moving so that the mobs are between you and a corner. When they go flying they don't actually go anywhere.)

I also have an Inv/SS tanker that has neither Hand Clap nor Unstoppable. I find that Tough, Weave, the defensive auras and slotting IO sets for Smash/Lethal serve quite well, making Unstoppable actively undesirable because of the precipitous end/health crash.

SS/Inv can be relatively inexpensive to soft-cap S/L defense for tankers using Reactive Armor, Smashing Haymaker, Multi-strike and Perfect Zinger. You may need to use a couple of Kinetic Combat sets and Obliteration to S/L soft-cap a Brute (I haven't actually tried doing this, so be sure to work up your own build in Mids.

Your best bet would be to work up a build using Reactive Armor in your shields, along with Tough and Weave, with Smashing Haymaker in your attacks. That will give you a good base of S/L defense. Over time you can replace as many Smashing Haymaker sets with Kinetic Combat as needed to raise your S/L defense as desired.

I don't like the popup either. But there are many different buffs and things that other players can do to you, and it's not reasonable to have a different option to control every one of them.

Probably the best and easiest thing to do long term would be to make it affect team members only -- you can't spam everyone you see. That way you can tell people when you join the team you don't want it. The mechanism to do this may already be there, since powers like Teleport only work on team members.

I'm not sure that putting two extra slots in CJ does much for you. Those two slots only increase your defense by 0.9%. You'll be better off putting those slots in powers that can accept IO sets that will give you additional defense. It's possible to soft-cap Smash/Lethal defense with Fire/Fire/Pyre, though it's expensive (requiring pricey sets like Kinetic Combat and Obliteration, though you can also use Mocking Beratement and Enfeebled Operation which are very cheap).

You'll probably want to put something like Karma: -KB in your Combat Jumping, and Steadfast: -KB in or two of your armors. Not getting KBed makes being a tanker much more fun.

The Recovery Serum is great for brutes.

The Stun Grenades are great when you get into a jam solo.

Yeah, I have a BS/SD scrapper and it seems sinfully overpowered. It doesn't have a lot of AoE attacks, but it's softcapped in all three positional defenses with one Parry active. And it's very cost effective: It uses one each of the pricier Obliteration and Mako's Bite sets, and the rest of the sets I use are pretty darn cheap (Scirocco's Dervish, Red Fortune, Aegis, Crushing Impact, etc.). The most expensive thing was Membrane Exposures for Active defense (the fact that those affect Defense Debuff resistance seems to be a bug, so I wouldn't be surprised if the devs change that at some point).

Getting so much Melee defense out of Parry really helps a lot. The other primaries don't really have anything that compares.

There are many Ouroboros arcs that you can complete quickly to fill out your 11 merits to 20. There are some that can be completed in 30 minutes or less for 7 merits. Those have the advantage that you can solo them at your leisure, or if you've only got 10 or 20 minutes at a shot.

The problem is that most every change the devs make engenders this kind of reaction from some segment of the player base. It's impossible for them to distinguish from forum postings what the real opinion of the majority of players is.

I, for example, see a few areas where they should improve the market interface (make some things less automatic, while making others more so), but otherwise it just works for me. The previous system had its own warts, and the new one has many improvements that I definitely like (alphabetic sorting, looking up salvage for recipes, single-button click to find the bidding history for an item I've got stored, etc.). And probably the most important issue was the performance (though that never affected me).

When they nerfed regen scrappers there was howling, when they nerfed energy melee there was howling, when they changed PvP there was howling and every time they utter the words "Mission Architect" a thousand wolves descend upon Paragon Studios and sit outside their windows at night baying at the moon.

There is probably a money and time budget for changes to the market, and when that budget was/is reached they will stop changing the market. They will establish some metric -- say, total market volume relative to the number of contact hours -- and if that is comparable to the pre-I17 measurement, they will surmise that the market is functioning adequately. A review will be scheduled for some point in the future and in the meantime the devs will move on to other projects.

In other words, we need to suck it up and stop whining. Concentrate on having them fix the top five real problems and stop picking nits. We shouldn't chase too many cats up the tree and waste the devs' time trying to get them all down.

I would slot Karma: -KB in Combat Jumping, and put a slot in one of your other shields (Dark Embrace, Murky Cloud or Obsidian Shield) and slot a Steadfast: -KB there, or another Karma: -KB in Cloak of Darkness. If you do all three (at the cost of two slots), you'll get 12 points of KB protection, which is more than Acrobatics gives.

Besides using no endurance, the other major benefit is that you'll get KB protection when exemplaring at level 25 and above (and possibly lower depending on the level of the IO you get), and not just at level 44+ if you take Acrobatics at 49.

I've found that KB 4 protection works 95% of the time, KB 8 works 98% of the time and KB 12 works 99.9% of the time.

These IOs can be usually had for between 5 and 10 million if you're patient. You can also run AE missions and buy Bronze rolls in the 30-34 range. I've got many Karma and Steadfast: -KB recipes that way, plus many other goodies.

Wormhole has its problems, but it should be fixed rather than replaced. It's a kitchen-sink kind of power in that does a bunch of different things (teleport, stun, knockback).

The problem I have with it is that it takes 3 seconds to cast and all of its effects have a delay of 2.6 or 2.7 seconds before they affect the target. Frequently mobs will have enough time after you start casting to shoot or even run up and slug you before it takes effect. Other similar area stun powers (Flashfire from Fire Control) don't have this delay.

The delay can sometimes be finessed by casting the power from around a corner (another reason why this is a great power), but the range is often not far enough to make this easy. And if you're on a huge outdoor map there is often no terrain to hide behind and avoid taking an alpha strike.

Thus, it can take a long time to do the setup for this power to use it to maximum effect, and if you're running on a team it's not reasonable to expect them to wait while you fiddle around.

The delay on the effect is likely there because the devs believed that it was such a fabulous power it needed some downside. It should work like the other area stuns and (if it hits the target), they should be affected without a chance to blast the caster, like Flashfire. The delay is not warranted because Gravity is in general weaker than the other control sets. In particular:

• While Wormhole is a great power, it's very difficult to coordinate its use with teams.
• You can put mobs anywhere you want, but since they get KBed with mag 14.5 KB it's not as easy as you'd like. You need a good wall or a corner to avoid scatter, and many maps don't provide them. Thus, while you can use Flashfire anywhere, anytime, Wormhole's range of usefulness is drastically more limited.
• Gravity in general is weaker than, say, Fire: what damage it does is smashing.
• The other signature power in the set (Propel) is also ridiculously slow to activate, and does smashing damage. If you're on a team with blasters you might as well not even bother to use Propel because the blasters will have killed your target three times by the time it fires off.
• The presence of Dimension Shift makes the set on the whole much weaker -- a single-target intangibility is bad enough, but an AoE intangible is almost unconscionable.
• The pet, while useful enough, is arguably the weakest of all the controller pets.

I'd actually prefer to eliminate the KB from Wormhole, but it goes against the conceit of the power (punching someone through a hole in space squirts them out the other end), and I think it's important to keep some color in the powers. All in all, eliminating the effect delay would be the least damaging change to Wormhole.

Yes, this excuse for storing recipes is rather disingenuous. Since you can currently craft those recipes -- and must do so before they can be used -- and then store those crafted IOs in bases, adding recipe storage is not a cost-effective use of developer time. The essential functionality already exists and developers could spend that time doing something else that we've requested that cannot be accomplished by some other workaround.

Add to that the email attachment feature, and recipe storage in bases should drop to the bottom of the list.

I've only tried a couple of stalkers. I deleted an Energy/Ninjitsu for another alt at about level 20 on my main server, then created a Dark/Ninjitsu on another server where it languished for a year or two.

I've been playing it again recently, and like it. Currently at level 32. Between Siphon Life and Kuji-In Sha you've got decent healing (and the latter gives a good place to slot a Steadfast: -KB). Smoke Flash is great for placating an entire spawn, allowing you to attack individuals at will without reprisal from the spawn for 15 seconds or so.

It's relatively easy to get positional defense outside of Hide in the high 30s and low 40s for melee and ranged defense with IOs, a little harder for AoE (when Hide is active it's like 70). The down side is that defense debuff resist is only 30%.

Shadow Maul isn't a great area attack power, but with minimal maneuvering you can regularly get 2-3 targets in its cone, and when you're surrounded you can often get 3-4.

I can easily deal with 4 minions and an LT, or two LTs and a minion, or a Boss and a couple of minions/LTs. If you accidentally aggro two spawns Smoke Flash (or the new temp power Stun Grenade) is a great way to get the heat off you.

As always, using purples at the right time is essential for survival. If you use them properly you can fight like a scrapper after your initial attack.

If you like controllers you may like Dark/Ninjitsu.