Saltyhero13

Looks like a solid line up! You can always do Earth/Thermal and maybe a Grav/Sonic or some other pairing.

On second thought I can't recommend Grav/ with a straight face.

Cute.

I'll strongly recommend Fire/Cold and Ill/TA for pairings.

/Cold helps Fire/ toughen up its Imps and manage its endurance woes. It also has some additional control that help fill in Fire/ gaps in control. I have a Fire/Cold/Stone at 50 that is pretty fun to play. I can't wait to finish IOing it.

As far as Ill/TA goes, I echo the other posters' sentiments about this pairing. Not only does /TA help fill in Ill/ control gaps and provide a means of debuffing foes for PA (who are unbuffable) there is one more reason I think these two synergize well together: Compared to other pets PA seems to transition to ranged attacks the best after OSA is lit. Observing other pets, they seem to get "stuck" in melee for some time before they commence attacking again.

Though I have only played Elec/ paired with /Rad on live, "on paper" /Thermal and /Sonic seem to have some good synergy with Elec/.

Carnifax made some great points.

Another nod for brute here. Brute's Soul Mastery PPP offers tools that bolster survivability and AoE capabilities. Unfortunately no Scrapper Epic pools offer the same benefits. If you go Scrapper, Soul Mastery's Shadow Meld is a choice I would consider for survivability. For additional AoE you have several other choices to consider (e.g. Blaze, Mu, to a lesser extent Dark).

There was recently a thread on the scrapper forums looking for advice on this combo: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=247817
You may have more luck on the Brute forums though.

Werner pretty much nailed it with his comments.

I'll chime in and elaborate with my experiences as a 50 DM/FA Scrapper and and a currently leveling (@20+) DM/FA Brute.

Some of the Pros of this combination:

• the unique synergy of getting access to two Heals, two End Drains, and two damage boosting powers.
• Dark Melee lacks AoE; Fiery Aura helps fill this gap with Burn and Blazing Aura.

Some of the Cons of this combination:

• Lack of KB protection (IOs or Acrobatics help mitigate this)
• Lack of AoE (Epic Power Pools can supplement with access to AoE)
• /Fiery Aura on a scrapper just feels squishy.
• The - To Hit is not significant enough to make much of a difference IMO. Its single target and resistible.

As a scrapper DM/FA I offer two build approaches using IOs:

1. Build for recharge and some defense (+15% to all). Pick up Soul Mastery for access to Shadow Meld. With the right slotting this will soft cap you like a mini "MoG" (from /Regen). If used proactively it will allow you to deal with burst damage and alpha strikes, greatly increasing your survivability.
2. Build for S/L defense with a secondary focus on +recharge and a tertiary on +HP. ~30-35% S/L Defense is good; if you manage to get more without sacrificing too much, go for it.

I recommend checking out the Brute forum as well for advice on this combination. IMHO DM/FA is one of the combinations that looks great on paper but doesn't play out so well in practice. It takes considerable IO investment to mitigate its lack of survivability; for the same investment you can get more out of other combinations. With that said I just rolled a Brute DM/FA to see if the experience is more enjoyable.

Good luck with your DM/FA!

Fair enough Green. The build is not terrible by any means I just think you'll get more mileage out of investing in IOs that provide global recharge and consider defense bonuses as a secondary focus.

Since I already commented on the HOs the first place I would start is following Elegost's slotting recommendations for the heal powers. Doctored Wounds is a nice cheap set with good bonuses.

I don't understand your slotting for Shockwave but I'll assume you plan on using it only for mitigation through KB. I would put a Posi set in there or look at slotting with the Ragnarok set.

Why take Challenge and Intimidate? Those just seem like odd ducks to me. Is it for concept?

The Body pool? With Quick Recovery and Inherent Stamina is more recovery needed? I am going to recommend Soul mastery in its place as a far superior choice. This is especially true if you go with a recharge heavy build. Regen typically has a tough time with alpha strikes and burst damage. With the right build, Shadow Meld can soft cap you right before you jump a mob. This will considerably soften the blow allowing you to deal with the alpha with more safety.

Take Soul mastery and use Shadow Meld proactively. You will not regret it. The whole switch from hero to villain and back takes 8 days. Just make sure you use your Hero merits before you start the switch so you don't loose them.

Good luck with your build Green! I hope that helps.

Just a few quick comments:

• If you can afford Hami O's I wonder why you don't just invest in an IO build that focuses on recharge sets to begin with.

• I would seriously consider looking at the Soul Mastery pool for Shadow Meld instead of the Body pool. Regen doesn't need extra recovery unless its poorly built to begin with. Soul mastery offers a mini MoG like power (think defensive build up) that's not quite as powerful but is available more frequently.

IMO there is more wrong with the build but following this advice will get you in the ballpark.

I know! Tell me about it!

As far as answering your question about the fix; here is the short and the long:

I wouldn't get too excited, the fix only hinted at Propel getting a new shorter animation.

Pre-i18, one of the devs (Castle??) posted in the 'troller forums hinting that Gravity control was going to get some love in the form of shortening Propel's animation. Players, during the i18 closed beta(NDA has since been lifted), were speculating what the fix could possibly be and began discussing how they would fix Gravity if they were "a dev for a day". The same dev dropped in on that topic to let us know that Propel was in the animation department's queue for things to look at but it was unlikely that they would be looked at and addressed prior to the release of GR.

Did you try stacking confuse on LR during his summon phase? Getting him to attack the spawned pets would be my tactic (even though they may not turn on him).

For i19 I plan on skipping Spore Burst and Vines from Plant/ as well as Snow Storm and Thunder Clap from /Storm. Currently on live I skipped the mentioned powers in addition to O2 Boost. I may consider swapping O2 for Snow Storm.

No. You must become a full villain in order to be able to do a patron arc.

According to ketch it cant be:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...48&postcount=7

Not capable holds the meaning you were using. Not suitable holds another meaning. No one ever said it is "impossible" to play.

Hmm..I wonder why? It couldn't be lack of semantic understanding?

unplayable - not capable of or suitable for being played or played on

I won't even touch the rest of the comments. The premise of your arguments are incongruent enough that they don't even hold up under their own merit.

....right and you still took it anyway. I see your comment hold lots of water considering you stand behind it in practice. Also RPers don't represent the majority of the player-base nor is it the context in which I made my suggestion for the OP.

The way I see it is every set has one or several key signature powers that help distinguish a set from its peer sets. A characteristic of these powers usually involves some unique mechanic and a degree of synergy with other powers within the set. Not taking these powers usually leads to an overall diminished capability for that hero/villain. Not taking these powers often leads one to question "why did that player not select another primary or secondary instead?" Many, not necessarily all, powers sets have these set characterizing powers.

In the case of Static Field for Electric control it provides a big portion of your control from the time it becomes available to the end game. Its part of the trinity that layers the -end/-recovery secondary aspect of the Electric Control set providing additional soft control. This is all on top of providing a means of recovering endurance within its AoE.

You are free to disagree with me and I definitely don't want to tell you how to enjoy the game. Like I said earlier good luck with that and I hope it works out for you.

To the OP: I hope you took the power. Its very effective and requires minimal slotting. Its also one of the few ways Electric Control can deal with the alpha strike.

Good Luck with your Elec/Rad! Its a great combo.

Yep. I ended up replaced CoD with Stealth and modified Mids to show the suppressed values.

I haven't looked at Werner's current Kat/DA build (he just published one recently) but I looked at one of the older builds he posted in the scrapper forums. I used a brute force method and replaced /DA with /FA to get very close values. I came up +2% shy on Ranged defense i believe after a little massaging. Despite that I managed to soft-cap the other two positions. I am coming awfully close without getting too deep into it, however I'll take your word for it that it can't be done (considering you guys spend a lot of time finding optimal scrapper combos on the Scrapper boards.)

I see your point about the attack chains; maintaining triple stacked Parry would significantly cut into DPS. This may not be a trade-off most players, including myself, could live with.

As far as building for S/L and E/N I worked out a DM/FA brute build (inspired by a scrapper I ended up rerolling). I had a hard time getting to 35% S/L alone. I would consider building for decent levels of E/N defense a chore, but I was unwilling to sacrifice recharge for E/N defense. I'll have to look at the soft capping invulnerability guide again.

Well I hope it hope it works out for you.

Its also worth noting that it give a +recovery per mob for friendlies that stand in it. Its considered a core power of Electric Control that would make the set unplayable without it.

This. The only time I would change the priority M&M suggests would be a case that I was going for ranged or s/l defense. In that case defense bonuses would take priority followed by the above suggested bonuses.

Regardless of what you do be realistic in your expectations of the performance of IOing your Earth/Storm/Leviathan will give you. There are limitation and tradeoffs in doing so.

Good luck.

I was giving the OP the benefit of the doubt that he has two braincells to rub together to make up for the ~.2% S/L defense. Keep in mind that in the advent of i19 that build will be even easier to soft cap.

I suspect this will change if Katana and Broadsword are ported to brutes in their current states. Werner from the scrapper forums posted his Kat/DA scrapper build that managed to be soft capped to all three positions while using Parry. With a little extra work I suspect a Kat/FA could get similar results.

Did you take fitness? If so no its not worth it. If you are draining endurance on a /Regen I seriously doubt the Body Mastery Pool will help you manage endurance. Without a build to look at its hard to see what the real problem is.

I would actually recommend the Soul Mastery PPP purely for access to Shadow Meld.

Yes if you have the defense to stack with it. Depending on your power choices and IO slotting its fairly easy to get ~15% +Def to all. Couple this with Shadow Meld, fully slotted it gives you ~30% +Def to all, and you essentially have access to soft capped defense on demand.

The other route you can take is to focus on S/L Defense through IO bonuses.

Fully slotted and stacked with resilience you would get about ~20% Res to S/L. I personally don't find this worth it but YMMV.

Hope that helps

Yep. Build courtesy of bAss_ackwards:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...8&postcount=10