Sardan

I played several classic power combos back in the SO days: Fire/Ice tanker, Ill/Rad controller, and a Fire/Kin controller.

Of those three, the only one I still enjoy playing is the Fire/Kin. Not as sturdy as my best brute or my widow, for sure, but I love the feeling of being able to "power up" the entire team via Speed Boost, Fulcrum Shift, and one of the strongest heals in the game, plus being able to do reasonable direct damage, plus having some AoE control powers. That mix of capabilities is still very appealing to me.

One thing to keep in mind is that getting to uber-ville is a multistep process. As others have pointed out, you first need to decide what tradeoffs you're willing to make. Blasters put out high damage but are squishy. Scrappers and Brutes are much sturdier but don't put out as much AoE DPS out of the box. Some characters can do very respectable damage only in pretty specific circumstances (e.g. a Fire/Kin controller is a classic farmer but has to farm melee-intensive non-mezzers) and outside of those circumstances they're good but not godly. Some characters are strong throughout their entire career (hello Fire/Dark Corruptor) while others get strong comparatively late (Fire/Kin Controller).

Aside from all that, understand that nowadays when you see a video of someone tearing through a mission solo that is set for a full team of 8, they're not doing it with a character using basic enhancements. You mentioned you've used Mids, so you're familiar with IO sets. It can take a huge investment to "IO out" characters if you're shooting to be in the extreme top performing builds. So understand you're not going to be at full potential for a while. But that's what's fun about the game, there's always that next level to build towards! Once you have your character all decked out in expensive IOs, then you can start to delve into the Incarnate system, which hopefully will be in its next phase by the time you hit 50.

Confuse powers reduce XP.

I periodically peek in on this thread to see the 88s' progress. Can someone kindly summarize how much total inf has been burned to date?

I believe the way recharge works is that every power's recharge is expressed in a number of ticks of a hypothetical clock that normally is in sync with real time. Any +Recharge makes that clock tick faster. So during the 5 seconds of the recharge buff, 10 seconds' worth of recharge time tick by. After the buff elapses, the tick speed returns to normal.

That's my understanding. Someone like Arcanaville could explain it with much more authority, as well as give you a formula for calculating the exact effect of the buff, I'm sure.

Castle, you and BAB were the main reasons I made sure to check the Dev Digest every day. I've always appreciated how much you participated on the forums, all the more so because it was virtually guaranteed that whatever change you made to player powers would generate some insanely overblown poisonous responses. I don't care how thick a skin you have, sometimes that had to hurt.

You helped build a game that has brought joy to hundreds of thousands of people all over the world. What a great legacy.

Best of luck in your next job!

I haven't looked at this thread in detail so perhaps people have already recommended this and I just missed it, but one IO that's very nice but easy to overlook is the Force Feedback Chance for +Recharge when slotted in Footstomp.

It gives a 10% chance per affected critter for a 100% +recharge bonus (nonstacking) for 5 seconds. As an IO'd SS/WP you'll likely always be at the target cap when you fire off Footstomp and you'll get the buff virtually guaranteed.

I went for the Endurance reduction in my Alpha slot for my SS/Shield. I built for very high recharge and end consumption was always my Achilles heel. Now it's totally under control.

I notice you have an aftermarket CPU cooler as part of your $1375 system. Do you recommend that even if the CPU isn't going to be overclocked? If so, why?

I'd vote some kind of Dom. You get ranged attacks and control. You said mez protection was important and Doms get it while in Domination. It's not cheap but perma-Domination = perma mez protection.

I don't think you should do an iOS app at all. Android phones are outselling iPhone. (Yeah, this will probably change for a while when Verizon offers iPhone, but I think the trend will resume). I'm sure there will be an onslaught of tablets, some running Android and some running the forthcoming Google Chromium OS, some running Win7 or Linux. Blackberry is still a big company and is throwing a ton of money into new platforms. Nokia too. Not to mention, if your app is really cool people will want it for Windows and Mac too! I know I'd much rather run a build planner on my PC browser than my phone's tiny screen.

My suggestion: do a web app. Use PhoneGap to be able to crank out native apps that can go through various app stores. Use a framework like jQuery Mobile to create interfaces that look native across different devices.

You don't have to worry about stuff like shipping an updated UI or database with a web app because everyone always gets the latest. If someone switches devices, they don't have to worry about transferring their data. Linking to datachunks is easy. Hosting is cheap. Heck, one generous donation of $100 would take care of hosting for a year.

Plus, a web app makes possible interesting possibilities of user generated content. People could mark their builds as public, allowing others to browse annotated builds for comparison/inspiration. You could offer statistical functions like "what percentage of builds pick this power" or "show me public builds that have more of set bonuses X and Y than my build does".

This may be a nonstarter 'cause it sounds like you're a dedicated Apple developer, but from the standpoint of maximum user adoption and futureproofing, a web app is the better way to go.

I can't speak for others, but I have a Fire/Kin with tons of recharge, so I'm going for the end reduction Incarnate slot. Yes, I can use Transference but I'd rather be attacking.

No one knows yet when the next two tiers of Alpha slots enhancements will be available. Might be i20, might be sooner.