Securitron XI

Nothing really to add, but to chime in and say the above is pretty spot on.

Shrug,

Seems simple enough to color the forms, if they can do it with Power Surge and such.. I don't see how the leap is that difficult to coloring Kheld forms.

I really want to be able to color the SoA lazers. The red inner core and red beams really restrict color choices in the costumes if you wish to coordinate a decent look.

Weapon customization shouldn't be that big of a deal, it's on the costume portion, not the power portion. Claws already have their animations etc.. pretty much everything in HEAT or VEAT has an animation somewhere in the base AT's... so why coloring it is such a big deal is beyond me.

I posted in the request thread, but I really don't expect to see this happen any time soon. I'm sure they are more focused on tweaking the upcoming Incarnate content.

Drop the data link in please.

I like your defensive slotting, I had a fairly traditional build that was about the same defense/resist but cost quite abit more. Looks like you applied somewhat traditional /invuln slotting to your crab and it works pretty well.

Made me rethink my build, was able to achieve pretty much what I wanted for about 1/3rd of the cost of the previous build.

Thanks!

It's still a great power IMO, Shatter Armor that is.

I'm a little confused as to why you would want another AoE as well.

Provided you've built for perma-ML, or your build is similar to the one in the second post in your thread (i didn't pull yours up due to lack of data-link) - Dart burst is on like a 2s cooldown, and spin is like 3.

You'll always have an AoE available to you. Sure the radius on spin is a touch small, but the cone on dart burst is decent.

If I were dead set on getting some patron powers, I'd probably look at utility over damage. A hold, an AoE immob, whatever floats your boat. You're not going to beat your AT's powers for AoE damage.

Darkest Night, Electrifying Fences, Web Env (reccomend against this one) - School of Sharks + Acid Breath, follow it up with a dart burst, can be a nasty combo.

If you can stomach the redraw, Shatter Armor is worth it's weight in gold on AV's, EB's, etc..

If it's to balance hero's not getting epic pools, how about I get refunded for my travel powers?

Minor gripe, I know.. seems silly though.

And yes.. I understand Khelds are hurting right now, it won't always be that way.

You have a resist aura IO and a defense aura IO ontop of Leadership pools that are pretty standard for MM's. All of these help when stacked together for pet survivability. Aside from that, you can resummon fairly easily.

MM is a tough AT to fall in love with. It requires a solid secondary to keep you entertained, mastery of binds and situational awareness, and knowledge of which mobs spray aoe around and how to get around it. Be sure to pick something with a heal and some additional buffage. It's not terribly hard to get your minions to stand up to typical NPCs.

Ive seen both sides of the coin, ive seen pets getting splattered every 2 seconds, then I've seen the more dedicated MM's putting more effort into controling them, a few seconds of lost dps is better than the end cost and time of resummining and upgrading them.

That being said, 2 of the 3 sets you mentioned are pretty darn squishy (ninja and merc) - If you wanted to give it a serious run, id probably recommend just about any but those 2.

While I know this is supposed to be a kinda "hip-hip horray blasters!" thread, it's hard to get excited when one of the primary arguments is:

"All the time a scrapper spends running up to an opponent, the blaster spends blasting... I think many do not grasp this simple fact."

Having played both sides of the coin, the time spent face down on the pavement probably exceeds the amount of time my scrapper has to acquire and pounce on a target.

What's that? Go easy and die less? Well, then not only am I not doing my job right (raaaarrh) - but I'm not out damaging my scrapper. The ammount of times the words "Man if I was on my scrapper I'd be alive.." vs. "Man if I was on my blaster I'd be owning this fight.." ? 12312424 to 2 (BM, Architect)

For the present, if I want a ranged character with some muscle, I usually play my corrupter... so I have a decent secondary to fall back on if I feel my damage is sub-par or too risky. My Cor's face-plant quite abit too, but for some reason it bothers me much less.

I've tried to find the motivation and reason to finish leveling my blasters but it's really hard when the grass is greener on the other side and you're (me) a big cow. =p

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To be constructive: I'd love to see some balancing done to the Blaster primaries, you'd think something named BLASTER, being as squishy as they can be, would out-damage most everything by a fair margin. I'm not going to champion for higher defenses and mez protection, but I want some more "cannon" in my "glass cannon" - With the dmg most other AT's are capable of now (properly built) - even a poor blaster should be able to keep up. Just an opinion.

You really just have to think of them as visible long-term DoT's. If you can approach it from that angle it's not too bad. On your own it's not so bad, as you can usually melt the spawn before it's a problem. On teams however, it can be frustrating. Summoning after the Alpha's been taken can help.. but they will die, alot, just don't get too bothered by it.

The more auras you can put up for them the better obviously.

There are just situations where you can't avoid it. The two new TF's in particular are espically nasty toward pets of any kind. MM's have to constantly re-summon. Since that's not really an option to us, even with perma-pet builds.. you have to recognize that even though you may have a perma-build.. it may benifit you to hold them back for the opportune moment.

Such is life, whattareya gonna do, eh?

Getting the initial alpha is not as gutwrentching as alot of these new threads poping up are making it out to be. I had mine in 2-3 days of doing lv50 Tip missions, LGTF, and a MS raid or two.

LGTF- 5-9 depending on how lucky you are
MS raid - 2-3
Tip missions - Got a dozen or so from here pretty easily, yes.. it took more than an hour.. oh no.

After all the complaints you will get your slot, run these TF's.. continue getting shards and think to yourself (gee, i have 38 shards now with nothing to do with them till next issue) - All the complaining will eventually seem fairly silly.

In relation to Apex/Tin-Mage - you will get brutalized without em unless you are pure support (IE, FF, Empath, whatever) - even then, you will still die, alot. Hell, I have the 2nd upgrade and can bite it pretty quick on TinMage

If you're expecting mircale out of the Incarnate system just yet, prepare to be disappointed. In the end it will be pretty cool, but we are just getting warmed up.

DISCLAIMER: Personal Opinion

- Fire primaries
- /dark MM
- Bots/Traps Bots/FF - (great cure for insomnia)
- Fire/Kin trollers
- Fire/Psi Domi's
- Super Strength (rage crash is annoying)

To beat a dead horse and not flip through 40 pages:

SoA animations and coloration. Don't care about the backpack being stuck, I like it. Just wanna change the colors of the beams and possibly have a few alternate animations.

Being having quite abit of fun on my Ele/Thorn domi, not super rare and not super "chaotic".. but incredibly satisfying.

Lost my old crab when I activated GR on the wrong account so I've been working on a new one.

The build was thrown together pretty quickly, but will be the framework for what I am working toward.

You can build nearly any AT combo for survivability, I guess what really matters is the offense you have left.

It's really as simple as, "Do you like AoE and pets?"

or

"Do you like stealth, ST dmg, and mace?"

Crab can work his build around the pets and brings buffs to the table
Bane can work around spike dmg, and brings one of (if not the) best debuffs around in the game. (Similar buffs to crab)

In the end, any AT can do what you're trying to do with your SoA better than your SoA.. what you bring is buffs and surviability while being able to perform fairly close to the specialized AT's.

You are a force multiplier, just like the widow, and stack incredibly well with other VEAT's and characters that use the leadership pool. Nearly everyone can build a nasty AoE character or ST character, but can they match your buffing capability and survivability? Probably not, that's why you will be loved in groups.

As far as solo, it's a matter of preference. Both builds are mid-late bloomers.

This is actually a topic I got to wondering about after watching a /stone brute basically never die during the Tinman TF while the rest of us were being murdered over and over. He could basically tank absolutely everything, he just couldn't kill it by himself. If 16 boss/AV/LT/EB +4-6 combos can't dent him, I'm really curious what can. (Gimmics aside of course)

As a personal observation, stoners are the only ones ive witnessed actually show true invulnerability. My old one was for the most part, but times have changed since then. No numbers, just what I've seen an opinion.

I'm very interested to see how this testing goes, but alas I'll leave that to the more numerically inclined and patient folks.

I feel like the potential effectiveness is being somewhat understated.

I watched an elec domi drain the ITF boss dry after he rezed and he just kinda stood there and died afterward.

Looking at how long some of the encounters are in the new strikeforces, it could very well be a viable and potent option now.

Widow is easy enough to get perma-ML that I wouldn't base it around a recharge incarnate, just an opinion though.

As far as actually playing a widow, it plays exactly like a claws character with buffs. Seeing as how you're going to have a high recharge build for mind-link (that's what you bring to teams over Crabs/Bane) - Spin is gonna be on such a short cooldown it's likely the only AoE you need. You could opt for the Poison Dart AoE if you really want, but it's largely unessicary, unless you specifically want the -regen from it. It's cone is abit finkey and it's dmg is inferior to Spin. That being said, you could all but spam it if you really wanted to. You'd be missing out on alot of the widow's dmg potential though, plays alot like a claws stalker/buffer/w/semi-ok AoE.

I for one, certainly wouldn't cateogorize it as one of the stronger AoE characters.

The spines/da suggestion isn't exactly uncommon, but it's undoubtetly a stronger AoE toon with a large investment, and could get ooodles and ooodles of benifit from Cardiac oriented Alpha junk. You may think you have played an endurance hog character, but untill you've played spines/DA, you really haven't. Well, almost anything /DA is a real pain.

It's a shame you put "with status protection" in your guidelines, you're limiting yourself from some really cool combos with some nice potential

Fire/Thorn Dom (Mmm Domiblapper?) - The MFing Warshade (Incarnate usefulness remains to be seen, but it's a hell of a toon) - ELM/Nin Stalker and so-on.. though the stalker does have mez prot.

In the end of the day, it's just opinion, like everyone elses suggestions.. therefor subject to numerical arguement, personal opinion, and folks with greater experience than I. My old account had a pretty geared Widow and I never once questioned what I brought to a team in terms of buffs and dmg.. It's a solid class and with multi specs you can work up a fort for a mini-troller/blaster. If you do go the dual spec way, the recharge is abit harder for the fort to perma ML.

Take it with a grain of salt, and happy hunting!

It's now an EULA violation for using the tools provided in game for gain? If that were the case, every mission, every arc, every strikeforce.. is a violation. It's not the players responsibility to know the intention of every implemented feature, we aren't mind readers. Yes, the monkey stuff was abit absurd.. but the reality is the players were not really doing anything 'wrong' - Making maps that had a mob that was bugged.. sure, not really moral.. but at the same time, not their fault for the mistake in coding. It was fixed, maps were deleted, everyone's moved on to Alpha stuff but still people wanna rage and im sure will continue to do so for weeks to come.

There's a large difference between abuse and exploit.. I suggest a couple of you look into it. What's happening is abuse, not exploiting. The term exploit has been diluted from it's real MMO meaning for awhile now. Go back to 1999 and read up on an Everquest guild named Conquest killing "The Sleeper" if you really don't understand the concept. (although sadly you will probably get the polluted "we are innocent!" version)

Personally I don't understand the devs adversity to farming when they make the games natural reward system terribly slow. They've tried to stop it at every turn since the beginning dumpster diving, auto-follow 5th col. sweeping, libTV/Demon door sitting, Ouro flashback merit bonanza, and eventually AE. Players are going to find a way, it's not their fault to be honest.

Any time someone levels faster than you for whatever the reason, you guys seem to lash out and whine about it. I level'd a few chars legit faster than some of these (well not the recent monkey stuff) AE babies have.. and yet.. some people would still complain.

Mission Arc farming gives too much xp!
Resetting missions for farming gives too many recipies and money!
Tanker burn herding is working too well!
Dumpster diving 60 mobs at a time is killing my gameplay!
Door sitters are ruining my game!

These things all have something in common. They don't really affect you and the way you want to play the game in your care-bear-huggy-roleplaying-sit-under-the-Atlas-globe-and-dance world.

What if I wanted to make a really fancy story arc of my own and it just happened to have alot of XYZ mobs in it that happen to be tailored to my /ELA brute's strengths? Do I get a strike? Am I gonna get banninated?

It's really rediclious how uppity people get about AE, farming, and leveling in this game.

In short, yes, if EXP was removed from AE, it would die it's already slow coming death.

Nowadays, just about anything can be built to be durable enough to solo most content..

In the end it comes down to what happens after you get building your survival properly. Do you have additional survival through CC? Or superior damage? Do you have cannon fodder pets or do you have a few tricks up your sleeve? Are you looking for versitility or do you want to be the best at a particular thing?

Things I'd stay away from early on:

Empathy
Improperly built Defenders (note the very specific wording here)
Early game SoA's (They are just plain unfun until they mature)
Gravity
Stone Armor (This set really shines in groups. By yourself it's kinda a drag)
Probably most blasters (Don't get me wrong, blasters are great and can solo all sorts of stuff. They also start very squishy, and for a newer player.. dieing every 10 mins is no bueno)

Things I'd really consider!:

Any scrapper or brute with: Willpower, Dark Melee, Regen
(Why these 3? They come great out of the box and require minimal fuss/thought to work them properly.)

Other AT's: Late game SoA's (pet focused crabs and perma ML widows), Heavily invested controllers/dominators, Just about any Mastermind combo. (Though be warned, the player activity can be very slow depending on the secondary) - Well built tri-form warshade

These are just opinions looking at ease of use vs cost vs power. It's been my experience that the first 3 mentioned (Scrapper or Brute with WP, Regen, and/or Dark Melee - though any primary would be fine) are the biggest bang for the buck in terms of soloability and money invested. The "Other AT" list typically requires a large investment and some of the chars can be difficult in the early levels. There are always exceptions to every rule and other ideas based on other peoples experience. That's why you see the word opinion in here several times.

Personally I just ran a claws/WP scrapper up and it was blissfully powerful and easy.

After starting up a new account (lost the old info, didn't care enough to get it back) .. The bit above is terrible terrible terrible. That rabble above about your buffs not being for you is about as wrong as it gets with kins. EPICALLY corrupter kins. The day kins (esp fire/kin trollers and corruptors) stop darting in for FS, will be roughly in Dec. 2012 (oh noes, end of the world)

I had 3 /kin's IO'd to the teeth at 50, and probably enjoyed the AR kin the most. Naturally this was because I spent alot of time TV farming but hey, he was good in TF's too!

FS yourself and spam your crashless pewpew AoE with the AR, or get wicked with blizzard and some ice effects in TF's. Both are good. The cookie cutter Fire/Kin is always decent as well.. but pretty standard. (And standard is boring)

It's terribly easy to SB/FS everyone and have plenty of time to lay the smack down, (or debuffs) - Keep an eye on health and end and don't go too overboard DPSing in a group. Don't get too hung up on the buffs, once you get a routine down, it really becomes abit more about your DPS/Control pairing.

Also, if you go Cor, pick up Vengeance. This monkey-business (pardon the pun) will get put down soon enough, and the harder longer battles will come around again.

Fire/kin's are a dime a dozen on both sides. TBH sounds like you need an AR/Kin or Ice/Kin corrupter. Sonic is pretty nifty too at times, esp if you're going to be more TF/SF oriented.

It's honestly pretty hard to go wrong with any kind of kin, epically coupled with a top tier nuke, as kins have the easiest time recovering from the crash.