Seldom

For just a low budget, crabs are probably going to give you the smoothest arachnos ride. They feature decent defense, with good resistance and intermittent healing for what gets through. It's very tough and forgiving, so much so that you can off-tank at times. Throw in a selection of ranged damage, melee damage, pets, and a huge variety of aoe, and you can make them work a good many different ways. That said, I've personally found the ranged is better without melee, especially the ranged AoE. The pets are well worth it as well.

As to doms vs. spiders- choose your poison. Spiders rely more on passive toggles for protection, with mostly damage as their main concern. Their role is to be there and blow stuff up. Doms rely on active controls for survival, so they require more thought. That said, you will have more predictable survival with control than on a defense based AT like spiders.

Spiders: toggle up, shoot stuff.
Doms: Find highest threat, lock down if possible. Use AoE control, kill things before they break free. If AoE control is unavailable, focus fire on easiest to eliminate targets, locking down others.

Ice/Ice- unconventional control, slowing secondary. Not an offensive juggernaut, but does okay. Ice/ has more soft control than hard lockdown, so it's a tricky set to start on. Do not combine your immobilize with your ice patch.

Fire/Fire Dominator: fun to play, but lets you taste the dirt around the world. This is a blaster that happens to have a couple controls- do yourself a favor and do not take your immobilizes until later. I cannot think of anything alse in-game that can spread as much fire around as a fire/fire/fire dom. Excellent for your inner pyro, but the combo of short controls+damage means you'll be fighting the tank for aggro without trying. Excellent with a good team to back you up, squishy to the end. Late to mature, but once it's there it's a damage machine with some decent tricks.

Earth/Fire- one of the safest, best "just SO" primaries with the highest offense secondary. This would be an excellent starter, in my opinion. It doesn't need billions to become gold, but extra investment when you can won't be lost, either, as it does have space to grow.

Plant/Fire- another excellent starter- more damaging, but still safe, with good damage on the side. Only negative is that plant lumps much of its controls into a few primary powers that you live and die on, but they're good enough to let you live on 'em. This one starts fast, but doesn't grab as many game-changers later because of it.

As for spiders, that's another forum. Crabs are kings of ranged AoE tankage, huntsman are a bit squishier but more rounded.

mass confuse- (bonus if it's with domination) Nothing like the entire team coming to a halt at the sight of an overpowering, team-wipe worthy spawn, only to pop domination and turn this sucker loose as the tough foes dissolve into each other.

Drain Psyche- Makes my dom into a /regen dom.

Rain of arrows- bonus points if you have boost range, aim, and buildup to pair with it.

Cloak of Fear: something about standing amongst a crowd of sniveling, shuddering fools as I kill them one by one.

Dark regeneration: 1% hp? More than enough. *sucks life back to 100%* Ahhhh....

Footstomp: BOOM!

Energy Transfer: BOOM!

Short Circuit: Oh I'm sorry, did you misplace your will to fight? There, stand/run around, perfectly useless, please. Thanks!

Assassin strike: good enough to make playing a squishy scrapper TOTALLY worth it.

I don't see too many other EM/dark brutes, my 'main' brute's combo. He can stun stuff silly, and has very good burst damage. That said, it's the only combo out there with two self-damage powers.

Many don't like the changed EM/ attacks- as much as I loved the superfast energy transfer, the new one does have a cool 'Oomph!' when it hits with high fury and and a buildup. Energy melee does need good timing, especially on teams. The big attacks are slow, so they should only be used on hard targets, or full health squishy stuff.

I do love this set's theme

I would not want weaken/envenom into AoE's- that just makes the set into a clicky radiation. Performance-wise, I'd love to have a set with highly concentrated debuffs that, though limited, is 'king of the hill' at turning singular entities into jelly. There are more than enough debuff sets that handle the group debuff job.

The odd thing with the set is that usually when a group of abilities do not offer protective mitigation, they offer a way to kill targets faster. In other words, you get the long, safe fight sets or the fast, 'skin of your teeth' fights. Poison is not very strong in the former OR latter. Extremely limited control/buff mitigation, AND limited offensive debuffs.

This is again why I'd go back to a functional sleep trap and improving envenom vs. hard targets being the perfect balance for the set- it maintains both. Sleeping foes mean that if you engage them, you break your mitigation. So from the offense side, sleep barely exists. It's continually broken by your attacks. An improved envenom means that your singular target will die far faster- without sleep as a mitigation, you are operating on the 'kill it fast' method of balance, sans much mitigation. But when you aren't attacking stuff, you are operating on the 'long and safe' method, as it offers no method of killing them faster. Hm. For this to work, I'd actually add a tiny DoT to envenom, ensuring that which is weakened cannot rest.

Noxious gas is your 'ultimate' debuff, so I have no issues with poison getting more consistently available AoE debuffage at its final level- but you look at it, it's still far more limited than other AoE debuffs. (10 targets vs. the standard 16) The AoE debuff is just the cone slow and this toggle, close to a pet. (On who its presence depends) That's none too overpowering, especially considering your biggest debuffs are one target at a time. Still, giving it a very minor toxic DoT to break the improved sleep trap would follow suit with 'kill it fast' theme. (oh, and completely remove the hold. A mag 1000 hold, however unpredictable, completely throws off the balance formulas.)

So in a standard fight with all powers present, a poisoner could take on a huge crowd, but they'd have to be careful. Everything they debuffed to be easier to kill would fight back- everything they were not attacking would sleep harmlessly. The more they engaged, the more danger the mastermind would be in-- but by focusing their assault they could cherry-pick target whilst other rested. Slower, but safer. And facing a full mob on a big team, they could still protect the team well enough when things went bad.

Also: Ninja masterminds.


Hint: their Lt. assassin strike can bypass resistance vs. a targetable foe. And dummies can be targeted. Hmmm...

1. Yes.
2. $10-$15, $30 if it completely changed how I used a base, ungated to VG/SG members.
3. Steampunk, Longbow military, Council military, Cave, Arachnos, Praetorian lab.
4. At the $10 dollar mark, a pack with wall/floor/ceiling textures to one theme, 10-20 decorative items, and one major functional item. (trainer, AE portal, rep contact, enhancement store, market interface, costume editor, recipe storage, etc.) At the $15 price point, 2 full texture sets, ~20 items, 2 functional items. At $30, You'd better have at least 4 good texture sets, 2-3 full new decoritive category's worth of items, and 3-5 of the 'best' base usage items.

I don't mind the fighting- they need to strike a balance between "he's still Thor, but is de-powered" and "he's still Thor, but is de-powered."

That said, the bow and arrow cameo seems pretty extraneous to the scene as it is teased.

I get the feeling that 'freeform' AT's would have to end up just being 'hidden' archetypes, with pre-formed AT mods, caps, stats and inherent powers assigned for certain combination. Pick buff/debuff primary, blast secondary? You get vigilance, and defender stats. Melee primary/armor secondary? You choose an inherent between stealth kills, fury, or critical hits. It could be fun, but would inevitable produce HUGE amounts of work on the powers team.

This gives balance issues that have not come up- from the more obvious buff & debuff/melee combo, or the oft-suggested blast/armor-- to the far trickier buff & debuff /armor or pet/control.

Siphon power and siphon speed, are numerically two of the best anti-AV powers IN THE GAME. Why? Both are entirely unresisted by standard AV resistances. Av's resist most debuffs by over 80%. But they do not resist -damage, and siphon speed is flagged as unresistable, so both powers have full effect. On just SO's, siphon power can cut AV damage by 50-75%, siphon speed can reduce attack rates by 40%. If you play kinetics and do not use these two powers in an AV fight, you are neglecting to protect yourself and your team. If you replace siphon power with fulcrum shift, you hamstring a kinetics vs. hard targets.

Repel, like it or not, is a soft control power. Is it 'meh?' Yes, perhaps purposefully so. It offers impermanent soft control that is also dangerous. Look at the rest of the set, and the living on the edge is part of the them. One of the most powerful heals, a full endurance refill that can also drain, two very strong damage buffs, this is the best mitigation they can throw without making the powers go out of whack. It's also a counterbalance-you can leech off a foe at close range for the greatest power, but far less safety, or you can turn this sucker on for more mitigation, but it makes leeching power more difficult.

Inertial reduction is a theme power, and it's another one of those purposefully 'eh.' powers. Kinetics has a ton of really good powers, this is a flavor/convenience one. It's actually very handy to give to speedster team members in bumpy zones, and allows the kinetics a more vertical option to their fast horizontal one. (siphon speed.) As to replacing it with a -resistance power: you will never have in the same set a power that allows you cap you and your team's damage with a power that lets it bypass that cap.

Speed boost is a powerful team buff, and has naught to do with the balance of siphon speed, as has been noted. The movement bonus is a theme thing. If it were made to be targeted, it would become unreliable. If you made it multi-target, it would be weaker/shorter in duration to balance. It would also make its use in a team far less fluid, and FAR more annoying "GATHER FOR SB PLZ! GATHER! GATHER!" Please no.

Hmmmm...so if the devs found from datamining that some interface procs were too strong or weak, they could easily tweak them and most gamers would be none the wiser?

Naaaahh.

My basic view of the /poison set: it seems to sacrifice mitigation for highly concentrated debuffs. But its 'Highly concentrated debuffs' are often on the same level as the AoE's of dark, traps, and radiation. Its trap seems to be its mitigation tool, but the trap has no real mitigation past its first release. (the sleep doesn't tick or remain, so when it's broke, it's broke. The mobs have to be fully drained of endurance to be neutralized by end drain.)

Making the unstackable debuff unresistable makes it FAR better against AV's, and fixing the trap to be reliable but delicate mitigation give some longevity to the set.

Making the final AoE debuff constant means you have better, but still limited, debuffage vs. multiple targets.

I'll repost what I've said before:

• Envenom: Make the -defense 50%-75% unresistable in its effect. Same to the -resistance if possible. As these are unstackable, this is fine, but makes the set catch up significantly to be good vs. AV's. I'd even remove the stackability of the -regen, but make it completely unresistable.
• Poison trap. [renamed to Leeching trap, or something along those lines, removing dual name confusion] Give it range, a pulsing sleep cloud, and a heavy -recovery, and a medium -end. This gives it an immediate "Oh no! sleep, stop attacking!" as well as a way to slowly sap mobs into weary ineffectualness. So if you are steamrolling, the soft control gives slight but not complete coverage, if you need to play safe, it will get you there with a bit of time. This covers the group weakness while preserving the single-target nature of most offensive debuffs. The ranged drop is consistant with the ranged nature of all the rest of the set. Visual: The player prepares a gob, throws it out to a targeted location, which when tread upon explodes releasing the aforementioned cloud. Interrupt is shortened, and placed in the 'preparing gob" stage.
• Noxious Gas: This needs to be a toggle, plain and simple. Even if its power is reduced, or the hold portion is removed, this is a level 38 power with a 45 second effect on a 300 second recharge that has a 10 target cap, and it dies if your pet (which has to be at close range) dies. It deserves to have more of a presence in a poisoner's career.

In general, the defender will be safer. Better forcefield, better debuffs, unless the summoned entities are using other values. That said, AR has less debuffage in it, so it looks better in corruptor hands. Scourging full auto....mmmm....

The biggest thing you'll notice early on is that a defender will have all trap toys by 32, but full auto at 38. Other way around for a Corr. The things are VERY close. Defender is more tricksy with the traps, corrs do better damage-especially versus 'hard' targets, where the scourge area is a larger timeframe than usual.

It's your call. The defender will be survivable very quickly, the corr will start killing things earlier. Past that, it's shades of grey in offense/defense.

A fun little quote from an incarnate trial run, to my mind/ dom:

"Confuse more plz!"

They didn't have to tel me twice, but were refering to a Vickie that escaped the mass confusion. Still, it gave me a chuckle after all the silliness I've come across on the "Don't confuse! NPC's kill steal!" end.

I'd been hoping for a LONG time for multi-team missions. I have more buddies in-game than fit in one group, so a multi-team setup would allow them to join on in. The headscratcher for me is that most of the new stuff is along with a 'Hardcore' new direction. (Well, not 'new,' just a higher progression from the recluse/states TF's.) My characters that are IO'd to the gills with ultra-rare alphas and all that stuff died pretty often but can still kick butt.

Basically, stuff that will kick my more laid-back/casual in-game buddies' tushes more often then not, leaving them feeling defeat, frustrated, and incompetent.

They're used to normal missions where we can joke around and take names in 'normal' content, and the new stuff turn into "Serious bizniz: YOU WILL DIE, foo! Get on the ground an give me 20...temps in 5 minutes against +4's! Go! Go! Go!" It makes me think the devs are tailoring to the speed runner tf crowd, which my buddies absolutely REFUSE to do. Ah, well. On the plus side, the old TF's story arcs are around, so we do this stuff.

I wonder what the uproar would have been like if the devs just did a league story arc.

From my time in this game, I can can honestly say it strikes me as odd that many are saying that the individual in question should 'Branch out' and 'Meet new faces' through trials- I have to say, in my time in this game the worst places to go to get to know somebody are (1.) farm teams, and (2.) TF's/trials/etc.The farm teams I won't get into, as that's a whole 'nother story. But on trials/TF's, people are many times focused on the objective, and hiccups can be problematic for the team. Add to this that oftentimes it's a set period of time that people disperse from afterwards, and it just hasn't been the best way to know somebody. The new trials are far more rushed, and often more difficult, with frequent failures. Not the happiest place to socialize.

The folks I play with most I've met by teaming up to do random assortments of missions, where there are not start/finish prerogatives, not much pressure when stuff goes awry, and things are simple enough that there's no pressure on those that prefer a more relaxed game experience.

In these cases I'd suggest finding some odd, side content/arcs that don't get used much and play those, through ouroboros if necessary. Likewise the mission architect can be good if you find some fun arcs, or if you take the time to build them. Or, start some new, themed duo to play.

Some fun customizations I've found: Fire/Ice dominator, everything colored a blue-white. Strangely enough, the cold, bright blue make her fire effects cause her to look colder than the /ice does. Her story is that she's from an ice race that bonded with a fallen star, so she manipulates celestial energy. The combination of an ice blue hotfeet with chilling embrace running is visually impacting.

Along the same lines as posted, a green/grey/brown/blackish palette for my steam-punkish dark/dark corruptor, Smognaut. He avoids any skull-themed powers, sticking to the smoky powers. As such, he runs around masked in pure polution, spewing greyish, tannish green puffs of smoke at his foes.

Another fire control switch is my radioactive hazard character, Toxicore. The fire is all a bright, light green palette of the 'dark' customization on fire control. The visual result is a smoky opaque green clouded energy result, the same goes for his secondary, /rad. The combined smoky greenishness with hotfeet/chocking cloud simulated that's he's leaking toxic radiation pretty well.