Seldom

The trick with purple sets is that because of their extreme rarity, they need to have as broad a use as possible. Otherwise you end up with purples that dilute the pool that can only be used by more specific sets, making the more 'valuable' ultra-rares rarer. It also makes them a little less rewarding, as it's a disappointment when a player geta an 'ultra-valuable' recipe only to find they cannot use it, and it isn't actually so valuable.

With this in mind, I have no idea why we have not seen a defense/resist/heal set yet, as all character have ways of using those, and these are just as valuable (if not more so) to most characters as the damage/mez sets.

Taking cues from the purple pet set, which covers both recharge intensive and standard pet sets, I hope if they add in said sets there are no 'accurate' sets. Instead, purple sets that happen to have accuracy possibilities. That way, there's less dilution.

My most versatile:

Mind/Psi/Soul permadom, with teleport/stealth/flight

• Has every possible control power in the game, from soft to hard. Hold,fear,stun, immobilize, confuse, sleep, stun, repel, knock. (up) Almost all powers in a consistent magnitude that can lock down anything but a giant monster or Hamidon. (Or reichsman) Add a second control character, and it can lock down giant monsters.
• Has significant self-preservation in drain psyche, if played well. a Mind/ can group enemies up with telekenisis or confusion, then get a saturated drain psyche, which can be permanent given targets.
• Has very good damage, in multiple types, specializing in psychic but has neg. energy and smashing for resistant foes. Ranged, melee, AoE, it has something for each situation.
• Has a means of heightened damage with soul drain
• has a means of excellent stealth, [stealth+freebirdstealth] and can control entire groups from invisibility. This means that foes that could usually see can invisible characters can be put to sleep or turned against each other, using aggro-less controls. Can bring teams past troublesome content with ease.
• has a very good debuff vs. hard targets in drain psyche, which can be permanent if it hits every time.

Its weakness is that it has only indirect team assistance, either by damage, control, or regen debuffs. It is excellent at just about every active damage mitigation, however.

Crab soldier, as mentioned earlier. (especially with leadership pool)

• High defense capabilities, resists mez, resists all damage types
• strong aoe attacks in a variety of damage types possibile
• strong and constant team buffs
• Strong self-heal
• Many diversionary possibilities possible through many pets and a pseudo-pet bomb.
• strong debuff tied into its attacks chain

Weaknesses: light on burst damage, particularly against hard targets. High endurance costs, weak vs. defense debuffs, endurance drains.

Kin/elec defender, electric mastery and leadership pools

• Strong buffing ability
• Strong debuffs
• Excellent endurance drain, can stop all incoming damage with 2-3 sapping powers.
• Multiple holds
• Excellent damage

Weaknesses: low hitpoints, lacks mez protection, significant defenses. Lacks defensive buffs for team.

Bots/forcefield mastermind with medicine/leadership/mace mastery

• Can 'tank.'
• Has good damage
• Has excellent survivability
• Brings the team excellent survivability
• Pets boost survival, bring debuffs and a few soft controls
• Brings mez protection to the team, self,pets
• Can heal small ammounts of damage that penetrate shields
• Can neuter melee enemies with force bubble, control enemy positions with it
• Has a good self-heal on top of strong personal defenses.

Weaknesses: lacks burst damage, direct damage, and strong debuffs.

Hehe.

Even the questions were worded wrongly. A good friend of mine is a clinical psychologist, and the way the questions were phrased would be enough to make the guy chuckle, much less the 'diagnosis.'

Hey, internet poll is just that. A silly, meaningless thing to take then laugh at.
Haha! It says I'm not crazy.

....I've known that for years. Harvey tells me every day. You've met my friend Harvey, yes?

Hmmm.....


Disorder / Rating
...............................
Paranoid: Moderate
Schizoid: Moderate
Schizotypal: High
Antisocial: Low
Borderline: Low
Histrionic: Low
Narcissistic: Low
Avoidant: Low
Dependent: Low
Obsessive-Compulsive: Low

Man. I'm way more normal than I or the voices ever thought. Happy day!

A very skewed user here says Mind/. Confuses for turning nasty SF surprises against themselves, sleeps vs. av's, holds vs. anythings, and a good range of stackability. Also can prep problem groups with 3 aggro-less powers. Special note: the aggro-less powers work when invisible without revealing you, making you the ultimate ghoster.

I like /psi as it's a handy debuff vs. the final av's, and boost survival as well.

What if it's a godmode power similar to those we see in Ramiel's arc, and are craftable using just one component and some shards, but with a trick: the effects are truly overpowering, but last only so long (10-15 mins) and are used up in the process?

So you can be untouchable, but you can only be so by using what you've earned in 1-2 sf's, and it's temporary.

Huh. Actually, if they did that I'd be very interested in seeing what they made the omega incarnate trial like.

I am a recovering altoholic. Recent developments on non-tradeable progress have made me refocus onto my favorite characters, getting them to 50 and incarnating them. But there are still so many new combos to try, concepts to play.

35 characters on champion, 18 on protector, then the unfortunate 'set asides' moved to other less played servers for space on the aforementioned two. These number around 20, poor souls.

The day they let characters move freely across servers is the day my altitis inlfames like a pyro at a fireworks factory.

Looking at the numbers, if you look at slotted shields the 'little bubbles' make up three-fifths of the defense numbers. This is deceptive, because the difference in survival between a 12% chance of not getting hit and a 30% chance of not getting hit is big.

Ignoring numbers, I know for a fact my Bots/ff mastermind rolls with the toughest, most durable pets in the game with little bubbles up. I also know that if I slack and let those go down, I will start losing pets where I would never before. The fact that they can go an entire mission with minimal healing set at +1/x8 tells me the little bubbles help a ton.

If I'm on a team, I know that if I keep those up people will need to be healed far and away less often, meaning that my team can do more difficult things, or just work faster as they don't need to hold back as much.

If two little powers constitute 3/5ths of the direct contribution a forcefielder can contribute, should they use them? Yes. No if's, or's, or but's. You have a big way to help your team, and it is these powers. Defense rigs dice on the chance of being hit, and if you're not wanting to rig those dice, you are not looking after your team as well as you could.

This would not be so big if it weren't for the rest of forcefield. While other sets offer side benefits, many of the other forcefield tricks have less direct, and far less prolonged benefits in normal circumstances.

Forcebolt makes many foes less of a threat for its knock duration, but they are the same threat again in seconds. Replusion field, same thing. Detention removes a foe, but protects them too. So it just puts off a threat rather than removing it. Repulsion bombs nullifies threats for a few moments, and helps with damage, but has a lower prolonged effect as well. Personal forcefield nullifies 2/5ths of your defense assistance to your team, but helps you. If just you surviving but removing defense/mez shields from friends is useful in a situation this is big, but in standard combat this is less useful. Force bubble does help a lot, keeping foes at range, and allowing for players to decide where they want their enemies to be.

The thing is, the majority of prolonged survival assistance that you get from forcefields is found centered in 3-4 powers. You can help by knocking things around, but that requires a lot of direct interaction and observation, helping friends in moments while layering defense would help them for longer times and not be hampered by mistiming and location.

With traps around, there's an option for those that like the big bubble but not bubbling. For non-bubblers, this is even better in some ways as it won't go down when you snooze, and offers many other fun toys to be preoccupied with.

Simply put, people get upset with forcefielders that don't bubble just because they aren't helping the team as much as they could, and because the help they could be giving requires very little skill or bother. Just 2 animation per team every 4 minutes? In a game that often requires powers to be clicked over and over sometimes seconds apart, this is not a big inconvenience, and just shows the player is less concerned with those they are assisting. They're the empath that skipped its buffs just for heals alone. They're ignoring some really nice tools.

Hm. Good point. I wonder, though, if there's a way to make a 'unresistable' phase that can apply even to phased targets? This, if possible, would make a toggle workable. The only issue is that it runs to the issue of bypassing the few eneemies that are supposed to be phase resistant, which could be termed an exploit. Also, phase enhancements would not longer be needed. (Even in a 'normal' toggle they add mag, but an 'unresistable' thing, if it would work, would make this moot.)

I wonder if there's a way to do something like this: 10 second effect duration, three pulses every ~10 seconds that check . 5 seconds apart to see if the target is phased. If so, they phase. If not, they do nothing. This could be a lag issue, but would mean that there's a way past server discrepancies and phase durations to keep the effect. At worst case, if it gave no performance issues, it would mean that there would be small holes in the coverage and a delay when untoggled, but that still seems preferable as a control that you can set the duration on (aside from the 30 seconds) and have active with one application. *Shrugs*

Dimensional shift: I always thought that phasing powers would be amasingly powerful, but for one portion: The lack of control on duration.

So what if dimensional shift became a timed targeted AoE autohit toggle, with an associated mag 50 immobilize?

This solves a couple issues:
1 As a toggle, you can release the foes as soon as you're ready to deal with them. Team ready to kill them? Just un-toggle.
2. As a mag 50 immobilize, you won't have the issue of immobilize-resistant phased runners.
3. As a timed toggle, you cannot remove foes from a fight indefinitely, so they will be a threat at some point. I was thinking 30 seconds? As toggles only begin recharging when they deactivate, this becomes a balance point as well. You have greater control over duration, but can't remove foes 100% of the time.
4. As an autohit toggle, you are guaranteed to capture your targets. However, they are still immune to you, so it can't be exploited. When they become un-phased, you will have to deal with them.

I am currently having a lot of fun on my fire/fire. The damage blooms well, just got my rain of fire from the ancillary pool. I can't wait to finish him up with the whole slotted/unlocked rain of fire/fireball/rise of phoenix/fire armor kit. It really does feel like a blaster who happens to have pets and holds, and can be very versatile. Once he's 50, he will have a whole bunch of sets he can use to amp him up even more.

A less common suggestion, but still a fun one, is a plant/earth dom. Seeds as an opener, and creepers for distraction, it's a very forgiving combo that allows you to clonk things on the head or in the face with giant mallets or boulders. Plus, the soft controls of /earth can help plant/ as it's a bit vulnerable if seeds doesn't stick well.

Crabs are a fun 'sit back obliterating waves of foes without a care in the world' archetype. Heck, when you build it right it's on par with a tank's survivability in most circumstances.

The only thing I have to be careful about is getting cocky- the majority of the 'imperviousness' comes from defense, so when something hits my defense down, I have to remember how squishy I am underneath. Thankfully, I've usually killed them and all their buddies by then using bullets, lasers, explosives, toxins, and robot spiders.

P.S. Sorry, but he's still not as good as my Mind/psy permadom. But he does indeed rawk something special.

The big thing with a tier 4 is that it ignores the enhancement cap by two thirds. So while a tier 3 gives you a around a spare dual origin's worth enhancement if the value is capped, a tier 4 +45% gives you a spare SO worth.

The tier 4 'only' gives you a +1 combat rank, as it cannot stack with any other alpha. Only one can be active at once after all.

An empath who understands their powers, and a good /sonic are two favorites of mine.

Many empaths just don't 'get' that they're good for more than just healing, or heal+clear mind. I LOVE when only those without mez protection sport the clear mind, the blaster gets fortitude not the tank, and the character with the best powers on a long recharge or player with worst endurance issues gets the adrenalin boost.

Sonic is kind of different in that it's so very simple, but so undervalued. Defense is powerful, but in a game with more bad luck strings than some would admit, resists have their own value; especially when it's far more likely to have a team member with defense to stack with. Resists and defense together? golden. Plus I love the streamrolling that happens with all the -res. The funky thing with sonic is that it doesn't announce it's self. Defense gets its 'deflected!,' and a mob unloading on you with none hitting. "wow!" team members say, these bubbles are awesome! When you magically do 30% more damage, and a mob cuts you to half health, rather than death? Well, you just must be awesome enough to dish damage and take it. It really is a 'quietly' awesome set. (Yes, sonic is 'quietly awesome. ha. ha. Irony.)

My first villain on this account was a dominator, (at issue 6 launch) after playing on CoV beta on a shared account where the archetype was fun enough to convince me to get my own account. She was my first 50, and remains my 'main' character. The journey has indeed been interesting.

I find a lot of the hyperbole of revamps came from one very focused fact; stacked domination on a perma-dom, especially on a top-heavy /psy, was capable of extreme craziness. Players with it did not want to let go. Yet when I exemplared down to do a pre-PSW, or even pre-subdue level it was not a fun time. I'd be on teams with dominators, more than half always being /psy, complaining as their team members said "Just hang in there until 38!"

It was plain that the balance was a bit off-kilter.
Looking at things now, it's pretty clear, it wasn't just the damage boost that made dominators fun- the fact that the secondaries are now based around a normalized point rather than the dom up/down means they all seem more balanced. I love exemplaring with my dominator now. She's fun at any level. Sure, the lack of certain cool powers is there, but she's always capable.

...And you know what? I don't see just huge number of /psy doms. /Earth. /Thorns. /Energy. /Electric. /Ice. Yes, /Psy. All have their own advantages, and good reasons to play. People can find a good reason to choose any of them, and they won't have to be cringing until level 38.

Yes, I also have to admit the ancillary/patron pools have done wonders. At first they had the generic patron pool setup. Then a more diverse, nuanced setup as extra powers appropriate to them were added. Now the ancillary pools are in. You want AoE? You've got it. Debuffs? Sure. Armors? go for it. With a more balanced archetype, you can choose well between a good variety of new strength specializations.

Cheers, devs. You made a fun archetype, then you made every flavor of it fun, at just about any time.

To be honest, self-resurrection powers are balanced around a couple of assumptions that this request bypasses.

For starters, many are so strong because they are meant to tilt the tables in your favor, because the tables were tilted against you enough to kill you. They are not a buff, they are a rebound. 'Rebounding' from peek strength is not a rebound.

Secondly, they are all in armor sets. The sets have 8 other powers doing their best to keep you alive-the self-resurrects are a designed exception, a power that is not supposed to stack with the other 8, not taken into account for normal survival. Adding another layer of self-preservation that was not supposed to be there makes those armor sets operate completely differently. To be honest, if willpower had a heal with all its regen, regeneration had three heals, dark armor an extra heal/stun WITH +endurance, and fire armor had a massive nuke of damage that was also a second heal/+endurance mechanism, it would break these power sets' performance.

As such, the sets and/or powers would have to be rebalanced for regular access to these abilities, to the point that they wouldn't be strong enough to carry the character back in a killing situation. In short, resurrection powers would stop being good at just that, a single power strong enough to bring the player back from death.

It's not a good plan, and would be more trouble than it's worth. Like them or not, resurrects are a second chance mechanism, placed in sets that are less about a 'winning button' and more about using all other tools to stay alive.

Fire/Fire is a very fun combo. The kind of thing that lets you set so very much stuff on fire that you can't help but cackle with glee. But some things to keep in mind; immobilizes come early, but should be used late in your character. They are dangerous to you, and will grab more attention than you can often cope with. Flashfire is what makes the Aoe immobilize useful- stunned foes wander, so flashfire+fire cages=a hold.

Flashfire will often be the only thing to keep you alive, especially against larger groups. Take it ASAP, slot it to the gills.

Play smart, burn what you can kill fast, lock what you can't. You will be very squishy for a while, but after 38 when you have lots of slots, good enhancement value, and all your big attacks you will feel the power in full...and that's before you get ancillary/patron pools to boost your AoE/damage/survival even more.

Fire/fire is a squishy, powerful aggro magnet. It's best when you know just how much flack you and your enemies can take, and can time/position your powers for maximum effect. Because there is very little margin of error between you standing over them in triumph, and you waving hello as you pass the hospital nurse. Candy, target choices, and power order decisions all come into play. And the early frustrations with a still developing character, combat missteps, and the intimacy with the various flavors of flooring make the combo all the more enjoyable once you gain the upperhand, and the play becomes natural and fast. It's very satisfying and fun.

Mind/ on dominators all about control, but does not do much direct damage. Confusion bypasses this by letting enemies 'help,' but it is at its core all about enemy manipulation rather than enemy defeats. It has 4 1/2 AoE controls to cycle through, 2 of which are readily available but 'breakable.' It also has 3 aggro-less powers, making it very good at enemy pre-mez before a fight. Its single target controls are fast and diverse, allowing a one-hit boss sleep, a fast hold, a fast boss KU, a long-lasting confuse. If something resists one effect, you can use another.

Fire/ is a hybrid, helping kill things faster but by doing so, it trades a lot of control. It has only one fast standby AoE mez, (flashfire) and its backup AoE is the close-range hold. It only has one single target 'stop attacking!' power. So for actual lockdown powers, you will only have 3. In addition, you get a kb patch for area denial if you wish, a -perception to reduce outside mob additions (less reliable than a sleep) and two flavors of immobilize. It's actually pretty scant on control, to be honest. But when you have a massive fiery aura boosted by embrace of fire, a trio of happy burning imps slashing at your foes, and orange numbers pouring about, you'll 'get' it. This is not the set to stand back and observe your helpless foes. You are in a race to destroy your enemies before they can rouse themselves and kill you.

With perma-domination, no other archetype in this game can compete with the level of control Mind/ can bring. Permanently sleep archvillains. Hold them. Confuse them. But you'll still not be killing things that much faster. You'll just be living longer, if not indefinitely. (Depending on how alert/well timed you are.) Fire/ on the other hand gets to use flashfire a lot more often, for longer durations. As such, your race for survival will be a lot more one-sided to your favor. You won't be able to face against big enemies as well as Mind/, but your flashfire being stronger and faster means you can pick up the pace wasting mobs.

In teams, scourge means that your attacks are extremely effective as follow-ups. If you're on a team with a good number of AoE's they use, and you have buffs/debuffs, use an the beginning moments to use your secondary or use single target attacks on the 'hard' targets. When your team lets loose their AoE, follow up with yours for a good chance at finishing things far quicker.

Not something you'll do in every circumstance, mind you, but a good thing to keep in mind.

P.S. scourge=love when fighting AV's/Heroes/Gian Monsters. The more the hitpoints, the more time you spend doing double damage. They are one of the best, if not the best, team members archetypes for those fights for this reason.

I'd love for there to be free transfers, but I'd even more prefer a system that allowed over-server teaming that allowed names and VG/SG statuses to remain intact.

I have multiple friends that play on multiple servers. There are many times I catch myself saying "I'd love to do [X activity with friend] as Y character, but they're on Z server!" Transfering them just to play means losing a name/renaming, and losing all SG/VG status.

A cross-server teaming system would be preferable. Before then, free transfers all the way.

Objective: the head size for all female beasts is visibly smaller than comparative male head to body ratios.

Scrolling through the costume sets, there does not seem to be a predefined minotaur/lion/tiger/etc set in place as of yet.

Subjective: some very good modeling done here. Though I do not lean toward animal characters, this pack has me tempted.

Female head sizes seem scaled to the necks, while male heads seem scaled to sit on the necks. this means that even at the largest head size, females' beast heads seem incongruous with their bodies.