Seldom

The mag is pretty simple. With 2 instances of domination up, your mag/duration is up there. If you're able to get enough recharge for 3-4 domination stacks, your controls will go through that 50 mag protection pretty fast.

As for damage: they have damage upclose to blasters and scrappers, with the upside of a button that refills all endurance. This means that attack chain endurance monitoring gets a lot easier.

Peersonally? I cheat. Drain psyche turns the AV regen waaaaaaay down, making damage 'stick' longer. That and telekenisis' toggle with a constant stream of multi-domination magnitude hold helps a lot in preventing the AV from breaking loose. Dropping dominate on top makes this look easy.

♪You can also use glyphs!♫

Note: some glyphs work in the mission architect as well. Great for singing characters!
♥

Yeah, they're pretty much equivalent for most of the game.

The order thing is big; by 32 corrupters can have all their blasts. Defenders must wait until 38.

The inverse is true for defenders: a kin/ defender has fulcrum shift at 32. A corrupter must wait 6 more levels.

Also, corrupters are excellent damage dealers vs. hard targets. Scourge triggers after the enemy takes a lot of damage, fine, but that is overkill on minions. But if the enemy is something like an AV, they still have a significant ammount of health to go even at 25% health...at which point the corrupter's scourge starts pounding the nails into the coffin.

*shrugs* I've heard alot of hate for it, some don't like the mechanics of it. I've seen some people run entire missions with flight/superspeed on. This is usually not one of those travel powers. I don't use travel powers in-mish that often (usually) so it never bothered me.

Some people like binds for it, I just keep it on my bottom tray in the second slot, so that "2" is my teleport key. (It's right over my 'w' forward, so it makes sense to me this way.)

It takes some getting used to, but it's fine. Actually, when I have just finished playing my teleporters, I get ancy for it. It's one of those things where I tried it first and then asked on my superspeeders "THIS is fast?"

*edit* actually, one negative I have for it: it has a hover attached to it. When you finish teleporting, you hover slowly for a few moments; for my impatient self, this is a downside from when you could drop and run right after a port. You do NOT need hover with this power, unless you are experiencing substantial performance issues.

See, when you ask about what's "uber," it's such a broad scope that you won't get a straight answer, unsless those folks are limiting their discussion to odd outsiders like "what farms well" "or "What solos pylons."

For instance: my list of 'uber combos?'

Bots/FF/leadership/fighting/medicine/mace mastermind: an army of untouchable robots backed by a leader that can make the team just as untouchable. And anti-mezwith some health recovery to boot. On SO's it's as tough as a softcapped tank, with the bonus of team survival on aggro dispersion through pets.

Kin/Elec 'sapper' defender: drains stuff dry. seriously, he can make sure a giant monster puts out 0 damage indefinetly. That's right, 0. No end=no damage.

Mind/Psi dom: With enough recharge, it can shut down almost any enemy in the game, including archvillains. and against them, the -regen is there to make them die faster as well. Basically won't mow stuff down, but it makes sure no team has to worry about stuff.

Arch/energy blaster: death from afar. Seriously. Just taking the /energy boosts, this combo can hang in the back 'nuking' from snipe distance with ease. It doesn't need to get its hands dirty.

Crab/leadership/fighting Soldier: The illegitmate child of a tanker, blaster, and mastermind rolled into one. Three times more ranged AoE attacks than single target, group buffs/debuffs, armor, dull pain, mez protection, and pets. This one is amazing just for the bevy of things it does well with impunity.

Illusion/Empathy controller: No it won't kill your AV. No it won't solo a farm in record times. But it sure as heck will keep a team safe! Having distraction galore paired with the excellent team buffs makes this combo capable of making the team last through thick and thin, once it's matured.

Can't believe I forgot this, but the 'tarzan' animation used for some armor toggles, like 'integration' is ill-fitting on some characters.

Assasin strikes...an animation that is less-squatting, more striking. if indeed the character must 'go low,' make it more of the one leg back 'ninja run' low than the squatting stance.

Dual pistols: the animations are sleek, but a less active range of animation would be good for some characters. Heavily armored, older, old-west etc. characters look odd doing the gun-kata dances. Might they be boring? maybe. But people would be choosing to be boring.

For primaries in just the number sense I'd go sonic/ or dark/.

Sonic attacks softens targets, dark blast makes them hold still and connect less. Pistols' -damage debuff is also good for av's on chem rounds, as they don't resist the -damage.

...or you can go archery/Fire blast for better mob damage.

For secondaries /cold has some nice shields and debuffs. /Dark has excellent debuffs, good control, and good healing. /Radiation softens big targets into the ground.

That's for sf's in general. For the ITF, /cold is monsterous as it can greatly reduce the healing of the healing nictus along with its usual skills.

heh. I remember after a 'Mayor' of Champ was elected I saw said individual mention it in broadcast...followed by a majority of the locals responed with variations of the following:

"?"
"Wait, there's a mayor?"
"What's a Mayor do?"
"Who are you?"
"LOL"

Such a title has as much gravity as the players ascribe to it, and since the duties/power are nada, that starts low. As 'elections' go from the forums, and those checking the game forums (much less the champ forums) are a small subset, I never quite got why the title was thought up.

But hey, if somebody wants it, take it. It's a good conversation starter!*

*I cannot comment on the quality of said conversations. :-P

P. S. Whilst titles are being decided, I humbly** nominate myself for the position of "Cheif inquisitor of Ice Cream."

**humbly may or may not be ironic in said case. Who can tell? Not me! I'm too jaw-droppingly wonderific!

I'm still working on mine. (level 27)

I don't know, I like it. I've generally not gotten into ice powers as much, but icy assault is pretty good. It's definetly a generalist set. I'm reeeeeeeeaaaly looking forward to the double slow auras for kicks. It lacks mitigation of its own, but powerboost helps the primary make up for that.
Since the rebalancing, there really seems to be no 'bad' secondary on doms.

Fire/ still has it squishiness before things are well developed, but it's definetly good on damage.

It doesn't seem a 'leet' build so far, not making records for defeat times or total control, but it's fun. That's what matters, right?

Well, don't the stone cages stop knockback? That makes you able to control when or when not to knockback targets with TK thrust on the earth/psi. *shrugs* If indeed that matters.

The Mind/earth gets four holds, on a toggle, with powerboost. that makes in very possibly the king of ST control.

Other than that, /Psi seems slightly better for range/AOE, while /earth wins out on its ST close damage.

Some people need to get out of the number crunching and into the game. Honest fact:

Scrappers and blasters can do about the same damage. Brutes somewhere near there too.

However...melee vs. blasters: most melee archetypes cap targets at 10. Blasters can hit 16. Melee usually has a range of 7'. Blasts have 80'. Most blaster's aoe is 30' in diameter. Most melee is 16'. Melee cones? 7'. Blast cones? 40'.

The places blasters fall behind is where they lack the Aim+build Up combo. when they do that, it's tough to compete with them. They can get a 162.5% damage boost before touching anybody with the highest dmage scales overall of any AT.

It's true that corruptors can get further ahead...I know my rad/kin is absoluteley devastating. The trick is twofold, however; corrupters always need to aggro before hitting their highest damage. Also, whatever a corrupter can do effects the team...so in a team situation, anywhere there's a corruptor/defender, the blaster on the team is greatly ourgunning them and any scrapper, brute, or whatever around.

This belies a little-appreciated blaster strength. Anytime a blaster is on a team, they are almost by rule the best to be buffed. Throw that fortitude on the scrap, or the blaster? Duh. The blaster goes from 'glass cannon' to higher damage, high defense cannon. Any shield power is better used on them; while melee survives well on its own, just about any ranged can hit more targets faster than their melee brethren, and blasters start way sooner. The weakness of 'no defenses' gets patched up? Fuggetabout it.

Seriously, if you have some good buffs, a spare blaster on a team will help speed through big mobs faster than a melee archetype.

Note: the above is based upon my experience with fire/mental, archery/energy, and assault rifle/energy blasters.

1. Power/ancillary/patron pool customization
2. AE rating/search revamp
3. More 50+ content in lieu of the alpha functionality
4. Pie in the sky: ability to play on multiple servers with single characters at no extra charge
5. Ability to add event/dialogue triggers to AE missions
6. Ability to specify ally/enemy placement in AE missions

I did one of these in an attempt for the master badge, and nobody seemed to have the answer to this. I asked about it, and it took some time for the blasters who said they got the anti-phase to realize that the powers were from their khan runs, so they didn't know. I didn't remember to ask when they got the patron temps which they got as a temp.

I can't think of a single character that is 'locked out' of content by sheer ability, honestly.

If you're talking about ease, I'd offer my personal choice: a Mind/Psi/concealment permadom. The invisibility of a stalker, the ability to completeley negate targeted ambushes, and capable of good damage whilst controller all but a GM solo.

Special abilities include the ability to turn problem enemies to your side, destroy regeneration rates, sleep/confuse foes that see through stealth without aggroing them, and control 2-3 mobs worth of enemies spawned for an 8 member team with impunity.
Note: the previous statement is highly biased.

Actually, I've found Mind/ to be the best stealther in-game, due to aforementioned no-aggro controls.

This is for the stealthy approach: for the front-on approach, scrappers and brutes can solo huge ammounts of the game without breaking a sweat, and masterminds can be strong enough that normally challenging content becomes tedious it's so easy.

The game is not hard, most of it is capable of being beaten on base difficulty by even the lowest defense/offense character. The question then becomes about handling the few percent parts of the game that under normal standards assumes multiple players. In such cases, stalker swould not be my first pick. (especially with Rikti/Knives/Nemesis/ambushes.)

/Earth is going to be your best bet, with 3 melee attacks, a pBAoE, and a PbAoE damage toggle. 5 powers that work best in enemies' faces.

If that doesn't do it for you, /electric has three melee attacks, but no PbAoE. /Energy, /psy and /icy are in the same boat, but with a PbAoe in place of a melee. Still close range. (Icy does have a close-range toggle too.) /Thorny will give you some better multi-target close range options.

In general, doms have around three attacks that require you to be in the thick of things, so melee is a good option in almost all times anywise.

For primaries, fire/ has a damage toggle/group hold that need you in the middle of a group. Ice's confuse/ hold are the same, Electric control's drain toggle is likewise PbAoE.

That said, blasting stuff in the face/ controlling from punching distance is all good. My Plant/Earth is great fun, throw down the seeds to confuse enemies, then go to town amidst a forest of creepers.

For 'best team AT' there's no straight answer. In fact, the 'AT' thing is a misnomer. The way the game works there are powersets that greatly benefit from large mob/multiple ally situations, then there are those that are better for small/solo situations. Of course, there are a few that are great in both.

The measure I'd use is this: does the presence of a player on a character significantly improve the team performance, or allow them to accomplish things they otherwise could not? Yup. these are the ones that do well on teams.

Funky thing is, there are different ways of approaching this...I'll give so combos I've found useful, and how:

Bots/Forcefield/leadership/medicine mastermind:
The robots have some great damage, add disposable but tough bodies to the fray to distract, and generally stay out of people's way. The forcefields make the team close to untouchable, and can clump enemies. The leadership gives all better attack, more defense, and tohit, the healing helps for the few things that get throught the shields. This is both the damage/distraction/buffing route of team contribution all on one character.

Mind/Psi/concealment dom: (now keeps domination stacked up at all times)
This offers no buffs, but ensures that a handful of attacks will escape a crowd at best. The fact that nothing much fights back means even the least survivable mash of team members can go nuts. The reaaly tough stuff? With enough domination, it can still be held, and drain psyche ruins regeneration rates on such foes. Lockdown is a less-considered route to team contributions, but it's excellent regardless. Oh, and it can control entire groups without notice, and ghost missions too.

Inv/SS tank: (defense bonuses galore)
Damage is okay, but not great, absolutely no direct contribution to team member stats. But who cares? A tank that can take the toughest foes head on and distract foes makes this another form of lockdown. So long as you're alive, the chances of the team getting damaged is well reduced.

Crab/crab/leadership arachnos soldier:
This is like having a lower-damage blaster around that also tanks and buffs. Being able to take a facefull of attention while blasting crowds to oblivion and giving the entire team an extra bunch of defense and 30% extra damage? nothing to sneaze at. Oh, and it can debuff a group's resistance too. Good stuff.

Kinetic/electric/electric defender:
This one is a tad squishy, but its effect is still powerful. damage cap allies, sap enemies-even giant monsters-into helplessness, give good recharge, recovery,healing, refill endurance, debuff fo damage and regeneration, and have two holds to boot? It's a handy team member. Did I mention has a nuke it can immediately recover from as well?

3-4 lucks, taken together.

60 second godmode (no crash!) for 150-200 inf.

For non-mez I'd have to go with mu.. Sappers I can deal with..it's a rare thing to have more than one per spawn, and when dealing with malta, it's easy to get into the habit of looking for them before you leap in. Mu? You can fight way more in a spawn, every attack they have saps hard, they love to stay far away from their groups, and they resist energy pretty highly.

For mez characters I'd go with arachnos huntsmen/widows. The widows act like bosses against mez, and huntsmen? It's ridiculous.

Knives of artemis are a pain as well, moreso in groups.

I use both. While some dislike the lowered fury, I like it because it helps me assume 10-15 helpless minions per spawn. As such, i can play for a much bigger team size because of all the helpless fodder. If I'm feeling like taking it easy, 0/x6. If not, I try 0/x8. With those toggles, /dark shines as the cannon fodder diffuser.

Granted, I do think it needs a lower endurance cost. Still, I built for +recovery (pretty darn cheap cheap to do) and threw in 'tough' for good measure. This way I can clump up a spawn, jump in and smack the bigger fries whilst the small fries cower/stagger.

Cloak of fear has the nice side that it makes foes stand still, and has the -tohit.

Oppressive gloom costs way less and stuns...these wander, but it has the nice side of detoggling foes. This way you have fewer debuffs to worry about.

With both, if you have over 10 in a mob, you can have more than 10 covered. If something stops cowering for a second it can then be stunned. if something is stunned, it can be feared before it comes loose. This gives a great deal of impunity against mob 'filler' in melee. Fury then goes up by the few that stay ranged or need more mag to shut down, and some fisticuffs on your part. With a big enough spawn and some action on your part, it's darned easy to stay at high fury for any fight.