The_Pancake_King

I just wanted to thank everyone for their opinions and builds. I particularly like Wiccania's build, though I would have to change a few things here and there since I want a travel power. I'm thinking I might do away with the fighting pool and pick up a few more fun powers that I'd like to have (aim, travel power, and maybe omega maneuver). But since I'm leveling up and only in the low 40s, I decided to take some attacks like heavy burst and frag grenade to help out until I can pick up the other soul mastery attacks. I'll also be picking up hasten earlier to make better use of the pets, although I find that I'm not loving the pets so far as much as I thought I would (I think this is likely due to the fact that I haven't IOed him out yet and there is a lot of dead time between when I can use call reinforcements).

Once again thanks for the input, it's been very helpful.

So my crab is now sitting at level 40, loaded with mostly SOs and a few generic IOs. I enjoy playing him quite a bit, but his build is hardly optimal since I just used the 'take what's fun now, I can always respec him later' style of leveling. Given the free respec we just got I decided I'd look up some examples and give it a whirl... only to finally give up an hour later.

My build goals are AoE damage, defense, and pets (likely in that order, although I am torn between the pets and defense). I was planning on going soul mastery and taking super jump as my travel power. I know teams love a walking leadership toggle machine, but it's important to me that my character feels powerful and that not all of my strength lies in my pets or toggle buffs (which is why I have AoE damage as my 1st priority). Additionally I hate playing 'endurance challenged' characters and I worry that with all of the toggles (3 crab leaders, 1 fort, 1 combat jumping, leadership, maybe fighting toggles, etc) I'd need to rely on sucking down blue pills left and right like a pre-i19 level 16 brute.

Is this kind of build even realistic? I'm thinking I might have to choose 2 of the 3 but I'm not sure (especially now that we have alpha slots).

Last night I was going to pump out a mids build but I had trouble even choosing my powers and couldn't even find a good place to start. Add to that the addition of the alpha slots (my first thought was the end reduction slot) and I gotta say, I'm just very confused. Does anybody have experience with an alpha slotted crab build

On of my biggest questions is... how important is the fighting pool? I want to have a good defense, but I have to admit I strongly dislike this pool as it is (imo) the most boring pool in the game. Is weave really necessary, or can I fill my defensive needs elsewhere? I suppose I could always sell my (in game) kidney to pick up the +3% defense purple, but it would be nice if I could manage it without spending quite so much.

Heck, the way the market has been fluctuating lately it may not have been a mistake!

A good question that I've been trying to figure out myself.

At the moment I'm leaning towards bots, because I like the protector's healing the other bots without me having to worry about it (since traps doesn't have its own click heal and it can be tough trying to use aid other in the middle of a fight).

Bots are a lot easier to deal with, as they are all ranged damage dealers and the assault bot is always good to go. Thugs on the other hand have the suicidal arsonist to deal with as well as the bruiser (who is a brute and performs much better with built up rage).

I do, however, vastly prefer gang war to repair (for fun factor). I also get tired of hearing 'CLOMP CLOMP CLOMP CLOMP' everywhere I go, and thugs don't do that which is nice.

These range pet issues will have me shelving my masterminds soon. It's gotten really bad. I wish their was a way for them to let demons have their 'new' AI and let the rest of us have the 'old' AI. Sure they always were occasionally retarded, but my bots/thugs/mercs are now CONSTANTLY running off into new spawns of creatures unless I spam commands to try and stop them (and even THEN they still do it every once in a while).

It's not just particular pets like he arsonist or bruiser either. Even battle drones and the like now feel like they will get a MUCH better shot off if they run 200 yards away on the complete opposite side of the spawn. It makes playing my */traps MM especially annoying since their erratic behavior constantly takes them all out of range of my traps (not to mention my supremacy buff).

There has got to be a way for them to program an AI that says 'just stay next to me and blast who I tell you. If I don't tell you who to blast, just blast someone in range'.

Edit:

I think there is a misconception that the problem solely deals with ranged critters running into melee. Yes, this is annoying, but the retarded AI I am seeing is FAR WORSE. It's not just ranged pets running into melee, it's ranged pets running right past the mobs waaaaay off into the distance (usually just ending in them getting killed, sometimes ending in them running back to me with a lot of new 'friends').

If my pets only run into melee I can deal with that, but having them run all over the map like their backside is on fire is completely different.

AR/Dev blaster - Hated the targeting drone. It was (and still is) one of the set defining powers and I hated it. Hated it's noise and the way it looked. Seems silly, but it was a big part in me giving up on what was once my highest level character.

Ill/Kin Controller - Wow did I hate this. I found that I do not have the patience for speed boost, and though on paper illusion looks like a set I'd love, I found that in practice I really didn't have much fun with it.

Energy/Fire Brute - For a time I liked this, but in the end I started to hate energy melee and I could never really get over it. Oh how I wished I had picked something else (like fire melee).

Edit: I'm starting to hate my masterminds. The pet AI has gotten beyond frustrating. I wish they never would have added demons if they had to butcher the AI for most of the other sets for their benefit.

Fearsome stare is a big one. It's a pretty handy hold type power, but the debuff is very very effective and there is no really 'flashy' animation that lets your team even know it's there (since mobs taking damage will still attack). It's one of those things that a team might not even notice until it's gone, at which point everyone is wondering 'why are these things so much harder than they were a few minutes ago?'.

Also, unlike a sleep power where the mobs are hunky dory once they are woken (is woken a word? maybe 'awoken'. Waked up? Heck I don't know, you get the idea) the debuff persists.

Howling twilight is a big one too. It's a power that can dramatically turn a horrible wipe into a triumphant victory with one click.

Many kheldian powers are underrated (eclipse, stygian circle, sunless mire, etc). I also think confusion powers (especially 'seeds of confusion' due to the fast recharge, wide cone, and the early level you can get it) are underrated. Confusion powers can make even the most horrible mob of arachnos/malta/longbow critters beat and debuff themselves senseless while you 'arrest' them with impunity.

Wow, I don't think I've ever seen so many people standing around the markets as I did last night. I figured it would be busy with all of the new people returning, but it seems to me that all of the 'new' 50s (*cough*monkeys*cough*) have decided that now is the time to IO out their new favorites. Additionally, a lot of returning players seem to have come back with barrels of cash to spend on new stuff.

I'll admit that I planned ahead for this patch and I've been doing great business so far, but I'm still kicking my self because I could have done SO MUCH BETTER!

Some things I've noticed -

- Characters of mine that have been sitting with stuff on the shelves for weeks have had everything sell out in minutes.
- These things that weren't selling before (presumably because I had them listed too high) are now selling for far higher than I generally list them.
- Recipes are starting to creep up in price because demand is so high.
- Common salvage is just INSANE. At one point last night people were paying MILLIONS for silver of all things.

Anyway, it's a fun time to be playing around in the market! My guess is that within a few weeks things will settle down, and the market will soon be saturated with level 40-50 salvage once again with everyone playing their 50s for the incarnate slots.

Thanks! It looks like the proc is overall the best enhancement for the slot for my tri-form warshade and should help my dwarf form quite a bit.

Ok, simple question. If I have the performance shifter +end proc slotted in my forms and in my inherent stamina slot, will it proc twice as often or will one overwrite the other?

Well I've recently got the MM itch again and I've decided to scratch it with a thugs/traps build. I had played and enjoyed a mercs/traps MM years earlier, but always looked at the 'thugs' powerset with envy, until now that is!

Anyway, I've been playing him quite a bit and he is now level 40 going on 41. I completed GWs patron arc (lots of fun!) but I can't seem to decide on what patron pool to use, and also what to do with my respec!

See, while playing my thugs/traps I hardly did any research. I just plopped enhancement slots into whatever looked shiny, crammed some cheap SOs in them as I went (lots of damage and accuracy in the pets), and went on my way. I don't have mids on this computer, but basically I took every primary power but 'pistols' and 'empty clips', and every secondary power but 'detonator'. I then took nearly the entire leadership pool (missing the accuracy one I think), hasten, and super speed. My slotting is downright horrible, but it doesn't really matter since I am about to respec anyway.

My thoughts so far on my MM:

1) Can't wait for free fitness! I find I can't use my leadership toggles and still manage to put out lots of traps without popping pills all the time.
2) I need defense! Numina exposed my crappy defenses for the world to see, and only chugging green pills and the distraction of my bruiser pounding her face in saved me. I'm guessing that MMs nowadays take tough and/or weave, but I've never taken those before so I'm not quite sure how to go about building a defense.
3) Tired of re-summoning arsonist! To this end, my next build must have the medicine pool. I don't want to stand around the triage beacon for a minute after every fight.

So having said all of that, does anyone have any good IO setups (non purpled out) for an up and coming thugs/traps MM? Also, what are the prevailing thoughts on the patron shields and MMs? I looked at them last night, and I got somewhat confused because the descriptions in game seemed to differ from what I have read online (for example, some of the shields said they resisted ALL when online they say only S/L and cold, for example).

This is a real issue, and I have seen it with my thugs MM. Years ago I used to play MMs quite a bit, with most of my experience coming with a mercs/traps MM and I never saw this kind of behavior (not that they were geniuses before). The pet AI was certainly different then.

Now, for some reason my thugs will decided to just spring off in random directions. I even notice my bruiser sprint AWAY from mobs at times. I'm not sure if the AI is making him sprint away so that he can use his ranged attack or what, but it does get very annoying.

Also, I don't notice the problems so much when I play solo or in confined spaces, but I notice it bigtime on outdoor maps (like mayhem missions) and when there are a lot of mobs around (big teams).

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...57#post3328157


This post may be of interest to those trying to use these excellent binds in macros.

The quick summary is that if you create a macro with one of these binds there is a bug that, when you zone, will remove everything after the 'gototray #' part.

In my case I designated the last and second to last slot with macros called 'dwarf' and 'nova' and bound those to my 'Q' and 'E' keys. I then made a 'Human' macro on my nova and dwarf form trays to turn back and rebind the teleport key, similar to this bind below:

"powexec_toggleoff black dwarf$$powexec_toggleoff dark nova$$goto_tray 1$$bind lshift+lbutton shadow step"

What happens is that for some reason everything after the 'goto_tray 1' part gets cut off at random when I zone. The proposed solution in the thread I linked to was to put the 'goto_tray' command at the end of the macro.

Thanks everyone, this will make my warshade a lot more fun to play.

I was going to say, I'd definitely find a way to get hasten earlier. I'm not the kind of person who thinks everyone should have hasten, but traps benefits greatly from it, especially earlier before you have lots of enhancement slots for recharge IOs.