Vysires

Just as a note, you will sometimes get -def on rage crash, even with it stacked. As far as I know it has to do with zoning, the first rage crash after zoning you will get -def, at least some of the times. I guess if you fire off rage after zoning, before your first crash you might not get it, but it does happen from time to time.

The main thing that works for electric is that it has a good resists to most everything. It's heal isn't great, but it's not bad either. The reason this works, is that it's actually moderately easy to stack up defense with IOs and pool powers, but you can't do the same with resist, and heals/regen are also a bit more difficult, though possible unlike resist. So what /elec is lacking is the easiest thing to fill with pool powers and IOs. That is why it can be a good set. Once you add in LF and LR and all the other oddball perks in the set, I think it turns out pretty good.

My main problem with Electric isn't that it's a bad defensive set, it's just that when you compare it to what /Fire offers, it's not quite enough more defensive to be worth taking over fire, besides for concept reasons. Or if your just tired of /fire I guess.

Besides Stone, there are a few tank options I think could make rather good tanks. Basically Invuln, WP for pure defensive. Electric and Dark can make tough tanks that have some offensive perks I think WP would ultimately be the strongest if you managed to build in enough defense.

A WP/DM tank, who capped S/L/E/N def, would be quite durable. I expect F/C will be pretty good as well in any build that gets the others to cap. So it will have good defense, plus good S/L resist, and a ton of hp/regen. This would be the toughest non stone tank IMO.

Invuln can also make a pretty strong tank, but it's somewhat weak vs non S/L. Not that it's weak, but not quite a good. With spiritual alpha available, it's easy to perma DP, and that makes it easy for Invuln to cap hp. So you have cap hp, can get good defense and huge S/L resist. But it wont have nearly as much regen as WP, so that is why I think it would come in behind WP.

Electric isn't considered a strong defensive set by many. I will admit that it isn't exactly. The advantages I see to electric is that it gives a strong base of resist, with only a small hole to toxic. The base resist on the Electric shields is generally higher then other powersets. A good electric build can get almost 80% S/L resist, capped energy, 55% resist to most everything else except toxic. Energize gives it an ok heal, plus some more regen, plus some end reduction. Once you add in SL from DM, and build for defenses with IOs, I think an Electric tank would could be very tough. Electric also has some nice offensive options with Lightning field and LR. The downside to Electric is that it doesn't have any +hp, so the health values are going to be a good chunk lower then WP or Invuln.

Dark has some advantages like electric, but the base value on the shields is lower, however it is stronger vs toxic and psi. It also has a defensive power, not huge, but a 2nd weave essentially, so would be easier to get defense numbers up to cap. It also has a better heal then electric. Main downside I see to Dark in the current game climate is it's a bit weak vs energy, and there is a lot of energy damage out there. But if you manage to get good energry def, even if it's not capped, i don't think it would be a major problem. It also lacks +hp like Electric.

So basically, most tank sets can be made tough with IOs. But generally if you want a really tough tank, you want some resists, and then you stack defense on top of that, then if you can, you get a 3rd type to stack on those, either HP or regen or a mix of both. So for pure toughness, I would say stone, then WP, then Invuln, then Dark, then Electric. DM is really the best attack set from a defensive standpoint. It has a great heal from Siphon Life, and has -to hit on it's attacks.

I was going to post a comment about how I didn't really like electric control. It's an effective enough set, but doesn't really have anything great enough about it that makes me want to play it. But then I started to think about the fact that the only control sets I actually think are worth playing are plant, fire, and earth, and mabye mind. That made me realize that I might be a bit more picky then most about what I want out of a powerset.

Basically IMO, a good control set provides control, plus something else generally. For example Fire has control, plus extra damage with hot feet and imps. Plant has control, plus seeds is really the best every spawn control IMO, plus it has carrion creepers. Earth has control, plus control, plus some debuffs. Mind's main pull IMO is that it has some flexable control, plus you can do some interesting stuff with the confuse and sleep at high levels. That's why it's a maybe.

So from that perspective, when I look at Electric, I see a control set, that doesn't have much else. It can be an effective control set, if you use all the powers effectively, but it's ultimately a low damage set, and the only perk it has is Conductive Aura, and that's just not enough IMO. Course that also tend to apply to Gravity and Ice control, and plenty of people like those.

One slight advantage I see for electric control is that like plant and mind, it has a confuse and sleep power, which are cheap purple sets.

One quick comment, Sleet is underslotted. Sleet is stupid good for a dom, and deserves some slotting. Tough is actually not that useful, and doesn't really need to be slotted. If you move the 3 extra slots from tough to sleet, you can get some good numbers, and the -res proc. I generally like to go for analyze weakness Acc/Rech and Acc/End/Rech plus a normal lvl 50 recharge IO, and the -res proc. Those 4 slots give ok accuracy, and good recharge, a bit of end reduction and the proc. Yes, with hasten and spiritual alpha it only saves 4-5 seconds, but sleet is just that good.

Other minor things, Embrace of Fire and Hasten don't really need more then 2 slots. The gains at the level of recharge you are looking at, is somewhat minor. Especially if you are going with the spiritual alpha. If you could manage to shift those two slots over to Hoarfrost somehow, you could fit in another 5% recharge from Doctored Wounds. Another option for those two slots are putting some Procs in some powers. A damage proc in quicksand, or -res or damage in earthquake. Not super familiar with how Volcanic Gasses works, a damage proc there might be nice as well.

Not really sure you were going for Spiritual Alpha or not, but it might be worth it to think about getting Musculature instead. Doms tend to have so much global recharge that spiritual isn't really that great, but the extra damage from Musculature is definitely nice on a Dom.

Just thought I would post a data chuck for a sample of the changes I mentioned. The slot in Combat Jumping could go a bunch of places, it was put there to push the build back over 45% S/L. Without it it's at 44.8% which is pretty close IMO. If you moved it back to Hasten, it would push it back below perma without the alpha slot. But even with 2 slots, in that build hasten is 124s recharge, good enough for me, not sure if you care.

When I was leveling my soldier, I went with a huntsman bane build for grouping, and a mace bane build for soloing. I found that the huntsman did ok for solo, but a mace bane was easier. Though it depends on what you prefer. Either way I went with bane powers, cause for a huntsman, the extra powers available to a bane, specifically cloaking device, are more useful then the crab powers. Crabs have some nice stuff, but tend to be better for late game builds IMO.

Just going to make some suggestions I think might improve the build. There are a few powers that appear over slotted to me.

It's up to you, but I think the 6th slot in Gloom is overkill. If you drop the Dam out of Apoc, you only loose a small amount of damage enhancement and the set bonus of 5% Psionic Def isn't that great IMO, it would only really help on like 2-3 attacks in the game that aren't covered by positional def. Similarly, the Dam/Range in Positrons blast is fairly pointless in Dark Obliteration. If you drop it, you only loose 4% damage enhancement in that power.

Also the 4th slot in Foresight and Mask Presence is overkill. If you drop out the Def/Rech from both of those, you loose a total of 0.3 Defense and it frees up 2 more slots. You can also take a slot out of Hasten if you want, the 3rd lvl 50 IO is mostly overkill and only saves a bit of time on the recharge.

If you pull all those slots, that gives you 5 free slots to work with, or just 4 if you want to leave hasten with 3 slots. Depending on what you want, that should allow you to slot up another power. If you want more defense, sticking all 5 slots into either TT:Tactics or Aim and putting in Gaussian's would get you +2.5% def to all positions. If want a bit more recharge, 4 slots and Adjusted Targeting would get you another 5% bonus.

Another option I guess would be to drop Aim or one of the other single slot powers and move things around and then use those extra slots to pick up another AE. You could then slot another Posi there, and get another 6.25% recharge. This would give you some more AE, which the current build is a bit lacking.

Also, not sure how much you like Hover or not, but Combat Jumping is a very nice option IMO. Gives you same defense and slotting options, but costs a lot less end.

The only advantage I can think of for brutes to softcap easier is the fact that they can slot taunt sets into a lot of powers that scrapper's can't. Depending on the build, this can be useful. However for a Elec/Shield i don't think it would really apply. I mostly find it useful where you have powers like Soul Drain or Consume where you want recharge and some ACC, but don't really care about damage. This is not the case with Elec/Shield. So that leaves the extra HP, which is nice, but not enough to counter the advantages a scrapper brings to Elec/Shield.

I don't really see why you would need Fire def, your capped on Fire resist if you take Temp protection, so your not really going to have to worry about fire damage. I prefer to go for S/L def on my SS/Fire, but really if your running a fire farm, you don't need much more then whats there. With high recharge and using the insp drops you get, you can get by with just your resists and healing flames. So for a farm only build, you just want to IO for recharge. My SS/Fire is my main, and is used on a wide range of things, so I went for near capped S/L Def, and good but not great recharge, gets a bit of both worlds.

I guess it depends on what you are looking for. For example, if you are looking for the armor set that requires the least amount of IO investment to get near it's max performance, I would say SR. SR has the most defense from it's actual powers, so gettting soft capped isn't hard, you can do it mostly from pure powers, with a very small number of IO sets to get your def up to cap. It has maxed Def Debuff resistance with very little effort, it doesn't have any major status protection holes.

The downsides to SR is that anything with +to-hit or high base to-hit, like iTrial content, is going to be harder. So the near max performance of an SR toon is good, but not as good as say a well IOed Invuln or WP. It does take less IOs to get it well slotted. On the flip side, it does take a fair number of power choices.

So it somewhat depends on what you are looking for. I have a SS/Fire toon that is my main. I have got her up to 40% S/L and Melee Def, and around 75% global recharge. Add in the the incarnate stuff and she's fairly durable. I wouldn't consider her a main tank, but she is plenty tough for most things. Plus she does a ton of damage and is fun to play. Rage crash takes some getting used to, and is somewhat a matter of taste though.

So if your asking what set is easiest to IO, then I would say SR. If your asking what set benefits the most from IOs, without having a multi billion inf build, then I would say Fire for an offensive set, or Invuln or WP for a more defensive set. Basically the idea is that you can add defense to most anything with IOs, but you can't add resist or high levels of regen/hp really. So invuln and WP both have some def, so it's easier to get capped then say fire, which has no def. But they also have some resist, and either some +hp or +hp and regen. So ultimately they are layered. A WP or invuln who manages to get capped or near capped def on S/L and E/N is a very strong toon defensively.

I find that corrupter or defender duos work pretty well. My brother and I did a pair of Kinetics defenders that were pretty fun. We also tried a pair of Fire/Rad Corrupters that worked pretty well, 2x Rain of Fire with 2x EF and RI is pretty fun. We found that with 2 rains, there was enough slow to be mostly ok.

Other pairs I had thought about were Empathy and traps, as some have said. An Empathy pair doesn't get really great til 32, but gets good at 12 with fort. Once you get to 32 though, you can use AB on each other, Getting a huge boost to regen, recovery and recharge. I expect with some IOs + AB itself, you shouldn't have much trouble keeping it perm on each other.

A pair of Traps would work pretty nice. 2 FF gen would give very nice amounts of defense, Add in 2x maneuvers and your pretty nice off for defense. For example 2 corrupters with slotted FF gen and Maneuvers are at about 40% defense to all. At low levels you could alternate acid mortar to get it up most spawns, eventually should be able to double up the mortars. Add in 2x seeker drone, and x2 poison trap, and you have some nice debuffing.

I could see where a pair of sonic could be nice, end recovery might be an issue, plus you would need to be in melee range to take advantage of Disruption field. But with bubbles on each other, plus 2x sonic dispersion you should be near or at the res cap. 2x disruption field is -60% res, plus another -60% from sonic siphon for hard targets. Not quite as fun looking as some of the others, but some nice synergies.

a pair of /cold or cold/ could bubble each other, Frostwork each other, would get double sleet eventually. Could get pretty nice defense with 2x maneuvers, 2x Arctic fog, and bubbles, with those, looks like about 36-38% def all for a corrupter, 48ish% def all for a defender. That plus all the debuffing available to a cold, though to be honest a lot of it is single target.

Basically I tend to look at the defender/corrupter sets that I might not want to solo, because they have buffs that are for other people only.

I expect a pair of brutes/scrappers could duo fine, but wouldn't really be synergistic. One thing I worry a bit about with different pairings is that one of the pair ends up feeling less useful. If you have a buffer/attacker pair, I might worry that the buffer might feel somewhat secondary, though this obviously depends on the players. But if I'm doing a dedicated pairing, I really want to take advantage of the nice buffs/debuffs available.

Edit: Forgot another pair worth mentioning, a pair of SoA. Especially a pair of Huntsman or maybe Crabs. Pick up TT:Maneuvers, Maneuvers, TT:Assault, Assault, you have 40% def all and +60% damage. Add in 2x Venom grenade for -40% res all, and -80% toxic, and you have some good debuffing to go with the defense and damage. You get some status protection in the armor and have a fair bit of AE. Best thing is you can of that by mid teens. You can pick up some useful pets at higher levels, and depending on if you go crab or bane, can get either more pets + res all + serum(hp) or you could get stealth + more def + more -res with surveillance.

When I was trying to get a rare alpha built for my Dom, which was soon after iTrials were released, I found that doing a bit of both types worked best. Specifically I ran some normal TFs to get shards/components, and ran some iTrials for threads and components there. I crafted the alpha common with shards, then I used threads for the Alpha uncommon, then used shards for the rare. This allowed me to save a fair bit of shards by not having to create the uncommon tier, and for rare, you just have to run 1 weekly TF, and use 2 common components. I found this to be the quickest way to get up to rare since there was less interest in running normal TFs due to iTrials.

Mask Presence gives a base 2.5% unsuppressible defense. This is enhanceable as was commented. Just as an FYI, if you have a recent version of mid's downloaded, you can set it so that it shows suppressed values for things. If you go into options -> configuration, then to the effects & maths tab, on the right hand side there is now a box with flags you can check and mids changes your powers as if the things checked are active/in effect. I always leave Attacked and Activate Attack checked so that I get the in-combat values.

I really like most of Gaiman's work, but I wouldn't really call him a prolific novel writer. Now if you include graphic novels and some of his other works, then I would agree, but I got the impression we were mostly looking for more "normal" novels.

I also have to say that I wouldn't consider all of his work light reading. Stardust, Good Omens and Coraline and such yes. American Gods and Anansi Boys are not what I would consider a light read. Neverwhere is kinda in the middle IMO. Most of his stuff is good reading, definitely, but not always what I would consider a light read.

Terry Pratchett is more of a light read from what I have heard, though to be honest I never quite manged to read any of his books. Keep thinking I should, but don't quite get there.

You guys can talk about randomness and sample size as much as you want. The number of MMs who have posted indicating that they get nothing but commons and Uncommons tells me that individual participation is a factor. It's not like we are talking about to hit where you can have 100 different results. There are only 4 kinds of components, and since a fair number of people seem to get V.rare and Rare, we know that the drop chance on them isn't tiny. Assuming that is true, then you really shouldn't get multiple players, especially of a specific AT, that never get anything better then an Uncommon. If personal participation only counted to get you past the threads only door sitter reward, then you would not get results like that.

The Devs who posted about rewards were not very clear IMO. The first post talking about it wasn't clear, then after much discussion the next post still wasn't clear. To be honest, I have to interpret that to indicate that they didn't want to be clear, for some reason.

/FA doesn't get Embrace of Fire. That was what they renamed Fiery Embrace to for Doms when they changed the power. Now Fiery Embrace doesn't benefit fire powers any better then anything else. It just adds a damage proc to all damage powers. So Fiery Embrace isn't a reason to pick Pyre Mastery. As far as the other two, I like Soul Mastery, Gloom is great, Dark Obliteration is a good AOE. Doesn't have quite as much AoE as Mu, but still good.