dave_p

I'd at least make sure to have started the first RWZ story arc from Levantra to make sure you're eligible for Vanguard Merit drops from all the Rikti we *kill* (I mean, we're not arresting Rikti on their own mothership, right? ). If you're not sure, check your salvage's "special" tab and if you have at least one Vanguard Merit (different from reward merits you get from TFs and such), you're good to go.

Otherwise, stay off of Req chat (for raid leaders only) and listen to said Req chat. If you die, just hosp it and ask for a TP back. Stick with the main group. Have fun.

Vax and others, thanks so much for holding these raids, but would it be possible to give us more than a day's notice? I can't access these boards at work any more so it's difficult for me to be home in time for a raid that's announced that day. I only ask this because I hate missing one of your MS raids.

So, er, what part of my post exactly are you disagreeing with again? Please actually read what I said before responding.

Agreed re: RoF, which is why I only picked it up for massive invasion-like events (or the MS raid). It definitely has more uses at 50 than getting there, and if you're running a lean, mean, high-DPS team, RoF will rarely get used. Hell, sometimes I don't even bother w/Fire Breath, cuz by the time it finishes animating, there's nothing for me to throw my Fire Ball at.

Hmm... as long as this thread has been resurrected, I may as well add some thoughts (my Fire/Ice is my favorite blaster by far atm).

RoF--situational, and yeah, I skipped it for the longest time (originally had it way back in i0 when I first rolled up my blaster). Picked it back up just for the zombie invasions (works great w/Rikti too). It's a nice power when you just wanna maximize your damage potential, but works well as a finisher or a defensive "oh sh**" power too. I now recommend this power, though you can hold off on it.

Ice Patch--love it on my /Ice tank. Only sorta like it on my blaster. The small radius is fine if you're going to be fairly immobile and fighting melee, but for a ranged, highly mobile blaster (which is how I play mine), it's very, very situational (there's that word again). Great for soloing and setting up corners and what (it's saved me in many a boss/EB fights), but for fast, high DPS teams (where Fire/* really shines), not so useful.

Shiver is great in conjunction w/things like RoF, but again, highly situational. It can be skipped easily or picked up later.

Fire Breath--I have to stress how important it is to slot for range for any cone. If you just increase the range by 20% (a single SO), you're increasing the overall area of effect by almost 50%. If you max out the range (ED capped at close to 60%), you increase the AoE by 250%!!

So how do you increase the range w/o sacrificing acc or damage? IO sets, and cheap ones. Even prior to i13, all the */Range set IOs were dirt cheap. Pick up the Damage/Range IO from Posi, Detonation & Air Burst and you get almost a 50% boost to range (assuming lvl 50 IOs) w/almost no sacrifice. You'll be amazed at how many more things you can hit with added range to this power. Even if you were doing straight SOs, I'd do 1 Acc, 3 Dam, 1 Rech and 1 Range.

Epics? Anything w/a hold in it (so no Cold or Force for you!). Why? Because if you don't take Freezing Touch from your secondary, there's really no purpose to being /Ice. And FT + epic hold = insta-held boss (or 2 pesky lts). Personally, I like Flame since it fits the concept well (again, Cold is out), has a good shield, and Char activates the fastest.

Overall though, a great writeup by Camo. The above are mostly nitpiks and personal preferences.

Excellent guide.

My frankenslotting Arctic Fog (and Steamy Mist, for that matter) advice is:

Set Res (say, Aegis)
Set Res/End (Aegis again)
Generic Res IO
Set Def (say, Serendipity)
Set Def/End (Serend again)
Generic Def IO

At the higher lvls, this caps Res & Def values and offers very good end redux. No reason to choose bet. Res & Def in my mind, and it's definitely worth 6-slotting.

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I actually created a respec mule to get rid of the 35-40 Immobs I crafted. (get to level 3, go to base, grab 10, back to galaxy, vetspec for cash. . . )

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Heh, that's a pretty good idea. I usually delete my holds & to hit buff IOs that don't sell (did immobs at first, but they were just impossible to unload even for 1 inf, and holds do occasionally sell). Prolly not time-efficient, but if you hate wasting inf (and I do)...

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My biggest gripe about the Midnight Squad (blue-side) is that it's tedious. It was actually a lot of fun the first time, but after that? It's just a slog to get all my 35+ toons into Cimerora for the ITF.

***Spoilers***

The 20 Lost curing mission, I've skipped every time after the 1st, because it's just time consuming. The 2 exact same Rikti map missions, I just skip to the end. Lady Jane? Psycho airhead that makes Fusionette look smart--if I'm not playing a controller, I always clear the whole freakin' map out first then lead her to the chest.

***end spoilers***

Basically, it's a good, not great arc, but the fact that we *have* to complete it to get into the new zone (as opposed to the RWZ where you got in *then* had the new content) kinda sucks, since the arc gets very repetitive, and fast. Origin of power is cool, but again, it's just repetetive dialogue, and why no mission complete bonuses for each of the Speak to X missions? At least you get fresh dialogue for each origin, so that's kinda cool.

I'm hardly calling i12 a bust--powerset proliferation & the QoL improvements were amazing, but it was fairly content-lite. Nothing wrong with that, but I hope they do more w/both Cimerora & the MS later.

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Skipped mostly to the end. My comments echo some of the very early ones.

Beautiful new zone. Very fun TF (end fight is too hard? seriously, ppl?). Content is majorly lacking. First time I went through the Midnight Squad arc to get access into Cimerora, I was like, 'that's it?' One short backstory arc and an endless mission generator. And the TF. Seems like a ton of work for very little content. I really hope they "revisit" it and soon.

BTW, the last time I ran the ITF--1:30-ish, zero defeats, Rom went down w/o a hitch. We didn't even bother pulling or separating. Very good team, it wasn't a PuG, but it also wasn't some MoSTF-specialized supergroup either (of course the players were all very experienced). Just bring a good mix of tanking, damage & support (you know, like you're supposed to), and you won't have too many problems. Hell, an all tanker team has finished it, so you really don't have any excuses.

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Very true. Given that the question "Is it worthwhile to slot a damage proc?" comes up a lot, how would you answer it?

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Here's my take, at least on PBAoE toggles. You can apply this to click powers, but you have to take into recharge rates, and I haven't really spent the time to take notes on how procs perform in normal attacks and whatever. BTW, I wrote this up for another thread, but thought it was more appropriate here (only slightly edited), so it may be repeating stuff others have already said.

Basically, the higher the base damage, the less worth it the proc is. The procs do fixed, player lvl-based damage, listed by Natsuki, that's independent of how much normal damage the power does. That means if the power does a lot of base damage (say, Hotfeet or Blazing Aura), normally taking/slotting for damage or slotting other powers that affect its damage (say Assault, AM, EF, FS, etc) gives you more "bang for the buck" than slotting a lower base damage power. However, this also means that slotting a constant damage proc in those high base damage powers gives you a proportionally smaller return. Of course, slotting procs in powers w/no damage is a pure win, *if* you can account for the usually high end costs (think Arctic Air).

Here's a made up example. Lets say power A does 5 points of damage per sec and power B does 10 points of damage/sec (assume 100% accuracy for simplicity's sake). A damage proc will do 50 pts on a hit, but only hits 20% of the time, and it pulses every 10 sec. So on average, that proc is only worth 1 point of damage/sec. On power A, that 1/sec damage is worth 20% of base, or less than a SO's worth. On power B, it's only worth 10% of base, or less than a DO's worth. Now you have to ask yourself, what's that slot worth to you? If you're not already ED capped for damage, you'd definitely want to do that on both powers before selecting a proc.

My observations running Herostats while running w/toons w/damage procs find is that 1 damage proc in Mud Pots, otherwise fully slotted for damage, adds around 15-18% to overall damage, or 30-35% of base damage, so about an even SO's worth of damage. Since I already have Pots ED capped for damage, that's totally worth it for me to spend another slot for an extra SO's worth of damage. Of course, Pots is capped for end redux as well and decent slow & acc bonuses to boot, though no taunt slotting. I could place a 2nd damage proc, but it would disrupt too many other things (including set bonuses).

For Hotfeet, Blazing Aura and the like, the proc only adds like 12-15% of base, or a DO's worth. That's very borderline on if it's worth it or not. I decided to keep it for my Fire/Rad to run a single damage proc in Hotfeet (again, could add a 2nd, but definitely not worth it), but not so worth it for my Fire/EM tank to run any damage procs in Blazing Aura. BTW, Both of these toons are very high DPS machines, so the extra damage from the procs are almost inconsequential, so the single proc in Hotfeet is *really* borderline, but on my Stone/Ice tank running Pots above, that one damage proc really adds to his AoE damage.

As for those non-damaging toggles that you can slot into, again, there's those other costs to consider, as well as slot bonuses. my Ice/Storm only slots 2 damage proc in Arctic Air cuz I want the 5th set bonus of Malaise's, 6.25% recharge, but many slot all 3 available damage procs in that power (slow, confuse & fear). In fact, even the 2nd damage proc in AA kills the end redux portion of that power, which is an end hog calling for capped end redux slotting, but I have other IO recovery bonuses to take care of that. If you don't, I wouldn't recommend the 2nd damage proc, or you'd just have to be willing to lose the set bonus.

Some other factors to keep in mind, of course, is the damage type. Mixing in a lethal proc w/fire damage for Hotfeet is very nice, even though lethal is far more heavily resisted. Like with investing, diversification is the key to long term success.

This should really be included in the Defender forum's stickied guides & faqs post. By far the best TA/A guide I've seen. Thanks for the good work Lumi.

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Actually there are two seperate issues getting mashed into one thread here.

1. Mobs hitting the "Cut and Run" script WAAAAYY to often or early. This is what most people are writting about.

2. Tanks unable to hold agro due to Taunts/Guantlet not working right. This seems to be do to some bad code lines that _Castle_ is already working on. I am hoping that once that is fixed, Tanks at least won't see this "Cut and Run" as often. I can count on one hand the number of times my Fire/Fire tank had anyone run away (Burn is not in my build). I also slot a Taunt into BA for just this reason. So having mobs run from me is totally new to I8.

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I suspect this is correct. Even before I8, you could tell a difference in the "cut & run" behavior w/a tank by turning on & off your aura. W/o, things would run away, even w/punchvoke going (tho perhaps not at the rate they are now). W/your aura on, things would stick to you. At least for tanks, I suspect that when Gauntlet gets fixed, things will stop running away so much. Dunno about the other ATs tho. My controllers never had problems w/things *successfully* running away from, but I suspect that scrappers will be annoyed the most by the new running away behavior.

I recently rolled up a new Emp/Mind defender and was looking at your guide. Very nice job, one correction:

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As the final power, you can grab Acrobatics which helps prevent knockback and immobilization. Neither of those is deadly to you, but if you’re on your back or out of range, it can be hard to keep your team alive.

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Acro has a big KB protection component (mag 15? something ridiculous) and a tiny, tiny hold protection (mag 1 or 2). It does nothing for immobs--that's what CJ is for.

Whoever said for the Empath to "stand behind the tank" doesn't play tanks much. One of the keys to proper tanking is to position yourself away from the mobs and your friends so as to direct AE & once attacks away from your teammates. And my controllers/blasters can use Fort & AB just as much as my scrappers & tanks.

On AP, I think this is a very useful power at the lower lvls if you want to be a dedicated healer. Before SOs and Emp's better buffs, when "healers" really are sorta necessary (tanks aren't very tough yet, controllers can't CC that great), it's good to have all 3 heals available for constant use. You can prolly respec out of it at 24 where you have SOs available, tanks are pretty tough and trollers can CC very well.

Fledgeling heroes also don't get neat travel temp powers either. That has got to be my favorite feature from villain-side. That and Brutes.

Be nice if the Praetorians were reworked for villains as well as heroes.

No mention of skills, new ATs (remember those?) or server transfers. Wasn't there talk about the "war walls coming down" or something like that?

Heroes & villains working together sounds nice (happens in comics often enough), but I hope it's not just some massive hami-raid.

Oops, sorry, I was going by what Ominous wrote up in the Liberty boards, but I knew there was another Rad defender thowing AM's around, but also that it wasn't you. So I corrected En vy's powersets, but not yours. My bad!

And yes, very good leadership & teamwork all around. Everybody being on the same page is cruicial, though we did almost get separated at that first hole.

Finished this last night in 1:45; the titan took less than 1 minute to take down, so only 1 ambrosia for the melee'ers were needed (squishies hovered or were otherwise out of stomp range). No deaths. Tactics & observations below:

Party makeup (mostly 41's, some exemps, 1 or 2 below 41):
2 tanks (Fire/EM, Fire/Axe)
2 trolls (Fire/Emp, Fire/Rad (me))
2 defenders (Emp/Rad, Rad/Dark(?))
1 scrapper (Dark/Regen)
1 blaster (Fire/Fire)

At least 2 heavy duty damage dealers are necessary for the walls, but this party had more than enough firepower (pun intended ) for the rest of the trial. Multiple tanks & controllers are a huge plus. The walls went down very fast thanks to the multiple rad auras as well.

1st wall--find & kill both Quarries, gather & buff, scrapper & blaster on the wall, everyone else watch for the spawns & take out the cairns asap. I think both rad auras were placed on the wall and it went down fast. No problems here.

Acid pit--kill greater devouring till we all had 3~5 ambrosias. Redistribute to make sure the melee'ers had at least 4. Turned out to be overkill, but better safe than sorry. Only snag--got stung leaving this part, so a few of us couldn't Hover/Fly for the lichen bit, which was annoying. Jumpers, short hop or you'll bring the swarm from the ceilings down with you.

2nd wall--take out all the lichen colonies & lichen first. Same, gather, buff, scrapper & blaster on wall, rest on spawns. This was seriously the only hairy part of the whole trial as far as I was concerned. As soon as you start attacking the wall, you get a ton of Greater Devoured spawning in with mushroom mezzers as support. This is where the multiple tanks & controllers with defender support really shine. Just spam all the mass holds, make sure the controllers are unmezzed when they get slept/held, taunt/burn away until the damage dealers declare the walls down. My initial rad auras went on the wall like with the 1st, but I got mezzed out of that pretty quickly, tho with 2 AM's going, Clear Minds flying around, my own Indomitable Will going up every once in a while, no mez stuck for very long. Switched over my rad auras to the spawns, which meant the wall took a bit longer to bring down. This was the only time I really used my insps liberally too, and I wished I'd brought in some disciplines.

Titan room--clear out the outer rim first, follow with the moat, free the heroes, take down the titan. Nothing fancy--we thought about herding to the freed heroes, but honestly, we were killing so fast, we just swept around in 2 circles clearing the room out. On the titan, buff, ambrosia, usual monster tactics. The tanks & scrapper triggered the footstomp before the imps got there, cuz I think many of them survived to add to the overall damage. Again, cakewalk.

What helps a ton--people who've done this before, or at least read up on the trial, especially threads like this one. Most of us had either done the trial before or had read this thread. Also, damage is king, as usual. You definitely need the tanks & controllers, but having all of ours be offensive (Fire) made life tons easier. For defenders, 1 emp & 1 rad, I think, workded out perfectly, tho I could see good uses for the other sets. Bubbles would've been nice at the 2nd wall, and so would've been a Tornado & LS on the walls themselves. FS would've had all of our (pets included) damage capped the whole trial. Finally, you absolutely need at least 2 dedicated damage dealers to take out the walls, or you'll be at those forever. I think the scrapper/blaster combo was best for the most versatility.

Possibly the most fun I've ever had in a trial or TF. Definitely recommended for everyone with the right lvl range. Oh, and make sure you have an enh slot open at the end. I got a nice triple acc debuff/def debuff/end redux titan enh at the end, which is perfect for my RI.

Edit: Party makeup has been corrected

Agree with just about everything GamesWalker said. Great concept and very cool videos, but a bit of overkill. I've often ran with teams of 2 */rad controllers & a */kin controller--imagine 3~12 *sets* of double AM'ed, Fulcrum Shifted imps/phantasms/etc running around, while the controllers are also double AM'ed & Speed Boosted. You won't have time to put on all the nifty Rad auras, cuz things die too fast. On a tangential point, at the high end, I think you get more versatility and synergy swapping out a Rad or two for a Kin & maybe a FF (which would dilute your concept, so prolly not worth it, rp-wise).

Having said that, I'd love to join your SG if I were on Freedom, which, unfortunately, I'm not. Sounds like serious fun.

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Interrupt reduction SO is not needed. I had 3 of these in my Zapp for my Electrical Blaster and you could not really notice a difference.

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Just to clarify what you may already know (apologies in advance if this is the case), interrupt reducers don't reduce the animation time. Your Zapp still actiavates for 6 seconds, but with interrupt reducers, you can be hit, move around, etc after about 2-3 seconds or so. I agree with the rest of your post and don't advocate them myself, but there are people who like to hit cap with BU+Aim with their snipe attacks and use interrupt reducers instead of damage for maneuvering or whatever.

You have activation times of 2 for both Bolt & Blast? Is that right? I haven't played my en/en blaster for a few months, but last I checked, it was 3 for Bolt and 1 for Blast.

Player & mob powers work differently. None of my powers, other than snipe, have ever been interrupted, even when getting held, knocked down, stunned, disoriented, whatever. You can interrupt some mob effects, mid animations (and others, you only seem to interrupt them, but the powers still go off). Doesn't work with player powers.

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How in the hell can you kill swarms for 4-5 hours? That sounds insanely boring....

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That is the essence of power leveling. It's certainly not everybody's thing. For the record, I can only keep it up for an hour or two, tops, before having to go on some missions or group to break the monotony.

Fly is incredibly useful... but not for power leveling. Within that scope, SS is best. Great post; 5 stars.

One disagreement: Energy is a viable AoE set. Even before 6-slotting, I was able to kill blues & below with Explosive Blast & Torrent in one salvo with Build Up/Aim. Not nearly as effective as Fire or high lvl AR, but still viable.

Any thought on how to best use the prestige powers, like Nova, to AE mobs? Use them alone or as a followup to an Energy Blast? Skip altogether? Slot as soon as you get it at 32?