oriand

Does the "free respec" occupy the same slot as the freespecs from new issue releases, or does it come from a contact like Trial respecs?

When I finish the patron story arc, will I get some kind of free respec or something so I can take my patron powers? Or should I just refuse to train until I do?

Altoholic,

Remember that while the Electric Nuke is weaker than others, it doesn't empty your END bar, just applies a -40 and then shut off recovery. That's significantly easier to work around.

I strongly disagree; the Blaster nukes are actually UNBALANCEABLE without the random damage, no matter what you change the damage scale to.

If nuking killed *everything* it would be too good, but if you nuked and all of your targets stayed up, you would be in deep trouble indeed. It's only balanced if it wipes out most, but not all, of the opposition. So the damage has to be random; otherwise it would flip-flop from good to useless depending on the exact enemies you were fighting.

Accuracy isn't even really an issue; put one SO in and it's as close to autohit as makes no odds.

Every nuke except for Fire does serious offense debuffs or controls that should help you deal with the mop-up, and remember that some characters WANT enemies to survive. A /Fire or /Electric Blaster, as well as a Kin/ Defender, probably would rather kill all but 2 targets than kill all of them.

I really like the "death touch" idea, but would like to see it as new animations for the existing sets like Dark Melee and Ice Melee, rather than new powers. They could make one set of "touch" animations and just swap out effects to do fire, energy, etc.

Similarly, Ray Gun could just be alternate animations for Energy Blast.

Defense/Controls? You mean, like Fire Control/Fire Armor?

Sounds like a soul-crushingly boring toon. You'd have the worst damage in the world (especially if you didn't get Containment) but no risk of death. On teams, you'd just be a terrible controller who happened never to die.

Control & pets? You mean, like Thugs/Mind Control?

Well, Control sets already get pets (unless they're Mind Control). This one is more workable than the other suggestion, but I think I'd rather have one set of pets I could buff than two I couldn't.

Bright Shadow: I agree with most of your post, but it is... well, not mistaken, because I believe you actually do know this, but misleading in one respect.

You can't say that a Brute with fury has a damage scale of 2.25 and then move on to discuss damage buffs and caps the way you do. Fury doesn't modify the damage scale, it's just a buff.

So contrary to what you seem to be implying, the MORE external buffs are happening, the more fury a Brute needs to hit as hard as a tanker. At least until the Tank hits his damage cap, which really doesn't take long.

Example time:

A Tanker has an attack that hits for 80. He puts 100% damage worth of IOs in there and now hits for 160.

A brute has an attack that hits for 75. With a full fury bar, he does 225. Then he puts a 100% worth of IOs in there are hits for 300.

Now a Kin comes along and uses Fulcrum Shift to give them both +200% damage.

The Tanker now hits for 320, while the Brute now hits for 450. The Brute does, as you say, do hit substantially harder than the tanker ever could, BUT contrary to what you seem to be implying, the external buffs favored the Tank, both in absolute terms (+160 DMG instead of +150 DMG) and relative terms (pre-buffed Tank does ~1/2 Brute damage, buffed tank does ~3/4)

Of course, this all goes to hell if you add a second kin, at which point the tank goes home and cries. But teams with large but not insane amounts of damage buff actually let the tank put in a surprisingly good showing.

For that matter, since Defense Debuff SOs give a higher percentage, should I use those until I get my lady greys?

So I slotted 3 Defense Buff IOs in my enforcers, since Enforcer Maneuvers is so strong. Now my thugs have like ~25% defense to all which is really nice.

However, I noticed that the enhancement menu reports them as having enhanced defense debuffs as well as enhanced defense buffs, although I didn't slot any debuff SOs. Is this because there's actually only one "Strength to Defense" variable in the code, and it affects both buffs and debuffs? If so, can I slot, say, Touch of Lady Grey and have the debuff enhacements enhance Maneuvers?

Re: The Arsonist. Instead of putting him on follow/passive, I just made him a GoTo bind that lets me pull him back to my location. The reason he dies so often is that his ranged attack chain doesn't recharge fast enough, so he runs int to use brawl. If you interrupt him with GoTo, by the time he gets back to you he'll probably have some ranged attacks recharged.

That said, I'm having a problem: I named my thus Larry, Moe, and Curly, and in the past, Curly was the Arsonist. So My bind says petcom_name Curly. But lately it seems to be random which name the arsonist spawns over, and often Moe will be the arsonist and Curly a thug. I tried petcom_name arsonist but got told I didn't have a pet with that name. help?

Corruptors take over? Nah. Count me in as one who's DYING to get my hands on Defender Villains.

Defenders have two overwhelming advantages: First, better buff/debuff modifiers. Admittedly, those only affect some powersets, but some of the potent ones are affected. Second, primary access to the support set. This means: first, that they get access to the good buffs faster, which IMHO is more important than getting to snipes, nukes, and second AoEs. Second, they can skip the first support power, which is usually something of questionable value. This lets them get a good attack chain faster. All in all, Defenders level much better. Let's look at some sets:

Radiation Emission: Look at a popular damage build, Sonic Blast/Radiation Emission. The Corruptor has more damage, and scourge. But the Defender has better -Res on his attacks, AND better heals and debuffs on Radiation. Furthermore, the early levels are much nicer to build for. Compare a Corruptor progression to level 4: Shriek, Radiant Aura, Radiation Infection, Scream; with a Defender: Radiation Infection, Shriek, Scream, Accelerate Metabolism.

Kinetics Defenders will also stay popular because the set is so end-loaded. Kinetic Defenders get Siphon Speed pre-travel power, Speed Boost pre-stamina, and Transference early enough they can stick it out without Stamina to that point.

Corruptors don't get their meaningful party buff until 20, and get their endurance refill at 35 after, they've probably slotted up stamina. I'm sure they're effective--I love my /Kin Controller--but it's a long slog.

Do the new Exemplar rules apply to Task Forces? That is, say we wanted revenge on his Clokworkness: we'd be exemplared down to 20 by the TF, but would we still have our 22 and 24 powers?

Thanks. I'm a bit nervous because we got crushed by the Clockwork King back at level 20... we just couldn't do enough damage. Survived a long time on inspirations, then died...

Alternatively, we could try doing the Moonfire TF and taking down Arakhn.

I have a level 25 Energy/Fire Blaster; I duo with a Kinetic/Psychic Defender. We're both slotted with SOs. We wanted to duo the Sister Psyche Task Force. Do you think we have any chance against Clamor?

Samuel -- thanks SO much for making this thread. I've currently got my /fire manipulation up to twenty-five, and it's been a chaotic journey with a lot of stumbling blocks. The advice in this thread has given me a lot of think about.

I'm glad you've found a playstyle that works for you, even skipping several of the powers you asked about. For the same of acedmic theorizing though, I wanted to suggest an answer to your initial questions that I haven't seen yet:

Every set can be played solo or on teams, and with a variety of different primaries. Only a few of its powers will be optimized for ideal performance in the particular conditions you're playing in. Therefore, I want to take a stab at answering some of the questions by explaining not what it's good for to a solo fire/fire but to blasters in general.

Fire Sword Circle, Combustion: Let me just say that it's natural that these powers are less valuable to a Fire/Fire than they might be otherwise. Fire Blast is a set that has three good ranged AoEs available by level eight. I still think one of these might supplement your strategy well, but whenever I've looked at Fire/Fire in Mid's, I assume I would take only one or the other.

Not all primaries are equally blessed. My blaster is Energy/Fire. The knockback can make it awkward to take full advantage of the fire sets melees and auras, and I have some concern that it won't quite come together at level fifty. However, both Fire Sword Circle and Combustion have been godsends. Energy has ONE AoE, Torrent, until level twenty-six, and that's the much-maligned Explosive Blast. Being able, from the mid-teens, to take out a spawn with Torrent into a corner, Combustion while they get up, wait for them to close with me and FSC was very gratifying.

Elec Blast has a PBAoE instead of a cone, so the fire PBAoEs would fit right in. Ice Blast has only one conventional AoE, plus a rain, but additional AoEs from fir ewould surely be welcome. Radiation uses PBAoE as well. And Psychic, god help it, has NO AoE until EIGHTEEN.

Blazing Aura, Hot Feet: You've said you don't have Stamina, which naturally makes the endurance cost on these accutely painful. My Energy/Fire doesn't have stamina either, but what he does have is better: A Kin/ Defender with whom he almost always duos. He has buckets of endurance dumped on him all the time, which means your fascinating DPE tables are totally irrelevant. What does matter is DPA, which for blazing aura is effectively infinite. Running it costs me nothing I care about, and every little tick helps. Now, because I have Energy as a primary, I found enemies rarely got close enough to me to take damage, so I respecced out of Blazing aura into Assault. But I'm sure a Rad, Sonic, or Archer with a pocket kineticist would get good use out of it. And obviously teaming with a tank or controller would make ti easier to damage things with it.

If there ends up being another space, I'm in with my Level Thirty-Five Thugs/Poison.

EDIT: Name is Azazel Rex

War Mace will be the very last proliferation to stalkers, because it would tread on Banes' turf.

I really want Ice and Fire stalkers.

I made a custom group, called "Super Hellions" -- this consisted on the regular Hellions, plus one custom mob of each rank: "Blood Brother Flamer" with Fire Melee, "Fallen Flamer" with Fire Assault, and Double Damned, with Fire Control. The plot had the Pilgrim asking you to fix a temporal anomaly that put more powerful objects in the Hellions' hands. The custom mobs reflected the fact that the new hellions had more magic. So anyway, These custom mobs made the mission playable at all levels, but I figured high levels would be monotonous with only one mob of each rank. So I sprinkled in some thematically appropriate mobs, like Bat'Zul demons and Circle Behemoths, which I figured would be logical for level thirty hellions to summon.

I wanted the mission objective to be defeating an Elite Boss. Now, I could have made it a custom mob, but I wanted to run this arc on some of my lowbie toons, and didn't think they could handle a custom elite. So I put in 3K Kelvin instead. His level range is 6-12. I went to play the mission with my level 35 mastermind, and something strange happened. I got exemplared down to 12, as you'd expect, and a mix of level 12 and 13 minions and lieutenants spawned (difficulty: heroic) with 3K Kelvin as the boss. Only problem was, the standard mobs were all gone! There were no Blood Borther Slugger or Slicers, only my custom Flamer,s even though the level range should have accommodated them!

Unsure how to fix this, I tried removing 3K Kelvin and replacing him with a custom "Double Damned" Boss. This now meant that the mission's level range returned to 1-54. However, when I went in I discovered that it spawned Blood Brothers Sluggers at level 14, and Bat'Zul Demons at level 29, even though my character was level 35! Everything was grey except for my custom mobs!

Dismayed, I made a new custom group, called "Guinea Pigs", consisting of individual paragon police minions from level 1-54. When I entered the mission, I found it full of level 15 Detectives, Level 20 SWAT officer, level 25 Hardsuits, and so on!

My Questions:

1: Does anyone know why the standard mobs disappeared from the 6-12 mission? I'm prepared to think I may have done something wrong, or it may be referring to an outdated version of the super group.

2: More importantly, is there any way to STOP the spawning of standard mobs of inappropriate levels from a custom group? If not, is this something I16 broke, and if so are the Rednames working on it?

I've not played mine past level ten yet, but rather than Rad/Dark, I'd consider Dark/Rad

-- Dark blasts stack with Radiation infection to floor -ToHit.

-- Dark blooms painfully late, Rad blooms gloriously early. You may only have two attacks until level eight, but with Radiation Infection and Accelerate Metabolism, you can still solo quickly.

-- Radiation has ranged anchored debuffs. Dark has multiple cone AoEs, including an immobilize. Tentacles + Infection is AMAZING.

-- I've heard that nukes tend to be too dangerous for Rad to use, since his toggles will drop. I haven't tested it, but Blackstar might be safe enough.

-- I don't know my invention sets or market prices, so I can't speak to softcapping or what not. On the other hand, with all your debuffs, your efense should be largely irrelevant except against AVs.

Question: How does the Purple Patch effect Knockback magnitude?

There are a lot of weird powers that do the same effects for all ATs due to summoning pseudo-pets. In many cases the balance reason is pretty opaque. For the various damage patch powers, like Ice Storm, Rain of Fire, or Ignite, I think it's actually good game balance.

Damage over Time is a funny sort of thing. If you're counting on the DoT to kill things, you're committed to leaving them alive for the entire duration, which can be quite a long time. Toss an Ice Storm, and you're basically saying you're prepared to let your enemies live another fifteen seconds -- otherwise you'd be tossing a fireball or something. That's all well and good, but after those fifteen seconds they had better actually be dead. Otherwise you'd have been much better off picking guys off one at a time.

Damage patch powers also tend to slow, avoid, and otherwise debuff, making them feel much like Defender powers anyway. After all, Caltrops and Oil Slick Arrow are Support powers, not Blasting ones. Blasters can and should be much better at burst damage, since that's actually the primary form of mitigation they get. Defenders, who can use buffs, heals, or debuffs to weather the attacks of their enemies, don't need the burst damage, but should get the same benefit from DoTs.

Thanks, all.

Now, if only the actual in-game help would say that.

Does anyone know which Arrows stack with themselves? I especially want to know whether I can floor enemy ToHit by spamming my flash arrows.

Also, if anyone could tell me where one can look up which debuffs stack and don't, that would be lovely.

Angelic sets in General:

Melee: Fire and Broadsword have been recommended repeatedly, and both work pretty well going off strictly biblical imagery. Martial arts works for a kinder, gentler angel, or super strength for ATs without martial arts.

Ranged: Angels and God frequently slay people "with the Word" so Sonic is logical. Archery fits the popculture image. Fire and Dark for angels of justice and death respectively, though this doesn't fit perfectly.

Control: Mind Control and Fire Control are the obvious choices here, but don't overlook Illusion. Walking unseen is an angel type thing, as is attacking with light.

Support: Sonic and thermal for reasons mentioned above. Empathy and Force Fields for happy pop-culture angels. Dark and Trick Arrows also have promise.

Pets: Necromancy is not unreasonable for a judgment-day themed angel, especially with everything re-colored yellow-gold. Soldiers could also work.

Defense: Fire Armor for being, you know, on fire. I also like Regeneration for angels. They're not mortal, so they can't be put down permanently, even if their ethereal bodies aren't as tough as other scrappers'. Since I16 just hit, use a mix of white and gold for the animations and you're good to go.

SO where does that leave us? Lots of possibilites, but a few of my favorite are:

MA/Regen Scrapper
BS/Fire Scrapper
Empathy/Sonic Defender
Archery/Energy Blaster
Illusion/Thermal Controller
Fire/SS Tanker

Or for fallen angels:

NB/Regen Stalker
SS/Fire Brute
Mind/NRG Dominator
Necro/Thermal Mastermind
Archery/Sonic Corruptor