AT w/o Endurance Woes 1-50?

After laboring through a number of controller toons pre-IO. I'm taking a hard hit to the morale due to empty blue bars.

Consistent damage, and nerry an end problem is that which I seek. Can ye assist me, fair traveler?

A /psi dominator can probably avoid most end problems, between Domination's refill and Drain Psyche.

Ultimately it's going to depend more on your power sets than your archetype, though. For melee characters, for example, Electric Armor mitigates endurance problems with Energize, and outright laughs at them with Power Sink. It's also basically immune to sappers. Unfortunately, even the sets with powerful endurance management tools usually don't get them until level 20+. I find that the best solution to low-level endurance problems is proper slotting and Recovery Serums.

Everything is going to struggle in the teens as you get more powers but are pre-SOs (or comparable IOs) but anything with End Recovery powers is a good place to start.

Elec as mentioned, Kinetics, Ice Armour, Dark Melee, Energy Aura - in fact DM/EA is a very good combo for it as you get Dark Consumption at 18, Energy Drain at 28 and Energize at 35 - but it's always going to suck until you've got the enhancements to make those powers really effective.

Regen for brutes and scrappers can get quick recovery absurdly early (level 4). However, you'll have to manage your survivability.

If you are interested in a controller without endurance woes, try a Plant/TA. As soon as you have Seeds of Confusion 6 slotted and Roots, Strangler, and Entangle with a bit of damage slotting you are ready to go up against 4 or 5 players (no bosses) worth of mobs.

Run up and hit them with Seeds, let them self heard for a couple seconds, hit them with Roots, then keep putting Strangler > Entangle on the lieutenants (mezzing ones first) and throw Roots in when it recharges. The mobs will kill themselves and you'll get exp and drops for them as long as you do any damage to them (more damage = more XP but don't bankrupt your blue bar trying to do that. Time it so you finish a spawn in about the time it takes for Seeds to recharge and just move on to the next spawn.)

As you level up you get to add TA's Debuffs to increase up the XP speed. As the toon matures it just keeps getting better.

Go forth and profit

A Claws/Willpower Scrapper will probably never have to worry about the blue bar. The Scrapper version of Claws has reduced endurance (though the Brute version hits harder) and WP can get by with just High Pain Tolerance, Fast Healing, and the occasional use of Indomitable Will until you pick up Quick Recovery. After that you can pretty much ignore your blue bar assuming you at least frankenslot or drop an endurance reducer in your attacks.

If you don't mind pre-planning your build and using an alt to buy IOs then all sorts of things can get by with no endurance issues. Just play an AT with decent damage (Controllers will always have early endurance issues, simply because they need so many attacks per enemy), plan a frankenslotted build using low to mid-teen level IOs with some end reduction, and don't run toggles unless you absolutely have to before using that build. The downside to this method is that recipes that low level can be extremely rare... they're often cheap when they sell, but the low demand means there simply aren't many ever put up for sale. That's why you need to pre-plan and buy the IOs in advance with an alt... doing so will probably take far longer than getting the new character up to SO levels. I did it once on a Brute and while it did make the teen levels a lot easier it just wasn't worth the hassle.

Finally, you can always play a Blaster. No toggles plus massive damage equaled few endurance troubles even before inherent Stamina and almost none now. The downside is that you're a Blaster... you either like them or you don't. Masterminds can also be good at low levels since your pets have their own endurance bars. Just don't overuse the MM's attack powers since those use a ton of endurance for minimal damage.

Of course you can get to 22 very fast if you run a few sewer trials and then join mission teams (where you may have buffs to help your recovery or damage output). Once you hit 22 a lot of ATs can be made reasonably endurance friendly by just dropping an endurance SO in every toggle with a significant cost (no need to worry with Combat Jumping) and every attack except maybe a low-cost tier 1. Oh, and 3-slotting Stamina with EndMod SOs of course. One trick you can do if you have a hero alt that has done the Faultline arcs is to make your new character Technology origin and mail them endurance reduction SOs from Yin's Market. You have to be level 15 to unlock that store but he sells level 13, 17, and 21 enhancements and any origin can buy them (you just can't slot anything but the one for your own origin) so you can mail yourself SO-level endurance enhancements to slot starting at level 10. Or be a Mutant or Natural and use SO-level damage enhancements, since fewer attacks to kill = less endurance used. If you can't get those or don't want to fool with it then level 20 generic endurance IOs are significantly better than DOs and slottable at 17.

Oh, and above all... slot accuracy first. You want your accuracy going up as your to-hit drops: at least one DO at level 12, and possibly two DOs or a lvl 20 IO at level 17 (or just one DO, depending on your AT and power sets). You want to have as close to a 95% chance to hit as possible, especially at DO levels (1-11 goes by so fast it's easy to ignore TO level enhancements entirely). It's not too hard to afford to fully slot DOs at 12 as long as you sell your drops on the market, but I'd suggest mailing yourself a couple hundred thousand inf from an alt and then you don't have to worry at all. Then once that character gets higher level you can use him / her to bankroll your next alt's DOs.

Any elec/ dom or controller. Conductive Aura will keep your end bar filled pretty much always, even moreso if you actually slot it for end mod. You get it at level 8.

My SJ/EA scrapper had serious endurance problems until I frankenslotted IOs, but my SJ/Regen brute has been sitting pretty from level 1. The major difference apart from quick recovery, which is definitely a big help, is that fury early on means you will kill enemies much faster regardless of your lack of damage slotting. Now that both of them are past 22, though, it's becoming a little annoying on the brute to see how damage slotting doesn't actually help very much, whereas the scrapper of course benefits greatly from it. That's beside the point, of course, which is that a regen brute is an excellent choice for endurance sufficiency.

I actually had horrible endurance issues on my elec/earth dom to the point where they were not correctable with IOs by level 35. Permanently shelved. YMMV, I guess earth is a pretty endurance heavy set.

Masterminds with buffing-oriented secondaries (force field, thermal, sonic, like that) can be very low-endurance.

If you level up a Tri Form Warshade you should have zero endurance problems, with the exception of when you fight single targets. You'll never run a single toggle though, and Stygian Circle recharges pretty fast even without IO's.

A WP Tank that gets and uses Taunt early.

Stone Melee/DA Broot FTW!

I kid I kid, I have a 13 kat/regen scrapper soloing at 0/x3/bosses with no slotting and no worry on the blue bar since QR (I can solo at this setting because of Divine Avalanche you get at 8). A Kat/Will will be sturdier after you get Indomitable Will at 16, it's the only toon I'm consistently deleting blue insps at this level.

As for controllers, damage output will be a problem compared to any damage oriented toon, but elec is a good choice. My mind/emp never have end issues and mind has a good early ST attack chain for trollers, even with a secondary that is kinda useless solo. A mind/Ta or plant/Ta would be a good low end soloist, although I dislike TA and the powers take a bit long to recharge before SOs.

Quote:

Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle Now that both of them are past 22, though, it's becoming a little annoying on the brute to see how damage slotting doesn't actually help very much, whereas the scrapper of course benefits greatly from it. That's beside the point, of course, which is that a regen brute is an excellent choice for endurance sufficiency.

I always slot my brutes for acc and endred until the end problems are solvable, but I do feel a lot of difference when I manage to slot the attacks for damage, I usually do that around level 25 when I have enough slots. And I have 3 lvl 50 brutes, the incarnated one (t3 on everything) has two builds, one for farming with KO Blow slotted with a taunt set and one properly slotted for damage, believe me, in the later levels when mob hp is higher it makes a lot of difference - around level 30 I believe, which is the time Stalker AS start getting less use from me because with mob hp scaling up, you don't one-shot orange mobs like in the earlier levels.

Your general rule of thumb for endurance problem should go:

Buy, and change inspirations into blues. This is extreamely useful for levels 1-22 before you get SO's.

Have enough accuracy to hit things. Missing prolongs fights, which means you're going to be using more endurance to get through a spawn than usual. Make those hits count.

Frakenslot everything for endurance reduction. Around level 30 if I still notice my blue bar having trouble (or start having trouble) I'll just grab whatever is the cheapest IO I can find with Endurance/Something and shove it in my powers. Having all your powers using half as much endurance as before makes a *giant* difference.

Using these three tips I have a *very* hard time running out of endurance on any character at any level.

WP or regen are the best for minimal end issues, especially regen since you can get quick recovery at like lvl 4

I could be figmenting but it seemed my Archery/Energy Blaster was extremely endurance friendly. And of course, eventually would have picked up Conserve Power had I continued with him.

My TA/Sonic Defender is in the 24ish range, and I have noticed ZERO endurance issues with him. And I duo him with a Tank, so it isn't like our combined damage potential is insurmountable...

One thing that nobody ever mentions: pacing yourself. If you have decent survivability through whatever means but are running out of endurance, slow down.

One of my first toons to not have to look at the end bar is my elec/time troller. Conductive Aura is just that good!
My WS looks at the end bar while it refills it, but even before getting Stygian, I'm normally in one of the forms.
A teaming defender is probably pretty good on end also, especially one where you're not expected the keep the team's green bars at full. My Ta/A never had stamina until I came back from a hiatus and it was inherent.

Rads, especially a Rad defender, with AM, can be awfully easy on the end bar. But it's going to be hard to beat a WP or Regen, 1-50.

Elec/Psi Dominator

Pretty Much Anything/Force Field Master Mind

As said above, Regen and Willpower helps a great deal.

Illusion controllers can be endurance friendly if paired without a heavy toggle secondary and even then, certain secondaries such as rad and kin have tricks to help get the end back.

Mostly repeating here, but /regen is very easy on end, for controllers I think best on end would be elec/kin, and elec/psi for doms, most MMs are pretty good since your pets do most of the fighting, although for a few of the primaries the pets need end management. My elec/fire blaster is good on end, I'd imagine /elec, /dark and /mental would also be good. Just need to slot some end reduction and be willing to use the end recovery built into your secondary.

Quote:

Originally Posted by BackAlleyBrawler That...was a Herocon 09 exclusive easter egg. The powerset will not have doves associated with it. Namely because you guys would want to color tint the damn doves, or make them hawks/ravens/flying sharks/etc and that's just a headache I do...not...want...to deal with.