DreadShinobi

In response to the addtion of incarnate abilities, especially in regards to older level 50 content, rather than toning down incarnate abilities, I'd like to see more tiers of difficulty added to the game. Specifically tiers that are not directly tied to higher level enemies or the purple patch. While i think we should get the option to fight level 55s, one higher than the current cap on enemies, that is mostly just to counter the current level shift applied by the alpha slot. Alternatively remove the level shift from alpha slot for normal content. That would be the only thing I'd take away from the current array of power creep, and I'd love to see more options within each category of incarnate powers, and the later tiers of incarnate power opened up for unlocking. Now with an additional tier of difficulties, I think it could be quite easy to implement. 2 sets of 4 options that are applied as buffs to all critters. One set being 20%, 40%, 60%, and 80% damage resistance, in addition to any passive resistance the critters already have, capped at 90%. Combat would last longer, give more time for the enemy group to actually do their thing, give more time for buff/debuff/control archetypes to do their thing, and more time to actually work as a team. The second would be a damage buff to critters, set seperately from the above damage resistance setting for 50%, 100%, 200%, and 400% damage buff to critters, where the goal again would be to make combat more dangerous, increase the value of buffing, control, and smacking down the enemies down hard and fast. A 3rd or 4th challenge setting could be added to give enemies a +special (powerboost) effect so that their debuffs and controls would be more significant, and the other setting could be a minor mez protection toggle, like mag 3. Each of those two challenge settings would have 1 tier each rather than 4, totalling 10 additional levels of challenge. Each difficulty increase/challenge setting the player or team leader chose to include would increase influence gain, a multiplier to merits gained for completing the content, or a stackable % chance for a second reward window at the end of the content. Something along the lines of feeling rewarding for playing at a higher difficulty, but not so that it would feel required to do so. I believe that with these additional difficulty settings the incarnate system can flourish and be expanded upon, as long we stay away from adding more level shifts.

My badger on homecoming is a rad/fire brute and on live I had 3, a ninja/dark MM (namesake, villain badger), fire/kin controller (hero badger), and fortunata, an extra badger i started out of boredom. The MM turned out to be a massive PitA, summoning, resummoning, and generally not a character I wanted to run for TFs anyways. If I did another badger on homecoming it would absolutely be my fire/fire blaster., because it is the character I enjoy playing most anyways. Having something that exemps exceptionally well is also very helpful because there is alot of things to do as a badger exemped to low levels. Healing abilities are absolutely not necessary, you can rebirth spam the wolf spiders in mercy for that.

do you have anything for anyone to go on? Like how you play, what type of content you do, what powers you like? Maybe post a build for others to see where you're currently at, then it is much easier for people to give suggestions.

With the new patch and buffs coming to /Ninja Training (reduced cooldown on Lotus Drops, and higher cooldown/increased damage on Golden Dragonfly), I'll be tinkering with a Fire/Ninja/Munitions high risk/high reward debuff blaster. Munitions is often overlooked because the shield it offers is literally the worst, but it offers Surveillance as a strong single target debuffing choice. Surveillance with achilles heel and a fury of the gladiator proc in golden dragonfly = consistent 54% resistance debuffing. Smoke Flash can also take off an additional 10.5% aoe resistance. Popping off -64.5% resist debuff should be great for shredding AVs on teams while keeping juicy blaster damage. Choking powder is also pretty nice with 5 dmg procs and a chance for build up, which helps alleviate the lack of true build up in the secondary. Golden Dragonfly can proc Forcefeedback +rchg, which is often unavailable to most blaster builds that lack knockdowns.

Mu pet is not controllable even with the lore pet control panel. You can drag the lore pet controls to your power bar and try clicking the pet commands when lore pets are not summoned.

Ya Summon Adept is 100% skippable, I barely use it because you can't control who it attacks. It is just a set bonus mule that sometimes works out as some minor extra damage. I just really like expedient reinforcement set bonuses, with the unique combination of +dmg, +rchg, +ranged defense. Electric Shackles can also be used in that slot which provides 7.5% rchg with just 4 slots and a small amount of ranged defense, and then gives you 2 slots to put elsewhere. Or you can use Rain of Fire, Fire Breath, Fire Sword Circle, Consume, or Burnout in that slot, depending on your playstyle.

Glad to hear you had a good time with my build. It is definitely a different playstyle than a typical blaster build, but overall allows you to play much more aggressively imo. Access to RoP makes the build shine in areas that other blaster builds can struggle with such as enemy factions that have more exotic damage types and shut down powers. It is great for all the incarnate content, the psi resist is really nice for MoM trial, and even the toxic resist helps vs greater devoured spit in UG, which can otherwise be a massive pita. As you play the build more and get comfortable with the two defense numbers, the 20% melee defense and 28% ranged defense it just gets easier. 32.5% ranged defense would have been alot better allowing for a ranged softcap with a small purple, but honestly with how short combat duration is for blasters its not necessary and deflecting a few attacks is plenty. Being in range of a single maneuvers can actually make a difference you can feel, and thats a nice feeling, compared to being at softcap all the time and getting little to nothing from team defense buffs while your resists are likely in the pits still. Teaming with a cold domination def/corr/troller is also wonderful for this character. A medium purple is +25% defense and puts your melee up to 45% and ranged to nearly incarnate softcap. A guarded insp (18.75% def, 11.25% res) will softcap your ranged defense and hardcap many of your resist values. I won't deny my blasters sg base has 7 very stocked inspiration collectors, so I typically use larger insps with this character, or I run with stacks of team-red insps to act as a wannabe fire/kin corr. Don't forget Demonic Aura and all other accolades will be receiving a small nerf with the next patch for high recharge builds, and will increase their cooldowns from 6-7 mins to 10 mins. I've never tried AE farming with the character but interesting to hear you gave it a shot! The only farming I do is afk farming with brute auto burn. It is pretty noticeable. Fireball is a 15 ft radius with a 16 target cap and Elec Fences is a 10 ft radius with a 10 target cap. Burn solves the target cap and radius discrepency. After casting Fireball>Burn you have typically already reduced the mob size and given a moment to the AI to clump up on you to where Elec fences will hit everything remaining that it needs to before AI decides it no longer wants to be a part of combat with a fire blaster.

The build I posted was specifically mentioned to be for endgame content, not an exemplar focused build. Also for the majority of low level TFs, any IO'd/catalyzed fire blaster is going to have a cake walk. I run enough characters through those TFs for accolades than I care to repeat any of them for merit farming. Getting mezzed is a toggle drop on hot feet, so whether or not it is going to cause you harm or not is less of a point than that it causes you to lose dps from having your powers disabled, even if it is just 2 seconds, losing the hot feet damage, and spending more time retoggling it when you could have thrown another blaze/blazing bolt. The uptime of RoP is also alot better in practice for a blaster because you can cast Inferno on a group during its downtime, or pop a purple insp to softcap yourself. The value in RoP is that it stretches your inspiration tray a really, really long way. It is effectively 2-3 oranges and a break free (over the course of a 10 min TF you nearly just doubled the size of your inspiration tray just by having this power) that are on 90 second durations as opposed to the 60 seconds that inspirations last, and then you only need to pop 1-2 purples to godmode yourself during the downtime, which is far less insp usage than you will get from kill speed drops. Also when you're aware of the tendencies of the mob groups youre fighting the effective downtime of RoP becomes less and less, as you don't need to hit it if the group has already been engaged upon, or doesn't have a mezzer present, or you have your nuke recharged, or youre just about done with the mission and can save it while you transition to the next mission. It also makes just about every AV fight a breeze and in many circumstances that may be all you need it for, since trash groups are typically a non threat anyways, which again lends greatly to its uptime/downtime cycle, where no AV fight should be lasting longer than 90 seconds and it will typically take about a minute to get to the next one. KoB for blasters is pretty cool, but the resist shield has a nearly pointless tertiary resist type. Cold damage is extremely rare, outside of holiday events, and the majority of cold attacks have a S/L component and can be deflected with S/L defense. IOs also provide very easy to access F/C resists with no build cost. I also really recommend putting the status resist IO in fireball, as the uptime is a far cry from what you will see with it in Flares. Even though Flares can be cast while you're mezzed, youre more likely to open a fight with fireball before the enemy group is able to cast their mez power and youre then protected ahead of time (again avoiding the hot feet detoggle). In the build you posted I also feel that you're missing out on alot of potential without slotting the apocalypse damage proc or the double Hecatomb/Unbreakable Constraint purple procs in KoB. The fury of the gladiator resistance debuff proc also works much better in Burn as it amplifies its own damage and generally works better as a single target rotation filler than FSC does. Both putting the status resist IO in flares and using FSC are things I've had in my build in the past and respecced out of. FSC looks great on paper (aside from the animation time), but falls short in practice due to the 10 ft radius and targets capped at 10 as opposed to 16 which Fireball and Inferno can hit.

Using one of the +Def shields in either Mace mastery or Ice mastery, while convenient, ultimately leads to a squishier blaster. Layered defenses, as with any other archetype, are highly valuable on a blaster as well, further enhanced by the significant effectiveness of purple inspirations compared to oranges. The blaster I run uses Mu mastery, for the ever important and highly valuable energy resists, which keeps damage to a minimum against one of the most common damage types you will face, especially valuable for Apex and Tin mage (which is the main content that I run with this particular character, along with other endgame TFs). Mu mastery also offers an aoe immobilize with fairy good DPA with a couple proc, but offers more in the way of effective dps by keeping enemies in your two damage auras and burn for longer. Also stacks with Ring of Fire to lockdown fleeing AVs faster, precluding the need of a taunter. I have also grown extremely fond of Rune of Protection for blasters, and after playing with it for quite a while would no longer give it up for anything. You can activate it while mezzed, meaning it replaces the need for carrying as many break frees to task forces, giving more room for Reds and Purples. 90 second uptime / 68 second downtime is amazing, and you can increase that uptime with Geas, base buffs, offense amplifiers, team buffs, etc. And it provides resistances to all damage types, including Psi, and stacks beautifully with Charged Armor. Access to a long duration mez protection clicky is also really nice for not needing to retoggle Hot Feet when you get hit by a 2 second stun. Charged Armor+Rune of Protection = 66.4 S/L resist, 59.8% Fire/Cold resist, 65.66% Energy resist, 37% Negative resist, 36.5% Toxic/Psi resist. Bonkers for a blaster. With resists that high, moderate defenses go a long way. It is always easier to patch up defense when needed with 1-2 purple inspirations than it is to patch up your resists to similar numbers with 4-6 orange inspirations. The dual Orange/Purple insps are also very effective. The ever present Manuevers stack while playing on teams puts your defense numbers at a much more comfortable number as well. The lack of a defensive hole playing a resist based blaster compared to a blaster that relies only on a 45% S/L softcap has been very significant in my experience. Hero Plan by Mids' Reborn : Hero Designer 2.6.1.25 https://github.com/Crytilis/mids-reborn-hero-designer Click this DataLink to open the build! Level 50 Magic Blaster Primary Power Set: Fire Blast Secondary Power Set: Fire Manipulation Power Pool: Speed Power Pool: Leaping Power Pool: Concealment Power Pool: Sorcery Ancillary Pool: Mu Mastery Hero Profile: Level 1: Flares -- SprWntBit-Acc/Dmg(A), SprWntBit-Dmg/Rchg(17) Level 1: Ring of Fire -- Apc-Dmg(A), Apc-Dmg/Rchg(3), Apc-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(3), Apc-Acc/Rchg(11), Apc-Dmg/EndRdx(11) Level 2: Fire Ball -- SprDfnBrr-Acc/Dmg(A), SprDfnBrr-Dmg/Rchg(13), SprDfnBrr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(23), SprDfnBrr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(25), SprDfnBrr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(25), SprDfnBrr-Rchg/+Status Protect(31) Level 4: Fire Sword -- Hct-Dmg(A), Hct-Dmg/EndRdx(5), Hct-Dam%(5), Hct-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(7), Hct-Acc/Rchg(7) Level 6: Super Speed -- BlsoftheZ-ResKB(A), BlsoftheZ-Travel/EndRdx(17) Level 8: Combat Jumping -- LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(A), ShlWal-ResDam/Re TP(9), Rct-ResDam%(9) Level 10: Stealth -- LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(A) Level 12: Aim -- RechRdx-I(A), GssSynFr--Build%(13) Level 14: Hasten -- RechRdx-I(A) Level 16: Build Up -- RechRdx-I(A) Level 18: Blaze -- SprBlsWrt-Acc/Dmg(A), SprBlsWrt-Dmg/Rchg(19), SprBlsWrt-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(19), SprBlsWrt-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(21), SprBlsWrt-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(21), SprBlsWrt-Rchg/Dmg%(23) Level 20: Cauterizing Aura -- PreOptmz-Acc/Rech(A), PreOptmz-EndMod/End(34), PreOptmz-EndMod/Rech(37), PreOptmz-EndMod/Acc/End(40), PreOptmz-EndMod/Acc/Rech(43), PreOptmz-EndMod/End/Rech(48) Level 22: Spirit Ward -- Prv-Absorb%(A) Level 24: Arcane Bolt -- SprWntBit-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(A), SprWntBit-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(31) Level 26: Blazing Bolt -- StnoftheM-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(A), StnoftheM-Acc/Dmg(27), StnoftheM-Dam%(27), StnoftheM-Dmg/EndRdx(29), StnoftheM-Acc/ActRdx/Rng(29), Apc-Dam%(31) Level 28: Rune of Protection -- UnbGrd-Max HP%(A), UnbGrd-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(37), UnbGrd-ResDam(39), UnbGrd-Rchg/ResDam(39), RechRdx-I(42) Level 30: Grant Invisibility -- LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(A) Level 32: Inferno -- Obl-Dmg(A), Obl-Acc/Rchg(33), Obl-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(33), Obl-Dmg/Rchg(33), Obl-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(34), Obl-%Dam(34) Level 35: Burn -- Arm-Dam%(A), Arm-Dmg/EndRdx(36), Arm-Acc/Rchg(36), Arm-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(36), Arm-Dmg/Rchg(37), FuroftheG-ResDeb%(46) Level 38: Hot Feet -- Obl-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(A), Obl-Dmg(39), Obl-Acc/Rchg(40), Obl-Dmg/Rchg(40), Obl-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(42), Obl-%Dam(43) Level 41: Charged Armor -- StdPrt-ResDam/Def+(A), GldArm-3defTpProc(42), GldArm-ResDam(43) Level 44: Electrifying Fences -- PstBls-Dam%(A), PstBls-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(45), PstBls-Acc/Dmg(45), PstBls-Dmg/EndRdx(45), PstBls-Dmg/Rng(46), Bmbdmt-+FireDmg(46) Level 47: Summon Adept -- ExpRnf-Acc/Dmg(A), ExpRnf-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(48), ExpRnf-EndRdx/Dmg/Rchg(48), ExpRnf-+Res(Pets)(50), ExpRnf-Acc/Rchg(50), ExpRnf-Dmg/EndRdx(50) Level 49: Invisibility -- LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(A) Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A) Level 1: Defiance Level 1: Quick Form Level 1: Prestige Power Dash -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Slide -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Quick -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Rush -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Surge -- Empty(A) Level 1: Sprint -- Run-I(A) Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A) Level 4: Ninja Run Level 2: Swift -- Run-I(A) Level 2: Health -- Pnc-Heal/+End(A), NmnCnv-Regen/Rcvry+(15), Mrc-Rcvry+(15) Level 2: Hurdle -- Jump-I(A) Level 2: Stamina -- EndMod-I(A) Level 0: Freedom Phalanx Reserve Level 0: The Atlas Medallion Level 0: Portal Jockey Level 0: Task Force Commander Level 50: Musculature Core Paragon ------------

Temperature Protection is skippable. Fiery Aura has alot of bad reputation about being squishy, but in practice it is quite solid defensively. Survivability is only relevant equal to the amount of incoming damage, and for many tankers, they have far more than what is needed. Most of my fiery aura experience is with brutes, as that is where the damage effectiveness was before the tanker buff patch, but I have tanked literally everything in the game with fiery aura, pretty much only carrying Red inspirations. That said my fiery aura brute runs two builds, one with 45% S/L defense, and one with psionic resist, better numbers defensively can obviously be achieved with a tanker. Once you meet the survivability threshold, fiery aura pushes far ahead of other sets (sans bio armor) with its offensive capabilities, which was what you mentioned, wanting an armor set that pushed EM damage further. I messed with mids today and pretty easily built a Fiery/EM tanker that has 90% resist to S/L/F, 58% cold, and 70% N/E resists on top of 45% S/L defense. With an 1100 HP heal every 12 seconds, and an additional ~280 hp regenerated in that time frame, you can have quite the layered defenses with fiery aura. It is quite easy to build in extra survivability (purple insps are broken), and much harder to build in extra offenses, which is why Blazing Aura, Burn, and Fiery Embrace are so valuable. Comparing Fiery Aura when built up to 90% S/L resist and 45% S/L Defense to say Invuln, I don't see how people can say it lacks in mitigation, and burn is some significant mitigation.

Rad Armor is great on tankers, as most resistance based sets are. I personally don't like that clicking Meltdown and Ground Zero takes 6 seconds to activate, and the set as a whole has much competition from Bio Armor. You mentioned Fiery Aura as one of your options and it is a great pair for Energy Melee, and is what I would recommend over Rad Armor. Burn helps shore up the lack of aoe in EM significantly. Fiery Embrace further buffs TF/ET damage to ST Nuke levels. Fiery Aura is no slouch defensively for tankers in most regular content either. A Scrapper would get 28% crit damage on TF/ETs and double focus for more fast energy transfers, same with stalkers, however neither AT runs well with fiery aura and that would be the tanker's niche here. The tanker being able to run a more offensive armor set in fiery aura can easily make up for the lower damage scale when compared to scrappers, outside of Bio Armor scrappers. Fiery Aura also has a couple more skippables that can open up room for pools and ancillary compared to Rad Armor. I don't recommend the combo for brutes.

There is a leveling range where you have TF and do not yet have ET until lvl 38 on tankers.

Same.

This is where I'll be logging out all of my characters moving forward. Then I just don't need to worry about having less access to my base. They have given plenty of options to the players still want to have access to base hopping. I'm also quite fond of the teleporter popmenu macro being introduced. Also, Is there any way that the Fast Travel Popmenu would be able to show cooldowns? Cause otherwise I'd still probably feel inclined to keep all the buttons on a power tray somewhere to track the cooldowns, and that is a little messy.

For blasters it is difficult to compare anything to the performance that Fire Blasting offers. The animation time on fireball and blaze put much to shame. Beam Rifle is bogged down by a number of long animation times, including Lancer Shot, Cutting Beam, and Disintegrate at 1.9s, and Piercing Beam at 2.33s. The DPA of Fire Breath looks good in comparison. The DoT on Inferno is also very strong with blaster mods when comparing the two nukes. BR is not really a set that shines in melee, like where you say you want to play. From Fire Manip, Combustion is skippable and FSC isn't all that, but Burn is on point. I'm sure BR/Dev can be fun and a unique pick and playstyle, but if your comparison point is a fire/fire blaster it is a hard comparison.

@Golden Azrael EM still has a truckload of Stun potential even if you ignore the Stun EF mechanic completely. It didn't have an effect on survivability, especially on BS that had a 60% chance already. Both TF and ET have massive stuns. ET is an especially effective stun due to the 1 second animation. Bosses get stunned easily, as do EBs, and I've been stunning AVs when their PToD drops too, for the full duration of their PToD drop. Barrage literally benefits more from having the stun mechanic there because youre increasing a 10% (?) stun chance to 100% rather than 60% to 100%. It is also a regen debuff. The regen debuff ironically will not give you more effective dps compared to a fast ET. It is also more relevant on the one archetype that has to take Barrage in reference to their role.

I feel like there are other changes that could benefit MA. Similar to what was done with EC, Crane Kick seems to make more sense as a narrow cone, think 10-19 degrees 10 ft range, similar to Golden Dragonfly. I always thought if I crane kick someone and there is a guy standing directly behind him, both should be crane kicked, whether that is your leg hitting the second guy or the force of the crane kick knocking the 1st guy into the second guy for them to both go flying. Crane Kick also needs differentiation from Cobra Strike. An animation time reduction of EC would be swell. Possibly reaching into Martial Assault and porting over Reach for the Limit or Burst of Speed could enhance some uniqueness for Martial Arts. Though I don't know how the latter would be fit in. But it would be really nice if they looked at Fiery Melee too....

Yup and you also get 10% range buff on /both/ sentinel ATOs. This largely makes up for the shorter base range that the archetype has and puts it ahead in some cases.

This alone is the only thing that pushed me to make a sentinel-anything. Bio armor specific to sentinels offers a truly unique play experience. My fire/bio is the only character I have that doesn't have super speed or speed of sound. Athletic Regulation is arguably the best movement speed power in the game, being that it is a passive, compared to similar things like Siphon Speed that need to be maintained. Not needing to run super speed also does noticeably cut down your endurance usage (I am not one who cares to detoggle it in combat) Outside of that, Bio offers a massive absorb shield and regen buff on a low cooldown, keeping in mind that Absorb protects you against all damage types. The heal which doubles as a free medium blue inspiration coupled with 55% endurance drain protection offers little fear of bottoming out your endurance with little build investment. You can be quite survivable without softcapping your defenses letting you invest in other things like procs and global recharge.

Thank you and well done. Happy and ready for the live server rollout.

@Myrmidon

Barrage has already been mentioned as a suitable replacement to provide a 100% chance stun and regen debuff. I'm sort of in between, and my posts aren't really about min-maxing dps, it's about the feel of the set, such as in the post I quoted from @Mystic_Cross. And moreso than maximizing my DPS I'd prefer a simpler/looser attack chain where I can still fast cast 2 ETs on a crit TF (because TF only crits for +28% damage, and ET cannot crit for additional damage at all on crit based archetypes, so there should be some payoff, which is in the form of a second stack of EF, so yes the usage of that second stack does matter).

That's true I could play an attack chain like that, but then I'd feel like I am playing a dual blades combo system, and that's what a lot of people do not want.

This is what is being reffered to, and has nothing to do with being some kind of demigod. No matter what level of play I am at, I will always rather just spam a few more energy punches than lose my second EF stack to BS. As has already been said everyone loves basic bonesmasher. I personally don't want to feel punished for using it liberally.

The bonesmasher complaint is specific to Stalkers and Scrappers, who can build 2 stacks of EF on a crit with TF. It is not relevant to brutes/tankers who just build 1 stack of EF at a time. If you're a stalker/scrapper and you have 2 stacks of EF, ideally you want to spend both those stacks on ET, which locks you out of using BS before you cast the second ET if you want the fast animation. This can lead to player mistakes or gapping your attack chain so that you don't mess up your second ET by casting BS. Also after you cast the second ET, your TF is recharged further locking you out of casting BS if you don't want to mess up your attack chain.