Carnifax

If IOs were not in the game then swathes of players would have gotten bored and moved on. For an awful lot of people being able to build chars with IOs and set bonuses are a large part of enjoying the game. Without it I'd be long gone.

Fat naked guy doing a rainbow chunder.

So I built an Elec/Poison in Beta and kitted them out. @Coyote's End concerns immediately cropped up. So I gutted Alkaloid and used the slots to slot toggled and Health a bit better. Quite entertaining overall though, not the single hard lockdown of other sets (some were confused, some were asleep, others were choking to death and some were just standing around twiddling their thumbs. All were falling over constantly).

Blasters can have a Rad secondary. As can Sentinels 🙂

I've said it many times, on an 8 man everyone is around 3/8s unneeded. Try running +4x8 with a 5 man instead, or fewer. You can start TFs etc with as many players as you like now.

Well now, this I didn't know. I did have Envenom procced up but cannabilised it. But silly proc trick I'm all over. Think I'm going Elec/Poison, just because I've never gotten near 50 with Elec (as far as Gremlins maybe). Already have a Grav, Illusion and Plant on the way which is why I didn't consider them.

So my initial was "Fire" but I quickly rejected that. So now I'm debating between Elec, Ice & Dark, leaning slightly away from Dark just cos the build seems too much of a stretch. The Elec build is weird because I've actually avoided Conductive Aura since it doesn't do a hell of a lot on its own. *Edit, I've done a version with Aura > Neutrotoxic Cone thingie instead Ice version. I kind of like the idea of Arctic + Gas Aura Dark. Not sure I like this, Haunts seem underslotted and no Confuse makes me sad, And finally the Fire version which was my initial draft (but I have a planned Fire/Traps Fold Spacer sitting in his teens so unlikely I want this)

So Poison. No-one plays poison much. But looking on @UberGuy's amazing City of Data Poison seems quite decent in a "No buffs, all debuffs" kinda way. I'm flailing around looking at various primaries (I've even got 4 builds done) but I'd like to hear what others think and potential builds before I start spamming the forums. So, as Maxim says I got the poison, what's your remedy?

Can't think of anything significant baked into a Tier 1 secondary.

Bruising isn't a thing any more. It was dropped in favour of just turning Tanks into AOE Monsters and also buffing their other damage to compensate for it being removed. Because BALANCE.

That's the thing. Invul basically gives you a bit of everything defensively. A bit of everything is a perfect base for an IO build. My two builds are at the end of this thread here. The Wintered version is quite silly numbers-wise. You need Guarded to hit Melee cap but Guarded is a nice cone anyway. The big downside of Staff is the damage type and the lack of NoRedraw (if you can live with that then get a Snipey epic like Mu).

Just to throw another into the mix, Nature can make you into a bit of a powerhouse. Its *big 3* buffs all affect you. So that's 23% resists to everything, a whopping Absorb shield, 82% damage to everything, some regen, a nice End discount and some extra ToHit from those 3 alone. Sprinkle in whichever of the 3 toggles you like from Entangling, Spore Cloud and Lifegiving Spores and you should be pretty well sorted. You'll still need to build for Def but IOing for defense is standard enough, and then one you do that being able to layer those Resists and Absorb on top makes you very tough.

Sorry, I read that backwards. Quite a lot of sets have this. Dark and Storm it's always "Drop mist". I've also annoyed people with a poorly timed & placed Group Invis (til I apologised and said "You can right click it to cancel it!"

I've a Staff / Inv. He's pretty indestructible and click-lite which suits stupid "I-always-redraw" staff.

I'd the opposite of this. An ITF where we lost both our Tanks before the 1st mission finished (basically just as we got outside again). That left us as 6 : Two Blasters, a Scrapper, a Sent, an Ice/Stormie corruptor and my DP/Kin corruptor. So it looked like it'd be a shitshow. But the leader said "Right, we're going around the backway". We did that, triggered Sister S but at the same time also triggered the Seafood Special. We held those off as long as we could* while Sister Sol very.... slowly.... did her thing, got Mish Complete and then dropped diff so we could reasonably easily finish between us (think we ended up on +2). * Dwarfs were fine til the stupid Squids got involved and cascade-stripped my Defenses

You mean "exactly like everyone else"? I'd never not pick Hide on a Stalker, just like I'd never not pick my Hold in a Controller set or my Smashing / Lethal / Melee def on an Armour set. What I'm saying is that in this context (allowing a choice of 1st Secondary powers) I don't see any reason to make a special exception for Stalkers. If this happened a Hideless Stalker should be an option. Just an exceptionally crap / niche one (like petless masterminds).

A lot of it is just the sheer number of attacks "creepers" makes. It's why you slot with Damage procs 1st (so Entangle, Vine smash and Thorn attacks all get chances to proc it). But yes the Entangle having a 1000 second recharge would also be a big factor, you'll essentially be 90% sure of procs on the "corpse bombs" when they go off (and again you've up to 3 damage procs in there). Immob proc isn't as good in Creepers (because it will only trigger for Entangle, not the Vines). Slows are better because they go off for the Bramble patch and the Vine attacks (but not the Entangle).

There's two aspects to this for me. 1) I could use more slots for my build. Some attacks are underslotted (just Kinetic Combat in some Dwarf attacks for example. Nowhere near enough slots to take some Human things like Unchain Essence) 2) Past level 40 I didn't take a single power which wasn't a 1-slot Mule I never use (Stealth pool / Combat Jumping and the like). My post 40 build is like anti-epic 🙂 I've also said in the past that Dwarfs should be allowed Orbiting Death and Nova Grav Emission (the cone stun thingy) and that both forms should also allow Pool toggles to keep on running (Leadership / Combat Jumping / Tough / Weave / Stealth etc)

I'm just baffled as to why anyone would want to prolong a Citidel over pretty much any other non-shard TF. "Would you like extra razor blades in your broken glass sandwich?"

It'd make Traps secondary less horrific earlier on. Traps really is a "crap sandwich". Nice powers in the middle, bookended by shite at the start and end. On a controller it's like "yay. I start with a power that manages to copy yet be much worse than one of my primaries". And like Bill says just let Stalkers not take hide too. Why not? It's probably gimping them but no worse than anyone else could gimp themselves anyway by missing their set signature powers.

+4 Citidel? Ew Ew Ew.

^ This. Beam does have the 145 recharge, but to balance that the base damage is lower. Rain of Arrows really seems to be the only outlier (according to Mids anyway).

Yup, totally. Hence my Water / Temporal "Time" blaster. Bonus : My Primary doesn't make weEEEEeeeeOOOOO noises.

I find them intensely dull. Especially Crabs, it just feels like "stick toggles on. 1. 2. 1. 3. 4. 1. 2. 1...." But yes, PBs / Warshades should get an epic which is essentially "Powers which give more slots". Although I'm not sure if that's possible.

This is a good point actually. I know the Furies or whatever they're called in DA will fire off the Dual Pistols nuke. Which version will they get?