Gorgar

I'd love to have old Phase Shift back. Also, the graphics for it are really cool.

I like this. I'd probably use mace models on my inv/axe tank if I had the choice, but I picked axe for the secondary effect. Something like this already sort of happens with Dual Blades, where there is at least one axe model you can use in place of either sword. Meanwhile, I'm glad mace, axe and broadsword are such old sets. If they were designed recently, there'd probably be a lot of superfluous twirling involved. Wish they'd designed staff back then too.

Most of mine just get the Panacea proc, and a common end mod plus Peformance Shifter end mod and proc in Stamina. I'll add Miracle if that's not enough and they don't have any end recovery powers like Consume. I rarely use Numina, only when slotting a full set into a squishy for the defense bonus, or going for lots of regen.

I for one like the Bombardment set bonuses as they are. I'd rather have more enhancement value than a damage proc, but not at the expense of the set bonuses.

I just stick a Zephyr kb protection in my travel power and call it good. I'm generally not doing anything else with the slot anyway. Melee characters with kb protect in their armor sets usually get a stealth proc in the travel power instead.

Dark defender would be my choice. Illusion/dark would also be pretty nice.

Really nicely done costume!

This is great. Makes it easy to find powers that would make me want one set over another. Thanks for writing this up.

Fire farming is a very special case where only fire defense, fire resist and regen matter for keeping you alive. Fire resist is easy to cap. Fire defense also needs to be capped, and I noticed a huge change in my survivability when I went from 42.50 fire defense to 45 after a respec. That made the difference for being able to afk farm if I want to, and to not have to watch my health as much when actively farming. Smash/lethal resist doesn't matter in a purely fire damage farm. I took Tough to slot Aegis in and so I could get Weave, but I don't run it in a farm.

I was woefully uninformed about this and ran my mace/da through the Hollows taking down huge groups of blue-con guys by having Death Shroud slotted for acc and damage, and just an acc and an end reduction in my attacks. I didn't know how bad I had it! Damage auras are fine, including at very low levels. You may have to back off somewhat on single-target attacks, but they're very efficient aoe.

Dark Armor/Dark Melee. Touch of Fear is useful at times and stacks with the aura. Not a great solo set though, in that it takes forever to kill anything. No reason you couldn't tank on a DM/DA brute though. Presence isn't a real strong pool. I played with it some on a WP/DM tank to add more fear, but it's weak compared to DA/DM, and if you don't take either dark set, it's probably not going to be terribly effective. If you're thinking of doing this because it would be *good*, well, it probably wouldn't be. But it'd be playable if it was something you really wanted to do. DA/DM is pretty much the canonical example of "defeat them one by one" though. Your taunt aura should generally keep the enemies around you on its own, with the taunt power to help out.

I'm aimed a bit more at control at the expense of maximized buffs via Power Boost. Otherwise, everything in here pretty much matches my experience. Nice guide! I went Emp/Sonic/Dark so that I could run Oppressive Gloom to stack with Screech. Also took the cone sleep power, just for ambushes and such.

This sounds pretty cool. Now I'm hoping for, some day, an arcane defense set, because my armored ranged attacker would be more along the lines of Dr Fate. I'd love to see the sorcery pool as a starting point for a new powerset (or two, there's a blast in there). I have not played a sentinel past level 4 and it's probably mainly the inherent that just doesn't do it for me, so I'm looking forward to this.

HFTO, again. This makes me definitely want to revive a couple of tanks I was redoing as brutes. It's not raising the aggro cap, but it should make it a *lot* quicker to *reach* that cap.

Inv is good for this. Willpower is decent too. My Amazonian type is Axe/Inv, was a tank on live but a tanky brute fits her better. I'd go brute, your choice of mace, axe, katana, broadsword, dual blades, staff, titan weapons, with invuln, willpower, shield as good thematic choices for armor set. If you really don't want a weapon set, to me Super Strength has kind of a Hulk-like feel, and Street Justice would fit an unarmed Amazon better. SS looks strong and slow, StJ looks still strong but also agile, and therefore more fitting. And it's a decent set.

Generally: I like how HC has been doing things. The QoL changes are great. Specifically: Give Archery a niche. Range, maybe. Alternate, basic animations for the flashy sets like DB, DP, especially Staff. I know a lot of people like those, but give me the option not to spin on my head. Especially in hover. Customizable and more MM pets. A way to select an NPC to join on solo missions. Could be a way to add content, do Sky Dragon's missions, unlock him as an optional companion. Like Diablo II's companions basically. Good for defenders, lowbie controllers. I don't care if the Incarnate system gets finished, but I'd like to see it confined to incarnate content. Nukes and pets for everyone doesn't make sense. Tried to fight some zombies, they were continuously eradicated by judgement powers before I could target any. It's dumb. More powersets and costume bits. More ATs? Third colors for pieces, more colors, maybe some minor effects like being able to override the textures. For instance, the Justice costume would look cool if there was a metallic version. Adding some very simple patterns and being able to set a second pattern would be a good use for a third color. The costume editor is still one of the best parts of this game, and it would be cool to build on it a bit more. I'd like to see things we can combine, giving a lot of variety, given at least as much attention as very specific niche costume pieces, as cool as those are. A second aura would be nice too: why not smoke *and* fire? The biggest change I'd like would be to revamp the maps. The office maps are pretty silly. Multiple floors of different sizes and shapes. Weird design that any normal person would get lost in. I'd really like to see maps generated on the fly in more normal dimensions so that it's not quite so much City of Weirdly Specific Office Buildings. Also some work on the caves. It's too easy to miss a side passage. I would expect some sort of pathway in caves being used as lairs, which would help a lot visually. Council might have something paved, CoT might have just dirt, but anything would be better than the current caves, which are very hard to navigate. Don't get me wrong, I've loved this game since Issue 4 when I joined, but when I came back, I found the maps were the one thing that really stood out as wanting attention.

This would seem pretty immersion-breaking to me. Why would my mace come back after I throw it? Am I carrying a bag of them?

Just the fact that they picked the defender AT makes me happy. Doubly so if they're dark/whatever, but fruit salad is good too. Dark just happens to approach problems in a way that works really well for me. Second would be emp or a well-played storm.

This is what I've arrived at as well. I do keep three bins for high-level salvage and keep 8-9 pieces of each type in the white, yellow and orange bins. This is just for convenience as I like to craft all the recipes that drop while farming, convert and sell them. Then I refill anything that's low that I have on hand, ditch the rest and am ready for another farm run. It's probably not efficient compared to just serial farming, but it's nice to have a break from it. The only time I buy salvage is if I buy a set of 10 recipes with intent to convert them to something specific that sells well, or if I'm out of a rare for a purple or pvp recipe that dropped and I don't feel like waiting. I remember the days on live of runs on specific useful salvage, and while I did some flipping myself just to see if I could, I don't miss it. One thing I really like about HC is that there are ways to make money that are tied to doing something useful. Farming and crafting the drops puts attuned IOs on the market, and that's good for everyone.

I would argue that there's not a kb tax, in that if I don't *want* the kb, I don't tend to play energy blast. There are plenty of other sets that are useful, and I don't see much point in taking a set with a consistent secondary effect if you don't want the effect. I think energy pairs well with some defender primaries and poorly with others. It goes well with storm and I mostly solo with my storm/energy. If teaming, she's kind of an off-tank, again dealing with stray ambushes when needed, and providing Freezing Rain for the melee crowd, hoverblasting, and keeping things off the squishies. It works pretty well, but she's not that helpful on a team that's steamrolling, in which case I'll just alt. I've known a couple of really good emp/energy that similarly knew how to aim their kb, target intelligently, and use Energy Torrent to keep from being overrun by stray mobs. My own emp is /sonic and uses the cone kb in that set in a similar manner. Energy is probably a poor choice for some other primaries. I would not pair it with dark or nature for sure. The one place I'm considering slotting a kb->kd proc is in Phantasm on my ill/dark, where the pet has an obnoxious tendency to knock things out of the tar patch and not follow up and dispatch them. So I get that kb can be detrimental, but it's also generally fun for me and my preference is to play energy when it works with the other powerset and not play it when it doesn't.

En/en is pretty good at hard targets. Chain KB is good control. Probably less so if you use kb->kd IOs, as you eliminate the time mobs spend getting back into range. I built for ranged defense, didn't even take Hasten, and my tactic is to keep things out of their effective range, which is shorter than mine. Soloing, I put Boost Range on auto, set myself generally on +2/x1 to +4/x1, and use kb to keep things far away from me, including Bonfire, which I have slotted for kb. It's a lot of fun. Stuff frequently dies without ever getting within melee range. The reason I don't make the team bigger is just to keep from getting too many mobs to be able to juggle. Teaming, I usually put Energize on auto (though still sometimes Boost Range) and either target things nobody else is dealing with, Nova the group, or use more single-target attacks on bosses and/or mobs with annoying powers. I like the energy secondary. For a while I was running Aid Self and Field Medic, which is a pretty good heal on its own, and better if you have time for Power Boost first. I'm finding Energize is enough healing by itself though, as the extra regen has more time to work while mobs are running back to me. Sorry you're not enjoying it, but I for one love it, to the point that I don't really play other blasters much. None of the others I've tried come close to being as much fun as en/en is for me, even at low level.

Thanks for clarifying that. In light of that, I probably won't take the power. There'd be little advantage over just using Stealth and a stealth proc in Combat Jumping like I do now. I tend to be close enough to the defense cap that the little defense Stealth gives wouldn't be worth losing to get better stealth radius.

Thanks, I see on live Invisibility is 1.30 end/sec, so now I get it. This is a great change and I'm likely to take the power now. Would be better for opening a fight with Nova and not getting hit on the way in. If there was ever a change to the pool powers like the travel powers got, where you could take the third one without prerequisite, I might drop Stealth altogether on some. While you're looking at Concealment, would there be any way to make Phase Shift indefinite in PVE like it used to be? I think they changed it to the max 30 seconds for PVP reasons, at which point I sadly respeced out of it.

I recognize some base items (statues, cemetary pieces) as having been added to beta a few months ago and then removed because of some issues. I noticed the plants that had been added then don't seem to be in this update. Don't remember what they all were, but I do remember there were African violets. Were the plants the problem before? Is there hope for their return? There's a lot of new stuff and people building outdoor, medical, Arachnos or cave bases among others will be very happy. Just curious because I really liked those plants.

As it stands on beta right now, it looks like Invisibility costs .46 end/sec. That's what it says in the power selection screen. Combat Attributes shows it at .45. Either way, it's neither the number the patch notes say it originally was, nor the number it's supposed to be changed to. I'm kind of surprised Invisibility would be *cheaper* than Stealth, but you do need another Concealment power, so maybe that's why. It's a better Stealth than Stealth in all ways as listed, and even at what I suspect was its original cost, I'd take it over Stealth at least on my main. Better defense and concealment before firing off Nova, and a defense bonus if I need to disengage for a few seconds. I'll take that.