Erydanus

You just need to come up with better origin concepts. Is your character Natural? Is he "just" the best tactician ever and he talked some people into working for him as flunkies? If that's the case though your character is automatically a supreme specimen like Batman and your power is TRAINING OTHERS. That's formiddable. You can't assume demons are magic and robots are tech. Look at the clockwork, they're mutant origin. Why? And you can't do that either? Is your origin magic? My beast mastermind is magical. He's a forest ranger who's dabbled in dark sorcery. These aren't common wolves he's running around with (not like the Dire Wolf is a normal animal anyway) they're spirits of the forest at my command. You can't even kill them - you can only dissipate them for a moment before I resummon them. HA! My thugs? Ex-hellions, at least the arsonist. Maybe they're skulls or outcasts. Anyway, with my Magical origin, they're under the control of a vampire with dark magical powers so they're strengthened by my blooood. "Common" Mercenaries? you mean ex-Malta agents or maybe they're Council or Arachnos I don't really care they work for me and they can get as good as they give. My tech origin gives me access to supertoxins and combat drugs that are probably illegal in most countries but the results show themselves. I could explain the ninjas, but then they'd have to kill you. 😉

I confess I have occasionally used powers from the command line. /powexecname rest /powexectoggleoff fly (handy if you're flying while you respect and drop fly... ahahaha don't ask me how I know that)

Ok no this makes perfect sense. Confuse is the same way, you put a damage proc in it and you give up the no aggro of the attack. I had also been planning to slot it with Will of the Controller simply for the nice numbers and because I thought the proc would get a reasonable workout in there as opposed to say putting it in the AoE hold. (I slot the single target hold as a blast with some frankenslotted hold). Great warning.

@Gulbasaur Yup! Hit R to autorun and tried /em flypose1 /em flypose2 /em flypose3 etc no effect at all.

This is basically what I'm doing right now and as a leveling build it is working very well. I think my fortunado is 26. Basically I'm looking at Psychic Scream as good value in damage and mitigation because it does have a 50% recharge debuff. So against single targets I'm doing the chain you're showing but if it's a small group (and it usually is) it's more like Follow-up -> Spin -> Psychic Scream -> resume single chain on main target -> if things run or I need more mitigation Psionic Tornado (for the knockdown in great part). The thing is, as a leveling build, Tornado is too expensive to use freely, it needs more slots but I'm prioritizing other things right now (like Follow-up). I just picked up Telekinetic Blast which I will be slotting with force feedback proc (and probably a kb->kd proc) and using as my ranged attack for runners and for just general purpose ranged reasons. This will definitely be the sort of build that gets a heavy re-do at higher levels when more slots are available but as an actual leveling build it's working extremely well. I did cut some big corners, for instance I took Leadership: Maneuvers at a very low level to stack with the widow version.

So @Gulbasaur I tried to do fly poses while using mystic flight this weekend and nopers, it didn't work. Are you sure you were on a mystic flight character doing that?? Also to follow up on my comments about my Huntsman, he has been a lot of fun, I think he's bout 18 now. Turns out I really like the gun animations (both shooting and smacking people with it) and this makes me remember what I was doing with mine on live before shutdown. I was basically playing him like a sentinel, just enjoying the blaster-like shooting front end with the layered defenses of the SOA secondary. Now on the current guy, redraw has been hell any time I used filler powers like Sands of Mu so my idea of mixing in the fighting pool is definitely right out. It's interesting that with the Widows the Fort/NW get the same attacks as the Blood Widow (albeit I think the NW gets redrawless animations making them a bit better?), but for the Soldiers it's like you throw away the gun when you become a bane and take attacks using the mace that parallel the originals. Unfortunately, staying with the gun is choosing to take numerically inferior attacks but that's the price of a Concept(tm) Character.

First this is not a great combination for controller play though you're going to be helpful to teams. You're just not going to get a lot of synergy from it, just control on the one hand and drop a lot of buffs on the other hand. And as much as I love gravity, we all know it trades away some control potential for straight up damage, which, if you're on a team, is probably less useful because they will have people who can do it better than you. That said here's the deets. What's good about Nature Affinity? Everything. Everything in this set is good, take everything. The theme of the set is like if someone looked at Regen and then looked at Willpower and then looked at Empathy and said "Well I've got an idea for a new set." It's heals, heals over time, regens, some damage resistance, some absorb shield, randomly some recovery, and it finishes off with a sick AoE damage buff. The heal is an AoE cone that starts behind you so you're affected too (remember Singularity cannot be healed but it can be buffed otherwise); Rebirth is a Big Heal if you use it on someone who's not already dead; Lifegiving Spores is similar to a regeneration beacon but it's a HoT instead and also has some +recovery. For debuffy things in the set you get spore cloud which is your typical radiation infection type anchor but it's got some -regen and some -damage in it, plus it puts a mushroom on the head of your anchor target which makes it actually easy to see (bonus lols when used on giant monsters). Entangling Aura is kind of a choking cloud type power. The other powers are pretty obvious buffs. Gravity was changed significantly a few issues before shutdown so you may not know a lot of this. Lift and Propel were straight up buffed; Lift does a lot more damage now, and Propel is faster to cast and recharge, it also does knockdown on the target in a tiny AoE just big enough that when you hit a Hellion with a couch, expect the two mobs flanking him to be knocked on their butts too. It sometimes does knockback on the main target but the collateral damage is usually knockdown. I don't feel it requires a kb->kd proc, I find it manageable. Basically Gravity Distortion, Lift, Propel is now a fast flowing attack chain. You can still weave crush in but it's a filler attack. Dimension Shift was changed from a click AoE intangible power to a TOGGLE albeit with a maximum duration. It's also a placed AoE and if anyone goes into the effect area they become "phased in" to the foes and can attack them so if you shift some foes and the team's ready to grab them they can just run in or you can turn it off. (People don't magically love it now but it's not going to get people pissed at you.) Finally Wormhole got buffed (… yeah I know this is all nuts, right?) so that it no longer causes aggro when you use it so if you target 5 guys and teleport only 3 of them the other 2 will usually just stand there going "I felt a breeze? what? oh nothing." The knockback is still a bit strong so people are often slotting the knockback to knockdown proc in it. Finally if you aren't familiar with the controller Archetype sets let me just recommend you get the energy font proc and slap it into Crushing Field. If you put your Spore Cloud on a mob and then spam Crushing Field as you are doing your attack chain there's a very high chance the proc will trigger; it creates temporary pets that have an AoE stun power. Trivial damage but as a Grav/Rad I found it helpful to have these 10 second decoys flying around and occasionally stunning some minions.

Are you mis-matching the beacons and teleporter by tech/arcane? They must match or they won't connect, @SolarCenturion.

Well, no. First one of them is a global you just slot it and it boosts your critical hit chance a little. The other one is a proc and the whole procs per minute thing has turned conventional wisdom on procs on its head. In the past if you had a fast charging low damage attack like your typical first or second power in an attack powerset, if you slotted it with damage procs that chances of them firing with the repeated use meant it was often a DPS gain over a damage IO/SO. It doesn't work that way any more. You're actually penalized for using it in a fast recharging power, even your recharge enhancements count against you in that calculation. When the procs now say they're probably fire off 2x a minute, they kind of mean in that exact situation of spamming a fast attack with it. Putting them in slower charging attacks raises the chance of triggering, and AoEs often trigger procs very well because more targets means more chances to check and fire off usually. But again, it's a bit of a nerf from before because instead of a proc possibly going off on everyone in the AoE once it triggers it stops (I THINK). But if you're trying to get a build up proc to fire and you put it in tactics every ten seconds it makes a check vs every friendly player you're buffing and so it has a high chance of giving you a buff is high. But, bizarrely, if you stick the build up proc into actual build up, the recharge on it is SO high there's about a 66% chance that any time you fire off Build up you'll trigger the proc effectively getting double build up. So what the discussion here is boils down to: stick the 50% critical hit bonus in something like Spin which hits a bunch of targets and makes it likely you'll get a buff making your next hit crit, or put it in a moderate speed bread and butter attack at a critical point in your attack chain so that the crit buff is always going to happen before you use a heavy hitter.

I don't see what's wrong with Shadow Field? I think the power detail info is hard for people to understand. It's an AoE hold that persists and pulses so foes that enter into the area later have a chance to be held too. It's a bit like Volcanic Gasses in Earth. Different, but not bad. And no I don't think you should slot any of your control powers for -hit other than Fearsome Stare (after you have taken care of your acc, rech, and fear duration needs) which does have an appreciable -to hit element and doesn't need many slots to have it available every fight. Likewise don't skimp on Darkest Night in your secondary. There's not many -tohit sets, just use what you like.

Gosh I know. It's why selection of secondary requires careful consideration. If only there were secondaries with -fly powers. *TURNS TO LOOK AT CAMERA*

Possibly a better question is "Are teams useful to Masterminds?" and I'd say the answer is, 'sometimes.' 😉

I wuvs it... I wuvs it a lot. Followup~ Spin~ Eviscerate~!

Oh I think that will get you going. I'm sure once you're playing you'll figure out where you need to tweak things to have fun. The way afterburner works, by the way, is that the flight enhancements you put in it push the flight speed cap up higher. So you may want to put an actual fly speed in it instead of a 2nd Zephyr/Knockback. The biggest problem with knock is knock/down I think, for most people, and knockdown is just knockback that's 0.1 to 0.9 in power. So 4 points of protection is enough to cancel every icepatch and simple knockdown attack (which are mostly 0.67 knockback) right there. Plus if you hover most of the time you'll just spin in place if knocked anyway. In fact hover is fast enough unslotted you might want to cram a luck of the gambler +recharge into the second slot... if you're into that anyway. 🙂 Do stick a fly speed in swift though.

Honestly I'm skeptical at -regen not having a place on a team. I got into a Tin Mage yesterday that bordered on disaster when it got to the 4 AVs at the end. We didn't have any -regen and only a little -res. It was the kind of situation where we were chewing away so slowly that the other AVs were taking people out degrading our progress further. Even on the last war walker it was a hideous strain, the kind of fight where you're emptying your inspiration tray to max damage out. I would just have about killed for anyone to drop howling twilight and its massive -regen and tar patch with its appreciable -res on those [unprintable]. Layering is best for buffs - and debuffs.

I think the actual numbers in Expedient Reinforcement are BAD: Accuracy 73.78% (74.20), Damage 91.78% (95.40), Endurance Reduction 47.70, Recharge Time 68.9. + the proc. Less than 90% in recharge intensive pet is pretty questionable to me - maybe you have enough global recharge from bonuses and haste and such to keep a pet up perma, but the ones I happen to have looked at and considered this set in usually have a big uptime gap and I need 90% in the slotting to start with. If I put this set into a pet I'd be considering it a "mule" situation, TBH.

I actually had a Dark Miasma/Archery character on live. I was doing a concept with him, but it was still pretty fun. From the standpoint of you leveling this character I have a few suggestions. 1. Taking everything in Dark Miasma except Black Hole and Petrifying Gaze is good. 2. In Sorcery, Spirit Ward and Enflame are not all that and a bag of chips. Very much a personal choice; Rune of Protection for yourself is great and if you're going with its flight and need Ward for the prereq, no quibble there. But don't be shocked if you're underwhelmed with it or Enflame. 3. Presence is really not that great for the type of character you're playing. You'd be better off getting Dark Embrace in your Ancillary pool and actually slotting. Lots of random collateral damage at high levels you could get squished by an AoE suddenly. 4. The leadership pool would be more helpful to your team than the Presence powers or teleport foe, at least maneuvers, assault, and tactics; and maybe vengeance. People don't seem to be deliberately dying to allow it to trigger any more but that used to be A Thing. Slotting suggestions. Remember that getting a set bonus that does a random thing is not worth slotting a power in a way that's not making it more functional. It's true that many small bonuses can add up but it's never worth trading off a cornerstone power not working optimally to get a 1% smashing resistance bonus. Having your cornerstone powers working right will make all gameplay go smoother and obviate the benefit of a small random set bonus. For instance: Tar Patch. Slot it with 2 recharge IOs and maybe the damage proc in Impeded Swiftness but chasing a 3 slot bonus in impeded swiftness is not really helping you a lot. It doesn't need accuracy, it only costs 8 end, and you don't really need to increase its slow effect. You just need to be able to use it every fight so max out the recharge. Shadow Fall. This should be 6 slotted. It grants both overall defense (5%) and psi/dark/energy resists (20%). It's probably more important to slot it for defense first and if you went 6-slot with Luck of the Gambler no one would think that's weird. I personally like to give it slots for both defense and resist. You should at minimum stick 2 Def IOs in here. I personally like to do within a set the Def, Def/End, and Def/End/Rech or a Proc if I'm going for a 3 piece set bonus; same pattern for Resist. Mystic Flight. Flight is capped without any enhancements once you hit 50. Remove the extra slots from this they are a waste. Consider a Blessing of the Zephyr -knockback IO. Spirit Ward. Move the Numina proc to Health. You don't really want it only triggering for 2 minutes after you've used this power. Howling Twilight. Great power but putting Ragnarock in here is just silly. It only deals about 8 hp of damage to simulate the "life drain" effect. 2 recharge IOs and maybe some fun procs but not a purple set. Fearsome Stare. I would try to take this earlier. It's just so good. Lots of recharge, some accuracy, don't need much fear in it. Long Range Teleport. Did you know this just lets you teleport to other zones? Literally it's just like an Oro or Base Portal. You probably don't need to 2 slot it. Well, now I've spent the time thinking about it, here is what I would shoot for while leveling. Here is a leveling build that goes up to level 34 using strict slotting. (Disclosure: I forgot to slot Health and Stamina so I cannibalized slots at the end. Ooops.) I tried to keep as much of your choices as I could but added in my own suggestions. As you'll see in many places I recommend simply using a generic IO and there's only a few sets where I think they give numbers and a useful set bonus. Some of the hybrid slotting like on the Dark Servant and Shadow Fall is definitely just one option of many and not even what I would do myself. Right at this point you start getting a lot more slots and tap into your epics, but if you mostly follow this guide while leveling I genuinely believe you'd be an effective support to your themed team. Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.962 http://www.cohplanner.com/ Click this DataLink to open the build! Level 35 Magic Defender Primary Power Set: Dark Miasma Secondary Power Set: Archery Power Pool: Sorcery Power Pool: Leadership Power Pool: Teleportation Hero Profile: Level 1: Twilight Grasp -- ThfofEss-Heal:30(A), ThfofEss-Heal/Rchg:30(3), ThfofEss-Acc/Heal:30(3), ThfofEss-Acc/EndRdx/Heal:30(5), ThfofEss-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg:30(5), ThfofEss-+End%:30(7) Level 1: Snap Shot -- Acc-I:30(A) Level 2: Tar Patch -- RechRdx-I:30(A), RechRdx-I:30(7), ImpSwf-Dam%:30(9) Level 4: Darkest Night -- DarWtcDsp-ToHitDeb/EndRdx:30(A), DarWtcDsp-ToHitdeb/Rchg/EndRdx:30(11), DarWtcDsp-ToHitDeb:30(13) Level 6: Howling Twilight -- RechRdx-I:30(A), RechRdx-I:30(13) Level 8: Shadow Fall -- ImpArm-ResDam:30(A), ImpArm-ResDam/EndRdx:30(15), ImpArm-ResPsi:30(15), LucoftheG-Def:30(17), LucoftheG-Def/EndRdx:30(17), LucoftheG-Rchg+:30(19) Level 10: Blazing Arrow -- Acc-I:30(A), Dmg-I:30(19), Dmg-I:30(21) Level 12: Fearsome Stare -- Hrr-Acc/Fear/Rchg:30(A), UnsTrr-Acc/Fear/Rchg:30(21), GlmoftheA-Acc/Fear/Rchg:30(23) Level 14: Mystic Flight -- BlsoftheZ-ResKB:30(A) Level 16: Spirit Ward -- HrmHln-Heal/Rchg:30(A), HrmHln-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg:30(23) Level 18: Maneuvers -- LucoftheG-Def:30(A), LucoftheG-Def/EndRdx:30(25), LucoftheG-Def/EndRdx/Rchg:30(25), LucoftheG-Rchg+:30(27) Level 20: Rune of Protection -- RechRdx-I:30(A), RechRdx-I:30(27), StdPrt-ResDam/Def+:30(29) Level 22: Tactics -- GssSynFr--Build%:30(A), GssSynFr--ToHit/EndRdx:30(29), GssSynFr--ToHit:30(31) Level 24: Explosive Arrow -- Acc-I:30(A), Dmg-I:30(31), Dmg-I:30(31) Level 26: Assault -- EndRdx-I:30(A), EndRdx-I:30(33) Level 28: Recall Friend -- IntRdx-I:30(A) Level 30: Vengeance -- RctRtc-Pcptn:20(A) Level 32: Dark Servant -- TchoftheN-Acc/Heal:30(A), TchoftheN-Acc/EndRdx/Heal/HP/Regen:30(33), TchoftheN-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg:30(33), DarWtcDsp-Rchg/EndRdx:30(34), DarWtcDsp-ToHitDeb:30(34), DarWtcDsp-ToHitdeb/Rchg/EndRdx:30(34) Level 2: Swift -- Empty(A) Level 2: Health -- Mrc-Rcvry+:30(A), NmnCnv-Regen/Rcvry+:30(9) Level 2: Hurdle -- Empty(A) Level 2: Stamina -- PrfShf-End%:30(A), EndMod-I:30(11) ------------ | Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Hero Designer to view the build | |-------------------------------------------------------------------| |MxDz;1108;522;1044;HEX;| |78DA7D935D6BD3501CC64FD2645DB7BE256997BE656BC18153288ADECB665590558| |69B9BE04509DDE916569B9254D04B3F82087A218A17227AE3A5A81FC21B6F053F81| |2FDF20FE9BFF63AD040C243FCEF37FCE39CF7949F77E27FBEEDAC34B42C95F1EBA6| |1D8EBC8811C1DCA40EFBA475E5F4C9F34BDD53F7A6FEBDE60D0EEB8C149AFEBB9E1| |5DD79E556EBAA32379D8DE0CFAC7327820B23BBE3F6CEFFA419F5A85B8B12D5D328| |6C7DED88CDB7B7228C77E3071279E3F62FF556F329261685C197B7D4CE386131AA1| |4229D6E9DD55E9A34C7345BAC8A5847034A1E6C102532B820673C1643E53059E488| |89A88B53D15C3894855CEB2B6002EBE5662DE224F0A9ED42735D6963E30B3EF99FB| |049D3D8A8EFE59F0806A69644E9FE631F3A7C00D66B10416996699F982FA6630770| |6994D8759026F9367199EE5CFDCAFF485B9F28DF998362F87B5E7BE72E647A41590| |B9B009FF16D3A06337B8963290AD826C158B5943C627348EC5EB532DACB906366CF| |658345E1919CB6F79FEC61BE6EA2BE64B820D8F8DB5AE3AFFD2A471AAC85C6DB1D6| |04D7A956C71AEB75EC11690E6713CE739AC0D2C41DC21AFBF4B532DF8DE60A68335| |B1F39530BE7DBC27947FF7D1ADADC0D9B0AE24C42399750CE27940B09E56242D94E| |2837B4D9BF11ED68B37B2D94B89A29CE6E71F47D89AACA7CF5E75F4551AEF3992DE| |E337F24DCBFE6DD4FF1473479C77F03C529CBB4| |-------------------------------------------------------------------|

Are you unaware that Rebirth is also a direct heal? Unfortunately it is on a 180 second cooldown as it is primarily a rez, but it does have that flexibility. It also grants 3 stacks of Bloom so it really might just keep that teammate who took an alpha up if you can use it before they die … and if they die mid-cast well, it should land as a rez so you're on top of it!

These various +resist and +defense IOs always grant you a personal aura that protects your pets, sort of like a Mastermind's inherent. If your pets run off and aren't near you, they don't benefit.

I'm in Mids right now and it's not looking like a good concept. For a while I've wanted to roll a character who heavily uses the fighting pool so I could check out cross-punch; since the EATs have great parameters to begin with I thought it might fill a huge gap. I also thought that if I got into tough and weave early in the build when I didn't have a lot of slots I could increase survivability by just stacking the powers even if they weren't fully slotted. Thing is, it's not like the huntsman is short on powers to choose and I'd not be grabbing the fighting pool until up around 30. It seems pointless if I'm doing it at that level. I may still do a huntsman-not-bane for concept reasons, I like the arachnos rifle iirc, but unless I turn out to be a pincushion who needs tough/weave to level with, I probably won't hit the fighting pool. I'd probably just take leadership - but you never know. I might hate some of the animations.

Fly poses with sorcery??? Whoa I will have to check that out they were definitely not working before. Stealth buff!! Now I'm working on a Huntsman build, I'm trying to figure out if I can take the Fighting Pool completely and use it to fill in so I can get to 50 without going bane or crab, though honestly the bane secondary is hard to pass up on - I might let myself take the secondary and build up but no mace attacks and hand wave it as still being a huntsman >_> .

Pretty interesting. I just came back to my fortunado too (note: I was under the Impression that fortunado is the masculine of fortunata even without the tornado) because after hitting 24 I overdid it with the fortunata training and left him without any melee attacks. Too much of a change! The kicker is, I never appreciated the claws attacks until I separately rolled a claws/ninjitsu scrapper. I never played claws in the classic game but did have a 50 Fortunado there and relied on the darts and psi stuff. I think maybe I've always just resented they couldn't be customized and just didn't appreciate follow-up and spin. Well I appreciate them now. So I respecced into a new build to level where I took all the melee attacks and supplemented with the AoE psi attacks, plus scream has a whopping -50% recharge so that's mitigation, and the psinado has knockdown, also mitigation. For leveling I went ahead and took maneuvers because it was easy to get to melee softcap with it though the end drain right now is pretty bad as I haven't gotten end reduction in my attacks yet; with a Miracle I am seeing quick replenishment once I've stopped attacking but I've been deliberately trying to burn through missions to test the build out. The approach seems really good and overall pretty similar to your build. (I actually wanted tk smack for a force feedback but that's what got delayed for pool maneuvers.) One final note on the flight/sorcery flight debate: you can't do fly poses with sorcery flight; if the fly poses are important to someone that might be their dealbreaker.

I always figured I had found a junkyard and paid a fee and I was randomly shooting junk from it at people. Except the car, that was Azuria's. Ooops. I love the way it works now, both in terms of how it chucks an object at things and how it now has a small knockdown splash effect. It also has a faster cast time than it used to (as well as benefits from the 2nd containment effect of Impact). It used to be laborious to chuck things, now it's actually PEW PEW PEW.

Sounds right, I had 1 lock down three council minions at once for about 10 seconds. It looks like they have 500 hit points and can be attacked, which is great because taking a hit for me. I think the benefit is more apparent if you can get 2 out at once; my grav/rad has the proc in the AoE immobilize and I spam that a lot to keep everything pinned in the area of my two rad toggles, I'm frequently getting 2 out, I got 3 out one time. The value is probably a lot higher to me soloing than to a controller on a team.

Singularity has insanely high accuracy to begin with, I'm pretty sure 2-3 is a waste. At baseline difficulty it does not need any accuracy, at higher difficulty uh ... maybe 1? I'm honestly not sure it needs 1 even at +3 but I'll know for sure when I get my controller up to 50. Slot it for damage, or at 50 shove 3 peroxisomes in there if you want its gravity distortion to last a long time and stack. With the remaining 2 slots I stick the pet set procs that grant resistance and defense bonuses but of course that's very much optional and depends on your play style.