Erydanus

I'd like to suggest the addition of a 2nd base portal in most of the regular city zones, except the ones where it's very centrally located already. As you know many of the zones are quite big and it was enough of a problem a few got a 2nd tram added. I think a 2nd base portal would be very beneficial. Atlas Park, Talos Island - these both seem like the current portal is very central so it's enough. One near the Dark Astoria gate might be convenient -- but I'm not sure about that. King's Row - by the tram; the roof of Police HQ is really out of the way Steel Canyon - by the university. Just like the universities in Croatoa and Cap Au Diable Skyway City - by the southern tram Independence Port - by the southern tram Founder's Falls - maybe by the monorail Brickstown - maybe by the hospital & Crey's folly entrance; or over by the science store to make it diagonally opposite the one we have already Peregrine Island - in the ferry parking lot by the TUNNEL network

Controller epics actually got nerfed, you know. At one point the devs said, "oh shit these get containment, they've literally been doing double the damage we thought all along." The entire controller community stood up and said, "WE TOLD YOU SO AND NOW WE ARE USED TO IT." But the nerfbat swung anyway and the epic damage ratings were halved. HALVED. This was like issue 18 or so because my main was already 50 and had been there for a while, and it was before Incarnate stuff. So if you are thinking the damage seems low compared to an old character on live, this may be why. You used to get twice the epic damage even without containment so you ARE getting less now. That said you have a lot of tools to make up for this: - accelerate metabolism is a damage buff - enervating field is a -resistance power (-22.5%) so that ups your damage - lingering radiation is a -defense power so that lets you hit more reliably and ups your damage - anchor costs have been normalized; with inherent stamina using them both is no sweat even at low levels - anchor change means they'll persist after the target dies for quite a while so you'll have their benefit the whole fight not just for 5 seconds - EM pulse isn't as spammable as Flash but it will really mess up your targets. You know Lingering Radiation has -500% regen debuff? this power has -1000%. Bring blues because you won't have recovery after using this - for you, choking cloud is probably worth it. I'd do 4 pieces of Unbreakable Constraint including the chance of +2 mag proc, acc/hold, end/rech/hold, and acc/end/rech/hold; then I'd frankenslot with 2 pieces of Ghost Widow (acc/end, end/hold). You'd get 71% acc, 89% end redux, 89% hold, and 39% recharge time. The end cost is 0.44 with all that which is like both your toggles combined without any end reduction, so it should be manageable as long as you're not also running too many other toggles. And to be honest, this combo should be focused on the debuffs over any buffs. I might run Assault selectively but that's about it.

To me, taking tough and weave and seriously slotting them as you level means you're terrible as a controller. I genuinely believe this. If you can't neutralize the threat you're facing as you level with your control powers and the buff/debuff in your secondary, there is something wrong. At high levels (40+) the amount of collateral incoming damage tends to rise (especially in big cranked up groups) and at THAT point I can see you needing damage mitigation for the brief window it takes to establish control. However that's why there's typically a defensive toggle in our epic pools and you don't have to have an unslotted filler power eating up a choice in your build to get it. If someone wants a supplemental attack and they grab one from fighting, that's a different story. If they go on to grab weave or tough as a place to stick a knockdown protection piece or LOTG for recharge that again to me is different. But I am seeing people posting builds where they take boxing, tough, and weave at low levels and at the cost of cornerstone powers from their sets with the mentality that "fighting pool is mandatory." That's just not true.

Unfortunately this is apples and oranges situation. Numina's is in a static heal set, and it isn't a "chance of" proc, it turns on when the power is turned on. That's why people normally just shove it in Health. Theft of Essence is an accurate healing set meaning one that is targeted against foes to work, and it's got a chance of triggering. So it would normally begin making checks whenever a healing/damage aura came in contact with foes.

This is why I feel like slapping basically the scrapper pools on stalkers was really lazy by the OG Devs. They had their own formula and I struggle to believe it would have taken much time to assemble a grab bag of equivalent powers. I.e., pry torrent out of darkness mastery and turn it into Moonbeam. Now that my character is closing in on 50 I'm messing around with the Weapons Mastery pool (I do like Physical Perfection) but I haven't gotten to chuck shuriken yet. I kinda suspect I may flip villain at 50 for about 5 minutes and then respec. For concept reasons I wanted him to stay 100% hero the whole time. :/

Yeah I think that's exactly what was going on. I remember doing cobra strike a lot to get breathing room... I was probably breaking off to Hide and coming back to shank them with my Assassin's Boot To the Head. Pity, because MA/NIN is an obvious thematic pairing but now I think NIN needs some tweaking due to the Focus change. You know what would be REALLY nice? A ninja combat teleport move (Shukuchi). That is just a total staple of a lot of ninja powersets in media and games. In practice it would be similar to electric melee's lightning rod. Or alternately teleport and re-activate hide as you come out of it. It'll never happen of course but it would be sweet. Heck you can sorta pull it off with regular teleport at this point (do a macro using powexec location target I think) and just having the AT set with the hide proc.

I'm surprised Psi-Melee rates so low on that sheet. It feels pretty beastly to me. I also can't tell if he's calculating the massive damage increase greater psi blade gets if you have Insight and it turns into Insight Strike.

The beasts all have superjump so you can actually skip the group superjump buff unless you want it for yourself. That's about the only power I'd "consider" in Kinetics.

I played Mercs/Poison (when POISON was hot garbage) and I still got to 50 with them. They're really not bad.

I actually did something like that the last time I did thugs, also thugs/dark; I did a vampire and his goons!

Ah that explains it. You could probably take some endurance reduction out of shadow fall and put in some +def or +resist at this point then. For Howling Twilight I think 2 level 50 recharge IOs is pretty good as that puts you near the ED cap and brings you down to about 2 minutes from 3 for recast. One stun recharge would be nice and bring the 15 second stun up to 21 seconds, making it line up nicely with Dark Pit for stacking. Everything else either can't be enhanced (-regen, accuracy) or is pointless (10 points of damage!!). It doesn't really lend itself to stun sets either with the notable exception of Absolute Amazement. A couple pieces of that and some generic IOs would be great but 3 generic would probably do the trick a lot more simply. Because this power counts as several different types of attacks there are a TON of procs that can be jammed into it, but I don't think they're worth using. You could probably steal 1 slot from Tough as you have Dark Embrace and Shadowfall and Weave after all, and 1 from the self-rez and put them on HT.

It's pretty tough for Illusion to set up containment. At least you're rad. You have Choking Cloud and EM Pulse as additional holds, though they're no where as easy to use as a simple single target immobilize is -- if you didn't know, controller immobilizes are mag 4 specifically to give you a containment trigger for a typical boss. You could also stick a Devastation: chance of hold in your spectral wounds but, ugh, really this is grasping at straws.

I will say though that if you're running with a solid team every concern outlined above will be eliminated by the synergy with your teammates and the typical array of buffs put on you. Of course I also say that as someone who was playing a Fortunata at the point in time the devs overlooked that Psychic Scream didn't have a target cap, and our favorite group activity was to aggro every longbow on the map and ambush them as they came in the front door of the Talos Island bank. Me: Wow it looks like I just killed 30 Longbow at once. That can't be right... But anyway, yes. Super fun AT, worth the work building.

I'm thinking that's Willpower actually, based on soloing 2 elite bosses at the same time with my Psi-melee/WP stalker. I used to have a MA/Nin stalker on live who I loved, and I got him to 50. For some reason, I just don't remember this set well. I remember liking that character and being really irked when stalker MA got rejuggled but as I was looking over the ninjitsu set in the planner before commenting, it just felt unfamiliar. I don't think it got changed but right now I don't think I'd choose this powerset over willpower or a couple of the others I would pick for thematic reasons.

Additionally Sorcery's Rune of Protection has massive mez protection on top of moderate damage resistance but it's a click not a toggle. Still it's the kind of thing where you run around the corner and see 5 ruin mages and go "oh SHOOT *CLICK*" and you're good.

I don't see anything that would be hugely problematic so it's probably just a case of you having several toggles going and then spamming more attacks than your recovery can keep up with, then along comes the hasten crash and you're hurting. Loading it into mids even running all your leadership and hover you're using 1.4/s and generating 3.1/s and that leaves you 1.7/s to spend on attacks. Normally I don't think you could even pull off an end strain but the thing about hasten is it enables you to burn through your endurance faster. Are you by any chance also fighting end draining foes like carnies or sappers? If you're on the edge of having problems they'll push you over. That's why most epic pools add in an endurance management power. Speaking of... - dark consumption is an endurance recovery power and you only 1 slotted it. If you need to suck up more endurance then you need to actually use this tool which has been provided to you. I think you clearly need 2 recharge 2 endmod in it if you're having problems. Where you'll find the slots for that *shrug* Maybe yank 1 recharge off soul transfer. - howling twilight - I triple dog dare you to right click on that power in game and read the entire detailed power description. :)

I almost started my own site up too and unbelievably CityOfBuilds.net was available. >_> That said, http://www.cityofplayers.com/DevTracker/ is not loading for me at the moment. Site not found. Turn off Stealth, Phil.

Dark Pit, Torrent, Black Hole and maybe Petrifying Gaze are optional. Dark pit, as is typical of AoE mezzes, has 60% base accuracy. The duration and recharge are far apart -- it's not without its uses but it's basically an emergency button. When it unlocks at level 6 you'd be better off taking a regular attack or a good support power. It is nice to get much later in your build when you have plenty of slots and high level enhancements to build it up. It can be stacked with Howling Twilight as a booster. In comparison Howling Twilight has an autohit stun that affects lieutenants and lower so it's a much better tool for a low level character's emergency use. Torrent is a knockback "hose them down" style power. Fine if you like that kind of thing or skippable if you don't. Many people will now want to use a knockback to knockdown proc to mitigate the wild spray of foes that knockbacks have. Petrifying Gaze is an edge case. It used to be controller-level and it got nerfed hard. It takes a massive slot investment just to be able to stack it and thus affect a boss who's even a little resistant to holds. It's useful as a hard hold on many lts and bosses but you have so many tools in your kit putting a darkest night and tenebrous tentacles on a boss might be a better use of your time and stamina. Black Hole is a phase shift, it makes your enemies intangible so they can't hurt you but your team also can't hurt them until the time-out is over. A lot of people just don't like this class of power though obviously this might be the panic button that saves your team from a wipe. If you do take it be very thoughtful about its use. For a defender Life Drain is also optional but for a corrupter it's some really nice damage so with that disclaimer I'd say take everything else in the set other than the 4 powers named above without any hesitation. However, take them thoughtfully in whatever order works best for you.

Swift, Hurdle, Health, and Stamina are now inherent powers you gain at level 2. By selecting them in Mids you triggered it letting you construct a "legacy build". While the slots you allocated to some of these will still need to come out of your slot budget as you level, you'll need to select additional powers to replace them. Congratulations. You have room for an Ancillary Pool.

Important note: I am discussing a build for roleplay/experimentation and not a main build. It would be a secondary build not used for real teaming. So, for a while I've been interested in doing a build where I could experiment with lots of the new and revised pool powers, like Fighting, as well as the tier 5s we now get in some which just seem interesting to me. But I've been having a hard time figuring out which AT to do such a build in. It wouldn't make any sense to me to try a fighting pool focused character as a scrapper - you could just play street justice. On the other hand going too deep in support doesn't make any sense either because they'll be so weak you'll never get anywhere. Someone gave me the suggestion of Sentinel and I thought that was promising. But then it hit me: why not do a mastermind and actually just use the primary attacks? That rounds out the concept "thug with a gun and some punches." And you also get a secondary powerset which is support focused which could really help make such an RP build work. Plus there's enough diversity in the choices you could easily do a "normal guy ex gang member" build or actually have minor super powers if that concept works better. At that point it hit me, "well DUH play Thugs!" because you get a couple gun attacks, plus if you're RPing as a gang member you could call your gang for support and take Gang War as your only pet summon. Then for secondary if you were going with a normal guy concept you could take something like traps or poison, or if you were an ex-Skull Dark Miasma. Naturally this kind of build would also work with Ninja/Trick Arrow or Dark Miasma; or Mercs and Traps or poison. Similarly I know a LOT of people just love the whip attacks in Demon Summoning and wish it was an attack available in an actual weapon using set. I think this would probably be viable to the late teens, but I'd be surprised if you could take it further unless you were teamed up with a very patient friend who (carried) helped you. So what do you guys think have you experimented with MM attack builds or roleplay?

I was looking at the Stalker version of ninjitsu and it's really annoying that Bo Ryaku, the knockback protection power for the set, was passed over. As far as I can tell, it was skipped to make room for caltrops, which I don't see as a great choice in the light of the assassin's strike buffs. I could see the original devs not wanting to give stalkers a passive damage buff, but if they just stripped that out you'd still have a 7.5% resist all and knockback protection passive and that's great. Caltrops would be better in an Advanced Ninjitsu stalker epic (ie a rework of Weapon Mastery for stalkers) if you ask me.

Yeah this is the problem. The proc rework was in beta for i24 and it's gone live here. There are a lot of people who have strong opinions but they're still based on I23 and earlier. I, personally, have been doing so many alts that I haven't gotten anyone to a high enough level to do a serious build and trick them out with procs. But based on the prestige enhancements and a few that dropped into my hands, I'm underwhelmed. I actually pried a damage proc out of an attack I spam a lot which I thought it would rock in during a respec and sold it off. I haven't regretted that. So I do hope anyone posting in this forum is giving their input based on their actual I25 experience and not just spouting what they remember to be true because it may not be. For instance someone told me that procs in damage auras and rains no longer check on all targets but instead start checking on each target in turn and as soon as they trigger on one target they go into cooldown and stop. If that's true (IF) then they're pretty gutted. But I'm not sure that's true I want to test more. If you don't get a lot of responses to this thread - this is why. People are figuring out the new normal still. Honestly I really wish this change hadn't been implemented it's just a layer of complexity I don't have the bandwidth to deal with right now.

Nothing needs to be unlocked. When you place a teleporter machine you have to place beacons near it to link it to those destinations. You can now put up to 10 on one machine. (I like to stop at 4-5 because I think the menu gets too cluttered). The various teleporters link to the beacons closest to them so if you just put the beacons neatly behind or infront of the machine (if it's on a platform) you should be fine. You have to use tech beacons with tech teleporters and arcane beacons with arcane teleporters. A few of the functional base items do require a bit of power & control. You will need an arcane or tech power item, most of them now give both power and control. A small generator for example will take care of most bases by itself. Power and control is universal and does not matter between tech/arcane.

Disagreement: the sky boxes are only 5x5 and it is super obvious when you cross out of them; looking at a sky section they affect from outside them does not show their sky. It's better to set a default sky for the base. Use the skybox for like a 2x2 ceiling hole or something off by itself, but not a main room. You'd have to layer a bunch of them with significant overlap to bypass the fade out effect as you move around otherwise. Until they're available in a larger size I don't find them practical.

I originally played a Grav/Rad on live and soloed a lot. I have been enjoying a Dark/Dark on here since launch so I feel like I'm in a good position to answer this. I was not aware that some changes were made to Gravity just before the game shut down that now tilt it unambiguously to being the friendliest set to solo with the highest direct target damage in basic attacks. This is because 1) Lift was given about 63% damage increase (Controller only) putting it ahead of Mind Control's Levitate by about 25% as a direct damage attack 2) Lift was given a bonus damage packet called Impact! that triggers if you use it on someone held specifically by Gravity Distortion; looks like about 20% base damage 3) Propel had its cast time reduced making it a bit more spammable though still slower to recharge than a tier 2 blaster attack; it's about 75% more damage than Fire Blast in the Fire Mastery epic too. 4) Propel was converted into a hybrid-aoe; it's single target with respect to damaging it's main target (and takes single target blast IOs) but also has an AoE knockback piggybacked on to it. It also has a knock DOWN component built in that I'm trying to figure out, I put a chance to knockdown proc in it muddying the results. But I'm seeing a guy being shot by this and if he doesn't go flying he and 3 friends all get knocked on their butts so that's great. 5) Propel was also given a bonus damage packet called Impact! that triggers if you use it on someone held specifically by Gravity Distortion. The upshot of this is that at about level 12 with only the prestige starter enhancements slotted I can usually kill up to a yellow lt with the chain of: Gravity Distortion, Lift, Propel. This is a kill speed controllers do not normally achieve and what's making it work very well is that the secondary is /rad. With inherent stamina it's possible to take and run Radiation Infection and Enervating Field with no difficulty at all. With the toggle change, once you kill your anchor you can finish off his 2 buddies before the anchors fade. The combined effect of these 2 anchors is -25% tohit and -30% damage for them which greatly protects you; while also being -25% defense and -22.5% damage resistance. In other words, they're going to miss you like crazy and do a lot less damage when they do; you're going to hit them like crazy, and do a lot more damage when you do. Crushing Field will act as a great clumping tool. Frankly it'll be on a par with fearing a group and then immobilizing them. For soloing, Grav/Rad is now in my opinion hands down way ahead of every other combo I can think of. Now if you're teaming most of the time, that's less valuable. But I think it's great to have it as an option. As far as /Dark Affinity it's a really solid set and comes with a bonus pet who spams holds which provides you with a lot of bonus control. Both the primary and the secondary have a phase shift power, and they're typically not popular. If you do take Dimension Shift you absolutely don't need Black Hole too, so that opens space up to take an extra epic power. I think either set is a great choice for both concept and play, though if you are interested in soloing I think rad edges out dark.