Erydanus

Maybe I should do this too but make it Carly Rae Jepsen singing "Here's my number... call me maybe" over and over.

Dammit, Phil! I'm a Defender not an engineer!

Some tips I actually just posted in a controller thread: Twilight Grasp- single target aoe heal centered on you, packs a hidden -50% regen debuff as well as a -5% tohit debuff and a -10% damage debuff. If you ever play with a Dark Miasma character and they have Twilgiht Grasp on autofire it's not for the heal. You should have more slots in yours, accuracy plus some recharge and maybe a little end reduction. Tar Patch - GTAOE damage resistance field, -30%. You have 3 slots probably for recharge, which is great, but while leveling I might make do with just 2 to free one up for Twilight Grasp - but see my slot tips after this. Darkest Night - if you can't control the foe, surround them in darkness so they can't hit you. -15% tohit and -30% damage. I soloed the Skull elite boss Veles on a Dark/Dark controller because I put this anchor on him and he stopped doing damage to me and then I chipped away at him. (Also I confused his minion and she shot him the face but it was mostly me.) This is worth at least 2 slotting with end reduction while leveling and then enhancing with some tohitdebuff at higher levels. It really is like dropping a wet blanket onto your foe. Howling Twilight - this is an area effect autohitting mag 2 stun and mag 3 fear which also applies a -500% regen debuff, making it on a par with Radiation's Lingering Radiation except it's autohit. Both powers also have a slow and -recharge effect. The mez only lasts about 15 seconds but the regen and slow debuffs last just as long as Lingering Rad's, though the recharge is twice as long. Extra bonus: Howling Twilight also does a full life resurrection on your team! Using it as an opener is a possibility though usually Fearsome Stare is used that way since it has a great -tohit debuff and it's close to spammable. If you're REALLY aggressive consider putting a damage proc in it. Fearsome Stare - really amazing cone AOE fear power which also carries a hefty -tohit penalty. The things that resist the fear and shoot you will likely miss. Petrifying Gaze used to have stats that made controllers envy so when their AoE holds got nerfed, it got nerfed even harder. Note that there has been a change with Snipes. If you get enough tohit buff they become instant, so Aim + Blazing Bolt might be triggering that. Dark Servant also benefits from Leadership so it might be worth taking assault and tactics a little earlier. I specced out a sample build for you using most of the same choices you had and just inserting my suggestions. I did this with SOs. Here is the thing, it is really awkward really to do an SO build for me anymore. Look at a bread and butter move like Fire Blast. Six slots: 1 acc, 3 dmg, 1 recharge, 1 end redux. Classic attack slotting. Now, suppose you get a level 25 Ruin: Accuracy/Damage/Recharge and a level 25 Thunderstrike: Accuracy/Damage/Recharge. Those 2 IOs add up to 32% Accuracy AND Damage AND Recharge. You literally just crammed 3 SOs worth of enhancement into 2 slots worth. If you finish by adding 2 generic damages and an end reduction you still 6 slotted it in 5 slots and now you have a slot that can go somewhere else. That's what I actually do all throughout most of my builds. Sometimes I do stay with generics - like for Darkest Night I would probably just put 2 end reducers in while leveling. But Fearsome Stare instead of putting 1 acc and 1 recharge and 1 fear or tohit, I'd go after 2 mismatched Acc/Fear/Recharge and 1 tohit debuff/endurance piece ... that would end up with me getting 32% accuracy, 32% recharge, 32% fear, 20% endurance reduction and 12% tohit debuff (remember THAT one is on the scale where an SO is 20% not 33%). That's like 4 1/2 worth of SOs in 3 slots. Finally the jetpack is sold by the pay to win vendor and you can buy multiple half hour charges of it at once and really bank some time. It's in the temp powers tab. Sample Villain Plan that stops at 38 by Eri, via Pine's/Mids' Villain Designer 1.962 http://www.cohplanner.com/ Click this DataLink to open the build! Level 38 Magic Corruptor Primary Power Set: Fire Blast Secondary Power Set: Dark Miasma Power Pool: Speed Power Pool: Teleportation Power Pool: Leadership Ancillary Pool: Power Mastery Villain Profile: Level 1: Fire Blast -- Acc(A), Dmg(3), Dmg(3), Dmg(13), RechRdx(29), EndRdx(34) Level 1: Twilight Grasp -- Acc(A), RechRdx(5), EndRdx(11) Level 2: Tar Patch -- RechRdx(A), RechRdx(5) Level 4: Fire Ball -- Acc(A), Dmg(7), Dmg(7), Dmg(15), RechRdx(29), RechRdx(31) Level 6: Rain of Fire -- Acc(A), Dmg(9), Dmg(9), Dmg(13), RechRdx(19), RechRdx(31) Level 8: Super Speed -- EndRdx(A) Level 10: Darkest Night -- EndRdx(A), EndRdx(11) Level 12: Recall Friend -- IntRdx(A) Level 14: Howling Twilight -- RechRdx(A), RechRdx(15) Level 16: Shadow Fall -- RechRdx(A), RechRdx(17), DefBuff(17), DefBuff(23) Level 18: Aim -- RechRdx(A), RechRdx(19) Level 20: Blaze -- Acc(A), Dmg(21), Dmg(21), Dmg(31) Level 22: Fearsome Stare -- Acc(A), RechRdx(23), ToHitDeb(36) Level 24: Hasten -- RechRdx(A), RechRdx(25), RechRdx(25) Level 26: Blazing Bolt -- Acc(A), Dmg(27), Dmg(27), Dmg(33), RechRdx(34), EndRdx(34) Level 28: Assault -- Empty(A) Level 30: Burnout -- RechRdx(A) Level 32: Inferno -- Acc(A), Dmg(33), Dmg(33), Dmg(37) Level 35: Power Build Up -- RechRdx(A), RechRdx(37), RechRdx(37) Level 38: Dark Servant -- Acc(A) Level 41: [Empty] Level 44: [Empty] Level 47: [Empty] Level 49: [Empty] Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A) 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: Scourge Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A) Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A) Level 4: Ninja Run Level 2: Swift -- Empty(A) Level 2: Health -- Empty(A) Level 2: Hurdle -- Empty(A) Level 2: Stamina -- Empty(A), Empty(36), Empty(36) ------------ | Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Hero Designer to view the build | |-------------------------------------------------------------------| |MxDz;1181;482;964;HEX;| |78DA6D93DB6ED3401086D75E0793346DEA94A64DD3034D1B01052C10DC23B5A508A| |99122E0DEB29A6DB108B1B576457BD917E225384A3C0B87373083F7B7D3B559C9F9| |9C7FFED999B1D7C38BC3E6C71757CF98D13A98F871EC1D84529E4749286B43FF2C3| |8E18C964D57AF0878AFFCE99918BB478114DE3E25256BB3D8FEF9E9A97BE8CB77DE| |30F0E3F73E6B8CC270E2BE8E8418B7B3DB376222A250267E1284D356261D0B7F2C6| |4FC36889AD9FFA320998A386E3F8F821377147E10D21B5219212F57A993015D774C| |8695D632589C995C67135C7714B76DC54F46916BE6B9163C0D783E9347D952C3707| |4CF5DCAE2A8CD917F83EB5C28D5DE04EF516E0DB935E4DEE43AF3BEDBA5DC1D5BBD| |09CA6536FAFC424DD6D167DDD6671810E7E09F3394F695380FFF3CF65D00BF51ACA| |562BC056D31A7A5D801EFD31C0EF6711CBDDF07145BC23E4B98F116D7B9097EA79A| |CB7817CBF076F279BB8A7D9A63059E15C4564B7C4835BB78AE5DECB3C675DE06B74| |BE7A14DECE139F5525ACCEC30B60165036E972A6C61AA2DA6EF9873379F8AD847C7| |7DE4EF96F8C35027F95F8D01F64BFFB3D6ADE2B4B2CCC0F62ACAA38AF2B8A23CA92| |84F2BCACB99921E57A223ABF826989129F5C5E24B487F36286A5C8FFEAE28BF2ACA| |9F99622A65E7DAEF5F5298C876| |-------------------------------------------------------------------|

Now that you say that .... that does sound correct!

Ok! Well! I have solved the mystery! Somehow, I didn't bind Teleport to rshift and rbutton like I thought. I only bound it to Rshift. So every time I hit Rshift it brought up the targeting reticle and then when I left-mouse-clicked, it executed. I'm really, REALLY, sure that I did a bind command with the shift and the mouse button but what probably happend is I typed rshift + lmouse or rmouse which isn't valid so it fell through and bound only to rshift. The kicker is I've literally been doing by mistake what I actually wanted all these years. So now you know! To teleport with a retical, bind to a shift key only, and to insta port without a targ, properly bind to a shift and mouse button, or whatever. Thanks so much for the help!

Yeah I tried to join a Penelope Yin TF and it started up and ... teleported me to Ms. Yin without a team. Fortunately the LFG channel came through.

There's actually 1 type of generic IO recipe the crafting tables DO NOT sell. I vaguely remember this was a bug on live too, but it's just so niche nobody cared. Intangibility. Crafting tables do not sell generic intangibility recipes. Weird, huh?

How about a normal looking DOOR that functions as a portal. BRB recreating The Lost Room as a base...

There ARE some weird holes in the NPC vs Player costume options. For example the Tsoo often wear a certain top that is available to male players in the baggy top section -- but the Tsoo have a sleeveless version of it to show off their tats. We don't.

I'm happy my suggestions were helpful! The new look is much more pleasant. I also shrank the screen to see how it'd look on a tablet or something and it still looked good. However when I visited it on my phone there's a blank space of about 1.5" on the right. (I took a screenshot but it's too big to easily attach to the forum post, sorry. ) I can zoom in to fill the screen but then the page floats around so trying to scroll is touchy. I'm not sure what is causing this but I am wondering if it's the narrow banner ad at the bottom of the page?

Right. That's exactly why Redlynne suggested 27 as a sweet spot for exemplaring ... though I disagreed and said I thought it was fine to go as low as 20-25 depending on the piece. When you're dealing with a global such as Karma: Knockback Protection which doesn't have any enhancement parameter to it, the most ideal level would be the lowest level it comes in: 10.

Aha that's super helpful. Now I can compare the two characters and see if my mind is faulty or if the two powers are behaving differently!!

deal exactly about the same baseline damage as every other controller primary's single target hold and immobilize (except fire's which actually do deal a smidgen more) once you factor in the healback; though they are psionic so there's a chance they may not be resisted. (Since Clockwork are vulnerable to psi you can pretty much 1-shot under level 5 Clockwork.) More specifically, Spectral Wounds is front loaded and then heals back dropping its damage to match other powers - but if you kill something fast enough you get that extra bit of damage. So in a sense it is still superior to something like Stone Prison which is a DoT. Apparently Gravity Control wasn't badass enough and they gave a buff to Lift that gives it bonus damage on top of containment on targets that are held with Gravity Distortion. *makes an O face* Well all right then. So you have standard single target hold and immobilize that do the basic damage expected of all controllers and then you have lift doing about 1 1/2 times that and Propel doing about 2 1/4 x that. but don't overlook Mesmerize it's first power as a sleep with typical controller damage. Knock things out, shoot them in the air; profit! Let me talk a little bit about the viability of Darkness as a Controller soloing primary. You have the typical single target hold and immobilize, and you get a single target confuse at level 6. This lets you easily cycle through three mobs at a time. Level 8 gives you one of the most potent aoe controls in any control set: Fearsome Stare. If you do end up fighting more than 3 foes you can easily make them all cower in fear and if they manage to attack anyway they get a fantastic tohit debuff of -15%. The rest of the tools are rock solid, and level 18 gives you a shadowy alternative to Phantom Army in the form of 2 well-behaved shadows who can do darkness brawl attacks and have taunts to keep the attention of whatever problem foe you sic them on. They only last about a minute but they're pretty darn handy. Additionally when it comes to soloing the thing you need most, especially at teens-twenties levels is usually an extra attack. Sorcery/Arcane Bolt is fantastic and does about 1 1/2 times the damage of a basic single target hold. It also has a chance of knockdown, so it has mitigation as well. The secondary selection is also important, not only for what it gives you as a soloer - as in buffs that affect you and debuffs you can exploit - but also the synergy you can create with the set. Grav/Rad is a hellish combination with so many tools including killing foes damage resistance. But lately I've been playing dark/dark and again, Dark Miasma has literally never been bad. It is however a little less well understood I'm seeing, especially as a Controller secondary. So I'll give you some high points. - single target aoe heal centered on you, packs a hidden -50% regen debuff as well as a -5% tohit debuff and a -10% damage debuff. If you ever play with a Dark Miasma character and they have Twilgiht Grasp on autofire it's not for the heal. - Tar Patch, GTAOE damage resistance field, -30%. Death patch, area effect fear or immobilize: profit. -Darkest Night - if you can't control the foe, surround them in darkness so they can't hit you. -15% tohit and -30% damage. I soloed the Skull elite boss Veles on a Dark/Dark controller because I put this anchor on him and he stopped doing damage to me and then I chipped away at him. Also I confused his minion and she shot him the face but it was mostly me. -Howling Twilight - this is an area effect autohitting mag 2 stun and mag 3 fear which also applies a -500% regen debuff, making it on a par with Radiation's Lingering Radiation except it's autohit. Both powers also have a slow and -recharge effect. Extra bonus: Howling Twilight also does a full life resurrection on your team! It does have a longer downtime than LR but you can surely kill that AV in just 30 seconds right? Then you get some typical buffs and self heals, the niche and skippable Black Hole, and finally a mini-me pet in Dark Servant. It's a good thing I'm already playing a Dark/Dark or I'd have to go roll one now.

I have a Psi-blade stalker and I really hate mental strike. Even slotted up with a damage proc I really hate mental strike. It just underperforms for me. I know it's one of those weak but fast filler attacks but I really hate mental strike. Boggle is more useful than you think. Not only can you make a dude stop hitting you, if you hit the dude with boggle on your chance of triggering Insight is increased. It's not as helpful as I thought it would be but it's still helpful. Greater Psi Blade morphs into an attack that's more like TOTAL FOCUS if you have Insight when you hit something with it, otherwise it adds a psi dot. Naturally once you trigger focus you should use a couple smaller attacks and then hit something with Greater Psi Blade and do an INSIGHT STRIKE and lay them out. You'll ask yourself if you're not actually a stalker who just did Assassin's Strike from Hide it's that powerful.

Stalkers can do Psi-Blade/Energy Aura. Actually, on paper, that looks like a pretty solid combo. You can tint the aura hideous spectral green like the ghosts in Croatoa or just keep it mild and wispy!

I'm looking at Mids Planner and I can't figure out which exact power and which exact IO you are talking about. At a guess, are you asking about slotting a power with an IO like Miracle: Recovery? Because if you are, then that proc will fire off whenever you use the activated heal it's put in; but you can also put it in Health and it will just turn on and stay on. A similar effect would be if you took Nova form and slotted it with Gaussian's Synchronized Fire Control: Chance of Build Up. (The nova forms are a combo package that not only give you a kit of attacks, they include flight, a tohit buff, and an endurance recovery buff; the nova and dwarf forms used to not benefit from Stamina in the human form). In that case since it's a chance of activation the proc would just continuously check whenever it was eligible to do so and then restart. (It works similarly in tactics.)

I took teleport on one of my characters and from memory I did this bind (I THINK): /bind rshift+rbutton powexecname Teleport NOTE: I mouse left handed but am actually right-handed and thus that weird choice of buttons. The bind performed as I expected it to: when I hold down right shift I get a targeting reticle and can right mouse click to teleport. I'm good at it, I can zoom down the street no problem. Last night I realized I could bind Translocate for similar use so I did that bind and it worked differently. No reticle but the character teleports easily. However, I just really prefer the reticle. So then I started doubting myself and tried binding it to rshift and left mouse button and a few other variations and got into a situation where it made a reticle but wouldn't teleport and another where it made the reticle with one mouse button but engaged the teleport with the other (I probably had it bound multiple ways at that point I thin). At that point I had managed to totally confuse myself so I just reset all the binds on the character and reloaded my basic defaults, and then went back to rshift/rbutton. So my questions are the following: 1. Does Translocate just plain behave differently than Teleport? 2. If I want to see what I have bound on a character is there a way to do it? Could I back up my default keybinds, get on the character where the teleport works how I want and save their binds to default and then view it with notepad? Sorry if this is dumb, it's one of those "woke up and the thing from last night is super bugging me and I can't check in person" situations.

I think Stalker would be a better choice as you fade in and out naturally as you go into combat and come back out. Stalkers are more scrappery now than when they were first introduced. You do have a greater focus on single target as you trade a melee cone for your special stalker attack. I'm currently playing a Psi Blade/ Willpower scrapper and I find it quite fun. If you don't end up doing a stalker also keep in mind there are some stealth granting IOs that go into movement powers. You may be able to achieve the look you want by simply putting one in sprint and toggling it on for a fade out.

Basically there's a whole army of Longbow placed somewhere, like on the rooftop of the bank. If you move through the mission slowly and work your way to the bank you may trigger a few at a time to come attack you. If you beeline to the bank you may trip several. If you do a quick circuit around the map and go to the bank you may trip them all. We used to trip them all. Deliberately. Fighting a hundred longbow is a lot easier when you know they're coming and the entire team has precast the good buffs, laid down trip mines, traps, tar patches, etc. Then the entrance to the bank becomes a killing field. I once made a music video for it. Pity I don't still have it. ;)

The portal on Mercy Island in Mercy City does not have the Monitor Duty day job flag around it. I'm just speculating here but ... maybe this is an oversight from the revamp of moving the starting area from Fort Darwin to the city? The nearby hospital rez area atop the fort does work for Pain Specialist though.

Picking up from something far upstream; I didn't quote because I originally had several comments but decided to pare it down to 2. Redlynne said in a previous post "IOs will exactly match SO enhancement performance output at Level 26, so any enhancements of Level 25 and below will have below SO enhancement output at all Levels. This means that the minimum Level of Set IO you want to slot for maximum Set Bonus "coverage" while Exemplar while maintaining SO-like performance from your Set IOs is going to be ... Level 27 ... " This is not totally correct. It is for single-attribute set pieces but not for multiparts as they have higher values. (Chart on Paragon wiki if you want to look at the range: https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Enhancements#Relative_Enhancement_Values) Level 21 dual-part and level 18 tri-part set IOs have combined values that meet or exceed SOs. Further I'd argue that considering a single-part IO at level 25 (32%) to be below SO levels (33%) is maybe an overstatement; especially with ED factoring in. the difference between 3 even level SOs and 3 level 25 IOs is trivial: 94.9 vs 92.2. Even for 1-slotted parameters the difference between a +0 SO and a level 25 IO is just not, to me, significant enough to worry about. It's nice to get +3 SOs but I always felt they were more of a buff than an everyday level of power. The way I view it, there really isn't any appreciable loss of potence using generic IOs at 25 and multipart IOs at 20 or higher. Level 27 is a perfectly good level to use as a goal for many reasons Redlynne outlined, but if you want to use something in the 20-26 range because you can slot it right now or you have the recipe/materials in hand or whatever, I think it is absolutely fine and you should do so. The other thing I wanted to say was that I absolutely firmly believe that even if you just want to get your toes wet in the world of IOs you should do so as early as 22 with generic 25s and any set pieces that you find convenient to use and mix in, even disregarding set bonuses. I just had a hard reminder how good my advice is the other day when one of my alts reached level 22 and I just could not get the set IO recipes I wanted for him. I was just looking for odds and ends, but I was coming up empty. Everything was either sold out or more costly than I was prepared for. (It was just a bad mix of categories he needed, alas.) I was in a hurry, and I bought SOs. A couple levels later, I had to buy SOs again. I forgot how costly level 30 SOs really are. The cost of the 25 and 30 SOs absolutely would have paid off self-crafting most of the level 25 generic IOs I would have needed. I should have stopped and crafted his generics and made the investment. (I actually have crafter alts, but this character is not in a SG with them and it would have been a hassle to email myself 30+ IOs. Again, I ... should have.)

darks who walk onto the Rikti Mothership raid and introduce everyone to the PSIONIC RESISTANCE CAP is nothing to be trifled with either. : )

One thing to keep in mind is that usually a Brute should have an attack on autofire so that fury can be built. Usually in a powerset the first attack is a 3 or 4 second cooldown and the second is a 6 or 8 second cooldown. Broadsword's first two attacks are 8 and 4 seconds which is fine ... but Parry at level 8 is a 3 second cooldown. That's your fury-maker and it's also a stacking defense buff. Using that instead of Slash probably helped a lot. Shield is a bit more active than WP, having that instead of WP probably felt more engaged too. Parry, under IOs, is hilarious. It takes melee damage, Taunt (for Brutes anyway), and defense sets. Here's the list of procs/global IOs you can slot with it for fun excluding purple/AT/PVP options: Pounding Slugfest % Stun Kinetic Combat % Knockdown Touch of Death % Negative Energy Damage Mako's Bite % Lethal Damage Karma: Knockback Protection Kismet: 6% Global Accuracy Gift of the Ancients: Run Speed Luck of the Gambler: Recharge Speed Reactive Defenses: Scaling Damage Resistance Triumphant Insult: % Stun Perfect Zinger: % Psi Damage Since it's an attack and needs accuracy I wouldn't actually slot it with say the Luck of the Gambler as a wholeset, but you could mix melee and taunt sets and cram in a couple procs and still have some defense buffs on there. Depending on your build if you need a dump slot to put a LOTG recharge proc in, this is a viable option. The faster and weaker an attack is, the more it benefits from damage procs which is why if I were messing around instead of straight damage I'd probably do something like this: Perfect Zinger % Psi Perfect Zinger Acc/Recharge Touch of Death % Negative Touch of Death Acc/End/Rech Red Fortune Def/Rech Red Fortune Def/End/Rech The enhancement numbers would be about 45% acc, 20% damage, 28% defense, 40% endredux, 73% recharge (bringing it down to 1.7 seconds). The defense buff from this power can stack up to 3x so it's generating a constant 58% defense to lethal and melee damage. It's a pretty fun power to play with.

I think you're unaware of some updates to Stalkers (https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Stalker) You said you used to attack something with your AS and then placate and use "something else big." Uh, my understanding was that you do Placate + AS and USUALLY only AS. AS has that special mega damage boost it gets from being used in Hide that is not just a critical, it becomes a "melee snipe" complete with build up time. If you use any other attack from hide, you get an automatic critical hit but you don't get the mega damage of a 2nd AS. If that's not practical just do frontal melee. Stalkers gained a system where every attack (EXCEPT AS) gives them a stack of Assassin's Focus which is a 1/3 chance of an unhidden crit with AS, so after you do 3 regular attacks your AS should light up - it's going to get an auto crit at least. When you want to use Placate is when you're soloing a boss or something like that. Since you have wind-up time with it if there's several mobs meleeing you there's no point. But soloing a boss? Heck yeah. Or handy for getting a 2nd guy to stop beating on you for a few seconds.

And as an addendum I finally DID take the time to look up Dual Blades and as I thought, Stalkers have an alternate scheme for their combos that reflect that we mostly sneak up behind 1 dude and shank him. It ALSO incorporates Build Up and Placate making taking them earlier more important in one sense. As someone who just played a low level stalker I found I simply didn't need those tools at low levels because nothing was surviving an unbuffed Assassin's blade. It may be that just stabbing things without combos until level 14 is fine too. But maybe not! https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Dual_Blades The first combo a stalker can do is at level 8 and is the knockdown combo: Build UP, Assassin's Blades, Ablating Strike. Therefore, I'd prioritize getting Build Up earlier than I expected. At least it's logical, all you have to do is your usual build up + strike and if the dude's not dead make Ablating Strike your extra hit to knock him down. If he did die, great, finish on his buddy and knock him down instead. The second combo is at 12 and also starts with Build up, moves on to Assassin's Blades, but finishes with Placate instead of Ablating strike; that's the empower combo to buff yourself. So at that point after doing the assassin's strike you can either buff yourself or knock down a guy. Power Slice isn't actually needed until you take Vengeful Slice at 18 and can do the Attack Vitals combo. So just skip it at level 4 and take High Pain Tolerance there, Build up at 8, and Power Slice at 14. Everything else can stay the same, and if you level with a sewer team you'd probably never even notice the problem in the first place.