Erydanus

I've been working on a Dark/Dark controller build with Burnout, myself. I found out on a Mothership raid that you can actually put out more than 2 Haunts and now I'm sort of obsessed with the idea of not keeping them perma but actually using burnout to spawn a second pair. However jamming it into my build is not easy. I'm still working on it.

Experimental Injection reminds me of Stimulant, the deprecated power from the Medicine Pool that was turned into Injection, which has a benefit on a teammate and a debuff on a foe. I thought at some point it was decided that putting a power that has no benefit when you're solo in a pool wasn't a good idea and thus it got the dual aspect so it can be used as a debuffing attack when solo. By that logic, Experimental Injection should act the same way: it should also act as a debuff if used on a foe so that anyone who picks it can always use it on someone. It doesn't have to be super powerful, just something so it's not a waste of a power choice without a teammate. Edit: while any minor debuff would do, like 5% damage resistance even, it would be interesting to make it be synergetic with the rest of the Pool. Like, maybe have a bit more of a toxic damage resistance debuff (15-20% depending on AT?)

I'm pleasantly surprised to find out Explosive Shuriken has been doing not as much damage as intended all along. The change to regular shuriken from 3 to 6 seconds is probably good balance... I just stuck a set of, I think, Thunderstrike, in mine and found I was spamming shuriken so fast it made doing any other attacks seem like a questionable choice. Like I accidentally put it on auto when targeting a runner and I felt like I was using some kind of auto-fire shuriken launcher on him.

Well don't directly BUY them with merits! Take your merits and buy converters and boosters and sell them for fat cash on the auction house and then buy the Soldier ATOs for cash. 100 merits = 20 boosters, boosters sell for 1.5 mil each most of the time so you can either use 100 merits to buy one ATO, or 100 merits to buy 20 boosters and make ~30 million influence and buy 3, 4 if you get lucky and the ATO price is low that day.

The official origin type of Widows was natural actually. The psionic powers they have are considered normal human psychic potential forcibly enhanced to the point of being actual power attacks through the harshest of Arachnos training and probably some psychic surgery similar to what the Praetorian SEERs undergo.

I personally don't even like the mace attacks. I'd just like to stay with the huntsman gun attacks. Unfortunately if you go with the Crab path you get the crab backpack so if you want to do a Huntsman, you are stuck with Bane. I'm fine with the passive and support powers in Bane even though Cloaking Device doesn't add much since you're not sneaking up and conking people on the head, but even Build Up pulls out the mace and thus causes redraw of the gun. If you guys end up poking at Bane could you consider adding a couple exclusive powers (as in, you take these instead of the bane counterparts) to the pool to enable a huntsman/arbiter type build more do-able? Specifically a 2nd build up or equivalent (I'd even be fine with Aim) that uses the gun animation, and a shooty T9 exclusive against Crowd Control. Something along the lines of Full Auto from Assault Rifle.

No I'm talking about the crit BONUS like you get from having a certain # of teammates if you're a stalker or from having the scrapper ATOs, not the base chance on the target. Or else the crit chance on your last actual attack which would include the base chance anyway.

In the combat attributes monitor window you can monitor your tohit bonus and your last tohit chance, but you can't do the same for criticals. I'd really appreciate being able to either monitor my critical hit chance or my last attack's critical hit chance. Basically I'm having trouble gauging when the scrapper ATO with the big crit chance wears off and I'd like to put it on monitor and stick it right where I'm looking while fighting. I'd also like a better idea of my stalker's critical hit chance in different situations.

You'll be amazed. You want to put the chance to hide proc in Assassin's Strike. When you use AS there's a chance you'll re-hide and get an autocrit with your next hit! The other proc is a global. Put it anywhere convenient. Now all your powers have a chance of resetting Build Up. Like literally hit build up, assassin's strike, there's a chance you'll rehide and a chance you'll have buildup reset so you can hit it a second time and then use your next best power. That probably sounds pretty good... I assure it's even better in use, especially if you have any AoEs because they trip the build-up reset more.

I wish there were a third path available that let you build an arbiter style huntsman. Alternately, if the Bane power sets had a few extra rifle powers that are mutually exclusive with the regular Bane mace versions it would work. For instance, a big gun attack tier 9 that was exclusive versus Crowd Control; an aim/buildup power that uses the rifle animation (as the build up in the set pulls out the mace). Of course, going bane and just taking the rifle attacks is a disadvantage but it's a theme thing for me at least. This particular set reminds me so much of Thief/Ninja in Final Fantasy XIV. For the first 30 levels you're a dagger using thief, the class is hard capped at 30 you HAVE to turn into a ninja at that point to get any new abilities and the play experience drastically changes.

The thing about ATOs that many people skip over is they're slottable as level 10 enhancements and are synched with you. They're something that could be giving you a lot of benefit all through the leveling career, especially the special pieces. (There's more benefits for some ATs of course, the scrapper ones are nice but the Stalker ones completely change gameplay). As far as money it does take some effort to get a whole set put together but getting at least a couple to get you going is super easy. Just take 50 merits - like from running Yin a couple times or a Synapse - and buy 10 enhancement boosters. Those sell routinely for not less than 1.5 mil each. Then sell the 10 boosters for 15 million influence and buy yourself the first 2 ATOs that will help you the most. It might take to the next day to sell all 10 it might take 5 seconds. If the prices have gone up on ATOs maybe you need to sell another stack of 5 boosters, but in the end it's pretty easy to generate 15-22 million from merits so you can get the first couple ATOs and you don't have to do any very complicated market stuff. I make all my alts self-finance this way and usually I have the first 2 ATOs on characters in the level 15-20 range now.

@Gammos Why do you not have Scrapper ATOs in your build? Even if you don't think you can afford them after buying run of the mill IOs, surely you can scrape up the cash for at least the 50% chance of critical hit bonus proc and shove it somewhere effective like in follow up.

Instead of Shrapnel, what about Fusillade? That describes a series of missiles or bullets being shot so you've got something that implies a massive ranged air strike. Perfect for Rain of Arrows, Thunderous Blast, or you everyday garden variety fireball. Also, I'd like to point out that while a lot of top-tier signature characters from the hero and villain side named the initial wave of IOs, and a few later were named after Vanguard characters, the 2nd tier characters are an untapped pool of names. We have Positron's Blast, we don't have Dr. Aeon's Assault. The Midnighters haven't been represented at all yet, either. It's really nice Synapse got a nod in this group of IOs, but Valkyrie, Silver Mantis, Montague Castanella, Mercedes Sheldon, War Witch, Ice Mistral, Citadel and many others could definitely contribute sets.

So I've gotten the impression that you haven't played a controller before either, so I thought I would write up a little leveling build guide for you. This is not your typical at-50, here's your IOs and smashing/lethal are nearly capped style build. It's more a suggestion of what to take as you level and a few notes on why. This is an extremely effective combination, you don't need to do much with inventions to level. Level 1 - Blind, Twilight Grasp Standard starting pics. You want Blind first because it will hold a target and set up containment. Fun fact! Blind is a single target hold and it also has a VERY TINY mag 2 AoE sleep stacked on top of it. Basically if you get 3 Hellions shoulder to shoulder in a doorway and target the one in the middle there's a chance the guys on the outside will get slept. Is it useful? Probably not but you might see it happen sometime and you can exploit that for containment if you do. Twilight Grasp is of course a great heal that affects yourself. The target is also given a small -regen and -damage debuff so it's pretty much always worth spamming for multiple types of mitigation. You'll need to slot it for accuracy before anything else though, it can miss. Level 2- Deceive You said you wanted to play with this power right? Solid choice. Plus you don't need many slots in this at all which means it's going to be doubly helpful especially at early levels. Level 4 & 6 - Spectral Wounds or Darkest Night If you're soloing you can get by with the P2W veteran attacks for a while but you'll probably want to get an actual attack you can slot with accuracy pretty early on. Now part of the Spectral Wounds damage is temporary but its a part of the unenhanced value not the enhanced so it's not like this power's damage is gutted! It's perfectly good for a nice spike of damage. Darkest Night is a fantastic shut down power as it reduces to hit and damage. Having it on my Dark/Dark controller is what let me solo Veles and Cernabog - it shut them down so hard. Now anchor debuffs require a little finesse to use but on Homecoming once you target a mob with them, if the mob dies they stay there as if they were ground targets until the body disappears and you can shut the toggle down early if you're done with it. Even if a team melts things pretty fast it's generally worth tossing out to neuter foes for a few seconds. It used to be considered a very expensive toggle but in this free Stamina at 2 age, it's not a problem even unslotted. Level 8 - Utility Choice This is a good level to pick a power based on utility. From the primary and secondary, Flash, Superior Invisibility, and Tar Patch are available. Tar Patch is a great power as it applies -damage resist and slows things in it. This powerset doesn't have an immobilize per se so keeping things clumped with some slow is a bit helpful and the increased damage is clearly helpful. Flash is not a good power to take at this level. With the inherent accuracy penalty that aoe controller holds have and its extremely long cooldown it's simply not useful enough at this level. It's fine to take it later but at level 8 you need another power you can use a lot more often. Superior Invisibility is the best invisibility power in the game and the 2nd best concealment power (behind all versions of Stalker Hide). However, it cannot be used at the same time as Shadow Fall which carries a massive teamwide defense/resist benefit versus dark, energy, and psi damages as well as fear resistance. If you want to solo and stealth missions like a stalker, Superior Invisibility is a good choice, if you're planning to team a lot then waiting and picking up Shadow Fall is a better plan. Again you might have room for this later. Taking Superior Invisibility here does allow you to slot it with a Karma: Knockback Protection IO that's level 10, if that's important to you to have. This is also a level where you can take a travel power. A bonus attack like Arcane Bolt from Sorcery would also fit in here well; if you want to mostly solo, that might be the best option of all. Level 10 - Howling Twilight or 2nd Utility Choice This level is again going to be very dependent on what you want to do with your build but Howling Twilight is now an option and you should strongly consider it. While Howling Twilight started as a team res that healed the revived players for a % of health based on how many foes were targeted, that just never ended well. So the power got massively buffed and now is a full team revive even if the target is a 1 hit point gear. It also is an autohit stun, an autohit fear, deals a token approximately 8 hit points of negative damage to simulate the "life drain" aspect of the power, and it's also a massive slow that stacks with tar patch, a -recharge power, and also -500% regen which pretty much makes this power a "Kill the AV" button. The base recharge is 3 minutes which is pretty long but it is such a kitchen sink of benefits I'd seriously consider taking it. You can after all simply treat it as if it's an AoE stun (which most controller primaries have but yours does not) and yes, the stun is auto-hit but will only affect minions & lieutenants. Level 12 - Hasten I'm not a person who puts hasten in every build. It's a special treat for me. I only put it in when it fulfills some special objective and in this case that objective is: Permanent Phantom Army. At low levels no way will you have perma PA, but with Hasten at least you'll get it back up a lot faster. The only other new option at this level is Group Invisibility which, again, great power but not essential. Group Invis does grant a 1.8% defense buff along with its invisibility so it's worth having and casting on your team but like many of these low level powers, it's not essential right this second. It's a click not a toggle so it's helpful to just drop it for some bonus defense routinely. On the other hand, if you take Hasten here you can have a few slots in it before you get Phantom Army, which I think is ideal. Level 14 - Utility Choice 3 If you haven't picked up a travel power yet, now is a really good time for it because you're going to be moving to the larger zones soon and being able to fly or whatever to get around places like Skyway City and First Ward will be nice. You can certainly get by with P2W jet packs and take one of the powers you've skipped up to now, even Group Invis or the like. For sake of this sample build, let's say you take Mystic Flight. Level 16 - Shadow Fall As previously noted this power combines stealth with defense and resistance bonuses team wide for 3 damage types that people typically are less protected against. If you're mostly soloing you probably already took Superior Invisibility. Shadow Fall would be a great benefit for foes like Tsoo, Banished Pantheon, Circle of Thorns, and Clockwork, all of which you're fighting extensively in this level range. Level 18 - Phantom Army Probably the most popular power in the set. You will want to focus on keeping PA out as much as possible. Level 20 - Fade And here's the other reason I was suggesting you hold off on Superior & Group Invisibility. Fade is a massive ~9% defense buff to everything and also has some bonus resistance and resistance to defense debuffing. It pretty much makes that less than 2% defense buff in Group Invisibility go to a corner and cry. It has about a 50% uptime before slotting for recharge or factoring in Hasten or any recharge bonuses you put into your build Level 22 - 24 Whatever Filler levels to be honest. Now that you'll have access to SOs and their IO equivalents, Flash isn't unreasonable to take now but you're close to your real main control power. Any of the invisibilities, a travel power, another sorcery power - all possible choices depending on your playstyle. Level 26 Spectral Terror This is the set's real "control" power. It's a stationary pet that locks mobs in place with fear attacks. Level 28 Soul Absorption This is a teamwide regen and recovery buff. It's actually massive and it works on living foes and dead ones (as long as you use it before the bodies fade). Dark Defenders would be grateful to get this power with the controller values, it's that good. Level 30 Rune of Protection If you have been picking up sorcery powers as options this is a wonderful point to grab a 3d power from the pool. Rune of protection is a mez protection power with significant resistance as well. And you can activate it while Mezzed already (IIRC, I remember doing this). This is a good level to fill in such a useful self-defense measure. Level 32 Phantasm Sadly it's a ghostly glowing dude and not a trio of chrome balls with drills but it's still good. I GUESS. Anyway this is your pet, he makes a pet of his own. Buff him with shadow fall and fade, let the phantom army tank for him, and treat him as your pocket blaster. At this point the path to 50 is pretty clear. At level 35 Black Hole unlocks. It's an uncontrolled intangibility power and 99% of the playerbase despises this power. It's a great time to grab the first power from your epic pool instead. At level 38 Dark Servant unlocks. Some people dislike him but fluffy can run around spamming a 2nd copy of Twilight Grasp, as well as Tenebrous Tentacles (which gives you, a controller, secondary access to an AoE immobilize your set doesn't have already), and he also has Chill of the Night which is that dark damage aura Tsoo Sorcerers have. It does tiny damage but a lot of -tohit, plus fluffy can be procced with -tohit; a Cloud Senses chance for negative energy damage is a particularly good IO to put in him as everything he runs has a chance of proccing that. Dark Servant does have to be recast but I think it's worth it. The rest is just a matter of any epic or pool choices you want for flavor. Truthfully this combination benefits from a huge amount of defense and resist and a ton of regen, healing, and bonus recovery. A lot of the epic pools are kind of snoozers for it. Who needs conserve power or dark consumption when you have Soul Absorption already? Not you, not really. If you are the sort of person who really wants to full on cap your defense and resist as much as possible for incarnate powers, you might even use the typical epic levels for the fighting pool so you can grab tough and weave.

I actually only have 1 level 50 and it's my Psi/Willpower stalker, clocking in at 12th most popular combo to reach 50. (So many alts in the 40s tho…) I've got a werewolf character with Savage Melee but I can't recall his secondary at the moment - I rolled him and got his costumes right (each one is a stage in the man -> wolfman transformation including a different size) and then parked him till later. Honestly the stalker felt so OP I decided to focus on a more challenging character. I played a scrapper next.

Well I went and double checked and no, undo isn't affecting storage items, even empty ones. This is suuuuuuper weird because when the game just came back up and I was fumbling around with basics I know I used undo as I was completely fumbling with placement. Ah well, one more mystery.

You don't understand Coyote. People still complain about it. I'm not saying EVERYONE complains about it, but I have seen people write things like "I won't take electric melee I'd be gimping myself!" even on stalkers. Some people just have that perception.

I put the controller set that includes the energy font proc into the AoE immobilize. I found I used it a lot (especially on TFs) and routinely got the stunball to appear and since the mobs were already immobilized it just flitted right over to them and shocked them for a bit. I wanted to get the full set bonus as well. I used the other controller set with the damage proc in wormhole, but swapping out the damage proc for the knockback to knockdown IO. (If you leave the damage proc in you give up the no-notice no-aggro function in wormhole). The damage proc by itself went into Singularity, which I primarily slot for damage. (I like peroxisomes...)

Actually a lot of people do consider electric melee to be trash-level damage. I've always found it to be perfectly adequate myself but if you go through the brute, stalker, and scrapper forums here you WILL find people dismissing it like it's the worst thing ever and taking it is an act of self-injury. And most of the time they'll rail about "how it's damage is inadequate because too much of the powers effects were diverted to useless endurance drain" or the like.

I think it's a good name, it's in line with other support sets as well.

I agree the name is extremely bad, even threatening.

Yeah it's like Aries said. Keep in mind you can pull enhancements out of storage while just standing around, but the other bazillion items in the base only become part of the base while you're placing them in edit mode, and then they're locked in. You know how the whole base flashes when you access the storage? There's something happening there to the base even though you're in normal mode. Also the items that you're storing are somehow segregated into whatever storage container you originally put them in and not just going into a single storage pool, otherwise you'd just need 1 bin for everything. So instead you've got 18 storage items that get placed and in turn store 1800 other items that are in some kind of separated storage-not-for-furniture as part of your base. (Strife isn't asking for storage to increase from 18 items to 24 or 32, he's asking for more storage bins so a net increase from 1800 to 2400 or 3200 total items)

Yeah... I hate to say it but I basically agree with you. I appreciate the HC Team has brought back the game but it's also clear that they have a vision for what they like to play and the meta has shifted along those lines. At times I feel like I'm at the station and seeing the bus pull out. Given the choice between a meta that disfavors the type of characters I like to play and not having the game I am of course very happy to have the game. I also like the polish and professionalism the team brings to these servers. I actually don't think the issue is IO builds, I think the issue is things like nukes not having a crash and snipes being a routine attack instead of a special opener-only move, and various play balances to archetypes. But the flip side is maybe we'll see other adjustments down the road, I mean if everyone else is getting more damage why not give controllers and defenders some too?

There's a few things to consider with this question. 1. First, overall enhancement set IOs with their multiple pieces are more powerful than baseline generic IOs of the same level. When you have a 2 parter, those 2 pieces add up to 125% of the enhancement you'd get in a single IO. For example at level 25 a damage IO is 32% but an Accuracy/Damage enhancement is 20%/20% or 40% total. At level 50 it's 26.5%/26.5% for a total of 52% enhancement, beating a generic with 42.4%. Three part pieces are actually 50% more enhancement than a plain enhancement. So there is bang for your buck with these pieces. 2. Except sometimes it's not useful. Sometimes set enhancements apply to parameters that are not really that relevant. Probably not a complete waste, but if you were limited to generic IOs/SOs, they maybe enhance something you wouldn't worry about, like ever. You see this waste a lot when people cram endmod sets into stamina for the bonuses they confer, basically the recharge and end reduction mixed in with the end mod is going to waste. But sometimes all these enhancement parameters just go to waste. Have you ever slotted a set that had so much accuracy you were over cap? 3. Planning sets for powers is all well and good but the numbers people mostly go by are level 50. I've actually run into the situation where I slotted a power with a full set at a mid-level, and it was even attuned, and I got something like 75% damage out of it, because the set only had 90% damage enhancement AT level 50. If I had just put 1 acc and 3 damage generic IOs in, I'd have actually had better numbers. Sure, the set gave me some bonuses and some recharge and end reduction, but it wasn't a power I used a lot, and I really just wanted that power to do damage. I ended up unslotting a piece and sticking a damage IO in there for leveling. 4. Some set bonuses are nothing but a white rabbit luring you down a hole. They're not useful. Sure, if you're gonna use that set for its values, accept that 2% run speed buff but if you're not actually on a mission to boost your run speed for a play style reason, it's no different than buying something you don't need just because it's on sale. Even with bonuses that seem like they'd be valuable in combat, ask yourself if it will really make a difference before chasing it. Now I'm not saying you can't with a plan stack a whole bunch of tiny bonuses to cap yourself on smash/lethal resistance, not at all. I am saying if you're not actually doing that is a 2% smash/lethal resist bonus going to be as valuable as say putting another damage enhancement in the power you use the most. So, keeping these points in mind here is my take on this: 1. While leveling, using pieces of sets mixed and matched to get great values (Frankenslotting) is the most effective thing you can do. 2-part IOs at level 24 and 3 part enhancements at level 21 are 38-39% enhancement, blowing right past +3 SOs. Often I find that using the same 2 or 3 parts from 2 different sets nicely doubles down on the core enhancement values you really want. For instance with a power like Shadowfall using the Defense, Defense/Endurance, and Defense/Endurance/Recharge pieces from 2 different sets at level 25 values pretty much exactly caps the power on those 3 parameters. 2. If there are sets whose enhancement numbers look good to you while leveling, then go ahead and use them at any level above 22! If you get attuned sets they can grow with you as well. ATOs for instance, just use them as soon as you get them (and of course they're special so their #s are even higher.) However if the set numbers are not good I would not use them while leveling just to have set bonuses unless, again, the bonus is explicitly something you need.

I really dislike a lot of the villain zones. It's a mix of aesthetics and layout. Mercy Island and Grandville are the worst for me. I've said this before and had people try to tone-police me for this viewpoint but genuinely think that the original design of Mercy was a complete screwup. For those who forgot/didn't know, at launch you used to arrive out of chargen at the Fort in the top northeast corner of the map. You literally just had a few feet between you and the leveling content with hostiles right out the door and no space to stand around and group up or hold a costume content. I don't want to feel under fire the second I log into a game! By the time you fought your way through the broken alleys covered with junk and got to the walled city we now start in, you just wanted to blow town right away. I will give the OG Devs credit for reworking the zone so you arrive in the city and there's a decent plaza area you can park in. But the zone's still a pain in the ass and ugly. Praetoria is so much better, you can tell they really learned some lessons. And Grandville, hey let's add an end game zone that's so needlessly complicated that the elevator to the base portal is on a different building than the one the portal is on, using the same visual elements that you know already strain some people's computers to the point of barely being playable (well back then) AND let's make it really freaking ugly too. Thus at launch there were people who could barely enter Grandville to run their patron arcs because they could only get about 12 FPS. (Obviously with modern computers this is less of an issue but the zone's still ugly). And as others have said the whole game feeds two consistent narrative lines: you're genuinely a piece of trash and also, "lol, you're a flunky". Again, they learned their lesson and Praetoria does it better. It IS possible to work around some of the things that I dislike the most but it does restrict which content to do, and that means the CoV areas only support a limited number of alts for me because it's too repetitive to run just the bits I find most tolerable or actually enjoyable. In comparison on City, there's so much more content even if some of it is old and clunky that I can always find a different leveling path. It's too bad that CoV doesn't have more of the newer content that came in with the new lower level semi-tutorial arcs. That stuff is good. ("I'm the wind... bro!") We just need more of that kind of content in the 25-45 range and instead I find that I basically just go do Night Ward instead.