Erydanus

I have a Dark/Dark myself … well that thread already quoted was mostly my advice. Here's my thought. Blasters are masters of damage dealing. Superficially they tend to have "too many" attacks until you realize that what you're typically given are a bunch of optional attacks that you can use in certain circumstances. It's actually probably too many to fully kit them all out so you need to narrow down the ones that mesh with your playstyle and then pick some nice alternates for special occasions. For instance while I do primarily like to stay at range, during TFs I often find that there are so many foes or we are in close quarters (think of the indoor warehouse maps on the Penelope Yin TF) that I NEED a couple close range moves. My damage aura suddenly becomes a lot more useful and my punch attacks become finishers for the things that were dumb enough to come right for me. It's really just a case of trying everything out and seeing what works with your playstyle and then editing your build appropriately. That said I do think it's a weird situation where the build up type power (soul drain) is PBAOE which makes you want to get into melee range and then probably get back out. At least the set combo gives you multiple immobilizes and even a direct hold to help with that. Though again, on a TF, things tend to swarm the teams I'm on so it's no problem to fire Soul Drain and then fly up or something and snipe from range.

Also clean out your case and make sure the fan on your video card's not clogged.* Overheated videocards throw all kinds of strange errors. _______________ * By the way when it comes to cleaning any fans whether they're in your case or on your video card, don't hose them down full force directly. With the computer off and cooled down from running, gently dust with compressed air. When it comes to the fans, GENTLY touch a finger to a blade to keep the fan from being spun fast by the blast of air, as that can damage the berings. You just want to lightly dust off the blades, not rev them up.

That's what I meant up thread. My point was it was better to open packs and sell for immediate profit right up to the end of the promotional period thus filling your wallet. And then right at the end of the promotion stocking up. Though I personally just didn't bother doing that and when the event ended I had normal 8-10 mil priced IOs on the AH. I felt like I had made enough money as it was.

The only thing I can think of is it does have a -slow component that I think lands regardless of the immobilize. Now for me, I put the energy font proc in it so I'm generating the happy little stunballs with it anyway now. ; )

I have several controllers and I've never thought crushing field generated any more aggro than other aoe immobilizes. It's not even particularly damaging, fire and plant's counterparts actually are higher damage. However, I could see a Grav getting into the habit of leading with it since they don't have many options unless it's from the secondary and maybe just tossing it a few moments early. It's definitely the one to spam once the tank's in the thick of things.

I also have a DB/Rad scrapper, he just hit 41. I actually used the combos, though I have read there are more optimal sequences it just worked for me. The thing is the first 2 combos overlap and just vary by the 3rd move so it was easy to do this sequence: Nimble Slash -> Ablating Strike -> Blinding Feint -> Nimble Slash -> Ablating Strike -> Typhoon's Edge* * stick one of the P2W starter procs in here, the knockdown one. It's extremely nice mitigation. Anyway rather than worry about global recharge as he was leveling, I just tried to even out the recharge as I needed to go so I could hit the combos I wanted. I ended up slotting Ablating Strike with the scrapper ATO set with the 50% chance of critical strikes proc since it's the lynchpin in 2 combos and the starter for a third. If I trigger critical strikes and I want to break the combo to use a better move, I just do but a lot of the time it's just perfect as is. Rad has a big hole to cold damage (as well as psi) so I made the very rare exception for me and did take tough and weave, and I'm using a lot of the winter sets for their cold defense bonuses. I also had the cash to buy several special IOs with defense bonuses and some +end IOs. Now the character feels like an unstoppable juggernaut and I play like a tank. I run through like 3 rooms of foes and duck around a corner and let them come to me as I chain Weaken and Attack Vitals chains back to back and punctuate it with the occasional Ground Zero or trigger my self heal.

Wow uh … overall I think this build is genuinely bad. Like, bad bad. It looks like you have picked various sets to use and full-slotted them in to your powers without paying any attention to what they actually do for the powers, and without the set bonuses even being that useful. This is fundamentally What Not To Do. Just because you can put a set into a power doesn't mean it's a good idea to do that. Sometimes a set is just not good for the power even if it's the basic sort of set for it. I get you're happy with the build and if you're having fun that's great but I think you might want to pause and look over some assorted mastermind builds to get an idea how people normally set up their builds. I don't have the time to stop and explain power by power why I think so many of the choices here are poor but if you look at an assortment of other mastermind builds you might start catching on to what people more typically do. I also think you might be slotting the build as if you're primarily a party healer and the pets are an afterthought; considering the base values of your support powers are scaled to be much weaker than a controller/corruptor or defender, it's really not an ideal approach. It would explain you 6-slotting so many mediocre control/support powers instead of getting your pets to be their best. Considering that the Beast Mastery attacks give crit chance buffs to the wolves as you attack with them, it's ideal for you to use the attacks a lot and if you're attacking, they should be better slotted. Let's look at Summon Wolves & Lions: You've used 5 out of the 6 pieces of Sovereign Right for the wolves and all 6 for the other. The numbers you have add up to 97.49% accuracy, which is excessive; 73.78% damage, which is inadequate; and 73.78 endurance discount which is basically unnecessary but definitely overkill even if you do tend to recast the pets during combat a lot (it drops the cost from about 19 to about 11 end for wolves which, eh, not useful in my opinion). Basically, this set is terrible for mastermind pets and using it was a bad idea. As far as the set bonuses, they're not that great. Even if you're trying to build up your personal smashing/lethal resistance and defense which many players in the current meta do, there's nothing that is so helpful in those set bonuses that they're worth sacrificing having a good 95% damage enhancement, some recharge, and maybe a damage or support proc in those wolves. That's true even of the Lions power where the 6th slot of Sovereign gives you a defense bonus. You'd be so much better mixing sets or mixing in a few generic damage IOs instead. Another issue is that you could have been using Mastermind sets instead. They may seem expensive but it's actually quite easy to raise the money for them. Take 100 merits, which is like 3 task forces worth, buy Enhancement Boosters, sell the boosters for 1.5 mil each (average typical auction house price) and you will have 30 million influence. That's enough to buy 2 or maybe 3 mastermind ATOs as they typically cost 8-10 million each on the auction house. And the first 2 you should buy would be the ones that grant a resistance or defense bonus to your pets. Both the mastermind ATO sets have really great bonuses especially for 4 pieces - I'm not saying you need to use all of them but it would be good to invest in at least a few pieces of each. When you are picking your sets you should ask yourself these questions, using the expected values: 1. Does this set give me enough accuracy, too little, or too much? 2. If the power is on a long recharge (like a big team buff) does it give me enough recharge (like 90-95%)? if it's a more typical power is it enough recharge to use it as part of my ordinary play? 3. Does this set max out my damage (90%+) for attacks or healing for heals? 4. How much endurance reduction is in it? Enough to make the power usable regularly? (Big team buffs you use a lot typically you can just eat the cost of; really cheap powers you fire a lot cost so little sometimes you just also have to eat the cost of; but the medium cost powers that you fire every 5-10 seconds, those are often the ones that need end reduction the most) 5. Sure the set has bonuses but DO I NEED THEM? Do the bonuses actually HELP ME? Or do the bonuses just look cool? Anyway I hope this helps you think about your slotting plan a bit more.

I noticed that too and was meaning to check when I was home and could get in game. If that is the case I think it needs to be submitted to the devs as a bug/irregularity. I agree it doesn't need a lot, and possibly set bonuses are enough in some builds, but I too use endmod set pieces with some acc in them usually.

Ahhhh …. I think the power needs some accuracy too, it's not autohit. The difference between only hitting 1 mob and hitting several is noticeable. I've been doing half and half between heal and end mod. I'm still trying to figure out what works best for my build. I don't think the controller community has actually come up with a best practice for this yet.

I had a Dark/Dark defender who I rerolled as a Dark/Dark controller. It feels much more like I wanted him to be in the first place. The key powers are there. Like as a defender I invested so heavily in the soft control powers - now they're the primary function but the important supports are still there too. I had an Illusion/Empathy controller who flipped over to Illusion/Time, which actually better matches his theme.

Oro is for ORO. It's for flashbacks. That you can use it as a shortcut is just gravy. I actually find people pretty appreciative when I explain how to self-obtain the oro badge without someone opening a portal for them. Fine if they want to, fine if they want to go do a story arc with a time travel element and get Entrusted With The Secret that way.

also if they're talking on the looking for group channel you can just talk there like /lfg Oh I'm in for the Yin TF! though tells are sometimes better.

Consider reaching out to your old COH friends and let them know the game is up. Tell them what kind of experience you're having. I'm sure some of the people who came back initially were turned off by the servers being a bit unstable at the start - now they're silk smooth. Some who were interested may have held off, afraid they'd play a week and have the servers killed, traumatically. Let them know we have several servers, free transfers, all the good things going on.

I don't know if this is a glitch with my base or what, but I recently discovered I can use the Void Skiff to fly from the traditional base level to the outside if the ceiling is set to the open sky style and I'm in base edit mode. I don't even have anything built above I was flying up to hand position some ceiling details and I found myself outside! I was able to come back down in that room as well as 2 others that were "sky" style. I then went up and down, did a loop around the base and came back in. I toggled off the power and turned it back on and did it again.

I was buying and opening packs on every alt every day pretty much all December. I got burned out … but I also tricked out a lot of characters either with complete sets or have sets sitting in their inventory for when I level them. I should probably log on to everyone and do an inventory but I think I made ballpark 2 billion not counting what I actually used on characters. Honestly I am taking a little break from the game now that the pressure to keep on top of my auctions is over, it was too much. (I did it this way because I try to have each character be self-sufficient and self-fund with their own merits and purchases, though I will help if one specifically is floundering.)

There was actually an entire supergroup where everyone was playing a PA clone. They also had assigned names that were permutations of lowercase L, 1, and 0, so their names all looked something like 11001010101011 but were actually unique.

Anchor death is actually not an issue. The anchor now persists as long as the dead body does. It can actually be an excellent tactical choice to anchor something like darkest night on a minion who dies in the initial wave - no worrying about fleeing; it essentially turns the anchor into a GTAOE. Still between Darkest Night, Tar Patch, Fearsome Stare, and Tenebrous Tentacles you really only have to worry about a teleporter getting away with your anchor!

I would not bother slotting TT for any -tohit, the base value isn't very high. If you really want more -tohit in your build then Fearsome Stare is a place you can get some because it has much higher -tohit value. Still I would prioritize the control value; also, most fear sets suck in terms of their # splits, I'd just yank the best multipart pieces and the procs out. Tar Patch's -resistance is huge, it's worth it just for that I think. But you don't need to invest in it, just 2 recharge and done. There's a -tohit set with a darkness damage proc that can go into pretty much every power in the set. While I'm not a super fan of proc monster builds, it's an on-theme damage proc that will probably be extremely good in powers like TT and Fearsome Stare.

Let me consult the Magic 8-Ball *shakes the Magic 8-Ball* "Signs point to No." Sorry, you have to roll a claws/ninjitsu scrapper now.

I'd actually cycle 3 gravity powers: I'd move Gravity Distortion Field to 12, Wormhole to 18, and punt Dimension Shift up to 26. Honestly, I think Wormhole is just too good for a level 12 power but having an AoE hold at that level isn't too weird; punting Dimension Shift to T8 gets it out of the way. Redlynne's suggestion for mind isn't bad, but I'd like to remove telekinesis, drop everything after it by 1 tier, and add a psionic energy pet like Penelope Yin has to the T9 spot. I think Mass Confusion is a decent power but the set needs a damage dealing pet, especially in the current meta. For Storm Summoning, I'd like to swap Gale & O2 Boost. If you look at all the controller secondaries the first power is either a debuff, buff, heal, or immobilize. Gale as a trivial damage knockback attack is the outlier; I suppose if you think of knockback as a form of soft control it's not so bad but really if I have to take one of the first two powers in the secondary I'd rather take the heal - even if I never slot it and only use it on my pet.

I've got a Claws/Ninjitsu scrapper who is very fun. Scrapper Ninjitsu is wildly different from the stalker version. It's great, it's definitely Ninjitsu 2.0. It's still primarily a defense set but I feel it has more flavor than classic super reflexes which I think you have an issue with as well by your comment that SR seems very vanilla. I agree! The set's nothing but defense type after defense type, it has no flair. In comparison with scrapper Ninjitsu you get all the positional defenses and you get them really early, plus there's some damage resistance and direct heal; it even has a knockback protection power, something Stalker Ninjitsu is without. The upshot of it is that it feels to me like scrapper ninjitsu is to super reflexes like willpower is to regeneration: a second take and one that incorporates some layering to the set. In my case I went with punch daggers as the claw type so the character actually seems like a dual-dagger ninja a lot of the time, so the whole concept just worked for me.

It was very contentious when I talked about it on the stalker forums, but my alpha slot choice on my psi melee/willpower stalker was actually VIGOR. In fact, Vigor Radial Paragon. Why? Well it's: 33% Healing 33% Accuracy 33% End Reduction, 33% Confuse Duration, 33% Sleep Duration, and 33% Fear Duration. So that put 1 more end reduction in every power it put 1 more accuracy in every attack (which went into overkill to be honest but at the time I wasn't sure if I would have enough acc for cranked up incarnate content) It also put 1 more heal in all my willpower abilities that can take a heal, and to be blunt I had run out of slots for some of these powers or wanted to pump them above the ED threshold. That meant 33% more healing in: High Pain Tolerance - increasing max hit points further Fast Healing - increasing regen Reconstruction - increasing direct heal (You get Rise to the Challenge instead, still, this increases regen) Healing - yes the inherent! It was full of procs it was nice to get 33% heal added to it My stalker took Physical Perfection in his epic, so there was another regen power that got 33% added to it. Finally he had Boggle which is a confuse power that once again, I didn't enhance as much as I wanted so it got some benefit from it as well. Though, if I weren't trying to drop that 33% extra confuse duration in Boggle I could have gone with Vigor Core Paragon and gotten 45% heal as well as 33% end and accuracy. Since the final tier allows 2/3 of the bonus to stack on top of the ED cap it's definitely worth thinking about. At first I was thinking that the alpha was going to take me from o to 33 and 33 to 66 in a few powers but in Reconstruction I actually am over 100% in healing now so I have a stalker with a self heal that cures him for (in all seriousness...) 666 hp of damage ever 25 seconds. Anyway I think it's great you're seriously thinking about doing something that feels good for your character instead of automatically going with musculature. If it doesn't work out so what, you can just craft some new incarnate powers and change what's in your slot.

Well it would be interesting to make black hole a little bit like Wormhole without the repositioning element. When you cast Wormhole on a group it doesn't actually suck the mobs together at first, but it sort of looks like that because of how the animation plays out, especially since when they come out of the teleport they explode out of a gathered ball. However, if you have a knockback to knockdown converter in place they land in a pile so if you were to wormhole a group IN PLACE it would effectively just suck them together into a clump and dump them there, stunned. If Black Hole did something like teleported every mob within 20' of the target (maybe make it into a ground target power?) into a pile in the center and applied a 5-ish second phase shift instead of wormhole's stun, and then still had an immobilize on top of that (it's base 30 seconds immobilize from the phase shift now) that would be actually really helpful. Instant clump for burning, 5 second window where once they stand up if they try to shoot you it doesn't work, and then they're pinned there ready to be hit with Tar Patch and other evilness. The five second window would also be perfect for someone who wants to run into the pile and use their nuke - you'd just need to make sure the phase graphic was clear enough (I've always thought the mobs should have a "dark glow" not be transparent to mark this sort of thing).

For me, I just bought flying packs from P2W and also used Ninja Run + Sprint at the same time for a lot while getting to 24. I usually don't take a travel power until late 20s myself. I'm glad it was a helpful starter for you though!! I think you will find going melee and then dropping some nasty psi surprises on mobs to work pretty well and I think the end situation will be manageable. You're teaming too, so your team buffs will be appreciated and really be worth the end.

Having leveled mine fairly recently here are my suggestions to make your path easier: 1. Primarily regard the widow as a Claws/Leadership scrapper. I am very serious here. At 24 when you get access to the night widow and fortunata branches if you convert fully to a fortunata and focus on the psi powers, the play experience shifts wildly and is actually quite bad. Those powers need a lot of slotting to come up in effectiveness. Instead, if you maintain the core of a blood widow build and just selectively add a couple psi powers for range/aoe if you go fortunate it's a smoother experience; of course if you prefer to go Night Widow path the changes are less drastic anyway. 2. Make your lower level picks focus on the good bread and butter moves as if you were doing a claws scrapper but you can add in some dart attacks if you want range. After all if you were playing an actual claws scrapper you'd get focus anyway. Keep in mind the dart cone is weird, it's a narrow cone yes, but the vertex is basically behind your shoulder blades so it's almost like a shoulder-wide narrow column right in front of you. 3. At 25ish most sets are not that great. The values of sets at that level will not be kind to you as they're formulated to add up to a nice assortment of parameters at 50. However if in the first couple slots you have you focus on the highest value pieces of each set that will give you good results, or you can go into Frankenslotting. I very frequently use maybe 2-3 pieces of one set with 2 of another; sometimes when the sets allow it I will simply put 3 of the same sort of piece in like 3 Acc/Dmg/Rech if they're available. The SoA ATOs have procs which are worth it even if trying to collect the whole set at a low level isn't feasible. Special pieces like Miracle will also be really helpful. I'm going to link to a recent post I did on Frankenslotting too for general info on some of the tricks: 4. Here's a sample build very similar to what I did at 24 on my Fortunata. The focus is on Claws; from the Forutnata pool Telekinetic Blast is used basically to finish runners or to knock away a problem mob. It's not converted from knockback to knockdown yet but will later; Psychic Scream is used basically point blank in melee range after Spin, it's a good following move and also debuffs recharge. Psionic Tornado is similarly useful but it's too expensive to spam. It is a knockdown power so it's a good opener before jumping in and using follow-up and spin. In my own case I actually took pool leadership to stack on widow leadership at low levels because it was easier to run 2 toggles than to find slots and enhancements to enhance them well in the teens; since you're trying to stay close to your original build and do a no respect build I didn't put that in. It was actually not a problem to run the toggles because I had a lot of end reduction in the build already and 4 slotted stamina with DOs (no ED for four DOs, it's just like 2 SOs). Level 1: Swipe Acc-I:25(A), BrsBlo-Dmg/EndRdx:25(3), SmsHym-Dmg/EndRdx:25(7), SpdBit-Rchg/Global Toxic:25(21) Level 1: Combat Training: Defensive Rct-ResDam%:25(A), Rct-Def:25(5) Level 2: Strike Bns-Acc/Rchg:25(A), Bns-Dmg/EndRdx:25(3), BrsBlo-Acc/Dmg:25(11), BrsBlo-Dmg/EndRdx:25(23) Level 4: Tactical Training: Maneuvers DefBuff-I:25(A), DefBuff-I:25(5) Level 6: Telekinetic Blast Acc-I:25(A), FrcFdb-Rechg%:25(7) Level 8: Follow Up FcsSmt-Acc/Dmg/Rchg:25(A), FcsSmt-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg:25(9), FcsSmt-Dmg/EndRdx:25(9), GssSynFr--Build%:25(21) Level 10: Indomitable Will StdPrt-ResDam/Def+:25(A) Level 12: Spin DmnofArc-Rchg/-DmgFear:25(A), Mlt-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx:25(13), Mlt-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg:25(13), ClvBlo-Acc/Rchg:25(23) Level 14: Lunge FcsSmt-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg:25(A), FcsSmt-Acc/Dmg/Rchg:25(15), FcsSmt-Dmg/EndRdx:25(15) Level 16: Psychic Scream Dtn-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx:25(A), AirBrs-Acc/Dmg:25(17), Dtn-Dmg/EndRdx:25(17) Level 18: Psionic Tornado Dtn-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx:25(A), AirBrs-Acc/Dmg:25(19), Dtn-Dmg/EndRdx:25(19) Level 20: Tactical Training: Leadership EndRdx-I:25(A) Level 22: Mask Presence DefBuff-I:25(A) Level 24: Mind Link DefBuff-I:25(A) Also stamina is 2 slotted (2nd slot at level 11) so you can run with 2 generic Endmods or stick in a performance shifter; Miracle:Recovery in health if you can afford it. ------------