Erratic1

You mean, *Wind up...wind up...wind up...someone has already killed it* ?

Enemies not being controlled may have been a result of whatever you were targeting. Hellions, Arachnos, and Vahzilok were all immobilized/held successfully by my Symphony/Energy Blast Dominator last night. The controls are only somewhat shorter in duration than on a controller but sufficient to tie up groups at a time. Running the lowest of missions from Matthew Habashy where you take on five Hellions at once, nothing made it to me and that pattern persisted up through level 8 last night (though I expect that to change). As for damage, you are not a blaster. Lower damage is the price for locking things down. You are getting to shoot fish in a barrel, so they deny you the .45 and instead give you a speargun. Sonic has historically been tuned downward further in damage because it debuffs resistance. If it were not tuned down, it would dominate over all other blast sets. So you need to get a chain of attacks going with Sonic to overlap resist debuffs for it to be doing its best damage. If you do not have a lot of those becaue you took more control powers then you may have run into the issue of underperformance because you have so few powers at level 8. With the changes to Sonic though, a few more attack powers should bring you back up to par.

I figure if I am not playing the character, I truly don't need the name. Not making it easy is my way of telling myself, "Perhaps I will make a new character based on the name that is more entertaining than the character that got the name."

I think that page has one or two that people might actually want. Blurred things because I did not want to make them too easy to snag. 😛

It is hard to even guess what someone else will like. I like things which, depending on purpose, are outshined by other offerings. Still, let's give this a go. The only one of your listed combos I have actually played is DM/Inv--a classic and quite enjoyable. Sturdy as all get out. As good as it is, it has some stiff competition in its group, and I do not think it will in your favor in the end. Also ran is probably the hardest for me to settle on because the combo are so very different in terms of perks and drawbacks. Going with Savage/Stone even if it would not normally be one which interested me because I think there are some interesting overlap/interactions between primary and secondary powers. In Group A, DM/Inv is a classic--sturdy as all get out and can turn on the damage in crowds. But I have recently started a War Mace/Ninjitsu villain and there is much to be said for using Clobber out of stealth with a 75% chance (80% with the AT IO) to crit to basically execute someone. "You die, now!" Energy Melee hits even harder. It is admittedly only every 8 seconds, from stealth but it is so satisfying. And like DM/Inv it comes with endurance recovery and healing. I have to wonder if you could placate yourself back into a second execution...may just have to test that. Group B I think the nod will be towards Staff/Dark Armor Final between the three, Energy Melee/Ninjitsu

If I was worried about the characters I would have played them far more recently than indicated, and I have no problem with the names going back into circulation if someone wants one I have, but even for ones I might like to keep there ain't no way I'm going to go and hit page after page of characters to weed out even the keepers. 😁

Even without DDR, what you did with Defense is kind of nice. But the splitting of sets in Alpha Barrier, Not placing Miracle/Numina Recovery IOs in Health, taking of Tough/Weave, not slotting LotG: 7.5% Recharge Speed in Combat Jumping, Use of Sudden Acceleration to convert Knockback to Knockdown in a power that does Knockdown confuses/confounds me. Waitaminute...you didn't take Rage?!?! You have to build/play what fits what you want to do, so take the following as a different path to consider (Armageddon and Apocalypse could be replace with Obliteration and Entropic Chaos respectively and you could use a different Incarnate...I was just checking rehcarge limits).

I think I improved on my previously mentioned (twice) brute's costume: I will endeavor not to mention him again in the thread.

My blaster is a thematically a speedster: Characters from comics tend to lean on either lightning bolt, wings, or both to imply speed. You could go with some more classically inspired: Speedy.costume

Savage/Electrical on a Brute. Fury pumps your damage aura and your bleeds. Avoid spending Blood Frenzy stacks unless Blood Thirst is on cooldown, allowing you to restore stacks (completely opposite the way one would expect to use the power). Between Lightning Reflexes and Blood Frenzy stacks you should need able to sit at +40% global recharge so long as you continue to reliably hit targets. Moreover, since you get an endurance discount from Blood Frenzy stacks this helps keep your endurance up at levels before you get Power Sink.

Saw the costume and was impressed enough to ask for permission to post. Another, "Not Mine But Pretty Nice" entry:

The best PUG experience I have had is with team of few members. When there are only 2-4 of you everyone thinks about what needs to be done. You could try recruiting smaller teams.

Decided to try my hand at EnM/Inv: Not completely satisfied but might give it a whirl.

When I factor in healing recycle plus regen moderated by resistance the two come out amazingly close in terms of the amount of incoming damage necessary to drive their health bars down: 106.57 dps for Inv vs 98.73 for EnA when looking at Smashing/Lethal damage and ignoring defense. That is assuming perma-Hasten on both sides even though it is not quite perma on the Inv side since Kick is probably not part of the attack chain and the buff lasts for a very short duration. (It is not actually showing perma either on the EnA side either but Entropic Aura pushes it to actual perma with 1 foe--which there will be if you're fighting) so the 7.84 dps gap between them shrinks by some amount. Not even going to attempt napkin math here but gut would suggest to me an actual difference of probably around 7dps all said and done. Against non-Smashing/Lethal damage EnA looks to be a bit up over Inv. What it takes for those values to be delivered hinges on how much Defense on either character has been debuffed, how many attacks are coming in, and how big they are. DDR is almost identical--50% for Inv, 51.9% for EnA so they should fair identically in how their defense is degraded. Defense given by Invincibility scales better than that given by Energy Drain. Also Invincibility is always on (unless you insanely toggle it off) whereas Energy Drain requires use near targets and then persists. On the upside for Energy Drain though, it cycles in under half the time the Defense boost persists so it might stack higher in the end (though honestly I doubt that is going to be beneficial in most circumstances even assuming the new stacks add to existing ones). The place Inv pulls ahead is with the boost to total HP. This will be most meaningful in big hit and being whittled down circumstances. It is not as apples to apples a comparison as it could be because of the difference in offensive sets and the impact that has on what can be slotted but its more than good enough I think for government work. I would be interested in seeing what you might build for Energy Melee/Invulnerability Hyperstrike. Edit: As goes Thrax's build (which is EnM, so a bit more apples to apples), I think the gap between the two narrows somewhat. Without doing math, my gut would be Inv still is more survivable but the gap narrows because the Defense values are not so high, at least when fighting against above even level opponents. Edit 2: Now I am all fired up to go against at Energy Aura. Darn my aversion to matching themes on primary and secondary powersets though...EnM/EnA looks to be pretty good. I could console myself with EnM/Inv but I already have a current StJ/Inv brute I'm working on.

FWIW, I never, ever, every have taken paired theme primary and secondary powersets. Energy Melee/Energy Aura is the only such pairing which tempts me. Invulnerability is godly. My first scrapper, created in the first month of release back on Live was DM/Inv. So I know how good it is. Even so, I think there are real merits to Energy Aura.

I agree to an extent but not completely. Compare to a possible Energy Aura build: The builds are comparable in terms of defense with Energy Aura notably lagging in terms of S/L resistance. But Energy Aura comes with a healing power which is up more often.* It also manages higher Regen. If I were not out the door right now for a family function, I might try to convert the HP/sec of having Energize every 35sec into equivalent resistance. * Energy Aura also recovers endurance, but that is indirectly tied to toughness in that a good offense being a good defense require endurance to feed it. 😛

A winner so far as what? Offensively, if you can stay in Offensive Stance while maintaining suitable defenses/resistance you will get a Damage buff out of Bio along with the area damage field Bio has. Defensively...well, the original poster has already ranked Bio several steps above Willpower. While I do not have one myself, I do play from time to time with someone who runs a Bio/Staff Tanker. She's a beast.

Not sure if that is directed to me or not. All I have done is provide information on how to use the forum interface more effectively than how they were instructed. I have no horse in this race.

Faster method is to highlight the person's avatar (next to thier post) by hovering over it. Bottom right corner has [Ignore]. Click on it.

Not likely a problem since as a ranged character playing with a Tanker buddy, the enemy should not be hitting the Defender much. And with the Tanker holding aggro, being close for Transfusion or Transference is less risky. On my Kinetics characters I sometimes zip in for an effect then retreat to range.

A worthy sacrifice for the sins of other powersets? 😛

I am not moving goalposts since the sequence of events is you responding to me, not the other way around. All day I have been tolerating the aggression in your posts and ignoring it because I reasoned that what I was seeing may not have been there. The phrasing of your last post makes clear your nature. Feel free to last word since when I note I am done with someone, I am and feel no need to make little digs like you just did.

So you're saying it needs to be nerfed?

It can be because "all the data" does not necessarily cover all the possibilities. And in fact many times you can know the data doesn't do so. As example, all the data on builds from what is posted on the forums would suggest IO sets are heavily used. But the reality of what people play stands to be different. The developers can look at everyone that is playing but if AT 《X》 with Powerset 1/Powerset 2 is relatively unplayed and and it just so happens that population of players happens to enjoy leisurely pacing themselves, just looking at xp/hr is not really going to reflect what is truly possible. Controlled testing is going to tell you more than just just looking at all the data. Depends on what one is debating. I was contesting the contradiction I saw in a statement. You seem to have repeatedly read it as a matter about Bio.

Given how varied people are in how they play, the impact of paired damage powersets, and the dangers of generalizing from small samples (which factoring in all the variety is going to leave onevwith), I am not sure that is a good choice for a metric. Saying, "...until it gets nerfed" most assuredly is invoking one. Moreover, I am not claiming hurdles, I am mentioning factors which come into play. That is clarification as your wording suggests a different understanding of what I was trying to impart than what I intended. I am not particularly worried about a Bio nerf and despite whatever sentiment there may be for one there are points which would argue against it too. I would much more expect attention to be directed to proc abuse, but that is me. Nothing I have ever suggested or implied at any point.