Erratic1

If I like a character, I'll play them. 50 will occur eventually simply through playing the game. For the most part neither do I. And yet I still have level 50 characters because playing them is fun and that is what I do. Not seeing what setting an arbitrary cap on where I stop playing a character does for me. And its not like I do not make plenty of characters and play them.

Every armor set has a hole, be it a defensive or resistance one. So calling out WP's defensive hole as if Radiation Armor, Bio, Invulnerability, or any other set does not have one is questionable. The IO system is one way to address holes, particularly defensive/resistance holes. Addressing holes makes a good thing (everything else the powerset gives you) better.

Stone Enema

You need MORE POWER so things die to it. I am not the biggest fan of knockback but with such a stupidly high value I love it. Seriously considered renaming my character Chicxulub or Extinction Level Event because of Meteor. You do not want to know what I considered naming my character because of Upthrust.

If your group is wiping out spawns that quickly, move ahead of them, pop Seismic Forces, then use Meteor on a fresh group while they are killing the previous spawn. Do Upthrust immediately after casting. What doesn't die to your Upthrust (which will hit with the Meteor) and Meteor combo will be spread and your team will be along presently for the pick up.

Bravo! I do not like the bare chest option in the game but overlaying the pattern over it was inspired and seriously brings up the underling blah of the chest. (Can we not get a slightly more defined chest option?) Awesomely done. Edit: Found a way to get the Lanaru look by cheating and using Tights with a close color to skin color (and oldie and why they changed the skin palettes to be slightly different from costume, as people were making nude characters). I also stole shamelessly from you. 🙂 RularuuMage2.costume

I despaired immediately of coming close to the Living Spellbook art with the options in the character creator and so went looking at the Rularuu images for inspiration. I really wanted to do something close to Lanaru the Mad: Obviously the clothing options are not available to us but I had an idea on how to handle that. But I could not get a satisfactory chest look. So I went with a robe for a more modest, cerebral physicality. Added in an aura and then came back for wings to bring back in the Living Spellbook aspect. Spider wings were tempting but decided against them in the end. Finally headgear. I went with something which is more neutral, power for power's sake, in its presentation. There are other options which would go for a more evil or good like Faathim feel. Not sure how close to Rularuu themed I got but I think it is pretty cool regardless. RularuuMage.costume

While on the whole I do not disagree part of me wants to take that costume and metal it up. 😄

The Scrapper version of Mud Pots doesn't taunt?

Probably better to observe the Combat channel.

I am greatly enjoying my Elec/Stone brute and can think of no reason it would not work as a Tanker.

Proton Sweep is pretty miserable and Devastating Blow takes long enough to activate you could go make a sandwhich. Do yourself a favor and take Cross Punch instead of either.

No idea on a tank but got Elec/Stone going on a brute and am liking it more than I thought I would.

May have meant damage aura.

I've started an Electric Melee/Stone Armor Brute, primarily because I had the name in mind and the powersets fit. Fun so far but low level always is.

The name was sitting there, so perfect for the powersets, I have never played either of the powersets, and darn it I really like the costume I've come up with even though (a) I did not need another character, and (b) if I did need another character I had another one in mind! This is my planned Electric Melee/Stone Armor Brute, Earthshock

Look forward to playing with you again someday. That may have been the first Sutter I actually enjoyed running. And if we do play, you'll get to see Bronze Magus' second costume. 😁

So very much this.

Did I not mention I have made 30 or so characters this year alone and still found time to play other games, get five characters to 50, 24 characters to 30+, and still fully IO out two characters? January 15th btw is more than a month away. Not much more than a month but still more. Not sure why that is relevant. The character I referred to was made January 15, 2021. As I noted, he was fully IO'd in a few months, again with all the other things occupying my time. If you play only one toon per year, getting fully IO'd, even with part-time play, should be fully doable. (Well, depends on what you mean by part-time...playing 30 mins per week might make it a bit of a stretch.) Various components used in upgrades can be bought with influence. You kind of have to prioritize or learn to work the market. Of course with a fully IO'd character generating influence is just a matter of playing sufficiently. I got a lucky drop back on live of a purple recipe (not IO, just the recipe) which I sold back on live for 32 million. For that you could buy two of the actual IOs made from the recipe on Homecoming.

DM/Inv is plenty potent on just SOs. But yeah.

If you're just using basic IOs Shield is not that good. And we know Shield is plenty good.

Homecoming has made access to the IO system open to all in a way which was not there during live. I will not go into the structural changes but the prices for purchasing them without doing any sort of market manipulation or farming is kept much lower than was the case. At a minimum, once your characters hit level 50 and you've got little to spend influence on other than Incarnate upgrades IOs are increasingly accessible. And that if you are particularly lazy and buy SOs during the leveling process. My routine is to forgoe any enhancements until level 22. Buy Accuracy SOs for powers which need to hit at level 22 and 3 Endurance SOs for Stamina. At level 28 start slotting white IOs (I used make level 30s but 25s give almost the same bang for the influence buck and cost much less), replacing the earlier Accuracy and Endurance SOs and slotting Damage IOs for the first time. Aim for damage powers having 2 IOs in them by level 30. Bring damaging powers up to 3 IOs by level 35. Defense/Resistance IOs get slotted based on what the previous multiple of 10 level passed--one in each power in the 20s, two in each power in the 30s, 3 in each power in the 40s. Since you buy once and do not upgrade you save a nice chunk of influence which can go to buying non-generic IOs. And a trick to make life really nice is to save up your purchases on your first few characters until you can slot several non-generic IOs at once. Then use a respec, because that will return all your generic IOs to your inventory. Slot your non-generic IOs along with any generics you need to continue to use and save the rest for future characters. That means on future character you spend even less to get their slots filled. As for purchasing non-generic IOs, always buy Attuned (well unless you have a good reason to buy non-Attuned) because while they sell separately on the Auction House, the IOs come from the same pool. All you are doing is specifying which flavor you want when you purchase. As for wealth, there are several levels and you do not have to be Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk to kite out a character. My signature Brute was created January 15th OF THIS YEAR. While is not the first character I fully IO'd out I did not use the previous one to generate any of his influence. I did not engage in market manipulations. I did not convert reward merits to things which sell well on the market and sell them for influence. All I did was play the character and bid low on the AH with a willingness to wait. His total cost was probably just under 150 million influence. I would guess I have probably generated 500 million influence on him. "Easy to do if you play him all the time," I can hear someone saying. But I don't. I play other games and take breaks from City of Heroes (heresy I know) with Outriders having 80% of my focus for three months and Diablo 2 Reforged getting 50% for another 3 months. Add too that I am a confirmed altaholic. I may have created 25 other characters since then with all but one making it to their 30s (takes little time I know but I do not use AE farming for levelling, I play the game) resulting in one other fully IO'd character (Tanker), 2 others having made it to 50, and another 9 being characters I fully plan to take to 50 and IO out. Since June I mostly bring the character on when I'm frustrated with life, do not have a lot of time to work on levelling one of my projects, and just want to feel powerful while beating things down. So his play has been fairly minimal. He's only at Veteran Level 57 and only has his third level Alpha ability. All of this to say that IO'ing out a character is not a horribly difficult thing to do at this point.

Arguably its +Damage is disguised/rolled up under its +Recharge, as if you can use powers faster you do more damage.

3 SOs in Kinetic Shield, Weave, and Energy Cloak get you to 31.59%, which is where I am guessing your 32% value comes from. Evaluating the value of a powerset by looking at its performance with 6 added slots filled with SOs is not something I would advise, at least in the context of discussing a powerset's worth on these forums. Did you miss that Energy Drain buffs Defense on top of gaining you endurance? With 9 nearby foes, using 3 SOs, you'd be at 37%. If you are not confining yourself to SOs, just adding the two +3% Defense IOs brings the total to over 43%--nearing the soft cap.

Atomic's +Recharge requires foes to be near you. Are you planning on blapping? Time's Recharge is always on, always at a fixed value.