roleki

All I know is, if it doesn't include a jaunty jingle, it's missed its mark.

The very first attack you get as an Axe is called 'Beheader.' That's not something that allows you the illusion that you're sending the bad guys to reform school. That said, if you live in a city where people can teleport & kill you 18 different ways and you'd STILL rather take your chances stealing purses in broad daylight... well... "Some men, you just can't reach. So you get a front-loaded Build-Up-> Total Focus -> Energy Transfer that crits. Which is the way he wants it. Well, he gets it. And I don't like it any more than you men."

I pretty much only play 50 stuff, so if I (or someone near me) dies, it's probably because something stupid and/or amusing has happened. After a chuckle or a mutter, I usually fart out whatever old-person exclamation pops into my head at the moment, like "SOMETHING BIT ME!" or "HE HATES THOSE CANS!" then click whatever button gets me off the floor. For whatever reason, youtube is bereft of my reaction to defeat in other games (basically, that moment Flynn realizes CLU has been excised by the MCP and he acts like the keyboard actually caused him physical harm.)

I was just wondering what the story was on Intangibility recipes and enhancements - as far as I can tell, they only exist as ghost entries in AH. Was there a dark moment in history when Dimension Shift and Black Hole were making the game unplayable, and the devs only recourse was to nuke their life-giving Intangibility enhancements? Anyone else have any unthreadworthy questions that might fit under this?

Nah, I mean Trip Mine, the power that helps you maximize the number of spawns your PA can last through. The power to debuff or mezz an enemy is insignificant next to the ability to pop behind them and explode them with a nuke. Every 10s until they are dead.

Please change the thread title to "What are the worst powers in the game after Time Bomb?"

It's not so much an import, you have to open the buil.txt from the Mids File... Open menu; but, you don't have to change the file type, just navigate to the Builds folder and pop it open. Is nice!

Same; even my EM/Fire seems to need less time spent keeping it upright than my EM/Rad, and those things are getting pretty much the exact same set bonuses across the board. That said, could be a matter of "the best defense is a good offense" or something along those lines, and I'm just taking less incoming on that EM/Fire.

Necromancy! But, anyone done Mercs/Emp? I realize it's suboptimal, but I had a name stuck in my head that pretty much demanded guns and healing.

While I'll agree that Time Bomb is just flat-out awful, I would argue that Trip Mine is pretty much the MVP of the set. Why even take Traps if you're not going to find a way to use Trip Mine?

Also of note: among other things, Acid Arrow also lowers ToHit debuff resistance for 45s, so if you fire that and get Flash Arrow off shortly thereafter, the resisted portion of the -ToHit debuff is even better. In any event, congrats on choosing a Fire/TA Corruptor, that's one of my favorite combos in the game (so much so that I've got two of them +5'd all the way around). Nukes all over the place, debuffs AND scourge? What's not to love?

First thought was a Mastermind, but an Emp Defender would also be a drastic change of pace.

Fold Space didn't exist when I rolled my Ill/Traps, but if it did I probably would have tried the same thing. Onliest thing is, you have to make sure the killzone has enough Trip Mines to handle all the incoming, but spaced out enough that one target doesn't eat up several Trip Mines. As it stands, I used to set up little ambushes around corners then draw bad dudes to them, but it never seemed to kill everything neatly. Combine that spillover with the time it takes to set up all those Trip Mines/Gas Traps, and ultimately I just didn't have patience for it. That said, don't give up on that Ill/Traps just yet! When they're humming along, they are capable of remarkable forms of violence! The onliest thing is, you have to configure them in such a way that they can execute. Like everyone has suggested, Recharge (specifically Global Recharge) is priority #1 on an Illusion controller. Once you have that nailed down, survival is just a question of stealth, misdirection, and timely application of debuffs and soft controls. On my Ill/Traps, I keep Superior Invisibility on at all times; when I deploy FFG, I hit Group Invisibility to keep that off everything's radar. I don't fire up Phantasm unless I'm on an EB or above; that moron starts firing from 70' away and basically announces you're nearby; pretty much the same deal with Seeker Drones. I deploy PA like an alpha attack, with a macro that fires them right at the feet of villainy; once the mob notices them, I Jaunt in behind and lay a Trip Mine. Anything that survived THAT gets a good look at Spectral Terror, and by that time Trip Mine is up again and I can (usually) safely let loose another; if not, then they get Poison Gas and/or Caltrops. One last thing: you've probably already read this ad nauseum, but just for the record... don't bother taking Time Bomb. I mean, you can take it on the Test server to see firsthand how slow and useless it is, but in the grand scheme of things, it takes longer to deploy (and detonate) than most encounters would last if you were hitting mobs exclusively with Brawl and strong language. It's the worst T9 in the history of T9s. Its best feature is that if you don't take it, you can fit something else in your build. I'd be mad if it was just an inherent power; that you have to actively choose it and slot it is almost insulting. Anyway, keep at it! Unless you actually were looking forward to Time Bomb. ETA: quick video of Ill/Traps doing its thing; it looked a lot better when I was doing it 😞

Weird. I use an image macro to swap the icon from the power to the macro, and use these guts: "powexec_name Bonfire$$powexec_location Target Bonfire" or "powexec_name Jaunt$$powexec_location Target Jaunt" To just tab over to a target and fire a power at their feet. I've never had it fire below the surface or anything weird like that, but I have had it refuse to fire in hectic scenarios like an MSR when everyone and their brother is clubbing the GM, but I assume it's a sync thing or something along those lines.

Maybe it was? I assumed not, since there aren't any bids on vaporware 53s at the Auction House; the HC-specific ones don't seem to get those. Maybe they do and I'm mistaken.

Favorite? Too many to list, but I am glad they whipped up Electrical Affinity and the new IO sets, like Artillery and Ice Mistral's Torment.

On the one hand, a shuriken-based set sounds awesome. On the other hand, I don't think the world is ready for Cone Warfare.

I don't know if it's the best answer you could have gotten, I just know it's the best answer you could have gotten from me.

I have both En/En and Fire/En, and while my preference is for the En/En, that preference is almost 100% based on nostalgia, since En/En was the first thing I played on Live. Through that lens, I feel En/En sounds better, looks better, and feels better than Fire/En. That said, while En/En *does* get some mitigation with KB, that point eventually gets canceled out somewhat since all Blasters have access to KB/KD through Bonfire from the Flame Mastery pool, or they can slot procs from Avalanche, Ragnarok and/or Overwhelming Force. Meanwhile, Fire's secondary effect is more raw damage; beyond having less damage by the numbers, all of Energy's damage is split between Energy and Smashing damage, and Smashing damage is more commonly resisted by mobs. You're more likely to run into situations where your En/En's output is getting nerfed by damage resistance than running into things that resist Fire. Further, if you opt to enhance KB (or mitigate it with KB:KD) on that En/En, you're more than likely doing so at the cost of a damage enhancement AND a set bonus, putting more distance between what damage/survivability the En/En can muster and what the Fire/En can. Furthermore, in the grand scheme of things, Fire attacks generally have quicker animations/arcanatime, recharge faster, cost less endurance per activation, and in the case of AoEs, have more range and hit more targets than Energy attacks. That's not true of every power T1 to T9, but if you lay them out side by side in CoD, Fire comes out ahead in most of those metrics. All THAT said, I make it sound like Fire blows Energy out of the water, but honestly, it doesn't feel that way. In general content, Energy's output kills things just as easily as Fire, and there are a lot of times all that extra DPS/DoT is just wasted on already-dead things. Also, when levelling up, Energy has a built-in survival trick that Fire does not... there are many occasions where the ability to piss something off even more pales in comparison to the ability to knock that thing on its ass and keep it there. Plus there's the aesthetics of it... in comparison to Energy, Fire sounds boring, looks boring, and even though you're lighting something on FIRE, it's somehow not as satisfying as sending that thing flying across the room - or, pinning it to the ground, if that's your persuasion. In the grand scheme of things, you get 1000 slots per server per account, might as well have one of both and use them as the mood strikes; they're both cromulent Blasters and have their strong points.

Long question short, am I imagining things, or do I really get more Critical Strikes/Critical hits running +2 (or more) than I do +1? Or, put another way, COD shows I have a 5% chance to crit vs. minions and 10% vs everything else; when you throw in level-shifts and all that, does notoriety +2 (or more) 'promote' minions into the 10% chance to crit? Or does the combat engine still recognize them as minions no matter what level they are relative to mine, and I am just imagining that I get more crits running 2/8?

I use secondary builds on stuff that has a lot of KB; I happen to like a lot of KB, but I hate dancing around it on teams, so primary builds are boniferous and replete with KB:KD, then secondary builds are the minion launchers. I've only forgotten to switch back to the -KB build a couple of times.

If I recall correctly, besides getting an XP boost for sheer number of attacks, there's also more XP for ranged alpha, ranged attacks in general, and whether there are mobs that patrol the area.

Until someone replies with a Sonic Resonance, I'm still the leader in the clubhouse.

It's not going to dazzle anyone, but on the off-chance I am the only respondent, I present to you my melee-centric Sonic/Rad Corruptor, Sonic Counselor. Theory is, the one-two punch of Choking Cloud and Oppressive Gloom would keep the crowd from outright beating me to death, allowing me to sneak in and smack the tar out of folks with Shout and the attacks out of the Fighting Pool; take all the -Res from Sonic and Rad, plus the reciprocal damage bonuses of the Fighting Pool attacks, plus the damage amp from Soul Drain, plus the damage spike from Amplify, PLUS the occasional bout of Scourge, add it all up, and, well... it works? Note that when I say 'it works' I mean that as in "it can smoke a Fake Nemesis before it gets PFF going" not "It's a 4/8 juggernaut! Scrappers, schmappers!" That said, it IS pretty safe to solo with, provided you have Clarion/Break Free in your pocket.

I don't know the proper terminology for the phenomenon, but whatever it is called, I suspect people who have invested resources towards Accuracy/ToHit are more likely to notice every MISS! message and will attach undue significance to each one. If I'm rolling IOs and miss twice in a 4-power attack chain, I'll think, damn, that's unlucky. If I spent 2M on a Kismet +Acc and miss 2 times in the span of four attacks, I'll kill you and everyone who ever met you.