carroto

I had the same experience with /Poison on an MM. A different secondary probably would have fared better. Also MMs often have a rough patch around the late teens/early twenties where the enemies are getting tougher but you don't have enough defenses for your pets yet so they can get wiped out over and over. As others have said, to start out a simpler and easier character would probably be better. Any of the melee classes will generally do the trick so you can pick whatever appeals. There are guides here on the forums to making money that don't require farming. If you aren't trying to get super rich but just want to be able to afford basic enhancements it doesn't take a lot of time or effort. There's a lot of value in playing your way through the game and learning your way around. Although many players in this game are patient and willing to help, it's not that fun when the rest of the team is waiting for that last player to be walked through how to get to the zone so they can join the TF. Lastly regarding teaming, there's a reason so many players cluster a couple of the servers...it's much easier to get a team if you're where everyone else is. You might want to consider rolling a character on a higher-population server.

This is why I don't play /Dark anymore. But at least with Ice/ you can build for enough single-target damage you can just focus on cleaning up the bosses that are typically left standing after all the AoEs burn everything else to the ground.

Only if everyone on the team is in the same 5-level band.

*raises hand* I wonder sometimes if other people really have vastly different experiences in the game than I do. 99.9% of the time people use Incan well (or at least well enough) and it's just more convenient to not have to bother with the prompt. If I'm grabbing a snack or taking a quick break and someone gathers the team I'm not left behind. If someone starts using it inappropriately I can turn the prompt on easily enough, but I'm pretty sure I could count on one hand (with fingers to spare) the number of times I've needed to do that in my years on HC.

I'm always disappointed when I see this. I tend to avoid teams that require all members be 50, even on my level 50s, not that they care. They fill quickly enough, but I just don't like being a part of that. Those times that I do end up on those teams typically a handful of 50+ characters rush through obliterating everything and they could easily have let everyone else door-sit. No reason at all to require that everyone be 50+.

Not exactly the same thing but I always liked Stalkers and always liked AoE, so that limited my choices quite a bit. Finally after all these years decided to make a single-target specialist and it's become my favorite character. Fits really well into the current meta where on most teams the trash mobs get AoE'ed into the dirt really fast leaving the bosses to be cleaned up.

So you were able to bring it down with pure DPS? I have at times wondered if the whole team bought candy canes off the /ah and went and bought the holiday Golden Rings power (that's possible to do year round, no?) if that could be made to work in a pinch.

This more than anything. Rad Blast is so bad on Corruptors. Also if I could get the Blaster version of Dark Blast on Corruptors that would make my year.

For me with soloing on a squishy the first consideration is mez and how I'll deal with it. Nothing sucks the fun out of the game for me like helplessly watching my avatar get defeated with no recourse. For Corruptor/Defender builds Rune of Protection is an option, but it locks out a power pool pick and requires me to take a number of prerequisites, which makes it an incredibly heavy tax to pay just to deal with mez. Still it is an option. Other than that there are the sets that help to cope with it. Force Field and Sonic Resonance offer nearly complete mez protection that means you can just ignore it as a consideration outside of rare mez stacking situations, so those are great. Pair with Dark Blast for a heal and you can build quite a sturdy toon. These pairings would probably be among my favorite builds if Dark Blast weren't so unfortunate in the AoE department (really not a fan of Night Fall). Radiation Emission is also good here. Tohit debuffs can help make the mez attacks miss, but even when that doesn't work the large mez resistance you get from Accelerate Metabolism means the mez will wear off more quickly so you can be back in the fight quickly enough to have a chance usually. Dark Miasma deserves an honorable mention because it also offers large -tohit, but without mez resistance you can still suffer from cascade failure, where you get chain mezzed. Especially after the unfortunate changes to toggles that has them suppress for a considerable length of time after being mezzed, there's no way to get your protection back up in time for the next round coming your way. The long cast times of most of the Dark Miasma powers really work against it here. The one thing that can save you here is the Dark Servant. It's a great distraction and sometimes you'll get lucky and it will heal you while you're incapacitated. Other than that Dominators can be great too. Domination is a built-in mez protection (among other things) so you can plan to have that available when you need it even pre-perma-dom. Energy Assault would probably be my premier pick for soloing on a Dom. Dom's get the best version of Power Push and this power is so great while leveling up. It means you don't need Domination most of the time to keep yourself safe. Also if you don't mind keeping half of your inspiration tray filled with Break-Frees and restocking it between missions as needed you can just take whatever you want and make it work in that department.

This is the main point that has kept me from the set. I tend to favor armor sets that contribute in some way to offense. My favorite contribution is a damage aura, but I'll take what I can get. Regen is the set that more than any other goes in the opposite direction. Not only does it not contribute to offense, but the time spent on the clicks reduces time available for offense. That said I did play it pre-shutdown and I remember it being fun. I enjoyed the feeling that it rewarded skill and thoughtfulness rather than just a "toggle and forget."

Yesterday I was on a Keyes badge league, usually just going for one badge per run. We kept failing them (the badges usually, but sometimes the trial) over and over, usually immediately. Not even getting close to success, it was like a bunch of people were not even trying, or reading chat or whatever. Just facerolling their way through the trial. I wondered if it was due to new players. Then again sometimes you just get a bad mix of players. Maybe new people, maybe people for whom English is a second language, maybe people who just want incarnate salvage and can't be arsed, maybe kids who just like mashing buttons...

This is the conclusion I came to as well. It was loads of fun seeing mobs get knocked down by Caltrops, I'm not denying that, but slots tend to be so tight on my builds that I can never justify it for the meager level of actual benefit they bring.

Yeah it's a real shame these numbers don't go back further. The mass exodus from Torch began well over a year ago. I held on as long as I could but by the time there was nothing in LFG but tumbleweeds I figured it was time for me to go, too. Seems like there were a couple of waves. Initially a lot of people were splitting their time between Torch and Excel, and then once people started to notice the slowdown and also switch over it just snowballed and went fast downhill. It would be great to see that in the graph. Things had probably already stabilized at their new lower level with just the die-hards hanging on before these data started being collected.

That just counts the launchers? If so you can add +1. I don't use a launcher, just a raw text-based updater on Linux, so I imagine that I don't show up there at all. Oh wait that's when page 6 came out so I did have to run it, so maybe I am counted in the "other" category. More than I would have expected. Even so I'd guess the majority of those are Macs. Interesting.

This is why I always take Barrier instead of Clarion. Pseudo mez protection along with increased survivability more generally.

One of the ways I like to look at the utility of slotting a damage proc in a power is to compare slotting a proc versus using that slot for direct damage enhancement. You can see on the below chart that for Corruptor Energy Blast the three main blasts end up very similar in this regard due to the PPM system, varying only due to their animation times. This also shows that once I've slotted the power to the ED limit, procs can allow me to surpass it by a respectable amount. If I slot minimal or no recharge in one of those powers and put two procs in it, that's like adding another +100% (on average) damage enhancement.

I wonder if you can expand on this a bit. I use the contact finder redside quite a bit and there are many contacts I've never gotten any way except through a broker. For example in Port Oakes I can get Mr. Bocor through the finder, but he only introduces The Radio at an appropriate level. I have never gotten Billie Heck or Angelo Vendetti through the finder or an introduction from another contact. It's the same for Cap Au Diable. I can get Dr. Shelly Percey through the finder but she only introduces Marshal Brass. If I want Dmitri Krylov or Peter Themari I have to go through a broker. If there's another way I've been missing all these years I'd love to know about it. It's the same for every zone. Contacts don't do introductions across zones. In my experience I can get one contact in a zone through the finder, but that's it, and that contact only introduces their related contact in the next level range up. The one exception for this is Grandville, where you can start with Westin Phipps through the finder and end up getting introductions to all the other contacts as you work through each of them. All of this is for regular contacts of course. There are other special contacts like Veluta Lunata in Port Oakes that can also be accessed through the finder.

That level range redside has always stood out to me as being chock full of defeat-alls. If I were badging in that range I think I'd look at Peter Themari's arcs. Each has one defeat-all but they're pretty short.

I took it on mine and yes it's fun. The damage is okay but if you proc it up it's almost another nuke. With the recharge and cast time you'll be capped on the proc chances. Plus you don't need to put any endurance cost reduction in it, because the cast time is so long you'll get the end back naturally by the time it's done casting. If you have enough +accuracy set bonuses then you really only need to slot for damage and recharge, which leaves plenty of room for procs. The main downside is that on teams the cast time meant that I could almost never use it. It would always get interrupted or the mobs would already be dead. Sometimes there would be another group over there that we hadn't engaged yet and here we go, finally my time to shine, but it seemed like there was always that one mob that insisted on throwing an attack my way and interrupting that long, slow windup. I'm remaking the toon on another server and I'm going to try going another direction this time, maybe proccing up the sleep grenade.

You'll get a small chunk from the first mission of a Barracuda SF if that interests you at all. Maybe for a change of pace now and then. If you can get a team to clear all the way into and through City Hall you'll probably get a good number of them.

Seconded. I was surprised at the low S/L defense when looking at the build. The provided bind/menu only combines inspirations to reds, nothing for purples. I guess I could try it out on test but it looks like it would be taking a lot of damage without much defense.

So does this mean that you're shelving the Fire/Dark Tanker? I've got one as well that I made a while back and am slowly leveling and so far I like it. Basically a remake of a Dark/Fire Brute on another server that was a blast to play. Built for resists and recharge so both heals come up quickly it's a fun, active play style.

It was originally a cone and was changed to single-target for Stalkers at some point, no? Maybe I'm remembering incorrectly.

I am currently working on a Rad Blast/Sonic Resonance Corruptor built for melee play. Because the first two Rad Blast attacks have such horrible DPAS for non-Blasters, I'm skipping/ignoring those and taking the melee attacks from the Fighting pool as well as a melee attack from an Epic pool. One nice thing about Rad Blast for this is that it has two AoEs (plus the nuke) that are usable in melee range. Mez protection, capped S/L resistance, and decent resists to most other damage types. A decent bit of regen. It won't be the sturdiest melee fighter around and certainly not the most damaging, but I'm hoping it will be a fun combo of buff/debuff and melee. One other bonus of playing SR in melee range is that the other melee fighters will get the benefit of being in the big bubble, which they normally don't get when I play SR. I built a similar character back on live and quite enjoyed it. I'm hoping this one will be even better.

I don't know what history you have access to, but presumably at least HC has some kind of source control, so you'd know if that was changed going back a few years. Are you saying that it's been that way all along on HC? Because that's not how I remember it. I played that mission a bunch and usually helped the Freaks fight the PPD. I wish I could remember when they stopped fighting but I'm really bad at placing things like that temporally. Anyway, I'd swear that it's been working on HC for most of my time here and it's relatively recent that they stopped fighting. After seeing this post I was kind of scratching my head and wondering why I didn't report it when I first noticed it instead of just shrugging my shoulders and carrying on.