Mercurias

I'm running an Elec/Psy/Mace Dom who is literally just really fun and a delight to play despite its lack of overwhelming damage potential. 😛 I also have an Earth/Energy Dom who is a lot of fun. Next on the list is a Plant/Fire, I think.

I like Agility, personally. It helps you more easily softcap, gives a Recharge boost, and gives your Endmod some nice oomf. Vigor core is definitely great too, though!

Well if you want something straightforward, you might like Fire/Dark or Plant/Storm. For Fire/Dark, Fire makes containment setup easy, and it has high damage compared to other sets. It also can double-stack AoE Stuns with Howling Twilight and Flashfire to straight up mez bosses. Add to that some rock-solid utility (heals, buffs, the strongest rez in the game that is also a stun, AND excellent debuffs), stealth, and four support pets (three fire Imps and Dark Servant), plus regular use of Bonfire with a KB/KD proc, and you have a one-person lockdown team that is extremely easy to play on team or solo. I play my Fire/Dark/Fire Troller basically right in melee, standing on top of a bonfire patch while throwing fireballs, juggling enemies while they roast, and keeping my pets alive so they can ALSO hurt things. Plant/Storm has an extremely high amount of lockdown potential, as well as an extremely high overall damage from your DoTs, AoE confuse, and /Storm powers. For most of the game, you can anything short of an EB by popping Seeds of Confusion on a group, then Roots, and then focusing on locking down the boss while the enemies shred one another. Storm adds a dimension of positioning which Plants didn't have, as well as heavy debuffs and some really nice damage. By 50 you'll be likely to make Dominators jealous...And it's honestly easy to play since most of the powers just require you to set them and let them do their thing. Dark Control is also excellent, with its confusion power, cone fear, AoE Immob, and quick-summoning helper pets. It works extremely well paired with most other sets, but I like it best with Radiation Emission since it lets you keep at range...Which is where you need to be most of the time in order to best utilize your Cone Fear.

Could be an Illusion/Darkness or Illusion/Time Controller also. They have a powerful baked-in invisibility toggle and light-based "pets" along with some controls and attacks. Either secondary makes for a pretty darn solid, all-rounder type stealthy character who manipulates people into being killed unseen and without a shred of evidence left. A Claws/Energy Scrapper might be fun too. The Vanguard claws look like hardened light.

Ninjutsu is a pretty friendly set to slot. It goes off of positional (Melee, Ranged, AoE) defenses, so you can focus on the buffs which get them to softcap and then leave room for other sets. Once you hit softcap, I would focus on Recharge and Recovery until you hit close to Perma-Hasten. That'll help get your heals back online faster as well as help you recover endurance more swiftly with Seishinteki Kyoyo once it comes off of cooldown. After that, I'd bump resistance and damage. Musculature works really well as the Alpha for Sentinels because it helps bump their naturally low damage. I would go for either Degenerative or Diamagnetic for the Interface. Diamagnetic can help you double-down on the ToHit and ass -Regen to help you handle bigger baddies, while Degenerative gives -HP debuff procs and added Toxic damage. YMMV, but those are the two I'd recommend. For Destiny, I would grab Rebirth for added healing. Again, YMMV. For Judgment, I went with Void Radial, but either Void works. It's basically a second cast of Blackstar. What's not to like? For Lore, I went with the Banished Pantheon, but you can honestly grab anything there. They should all be fine. For Hybrid I chose Assault, but you could probably go for Melee if you believed you were going to spend a lot of time here.

In my own experience playing a Dark/Energy Blaster, I had the most fun playing almost entirely at range. Boost Range from Energy Manipulation makes pure-ranged rather viable, particularly if you slot enough recharge to make it permanent. With a boosted 59.6% range, most enemies couldn't touch me before I had them knocked down by Umbral Torrent or Immobilized. I personally picked Speed, Jumping, Fitness, and Leadership pools and relied on Energize's endurance cost reduction to let me run all those helpful toggles while having no issue pumping out Negative Energy Snipes. Your own mileage may very, but I liked it very much!

Here's mine, which may be the unusable lv 50 one you were talking about: There's a lot of wiggle room in this combo to make it yours, but what I focused on was building a character that was versatile, with control elements and durability to help offset its lower damage output compared to a Blaster. The key things I did which I personally like are: -The build has two heals, a recovery power, and softcapped positional defenses. -Mystic Flight -I slotted Umbral Torrent to do KD rather than KB, and also give a chance to crank recharge. -Blackstar up every 25 Seconds. -Soul Mastery gives a Cone Immob as on top of Darkest Night, which work extremely well together by locking enemies in place in the radius of Darkest Night where they have a damage and respectable (though I wish I could have made it more subtantial) -ToHit Debuff. -Antiumbral Beam, Gloom, and Abyssal Gaze give a continuous 1-2-3 Single Target Chain. -Umbral Torrent, Dark Obliteration, and Soul Tentacles make a continuous (though at closer range than I'd like) 1-2-3 AoE chain. If you want to pump the damage, the first thing I would do is trade out Gloom for Dark Blast. Dark Blast's power is *incredibly* low, but it triggers Offensive Opportunity, which should be helpful. I went for Gloom because I prefer the attack, but I'm considering chancing it for the sake of the mechanic. I'm sure others could either improve on this build or make something better, but I hope it gives you a starting point or something to consider!

I have a Dark/Savage who is a lot of fun. His powers are based off of pop culture vampires like Castlevania's Dracula., Dark Manipulation, summoning spirits, misdirection, superhumanly strong, and teleportation. If only I could have managed to squeeze in a triple fireball spell when he opens his cape...

I would honestly say Illusion/Dark is probably the most powerful solo controller. Illusion/Storm has more raw damage output, but it lacks any self-healing, and since I'm trash at the game I never play a "solo" character who is missing a self-heal. An Illusion/Dark has plenty of damage as well as exceptional defenses and healing. It's a great character for soloing AVs and GMs.

Shield is a really good secondary that gives your primary a lot of benefits. A lot of people don't like it compared to Bio armor because it doesn't go much for regeneration, and it doesn't boost damage as much...But that doesn't mean Mace/Shield is *bad* by any means. You have a much easier time softcapping defenses on /Shield, and it gives some slight boost to your offense. It also looks way cool! I don't know that some Plus Ultra Power Gamer would run either power set, but they're a solid combo for sure.

I would personally say that I have more fun as a Water/Atomic Blaster. There's nothing wrong with either of the other options, but frankly after years of playing an Ill/Rad Controller I sort of don't like Radiation Manipulation very much anymore.

You can do that a lot of different ways! I have a Water/Atomic Blaster with the Atomic powers colored to look like mist or steam. You can also play a Water Blast/SR Sentinel to give yourself high defensive values along with your watery powers, or run a water/Kinetics Corrupter and play as if the Kinetics stuff is your character sucking the water out of enemies for bigger attacks.

I really enjoy my Water/Atomic Blaster. It’s a big ole AoE machine, and I’m able to run content on it in the 30s at around +0/x5 without IOs.

Time is an extremely active set with a combination of control, buffing, debuffing, and healing. It’s extremely well-rounded, but the damage it does directly is minimal on its own (you can slot Distortion Field with Procs and that’s about it). Storm Summoning is also an extremely active set, but it focuses heavily on debuffing and controls. In later levels you’re able to summon Lightning Storm and Tornado pseudo-pets for added damage. Storm pairs very well with Dark Blast and Water Blast, in my personal opinion. Storm is also extremely endurance-heavy as a set, so people tend to build with that in mind. If I were you, I would personally run as a Storm/Ice for theme. It’s a really nice ranged combo! You’ll end up leaning hard into your primary for overall ranged DPS and control (Ice Blast will give you a couple of decent Holds, Ice Storm, and Blizzard). You won’t have a self-heal, so you’ll need to keep using your Storm powers to prevent enemies from attacking at all.

Huh. I’d thought the goal was to grab enough recharge to make Overgrowth perma.

Howdy! I’m running a Necro/Nature MM right now, and I’m starting to think the combo has a lot of potential (possibly on par with a Demons/Therm, but probably less than Bots/Time) thanks to Necro pets’ natural sturdiness being reinforced by /Nature heals and buffs. I’m not very familiar with either set. Does anyone else run this combo, and are there any sample builds out there?

I’m going to be laughed off of the forums, but probably my favorite combo for Stalkers is still Dark Melee/Ninjutsu. It’s a scrappy grab-bag of utility and mostly-ST damage with a surprising amount of built-in healing. I have a lot of sentimentality attached to my DM/Nin Stalker. It was my first redside 50 back on live.

It's interesting, but I don't know that you're going to enjoy having Fulcrum Shift at level 49.

I enjoy Fire/Dark, but I honestly feel like Ill/Dark may outclass it. Illusion is a strong solo contender because it's simply built extremely well for soloing content. It has baked-in stealth and damage, as well as a Confusion mez. It's also got invincible pets which can be up permanently so long as you have sufficiently high recharge. It's kind of hard to beat.

As a personal choice, I would go with Dark/Dark. I'm not feeling Rad Affinity these days, and Electrical Affinity is really awesome in concept, but not really my playstyle in practice. The Dark Controller secondary is absolutely fantastic, though, and one of my favorites. As an alternative just for the heck of it, you might also like the /Time secondary. It plays nicely with Dark Control. As far as Epic/Patron pools, I'm personally a fan of Fire (for added attacks) and Primal (for Power Boost). YMMV. Hope any of this helps, and that you enjoy the character!

So no replies means it’s perfect?

If you’re wanting a non-brute build that can combine survivability, utility, and PBAoE Damage, I would recommend a Fire/Time/Soul Corrupter. Fire Blast works exceptionally well at all ranges, including melee, and it has a lot of AoE to give. Time Manipulation is a set with exceptional buffs and debuffs that will keep you safe up close. Soul Mastery gives a protective toggle, Power Boost to magnify the effect of your Time powers, and Soul Drain to drastically crank up the damage you deal. If you want a sturdy beast for PAoE that is easy to play, Rad/Fire/Energy Brutes are excellent candidates. They combine heavy PBAoE Damage with survivability, but they can be expensive to properly slot, if you want a super-PBAoE focused character who works well before IO slotting, you’ll probably like a Spines/Bio Brute. Spines leans heavily into PBAoE, even having an added PBAoE Damage toggle. It also deals seldom-resisted toxic damage, so enemies get added damage over time. Bio Armor is heavily focused on being in the thick of things using a combination of resistances, regeneration, burst healing, and defense to keep enemies at bay. It included my several powers which draw from enemies in melee range, which reinforces the PBAoE playstyle. If you want a super high-risk, high-reward style of play, Fire/Fire/Fire Blasters May be your thing. With virtually zero protections, they’re the game’s textbook glass cannons. The running joke for years Ismaili that their self-Rez is part of the their damage rotation. I’ve tried most of these. As a compulsive clicker, I tend to prefer the Fire/Time/Soul Corrupter and Spines/Bio Brute.

I put your suggestions into practice. I like 'em! Thank you!

Have you ever considered taking this whole mad king thing and applying it to a Peacebringer? They benefit strongly from super-high amounts of recharge, and I'm curious to see what kind of havoc can be made with one.

Thanks so much for all the feedback! I tried to work in as many of your recommendations as possible while maintaining the whole nature-y theme (which does affect optimization), and here's what I came up with.