Neogumbercules

I'm not going to get into a big counter quote discussion, but you've completely missed the point I was making. Nothing about vigilance has any impact on how you play a defender. It's a completely passive and invisible inherent, and despite the fact that you think inherents are not designed to impact your power picks or how you play, that's demonstrably false on many of the ATs. Domination is the obvious example, as the endgame for a dominator revolves around the inherent and when you press the button you explode in a flash and gain an awesome glowing aura, plus your controls all have that satisfying Domination! text. You literally pick when you use it, so it's an active gameplay element, and yes you bet your booty I'm taking powers that work well with domination, so it 100% influences how I build a dominator. Another one, Fury benefits from having a high recharge attack chain and encourage a brute to jump in and fight like crazy. Plus the damage numbers get waaaay bigger when it's full and enemies die everywhere. Critical Strike on a scrapper encourages you to attack the boss, and several scrapper powers have enhanced crit strike chance, which, wouldn't you believe it, influence your power picks. They get a big critical hit text when it procs. These ATs and others also have ATOs that play into the inherent, which turns the inherent into a gameplay consideration, in this RPG, where you pick complementary powers and try to find synergies. One of Arsenal Control's biggest complaints in beta was that it didn't have a good way to set up containment. Again, another gameplay and power pick implication for the inherent of the controller. Controller has many builds that use containment to synergize with power picks. Fire/Kin controllers are a good example of this. Controllers get the big Containment! text pop up, too. Even Scourge, which is largely passive, has gameplay implications, as you know I'm looking for the boss with low HP so I can incinerate them with blazing bolt or blaze and seeing that big orange SCOURGE! damage tic is satisfying and gives good feels because you, as a player of a videogame, get to see that great visual feedback of what you're doing. Tanks entire play style revolves around Gauntlet and, yes, powers like Burn are great picks on a tank because I can now get a ton of damage out of it because my passive is going to ensure that the foes won't run away when I click it. You see it in action because the enemies crowd you and don't run away. It synergizes on teams, too, as many toons will use powers that make foes run, but they won't run when a tank has aggro on them. I could go on but I don't need to beat it into the ground. A lot of the inherents have audio and/or visual feedback and they DO change the way you build and play your character. Vigilance gives zero visual or audio feedback, does not impact how you build your defender, cannot be manipulated or exploited or synergized with in any way, and yes, the endurance part of it remains, but that's a reach because that aspect of it is so unbelievably useless in any phase of the game past maybe level 12. But forgot about the damage and endurance thing or the mechanics of what Vigilance does. That is truly not the point I'm making. The point I'm making is that it's boring, it provides no feedback, and the player doesn't engage with it -at all-. Put another way, if Vigilance made you turn super Saiyan with glowing yellow hair and a flaming aura around your body when half your team was dead, but was mechanically 100% the same as it is today, I would consider it way better than what we currently have.

The viability, usefulness, or necessity of Vigilance as it's currently designed isn't even the real issue in my opinion. Vigilance is poorly designed, simplistic, boring, and only exists to throw defenders a bone when solo'ing or playing on small teams. It doesn't help define defenders, or have any impact on how a defender plays. It doesn't factor into your power picks or cause any kind of engagement on behalf of the player at all. It's not visible in any way, and it's literally turned off when you're on a team. On many defender primaries it's pretty much useless, because the defender can boost itself. I just think from a game design standpoint, it sucks because it's...boring, like I said. Even completely passive inherents, like Scrappers critical hits, or Corruptor scourge are visible and satisfying when they pop. And you can actually play around them to an extent. Vigilance is just invisible and literally non-functioning most of the time.

I agree with you and I really wish they would take the range and target cap nerfs off sentinel and give them a decent inherent. That said I would also love a hybrid melee/support primary, Mastermind secondary AT, so I'm a bit of a hypocrite.

I would assume it involves manually tweaking these rescue missions to count as complete as soon as the rescue is complete, or as soon as X number of ambush waves are defeated. In missions where you have to lead an NPC to another asset like a computer terminal, tweak these so the NPC teleports to you when you arrive at the location. I would be completely in support of this, even though it sounds like it would take a lot of effort, or just be a band-aid solution to some bigger problem like maybe the mission design process and toolset internally is just jacked to begin with, so even doing something like what we're suggesting in this thread would require a redesign to the internal tools. Beats me, but yeah, escort missions are trash.

Hate to sound negative but I agree with the folks worried about changes to DA being done. They will absolutely overcomplicate it and change the feel of the set. At times it feels like their aim is to shave all the edges off until we're left with watered down mediocrity, or stuff that only feels strong when specific conditions are met as @ShinMagmus suggested. My first character way back in Issue 4 was a Claws/DA scrapper and I've enjoyed dark armor ever since. I agree DA is a pretty underwhelming set, but I also have an S/L soft-capped perma-hasten DB/DA scrapper that absolutely rips. Of course I only use half the powerset, which sucks. The only changes I would be in favor of would be to give DA KB protection and straight up buff cloak of fear and oppressive gloom numerically without changing them. The self rez... I dunno. DA doesn't really need a tier 9 godmode power. I would turn it into a Diablo 3 style cheat-death auto power. When you are defeated, you instantly unleash a blast of darkness that stuns all enemies in an x foot radius (stacks with oppressive gloom) and restores half your health. Give it an unenhanceable internal cooldown of 90 seconds or something. Then I'd call it good to go. The only reason I wouldn't change Dark Regeneration is because I flat out reject the notion that this game needs to be balanced without consideration of the existence of IOs, and therefore, DR is pretty good with IOs.

Ditto.

If there was one UI update I could get it would be an overhaul to the character item menu!

I only get like 30-60 minutes to play a few nights a week, but I'm up to about a billion inf on my new guy now (my other farmer was inf capped so I went full "buy it nao!" for this new guy and spent 1b on his build). His penance is that he has to build back that bill and mail it to my other toon as repayment. I thought about trying to low-ball some of those 500m D-Syncs and flip them but for some reason I'm afraid! Last time I went hardcore marketeering I would buy 100 super packs. I would always make more back then I spent but it was mind-numbingly tedious. I'm kinda considering doing that again just to see if it still works.

Are you guys still converting uncommon yellow recipes or have your methods evolved? I've kinda gotten back into that converter rat race, buying up tons of yellows and converting them to something better. I'm doing zero fishing and just throwing everything I get on the AH for less than what it looks like they're selling for. Over the last week and a half I've made about 700m just doing that. I'm also being stupid and buying converters for 69,420 because I'm immature and it gives me a chuckle.

I don't know if I still have a mids build saved but I can look later tonight after I get the kids to bed. Basically take Force Feedback in Explosive Arrow, Gale, Tornado, and any other power that does KB. Also take Spiritual Core Alpha and Hasten with 2 50+5 IOs. Slot every power with sets that give +recharge. You can double dip with one of the Corruptor ATO sets by splitting it between 2 powers because the +Recharge is the 3 slot bonus. That's an easy +20% right there. If you're cycling your KB powers fast enough in big enough groups you'll have that proc active most of the time. It's pretty fun.

I like where you're going with this but I think you have too much -def. I would throw a bunch of -dam and -rec in there as secondary effects, and I'd pull something similar to Choking Cloud that causes a puke effect.

Something I've considered for a while is that TOs, DOs, and SOs should have been completely removed from the game and basic IOs should be craftable without recipes, only costing the mats and the crafting cost at the table. In addition to that, there should be more crafting tables in common areas, like inside Wentworth's or near the Black Markets in the Rogue Isles. Keeping one foot in the past when the crafting system was first introduced maybe made sense back then, but it's long since become redundant. A major reason to do this would be to simplify the process for new players, and another one would be to act as a tutorial/introduction to IO sets, which is pretty much a major aspect of the endgame, like it or not.

Throwing my keys in the bowl (wait, wrong analogy). AH price history is exceptionally broken. I hope they were flexible enough to be able to roll back this change if they can't find and fix this quickly. I just now started getting back into the AH game so I could slot up a new build. Bad timing.

Hey just glad someone found it useful. I was mostly curious if it was possible!

Okay, I built this character on the test server. It's EXTREMELY sturdy. Basically can't die, although I do need to heal from time to time. Solo, when being attacked by dozens and dozens of mobs with the ranged fire attack from beyond the normal aggro cap, I do need to keep hitting Transfusion to stay alive, but once the enemies are whittled down, I don't really need to. In a dual-boxing situation where my Tank is soaking most of the aggro, as long as I don't dive into something completely unreasonable (like 5-6 spawns all grouped together), I should be able to keep Fulcrum on auto. If not, I need to keep Transfusion on auto and manually cast Fulcrum when it's ready. He solo cleared the asteroid map at +4/8 in less than 10 minutes, which is pretty good for a Defender! It helps to be damaged capped at all times. This guy would also be extremely powerful in regular content as well, but of course, so would a Kin/ with no IOs at all.

Dunno, just felt like sharing this build. It achieves 45% fire defense and 75% fire resistance self-sufficiently. The idea is I will control my Tank and put this defender on follow with Fulcrum Shift on Auto. It will target through the Tank, using FS on the enemy my Tank is targeting. Honestly, if I wanted to go "all in" on this character being nothing but a buff bot I would take the slots out of Transference and Aim and use them elsewhere, but as it stands, I might let this character leave the XP mines from time to time so I will leave those two powers slotted for now. I intend to put this on the test server to play around with before I commit to the build. There's room for some efficiency, probably if I use HOs or D-Syncs but I never use them for some reason and prefer to keep it simple. I can trade out a Winter IO set for a purple set to get extra recharge and accuracy. The loss of 5% fire defense will be covered by the fact that my Tank is also running maneuvers, so the Defender will still be at the cap. The real question will be whether or not it can survive a farm at +4/8 even with soft-capped defense and 75% resistance. For some reason Mid's is giving me an exception when I try to copy the forum export but here's the build chunk. This is for the latest version of Mid's using the most recent patch data: 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

I'm going to echo the Stalker suggestion. They're pretty much the premier solo AT and the mechanics are incredibly straightforward. Just attack stuff. Stealth missions to make them go faster. End of story. I prefer sets with toggles for Mez protection, and defense based armors tend to fare better for Stalkers. If you don't want to play a melee AT, play a Mastermind. Ignore all the macros and keybinding guides and just use the 3 buttons they give you to command your minions. It's very easy. If you keep your guys in "defensive follow" mode, any damage dealt directly to you will be divided amongst all your minions, so it's really easy to stay alive. I suggest Bots/Time. Once you get . more familiar with the AT and the game in general you can start doing the deep dive on advanced MM controls.

If you want to achieve your goal of having sustained fire indefinitely it's really easy in a blaster. Every secondary has a power that boosts your recovery. On /Fire, for example, it's called Cauterizing Aura. Keep that toggled on, keep stamina slotted with 2 end mod and a performance shifter proc, throw miracle and Numina's proc in health and you will never run out. As for damage, just hit the ED caps and you'll be good.

Edit: Okay I went onto test and made a completely maxed out ArseFire Dominator to play around with. Doing +0/x8 Council's in PI. I removed my previous comment as I wanted to provide more direct feedback. There are too many location powers in the set. It makes it hard to play. Yes I could do the whole powerexec location whatever thing but I don't like doing that because those power macros don't show cooldown status on the tray, which I need. I know I can put them on another tray and look at them there, but I'd rather see it all in the same place. Call it old age, but this set has enough things to keep track of already. I would take at least 1 of the location powers, probably the big AoE hold, and make that a targeted AoE. I felt like the set was pretty strong, actually. Between the big AoE hold, flash bang, liquid nitrogen, and sleep grenade, I was able to keep two enemy groups pretty much locked down. It's a very busy playstyle and requires the player to click a lot. I will chock it up to first-time experience, but trying to remember which powers were locations and which were clicks was kind of a lot. Then juggling in my other powers such as sleet, ice storm, combustion, etc...I have to click on the ground so much it becomes difficult. I will point out, to the people worried about the lack of an AoE immob, I know this is not exactly useful for 90% of your playtime with the character, but you do eventually get access to that incarnate which provides a good immob proc on most of your attacks. It's not Fire Cages, but it's something. Also this was my first time playing a maxed out /Fire dominator. That's a pretty good powerset! Overall, the set is not as bad as I thought, I just think the playability needs improving. Again, this was on a completely maxed out, permadom, perma-hasten, fully incarnated purpled out super build. I feel that using this set under regular build situations or leveling with it would be very different and I would really miss the lack of a more spammable control, as these 90 second timers are kind of killer. I would also like to see more variety in the player animations, as not every power needs to be shot from the rifle. We can throw grenades, etc... My two suggestions boil down to this: Put Liquid Nitrogen on a 60 second timer and maybe increase the kd chance/pulse rate. This will make LN a solid early leveling power that will carry players through the whole game. Change Tear Gas to a Targeted AoE that creates the patch. There are too many location powers in the set as-is.

What is a wet target? How do you make someone wet? That is not a status I'm aware of. Do targets get wet from water blast or something like freezing rain? Maybe I've been missing something since issue 4?

A classic fantasy magic themed control set (think Harry Potter and LotR wands and wizardry). You could have a variety of magic wand and staff abilities. Unique effects could be shrinking enemies so they are tiny, transforming them into toads, tossing them into the air, etc...

My favorite is Cloaking Device. I've actually really enjoyed playing Devices and with this upcoming patch it's getting even better.

Okay how about this for Arsenal Control to give it a "signature" kind of power that feels fun...Swap the position of smoke canister and sleep grenade. Adjust smoke canister to be an appropriate T2 ability. Alternately, replace flashbang with this. If you replace sleep grenade or Flashbang call it Riot Control Grenade and have it do something like this: "You lob a specialized non-lethal riot control grenade at your enemies. Riot Control Grenades deploy a variety of compact control modules that are designed to induce panic, distraction, and confusion among rioters. Opponents affected by Riot Control Grenade will randomly be effected by one of the following effects: Immobilize Confusion Disorient Hold (lower chance on the hold) Targeted AOE - 60 second cooldown. Mag 3 on the controls, 100% chance to to trigger containment and domination. My idea behind this power is to give the set something that is unique, powerful, mechanically interesting, and doesn't feel like something that was just picked off an NPC or a copy of some other power.

I wanna try this out on a traps Corr with caltrops. Finally gonna keep those baddies from escaping my Acid Mortar (which makes enemy AI run like flipping crazy).

I'm looking forward to getting the kids to bed so I can play this but from looking at this at face value, cryo should really be T2, sleep grenade sounds interesting now that I know it re-applies and has slow/-recharge, but I'd MUCH rather have an AOE immob like wide-area web grenade, and I think it should go in cloaking devices' slot. Cloaking device seems kinda...bleh. I could take it or leave it. Maybe if it was a team cloak (like shadow fall from dark Miasma without the res buffs). Gun drone is boring. If it had more attacks with useful soft control secondary effects it would be a lot more exciting, but having a clone of a blaster power is very underwhelming.