Luminara

It occurred to me that Recluse is less the cardboard bad guy and more a tragic villain. He didn't set out to become the bad guy. He wasn't scheming and plotting in the beginning. He was an ordinary man, with ordinary goals and ordinary dreams, not the least of which was making his own way in the world. When he became an Incarnate, his life and fate were bound to the Well, effectively leashing him to the Well's goals. Everything he's done since has been in hope and pursuit of finding a way to free himself, to break free and reassert himself as the one in control of his life. He despised Statesman not because it's convenient for the story for two former best friends to become rivals, but because Statesman was directly responsible for his bondage, for his servitude to the Well. He's turned to amassing more and more power, personal, political and financial, in search of some means of freeing himself. And he's turned the Rogue Isles into a "social darwinism" because he believes it will help people avoid his fate, because he sees it as giving those with the strength, power or ambition the means of taking control of their own destinies. He wants freedom, for himself and anyone else willing to grasp it and capable of doing so, whatever the cost, even his own soul. Note that I'm not implying that he'd sprout a fluffy bunny tail and start pooping rainbows if he were freed of the Well's influence. He's definitely become the bad guy, but not as a choice, rather a reaction to what he views as enslavement.

Find one. They're very dog-like, as @Coyotedancer mentioned. They adore being handled, hugged and rough petting. Very playful, even when they're old, and just as delighted to sit in your lap quietly when you're not in a playful mood (they purr up a storm and drool a bit, just from the sheer delight of being close to you). Friendly with everyone, including small children, and they're not averse to a little rough handling. They know they're big cats and can take it. They'll even chase dogs, though it's strictly play, they're not aggressive. Just be aware, they're not small animals. Maine Coons are the largest cat breed, they can grow up to 20+ pounds. And whatever you're doing, they'll want to "help"... which typically translates to sitting on your workspace, purring and giving you "I love you" eyes. They're one of the most intelligent breeds, too. They can figure out how to turn a knob and open a door. They'll actually pat you to tell you they want to be petted, or pull your hand onto their head and rub up against your palm. They are, in my experience, the most loving breed. They love you and expect you to love them back, and they express that affection through as much physical contact as possible, and expect you to do the same. If you want a lapdogcat, this is it. An alternative would be a Savannah cat. They're also dog-like. They enjoy walking on a leash, they fetch and they're VERY active. Unparalleled loyalty. They'll follow you to the depths of Tartarus and back, and they won't go far from your side when you're in the same room, except to play (again, VERY active breed) and for biological necessity (litter box, food). They're also fascinated with water (water bowls tend to double as kitty pools for Savannahs). They're not snugglers like Maine Coons, but they crave any attention you give them and will tolerate being held without putting up a struggle, as long as you're letting them face whatever direction they choose (Jessica likes to sit on my arm, monorail cat style, watching the valley while we stand on the porch). They also grow large, but they're longer, leaner and taller than Maine Coons, not as bulky. The big caveat with Savannahs is that they need to play. They don't want to play, they NEED to play. You have to spend some time every day playing with them, primarily giving them something to chase. Catching the toy is a secondary consideration for them, it's the chase that they need. If you don't keep them chasing something for a while every day, they'll start climbing the walls, literally, looking for something to chase, and 3 a.m. is prime time as far as they're concerned. They're also very intelligent. When Jessica wants to play, she selects a toy, takes it to one of the areas she's decided is her play space, and pats the toy to tell me that it's time. She couldn't be any more blunt and direct if she shouted "PLAY TIME NAO" in English. Even these generalizations fall short of how remarkable these two breeds are. They're both very, very intelligent, and every individual has unique traits. My Maine Coon, for example, couldn't get enough of whatever I was eating, which included some really odd things for a cat, like apples, plums and pistachios. My half-Savannah, on the other hand, won't even lick the plate, regardless of what I've had on it, but she stands up on her hind legs and expresses excitement at dry cat food. You can't go wrong with either of these breeds. Even half-breeds retain defining characteristics from the Maine Coon or Savannah lines. Pure bred kittens or adopted shelter cats, you just can't make a bad choice with them. They're amazing, incredible companions and friends. The greatest gift you could possibly give yourself is a friend like a Maine Coon or Savannah. They'll love you every second of their lives, and you'll love them more every day, and be endlessly fascinated with their minds and personalities and entertained and comforted by their presence. One warning, though. Once you let them into your heart, you're setting yourself up for the worst grief you'll ever experience. They don't live forever. I learned that the hardest way. It's been 8 years since I lost my Maine Coon and I still struggle with the grief. They're that... intense, in every way. They crawl right into your soul and make themselves a part of you, and when they're gone, the world is the darkest place imaginable. Be ready for that, and plan to get another as quickly as possible after he/she passes. It's the only thing that helps, which is another thing I learned the hardest way. But I wouldn't trade one second of my time with my Maine Coon, no matter how much I miss him now, and I wouldn't trade one second of my time with my half-Savannah either, despite knowing that I'll be absolutely destroyed when she dies (fortunately, she's barely over a year old, so that day is far in the future). For dog-like companion cats, there's nothing comparable to Maine Coons and Savannahs, but really, any cat is a worthwhile friend. There are plenty of shelter cats and strays just waiting for someone to love them, and I think you have a lot of love waiting to be shared. Don't just think about getting a cat, Bill, go out and do it. Don't stress about which cat or what breed, the cat will choose you and you'll know it when it happens.

I have another 20 or so months until I ding 50. Really hoping I get the flashy graphical effects IRL.

There seems to be some confusion about what some of TA's powers do. PGA isn't merely a Sleep. It's a damage debuff and rapidly pulsing Sleep with a high chance of application. Essentially, it takes all minions in a spawn out of the fight, and keeps them out of the fight even if they're attacked (it puts them back to Sleep), in addition to reducing the damage output of everything above minion level. The only comparable powers are things like Choking Cloud or Steamy Mist, toggles with significant endurance costs and much slower pulse times. If we were really attempting to balance PGA, we'd be suggesting that the pulse rate and Sleep chance be reduced to bring them in line with the existing similar powers. As it currently exists, PGA is an excellent source of mitigation, and even after acquiring OSA and EMP Arrow, it's still one of the best arrows in the quiver for damage mitigation. It doesn't need to be changed. It definitely doesn't need to be buffed, beyond reducing the recharge time so it's usable more frequently. And making any changes without significant improvements to other TA powers would be devastating to the set. There is no crash associated with EMP Arrow. None. It applies a brief Recovery debuff. It's not a crash. You still have most of your endurance after using EMP Arrow, and nothing precludes you from continuing to use other powers while the debuff ticks down. OSA's target is a critical element of the powerset as a whole. It's more than an additional step between initial cast and ZOMG BIG DAMAGE NUMBARS, it provides a guaranteed focal point for the player to use for other powers, as well as for other players to use targeted powers. With OilSlickTarget, one doesn't have to Tab through critters to find a "good spot" to use powers, one can simply select the best spot (center of the spawn) with OSA and use OilSlickTarget for all subsequent targeting. Removing that would be removing a key strategic ability from the entire set. Additionally, as complex as OSA is, as a power, the fewer dramatic changes, the better. It took several Issues to work out all of the bugs, and there's a very good chance that new, even less palatable bugs would be introduced with any changes to the mechanics. Reduce the recharge time, and leave it at that. TA doesn't need another location-targeted power. Most of the set was location-targeted in beta, and many of the powers were changed to critter-targeted in response to player feedback. It's good with the two location-targeted powers. Let's not take two steps back when we're discussing taking a step forward. Neither Ice Arrow nor Entangling Arrow need to be reworked into damage-dealing powers. TA is a Defender primary, Controller/Corruptor/Mastermind secondary. The sets in those categories are, by and large, not designed for dealing damage, they're designed to buff, debuff and control. There are damage-dealing powers in some of the sets, and TA already has one of the best with OSA, but none of them have single-target Immobilizes or Holds which also deal damage. Again, Defender primary, Controller/Corruptor/Mastermind secondary. Not a blast set. Not a Blaster secondary. Not for dealing damage. Buff, debuff, control. If you want damaging control powers, play a control primary or blaster secondary, that's what they're there for. Flash Arrow's ToHit debuff being Unresisted excludes it from being doubled or tripled. It's already competitive with every other set's ToHit debuff capability in AV fights because of that Unresisted flag. Increasing it without removing the Unresisted flag would be imbalanced in the late game, and it would also be absolutely pointless unless TA is given a more usable source of -Regen than EMP Arrow. A stackable ToHit debuff in another power would be more appropriate and useful, as it would allow a lower level player to stack ToHit debuffs and achieve appreciable damage mitigation (just like having decent Defense totals), while also ensuring that TA wasn't overpowered in AV/GM situations, or left with the even worse option of only bringing part of the toolkit to the fight and still being considered C-lister material because it couldn't debuff Regen sufficiently.

Squid are friends, not food. Stop eating my friends. 😡

TA's problems are lack of viability in end-game play, and lack of sufficient debuffing/control options to protect teams prior to the end game without blowing their entire arsenal at once, and lack of focus as to what it's supposed to be doing (protecting teams, or increasing the pace of teams). The recharge times across the board are too high. The set is too reliant on +Recharge to keep up with the modern pace of play. The set doesn't even begin to function well until and unless IO sets are used to garner significant amounts of +Recharge. It needs significantly lower recharge times to make it a proper combat set. Durations can be reduced correspondingly, but it should provide better combat effectiveness, which it can't do with long recharge times. A debuffer who can't debuff because all of the debuffs are recharging is dead weight. None of us like to feel like dead weight on a team, and it's worse in solo play. As a mitigation set, it's lacking. In the early game, none of the powers can be used more frequently than once every 3rd to 5th spawn, and some of the powers offer no meaningful mitigation. -Recharge doesn't protect a team, or the player, from the alpha strike. Flash Arrow's debuff is low, not significant on it's own at lower levels, and due to the Unresistable flag, not high enough to be worthwhile in the early to middle game. It's all but useless until PGA, in regard to mitigation, and that's not appropriate for a set without buffs. The set needs something to stack. Another source of -ToHit, or -Damage, or even, failing anything else, another Sleep, to mitigate incoming damage. Glue, Acid and Disruption would all be good candidates for an additional debuff/control effect to stack with an existing debuff/control. A corruptor or defender shouldn't have to wait until levels 28 and/or 32 to have usable damage mitigation options, or be forced to couple the set with a debuffing blast set just to make TA feel less like a failure of design. A mastermind has to wait even longer, and given that the debuffs and controls are critical to the functionality of the mastermind, the lack of mitigation absolutely does not justify the wait. For a set which was designed and intended as a defender primary, it's frustrating to know that it performs best as a controller secondary simply because controllers already have sufficient mitigation to ignore the holes in the set's design. Disruption Arrow is still limping along with a 10 target cap. It should be 16. Acid Arrow is hampered by an 8' radius. That's melee attack range. With a target cap of 16, it should have a radius capable of actually hitting 16 targets, not 4. Increase the radius to 15', minimum. With these changes, TA will be much better positioned in the early and middle game. For late/end game play, it only needs one thing. -Regen. Tack 500% -Regen onto Disruption Arrow, a power the player is going to use in AV/GM fights anyway. And reduce the recharge time on OSA. The mechanics don't justify the recharge time. Neither does the damage. The existing 180 second recharge time isn't balanced, for what the power actually accomplishes, for the set or in the game as a whole. 90-120 seconds would be appropriate.

I don't play any dominators. I've tried to, on the original servers and here, but I've already played the control sets, and they hold little interest for me as they stand (copies of existing controller primaries). They need a flavor of their own. The secondaries are also too spread between melee and ranged. I understand that they enable different approaches, but the existing mixed design does more to restrict than enable. Trying to build toward one goal or the other, melee or ranged combat, effectively cuts your leveling pay-off in half, as you're only acquiring "useful" attacks half as frequently as other archetypes. And while the option to use ranged attacks in melee always exists, it doesn't work the other way around, so building for ranged combat always feels self-defeating. Given that the primaries are almost exclusively composed of ranged powers, there should be more synergy for ranged combat, but it just works out to feeling like a gimped controller. This leaves the choice of playing with melee attacks and mixing in ranged attacks when or where possible (rarely possible with a 40' range cone with a narrow arc, for example), but that involves stopping frequently to use location AoE controls and ranged attacks, and that's especially important when we're discussing controls, because that's the dominator's Resistance and Defense. That's what they have to stay alive. It's too hodge-podge, too unfocused. Yes, I do know there are binds to fire location powers on oneself, at a set range, on a selected target, etc. No archetype should have to depend on binds just to be playable out of the box. We shouldn't have to work around design flaws and oversights just to make a character playable. Things like this should be baked into the powers, not an obscure bind command that isn't documented anywhere outside of a couple of forum posts. I also dislike the way the design of the AT revolves entirely around Domination. I don't find myself building a character, I find myself building a Domination enabler, and the builds, overall, fall short because they so narrowly focused on that single aspect. As an inherent, Domination should work inherently, without the need to design the entire character around making it work. Every other archetype's inherent functions naturally. A controller doesn't have to build a specific way to make Containment work. A brute doesn't click a button and pray he/she has sufficient +Recharge and builds enough Fury to re-enable the button before the timer expires. This is the only inherent that isn't inherently usable. And I say that as a +Recharge junkie. Even my mastermind builds have 100% or more +Recharge, sans Hasten, and they have little use for it. Building a dominator tends to skew around building around that one goal, making Domination permanent, and it's boring, detrimental to creativity and stifling of experimentation. I can do so much with any other archetype, because the simple nature of their inherents being inherent, rather than an active power, gives me a world of flexibility. Dominators lack that flexibility. They may have primaries and secondaries which are thematically alike, but they're not actually complementary of one another in play style. There's no real synergy between dominator primaries and secondaries. And Domination has become less an inherent and more a burden, a necessity to build for and around, creating unnecessary restrictions on variation within the archetype. I've played a defender who eschewed her secondary set and used pool melee attacks instead, all the way to 50, post-ED and GDN, just to prove it could be done. I played a TA/A to 50, solo so no-one could accuse me of leaching or power leveling, before the Issue 7 buffs and bug fixes to those sets. I play without travel powers. If I wanted to (and i have been tempted), I could play a petless mastermind to 50, rapidly and with great ease. I'm very, very good with numbers and mechanics, and using what I know to make "impossible" characters work well. But I don't play a dominator. For me not to want to touch something, that's notable. Decouple the primaries from being duplicates of controller primaries, and make all of the powers usable mid-combat, as PBAoEs or critter-targeted AoEs rather than location AoEs, so survivability is more under the player's control. Streamline and focus the secondaries so there's a complementary style of play with the primaries which is encouraged, or at least, made possible, and so you're not leveling up and shaking your head because you have to wait until the next power unlock to get something useful. And make Domination more inherent, less of a defining click power for the archetype and more of a secondary effect like other inherents.

Safety first.

Firbolg in Croatoa standing near payphones - "This item, it speaks to me!" "Ring ring!" "Quiet, you!" Freakshow in Brickstown when a female character aggros them - "Beat it, princess!"

Go big. Level 53 TO.

Random SO, if I recall.

Can't log in to check the in-game description, but the text in Mids' states: "You spray a concentrated torrent of water toward your target that causes High Cold and Smashing damage as well as reducing your target's movement speed. If you have 2 or less Tidal Power, you will gain a stack of Tidal Power. If you have 3 Tidal Power and you activate this power, it will have an enhanced effect causing Water Jet to cast slightly faster and immediately reset the recharge of Water Jet. Water Jet's enhanced effect can be used once every 15 seconds."

My standard approach is to scream incoherently for several minutes. It doesn't help, but your experience may be better than mine.

The Ouroboros portal is right on the tram platform in Echo: Atlas Park, if memory serves.

No description, but in Mids', right-click the relevant power to lock it, then toggle Combo Level 3 while watching the Info panel. It'll display damage, endurance cost, animation time changes, etc. when the combo is active. The Effects panel shows other effects, like the mag 3 stun becoming present in Geyser.

The Mechanics. Also, Mike. Presuming the attacks are coded in the same way as Staff Melee, there should be no requirement beyond having activated the necessary combo level, and no additional restrictions. Again, that's based on the presumption that they recycled the combo code into multiple sets (which was historically their approach, and makes sense from a design perspective). Bear in mind, though, my experience with combos is limited to Staff Melee, which only has two attacks offering different effects when combo level 3 is achieved, and animation times at or above 2 seconds (i include Arcanatime in all of my attack chain calculations) for all but the tier 1 attack (which i don't have), so I can't assemble a sub-5s attack chain to test for you. I can say with absolute certainty that there's no unmentioned, invisible 10s cooldown timer on Staff Melee combos, as I frequently activate CL3 at the 5.3s mark and have never run into a timer or restriction.

Yes. Oil Slick Oil and Oil Slick Target. Oil Slick Target is flagged immune to all effects and has mega-capped Resistance (9999%) to every damage type except Fire and Energy. As @parabola said, Oil Slick Fire, the burn patch, isn't summoned until and unless Oil Slick Target is defeated. Oil Slick Fire is the pseudo-pet with the targeted AoE attack. Since the pseudo-pet doesn't exist until Oil Slick Target is defeated, it can't defeat Oil Slick Target via procs.

Every set IO is potentially worth whatever the highest selling IO of comparable level range happens to be at any given moment. Ignoring the existence of that potential revenue is certainly a choice individual players can make, but it's not something which can be dismissed in an examination of income sources and their relation to any given activity. It's relevant to the overall community, even if it isn't for some players.

Dig up the pre-change recipe sales data. It's going to be scattered among posts, but shouldn't be difficult to collate if you're serious about knowing what the difference is (check the market sub-forum). Take the average value of each rarity tier (uncommon, rare, very rare, etc.) in a recipe category (ranged damage, universal travel, accurate tohit debuff, etc.), multiply it by the average drop rate, then multiply the result by the average number of drops per run shown in @AboveTheChemist's data dump. That will give you an estimated income value of any recipe rarity in a category before the change. Then do the same math with current sales prices to determine the current income value of the same recipes. Compare the pre-change total to the post-change total and you have your answer. It won't be as precise as actual records of each recipe's sale price over the last six months, but it will be accurate enough. It's worth noting, though, that crafted enhancements contribute an order of magnitude more income value in the above data, so it may be better to do the math for crafted enhancements, rather than raw recipes.

That's what I expect as well. Every farmer will have his/her own approach to farming, but that approach will be a routine, and as such, have a generally non-variable run time which should generate an estimable income rate in the same way, so the math will be applicable across the board. Then let's set the average time at 1 hour. Time spent collecting booty after the run is still time spent. 11 minutes and 17 seconds of extra run time per hour to achieve pre-change daily income. Breaking that down further, on a 5 map run, each map required 8 minutes and 12 seconds average time to complete. A single extra map would be sufficient to accomplish the same goal, leaving a few minutes afterward to manage sales. So we now know that "double inf" was functionally ~20% extra inf, and that the additional time required to make up the difference is comparatively minimal, ~11 minutes of additional time per hour spent farming.

The first conclusion we can reach is that the misconception of "double inf*" has been proven to be just that, misconception. Worst case, according to your data, is a ~25% income differential, presuming atrocious drop luck, whereas luckier farmers are experiencing only ~11% less raw income than before the change. ~20% average might sting, but it's a very long way from 50%, and considering the rate of gain, not the catastrophic situation that has been portrayed by some. The second conclusion I can draw is that 3 extra runs would've placed you at the same income you could've gained before the change. I expect a similar situation for all farming approaches, so the time invested is a relevant factor. If you happen to have an average run time for your tests, that would let us know approximately how much extra time farmers have had to invest to compensate for the change. As an example, if your average run time were 30 minutes, then that would equate to an additional 5 minutes and 37.5 seconds of farming every day in order to match your previous income. If your runs were as long as 60 minutes, an additional 11 minutes and 17 seconds daily would make up the difference. Et cetera. The third conclusion is that there's some headroom for some farmers. The ones who vendor or sell everything for minimum price, never craft, etc., can recoup some of the lost 20%. Even using your methodology, @AboveTheChemist, there could be some additional income to be garnered. Crafting every set IO recipe and dedicating even one merit to potentially enhance the value could net a sizable income increase. But that's minutia, and I certainly don't expect you to replicate this test with a new methodology. You've done enough to give us some serious discussion points, and your work is greatly appreciated. ❤️ That's either a heart, or an upside-down bloody scrotum, whichever you like more, and it's all yours. 🙂

Try Grant Invisibility instead of Stealth. Both TA and Archery have fast animation times. None of them are over 2 seconds, most are 1.3 seconds or less. So despite the lack of toggles in either set, they still lead to heavy endurance usage, and with limited slotting availability (due to SOs being used instead of IOs) in conjunction with pool toggles, you're going to need all of the endurance you can scrounge. Cutting out one 0.33/s toggle, Stealth, will help enormously. Grant Invisibility has a high up-front endurance cost, but you can easily recover that on the way to the mission, or the next spawn, and with a duration of 2 minutes, you won't need to worry about burning excess endurance during a fight, or a sudden lapse of mitigation. The +Def is identical, in strength and functionality (half is lost when you engage foes (which does not include using Flash Arrow, that's flagged as a no aggro power and doesn't break Stealth/Invis)), but the perception reduction is almost twice as strong as Stealth, so even if you do land in the middle of a spawn, you won't have delayed aggro as you're high-tailing it out of there (which occurs with all forms of Stealth (pool, IO, Cloaking Device, Superspeed, etc)). With Flash Arrow and Maneuvers from both of you, plus CJ and Grant Invis/Stealth, you'll both be sitting at ~38.5% hit reduction to every type and position (presuming all powers are slotted with 3 SOs for -ToHit or +Def). Some of that, in the Defense portion, will be reduced when you're fighting lieutenants, bosses and +X critters (the more +s, the lower your final Defense value), but double-stacked PGA will definitely take the sting out of anything that does hit you. I don't recommend focusing on the control aspects of TA. You can play the control aspects up, but based on my own experiences (past and present), I suspect you'll realize that you don't need to double Ice Arrow every boss and EMP Arrow every spawn. The double Sleeps from PGA will neuter every spawn, from that point, soft controls (Glue and OSA, and random KB from Explosive) tend to be enough. Especially if you're rolling with a pile of -ToHit and +Def. I ran my TA/A in Issue 5 with a fraction of that projected Defense total, hit checks on Flash Arrow, pernicious bugs in OSA, PGA working entirely differently (one hit check on cast, no persistent patch with a pulsing Sleep or -Dam), and double (or more) the current animation times, and I dumped Ice Arrow on a respec, and almost never used EMP Arrow, when I was in the mid-30s. Today's TA is much more effective, and PGA itself is more mitigation than the entire set had at release, and still better than it had even after several bug fixes and changes to animation times. The change made to PGA, in and of itself, is more vitalizing to the set as a whole, than anything else that was done with any other power in it (except resolving the failure to ignite OSA... that was the most important fix. ever. in any set). With two at your disposal, and the -ToHit and +Def totals you'll be sporting, very little below EB rank will be a threat (robots... damn robots don't like naps...). Even the critters you can't put to Sleep, like robots, aren't going to be hitting you hard after you've debuffed their damage by ~47%, if they hit you at all. Rather than repeat your Force Fields experience, use only enough mitigation (double Flash Arrow, double PGA and one Glue) to open, then debuff their resistance and arrest them until they can't walk upright. It will be much faster, and not unreasonably unsafe. Especially when you acquire OSA (drop Glue from the opening volley, it won't be necessary once OSA is available), and again when you obtain RoA. And remember that Acid has a melee PBAoE radius, 8', so they'll be more effective used on different targets (stack them on bosses, otherwise, spread the pain). Also, Disruption has a 10 target limit, so choose your difficulty setting appropriately.

Double PGA will Sleep bosses. Double EMP Arrow will hold... God. And everyone nearby. Don't try to stack OSA. Double Knockdown will turn into Knockback, and the frequency of OSA's pulses makes that a distinct possibility. Double Glue Arrow won't be necessary unless you're fighting Crey tanks, Warwolves or other critters with significant +Movement. Double Flash Arrow slotted for maximal -ToHit, stacked with double Maneuvers slotted for maximal +Def, brings your mitigation up to ~30.5%. For a natural travel power approach, I recommend slotting Hurdle with 3 Jump SOs. You'll be hopping along at ~49 mph (at level 50). Take Combat Jumping for maneuverability, and a bit more +Def, but don't slot it for +Jump. It only increases height, not speed, and the higher you leap, the slower you actually travel (when using Hurdle as a travel power). Sprint adds nothing to jumping speed, either, and only a minute amount to height (0.5' at level 50). That's the fastest method of movement without taking an actual travel power, using Ninja/Beast Run, or using a temp travel power. When you're more accustomed to bouncing around, you can practice without CJ, if using it violates your definition of Natural. But you really need it if you haven't played like that before. Without CJ, you're incapable of altering your direction until you touch a horizontal surface (even a tiny one, like trim on a building), and you'll find yourself barreling into spawns. Play it safe until you're comfortable with Hurdle. You can try Sprint, but even with +3 SOs, 3 in both Sprint and Swift, you'll be limited to ~45.5 mph. It's an inefficient use of slots, and working with SOs, those 4 extra slots would be better spent elsewhere. Take and use Fistful of Arrows and Explosive Arrow. You're going to take Rain of Arrows, and TA is an AoE set, so make the most of your AoE potential. Put at least 1 Range enhancement in Fistful. 2 would be preferable. The greater the range, the wider the mouth of the cone, and the further you are from being stabbed in the face. With both of you pumping out AoE from Fistful and Explosive, you'll tear things apart quickly, and waiting for RoA won't feel nearly as rough. Skip Stunning Shot. Both of you. It doesn't stack with Ice Arrow (stuns vs holds), and you won't need more control than you have with PGA, Ice, Emp and soft controls like Explosive's chance for KB, Glue's Avoid and OSA's KD. If you have specific questions, ask. I played travel power-less TAs on the original servers for 7 years. And I'm playing more travel power-less characters, and TAs, here.

Before anything, speak to the P2W vendor, revoke the Throwing Knives origin attack and take either Apprentice Charm or Taser Dart. Both of you. If you don't, you'll have to use Blazing Arrow to ignite OSA. That would deprive both of you of your best single-target attacks, and as TA/A characters, that's not a luxury you can afford, even for concept.