MonteCarla

Hi Bear! You can build for defences, but you don't need to. As a Dom you can lock your enemies down from range before entering melee, and only engage them once its safe to do so. With Pyro, Glittering Column makes a great opener, since it will taunt anything, including bosses. While it's active, use your control powers to lock down the enemy and then start damaging them. You can do this at range if they're particularly hard hitters, but closing to melee will be more effective with 3 sword attacks in Icy Assault. If you're soloing, learn your tools, like stacking Dazzle and Explosive Bouquet on a boss to double hold them. On a team, let the melee types bunch up the enemies and draw aggro and then use your various group mez powers before wading into combat yourself. (Or use Glittering Column to take the alpha strike) For build goals, I always recommend building for Recharge as much as you can on Doms, in order to achieve that hallowed state of Perma-Dom, where Domination recharges faster than it wears off. Here' my guide for that: You can build up decent defence as well via the Fighting pool, which helps if you're ambushed or start a fight not on your terms. But your primary defence is always active defence. When Domination's up you can mez a whole group of bosses with a single attack, something most Controllers can't do! On that topic - it's really easy to save Domination for when you really need it and thus never actually use it. I recommend putting it on auto just to get out of that habit.

OMG yes! I feel like I've always had to do mental gymnastics to explain what exactly my Kinetics characters are doing. It's a genius piece of game design - chasing 7 speeded up players for buffs whilst trying to maintain your own stacks of speed and damage buffs AND providing heals, energy and damage buffs based on enemy position without any personal defence leaves me hyped up and frazzled every time, in a really good way. It requires a whole lot of situational awareness and you have to be on your toes to play it well. But trying to explain what my character is doing... Attempts so far: Ice/Kinetics Controller - a speedster could reverse entropy and turn molecular heat into directed kinetic energy. (Her twin sister was a Fire/FF Controller whose powers did the opposite) Kinetics/Sonic Defender - Lemurian with a magically powerful voice like Black Bolt and "Lemurian Cantrips" for Kinetics ie its just magic. Energy Blast/Kinetics Corrupter - Vanguard operative who could copy and siphon powers like Rogue, but also siphon pure energy. A quick meeting with Fusionette every shift gave me energy blasts, Kinetics handled the power siphoning. Sonic/Kinetics Corrupter - part of a robot girl-group team with bass vibrations and ummm.... no idea. Didn't even try with this one. 🙂 Symphony Control/Kinetics Controller - a genie maths teacher who performs amazing feats of power division and multiplication! So yeah, my most successful attempts were "it's magic!" Kinetics is the absolute queen of "what the hell is actually going on?" But some other notables are: Marine Affinity - its very ocean themed, but not sure what's actually happening with half of the powers. Radiation Emission - almost never describe this as Radiation based. Sonic Resonance - how am I making everyone tougher with sound? Invincibility/Rise to the Challenge/Against all Odds - how does more enemies make me tougher or smarter. I guess mostly this is just grim determination. (Cap fighting off all those guys in the elevator is Against All Odds at work?) Oh, and Stone Armor - there was Monolith in the Elementals by Bill Willingham back in the late 80s? I think he was a smallish kid who covered himself in rocks or turned into a giant rock form. Very Granite Armor. And Terra from Teen Titans never did this kind of feat, at least not in the Wolfman/Perez run. Her powers were more Earth Control and Seismic Blast.

I love this thread title! 😄 I know the feeling. I try to stick to 3 active characters but it's grown to 6 or more at times. Some stick, some don't, and it's usually down to 1) Concept - do I like being the character, using their speech patterns, and so on. 2) Build goals - am I chasing levels to achieve capped defence/resistance or perma-Dom or something exciting like that.

We shall have to disagree on that point. 🙂

Some other things I've tried on Live/HC: MA/SR Stalker with no mez protection, capped defences and Kinetic Combat Chance for KD or Stupefy Chance for KB in my attacks. Enter combat on your terms, keep enemies juggled, and live in fear of mez, just like a non-powered Batman type should! START Vendor Stun Grenades are a plus. Probably best done solo. 🙂 Arachnos Soldier just using the base powersets, so a very capable leader with a gun. Electric/Electric Blaster with Power Transfer Chance to Heal in every attack, so you heal as you fight. Not super effective, but noticeable. Ice/Nature Controller built to do very little damage, so you really need to team at all times. Any Archery character - put the Stupefy Chance for KB in Stunning Shot and refer to it as your Boxing Glove Arrow. It looks great! (Slot the whole set - the bonuses are very good.) And Force Field Defenders capped to all who positions - "the Sentinel who buffs", and badass Empaths who can fight and survive are always fun for me. Guides are in my sig.

There are some cool ideas here:

I've got a real soft spot for it. I've got 7 level 50 Empaths. It's my second most played powerset after Energy Blast.

When the Terra arc was created, the level cap was 40, and the Devouring Earth were THE biggest baddest threat, with Hamidon being the ultimate enemy in the game. She is no pushover, that's for sure. It is disconcerting when you hit a brick wall with an AV in a story arc. I've often found the Envoy of Shadows has that effect on me in Cadeo Kestrel's arc.

I'm thinking of making a /Thermal Corruptor. I know that the Defender version of Power of the Phoenix (the ally rez with explosion) has been glitched for a while now, and can't be used due to a bad target-type entry or something. (Which may be fixed now?) Does anyone know if the Corruptor version currently works properly?

The Defense Amplifier from the START vendor gives you Mag 4 mez protection. It costs Level*Level*1000 inf for 1 hour application, so you can buy 8 hours at level 1 for 8000 inf, up to 2,500,000 per hour at level 50. It's a game-changer.

Hey! 🙂 I've got one of them! I just checked and she wasn't Defenced out much, but here's how you could get to the Ranged Def cap pretty easily. 1 Power Bolt Thunderstrike 3.75 1 Storm Kick Makos Bite 3.75 2 Energy Torrent Artillery 4.05 4 Kick/Boxing - don't slot 6 Power Burst Thunderstrike 3.75 8 Sniper Blast Manticore 2.5 10 Burst of Speed - Overwhelming Force 1.25 12 Aim GSFC 2.5 14 Tough Steadfast +Glad 6 16 Dragons Tail Defiant Barrage 1.875 18 Flight/TP BotZ 1.25 20 Reaction Time 22 Explosive Blast Artillery 4.05 24 Inner Will 26 Nova Blaster's Wrath 3.75 28 Weave LotG + Red Fort 5.5 30 Eagles Claw Makos Bite 3.75 32 Total 45.8!! Add in Hover at 32 or the START vendor's Defensive Buff (Really recommend this as it also gives Mag 4 status protection round the clock as well a +5% Defence) and you can loosen up a bit and swap out an Artillery for a Posi's Blast or something better. You'll also pick up a few extra points when you purple your ATOs at 50. Thunderstrike and Artillery both need 6 slots, so it wont come together until the late 30's probably. Thunderstrike's got good bonuses, Artillery less so. The whole build's very light on global recharge since it's purely ranged-defence focussed. Pick up the epic armor of your choice, resistance or defence based to bolster this further.

Yeah. This is the basis of "frankenslotting". e.g. Power Sink: to maximise End Mod and Recharge would take 6 SO's, but can be done with 4 End Mod/Rech IOs

/Time provides a solid +Defence boost and a self-heal for your safety, and an AoE -Res -Def that can take the Achilles Heel proc for more -Res plus some +Rech for more Aim and nuking. I played a Time/Fire Defender and she was godly. You're planning to avoid Fire, but I imagine an Ice/Time Corrupter could be a lot of fun too.

I generally don't take Overwhelming Presence for Controllers and Dominating Grasp for Dominators. They provide no +Recharge set bonus, which both classes really benefit from. They provide a boost to Energy Defence rather than Ranged Defence. The set bonuses they do give are pretty rubbish for these classes. They don't boost damage of the power you're slotting. There's usually something better (Basilisk's Gaze, Stupefy, Malaise' Illusions) anyway, and cheaper. I sometimes slot the single Chance to Spawn Energy Font/Fireball Thingy, but they're pretty underwhelming to be honest. Nearly every other AT, I slot both sets. They almost all provide a +Recharge and +Defence bonus, and max out damage and recharge for the power. They're pretty awesome. For Defenders and Corrupters I split the ones with +Recharge for 3 pieces.

Yep! 🙂 I've run Empathy duos with friends a few times. They usually get abandoned in the 40s because they're just too good! 😄