MonteCarla

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! 😄

I'll usually slot my attacks up first for 1 acc, 2 damage at the least. I find doing almost double damage and hitting my targets reliably has an immediate impact on my performance. Shields are more of a long game - the difference between having 36% S/L Resists (1 slot) vs 45% (3 slots) is not so noticeable. The extra points from slotting become more important the higher you get for both Resistance and Defence builds. I'll pick up Tough/Weave and start building for defences in the late 20s/early 30s once slots become more freely available. There has been the odd tank where I've gone straight for defensive slotting for concept reasons, but I'll slot for attacks first if I'm being practical.

I know what you mean. My first character on Homecoming was a Rad/Energy Blast Defender, and I've played it on a number of characters, including a Rad/Elec and a Rad/Dark Defender. It's the Swiss Army knife of the original support sets that doesn't do any one thing really well, but does a lot of thing quite well. When it comes down to it, support sets do three things: 1. Our health bars aren't going down! Rad Infection stops you getting hit much - once the long animation's done and your toggle anchor doesn't run off. Choking Cloud provides more intermittent protection and you can mop up with the heal. EMP is a good panic button. It's all good layered protection, but no Force Fields. 2. Our blue bars aren't moving! Accelerate Metabolism does an OK job of this, with some OK +Recharge on top. 3. The enemy sure are falling over quickly! Accelerate Metabolism provides an OK damage boost and Enervating Field provides some OK -Res. (If your toggle anchor doesn't run etc). Force Fields applies more -Res to a GM or AV these days. When a Rad user joins my task force I go... "mmm. cool, I guess.". Not quite like the excitement of a Force Fielder or Kineticist who provide one big obvious advantage. Over time, Rad's suffered a few blows: - It has two powers that require a dead teammate. With Return to Battle from the START vendor, you have to be quick to Fallout and Mutation them before they get up anyway. Trying to teleport them first? Good luck with that without excellent team communication! I tried that often on my Rad/Dark pixie and couldn't do it most times. In addition, anyone can rez now with the SMART vendor temp, further devaluing Mutation. - There was a time on Live when Lingering Radiation was a must-have for taking on giant monsters. Their regen has been toned down, and most teams handle them through sheer damage, -res debuffs and proc damage these days. - Newer sets like Electric, Nature, Time and Marine are also Swiss army knives, but maybe a bit better, or at least easier to use, because enemy toggles are kind of annoying. It's gained the new toggle behaviour, where your toggle keeps running on the body until it fades. It's not a bad set at all, just somehow a bit hard to get excited about?

Wow! These look amazing! Well done

Yes to more proliferation! We've had stealthy tanks since issue 1 (Dark Armor) - Ninjutsu would work fine for the heavy melee classes.

I read something the other day about extrinsic and intrinsic rewards in games. Extrinsic rewards are the merits, XP, badges etc - the stuff you get given by the game for completing tasks set by the game. Intrinsic rewards are the sheer joy of using your powers and flying across city blocks while having a cool costume and so on - the rewards of just enjoying the game for what it is. They're linked - all the merits and XP allow me to later on enjoy the intrinsic reward of solo-ing a +4/x8 map and surviving, and so on. Apparently playing games purely for extrinsic rewards is linked to depression. I immediately thought of Synapse! I now try to focus on the intrinsic rewards when I'm doing it - big merits payoff, TFC progress, the big XP boost you'll get if you do it at low levels. That and having a captive audience for 90 minutes to talk to in-character. 😄

There's very few builds that won't benefit from extra Recharge in set bonuses, and the amount you can build up is quite generous. Chasing +Recharge set bonuses, and adding in the Luck of the Gambler +global recharge pieces will get you to around +100% Recharge in bonuses, equivalent to 3 extra SO's in each power without diminishing returns. Defence is usually my next priority. Either building to the softcap because I already have Defence (typed or positional) or adding defence to an un-armored character. Add in the Steadfast Protection and Gladiator's Armor uniques for an extra +6% defence to everything. +Recovery, +Accuracy, +Endurance, +HP are all nice to haves. +Resistance can be a big deal for a resistance-based armor set, I did a guide on that. +Damage bonuses are less generous. Chasing them will typically give you 1 extra SO's worth in each power. If you're chasing offence, slot for damage procs and build up +Recharge and +Accuracy with your set bonuses.

Yep, the Energy pom-poms sure are strong and pretty! Probably one of the most satisfying sounding powersets in the game. I've realised I had played a Psi Blast/Time blaster to 50. She was.. forgettable, I guess? 🙂 Another reason to go /Energy.

Take Repulsion Bolt. It does a -15% Resistance debuff these days. And it has a 1.4 Base Accuracy, so you can single slot it either with KB->KD or a damage proc.

Ways to make Synapse Task Force better: - Use the Base Empowerment buffs to give yourself End Drain Resistance and +Recovery. Tell the whole team to do this. TAXI-4000 has base buffs in Everlasting, not sure what the best public bases are on other servers. - Everyone grab Plasmatic Taser and Grenade from the START vendor, as many stacks as you can hold. The worst Synapses I've run have been due to lack of AoE damage for all those Defeat-Alls. Single target-punching out Gears sucks. - Run it on the week when it's the Weekly task force. Its length becomes an advantage then, with the big double merits bonus.

I'd suggest /Energy, because /Time's heaviest damage powers also do Psionic damage, and when it's resisted it tends to be heavily resisted.

Power pools I take most commonly on Defenders: Leadership - adds some extra buffs. Tactics also prevents blindness status effects from sticking. Speed (for Hasten) - if you have Aim and a Nuke you'll want them up as often as possible. Also, many powersets have long cooldown buffs that benefit from taking this, especially Empathy Teleport - Teleport Target can bring a dead teammate to you for a safe rez via an inspiration or the START vendor device. Teleport can be used to teleport to a teammate in trouble with a macro eg "\macro TP powexeclocation target Teleport" even if they're in a neighbouring room sometimes! Fighting - Tough and Weave make you sturdier. With the right IO sets a Defender can get to softcapped defence of 45% and resistances of 75% vs Smashing/Lethal (depending on primary powerset) Medicine - don't take this if you have heals in your powerset. But it can be handy if you've taken Force Fields, Cold Domination or Sonic Resonance to patch heal a teammate who's health is slowly dropping. Concealment - Stealth will make you fully invisible these days. Taking this and Teleport Target makes you a great scout, able to find the end of mission boss/objective and bring the whole team in. But there are no hard and fast rule. Experiment, and see what works for you.

Superman and Batman harm other people! Everyone in this game harms other people! Its how we get XP! 😄 So I must respectfully disagree with your thesis that damage and debuffs are for naughty villains and buffs are for nice heroes. There's plenty of precedence for villains who empower their minions and sit back and let them take the lumps. Lex Luthor does it. Mystique and Destiny leading the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants do it. Morgana le Fey enchanting Mordred to go out and be her *ahem* little bitch on the battlefield does not make her less of a villain. There's an entire villain AT in this game dedicated to doing exactly that. If you can do a Positron Task Force on your villainy villain, you can surely justify buffing the odd teammate in character too. If you don't find the playstyle fun, that's totally cool, and I'm glad that there are debuffing powersets for you to enjoy. Just like I'm glad that there are buffing sets for me to enjoy.

So... buffing other players is somehow... emasculating? 😄