MonteCarla

Yeah, there is usually a point where more Recharge doesn't make a difference. Your attack chain starts to get limited by animation times instead of +Recharge. You've got perma-Hasten, -Domination or -Phantom Army sorted out. You've got Adrenalin Boost perm-able on one target but it can never be perma'd on two. and so on.

My quick 2c: I hear you. Force Fields on a Corruptor isn't going to add much to your survivability - Dispersion Bubble adds about 12% Def to you and that's it. Dellects 1 out of 4 attacks that would land. If you play on a Defender that goes up to 16%, and throw in the two uniques, P2W buffs, Fighting pool and so on you can become pretty sturdy like a Sentinel. +Defence becomes more valuable the more you already have. It got better with the introduction of -Res in Force Bolt and Force Bomb. It shines when protecting a levelling team of 8 while still having time to Blast, where you're the keystone who hangs back and avoid the alpha strike. The level of protection you offer would be wasted even on a reckless lone Scrapper. So yeah, Force Fields isn't really great for your mission statement. My fuller thoughts on FF are here:

Woah! It works! Thanks so much, twozerofoxtrot! That made my day! Really glad I dropped by this thread to moan about something! 😄

I wish you luck in your search!

I'd make sure all popup dialogs (Resurrect, Mystic Fortune, Teleport, mission into text) could be activated with Enter or Esc

Very cool! I can't see anything I'd change there. Happy Bruting! 🙂

Have a read of the Resistances for Brutes guide in my signature for some overall analysis on taking advantage of that 90% Res cap. You've got the Reactive Defences unique in Vengeance. Good. There's also the Shield Wall +5% Res vs all unique IO, which I think you're missing. That could go in Hover, which is way overslotted. It's base defence is so low it isn't worth 4 slots. In fact, pop both those uniques (Reactive Def and Shield Wall) in Hover for when you're exemplared, and stick a LotG +Recharge in Vengeance Make Hover just 3 slots - LotG unique and the two +Res IOs Can you easily close the remaining 5% gap for S/L resistances? Plasma Shield needs some slots to max its innate resistance, so 4 Aegis in there adds +3%. Take a slot from Manouvers maybe, and two slots from... 1 from Weave and 1 from Fire Shield. AND/OR Give up on the GSFC in Tactics. Its giving you +2.5 defence vs all, which is OK, but you could redistribute that shore up Plasma Shield and work on your Psi resists with some more Impervium Armor uniques? (You can slot 5 of them) I'm not sure which is better really. (One tip I didn't put in my guide. For Energy heavy situations, you can grab the kinetic Dampener temp power from the P2W vendor for some more energy resist!)

Typical Posi 1 chain of events: Yay, we have Force Fields and Cold! We'll be unhittable! Oh, crap... so will our duplicates. I'd better buy some team yellows between mission for the final fight against our doubles.

Mm Hmmm.... Looks good, Uun. I can see a few spots where I might do things a bit differently. 1) Stone Cages: I normally don't bother with the Dominating Grasp set at all beyond the Fiery orb Proc, and I'm not sure how often it goes off in there anyway. Maybe drop it in Seismic Smash instead. Stone Cages itself doesn't need much slotting, maybe even just a accuracy 2) Volcanic Gasses: You can probably get away with just 4 slots here - the small S/L resistance bonus from 5 is neither here nor there on this build. 3) Ice Storm and Fissure could also lose a slot each - the E/N resistance from slot 6 isn't doing much here. I'm not sure what else to do with these free slots to be honest. Maybe a few well placed damage procs? If you want to be tougher, you could look into Fighting. Drop Hurl Boulder, Assault and Hibernate to take Kick (ignore), Tough (2 slot with Gladiator's Armor and Steadfast +Def uniques and don't bother running it) and Weave (LotG Unique + 5 Red Fortunes) This will give you +13% Defence across the board, bringing you to the S/L softcap and a small purple away from E/N softcap too. This also gains you an extra 6% or so recharge.

I split it too, for the double global recharge buff. Snipes are great, but I usually can't resist putting 5 pieces of Manticore's Sting in my snipe. So it ends up in my longest recharge best single target blast. Some powersets really benefit from this AoE spot heal, such as Force Fields, Cold Dom and Sonic, where your team's health can trickle away if there isn't a healer on the team. Similarly, if you've got very high defence but you're lacking a self heal it can be a big deal. If that's the case, put it in there with the Acc/Dam and Quadruple (for minimum recharge boosting) But if you're playing a set with a self heal already, just use this set to get the double recharge buff. In Dark Blast, I'd pop it in Life Drain or Gloom, where it might go off 1 in every 3 activations roughly?

I recently turned them on for my recent characters. I then had to update my binds file to accommodate them so I can go F5 to heal, F6 for energy etc when I'm in the thick of combat. Until then they clogged up my tray and annoyed me. I haven't turned them on for my latest characters. I guess that's a big old "No" vote to them.

I've taken Radiation Blast to 50 nearly 6 times now. 3 of them had Light Powers, either "Solid Light" photon blasts or dazzling light that knocks opponents out. 3 of them had Captain Marvel-ish Cosmic Energy type superhero blasts. Radiation Emission's stood in for Jubilee-esque Firework powers, Pixie magic and Power Cancellation like the X-Men villain Scramble (mainly via the hold aura and enemy toggles) None of them gave people cancer or caused irreparable cellular damage, because I say so! 🙂 Kind of like how none of my fire users cause third degree burns, or sword users don't leave people dismembered or bleeding to death, or super-strengthers aren't punching people's spines through their bodies. I'm just not that kind of superhero. And powerset names are just names. None of my empaths sense or modify emotions, while we're at it! EDIT: Safety inspectors are very well paid in Paragon. Those 5% fees from Wentworths really add up!

Totally agree. 🙂 Dr Q has the variety of doing endless Council missions with a bit of street-sweeping in between, activities which people might actually do outside the Shard. Justin Augustine is like street-sweeping in a zone 10 levels below you for half an hour and then doing some radios. And to top it all off, I think The Chantry where Justin's task force takes place is Nemesis free, so there's not even any Unveiler bonuses to it.

Wow, that's impressive! Do you get people lined up pre-emptively for the hunts as they come up, or are you just zerging through everything as a team?

In an hour or so, the Weekly Task Force ticks over to the much-maligned Dr Q. Task Force, and I'll complete the last mission and be 244 merits richer! I thought I'd give a little review of each of the 4 Shadow Shard Task forces, since they had a certain negative mystique about them before I took the plunge and did them. Dr Q. (40-45) - 122/244 merits, 3 hours solo This is the longest task force in the game at 22 missions. It starts with 5 hunts (eg defeat 50 Rularuu at Point X-Ray) amongst the instanced missions, and the missions are nothing to write home about. It's basically like 3 hours of messing around in the shard (which I do enjoy as a Roger Dean fan) and doing the most basic radio missions, including quite a few defeat-alls. But... it has no AV at the end, so anyone can solo it. It gives the biggest merit reward in the game, and while you're doing those boring hunts you'll often find Fake Nemesis in pairs for a bit of badging goodness. Point X-Ray is great for this. (I'm at 30/100 without really trying now, just taking out pairs who were visible when I entered or exited missions, or I saw while hunting.) You get exemplared to 45, so you keep your incarnate powers. If you play at +0, the many Crey you face will be half and half suits instead of power-armor, which makes things easier, unless you're badging for Gamma Tanks or something. Soloing a task force can be done over several days of course, so you should break up the grind if you have a few days where that character doesn't need to team with anyone. You'll often hear negative talk in chat about this one, but its really just 3 hours of dull-ish radios with a big payoff. And that got me from 43 to 46 on my TA/A Defender. (Competes with Tinpex as the weekly. Lucky for me I'm not fond of that, but I now others are) Sara Moore (40-50) - 64/128 merits, 1-1.5 hours teamed This one is a proper adventure. You'll need a team because you fight Ruladak the Strong at the end, in a rather cool and scary special map in the final mission. Its about an hour, and you end up hunting a fair few Nemesis in the Cascade Archipelago, which helps getting Unveiler for the Freedom Phalanx Reserve Member accolade. The Cascade Archipelago with its bloody waterfalls is the most vertical map in the Shard, and second only to the Storm Palace. This one has always felt like a "cosmic" Justice League/Avengers adventure. (Competes with Synapse for the weekly, accolade hunters! A tough choice, but this one's more fun!) Justin Augustine (44-50) - 42/84 merits - 1-1.5 hours solo The first half is the dullest thing ever. Go round the Chantry like a clock, defeating 50 under-levelled enemies at each point, then click on a monument. Thrill to being sent back to Firebase Zulu to click on many groups of monuments for Dr Boyd! About half way through you actually get to fight enemies of your own level (CoT) inside an actual instanced map. Reveal is an absolute must here. I recommend solo-ing this one, if you want to just for completeness or the merits when its weekly. I got a team together for this on my first time, and kind of regretted it. One thing I always enjoy in here is finding groups of Brutes standing on high points and shotting at the Chantry in protest at its presence. Just a nice little idle animation that they have. Yeah, that's the highlight. No AV's here, just a few CoT mages with more than usual hit points, that can be tedious on a low damage AT. (Competes with the ITF for the weekly, in what may be the best TF ever vs the worse ever, so good luck finding a team!) Faathim the Kind (44-50) -73/146 merits 1.5-2 hours teamed This last one's intense. You fight multiple AV's (Malaise, Mother Mayhem, Nemesis, Baphomet) and eventually Lanaru the Mad. There's lots of Nemesis along the way for the Unveiler badge. And it takes place in the dark psychedelic grandeur of the Storm Palace, unlike the others which are in the "nice" orange parts of the Shard. This has the full Avengers: End Game feel, and is a whole lot of fun with a good team. (Competes with Yin as the weekly, do this first to maximise your bonus merits!) Temporary Powers from the SMART vendor. If you forget, remember the vendor in Pocket D will talk to you when you're on a Task Force, unlike the Atlas Park one. Reveal - definitely get this to clear the maps for each zone. Especially useful for the two solo-able task forces. Team Transporter - makes navigating the Shard nicer in a team. Mission Transporter and Assemble the Team - these two double as a second Team Transporter nicely. Defensive buff - gives you some mez protection if you don't already have any, which makes soloing Rularuu groups much easier. Happy psychedelic hunting!

Hey shortguy, fellow Maths-phile! 🙂 Thanks for continuing this conversation! The rate I listed in the tables were the chance for each individual proc to fire off. I've assumed that each roll is completely independent of the other proc rolls? Is that not right, by the sounds of it? What do you mean by "Multi proc chances in a single power"? I feel I may be missing something here? Here's my line of thought in the original post: Say I stuff six 3.5PPM damage procs into Electron Haze (which I have) then each one has a 50% chance of going off, or close enough. Doesn't that mean that I have like a bell curve of possible outcomes - out of the 64 possible outcomes, like flipping six coins: No of procs firing Probability 0 1/64 1 6/64 2 15/64 3 20/64 4 15/64 5 6/64 6 1/64 Since the procs do 71 damage at level 50, each proc in Electron Haze adds 35 damage roughly, so I'm adding 6x that - 210 proc damage on top of the base 48. Since +Damage buffs only affect the base 48, I'm not that fussed with chasing smaller +damage bonuses. eg Assault would take it from 48 + 210 to 55 +210, which is barely noticeable. Those numbers in your table - the 616 is the total base damage I'd do firing off each attack in my list once, right? And then the 709 is with just Assault, 832 with Relenting and Assault, and 1325 with PBU or Gaussian proc, Relenting and Assault active? These numbers are still pretty small compared to the proc damage that's sitting on top of them. Here's the base damage and total average proc damage if I stuff each power with 3.5PPM non-purple damage procs as much as I can: Power Rate Num procs Base damage Avg. proc damage =rate*num*71 Base/Total X-Ray Vision 29.7% 3 36 63 36% Cosmic Burst 70% 3 76 149 36% P Volley 78.7% 4 144/82 223 39%/26% Irradiate 30% 5 32.4 106 23% Electron Haze 49% 6 48.8 208 25% Neutron Bomb 31.6% 5 32.5 112 22% Atomic Blast 90% 5 144 319 31% Force Bomb 56% 3 21 119 15% That last column is the percentage of the total damage I do that comes from the power rather than procs, and thus the amount that's enhanceable by +damage buffs.

Thanks for the advice, @MoonSheep I've got my various -Res procs slotted now. Should have done that earlier! I did take a look at Fire Mastery early on, but eventually settled on Energy Mastery for the Power Boosted bubbles and Total Focus. TF has a 40 second recharge, which could be brought down considerably without lowering the proc rate, and an awfully slow animation. Hmm.. you've got me reconsidering. My character's an amazon, using a sword is quite in character. And like you say, power boosting my team's bubbles is probably not doing much considering the Defence boost they already have from me and their own abilities. I like Cosmic Burst for the stun (say on Tsoo Sorcerors) but Char could take over there, and if I dropped one damage proc for a Lockdown +Hold proc it would hold bosses too. @shortguy on indom - Yep, agreed on most points. I'm not sure if the 0.55 damage scale is a huge problem here, since most of my damage comes from procs, which don't scale with AT. I'm not even slotting my attacks for base damage (ie foregoing +100% damage or so on them) so I don't think Assault is going to do me much good. It's good to have for the team as a flat +15% boost, sure, but wont budge my own performance much. Similarly with Unrelenting, its 3 power picks for +20% damage on a very long cooldown. I do mean to try it sometime, but not today. I've got Aim. I usually pop the Gaussian Build Up proc in there for a good +130% damage on tap before my nuke, but this time I'm dropping that in Tactics since I usually team, and it can then proc per teammate. @tidge Don't ever make a FF/Rad Defender - you can enjoy the "throw a beachball" animation twice with Force Bomb and Neutron Bomb 🙂 Force Bomb does knock-up by the way, so there is no scatter, and no need for a KB->KD. (City of Data doesn't say this, so I was quite surprised to find this out.) I'm keeping it as a solid opener for the knockup and the -Res

I know I'm a year or two late to the party at least, and talking about what some see as a despised flavor-of-the-month, but I've decided to try and build a super-proc-heavy Defender instead of focusing on set bonuses for recharge and defence. The mission is this - go without set bonuses from my attacks like I usually do, and stuff them all with damage procs. Rely on set bonuses for accuracy and global recharge to make me a viable Offender. (And as usual, I'm focussing on the levelling journey to 50 over the end-game.) I chose Force Fields/Radiation Blast. Why that? Force Fields gives me slot-cheap global recharge (LotG uniques) and accuracy bonuses (4 slots of Luck of the Gambler) and decent -Res debuffs these days from Respulsion Bolt and Force Bomb. And there's bound to be somewhere to stick the Kismet +To Hit unique too. Radiation Blast allows me to stuff the extra Lady Grey and Shield Breaker damage procs into all my attacks, as well as providing -Def to help with hitting the targets with my proc-stuffed, acc-light abilities. (Ice Blast is similar with Ice Mistral and Impeding Slowness, but Rad Blast has long recharges on the AoEs, which is a good thing in this case.) I can also look at slotting Achilles Heel proc for some extra -Res debuff with Rad Blast. I'd like to add in the Defender Archetype IOs. Defender's Bastion should go in a power where the heal will trigger reliably, and Vigilant Assault is getting split in two for the Recharge bonuses. So how does this jigsaw piece fit? I made a spreadsheet of all the attacks and calculated their Area factor according to the equations here. I wanted to see how a Damage IO compared with a damage proc's average damage (assuming no recharge enhancement) in each case. https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Procs_Per_Minute The table below shows the chance of a standard 3.5PPM proc going off in the power with no recharge slotting, and compares the extra damage from slotting a damage IO vs the average damage from the proc IO, to give a "Proc Factor" ie how much more damage the proc does on average compared to a damage SO. Power Rate Base Dam Damage IO Proc Dam Proc Factor #procs X-Ray Vision 29.7% 36 12.6 21.1 1.66 3 (-Defx2, Glad Jav) Cosmic Burst 70% 76 26.8 49.7 1.8 3 (-Defx2, Glad Jav) P Volley (snipe) 78.7% 144 50.4 55.9 1.1 4 (-Defx2, GJ, Manti) P Volley (quick) 78.7% 82 28.7 55.9 1.9 Irradiate 30% 32.4 11.3 21.7 1.9 5 (-Defx2, MAoEx3) Electron Haze 49% 48.8 17.1 35.2 2.06 6 (-Defx2, RAoEx3, KB) Neutron Bomb 31.6% 32.5 11.3 22.4 1.97 5 (-Defx2), RAoE x3) Atomic Blast* 90% 144 50.4 66.0 1.29 5 (-Defx2, MAoEx3) Force Bomb 56% 21 7 40 5.5 3 (KB, RAoEx2), and FF:+Rech *The proc chance for Atomic Blast stays the same even with max recharge slotting, and having a nuke which also applies a Hold up as often as possible is a good thing! -Def: Touch of Lady Grey (negative), Shield Breaker (lethal) MAoE (Melee AoE): Scirocco's Dervish (lethal) Eradication (energy), Obliteration (smashing) RAoE (Ranged AoE): Positron's Blast (energy), Bombardment (fire), Javelin Volley (lethal) Electron Haze is a real winner, with each proc being equivalent to 2 damage IO's, so its effectively 12-slotted for damage! That's still using Defender base numbers, but it should do around 260 damage on average at level 50, so half an even-con minion health bar? There are also up to 2 potential -Res procs we can slot in . Achilles Heel with go in any attack (chance for 20% -Res debuff equal to the damage proc chances) and same for Fury of the Gladiator in MAoE attacks and Annihilation in RAoE attacks. Any of these can only apply once across the entire team, so our best bet is probably putting them in the AoE's where there is space, and leaving it at that. Global Recharge: I'll be accumulating some decent global recharge through: - 5 Luck of the Gambler uniques (37.5%) - Two three-sets of Vigilant Assault (12.5%) - Defender's Bastion (8.75%) - P2W buffs (15%) - Base Empowerment (20%) - Hasten - The Force Feedback +Rech proc is very tempting for Electron Haze and Force Bomb. I'm going just Force Bomb, since Electron Haze can be a 6 damage proc monster, and that's the primary mission here! Global Accuracy and To Hit: - Kismet +To Hit - +9% Accuracy for 4 pieces of LotG (4 times in Bubbles, Dispersion and Manouvers) - +11% from Defender's Bastion - Tactics - Aim Defence: - 16% from Dispersion Bubble - 5.5% from Manouvers - 5% from P2W buffs - Kinetic Damper temp power as required for heavy S/L enemies - 3.75% Ranged in Defender's Bastion Around 30% base, close enough to being 1 small luck (or the Kinetic Damper) from the cap I've chosen Proton Volley to forego the procs and hold the Defender's Bastion Set, because when used as an opener in snipe mode, the damage isn't that different between slotting and using damage procs. The three part Vigilant Assaults went into Cosmic Burst (pieces that don't boost recharge) and Atomic Blast (pieces that do boost Recharge). Here's where I'm at at level 39, with much of the mission statement working. Conclusions: - It's been very expensive. I deal with 200 million inf emails, and had to use two of these to build this character. - I don't feel like a completely broken damage monster by any means, but I'm quite viable, and soloing and teaming decently within my usual regime. (+2 missions and Task Forces). I still need to get the -Res procs in before really calling this though. - I'm leaning on the P2W Recovery Serum when I don't have an end-boosting teammate. But I can live with that. 🙂 - Overall 6 or 7/10 for a fun experiment (I'm keeping an Acc slotting in Irradiate for now as a source of reliable -Def to open with. Same with Neutron Bomb?) Purple procs proc more often (4.5ppm over 3.5ppm) for more damage (107 over 71), so do 1.93 times the damage of the basic ones I used here. If I hit 50 and want to keep going, I can basically add them to Cosmic Burst and Irradiate maybe?

I've taken the following to 50 with Energy Blast: Kinetics - your primary relies on close by enemies for your buffs, so you have to be wary of knocking them away. It was pretty cool though once I got to capped melee and ranged def through some heavy slotting. Cold Pain Empathy In all these cases, Energy Blasts's knockdown helps a lot with your self-protection which can be lacking from your buff set. Radiation Emission EB helps position your anchors if they try to run. Traps No big synergy good or bad. I'd slot the two AoEs Energy Torrent and Explosive Strike with the KB-to-KD IO to help stop you scattering enemies. And adopt a "you tag it you deal with it" approach to single target attacks - when you start knocking an enemy around its your problem if they get scattered from the pack and you have to deal with them. Also learn to knock enemies back into the pack with positioning. Above all though, I'd highly recommend an Earth/Energy Dominator. - You have immobilises to stop KB on a target or group. - You get a good concentrated version of Energy Blast, including a Power Push with big damage and 100% KB - You get beefy Energy Melee punches - You get mez protection from Domination Add in the Energy mastery epic and you get Energy Blast's AoE powers. This combo just feels powerful. I've customised it to look like a Firestorm-esque nuclear transmuter and a Green Lantern-like Energy Sculptor, and both were amazing to play 🙂

Aww, this makes me happy! 🙂 A Sentinel-that-Buffs! I agree with some of JJ Draken's changes. I reckon if you go Fighting for Tough and Weave for early invulnerability then Scorpion Shield is probably overkill on Defence and can be swapped out for a Resist shield in another epic. It's pretty easy with Tough and say Electric Armor to hit 75% S/L resistances as well as capped defences. That makes a big difference to a lot of the heavy hits in the game, like Freakshow Tanks. I'd also tend not to turn on Tough until I got my epic shield to save on endurance. Till then its just a passive +6% defence with the two IOs. I also tend to split Vigilant Assault between two powers to get the Recharge bonus twice. And I try to fit Force Bomb in early like you did originally - its your AoE -Res power. Mystic Flight is a cool idea. That also gives you the ability to teleport to a teammate in another room who may need your protection. e.g. bind Q "powexeclocation target Translocation" It will feel spongy flying without hover - maybe take Hover as well instead of the Stealth pool?

It helps enormously to have a bind for it, so you don't have to place it in combat. /macro DA "powxeclocation target Disruption Arrow" It's my #2 arrow after Flash Arrow for any group of enemies.

The Defence category just tells you which powers you can slot it onto. That's why you can't put a LotG End/Rech into an attack, even though the bonuses would work there. Typically, full sets give you better bonuses than slotting IO's because of all these mixed attribute pieces. Two attributes enhance them both by 2/3 IO values Three attributes enhance them both by 1/2 IO values An example is Thunderstrike or Crushing Impact - both sets give you the equivalent of 3 Damage, 2 End Redux, 2 Acc and 2 Recharge for juts 6 slots. And then there's the set bonuses on top of that! Other sets often have an End/Rech piece which don't enhance the primary attribute of the power, eg Unbreakable Guard or Doctored Wounds. You'd use these when: - You're chasing the higher set bonuses and want a full set - You've ED capped the main attribute and want to improve the power further - End or Recharge are more important than the primary stat, eg Elude, or even Fortitude. When I use LotG its mainly for the recharge unique, so I often stop at 4 pieces for capping Defence and the global accuracy bonus. Similar with Unbreakable Guard - I'm usually after the melee defence and can stop at 4 pieces. You'll find the End/Rech pieces are usually the least desired and cheapest on the auction house.

I generally play Defenders (19 Defs, 6 Corrs out of my 50's), but I'm part of a group who play all-Corrupter and all-Defender task forces every week. The all-Corrupter one falls on a civilised 9.30am Sunday here in Australia, whereas the all-Defender one is the not-so-nice 4.30am Monday. So I play a Corrupter with them. 🙂 I've got 6 Corrupters to 50 now, another one was a Kinetics/Energy who I re-rolled from Defender after looking at the potential damage numbers (and low Defender damage boost cap). The others were.... one was part of an Empathy duo with a friend, and one was Elec/Elec rolled as a Corrupter just for a change?

Here's my thoughts on Force Fields, written after the update. ( And Sue gets an oblique reference 🙂 ) There's some good discussion in the thread too, not everyone agreed with my ratings: In brief: - Take Deflection Shield and Insulation Shield and Dispersion Bubble and slot them for max Defence. (LotG + 2 Def IOs for minimal slotting) - Manouvers is a really good idea too, and Grant Invisibility will also help push non-IO'd teammates to the defence cap. (My guide is very much levelling PUGs rather than end-game play) - Force Bolt and Repulsion Bomb do -Res now, so take them both.

Yep. Generally Corrupters (and Controllers and MMs) have 75% strength buffs and debuffs compared to Defenders.