MonteCarla

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! 😄

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.