MonteCarla

Wow, how did I miss Unrelenting? I guess because I took Presence once, on my first Sentinel to get a taunt. How does it work exactly? You get the buffs if you click it while you're alive, but if you're KO'd it rezzes you first (at half health) and then gives you the buffs? And yeah, I suppose I omitted Wall of Force because I'm not that impressed with it, @Uun It's low damage and 33% chance of knockback, so it doesn't do either of it's things well. I've taken it on my tank but probably wont do so again.

And yep, @Dauntless - LotG uniques are in a class of their own! 🙂

I've only really started looking at these two powers now. They're like mini-God mode defensive powers, at Tier 3 in the Sorcery and Force of Will power pools. What sort of builds are people using them in? I get that Rune of Protection (uptime 60s out of unmodifiable 180s) is popular for the mez protection (for those of you who don't indulge in unlimited START Vendor buffs like I do), but I can also see it being really nice on Resistance Brutes/Tanks to push your lesser Resistances to the cap. Damn, that's nearly +40% resistance to all when slotted, for 1/3 of the time! (Tank/Defender values) Unleash Potential (60s out of 600s, so out of 150s on a very high recharge build) gives +24% Defence slotted! That would be extra nice for Blasters or other squishies, but not as good as mez protection...? The big downside to both is having to pick two other powers. Force of Will has: Weaken Resolve, a -Def/-Res power that can slot an Achilles Heel -Res and be a decent boss-up debuff ( with a horrible animation! 😞 ) Mighty Leap - a superjump clone with a stompy long-recharge AoE thrown in for free Project Will - a mediocre ranged attack. Sorcery has: Arcane Bolt - beloved of my Controllers Spirit Ward - an OK-ish absorb shield for an ally Mystic Flight, cool looking fly with free teleport! Enflame is nice, but it's also Tier 3 too. If you're prepared to let these pools dictate your travel powers, they're pretty good. I've taken Force of Will on my Invulnerability tank partly just for fun, and I'm planning Sorcery on a Controller, but kinda feel they're the wrong way round for the +Res and +Def buffs. Tell me your stories on how you use them!

I usually 2 slot Hasten, with 2 SO's as I level and 2 Level 50+5 IO's once I hit 50. You can get perma-Dom without it just by stacking set bonuses, but it's tight and usually won't kick in until you're 50. Hasten gives you breathing room to enjoy perma-Dom from somwhere in your 30's onwards.

I've done this once with a character I really enjoyed playing - Jenny Foxgloves (Nature/Ice Defender). I'd got her to 50 and Tier 3+ incarnates in everything, so I remade her as a Plant/Storm Controller and levelled her up to 50 again. (This was her winter form as a nature spirit, since Plant Control produces spiky thorny effects compared to the lush foliage of Nature Affinity) I'm considering doing that with a couple of other characters who I've capped out on, and kind of miss playing. Same character, but with different powersets.

Repulsion Bolt and Force Bomb will keep a 35% resistance debuff on your AV target, so FF is nowhere near as bad as it used to be for this task. Dispersion gives you status protection and a very good start to capping your Defences. You have zero native regen or recovery tools. Add in Envenomed Daggers from the START vendor and as much damage as you can slot and proc for?

Here's a weird idea for Regen - what if the set was made so that "death" was not much of a problem at all, but part of the playstyle? Revive currently has a recharge of 300s and provides 90s of Debt Protection, meaning if you slot it for Recharge build up a big Global rech you can pull off serial Revives. What if we made that really easy? Add 100% Debt Protection to Fast Healing, so its always on. Lower the Recharge on Revive to like 60 seconds or even 30. This way, every time you get defeated, you're seconds away from being able to get up again. That's a very Wolverine/T-1000 -like way to fight. 🙂 What am I missing here? Every time you die you wipe all debuffs (which is good) but also lose Hasten and Instant Healing and other click buffs. If there was a way to put the buffs on hold so they still applied when you revived, that could work? (And I second the idea of lowering Reconstruction's recharge to 30. It struck me as odd when I started playing that it took 60 seconds but Healing Aura had like a 8 second recharge)

I defeated her the other day using the Complete Mission button. I totally hear you. She is insanely hard, even for characters who should be able to handle her.

Working backwards from the Rule of 5: 5 x 10% (Purple sets for Melee, Melee AoE, Ranged and Ranged AoE, (or substitute Confuse for one of them) and Superior Ascendancy of the Dominator) 5 x LotG +7.5% (Manouvers+Vengeance, Weave/Hover/CJ, and Stealth+Grant Invisibility or Indomitable Will+Link Minds) 3 x Other 7.5% (Basilisks' Gaze x 2 and Sting of the Manticore) That's 110% You can then add 3 x 6.25% (Stupefy, Glimpse of the Abyss, Positrons's Blast, Decimation, Malaise) or 5% (Crushing Impact, Obliteration) to bring it to 125% or more. It won't be cheap, but it's doable. And if you're willing to rely on the SG Base Empowerment buff, you can drop two purple sets.

OK, so it sounds like it's failing for you only when its on that knife's edge of 123.75% Recharge? Because that's when your window to reactivate Domination is less than a second. (It recharges in 89.3 seconds and only lasts 90 seconds) I think this can fail due to lag? The server has to tell your client that the power's recharged, then your client automatically presses the button for you, which then fires off to the server to tell it to activate the power on the server. If either of these messages are too slow, it might be the server gets the message too late. I typically have Domination on auto-fire, but also set up Q and E to activate Domination and Hasten for convenience, and because I've sometimes seen Domination un-grey itself without activating straight away. Particularly in the mid-30s when I'm getting unreliable chain-Dom with Hasten, I tend to press that button. If you're getting reliable perma-Dom with the SG base buff, then I'd say its' worth rebuilding with an extra 5% recharge to cover that gap. (Gives you 87.4 second recharge with that extra Crushing Impact set, so 2.6 second leeway instead of 0.7 seconds.)

Hmm. So avoid things like Illusion that thrive on high recharge. Scrappers love Kinetics. Plus it gives you a bit of bonus recharge via Siphon Speed, which is what you'd be missing from a high end build. And it doesn't lend itself to IO slotting, so no big loss there. Earth Control's good for making those Kinetics powers hit with the -Def, and gives a lot of security with multiple fast AoE controls. Its main problem is lack of direct damage, but that's helped a lot by picking up some START vendor powers these days (or Sorcery for Arcane Blast) and by having a Scrapper buddy. Does Earth/Kinetics sound any good? Actually, Arsenal Control might be good too for similar reasons, lots of different AoE controls if you're not running on high recharge? Arsenal/Kinetics would be an odd combo, and maybe quite effective 🙂

SO's were traditionally only available at level 25, so 22 became a big watershed level when you could start slotting SOs. The Homecoming team only changed that recently to make them available from vendors at all levels. I guess they didn't update the merit vendors.

Domination can only be activated while your Domination bar is full Your Domination bar stays full while Domination is active. So... If Domination recharges before it expires, you can activate it straight away because your Domination bar is already full! I do have to build it up first, which takes maybe half a mission solo? But after that, by having Dom on autofire and wither pressing Hasten manually or having +123% rech or more, I never lose it until I log off or die. That's the absolute beauty of Perma-Dom. Once you have the recharge you don't have those downtimes where you're building it up.

What I have noticed recently (post the last big update) on my up and coming Arsenal Dom was the drain sound effect would go off sometimes when I was chaining Dominations. It felt like it happened when a Domination expired, regardless of whether it had been stacked/replaced with another one. But I didn't get a Domination drain actually happening, just the noise.

You got me panicking, Outrider! 🙂 I just checked with Pink Topaz, who conveniently has 123.75% Recharge buff when I use the Base empowerment. When Domination goes off, it has a recharge of 1:29, and manages to fire off again without Hasten when I'm idle, as long as CoH has focus. After typing this, I've lost Domination. With Hasten up, it's been cycling fine of course. So Perma-Dom doesn't appear to be broken unless you're on a knife's edge with recharge AND you background the game?

I like soloing Dr Q and Justine Augustine. I've really enjoyed Sara Moore and Faathim with a team. (And the Shard TFs will also unlock the Fake Nemesis "Unveiler" badge, so another chore down) I enjoy Synapse with a PUG, always a good chance to chat with the team. Same with Citadel, and I take a perverse pleasure in Numina's TF and organising people for the hunts. Patron arcs... ehhh... not super-fond of them, so they always fall under "doing it for the rewards", even if I RP a reason to go undercover in character. Hero Tips in the 20s! I don't like a lot of those missions particularly. Fighting Sky Raiders, CoT ghosts and Banished Pantheon before I've got my global accuracy up can be a pain. But I always feel obliged to do them to get my 40 merits and most importantly, get Call to Justice counting down quickly. And Striga! I did the first arc for the Wedding Ring recently (and haven't used it since). I often do the last arc to unlock Hess TF via Ouro, before its the weekly. But they really are dull missions full of dull enemies in a grey rainy map. Oh, and occasional defeat hunts like taking down 100 Family bosses in Striga docks to score the Untouchable badge

I didn't know you could do that! Like others have suggested, you're better off buying Enhancement Converters (under Special Salvage) from the merit vendor. They're the purple circle with yellow arrows. 5 merits buys 15 of them. List them for 1 inf in batches of 10 on the Auction House (available anywhere by typing "/ah") and they'll sell immediately for at least 50,000 inf each, maybe up to 70,000. SO's cost 30-50,000 each, so you'll get at least 3 per merit, probably more. Going this way via influence also allows you to upgrade your SO's using the handy Upgrade button on the Enhancement screen, rather than having to buy all new ones every few levels and manually slot them. Its a little bit more hassle than just buying the SO's, but it doesn't require much marketeering, and really turned thing s around for me when I was new.

Yesterday I joined a Posi 1 and then ran a Posi 2 on a new-ish Tank. I had a great team both times. The Posi 1 was one of the smoothest I've ever had, despite us having 4 support characters on the team (which often leads to a bad time with the Shadow Duplicates at the end) Later on I ran Manticore on a Defender, and had an awesome time once again. I got lucky enough to have I think 3 Controller/Doms, so between that any my own holds and Choking Cloud I think maybe 2 Paragon Protectors managed to pop their god-modes during the entire run. And we had a high level Tank who offered to tank-stealth some of the missions (eg find the computer, rescue Councilman Birch) while the rest of us beat up spawns near the door. He even ATT'd us all to Hopkins for the final mission.

I vary from one Dominator to another, Starseed. I've played some Dominators where its a key part of who they are, give them softcapped Defence and S/L resists, and they confidently tank on Task Forces. (Pink Topaz, my Green Lantern like Earth/Energy was a definite case of this approach.) My current Arsenal/MA Dom doesn't take Fighting, but I think still has a bit of Leadership. What do you tend to take instead? One thing I've found with Dominators, is they share the "most clickiest" award with Blasters, since both powersets give you active powers rather than toggles or passives. Couple this with the fact I'm chasing high recharge, I doubt I could pick any more powers to actively use due to animation time and available slots, so having a few toggles is good in that way too. (Plus Weave, Manouvers and Vengeance are all LotG mules)

I think its pretty close, to the point of not worrying about it. A Corrupter does 3/4 of the Res debuffing of a Defender. Say you're blasting/debuffing away at an AV as a Defender, you have 12% + 4 times 8% from Sonic Blast, 40% from Envenom and 25% from Poisonous Gas = 110% -Res Debuff from your powers. A corrupter only gets 86% -Res debuff. A Defender gets +30% Damage from Vigilance. Corrupter base damage is 1.15 times Defender base Damage. Scourge makes you do 1.25 times normal damage on a big target, as the bonus tapers from 0 to 100% over the second half of their health bar. Corrupter 1.15 * 1.95 (Damage slotting) * 1.86 (Res debuff) * 1.25 (Scourge) = 5.21 Defender: 1.0 * 2.25 (Damage slotting + Vigilance) * 2.10 (Res Debuff) = 4.725 The Corrupter will do about (5.21/4.725) = 110% of the Defender's damage when soloing an AV. That's soloing an AV. The Defender will amplify a team's damage a bit better due to the superior -Res debuff, even though their own damage will fall a bit. So yeah, I wouldn't worry about it. Go melt those AVs!

Fire/Rad Corrupters are my number 3 choice, Scarlet! 🙂 See my big first post above for why.

Storm Defenders and Dark Defenders would do some nice force amplification, but they don't buff each other's recharge, or provide any endurance tools. In both cases you get 18% more defence and 50% resistance to 3 exotic types via the stealth auras, and the same level of AoE -Res that Time gives, but with no -Damage. 3 Sentinels will just add together, no multiplication. And they won't be any sturdier than 3 mutually buffing Corrupters. These are all excellent solo choices. You'd still have a good time with three of them, but they don't super-mesh the way Time, Empathy and Radiation do.

You slot them for Recharge. +100%. You have double Adrenalin Boost +200% Hasten gives you +70% recharge That makes them recharge in less than a quarter of the time. So AB recharges in 60 seconds... Ahh, I think my maths is off. Sorry. You can't have double AB up all the time on an Empathy trio. The Auras will recharge in around 120 seconds, so you'll maybe have two of them out of three up at any time if you stagger them. That put Empathy down a little bit more over Time. Time is really easy to play, just gather to Chrono Shift/Farsight every two minutes, Temporal Select each other when its up, and blast away. You really will die of boredom 🙂 I've played two Empathy duos with friends in the past couple of years and we abandoned them in the 40s because nothing was a challenge! And yeah, these sets will all function very well with just SO's as you level. PS Experimental Injection is probably a great idea for Time to give you that mez protection and some more +Recovery

Fire Corrupters is probably the best choice for blast sets and archetypes. You leverage Scourge and put out more base dmage than anyone. And you dont need any more debuff effects with the right support sets. All take Assault (+45% Damage) and Manouvers, slotted (+12.5% Defence) My top three contenders in order are: 3 x Time Manipulation +50% Damage from double Temporal Selection +60% (double TS) + 150% (triple Chrono Shift) = 210% Recharge. +300% Regen from TS +45% Defence +30% To Hit from triple Farisght A bit of patchy +Recovery from ChronoShift, probably best to stagger this. No mez protection beyond rarely getting hit. -66% Res debuff from Slowed Response, up every 20s or so, add another -60% for Achilles Heel procs. (Do they stack from different casters?) -60% Damage debuff from Triple Time's Juncture -- Safest, with best +Rech and better damage boost than Empathy 3 x Empathy corrupters: +35% Defence, +50% Damage, +30% To Hit from double Fortiitude +200% Recharge from double Adrenalin Boost. +4000% Regen or something crazy from triple auras and double AB, and more Energy than you can possibly consume. Full mez protection and +Perception from Clear Mind No - Res debuffs. -- Very safe with decent damage output boost 3 x Rad Emission +60% Damage from Triple AM +90% Recharge +90% Recovery -66% Res debuff from 3 x Enervating Field, fast cast toggle -100% To hit and -Def on Rad Infection, slow casting toggle Mez resistance - mezzes wear off ultra-quick but still interrupt. No defence bonus Choking Cloud x3 is awesome "passive active defence"! Empathy and Time will have you dying only of boredom as you rarely take a hit, and heal instantly. Time has better damage output due to the -Res. Build up and Nuke from 3 Fire Corrupters opening every spawn will be pretty amazing at that Recharge. Empathy is safer and gives mez protection, Time give you the -Res debuff. Radiation Emission is not quite as good, requiring a bit more active defence. But everyone will be held pretty quickly by Choking Cloud. It's weakness will be AV's - the holds wont work and the -To Hit gets taken down a lot by purple triangles. And you get a slightly less stellar +Recharge, translating into a 10 second or so further wait for your nukes to be back up? 3 x Nature, since it got a mention +53% Res to all (3 x wild Growth) +200% damage (3 x Overgrowth) No +Defence, no +Recharge, but heals and absorbs -66% Res on a single target (corrosive enzymes) It would be very good, but not as stellar as Time, Empathy or Rad. VEATS give you an extra +45% damage, some -Res and more +Defence than you ever need? No +Recharge or +Recovery though, and less base damage than a Fire Corrupter. (I love overthinking this, @Clave Dark 5 🙂 )

I love buffing. The 4 minute ones (Sonic Shields, Thermal, Ice Shields, Force Fields) don't take a lot of attention since the devs wisely made them AoE, and I'll tend to do a couple of random teammates every two minutes. If I'm good, I'll try to catch everyone just before entering a mission and just before leaving for a bit of double stacking. (You count as a separate person every time you zone, so you can stack your buffs). They're not a great deal of fun, beyond the warm fuzzy glow of knowing you've transformed your team from a little bit to a lot. Empathy is where the real fun begins. At high recharge, Fortitude is up just about enough to cover all 7 teammates. Doing this requires probably more concentration than anything else in the game, certainly more than scratching enemies with your claws ( to quote Magneto in X-2 🙂 ). Especially if you want to keep attacking. I learned how to target through my next ally on the Fort rotation to keep blasting and made teleport binds to select teammates for when we split. Doing all this while spot-healing, keeping my favourite Blaster AB'd, and all squishies Clear Minded was an absolute joy because it was so difficult. Oh, and I'd be watching the minimap for finding just the right time to let off your auras. Buffing is like PVP in that you're chasing unpredictable moving targets compared to attacking AIs. Kinetics is a whole other thing too - two one minute buffs and your whole team is faster than you thanks to one of them! Being a badass buffer (ie one who also attacks) makes you split your attention between the game world, Team HUD for buff timers and the minimap. I come away from a session doing that a little bit wiped and very satisified. Playing a Energy Melee Stalker or damage aura Tank is how I relax in comparison. I also love being buffed, and totally change my playstyle if someone's made me temporarily invulnerable of superfast or whatever.