MonteCarla

I've always been partial to FF/Sonic on Defenders, adding a nice offensive debuff to the most defensive primary. Both sets got improvements this year, so even better now.

I've seen it said several times here that Dominators have one of the biggest gaps between baseline performance and kitted out IO set performance. I do not disagree. In their base state, Dominators are like control-heavy damage-light blasters, relying on active defence to stay alive, with an on-again/off-again mechanic of Domination that lets them handle bosses. With Set IOs this becomes permanent, and Dominators have mez protection and decent passive defences, and can dish out boss-level crowd control. A well-built Dominator is a combination Controller, Scrapper and Blaster. Who do Carnie Master Illusionists fear? Perma-Dominators, that's who! Lock them down in one swift move before they can pop their pets out! This guide is for players with a couple of 100 million lying around, and takes you through how to enjoy the power of Perma-Dom as early as possible. It's a very satisfying journey, watching that global recharge number increase and the magic of Perma-Dom fall into reach. My levelling habits I slot attuned enhancement sets as early as feasible, and with Dominators its always recharge as an exclusive goal. Secondary to that I'll go for Defence. Round about level 30, I'll start to experience chain-Domination, where you sometimes get one Domination kicking off after another, but not always. By 40 I'll have perma-Dom going reliably if I'm vigilant with Hasten. By 50, with a few purple sets swapped in, I'll usually have full perma-Dom where it refreshes without me having to click Hasten at all. Despite this, I always take Hasten to get long recharge AoE controls and other good powers up as quickly as possible. I also try to build for personal defence, as it can save your skin while you establish control in an alpha strike. I aim for good Defence values, and try to cap S/L Resistances to 75%, since this covers a lot of the big heavy damage hits in the game Basic Setup I put Domination on auto, and take Hasten early I put them both in a "utility tray" with things like Long Range Teleporter, next to my main three trays, so I can see them. I then add a couple of binds: \e bind q powexecname Domination \e bind e powexecname Hasten I've found auto powers don't always fire immediately, and sometimes you can lose Domination from not clicking it fast enough. Activate Hasten manually whenever it's up. I use the Powers->Combat Attributes panel to display my Last Chance to Hit, Global Recharge and Melee, Ranged and AoE Defence. I set Options->Windows->Powers: Recharge Indicators to Bottom, so I can see when Domination and Hasten are about to be ready again. Power Pools Speed - must have. Hasten - absolutely take this. You can achieve perma-dom without it, but at perma-Dom levels of recharge Hasten also becomes permanent. You will have some AoE controls and Build Up style powers that you want up as often as possible, so its general benefit is huge. Remember, you can turn off the Visual FX for this at the tailors if you like. Fighting - Dominators get very good values for Red/Def powers, almost level with Tanks/Defenders Kick is a write off, since your primary and secondary are filling your trays with much better clicks than this. I keep it in my tray as brawl-on-steroids, and found it handy at early levels. Tough takes both +Def uniques for 6% straight away, and will help you get to 75% S/L resists with a Epic armor. (60% for both powers slotted, 7.5% for the P2W buffs, and another 7.5% from set bonuses) Weave adds 7% Defence and gives you 12.5% Recharge if you slot 1 LoTG unique and 5 Red Fortunes. Leadership - Almost always take this. Manouvers is about +5% defence slotted, and can take a LotG and 5x Red Fortune. Tactics is great for preventing blindness and making your attacks land, very important when you rely on active defence. Vengeance opens up later as another LotG mule. Concealment - maybe Grant Invisibility and Infiltration are LotG mules, especially if you're not going with Psionic Mastery Flight/Leaping - maybe Hover/Fly or Combat Jumping, adds another LotG mule plus 2.5% defence or so Epic Pools Ice Mastery Defender-level Sleet, around every 30 seconds (down from 120 base) with your big recharge bonus! This is very hard to pass up despite not contributing to the main aims of this build type. Ice Armor will help cap your defence against S/L, but you lose the chance to cap S/L resistance. Psionic Mastery Link Minds is another +7% Defence, almost perma. (Note it can't be slotted for recharge, but is affected by global recharge) With a Power Boost style power this becomes almost 10%) And it's a LotG mule slot. Indomitable Will - the mez protection is already covered by perma-Dom, but capped Psi Defence and another LotG mule slot are useful. Mind over Body - I prefer a resistance armor, since you can get to 75% S/L resist fairly easily on Dominator values. Primal Forces Mastery Energy Torrent and Explosive Blast can take the Force Feedback +Recharge proc and have a 35% and 18% chance of triggering if they hit, giving +100% recharge for 5 seconds. (Slot with the FF proc and 5 x Positron's leaving out the Dam/Rech one?) This effect doesn't stack, but can be up for a decent percentage of time if you're steamrollering on a team. Energy Torrent does Knockdown, Explosive Blast does Knockback, so you may want to slot it with a KB to KD. Temp Invulnerability will get you close to the S/L resist cap along with Tough, maybe to 75% with a few incidental set bonuses. You can take different Epic sets in different builds if you want to experiment, and have the inf to burn. IO sets to chase This was my shopping list before playing my new holiday project Pink Topaz: Ascendancy of the Dominator: +8.75% Recharge and +3.125% Ranged Def at slots 5 and 6. Put this in a Stun or Fear power, or an immobilise even Holds: Basilisk's Gaze: 4 slots give +7.5% recharge and 1.25% Ranged Def. Good for both single target and AoE hold Confuse: Malaise's Illusions +6.25% Recharge and +3.125% Ranged Def Stuns: Stupefy +6.25% Rech at 5 slots, +3.125% Ranged Def at 6 (but this means adding knockback to your power) Spectral Terror: Cloud Senses for +6.25% at 4 slots, ranged Def at 6 slots Pets: Expedient Reinforcement: +6.25% at 4 slots, ranged Def at 6 slots Melee attacks: Crushing Impact +5% at 5 slots Melee AoE: Obliteration +5% at 5 slots (and +3.125% Melee Def at 6) Ranged Attacks: Decimation +6.25% at 5 slots Snipes: Sting of the Manticore: +2.5% Ranged Def and +7.5% Recharge at 5 slots Dominating Grasp: Maybe use the unique Fiery Orb later on. But no Recharge bonus means don't slot this set. I'll usually slot just enough pieces to get the recharge bonus until the slot-rich late-30's and early 40's, when I'll add in the extra pieces for defence bonuses. Other sources of +Recharge - The P2W buff give you +15% Recharge. These cost Level*Level*1000 per hour, and you can buy up to 8 hours worth. They are not crazily expensive when you're levelling up. The first batch, costing a mere 8,000 usually lasts me until level 20. The next batch at 20 would be 3.2 million, and lasts well into the 30's - Base Empowerment gives you +20% for 90 minutes from using a Base Empowerment Station. Use TAXI-4000 or ZONE-8888 as good practical bases that are easy to remember, with simple layouts Ingredients are any set of: (Clockwork Winder, Boresight, Temporal Sands) (Alchemical Silver, Improvised Cybernetic, Symbol) (Ruby, Kinetic Weapon, Destiny) - The Force Feedback +Recharge proc. This gives you +100% recharge for 5 seconds. Its unreliable, but hefty, and can have considerable uptime if you're spamming AoE Knockback powers such as the Primal Force Mastery attacks or Psionic Tornado. You won't want to rely on this for perma-Dom, but it gives you more breathing room in heavy combat. Defence: My baseline is: P2W Buff +5% Fighting +13% for slotted Weave and the Steadfast and Gladiator's Armor unique IOs in Tough Manouvers +5% Combat Jumping or Hover: 2.5% Total: 25.5%, so you're capped with a medium Luck. Add Link Minds and you're capped with a small Luck, and probably capped vs Ranged at all times with the sets listed above. Example at Level 27 (Pink Topaz, Earth/Energy/Primal Forces) Fossilize: Basilisk's Gaze x4 Salt Crystals: Sandman Heal IO Stalagmites: Ascendancy of the Dom x6 Earthquake: Rech IO Volcanic Gasses: Basilisks Gaze x4 Bonesmasher: Crushing Impact x5 Whirling Hands: Obliteration x5 Power Up: Rech IO Total Focus: Crushing Impact x5 Fly: Fly SO Hover: LotG +Rech Kick: Range SO Tough: Steadfast & GA +Def IO's Hasten: 2 x Rech IO Defence: +13.5% (+19% Ranged) Recharge: +46.25% (+81.25% w/ P2W and base buffs) One day in, and I'm already chaining Domination regularly. I got 4 Dominations in a row during the level 20-29 Hero Tips Alignment Mission (big map, 3 bosses, Blast Furnace and Nocturne), which felt wonderful. By level 35 I'll have 20%/26% defence and 68%/103% recharge, so keeping perma-Dom up if I pay attention to Hasten. By level 50 it's +98%/133% recharge, with maybe another 10% as I start to invest in purples, so into the world of perma-Dom without Hasten (or easing up on the P2W buff as it gets more expensive) This lifestyle is expensive. If you're looking to make some decent influence while mainly fighting/committing crime, acquire merits by doing Task Forces, Giant Monsters and story arcs, buy Enhancement Converters and list for 1 inf. You'll get almost 1 million per 5 merits. If you want to devote more time to making more inf (like I do) use those converters to upgrade common recipes that you craft into rares, and convert those into juicy rares! See the Marketing forum for examples. Happy Dominating!

Nearly every character I have does the Spelunker flashback mission for the Atlas Medallion I'll also use it to get Anti-Matter for Portal Jockey ( and to get Shrouded and Multidimensional. ) I used it once to farm Fake Nemesis robots with some level 40 arc. And occasionally I solo the old Positron Task Force via Flashback. I've contemplated running a solo arc like Freakalympics sometimes, but I don't think I've ever actually done it.

I kind of like Synapse the way it is. And Citadel, and even Numina with her stupid hunts. I only ever play them when they're the weekly task force (so 122 merits counting Babbage for Synapse). The more modern streamlined content like Penny Yin is cool, but there's a certain sense of achievement with the less friendly older content? I think the game would suffer from losing this... chewier content? I always have a bit of dread, followed by elation at getting a team together, followed (90 minutes later) by elation at actually finishing it and getting the badge. I don't get that with Penny Yin. Similarly, should Anti-Matter and Siege be rolled into the Maria Jenkins arc to make Portal Jockey easier? I'd say no - I like gathering the accolades to involve a bit of hierarchical planning and tough moments. As long as the team gets talking (in or out of character) about something other than how much they hate the task force, the time flies by. The only time I didn't enjoy Synapse was on a team where none of us had decent AoE damage. That could have been solved by a group shopping trip to get Plasmatic Tasers and Hand Grenades. End issues can be mitigated a lot by the supergroup base buff too, which should last almost the entire task force.

I moved to Champions Online. After not being super-impressed with it at launch, it had really picked up by the time I went back. The lack of content compared to here wasn't great, and the support powersets were a bit lacking (although being able to cast 6000 hp Protection Fields with the right build was cool) but it made a very good substitute for CoH. There were a number of things it did better than CoH, which shouldn't be surprising since it was a second attempt by many of the same people. I met some cool people there, had some of my best roleplaying experiences ever, and will always look back fondly on my time there.

Ice, Earth and Elec are probably the lowest damage primaries. That said, its not like it used to be, and you can make any of them solo-able with say the Sorcery pool's Arcane Blast and Sands of Mu, Plasmatic Taser and other free powers. Earth is a pretty good choice, in that it adds a lot of -Def to help those temp powers hit. (But doesn't let you slot Lady Grey or Shield Breaker damage procs, which would have been even better.) Out of the secondaries you listed: Cold is great - you can use everything except the ally shields on yourself. A procced-out Infrigidate becomes your snipe, kind of. Electric likewise, if you take the pet to bounce chains off. Force Field is better than it used to be, with -Res in Force Bolt and Repulsion Bomb these days, and obviously the best self protection set out of these. Pain and Poison are both decent. I'd choose between Earth/Cold and Earth/Poison if you're planning a solo and duo character. (Empathy is the ultimate duo powerset btw, but tied with Sonic for the worst solo set)

Oh yes! You'll sometimes get a message saying TARGET BLOCKED but most of the time if you're in range, you can port to your target in another room. I heard of Green Machine - they're what inspired me to try Empathy duos. And to be honest, in both cases we stopped playing somewhere in the 40s because it was too easy. Double Manouvers and Power-Boosted Fortitude put us near the defence cap, we had insane regen and recovery, full mez protection and capped S/L Resistance from Tough and Temp Invuln. The game just became too easy really. 🙂

Good write-up on Empathy, Doc. Agreed, recharge is everything on this set. Slot for it however you can, eg Luck of the Gambler unique plus 5 x Red Fortune in Fortitude. Take Leadership to get Manouvers and Vengeance for two more LotG's, and so on. Use the P2W boost and the Supergroup base boost if you can for an extra 35% Recharge all up. As to who to Adrenalin Boost - I usually look at it from a Recharge point of view. Blasters will get more nukes in, Controller will get more AoE mezzes. This often precludes AB-ing the Tank, unless they're a Shield Tanker. But like you say, it's also a case of watching people's health and energy bars and seeing who needs help. One other option is if there's another Empath on the team, shoot them a tell and see if they're up for mutual AB-ing. This can lead to perma-double auras, and double Fortitude all round if you're both good. (I've played dedicated Empathy duos with a couple of special friends, and that is a very fun project!) One thing I'm keen to try on my next Empath is to use teleport binds. bind q "powexeclocation target Teleport" This means when your team split, you can keep supporting both groups. See someone's health dip? Shift+<Team Index>, Q, Heal, maybe Fortitude if they need it, and then select another teammate to return to your previous group. Maps have to get pretty big for this not to work. It also allows you to keep Fortitude order. II try to keep the next teammate in my head for Fort-ing, and often target through them once Fort is recharging, so I can hit it as soon as its ready. It always annoys me a bit when teams split up and make this harder, 'porting may be the answer. The old Port-and-Fort! 😄

Yeah, I'd just drop a Recharge in Combat Teleport. I'd never add an extra slot to it.

I've taken 15 Defenders to 50, and counting. I think the biggest surprise for me was Jenny Foxgloves, Nature/Ice Blast. Entangling Aura and Freeze Ray let me hold entire groups plus a boss very quickly. And then Ice Storm and Blizzard are perfect for taking them all down without anyone running away. Both sets work for bigger tougher groups where you're going to be in one spot for more than a few seconds, allowing you to make the most of Nature's recovery/regen patch.

I had a great time in Champions Online - some of my best MMO fun ever. CoH narrowly beats it due to: 1) better support powersets and 2) better teaming experience 3) more content to play through. But Champions was a great attempt at updating the CoH formula

I remember this being a "feature" way back on live, in that I could stick the Ragnarok: Chance for Knockdown purple in Crushing Field and spam it to keep knocking enemies over. (Back then procs had a flat chance of proccing, 33% in this case) These days, it's just annoying, and I agree it should be changed.

I've made Blasters with 45% Ranged Defence early-on, on a modest-ish budget. 6% - Tough (Steadfast IO and Gladiator's Armor IO) 5.5% - Weave (slotted) 2% - Hover or Combat Jumping (1 slot) 3.5% - Manouvres (slotted) That's 17%, you need another 28% from set bonuses. Maybe go with: 3.75% - full set of ThunderStrike (x3) 2.5% - 5 piece Sting of the Manticore (x1) 3.75% - full set of Mako's Bite (x2) 4% - full set of Artillery (x2) (Gymnastics adds another 2% or so) The Blaster IO sets will also help if you've got enough money for them. You'll lose some opportunities for Recharge bonuses or other goodies. On more expensive builds I've been able to cap Defence to Ranged and Melee (Touch of Death, Unbreakable Guard and Obliteration) while taking a Resistance epic armor.

I have to admit I quite like Sonic Resonance. It's a set I play when I feel like I haven't been teaming enough. 🙂 I've done: - Sonic/Water Defender - Sonic/Radiation Defender (ultimate offensive debuffer, loved this one!) - Earth/Sonic Controller Adding 55% Resistance to everything except Psi to the whole team is huge, considering you're adding to everyone's existing resistances, and often capping people. I always got the feeling it was balanced with Sonic Blast, and came out underperforming compared to the overperforming blast set. When your blast set debuffs resistance better than your primary, something's up. If I could change it... 1) Sonic Siphon needs to do something else as well. Maybe a -Def debuff, which would allow us to slot Achilles Heel in there? Maybe add a radius to it like the Poison debuffs got? At the moment it often feels like a waste of animation time. Even just up the value of the debuff a bit, but make it more than a single target, no other effects version of debuffs many other sets get. Time and Pain, for example, get a once-per-spawn-with-good-recharge AoE -Def/-Res, whereas Sonic gets to ping at individual targets and still deliver less -Res if you account for the Achilles proc. 2) The Psi-hole kind of sucks, and feels very Issue 5. Clarity needs something else. Give Clarity a big +Psi Resist, 30% base maybe?

This sounds like it could be fun! I found a cool trick on my Symphony/Kinetics character (also combining Kinetics with a Cone heavy set) and it worked really well. Take Combat Teleport and set up binds to move in and out of combat quickly. I did: /bind q "powexeclocation target Combat Teleport" to close in on enemy ready to Transfuse/Transfer/Fulcrum /bind e "powexeclocation back:30 Combat Teleport" to back away ready to fire off cones.

Yeah, agreed. I'd absolutely worry about that for my own defence, since I solo sometimes and would like to halve my incoming damage when I do. Teammates defence values are less under your control, and I suppose I've relaxed a bit in thinking that my Defender is going to be the only source of buffs on a team. There's probably someone else running Manouvres on a Task Force team, or people are hovering or running Combat Jumping, or have their own set bonuses or something, making 40% as good as 45%. (Or you rock up and there's already a Cold Dom and Time Manip and everyone's at 70%+ Defence. That's happened often enough to me :D) And I see your point about the early access to Kismet, tidge. Nice thinking!

I'd swap the slotting on Dispersion Bubble and Manouvers. If you're going to underslot one of them, Manouvers has much smaller base values for Defence. (3.5% vs 10%) And the underslotting of ally shields will only drop ally's defence by... 5% or so? You're still going to be protecting your team really well despite the "selfish" build 🙂

I really do wish there was an alternate animation for Force Bomb 😄 I'm going to have to experiment with Rune of Protection for the Resistance Bonus. It's got a fixed uptime of 1/3, but there's got to be some interesting mileage in it either for mega-Resistance Brutes (one of my other hobbies!) or a Resist focused Defender with Rune, Epic Armor, maybe with Sonic Resonance or Pain Dom..? Hmmm...

Hey tidge! I had a FF/Beam Defender a while back, and like you didn't take the Fighting pool and took Damping Bubble, and it all worked out rather well. My biggest question with your proposed powers is what are you getting from Sorcery? Often people build towards Rune of Protection for the mez protection, but you already have Dispersion Bubble giving you that all the time. I'd probably swap that pool out for Flight and Hover and free up a power pick. I found Aid Other really useful - your allies leak health very slowly with your Force Fields, and there have been plenty of times on teams when someone's dying slowly and I've patched them up with it. And that can hold your Preventative Medicine proc. (And Aid Other visually matches Beam Rifle as sci-fi equipment) You're missing Repulsion Bomb, which does area -Res debuff and knocks everyone over, so its a great opener on teams. (And take the FF +Rech proc, which makes your nuke and Aim come up faster). Its biggest downside is a long animation, and it looks like you're throwing a telekinetic beachball. 🙂 And you're missing Aim. Add in the Gaussian Build Up proc and this typically gives you +130% damage for your nuke. The extra +80% damage will trigger 90% of the time in Aim or Build Up, and only lasts 5 second, but it boosts your nuke. I'd been skipping Aim but respecced a number of Defenders when we were allowed to drop our Tier 1 blasts, and really noticed the additon of Aim with this proc. I'd drop the Leviathan Mastery Pool. Charged Armor and Power sink are great epic powers. Charged Armor protects vs Electric (very common) rather than Cold (uncommon), and Power Sink is the best end recovery tool for a FF Defender I've found. I've tried Victory Rush and always been a bit disappointed. Mu Mastery gets you these two very early, but Elec Mastery also gives you Thunderstrike, which is always fun with a KB to KD and the FF +Recharge in it. That's my 2c. Happy bubbling! You'll be a huge help to your teams whatever you choose! 🙂

I use the P2W Defence Buff to get Mag 4 status protection on all my "squishies", and it's utterly game-changing! (I really feel it when it runs out mid-mission). It costs (1000 * level * level) per hour. You can pick up 8 hours at level 1 for 8,000 inf, which usually lasts me till the early to mid 20's, so refreshing it for another 8 hours costs 4-5 million. Another refresh at level 40 maybe costs 12-13 million and gets me to 50. So less than 20 million while I'm levelling. At level 50 it's 2.5 million per hour, and I tend to refresh it for particular task forces, knowing that it'll pay for itself with the merits I earn. One of the downsides is that you do feel the clock ticking when you log in. It also gives you a decent defence buff and some resistance. https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Defense_Amplifier

In response to your analysis of +Damage vs -Res in the original post: Characters typically run around at +100% damage anyway due to slotting. Add on top of this Blaster Defiance (maybe +50%) and Brute Fury (+150% ish) and bonuses from Aim, and Build Up for the big damage events like nukes and it may be more like +200% or +300% Adding 62.5% from Painbringer (for example), gets diluted by this to change your damage from 300% to 362.5%, which is only a 20% increase in terms of how much damage the enemy takes. -Res on the other hand mulitplies this base. So a character with +200% damage attacking an enemy with -30% res does 260% base damage. (200 * (100 + 30)/100) On a typical decent PUG Task Force team, you'll maybe have two other support characters doing -30% Res to enemies on average for 160% damage. Adding another set of this yourself increases team damage to +190%. And the way that resistance resists resistance debuffs means that -30% Res always means an enemy takes 30% more damage whatever their resistance. In short, -X% resistance debuff is typically worth +2X% damage, or more.

I posted about this in the Brutes forum, after making an Electric Armor Brute who hit 90% to six types (not Negative and Toxic). I'm still not sure if you could hit 90% to everything. But there's lots of numbers in my post that may help guide you. Here's some numbers where you 3-slot every resistance power and Tough, and add in the Shield Wall and Reactive Defence IOs, P2W buffs and Base Empowerment buffs. You can see the shortfalls you have to make up with set IOs. Tanker slotted with Shield Wall/Reactive Def IOs, P2W and Base Empowerments Powerset S/L F C E N Psi Tox Electric Armor 99.5 75.8 75.8 146.9 67.9 75.8 20.5 Fire Armor 91.6 162.7 36.3 67.9 67.9 20.5 83.7 Dark Armor 91.6 67.9 67.9 52.1 83.7 99.5 52.1 Rad Armor 91.6 75.8 32.35 91.6 75.8 44.2 99.5 Bio Armor 60 20.5 20.5 20.5 20.5 20.5 60 Willpower 79.75 20.5 20.5 20.5 20.5 20.5 52.1 Invulnerability 107.4 52.1 52.1 52.1 52.1 52.1 52.1 Electric Armor looks like your best bet still, although there's not a great chance still of closing the gap with Negative and especially Toxic.

(This is a discussion on making Brutes (and Tankers) where you're chasing damage resistance as your primary goal. These will not necessarily be the best builds ever. 🙂) I normally default to making "tough squishies" - Defenders and Blasters with good defences through IOs and the Fighting pool. For a change I decided to make a super-tough resistance-based Brute, and was amazed with the results. By level 46, Optimadam (Elec Melee/Elec Armor) had 90% resistance to all Damage types except Toxic and Negative! As well as the sheer joy of seeing numbers turn blue in my Combat Attributes, this plays really well. I feel like Wonder Man from the Avengers, like I'm made out of indestructible energy and literally nothing can hurt me. Unlike Defence, Resistance really has no counter, since resistances resist resistance debuffs. You're taking 10% normal damage, but even if you get your resistance debuffed, you're still talking 10% of what you would without any resistance. (I intend to test this theory fully in Gaussian's arc, which is heavy with res-debuffing Longbow enemies) Defence based characters tend to take less damage and ignore most debuffs to boot, but have many counters such as To Hit buffs (Nemesis, Devouring Earth) or Defence debuffs (Arachnos, Praetorian Clockwork, Earth Thorn Casters etc) This got me thinking about the numbers for other resistance based sets. The Tanker values look like this, with all resistance-granting powers and Tough taken: Tanker Base values Powerset S/L F C E N Psi Tox Godmode Electric Armor 50 35 35 80 30 35 0 Fire Armor 45 90 10 30 30 0 40 Dark Armor 45 30 30 20 40 50 20 Rad Armor 45 35 7.5 45 35 15 50 20 Invulnerability 55 20 20 20 20 20 20 70 Willpower 37.5 0 0 0 0 20 0 30 (Fire Armor assumes two Toxic res boosts from Healing Flames are active) Slotted with 3 SO's or equivalent (x1.58) they look like this: Tanker Slotted values Powerset S/L F C E N Psi Tox Godmode Electric Armor 79.0 55.3 55.3 126.4 47.4 55.3 0.0 0.0 Fire Armor 71.1 142.2 15.8 47.4 47.4 0.0 63.2 0.0 Dark Armor 71.1 47.4 47.4 31.6 63.2 79.0 31.6 0.0 Rad Armor 71.1 55.3 11.9 71.1 55.3 23.7 79.0 31.6 Invulnerability 86.9 31.6 31.6 31.6 31.6 31.6 31.6 110.6 Willpower 59.3 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 31.6 0 47.4 And Brutes, getting 75% of Tankers values look like this with all powers slotted (and Regen added in for comparison): Brute Slotted values Powerset S/L F C E N Psi Tox Godmode Electric Armor 59.3 41.5 41.5 94.8 35.6 41.5 0.0 0.0 Fire Armor 53.3 106.7 11.9 35.6 35.6 0.0 47.4 0.0 Dark Armor 53.3 35.6 35.6 23.7 47.4 59.3 23.7 0.0 Rad Armor 53.3 41.5 8.9 53.3 41.5 17.8 59.3 23.7 Invulnerability 65.2 23.7 23.7 23.7 23.7 23.7 23.7 83.0 Willpower 44.4 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 23.7 0.0 35.6 Regen 32.6 14.8 14.8 14.8 14.8 14.8 50.4 83.0 (Regen assumes 2 Toxic res boosts from Reconstruction are active) Each set typically has good S/L, a hole in one type and a strong exotic type covered. Psionic resist was Dark Armor's thing, but crept into the modern sets too. And Electric Armor for some reason gets better resist values in its main toggles. I'd say that Electric is the set to go for if you want to try this yourself. Other common sources of resists: Shield Wall unique: +5% to all resists Reactive Defence Scaling resists unique: +3% to all resists at all times, increases to 13% by 0 health. These two uniques are a must have - put them in Weave or Combat Jumping or whatever defence power you might have. P2W Vendor Defence Buff: +7.5% resists. Costs from 1000 per hour at level 1 to 2,500,000 per hour at level 50. Very nice if you can afford them (like me) Empowerment Buffs in Base: +5% per type for 90 minutes per damage type, just costs cheap salvage and planning. ZONE-8888 has a empowerment station, all it costs is common salvage and some forward planning. Orange pills: +10%/+15%/+20% - these are the cheapest and least desired of all inspirations, but great to have when you're closing in on the 90% mark as you level. Use them for AV fights or double spawns or other tricky situations. Tanker and Brute ATIO's Slotting a full set of each gives you the following bonuses, which increase to +12%/+6% at level 50 when you catalyse them. S/L F C E N Psi Tox Variable bonus Tanker ATIO 10.5 5.3 5.3 3.8 3.8 4.5 4.5 21.0 Brute ATIO 9.8 4.5 4.5 4.5 4.5 0.0 0.0 The Tanker ATIO unique also gives you up to +21% resistance to all (3 stacks of 7%) while you fight, but this wont help with a first alpha, or be 100% reliable. As for other set bonuses... Smashing/Lethal You'll probably get a few of these in other sets you might slot anyway: Crushing Impact, Obliteration, Aegis, Preventative Medicine, Touch of Death, the ATIOs. For a Tanker, the two uniques and ATIOs get you to 90% for most armors, for a Brute you have to find another 20% on top of toggles, Tough and Brute ATIOs. This is pretty easily done, especially with the P2W bonuses. Energy/Negative This is one of the harder ones to get. Pages like this are handy (sort in order of descending bonus) https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Category:Sets_that_improve_Energy_Resistance Shield Wall at 4 pieces isn't a bad idea, since you're already slotting the unique. Tankers can pull the odd move of slotting Gauntleted Fist as 2 3-sets in different powers to get a great E/N res bonus twice (and forego the S/L bonus). This might be a good move for Invulnerability or Fire Armor looking to fill this gap? Fire/Cold Generally, the most abundant. A full set of Unbreakable Guard gives +5.25%. You can only do this once because of the unique +HP piece. Impervium Armor gives +3.75% per set at 5 pieces. The Winter pieces can pull 3% bonuses for very few slots. Purple sets nearly all give +6% for 3 pieces. Preventative Medicine gives +3% I put 2 Fury of the Gladiator and 3 Avalanche in Lightning Field to get +6.75% Fire/Cold. Not the best move, but if you're single-mindedly chasing resistances, it works. And Winter's Gift can give you +3.75% for just one extra slot in a travel power (but not a sprint) Toxic/Psi Sets often have a big bonus to this for six pieces, eg Crushing Impact and Doctored Wounds give +3.75%, Rare sets often give +4.5% Toxic/Psi for 6 pieces. Impervium Armor has the +4.5% bonus at six pieces, including the +6% Psi Resist piece, so each set gives you +4.5% v Toxic and +10.5% v Psi. You can slot this set 5 times! Aegis is similar, with its Psi Unique (only +5%) and a six set bonus. Any set with native Psi resistance can easily hit the 90% mark on Psi, even on a Brute. Most purple sets give +6% for six pieces, which counts as a different bonus from the Impervium +6's for the Rule of Five It's possible to build up say 4 * 10.5 (Impervium sets) + 3 * 6 (purples) + 5 (Aegis unique) + 8 (Shield Wall and Reactive Defences) = 73% Psi resist (and 44% Toxic) or so purely from uniques and set bonuses! You can probably push that to 90% vs Psi if you try, even on sets with zero natural Psi resist. My next project with all this will be a Regen Brute, with the following base targets to aim for, and then build on top of. S/L F C E N Psi Tox Regen w ATIO+Uniques+P2W 57.8 34.8 34.8 34.8 34.8 30.3 65.9 I've seen a number of threads about Regen Brutes recently, and I do like a challenge!

I've played a Human-only PB. The crash from Light Form isn't too bad. It'll drop your health to half-way, and you can instantly heal that using either of your self-heals every time it happens. In between crashes, let's just say that you very rarely need those self-heals, since you're rocking 85% resistance to everything except psionics. (This was on a perma-Light Form build)

I make characters based around concepts, and powersets that I havent tried yet. I have a big supergroup and a few other groups of characters with common backstories. I have 58 level 50 on Everlasting to date, about 10 of whom got incarnated. (I made a big spreadsheet recently) The rest get dropped when they graduate in favor of a new idea, after I've turned all their merits into converters and crafted through them to make 500 mill plus from each character. I usually have between 3 and 6 characters active at any given time. I favour team supporters who can look after themselves. Australian evenings are quiet, so I usually plan on some soloing. I'm fantastically rich in game due to crafting and selling rare IO's, so nearly everyone gets all three P2W boosters all the time, even at level 50. I buy attuned IO sets starting in the low 20s, be default focussing on Recharge and Def. My squishies (90%+ of my characters) often have capped defences by level 40. Sometimes I have build plans in notebooks on my desk, with details of my def/rech values at each level. I usually solo up to 20 or so via street-sweeping Atlas (with Sands of Mu, Plasmatic Taser etc to help), KR radios, street sweeping Outcast bosses in Steel and more radios. I do my Hero Tips at 20 to get Call to Justice, and start running or joining Weekly Task Forces with randos from there, mainly on weekend mornings when the US is awake. I love PUG TF's - sometimes you get 5 or more support powersets and blaze through, sometimes you get a less than perfect team and figure out how to make it work. I'll join PI power-levelling teams early if I think I can contribute at low levels eg buffing Defenders. I nearly always solo Dr Q a couple of times when it's the weekly, and maybe Justin Augustine too. I'm almost always in character. I have some long term RP friends. It usually takes me about 24 hours to get a character to 50. I can't believe I'm still playing almost every day 😄