MonteCarla

Electric Armor on Brutes is the best set to build for Resistance. I wrote up a big guide on building Resistances for Brutes way back. You can easily hit the 90% to Smashing, Lethal (needs Tough and Brute ATIOs) and Energy (just happens) and can also reach it for Fire/Cold and Psionic if you go for it. I found this to be a lot of fun and ended up with a supremely tough character who's defences would never get bypassed by debuffs, unlike Defence based characters. You won't need Recovery bonuses thanks to Energize and Power Sink - getting their Recharge up via set bonuses is a better bet than trying to enhance Recovery itself.

I've played Sonic Resonance to 50 twice on Defenders. Here's my 2c: You've picked the right powers to skip. It's one of the worst support sets for solo-ing, as it gives you +18% Resistance and Mez Protection from Sonic Dispersion, Sonic Siphon and Liquefy. So hopefully you're planning a team build here. It's not a great set overall, and I think this got overlooked early on in I5 because Sonic Blast was so good. Both have been balanced a bit by the HC team though, so we're in a better place. Sonic Siphon - 1 slot wonder with Acc is fine. Clarity - 1 slot with End redux or recharge? Disruption Field - 1 slot for end redux (maybe 2?) Liquefy - slot for -To Hit and Recharge. Cloud Senses is the premium set here because it gives you +Recharge and +Ranged Def Sonic Barrier, Sonic Haven and Sonic Dispersion - Put the Steadfast Protection and Glad. Armor uniques in here for +6% Defence And choosing from here: https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Category:Sets_for_improving_Resist_Damage - Unbreakable Guard gives you +Melee Def at 4 slots - Aegis gives you +Area Def at 3 and 5 slots - Impervious Skin gives you +5% Recharge at 5 slots. The low slot demand on your secondary means you can spare the slots for your blasts. - Corrupter uniques are worth slotting. You could split Scourging Blast across 2 powers to get the +Recharge bonus twice. - Single target blasts: Thunderstrike gives +Ranged Def for 6 slots, Annihilation gives +Recharge for 5 slots - Cone Attacks: Artillery gives +Ranged Def for 6 slots, Positrons Blast gives +Recharge for 5 slots, and increases the range of the cone - Nuke can take Obliteration for +Recharge and +Melee Def for 6 slots - Shriek can take Stupefy, but it's got good damage now, so its better slotted as a damaging attack - Siren's Song can take Call of the Sandman unique for a fairly reliable self-heal as a gimmick, maybe on top of the Posi set. Sonic Attack doesn't take any special damage procs beyond the Knockback ones in Shockwave.

I never knew about this, it sounds way cool! Looks like the big hurdle is defeating the Seed of Hamidon for Germinator Terminator. Is that like a whole league event, or could a single team pull it off? https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Between_Realities_Badge

An example: Storm Blast covers Smashing, Cold and Energy Fire Manipulation covers Fire and Lethal Force of Will pool gives you Psychic Experimentation gives you Toxic Soul Mastery for Negative Energy And of course, damage procs can add extra damage types in there if you skip some of these. I'm not sure how you'd put all this together into a coherent build in terms of either game mechanics or concept, but it can be done.

Did the CoT or any of your teammates have +To Hit? That can rip through SR's defence and ignores defence debuff resistance.

I've found the -Recovery to be really important. Short Circuit gives 10 s of -100% Recovery Thunderous Blast gives 20s of -100% Recovery. I think the purple patch reduces the amount of -Recovery rather than the duration, so a team of Short Circuit-ers should have no trouble keeping the enemies floored at over -100% Recovery. It does need re-applying, sure, but its also part of your AoE attack chain, so you'll be using it anyway when its up. I have tried Electric Control twice and it does drain really well too, and provide mass immobilise to stop the drained enemies from just running off. Conductive Aura mostly makes up for the lack of -Recovery, but may allow a sneaky shot in between pulses, which Short Circuit strictly forbids for those 10 seconds.

Hmmm... In an ideal situation, your superteam can run in and drain each group of enemies to zero with one hit, and are then safe to take them down as quickly as possible with actual damage before they scatter. So let's start with Electrical Blast for everyone, with Short Circuit (big -End and -Recovery) slotted for End Mod first, damage second. That does 70% drain, so 35% drain against +4's, so you'd want three people with this powerset to run in and alpha. Slot your other powers for damage first, end drain as extra. Short Circuit has a long animation, so give someone Force Fields to keep you all safe while you do this. A Defender is ideal here as they can soft cap their team mates by themselves. You can now all attack, and take advantage of the Shocked mechanic to get boosted damage. May as well have a Kineticist in there to boost everyone's damage while you're at it. Make them a Corrupter maybe. And then add Blasters or Corrupters with -Res debuffs. Maybe swap Force Fields out for two Time Defenders with Farsight, so everyone gets full damage boosts and rotating -Res debuffs? So 1 x FF/Elec Blast Defender 1 x Elec Blast/Kin Corrupter Elec/whatever Blasters Or 2 x Time/Elec Blast Defenders 1 x Elec Blast/Kin Corrupter Elec/whatever Blasters The End Drain will do less than stacking support sets will, but it'll still be fun to watch the blue bars drop. And maybe add a Elec/Something Controller in there to lay down Electric Fences to stop the enemies running around once they're drained. I think the Repeat Offenders used to have an End Drain team, called "Don't Whiz on the Electric Fence"? Or did I just imagine that? 🙂

My first character way way back in Issue 5 was a Fire/Fire Blaster, and I tried to solo her by street-sweeping, and it was horrible. I do remember watching with envy as an Energy/Energy Blaster took on a Council Lt in Steel Canyon and knocked him down the street while obliterating his hit point bar. Shortly after, there was my Elec/Elec Blaster who I did get to 50, mainly by solo street-sweeping, and had a pretty good time doing so. The big difference, of course, is the active defence provided by knockback or Tesla Cage. Fire Blast is rough because it doesn't have any hard mez at all. You've got Positron Cage to help out. Its easier these days of course. Grab Plasmatic Taser from the P2W vendor. This gives everyone a good AoE hard mez for the early levels, as well as an extra AoE with good damage. On a Fire Blaster you could keep using this all through your career. Use IOs, Fighting, Manouvers and Hover to get capped defences to Ranged first, then other positions. I've done this on a few Blasters (including a Fire/Atomic) and it rocks! Or try to get to 32% Defence, so a small purple pill caps you. Lean on your crowd control powers in primary, secondary and epic pools to become a sort of reverse Dominator - mostly damage with enough mez to keep yourself alive.

My most successful End drainers were: Elec/Energy Aura/Elec Sentinel Rad/Elec Defender with attacks slotted primarily for end drain rather than damage as an experiment. Both had something to stop drained enemies running away - Electrified Fences and Choking Cloud - which is a big part of making this work.

I'd go */Energy Dominators with the Energy Mastery Pool - that gives you most of the primary and secondary powers of an En/En blaster with a side of controls. Gravity is probably the best primary with it's fairly unobtrusive pet and "space-y" powers like Wormhole and Dimension Shift. Earth is great if you want to lean into Molecular re-arrangement and transmutation. And En/En Blaster gets Nova and higher damage, and can be built for capped defences if you lean into it with Fighting and Manouvers and so on. I can attest to that feeling very cosmic too.

OMG that is such a good idea, rebinding the keys instead of using macros so I can still see the Recharge! (I've been stashing the power icons in tray 4 so I could watch them, sort of off-center, which hasn't been working out great) I also didn't know about powexeclocation target cursor as an option. Thanks, Projector!

I was getting a Synapse Task Force together at the weekend when a Mapserver event spawned in Skyway. They killed me and a couple of teammates once the Giant Monster spawned in. And then I had to chase Synapse around as he attacked it to get the Task Force to start. And he's fast! Yeah... I won't miss it. 😄

My current main is a TA/A Defender! For survivability, I've got: - 4 pieces of Dark Watcher in Flash Arrow, giving me ED-capped -To Hit debuffs. Always open with that. - Poison Gas Arrow does a big -Damage debuff - Ice Arrow and my epic hold (Dominate) both have the Lockdown +2 Hold Mag proc in them, so they nearly always hold bosses. - Ranged defence set bonuses to stack with the -To Hit from Flash Arrow and Hover to keep me out of melee. (She's a faerie archer) For doing damage: - Aim with Gaussian's Build up proc - Rain of Arrows and Oil Slick Arrow, Judgement nuke for heavy AoE - Ice Arrow and Dominate have lots of damage procs stuffed in them - Blazing Arrow and the snipe make up my level 50 attack chain. - Net Arrow and Disruption Arrow (with a targeting bind) for -Res - Achilles Heel proc in Acid Arrow for a bit more -Res She's like a 6/10 for effectiveness. The improvements to Flash Arrow have really helped the set since I last played.

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!