MonteCarla

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!

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