Doomguide2005

Choice should not be confused with difficulty. A controlled vs random critical seems to verge on being an oxymoron (or perhaps misnamed). Assassin's Strike or a 'true' Sniper attack are delivered on an unaware target at vital areas of a foe by an attacker who chooses when, where, and how to deliver the blow. A scrapper slashing, clawing, punching his way through a horde of foes isn't taking the time to line up an exacting shot (but every now and then ... ). The random flow of the fight make the crits also random. At least that's my mental image. YMMV and all that. That and non-random crits may make for choices, even interesting ones, in general removing randomness or increasing predictability reduce the challenge overall. Might be more appropriate to increase the crit chances as the character levels if something of this nature were desired. A more experienced, capable combatant is going to have a better 'feel' for the flow of a fight and how to influence things to generate better outcomes (i.e. more crits, faster defeats).

Unless it's different in PvP none of Kinetics powers do -recovery (Transfusion does a small amount -endurance. Transference does a modest amount of -endurance). Short Circuit however does considerable -recovery as well as a lesser amount of -end. A strong sapper build will do both quickly removing endurance then shutting down the ability to recover that endurance. Power Boosted SC fully enhanced gets rather ugly at PvE-side anyway. On a defender it's showing as around -70 endurance and -200% recovery in one of my Mids builds.

There is a real difference between -1000% and -1250% (-1000% is far easier to overcome). But you do have to work at it to deal with those numbers, builds would need adjusting (Heat Loss, Speed Boost, AM, etc.), certain ATs and sets would suddenly be much more valued especially in the endgame (hello Empathy). Geas of the Kind Ones would become much more valuable --> it has iirc a +1000% recovery boost, it's how my Claws/SR scrapper dealt with Elude's crash back in the day. And, of course, my Green Machine Empaths would love it ... they made a laughing stock out of the crash (crash, what crash?).

One thing I don't see mentioned is Traps (and Force Fields) both have a self included mez protection in the set.

Yeesh, trying to find the contact in Founders while dodging snipers with no vidiot map or anything ...

Aim I'd probably keep for two reasons. Gaussian's proc in Aim will fire when you use Aim giving you a great deal more control over when it happens vs Tactics. As I understand it Tactics checks every 10 seconds which might be between mobs or while your nuke is recharging or maybe when you do need it. Second I had a lot of fun with PBU (which would require a different mastery or alt build). PBU+Aim+Tactics does some silly good things to your To Hit. Want to hit Mako after he hits Elude or that Paragon Protector after he MoGs with Benumb etc.. You'll ruin their day.

I'll be interested in seeing the feedback. Quite a while back but post IOs I ran one on Justice up to the early 20's. Found teaming mandatory for this set pairing (as some one who solo'd an Emp/Rad/Dark on Invincible). The masochist in me wants to try again and see if running solo works better these days. Teamed just fine but sans team it was god-awful painful to kill anything before my blue bar vanished.

No direct experience with it or Nature but on looks alone it have to be a really cruddy mule before I wouldn't take it. It looks by the numbers provided above by @5099y_74c05to be a Choking Cloud analog which if I'm remembering correctly pulses every 2 seconds refreshing the duration vs stacking the individual holds (i.e. the mag 1 and mag 2 stack, but the mag 1 merely refreshes if the mag 1 occurs again). Not enough knowledge about procs but I'd be looking 4 basilisk (recharge) plus a Lockdown proc or full set of Lockdown for range defense (depending on my overall end use) or something similar to what @Corythiasuggests above if my end usage was rough overall. Minimum I'd go (endred plus 2 end/hold IOs).

This plus grabbing a select few unique IO's such as Miracle, Numina's, Kismet +6% can make a significant difference while leveling.

What @nihiliisaid. I can remember doing one with my SG once long time back on Live and our team composition ah ... lacked. We'd tried 'everything' including loading up on reds. No dice. Finally ended up swapping to an alternate build on my Claws/SR scrapper which had Darkness Mastery-->Petrifying Gaze. Spamming that was enough.

They're just checking ... honest 🤪

If it's a problem I can see fixing it. But i just 'tab target' so I can't say I've noticed an issue.

I'm pretty sure the Owls and Felines are in it together. *goes back to reading the Owluminati minutes of the last assembly*

Which combo of Acc, Endred, Rech and Damage (and Other) works best is going to strongly depend on difficulty level, AT, whether you team and the players taste (or tolerance) in speed through mission and dealing with endurance management. Ask yourself do I like or expect to move quickly thru missions (Brute vs Defender?). Is the set or several of the powers inherently accurate (Archery, many Holds?) or provide defense debuffs (Earth Control, Assault Rifle?)? Do I really hate missing or waiting for endurance to refill? Are things like Beginner's Luck still in play? Team vs Solo? Add to this list as you learn new sets (or relearn old ones). How they're answered will go a long way towards helping decide which slotting scheme will work for you on a particular character.

The one that jumps out is the Winter event.

It all depends on the build and/or the sets (and as you point out, even their level) can make a difference. At 50 my Claws/SR tends to have more health than many Brutes, but she's also almost at the hard cap for a scrapper ... which is substantially less than a Brutes cap. That said the biggest difference I'm thinking isn't health but resistance cap when looking at your average scrapper vs brute. Edit: The health cap probably really only matters in high levels on an IO build similar to mine on a Armor set with Dull Pain or similar power available. Otherwise there are so many other variables contributing to health it's kind of a wash, brutes having a small but definite edge which can explode when you tack on Dull Pain or something like a Frostworks buff.

And died scant seconds later as my claws hit him (and maybe the next bunch of dead guys, Focus, Shockwave) right between his cowardly shoulders.

Can't use Mids at the moment (dead computer, only phone for internet) but on page 4 currently is a thread about Katana/SR with a solid build entitled "Kat/SR First Attempt". In general it's a fairly common build request if you look back a number of pages you should find some.

Perhaps refiguring to include the new Teleport pool? I've seen at least one mention of someone using it to 'hop' in and out of melee to get around issues with cones vs melee.

500% vs 400% Corruptor damage cap vs Defender cap. 0.65 defdebuff or what's roughly left of the debuff difference between a Defender -25 vs -20 Corruptor vs a lvl 54 AV Or what everyone else is saying, try it ... a Kinetic of some sort to take advantage of that damage cap might indeed be the thing.

The difference between Controllers and Dominators is basically their AT modifier and their secondary power sets as they, to the best of my knowledge, have the same primary sets.

And the 3rd when you unlock your Alpha at 50 iirc.

Must have been another thread on topic but as I mentioned there if you are using the same character name as on Live you are right there are probably in violation as that character and name belong to NCSoft per the Terms we agreed to logging in on Live. Just ask Jim Butcher (published author) who named his character after HIS own copyrighted character from the Dresden Files and had to argue with NCSoft that it was his to avoid becoming "generic123456".

This. Real numbers, Mids', combat attributes all came along well after issue 0. When I started in i3 I had no clue what my defense actually was. If I got into trouble, I hit Elude, my defense got "higher". How high I had no real clue. And those descriptive terms were well known to be a bit ... colorful, varying from one attack to the next just how much damage 'moderate' or 'superior' might do from one set to another. Now HC could go back and edit it all for consistency but do you really want the team spending their limited time on that vs a 'huge' number of other requests like new powers, missions, content and all the rest?

This game is very forgiving of 'sub-optimal' builds. If speed, build vs concept, minmax performance, were required to succeed we wouldn't have man builds, pool boy, petless Master Minds, pure Healers ad infinitum in this game. One of its glorious strengths is its utter flexibility to choice and style. Go for it and have fun.