Doomguide2005

My concerns with both Earth and Ice would be damage, which is why Storm is so often used as stated above. Not very familiar with Time and I know the set can take procs for adding oomph but not sure if it's enough or not. Then again for teaming it should bring plenty of control and debuff to hold its own

Traps is very potent set. But its also rather difficult to play on a fast moving team ... lots of laying your trap(s), looking up to see the team moving to the next mob having obliterated 'your' mob. Steep curve (or tolerance) to learning how to use traps on such teams. On the other hand you'll be an enormous boon when fighting AV's, Monsters, GMs etc. Your debuffs are potent.

Yep as far as I know the conventional wisdom currently is the procs aren't really worth it. I'd probably lean towards 3 slots --> rech, defdebuff/rech, defdebuff/rech which will get some more defdebuff while hitting ED 'caps' for recharge.

While Quicksand isn't fantastic at higher levels/endgame it is very solid in the early levels. It has three things going for it. The defense debuff helps hitting, it's a patch you can use from behind cover (don't need los) and last don't under rate the slow. It can buy you time as powers recharge allowing you to stack mez while foes try to get to you/the team or just plain get away if you got more than you bargained for coming your way. I've never heard anyone say Earth Thorn Casters and their QS was anything pleasant, iirc they got nerfed precisely because of stacking QS 🤔.

I think Plant/Storm would be an excellent choice. As would Earth/Storm. Traps is also a great secondary especially for solo. Force Field Generator provides defense and perhaps more important while leveling mez protection.

Well I guess a better way to put it is not so much separate as the later weighs heavily on former so while you can discuss both individually the later has veto power. And even more so than Gaussian's you've made a good case why an alternate IO is probably a bad idea for Expedient Reinforcement. Both the +def and + rech are quite desirable and getting one makes getting the other more 'costly' for a build. In this instance you'd be getting both without cost to obtaining the other.

Won't disagree, particularly about the value of +def. But I'd also say that's a separate discussion from the main idea of an alternate enhancement option for sets containing a unique IO.

Yeah can't imagine that would get too out of hand. After all there is the Rule of Five if nothing else.

I'm okay with the idea of the OP. Having an alternate IO for a set outside of the unique would be okay, just need to examine whether the 6 slotted bonus should also be unique for that set. The only issue there is 6 quad enhancements that also offer set bonuses is ... well wonky. Quad enhancement values effectively ignore exemplar effects (i.e. a level 50 quad values aren't typically effected at all until under 20, varies some by schedule), and added together provide far more total bonus. Though to be fair I'm not sure off of the top of my head how much more. But 2 def/rech (slotted in 2 slots of a power) is more bang for the buck than 1 def plus 1 rech in those 2 slots. And then still get the set bonuses!? Pretty sure that is a show stopper of significant proportions. Unless I'm misunderstanding the line of thought with the 2 posts

This about a 1000 times over. Started one on Live, got to around 30th before Sunset (end usage was god awful). Restarted one here, the new sustain has so far made end a non-issue through the late 20's when my computer died. Absolutely a ton of AoE including several PBAOEs (Short Circuit, FSC, Hot Feet, Combustion, Burn, Blazing Aura, etc.)

Which blast secondary is your Stormy? Have you tried adjusting camera distance and angle, I've found they can help with seeing what you do if further out and up (basically looking over the fx in your face) My Storms on HC (and most on Live) are Controllers. They rarely used/use Hurricane. Mine usually focus on stuns and tend to get into melee range. Hurricane would usually be counterproductive. That said Hurricane does have a steep learning curve and is definitely not everyone's cup of tea. Experiment with builds that rarely if ever use Hurricane rather than give up on the set would be my recommendation. Storm overall is very worth it.

And my favorite --> mez them first, at least on my Earth/Storm my opener when in line of sight (vs around a corner laying a patch) would be Stalagmites.

Threat is what determines when (or if) a critter will aggro and on whom. There was a post on the Live forums where Castle laid out the basic formula: Threat = Damage * Debuff Mod * AT mod * AI mod * Range mod * (TauntDurationRemaining * 1000) Each foe will have a list and will aggro on the highest threat on its list at a given moment. The AI mod and Range mod aren't well known by the player base. Much of this is pulled from the HCwiki (in turn that's pulled from the archived paragon wiki).

@InvaderStychThere are some mobs where the AI does have them move to range and attack from there (such as Longbow Eagles iirc) Frequently their better attacks are ranged rather than the more common melee attacks/attackers. Any foes or specific enemies you see doing this?

Two thoughts: First at least initially you can slot Karma KB protection IOs in any defense power. Can always respec it out later. Second I'd go with 4 pts kb protection. That's plenty sufficient to see you through until you take Bo Ryaku. Very few attacks deliver more than 4. And those that do usually exceed 8. Once you get Bo Ryaku you shouldn't really need any protection besides Bo Ryaku.

Attack? I said search ... or has Rusty got something to hide *glares menacingly* widow claws slowly extending, dripping venom.

@SuperPlyx That sounds like myth .. Or my Earth/Storm would constantly enter empty maps with no one home since outside of escort/hostage missions she's running Steamy Mist 24-7. I doubt the number spawning depends on the number of non-stealthed PCs vs total PCs in the bowl. That said a number of stealth powers also have negative threat levels attached, but again many of my stealthy characters run among other things Super Speed which has -threat and I've never noticed that having an effect on spawning in mission maps. I don't know offhand whether the -threat is suppressed along with the stealth.

Search "Attack Mechanics" on the HCwiki.

Well not everyone can fly, I mean how else do you get under the bridge to remove the explosives? Sheesh! 😜

As for the click mez, I noticed when I first returned to HC that PB allowed you to click it when mezzed. For quite a while ( as in many issues ago) I have not placed PB on auto, the fact it readily recharges before its duration ends meant I simply waited to be moving between spawns or whenever it was convenient so not to interrupt me while attacking. On occasion this meant I'd forget to click, an a attack would land and it would rudely bounce me across the map. Almost never would that mean getting mezzed ... and now if it did happen well I could use PB anyway. Point is I personally wouldn't worry about putting it on auto. Capped defense means it's a very rare occurrence and I'd much rather use it when it won't interrupt my assault even if it means the rare oops which is then 'on demand' eliminated by clicking PB. Put Hasten or something else more productive on auto.

I wonder if the Stealth also carries a -threat with it. Might explain your noticing a tendency to shed aggro.

Speaking of the diabolic, Bill Z recently posted in the Brute forums about Claws/** Thread title "SM/Claws with something"

Hide? (*runs off to check*). If this is a Scrapper there's no Hide power, that's for the Stalker secondary. Currently I can't look at or create builds in Mids', only have phone for internet access. Looks like your KB protection is comparatively late coming at 28th. Your positional defenses on the other hand come early especially compared to SR whose access to AoE defense is rather late. SR is what I'd consider as the closest 'natural' themed set along the same lines as Ninjitsu. You have modest DDR so are susceptible to cascade defense failure if you're up against heavy defense debuffs like Cimerorans. You have tools for both healing and end recovery. SR has no healing or recovery but has a DDR second to none (and essentially makes you immune) and its unique scaling resistance (more you get hurt the more resistance you have). Only the IO can allow others to mimic it (and it caps off at +13, well less than SR's, though the two will stack for SR) Got to run for now, back later.

Truth And one thing about Katana is Divine Avalanche. Find yourself getting in trouble via cascade failure because you're getting defdebuffs working DA into the chain would/could stop the cascade failure before it gets totally out of hand and hopefully let you turn it around or buy the time to gracefully get outta dodge (assuming you keep it in the build and of course the attacks are the right type)

Difficulty of creating such a scoring system aside (enormous and improbable), I'd say all ATs are in fact capable of dishing out and mitigating damage sufficiently for the vast majority of content. There are at least 2 threads in the defender forums with Empaths doing solo +4/×8 ITF runs. One of them is a 'Master of' run. And personally I'd just as soon run with a team of defenders anyway ... force (and fun) multiplication and all that. Judging (scoring) such a team would be added difficulty in any case because of force multiplication. You'd need to score both the individual and the synergy of the team. Something probably as difficult if not more so than finding the 'proper balance' of the game itself.