Doomguide2005

Hmmm Probably the one who's been my main since created on Live then recreated here upon arrival on HC. My Claws/SR scrapper GRETA -001 (an acronym for Genetically Resequenced and Engineered for Tactical Assault). No epic/mastery as it has varied over the nearly 2 decades of her existence. Currently it's /Body but also spent time with both Darkness and Weapon Mastery. Stiff competition with Reyna Morningdew Empathy/Rad/Dark Defender and Seismic Susurrus an Earth/Storm/Stone Controller. But ultimately Greta would win out and she'd come looking to shred who ever made her friends vanish.

This ^ Once Heat Loss is decently slotted any endurance issues should be long gone. It is possible to make the Recovery portion perma but practically speaking it does not require it, you just need enough so you can't burn through your blue bar before it's ready again.

He's the first name to come to mind especially when paired with SR. And I've talked about what seems to be widespread belief SR is endurance heavy in other threads, which is utter rubbish. I'm in total agreement with @Thraxen and also think @biostem gives us a solid reason why the belief lingers on. And yes I also use Musculature (which also can help endurance modification (Radial Paragon) and hence recovery fyi). My prime Destiny choices would be Rebirth for a self heal and Barrier. And I'd say I use Rebirth as often to help teammates recover health after a big hit (exploding ITF crystals or after a whole bunch of the Council Mechs wake during the 3rd mission and decide they need to destroy a support character or two) as for my own benefit. My Judgment is Void both for the damage debuff and alternate damage type dealt by the nuke. I've never tried or particularly thought about using Cardiac for either Resistance or Endurance. By the time Cardiac comes into play any endurance issues are long gone and the Resistance is only going to help powers that can slot damage resistance IOs or sets. Won't help your scaling resistances, for example. As an Incarnate it takes facing a stupid amount of endurance drainers to make her end bar drop significantly, I'm probably in overkill territory for most content. And I'll stop rambling on.

I do not recall any unfortunately in part I suspect because we are talking the very early days of that technology as well as the changes you mention.

The one last itty bitty detail is rank accuracy isn't the only kind of accuracy buff out there. Powers themselves (both ours and theirs) also carry accuracy values above and below 1.0. Pretty much no way to effect those at all defense-wise. So someone like a +4 Antimatter with a horde of rad blasting robot minions also at +4 can start to get painful even to an SR despite 95% DDR. And minimum defense is -100. Which is where cascading defense failure can rapidly head.

As i don't for 99.99% on Live and here it's non-existent use the system what would happen if in the example abc and def had different star ratings. Or are they all only linked to the global. Sorry in advance if that's a truly dumb question. Edit: After all bad days or new pairings/AT could lead to different ratings handed out to the same player type issue

Calling @Linea who i know at least was a fan of DP. Not sure how much has changed over time but if remember correctly one of their earlier ITF solo characters was a DP. The damage is there at least enough that the difference between DP and AR shouldn't matter to someone looking strongly for style and flavor over pure raw min max.

I started on and my main ever since i3 is and was a scrapper. So way back when I first started trying blasters well I tended to get my glass cannon smashed in melee. Until, on my 3rd or 4th try, I rolled a Fire/Energy. Now she was more "blapper" than jouster but I did learn to joust with her as well (Hello Longbow Wardens) as foes/bosses got tougher in later levels. The pure raw damage of Fire Blast meant no way other than learning to kill, be killed or joust. No sleeps, no holds, no mez or KB outside the rather random stuns and KB of my melee attacks to help survive. Nothing but my melee secondary and learning how to move lay between me and floor tasting.

First off Huge fan of Combat Jumping. Virtually every character I have runs CJ. That said one of my recent characters, an Emp/Rad, is at times running Evasive Maneuvers and Fly and as @Outrider_01said it has immobilize protection as well and and gives me a great deal of aerial quickness and precise movements while in flight. Further I almost always run around at ground level with both off especially indoors to conserve end (even when my Aura is up). But it counters immobilize just fine, if I get "stuck" or it's to my advantage to get airborne I'll turn it on and typically become mobile again. She's just level 31 atm so it also wouldn't surprise me if I pick up CJ later in the build as it's so dang useful for ground movement and of course it can take an enormous number of unique and special IOs (as does Evasive Maneuvers). I'd also note Evasive Maneuvers defensive bonus applies out of combat whether you're airborne or on the ground. In short I've been quite happy with changing out CJ for Evasive Maneuvers plus Fly and typically by now I've grabbed CJ.

Outside a few lowbie TFs my Empathy/ Rad has currently solo'd to 31st. She avoids the majority of mez at this level by using two powers Cosmic Burst and Air Superiority. Knock of AS plus the stun of CB makes solo work at that level relatively calm so far. Add in a bit of kb protection for yourself plus Auras when up and things are good.

Yes the Trinity existed. Still exists. Needed or most effective or efficient perhaps when Tankers could herd entire maps to a dumpster to nuke to oblivion with 6-slotted damage vs at max +3 mobs but given the speed 8 Fire/Rads or Fire/Kins sporting a dozen Imps a each might move through those mobs ... maybe the Tanker would actually be slower to arrive at the dumpster than all those crazed Controllers annihilated the last spawn. We'll never likely know and it certainly isn't true today. It's a very different game from back then.

This^ Is a good point. My main Controllers on HC are Plant/Cold, Ill/Traps and Earth/Storm and the extra damage for a single-target immobilize is dubious for the most part

Pretty much agree with all the above. I'd take the single target immobilize for early game if at all. Usually I'll just use the AoE for AVs while teaming. If I planned to take AVs solo I'd lean more towards the single target being included.

One of the primary ways my main got tricked out on Live (pre i21, since life, then computer issues knocked me out by then) is something no one has mentioned yet. I got her Glad proc, Shield Walls and other 'pricey' IOs for Hero Merits by running tip missions. It would actually take longer on HC than on Live where you completed 11tips (10 then the alignment) you ended up with 1 hero merit. Here you get 40 merits (instead of the 50 required for a hero merit) if I'm recalling everything correctly (both then and now). But it was definitely a way my minor league marketeer self made a buck to start acquiring pricey stuff on Live as well. Using hero merits i could solo and pretty much get anything I wanted. I purchased many LotG specials, at first using them then selling them on the market for fun and profit.

Not sure when you think this sort of game was ever required but it was long gone by late issue 3 and I doubt it ever was required. By early issue 4 of my 6 or so characters one was a Defender - Empathy/Dark Blast (Dark Lightning) and another was Cometfall, an Earth/Empathy - Controller. Neither fit the description of 'Healer' though both were capable enough using the healing powers neither relied on them. Right out the door she used and slotted her blasts and he definitely learned the power and utility of his CC powers. Within a short time I joined the Repeat Offenders SG and among their SGs was one of the original RO SGs an all Defender Empathy group ... nothing and I mean nothing slowed them down, most foes were basically speed bumps. Ever use a Nuke back then and have all your toggles drop with all your end vanish. More than once I let loose with Atomic Blast looked down at my power trays to see what needed toggling back on only to see an endurance bar at 3/4 full climbing rapidly with all my toggles still running (Tactics and Assault required plus other optional powers). This was long before IOs and before even CoV existed. If anything was required it was well, nothing, after about the 4th Empath, was needed or required. Helped perhaps, but needed not a chance. You could have dropped a dozen mobs on a team of 8 and a few seconds later and all you did was increase the xp rate. Ever try to kill something at or above the defense soft cap that was also at the regeneration hard cap along with healing of HA/HO plus silly amounts of recharge and mez protection? I'll be moving along now.

Another thought beyond options are usually a good thing ... I'm on my Emp/Rad running with a team in the Hollows (so lowbies) and I was exemped. Well the Tanker was still lower than much of the party. The animation was my first clue he didn't yet have his PB yet (or gaps in the click protection existed after a few levels). Now obviously the foes don't, far as I know, use procs but various animations are a visual clue for your teammates that a buff or debuff is effecting a potential target which can effect a decision to use or not use one of yours. Not as important solo but clearly a lack of visual indicator can lead to a delay or lack of a buff being used.

Probably most of the time ... until Hardmode vs some foes or when a Paragon Protector hits MoG or Elude or Cimerorans start stacking defenses or, or. Personally when it comes to hitting stuff I'd like to smack stuff with overkill. Ya know so I can still hit the PP in MoG while debuffed by a swarm of CoT Spectrals kind of overkill. But as Nemu points out adding a few extra procs in the build might be good too while keeping the damage up.

Oh I so feel that! They hadn't a prayer. The real question was could I score no escapes 😁

Another large factor in the Sonic Assault (or any strong resistance debuffs) set is procs and resistance debuffs are the only was to further increase damage output past the damage caps of the ATs

Probably one of my favorite set pairings and probably top 3 if not favorite Controller pairing. Give 'em hell.

Yes 😜

I'm in the the need for the Holy Trinity never existed in this game. I give you Green Machine as but one example. A full team of SO only builds of Empaths could have existed from near as I know from day one even if Green Machine didn't itself exist for a number of issues. And they could and did devastate any foes in their path. The RO Network's all Defender (and Controller) SG teams existed in part as examples of non-trinity teams many issues before IOs even were a thing. They all pretty much could curb stomp any foes they faced.

There's also going not too far back large difference in how readily (especially pre IO now thinking on it) our foes can strip defense from characters. Only SR possessed a significant ability to not get debuffed (i.e. DDR) by the multitude of commonly encountered defense debuffs available to our foes. Cascade defense failure is thing even now. But resistance always resists further lower by it's original value. A Tanker sitting at 90% resists to start will be 90% resistant to every incoming resistance debuff to matter how many or how often those debuffs come. Making a cascade failure of resistance essentially impossible. Resistance debuffing foes were until recently also far less common (and probably still are).

I'll let others comment on the power questions as my experience with both Gravity and Time is virtually non existent. Overpower is a 20% chance to add 1 mag to a power. Essentially giving you a chance to one shot chance to hold a boss for example (going from a typical 3 to 4 magnitude).

Just going to point out "just 5%" could be a large difference in overall mitigation because of the way defense works. Going from 45% to 40% will, for example, double incoming damage. Running on a small team at +0 vs similarly small mobs it's probably not nearly so impactful as vs +4/×8's would be admittedly even though incoming damage would be doubled.