Doomguide2005

Gale- useful pretty much as you describe. Particularly in the early game as Storm Summoning is in general a late bloomer though recent changes to when you get your powers makes this less true. Its soft control early before Storm gets its later offensive powers can be very useful. O2 Boost- I like it and would rarely skip it even at for a higher level character. Especially useful vs Endurance Drainers it self stacks. It also helps boost the targets Perception (cause everyone loves being Blinded right). Again self stacking. On top of the other benefits. All of which are self stacking. Still I wouldn't call it mandatory by any means just more useful than often thought to be. Snow Storm- Another useful but not mandatory power. Greater utility in the early game and somewhat dependent on what it's paired with particularly outside of the Corruptor AT. Ice/Storm for example has a ton of slow and recharge debuff built in leaving only the minus Fly. Steamy Mist- Among the powers I would never skip. I am almost always looking to 6 slot and get into the DR for its buffs. Whether I use special IO's depends a fair bit on what other choices I might be making that effect options for placement of those IOs. Freezing Rain- Another I would never recommend skipping. I rarely use procs there as they would likely fire poorly at best. It's an AoE and I am going to push the recharge with my slotting almost always to minimize the cooldown on the power. I might if I have slots to spare (an exceedingly rare thing) drop and Achilles resist debuff in there. Hurricane- So far I usually taking it but use it very situationally. It's a much a mule and used infrequently as I'm not particularly skilled with it. I'm also usually on a Controller with my Stormies so have lots of other options. More comments in my other post. Thunderclap- much more skippable on a Corruptor. Again I'm usually on a Controller often an Earth/Storm and I'll stack TC with Stalagmites topping it off with Fissure. Throw in containment and the whole mob is often immobilize and stunned. But keep in mind your primary. Dark Blast has the often maligned Dark Pit. That's a pair of mag 2 stuns at your disposal which when stacked is a stunned Boss. On teams that's probably slow and not worth it, but solo or a duo (small teams) could be strong overall mitigation. The big Guns- never skips without really good reasons in my book. And on a Corruptor with no AoE -kb yes to slotting a kb to kd proc and any AT will benefit from the FF proc. One cautionary note on Tornado. You'll find an Immobilize of almost any sort useful when fighting AVs while using Tornado. I've seen it turn Recluse in the old Statesman's TF turn into healthy competition for Romulus running all over the map. It's a mag 10 afraid that does self stack. Edit: @ExeErdnaYeah I would totally agree. Teams in general dispatch even +4 foes quite rapidly in the endgame. Even a skilled user is going to have trouble even remotely clumping all the foes up before they are long dead. Basically especially for higher level teams it power is overall greatly diminished by the combo of kill speed and defense of high level teams in particularly.

I think Hurricane suffers and opinions are so mixed for two reasons. First as pointed out above it does have steep learning curve to use without messing with melee combat or causing foe scatter. But I've also seen skilled users keep a whole spawn debuffed and whiffing clumped along a wall (not in a corner or deadend) without disrupting melee. Which brings us to the second issue. In a world of high defense if not capped the value of that applied debuff loses a whole lot of its impact especially in light of the above (required skill). Back in the day when for even many melee sets reaching high defense was unusual a skilled use of Hurricane was a game changer. Now that debuff is all too often utter overkill on teams given the downside. Something it shares with powers like Empathy's Recovery Aura replaced by special IOs and set bonuses.

I like Fold Space but that may be the early influence when the Rad/Fire team started using it. Yoink and everything was yanked into Choking Cloud(s), frequently accompanying Rain of Fire(s), Fireball(s), Inferno(s), with EF and RI debuffs in place.

And so was born the Pecking_Flea mutant chicken superhero!

While I try not to engage in thread necromancy (because it seems to draw such negative feedback) I must admit I'm totally clueless why it's an online social no no. Makes no sense to me at all to start a new thread/post on the same exact subject especially when the thread (in this case) itself so clearly marks the guilty post as "3 years later". At what point does it stray from merely a slow or late response into 'foul necromancy' territory. A week, a month, 6 months, other? Either the topic interests you or you skip the thread regardless I'd think.

I never built a character with trying to max range out as an overall build strategy but my Emp/Dark back in the day (pre-IOs) would sit up on the ledge of the War Wall in Crey's Folly and snipe Freaks with Moonbeam that occasionally I'd only know she hit by seeing the "you have defeated" pop up in her chat window along with the xp as they ran in panic from the first shot right out of sight.

Still does indeed. It's (He's) one major reason my characters almost always take an immobilize if possible. AVs have no special protection as a whole against immobilize (or Sleep). And those maps in Cimerora in particular have lots of running room which not only cuts into the teams dps but risks dragging all sorts of adds into the scrum.

So many memories Participating in my first ever closed beta, freeing Lady Jane and watching her tear off to aggro seemingly everything before dying predictably. Finding myself lost, with nothing but deeply purple DE in sight, on the far side of the woods in Eden and having a now former teammate get an sgmate come and recall friend me safely to the gate. Sheesh Mito's/Hami have some perception and range (while grabbing exploration badges) Watching a level 50 Stormie herd what seemed like the entirety of the Hollows while I plastered myself against the War Wall hoping none of the horde noticed me. Falling out of my chair the first time a Council foe went all Wolfie on me in IP. Going toe to toe with two Fake Nemesis bosses in PI. They were lvl 47 I was lvl 42 on my BS/Regen. The next time online my IH was no longer a toggle. First time I ran my lowbie Emp/Rad as part of Green Machine (i5?). Crushing everything very purple despite all red or empty slots. While duoing with my friend on his Blaster the both of us laughing insanely when a Goblin landed on his head first time we played in Croatoa. The first time my friends and I having just leveled up all used Full Auto after surrounding a mob on a large outdoor map. Nostalgia. Such a potent feeling.

If you're running Tactics there's your Confuse protection

Unusual but I believe you could mule a Preventative Medicine proc in here. I know my support types are often looking for alternatives to adding yet another slot to Health. Not sure about the Power Transfer proc as I'm on my phone atm

Numina still spawns ambushes for most (all?) of open zone hunt portions. Citadel and Moonfire both spawn ambushes with their delivery missions. And of course there's Babbage during Synapse. Probably others I've forgotten as it's literally been years since I saw them last. In part that's do to many of the same things that make Dr. Q so much faster these days. Teams simple leave the ambushes in the dust to most likely despawn. Edit: I miss the older sometimes nasty ambushes that occured through out the game. The first time I ever saw Malta was while my newbie self was leveling up in KR as several were in pursuit zipping across the map some distance off.

This. It's the activate period you need to look at for this. By comparison look at a toggle power like Enervating Field. It's period is 0.5 sec vs a 0.75 duration of the debuff. The toggles in both cases have activation periods shorter than their effect. The 0.25 sec difference in EV is effectively both keeping the debuff in place while preventing the toggle from ever "dropping" due to internet reasons I suspect. CC has a relatively long duration precisely so it can self stack per caster and if enhanced allow it to hopefully work vs +4's where the purple patch will seriously reduce duration of the holds even before considering the foe mez resistances.

Yeah on my scrapper(s) an EB or AV can be fun ... on one of my not highly tweaked incarnated support characters it's going to be more iffy.

This^ As in everything mentioned in the thread (more or less). I've got less time for HC than Live 😕 so in general it's not too much of an issue here. But on Live I probably got into virtually ever mini or sub game that existed. The least explored probably were the costume creator (I can never match the vision in my head i.e. I suck at it) and PvP. But fooling in market, badging, stupid scrapper tricks like soloing AVs, RWZ challenge with an Emp/Sonic about issue 13 (a draw back then, they'd be crushed likely these days with Incarnates in particularly), swapped sides, unusual power set combinations, work in Mids, work on SG base creation (I inherited several as folks left the game over the years), fiddled with AE, ran AE mission content (farming on rare occasion usually with a friend), run extreme AE content ala 801 series. And more I'm sure. Variety keeps it going. Edit: How could I not mention running themed teams with friends and sgmates. Probably induced by my association with the RO Network ->> Green Machine back then was an eye opener to a relatively new player.

The silver (okay maybe tin-plated 😜) lining is there's no AV or even EB to face along the way or even at the end (don't recall any EBs anyway, I know there's no AV). For a Solo or duo of friends with Flyer/Teleport character(s) and or with many of p2w teleport powers and knowledge of the TF it's eminently doable even without a super tight endgame build. And 122 merits is nothing to sneeze at for the effort.

Yes he? is here. Someone already had Local Man as a name so these days they are known as @Area Man to the best of knowledge posting a few times in the Controller forums.

All the above largely comes down to what sets/AT you're looking at. The difficulty of Cimerorans vs Rularuu for an SR compared to Willpower is quite different. Nevermind running a Controller or other Support AT vs Cimerorans when compared to Malta ... Cimerorans just don't use mez (induce cascade failure and hit like trucks yes, mez no), Malta on the otherhand. Incarnate content like in DA or Cimerora is no joke but hey it's Incarnate. Outside of the already mentioned run a mission featuring Vanguard/Vanguard Sword. Lots of +to hit auto powers used (including a PBAoE Tactics variant), up to +30% in total value along with atypical damage types (cold, psi come to mind). They were a rude surprise vs my Claws/SR the first time they were encountered. EDIT: @GastlyGibussorry not sure how I glossed over your post. You pretty much said everything i did including a bit about the Vanguard. Consider my post a "This^"

Keep in mind considering a duo between a Corruptor vs Defender choice the Defender is also looking at a perma +20% damage boost to help with their damage output owing to team size along with generally stronger buff/debuff values to close, eliminate or surpass any damage advantage Corruptors may have.

Absorb Pain - Absorb Pain's value comes primarily from the size of the heal in one go. It's offset by a strong inability to heal yourself applying both regen and heal debuffs on the user. That debuff lasts longer than the cool down by a safe margin and the debuff itself self stacks. Combine that with the fact the Empath could in the same time use HA+HO+HA (about 520 vs 670 heal before enhancement) with no effect on their own ability to heal/regen. These are why I don't typically take AP. I play an aggressive Empath several of which want to get in the mobs face for things like Short Circuit (Irradiate, Nukes, etc.). Inhibiting my own ability to heal I could readily be dead if things are going south for the team. So playsyle should play a significant role in a decision to have/use AP. The other major consideration is how often a team member would need the huge heal and outside of truly hard (including Hard Mode) content most of the time that ~520 (pre-enhancement) heal will keep them upright as well as the one huge burst from AP especially if the Empath is keeping up on their Fortitude and RegenAura. Probably only +3 or +4 AV's (outside of Hardmode) are even capable of delivering blows large or often enough to truly need AP against an endgame build for at least build considerations. Resurrect - Resurrect is ... handy at times. In the early issues only 3 Defender sets had a rez (Empathy, Dark, Rad). There were none of the QoL changes yet. No combine 3 inspires to get a wakie, no p2w powers etc.. Empathy's simple thorough rez had a great deal more value to a team. These days power creep and QoL have done nothing but erode the value of Resurrect. It's a personal choice but I'd much rather follow up someone using a self-rez from whatever source with Fortitude + Clear Mind. The power choice for taking Resurrect is too hefty a price within a build given all the other options available. If or when I do take Resurrect it's only the default slot with a 50+5 Endred IO. Last thing I want is to be low on endurance when a teammate goes down during a heated fight and I'm sitting at 26 or less endurance. Recharge is way too long to make it worth enhancing. Even with high global recharge you're looking at a minute long cool down. Range ... similar issue. Base range enhanced hardly matters (yay instead of 15ft it's now ~22 ft). These days it's also a very plain vanilla rez. Again a Hardmode build will see much more value in Resurrect as death is generally much more likely.

I get where you're coming from but I've been enjoying having both IW and Rune. Having Rune takes some pressure off trying to get IW at or near perma and is there for the times I don't have IW up and running nor breakfree handy.

Some general comments starting with good advice up thread. In a team oriented build especially one intended for larger teams (4+ allies) I'm going to be looking at recharge then even more recharge as the builds focus. I will probably only skip Absorb Pain and Resurrect at least in the primary build but one or both may reappear when looking at something intended for smaller teams running Hardmode content. I'll want my Auras cooldown both as short as possible and as close to the same as possible. Similar cooldowns is useful mostly so it's one less power to track. One's ready then I know the other is as well so position myself and fire them off. I'll add more later after checking on my own Emp/Elec who hit 50 but is just starting Incarnate work and looking at respec into a more final build.

This^ Like ultimately I think folks would agree it really comes down to the build/sets. In the case of my scrapper (Claws/SR) they have/had no powers boosting regeneration (outside of Health duh) and Medicine barely covers it. It takes maybe 8 to 10 seconds for her passive regeneration (~32hp/sec) to equal to using Aid Self (iirc what Aid Self did) as compared to an SR scrapper who hasn't put much effort into it (~18 hp/sec) where it could take 15+ seconds to recover the same amount of health. As an SR typically hits fall much further apart in time, especially if i break contact and duck around the corner from a lot of heat, start kiting etc., and of course passive resists come into play as well. Now look at where your typical support character with a much lower hit point total and build needs like recharge and defense/resistance take precedence over +max health and +regeneration making seeking higher passive regeneration much less effective (doubly so with self heals available) mitigation.

What! Silly person read directions?

Took me a second but ... 😜

Oh boy indeed. Expand that to an 8-man team, include a Kinetics and you have the issue 9 team that jumped the patron final four AVs on a then new Master of run. And proceeded to curbstomp them and Recluse.