Doomguide2005

Warning nostalgia ahead: First time I saw this combo it was a "wtf just happened" moment. To one side of my screen the WS entered the mob and in what seemed like an instant the mob went 'poof' (Quasar - post Mire I presume) as their end bar basically bottomed out only to completely fill again (Eclipse). I had seen this sort of nuke post nuke thing happen as an Empath in Green Machine but it took having at least a near full team, mostly to get the damage buff needed as this was pre-IO. This was a small team with minimal buffs and not a Kin in sight. The speed at which all happened still boggles me today in the age of Incarnates.

I haven't opened up the build in Mids but I'd say that looks like a very solid build by @Warlawk

It's the snipers. Base perception 149 ft or pretty much only Superior Invisibility and Hide will keep you from being seen in most circumstances. Once they attack and hit the "HitByFoe" kicks in (CoD2.0) and bye bye Stealth for 10 seconds (resetting each time you're hit).

Thoroughly agree. It's a perfect example of how synergy between powers elevates a solid utility power to a potent combo. Running with RadEm or Nature it can pull everything into a tight clump for Chocking Cloud or Entangling Aura to be rapidly controlled for AoEs such as Nukes, Fireballs etc. while minimizing foe retaliation. Edit: imagine the already devastating Fire/Rad teams using it for instance to continuously be pulling in mobs. Not only catching them into Hot Feet and CC but helping to keep, indirectly, the "oh look shiney' behavior of all those Imps to a minimum.

I'd be torn between Howling Twilight and Fulcrum Shift especially on large teams. Followed by a whole bunch of powers many because they are single target vs AoEs or useful paired with another specific power or some variation of these factors And waaay down likely at the bottom is Time Bomb

Only one of my characters has ever 6-slotted Health and she's also the one who 4-slotted Stamina. The rest have rarely gone to 3 on either so far. In the case of my scrapper who 6-slotted both Health and Physical Perfection she's an SR whose only heal is Rebirth. She can sit at the scrapper max health over 50% of the time with regen rate pushing 33% before factoring in her Hybrid buffs. It is seldom i see anything other than a Tanker with more health base.

I also don't tend to use or otherwise find FA all that useful but then I don't often run resistance based builds where to hit debuffs can really stack up. I did grab CP and Physical Perfection on my main, a scrapper. She rarely finds herself needing it but on occasion after fighting through hordes of end drainers will pop CP and her end bar will steadily recover even while continuing to battle trough the horde. My feelings are solve any end issues you have without consideration for Epics or Incarnates. For the most part those issues outside of very specific builds should be history . If I need a To Hit buff I'll usually grab Tactics and it runs 24-7 on the above scrapper. If I do run into such issues such as multiple Master Illusionis with their Fluffies out with Dark Ring Mistresses handing about I'll use either a Big yellow or two or just back away and let the buffs fall off, pull the mob apart etc..

Glad to help. One reason I went with Electric Mastery is it is one of a few epic pools with both an Immobilize and Hold. The Immobilize for AVs while the Hold can be nicely proc'd into a strong attack to use. In enlarging and looking longer at your screen shot I noticed you had a single Miracle IO in Frostworks. I'm assuming it's a Miracle +recovery unique if not please ignore the next bit. If it's the unique I would replace it with a +5 boosted Heal IO unless you are willing to only have the Miracle unique work for 2 minutes (120 seconds) after you cast Frostworks as that proc IO is one of what is called a proc 120. It'll work for 120 seconds after it has been cast. In toggles the toggles typically renew themselves every 10 seconds essentially renewing the boost to recovery. Same with auto powers which is why folks to often stick it in Health. You can use it in a click like Frostwork but unless you recast Frostwork every 120 seconds or less on an ally the buff to you will expire. Frankly once the build matures and Heat Loss is cycling you can probably just unslot the Miracle and use it another character but while leveling before HL is available it would be useful as long as you have teammates or pets to buff on a 2 minute or less schedule. In fact a specialized build I had on an Emp/Sonic used the Numina's unique (also a proc 120) this way in Healing Aura in order to get the boost to regen and recovery as well as the set bonus for range defense as HA requires no ally or foe to use. PS: It's also fairly different from the one I used on Live where I had Power Mastery. Aim, Tactics and PBU all had 5 Adjusted Targeting slotted in them. When I hit PBU with the other two active it did rather insane things to his To Hit buff (push it to the +175% hard cap)

I'm guessing I can't get the data chunk to open because my Mids is older than the above. So lets try uploading one version I have in Mids for my Cold/Ice/Elec Grey Grissom ColdIceElec Hasten (v2.00 i27.6) - Defender (Cold Domination - Ice Blast).mbd Off to see if that opens from my end. EDIT: See if that works for your version and let me know. Be careful with what's enabled or not when looking at values.

I'll have to try and get a look at this later as currently on my phone on a break at work. Defensive mitigation on an Ice/Cold or Cold/Ice in general when running with larger teams in particular doesn't need to be capped or even that high. Several of your powers cause the foes to try and run out of the area rather than attack. Mix that with all the slow and recharge debuffs well they just don't attack nearly as much while running slowly out of the AoEs. Then add in the hold(s) in Ice and some of the most annoying or dangerous foes may not be moving at all. One of my favorite sets though typically I run the mirror Cold/Ice. Back later

I do not believe any changes to knock have changed how Repel works so the answer is no. Most of the effect causing scatter is based on the Repel effect. The knock has a very small chance to occur (5% per pulse) making it very random, unpredictable and even if knocked down the foes would be repelled away by the Repel effect. So no that's not a place for that IO (or anything similar).

Ageless should be useless on an endgame build for SR when it concerns DDR. You should be sitting at 95% the cap maybe slightly under when Ageless is also an option (45th+). Far more dangerous are foes with To Hit buffs and or higher accuracy. Incarnate base hit and up lvl AVs, doubly true if said AV has access to further To Hit buffs ... such as my discovering Bobcat was generating a ~60% hit chance vs my Claws/SR on one run where she decided i needed to be put down hard despite soft capped defenses and capped DDR and did so 3 times within minutes. Looking at things I realized that unlike a typical team this one had no Tanker or Brute (or anyone else likely to get her attention via Taunt/Threat mechanics), was not size 8 and also somehow managed to have no defense buffs either. Well that made her To Hit somewhere around 17% then add in accuracy mods, probably landing her version of Follow Up prior to Eviscerate and the rest was my face planting history. Note to self when those circumstances pop up use inspires to get to the incarnate cap. She'd still have a decent chance to smack me but at least it should be under 50% instead of over.

My current favored Empath on HC and first GM character on Live currently uses Fly, Evasive Maneuvers and Air Superiority. She also used AS way back when Invincible was the hardest setting to solo Cimeroran repeatables. The knock is a very important part of how she could take down 2 bosses. Cosmic Burst while closing on boss 1 switch to boss 2 with Air Superiority while Oppressive Gloom stuns boss 1. Cosmic Burst boss 2 while they're down/getting up. AS on boss 1. Keep up that general pattern stacking the stun CB with the KU of AS to keep both busy (or the most dangerous two targets) interspersed with Irradiate to chew up staggering (OG) minions. The 2 Auras plus Eye of Magus made her very tough when first engaging or when they managed to attack back. Couldn't handle large mobs back then solo but defense was only via Eye and inspires as this was pre-IO. Uses many of the same strategy to survive these days. Late Edit: I've also taken to loading up on Stun Grenades and Plasmatic Taser from f2p. Especially the first is very sweet for taking all the minions out asap and let's me get into the mob for Oppressive Gloom to keep them stunned while I use Soul Drain, Irradiate and Atomic Blast on the spawn.

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