Doomguide2005

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.

Or heaven forbid Rikti of Unusual Size

My Empaths start giggling. A single pair of Empaths would be sitting at the softcap on SO's (at level 13). Start involving IO's and or more than just self buffing beyond Fortitude and it starts to get silly fast especially for small teams of defenders Small teams would see the greatest change in the relative strength of buffing sets. Then again 7 Defenders vs 8 is virtually no effective change ... they're silly powerful either way.

This^ While my norm on all my other characters is pretty much the 3 slots or less as is common in this thread (with just the base slot in both Health and Stamina in my Empaths) my Claws/SR has 6 in both Health and Body Mastery and 4 in Stamina primarily for the +max health as well as the +regeneration. She also has just shy of 2100 hit points and passive regeneration of ~32 hp/sec further backed by t4 Rebirth which will see her at the hp cap for scrappers for quite a space of time.

This^ By the time you've gotten enough defdebuff stacked to even remotely initiate something resembling defense failure much less cascade failure you are probably already a greasy spot on the floor.

The defense debuff should be heavily resisted (i.e. DDR) by level 34 making that almost a non-issue unless her debuff is absolutely huge (or one or more powers have been delayed). Caltrops in general are auto hit but against SRs Quickness (40% move resist) a single patch of caltrops shouldn't do much but a low constant DoT. @Blackjoyhinted at the likely issue if Siver Mantis uses/used Toxic damage SR's scaling passive resists do not effect the amount done (resist = 0%). So if she manages to land a strong Toxic attack you'll eat the full damage regardless of your health.

1) True you are less likely to find characters with capped resistances than defenses in end game (outside melee/armor ATs) especially across multiple types. Though I also think you're more likely to run into resistance buff support characters these days as well than previously. 2) resistance debuffs are resisted by the targets resistances to the damage type. Between this and the Purple Patch a high level AV will end up potentially resisting a whole lot of a resistance debuff (but that's true of debuffs in general). The positive side is from the teaming pov that debuff applies for everyone attacking that target -> allies, pets, lore pets etc.

Yeah it's interesting to see a very different take on Tornado as the circumstances in which my Storm/Storm (and other Storm Defender or Corruptor pairings) pulls out Tornado is precisely when I'm facing nasty looking mobs and suspect I will draw lots of aggro or already have. This is especially true while leveling.

Or via Ouroboros portal and probably a few other alternatives as well.