Doomguide2005

To go into slightly more specific terminology (useful if looking through or for a wiki article, for instance) that @Ironbladeis talking about are called Schedules. They are Schedules A,B,C, and D. The first and largest group is Schedule A. The second group is Schedule B and so forth. For all of them it pretty much denotes where the drop off in the return on value of the enhancements occur do to ED. Schedules C and D currently consist of one type of enhancement each, Interrupt and Knockback respectively. The remaining 24 enhancement types (or Aspects) are either A or B. Schedule B enhancements are Range, Defense Buff, Resist Damage, To Hit Buff and To Hit Debuff. The remaining 19 are all Schedule A.

A few more thoughts and some details about the build: All 14 primary and secondary choices were taken as soon as available. Just happened to work out that way, something I find is not often the case when I put a build together. It likely is more important in this build to do simply because it makes the build as exemplar friendly as possible in terms of power availability while exemped particularly at low levels. Healing Aura - 6 slots for Preventative Medicine, and Fossilize - 6 slots probably 5 Unbreakable Constraint + damage proc in 6th. But this also where not being able to try things around in Mids rears its ugly head. It's much harder to see where AT sets and Winter sets might get used to benefit the build as I'm far less familiar with them. Ultimately we are looking for global recharge bonuses Stone Cages - 6 slots. Good spot for one of the special sets mentioned above that enhances Stone Cages damage and provides that desired global recharge at the same time. I'm less concerned about enhancing the mez component than other aspects. Normally I'd be more concerned about end use as this power sees lots of use but you've got RA on a very short cooldown from 23rd level and up as well as lots of global +recovery to help below 23rd. Heal Other - 5 slots for Panacea. Just going to note here that I'm assuming the budget is essentially unlimited. If not these would turn into Doctored Wounds as well as other options beside Purple sets above etc.. Quicksand - just the base slot. Largely doesn't matter what. I like to use a Range enhancement as I've noted that often on indoor maps it can make the difference between dropping QS from around the corner (and therefore immune to return fire owing to having total cover to the spawns LoS) or having to step just around the corner to place the patch (and therefore risking return fire as now they can see and potentially target me). Using my patches out of LoS is something Earth excels at doing. Combat Jumping - in my hypothetical paper build I used 2 slots here. Kismet +6% and a LotG def/increased global. Hasten - 2 slots both 50+5 recharge IOs. This is one of those powers where playing in Mids and/or the test server might result in shifting things around to place another slot for recharge to keep Hasten perma as long as possible while exemplaring increasingly lower. Stalagmites - This is your bread and butter alpha breaker or opener when you can't drop a patch from cover (do drop patches from out of LoS when possible). Edit: 6 slotted, prefer 5 Absolute Amazement, then if not otherwise used the Superior Overpowering Presence proc. Assault - 1 slot, 50 +5 endred. Clear Mind - 1 slot. Really doesn't matter what if anything is placed here. Almost all sets including armor sets have need of this power even at high/endgame levels. Below 16th some armor sets don't even have their mez protection and all of them have holes to certain attacks. Knowing what some of those holes are (Confuse and Terrorize come to mind) makes for a better Empathy player. A Confused end game Tanker or Terrorized Brute is a sad thing and you have the power to free them from the effect. Blindness is another debilitating effect you can counter with CM. Life demands attention back later.

Took longer to get back here than anticipated. First I'll say the obvious this pairing has team oriented written all over it. It will also be very strong as support when exemping to sub 30 levels. Second is a bit of a disclaimer I can't use Mids or post a build. My computer up and died leaving my internet access entirely from this phone. Upcoming changes (new notoriety settings) may and hopefully will breath new life into Controllers and support in general and Empathy in particular for endgame and Incarnate play. I'd focus on recharge first, last and foremost. Nearly every single power should be contributing to increasing global recharge. Your mitigation will come from, in no particular order or importance, inspirations, teammates, your Auras, your controls/mez, and epic shield. I'd definitely take Fossilize, Stone Cages, Quicksand, Stalagmites, Earthquake, Volcanic Gases and Animate Stone from Earth Control. And I'd take Healing Aura, Heal Other, Clear Mind, Fortitude, Recovery Aura, Regeneration Aura and Adrenaline Boost from Empathy. The remaing 4 powers (Stone Prison, Salt Crystals, Absorb Pain and Resurrect) are, to my thinking, situational, unneeded or both. For pools I'd be leaning towards Leaping (for Combat Jumping), Speed (for Hasten - all about the recharge). I also like Speed for Super Speed as several powers require you to be on the ground (Edit: looking through the CoD entries it appears only Stalagmites requires the caster be on/near the ground and only QS requires the target be on/near the ground) and gives you stealth and -threat in one. Then Leadership for Assault and Tactics (as well as Vengeance and Maneuvers). Epic is largely your choice. I looked at Psi Mastery which has Indomitable Will. IW is armor set quality mez protection power and a spot for another LotG def/increased rchg. And with very high levels of recharge can be perma (or so stinkin close that a single outside buff will likely make it so) and this build should have those very high levels of recharge (need just over 200% global recharge assuming another ~100% in the power as I recall). I tend to look at Spiritual Core for my Empaths. Which is another advantage to IW is it frees up the pressure to take Clarion for mez protection allowing you to make other choices with less sacrifice. Any questions or thoughts about Power choices etc.?

Pretty much any 4-man team especially IO builds can work but if building a small 'super team' ... I'd have 1 armor/melee/damage character and 3 support or 4 support characters. Next I'd want defense and resists shields/buffers so the team is capped for defense with strong if not capped resists. Healing and end recovery are nice extras particularly if doing challenging content with settings like no inspirations, Temps, or incarnates allowed. I'd tend to avoid Empathy unless you use 3 or more at which point they get nearly indestructible buffing each other and their team (gets silly powerful very quickly at that point) So I'd probably swap out either the Tanker or the Scrapper/Brute (if not both). Go all in with Dark Melee/Dark Armor or Dark Armor/Dark Melee. Two folks with Darkness Affinity would be a plus. Fade gives DDR and that means giggling at all those defdebuffers in the game. Anyway must sleep.

End of my lunch break here, but I'll be back. Earth and Empathy are 2 of my favorite sets.

A few random thoughts. If you plan on primarily teaming, especially on larger teams focus on recharge for mitigation. Defense is fine and all but, Stalagmites is a relatively fast power. The animation is relatively longer and it roots you but it is only 0.733 seconds into the animation before the foes are hit by the stun. Earth has many patches you can drop from around the corner or under total cover where retaliation is impossible. Arctic Fog --> with a stealth IO or Super Speed and you are invisible to the majority of foes so you are almost always initiating the fight (or a teammate has chosen to) All your powers both Earth and Cold can be used at range including Heat Loss. You'll just benefit less from HL Sleet not only debuffs but has Avoid. They'll be running (slowly) out of the patch, not fighting you. The slow effect is substantial right out of the box no need to enhance especially when foes are also being effected by QS and/or SS as well, nevermind the rest of Earth's abundance of controls. This is why recharge is important, getting those cool downs shortened will do more to protect you than defense ever will. (Okay that might be slight hyperbole but not by much ... ) Indomitable Will --> mez protection essentially as good as any armor set. You can with very high levels of recharge make this perma (and I do mean high) but it is doable. You'll have an Immobilize 'hole' but CJ covers that. Benumb --> does have a to hit roll as pointed out above, but this one reason I like Tactics. Tactics, Kismet, Earth and Cold's defdebuffs plus the global accuracy you pick up going after recharge can go a long way towards saying you don't need accuracy in Benumb. You may or may not need to slot the power itself. My Cold/Ice did not but that was using defender Tactics etc.. Sleep calls for now.

@InvaderStych I'd go a step further even and say we want Diverse Teams in the sense of over multiple team compositions and not necessarily within the composition of an individual team. Everything from 8 Empaths or FRads to 8 entirely different ATs with everything in between included, all viable, even if each composition has varying degrees of success.

I like them as an interesting change of pace to the usual mission content. I dislike them for the reasons pointed out in the thread and would love to see some solutions implemented, some suggested above. Save by 'fixing' the vault so it closes or reinstates a protective force field around the item (maybe the force field is really an absorb shield and hence destructible but gives you time to return to handle an ambush). Maybe guards driven away return to their station(s) after your character drives off the supernatural threats. My friends and I would joke about wanting a burlap sack for those silly hostages you have to rescue so maybe your character takes possession (and if you get defeated you might lose the items with or without any chance to recover them in time to prevent defeat/mission failure). And probably another zillion variants on the general idea.

And you do benefit from doing it over and over. Eventually you can do it without purchase of the recipe, reduced cost, shiny badge(s) and portable workbench. So not quite what the OP envisions but there are benefits for 'becoming better' from repetition. And I for one appreciate the lack of necessity for what would essentially become grinding to get skills increased across a very large number of skills.

And my Claws/SR scrapper 😋 (And pretty much any other SR using AT). We ain't afraid of no defense debuffs (we're a Scrapper, we ain't afraid of nothin' ... till it's too late of course). Her favorite part is that damn autohit Nictus.

🤪 They've just suffered from being attacked by a foe who isn't several levels lower than them ... since Rommy is the same level, ouch, ouch, ouchie.

Hmmm, Dark Armor, Dark Miasma, Illusion Control, Mind Control, Mental Manipulation, Presence, Dark Melee, Darkness Manipulation, and Leviathan Mastery all have Fear causing powers. Pulled from the HCwiki and as the article is incomplete this list may be missing a few power sets --> such as Darkness Control which has several powers with a fear component (including Haunt and Umbra Beast) that I know about. Could be wickedly effective even as a small team. Silly amount of To Hit debuff potential resulting in a whiff fest after the foes are attacked and get one return attack to retaliate.

Lol 😆 Though to be fair a single AV vs 8 Controllers of any sort is already in serious trouble in terms of getting perma Held unless they've something above and beyond PToD vs holds to help them out. That's ~25 mag every 3 seconds or so just from their single target holds.

@Riverduskgot it in while I was typing 👍. Earth and Illusion both have something going for them that no other Controllers have. Their pets. More specifically pets whose attacks taunt their target. All of Stoney's attacks carry a mag 4 13.2 sec taunt in addition to their other effects and damage. PA again all attacks carry a mag 4 taunt some at 27.2 sec the rest at 26.66 sec. PA's decoy also has +500% threat modifier for 0.45 sec. I'm guessing the last is to grab attention as the decoy appears, while the rest (the attacks) keeps the attention focused on PA for the duration. Phantasm creates a decoyphantasm and its attacks carry a mag 4, 13.33 sec taunt (the phanty's decoy. Phantasm carries no taunt itself). That's why Illusion (often /RadEm) was solo veteran long before IOs even existed.

It was the only zone since I started playing (late i3) that my main was not the first to visit. Tried to zone in and the computer crashed leaving her in 'elsewhere' After several tries to log her in and support tickets I eventually logged in another ... and it rapidly became a favorite.

Well it is a 3.5 ppm proc so at minimum I would expect similar proc rates from damage procs with same value. Both Touch of Lady Grey and Shield Breaker have the same ppm value per CoD

Agreed 👍

One other thing not mentioned is Earth (Stoney) and Illusion (PA and Phant) pets are the only ones whose pets have Taunt built into their attacks. PA in particular is a long lasting taunt effect, but Stoney is no slouch either.

hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Exemplar_Effects_on_Enhancements This should take you to the HCWiki page dealing with the topic. It should be accurate on the material covered. It doesn't cover attunement as I recall. Step 3. Covers the actual scaling on the enhancements.

Well they aren't temporary but can be had from the p2w vendor. 1. Nemesis Staff 2. Okay don't know about that ... but then taunt is merely a modifier on threat so anyone can aggro a foe. 3. Sands of Mu 4. Hehe ... don't suppose Rest counts? And of course Healing and Rez powers are available Not to mention I've a hard time thinking of a TF where not having a specific power might stop a team in its tracks in a similar manner as this. And at least in the endgame there's this thing called alternate builds. My scrapper did exactly that on this very TF back on Live. We didn't lose our sole controller but I was using Petrifying Gaze, a mag 3 Hold with base duration a bit over 9 seconds courtesy of an alt build using Darkness Mastery. Stacking would be an issue but that's just me. Hopefully at least 6 teammates still left or finding a Hold might be the least of the problems. So while that would make things a tiny bit easier it is a rather minor request and there's plenty of fairly solid attacks already present at the p2w vendor and this is hardly game breaking.

Well I can safely say the concept existed as of issue 3. I can also safely say while the concept existed it had already expired and was headed out the door. It just has a way of saying goodbye like the friend everyone has who starts saying goodbye at 7pm and is still chatting away as the clock strikes midnight.

More like a meme specific to this game and its forums. Nobody is forcing any one to use it anymore than "in before a Red Name". Myself I just think the idea runs contrary to the intent behind the damage buff which was to boost defender damage when solo or on small teams and not as a all the time boost to their damage output. I do think the Vigilance needs a tweak or 10. But I'm at a loss to say how specifically partly because defenders are very potent in teams (i.e. how do you do something for an AT so utterly dominant in large groups that helps solo without making groups even more ridiculous) and also very a very functionally diverse AT with equally diverse playstyles. If Vigilance is applied as suggested then why are we talking about an inherent vs an increase in the AT's damage mods etc., etc.?

Caltrops doesn't need much. Slotting for damage here is a lot like doing so for AM. It'll make a small number a slightly larger small number. Its main use for me has been a stay away power, area denial. If it's running away it is not shooting at you as well. I also like to slot some range into it so I can use them at a range beyond 'just off my toes' distance. But that's all said as a Defender or Corruptor player of Traps not as a Controller. You have lots of other options that you don't have as those two ATs to keep mobs off you ... and with Fissure and Seismic Smash available less reason for it. Therefore I'd be looking to slot slow movement primarily. Targets running slowly away from you make for juicy targets for Fissure and Seismic Smash. And moving slowly in caltrops will by itself equal more damage as it keeps them in the field longer taking damage. Usually this meant I'd frankkenslot Range/Slow IOs in caltrops and that's probably still how I'd do it even though range is less useful ... options always are useful and you could still drop them at your feet. Well you do have Triage Beacon and I agree with @plainguyI like to be able to stack Beacons and the procs you're using there don't have their chance to proc altered by recharge in the power. They fire off on casting then every 10 secs thereafter 100% of the time. So yes I'd personally be willing to trade away Earth's Embrace for caltrops. On the otherhand I think this next thing exemplifies one big difference between a Traps Controller and a Defender or Corruptor. Namely the utility for having and using Seekers. I would not skip it in a Defender or Corruptor but you have all sorts of options to squash return fire from a mobs and doubly so with Plant as typically this means using Seeds on them as an opener so while I'd normally go on about its benefits of keeping and using them those benefits barely exist for a Plant Controller. If you can fit it in great, if not then it's not a big problem.

Only fun games become old games 😁

Is it a Banshee or is it Memorex (or the mating call of a distressed Humpback). You tell me.