Doomguide2005

The scaling resistance starts at 60% health and will stack on top of special IOs, Tough, etc.. In general I use a combo of LotG and Shield Wall sets. Either def, def/endred, def/endred/rch (usually toggle powers) or def, def/rch, def/ Inc glob rch (auto powers.) Make sure DDR gets to 95+%

Smoke would have some niche value used against 2 categories of foes. First is Snipers. They'll see through things like SS+stealth IO or Field Operative + stealth IO (or even all 3 stacked up) but those stealth combos will get you close enough to potentially use Smoke on them. Now they won't see you or any allies for that matter. Helpful since if a Sniper hits you it'll likely suppress your stealth and now you may be visible to other mobs as well. Second because it's a perception debuff and not a stealth buff it works vs late and endgame foes that just ignore stealth like Rikti drones. Caltrops I have typically taken. I like to use multiple Rng/Slow so I can throw further than just off my toes. Global recharge takes care of recharge for caltrops.

In addition to all the above work on the Accolades -> Atlas Medallion you should be able to get at your level

Neither the status of my internet access (and ability to log in) have changed in the last year. I'm still without the ability to log in and still would with haste once that status changed. That said out of the alts I created in the 4 or 5 months I could get in game I think the ones I care about had already reached 50 or are pretty damn unlikely to be taken should they be released. The rest I'm quite capable of renaming ... and merely being back and able to play is what would matter to me most in any case. Edit: And now I want the name "Edge Case" for my second Homecoming, since I'm pretty sure that's exactly where my circumstances land me.

SR would be a good choice. Auto hit slows meet Quickness and defdebuffs run into DDR.

Because of my dead computer and other things my last Empathy, Pain and Thermal builds (the 3 sets most likely to be called healing sets) were built as high recharge builds any defense would be incidental. My mitigation would be, in no particular order, inspirations, teammates, epic shields (typically resist based ones) and keeping any self buffs (Auras on a Empath for example) on minimal cool down. These days I'd be looking more into at least some defense, while still focused on high recharge. That means typically either Doctored Wounds or Panacea in the heals. I'd be reluctant on a team-focused build doing to much with procs. I'd save that for a build more focused on solo and damage out put rather than getting buffs out to allies. Trying to both I think would make both goals less attainable. So again for the blasts I'm looking at Decimation for recharge not procs or defense bonuses. Purples and ATO's for recharge etc.. I'd do build but just got this phone for internet.

Yeah for solo work at 45+. Trials I'm sort of surprised he's not getting covered already by either Tactics, Clarion or both.

According to CoD v2.0 Tactics offers both Confuse protection as well as resistance. The protection is -3.633 mag so it's not huge and foes stacking it could prove problematic ... hug some folks running Tactics should help a lot if that's what's going down. Edit: Or get an Empath to drop Clear Mind on you

To the best of my knowledge there's been no overall changes to procs or to individual procs that I'm aware of.

Cold or Traps would be my choices. Traps is interesting not only because of the strong debuffs but because they come from pets. You can 'wander' around the battlefield utterly invisibly stealthed dropping those pets 'casually' destroying your foes undetected. Cold is just a really strong set for it's debuffs which like RadEm is good when a chunk of your pets can't be effected by any buffs you do have.

You should be easily hitting the 95%+ clamp for your final hit chance. With that sort of slotting you should be capped against +4s nevermind +0 or +1's. With "Streak Breaker" and a 95% chance you can not miss more than half the time. Welcome to the world of perception bias most likely (with maybe a touch of frustrated anger hyperbole mixed in). Look at your combat logs it should be there. Things like Twilight's Grasp and Transfusion also sometimes "suffer", especially on a fast moving team, from corpse blasting which in this case can equate to not getting a Heal out of what looked like a successful hit on an alive foe.

So in general I like things not to get any easier and as mentioned above moving the fight so it occurs somewhere else is a good preventative action and with all the various movement options how tough is returning from the hospital in any case. That said: not everyone wants it difficult especially 24/7 and as relatively small as the penalty is we are talking about someone already dead. Stuff in real life happens. You take a restroom or food break thinking you're safe. Then the wandering mob or ambush comes along. Or maybe your 4 year old wanders in holding "really hazardous object number 3" just as you start pulling the fight away in case things go south. Or that phone call you've been waiting on all day finally happens or ... you get the idea. They are paying an inspiration slot tax for the ability. It's one less other type of inspiration they have on hand. So not really something I'm looking for but I'm not against it particularly either.

Healing Aura and Heal Other -> One gets 6 slots and Preventative Medicine, the other gets 5 slots with either Doctored Wounds or Panacea. Absorb Pain -> skip. I've taken this power (err death trap) only a few times. 1. To see if it's really that skippable (yes). 2. As a set mule (not really worth the slots to mule for +recharge). Mind you this could be colored by my Offender play style ... zapping your healing/regen is not really a good idea for that play style. Resurrect -> underwhelming choice I skip it. Between inspires (combining as needed), day jobs, better rez powers, etc.. it just isn't worth the choice. If taken base slot with endred as it is an end hungry power (26 end) and Murphy says you'll need it in a hard fight after Recovery Aura is into cool down and your blue bar is running dry and that's when the alpha taker goofs and eats dirt. Save it to bring back someone relatively vital like the Dark with HT when the team has multiple down or adds show up that really need dealing with. Clear Mind -> base slot only. Doesn't really matter what is slotted. I often go with range just to get that one teammate who wanders off and is waaaay over there. I'd also tend to take at 8th while leveling. At that level even a lot of melee toons don't have mez protection yet. I don't respec out of it and use it even at 50+. Fortitude -> take and use from level 12 onward. Slotting as described above. Recovery Aura -> I tend to 3 slot using 2 endmod/recharge and 1 recharge. Pushes ED hard for recharge while providing a boost to recovery. Late game can use 2 recharge boosted to +5 as the base buff (+200%) is typically plenty for the vast majority of builds. Regeneration Aura -> 5 Doctored Wounds or Panacea. Adrenaline Boost -> described above. Since I'm building for high global recharge I'll have Hasten typically before 18th (to ensure Recovery Aura is effected no matter how exemped). Then add in Assault and Tactics by 24th. Typically I use Super Speed and Combat Jumping for mobility. 2 slots into SS (BotZ kb prot + Winter's Gift) while CJ I'm looking at Kismet +6% and LotG Inc glob rch plus other specials. Hope this helps.

What difficulty were you running when you 'got caught out' and 'melted'? There can be a big difference on a leveling build even at level 40 running as an sk at +4×8 (so you're seeing +5's) on a lvl 50 team and running at your lvl even vs +4's. Second while great for capping def Scorpion Shield is a defense and you've no DDR. You run into the quite plentiful defdebuffers and no resistances to speak of and it'll get ugly scary fast. Back later

Agreed Time Bomb is entirely not good. Elude is functionally quite good it just suffer from being almost entirely redundant rather than mechanically awful. *too tired to try and figure it out (my brain is currently almost as useless as Time Bomb) but just how many t9 powers are there?*

Fortitude can be slotted a whole lot of different ways. Generally I use between 3 and 6 slots so it kind of depends on how many slots you want to use. 2×Membrane HOs and a LotG def/increased global rch 4 LotG (def, def/rch, def/endred/rch, def/Inc glob rch) 5 Red Fort (all but the endred), LotG def/Inc glob rch The above are probably my most common slotting options. Edit: the first option has only the LotG special as a set bonus but maximizes all three aspects (+def, +rch, +to hit). The second adds to global accuracy, max health and regen via set bonuses. The 3rd is about gaining 12.5% global rch but uses all 6 slots. On a rare occasion I've added a couple of To Hit buff sets like Gaussian's to the 2nd option. For Adrenaline Boost it's pretty much is always either 5 Doctored Wounds (less expensive) or 5 Panacea (expensive). I used to slot an Endmod/Rch in the 6th slot but since nukes no longer have a crash it's entirely optional. Note my builds to date are focused on very high recharge in order to minimize the downtime on my Auras, Nuke and Fortitude (so as to cover as many as possible with Fort). Any defense is pretty much incidental. Mitigation comes from (in no particular order) inspirations, teammates, epic shields, mez/kd powers and keeping those Auras up and running (in particular RegenAura). Currently my computer is dead so can't post a build (and I haven't yet played water blast either) and I'll let someone else describe how to post a build.

Yeah I spotted the Black Knight entry but wasn't sure that was the foe in question. Hadn't run Night Ward arcs yet before my computer died. Thanks for the info.

Does it carry the -range of player Taunt. Tried but couldn't find it on CoD

I think most controllers can solo most AVs especially even level AVs. To my mind and experience solo vs an AV has more to do with surviving the AV than any other single factor. A strong debuffing or highly offensive output set will tend to do it faster (or of course a pairing combining those elements). And surviving doesn't have to mean high or capped defense either. Pre Invention Ill/Rad did it by having PA available 24-7 to tank for them for example. Any of the pairing mentioned should be able to do so. Any sets in particular strike your fancy? Any other requirements such as wanting to handle +4/×8 with AVs? Or pre Incarnate capability to do so, etc.?

I'd love to try Ice/Sonic again with all the changes to the game since I ran it on Live. Thinking it would be far less painful solo particularly on the blue bar. Things missing --> Inherent Fitness, don't recall if sets were around but don't recall slotting the Miracle etc., but that's likely just because I barely made it past 20th. Ditto for getting the accolades.

I can imagine. I ran an Ice/Sonic Resonance controller. Teaming was fine, good even. But solo this was pre Inherent Fitness and good lord did it destroy its end bar trying to kill anything. 3 even con minions was a challenge to defeat as my end bar disappeared tickling them to death.

And that's because, if I understand things correctly, as @oedipus_texis explaining in his post, those Cold Shield's also have a Resist Damage component.

Indeed the shorthand can get rather cryptic.. There's lots of shorthand involved in the names of enhancements. Writing out "Gaussian's Synchronized Fire Control" 6 times is, well, word clutter which in itself gets problematic. Sometimes even as much as I've used Mids I'll see something that I don't quite recognize and what I'll do is go to the wiki page on enhancements and just start looking at what the shorthand might be for. It's a little bit like looking at license plates and trying to figure out what clever thing the owner was trying to say with their personalized plate.

The post you're quoting is a response to DreadShinobi's post above my post and while I probably should have typed it out fully I was speaking about the recovery debuff of SC specifically and wrt PBU. Again the specific build (Empathy/Electrical/Power) never made it into the Live game but Mids (correctly or not) clearly indicated both aspects of Short Circuits debuffs being boosted by PBU at the time I was creating the build. So something is out of whack (or been changed)

All I can add is Snarky and Zhym are hitting it out of the park with their advice. It's hard, really hard, to screw it up so badly so as to make something unplayable bad. Adding to that with the relative availability of respecs plus a build planner, well just jump in, experiment, learn as you go, ask questions and most of all have fun. Between her creation in i3 and Sunset I probably planned out, rebuilt, tore apart rebuilt again my Main's build a couple dozen times. Some done way back when with pencil and paper then a whole bunch more times in Mids. And until my computer pushed up daisies the process was ongoing here on HC. Playing around in Mids, trying to improve my builds and more importantly perhaps trying to improve others builds as well as dissecting those builds got me to my current proficiency and even there there's a huge difference between my knowledge about SR, Empathy, Earth Control etc. and how to build a solid Warshade or Water Blaster (hint it was a Claws/SR that started in i3 and I've never yet run a Warshade beyond the 20's).