Tigress

It depends where you enter. Some portals give you the message, others don't. Night Ward Villain portal for instance.

Poison isn't really terrible, but its lackluster and quite outshined by other sets that do most things way better. I tried it a few times but could never really warm up to it and ended up deleting the character. I suggest you try it on the test server and see if it fits your playstyle. Sadly it didn't fit mine.

I do support (and bump) this request, and would also like to add the existing broadsword skin of the powered up Grave Knights (Mastermind Necromancy). There really is not anything similar to that sweet double bladed design in the current weapon selection and I believe they would add a lot of flavor to dark or villainous designs that we currently don't have, without coming across as goofy.

We europeans have a little more lenient view on that. You can buy "chocolate pizza" in most supermarkets (which is in effect one giant cookie).

One of my favourite Pizzas of all time had pineapple, banana and peaches on it, along with chicken and curry, topped with Gorgonzola cheese.

I haven't tested it with Power Surge in particular (you could do so on the test server however), but as far as I know, the effects overlap, meaning you get positive effects of both for a short while, then crash but keep positive effects from the one thats still ongoing. Depending on the individual effects of the crash, it can either be quite useful (i.e. Willpower) or an absolute waste, so my suggestion is to test it for yourself on Justin.

They very much are! I'm pretty sure the buffs don't persist when the creeper moves to a diffeent location, but the individual tentacles definitely are. I have seen a Plant/kin use that to spectacular effect.

First of all, if you are *just* looking for damage, the class may not make you happy. Second of all, if you still wanna squeeze the class for damage, I suggest either Fire Control or Plant Control. Fire Comes with more damage out of the box (if you slot Bonfire with a knockback to knockdown Enhancer), but plant control quickly catches up in endgame and IMHO offers superior control with its Seeds of Confusion). Gravity is also something to consider, as it has a high damage single target attack in the primary pool, something the other sets seem to be lacking. With Secondaries, it gets a lot more tricky. Again, I'd say Fire comes out on top damage-wise (just a feeling though, I have no hard numbers to back it up), but offers not much else. Martial is a bit wonky with all those shuriken attacks, but its a pretty cool looking, area focused set. However, none of the sets (at least of those I have tried) are really bad. All of them have some cool abilities (Earth with its stone mallet, Electric with its energy drains, Savage with Spot Prey, etc.) and are still pretty decent in damage. tl;dr: Look for what suits you best instead of the numbers. I found this to be truer with Dominators than any other Archetype.

Right now, Unkindness is kinda... meh-ish, if you know what I mean. However: straight from the demo server patch news: Domintoar >Savage Assault > Unkindness: This power erroneously said it consumed Blood Frenzy stacks. The text has been corrected. This power generates one Blood Frenzy stack, and it's DoT becomes stronger the more Blood Frenzy the caster has. This bonus to Unkindness makes up for the set's lack of Savage Leap and Hemorrage. Tested it and it seems to work pretty well. Biggest plus on Savage however is the Spot Prey, which gives you 40something % of to-hit and damage and is easy to get perma with its 25 second duration.

As Savage Assault doesn't really have a lot of noteworthy secondary effects (besides damage), there isn't a lot of synergy with anything. However, the "Spot Prey" power grants a really nice to-hit bonus (and okay sized damage bonus, plus perception) which lasts for a godly 25 seconds (so its easy to get perma), so along with earth control, you will likely be the kind of hitting everything. Be sure to note, the set is rather melee focused and its quite inadvisable to skip those. I would generally start combat from a distance, first with Spot Prey, then graciously applying Earth Control slows, defense debuffs as well as ravens, then jumping into melee with Feral Charge and finishing them off with powerful melee slashes, reapplying Spot Prey when needed. Use Hawk to finish off tougher Bosses as soon as you reach 5 stacks of Blood Frenzy. All in all, I find Savage Assault to be a very much underrated set. Its a ton of fun, even though the damage type is quite weak.

Theoretically speaking: Force Fields, Darkness and Ice, as they add to the already substantial defense buffs from the Enforcers (same as with Robots by the way) Poison worked remarkably well for me too, though this tends to shine only at the higher levels and can be rather painful in the beginning. Kinetics is always useful, but would probably be more effective on melee heavy henchmen such as Animals, Ninja and Undead because of how the heal works. If you solo a lot, you *might* get a lot of mileage out of Storm as well (heavily depending upon your playstyle), keeping the enemies debuffed and blown into a corner, however, be prepared to change that tactic significantly when fighting in a team as they usually don't take lightly upon knockback-heavy stormies.

I would say Thugs is probably your best bet, as there is only one henchman that is decidedly melee. Send your Bruiser into CQC, equipped with Antidote and Noxious Gas, spray some Neurotoxic Breath for good measure and let the rest gun them down from a distance. Thugs have great damage, good stability and are fun to play.

/Kin feels useful from the very start. Its got something nice and useful at every level. For me, /Time felt likea waste of such at first. Even the heal is (also at first) far less powerful. However for me, Time shows its true beauty at levels 16, 28, 35 and 38. I find /Kin much easier to play, but /Time more versatile and more rewarding in the end.

I used to level both a Robotics and Merc mastermind, but I always found, my bots clean the playing field a lot faster then the mercs can possibly can, but that may have something to do with slotting and/or boosts through secondaries. Of course the bots survivability is a lot higher through a good combination of defense, healing and damage resistance.

Neither Darkness not Time has (at least to my knowledge) any real resistance to status effects, especially. In my experience, that is rather critical to the set. If I could chose again, I would probably go with Pain or Poison.

Bots is so much stronger than Mercs, it hurts. However great time is in the end, its a super late bloomer set. Bots have no area attacks (but the pitiful Protector Bot grenades and the Assault Bot flamethrower) prior to 32, when suddenly they all get superior area goodness. Try and suffer through the early levels though, and you will be rewarded by a staggering amount of firepower, enhanced through the amazing time buffs. Go for it!

The worst thing about the set is also the best thing about it: The practical complete lack of ranged attacks. Animals do monstrous damage to single targets in Melee but will always be stuck in melee, therefor they will all be clustered together with the touch of the attack button. Easy targets for area-buffs and -heals. However, that makes them extremely susceptible to crowd control and area attacks. I suggest a secondary that gives some form of status resistance, like Kinetics with Increase Density and Speed Boost. The targeted area heal is also more useful with this set than almost any other. Animals will be unbelievably annoying against enemies using area attacks of any kind and especially Teleporters. Just think of a Tsoo Sorcerer: Debuffing all animals around him, then teleporting away and aggroing the next two groups when they chase after him. A simple area root will completely shut down any and all damage from the animals, unless you raise their resistance to it, so that is something to consider.