Peacemoon

To echo above people have a very low opinion of what a defender can do so I do get some compliments when I play mine. Probably because I don’t play in a timid or helpless way. Peacebringers and Warshades impress me the most. One of those played well will always get lots of good comments. I love the versatility they showcase.

Turn it into a different type of Time Bomb - like an EMP bomb. Keep it how it is currently stats wise (cottage rule sorted), but add extra powerful debuffs worthy of the long recharge and hard setup time. Im thinking like how EMP Pulse works for Rad, Or something more creative. Traps is a buff/debuff set, so it’s pretty unusual to have a pure damage ability with no side effects.

Well if you went down this road you might as well keep it as a beacon, but have a secondary effect of making the FFG also act as a triage beacon. That way you could be followed by a really helpful buff drone but still put down a stationary beacon when you wanted to.

The thing about Dark Astoria is there should be enemies that are 54+3, so you need those incarnate shifts to tackle them. Then it would be proper incarnate content. Right now it’s just normal content but with more perks available to the player. Just to summarise!

You get more influence for higher level mobs, but obviously they take longer to defeat. So find a sweet spot where they’re not taking too long but also stretching your character appropriately. So it depends on what you’re trying to do. Also I don’t think everyone does do +4/x8, personally I tend to stick to +3 on my Defender, even though he can do +4, it just starts to slow down too much for him.

What about making the beacon behave like Faraday Cage? So you can keep moving it... as the team moves..

Sacrilege!! It should do triple the damage and take 3 times as long! 😛

I like /AR on my defender. Snipe does high damage and Full Auto is up every 15s. Stick 3 procs in it and Defender ATOs and it’s golden

No idea how easy it is to fix for the team but yes would be great. And the tunnel where you come down the ramp on either side and loop back underneath yourself! At least MMs can resummon the pets I guess. The best trick I’ve found when descending stairs is to approach the stairway at full speed, and hope the fall launches the pet most of the way down!

I might not be explaining myself properly, but in my limited MM experience it’s when you finish defeating a spawn. The Henchman sort of hang around for a second or two making sure the enemies really are defeated before following you. It’s true dedication to their task! But, the delay means they lag behind as you go from group to group. Also there are some pathing issues on praetorian maps, particularly the Praetoria labs. The stairwells causes NPC followers huge issues. It takes at least a minute to help them negotiate those steps. It’s like taking my elderly Nan on a mission! (And curse the missions where you then have to double back to the entrance, with the knowledge that you have to tackle those stairs again!)

It’s why I love psychic scream, it does -62% recharge in a cone... underrated 😉 I think with web grenade you could probably add -defence just to give the debuff side a bit more umph. I do quite like -defence because it would help at low levels when accuracy isn’t always great, and sort of fits the theme of entrapment and easy to hit. It could also have an innate accuracy bonus.

Playing a MM does make every mission feel like an escort mission. The pets do like to ponder their existence when transferring from combat to passive..

I think the cap for recharge debuffs is -75% or something similar. I remember because I was testing with Lingering Radiation and power analyser, and it takes +2s for it to dip below capped debuff. Unless I was mistaken and reading it wrong. To go higher than the cap is just to keep it effective verses higher level mobs.

Keeping AVs still is a very useful skill for some builds. Particularly Illusion/Traps which has no immobilise. AVs that are still don’t punch you in the face (unless you like that sort of thing!) According to Mids the skill also does +62.5% recharge, which is pretty huge, but could be higher. Really it’s worth comparing web grenade to other tier 1 single target debuffs from buff/debuff sets, and remembering web grenade has only a 4s recharge.

Purple triangles don’t protect AVs against immobilise, if that’s what you’re implying? I think if there were any changes to sticky web grenades, the most likely would be some additional debuff on the effect. I think Arachnos also have a web grenade that holds?

Also Gadget Control/Traps would be great place for a Controller build 🙃

It would be great if traps could somehow be made more mobile friendly where possible. Triage Beacon in particular. Perhaps if you could move it around a bit like how you can move that cage power around in electric affinity. I think it’s part of traps thing that it’s great to set up a kill area and then annihilate enemies with loads of traps. But maybe mitigating some of that to help with mobile teams (which to be fair is most team situations) then that would be great.

You can rename your characters as many times as you want and swap names around. I always recommend to people if they’re really torn between powers to try leveling both up and then assigning your name to the one you like best 😊

Cold/Ice Defender? 😄 Shield your wife and good debuffs on the enemy?

I just meant technology theme as a shorthand for a different, perhaps more gritty or grounded concept. Didn’t mean they’d have to be technology origin, but of course a portable weather control gadget would be neat! Just don’t like people to think you have to go for the obvious sets.. although the OP I think did seem to suggest they wanted something more easily fitted together.

There are two ways you can play Storm Summoning (which is an amazing set): EMBRACE THE CHAOS! or Mitigate the chaos Both are mighty fine choices but it depends what is fun for you. Arguably mitigating the chaos will be most welcomely received on most standard teams, but embracing the chaos can be more fun, especially solo and in small teams with people you know. So to mitigate the chaos you are really looking at a Controller, particularly one with an AoE immobilise that gives knockback protection to mobs. It helps keep them all nicely packed together.m and means lightning storm, Gale, tornado etc, won’t scatter them. Arguably the best for this, both gameplay wise and thematically is Earth Control. Earth brings so much hard lockdown and it’s low damage is boosted a lot by Storm’s high damage. Mobs will be pinned down and battered with storms until they are defeated. Fire, Ice and Plant are other alternatives. I have an Earth/Storm alt I keep meaning to get to, and I find it very fun. As for APP you can go any direction you like, but I changed my Earth powers to molten and picked up the fire APP. Earth, Fire and Storm... To embrace the chaos you are looking at Defenders, Corruptors and Masterminds, or something like Illusion Control. With this style rather than locking things down as a form of defence, you are looking to knock things down or away so that mobs can’t do much against you, and pummel them with much higher damage from your blasts or pets. I think Defenders tend to work better than Corruptors because their a Storm set is quite superior in buff/debuff numbers and damage. Thematically you could pair with electric, fire or cold blast? If you went for a more technology theme then rifles and pistols definitely could work. Illusion control works nicely because you are doubling up on chaos, you have pets that can tank which helps mitigate the lack of lockdown, and both sets really love recharge so you can focus on that to get perma phantom army and 3+ lightning storms out. There’s a lot more that could be said but I think that’s a pretty good overview of the two main directions you can go! Also I just listed the main combos that came to my head. Others can work for sure. My main on live was Mind/Storm and there was fun, but probably not the best. One HC extra - with knockback to knockdown enhancements it is possible to mitigate the the chaos to some extent on a Defender, but it will cost you a bit (in terms of slots). But can be a decent middle road I guess?

All in time for dinner? 🤣

Also, slightly off topic but my Defender has Rise of the Phoenix self rezz and it’s one of my most unlikely favourite powers. I don’t die very often but when I do I pop right back up! I usually get rid of any debt slaughtering the villains that defeated me. Death is now just a bump in the road. If you have access to this type of power I’d recommend giving it a try.

I just wish you could use them while not dead to get rid of them. I don’t do much inspiration management and they’re usually more hassle than they’re worth blocking my tray!

What you’re looking for is City of Heroes: Diehard Edition, and I wholeheartedly approve! My favourite ever office map is in Dark Astoria. The lifts don’t work and you have to take the stairwell to go down into the basement to find a clue. It’s half submerged in water and pitch black. Suddenly I was playing a very good single player game..!