Panache

The Sam Jackson Nick Fury was the Ultimate Nick Fury; 616 introduced Nick's son later on.

Not a hero, but Marvel’s Graviton was basically Magneto but make it gravity.

Karma KB Protection too, for the few who need/want it.

Yep, both the Blueside and Redside training wheel missions have that bug and have had since Live.

A good point. Really, the whole of Dark Blast benefits from Power Boost. A “free” ~78% boost to stackable -toHit is worth it before you get to the immob, hold, heal. Mine isn’t to Incarnates yet, but I like the look of Intuition paired with the -toHit Interface (forget which that is). A bit gimmicky but gimmicks can be fun. (speaking of gimmicks: picked up Bonfire and the +Range Bonfire/Umbral Torrent/Tenebrous Tentacles combo is bonkers)

I’ve got Tenny Tents and Char in mine, so I get decent utility out of PB. Plus I like the “defensive Build Up” effect; it’s a nice cushion before you get your -toHit train rolling (which also gets a nice although somewhat marginal benefit from PB). V cool to see the small differences between largely similar builds!

Giving @Outrider_01 a shout for this combo and style (although I skipped Stun). I initially rolled Dark/Nrg because I wanted to mess around with Power Boosted Blackstar. I respecced out of Blackstar almost immediately. There’s no reason for that combo to go into melee, or honestly even within 100’ of enemies. It’s so fun.

The Blaster secondaries have a bunch of different options for a very different gameplay experience from Scrappers. One of my favorite characters on Live was a Sonic/Energy Blapper who leaned a lot on Power/Range Boosted Sirens Song, Stun and Screech; basically leveled it like a Stalker. Double "Build Up" is sometimes reason enough to blap.

Wolfdog ended up getting way more attention (1-50 in 3 days and first real foray into Savage; that set is fun as heck!), but I played around with Psi Melee a bit, and the animations seem very in line with an imperious snob of a hero.

My first thought was to lean into a double meaning of the name and do a Psi/Nrg Blaster who fought from 200' lol. Now I'm thinking of pairing Shield with Psi Melee; I haven't tried the latter set at all.

Last night I found and locked down two names whose availability surprised me: Wolfdog and Highness. The former is obviously a crusty lycanthrope who lives in the woods (Savage Brute for sure, prolly WP or Invuln), but I have no idea what to do with the latter. Mind Dom came to mind first, for making baddies bend the knee so to speak, but I'm not 100% sold on that. Anybody have any impulse ideas conjured up by that alias?

Like for real, whenever I exemp on a character that picked up CJ later than the level I'm exemped too, it feels downright unplayable.

Fair play. I think you learn a bit more in film school than bigger words to describe the movies you like, but agree to disagree it is.

So that we can learn to pick ourselves back up.

Well I am rockin' the ganj, and I think this is malarkey, lol. Critics don't have more insight because they're paid, they're paid because they have more insight. If you're reading some critique and personal preference is obvious, then that critic is bad at their job. I think it makes a lot of sense to listen to friends whose tastes you know line up with yours when you're deciding if you should see something; I think it doesn't make sense to trot those same friends out into third party convos if that third party has no idea who your friend is.

Shyalaman's an easy but inconvenient example; that dude has been pretty famously self-financing his movies for a while now. I'm not sure that Spielberg (or Scorcese for that matter; The Irishman was a tough watch) losing his fastball means he'll stop finding willing partners, but I'd imagine any difficulties they might run into are because studios are increasingly narrowing down to pre-existing IP tentpoles. Not that Spielberg hasn't gone down that route himself (to kinda janky results).

Haha, duly noted on the Grav/Storm! But this convo did compel me to try out a Grav/Storm/Stone, Space Folding StunLock thingy, so thanks for the inspo (and sorry if we team 😛 ) !

Sounds like you and I are on the same page about build goals (although I do tend toward some kinda mez protection). Between Live and Homecoming, the 'on-paper' Mids build I liked best was Fire/Dark/Psi. I eventually got that to Incarnate levels and it did what I expected it would do, but the playstyle of it just wasn't for me. Also Procs changed all of my builds in ways I still don't quite understand, which put me back in the lab. What became arguably my most effective Controller is an Ill/Traps/Psi (I mean, who coulda seen /Traps proliferation coming). It is a bit of a wet noodle against Hard Mode things if you catch some stray aggro, but it can solo just about anything, and puts Pylons down pretty quickly; I've hit 600 dps on Good Proc days. I really really liked Plant/TA, but mostly as an AoE death machine; it struggles a lot with hard single targets like AVs and GMs. I saw you mention a distaste for Storm, buuutttt....there's a path with Storm and Mu (and eventually Cardiac) which gets you to softcapped Ranged Def AND capped Resist to S/L/E, while also solving your Endurance issues. My experience with this is on the Defender side, but I do like the idea of a Grav/Storm/Mu.

My guess here is that you're referring to 'my buddy' and not 'critic reviews', which if true is kinda the point. It's pretty easy to find a critic/outlet who/that has tastes similar to your own and go from there.

Ha, I am very happy this isn't true, or else we would have lost a LOT of great movies.

"Dial of Destiny's James Mangold" is like when South Park only referred to Spielberg as the director of 1941 and Always, lol. Poor Jimmy.

Oh for sure, I'd probably skip the ST Confuse if this wasn't a very theme-heavy build. I solo far more often than I team, so going the sturdier route is a playstyle choice.

I like Psi Blast for Cyclops/eye blasting folks; pairing the head-centric animations with an Eyes-Combat Only aura works pretty well.

Commenting for updates as this is relevant to my new hyperfocus (Mind/Sonic/Psi). Definitely went with a different build direction (chasing capped Ranged + S/L Resists and permaHasten; took Mez and Confuse), but the Sonic slotting/strategy is really the trick with this combo. That set seems made for dual builds.

The Venn diagram of "I don't trust critic reviews" and "my buddy so and so saw it and said these things" is a circle.