synfoola

Thank you for the tips, gang. 🙂 I grabbed Arcane Bolt (would've considered Will pool, but no AoE containment to take advantage of it besides Flash on a horribly long CD). I'm also honestly considering Air Superiority since Darkest Night let's me mix it up in melee to Sands-cone the contained mobs who were affected by Blind's small pseudo-AoE, anyways. This way, I can have a solid ST attack chain to help deal with Ill's crawling temp-damage regen on mobs. Then, I'll probably spec out of one of the pools later when I have the endurance and slotting to just Sorc-Fly and burn the saved power slots on getting up to Rune. And thank you also for the reminder about the proc, especially the -Res proc. That's 3 times I've forgotten about it, even with 2 /Time toons. 😅

Hi, all. 🙂 Giving Illusion a whirl due to the changes and, since I already have two /Time toons, I decided to go with /Dark. But, here's the thing... ...we all know that Illusion isn't heavy on the attack chain until much later and I'm kind of addicted to leveling with teams and a little sprinkle of solo, so I'm wondering what you guys would suggest for a filler attack during her leveling? My Altitis keeps me from anything more than lightly investing in IO's (a Gaussian's here...a KB->KD there...), so my recharge will be limited to craft IO slotting and Hasten when I hit 22. Air Superiority is always an option for it's flippiniess. Boxing/Kick is OTW to Tough & Weave and there are enough skippable powers in the set-combo during leveling to get to Crosspunch, I guess. The sorcery attack would fill in the gap, but that activation time is horrid. 😕 Or should I just play team half-fender until Epics? 😮 Thanks in advance, all! 😄

Great fixes, gang. 🙂

Hey, gang. 🙂 My Beam/Bio Sentinel just hit 35 and I came across a few posts about the adaptation bonuses for Genomic Evolution either being off or not working at all. I'm not a fan of Beam Rifles range and was looking forward to the small boost from this passive in Offensive Adaptation. Has this been fixed or is it still an issue and skippable? Thanks! 🙂

Pretty much any set that has wild animations and/or makes your video card or speakers range from raising a condescending eyebrow to screaming "WTF??". lol Love Stone Melee for the heavy smash and rumbling sound. SS is in here as well, but i hate the one cheesy Popeye animation. Love Stone Control for the rumbling sound AND the "WTF??" I mentioned above from the vid card and mine's still no slouch. Water Blast single target attacks are meh (seriously, with the dough roll opener...), but their AoE's are yummy and the Geyser nuke is everything. Dark Melee's sound effects make it feel heavy hitting and visceral. Storm Summoning is nice & chaotic and conjuring Thunder and Thunderclouds are yum. Titan Weapons takes off slow, but then goes into Lawnmower Mode from the PBAoE. Staff Fighting is like a dull-bladed version of TW's lawnmower mode. Dual Pistols/Martial Combat has been my greatest time leveling a blaster since the game went live. Pairing Street Justice or Martial Arts or Dark Melee with Shield Defense is always nice & visceral...but only the last one of those will make you not want to grit your teeth due to endurance issues without IO's thrown in the mix. I wish I could get into Rad Melee more like many others, but I gave it 40+ levels and it just bored me for some reason. It's powerful but, apart from the Superhero Punch Landing nuke @ 32, it just doesn't do it for me.

Elec Blast, on its own, was always crap compared to other blasts...even before ED when we could make a 6-slotted Short Circuit worth a damn in the end drain department and it gave us bragging rights of being able to survive pre-nerf Peregrine Island along with the Fire/Fire tanks and the Fire/Dev Toe-bombers as a sorry consolation prize. Thank GAWD, I paired it up with /Energy Melee at the beginning or the ED change would've just killed her playability for me altogether. The forum arguments we used to get into just over Voltaic Sentinel...LOL So, ya...problems going back to basically Issue 1 that weren't resolved by sunset besides making Volty follow you around (and even that is just "Meh"). The Sniper change in Homecoming has pretty much helped Elec Blast more than all the issues from Live, but Elec blast is going to need a major rework...and I honestly can't blame the dev team here if they can't address it within the months HC has been live vs the years Cryptic/Paragon Studios didn't do much with it. *shrugs*

I'm with Screwloose for the most part. My favorite tank to team with is one who can anticipate the needs of their team to maximize the /faceroll XP, whether that involves taunt management, "melee-controlling" (love Stone Melee for this), bunching up the next group while we're cleaning up stragglers to have them set-up like bowling pins for us to AoE down or giving the AOE a head-start to AoE them down before Blasty Knock-Backer'son spreads them all to hell, or whatever. Some set-combos do this a little easier than others, but the ability to play to the teams strengths AND weaknesses is a quality I appreciate the most in any PuG.

I didn't even know this was happening here. 😮

Howl in Sonic Blast just doesn't fit. Everything else sounds otherworldly...and then you unleash howl and sound like a dog left in a kennel while the fam goes on vacation...

Sigh...I actually wrote a guide on AR/Ice before the ED changes. I loved that toon. 😞

I can only chime in as a DP/MC, so I'll only go off of mostly MC and a blapping perspective: 1) If you're blapping, don't pass up Burst of Speed--> Dragon's Tail to go into melee groups. AoE-Warping, PbAoE dmg-KD, and melee mop up or nuke while they're on their asses. 2) Bearing that melee stuff in mind, do the patron arc, villain side, get Scorpion Shield and switch back to blue or pick up the Ice EPP for the Ice Shield and possibly Hibernate or Hoarfrost for even extra dmg soak. 3) Love Ki Push for Bosses and annoying Lt's/Minions. They stay in the air nice and long which gives you a lot of options to handle them or others. You can even semi ping-pong them depending on where you position yourself near them while they're flying away. 4) Never, ever turn that Reaction Time toggle off. Love it for the absorb. Love it for the debuff. Love it for extra end...with the right slotting (and I just mean basic, non-set IO's), you'll be able to run Leadership toggles, Fighting toggles, and Scorp Shield without breaking much of a sweat at all) . And love it for the slow. Combine it with slotted Scorpion Shield, Tough, Weave, Maneuvers, etc. and it's just a blast to play. 5) Inner Will is optional for me. I kept it because I'd rather use Break-Free inspirations as combination ingredients for purples or yellows. The heal component is absolutely terrible. lol

I copy/pasted this to add Power Boost directly after my Aim or Build up and it's not working for some reason. It skips Aim/BU entirely and goes right to PB whether I press or hold the key. Is there something I'm doing wrong? Thanks. 🙂

Can I ask why Stone Melee is at the bottom? I've had fun tanking with that melee set since the game went live, especially after they changed its KB attacks to KD back in Issue: Early Single Digits. I still have so much fun with it. It's loud, feels epic hitting mobs with stone/crystal/magma fists and sledgehammers, I get two AoE KD's (one with an added stun that's a targeted, ranged AoE so I can get them on their asses before Knockback McChaos Spreaderson Teammate has a chance to fling them across my monitor and make the fight last 40 seconds longer than it has to) on relatively short CD's with ST attacks that have a Stun/KD (and one w/ a Hold) thrown in as well. Throw Boulder is trash, but it's the easiest tanking around. I just cycle through the AoEs and Taunt watch my team melt stuff around me. It's almost relaxing...and LOUD! 😄

I played WoW at Live. I got really into it because of all of the lore and the exploration aspect of it just being this huge world. But, I hated the combat back then...I really couldn't get over an epic dungeon boss flinging the entire raid back and everybody landing on their feet. And, as much as I loved exploring, being able to have enough time to make a quick meal by the time your (insert flying animal taxi here) landed at your destination hub, annoyed me a lot more than making me feel that everything was connected. These aspects were also what soured me to SWTOR and Wildstar at Live.

Leveling a Bots/Times was a pleasant surprise (other than the 3rd drone, that I named LeeroyBot, adopting the Thug Arsonist personality early on) and just got better & better, Tankermind'ing long before I got Scorpion Shield...but, I honestly wish I would've leveled it as a Thugs/Time instead. The easy slows and TH-Debuffs are missed playing my Thugs/Kin MM; she's a blast on teams but, solo-wise, it's hard to resist the temptation to go Mace mastery again for the early AoE immobilize, even with it's horrid activation time. [Edit: I also forgot to mention that Thugs also gives you one less pet to have to slot a KB-->KD IO in before you get that AoE Immobilize. 😕 ]

TY. 🙂 Found the problem. User Error. lol Forgot to slot the Drones as well. 😄

Kelly, are you still getting KB from the P-bots when they hit the same mob with their heavy burst? I have a regular lev 21 IO slotted for them and an attuned IO slotted in the A-bot, but the P-bots still seem to be throwing mobs around sometimes. 😮

Hey, Plain. 🙂 The toon in the profile pic was the other MM on your team...Thugs/Kin MM named The SYN'stagrammer. lol I remember it. We were outside of the cave entrance right across from the Brickstown train station. I found it a little annoying as well, but also got the feeling that it was directed more at the cave map than at just the MM pets. We're just going to run into this type of thing sometimes and it's not worth taking personally. I've had people complain about my Nature'fender putting too much of a load on their video cards. lol Of they want to leave, let them leave or they can adapt. You were a good addition to the team, big, door-blocking, always-screaming pets or no. 😄

Replace MA (which is, sadly, terrible for more than this AT, even after the pass they gave it back in the day) with MC. The slow KB of Ki-push is useful from the beginning until you're insta-queuing Eagle's Claw on a boss to kick them while they're still flying back. By then, Executioner's Shot is back off of CD and it's right back into it. There's also a weird slow-motion KB ping-pong glitch that you can take advantage of when it happens sometimes, effectively "herding" that KB'd enemy wherever you want depending on how you position yourself near them while they're flailing slow-mo in the air. I expect this to get fixed eventually, though. 3-slot Reaction Time with Health/Absorb and then, maybe with a high lev End Mod or two after you have all your must-have toggles like Tough/Weave, Ice/Scorpion Shield, and Maneuvers. It's a fantastic toggle, even without that weird turn-off boost mechanic that I never use. I generally CJ in close enough to tag the mob with the Reaction Time debuff, Empty Clips cone attack, AOE attack, Burst of Speed AOE-port in, Dragons Tail PBAoE KD the mobs around me, then CH back and Empty Clips the mob again if they happen to still be up (by then the Reaction Time debuff + low health AI reaction has them slowly running away from you). RT's absorb has handled quite a bit of the ranged damage soak and your defense toggles and RT are handling the melee. A purple chiclet or Inner Will (don't slot for health...just don't) handles mez. So, ya. With /MC you get some martial arts moves with a little wire-fu thrown in, a fantastic toggle and MOAR AoE's. Whether the lack of a real Build-up clicky vs the proc-passive means something to you or not, I'll leave that on you. There are some ghetto-IO ways around that as well. Either way, it's the most fun I've had on a blaster since the game was released.

I'm with Crysis. My DP/MC blaster is the most fun I've had since leveling a blaster from when the game went live. I only made this toon as a gag-toon Matrix-Trinity knockoff and she's one of only 3 toons I have out of all of my alts that are almost 50 and will be end-gamed out. In my opinion, the secret is that damned toggle...Reaction Time. Not only does it give fantastic absorb when health-slotted and +Recovery, but the Slow and -Rech to them in a 30ft radius gives you enough space to debuff them right as you cone attack--->AoE Attack, to which you can then Burst of TeleSpeed melee AoE -->Dragon's Tail melee PBAoE or just Hail of Bullets to your hearts content...and your blue bar has barely moved (with 1EndRed in your attacks, of course). If there are even any mobs still standing, they'll most likely be running away due to the low-health + debuff AI reaction, which means they're not trying to melee you. Hit the boss that's left with a quick Ki Push while having Eagle's Claw already queued up and you'll still Trinity Kick them even as they're flying away in slow-mo' and, by then, you'll have an Executioners Shot coming out of the barrel. And, kinda like Reaction Time, there's a game element that works to your advantage since the Ki-pushed mobs can land in weird positions that make them take longer to get up (my experience compared to Energy Push). That's more indirect control for you to take advantage of. Since you'll be mixing it up in melee, I'd recommend switching to Villain long enough to get Scorpion Shield (S/L/E Defense toggle) from Mace Mastery and pair it up with Tough & Weave. I also went with Combat Jumping/Super Jump (Matrix and all), and that leaves you with a choice between Inner Will (ghetto Rune of Protection with a near-worthless heal component and a status/low-health trigger, but it frees up another space on your inspiration tray for, say, a big, fat, Defense Chiclet ) or getting Aid Self (if you skipped one or two powers like I did with Piercing Rounds and Suppressive Fire) and at least 2x Interrupt-slotting it. It's so nice to have a toon, let alone a blaster, that doesn't freaking need Cardiac or has to manage every other fight with an end-drain power before IO sets. lol

Hey, gang! :) @synfoola here. All sorts of SYN'sisters on Victory and Freedom back in the day. Most of my SYN'toons are either on Torchbearer or Excelsior with one or two on Reunion. See you in game. :)

Not thrilled about the DFB nerf but, if it's going to be nerfed, then this is the way I'd want them to do it so it's fine. Hopefully more will switch from DFB to DiB in the later teens (and stop obsessing over the end bosses badge lol) and everything will adjust. Loving the -KB change. Unlike the Private Server poster, I like to work with my teammates tactics and not having to deal with that very-longtime aspect is what kept me from rolling many /Storms and such.

Something I'll have to consider. When I started with CoH, I was still living in the US. But, now I'm in the EU and will likely remain here for the distant future. I wonder what kind of lag I'll be dealing with when my Torch/Excels toons are moved to Canada from the Netherlands? I wonder if the EU population would make it worth it to move them to Halcyon. :o

Synfoola and the SYN'sisters reporting for Boo-, er, I mean DUTY! :O