laudwic

I've got a 50 Demon/EA that I've enjoyed taking to 50 and beyond. I haven't seen it mentioned here, but you might want to consider Ninjas. I'm running a set with Trick Arrow that I've gotten to 45 so far and they do a good job going through mobs. Healing, absorb and 'thunder dome' will help mitigate their lack of defense. The only real negative is the lack of a mule to take all the MM unique pet IOs. Also, Discharge will give you some good AoE Debuf on Damage. Plus, you could do a pretty good 'Big Trouble in Little China' theme.

Me too and since the meta was you're, essentially, fighting the game gone wrong, it makes sense to have things happen that normally couldn't. Great job by the Devs! I appreciate all you do for us!

It's location helps keep down the riff-raff and helps ensure a better experience for their exclusive cliental.

Yeah, I've never heard of anything being stolen from them! /s

Yes, bring in the clowns. . . . Let rampant speculation begin and thanks to you and all the Devs for keeping adding new content!

Been there, soloed a lot of characters to 50 by playing through content. Had many times in which an ambush would come and attack my solo character even when my character was invisible. OP is suggesting a change to the mechanic/mission design of the game, one that would damage what I enjoy for the game. As OP is suggesting a change, OP has the burden of supporting that change especially since he is trying to force his style of playing on to mine by trying to get the game changed. This isn't I farm/I play content, this is make changes to how certain missions work to accommodate how I prefer to play. OP's character is not being made useless, OP is having to adapt to encountering enemies that are coming at him ready to attack rather than being able to dictate the battle field for when OP is recharged and ready to go and getting the first shot in. OP is complaining that it is harder to protect a fragile NPC when there are a larger number of enemies because he set the mission to have a larger number of enemies. Part of the challenge is to protect the NPC, that isn't only being able to take down a group of enemies, it is doing so in a way that keeps the NPC safe. It should be harder to do that when you set your mission difficulty for a higher level then your character and for a larger party size. Some times you pop inspirations when you get the idea an ambush is coming, they are about as good as end mission bosses about keeping their mouths shut. Maybe you even run off from the NPC you are protecting so you keep the incoming mobs away from them. There are ways to do it, and it is harder when you increase the level of the enemies and the number of them. As it should be. If you increase the challenge level, gasp, you increase the challenge. There should be a chance of failure, the chance of failure should increase as the difficulty increases. Protecting an NPC should be harder on a solo character versus a group, especially at higher difficulty levels. Catching a single fleeing mob should be harder for a single character than a group. This is a feature not a flaw.

Absolutely, but there is also a big difference between fighting mobs that are standing around doing nothing until you launch your attack versus mobs running in to attack you. I would bet that ambush your talking about, if it was like the rest of the mobs in the mission waiting for you to do something before acting, you could have handled it. There is a big change when the mobs aren't giving you the equivalent of a DnD surprise round. Frankly, I don't see this as auto fail I see it as working as designed. If you are going to take on higher difficulties, you should have a higher chance at failure. If there is not a chance at failure then what is the point? You said I'll do something that the developers have set in their guidelines that is of a reasonable difficulty for a group of 4 at a level higher than you take a character into, you took an added challenge for higher rewards (more xp and inf than running the mission as +0/1). It seems that the concern is when the challenge isn't just damage x mobs to defeat when you get to dictate when the fight starts and get first shot but rather when it requires keeping the NPC safe by healing, keeping aggro off, or keeping the AoEs falling in an area the NPC isn't. On a don't let NPC escape, if you guess the wrong corridor and the NPC escapes by going the way you didn't or couldn't cover due to group size, or when there is a lot of enemies, again due to the mission being set up for a larger number of players, and the NPC can slip out among the masses, then failure is absolutely valid. The vast majority of my play is Solo. I have 10 lvl 50s and all but one has all the incarnate levels unlocked. I run them at difficulties I'm comfortable with that fit my play style. Now that I've played more and want to level up faster, I run double xp until late 40s as the amount of Inf I get playing my 50s funds other characters and to speed up leveling. I also rotate between alts to take advantage of patrol xp. I have a ton of characters between 20 and 50 to rotate between. The possibility to fail a mission is a feature not a flaw. An increase in that possibility when you take on mission sizes designed for larger groups is similarly a feature.

That's where I'm at. I mainly solo, but I watch general chat and help discussions. Things have started to, in my opinion, get quiet lately. I enjoy this game as a stress relief and, frankly, I haven't found anything else like it so I really want this to continue. . .

Out of curiosity, and its been two years, is is possible to get an update? If we can't do player base size/active size, can we get an update on the AT breakdown? Thanks for all you guys do.

Very interesting, a thought about Force Move and as I have no programing knowledge what so ever feel free to immediately discard this. . . . Force Move seems like an interesting basis for a control power. Imagine a power, call it, Gather, that has a large AoE that causes foes to be compelled to move from their scattered group into the proverbial 'Fireball Formation'. So many times in missions, enemies are scattered on the set up, not as Covid social distancing, but to avoid AoEs. There are complaints from melee and AoE blasters when Controlers us an immobilize power early and the enemies stay scattered. In a way it is a control power because when an enemy is moving it is not attacking. (In that way the knock powers are damage mitigation powers, it the enemy is getting up it is not using that time to attack.) Thematically, forcing an enemy to walk and gather in a spot is different from a power drawing them in (which can be fun too). Just a thought, and Thank you for all that you do!

I have a Electrical Blast/Electricity Manipulation blaster in his early 40s that is fun and does fine. The attack of Ball Lightning (run behind it as it goes in) Short Circuit, then Thunder Strike does wonders to even con minions. I generally do not worry about endurance drain on my blaster as he takes things down quickly. When I do want to drain, using charge up with Thunderous Blast does well, then short circuit and power sink do a good job of killing what is left. I'm having fun with him. I primarily solo and go between a bunch of characters. With my defender on the other hand, EA/EB, I made that character after the changes and I have gotten that one to 50 (16 vet levels) primarily soloing and the occasional task force. No farming. You can absolutely drain EBs to nothing or essentially nothing. Remember, they may be able to do a minor attack, no big deal. The minor attacks aren't what defeat you, their massive attacks are. If you drain them down to nothing, they aren't dropping their nukes or similar. I soloed all the requirements of the portal jockey badge and drained each and every one of the EBs (only one I didn't get to no blue showing was the Clockwork king)

<shrug> I was doing Elite Bosses, and the two AVs from the AE mission (both were Mu and resistant to electricity) and was successful draining them as set forth above. I was also able to drain some GMs. You might want to give an ElA/EB Defender a try on the test server. The changes they made makes draining endurance a viable tactic. Use Power Mastery Epic Power Pool Build up with Thunderous blast followed up by Charge Up and Short Circuit.

With my Ill/TA I six slotted Acid Arrow (rest the same 5 procs) and put in an Acc/Dam from Positron's Blast, and since that was two from that set it gave me a 2.5% to recovery on top of some accuracy.

Appreciate it, but I haven't had any problems. One thing that probably helps me that I didn't mention is that I shove the Stealth IO from the Celerity set into sprint, the other player is also grabbing the initial aggro. Your right in that if you do not kill the enemies end, you can easily be in a world of hurt. That is one of the reasons I keep using Insulating Circuit to get free absorb points. When I solo, which is what I primarily do - I find it relaxing and it helps destress from my day- I generally throw in ball lightning, I follow it as it is going it, and then hit them with shock. At that point, I really only bother with the cage if there is something that might stun or hold me because the enemy doesn't have the endurance to be a threat. I have to say, I really love draining all the endurance from the main bosses in missions. They will continue to give you their programed phrases as you attack them. It is kinda like they are monologing as you beat them down.

I haven't tried any of the end game Portal AV missions or Incarnate trials. What I can tell you is, I have been successful, playing solo, draining EBs required for the Portal Jockey Badge (except for Clockwork King) with relative ease. While also solo, I was able to drain two AVs in the Murder on 34th Street AE mission (highly recommend it) and was able to defeat them albit with help of the NPCs in the mission mainly due to the ability of this set to also kill recovery (without buying envenomed daggers) and boosting damage. I've had no problem draining the End from Giant Monsters as well. Short Circuit does insanely good at draining. I used the Synapse Shock set mainly for recharge and it adds some damage. You'll want to keep using this power ever time it recharges on an EB or better because not only does it kill end it has a nice -Rec component. Don't forget about the change to Aim (Charge up) where they added a scale 2.5 End Mod Str Boost that boosts your endurance drain (Blaster/Sent = 25% , Corruptor =27.5%, Defender = 31.25%) Couple this with Zapp for a good drain on a single target. I like the Power Mastery Epic Power Pool to grab Build up, and use that with Thunderous blast where they added a -30% bonus Endurance Drain vs Elite Targets (Main Target Only)

When I'm grouping, it is generally the second power I put up. When grouping, I'm finding that the best way for me to be of assistance is follow the insane tank or scrapper into the main melee, as they take the initial aggro, I fire off Short Circuit and then Faraday cage. Short Circuit nukes the blue bar of most things completely. If they can't do much, there isn't much of a need for resistance. Once I do that, I recharge Insolating Circuit to recharge the Absorb they lost and it is better to give absorb than healing in my experience as you can't heal over max, but you can add absorb to max. Then throw in empowering circuit to give a damage buff before hitting Short Circuit again. Add in healing and endurance adds as needed. After battle, make sure the insane tank or scrapper is maxed for absorb as they run into the next group. In some ways, you really should think of the improved sapping ability as a control power. If the enemy doesn't have endurance, they can't do much. Even if the EB or AV can do a basic attacks they are not doing the main attack. Also, pay attention to the powers with -Rec, such as shock, Galvanic Sentinel's powers, and Short Circuit. Those can replace the P2W crutch of Envenomed Daggers.

With all of the recent updates to Electrical Blast, I decided to make a EA/EB defender and had a great time. Since there isn't any information on Electrical Affinity in the "I need Healing" Defenders Guide, I thought I would post some of my thoughts here now that I leveled my EA/EB defender to 50. Electrical Affinity: A quick note about Static. You build static through the use of your powers, and it dissipates over time. The more static you have, the more targets chain off with your buffing powers. The initial target gets the most benefit and it reduces from there. When your working in a group, you'll have plenty of static within the first minute of the mission. Heck, you can shoot your teammates before you go in to build some up. Big thing to remember is that you are healing/buffing via chain lighting. If they aren't in the general area of the initial target, they are out of luck. Shock: Great little power that needs no additional slots. Put an Acc IO in it and your done. It is a nice little single target debuff, - DMG, drains some End, and hurts recovery. When soloing bosses or EBs, I would cycle this in whenever I was waiting for other powers to recharge. Harming their recovery makes your life easier. This is the only character I've never felt the need to pick up Envenomed Daggers to take down EBs solo while leveling up. Plus, it builds static if you need it. Rejuvenating Circuit: This is your shoot your friends to heal them power. Good amount of healing, good recharge time. When in a group, if you see health go down, shoot them. Galvanic Sentinel: A great little power with my only complaint is that it's duration is too short. While soloing, you can summon this little guy to debuff your enemies (think shock but an AoE), it is targetable so if an enemy is shooting it, they are not shooting you, and you can target it for your healing/buffs. When you target it, you can bounce your heals and buffs to heal and buff yourself. Also, for even more fun, put the proc in from the Energy Manipulator set to give your Sentinel a chance to stun enemies for you. Remember, stunned enemies don't shoot back. Energizing Circuit: Everyone uses too much End, this one gives you a way to give a boost to your friend, and to yourself if bouncing off a friend or the Sentinel. I wish it gave a little more, and it is a little annoying that you have to have End to give End, but minor complaints. Faraday Cage: This power is just wonderful. For this power alone you are a great asset to any team, not that they will realize what you just saved them from, but man its good. Ok, you create a dome of lighting around you, looks spiffy, lasts until you cast it again. It gives a nice amount of resistance to everything except toxic, but, here is the kicker, protects against status effects, knockback, minus recharge, recovery, and end. Your team isn't going to realize the pain your saving them, until they step out of the dome and are held. Great power. Empowering Circuit: Everybody likes a damage buff, so give them one. This one buffs damage and to hit. Doesn't last long, but recharges quick. Defibrillate: Didn't take it. Melee Targeted AoE Ally Rez. Hear it is great if you like this sort of power, to me too situational and bounce backs are readily available. If folks are staying in range of your absorb and heals, you really won't need this much. Sure, you may save a Mothership Raid that is going south, but it wasn't worth the power slot to me when I can get something else like a leadership power. Insolating Circuit: Another great power because this time your giving your teammates (and yourself if you bounce it) Absorption. That is free extra hit points. While it doesn't last long, the recharge isn't long. You can spam this to your hearts content, and its a great way to know if someone is out of range for healing. When soloing, I would bounce Insulating Circuit, Empowering Circuit, and then Energizing Circuit (to recover all End) before a boss or EB fight. Amp Up: Didn't take it, sure, great buff on someone else to double the effects of secondary effects of their powers, but haven't you given them enough benefit? Personally, take the Power Mastery Epic Power pool and grab Power Build Up. All the benefits of Amp Up but this time to you. Electrical Blast Charged Bolts: If your going to solo, your going to need attack powers. This one does damage and drains end, a great combination. Lightning Bolt: Same as a above but a little more damage with a little slower recharge time. Ball Lighting: Targetable AoE. Damage isn't great but the end drain helps. Short Circuit: PBAoE with moderate damage over time, but drains a ton of endurance and really hurts their recovery. My normal tactic while soloing was throw in ball lighting as you are running up, then hit Short Circuit. At that point, your enemy is almost completely drained. One shot of charged bolt or lightning bolt will drain the rest. An enemy without endurance can't do much. Anything below EB can't do anything, watching False Nemesis try to activate their defenses and fail is hilarious or enemies with scripted sayings monolog is great, EBs can do a minor attack while drained. An EB minor attack is far more manageable then the rest of their arsenal. I soloed my way to the Portal Jockey Accolade by this tactic without any real difficulties or using Envenomed Daggers. Aim: great build up power, it also helps drain end. Zap: fun sniper power, drains endurance well, especially when coupled with Aim. Consider the Executioner's Contract IO set because of its Chance for Stun proc. Tesla Cage: Decent single target hold that will do minor damage based on how much static you have. The additional effect is a little disappointing, but still nice to have. I found I really didn't use this power a lot compared to how often I normally use single target holds, its just that with Faraday Cage up, I really didn't worry about enemies holding me. Plus, I generally had them drained of End pretty quickly so most were not a danger to justify this over an actual damage dealing power. Voltatic Sentinel: A toggle that creates a ball of energy to follow you around and do some damage to your enemies. Nice to have, fun to put in another proc from Energy Manipulator to have even more stunned enemies. Its a toggle so you lose it if you are stunned or held. Thunderous Blast: Targeted AoE nuke. Love it. Against EBs, I would bounce my buffs off my Galvanic Sentinel, hit Power Build Up (epic power pool) and shoot this while running in after it. Once there, I would hit Short Circuit. At that point, every EB I've faught, with the exception of the clockwork king, was out of endurance. Then I just used Charged Bold, Lightning Bolt, Zapp to take them down. Occasionally throwing in another Short Circuit and Shock to hurt their recovery. The Galvanic Sentinel should also be hitting their recover too at this point. Other notes on tactics: When I group, I mostly just heal/buff. I follow the person who is running head first into groups, throw up a cage, and just keep healing and buffing. As long as everyone stays in the general area, everyone will be ok. Problems happen when someone runs off and you can't immediately target them for heal/buffs. I don't worry about attacks as much as others do more damage and things are generally defeated so fast that trying to drain the blue bar faster than the red is kinda pointless. That being said, I did do three encounters with Winter Lords, and I would buff my team before we went in, and then drain the Winter Lord's endurance. I could drain them completely of endurance, and while they would do the occasional minor attack, it was never one that would threaten anyone else in the group. This build solos well. I haven't set it up to do the insane +4/8 content, but I had no problem with the regular game content, and never had to resort to Envenomed Daggers or other tricks to defeat an enemy.

One method I like is simply sending an e-mail to my global name and even after it is marked read, leave it in my inbox. Then, when I want to send Inf or something else, I just reply to that e-mail. That way there is no chance of mistyping the e-mail address. The first e-mail can be a test e-mail without anything.

Just a defeat badge for taking out Nemesis and Crey Snipers. Just seems to me that the Crey Snipers in PI are just working with too much impunity.

I usually solo, but I'm trying to team more with this toon. I started with multiple runs of DFB, and gained multiple levels on a yin. I only use it as a bounce when I'm not teaming. When teaming, I always just target teammates to either bounce heals/buff or just fire my attacks having them target for me. Where a bind would be helpful is when I want a boost to health or end it would be so much easer to hit a bind and fire off the power then find the little ball.

Can anyone give me some suggestions on slotting, using this power, and a bind to target it? Running an Electrical Affinity/Electrical Blast Defender. I used Electrical Affinity with a Mastermind and enjoyed it, and I thought it would be a fun combination with the changes to Electrical Blast. So far, at 24, this power seems to be a way to soak alphas and something to target and bounce heals and buffs off of. Is it worth slotting beyond the initial? If so, how? Just Endurance mods? Currently thinking Proc from Energy Manipulator (chance for stun) and three from Synapse shock (Endmd, endmod/rec, and endmod/15% run speed) I don't see anything else helping. Anyone have a good bind to target it to make bouncing heals and buffs off it easier? Any other suggestions for using it?

I'm with Frozen, and to continue to beat a dead horse, AoE sleep is almost useless in group play as AoE are flying around left and right. I understand the arguments about confuse enemies shouldn't give you xp because that isn't damage your doing, been there, read the posts arguing that ad nauseam, guess what, your still going to get complaints about using confuse powers in some groups as it reduces the xp awarded. (The IO/Proced out blaster is going to tell you that you only ended the battle a few seconds faster and they would have destroyed them anyways - then we can go on to the also very plentiful argument that Dominators and Controllers are not that useful in the later game as everything is destroyed so quickly that controls really don't matter.) So, two powers in the set can get you grief is you use them, one of the powers, Telekinesis is niche and right up there with Black Hole from Gravity as a must skip. Your top power is outshined by a T5 in another control set. (Yes, we will keep bringing it up as it proves the point of why Mind should be relooked at in light of how the game has grown and changed.) So, again, personal opinion, kill TK, move Mass Confusion down in TKs place, add a pet at as the T9. My dream would be being able to use the T9 as a confuse power to take an enemy as a pet with a duration based upon the type of pet - Minion until dead or zone, LT 5 minutes or dead, Boss 2 minutes.

I've been running a blaster and I've been running a blaster with Electrical Blast and I've been able to drain enemies pretty consistently. Most of the time it doesn't matter, but the drain improvements to Aim coupled with Thunderous blast kill all the lower levels and leave bosses drained or close to it. Short Circuit does a great job of taking up the rest. Drain when solo is workable, and I've drained both Winter Event EBs. On a team, well, its like everything else, they don't last long enough. Edit: just an update, made a Elec/Elec Defender, now 43, I'm finding that using Power Build Up from Power Mastery Epic along with Thunderous Blast and Short Circuit, I've been able to drain EBs in Tina Macintyre's Anti-Matter Collision/The Instant Army Arc and defeat them solo and I was able to drain a GM Snow Beast and keep it drained as the rest of my four member group beat it down. Note, they will do an an occasional attack, but no where near what they normally do. Oh, and draining Fake Nemesis to nothing is a blast, you have to keep shooting them but, man, watching them try and be unable to do the invulnerability shield is hilarious.

While I am against scaled-level mobs for most things outside of events, this is an event that should have them. I've started two new blasters to try the new primary/secondary and the revamped one. I was grabbing presents last night, and when the spawns were purple, well it was not a pleasant Gomer Pyle moment, 'surprise, surprise, surprise.' I would prefer if the mobs in events, especially ones that just appear, be scaled-level rather than being surprised by the level that pops up.

Played this set on live, thank you for making it. I skimmed the prior 8 pages, didn't see this brought up: The -Def attacks are not putting on the defense debuf icons on enemies. Shouldn't they be? Edit: Shouldn't the listed damage for Shatter be Moderate instead of light?