TygerDarkstorm

I'm not sure if everyone dooming and glooming these changes have actually tested them on beta yet or not. I didn't think all the changes felt horrible as of level 20 (I will try to do more testing at higher levels later). However, there are noticeable differences and I am unsure if they're all good. We all knew Seeds was going to take a hit at some point as it was wildly overtuned for where it's at in the tiers, but I do agree that it got over-nerfed. Duration and target caps reduced feels terrible in leveling play as an average (e.g., not twinked, not exemping, just basics skills player). While you can layer this with Spore Burst for layered mez/control, that technique doesn't feel so great either as Spore Burst is also left feeling like a shortish duration. I like the idea behind the changes to Spirit Tree, however, it's taunting power sucks. Doing a Council mish at +0/x2 and while the regen did noticeably help keep me alive, the tree taunted maybe 1 of the 12 or so opponents I tested it on. This made me have to rely far more on Vines to keep me safe. The Vines changes are fantastic, however. This power was reliably holding groups and dealing damage and even reholding enemies who broke free of the hold. I did feel like it took a long time to kill the mobs though, which felt weird when plant is usually known for damage--taking almost as long as my arsenal controller to arrest mobs doesn't feel good, especially when my plant controller can't control the groups as effectively as my arsenal controller can. I do hope the devs rethink the scale to which they've nerfed plant control--I accept that Seeds needed a change, but something is feeling a little overdone. I will probably still play plant, but I do plan to do more testing as some of these changes are not feeling as good.

So far testing on a level 20 plant/marine controller, I still feel as if spore burst is skippable. I'm sure the sleep is stickier compared to before, but I still feel as if the mobs are waking up pretty quickly and I'm relying far more on Tide Pool and Vines to help with mob mitigation.

As of right now, I'm also not feeling like I'm noticing much of a difference.

Does a plague doctor costume work? If not, I'll tweak my toon's costume. I will be there on Botanical Pathogen - Plant/Poison Controller.

I feel like that fits.

I just checked on my Dark Armor tank, the option is there, but not in the individual powers. You can see it on the drop down from the top where you choose if you want original, color tinted, soul noir, etc.

I'm just gonna point out one thing. Your UI is movable--you do not have to have the text only appear in the top right corner of the screen. For example, my Health/End display sits near the bottom right of my screen (sorta middle-ish right), which means my buffs/status icons appear above it there, and is also where the "momentum" text appears for my TW character. You can move your HUD to make that text more visible as needed. Not to mention the rings lighting up and such when you get momentum. And also knowing that you're in momentum after you do a slow attack. Your focus is a lot on the top right thing, and like, you can move this to be more convenient.

It says appropriate costume on it. I gave my plant/poison toon for this a plague doctor outfit as it seemed fitting.

Sorry for being late this morning and messing up the TF difficulty settings--I was moving slow getting to my computer and deciding to change to bring debuffs/support. Thank you Jax for running Sutter today. Our two PuGs were great additions and we had a smooth Sutter that was a lot of fun. 🙂 Posting next week's theme just so folks can see it easier and prep for it while Frau is busy: 31 May - “Mutate This!” - The Kheldian War (Moonfire, Level 23-28) - Professional-Grade Gene Alterations with Radiation/Radioactive, Bio/Nature, Poison powersets; appropriate costumes.

I'll run it, but I'll quick set up a debuffer/support toon for the theme and we can pick up PuGs hopefully

This is the way. Plus, there is a setting in options that allows you to show pet names for other players, thus making it so you don't confuse them among enemy mobs.

We only have 3 sign ups--is this worth doing? We seem to be struggling for consistent sign ups lately

Kudos to everyone who did this! My real life ended up so busy that I was unable to end up creating any of my rolls in time. Love seeing what combos people get and what they do with them. 😄

Martial Arts is a melee primary, do you mean Super Reflexes?

I totally didn't think about it, but does Sutter require any sort of special unlock (e.g., like Mortimer Kal)? I want to check so I can make sure I make time to unlock it if needed.

As of right now, I don't have any plans for this weekend, I can do the signup and lead. 🙂 I will let others choose their color before picking mine. 🙂 Signups for 24 May - “Lite Brite” - The Sky is Falling (Admiral Sutter, Level 20-40) - Spectrum Body type (other costume elements are fine, but the spectral body should be visible). Everyone picks a different color. Any AT/powers. @TygerDarkstorm - Environmentabot - Bots/Nature MM; Color: Purple @Burnt Umber - Backstreet Justice - STJ/Willpower Scrapper; Color: Dark/Royal Blue (I totally read the name as a Backstreet Boy lol) @Bananiac - Nuclear Fuelrod - Rad/Staff Tanker; Color: Greenish-yellow @Midnyte - Candy Martini - War Mace/Bio Brute; Color: Candy pink

Thank you. I was being lazy about looking up when the devs made the traps pass, and what it entailed for MMs.

I haven't tried that combo yet, so I can't comment to it. I think a few others around here have tried it. Necro got a big boost with the MM pass, so I'm sure it works fine together. 🙂 I'm not entirely sure if Detonator got an upgrade (I can't remember if it was included when the devs reworked some of the bomb powers) to make it worth taking, as it's had kind of notoriously meh damage for the price of sacrificing a henchman. At the moment, I think my only /Traps MM is a Merc/Traps who just hit 50 and is in bad need of a respec, and I skipped Detonator on her, and probably will in the respec. Hopefully some others here can help out. 🙂

I play pretty much all of my masterminds actively--I'm not a fan of the stand back and basically do nothing playstyle that some MM players like to do. With the MM updates the Homecoming team made a while back, most primaries should have you being fairly active on their end--you often want at least one, if not all, of your personal attacks. For secondaries, I disagree about taking poison--MM debuff modifiers are terrible and poison is really not a great set to take for MMs. For active secondaries, you're going to want to look at Nature, Marine, Storm, and Electrical Affinity. All of these provide an active MM playstyle as well as being strong secondaries for MMs.

As @FupDup mentioned, you can swap Electric Armor for Energy Aura and have a very, very similar character theme while having the freedom to choose hover/fly. Fire/Rad is also a classic sent combo that can hover blast. Pick whatever sounds fun to you--you have 1000 character slots to play with after all--and just make sure you avoid armor/blast sets that have a grounded component so you can hover blast to your heart's content. Imo, Storm Blast sometimes feels best on a sent because Storm really wants you to focus on it and using its powers, which a sent allows you to do with their armor secondary. Mine's paired with Elec Armor for thematic reasons, but I'm sure you can make any of the other armors work with it as well. Dual Pistols also seems like something folks like on sents--I haven't made one yet, so I can't comment to it, personally. My Psy/Fire/Psy sent is my personal favorite sent atm; Burn is the only power that requires being on the ground, and it's kind of a pain to use with a super low target count that you could skip it to fly instead.

Well done! I may be paying homage to this concept. 😜

Oooo, with Bots having Maint Drone, does this make Shoal Rush more preferable to take over Soothing Wave?

Well, your grounded power is probably one of the biggest reasons why you're not seeing folks with electric armor taking fly powers: If you don't care about losing your immob and KB protection, then go ahead and swap for fly. If you don't like super speed, you can always do super jump for a travel power.

What you did with the head on the first one is really cool! Is there the glass ball thing in there or is it just an aura effect?

Geeze, how to pick my favorite MMs? lol My Demons/Storm is still quite a force to be reckoned with. My Bots/Nature is also good fun and synergizes pretty well. I have a rather massive collection of MMs, so it's hard narrowing it down. Notable mentions are any primary with /Marine because Marine feels made for MMs and pairs well with basically all of them--even Beasts, which are at the bottom, feel good with Marine. Necro is a great primary that pair well with just about anything--necro/thermal gives you zombies on fire; necro/kin gives you zoombies; necro/cold for zombie pops; necro/dark is classic; necro/sonic for wraith/banshee vibes, etc. etc. Mercs are also strong after the last MM pass and also pair well with anything and are a good choice for newer MMs since they play primarily at range. Bots can also fall in with this.