Ringo

I ran an Ice Armor/Energy Melee tanker up to 50 waaaaay back in the day. Cold Starlight was her name, had a blast with the pompoms

I quite like the Chambers Brothers take, personally https://youtu.be/AQSjV4DZ-Gg?si=ardbtJJY3-0mpnLn

If you can share what you're leaning towards and why it appeals to you there's definitely more advice available on pairings/strengths/etc. (If you want more advice)

Phantom Army is so good you will eventually mind it not being Perma. But! That could just be motivation to make enough inf to get there

Cheap controllers are basically controllers that don't need to chase recharge. Damage procs and defense can also be expensive but are mitigated by teammates who can dish out damage or take aggro, which you'll have. Primaries that don't need necessarily recharge to get a groove going: Earth Gravity Arsenal Symphony Electric Secondaries are a bit different and split into 3 categories. Doesn't have to chase recharge, could chase recharge (the set has 1 or 2 powers that need it but performs well without), and should chase recharge (your set is defined by powers with long cooldowns). Recharge Heavy secondaries (should): Storm Summoning Traps Empathy Pain Darkness Affinity Recharge recommended secondaries (could): Time Cold Domination Trick Arrow Thermal Radiation Nature Kinetics Recharge optional/lite secondaries (no need): Force Fields Sonic Resonance Electrical Affinity Radiation Emission Poison

Counterpoint: Being an optimist will definitely lead to disaster

Sorry, no, Dad jokes are my Sustain power

I blame the animes Attack and dethrone God!

Psychic Blast/Energy Aura Sentinel Ranged Psychic-themed (and damage typed) attacks coupled with a very psychic compatible defense (dodge, deflect, can't hit me) armor. Sentinels are very survivable solo, possibly the easiest AT to learn as you go, and make for solid teammates with a nice debuff (Vulnerability, use it early, use it often) for hard targets PS: if Psychic-pink isn't your style, try recoloring your attacks to gold, I think it looks awesome

Corruptor primaries out-damage Defender secondaries when on teams. While Defenders will provide stronger buffs/debuffs, some times you just want to see those bigger orange numbers

For teaming: As a Dom, having PermaDom giving you high magnitude Seeds of Confusion is your biggest team-wide contribution - it increases kill speed and team safety. So you're going to want a high recharge build. Secondaries with good places to slot the Force Feedback +Recharge proc can help with that. Energy, Earth, and Electric are good places to start. As a controller your teammates benefit most from Buffs and Debuffs and almost any secondary will do that with the exception of Storm which is mostly a damage dealing set and isn't necessarily a strong team force-multiplier build. However some debuffs (-Dmg, -ToHit) reduce the effectiveness of Seeds of Confusion. This means Dark, Rad, Nature, Time, and Poison are, while great debuff sets and absolutely workable, are perhaps less ideal when paired with Plants. That leaves the top debuff sets for Plant as Trick Arrow and Traps. HOWEVER, because Seeds of Confusion and Creepers benefit from high recharge builds, your secondaries that mix Buffs with long recharge Debuffs are going to pair *very* well with Plants. Sets like Cold, Thermal, and Pain will make great use of slotting for extra global recharge.

My main is a Plant/Storm controller and if you like controlled chaos and high (for a controller) damage you can't go wrong with that combo

Dual Blades and Staff have 2 cones and 1 pbaoe, while Katana has 1 cone and 1 pbaoe so that might favor DB/Staff for a tanker over Katana at least The Dual Blades combo system is fairly simple but might play better on an armor set like Super Reflexes where you're not interrupting your combos to lay a burn patch or hit energy absorption or ground zero

How long does it take to solo Big Red?

I went Archery/Ice. I don't remember why, off the top of my head, but I do remember looking for a good pairing with my first Archery blaster and something about Ice made me think "Oh this is gonna be cool"

My completely unslotted, emptied bank account, level 50 Gravity/Trick Arrow controller stares balefully at me from the last character select page There's probably a Grav/TA build out there I do want to play, but *his* build was chasing recharge for Wormhole->Oil Slick Arrow and it never worked well enough for me to enjoy it

I have a 50 Ninjas/Cold from 2019 that used the Fighting attacks to draw aggro and tank in Bodyguard mode. It helped that /Cold was specifically picked for keeping the oft-dead ninjas alive long enough to crit and absorb damage, but it can definitely work! Using the MM attacks to up crit% is a wonderful revamp and may make for the best way to generate DPS but Ninja MMs played without it for years so if you don't want to then just skip it - not every character wants bow attacks! However I did roll my latest MM as a Ninja/Trick Arrow, specifically to use the bow

Even if I make a build I rarely intend to fill it out until my character is 47+ Until then I'm playing it by ear, taking the powers and slotting them with what feels fun and/or necessary. So I'd say somewhere 40+ is when I'm finally confident in what I like and want out of any given character.

Lock yes, delete no. I think people should be able to search and read the old threads, but if they have questions comments there's no reason not to start a new thread. Old threads with no responses within the last year should become "read only", but otherwise preserved. It's not like forum posts are extravagant data storage. At worst it possibly increases forum search times over the years, though search filters help with that

Ack you're right, it's "hidden" in Evasion. I completely forgot

With the recent influx of players there's been more posts! Great! And more necroposts... less great. And more necroposts responding to things that don't even work that way in game anymore it's not 2019 anymore oh my god. I don't think this needs to be the entire forum necessarily, but in the ARCHETYPES section and its AT sub folders I just don't see any reason why anybody should be replying to a dead argument from 3 years ago about powersets that have since been revamped. I'd rather a thousand new "How do I build a farmer?" threads than another "Well actually" response to the 2019 version of Battle Axe

4 years is a leeeeetle late, yeah

Super Reflexes Pros: Soft Cap all positional defenses Scaling Resistance % to all damage types (except Psychic? It's not listed in COD) Defense debuff resistance. Slow debuff resistance. +Recharge Cons: No Taunt Aura (This is wrong, your taunt aura is in Evasion) No Damage powers No Heal Click Mez Protection My thoughts: SR's scaling resists means the only time you *should* be dropping is from a OHKO at full health. SR may be better on Tankers because of the higher caps, but SR Brutes can reach the same resistance numbers as other Brutes so getting dropped on +4x8 is more likely a player problem than a set problem. That doesn't mean that said player can't have less problems on a /Rad over an /SR - but that's on the driver not the vehicle. And yeah, I would absolutely take SR over Rad against all content if your goal is to outlast your opponents. However Rad can increase kill speed which is something SR can't do, so it depends on what you want your Brute to do. SR is "less busy". SR is stronger on SOs. SR IO slotting is more flexible because it only has to chase Resistance bonuses through sets. I totally get if someone doesn't find those benefits appealing, different strokes for different folks, but mostly what I see from your evaluations is for farming which is a very specific niche about fighting beyond the aggro cap trying to kill as many mobs as fast as possible before they kill you - which, yes, /Rad and /Fire both increase kill speed, have easily capped resistances, and have heals. That's super in their wheelhouse. Against harder hitting Bosses, EBs, and AVs Rad and Fire no longer have a leg up, and resist sets will fall before SR Unless those OHKOs get you, of course

If you don't have a fully IO'd build then take it. It'll come in handy at times! Especially if you are the lead tank and dying and losing aggro will become a cascade failure - you're Super Reflexes, hit Taunt then stand there and heal, it's a viable strategy even on SOs!

My main on Live was an Illusion/Forcefield controller, both sets being characterized as "hard light" holographic projections. I honestly feel that Spectral Terror is perhaps the only "trickery" illusion power besides the stealth powers. However if you've already played an ill/time maybe pass on that A defender with either Forcefield or Sonic as a primary would be my pick. I know you can change Sonic Blast animations to not be shouts, not sure about Sonic Resonance. As for secondary - Energy blast, the aforementioned Sonic blast, or Psychic blast would be my picks. Both Sonic and Psychic have alternate "fire from hands" animations and both look great recolored to what you want Personally, with your criteria, I would probably try a Sonic/Psi blast Defender. Thematically can all be light based powers, -res, knockback, intangible, and an AoE hold (mag 2) in Liquefy give you some control tools along with your great teammate buffs, and Psychic blast gets you a sleep, more KB, and disorients as well