Diantane

Often I'll see a tank or a defender that has trained a lot of their early attacks. Like they are going to play just like a tank/scrapper or defender/blaster (50/50). The problem with that is since the attacks are in their secondary power-set, they will be weaker than a primary set would be. So they have become a "jack of all trades, but master of none." When I play an archetype, I dedicate myself. If I'm a defender my job is to support the team. So I will train my primary support powers with all priority. I only train an attack if that's all I can and my pool powers are complete. When either a 50/50 defender or a dedicated defender joins a team, everyone sees the difference right away. As a dedicated defender that has slotted all of the primary powers for buffs and debuffs (not for damage) the team will thank you for it and possibly ask you to join them on other teams. The same goes for the tank. A 50/50 tank will be weak on a team. They won't do much damage and die just like any other player. As a dedicated tank all of your defenses are trained and well slotted. So you can run into a large group of foes and taunt them to you. Be able to handle the "Alpha Strike" every time and protect your team. Those that are dedicated Defenders that heal very well, will bring your health after the alpha up to maximum very quickly. They won't be firing off weak weapons, but concentrating on keeping the team alive. This goes with any archetype. I've also played dedicated controllers. Everything slotted with holds, slows, confuse, defense debuffs, to-hit debuffs, etc. (never damage). Started a Dedicated Mastermind yesterday and leveled in team today from 8 to 27. He is Beast/Kin. Every Beast power is trained and well slotted. Only two kinetic powers are trained (transfusion by default) and Siphon Power. So my primary attack set is well covered. I'm not just standing there watching my pets attack. I'm totally engaged in combat and having a blast doing it too. After your dedicated archetype has all of their primary powers trained and slotted (mid 30's) you can start training the higher tier attacks that will do much more damage, but you'll never play that character the same way as others play theirs, ever again. As a dedicated archetype let others know this, "L16 Dedicated Sonic Defender LFT or L26 Dedicated Alpha Tank LFT. You will be recruited before others every time!

Shortly after I started playing in Homecoming (Everlasting server @Diantane) I put my over 40 years of computer gaming experience to use by running teams. Run them all day long (8-12 hours straight) and every day. I'll start a new character every few days (never the same power combination twice) and look for new arcs. No, I'm not into grinding level 50 AE or Radio Missions. I like the adventure of exploring all of the storylines and earning lots of merits in the process. Love them missions. If you read the storylines, they are really quite entertaining. The reason you want to be in a team isn't just of the enjoyment you feel spending time with others, you will also level much quicker. When I start a new character and build a team, then run that team for 9 hours or more, I end the team in my upper 20's to mid 30's. Of course you could level much faster in an AE farm, but you want be able to experience the pleasure of running the interesting missions. If you make a character to 50 in a farm, you won't want to play them and won't know how to either. I let myself be power-leveled once. I hated it and deleted the character. Building a character yourself is so much more fun. You will experience all the ways you can improve your character as you go. When you start a team you have to identify your level, your alignment, what arc or type of storyline and who you are looking for and sent a message in "Looking for group" and "Broadcast" if mission is in that zone. An message example: L24 (blue) Midnighter Arc Mission Team LF3M (looking for 3 more). If the missions are set harder than normal (like +2x8), you would change the message to L24 (blue) +2x8 Midnighter Arc Mission Team LF3M. If the team fills and more players are still calling in, I tell them that the team is full, but I've be happy to put them on a list and tell then what number in line they are (Sorry, but team is full. However I can add you as #1 to the list). When a mission ends, you want to keep the action going as fast as possible. Get ahold of the contact and grab the next missions. Then you have to click on the mission with the cursor and click on select so the rest of the team can see it (shows up in red). Sometimes this can't be helped. If you are starting a new contact these can sometimes be very demanding of you. Sending around to see other contacts in different zones. Let your team know what you are doing. If you don't, team members will start leaving. If they do, send out a recruitment message right away. When they see more players joining the team, it gives them confidence that the team is still strong. If you haven't spoke with your team more than a half dozen times, your recruitment message may still be in the queue. You can check by pressing enter, then pressing the cursor keys up or down to show the last several messages you sent. If your recruitment message is still there, edit it with any new level, mission arc, number of players you're looking for, etc.. You can tell which players are very resilient with the game. They are very experienced or possibly a veteran (over 50). You will get to know them and want to team with them again. Add them as friends. They will stay with your team a very long time. Maybe for hours. The rest of the players will join the team. Do 1-3 missions and leave. One or more players almost always leave at the end of a mission. Expect it. Prepare for it. The funny thing is, they all want to level fast, but only play a couple missions and then go watch TV or something for an hour before returning. The one type of mission that you will lose your "temporary teammates" is the landscape kills. Like Kill 30 Council. When this mission comes up, you may lose half to all of your team. But the veterans and other experienced players will always stay and help out the team. It doesn't matter if we have to kill 200 landscape NPC's, they will find them all and get their badge (you get a badge for killing 200 of one type of critter). Switching to the First or Night Ward arcs is a downer for many players. They will quit as soon as you do. But the players that stay will experience several fascinating storylines. Doing these missions will allow you to bypass the endurance draining freakshow and clockwork. Also the machine gun and artillery wielding council. I usually start them between 22 and 26 and complete all of the arcs (well over a hundred amazing missions) and come out at the other end in my low 40's. I'll send out word that we are still here. L24 (blue) Night Ward Team LF4M. We usually have full teams throughout. The missions can be quite hard at time, but when the teamwork is there, the reward of your enjoyment will be fulfilled. Always listen to your team. If they ask you to turn up the difficulty, do it. Now don't set the difficulty to +2 when you have a new character in Atlas. Your powers haven't been enhanced to handle that yet. I have had teams that told me to raise it up to +4x8 and they handled it quite well. Some others may join and die quickly and complain, but the others are usually pretty fair about making changes and will work with the team. It can be either rewarding or frustrating running a team. I have experienced both many times and I will keep experiencing them. I promise you this, if you join and stay on one of my teams, you will see more fun and excitement then you've ever seen playing this game. You will also level up quite nicely and earn lots of badges and merits. See you in-game!

This was my first experience of playing a controller. Hate to think I spent millions of inf on a dud. As you said, there is no to-hit debuffs here. I had to wait until melee players rushes in to take the alpha before casting a hold. If I did it first I would pull all the aggro (a deadly mistake since I had little protection). My job is to make the battle safer for others. If the others have to approach first, I'm not doing my job. This wasn't what I signed up for. I remember last night that I hated this and quit the team I had led for several hours. Gonna create one of the controllers you mentioned. Thank you!

I’ve got two SO accuracy enhancements in each of my hold powers and I’m still lucky to affect anything above my level. Frostbite almost never hits. Just don’t use it anymore. The only power that works 100% is Ice Slick, because it doesn’t use accuracy. Thought of switching to another type of controller, but maybe they’re all bad.

My character is new. Just created him last night. He was Ice/storm, but didn’t care for the blinding trait of hurricane. So I re-rolled him to keep the name, “Freezermax.” He turned 22 and I went to sleep. Started using SO’s at level 7. I’ll start using IO’s in another ten levels. Then see what happens with it.

I’ve tried a couple confuse SO’s, but no critter fights their own kind. Have tried two slow SO’s with no difference. So is this just a power that should be spec’ed out?

You need to-hit debuff secondary with Ice Control? Well I got just the thing (that you didn't mention). FF does defense and thermal/sonic does resistance, but I have Cold Domination as a secondary that does both resist and defense shields for the team. So much for minus to-hit - lol. Jack Frost will be protected as well.

Thanks for the quick replies. Gives me something to work for. The incarnate update would be ideal, May switch from doing missions at RWZ until then though 🙂 I'll also work on the inspirations (thanks for that helpful tip).

Played my first blaster this week (Fire/Atomic). Leveled him to 46 and just stopped. I just had enough. Put to sleep and then the foe kills me with no way to protect myself. This happened several dozen times. Don't care for melee (played a stalker. Drop a red inspiration, click on build up and go to assassin. Then three others kill the guy that I took too long to prepare for. All my efforts wasted). What I needed was a blaster with mez protection. Thought that the sentinel was the answer, but their damage level is so low it takes me three full uses of all of my attacks to kill anything. The defender's even worse. They need either provide mez protection for the blaster or beef up the sentinel (which I would prefer).

Well that might be true for some powers, but if I capped fire resistance with just two SO enhancements, why would you want to use three??

Unless they changed it I read that ED would give the third of the same enhancement a substantial reduction (can't remember the percentage). So unless you wanted to enhance the defense debuff or something else... According to MIDS, Fiery Embrace only works for 20 seconds with a 3 minute cool-down. One recharge IO lowers it to to 126.4 seconds. Two is 98.19 secs. But adding a third only lowers it another 8 seconds (pretty bad). I can just imagine what little a third damage IO would do for you.

Well that's cool. They must have upgraded that since that 2019 post I read.

I don't believe it! The fire shield wasn't on as you said. When it came on I capped at 90% fire resistance with just two SO's in each fire defense. So adding a third SO or switching to common IO's wouldn't do anything more. I am curious why you trained Fiery Embrace. That is to increase fire attacks. My guess that if you were a fire/fire brute, that would work, but otherwise..... Just read that FE only affects FIRE attacks. Not burn and fire aura. Anyway I was able to complete the AE tf and earn a million influence (that was on -1x4). Will turn that up and try again. Thank you all for your input!

My build: https://www.midsreborn.com/builds/download.php?uc=1346&c=547&a=1094&f=HEX&dc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

Thought I would work my way up since those bonus IO sets cost a lot more than I have. Figured I would earn some farming little stuff and add as I go.

Well workbench IO's would only get a tiny bit more. And as I said, I turned it down to minus one level and times four team size. My stalker and mm can do that.

The character is Radiation Melee, Fiery Aura. Fire resistance is 63%. Defense is 7.5%. This is the highest I can get with 2 Single Origin enhancements in the Fire and Plasma shields (31.5%). Plus two Resist Damage SO's in Temperature Protection (31.5%). Combat Jumping has one SO defense (2.255) and Weave has two (5.25%). No idea how you came up with 45% defense.

So I read that Rad/Fire Brutes are pretty good farmers. Make one and finally get him to 50. It was a hard struggle in teams because I died many, many times. End was also a major concern. Even with an end enh in every attack, consume was not enough. At 50 I got all enhancements to 50 SO's. Also running tough and weave fully slotted with SO's. So I go into AE Fire Farm with no lethal. Go in and my health dropped "very" fast. Was able to get out before dieing. Quit that task force and set missions to -1x8. Tried again and again health dropped rapidly. Tried again at -1x4 --- Died in 5 seconds. Don't know what I read before, but this character sucks.

I was overwhelmed by the response, but it got me thinking. If a hundred players did each of these ideas, none of them would work. I mean the influence has to come from somewhere. There would have to be a lot more "spenders" than "earners". A lot more. Then the spenders got that influence somewhere. So they too are earners.

I could not see the edit button, so I cleared out the salvage and enhancements from the base and deleted the sg that I made a few years ago. Started a new one and everything worked. I was away from the game for a year and I guess it became bugged.

So how do you enter build mode?

I'm in SG mode, but still zero prestige. Did they remove it?

So what's the advantage to having Evasive Maneuvers at all?

I have a L32 FF MM. Before summoning any bots: Personal Defense Evasive Maneuvers = 13.5% Dispersion Bubble = 10.77% Hover = 2.25% Total 26.52 % Summon Protector Bots. My defense drops to 23.79% even though one of them adds Force Shield (10.77%) to me. As soon as I dismiss the bots, my defense goes up to 37.29% An ideas?

As much as I've tried, I just can't afford to upgrade my enhancement upgrades. Only play a handful of alts and every one's enhancement page is lacking. The enhancements are either red or some have IO's that are 20 levels lower than the character. Now DO's dropping as loot sure helped, but its not enough to catch my characters up. I've been told that when I reach 50 that the influence will be coming in a lot more (course level 50 enhancements are very expensive too). See players with IO sets and I'm thinking how could they possibly afford it.