Gwyrddu

Dark blast/Devices has been an excellent hover blaster for me. From the dark blast side you have a sniper set that gets a mass immobilize, mass knockback, and a couple of other useful tools like a life drain and hold. From devices you get caltrops, trip mines, gun drones and abilities that decrease your chance to be hit that stack with the -tohit of your dark powers. Devices only has one melee power (but one with a bigger range) in taser which can be used to incapacitate anyone who gets past everything else.

Are you using theft of essence? It made a big difference when I used in on an endurance hog and it looks like there are two spots you can put one in.

I like the way my grav/ff controller works out in practice. mainly because it gives me the defensive tools I need off the bat without interrupting my ability to pummel enemies with a mixture propel, lift and arcane bolt. Sure I don't get any heals, but it's not like I can heal singy anyway.

T1 Sonic is not an immobilize, it's a knockback.

I have a gravity/ff controller and arcane bolt with its bonus and containment gives a little better ST damage then propel or lift, even though one of gravity's big thing is their single target damage. Likewise on my rad/elec brute I replaced devastating blow with a faster and thus better cross punch even though the former is a T8 attack. I'm sure there are plenty of other examples, but the point is that not only are pool powers viable, but in certain circumstances they can outperform primary or secondary alternatives. I'm sure it's a fine balancing line to have pool powers be good but not so good that people ignore their primary and secondaries for them.

You should read the developers diary Knock, Knock post in the Developer's corner where it talks about changes to knockdown and how singularity was used as a test for getting the new system running.

That's easy, one of those blaster secondary recovery/regeneration toggles, with the specific one depending on the particular character. So if it was a character that needed stealth for example I'd grab field operative.

This is interesting since I have a dark/dev blaster in the same level range and for someone without full time mezz protection I hardly get hit by mezzes at all. I think there are quite a few reasons for that some specific to dark and its control element and synergy with devices, and also that I am hover blaster using rune of protection (albeit I wasn't getting mezzed much even before I picked up ROP). But concentrating on your build, you really want a stealth IO to go with Field OP. And then you always should be able to set up a trip mine, hit the enemy with a smoke bomb, then aim and snipe the biggest threat in your mob before your enemy has time to react. Maybe from there you can proc out an AOE attack with your own mezz effects to further minimize the effectiveness of any counterattack. Anyway your best defense as a blaster against being mezzed is the power of your alpha strike.

Alright I tested it out some more and SR resistances do show up, but only when my health is below 50%, which is different than what reactive defenses does which shows an increase in resistance when any health has been lost. That the two systems appear to work differently doesn't seem to mentioned anywhere (I mean aside from reactive defenses starting out with a set resistance, which is mentioned)

I can definitely confirm that kismet does show its bonus when it is an active power, but it is labelled as a to-hit bonus and not an accuracy bonus, which is the line right below accuracy. The only other thing I can think of it being is not having the right kismet slotted in your power. On a tangential note, does anyone know why the scaling resistances for SR on my stalker aren't displayed? Even when I check for it when I'm injured it doesn't show anything, even though it shows scaling resistance for that IO that also offers scaling resistance.

Well there's only one piece of insight I can offer on your questions. The biggest thing I notice about seismic blast is that it has its own mechanic where it gets stronger the more you use it for attacks. Now blaster secondaries are mostly attacks, so in some sense it's counterproductive to be attacking with your secondary since you aren't building seismic pressure. So I think the ideal answer is to pick a relatively passive secondary, either a corruptor with a non-busy secondary or if you do go with a blaster then one which at least has two toggles. The other thing to consider is whether your character is going to be mostly solo or mostly grouping, since some corruptor secondaries have three or more powers that only can be used in a team and some have all their powers available to a solo player. One of the latter sets, traps is considered bad for groups because of the setup time but works well for solo.

I like trip mine and I think it's worth taking. But from my experiences with a dark/dev blaster I'm noticing an anti-synergy with controllerish sets that enemies can't set off the trip mine if they can't get to you and that I'm better off mezzing my opponents when that's an option. Anyway, it ends up making the power more situational than it otherwise would be.

Would you really want that update now, or in March 2022 when we'd see the full effect of the latest issue on those statistics? Personally I'd rather know how all the new earth combos rank or how the updated electric blast set does as well since it has already been as long as it has been since the statistics have been released. Plus having it at the 2 year mark would be a convenient marker for when to expect updates to statistics.

Just to add to that it's pretty easy to get high accuracy bonus with target drone. Even with only one to-hit buff you can get at least a 20% bonus on accuracy. In fact it might even be overkill if you are also getting an accuracy bonus from the AR set. You should of course take the power anyway because you are still getting the damage bonus from targeting drone as well.

I'd think /Elec would be better on a brute. First off I think it's a pure resist set and brutes have a higher resist cap. Secondly there's the brute adding taunt to damage aura to keep enemies from running away. I mean I'm sure Elec/Elec is doable, but I have both a Elec/SR stalker and Rad/Elec brute that I like and I can't imagine a Elec/Elec scrapper would be better than either of them.

I'm playing a grav/FF controller which is actually pretty good at solo. Doesn't even need much in the way of slotting either outside of -KB protection and a stealth IO. People underestimate FF having that status protection, much less the other survival tools at your disposal.

PVE you can be completely invisible to 95% of the content with any stealth power + a stealth IO. Shinobi means you don't have to take infiltration (also freeing up the endurance cost of infiltration). There may be combinations that allow you to double up on stealth, but even if that's true I doubt it would be worth it.

Isn't Spidey wearing a venom symbiote in the above comic though? I would think that Spiderman's strength would be enhanced because of venom and maybe this comic was even hinting that this was the case.

Has hitting with these two powers ever been a problem though? It's already the most reliable way to take an opponent out of a fight. I'd think number two alone would be sufficient, since the real problem is that it slows down groups and as a solo survival tool it's already actually pretty good.

I think the train has long left the station for a realistic assessment of fighting styles in COH. Even if we were going to gatekeep on that, the fact that nunchucks are a real weapon (even if rarely used outside of Hollywood) would put it ahead of a majority of sets in the game. A better assessment would be that it would look cool if done right, but you'd definitely want to do it right and have it be its own set including plenty of twirling, and it's dubious that's the best use of limited art manpower. And even if we were going to a new powerset, what would mechanically separate it from the half dozen other weapon sets? At least some other new powersets like flame whips or throwing (poisioned) daggers the mechanical differences would write themselves.

I have a level 25 rad/elec brute right now, and it certainly seems to be getting more viable as I level up. The speed bump from lightning reflexes means I don't need to toggle/detoggle sprint every battle anymore, and a simple Theft of Essence in Radiation Siphon has done a lot by itself to combat endurance drain. Slow attacks don't matter to me as much when you have two damaging auras killing everything around you. Even among the dozen or so characters I'm playing I don't think my brute is the worst, as both my fire/savage dom and dp/cold corrupter manage to have both endurance issues and survival issues.

I prefer unique power sets, assuming there is some semblance to balance involved. Some of the coolest sets and abilities are also pretty unique as well. I will play devil's advocate though and point out that the more unique systems with each power set you have, the less likely you will have anything else that interacts with them though. So we will likely never see an IO set that interacts with blood frenzy or any other power set that benefits from the contaminated condition. It's a minor downside but one I see pop up in other games as well. For example D&D nearly every class and some subclasses have their own resource or mechanic and almost none of them have anything to do with anything else.

I never tried Dark/Dark, but I'm pretty impressed with Dark/Devices, particularly in solo. It's the closest you can probably get to being a ranged stalker.

Archery is a snipe set (well except for on sentinels) and is better for single target damage. DP has better AOE damage and control and is more for closer range. Martial combat is setup to be better at close range with quite a few melee attacks and a toggle that benefits from being near the enemy. If you want a good secondary for a snipe set, then something like TA or devices would be a better choice.

I don't think you can really have too much defense, that's why they are soft caps and not hard caps. A better question is do you want the recharge reduction from SR or the stealth and healing/endurance clickies from ninjutsu ? My inclination would be to go with the latter, but not because of SR being overkill. For example DM/SR is a great pairing that doesn't need ninjutsu's benefits quite a much because it has a built-in heal.