Gwyrddu

Canadien Shield would have been my first alternative. It's not really a misspelling when you can play it off as a nod to Canada's French heritage. Just don't be surprised if you suddenly start getting chat messages along the lines of "Recherche membre du parti".

Both SR and Ninjutsu have a very similar power, and you don't need hasten to have it permanent, just two recharge reductions is sufficient by level 25 if not sooner. Honestly I'd rather see there be two autofire slots in the game rather than redesigning sets though.

Going off the statistics, traps is the least common set for level 50 characters for both defenders and corruptors. Yet it's the only support set besides trick arrow that doesn't have those stupid ally only powers that I usually skip unless I have nothing else to take. Anyway I'm just wonder whether there is an actual problem with the set or does nobody do solo missions? It's even weirder that for masterminds which actually always has a target for ally powers traps ranks about average.

Based on a recent preview picture of a stone based set, this appears to be coming soon. Probably a few others sets that can made be filling out existing themes from other sets, at that does seem to be the direction the team is going anyway with electric affinity and sonic manipulation. And however great those additions are, I hope we are still getting wind control, utility and gadget power pools as well eventually.

Dark/Devices Hell that almost works as an answer towards what one controller I would keep or what ranged stalker I would keep because he's sort of all those things.

You can buy athletic run from a p2w vendor, and I think that's faster than sprint. There's also numerous travel pool powers for quicker travel, and some power sets also have speed boosts. Yeah sprint still does take endurance, although I have at least one character that always uses it for the thematic power slide anyway.

Since I only have one of each archetype, answering this question is easy, it's whatever I happen to be playing, in this case a SD/BA tanker. Battle axe isn't flashy, but being able to knock down opponents with every one of your attacks is fun, and shield defense is a really good set. Having a damage boost and a teleport is both very welcome and hard to find on defense sets and grant cover is a rare party boost and also appropriate for a tank character.

I'm solo-leveling a grav/FF controller and it's a piece of cake. dispersion bubble gives me defense and status protection, containment field allows me to remove the biggest threat from the board and if all that fails personal force usually allows me to escape so I can come back refreshed (but given all my other controls this is rarely needed). In either case, I wish my dp/cold corruptor had the status protection that my controller has. Sure, in the particular situation where everyone is already soft-capped and has a full suite of status protection and is in no real danger and thus no need of your other FF tools, then FF isn't helping the party. But then again neither is a defense set. You still have a whole other set plus whatever powers you pick up to fill in the gap of aiding the party while FF keeps you alive.

The thinking probably wasn't "We have electrical powers now, what should the effect be?" but rather "We want a power to be able to drain endurance, what power set should we put it on?" You could have arguably made the case for cold, but cold likely already has a slowing theme to it. In either case, wherever you put it you'd have to suspend your disbelief a little since endurance is an abstract concept.

HC devs have already added the Will Power and Experimentation power pool on top of Electrical Affinity and Sonic Manipulation power sets. The most recent patches have been more focused on power balance, but that's more reason to believe future patches will focus on other stuff instead (and in fact a preview suggests we will get an earth related power set in the future). In either case, the dev team aren't ants endlessly circling their own trail in a death spiral, they'll balance things just enough that they are satisfied with the results and then move on.

How do you feel a throwing set should differ from other ranged sets mechanically? Not saying it's a bad idea, but art work and concept should go hand-in-hand with something that differentiates the set in game play.

Defiance plus higher base damage plus usually a bonus damage power for blasters gives better damage than the often wasted damage from scourge and some -resists that corruptors may or may not have depending on secondaries. As for melee AT's you mentioned, I think it's a moot point. In general melee only ATs should have better damage than a mostly ranged AT if damage is their primary focus. In either case, blasters did just get plenty of help with a buff of their secondaries in the last update. They are a very popular AT and good at what they do.

You should probably try running a traps defender. It's the only primary other than trick arrow where you don't have to skip powers because they only work on friendlies, and unlike trick arrow you get some buffs to work with. Secondary could be anything, although thematically beam rifle is usually picked. If you want even more control though, dark blast is probably the best secondary for that. Personally I'd skip the first power and start with caltrops instead, that and try to slot a stealth IO as soon as possible to give you more setup time against opponents. Edit: I guess dark miasma also doesn't have friendly powers either, although I don't have any experience playing that set.

Well I can only work backwards on this question because if I planned an alt either I'd create it or quickly forget it about and it would likely never get made. So my last three alts were: Data Warez: Technology Traps/Beam Defender. Came out of an idea of what if Data from the Goonies grew up and became a superhero. I was hesitant to make a defender after leveling up my corruptor solo was such a pain in the ass. However, I think traps is one of the few support sets that are really good for soloing. Blue Efreeti: Magic Fire/Savage Dominator. Simple idea of a freed efreeti, it's taken some time to figure out how the sets and AT worked, but I'm getting the hang of the synergies with this one. Made good use of the genie costume, and originally made the fire powers blue but I didn't like how that came out. So instead all the savage and fire powers are orange with blue undertones. Cherenkov Punch: Mutation Rad/Electric Brute. The biggest turnoff for radiation sets for me is the ugly green glow. Turns out though around nuclear reactors there is a pretty blue glow called Cherenkov Radiation. So now I had an excuse to make all the powers blue, and then combined it with a boxer motif. I'm finding the combination has amazing AOE potential and a good heal built in, and I'm even getting good use of the experimentation pool. It is a little toggle heavy and endurance recovery comes late, but one of the powers gives a speed boost before that which makes it OK to run around missions without sprint.

Thanks, I must have missed the option last time I looked. Not sure why the game decided to change option settings on me without my permission, but that did appear to be the problem.

I was playing the new Vahzilok (blue) mission with a dark/devices blaster when I entered the fifth quest where you get hit by a viral load debuff at the beginning of the mission. I looked at the icon to see what it did and noticed I was short an icon or two. I tried switching my toggles off and then on and from that point onward none of the toggle icons were visable, even after I finished the quest and logged out and back in again. I couldn't find any setting for the icons in options either, so I don't see any way to solve it. I guess it doesn't make my character unplayable, but it is a considerable disadvantage not being able to see my buffs/debuffs directly.

Any of those combos will work. Katana is the an older set so outside of cool individual moves the only inherent bonus is a defense debuff and bonus to accuracy (which is important). Take street justice if you want to play around with a combo system and staff if you want some flexibility in terms of fighting modes (similar to dual pistols). Super Reflexes I believe has the best defenses in the game, but only gives some resistance when down on health. Energy Aura is more of a mix of defenses with resistances. Both give a speed boost, EA provides stealth and resistance to endurance drain, and SR gives resistance to slow.

You should try playing a dark/devices blaster. They have no melee attacks and their debuffs and controls makes them as solid as a sentinel and realistically I get mezzed less often with my blaster than with my dominator (and in the rare case that I do I can still spam my first two powers). Having a claws/ninjutsu scrapper I don't believe I ever have to wait for an attack, although I agree there are other primaries where this is an issue. That's probably when you want to start looking at increasing your recharge speed. Hell, a couple of defense sets have a recharge boost baked into them.

As a more casual player who is mostly solo leveling up most of the archetypes, I'd say in my experience, dominator is not the most difficult AT to level. No, I'd say for me that would actually be a corruptor, although primary/secondary choices undoubtedly have some impact here. The lack of defenses or mez protection while not dominating is harsh, and I feel it more because on my fire/sav dom I can't really hover and hotfeet turns off when I get mezzed. But in the end hard control is still excellent protection, and I am getting better at timing my domination for when I am getting to a big fight or will get mezzed. I am getting up to level 25 though and that's when I start soloing bosses on my characters using my extra line of inspiration, so I'll have to get back to you about how I do with the extra level of difficulty. Combat jumping is my only defense power so I'm probably going to stuff a bunch of IO protection in there (already have a stealth io in there which is a big quality of life improvement).

I'm hoping new stats will come out in March. If they released them now they probably wouldn't reflect how players reacted to the release of the latest issue.

The problem with dominators is not that they aren't potentially powerful, but rather too much of that power is wrapped up in their domination ability, limiting how they are built and played moreso than most other AT's. Otherwise they are controllers with even less reliable controls with no defenses and with much of their damage tied up in melee attacks.

My favorite dominator is going to be by default the only one I've played so far, which is my fire/savage dom. The -recharge helps with fire having weaker controls, as well as the endurance discount keeping me from running out of energy. Plus the anti-fly on unkindness synergizes with hot feet, and the crows look nice retinted as fire birds.

The Ultima series is definitely my favorite games from the 80s. Did you know that Lord British was an executive producer of City of Heroes?

For me it's hands down the corruptor. Not as good as blasters for damage and not as good as buffing/debuffing as defenders, with several powers which can't be used on yourself yet also lacks pets. In practice playing my corruptor is like setting my difficulty up at least one level.

A ranged stone powerset is missing, and rock hurling giants is a pretty common trope (or even rock throwing halflings).