Dark Dove

Fire Blast!

I always create a bio for every character I intend to continue playing. For me to enjoy a character enough to keep playing past 50 I need a costume I like, a bio I don't hate, and a name that I love, to varying degrees. Powersets alone won't do it for me. Sometimes the bio takes some time (like a few days after hitting 50) and sometimes it happens at the character creation screen. The bio doesn't have to be something amazing, but it at least needs to make sense and have some 'character' for the character. The only time I don't write a bio is if the powersets are boring after I've played with them a bit or the costume isn't working for me or the name isn't that great.

I see. You mentioned exemplar as a purpose so I assumed you meant that they needed to be slotted earlier for exemplar purposes, I just wanted to clear up that it wasn't necessary for that purpose.

These work fine when you buy them attuned (except for Shield Wall and Gladiator's, they already work as attuned since they are PVP IO's) down to the level at which they can be slotted minimum. You can put them in a level 49 power slot and they'll still work down to that minimum, if attuned or a PVP IO. Since the market can attune them free of charge, it's a pretty good way to go and gives you power by level selection freedom.

Here's the build I'm currently working on (will edit it if it changes) that's a somewhat proccy Traps / Dual Pistols defender: I've got some questions about mostly Traps, I'm a little inexperienced with the set. 1: Triage Beacon: I have the Panacea HP/End enhancement here, is that a mistake? I'm sure I can find an extra slot for health if that's just a better place for it. I like to be team friendly but only as a secondary goal, so if this just doesn't perform well in Triage Beacon I'll move it. 2: Poison Trap: Does this require Acc slotting? If it does, do things like Kismet +Acc(tohit) and Tactics matter for it? 3: Is Summon Adept worth the slotting I have there for it? I can't find the thread but I think I read once that these IO's help your Force Field Generator and other stuff from getting destroyed. Should I keep that or dump it in favor of something else I'd like to have or for the slots elsewhere? 4: Anything else, advice or critiques, totally welcome, I appreciate it!

Stealth adds more defense when you aren't flagged as having attacked or been attacked. You can set this in your mids by going to Options, Configurations, Effects & Maths, and checking the box for Attacked in the Suppression field on the right. That will give your powers their "in combat" numbers so you can properly build around that.

I also feel this way.

My favorite thing about sentinels is the idea. So many great concept characters will work for sentinel, ranged damage, armor set. Sometimes a blaster just won't do. That doesn't make up for them being 75% of the effectiveness in their particular niche (ranged, mez protection, armor set) as compared to a ranged VEAT, who will do everything the sentinel does but better with normal AoE target caps and ALSO bringing force multiplier team buffs and other stuff. Sentinels have a tax I guess to be able to recolor the powersets and have electricity or dark beams instead of only psychic stuff and crab guns?

PVE opinions: Cloak of Fear is the least useful power of the bunch, Oppressive Gloom does more for less (one slot acc gets the job done, low end cost). I've never kept CoF in a dark armor build on any AT, ever. It's fun and neat but underwhelming while also having a heavy slot cost to be effective/sustainable. Focused Acc is only useful if you're having trouble reaching high acc/tohit, so check your mids build set at 48 base to see if your powers are over 95%. If you're using IO sets you're probably pulling in some decent numbers already and you might not need FA much, and while using it to counter debuffs is a nice option I don't think it's strictly necessary. If I were building it I'd probably drop both of those powers (CoF/FA), unless they had sets that worked favorably for my build goals. PVP: I don't know, you probably want all three of those powers for PVP, but I'm not into that stuff so I know very little.

Fly There is a case to be made for Foot Stomp but as long as it resides in a powerset that relies on Rage to be any good, it's just hard to find a reason to use it, so I guess it's my favorite power I'll never play with.

Some ideas: Energy Melee stuns stack well will Oppressive Gloom, and isn't super endurance heavy. Very good single target damage. Radiation Melee and Spines add a second damage aura which is fun to run two, although you have to build conservatively for endurance with these sets. Savage Melee has endurance fixing and +recharge baked into the mechanic, and some decent AoE Staff Fighting has an endurance fixing mechanic Stone Melee (Fault) Super Strength (Hand Clap) and Electrical Melee (Lightning Clap) have AoE disorients that can be slotted for KB to KD and Force Feedback +Recharge, and stack disorient with Oppressive Gloom. Stone is end heavy, Super Strength's Rage has annoying downtime, and Elec Melee has low single target damage.

Soloing an AV is defeating a mob that cons as an Archvillain/Hero without the assistance of another player character. I see no reason to further complicate that definition, so that's where I am.

The @VileTerror squad is always very helpful in game and tends to drive positive vibes even in some sectors where toxicity is more common like public channels. Not enough voices like that so definitely worthy of some praise. @Veracor raids/trials are always a pleasure to join, certainly stands out as a great content leader.

Finally worked out a Dominator build I'm actually interested in playing. Dang. Gotta wait. I guess I'll play Hero Designer on some other AT's I never play. Hope this gets worked out soon, otherwise Human form PB building is going to rot my brain.

Fire/Fire blaster? I can't look right now, but I think that's a thing. EDIT: I eventually looked, yep, Fire/Fire blaster has access to both Rain of Fire and Burn. Is Burn even worth using without something to stop mobs from running? I have no experience with it outside of AT's with aggro control.

This hard factual evidence shows that something like 7,500 characters decided that SS was unplayable, while a paltry 2000 decided to suffer through it that year. CASE CLOSED!

What constitutes "ignorable behavior" is in my opinion specifically anything. Ignore function isn't intended as a punishment or an unkindness, it's a filter for your environment that can and should be used for whatever purpose you decide that makes the game better for you, short of malicious use, like every other tool provided in game. It's the same as turning on the profanity filter or changing the hue of your UI. It has the same moral weight as pushing the "C" key default that hides the chat interface completely, or just removing the LFG/Broadcast and other public channels from your chat UI. I certainly support anyone using it in any way that makes their play time more comfortable or more fun (again, short of malicious use). It isn't our duty to read every chat message, or any chat message that isn't from the staff/system/GM. The expansion of ignore functionality options seems like a significantly positive thing, either way, allowing more precise communication filters can be beneficial in leaving avenues of communication open where they would otherwise be closed off completely. It might not be something I'd put at the top of the list of things I'd want the development team to work on, but it's certainly a good thing and a good idea to get around to looking at eventually.

I've rifled through seven sentinels to 50+ incarnate with full builds. Only a single one is fun to play in endgame and exemplar, and the entire reason for that is I abused the poorly balanced Epic pools for Mind Probe/Dominate procs, and Bio Armor for reasonable damage output, nothing "sentinel" makes it fun to play, only the exploitation of the best available options makes it fun to play. I've tried really hard to enjoy the others but it just doesn't work, every single one of them in play feels like I should just roll another AT for the concept and actually have fun by doing good damage or good debuffing or absorbing alpha strikes or other things better. I can have a great time, lots of fun, playing the worst options among the other AT's. I'll slog away on an Axe/Ice brute happily, or a FF/Psy defender, or an MA/Regen stalker, it's fine, they still perform when optimized at an acceptable level. The baseline power of those AT's is just in-tune with the game. Sentinel doesn't feel that way at all, the very best character I can make feels as fun to play as the very worst characters from other AT's, which like I said, I can have fun with. The big difference after that is, those other AT's also have the option to play on-meta level power, where Sentinel doesn't. This is a little hyperbolic for effect, I'm sure it's not that bad, but the problem is that it's bad enough that I have no interest in continuing to play the AT outside of a few outlier cases (maybe I can make /Fire fun enough when extremely optimized?) I definitely don't think it's as bad as the OP implies, I don't feel like teams are carrying sentinels or sentinels are a blight on the teams they join, and any other post that says it is unplayable is clearly not playing the same game. It's still bad though. The game is about fun, more than anything else, and Sentinels aren't fun enough. I won't argue that you aren't having fun with your sentinel, but I will argue that you could be having more fun with your sentinel if they were fixed. Having more fun is a good thing.

Lots of opinions below, beware! Touch of Fear is a good, fast recharging AoE with four to five procs in it. It's not good without procs though, so if you aren't going to proc it, skip it; it's also much better on a Tanker. Shadow Maul is always a better pick than Touch of Fear if you only get one. I usually try to take both, though, they make a solid AoE attack chain for early on and exemplar. Still, not necessary. Your acc looks to be in the high 80's. As long as your soul drain hits anything, your to hit will be well over that, so I wouldn't worry about slotting any more acc as long as you intend to use soul drain. Anything lower level than 28 content-wise will never really need high acc anyway. If you really want to be closer to acc top earlier, you can always devote a single slot in a defense power for Kismet +Acc (tohit) instead of reslotting your other powers, which would put you up to very high levels pre soul drain. You don't really need to though. I think your fold space is way above 100% acc too, you could probably drop a slot there and still be at like 95%. Scrapper's Strike: Critical Hit Bonus can go anywhere. Slot it where convenient. Critical Strikes +50% crit is best slotted in a medium base recharge power that fits into your attack chain before your highest base damage attack. Siphon Life or Smite or Shadow Maul would work well, although in your current build Smite looks like the place it would probably land to avoid sinking the recharge proc rate on the other two powers. You want Midnight Grasp to get the crit bonus chance most, so rotate your attacks so that the crit chance proc fires before it. This also allows you to use it in a quick firing attack before an AoE, so you could instead hit your crit proc power and then use your best critting AoE's for crits. Alternately you could leave it where it is and use Midnight Grasp as your opener before AoE, although that lets your single target fall behind. I think if you switched the slotting from Midnight Grasp to Smite and added another proc (cloud senses neg or touch of death etc) to midnight grasp you'd get good results. You didn't take Grant Cover. That's a mistake. It is one of your sources of defense debuff resistance and slow recharge debuff. That's a very good power you're skipping. It only needs one slot and can take a LOTG+Recharge. Only the primary defense buff doesn't hit you, the resistance does, so take it, find a way to fit it in. These two types of debuffs (recharge and defense debuff) are some of the most deadly in the game. Don't skip your resistance to them. It'll give you a slot on another power instead of LOTG or for one of the other global io's, too. Active Defense stacks for defense debuff resistance, so a recharge there usually makes more sense, and in some higher end builds, two recharges. Is there a specific reason (some power you're trying to break a recharge point for) for the three slot hasten? You could just +5 booster two recharge slots and get a similar result to save a slot. It's good to shoot for around 50% S/L resists or more and (some) E/N resists, but it would take a lot of reworking to fit that in your current build. You are missing (Defense sets global IOs) Shield Wall: +5% resistance, Reactive Defense Scaling Damage Resistance. Find a place to slot those two, they will help with the resists a lot. This may sound optional but it isn't if you're looking for optimal builds, slot them in every build, every character, always.

This will be the bio for my next character, Dark Parrot. Dark/SS tanker. I won't play the character for long though, because SS is unbearable to play with rage crash.

Just because they don't want to see spam advertisement messages of certain kinds, doesn't mean they want to never communicate ever with the player behind the local name. Pretty straightforward and reasonable. Example: "I am severely annoyed by Player A's advertisement for costume contests, so I put them on ignore. Yet, I quite like teaming with Player A on other characters than the one they advertise costume contests on, but I have them on ignore, which is global, so I will never be able to see their messages in response to my team advertisements. If I could just ignore the local name for their costume contest running character, I could still interact positively with all of their other characters, and not be overwhelmed by their local costume contest advertisement character." Global ignore is a nuclear bomb option for minor issues that could be solved with a more diplomatic "minor" ignore is the gist of the ask, I think.

I almost never run speedrun teams. When I lead a team, it's always with the intent to play casually fast. Defeat the mobs in between the team and the objectives unless it's not logical to do that (huge open maps,ridiculous orangebagel maps etc, I don't ever want to fight everything on them, so you skip, because that makes sense for respecting everyone's time). Sure, I move at a fast pace if I'm on a pace-setting character like a tanker or brute or whatever can absorb alpha strikes, but again that is just respecting everyone on the team's playtime. Synpase the task force itself isn't very respecful of player's time, so I'm always leaning toward moving as quickly as possible through it, but I get the other side too. I like efficient play, I'm not really into speedrunning, timing things out to the second. Whatever shaves a few minutes off the end time seems like a smart choice, not something to be avoided or shamed. The fact is there are always more mobs to fight, stopping to fight them specifically to "get XP" isn't doing any favors because you're slowing down objective (instant) rewards for slow (mob grind) rewards. You will always get mob grind XP, always, even if you're with an advertised speedrun team, you'll get mob grind XP because you have to do that for content to progress. I don't fret when someone stealths a mission or ATT's the group to an objective because the mobs I was fighting are exactly the same as the mobs they just ATT'd me to or that are in the next mission, I lose nothing by progressing in the arc, and tend to gain something in the faster objective rewards. I do not understand players who gripe and moan about moving through objectives quickly and call any kind of advancement beyond fighting everything always a "speedrun". They just aren't speedruns. It's efficient play to make the most of the rewards available, it isn't some structured record-setting agenda. I do however understand not enjoying efficient play just because you enjoy slow paced mob grinding more than getting the most advancement out of your playtime. That's fine too and I support that you have fun that way, but if it isn't your team, you're always empowered to leave that team and create one that will play by your interests (as has been said by the previous reply), there's nothing wrong with that. Instead of complaining to a team that clearly has more fun playing faster, make one that has more fun playing slower; that seems like the more positive way to approach it. All of that said, here's an aside, an anecdote related to this. I had a rough experience early on with Homecoming on an ITF that sticks with me still. I was playing a Brute that was pretty much a complete build, but the team was filled with mostly lower levels or underslotted characters/non-incarnates. I moved very quickly from objective to objective, and people died, not a little but a lot, while I was doing the objectives and they were trying to keep up. I was essentially oblivious to this or too preoccupied to care. I was in a rush, I wasn't paying much attention to the team because in most of my other ITF experiences at that point, everyone was high level, well-slotted, and ready to go for ITF's before that I'd joined. This team was a mess, really, and by the last mission I could tell the team wasn't happy and the deaths were (quietly) being blamed on me, which I can't really deny is probably true. I was playing scrapperlock solo style and the team just wasn't sturdy enough to keep up with that kind of pace. I could have changed what I was doing and stopped, controlled aggro and pace to match the team's capabilities even though I was clearly capable of soloing the ITF faster than the team could advance through it. We got to Rom eventually at the end and it all went as far downhill as it could go. Nobody else on the team, not a single character, was able to withstand the AoE's around Rom, so it was just me rotating Dark Regen as fast as I could while handling all of the ambushes and first spawn Rom's group, while the team chain-died again and again and again to the point where they were hosping and running back. DPSing Rom by myself was slow going, and after what felt like half an hour of constant total party wipeouts (besides me), I finished Rom off. The leader of the team kicked me from the team the moment that the TF completed. I was sort of shocked, stared at the screen for a few minutes before it finally crossed my mind that I was that group's archvillain. I ruined seven other people's fun over a couple hours because I wasn't being attentive or considerate. I was angry for a little bit just because I'm not accustomed to being kicked from teams, but that faded quickly because it was well deserved kicking. There was no explanation given by the team leader, I stopped myself from trying to engage with them more and talk it over because I was cringing at myself and my behavior so much, it was embarrassing. I have since taken great measures to not be that player again, even when I get the impulse to move faster and faster. I have witnessed players who acted like that afterwards and noted it carefully. I think that kind of play is the most egregious and deserving of complaint, and I suspect that's the kind of play that most people who have issues with "speed" are actually trying to avoid or want to be heard about. Definitely don't be like I was. Respect other player's time, but also respect their enjoyment. As soon as you join a team, the game isn't just about your own fun, it's about everyone in your team's fun, and all things should be approached collaboratively with that in mind. You can make a team more successful and make them enjoy their time better just by being considerate, that's all you have to do. It's worth it, people will join your task forces more often when you treat them right. Be better, it's worth it, at least it was worth it for me. It wasn't a rough experience for me, in the end, it was a rough experience for those seven other players.

I usually suggest secondaries that help with endurance costs, because Stone Melee is fast animating and endurance heavy, so you run through the blue bar really quick. Some standouts for that are Rad Armor (top pick for me) and Bio Armor because they both have endurance management aplenty as well as additional powers that either add damage or cause damage. Energy Armor has some endurance management and isn't available to tankers, so if you want something that you can only do on a brute, Stone Melee/Energy Aura is one combination like that. Any combination will work though, so maybe pick something that looks fun. For me, empty blue bar makes me unhappy, so I stick with the stuff that makes the smash as endless as possible.

Welcome home, hero.

I like taunt. It makes things easier. The range and -range is a dream! I hate taunt. It makes builds harder. I need that spot for Fly! So... take it or don't take it, it'll work out fine either way, you should probably play with it for a while first before you decide you don't want it though because you might love what it does.