TheMoncrief

Agreed. Lockdown is OK if you can spare the slot, but the important thing is hold duration. That allows Choking Cloud/Entangling Aura to stack magnitude and hold Lieutenants and the occasional boss if you're really lucky. And to keep minions locked down pretty much forever, instead of just whenever a hold tick happens to land. Being able to essentially erase Minions and Lieutenants from the spawns while you do what needs to be done to the harder targets makes things much easier. At least, it did for my Beasts/Nature Mastermind.

I did some screwing around in MIDs and figured out what I was missing to see the actual totals for various stats, and it made clear, among other things, the glaring End issues the build would have. Mostly I'm solving them by following the advice already given. I'm considering dropping the Leadership pool entirely, as Power Boosted Farsight does the same thing only better and for far less Endurance, albeit only if I can catch the entire team in it. Regardless, thanks everybody for the feedback.

More frustrating that there isn't a decent way to export your badges to an external doc so you can put it in a database or whatever. I've tried various settitle scripts. They have never worked - either they just don't work any more (delay between using a settitle command and the title actually being set and showing up in chatlog) or I'm doing something wrong that is not obviously diagnosable. I don't have an issue looking things up on a wiki. I can't cross reference between my in-game status and the information on the wiki. It is unnecessarily cumbersome. Letting us export our badge list would be cool. Establishing good robust search and sort features in the badge menu would be cool. Those both require time and effort that the dev team really don't appear to have to spare. They are significant code changes. populating the badge list with all Day Jobs would be much *MUCH* easier for them, unless there is something truly outre in the coding under the hood for the badge menu - which is certainly possible, but even for CoH's legendary level of spaghetti code seems unlikely.

All Radiation Blast attacks have the defense debuff secondary effect and thus take Defense Debuff and Accurate Defense Debuff sets. Those include a good number of procs, including the Achilles Heel Resistance Debuff proc. Additionally, Radiation Blas has both Ranged AoE and PB AoE attacks, and can thus take two additional Resistance Debuff procs (in different powers). The upshot is that there are more options for procs in Radiation Blast than in sets with less useful secondary effects, as well as the fairly unusual abillity to slot three different Resistance Debuff procs, which can significantly boost your damage output. Radiation blast is far from unique in this ability, but is still better than average in its proc choices.

I was thinking this just the other day. Mostly because once you have more than a handful, it's actually hard to figure out which ones you're missing. There are all sorts of badge UI improvements the game could use (like searching the list) but just populating the Day Jobs tab would be pretty simple and helpful.

So I just got my Time/Rad Defender to 50 and have been planning a respec. My current "build" is a mish-mash of slotting choices and sets that I had available or seemed like a good idea at the time, so I'm planning a respec into something actually planned. Before I commit to anything that's going to cost me resources, I'd like feedback on whether the build will actually be any good. I based it (very loosely) on a Bopper build, so it *SHOULD* be OK, but who knows how badly the changes I made have gutted it? Also, I haven't been able to figure out how to turn off Power Boost in Mids, so I'm having issues figuring out what my real numbers are - or if it's naturally off already, how to turn it on. Any advice on that would be helpful too. Anyway, here's the data chunk. Hope I'm doing this right. 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 Thank you!

An interesting thought from Biostem is that one common thing all the patrons have in common is that they all lead distinctive followers - in the cases of the patrons, specialized troops within Arachnos - they can send to assist the player who takes that patron pool, which is why the patron pools in many cases include pets, while AFAIK, none of the ancillary pools include pets. With that in mind, it might be worth considering which groups of distinctive heroic NPC groups might be involved and find heroic patrons to represent them. For example, the Midnight Squad, the Paragon Police Department, Freedom Corps, Wyvern, the Legacy Chain, or Longbow. We could work backward from the organizations to find which, if any, potential heroic patron might represent each of the selected organizations. Manticore would obviously represent Wyvern, Numina could represent the Midnight Squad, Blue Steel the Paragon Police Department. I'm not sure who could lead other groups, some of them seem very bland and uninteresting, mostly existing to serve as enemy fodder for villains, but those are some concepts. To be really out there, there could even be neutral patrons. Maybe some rogue element among the heroes could be messing with the war effort against the Rikti, and Vanguard needs to recruit a Vigilante or Rogue to deal with this gross violation of its neutrality. You could get one of the bigger names among Vanguard as your sponsor. Just a thought.

If you look at the patron power pools, they are actually quite consistent, with a specific "type" of power at each rank of the pool that is shared by each AT. That is, for example, the first power of every patron pool for VEATS is a single target ranged attack, the 2nd is an AoE Immobilize, the 3rd is an AoE damaging attack, and the 5th is a pet. The 4th has some variation, but not all that much. Thus, the powers of heroic patron power pools would follow the same pattern, just a different flavor. That doesn't mean they wouldn't have some differences, just as you find differences in the villainous patron pools - type of damage, shape of AoE's, defense vs. resistance for armors and the specific damage types defended against or resisted, and so on. While tedious, copying the basic templates for all the blue patron pools requires creativity in the details, but not really at the level of a suggestion thread. The harder question is which heroes should be available as patrons. They should be heroes who either have power that can be in part shared, or have subordinates whose specific training can be shared. They should also be major heroes - I don't think anybody is going to be happy with Twinshot or No Mind as their patron. Positron is the obvious choice for a more technology based patron. Manticore for a patron favoring more intense specialized training. Perhaps the Woodsman might help heroes attune themselves with the forces of nature to gain access to some of its great power. There are plenty of options, those are three who stand out to me. But my suggestion is not that my specific suggestions be taken, but that the concept of heroic patron power pools be explored.

I actually really like Radiation Melee. It's slow, but it hits hard enough for the slow animations to feel rewarding. And it honestly feels enough like Super Strength on a visceral level that I can play it on my thematically SS characters if I don't want to be bothered with Rage. But it's definitely not for any character I want to feel quick and agile. It's the set I take when the concept is "I'm so tough I don't *NEED* to maneuver around, and I'm so powerful you have to deal with me no matter how much it hurts you. Which will be a lot, in case you were wondering." So basically a Tanker, or a really tanky Brute.

I think it would be extremely cool if there were Heroic patrons for whom a blueside character could run an arc to earn some teachings and gain access to patron pools of their own. I don't mind the ancillary pools being available to everybody, and sure, heroes can switch alignment to grab a villainous patron, but I think it would just *FEEL* cooler if I could get some pointers on some specific ways to manipulate radiation from Positron or learn about some of Manticore's hold-out gadgets or whatever. And, of course, Villains should be able to switch sides and get access to Heroic Patrons just the way Heroes can do now.

You have convinced me to give Cremate a chance. Long ago I made a Fire/Rad Brute, Played it through Atlas Park, noticed that Cremate is not Combustion, and shelved it. But I had the urge to play a Brute and this was the one I picked up. Cremate is not IMHO godly, but it is a solid attack. I will set aside my distaste for mixing Fire Sword and Fire non-sword attacks for this character, because a Brute really does kind of need more than just two single-target attacks. The knockup is nice, as you said. I'm hoping Rad Armor will give me back a bit of the AoE I lost with Combustion.

I don't have any direct healing powers as a Robotics/Traps MM, but I got good mileage from Triage Beacon at lower levels, and found Maintenance Drone to be a complete game changer when I took it.

Every time I look at Fiery Melee on any AT except Tanker, I get sad. I understand that Cremate is not a bad power, but it's not the Combustion that I know and love. And with a reasonable amount of recharge, Tanker Fiery Melee has perfectly respectable ST damage. Then again, Brute Fiery melee also has perfectly respectable AoE damage, it's just not as good as the Tanker version because of the Gauntlet buff *AND* Combustion. It's not that Brute Fiery Melee is bad, until you compare it to the absolute gem that is Tanker Fiery Melee. I do wish there were options to graphically reskin all (or at last most) of the attacks to either all use Fire Swords, or none use Fire Swords.

Come again? Somebody probably out to tell the Homecoming character creator about that. Mine doesn't seem to have got the message.

Well, I busted out my extremely rusty computerese skills, and came up with this. All on a level 50 Brute with all Fighting attacks taken, and assuming that I'm understanding DPA calculations as the game does them, and assuming that the synergy changes base damage instead of applying a 15% damage enhancement to the power (that last one is a big assumption): Boxing: 41.207 damage, 1.067 animation time, 38.620 DPA Kick: 45.544 damage, 1.833 animation time, 24.847 DPA Cross Punch: 68.860 damage, 1.67 animation time, 41.233 DPA Jab: 28.3612 damage, 1.067 animation time, 26.580 DPA Punch: 41.7077 damage, 1.2 animation time, 34.756 DPA Haymaker: 68.4066 damage, 1.5 animation time, 45.600 DPA So the fighting pools look pretty decent compared to the first 3 attacks in Super Strength. Not definitively better, but decent. For most Brute builds, you have to take one of the Fighting pool attacks anyway, so you may as well use it. The secondary effects from the synergy I'm not considering, just purely on a damage output basis. This all depends on taking *ALL* of them, though. If you're only taking one of the Fighting attacks, even Jab is comparable, and Punch and Haymaker both outshine it. It also depends on my assumption that the synergy effect is part of the base damage of the attack. If it's just an enhancement, they're still trash, at least on a Brute.

I've really wanted to know just how the damage bonus from Fighting synergy works. I tried reading City of Data, and it's... opaque. Maybe my reading comprehension has gone the way of my hair as I get older, I dunno. I'd really love to know whether they are actually worth taking and using over, say, Super Strength's forgettable 6 powers (ie, everything except Knockout Punch, Rage, and Foot Stomp). It's not even clear to me if that bonus 15% damage is an increase to their base damage or a buff, which makes a substantial difference when you are (as I am) considering them on a Brute.

As long as it's not a universal "Your secondary will just be disabled in all future content, choose a better set scrub!" problem I'll stick with it. I have a concept and Willpower fits better than anything else, so I'll cope. Hiding behind corners does help. As does having another contact providing missions that aren't complete nightmares when I need a break.

OK, I have a War Mace/Willpower Scrapper who's been running into some massive problems starting at level 40. I went into Tina MacIntyre's story arc and immediately get bodied by the Praetorian Clockwork. It's like they are custom made just to utterly wreck Willpower, with massive regen and defense debuffs. I can beat the missions at low difficulty, but I'm a *SCRAPPER*, I'm usually running at, well, not low difficulty. Is this what playing Willpower is going to look from now on, facing massive debuffs that make most of my secondary set pointless or at best massively dependent on inspirations or locked into difficulty settings that make more sense for a poorly built Blaster? Or are Praetorian Clockwork just the exception, my personal kryptonite, and I'll not be facing many enemies so perfectly designed to hard-counter me in the future?

Agreed. Demons don't need *MUCH*, but they do need some attention. Thugs and Beasts are both well below Demons I'd say, but all 3 sets that weren't touched in the most recent set of MM overhauls could use at least touch ups.

The article you linked was probably gained by dumping the default binds. Which is no longer possible.

Since the Battle Axe rework, I've been looking for a character concept to use it with, and run into a problem. How am I supposed to do a lumberjack character waging his solitary crusade against the Devouring Earth tree monsters that slaughtered his family without a plaid shirt costume option? Please, can this be in the game?

To be fair, some control sets have very few actual control powers. I think Illusion Control only has 4. That's still more than some Mastermind primaries have powers to slot their ATO's, and the same number as the best case Mastermind primaries. But 7-8 is not a universal rule for control sets.

No they're not. They are Mastermind ATO's. Period. Any other restriction beyond what is expected from an ATO set is arbitrary. Just about the only consistent thing about ATO's is that they must slot into powers specific to that archetype rather than pool powers. Tankers and Defender mostly have to slot their ATO's in their secondaries, for example, because it would be challenging to design ATO's to fit usefully into their highly variable primary power sets. The argument that having globals that benefit pets means they shouldn't be slottable in personal attacks is silly. They benefit pets because they are Mastermind ATO's, and the Mastermind archetype was designed to focus heavily on pets. That does not mean that their ATO's should be restricted to pets. Have you seriously considered the number of globals out there that can be slotted into powers that do not benefit from the global effects at all and are not even relevant to it? Luck of the Gambler in Tough Hide? Miracle in Health? Power Transfer in Stamina? Kismet in almost any power that will take Kismet? Globals are not always relevant to the powers they slot into. That's why they're globals. As long as their restriction still requires that they slot into Mastermind powers (which my suggestion guarantees) there is nothing inappropriate about allowing Mastermind ATO's to slot into a slightly broader selection of powers.

And I didn't ask to slot pet sets - Pet Damage or Recharge Intensive Pet - into Mastermind primary personal attacks. I asked for Mastermind ATO's. ATO's are slottable, generally, in whatever kind of powers are convenient for the Archetype in question. Notably, Defender ATO's don't slot in their Buff/Debuff sets (mostly), they slot in their attacks. Restricting the Mastermind ATO's to their pet powers is incredibly restrictive, especially for primaries that don't have a fourth pet power. Are Mastermind primary attacks thematic to Masterminds? Well, every single Mastermind set has three such attacks. Many Mastermind primaries only have three pet powers. The number of personal attacks in a Mastermind primary is actually more consistent than the number of pets. And Mastermind ATO's have exactly zero enhancement aspects that do not fit personal attack powers. That is actually fewer than the aspects that do not work for pet powers, since as I mentioned, pets completely ignore recharge reduction from any source, including slotted enhancements.

One issue that many Masterminds will face is that keeping their henchmen alive requires finding some place to slot the many global IO's that grand defense or resistance to them. Some Mastermind sets have only 3 powers that accept these (Pet Damage and Recharge Intensive Pet) IO's, and those are the henchman powers themselves. This leaves the Mastermind in a bad situation - either give up set bonuses and effective enhancement of your henchmen, or give up the global benefits of the IO's that allow your henchmen to survive in order to be effective. Compounding the issue is that some, but not all Mastermind primaries have a fourth power that takes these sets. This allows these sets to face drastically less slotting pressure for these critical global IO's. My suggestion is simple - allow the Mastermind ATO's to be slotted in a Mastermind's primary personal attack. That would take two of the global IO's out of competition for the precious slots in the henchman powers and allow some freedom to arrange the remaining global IO's without completely crippling the effectiveness of any of the henchmen. It would also allow Masterminds to actually make use of the Recharge Reduction on the Command of the Mastermind set, which has quite a bit of it - the pets completely ignore this enhancement value, making the ATO significantly less desirable. Ultimately, this would narrow the gap between the Mastermind sets that have a fourth power that can slot the global IO's and the sets that do not. And also encourage players to actually take and slot up their personal attacks, which are often completely ignored as overpriced and ineffective.