Miss Magical

My reasoning for deliberately using knockback in Gale and skipping Thunderclap are explained in the original post. I am skipping Hurricane, so I plan to use Gale as knockback for those rare occasions where I need to move things around - Keyes terminals are the big one. (Nobody ever wants to clear the terminals so I can charge them!) Between tornadoes, freezing rain, bonfires, lightning storms and fissure, there are a lot of knockdown powers, and most of them do damage or -res or don't eat up valuable animation time. So I'll try out Gale while leveling, but I don't predict it will be significant once the build starts getting core powers in the 20's to 30's. Thunderclap would normally be taken to combine with Flashfire. However, Earth APP means that Fissure is taken instead, which not only serves the same function on a lower recharge, but deals damage. It's even usable as low as level 30 when exemplared!

Thanks for taking time to provide very detailed, quantitative, well-reasoned and comprehensive advice that bore in mind my original build goals of maximizing damage and defense. I think if there's a gold standard for build advice, it would be something like this: concrete suggestions, backed up by numbers and sound reasoning. Now, I have to admit that when I first read your post, it didn't make a lot of sense to me. 2-slot weave? 6-slot earth's embrace? Lots of posiblasts? Does this actually work? But I put it together for a look: And it's... seriously good! I didn't catch on to regen as a possible 2nd layer of protection, but on a HP-capped character it just makes a lot of sense. Earth's embrace is now a 900+ HP heal, the endurance situation is much improved, and taking assault instead of tactics even makes up most of the damage lost from not having Intuition radial. Force Feedback in the tornado makes much more sense (so it can proc even when I'm not busy blasting). I might try a posiblast instead of ragnarok in freezing rain for the damage proc, and maybe try to eke out a slot somewhere for an achiles heel, but I don't see any way I can improve on this. I plan to take Clarion, so I decided to take bonfire over rune of protection. The reliance on the alpha slot to provide endrdx and acc means that the build only works at level 45+. I have a preference for builds that work well at both 45+ and exemplared, which is why I usually prefer to get only damage from the alpha slot. But this is actually good enough that I'll forego the rule in this case, and just come up with another build for exemplaring (probably replacing assault with tactics, and redistributing the slots from earth's embrace into cytoskeletons for the def toggles). Thanks again for your comments!

Hello! So, for reasons of theme, my brain insists it wants to play this exact combo. Apparently, the good folks on Excelsior somehow allowed the name Spellmistress to go unclaimed for however many years your servers have existed. This just calls for a classic elemental mage, and a controller is the only way to get all 4 Aristotelian elements on a single character. (The only possible alternative is a diabolical elementary school English teacher. Probably dark/poison. But that's a lot less sexy.) I even have a snazzy costume all ready to go: But I actually haven't played either of these sets before. So, I'm turning to you for advice! I want a controller that is able to perform adequately in the modern meta environment of high-DPS, fast-moving, TF/incarnate trial speedrun teams (even if these powersets might not be optimal for such a goal). Hence, the chief concerns are damage and +def. The build: The build goals are: Permahasten with 1 Force Feedback proc Softcapped S/L defense Tohit chance capped vs +3 enemies (Fire Cages at 93.94%) This build must take either intuition radial or musculature alpha (i.e. the ones that give damage) and Assault radial hybrid. This means I can't rely on either of these slots to solve problems regarding end, +def or accuracy - the loss of damage is likely too high. I am undecided on the lv24 power choice and considering tactics, hurricane or O2 boost (which is what the build currently has): Tactics: costs a lot of end and the build already has -def. Hurricane: costs a lot of end, terrain to use it effectively is not common, time spent moving to maneuver enemies with the hurricane (and hence not casting) is a loss of damage. O2 Boost: It's a container for Preventive Medicine and stops the tank from dying to Lord Recluse's -end attacks. That's about it. While this build has no heal, the hardcapped HP and constant absorb procs going off from Char should prevent it from being too fragile. Snow storm is used for grounding enemies so they sit in freezing rain and get eaten by imps. Bonfire is normally good, but skipped here since there is already a knockdown patch in freezing rain. Similarly, Thunderclap is skipped for Fissure which has a smaller radius but deals damage. I am not certain about the slotting in Lightning Storm and the location of the Apocalypse set; I have considered putting the 5-Apoc in Arcane Bolt and proccing Lightning Storm instead, or 5-slotting an Armageddon in Hot Feet and proccing both Arcane Bolt/Lightning Storm. Note that there is no sudden acceleration knockback --> knockdown in Gale, which is intentional: since I am skipping Hurricane I intend to use this instead for moving enemies (e.g. clearing Keyes reactor terminals). Please leave your thoughts. Thanks!

I found out the other day that the good folks on Everlasting somehow let the name American Aegis sit untouched for years!

I did this yesterday based on the recommendation from here, and I really liked it. The clone's dialog got me misty-eyed, and I was pleasantly surprised that my Stalker clone was equally deadly to me as I was to hapless NPC enemies. My only nitpick is the explanation for why you-know-who didn't survive, but really, that was an extremely minor point in an arc that I enjoyed a lot! I think this will become part of my go-to route through the 20's.

1) I can sympathize; even as a new player, it hasn't taken long for me to get annoyed at how quickly late-game characters feed villains through their well of furies-powered woodchippers. I can also sympathize with the difficulties in recruiting for no IO sets/incarnate powers teams. In fact, despite wanting more of a challenge, I personally would not join such a team, either (eliminating the build design complexity and greater number of powers to manage introduced by IO sets and Incarnate powers is a net loss of challenge for me). My personal solution is to run at +4/x8 with enemies buffed, players debuffed. I'm also part of a channel that does TF's at +4/x8 enemies buffed only, but with a time limit and a rule that if you die, you have to leave the TF and get no merits! And you can also run undersized, i.e. set the difficulty to +4/x8 but recruit only 4 players. Players looking for a challenge actually do join these teams, and my most enjoyable task force experiences have all been run this way. If you are looking for content where you might actually have to use well-designed builds and most of your abilities to survive, this is probably the closest there is. I can sympathize with not liking Incarnate trials because there are so few of them, so they quickly get repetitive. With that said, I personally think that the incarnate trials have a lot of positive aspects that improve game balance: Higher softcap - 60% instead of 45%. (I would be delighted if this was extended to the rest of the game in a gradual fashion, such that the softcap increases from 45% at level 35, to 50% at level 45, to 60% at level 50, to match the gradual maturing of lategame player defenses.) Lots and lots of irresistible and autohit damage to punish mistakes or careless play Actual mechanics: moving enemies, killing/not killing specific targets, using temp powers and interactables, healing and dps checks, etc. I just wish there were more of them to provide some variety, or failing that, that these elements could be propagated to other content in the game and incorporated in future content. But the chances of seeing a new TF or incarnate trial anytime soon don't seem high, so... 2) I personally haven't seen any of this; I do occasionally use knockback temp powers without anyone commenting on them - the P2W fragmentation grenade is nice for mopping up Clockwork gears if you have no low-level aoes on Synapse. Given how annoying poorly-used knockbacks and immobilize can be, I can definitely see why many people have strong feelings about them. Personally, I'm more concerned with other players using knockback and immobilize to reduce the effectiveness of my powers (which makes the game less fun for me), so if such a trend exists, I'm not bothered by it for now.

Okay! I am not really an expert at builds, so don't take my comments too seriously, but since you asked: That is a very impressive amount of psi resistance (85%) without any significant loss of recharge. In my attempts, I was never able to go past 75% without making major sacrifices I was not comfortable with. With the base empowerment buff that gives 5% psi res, you will be capped; you really need to join a master LGTF or something with a lot of psi damage and surprise the team by taking none at all. It's also interesting that despite the much more weakly slotted consume, I cannot say for sure that you will have endurance issues, because your main endurance spenders (KO Blow and Gloom) have far more endrdx slotting than mine - your KO blow costs 9.16 end, mine is 13.16 end. And despite losing both +def uniques, your defense to all is actually only about 3% less due to the use of stealth. I am personally a big fan of Darkest Night because as an autohit, ranged aoe toggle it has some unique uses e.g mitigation against vengeanced Nemesis. I would also not drop a force feedback proc because it adds aoe firepower when Foot stomp procs it and helps Burn and Dark oblit recharge. But that's just my personal playstyle. My only real criticisms are 1) You skipped fiery embrace! Fiery embrace + burn is amazing and the damage it adds to non-fire attacks is significant too. I will sooner lose procs in Gloom than Fiery embrace which helps every attack. 2) the location of the Tanker's Might proc. From the limited testing I did, in a damage aura it will not fire reliably against a single target, hence why I chose to put it in Burn. I believe the way they work in toggle auras is that the aura is treated as having a recharge of 10s for PPM calculations, and the game only checks whether to fire the proc once every 10s; for a proc with 10s duration this means there will likely be periods of uncapped resistance in prolonged combat against a single target. This may or may not bother you. Finally, you can get 90% S/L resistance without losing anything if you move the +maxhp unique from tough to plasma shield, replacing the Unbreakable Guard endrdx/rech; and in its place, slot an Unbreakable Guard res/endrdx/rech in Tough. That missing 0.28% probably makes no real difference but I derive a lasting satisfaction from seeing nice 90's in the stats window.

Manipulative, abusive and toxic people prefer to present a facade of friendliness, approachability and concern for others; the better to prey on victims and conceal their true nature. Such people will also gravitate towards pleasant avatars, which balances out any hypothesized positive effect that playing such avatars might have on players' conduct. As a newer player, the reason for low villain population seems pretty obvious to me. It was released later in the game's life and required a separate purchase. Hence it had a smaller population, which further dwindled over time because players tend to congregate on the most populated factions/shards for ease of teaming, socializing, etc. For evidence, see how Praetoria is even deader for the same reasons (even later in the game's life + separate purchase required at release), even though many explanations for low redside population (ambience, writing, etc.) do not apply or only partly apply to it.

Thank you! +4/x8 on every character is very impressive! I can't do that; although, now that I've done it once, the idea of a similar rite of passage for future characters sounds a little appealing. Thanks a lot for the advice! I would certainly not ignore +def on any build, it's too powerful. It's nice to know the T4 degenerative radial isn't a waste. I am looking forward to getting new, ranged lore pets now. I must say I'm extremely disappointed with the melee pets, which ended up not being useful at all. My plan was to tank for them and let them kill things, but I didn't consider how prevalent aoe attacks were in practice. (My estimation of the invulnerable radial pets also went up a little...)

Oh wow! That is very kind of you to say. Thank you very much! I really want some delicious procs in Burn too! It, and the lack of procs in Gloom, are my big regrets. However, I recently read somewhere that Burn supposedly checks for procs more often than it should, and I have a suspicion it's true - even against a single target, I have never seen my resistance not turn blue 90% the instant I press Burn. So if true, and I expect this will be changed eventually if it is, I'm also rather hesitant to enjoy procs in burn too much. I suppose I can be an optimist and describe my build as "future-proofed" instead.

After reaching 50 I played on some teams at +4/x8 for a week, getting Master badges for Underground and Keyes. In all that time I was only in serious danger twice: once in the Tina McIntyre hospital mission filled entirely with IDF Seers when I jumped into a roomful of them; and another time on a enemies buffed, inspirations disabled +4/x8 ITF with just 4 players, when I got swarmed by ambushes on the 2nd mission. But everyone on a team likes to think they are the most badass and deserves all the credit - it's human nature. So maybe I'm just biased. I read that all the cool kids were soloing +4/x8 ITF's to show how amazing they were, so I thought I'd give it a try too. When I went in, my Incarnate powers were incomplete. I only had T3 Alpha/Destiny/Lore, T2 Interface/Judgment, and no Hybrid. Note: this is the first TF I've attempted to solo, so I didn't know what to expect. I did, however, decide not to just munch on purple inspirations the whole TF. Inspirations are a fundamental part of the game, and I don't see any point in builds designed not to use them; but since I wanted to find out how a resistance build performs in the absence of softcap, it didn't make sense to rely too heavily on them. So decided I would start with whatever I had left from the morning's MoKeyes, use only what dropped for me, and reserve purple insps for emergencies only. The 1st mission did not go well, and quickly exposed a weakness in my build: endurance. I died no less than 3 times... not because of damage, but because the -End from Rage and Hasten detoggled me! Rage gives -25 when it wears off, hasten -15, and every 2 minutes they would combine and give -40 in rapid succession. I never noticed this before: on teams, we killed more quickly and I spent more time travelling between spawns. Alone, I killed more slowly and spent more time in combat, so endurance was a problem. The last death was right at the mountaintop as I was trying to get Sister Solaris (please, can I have her amazing flowy dress? I'll sacrifice the softcap for it too) to the altar without triggering the ambush. So the ambush spawned and ran all the way back to the boat to try and get me, and I had to kill all of it. But after that, I learned to manage my end, use Consume every time a Rage ended, keep Destiny active as much as possible, and top up with the occasional blue. Now that I had learned how to play it more properly, the power of the build started to shine. Even when I aggroed 2-3 spawns close together, the layered mitigation kept incoming damage to a manageable level. I would engage, and my HP would start to drop below 50%; then I would heal back up and keep spamming burns and knockdowns and -tohit attacks, and only the bosses would be left and they were easily killed. I dragged the minotaurs and cyclops from the ambushes to the next spawn to wait for their defenses to wear off, instead of attempting to power through. My def was constantly in the red but I never died for the rest of the TF. There were only 2 spots where I was in serious danger: the Minotaur/cyclops general and the Praefactus general on mission 3. These groups consisted entirely of critters that could not be quickly killed to reduce incoming damage. For the first I popped defense inspirations, for the 2nd I flew off once to heal before coming back and killing them all. I reached Romulus, where I found my Lore pets completely ineffective. I had Roman pets, and Romulus 2-shot them with his spinning slash. However, I was able to very slowly whittle his HP down. Requiem wasn't a challenge worth mentioning. "Too hot for you to handle, Rommie?" Finally, the last mission! I flew directly to Nictus Romulus and pulled to the NE corner so that the ambushes would spawn right on me to die. However, here I found that Romulus was too tough for me. I could only make a very small dent in his HP, which he promptly healed up once the Rage forced downtime began. To make things worse, he had KB attacks of more than magnitude 4, so I was constantly flopping around like a fish. I had resisted using Envenomed daggers so far, but now I relented. I replaced Haymaker, the weakest attack in the chain, with Envenomed dagger. But even then, between the knockbacks and the Rage downtime, I couldn't make a dent in him. After a few minutes of getting royally spanked I retreated. Looking up Romulus' powers on the HC wiki revealed a flaw in my resist-over-defense strategy. Both Romulus and his nictus pets have attacks that heal himself. A +def build would avoid these attacks and deny Romulus the heals. It was time for a change in strategy and also to get serious: I made a T4 Assault Hybrid and T4 Degenerative interface. This time I also decided to kill the Nictus first instead of Romulus. Not only do they have less HP, they also don't have the smashing resists that Romulus has. If I could kill the one that was healing him, maybe I could finish him off. I went back and started clearing the towers for insps and to pre-spawn the ambushes; suddenly I realized I made the wrong Interface - radial instead of core. But it was too late now. My final loadout was: This time I positioned myself with my back to the wall so that the knockbacks turned into knockdowns. It was very close: once I made a mistake and used Fiery Embrace immediately as Rage downtime began. That let the Nictus heal up about 10%. It took over 3 full cycles of Assault Hybrid for the first nictus to die. Luckily, it was the healing one! From there on, victory was assured. The remaining 2 Nictus died slowly but surely. At first it seemed Romulus would defy me still when he landed a heal for over 3000. But I started eating small and medium purple inspirations I got from beating up his men, and he never got a 2nd one off. "Perhaps even gods can die... Sorry, I'm an atheist." Interestingly, throughout both fights I was constantly with my defense in the red, but I never came close to dying. In fact, the damage the AV's did was pitiful compared to the legions of Romans. That's all! I hope I entertained you. I usually find solo play incredibly boring, but this was surprisingly engaging. I had to use my brain (don't whine, brain; you asked for this, so work for it), think about strategy and weaknesses, learn a little about how to play my character, and play an unconventional build. The TF took about 2.5 hours to clear. I'm sure I could shave the time down with a more optimized build, full T4's and the experience I now have. If you're interested in giving Fire/SS or the above build a try, please note: This build is extremely endurance heavy. Even with Ageless, active end management is needed not to run out and be detoggled. This build does not exemplar well due to a reliance on APP attacks. If you exemplar below 33-30 (no Gloom nor Foot stomp) you may need a separate build that takes and slots Punch/Boxing. However, Fire is still probably one of the better SS leveling experiences; I found the early Burn nice for aggro control and aoe. It's so fun burning all the little clockworks in Synapse. The build in the above post has a Gaussian's proc in Rage. I later learned this was pointless because with 2x Rage, Musculature and Assault hybrid, tankers are already almost at the damage cap. You should replace it (I haven't decided what to spend the slot on); I include it only to show the build I played as-is.

I love softcapped defense! Who doesn't? But when my brain decides that it wants to play Fiery Aura and Super Strength, and only those specific sets, suddenly I'm looking at one set with no native defense, and another that gives itself -20% def for ten seconds every minute. My research was not promising, either: all the builds I could find were old ones that crippled themselves to get lackluster amounts of S/L def that would evaporate the first time Rage wore off. And the one reasonably modern Fiery Aura guide I found had no advice to offer beyond a description of Fire/SS as "did not make the cut". Oh. I see. But this was a blessing in disguise, because it made me rethink conventional wisdom. Without defense debuff resistance, +def is very fragile, as -def attacks are everywhere. This isn't very problematic for "squishies" like Controllers and Corruptors, since they debuff/mez all the critters into the ground after the initial salvo; but it might be for a melee character who sits there and takes hits. Incarnate trials have a higher softcap and lots of unavoidable damage, which make over-investment on +def unwise for a character that intends to play most of the game instead of live behind the bars of a comic-con farm. Conversely, the popularity of +def in the metagame means that sets with +def shields and toggles are popular: it's common for me to count 2-4 leadership toggles alone in most high-level parties. +def inspirations also give more mitigation than res ones of equal size. So maybe it doesn't make sense to spend precious IO set bonuses on S/L def which quickly vanishes under heavy fire. Maybe it makes more sense to get +def from more efficient sources like inspirations and team buffs, spend set bonuses on resistance instead, and bolster that with other protections such as knockdowns, mezzes, heals and debuffs. The more I thought about it, the more viable a resistance build seemed. With that in mind, I whipped up this: Incarnate powers (all toggled off in mids): Alpha: Musculature core paragon Destiny: Ageless radial epiphany Hybrid: Assault radial graft Interface/judgment/lore: any This build has: 90% S/L/E/N resists with 1 Might of the Tanker proc Permahasten (of course) with Ageless and 1 Force Feedback proc 100% slow resistance In practice, Toxic resistance is also capped because Healing Flames gives stacking toxic res. This leaves me with ~23% psi and 30% cold deficit. Appropriate, given the brevity of my costume. I'll just use some inspirations in such a situation. Also, you read that right: it's a slow immune tanker! The weakest level of Ageless grants 21.25% debuff resistance, which makes me immune when added to the 80% in the build. This not only negates Fiery Aura's weakness to slows, which stop its self-heals and ability to quickly kill enemies, but the constant endurance refills from Consume and Ageless offer more defense against -recovery. This build takes Soul Mastery, which I personally believe is the strongest APP a Tanker can take and was absolutely worth selling my soul to Ghost Widow for 5 minutes. It gives Gloom, one of the highest-DPA tanker attacks (and one that's very proccable, if you have slots to spare - I don't); Dark Obliteration, which has low damage but a huge area that combos well with Foot Stomp; and Darkest Night, which on a tank has Defender values of -30% dmg. And all 3 of these powers debuff tohit! Note also the Tanker IO absorb proc and Winter IO hold proc in KO blow. KO blow is not only the highest-DPA attack on the character, but also a good vehicle for procs with a recharge just outside the ideal 20s range. This gives a high chance to not only get an absorb shield but instantly hold a boss with 1 attack. Since a regular spawn has 2 bosses, that's a huge chunk of firepower mitigated right off the bat. You'll notice that this build still has 16.77% def to all (almost 20% with Hover on). That's because despite being a resistance build, def is too powerful to completely ignore. 16-20% def helps mitigate the Rage debuff. It means I can almost softcap with 2 small purple inspirations, and helps others softcap me when I am on a team. I also do not want to go into negative def unless absolutely necessary. Incoming attacks landing 95% instead of 50% of the time is a large increase in damage that must still be avoided where possible. The heavily layered defenses of -Dmg, -tohit, knockup, multiple wide area knockdowns, Holds, absorb and resistance defeat incoming damage, while Ageless mitigates debuffs, the Achilles heel of tankers. Under heavy fire, fast-recharging heals and +def that's instantly raised to softcap levels in an emergency shut down any danger. Then there's the firepower of 2x Rage and fiery embrace which quickly wipe out minions and Lt's. The attack chain is something like Burn > Haymaker > KO Blow > Gloom > Haymaker. Against crowds, I'll do Burn > Foot Stomp > Dark Oblit > KO blow. Jab is not used. But this build also shows some of the weaknesses of my strategy. The reliance on APP attacks forces awkward slotting decisions, since APP attacks cannot accept the critical Tanker AT sets. Coupled with the fact that many resistance bonuses are 6-piece bonuses, this severely limits opportunities for procs. There's no easy way to get a -res in there, and there's no procced out burn. As I looked at it, I was skeptical myself, as the build did not seem impressive on paper. A lot of softcapped defense builds can also achieve 90% S/L/E/N resists too on top of softcapped def; they just need more than 1 Tanker AT IO proc to do it. A lot of the features aren't mutually exclusive with a def softcap either, so it's hard to say if I'm gaining anything by pursuing this path (except maybe a better Fire/SS build that doesn't cripple itself chasing the softcap). Can this even perform at a level comparable to softcapped builds? Let's find out.