Scientist

OP, if you want to be a really effective addition to your team, both as a healer and as a secondary blaster, I'd suggest doing this. You can slot most sets in the game by your level, and you will notice definite improvements in recharge of heals, defenses, and a number of other areas. Then, when you hit 50, you can pull out any sets you had slotted, such as Decimation or Positrons Blast, and replace them with your final sets, storing the sets you pulled out for your next character. I've got some sets that have been passed through 3 characters now on the way to 50, so you don't have to keep buying them. Just make sure to buy the Attuned versions, so you can start slotting them around SO time, and they are effective up to 50. If, for example, you want to 6-slot heals, if you put a Numina in you get some ranged defense, or a Preventative Medicine for some recharge. For Recovery Aura (which should have Endurance Modification, not End Reduction, by the way) slot one of the new EndMod sets, Preemptive Optimization, for both defense and some recharge. Also, though they are more expensive, the Defender ATOs are some of the best in the game.

That is correct, the Force Feedback only procs if the skill is used. If you are spamming Kick, you will lose a lot of dps from not using the much harder hitting blaster attacks. It probably also has a low chance to proc in Kick because Kicks recharge is short. And yes, Celerity +stealth stacks with everything, Superspeed, Stalker Hide, Steamy Mist, etc.

I was curious about the mezz protect ATO, it can go into ST or AoE attacks, am I correct in guessing that it is better to go into a fairly frequently usable AoE since it only has to proc on one target to provide the mezz protection? I was thinking that based on normally suggested slotting for the Force Feedback proc and other "self affecting" procs.

Running a Storm/Ice defender, lots of procs in the two holds work great, snipe level damage in a Hold is very handy. I think I can free up one slot, would an Achilles be better in Freezing Rain or Tornado? I'm not entirely sure how to calculate the chance in either, since they are both pseudo-pet based.

You are completely correct, Omega-202, I got that mixed up, it is the Venom Grenade that has a -40% toxic resist debuff with only -20% resist against other damage. That still means a nice damage bonus from Bile Spray, though, as part of an AoE attack chain. After VG and Arctic, the Bile is hitting against -55% AoE resist on the foes. Add that to the toxic damage from the ATO proc, and it is just hard to beat Crab AoE damage against tough spawns. Against weak spawns, a Fire blaster will certainly be faster because of fast animations. There is a LOT of high level content people play on +4, though, and all their AoEs will see -25% foe resists, which is comparable to most defender AoE debuffs. Dang it, I was thinking of making a blaster alt, and just talked myself out of it. . . 😛

One other comment, especially at low levels it can be easy to drain your end bar if you are throwing out a lot of attacks. Don't feel you need to do this, nobody ever booted a tank from a team because they didn't do enough dps. They would MUCH rather not have you run out of end, detoggle, and faceplant, spreading the remaining aggro evenly among the blaster, to quote another excellent guide. That is one reason I think TW can work for a tank without needing to micromanage it, I don't care that much if I have Momentum for 1 attack or 3, I'm doing my job even if I break the chain to throw out a Taunt, or fire off an aggro PbAoE.

Conversely, Bio is good for a tank because it is easy to cap energy and negative energy defenses, which provides protection from the handful of attacks which can really shut down a tank, such as Malta Sappers and Dark Ring Mistress Carnival bosses. Most of the really nasty debuffs in the game ride on either energy or negative energy typed attacks. Since it is easy to get S/L resistance to the cap with Bio, that helps a lot with the lower S/L defense as Gobbledegook mentioned.

I'm one of the ones who bids low and bid creeps for builds, because I have them planned out, and if I get everything for half-ish price it means I only have to spend half as much time marketing. Part of what I work to make Inf is buying/crafting/converting purples, so if I use a set on a character I replace it with ones I generate that way, so I can always get those from my stockpile in a hurry. Also, after getting my first couple of 50s, I haven't been on a hurry for others so plenty of time to bid low for things I want.

While Leviathan has long animations, I'm normally teaming on my Crab, and even MORE AoE -resist is too sweet to pass up, plus Arctic has doubled -resist for Toxic damage (note this isn't mentioned in Mids, you have to hunt around for the info), which you can do a lot of between Bile Spray and Venom Grenade and the Spiders Bite ATO global toxic proc. A friend and I theorycrafted this against a Fire blaster even without the ATO back on Live, and while the blaster can do more AoE in the first 5 seconds or so, after that the Crab catches up and stays ahead. The Crab also obviously has a lot better native defenses and team support with the Leadership toggles.

One thing a Tank really excels at is moving a specific mob, or spawn, to where you want them. Brutes and Scrappers with Taunt auras can do that to some extent, but Tanker Taunt has, as far as I know, the only "-range" power in the game. Thus even mobs who would normally want to stay at range, which includes a lot of annoying Praetorian ones, have to get closer to attack you, entering the team's debuffs and AoEs. Other than that, lots of good advice here, one thing I like to do when a spawn is down to maybe a boss and I'm about to run off to the next is hit that boss with a final Taunt. That makes sure they don't turn and clobber some squishy for long enough that the team will probably finish them off, and I don't really need Taunt immediately when I start herding a new spawn, I'm relying on AoEs/aura, so it has plenty of time to recharge. Also, there are certain mobs you may want to learn about because they are a threat even to tanks. Malta sappers are among them, you may specifically NOT want to taunt those, frankly if they shoot the blaster and drain their End, it just slows things down slightly since they don't do much damage, if you get drained and lose your toggles with a whole spawn beating on you and mezzing you, it could get bad. Dark Ring Mistresses, Carnie bosses, are also bad, they have really nasty debuffs, those along with some Circle of Thorns mobs can completely remove your defense and/or tohit, so abilities that have to hit enemies to heal you, for example, may be useless. I suggest monitoring your Combat Attributes to watch for those kinds of things, no point firing off the Dark Heal if its going to whiff.

I also run into this as a /Traps MM sometimes, when I use Poison Trap and all the mobs start choking, or Caltrops and they are slow-mo running away, the pets will stop firing because nobody is attacking them or me.

See, I like my bots/traps MM because I can manage the battlefield exactly the way I want it. It was particularly a nice change from live after running my rad defender main and having teams totally fail to cooperate and being either ineffective or faceplanting as a result. "Finally, a team that does EXACTLY WHAT I TELL THEM!" 🙂 I also like TW on a tank, because while its animating I can look around the battlefield and see what is going on that I might need to respond to. Since I'm not expected to be a main damage source on a team, if I mess up the momentum mechanic, its no big deal. I don't know that I'd take it on a Brute or Scrapper. Played a Grav/FF on live, and never again, even incarnated out I almost never found a mission or team where that character was a better choice than my other ones. There are a handful of scenarios where you NEED someone locked down, like "prevent escape" type stuff, but not enough to justify the character. Remade as a Grav/Time here, and significantly more fun to play between the fact that Time can actually help with offense and the availability of knockback -> knockdown IOs. Still a fairly late bloomer, though.

I noticed this as well when I was buying yellow salvage a week or so ago, normally a bid price of 8-900 would fill within hours, I had bids as high as 1500 go unfilled for a couple of days, and was seeing sale prices over 10k, which I hadn't seen since the first few days of Homecoming. I grabbed some yellow salvage I had lying around and sold it while the price was high, but I was also wondering what could drive it up like that, with built in interconvertability I would have though the sales volume on a tier would be too high to try to drive up the price.

The AVs do sometimes turn to look in different directions, too, if you can hit one of them when the next one over is facing away, you have a much better chance of just pulling the one. You may need some patience for that.

First controller, a Grav/FF. Based on a rpg character I loved, so I got him to 50, but he was slow to solo, which I did a lot of back in the day. "Slow" is saying something given that my main was a Defender who I felt soloed ok. I even incarnated him out, but I could just never find any content, with the exception of MSRs using Dispersion Bubble to block mezzes, that he was better for than some other character I had. That was a pretty narrow niche, given I rarely play evenings when MSRs happen. . . Not only did it convince me not to make any more controllers, I also never made a Dominator until recently on HC. Still not convinced the Dominator is amazing, but to be fair, she is only at level 12. I remade the controller on HC as a Grav/Time, which also fit the rpg character concept, and with the buffs to Grav plus actually helping teams kill things with Time, I no longer feel like a waste of a team slot. 🙂 Still not planning to make a bunch more controllers, though, one seems like enough.

Started a couple months after the game start, because I had two good friends who started in Beta and talked me into this, my first MMO. I hit a bit of a delay because it turned out you had to have one of a number of SPECIFIC graphics cards to play a MMO, who knew? 🙂 First characters were two Rad/Rad defenders, as a science geek doing things with radiation appealed to me and it sounded flexible and effective from the guides and comments. One was for soloing/PUGs and one was for a static team we set up. One of those was my first 50, became my main, and is again now my first 50 and main on Homecoming, and despite multiple nerfs to Radiation Emission over the years still a lot of fun to play. To be fair, I acknowledge some debate between myself and my friends about whether said nerfs were deserved. Defenders are still my favorite AT, I love helping a team stay alive and go faster, and Radiation is fairly, um, obvious about it. . .

Arcanaville thought that when they put Praetoria together they had "forgotten" how to design low level mobs like Skulls. Original low level mobs have like 2 or maybe 3 attacks, with long recharges, which goes up to high level mobs with more of a real attack chain. The Praetorian mobs were designed more like high level mobs, with an attack chain. I think it was also when the devs got a software improvement that let them trigger ambushes from more types of actions, so they REALLY wanted to put that through its paces. I think that was somewhat true with Rogue Isles as well, it had harder foes in a lot of cases then blueside. In particular, there were more AVs as part of normal story arcs, and I think it came out before you could downgrade them to EBs, because I remember my MM fighting them as AVs a lot. Fortunately a bots/traps MM can beat an AV on SOs.

I tend to consider Radiation a Tier 1 along with Time, mainly because I play at a variety of levels, even at end game, and Radiation, like Storm, gets its key abilities at much earlier levels (teens) than Time (upper 30s). Radiation also works pretty well even with a plain IO or even SO build, Time really wants some set slotting to shine, as well as inclusion of some Power Build Up type power. I do agree Time, like Cold, is very good at high levels with an IOed out build. Regarding /Radiation for a blast set, I've found it actually helps keeps mobs clumped if I run in and fire off PbAoEs in my debuff cloud, so I prefer it with Radiation primary to the cone based powers. I do agree that some end game content is too dangerous to allow that, but then it has pretty good ST ranged damage with a snipe plus Cosmic Burst, and with an Achilles activating very reliably in the snipe it has good ST -resist as well. I guess I'd move it to Tier 2, as I found it more fun to play than /Sonic, even though I know Sonic is a great hard target melter.

As I recall, Brian's volley of fireballs made short work of the Dread Gazebo, fortunately for our heroes, I mean that darned thing just IGNORED a crossbow bolt of Slaying. . . 🙂

One other thing I'd mention is that the P2W vendor sells temp powers, a Defense Amplifier, Offense Amplifier and Survival Amplifier. The cost per hour scales up dramatically with your level, so if you buy them at first or second level they are much cheaper. If you are PLing right off the bat, they could last up into the 20s pretty easily and help make up for the fact that you probably won't have enhancements slotted for a lot of powers. It can also be handy to prepare for your PLing by having a lot of plain level 25 IOs in base bins, so you can go grab them at the right point and they won't expire as you continue up through the levels. Having to run back and forth for SOs to the correct vendor is a pain, and it isn't really worth buying them anyway if they are only going to last a few hours of your leveling.

I also discovered some new niches when I got a recipe drop, checked the price, and said "Hmm, if this obscure recipe is selling for THAT much, there must be something interesting it can be converted into." More often these days when I'm doing a character build I say "Huh, I thought those crucial set IOs I need would be more expensive."

It wouldn't even be possible to corner the market on a whole set, many of the "converter lottery" people are just converting within a category, like purples or defense IOs or orange rarity, so they are generating all kinds of sets as they go. The profitable ones get sold, otherwise hit another convert. The only things I think might even be possible to corner now are things which can't be produced this way, like Hami-Os or ATOs, and even those I suspect would be tough to keep cornered for very long.

My endgame slotting for Singularity is Acc/Mez Hami, Dam/Mez Hami x2, Soulbound Allegiance Damage, and the Expediant Reinforcement and Sovereign Right resistance bonus IOs. That gives capped Hold duration, capped Damage, and 20% extra resistance on top of Singy's already high resistances. It is very rare for it to drop before I do. Depending on your secondary, you might want the two Defense bonus pet IOs instead. Before I could slot purples and HOs, I went with 4x Call to Arms for the 6.25% recharge bonus, a Damage IO and a Hold IO. It was still pretty darned tough even with that.

Do be careful if you join someone else, if they have been in the mission for very long and you join them and kill the end EB too quickly, you may not get credit because you "weren't in the mission long enough for the rewards". You may want to kill a couple of other spawns first to make sure you get end mission credit.

Does Group Fly still impose a -tohit (or -acc, sometimes the game description isn't as accurate as it should be) debuff on anyone in it?