Scientist

Same issue throughout my rad defender career, as far as I know the only answer is the Clarion Incarnate power. Adding up various "resists" from IO sets just shortens the duration of a mezz, toggles still drop.

There was a reason sometimes I would switch from playing my Rad defender, which required a certain amount of team cooperation which one would THINK would be fairly straightforward, to playing my Mastermind, once in a while. . . :)

The reason it happens every time you level is that you get one large inspiration of each type affecting you when you level, and a yellow insp grants +to hit. A large one grants +37.5%, which is over the 22% needed for insta-snipe. A medium yellow, btw, is only 18.75%, not quite enough. To the OP, the nomenclature in the game can be confusing, unfortunately. Accuracy goes in one place in the overall formula to hit mobs, "to hit" goes in another place. Accuracy comes from IO set bonuses, slotting Accuracy SOs/IOs in powers, and so on. To Hit is much rarer, though also much more useful percent-for-percent if you are trying to hit mobs which are higher level than you, or have defenses. It is also the only thing that can give you insta-snipe currently. To hit comes from the Tactics power, as well as a few others in the game, yellow insps, and you can get continuous +6% from the Kismet proc (which is wrongly labeled Accuracy, by the way). A defender can actually get insta-snipe continuously just from a Kismet and 2-slotted Tactics, but that is because the AT modifier for buffs/debuffs on a defender is much higher than that on a blaster. I suggest using the Pine's hero planner to figure out exactly what you need, no point in buying enhancements and doing a respec and still not having it work. I heard, by the way, that they may be changing insta-snipe so that everyone has it, but the damage bonus will increase with higher To Hit up to 22%. I haven't verified that myself.

An associated tip that relates to this is the "/altinvite" command which lets you invite other characters you have on that server to your sg, without needing to have some other friend in your sg online to do it.

It should, they are from different power sources. One is a foe-self-casting proc, as Redlynne mentions, and the other is from your Arctic Breath. I would also guess that a different -res proc, such as that from Annihilation, would stack with the Achilles Heel one, any idea Redlynne?

I would agree with you that a lot of bids on something could be pretty meaningless, but I would argue that having only a few bids does tell you something useful. You mention, for example, the Aegis that only had 2 for sale. If it also had only 3 bids, that may be a sign of low demand, and you may not want to list at the high end of whatever last 5 range is showing. If there are 50 bids, it may at least be worth looking at the set bonuses and demand for other IOs in the set and such to see if there may be legit demand versus someone trying to pump demand with lowball bid stacking.

An Epic pool available for Tankers that I think is underrated in this regard is Soul Mastery, which has Darkest Night. That is -21% damage on the target, and I don't believe -damage gets the automatic 87% or more reduction of effect that most other debuffs like -tohit get against AVs. -resist is the other exception to that reduction I know of. The nice feature of that is not only is it like stacking another 21% damage resist on top of your other resists, if the AV does an AoE that hits the rest of the party, it reduces damage on them as well. What I'm not sure of is how much Taunt effect comes from a non-damaging toggle debuff. The threat multiplication calculations I've seen work based on a damage multiplier. I can tell you from playing defenders that toggle debuffs do generate aggro, but I've never seen anything on how they multiply with Taunt.

Would a Hami-O Acc/Mezz increase the duration of Time Crawl at all? It isn't really a standard mezz.

I actually found doing the Moonfire TF on a team of 8 was just about as fast as hunting those stupid warwolves outdoors, because they run all over, and it got both the WW and the Vampire badges (well, I think I was 2 short on the Vamp one) plus merits. No unlock, unlike Hess. Interesting about the contact to get all the Mayhem missions, I had no idea there was a way to do that other than carefully level a character villianside, making sure not to get on a great team for too long and blow past a 5 level range. . .

Actually, I would suggest buying most of your level 25 IOs from the auction house, just don't pay the "buy it now" price. You can buy most for well under what it costs to buy the recipe and craft it, like 10-30k. You just need to take a few days to get them at good prices.

Sonic will certainly be more in demand than beam rifle in a high level team, since it helps melt AVs. I kind of liked the effects of beam rifle, so I had one on live, but never got to 50 on them, it was for a theme team. Kinetics takes a certain kind of high risk/high reward, live on the edge type player. I have a friend who loves it, but his motto for blasters is "if you don't have debt, you aren't playing hard enough", so take that with a grain of salt. It will certainly be in demand at high levels, but so is Time.

See, I find the farming process quite boring, but enjoy figuring out the market, whereas all of my friends are the reverse (or don't enjoy either, and if I ever want their mains to be IOed out to team with, I'll be supplying them. . .). I'm glad there are people who like farming, because there has to be new Inf coming into the market, in a vacuum it would be a money sink because of the game's commission. I'm glad there are people who like marketing, because there is always a supply of things I might want available, I don't have to personally store it all in my base. I also find it fascinating as an academic exercise how different prices of all kinds of things are on this market versus live, because of the combination of inexpensive enhancement converters, and the market readusting levels of recipes and enhancements as needed for orders. I never dare sell anything to a vendor now without checking the AH first, you never know when that level 16 recipe is in super demand because it happens to lie in a niche where it will convert to something valuable most of the time. . .

I also had a Grav/FF on live, based on my favorite character from a rpg I was in, one of the first two characters I made in I1, and I always struggled to find a use for him at 50 that other characters couldn't do better. As has been discussed here, the big problem is that only a smallish subset of teams at 50 really need more Defense (in the general sense, including things like controls), whereas most can use more Offense. Many controller secondaries provide some of each, including Sonic, which is a pretty good -resist debuffer for tough AVs, FF totally lacks any Offense multiplier. And my rad/rad defender arguably had more control "up time" than the controller, since they didn't nerf EMP as much as the generic controller AoE holds, on TOP of Offense multipliers. I remade my Grav/FF as a Grav/Time this time around, which also fit the concept from my rpg character, and even at 12th level it is a more interesting character to play and I see more potential. The only reason I'd consider a FF character these days if if I wanted to do a lot of low level team content with the character, say I loved the Posi TFs or the Hollows and wanted to run them a lot. The other option is a MM, so you have good offense addition from pets, but I would find FF a bit boring on a MM.

I didn't see anything in the patch notes about it, but did they also remove the cap on stacking 5 of the same bonus, such as 6.25% recharge? I thought Mid's used to have a warning if you had over 5 of a same bonus, I don't see it any more in Pine's update, but I don't know if that is because I'm missing something or Pine is. :)

This reminds me of the character I met back in maybe I10 or so who was also a rad defender, but didn't have either of the toggle debuffs. He chose Rad because with Accelerate Metabolism and Hasten he could have the fastest cycling heal possible, since he honestly thought that would be needed at end game. I showed him at least how to corner pull with Radiation Infection, then stand in it with whiffing mobs and chat, but I'm not sure if I convinced him. . .

In particular, as a Tanker you get the -resist debuff from Defensive Sweep since it is their Tier 1 attack. That might be another reason to swap it into an attack chain on a tank, possibly even an AoE one. I did have a question about Arc of Destruction, Pine's hero designer says it has "knockback", is it actually knockback or knockdown?

A suggestion for an alternative slotting for Singularity, in place three Expedient Reinforcements, is two Peroxisomes (Damage/Mezz) and a Soulbound Allegiance (Damage). That lets you max out both its Hold and its Damage. You give up 6.25% recharge time, but between a Superior Will of the Controller set and a purple Stun set in Wormhole, I was still able to get 120% global recharge. I've found anything that goes much past perma-Hasten usually brings something useful back up in time for when I need it. :)

I've definitely used 10-12 merits and still not ended up with something I could sell for 5M, but perhaps I'm choosing the wrong things to convert. Or just have bad luck, more than once there have been only 3 possibilities, and I cycle back and forth between the two unprofitable ones 4-5 times in a row. . . Selling converters also requires a lot less time spent researching what enhancements to convert than converting enhancements, so depends on what you like to do with your time in game.

While I haven't tested it with Screech, I regularly stack Cosmic Burst, the Rad stun which is also very nice damage (IMHO Sonic gets a bit cheated here compared to the early, unbalanced sets), and Dominate, the Epic pool hold which also does damage. In both cases the second shot on a boss mezzes them. I've even toggled between them on 2 bosses to perma-mezz both.

Even though margins are narrower, and I'm finding it harder as I go along to get the Inf/hour I had been getting in the market, I like this aspect of it, that the new market actually encourages marketers to play the game as well to get merits. I also like that IO builds will be much more affordable for many more people, and they could potentially afford them without hundreds of hours on a dedicated farmer or being forced to play the market. I suspect that cheaper prices will get more people who really don't like the market enough to learn how to make money in it to put together at least decent IO builds, find out how nice they are, and create more customers for marketers. I also suspect that more people will stick with the game because of being able to do that, but we'll have to see. I'm certainly sure that they are a long way from losing so many people they can't keep the servers funded, they are still getting their month's funding in under an hour.

Wormhole doesn't cause aggro any more? You can just mass TP and stun foes? Last time I was using it they all shot at me even before it triggered, interesting. . .

To the OP, consider putting Preventive Medicine instead of Doctored Wounds into your heal, 8.75% global recharge instead of 5%. This is a new set with I25. If you need slots, consider taking some from Radiation Infection, you can do pretty well with 3 Enzymes (HOs) in that, it optimizes everything that power does. Then an Achilles proc if you want still more -resist, though that may be overkill on a /sonic.

I will say I find use for a ST mezz on a rad defender because (1) I can use it first on a LT I want to take down after sleeping the spawn when I know they mezz, then actually dps them down while they stumble around, and (2) with the whiffs from Rad Infection on a boss, you can often hit them with Screech a second time before they mezz you, and keep them out of the fight thereafter. I've even used a ST hold from an Epic power pool and double stacked that on one boss and a Stun on another boss in double boss spawns in the Shadow Shard to lock them both down, but you need to be willing to do a lot of retargeting to make that work. Very handy to have max debuff chains, an extra 10% -resist debuff from a defender will generate way more team damage on an AV than improving your own dps by 10-20%.

This comment assumes you want a ranged AoE specialist Crab, which is something they are very good at. In an IOed out end game Crab build, you have a pretty complete AoE damage chain with Suppression, Venom Grenade, Bile Spray and Arctic Breath. The problem is that the last two are Patron powers and come very late, so that is a lot of levels with only 2 AoEs. Also, since you have good ranged defense, you want to keep foes at range, and the AoE immobilize School of Sharks, which you need to take to unlock Bile and Arctic, also comes late. Therefore, my suggestion is to retain Wide Area Web Grenade and Heavy Burst for an AoE Immob and additional AoE respectively until you can get to and slot those Patron powers in the upper 40s. If you exemp a lot, it could even be worth having an alternate build with those at lower levels. Also note that as easy as it is to get attuned enhancements in this version of the game, you can start slotting things with IOs even while leveling, you don't have to wait till near 50. Otherwise, leveling can also be a good time to experiment with powers you aren't sure of and see how you like them. Maybe you love the Crab pets, maybe you hate them, maybe you just think they are useless, you can decide before you invest in IOs for a final build.

Just a warning to Mjolnerd, a rad/fire may have a tougher time soloing AVs and GMs than a rad/sonic, because while fire does somewhat more damage than sonic, sonic on defender has some really nasty -res debuffs. Lusca was probably taking +40-60% damage the whole time because of the sonic debuffs. Where rad/fire will be great is against large group spawns, versus /sonic which is much slower taking out a spawn (though probably safer, with its built in sleep). Since 90% of fights in a group setting such as a TF are against whole spawns, and the 10% that are left are against AVs which slow the team down and are potentially more dangerous, both are really appreciated on teams. I have a rad/rad which is somewhere in between, better debuffing than /fire, worse than sonic, better AoEs than /sonic, worse than /fire. Those kinds of things are what make tradeoffs with different defender primaries and secondaries so interesting. :)