Heraclea

I enjoyed Water/Willpower well enough to get mine to 50. Water allows one of my favorite debuff strategies, which is to slot Pacing of the Turtle -recharge procs in just about anything that will take them. There is also a lot of soft control there with knockdown and slows. Mine is exclusively ranged, no melee attacks, and I use Ninja Caltrops (renamed to something random, but it's still Caltrops) at my feet to discourage too friendly mobs and add still more slows and more -recharge. This is in contrast to my double electric blaster, who relies a whole lot on PBAoE and is basically a sapper.

One of my favorite combinations back in the day. Wrote a somewhat dated guide from the days before inherent Stamina, and which also had the state of the old redside AH in mind. In the beginning it was separate from blueside and also very much a seller's market. I still think it's one of my better efforts, if only for the appropriate quotations from Hole lyrics.

I knocked out the arc this morning. The single Avatar was not impossibly hard, and I just burned an autocomplete on Face Hamidon's Fury. Though if I never see any of those floaty Augur things that are happy to just float there and attack you from across the room, it will still be too soon. I generally do as little as possible from out of the Vanguard base on Heraclea. Heraclea HATES the Vanguard, and considers them all to be villains not much better than Malta Group.

Dual blades raises another issue. To get the most out of it, he will want all of the attacks except Provoke. This suggest a forgiving defense set with many skippable or postponable powers. Most of the defense based armors have very little of that kind of give; you need all of the pieces in place. I would suggest Invuln - you'll get one of the passives whether you want it or not, and can use it as a mule for the +def IOs, but the other two are skippable or postponable until 47-49, as is Unstoppable - or Fire, whose core protections are in only four powers. Willpower is also a possibility; the last two powers in the set are quite skippable. I also recommend waiting to take Mind over Body until after Quick Recovery, which creates a little more wiggle room in the early build.

Here's a fairly interesting one, from the Church room at the Holy Office base on Excelsior. This is supposed to be a pipe organ. The body is just composed of wooden desks, with the many drawers put forward to represent stops. The pipes come from a variety of sources, including Divider wooden posts and the smaller diameter Sewer pipes. The 'keyboard' is made up of several computer keyboards side by side. The pedals and pulled stops are actually a couple of Gym treadmills; I used an AE computer and one of the Tech pipe seconds to cover unwanted bits. And before it I set a Typing NPC.

In Cimerora and elsewhere, it is literally impossible to 'overkill' defense. I'd go with a defense based secondary like reflexes or ninjitsu, or a mixed set like invuln or willpower. Don't thnk you can do shields with katana.

How do level shifts work, exactly? I noticed that when she was running Number Six missions, Heraclea was +3, but when all that was over, back to +1 again.

Why I enjoy putting the Tentacles on giant monsters.

A few other things. Don't gimp your build by planning around set bonuses. Now, the AT specific sets are generally good for this, but the ordinary orange melee sets with the best defense or resist bonuses often lack key ingredients in a slotting strategy. Most seem to have much less accuracy than I would want slotted in an attack. They offer maybe 40% where I like to see 75%. A working attack chain is more important to your survival than any set bonus. -Tohit debuffs are also very common at all stages of the game. Build the character you want to play and add such set bonuses as you can. Reliable damage is the best defense. Pay attention to the exotic damage types and effects of your attacks. My i23 spines/WP scrapper put Pacing of the Turtle or Dark Watcher's Despair procs for -recharge in everything that would take them. Using the same strategy on my i25 bio/spines tanker and water/WP sentinel. When these procs are constantly going on your pulsing AoEs they become quite potent, and add to your survivability in ways that aren't reflected directly in defense or resistance numbers. There are also some attack sets like Katana or Broadsword that add defense, while Dark Melee and Radiation add heals. Boosting the heal you get from those attacks will do more for you than any set bonus. Frankenslotting to boost key abilities will make you tougher than any set bonus. I think the min-maxing encouraged by hero builders is something that needs to be tested in actual play, and in-game you will find that enhancing your powers works better than chasing the bonus.

Gotten all sorts of PvP recipes, but exactly one purple recipe since starting back in late April. Used to get one once every couple tries along the Roman wall, but that's a dry hole for me.

It may be typical incarnates garbage, possibly soloable but definitely unteamable. I needed a quick second mission once and got conned into a Belladonna Vetrano arc, an experience I do not care to repeat. I expect it's like the rest of that twaddle, full of confuse and terrorize and psi nukes, with missions that move the goalposts once inside. You do not want a team, you do not want bosses, and you want everything to spawn at -1, which isn't how I usually roll. Actually running the missions will be a grim slog. Mission that was the problem was three Avatar of Hamidon AVs spawning together in one mission that would incomprehensibly spawn vines that would one shot everybody. If there was a strategy we were supposed to use, nothing in the mission suggested it and no one discovered it. Eventually some NPCs appeared, shone green light on them, and then they were four fifths dead and we eventually killed them. Might be doable with fewer of these mobs spawning as EBs.

All of the Mini bases on Torchbearer are worth visiting. Question: do the Mystic Forges do anything now? I put one of them in the tiki hut at Firemullet Groupies, where it serves as a hibachi.

My preference is for defense over resistance, at least for late-added, late-game, and incarnate content. Resistance works fine at what it does, which is to reliably reduce a certain portion of incoming damage. The problem starts when those attacks also contain debuffs like -recharge, -tohit, and slows. That crap is all over the place, especially in the high level content added towards the end of the official game. Why this stuff was added, I don't know; the most frequently chosen and played content remains enemies present in i2. The only way this material becomes playable is to not get hit at all. That's what defense does. It decreases the odds that a mob will hit you, ideally down to a minimum 1 in 20 chance, the 'softcap'. Defense can be weak in the levelling game, because it may take some time for all of the pieces of the puzzle to be assembled. Once it's working it is much stronger for late-added and endgame content. Defense is also more frequently debuffed than resistance, regeneration, or healing, and as such is prone to cascade failure: but they still have to hit you first. Ideally you get a bit of both, like you do with Invulnerability and Willpower. But still, these only work in the endgame to the extent mobs can't hit you at all. Go resistance or regen for your lowbie reward merits farmer, but defense for your incarnates.

I find this happens when there's too much debuff and not enough taunt.

I clicked on Number Six out of curiosity, wanting to know his backstory and info. Helped someone on an obviously broken mission before, and I was curious. I specifically did not volunteer to do any of his broken and unplayable missions versus Imperial whatnot, and have less than zero interest in running them. I specifically declined to take missions from him. Now, in my contacts list, he has a book, indicating that I'm on a story arc from him. How do I clear this without actually running his broken twaddle? Do I have to wait three days for every one of them to clear? How long is this? Is there another way to be free of him?

I know enough about WoW that this sortakinda makes sense for me. Oldie but goodie.

Hover is a godsend in City of Kinetics. Works wonders on Council catwalk maps.

Dark is also not particularly costume friendly in a way that WP or Invuln is, but it lends itself to certain effects. Back in i23, I had a dark tanker who colored all of the armors and auras bright pink.

Set it to Bright tintable then pick really dark colours. It turns the flashy glow into a smokey simmer. It's what I do on all the effects I don't like and quite a reliable way of making them more subtle. Thanks! Will give it a try.

I'm especially curious as to how the incarnate business is achieved. It seems to be taking me a couple weeks or more before I have collected enough geemies on a fresh level 50 in order to slot anything in the alpha slot. And even then, what I slot is based on what I have rather than what I want. Apparently some content is gated through level shifts; of my four level 50s only Heraclea is +1, and collecting enough doodads to move past seems an unconscionable grind, especially since I don't play 'mains'. It annoys that there is any content I likely will never see, even if that way lies only Praetorians and more confusion, fear, psi nukes, and don't-stand-here zones, and other catherding generic MMO crap that makes tankers irrelevant.

I've remade old characters, but with differences. I23 Heraclea was Inv/SS; i25 Inv/DM. This was done because I knew this was a solid combo back then; my Inv/DM tanker was Omphale, and she became my goto for things like master runs. I am glad I did not choose /SS this time around. Rage never fit her concept anyways, and before ED I skipped it. Probably works better without it now, but will be pretty lackluster.

Bio has a minimal FX setting. It still ends up making you look like Pigpen. Costume freaks are best served by Invuln and WP. My bio/ tanker is /spines: not an issue. I would say that the premier set is still Invuln. You won't plug the psi hole nearly enough to satisfy anybody going to try for that. Still a very solid all around set. Possible to build to be as tough as Granite without the drawbacks, including especially costume. WP is also very good for toughness. Does not have a psi hole. Better for sustained offense than Invuln because of endurance relief. Lesser taunt aura, apparently shared by the tanker version of Super Reflexes, is a minor problem. Out of the box it isn't nearly as tough as Invuln. Tough and Weave make seven league strides in fixing that. Bio and Fire are fiddly sets. They do just fine IME, but rely heavily on click powers for survivability. I understand that Electric is also that way; never played it high level then or now. Not sure what to make of Rad, but mine is still under level 20. Rad also seems fairly glowy and ugly, not for the costume crowd. Shield is potentially quite strong, especially with sets. but I still think of it as an offense oriented kit because of Shield Bash.

Knowing little of Warhammer, my impression of the WoW backstory was that every once in a while either the Horde or an Alliance found themselves backed into a corner. When this happened, each would hire a dodgy wizard who would pull their bacon out of the fire by contracting with some evil extradimensional entity. The side effects always included destroying a major part of the game world.