Heraclea

Question ~ have been leery of SS on HC once I knew what happened ~ but does the Rage crash affect Judgments?

I've always found it odd that the highest echelons of the Paragon Police Department are aliens or possessed by aliens, and none of their politicians breathe a word about that. There's a story hook somewhere in there.

Vera Lynn - We'll Meet Again RIP Vera Lynn.

Never made an Invuln character that took Unstoppable here. Respecced out of it on Victory for the few that had it back then.

So it wasn't PvP related. The actual point was that control oriented characters have their bread and butter powers on extremely long cooldowns, and as such need to build for recharge first and above all. These characters hoover up all the purple sets in my SG; they benefit from them more than the sets made for them. Any diminishment of Hasten's effectiveness would break them and probably get them deleted, as well as crashing the demand for purples.

Scrappers have a little bit more build freedom than Brutes do. Many Brutes eventually take Taunt. All my Brutes have it. Even the regen Brute, because that one was an experiment to see if a regen Brute could actually tank. But hardly any Scrapper takes Confront. One power choice's worth of more build freedom.

IIRC, this is working as intended. The gun drone is intended to be a short term tank for you.

From the Soulbound Allegiance Chance For Buildup purple pet damage IO descriptiun: Should read 'affect'. One of those things that just bugs me.

IIRC, at some time fairly early in the game, control powers got a massive nerf in the form of having their recharge times doubled or close to doubled. I remember many people being upset about it. Not sure what issue or when it was, but it may have been related to the introduction of PvP. Excessive recharge has always been one reason why I have shied away from that kind of character. Even if most of the late-added content seems to be made to favor them and shut out melee from a role.

Sisters of Mercy - Black Planet

My understanding is that Performance Shifter works best when slotted in any passive power. On a Brute you can have one in Stamina, one in Superior Conditioning, and one in Physical Perfection, and all three work. They can also be slotted in click powers, but then they would only have a chance to fire when those powers are activated.

You slot Health for endurance recovery. You slot Stamina for health. Brilliant plan there. It's like all those incarnate trials where the game tells you to do this or that, and then awards badges for not doin' 'em.

Also - and it just shows you how little I like the AT that I didn't even remember about them at first - Dominators. Made one on Homecoming. Thought I'd give it the old college try. Spent a shedload of merits and inf and cleared out the salvage racks five-slotting purple sets as well as ATOs on the character to get her enough recharge for permadom. Made it, finally. Still don't like it. Permadom just gives you one more damn thing to worry about while you play. Losing it because of a moment's lapse of attention is almost as bad as dying. Playing the character is a nervous and unpleasant experience. An expensive mistake.

My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult - Hit and Run Holiday

Also note that to unlock Katie and Hess, you just need to be present for the finish on the final mission for each of those arcs. If someone has the missions 'naturally' you don't have to be there for any mission other than the finales 'Stop Takeover of Salamanca' from Buck Salinger and 'Defeat base commander and his men' from Lars Hansen.

Kassav / Jocelyne Béroard - Sa Kitala

If one of my characters does NOT get wall-to-wall mez protection from their primary or secondary, they almost certainly will have Concealment pool, Stealth and probably Invisibility. The only characters that don't take them are the ones that already have something better in the primary or secondary, like a stalker, an archery/devices blaster or an illusion/rad controller. These characters need to be able to set the terms of engagement for each fight. Toe bombing is always fun, These tend to be my story arc completionists, the ones that unlock stuff like Katie Hannon and Ernesto Hess. They try to minimize combat and head for the mission objectives and arc rewards. So yes, I get a lot of mileage out of Concealment. I even take it on characters that do have mez protection, like a regen scrapper. And if a character takes it they will probably also try to work in Recall Friend as well. My problem with Concealment pool is that HC changes mean there's not much effective difference between Stealth ande Invisibility. Stealth + Stealth IO (catalyzed) is good enough for PvE, while Invisibility + Stealth IO is not good enough to enable you to run Nemesis or Rikti missions, or evade ambushes. What having both does, mostly, is to enable you to slot two different defense-set global uniques. Pool powers tend to be very uneven in quality. You have travel powers that you'll need another travel power to make work (Super Speed and Teleport). You have valuable powers (Tough, Weave) gated by attacks I usually don't bother putting on an action bar. Useless heals, interruptible in combat; I experimented with Medicine on Heraclea last year; didn't work worth a dried fig. I don't have the reaction time to be a spot healer. I don't find Hasten as essential as some do, and it seems quite optional on most melees, especially if they are running defense based armors with click mez protection, but if you are relying on powers with too-slow recharge (i.e. any control set) it does become much more pertinent.

Already exists: Next badge suggestion: Losing Paradise.

I have played with 'Karen the Destroyer'. I don't know when all this went down, but I do know that 'Karen the Destroyer' is a fully thought out character, with a bio and costume appropriate to the theme, battle cries that speak of 'speaking to the manager' and so forth. Everything about her refers to the current 'Karen' meme, which does not suggest that this character was made to mock your daughter. She does not appear to be created to harass your daughter; the character is level 50 and has veteran levels. I've referred to the same body of folklore in my Heaven and Hell AE mission, embodied in a mob named 'Customer from Hell'. It's a meme. Give it three months and something else will be trending. I am sorry to hear of her bad experience, but the 'Karen' meme is definitely out there. She didn't by any chance use her real name as a global handle or character name, or did she?

Did your character start in Praetoria?

Brian Jonestown Massacre - Pish

I tend to swap between Offensive and Defensive modes on my Torchbearer Bio/Spines tanker, which is the server where my richest characters live. My Excelsior Bio/Kinetic tanker gets a lot more mileage out of Efficiency currently; you may too until you get all the +recovery IOs. But you can't take one without the others. Once you get to 50 the -resist in Offensive is easily ignored on normal content. End hog secondaries like Spines, Stone, and Axe pair well with it.

Just a note of thanks for this guide. I referred to it several times as I built a Plants/Poison controller. The character is slightly remarkable in that I took everything in the primary, and the same for the secondary. Put off some things (the confuse and the bomb) but eventually took 'em all. But even the powers I took later than immediately seemed more useful or fun than any pool power. This character started out as a concept character (was reading a novel about Circe) but I saw potential in the character and levelled her to 50 fairly fast. I did not take Leadership (already rather end-bound, though I've given her every advantage I know how) and did take Concealment to Invisibility (because toe bombing is always fun.)

A scrapper whose primary has several skippable powers comes to mind. Scrapper, because all scrapper primaries have at least one skippable power in Provoke. If you are of the school that the only combo you need from Dual Blades is Attack Vitals, that's the easiest choice. Other attack sets with skippable stuff include Kinetic and Psi Melee. Willpower, Invulnerability, and Fire are armor sets that have several very optional powers.

Started a couple defenders. Never found one that interested me. Now, the controller I found I like best is a plants/poison. One simple thing distinguishes this one from the others I tried. Very few powers are aimed at teammates or allies. There;s a spot heal, a pseudopet heal, and an anti-mez buff and that's it. Almost all the powers are aimed at enemies. As a healer you're going to suck. That said, my comfort zone is tankers, brutes, and scrappers. Mez protection makes a character that much pleasanter to play.