Lazarillo

Depends a little on the AT I'm playing, and also, I'll note "first to go" isn't always the same as "first to hit". For example, if I'm fighting Rikti, I'll make sure to hit a Comm. Officer with something quickly to prevent any portals from popping up, but it's the Guardians I'm gonna take down fast, to keep them from bubbling all their buddies.

The "plus" is because Cardiac Core Paragon gives a bigger cost reduction than Vigor Core (or, for that matter, Cardiac Radial), 45% vs 33%. I don't believe there's any other difference between them, despite the slightly difference wording, and that should be clear from looking at the real numbers (which both call it "strength to Endurance cost on self").

I love it. Maybe along with increasing/guaranteeing chances to fire, IMO, since I don't really like running the effect lotto, but even without that, one-per-power seems like an effective solution.

I mean, bear in mind, that that's assuming you're using Tanker multipliers. The mag when an NPC uses it will likely be somewhat different. As to the main question, I feel like it's unneeded on the whole, since there are ways to build around it through sets and pools. Heck, in that regard, it's one of the easiest effects to compensate for. Compare to 7/11 having no Terrorize protection, nor any way to add it to their build, or a similar number lacking Confuse protection (and only by dipping a couple times into the Leadership pool can a small amount of that be gained). Or any large number of status holes suffered by most other ATs. KB protection is one that the game already has plenty of.

I mentioned this a month or thereabouts back in a discussion of the Aeon SF, but ITF is also a great example of how to tell a story in a TF. It's not a complicated story, in all fairness, but because it stays straightforward, it's possible to understand what you're doing and why just from things like NPC one-liners and the way mission objectives are strung together. It helps, of course, if you've done the "A Path Into Darkness" arc before, but it's not necessary. But the point is that, yeah, it's not just fun to play, but it's also well-executed in terms of storyline. Not perfect, but leagues better than most group content; it's one of maybe four-ish that actually pulls off feeling like effective group-written content. I do have one beef with the gameplay, and that's the lack of use for control powers in most of it. Controllers, at least, have their debuffs, but I usually feel kinda anemic if I bring a Dominator on it.

I do make some Heroes, yes. Crazy, I know.

I'm not especially fond of them. They're boring (less boring when pulling, but still hardly exciting), and yeah, the grindiness of the badges is discouraging, and on Everlasting, at least, the sort of off-color chat that goes on in Local during them doesn't exactly create a pleasant mood. If the badges were less grind-y, at least, they might be fun to occasionally dip into. But as it is, they just end up feeling tedious.

He can "absorb powers" and if saved, he's shown using what appears to be Energy Blast attacks. So Kin/Energy (or the reverse) seems reasonable. Amusingly, I'd been thinking about this a lot recently, too, as I had a concept for a villain that literally got their powers from taking the villain choice in the tutorial, and so wanted to combine a "natural"-ish set with one that might occur from siphoning his power.

In fairness, /Shield gets Terrorize protection, too, but has other more cosmetic problems for me (which is neither here nor there in a power comparison, granted, but is why I tend to semi-forget it), plus click mez protection. I think Bill mentioned it either here or in the other power comparisons thread? Time clickin' mez protection is time not smitin'. As for other Def sets, depends. Defense still isn't a guarantee, after all. Plus AFAIK, Longbow Terrorizes are all unvectored "psi defense only"-type hits, so most defense sets won't offer notable protection there: IIRC, /Stone is the only set that actually offers Psi Defense, no?

Given that two of them are in probably the most common enemy group redside, and another is all over DA... Yeah, I honestly have a hard time playing anything but DA or WP these days because I'd say a set that can do something that can't be achieved with build tweaking is much valuable than a set where I can't compensate for its weaknesses via other means.

Rad Armor doesn't have any way to get Terrorize protection in the build.

Gimme no delay on Will Domination (the animation is fast, but the effect is so slow) and I pretty much figure it's good to go. Unless you're fighting robots. Or worse, Carnies.

Appreciated, guys. Doesn't talk me out of it, but helps me understand what I'm in for! 🙂

Hmm, it seems to be about on par with others, though maybe it's more about the animation times and/or the lethal/toxic damage combo (or now that I think about, the fact that it's on par...after factoring in the DoT damage?). That's fair. I actually like most of 'em (not Spine Burst, admittedly), but that's always gonna be kinda subjective (like I don't enjoy Axe/Mace because of recycled animations within the set, among other things). I'm guessing that's not where the F-rating comes from in this case, though, but maybe we're all more slaves to style than I was thinking!

So, legit curious, why does Spines rate so low for Brutes? I mean, I know it's popular for farming, but outside of that, it seems exceedingly rare, and the initial post here ranked it an "F". Does it really do that abysmally? And if so, can someone explain, perhaps, how it malfunctions so badly? Just sort of looking at it, it seems like it should be pretty nice and Brute-y to me, but I don't have any firsthand practice with it...

I like this idea, and it'd be fun to be able to trick-or-treat in a wider variety of zones. Only difference of opinion is, say, use GM code on the door spawns so that they just always con at-level, or similar.

I feel like Sentinels are so out of whack that balancing APPs before actually fixing the AT as a whole and really understanding what they're going to be about, is probably a bit of an unnecessary side-track.

One note regarding Panacea, that I haven't seen anyone else mention yet: because it's an HP boost/heal rather than a regeneration increase, once you slot it, it will constantly tick its heal numbers above your character's head. This ticking effect can't be turned off (except by using a certain P2W temp power that turns everything off, and is all or nothing). This may matter to you, or may not. Personally, I won't use it because I find it pretty annoying,

While ATs do have different "ranged" and "melee" damage modifiers, these don't interact with how an attack is typed for purposes of defense. In fact, for example, most of the ranged attacks from melee ATs' APPs actually do damage as "melee" attacks for the purposes of damage modifiers and not being underpowered that way, but they do still properly tend to flagged as ranged attacks for the purposes of defense, as far as I can recall.

I'm pretty sure Succubi do go all the way up to 50? Or maybe I'm the one with the funky memory. I do like the idea of expanding the ranks of the boss mages to include more than just the waves of purple, though.

After the expansions given to Crey, I got to thinking, even more than that group, it's weird how the CoT only have one "element" per level range. You've got the Fire Thorn Casters from 30-34, Earth from 35-39, Air from 40-44, and Ice only from 45-50. It's cool to see them woven in kind of one at a time, but it'd be neat if once they were in the lineup, they stayed as part of it, with CoT by max level having a variety of different mages involved. And as noted, this feels more organic than reversing Crey's previous "they get more high tech as they go up in level" thing, so it works even better from the story side of things, IMO. Plus, if you look at the CoT "Possessed Scientist" enemies that appear on Peregrine around Portal Corp, they can also use the powers of all types of Thorn Casters, so it seems like it'd just be a matter of "proliferating" the enemies to use more traditional CoT garb, too.

If you're engaged in such insignificant villainy that some random passersby questioning your "reputation" sets you off, trust me, you're not being taken seriously anyway.

Should have PvP force-enabled in all red side zones. No classy villain would tolerate some brainless thug coming onto their turf and who going psychopath on all the potential pawns.

I hadn't envisioned it as anything that complicated...more just sort of an extension of what the OP suggested. More of an in-character/player option where there's a minimal FX option and one just adds a "$$ cc[x]$$" (or cce) to their shapeshift binds and sets it up on their own, rather than a mandatory "squid slot" or "lobster slot".

You get full XP, yes, for both defeats, interestingly (probably intentionally) this goes for whether they heal to full or not. So the "ideal" is to always keep one person and only one person near the Super Stunners when they go down, so you can re-defeat them with only a sliver of health for the regular rewards.