Coyote

Some Lore pets do -Regen so they help a lot, and also Transfusion is pretty weak -Regen but does stack.

I absolutely expect a TA defender to be buffing my tank, and healing, too. Or else they're not playing a Defender correctly.

Most AVs don't run from Ill/Storm's effects, because the Taunt from PA is strong enough to overcome the Fear effect. But when PA drops, they will usually start moving, and you hope that the next PA grabs hold of them and drags them screaming back to die. Which is usually the case, but sometimes you fight a flying AV (Macomber, Reichsman), and it's "chase the fox" time.

That's because they're no dummies... 😛

Day's not over yet.

I like the Abyssal Gaze slotting. I would put 5xPositron in Tenebrous Tentacles, because I like Range enhancement in it so it goes closer to the other cones, and because it's a DoT, so getting 1 (or better, two) damage procs in it would add more up-front damage. When you use procs, you are lowering your damage if you add Recharge to the power. So for Psychic Scream change out the Damage/Recharge for a Damage/End, and put a damage proc in the last slot, and see the damage go up. And I'd try to take it earlier, it makes a nice 3-cone cycle with the others. Also, going back to putting Positron's in Tenebrous, you might then put the purple AoE in Psychic Scream (it already has a nice range)... 5 slot it only (avoid the Damage/Recharge), and then put the Positron damage proc in the 6th slot. Drain Psyche's accuracy is a bit lacking, though I also like 6 slotting Numina's in it. You can get more Accuracy by finding a slot to 4-slot LotG in Weave for a bit of Accuracy bonus. World of Confusion is pretty underwhelming, put a single Coercive Persuasion proc IO in it, and otherwise take the slots, take another slot from Concentration, and 5-slot Soul Tentacles with Positron's just like Tenebrous.

CO had a good "action style"... combat movement, attacks and how they're activated, etc. Everything else wasn't close to CoH, especially the stories.

My version, softcapped to Range with Barrier.

OMG, I SO agree.... only thing I hate about my Fire/Psy is how he THINKS mobs to death. I want MOAR SMASH!!!. Earth, on the other hand, is just awesome and really feels powerful.

Overall comment: I think that you are chasing Recharge bonuses too much, and not building for enough Defense. Chasing Recharge exclusively should be reserved for certain builds that have a special reason (like a special power that they want to make permanent)... perma-PA, perma-Fortify Pack, perma-Domination, etc. Blasters have so many attacks, especially Water Blast with all of its AoEs, that you should pull back a bit on Recharge bonuses and go for some Defense bonuses. 1: Metabolic Acceleration is a Recovery/Regeneration power, but you really want to slot it up for Regeneration. Put 6xNumina in it for Defense, or if you want Recharge, here is a good spot for a Preventive Medicine set. 2: The Panacea proc should always go into Health, IMO. Dehydrate should be slotted as follows: 1xTheft of Essence proc (for +Endurance, this will really mean no Endurance problems even after you change the Metabolic Acceleration slotting), 1xAchilles Heel to add -Resist, and then 4xIOs to get damage in. I go with 1xDamage proc and 3xThunderstrike (because Thunderstrike has 3 IOs without Recharge, and if you put procs in a power you don't want to slot Recharge in it), but 2xDamage procs and 2xDevastation is also an option. 3: Super Speed should have 2-3 Breath of the Zephyr, this will give you a bit of Defense and also Knockback protection so you're free to change the Combat Jumping IO to a LotG for more Recharge. On that note, BTW, I would 4-slot Combat Jumping: LotG, the two Defense IOs that give Resist, and Kismet. 4: Ionize and Tidal Forces are overslotted, getting 5% Recharge isn't worth it. Pick one power between these and Tactics, and 6-slot it with Gaussian. The others should get 1-2 Recharge IOs or ToHitBuff/Endurance IOs and be done. 5: I personally would pick at least one of your two starting attacks to 6-slot with Thunderstrike, or else 3-slot both with Thunderstrike... you get a bit of Defense, and you're not left without any slotted attacks if you exemplar to a low level. This may not matter as much if you really don't plan to exemplar that far down, but also remember that Blasters get to use these two attacks even if mezzed... so it would help to have them a bit slotted so you can fight back a bit if mezzed. 6: I would slot up Aqua Bolt with damage procs, use NO recharge in it, and let the "enhanced water jet" ability recharge it sometimes. It's not such a great attack that I want it up all the time, but I do want it hitting harder when it IS up. Here is my Water/Plant build as an example... of course you'll do things differently, but it will show how I like to build Blasters...

There is a "Target Closest Enemy" button, I think it's Shift-Tab by default. I always use that to start my tabbing from the closest enemy and go outwards. It pretty much solves this issue completely. Heh. My main is Illusion/Storm. You haven't seen "flying for the hills" until you have 2 Tornadoes, 3 Storms, a Rain, and a Spectral Terror, and Enflame, all with a Fear effect... and three poor overworked Decoys trying to wrangle them all to sit still and participate in the discussion.

The best AV/GM soloer WILL be Ill/Traps, not /Storm. Storm is a compromise between enough damage for normal missions and enough DoT damage to act as -Regen against AVs, but it will still struggle with some AVs that have ridiculous Resists so you can't out-DPS their Regeneration. Traps doesn't have that problem, since AVs don't get to regenerate (except, I hear, the Crimson Prototype?).

My frowny face is off cooldown, I'm ready to go 😄

Absolutely, especially for /Dark who has a lot of defensive ability from the secondary. Also, with the inherent accuracy bonus in single-target Holds, 1 Accuracy is usually good enough.

Illusion/Storm for single-target. Plant/Storm for AoE. Fire/Storm for a mix of both. /Kinetics is also a very good choice for Plant, since if you're looking for that you're probably looking for AoE, so you're probably playing with large mob sizes. Grav is also a good contender, and Grav/Storm handles both single-target and AoE well (since it uses Wormhole to leverage Tornado and Lightning Storm's small-radius AoEs into actually being... AoE). Grav/Traps is also solid in both AoE and ST, with Grav's single-target damage backed up by Wormholing spawns into Trip Mine/Poison Gas Trap/Caltrops/Acid Mortar/little green elves 😉 . When Wormhole is up, it's great, with the downside being that you're really depending on teleporting mobs into the kill area, so it's dependent upon Wormhole's 90-second recharge.

Spawns melt real fast, but the bosses remain a bit longer. Let the others worry about AoE damage, and start with your non-AS heavy hitter on a boss, follow up with fast AS, then an AoE (to fish for instant recharge on Build-up), then back to single-target boss killing. I actually have no problem, but that's because I have either Feral Charge or Lightning Rod to help open the festivities. But I do have a Staff/Rad, and while he's not high enough, I expect that his opener on teams would be Ground Zero with multiple damage procs (400+ damage) rather than a "heavy hitter", then follow with AS and single target on the boss. Staff/DA can open up with a decent amount of AoE via Dark Regeneration slotted with procs followed by the spinning attack... but it's a bit slow, and you may not get to actually do much damage with it before the spawn gets AoEbliterated(tm).

So.... you can't buzz the tower with it? You have to use a Tomcat?

Earth, Savage, and Martial are the most melee secondaries. Martial not for single-target, but for its two melee AoEs. You might also put Thorns in there, it does have two melee AoEs plus a short-ranged drop AoE. Ice, Electric, and Fire are the primaries with PBAoE auras, and Plant is a "seed'em and mow'em" primary that leaves you most free to facesmash. But I'm not sure that Fire is strong enough defensively to fight in melee consistently, and I'm also not sure about Ice, though with a good defense layering "you didn't hit me" with "you can't attack again for a while" could work. But it might be a late-game build with mature defenses, while Plant and Electric are good to go into melee range from the teens. I'm running Ele/Earth, and it's pretty much all melee although it has ranged attacks, because shutting mobs down with PBAoE drain is just too useful. Note, that this character or any other who has a power boost can get a few seconds of improved Defense at the beginning of the fight, which can make a big difference for someone wanting to charge into melee, so going /Earth has an additional defensive advantage, not only the attacks.

How do you get Fulcrum Shift to rhyme with light? 😄 😛

Heh, heck with that. I'm considering reslotting my Ele/Shield Stalker, with no self-heal, with 2 of these. Considering the character has no self-heal or +regen other than Health, this should probably double his effective regeneration rate in combat. I can see Mesmerize as being another good place for it, if you're going to use Mez as a regular part of your attack chain.

Just to note... we ARE talking about yellow snow.... I mean salvage here, right? This is being manipulated, apparently, to push up its price by about 10-15k per item. Considering that most recipes will use 1-2 yellow items, maybe 3 at the high end.... this is going to cost someone crafting an IO about 45k more. Consider the cost of a single rare salvage in the recipe, and also the cost of crafting a recipe once you're in the 30s and.... does it really look like this particular manipulation is going to have characters broke where before they had enough money to craft all their recipes? The discussion is interesting. The puzzle of who is doing it, and why, and how, also seems interesting. But let's not take it too seriously and get too upset about it... it's peanuts even for your first character.

Well, Freezing Rain = Sleet, and FR is available much earlier, so I'm not sure that selection order really matters a lot. And I do think that Sleet should be available earlier for Cold Domination even though it would push Benumb back. Unless it just got swapped with Frostwork.

It's far better in Tornado. 1: Freezing Rain's DEBUFFS last for 30 seconds after the 15 second period of rain, but that's the debuffs. Achilles will only check while the rain is going on, which means that you get to check at 0 seconds (upon summons) and at 10 seconds. So you get 2 checks from each cast. Meanwhile, Tornado lasts for 30 seconds, so you get 4 checks per cast. 2: Each check has a lot higher probability to occur from Tornado, since it's a smaller radius. So you're getting more checks with a higher chance, so a lot more total activation of the debuff on a hard target. Note that putting it in FR will have one big benefit: with a larger area, it will roll on more targets. Given how few targets will be hit by Tornado, if you're asking for AoE reasons rather than AV reasons, then FR is definitely better, just because Tornado isn't really an AoE power unless you can manage to corner-pin a spawn, or unless you're a Gravity/Storm.

Just to note, Storm secondary with FF procs in both Tornado and Lightning Storm should average over 30% Recharge bonus during a sustained fight, which is when having PA permanent is more relevant. If you're traveling between fights, you do lose some Recharge, though, unless you stop to throw LS/Tornado up just for the Recharge bonus whenever they're recharged. Like leaving a trail of angry electric fart clouds behind you 😛