Coyote

Now I want to propose a Loving Emotions buffing set. With a Cruel Breakup single-target debuff.

It's good that there is no task force called the Winter Task Force, or we might have the sentence "WTF, the WTF is the WTF", and it would like totally make sense, you know?

Put a Theft of Essence in Life Drain and it should just about solve Endurance problems. Used regularly in an attack chain it returns more Endurance per minute than having a 2nd slotted Endurance power. Slot Earthquake for -ToHit... 4 Dark Watcher's gives nice enhancementing plus a Recharge set bonus. Stacking the -ToHit with Dark Assault's -ToHit helps a lot defensively. It can also take a Force Feedback proc, so you get a Recharge bonus whenever you set it. Assuming you do this (it does require 5-slotting), you should get at least 12% Recharge out of the power over a minute, and about 19% if using it as fast as possible.

Well, Vigilante vs Hero is more a matter of the kind of solutions that the character uses when confronted with situations. Heck, there are some similar choices in Praetoria, do you Kill or Arrest the bad guy you just defeated? There is no indication that there is an in-game difference... if you have a Hero ID, you're a Hero even if your problem solving style is more to shoot them all and let the morgue sort them out, than "drag the unconscious bad guys out of the burning building". Also: " The thing is Thugs by definition are ALWAYS criminals. "... Leaving the names aside, the mobs summoned could easily fit into many anti-hero groups in stories. Consider the Dirty Dozen, consider The Expendables, and many other movies featuring guys from the wrong side of the law fighting for truth, justice, and The American Way (tm) 😉

I'm considering a new Water Blast...er. As a secondary, I'd like to run Plants, but... when you're hit by damage, and fire Dehydrate, without an Absorb shield, that would be guaranteed to be useful. But with an Absorb shield, it's possible that the shield is damaged but with no HP damage, so Dehydrate's heal effect is wasted. On the other hand, getting heals would be more useful on a character with a lower Regeneration rate than if the character has a +Regen Sustain power. So I'm not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing to mix a lifedrain power with a constant (but low-level) Absorb shield... or maybe it's a negligible effect and I shouldn't care. Does anyone have any experience with the situation?

Pretty decent. My suggestions: 1: Transference is so strong in End regain that you don't need to add more slotting into it for End recovery... if you're trying to end-drain with it, I question that plan. Lt and lower mobs are going to be mass confused anyhow. You'll Hold a boss quicker than you Drain it. And once you're 50 and have Contagious Confusion proc in Seeds, the bosses are going to be Confused at the start of a fight, giving you the time to Hold them. So I don't see End drain as useful, and End recovery is already very high, so I would just go with a single Accuracy in it and be done. 2: Transfusion is overslotted, IMO, and I don't see the stat bonuses as worth the extra slots. I would probably use 2 slots in it for Accuracy/Heal, and 1 slot for Theft of Essence. This ToE IO will then allow you to take out a slot from Stamina. 3: As I understand, Force Feedback's proc in Carrior Creepers won't help you after the initial cast. And I don't think it's worth keeping on a power that gets cast about every 2 minutes... once a minute would be fine, that's equivalent to an LotG. But every two minutes is not worth as much as adding more slotting into the power. 4: This is your call, but personally while I like the Def bonuses from Thunderstrike, I always put Achilles Heel in Poisonous Ray. With a 90% chance to activate, if you're firing it every 10 seconds (and you can), it can add -18% Res debuffing to a single target, which is very nice for Kinetics since it doesn't inherently have -Res. That basically doubles the Res debuff from Poisonous Ray, and I think that's worth the loss of Defense. I would make up for it by 6-slotting Expedient Reinforcement into Tarantula even if it does increase the downtime. 5: I think that Fulcrum Shift only needs a single Accuracy. 6: With all of the extra slots pulled out, you can add a 3rd slot to Tough and get another 3% global defense. And then I think you may stil have more slots, and I would put them into a Defense power and get the +Resist IOs.

Couple of things: 1: I think that rather than 3 LotGs plus Kismet, I would swap the Kismet for the 4th LotG, get either more Def or EndRed out of it, and the +9 Acc bonus is in most cases better than the + ToHit bonus. 2: I would really run a Fire/Poison with a high priority on Defense, especially Ranged Defense (since you can Immobilize everybody, you shouldn't be forced to be in melee unless you want to be). For example, if I were 6-slotting a pet summons, and putting 5 Expedient Reinforcement plus another IO, I'd really get the 6th ExpRed for the set bonus. 3) I would put 6 Mako's in Boxing if I were 5-slotting it. Between that and ExpRed, you can add almost 7% to your ranged defense.

Right. With teamwork and coordination, it can be useful on a team. But on most pickup teams, players just want to zerg ... the higher the level, the more comfortable they feel just zerging since they can handle the max difficulty even with minor coordination. At lower levels, coordination is more necessary, and the power is more useful. On friend teams or SG teams, coordination is more common. Soloing, coordination is inherent. I would say that easily 90% of the pickup teams I've met don't coordinate anything. You're more likely to fall into a pickup RPing team than into a coordinated team, LOL.

Ugh. Dimension Shift is a useful power for many soloing Grav Controllers. Maybe Dominators also. It's a terrible power on a pickup team. That doesn't mean that it needs to die, or that it's never useful. It just means that it is quite useful, for specific builds. Not coincidentally, I get the idea that Sir M is using it with a /Storm secondary, and I use it with a /Traps secondary... exactly the two builds where I'd say it's the most useful since the secondaries are so location-dependent. I can also see it as being very useful on a melee-oriented Dominator, keeping ranged fire away while the Dom clears the melee opponents. Less than 9 Endurance to prevent all ranged shots from landing is a HUGE benefit for mid teens to mid 30s, maybe even into the 40s. Too much hyperbole about how terrible it is, without clarifying that it is terrible... on pickup teams. Where I agree, it's horrible. But I can tell you, the Praetoria, First Ward, and Night Ward content is a lot more easily soloed with it, since there are some enemy groups that are just annoying with nasty ranged damage... if you can block off part of that while clearing half the spawn, at a level where you don't yet have full defenses, and using a one-slot power, then that power isn't all that bad.

Super Strength generally works better with an armor set that has a damage aura (or both a damage aura and Burn, hehe), because it's main strength is its damage bonus... and you want that modifying as much of the character's powers as possible. And when paired with APPs that have AoE attacks, like for example Leviathan Mastery.... Arctic Breath goes up to 400+ damage with 5 damage procs in it, using Rage for +Acc and +Dam. If you're not adding extra attack powers, especially AoE into the build, and you're only getting Rage's bonuses to improve Footstomp, then one of the main reasons that people play Super Strength is affecting fewer of your powers. Compare that to a Fire/SS with Fiery Aura, Burn, Bile Spray, and Arctic Breath... 5 AoE attacks with Footstomp (you do want that many, since the 4 clicks are all on 20+ second base recharges). Play that, and a SS character ends up doing loads of AoE damage. Play a pure Inv/SS, maybe with just Energy Torrent as an additional AoE damage power, and the character seems lacking in AoE.

Have you considered this first? You can put in a lot of damage procs into DNA Siphon, and if you're in an AoE situation then the heal may not need to be enhanced much. It's what I'm using to add more AoE to a Street Justice/Bio build.

Especially when it gets DoT damage from running you over after the initial bludgeoning hit.

I would definitely take Possess over Shadow Field, personally. At least if you solo at all. And similarly, I slot up Dark Grasp with procs... I think it should end up between 250 and 300, depending on what you put in there. That's good damage for a power that's primarily a Hold.

Should swap Telekinesis and Dimension Shift, piss off EVERYBODY!!! 😂

Some excellent all around NON-MELEE builds (because melee is generally suited for TAC soloing) are: Illusion/Storm Dark Miasma/Sonic Defender (Corruptor version also works but you get the good powers sooner this way) Fire/Dark Controller Mind/Fire, Dark/Fire, Plant/Fire Dominator Storm/Dark Defender (same comment for Corruptor version)

Thanks, and you do have a point about whether the idea of damage from procs is warranted in a Stalker discussion. I do feel that it's warranted, since I used it to consider whether a Stalker with a particular secondary will have enough AoE, or be limited to mostly single-target damage. I think it will inform some players who may or may not have been considering some sets. Shield Charge is great, and works great with procs. I didn't mention it, because the other powers are fundamentally changed from non-damaging to AoE damage powers, while Shield Charge doesn't have its fundamental use changed. As for the damage numbers, those were the average numbers, per target, using the chance to proc for each IO based on the power's Recharge and AoE factor. So Consume would average 220 per target... which isn't bad for an AoE with good recharge, but rather poor for one with such a long recharge. It's actually why I really cared about the lifedrain heals that are on a 90 second timer or better, because those can be used every fight. Also, depending on the size of the spawns, slotting for more Heal may be irrelevant as you cap out the heals with just 3-4 targets for some of them, and so spare slots are available for adding damage.

Note about Jolting Chain and FF:Recharge... for the caster, JC is treated as a single-target attack. So the proc has a reasonably high chance to activate on the direct cast, but unlike other powers that are usable for AoE damage and do knockback, you don't gain any more chance to have Force Feedback trigger if you throw it at a large group. So against multiple targets, it's not nearly as good for proccing the +Recharge as true AoE knockdown attacks. However, it's far more usable against single-target, making it kind of a combination AoE/single-target attack. Its damage is about double vs a single target as it is AoE since it procs damage procs at higher chance on the single-target attack than on the AoE chains that follow.

Upgrades for the superheroes should be "Cape Mission" and "Aura Mission" 😉

"For 10 million I WON'T use Dimension Shift every time it's recharged" 😝

One interesting thing to mention about defensive sets on Stalkers specifically, is that some of them have powers that can be slotted to do damage like mini-nukes. Granted, on a long recharge. For ATs that already have good AoE damage, this may not matter so much... but when a Stalker is usually deficient in AoE damage, slotting any PBAoE power that does damage (and thus accepts PBAoE sets, with their multiple available damage proc IOs) can make a huge boost in AoE effectiveness. Examples from some of my builds: Rad Armor: Ground Zero with a base 90 sec recharge, slotted for 420 damage Rad Armor: Radiation Therapy with a base 90 sec recharge, slotted for 320 damage and return of Endurance Bio Armor: DNA Siphon with a base 90 sec recharge, slotted for 310 damage and return of Endurance Dark Armor: Dark Regen with a base 30 sec recharge, slotted for 170 damage and return of Endurance Consume goes up to around 220, but with a 180 sec recharge 😞 Blinding Powder is interesting... it's really useful once you get the Coercive Persuasion IO since the radius of the proc can be used to effectively cover the entire spawn although the base cone is usually not big enough for that. It also slots up to 192 damage with 3 procs.

I like Sonic more on a Defender, especially Dark/Sonic to play as a combination of a Controller/Blaster. However, it does have its uses with some Blaster builds: 1: The set is cone-based, so you can add Mental to get a 3rd cone, and maybe Force of Will, and play constant knockdowns with permanent Force Feedback activation on larger spawns. You can get 3 damage procs in Shockwave and FoW to help with the damage, and while it doesn't do up-front damage, it does solid sustained AoE damage from the teens up to the 40s or so. It drops off in the 40s as more Recharge becomes available and you start looking for AoE attacks with higher DPA rather than DPS. 2: The -Res and Defiance boost from opening up with the Sonic attacks leads to devastating melee attacks as a follow up. 3: If you're looking to play a Blaster but generally prefer controlling-type characters, Sonic offers a combination of good damage (overall, though not for a Blaster) combined with good control for a Blaster. Pair it with one of the secondaries that has an AoE control and with Dreadful Wail you can have both two AoE controls, an AoE Sleep, and some single-target mezzing also. Lower damage than Blasters and lower control than Dominators, but more AoE damage than Dominators and more control than most Blasters. I've run several builds for Sonic, and it doesn't look all that bad. It does look great on a Defender who fills in the attack cycle with some Hold powers (Dark/Sonic, with Abyssal Gaze and Dominate slotted with procs ends up with both Holds hitting for over 400 damage after the debuffing), which is why I would suggest running it as a Defender. Also, on a Defender, Siren's Song has more use, as it allows you to sleep everyone and set up non-damaging debuffs on the area while they're sleeping.

I planned on MM sets that were only based on EXISTING models, because creating new mobs may be too difficult for the current team. To this goal, I planned on the following: 1: Gang Leader. Similar to Thugs, but different versions for the different gangs of CoX: Hellions, Skulls, Trolls, Snakes, Goldbrickers, etc. 2: Mad Scientist: There is a cute low-level story arc redside where a scientist tries to figure out how to make the Contaminated a useful henchman force. Well, what if someone succeeded in doing it? 3: Magician. Use the Animated Spells from Night Ward. 4: Energy Master. There are a LOT of "Ball" npcs and effects, such as the Wisps in Croatoa, the little wisp buff pets, Singularity, Voltaic Sentinel, and so on. This would be a place where new "animations" would be easy, since the team could just use any ball NPC and give it an effect like a firey aura, to make it look unique.

Procs cap out at 90% chance, and Seismic Smash's Recharge is long enough that they're all going to be capped. So it's easy to calculate all of the procs as averaging 90% of their maximum damage. With 5x non-purple procs, that about 5*64, or just over 300 damage in procs. More with a purple, plus the base damage.

I like Fire/Time because Time is so strong defensively that it goes best with a set that is strong offensively.

Just to mention something... Illusion Controllers really don't have all that much use for PERSONAL defense. Defense is never bad, but they can really do a lot of damage and put out a lot of control while almost never getting shot at. Between non-aggroing Deceive and PA, you can start a fight with a lot of damage while being safe, and then join in after some of the mobs are Taunted... the defense from Traps should be quite enough. I run Ill/Storm, and take very little damage, and that's a set with very little personal defense. For a team, it's a different story, because power-boosted Farsight benefits everyone. But on the other hand, you only get this in the 40s... most characters have solid enough Defense by then that FFG should be enough help for pretty much everyone. I think that Ill/Traps is one of the best combination, probably the best for Illusion... while Time is only useful for a team-oriented Illusion character.