Story Archer

I play two controllers. The first is a Plant/Kin named Speed Orchid who is always welcomed on teams because everybody loves a Kin and who's very easy to play from the Controller side of things. Seeds of Confusion is arguably the strongest Mez in the game, it works great right out of the box and you get it by 8th level. That, your single-target hold and a fire-and-forget Carrion Creepers is really all you need out of the Plant set to shine. Controller (Plant - Kinetics) - L50.mbd The second is a whole other ball of wax and servers as my solo or small-team controller. She's a Dark/Dark named Mistress of Chains. This is one of my most powerful and most fun characters to play regardless of AT or power set. She can literally do it all: basically at soft-cap for all her defenses soft-capped for S/L/E resists high regeneration with an AoE heal high stealth multiple pets that are very survivable and layer on damage, healing AND control deals significantly more damage than you would expect from most controllers AoE fear, AoE stun, single-target hold, single-target confuse for a wide variety of mezzing options Strong buffs for pets and teammates alike Equally strong de-buffs that allow you to make a difference against even the toughest of foes. One of the best thing about her is that she doesn't even need purple IO's, so she's easy on the pocketbook. Completely maxed out, I have her at 1-1/2 purple IO sets just to up the damage a bit. Controller (Darkness Control - Darkness Affinity) L50.mbd Hope this is of help 🙂

DB means Dual Blades - is that what you're asking?

Well, I've played one now til 45 and I've found the attack chain(s) that work for Me. I take 5 attack powers: NS, AS, TE, BF & SS. The first three give me the Weaken combo which never loses its usefulness, especially against large groups. BF does what it does and SS gives me a second, quick-animating AoE attack. I'm able to chain those five attacks very smoothly without near the +Recharge a shorter chain might need and get great efficiency and value out of it. When my foes get whittled down to one or two, I just change over to the Empower combo and continue on without TE. Works superbly well for me. So... vs. large groups: BF -> NS -> AS -> TE -> SS vs. single targets: BF -> SS -> NS -> AE I'm pairing it with Willpower for anyone who might want to know.

Ok.

And... that matters to some people.

But it looks flat-out Fugly in a lot of cases...

I feel like it really all depends on what you consider a 'super-hero's super-hero'... something that's unkillable, something that annihilates anything it comes across or trying to find a happy medium between both? At the moment my two favorite Tankers are both in the middle, one leaning much closer to one end and one, of course, leaning to the other. Candidate #1: Dark Armor / Martial Arts This guy can survive anything. There are a few different ways you can build it, depending on what attacks you want to focus on. The numbers posted below are first from a build with NO purple/L50 enhancements or Incarnates at all... and second from the L50 build with purples but no Incarnates. Some of my favorite features of these builds are TWO stacking damage auras that put out about as much damage together as a T2 attack with every pulse, unbreakable Stealth that pretty much renders Ranged defense pointless and, on top of all the layers of defense you see listed there and the -ToHit from the Dark abilities (like Cloak of Fear and Darkest Night) you get arguably the best self-heal in the game available every 12-15 seconds. Ain't nothing killing this guy. Candidate #2: Radiation / Stone Hammer or Super Strength This build is kind of at the other end of the spectrum. It evaporates bad guys like snow in a desert sandstorm. There are actually two different versions of this (Stone or SS) depending on how you feel about Rage crash, but what they have in common are two potent mini-nukes (one which heals you and one which heals your allies)... each deal about half as much damage as a well-slotted Blaster's T9 with one up every 20 seconds or so and one up every 30 seconds or so - that's in addition to a potent PBAoE attack that goes off 5-8 seconds. The mini-nukes are even unaffected by rage-crash since the majority of their damage come from procs. In both cases the Damage Resistances are comparable to what you see above, but the character is only soft-capped to Melee attacks with more middling defenses against ranged and AoE attacks. To help that out, I make liberal use of Fold Space which pairs beautifully with Beta Decay. I bounce back and forth between which version I like more, but generally lean towards the 'super-hero' feeling that comes with dropping a maxed out Foot Stomp. If you're interested in any of these builds, just let me know.

I have a question that I haven't seen addressed (sorry if I missed it) - for some reason in Mids, Fold Space has a 15 second Duration. What is that in regards to? The power doesn't continuously go off for 15 seconds (pulling in people who might enter the AoE), does it? Or does the duration reference some sort of anti-TP effect it has?

That's the thing - what you describe has always been my experience. I'd understand it if I had only sold half of them and it was all mixed up as to how many from which stack, and I understand that the market fluctuates and some items listed at a higher price may have to wait for the market to 'come around again' before they are sold... but I literally haven't sold ONE. Not one, in a month of them all sitting there, with literally every purchase I ever see higher than what I'm listing them for. I understand that there are a sort of priorities that determine the order in which similarly priced items that are available get sold... but none? In a month? I'm willing to accept that they might have been a glitch or something, I'm just loathe to eat the listing fee (and pay another one) to find out and, more importantly, if there are some forces at work here that I don't understand, I want to learn what they are. I get that this is relative chump change for most people, but I'm trying to understand why the functionality that I have grown used to seems to have suddenly stopped working in this case.

I read someone say in a recent post that 750 million 'is just chump change for most of us'... I don't know who 'us' is, but that sure ain't me. I've never seen that kind of money. About a month ago I cashed in some reward merits hoping to make some influence so I could start outfitting my new Tanker, and I put 100 Unslotters into the market place, listed for 90K a piece. At the time they seemed to be going fro about 100K, so I figured they'd sell pretty quick. Since then - again, a month - I haven't sold any of them. Not one. I've never had anything reasonably-priced sit for this long on the market and the funny thing is that every time I look in (almost daily) the bidding history is still all 100K. I just wanted a reality check, to make sure that my posted stuff isn't sitting in some kind of glitch-limbo. I don't want to eat the money I spent on the listing fee, but I just can't figure out what's going on.

I'd be interested in a follow-up to this as well...

I'm a big fan of Ice and Dark. Where Dark falls short in this particular venture is the lack of +Recharge and +Endurance. I suppose an argument can be made for a slower, more measured approach for newer players, but removing triple stacked AM's creates a gap that Dark just can't fill. As for Ice, I'm not opposed to it at all, I think both are very strong. At the moment, since we're planning on stacking Choking Clouds, there should be little fear of wading into melee, especially once RI has been placed. To be honest, as nice as that early Hold is, by the mid levels things should be dying so quickly there really won't be any point to holding individual targets most of the time. The build I've put together has been set up to give a broad range of experience for lots of different types of abilities - toggle buffs and debuffs, click buffs and debuffs, single target ranged and melee damage, AoE and PBAoE damage, holds, heals - pretty much everything but pets. I'm sure they'll be making plenty of their own builds based on what they liked most from our play.

Good advice from everyone, thanks. My original plan was to use the full Lockdown set. The additional defensive bonuses are always welcome.

Afternoon all 🙂 I'm putting together a build for three people to run simultaneously (Fire/Rad) and I was looking at the potential for Choking Cloud. Right now I'm looking at ultimately slotting it like this: Basilisk's Gaze: Acc/Hold Basilisk's Gaze: Acc/Hold/End/Rech Neuronic Shutdown: Chance for Psi Dmg Ghost Widow's Embrace: Chance for Psi Dmg Gladiator's Net: Chance for Lethal Dmg Unbreakable Constraint: Chance of Smash Dmg Since we're planning on taking Greater Fire Sword from the Fire Mastery Epic Pool as well as proc'ing out Char in a similar fashion, we thought it might be a strong tactic to wade into melee with overlapping Clouds. Would the damage from this be worthwhile, and would our Hold durations be too short to be effective against higher level content? The plan would usually be to open with RI, then wade into melee with Clouds on. One of us pops an Inferno while the other two back him up with a couple of Fireballs; between that and the procs from Cloud, I figure we should thin out the mobs pretty quickly and we can cycle through Blaze, Blazing Bolt, proc'ed Char and Greater Fire Sword for the bosses, EB's or AV's that remain. I actually don't know if the Holds come into play at all unless it's just laginappe. Also, do procs benefit at all from Scourge? We'll have AM x3 and Assault x3 up at all times and I'm pretty sure the proc's don't benefit from those, but they do seem to give us the chance of turning CC and Char into legitimate damage options.

I think that's what we're going to go with. The fact that /Rad is so front-loaded is what put it over the top for me, so we don't have to wait until 25+ for the builds to really start syncing together.

I'm a huge Dark guy (Dark/Dark is my favorite controller), but the stacking +Recharge and +Endurance really are must-haves for me and Dark just doesn't do that, unfortunately.

I'm looking into Time as we speak - this is the other consideration (I edited the post while you were responding to it). Also, aren't we capped at 300% recharge? FWIW, I expect the majority of the time spent playing these characters will be pre-50, so I can't assume we're always going to have maxed out purple IO's on everything. That's one of the things I have to take into account and why Rad came to mind first - you get RI and AM pretty much right off the bat, instead of having to wait til late 20's/early 30's for the stuff that makes the build go.

Thank you very much for taking the time to respond in so much detail, this is exactly what I was hoping for. The two people I'm playing with are very new and I just don't have any experience with the Time set, but you've got me looking pretty hard at Empathy now. I do have a couple of questions/concerns, mainly about being able to keep the buffs up. Fortitude isn't a problem, but looking at Mids, Recovery Aura, Regen Aura and AB all have a duration of 90s with base recharges of 500s, 500s and 300s respectively. How do I get them perma? FWIW, I expect the majority of the time spent playing these characters will be pre-50, so I can't assume we're always going to have maxed out purple IO's on everything. That's one of the things I have to take into account and why Rad came to mind first - you get RI and AM pretty much right off the bat, instead of having to wait til late 20's/early 30's for the stuff that makes the build go.

So I'm going to be playing with two other people and we're all going to use identical builds when we're playing together. What Archetype/Power Sets would you suggest? No Controllers or Masterminds, please. At the moment Fire/Rad Corruptor is leading the list.

I'm not going to lie - this Rad/MA is pretty strong. It's basically got soft-capped positional defenses to go with 90% Res vs. S/L/E/F/T with 80% NE and 55% C/P... all without Incarnates. Heck, it's not even counting the ToHit and Damage Debuffs from Beta Decay (or Darkest Night). The only thing keeping me from playing her is how awful the visuals of rad armor make my costumes look. When will we get minimal FX options for all toggles??

Well, you can get to the defensive soft-cap of 45% by 12th level using only SO's and a couple select IO's. That's pretty damn strong to start.

The Tanks that I've played extensively have been Will/SS, SR/DM and Rad/Stone, which is currently my favorite. Radiation Armor/Stone Melee: 90% Res to all but Cold & Psi (over 50% on those), Soft-capped defense vs. Melee and 27% vs. Ranged & AoE. Two different Heals (one for you AND one for your group) that double as proc'ed out mini-nukes, both up every 30 seconds or so. Between Hasten, Beta Decay, 3x FF procs and 3x LotG, the global recharge is nuts. Plenty of +regen and +recovery. Highest-damage Tanker I've ever played. Room for maxed out Tactics and Maneuvers to help the team. 85% Endurance Drain resistance and 95% Slow resistance are a bigger deal than many realize. Having said all that, I've got a Dark / Dark on paper that looks like it will be able to do things no other Tanker could imagine...

First off, I'm loving this build and the concept fits like *chef's kiss*. I'm L44 at the time of this posting and working on what I want my final build to look like. I'm pretty happy with it (see build at the bottom): 90% Res. to everything but Cold & Psi (50+%) 45% Def. to Melee, 35% Def. to S/L, 26+% Def. to everything else Two mini-nukes up every 30s or so that also heal either me or my teammates, plus a spammable PBAoE attack Pretty insane Global Recharge from Hasten, Beta Decay, 3x LotG & 3x FF proc keeps everything humming right along 85%+ resistance to Endurance Drain and 95% resistance to Slow effects is just icing on the cake Add in the heals, absorb shields, regen and recovery boosts, and it's as all-around a Tanker as I've ever played. I'd still appreciate any insights regarding the nuances of the build from anyone who has experience playing either power set. Please note that I haven't dipped my toe into Incarnates yet, so any recommendations along those lines which would apply to this specific build would also be much appreciated. The build is intended for all aspects of game play, from soloing to TF's, high-level content and farming. The first thing I'm really on the fence about is the best use for that final slot. At the moment I'm considering three possibilities: 1) Meltdown: In practice, the only thing I'm really getting out of this is a 30% buff in damage about a third of the time and a nice Resist Damage mule that I'm currently using to help bolster my Psi Resist via Impervium Armor. Seems like it might be a useful 'aw s#!t' power in some situations. 2) Taunt: It just seems wrong to play a Tanker and not have this power. I've never had any problems holding aggro, but if I'm going to farm with this or run some of the higher end content, it might be necessary. 3) Vengeance: If I'm doing my job it should rarely if ever be needed, and more global recharge would probably be redundant at this point, but it could serve as a mule for a fourth LotG proc or free up an additional slot to be used elsewhere. The second thing I'd like input on is whether I should stick with Tremor or go with Cross Punch instead. They'd both slot the same; I like Cross Punch's faster animation time and higher damage as well as it's ancillary benefits, but Tremor will hit more targets more consistently, allowing for more opportunities for the FF proc to pop off and won't leave me trying to position myself ideally while in a crowd. If I went with Cross Punch, I might want to consider Kick in that L49 slot as another option. Fault was also a consideration here, but it ultimately seems an inferior option in every regard. Rad Hammer (Radiation - Stone) 2.mbd

The servers are down right now and I was wondering what was going on, but I couldn't find 'the place' to see that information...

This is just a ridiculous take. Literally everything that's ever been done has taken time to do. Don't be argumentative just for argument's sake. If you want to say that they don't consider it a priority over every other thing that they have done, well, that too is blatantly obvious and doesn't provide any actual answers, but it does at least address the question. What I'm curious to know is why hasn't it been considered something that was worthwhile to do? I imagine it would take less effort than most other things they work on, and if the reason was that there wasn't enough of a demand for it, then I'm here to put in my two cents. 🙂