Justisaur

All great stuff, I'd like stay to actually work. If I say stay, I want them to plant their feet there and not move, even if in aggressive or defensive, they need to be turrets and stop chasing down runners.

I'd pretty much ignore that AoE tier list, it assumes narrow short range cones hit their target caps and doesn't give 15 radius AoE's any advantage over 8 radius AoE's. Hence why katana/ninja blade is valued that highly. While they might not crit themsleves, they also don't break hide so you can still crit out of them with an attack of your choice. Doesn't matter if they don't, after testing I rarely got a crit after doing those two as I'd almost always get hit for a little bit, which ruined hide. I especially think Elec/Shield is way better on a scrapper due to those issues. Perhaps if you always team with a tanker or brute who's really good at grabbing agro and you wait for them to do so, but you're wasting DPS that way too. I also don't think it's really all that good in general, it's visually impressive, but that's about it, I found it fairly disappointing, the teleports are really short too. It might work better if you don't teleport in to start, use your AS or second biggest hitter, then use the AoE teleports as if they were just regualar AoEs. The other issue with that is you aren't getting any Focus from Shield Charge which is going to lower your DPS from AS if you're using it. I'm not saying Elec/Shield isn't viable on a stalker, it is, it's just loses less on a scrapper (still can't crit with the pseudo pets though). I think you'd be better off with different sets for AoE on a stalker is all, NB/Bio perhaps? I haven't tried an awful lot for AoE on a stalker so far so I'm not entirely sure.

If you do get OF KB->KD you won't need any SA KB->KD since it affects all your powers. I tested this on Justin with Bots, slotted in the T1, all KB from AS was converted to KD too.

Isn't one of the demon's T1 pets the one that heals them though? I thought about that with Bots, but then where would I put all my pet globals? Thugs most of the damage comes from the T1 arsonist You could probably do that fine with Necro & Ninja - they go down like tissue paper anyway (though slotting OF +KD sounds like it'd be better) I like to take the attacks early so I have something to do in DFB/AE lv 1 boss farms, then respec out of them later. Yes I can just use Nemesis & Blackstaff, but those aren't as effective in comparison if you slot the prestige enhancements. Demons and Beasts are a special case in that all their attacks have secondary effects are very useful, most sets have at least one that fits that description Lifedrain for Necro, Disorient in Bots, Knockdown from Thugs, which I try to fit in my build.

If you're stunning you might want that immob to keep them from wandering off. I suspect all disorient on a melee AT would be painful... not quite as painful as knockback, but still painful.

And I had put on my plate to try an ice stalker eventually. You should be able to test that pretty easy on Justin, just pop up an ice stalker, don't bother with enhancements, teleport to RWZ and try it on the dummies. I might try that eventually but got too much on my plate at the moment. Edit: Decided to try this, against the practice dummies the hide proc & placate worked. I tried against some low level enemies, and I never seemed to get the proc, but placating worked. I tried against some mobs with no real attack powers in AE and both worked there. I think it's working, but there's some weirdness with the low level mobs for some reason.

According to when the damage sheet had it on it, it was Savage Melee, now it says Ninjitsu. Of course take that with a bucket of salt. I think you're better off going Scrapper for AoE though as AoE sets give up an AoE or two for AS & Placate, and AoEs only get a 50% crit chance from hide, while the Electric & Shield teleport AoEs get none as they're pseudo-pets. (edited - meant to say Scrapper for AoE, not Stalker)

By mix, it's ~ 75% psi and 25% other - which means when you get a mob with 60% psi resist you're still doing 55% of normal damage... assuming it doesn't also resist the other damage to some extent which it probably does since those damage types are pretty commonly resisted. I find it's not enough to overcome regen at that level of resistance. (edit) - I was told that the extra damage on crits do all psionic, so that makes the high resists even worse, haven't tested yet. It's old but here's a link to the resistances by mobs: https://web.archive.org/web/20130902224627/http://www.culex.us/ig/coh/CHres.xls I note that 189 mobs listed have 50% or better Psi resist, while only 71 have 50% or higher smash. Unfortunately more of those are clustered in the harder content - AVs resist psi greater on average than any other type of damage. Mass Levitate is an exception - it's 100% smash, which is also commonly resisted (though not as much resistance when encountered) and it's an AoE so it's not going to do enough to bosses+ to be noticeable though. I'd strongly suggest Soul Mastery to get the Moonbeam snipe and make sure you have enough +to hit to get it instant cast to add it to your rotation, that may help (or team and let others deal with those mobs.) I got it after I couldn't kill Carney bosses, and didn't take it on my 50 test on Justin, so I'm not sure if it's enough yet. My Psi stalker is shelved at 40 for moment partially due to this issue and partially due to my VG needing other ATs, but will see if I can find time to test on Justin.

You could take Placate, then respec out of it once you've got the ATO proc, as it was shown to be about a 20-30% increase in dps vs. not having it or the ATO. I'd put Mental Strike in the same category - very nice to have in the early levels, especially if you're maled down to 2-5 for DFB, or 1 for AE boss farms, it's good for throwing in to get focus/insight until your attack chain is tight enough with +rech from sets to skip it, at which point you can respec out of it. I can't see skipping Boggle, having a very good single target confuse is amazing, and the only reason I see to take Psi over any other set other than aesthetics. Without considering Boggle, Psi would be a mediocre to bad set since it has serious problems with resistant enemies late game.

I had a necro/poison on live before the area splash, it was quite fun and thematic, but very difficult to play. I didn't get very far with it, but have it still on the back burner as something I want to play again after I've got my mains worked out. As to beasts, they are all single target except for the Dire Wolf, which has both AoE and single target. The lions have a heal and def buff (both beasts only unfortunately) and another damage or def buff in fortify pack, and there's a lot of other stuff going on I don't remember. They're very tanky compared to Necro. I suspect they'd work better against hard single targets than necro, and putting the poison buff on the alpha should work well. I might try that on Justin in my quest for the best MM for me.

Beasts/Time should do very well, it has a good PBAoE heal/regen, and the slows should help keeping enemies in melee and keep the damage low enough that the beasts survive to benefit from the heal. You'll need to be up melee to fully benefit them, but you should be fairly close for supremacy/bodyguard/ATO globals anyway. Likewise you eventually get entangling aura on nature, which you need to be up in melee to use too - that will also help with some mitigation since it will hold minions.

I want some tiny pets. Going off the Psi idea, maybe they could be Rikti monkeys.

Oh, I realize that, getting others to realize that is the hard part. I tested out Beast/Kin, and Thugs/Rad, Bots/Rad and Thugs/Traps again. Bots/Rad was my favorite and seemed most effective. I'll just have to deal with the knockback somehow, and keep an eye on the pets blocking doors - oddly I found more issue getting past the thugs for some reason than the bots. I did take mace mastery and the immobilize-slow web grenade, but it didn't seem to be immobilizing and stopping the knockback. I'll have to do some more tests with the web grenade. I know I can eventually get kb-kd Ios (someone says OF changes it globally? I'll have to try that too.) I was wondering if power boost affects anything from rad, like AM or LF? I tried it, but couldn't tell. I know it only works on the toggles a few seconds. It's been a long time since I really got into rad, and was wondering the best order of debuffs too.

You definitely should be better than that unless you've got absolutely no sets. I was able to stand up to 53 rikti with a psi/bio stalker with IO sets and no inspiration. I adapted my build from another's staff/bio stalker build. Have a look at the last build, as that should give you some idea what to do, at least a place to start. https://forums.homecomingservers.com/index.php/topic,3085.0.html

/releasepets doesn't work for getting the spectre on necro either though, that's not really a good test. On the other hand I'm about 99.9% sure fallout won't work on a dead pet either.

Based on some comments from my VG not being able to kill someone or other, I'm thinking I'll need buffs/debuffs more than defense. I did a bunch of testing things solo on Justin, but haven't found anything that really floats my boat yet. I'm thinking I'll try bots/rad maybe (still would prefer something smaller) that beast/kin is looking interesting too as you get all the damage buffs and near cap defenses after a little bit, and I've been looking for a kin I can stand (used to be sonic/kin corruptor on live, but nothing quite lives up to my memory of it.)

I used to run Bots/Storm as my favorite MM on live, while it's terribly effective, it's very annoying to the rest of the team, the assault bot is big and blocks doors, even the protector bots can do that, and storm is visually impairing, and then there's all the knockback. So I'm looking for something that's the least annoying, helpful to the team and still effective. That leaves bots right out, demons are probably the largest and most blocking of any other pets so we'll leave them off. Those are the two main ones I see people complaining about as far as annoyance. That still leaves a lot. For primaries I was initially thinking Mercs since none of them are big and they generally stay out of melee keeping out of your teamates way, but they still have knockback attacks, and they're pretty weak. Thugs - gang war has been annoying in the past, and at least the bruiser is going to be in melee. I don't remember him blocking, but isn't he fairly big Necro, Ninjas - both seem prone to run off and bring back more enemies to overwhelm the team, and both have a lot of melee, and both seemed fairly fragile, zombies perhaps less so, there's some larger pets, but I don't remember any blocking people so much. Beasts - All melee they're fairly short though I haven't really noticed them getting in the way, but not sure, and their effectiveness is questionable. Then we get to secondaries Storm is awesome - but again it's right out due to overwhelming visuals and knockback. Kin I don't feel like has enough mitigation. The top sets I'm looking at would be Time - maybe a bit too much mitigation in -rech that could negatively affect brutes, I didn't really like being in melee either, not sure how it would work with less melee pets either. Dark - maybe just a touch too little mitigation for the pets I have left to choose from Rad - I'm just not sure about how this is going to work with pets. Traps - Powerful set, but doesn't work well with teams like to move a lot. So your choice for least annoying/most effective in a team?

No hover was just something to throw in for another LotG, Meltdown doesn't seem very useful either, so I could drop that too. I don't even think I need the energy mastery either, but nothing else looked any better. I already feel like I've got too many attacks, I was thinking of taking taunt perhaps instead of something. I want a bit of an eye toward doing maled TFs as the VG does those a lot too.

I kind of mashed this together from a couple other posts that had one but not the other of TW and Rad, and made some changes from there. I assume I'd like to get my smash/lethal resists higher (and all the other ones) but can't find any way to do that without making a bunch of sacrifices that I'm not sure are worth it. Any thoughts or insight on it? Not sure how to get the powers list - but here's the chunk: | Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Hero Designer to view the build | |-------------------------------------------------------------------| |MxDz;1488;702;1404;HEX;| |78DA6593594F13611486BFE94C2DA56597A54065A7A5B543CB72633446058C81262| |828974D83631953A7A4AD895CFA1734D11B8DE072E185BBFE1EE39D4116B7448D4B| |3DF47D5992369D3E3DFBF9CE9C2F7963C2FFFCECCD934AF39DC9A60B85D4E9FCF5A| |2E54EA633F6A2AE94F2CE2F0C5F485FEECE391E9102656B2A69652DCB9CB78B6927| |B560A597734E2108CB8475C5720A96292176BA68E79CD4A9FCB55CBEE19CB364E52| |DA768EEFEF1CFE672597346826D27535316A6ECCC5251241FA4EC8E08B7B95C7ED1| |CAAF042697ED4573D2B1F2999554325D288A0EFDB6496F83F2ACB7C88FD2E42919E| |A9EA154C2508DABE091FBE41AF9007C36C8909D98B856D6B912E428688C916DC2A0| |A1365A18A24A6EEDB7AB6CEB2E914A07FF40EEF947FE055F483D1DF5DC3AEB1C1A2| |159AF8A7D548D20576C1CF2A6D475A3AEE68E2AE425B7C4E6E1393C4F10D7F7987C| |04F65F856F7F067C29BD7811A37B8751A33A429AA03F064E0F29E583AFCBB7897CF| |51FC1C64F608B2C490D7D6A9A119798862DF10D7C2535EBF08EF4BA87D00DAF926B| |F4ED467F9FE54C0D38AFD110C5FCFA23E0E010192643E06BC9DFA461079A3CC877B| |88AAC669F3ED20F6AD27733EAA8E676D4D645D7CAD9B4FE825FDB4FF207D8FE5D18| |92BD10DF007CB500CFDD3E2EA2A1AB37D24F0772BB3A38A7CE757203FC22E70C729| |F82DCA710F727C4BD09718F86B86711EED95789ED626CD707E822F48D3047EC38F7| |E804E77C0C7C2BBDF5729F7AD95B1F7B7B27B601CE64803BE6959711E6FB0DDF663| |FB7C8BBA05F7CA29C5BF43C6671F4223947CE73C7C4D7640DF329E2BD32CB387571| |CEB2D350FC94E42B1F15A9D0C48DBD7B2C170CB912155EA3159AB10ACDD4BEA6347| |3D01AC314668DBDDBAFB4DDC9D4AB9DF7518ED9AC163B3BD1FA60DFDED7B9B44BBC| |599C4A6D0F26BE75302ECC1B70308E13AEE5C4EBEF80EF5BF7FBFD0F025FE660| |-------------------------------------------------------------------|

I was playing around with a Ninj/Ninj stalker I made on the Beta server at 50 with IO sets, no incarnates. Oof, it was pretty rough compared to Bio. I took all three of the questionable utility powers, I tried using Blinding Powder to start off, I was lucky if I could hit 3 mobs at a time, and it didn't really seem to do much, even with Contagious Confusion and the rest of that set the confuse didn't last long enough to be worth it, and at most still hit 2, usually still 1, and I didn't even see anyone ever slept longer than you could blink. I felt very safe for a bit, but then boom, something got through my defense and I was in a world of hurt, I got back a couple times with the heal, then no warning and I was hit twice in a row and down. I had no time to actually use any of the utilities to get out of Dodge. With Bio it was more slowly losing health and trying to keep up with it with the heals and absorbs, giving me enough time to run away and recover if things were going too poorly. It was also much harder to remember to keep my anti-mez power up on Ninj because it's a click instead of a toggle, and if I didn't remember, I was toast as well. This was against 54 Rikti. I was able to sit on a pylon for some time, but it was again a bit more harrowing as I'd get hit once in awhile, and the odds of a 2 hit streak seemed like it'd be high enough to end me. Ninja Blade seemed very good compared to Psi, I was able to kill a 52 heavy suit, while I couldn't even do a 51 with psi, and was slowly piling up damage on the pylon, I just gave up as proving my point after it was down to 1/4 vs. slivers which were healed up with psi before I could put more on.

I think he switched from i25 to i24... Last time I looked at it, it had Savage Melee at #1 for AoE, and Psi for #2 ST. Psi sucks due to being extremely resisted by some mobs, to the point I can't even kill them without help, where ninja blade had no problem. I'd not the listed damages aren't that far off even in this sheet, only a 10% difference between StJ and Psi.

You can rename your characters easily, in the character picking lobby, there's a pen icon in the upper right. Tailor for costume (free if you're still under 10), ID/background is in options, and respecs for powers. The only things you can't change is origin type, At, and primary & secondary power sets.

I could swear I remember something about those being disabled after that, but I can't find any reference to it being done, it was 6+ years ago.

Necro / Kin seems a good match, I'm thinking of trying it myself. Kin doesn't have much mitigation, but you get a good bit of control from Lich. Zombies and Knights are slow and do best in melee - improved significantly by speed boost, and possibly inertial reduction. Kin's heal and damage buffs work in melee range, which the zombies and knights are. Color Kin dark or black, or red, and it would look decent with them. Besides Rage Zombies!

I think assault goes off of base damage (not absolutely sure) if so it's very very little. Say you have a grand total of +300% damage from ios, sets, and buffs, that means a 10% assault, is really adding 2.5% damage. I found this old bots/time build you could look at https://web.archive.org/web/20120911091610/http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=291477