Uncle Shags

I love it. Excellent name. Although with the water blast set, especially tinted greenish brown, wouldn't it be more like Prof Oopsee Isharted? I have a Poison/Water that I love. So good. Super tanky (like actual TANK tanky), super support, lots of cc with poison trap and KD, and surprisingly good damage. I still enjoy playing it. Actually, I might give it a spin after writing this! Our builds are pretty dang similar. I went for the Fold Space tree and a bit more damage. Procced out, enhanced Water Jet is amazing. I went with Aqua Bolt instead of Hydro Blast because it's faster for building tidal power. AB->Dehydrate->AB->Enhanced Water Jet repeat is a really good ST chain. My build isn't perfect, I'm sure, but maybe it'll give you ideas. Defender (Poison - Water Blast)2.mbd

Is it worth the slots? I see some builds with, some without, some with only one. My understanding is that only the Phantasm would benefit, not the PA? How about Spectral Terror? And I've heard some folks say that the phantasm is impossible to keep alive anyway, so why bother trying? I'm building my first Illusion and this is what keeps me up at night. JK. Kind of. Thanks!

Alternative perspective: Synapse is a horrible tf. It's long, boring, repetitive, and made worse due to lack of access to many powers. Most people who thought "OK, I don't need to speed..." are going to be smashing their face into the keyboard by the 1.5 hour mark, screaming "When will it end?! Please, God, can it just end?!" I only ever do it for the accolade, and hate it every time. Also, take a deep breath. The sky isn't falling.

I'm pretty excited. I've got a ill/time at level 4, ready and waiting at Richards. I got all my keymaps, and bindings set up, xp boost, ouro portal, long range transport reward, and goofy back story written. Pretty excited!

I'm taking a leap here because I've never played WM, but my impression is that it has a lot of mitigation via knockdown? Fire has zero mitigation. For large groups of normal enemies that can make a huge difference. Although, if you're talking AVs that might not matter because I don't think knockdown works on them?

I suppose since it's so versatile you can slot it to fit your needs.

Not too sure about brute. I've got a TW/Bio scrapper that I love, but feel guilty playing because it's so OP. If I were you: Drop defense sweep and replace with crushing blow. CB completes your ST rotation and is the fastest power you have to gain momentum Drop SJ and replace with titan sweep. You already have combat teleport and teleport. TS completes your aoe rotation and hits hard. Drop the enhancement chase for +regen and replace with global -rech and -rech in your heal/regen/absorb powers. Getting your click powers up as fast as possible is the key to Bio. Consider scrapper. The crit ATO goes reeeeally well with TW. Let me know if you want to see a scrapper build to compare to.

Good luck with your poetry. "Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of his Atlantic with his verb in his mouth." - Mark Twain

To me a major factor is Blizzard vs Inferno. In theory, Blizzard does a lot more damage, especially considering scourge. But personally I found in most fights most of the damage was wasted on corpses. If you plan on drawn out fights, blizzard is better. In quick fights I think inferno wins.

I'm sure you've all run Posi 2. How can you think badly of Vahzilok?! Dr. Vahz: "The people of Paragon think I'm a monster... But my work here will usher in a new age! An end to sickness... An end to war... An end to death itself! Task Force Shags will NOT stop my new age!" Poor Dr. Vahzilok is just a humanitarian trying to make the world a better place! And when we ruin his plan? "I was to build a Utopia! A place where all would live, free from disease, free from the grip of death! Is such a world...truly impossible to obtain...?" Is that evil? Insane? Of course. But evil? His aim was Utopia! Maybe it's the actions that matter, not the intention?

We need a statistician! I think you're right that eventually, over time, given the randomness from multiple missions and teammates, the numbers will start to be clear. Speed, safety, etc. My concern is that it would take more than 5 missions to reach the randomness you need for good data. Maybe a lot more than 5. But I don't know. Paging the statistician!

I wouldn't worry about it too much. Make a character. Try it out. Solo. Teams. See how it feels. Be ready for confusion. That's normal. Get creative. Try another. And another. Go back to the first and see how it feels now. The beauty of this game is there is a nearly incalcuable (smart people have tried and given up) number of ways to combine power sets, archetypes, powers, enhancement, play style, backstory, etc., and in the end, almost anything can turn out to be super. With a little bit of skill and practice you can go into a mission where you're vastly outnumbered and come out wildly victorious. You can go into a mission with 7 other people and every single person walks out the door feeling like THEY were the one that saved the day. The other 7 did fine, but it was their specific actions that had real meaning, and made a huge impact towards the success. This game is crazy, complicated, and confusing. But the good news is, it allows you to focus on what YOU find fun. No matter what that is. Go with that. The fun.

I loved it! In particular: 1. I soloed it and went right for objectives, which was great, but I could tell the enemy composition and density would have been challenging, fun, and fruitful for a full KM team of 8. 2. You somehow took my costume colors and flipped/mirrored them! That was an awesome touch. 3. The final bosses mechanic was great. Even as a invuln tank it had me...flailing. Thank you.

I have one stalker with it and one without. On one the build was too tight and couldn't fit it. The other one used it for the crit. If you time it right you can get some nice burst. I suppose it's good for survival too, but I found on teams I never had survival issues. I just never got much aggro, and what I did aggro was gone quick.

You should go back to the drawing board. I'm not sure how you did it, but you managed to somehow make your Invuln tank WEAKER than it would be without any enhance at all! Just kidding. Kind of. You need to familiarize yourself with enhance sets and which are good for what. You say you want this to be tanky, yet you're missing out on all the tanky sets. Have you looked at Icesphere's builds in the general archetypes section? I guarantee there's a Invuln/SS in there. Icesphere builds are nice.

Looks very interesting. I started tinkering with it but lost motivation. Realizing I can add loads of psi resist to invuln with impervium has me chasing that idea. I'm a fickle man...

That's really high. I thought my 40% was good. I'm going to steal some of your ideas. It's hard to balance because I'd have to give up some s/l res and -rech. Interesting... And Impervium Psi resist isn't unique?! What the?! That changes everything!

For sure! Let me at the boss! Worst mission is the MJ Chimera one. Little ninjas that are in HUGE groups yet all look alike. I think I immediately quit and made an aoe toon after that mission. I suppose the answer is to make a macro to auto target certain enemy names, and change it as needed per mission. In case you have to find the friggin Gorgons...

I had a Ice/DM that I enjoyed. The heal was nice, but felt kind of meh. So I just rerolled a Ice/Ice and he's feeling pretty good. Lots of slow and -recharge, two really nice aoes (Frost and Frozen Aura), and stacked ice patch x3. It's been a very smooth leveling ride - super durable the whole way. One of the reasons I'm excited to keep going on him is that the numbers look really nice. Not a lot of damage, but super tanky. I was originally planning on Darkest Night for the extra -dmg but I decided I just can't not take Fold Space on a team tank. Tanker (Ice Armor - Ice Melee)3.mxd

I have a nrg/dark stalker that I love. You actually met him once while on one of your blasters. I usually team and play him pretty much as a tank. Charge in first and take out bosses. Favorite time ever is the red fog MJ mission full of COT behemoths. Using combat tp to zip from boss to boss, punching them to exploding pulp while the team tries to keep up. Super fun. The only downside is when bosses aren't easily spotted. If they're the same size as the rest of their crew I get frustrated just one shotting minions one at a time. Stalker (Energy Melee - Dark Armor) 3.0.mxd

Yes, and even back to back! I made a fire/ax tank looking to try out the cyclone burn combo. He was super fun and got knee deep into incarnates but I decided the survival was overkill and wanted more damage. So I immediately started leveling an ax/fire scrapper. Again, super fun, and I enjoyed the increased damage.

Is this just for fun? Or function? Functionally, wouldn't it be just as fast and easier to just spin your camera towards the direction you want to go? If it's just for fun, then have at it and good luck!

People are so different from each other it's amazing. Obviously, there's a lot of people who aren't particularly picky about their builds. They're not interested in the minute details and just want to hand the build job off to someone else. Whether or not it's "good" from a min/max standpoint doesn't matter to them. That's fine. Others are very picky, and make multiple attempts, request review , and hem and haw over tiny differences in percentages. That's fine too. For the first group, having a fine tuned build that can push the envelope and pull off crazy stuff isn't as important. For the second group, that's everything... And then there's in-betweeners. When I see threads full of builds that don't meet my standards I just take a deep breath and say, "To each their own!"

Similar to some others here, I tested out my battle axe with multiple ff (3 I think) against a pylon. My non-perma hasten was only sped up by a few seconds, and remained non-perma. I then took the ff out and replaced them with other stuff that seemed to have more impact. As suggested, maybe a confounding variable was aoe vs st environment.

Funny coincidence, I just dusted off my Poison/Water last night for the first time in several months. Had a blast, then saw this. First off, I don't know why people don't like Poison. It's fantastic. Like you said, you have to build it right, but once you do it's super sturdy (I basically tanked for ITF last night), and debuffs like no other. And because of all the -res the damage is really nice. Not sure why the hate - I think envenom used to be single target, and people still hold a grudge for that? Idk... As far as your build, it's great. I'm comparing it to mine and found a few things you did that I like better. The couple things I think to consider are: 1. I disagree with the suggestion that envenom needs more slots. Your global accuracy and recharge are high enough that slotting for it makes no meaningful difference in that power. 4.59 seconds is fast, and Achilles Heel is good enough IMO. 2. You might consider turning water jet into a procced attack. It works really well for that because of it's enhanced version. 3. Maybe look at dehydrate? Putting heals in it doesn't do much. With pure damage slotting mine does 44 more dmg and 4 less heal. Small thing, but worth considering. 4. I'm not a super proccy kind of guy and usually like the bonuses more, but word on the street is poison trap (and water jet, above) does well with them. Mine with procs does 350 more damage. Not a big deal and maybe not worth it to lose 10% rech, but it's an idea. Most of the above ideas are just subjective and nothing I'd really push for. Other than the envenom. I really don't think it needs two extra slots that you could probably find better use for elsewhere. I'm glad you enjoy spreading the tainted water too! My dude has a disease theme. Something about squirting green, brown, and red pus and rot all over everything makes me cackle.