subbacultchas

Also bosses or no bosses is a tipping point for me.

Absolutely. It's only good with good controls, to help mitigate but not a total mitigation by itself. This with a purple every now and again, and a good aoe control set and you can do 3-4/8 pretty easily. What build did you use out of curiosity?

What the hell, it's been on my chest for years and I'm gonna get a little too real. Our Supergroup made a village people themed group for a while, mine was an Elec/Fire Blaster with a construction worker outfit named Manhole Inspector. Full disclosure, I was still pretty young but knew what I was doing, and was a bit of an a-hole. I'd played this character for months, working slowly toward 50 and softcapping defense and such, was a hell of a fun pure AOE melee range blaster. One day I got a tell from another character, "Are you Family?". I had no clue then what this meant, and said no and asked. The person gave me a rundown and we talked for a while after that, and slowly I started feeling a bit uncomfortable because I realized I'd made a joke toon that might actually bother someone. I did ask if it was offensive, and they said it didn't bother them in the least (not sure it matters at all), and we continued to chat for a bit. But that was a big turning point for me, in that I really started thinking about the jokes I made and how they would come across to others in a vacuum. To this day, whoever that person was, I appreciate talking to me about it and explaining what the terms meant, and how the character could be taken by others. I won't say it changed my life, but it did become an important part of the person I am today, and definitely in the way I present myself online and interact with people. And it made me stop thinking of players as their characters, and realize that there are real people with real lives and issues that I impact every day. I've certainly not forgotten it going forward. So I guess it wasn't a bad mistake, as I came out of it a bit better of person than I went into it. But it's something that's stuck with me, and definitely isn't a mistake I'd make twice.

As a reminder here, we've had a lot of player hosted events in the old days, allowed or sponsored by the devs. We've had pride parades, marriages, religious gatherings (including a Satanist one) and more I can't think of. I don't really like reminding folks of the old days, comes off more elitist and prescriptive than I care for. But in this instance, I feel like this is something we do need to live up to still.

Thanks for the info, if you remember more please add it :) I'm not looking for a full build, but things like the Karma -KB or various synergies with certain powers is good to know! Does the Stealth from Celerity let you just run around like a Stalker or do you have to avoid running right over mobs? Coupled with Arctic Fog, it gives you total stealth. Of course things with perception will affect that, so it's always good to be overly careful. Setwise I use quite a few Posi's Blast on the AOEs for recharge, only 5 slots with the sixth a recharge IO. I also use Thunderstrike on a lot of single target attacks, it's a superb way to build ranged defense. I found my Pine's build, but apparently its way old and nothing like the current one I use. I'll try to rework it over the weekend if I don't die due to heat exhaustion at my kids' softball tournament.

This is patently untrue. There are people behind the characters, and we form friendships and attachments to those people. As their sexual preference may be important to them, among other things, it may come up in conversations as well. This is normal, extremely normal, as people do talk about wives or husbands, children and the such which have some implications about their sexuality (though not strictly). Our outside lives do come up and often, and there's no reason to exclude this type of preference considering how normative it really is. You don't divorce the players from the characters unless you don't form friendships and just PUG. Although you could reform that to "excluding people based on sexual preference has no place in City of Heroes" which I might agree with. Deeming your outside life and aspects overall unimportant is a blanket statement I cannot get behind.

Overwhelming Force set, which currently is a reward in Summer Blockbuster is one such set.

I will have to check when I get home, I left mine at 47 when I dreamed up a new alt lol. But IIRC, Water Burst and Hydro Blast are your mains for FF+Rech, as well as Geyser possibly? I don't think I slotted Geyser with it if I could, because of the longer recharge on it already. You'll have to make a decision on whether it is worth it or not long run in those powers. Personally I think that once you hit 50 or so, if you build for +recharge you won't need it, but YMMV. Guassian's should go on Tidal, if you run Tactics it might go there too (never tried). Offhand I know I use Celerity +stealth, and I'm using 5 LotG +Rechg in my defensives, 1 Karma -KB, 1 Reactive Def +scaling dmg res, Performance Shifter +end in Stamina, and a couple more uniques or singles that I can't recall. The sets are mostly focused around extra +def, especially ranged, and +recharge. I think I have a build on Pine's, non-final, and if I can remember I'll post it tonight or this weekend. I probably won't remember, I have some poor soul waiting on my Plant/MA guide that I keep flaking on too lol.

I don't think anyone meant anything exclusionary, or claiming as if this were a 40's mining claim to protect. It's a simple question, and a lot of answers are far afield and some are in bad faith. Let's slow down, remember that this may not really effect some of us as much as others, and take the OP's question at face value and move on. Please let's not let this go where it very well might.

Definitely agree on the AOE aspects, and Explosive really needs a damage buff (plus the AOE dmg is paltry). My main farming toon is also Plant/Martial with Ice secondary, and it's the fastest farmer I have really. Get them grouped, lock them down/confused, then it's Sleet/Ice Storm/Dragons Tail/Spinning and maybe a Caltrops or two.

I use it that way, too, but I'd be lying if I said it felt like I was doing it "right". And, I mean, granted, I do like the Shurikens, too, and wouldn't want to see them go away; Trick Shot is like my favorite power in the whole game now. The problem the melee side of the set (and the set in general, kinda) has is that they're very skewed towards AoE, especially for a Dominator set. It's got lots of little semi-AoEs that seem like they've still got End/Rech balance as if they're real AoEs. When 2/3 kicks are "balanced" around the idea that you're always gonna be hitting 2-3 targets (one of which has trouble even reliably hitting one target sometimes), that's a tad problematic. It does suffer problem, I won't lie. Single target is not what it feels best as. My dom is mainly AOEs, so I rely on stranglers, explosive (which needs something badly), and maybe the snipe now. It's nor for everyone, I definitely agree with that, but it works for me.

That's exactly my thrust too. I have a Dom that's softcapped to S/L, and has the other damage types in the 30-40 range. And it works, that negates a good portion of the damage you'd usually take, coupled with your controls. I would not softcap S/L and ignore the others though, just my two cents. You're going to get some massive spikes that do you in.

I would too, without any regrets. This may be an unpopular stance with Dark corruptors and defenders, but it's an honest one at least.

It's a good set though, a really good one. And I use it as a primarily melee set, unlike a lot of folks who play it. I think it has an even enough split to make people who wanted a ranged or melee secondary happy.

It's fantastic... if you run a lot of s/l AE farms. Otherwise it is decent, as a lot of typed attacks have a s/l component and you use higher of your defenses. But there's going to be a lot of times where it's useless too. Positional defenses are better to cap IMO, or get your other typed defenses also in the 30-40 range. But I don't think s/l capping on its own is often the boon people think it is, considering the steps you sometimes have to take to get there.

I would like to point out here, there are valid reasons to occasionally spam your heals. I had a couple folks that were perturbed by me spamming Dark Affinity's heal during Summer Blockbuster AVs. It's not like we needed the heals at all, but there is a -regen component to most of the enemy target based heals. Not a lot, but totally worth throwing that -regen debuff out there on the AVs, especially the first one in the casino part. I figure I'd put it here, since A) this thread reminded me of it and B) more than a few folks didn't know this during SB, might be true here too. Dark and Kinetics are two of the sets that I know of that have the -regen component.

I'm loving it overall. But if I had to pick one power to be the MVP, it's Soul Absorption. Well slotted it will keep your team healed and in end for the entire time. I use it a fair bit even on solo mobs like AVs, where the +end really outshines the +regen. It may be a little bit too powerful, if I'm honest.

I'm sitting at 50+1 now with mine, early levels of incarnate slots done, and it's still just a beastly character to play. I wish I were more easily able to softcap defenses, but it's just not easy with this combo without severely skimping on powersets. Oddly enough, this is probably my fast farming character when I need to, even moreso than the brutes. Although my safest farming character is Elec/Dark Controller, it takes about twice the time it does with Plant/MA Dom. I keep waiting for SG mates to get level with him so I can stop just sitting on him.

That should work just fine if the procs work well. If you have +acc from sets, you could skip some of the triple IO's for dual dmg/recharge. If you're perma-dom, and who wouldn't be at this point, you might even be able to skimp on +recharge with a good global recharge. I'm at work and havent run numbers, but seems plausible.

Well well well, I assumed this no longer worked with Carrion Creepers and didn't slot this way because of it. I remember when it did work, and it was an awesome thing to do. Stink Bug might be trying out some procs tonight.

This. You have seeds, and you can lock them down, which makes them oh so ready for melee or pbaoe attacks. Don't drop Drain Psyche or Shockwave, you will regret it long term.

I don't know about Fire/Dark, but I'm loving Elec/Dark right now. May not be as top tier as Fire, but there's some pretty neat stuff you can pull off with it. As Coyote said, with /Dark you will find that AV's have a really hard time doing much to you. Even without Fluffy, I've been the main tank on Summer Blockbuster AV's on squishy teams quite a bit. It's just a very powerful, extremely survivable secondary.

I've played it a few times on Corr/Def, and it was a good set but not one I really liked. However the Controller set is one of the most amazing secondaries I've found. Buffs, debuffs, heals, and extra pet, and due to said def/res buffs its fairly easy to softcap def and have decent res % to most (even cap s/l). The best part I think is the regen/end group buff, I can often get my regen over 1000%. So what gives? Is my memory faulty, or was it always like this for controllers?

I'm still iffy on this, especially buff style powers affecting summons. But I remember it used to be as you described.

We may disagree, but I get Mezmera's dislike. For Mezmera, the new insta-snipe conditions actually cost a good bit of DPS. For me, who doesn't take the power at all, it's only an increase. Both are valid positions I think for very different build styles.