tidge

Frankly. I'm more surprised it took this long to get the change to the way the Banner credit (for defeat badges) is handed out. Hopefully the Elite Boss changes make some folks feel better. As @JKCarrier wrote above: it can be a real mixed bag fighting some of them.

I think it depends on the nature of the Tanker, but I would almost always go for +Absorb first, because there aren't cascading Resistance failures, and at a certain point more resistance is only contributing to the debuffing of resistances (in a good way). By "first" I mean I'd put the piece I want to trigger in a regularly used AoE with a 15 second-or-greater base recharge. I'm sure you are also leveraging the Scaling Damage Resistance piece (quite important for Tankers) as well as the pieces that are %+Heal (Power Transfer's healing amount is superior to Panacea's healing for Tankers). I haven't played all Tanker primaries, but generally with solid HP and Scaling Resistance available the only thing I worry about is -MaxHP or a particularly bad damage type mismatch (or gameplay equivalent).

Most of my targeted AoE have macros... my point is that if the team is moving quickly enough, it won't matter that a power like Tar Patch was placed in some other room. Another suggestion: If playing melee, invest in Combat Teleport, and use a macro to BAMF to the next target. /macro_image "E_Icon_Obliteration" "BAMF" "powexec_location target Combat Teleport"

My experience with Dominators have been this: If a Dominator needs Hasten to be perma in order to perma-Dom, then the build with perma-Hasten almost certainly doesn't need perma-Hasten... because the window between enough recharge for both perma-Hasten and perma-Domination is such that Hasten needs more global recharge, even if most of that extra will have to dome from Hasten itself. In other words: A Dominator relying on Hasten for perma-Dom probably doesn't have to have Hasten actually be perma. Obviously there are things like enemy slows. It was mentioned above by @The Trouble that Hasten will eventually have to have its Endurance cost paid. For my Dominators (which don't rely on Hasten for perma-Dom) just having enough global recharge for perma-Dom means that my attacks/controls are getting spammed at a rate where the blue bar is almost empty by the time Domination fires, refilling the blue bar. I suppose I could have some alternate attack chain with Hasten in play, but then I'd almost certainly burn the entire blue bar and take eventually the hit from Hasten. I tend to think of perma-Hasten as a build trap. I definitely have at least one Dominator with Hasten as a late-level pick, specifically to address potential enemy slows/-Recharge. My other Dominators don't have that trouble, either because of other build choices or perhaps something about the controls those Dominators have or the way they are used. I also want to echo what other players have written about putting Hasten on perma-cast at the cost of not having another power on auto. Yes, I am aware of binds to alternate between different powers, but I find that to be a sloppy fix for what I consider to generally be poor build choices. There are a significant number of non-attack powers that work as clicks which are incredibly useful to have on auto. One such power that I always keep on auto is Inner Will from the Blaster Secondary Martial Combat. This is a power that can only be used in certain circumstances, so having it on auto allows my Blasters to keep on blasting. Sometimes it's triggered by some trivial short-duration control, but nonetheless it provides breathing room when I need it.

Once a melee character has the attack chain slotted (with enhancement sets) things are much smoother. If you are committed to trying to achieve perma-Hasten, you will almost certainly be leveraging both Purple set bonuses and LotG... at which point you are likely to discover you don't need Hasten.

Pretty much any AoE/PBAoE should be fine. AoE that require placements may yield suboptimal results, if the team really is "fast-moving".

So you want them all to be lowered to a common value? Why?

I disagree with the suggestion. I have plenty of non-Sentinels with a number of different ranges in attacks. My personal opinion is that Sentinels have some longer ranged single-target attacks (than their cones/what-not) to hit enemies that run away from them, not to snipe at a distance or do things like "hover-blast".

I HAVE COME FROM THE FUTURE TO WARN YOU! THE COUNCIL CHANGES WERE REVERTED! BUT NOW EVERY TIME A COUNCIL BOSS DIES, THERE IS A 3 MINUTE CUT SCENE!!!!!

Generally, the ATO and Winter %procs have such good proc chances (when catalyzed) that they can tolerate being included in even fast-recharging powers. This is convenient because those sets often offer decent set bonuses. I rather like the options that the set bonuses and %procs offer Tankers (from the ATO sets), I mix-and-match all sorts of ways with them.

This was well-put. I was trying to think of a polite way to express how I got to the point where Hasten is one of the very last powers on the menu that I consider for any given build. I experimented with using the Force Feedback %+Recharge to cross into the 'perma-Hasten' regime... and while it works, it was more of a PITA to keep executing whatever power(s) than it was to not sweat if it wasn't perma. I used to think there were two in-play reasons to chase perma-Hasten, but I'm pretty much only down to (half of) one: The character must have an attack chain consisting of (pretty much) only longish recharge time attacks and needs absurd levels of global recharge to make that specific chain "smooth". I'm discounting this, because most ATs will end up having to take inherently fast-recharging 'attacks' at low levels... but I can imagine not wanting to add them to attack chains (even though many such attacks offer other benefits besides Damage). The second reason that I no longer bother with recommending perma-Hasten was for when a player had some signature power with such an extremely long recharge time. The problem that I see it is that such powers typically won't recharge faster than (perma) Hasten, so its like Hasten is the signature power... and Hasten won't do much more (in my general play experience), except for the case I mentioned above. (perma) Domination is sort of a special case, but most Dominators can get to perma-Dom levels of recharge without Hasten or the FF %+Recharge. For permaDom, its more (IMO) picking which build constraint you want to live with. It definitely was for me. Better to invest in refreshing SG base buffs to increase attack speed, IMO.

This is definitely AT-dependent, and to a lesser extent dependent on the attack typing of the players' character. I've played on level 50 Tankers that were solo ToTing in Peregrine that simply dragged some Elite Bosses door-to-door because they'd take more time to defeat than a Giant Monster.

My current project is Earth Control primary, partially chosen because of the character name/concept and partially because it is a set that I see, but only rarely. My chosen secondary was Cold Domination, so not nearly as rare to observe in the wild. It fit my concept better than any other.

So they are teaming up, they are going to be two of them at x2. I agree that things should be a cakewalk; I'm going to step out of the recommendations here because if a player is playing a lot of alts, and none of them have gotten past 25, I kinda feel like the OP is playing the game a LOT differently than many of us. START was explicitly pointed out as something they wouldn't take advantage of.... so yeah, a solo controller without P2W attacks is going to be a little slow to complete content below level 16. With the sorts of written constraints and my own reading-between-the-lines, I feel like a grindy pre-16 experience is what is in store... and the likely issues are going to be burning through endurance and missing attacks (they can't turn off Beginner's Luck!). I feel like the "try a Controller" is not even the right way to attack this. If the desire to test a Controller was the main driver, I feel like the other member of the team wouldn't be a Brute. As I wrote above, I don't even think Brutes are the simplest to play for a youngster. If they are prone to get upset when getting defeated, a Tanker is probably better. If they can emotionally handle defeats, a Scrapper or Blaster will give the Controller more of a chance to shine, plus offer the dopamine hits of finishing enemies off. IMO, Controllers might be the AT that benefited most from the lowering of the levels for picking certain powers... but a player would have to go past level 25 to find out.

I have it 5-slotted with 2x Acc/Dam/End 50+5 and three damage %procs. The Accuracy is needed for the %procs, it makes them surprisingly reliable. I only have damage boosted because there aren't cost-effective Acc/End reduction pieces. On a MM, if Shifting Tides was going to be 5-slotted I'd probably just go with 5xAnnihilation (and include the %-Resistance piece). 5-slots gets +MaxEnd, a global Endurance discount, plus the enhancement values in the power. %Proc rates may be hurt of course, but the AoE is quite large and it is a sort of set-and-forget AoE. If I was short of slots, I might go with just 3 (Acc/Dam/End and %-Res) on a MM, because it is the %-Resistance that really improves henchmen performance.

The OP has said that they rarely take characters above level 25, and made comments that imply that they won't leverage "modern" (my words) slotting techniques. It also sounds (to me) that they basically want the child to be on "easy mode" (as a Brute) and the only admitted pre-conceived notion is that "Controllers are slow." My point about spamming the heal is made because the other low-level Dark powers have recharge times such that they won't be available for every fight, and it will likely be hard to tell (at low levels) how they are "controlling" the fights. This feels to me like there may be enough preconceived notions that I probably should check out of this thread. I wouldn't give a young, inexperienced player a Brute... I don't even think it's best (at low levels) for "blitzing" enemies. An inexperienced Controller would probably learn the introductory Controller tricks better by supporting a Scrapper or Blaster teammate.

Controllers are great solo, but if you don't go beyond level 25 you are very unlikely to experience this. The 'classic' CoX experience for Controllers is slow, but that means ignoring START attacks, not slotting to address Endurance, single-target controls (Containment is supposed to help with damage) as opposed to DPS. Until powers can be cast in a chain, and you have AoEs, it is hard to see how Controllers are really shining. The most no-brainer Controller primary is probably Plant Control. You will be able to see Containment very early, and Seeds of Confusion is rather OP, especially for a level 8 power. If you quit at level 25, you will at least have been able to experience Carrion Creepers. If you want more direct damage with a side of Control, Gravity (provided you take Propel) will meet your needs. If you want to be the support, then the secondaries of Kinetics or Empathy will allow you to support the kid. Dark is great, but Twilight Grasp is something you might get bored with spamming.

I wouldn't put those %procs in Thunderstrike... at least not until I saw if they were doing enough for me. Some personal disclosures: I don't like the FF %+recharge %proc. I prefer to passively get Recharge boosts, as they are more reliable and more even. Also, Hasten at level 10 is not something I recommend. I know people make both of those choices, but my personal experience has been that this sort of chasing of Recharge isn't generally as effective as alternate slotting choices of powers that will be used. Specific to Thunderstrike: %procs make sense for the "not the main target", but in practice I have found that for all AT except Tankers, it is rare that there are enough enemy targets outside of the main target to make the investment in %proc slots worthwhile. I'd just opt for a 5-piece set bonus. Obviously if you are wedded to the FF %+Recharge, then I'd say 5+1 slotting. As a trivial aside, I'd replace the Health piece in rest with an Interrupt piece. 🙂

if you aren't dying, I doubt anyone would care. I suppose if it was the final AV fight of something like a Manticore and you weren't providing any DPS I'd probably say something before you got a player note.

All the PVP zones also offer level-appropriate door missions, no matter what your character's level is relative to the zone max. Most of these are either Longbow/Arachnos, so it isn't as if it is hard to find that content anyway, but I've occasionally done those simply to alleviate boredom.

Characters being dropped to levels below what is zone-appropriate is bête noir. I can understand when it is not the League leader's fault, but a majority of times it has happened to me it is because the League leader isn't paying attention at all. If I am soloing "just fine" I decline league invites because I have lost count of the number of clueless "Giant Monster hunting teams" that will put a level 50 on a level 20 team. Minimally this makes zone travel a potential nightmare. As @Ironblade notes, this is almost certainly stupidity and not malice. #1 Tip: League leaders should invite a new player's team to league, and then move the character to a team led by a level 50, or move other players to that (new) team. Once there are 6 teams on a league, they should all pretty much be led by level 50s... or the 6th team is the "holding pen" for new players. A level 50 can of course be moved to team 6 once there are 5 teams led by level 50s.

I certainly wouldn't put it past players to try to endlessly farm Prismatics by using a stream of disposable new characters, I also think that the effort is almost certainly more than just running a classic AE farm. I imagine that this sort of "farming" thing would be mostly done by a player that specifically wants Prismatics, and also has a roster for which they want badges and/or name-locks. As for ToT Leagues in PI: They can be a real mixed bag. I was surprised several times over the first few days just how poorly a couple of them were being run. This isn't meant to be a knock on the folks who were "leading", it was more that there were so few level 50s playing that my level 50s were constantly getting exemplared down to inappropriate levels for the zone. Sometimes this was due to folks dropping, but one league leader was actively doing it by moving my character from team-to-team, which is borderline griefing IMO. At no point was that character made a team leader, so that was simply clueless leadership. As for which types of characters I prefer to play in the ToT leagues: Ranged attackers, because it makes targeting easier. I agree that low-DPS can be an issue, but mostly because I've seen a bunch of ToT leagues with low-damage (and low-level) characters on the same team, which doesn't help the team (especially on Banner events).

I also tend to avoid radio missions, except "at level" when I have a character that wants the Mayhem/Safeguard goodies. I used to speed-run level 50 radios to unlock Hassell, but some recent changes to "who counts as a villain defeat" have made this unlock a lot more organic (and easier) for me. Another good alternative to Radio missions are the alignment tips, which can be run in zones other than level 50 zones (for level 50 characters). I don't always like to run Ouro arcs, because if I start one solo then I'm locked into it until completion, unless I simply drop it of course.

I highlighted some things that stand out to me. This is just my opinion, but I don't think ATs even start to feel like they are coming into their own until sometime between level 12 and 20. The other constraints (the "no twinking of builds") isn't really a concern when you won't have many slots to choose from. It sounds to me that you want a Defender, not a Controller. Helping an Ally is much easier with a low-level Defender than it will be with a low-level Controller.