normalperson

I feel like this would be fun to discuss. No need for any real seriousness. I want to brainstorm ways for "natural" characters to be competitive with other superheroes. The easiest is the "superman" way, where your character has super powers due to every member of their alien race having them, but if we include that we are making things too easy for ourselves. Some other possibilities are psychic powers and/or mastery of Chi, but those come close to the edge of mutation and magic, since a psychic has to start with some psychic potential, and Chi could be considered a kind of magic. I think the most fun is imagining some body builder and/or athlete becoming so athletically skilled that they are competitive with real super heroes. I guess that is Back Alley Brawler's origin? Another option is the "Indiana Jones" type approach, where the character's powers are really the result of wit, some skills, and huge amounts of "plot armor". Batman kind of straddles the line between "natural" and "tech".

On the one hand, Sister Psych is clearly defined as a Mutant. But on the other hand, it seems like it would take quite a lot of hard training to bring out a person's psychic potential. It doesn't really matter to game play, but I'm curious if the community has any conventions? If your character relies on psychic powers, are they better classified as natural, or mutant? I guess there is really no wrong choice. Even science could be how you got your psychic powers. Or technology via implants. I'm trying to find good justifications for natural origin to be competitive with the others. Maybe mastery of your Chi? ...or that could be magic.

I highly recommend the "Power Transfer: Chance to Heal" proc to put into "Lightning Field". You can't rely on it because it is random, but it's always nice to get that little +hp heal appear from time to time when you're surrounded by mobs. The field drains Endurance, which makes it uniquely eligible for that proc, among defense sets. Radiation melee has a persistent AOE also, Irradiated Ground - so a strategy of persistent melee AOE would make sense. Maybe add some damage procs to them.

Yeah. That is a pretty big liability to protecting teammates, and gathering enemies for the blasters' AOE's. So maybe I should take the real Taunt, and trade the power pool Provoke for placate? Maybe I can find some situation where placating will save me from dying. "Unrelenting" is just so useful!!! My brute is Oversized weapons/ Super Reflexes, so it gives me a way to heal every now and again. Edit: follow up: I decided to go ahead and take the real taunt power. And am having no regrets!!! I changed Provoke to pacify, because it's useful when there is a machine gun enemy standing away from the melee fight and debuffing my defense. I figure my allies won't mind if one machine gunner mob takes his attention off of me.

Is "taunt" really a lot better than "provoke"? Or just a little bit better? Or about the same? I'm wondering because the heal power you can get in that power pool set is pretty useful on a /reflexes or /shield build. But I don't want to let down teammates by failing to draw enough aggro.

I watch the damage bonus on my brute when I'm single player mission running, and it stays pretty close to +150% most of the time. So long as most of my attacks are already hitting, would that additional +80% really make a noticeable difference?

This can generally be about all seemingly supernatural martial artists, but I figure that Chun Li is well known. She probably gets her supernatural abilities from channeling her Chi. But, I'm sure if Chi is magic? Or still natural? Or kind of psychic? I guess Psychic powers are considered mutant. I looked up the origins of in game characters like Mother Mayhem, Sister Psyche, Penelope Yin, etc and they were all listed as "mutant". At the same time, aren't Arachnos Widows considered "natural origin"?