Crysis

-Navy SEALS but with advanced robotic commando's from DARPA, and outfitted with oceanic control gloves (tech, not magic) -Go watch The Abyss.....alien tech takes over advanced undersea exploration drones. Lots of undersea alien tech angles you could take. -Little Mermaid but with Robots.....think "Ariels Avengers" Hell, I saw a guy dressed like Moses the other night, big staff (I'm assuming it was Blackwand) who was a Robotics/Marine player. He had these macros where he'd lift his staff and fire off Tide Pool and shout out "DO NOT BE AFRAID FOR TODAY YOU WILL SEE DELIVERANCE MY PEOPLE!" and other quasi-biblical quotes. His name was "AQUAMOSE" or similar. Let your imagination run wild!!!

I max out active farming on PVE maps at around 280K XP per minute. Most missions take time to travel to the next one in the arc, travel up/down elevators, occasionally find glowies that are hidden, you’ll get that infernal layer-cake cave map, whatever. I can match that pretty easily in a custom-built AE map packed with all the EB’s I’m allowed to spawn and barely moving at all. The spawns just converge onto me. So while the rewards are now better in PVE, if you are just after herd-and-burn mechanics, AE still offers the most efficient XP per minute. It’s just convenient. If I’m in it purely for rewards, however, I find PVE is better because I can (depending on content) get AV’s, different salvage types, merits, aethers, etc.

Defense Amplifier is about the best mez protection you can get in the game, available from the P2W vendor from level 1. Yes, it’s not cheap, but you really only need it while leveling and then mostly only when solo’ing. It amps up your defenses, your resistances and also gives you mag 4 protection against most holds. That plus building for softcapped positional defense of some kind will literally almost guarantee you limited deaths from mezz until you can get your Incarnates. Many will you tell you its “cheating” but if you got the influence to spare, use of any power available to anyone that wants it is no more cheating than a rocket pack.

I went Musc Radial, Destiny Barrier and Hybrid Support. For builds, start with the thread titled “It’s a BOW Time”. Ninjas got buffed a little with the upgrade powers so my advice is to 2-3 slot each of them now but otherwise the classic build in @Redlynne‘s OP is a good starting point.

FTFY

What a fantastic presentation, Blue Idoru is going to have a fantastic Creation Day!

Have a tech based Beam/TA alt who has an origin backstory based on Wentworth monopoly forcing all the SO/DO stores out of business. Because that's effectively what happened in Homecoming. That said I'm amazed when I still run across players new to the game who don't realize IO's exist and/or don't understand them. So they get well into their builds just using SO's. They are easy to obtain and use, just like Geranimals of yesteryear. Sometimes I'll duck into one of the stores for nostalgia. Talos used to be where'd I do most of my mid level enhancement commerce.

Ok I understand your POV. I played Marine for so long on MM's that I became accustomed to anchoring on Barrier vs my pets because it was always near me whereas pets can wander out of Tide Pool (kinda like players do). Also Shifting Tides drops the toggle entirely if the anchor gets too far out of range....hung up on geometry or whatever.

I'm confused. It's effectiveness doesn't change regardless of how you use it as long as it's used on an anchor within Tide Pool. So how is it less effective on Barrier? And using END when not in fights...END isn't an issue with Marine.

Just confirming this happens to me also. I think we should bring a Class-Action against ICON!

+1 on anchoring Shifting Tides onto Barrier Reef. As a melee oriented Defender it's always next to me in the Tide Pool anyways. I do have Soothing but just the Absorb Proc in there. It's not even in my power tray. At such high regen levels plus huge Absorbs I have no need for heals. Shoal is useful for Proc damage but even then, fully skippable. I'll spam Brine far more than Shoal Rush and get more out of it for ST damage. -MaxHealth is just damage by another name.

Mini mode has its uses but you basically look like something afflicted with Funkopop disease. I’m glad I tried it on Brainstorm first. If we could adjust the head and thigh dimensions I might feel better about spending 250 Aethers on it.

I found on all my MM’s that Soothing Wave has almost no value in late game. Anything that can get through your Barrier Absorb and your PotD regen is likely to kill you before Soothing adds any healing. So it and Shoal are both skippable and/or droppable(sp?) as you near 50 or later. Take Vigor as your Alpha and even more so. Plenty of other utility picks you can take and slot.

It's one of the original powersets and as such (to best of my knowledge) it hasn't seen a lot of tweaking. Animations are slow but hey, its a big chunk of metal. I've played a few since Homecoming released and it still holds its own, although many other sets like Dual Blades appear to be "doing more" the DPS doesn't really seem to need any help. The only thing likely holding it back is the nature of it's damage being one of, if not THE, most resisted damage type in the entire game (Lethal). But it shares that with Katana so....no more handicapped than the more slender bladed peers. Dunno really...I never felt held back when using it. The knockup/down and -DEF secondary effects are very nice. I've solo'd AV's with it, even those resistant to Lethal, and just give thanks to the Well for my secondary proc effects of Reactive for giving me some additional damage types, as well as my epic attacks.

Have a Demons/, Mercs/, Ninja/, Necro/, Bots/ and Thugs/Marine Affinity alt, all of them at 50+3, most with full T4’s now. Had a Beast/Marine I took to level 35 but abandoned it and it’s scheduled for deletion. Beast just needs help. Thugs is as good as Thugs/Time or Thugs/Storm (my two previous most-played MM’s), but it’s not quite got the capabilities of all the other sets. I’d rank it last place, although it’s still far better than many other MM pairings for Thugs. For PVE content, including soloing GM’s and AV’s, take your pick. They are all effective. I have solo’d all of the non-Incarnate AV’s and regularly go GM hunting. Have downed them all with several of the above. My favorites thus far have been Ninja and Necro. On Ninja, take and use the Smoke Flash every time it’s up. Literally “Crits on Demand” and on Necro take and use all three of your primary attacks for the Specters. +3/x7 is easily do-able at low 40’s, and +4/x8 by late 40’s pre-Incarnate. It’s a great soloer and even better on teams. I took Fold Space on most of them….helps keep everything in the Tide Pool. You’ll seldom need to invoke Bodyguard mode. I play with them almost always on full Aggressive mode outside of some trials where I want to keep them on a tighter leash. People think you need Melee pets to maximize Shifting Tides and Tide Pool but Mercs and Bots both get into the pool just fine. Since I have TP pool, I have combat TP on a bind and will just TP to the other side of the spawn, usually dragging the Mercs and Bots along with me. Otherwise, and I think people forget this, just drop Shifting Tides onto Barrier Reef….it’s almost always with you (or near you) and thus it triggers the stacks as well. Or drop it on the AV/GM if a long battle. For any of the “hard mode” stuff, including the new Labyrinth stuff, you really need Ranged henchmen and Destiny>Barrier. It’s just too hard to keep the melee pets alive in hard mode content. Same is also true for “speed run” TF’s like Tin Man/Apex and such. Ranged Mercs/ and Bots/ survive those far better and it’s easy enough to face tank the AV’s yourself while they whittle down the target and/or get your top tier henchman to draw aggro while you just step back and debuff/heal. *DO NOT SLEEP ON BRINE* if you plan to solo AV/GM’s a bunch. It stacks and slotted with health/absorb it makes a measurable difference in target elimination times. Even if all you can spare is one slot for it, take it and spam it. For PVE content, I have a macro for targeting primary threat targets (mezzers, sappers and the like) and at +4/x8 a Sapper is eliminated with a single application opener of Brine and a single shot of any attack. Shoal is entirely skippable but you’ll want everything else in /Marine. Don’t forget that Barrier Reef offers more value for the Absorb than the defense, so slot it up with heal sets or if you can spare the slots do 50/50 of heal and defense.