Crysis

I just took a Powerfarmed 50 I made eons ago and pulled out of the library, totally bare of powers/enhancements of any kind, and finally activated it with a build and fully IO’d slots. As it happens, the numbers of IO’s it took to do so is almost identical to what you just posted here. Including Catalyzing the ATO’s and 5 Winter-O’s and boosting about 5 of the IO’s….add say 32 of those combined for maybe another 50mm in influence. Then all the stuff I buy off the P2W vendor for same, like the base/team travel goodies, for maybe another 5mm. All in, including the “buy it now” pricing (I didn’t bother to pull any of these IO’s from my reserves, it takes too long for me to do so) on a WEEKEND no less, total came out to about 855mm and some change. I know because I keep influence in emails in 500MM increments and that toon pulled out a billion even when the building started and still had 145MM left fully kitted. The overwhelming majority of the spend was on purples, which is why I NEVER sell those on the market and I usually never buy them either. ATO’s are fairly consistently priced these days as well I’ve noticed, and I often never buy those either due to the hundreds I have from Winter Pack hoarding. So even at current pricing, it’s hard to spend a billion on a PVE oriented AT. If I was PVP’ing, maybe my PVP recipes would have eaten up more. Or, more likely, I’d be dropping massive (by today’s standards) influence on D-Synch Provocations to boost or something (those appear to be running 300MM+ right now, but can’t ever tell for sure on the market). Back to the question posted…..to the OP, if you enjoy farming (I do on occasion), might I suggest ensuring you don’t run for influence rewards but rather recipe rolls? Great way to fill up a whole mess of yellow recipes that can be easily flipped to AH gold in no time. I admit I used to despise marketeering, and anyone who writes a guide about it only taking 30 mins of your time is talking in current tense after a lot of experience. At first, it’s a confusing mess and can take hours of in-game time to learn the tricks to making good influence. Yes, once you’ve got your first disposable billion or so, you can buy/convert/sell in stacks at a time, and that can take only 30 mins here or there. But at first…it’s daunting. So start off easy, find the 4-5 items you really want to specialize in and play that way. I fondly remember the first billion I ever made off of marketeering alone was simply buying/crafting stacks of Exploited Vulnerability IO’s and converter flipping them all into Achille’s Heel -RES procs. It wasn’t the most profitable of all the ways to make money, but it was predictably steady for a long, long time until someone published a guide that included that example and kinda killed the market for awhile. But that’s the basics really…find something that is semi-reliable, turn/churn/burn them via crafting/converting/flipping, then repeat it every day. Farm during downtime. Run TF’s if you don’t like everyday missions, always someone advertising a Speed TF….quick way to earn merits, which are great to flip into converters. Rinse/repeat/profit.

Dunno….procced out caltrops seems to trigger a bunch.

Hit 50. I’m pleasantly surprised. This combo plays extremely well. END is manageable with the tips I offered above. For lvl 50 I chose Victory over Veng and slotted a D-Sync in there and that likely will let me choose Agility or Intuition over Cardiac for my Alpha and hang on until Ageless. My +RCHGE is so damn high that Victory is up quite a bit already. Victory is decent if used against a fallen Boss, but I don’t see any difference when using it on either a fallen minion or a Lt. A few tips… 1) If you didn’t know, Spirit Ward works on TriCannon. That lets you drop the +Res Aura piece for pets and slot in a Soulbound +Chance for Buildup. It procs nicely and the cannon is quite sturdy even without the +Res but with the extra +Absorb. It's +235 pts Absorb. And when it procs, which is often, the Soulbound is 80% +DMG and 40% +TOHIT. Not too shabby for our little flying bucket buddy. Duration of the buildup effect is good for next three volleys. 2) I tried two builds….one with Arcane Bolt and one with Enflame, both fully procc’d out. Enflame wins big time. Great damage under Containment bonuses and as a bonus you can actually drop it onto TriCannon. Since it’s got a great taunt it’s easy to use this for additional splash damage. But I generally drop it on a Boss and it’s amazing how much it spreads, and with a chance to re-proc on each target it hits. I played with a few diff procs but the -Res proc or the Ragnorak Chance for Knockdown seems to be the best “bonus” non-damage procs to throw in there. Oh and for new Council….throw it on a Wolf or Galaxy. 3) At first the Sleep grenade seemed worthless to me but it seems to proc the special Overpowering Presence: Recharge/Chance for Energy Font almost constantly. That little bigger is a great distraction for spawns and between it and the TriCannon I almost never draw any aggro. 4) Yes, no Immob. But with so many knockdowns and slows, plus Freezing Rain and Snow Storm, you pretty much have the same thing. Not much escapes you, and with Enflame if they do, they are already on their way to dead. Overall I put this up against my Ill/Storm easily. With so much -RES and controls I was soloing +4/x8 easily by lvl 47. Damage is on par with an equal leveled well slotted MM and that’s fine by me. I actually solo’d 45-49 today and it was a breeze, took almost zero damage. Arsenal/Storm gets a five out of five from me!

We ultimately get what the dev team can provide, but I would admit that running a Dom with a Robot pet as a “sidekick” has all sorts of fun thematic potential. I tried the 1-pet MM builds, wasn’t a fan of it personally, but on a Dom? That could be a LOT of fun. Of course then I’d want /petsay emotes and chat binds to work on it also which would really be asking for a lot.

Well Snarky is actually something like immortal other than sharpened wooden stakes so, you aren't wrong.....

I play a ton of Stormies, and have found I really prefer to play them offensively rather than defensively. My last two Controller builds were an Elec/Storm and an Ill/Storm. Both are very potent solo'ers and good for teaming as well. So I took the new Arsenal powerset and created a Arsenal/Storm build, roughly following your Arsenal pattern. I'm taking it to 35 this morning and then I'll see how it goes. Like any/all Storm Summoning toons, it's murder on END. I freely admit to cheesing it with my stacks of Combat Amplifiers....you'll note I have both Defense and Survival amplifiers turned on in this build. I also plan on carrying plenty of recovery serum and even take base Emplowerments for +Recovery for longer TF's. It's manageable (barely) until you get Ageless. It's also very heavy +Recharge and with that even MORE important that you cheese your +END stuff until you get Ageless. At any rate, looks like this if you go the Amplifier routes....total theorycraft build for now. **EDIT** Just hit 42. So far, a few TF's in, just finished a Market Crash....END is manageable with all the buffs and she's pretty durable. Damage output is passable for solo'ing at +2/x5 but like most controllers, not made for soloing +4/x8 until late 40's. Fun set actually. Controller - Arsenal - Storm - HeavyRechargeENDuseWAmps.mbd

If you've not seen it yet....OP did just that over here:

I am abysmally (word?) late to the party, but was extremely happy to find not only that COD has been rebuilt entirely by so many thoughtful and knowledgeable players, but also that it's like totally updated for recent changes. I was struggling with a final power pick/one slot wonder and chose Surveillance from Arsenal Mastery for my blaster over the weekend. I had no idea it was as good as it was, especially if I just drop a single Hami-O Lyso in there. Thanks for the team that built/populated all this useful information!

^^^ I like the junkyard concept. I’ve many, many toons that I got to 50 and realized, even with great builds, just weren’t my thing to play longer to accumulate their T4 incarnates. So they just literally sit there unplayed, some for years other than the mandatory log-in-once-per-year to keep the name. I really should melt them down for all those IO’s and recycle. I just despise how long a respec takes per character to get all them back out. Guess I could just dump a whole bunch of unslotters into each one instead. Actually, now that I think about it, likely better that way as I can keep their builds and just truly gut them of all the IO’s I care to grab.

There was a time before the last two sets of AE nerfs/adjustments where I got into building alts purely based on ideas/themes. My goal was to create a “library” of ready-to-build pre-leveled alts via powerfarming. I had a project list and every day or so I’d login my second/third accounts and go to work power-farming (mostly AFK back then) a couple of alts per play session. I’d give them really generic names/costumes with the goal of actually playing them as rainy day toons sometime later. I seldom powerfarmed them past 38, usually closer to 35 so that they had their nukes or whatever and some slots to go around. At any rate, somewhere along the line I started duping powersets. I ended up with multiples of almost all the top-tier powersets. So, having more influence than I knew what to do with, I’d just build them out with entirely different slotting strategies and/or power picks/pool picks. Yes, you can do this with multiple builds per alt, but using them that way is annoying as it pops all your powers off and then you have to wait for everything to recharge. That’s super annoying when you realize your second build would have been better in the middle of a mission. So many different ways to make/play powersets in this game, I never worried about having multiples of same types. I like what I like.

Dual Pistol/Regen/ninja Deadpool homage here. Very durable, not the best +DEF so it gets shot a lot and insta-heals, but that’s what makes it feel like Deadpool. I was honestly surprised when I built the toon how well it plays. Regen on a Sent is easily the best version of Regen available right now. You’ll be tempted to build for +DEF because so many IO builds lean that way, and you can get really good +DEF by end game, but what you want is as much +Regen and +RES as possible. Really sturdy build.

For me.... Sprit Ward: Heal and Heal/Endurance Preventative Medicine IO's....nice +RES bonus Enflame: Go proc-crazy on it. I tend to 5 slot mine with a +5 ENDREDUX IO, Bombardment: Chance of Fire Dmg, Positron Blast: Chance of Energy Damage, Javelin Volley: Chance of Lethal Damage and Frozen Blast: Chance of Immobilize (more for the stacking holds from myself and others than anything...keeps stuff in the murder box).

see my edit above. Procs in Enflame get chance to go off on initial target and thereafter on every other target hit by the flames, all during its rather decent duration. Like a free series of attacks for the ENd cost of just one. Very useful against EB’s and AV’s, particularly those who like to run.

A couple of pros for the Sorcery pool…. 1) Two power picks from there, Enflame and Spirit Ward, are both usable on your henchmen. 2) Enflame is a sleeper power. You can proc it out and cast it on the boss of a spawn who then spreads that damage over others in same spawn, like Confusion but more direct “free” DPS for you. Or you can cast it onto one of your henchmen as extra free damage also. It does add up. Oh and the procs in there not only get a chance to proc on the target itself but as the fire spreads to others it gets further chances to proc -per target hit.- Personally it’s rare I ever have to pop RoP in the later game as my personal DEF is so high either via self or buffs from others. But I do find Mystic Flight a nice fly power and the teleport is actually useful for positioning myself and dragging my lazy necrotic friends through middle of spawn to engage faster.

Yeah, no need to even bother going red to pick up patron pools now.

I’ve always felt the entire Shadow Shard, and all missions therein, were just a summer interns’ assigned task to learn how to code. That whole zone is nonsense and the missions are highly repetitive. Could have been so much more than what it is.

Once upon a time when COV was first announced, there was speculation that hero’s and villains on opposing sides could be assigned an opposite faction as their “arch nemesis” and basically accomplish what happened here. Basically, appear in the others’ missions as an arch nemesis and duke it out. Then that rumor was dismissed as just being a PVP Zone/Arena “marketing speak” kind of thing, as many players would have howled in anger to be “forced” to PVP in their PVE missions. But when reports of this bug first surfaced, I always wondered if it was some errant piece of coding that had been written specifically to allow two different players to instance inside the same door mission expressly to setup this kind of ‘forced PVP.’ I for one would have LOVED this as a feature. But alas…just a bug.

You can also have ChatGPT limit the number of characters used to get a perfecly fitting bio for copy/paste. And for extra fun, have it write the bio in a particular style, like “…using hillbilly Appalachian slang” or “….Roman-styled prose.”

It’s likely dated now but I still pull her out of mothballs for the occasional ITF or other iTrial stuff and she’s just as potent as she used to be. Final build towards end of thread.

HUGE callout for Demon/Storm. Lots of -RES against enemies, and if you build for +Recharge, your Storm powers are really amazing +Damage all by themselves. Very thematic as well. I've long since retired mine but it was once one of the highest DPS builds you could make in the MM AT. Still very sturdy and very, very high DPS as well. Ignore Hurricane, Thunder Clap and pretty much anything in your secondary but Gale, FR, Steamy Mist, Tornado and LS. Proc out Gale, Tornado and LS with FF+Recharge procs. Very easy to run double Tornado and LS all the time. Grab Mace PP and Web Envelope for an AOE hold, although FR often provides enough knockdown you won't need it. With Teleport's Fold Space I'd def try to work that in these days as well.

I learned a bunch after reading this thread when the Necro changes had settled. I ended up putting 2 Golgi +5’s into Dark Empowerment as a slot saving mechanic. Now that you have an incentive to slot/use your attacks often you’ll be a bit more slot starved on Necro than in the past.

what!? No spider monkey?!?!

I have a Thugs/Time that’s built around Anchorman. Ron Burgandy and his news crew, plus Octagon, Dr. Kenneth Noisewater and James Westfall for the t1 pets and /Time was selected partially for the opening line of the movie (“There was a TIME, a time before cable, when the local newsman reigned supreme….”), but honestly more for overall build effectiveness instead.

Depends more on your play style preferences, maybe more for Storm than anything else. Many Corrs skip Hurricane, the heal and other powers from Storm, keeping only sleet, steamy mist, Tornado and LS. Then proc it out and build for high recharge to cycle attacks and get 2 and even 3 Tornado/LS out at once, as well as all the -Res procs you can fill and dropping Sleet constantly. Played like that, a Corr is going to be focused on +DPS versus many Defenders who focus on debuffs available from Hurricane. Scourge damage is a nice added bonus to a Corr as well. For me I never play my Storm defenders after 50. They can be built for +DMG but most people will look at the two and determine if that’s the goal then go Corr.

I’ve been on Beta testing with my alt account and no matter how I try to look at the changes to /Cold for MM’s, it’s just all around resulting in more deaths for my henchmen and less ability to hit the targets (since they lowered the -DEF in this patch). Now if the dev team would remove the level shifts for the Tier 1/2 pets, then perhaps I could see my debuffs being lowered. But otherwise, this is just a net nerf to MM’s who, out of all the classes, likely don’t deserve even more penalties than they already have given the level shift mechanics in play.