Without_Pause

Defender ATOs also work well with Sonic/sonic. Grab a def based epic armor and you'll have a rather tanky Defender.

I go against conventional wisdom when it comes to Lore partly because it is just really odd for a Stalker, as an example, to be going around with massive sized pets.

+1. The animation times on the ST attacks are not kind, but Rad is top tier for AoE. Shield/rad would be my pick for a min/max Tank. I would lean more towards doing one, but I have the Scrapper version, and I'm kind of done with Rad's animations in terms of wanting to level another one. Options not mentioned, Shield with Elec or Savage as both give you tele nukes although both are lacking in ST damage. I still think Savage is what Claws should have been. I made a Rad/bio Brute and that certainly makes me wonder what a Tank version would be like because it is going to pump out a lot of orange numbers. Any tank with two damage auras is going to wreck things. Balanced versus AoE heavy, but the smoothest set due to animation times unless I missed something is StJ. The more I play other sets the more I want to play StJ instead. I find EM more on the good side than fun, but Dark/em would be great for stacked stuns. Don't get me wrong, EM's ST damage is incredibly good maybe too good, but any time you have to deal with TF's animation time it raises an issue for me in the fun factor.

I have been thinking about using it with Thermal. I currently have a lowbie with Fire, but Fire feels weakest on a defender. I'm not saying it is bad on a defender. I'm saying at least Corrs and Blasters get better versions of it. I just need to see some animations so I can figure out how much I would like the set.

(raises hand) Some of us like that hectic playstyle. If my current laptop didn't offer up screen shot style gameplay in certain cases, I would still be playing more Kin.

Why? Did Diantane post again?

Melee with some blats and some armor would also be very Widow like. They are as awesome as they are unplayed unfortunately.

Badgers? We don't need no stinkin' badgers.

You can get Athletic Run going at a good enough rate to not really need SS. I'm borderline at skipping a travel power while using Athletic Run + CJ/Hover as needed and grabbing a flight power, see Hover Disk, at the P2W. It partly depends if I'm okay with not using a travel power to get something like a Resist Slow IO or +mag to KB IO.

FYI, based on the HC stats from March 2020, Fire/kins are still way more popular than any other combo, 2,459 versus Ill/rad at 973. Dark/dark is #3 with 594 so we are talking Fire/kins being roughly 4x as popular as the #3 combo. You just might not see them being played since they are more rolled to aid in farming these days. I honestly don't look at people's powersets they use on their controllers all that much.

The changes seem to be negative towards PvP, and to be honest, I don't care about that aspect. I like the set, but I'm honestly playing it due to the feel. I fear it will end up being lackluster in the end. I was hoping changes to it would make it better.

Shield/dark would be on a short list of builds you could stick in a mission and know it wouldn't face plant regardless of the mobs.

I haven't had the time to look into getting on beta, but has anybody looked at the Savage changes to give feedback? Is Hemo worth taking?

You certainly have the time to.

I would add Claws/rad since it adds recharge and damage. I'm still working on a rad build to see how much I like it in the end though.

StJ is way in the lead in terms of fun for me, but I did it on a Stalker. I got WP and SR to 50 although the WP on a Brute. I need to try out Nin at some point. WP tends to win by default as I don't like click mezzes, but SR is still great. If I didn't already have a level 50 Stalker version, I would do StJ/ea in a heartbeat in terms of pure fun.

I got a SS/elec up to 42 and realized just how boring SS is. Foot Stomp is amazing, but... I decided to keep the build around and maybe come back to it.

Said elsewhere and a hill I'm willing to die on, but animations over 2 seconds shouldn't be a thing. I lose count how often a Rad melee attack goes overused. Far more of a good set due to its AoEs versus a fun one. StJ is built for regen due to its animations. Longest animation has a cast time of 2.17 seconds and its CU. Not even the AoEs go 2 seconds.

I tend to ask in LFG as I want to see if anything is already out there. I have a lowbie set up for the FF arc, so I'll lead people through that.

On basic diff setting with no bosses. Only two spawn as actual Hero level and Manti is the only "difficult" one. I think it took me about 15 minutes to crank it out. Arc caps at level 40 so a player wouldn't hardly be limited by what they can use. Also you can get the 4x merit bonus the first time you do it so that's a solid way to work on it. Schweinzer has a list of each of the mayhem missions so it is easy to pick what you need.

I felt like trying to list a combo meant more I found a certain power set lacking versus it combing with something. The post showing user stats up at the top of the forum shows the least popular combos so any of those are likely what you are looking for.

Similar in that they have a variety of tools versus being overly dominant in something specific, ST vs. AoE. I do like sets which have shorter animations but there's a large number of sets which have at least one which I take issue with. I do like variation is terms of what the sets do and how they feel. Playing a Widow/Fort has very much been "Why didn't anybody tell me about this earlier?" vibe to it.

Correct.

A tale of two cities. Lead a couple SFs(Virgil/Silver Mantis). We run through them quickly enough. Conversation was had. Globals were shared. Side bonus, we exited a mission no less to get the Ghost of Scrapyard badge. Fully T3ed with the four accolade stat boosters is within reach. Saw someone advertising FF at +2. We did the door mission before it fine enough, and I saw the lead didn't have 2x XP. Well, that works for FF. Except, they flipped it to +4 for FF. Faceplant-O-Rama happens. Tells happened. I ask them if they are close to leveling. Nope. And yes, they knew what they were doing. "But don't worry, we'll level." Yeah, about that whole "we" part. If you are at +4 and someone is under you, they could be seeing +5s and their leveling does nothing to change that. It is your leveling which does, and you are leveling at the normal rate. Did sane people do FF at +4 back in the day? Well, no for this very reason! We had two support characters. A tank even asked about who was keeping them alive and thanked them. A Water/dark Corr spoke up. That Corr would eventually quit once they got sick of the faceplants. Spoiler alert, support characters aren't fond of being on faceplanting teams. More open dialog happened from said tank when the lead does level. Ultimately the lead quit although thankfully after they leveled twice. We finished although with various token faceplants in a very fitting way. What I'm saying is, I'm about 1:1 ratio with adding global friends on red side as compared to adding global ignores on blue side. So, red side = best side. (goes back to soloing)

I think one of the genuine missteps in terms of design was having any animations over 2 seconds. You can balance powers around other things.