Call Me Awesome

Agreed completely, and Captain Knockback (Imperious) is a jackass.

I'd give a hard no on that, what use does any melee character have for a power that tosses mobs out of melee?

If you're just starting out I usually suggest a Scrapper as a first character, they have very good damage and are durable enough to be forgiving of new player mistakes. It's really hard to pick a bad combination but for a really easy to play combination while you're learning Claws/Willpower is about as easy as it gets. Fast animating and recharging attacks so you don't have to wait on them to recharge and a "set and forget" secondary you won't have to manage. If something else really catches your eye then by all means play whatever seems like fun; there's 1,000 slots available to you for different characters! My personal first character was a Blaster way back in 2004, I found it was hard to stay alive and got frustrated with constantly getting killed so I rolled up a Tanker. That Tanker became my first level 50 and my most played character... years later I tried another Blaster and really enjoyed it having more experience and skill so I wasn't admiring the floor constantly. If there's an AT that catches your eye you may want to drop into the forum for that AT and get some advice on different powers to choose, some combinations work extremely well and others may require a lot of work to make them work well. There's not a powerset combination in the game that can't function however. One question, if you're planning to play solo a bit there's some AT/power combinations you'll want to avoid. A Controller with the Earth/Radiation sets is an excellent team player but a terrible solo player due to low damage output for example. A Fire/Kinetic Controller can be good at both on the other hand. Some sets are good in the early game and some are slow to start and don't get good until later on in levels as well.

Sounds like it would be nice, but it also sounds like it would be a lot of work. If it happens I'd think of adding a couple of inherent "modification" slots where you could toss a proc like you mentioned and/or something like a global KB/KD proc. If it happened I'd bet you'd see a LOT of characters slotting that one. Still, not having any clue about the state of the game's coding it could be a big ask.

I'm starting a new thread for potential changes to the Invulnerability powerset's Tier 9 power Unstoppable. There was a discussion on moving it to the T2 power here, something I strongly disagree with and I thought I'd pull out the ideas I had for changing it. I'm firmly of the opinion that all powers in a set should have a valid reason to be chosen and there should be tradeoffs for skipping one for another... that would seem to be even more true for the T9. As it stands now most Invuln characters skip Unstoppable since the crash is not worth the benefit. At best it forces you to wait out of combat for it to drop and you to recover from the crash, retoggle all your armors, recover HP and Endurance and then continue on. At worst, and most commonly, it causes you to hit the floor 3 minutes later and leaves your teammates to kill the mobs without you, then you'll need to rez, recover and retoggle. The concept of a severe crash is a relic of the early days of the game, newer powersets don't tend to have these drawbacks and even the thematic Blaster Nuke crash has gone the way of the dinosaur. We have the example of Shield for how a similar armor power can be beneficial without being a suicide switch. On it's own Shield is pretty comparable to Invuln in raw durability both at base levels and with an optimal IO build. One with the Shield however is a genuinely useful power for tight situations with a much lesser crash that with minimal attention doesn't detract greatly from the character's survivability. If I were redesigning Unstoppable to be a useful power in today's game I'd go about it something like this: 1. Drop the +Res from 70% down to around 15-20%. As it stands now the 70% +res is drastically overkill; it's utterly trivial to hard cap S/L by simply taking Tough and it's pretty easy to get E/N/F/C to 50% or above without extreme IO building. 2. Either leave the +Recovery as is or perhaps slightly reduce it. With all the +recovery IO's currently in the game this aspect isn't a huge deal. 3. Cut the HP and End crash down to 25%-50% range. 4. Leave the uptime and recharge as is, OR give it the One with the Shield treatment and make the recharge unenhanceable and set to double the power's duration. That way you get a truly useful emergency button that doesn't drastically over cap you and doesn't automatically kill you when it drops. This seems to me to be the easiest way to make it a usable power instead of one the vast majority of Invuln players skip. There have been suggestions for more exotic changes to the power but I'm reluctant to recommend them as that seems to open up room for unintended bugs, not to mention increased Dev time. My thoughts should just involve a minor tweak to the percentage values of the power in simply adjusting the buff numbers and the crash numbers. On my current build with CMA not having Unstoppable isn't a disaster by any means; he's certainly up for most any challenge with perhaps a dip into the inspiration tray in a pinch. It still bothers me that the ultimate power in the Invulnerability set is functionally near useless however. A player unable or unwilling to spend the amounts I did for an optimal IO build won't be able to approach that level however. I likely would modify my build to include it for a very select few encounters where I currently use inspirations to manage.

The PvP population of this game has always been almost nonexistent, most of us dislike it and actively avoid it. If I'm ever in BB it's for Shivans and I'll avoid PvP completely or leave and come back later if given no choice. Sorry you're not finding PvP enthusiasts, you're likely going to have to set it up ahead of time in order to find others who are interested. In fact, it would probably be good to set up some specific PvP events like the Tanker Tuesday events. Those of you who enjoy it can get together and have fun.

I'm pretty strongly in the camp of "get Leadership on any support type character". Controllers get pretty good mileage out of the Big Three (Assault/Tactics/Maneuvers) with the first two having priority. On the Kismet question, remember it's mislabeled, it's actually +6% To Hit, not Accuracy. Accuracy is very easy to get, To Hit on the other hand is rare and much more valuable. I have it on EVERY character I make, usually in Combat Jumping which most characters get for mobility and near zero endurance. It needs to go into something you'll have active all the time; it'll shut off 2 minutes after you use the power it's slotted in.

I don't think either of these is the solution, the -% per minute just gives something you'd have to manage constantly for the next while instead of doing your job and absent inspirations or the proper teammates it's even more of a guaranteed faceplant than the current system. The second one is just adding an unneeded complication and greatly reducing your effectiveness. I vote to keep it simple without needing to introduce complex and potentially bug inducing new systems. Adjusting the values of the buff and the crash should be the easiest way to make it useful without that. The exact amount of those adjustments would need some testing but I think having the buffs in the 15-20% range and the crash in the 25-50% range would be in the ballpark of having a useful emergency button when you get in trouble without the crash making it worthless. We already have the example of One with the Shield for how a useful emergency button can work; on it's own Shield is competitive with Invuln in terms of durability AND it has a +damage buff as well as a T9 emergency power that's worth having for those situations when things go pear shaped. My Shield Stalker currently has OwtS but I seldom need it. My Shield/Fire tanker on Live also had it and occasionally used it for difficult encounters. It's crash is enough that you need to pay attention to it, but not severe enough to kill you outright if it happens in combat. As of right now Invuln is up to any task without even considering the T9, and most Invuln characters I know don't consider taking it. I think that the T9 needs to be useful and not an automatic skippable power in the build. We don't need every T9 to be a Granite Armor level choice, but they all should have a valid reason for choosing them in any build. (Actually Granite is a whole other can of worms entirely in that it's a complete replacement for the entire rest of the set.) In my opinion every power in a set should have a valid reason to choose it; having worthless powers seems like poor design. That goes for the T1-T8 just as much as the T9. Currently Inuvln only has one highly skippable power and it's Unstoppable.

My choices to pair with /Sonic would be either Kin/Sonic or Rad/Sonic personally; both of them are highly capable. The choice is if you want a buff set or a debuff set. Dark/Sonic would also work well; I know my Dark/Dark back on Live was capable of maintaining something around -50% to hit to an entire spawn and -100% to a single mob. There was a fairly large population of D3's (Dark/Dark Defenders) back then; it was a very popular combination for good reason.

You know, on my Defenders I generally try to find some slots for Tactics; Assault is of course a one slot power. Maneuvers I'll either leave at the default slot (LOTG +7.5%) or if I can find slots I'll worry about other bonuses. As for when, most often I grab the three powers in the 20's - 30's. The benefit Leadership provides just to the Defender himself is worth the power choices... the rest of the team also getting the benefit is a bonus. If you're lucky you'll have several teammates with the powers as well and you'll stack up to godly levels, but even alone it's a worthwhile investment.

Excellent point, when I started tanking in Issue 3 endurance was a MAJOR problem for low level characters... and I had an Inv/Stone which isn't a low endurance combo. I had to strictly ration my attacks all the way to 50, so I concentrated on defense and aggro management when my end was low and tossed out attacks as I had the end to fire them without (hopefully, I did screw this up a few times) crashing my toggles.

If I were redesigning Unstoppable to be a useful power in today's game I'd go about it something like this: 1. Drop the +Res from 70% down to around 20-30%. (Hmm, looking at CMA's current build it would only need to provide 20% when fully enhanced in order to hard cap all resistances but Psi. Ok, drop the +Res down in the 10-20% range.) As it stands now the 70% +res is drastically overkill; it's utterly trivial to hard cap S/L with no IO bonuses and it's pretty easy to get E/N/F/C to 50% or above without extreme IO building. 2. Either leave the +Recovery as is or perhaps slightly reduce it. With all the +recovery IO's currently in the game this aspect isn't a huge deal. 3. Cut the HP and End crash down to 25%-50% range. 4. Leave the uptime and recharge as is, OR give it the One with the Shield treatment and make the recharge unenhanceable and set to double the uptime. That way you get a truly useful emergency button that doesn't drastically over cap you and doesn't automatically kill you when it drops.

Electric Armor should work decently; it's only real problem is with KB... Grounded only works if you're on the ground and if you jump you will get to take a trip. My understanding is that it will also get KB'd by Lord Recluse since it has no KB resistance, only protection and he'll beat it's MAG 10. That's from second hand comments however, the only Electric Armor I had at 50 was a Scrapper. As for Electric Melee, it's a nice AOE set with fairly low ST damage so be aware of that. Edit And I'll second the thought Ninja Surprise had on Jacobs Ladder, it's only mediocre damage and a really narrow cone. I dropped it on my Elec/Shield Stalker for that reason.

Well, Regen had a pretty hard lock on the Nerf Bat for pretty much all of issue 2-5 so it's not surprising out of nostalgia if nothing else. And I like Pie. And Cookies, of course... I played on Guardian after all.

Well, RotP is the Fire Armor T9, and I know Blasters get it in the Pyre Epic. I don't have Mids in front of me now so I'm unsure if any other AT's get it in an Epic pool. I'm generally not a big fan of Rez powers on melee characters; I'd rather take a power to help keep me upright than one to get me back upright. I DID get it on my Fire/EM/Pyre Blaster; I actually don't use it much but I didn't have a better choice at 49. By the way, Blaster numbers on Rain of Fire & Bonfire (KB-KD proc) are REALLY nice. It's a great Minion Melter while I'm taking out the Bosses. It's also nice for keeping the pesky Repairmen away from the towers in the STF/MLTF.

I can see both sides of this question but for me this is probably the clincher. In a perfect world we'd be able to select which way we want a cone to work but I don't think it's worth all the time it would likely take mucking around in the code. Remember, our Dev team are all unpaid volunteers who have Real Jobs so they have limited time available.

Agree with this 100%. Crashing T9 armors are worthless. Moving them to T2 doesn't suddenly make them useful, it just puts your most skippable power at T2 instead of T9 and it puts off a useful power that you could currently get at T2. Very few armor sets actually have a useful T9... Stone, Willpower, Shield and Ice are all that come to mind right now, the rest are generally worthless.

Rumor Central... proof that some things are Faster Than Light.

I kind of look at Build up powers as useful for an alpha strike on a primary damage character. On my Elec/SD stalker it's BU/LR/SC/Fireball/Chain/Thunderstrike/ for the initial alpha strike. I haven't run the numbers but most of that will benefit from BU... I mainly use it to boost the two nukes, if the nukes are up so is BU. My Fire/EM Blaster uses Aim/BU/Nuke/Fireball/ as the opener. By the way, anyone know if the buff lasts for an attack if the animation starts at 9 seconds in but doesn't finish until 11? On the other hand, I never take BU on a Tanker; my purpose is aggro and durability first and foremost with damage coming second so BU is an easy skip to make room for more useful powers.

Well, Invuln doesn't get a Rise of the Phoenix type power so all it's good for is turning you into Veng bait... provided someone on the team took the power. You'll still need to rez and retoggle everything before you become useful again.😁 Frankly as a melee character you're much better off staying vertical in the first place. Save the horizontal playstyle until after the mission.😂 I agree totally about crashes, Blasters got their Nuke Crash eliminated and the newer armor sets got a much weaker crash on their T9. Stone Armor is a whole 'nother story... I think the set needs a page one rethink personally. Yeah, Granite has the best durability in the game, but it's not worth all the penalties it saddles you with. I say that as someone who played two level 50 Stone Armor tanks back on Live, both of them post issue 5 and pre-IO.

Sorry, it's been so long since I looked at it I got the duration wrong. 🤔 Still, it WILL kill you if you aren't sitting out of combat waiting around when it drops. Give it the One with the Shield treatment, lower buffs with a much lower crash, and it'll become useful in edge cases. As it stands you're better off without it.

I had a Spine/Elec Scrapper on Live, as I remember it was pretty effective once it matured a bit. It was a bit squishy in the lower levels and some mobs *COT, cough* were miserable as they went right through your armor and nuked your to hit. I agree with the idea of focusing on your offense early to kill things before they can chew through your defenses. It will get better as it matures, remember that most characters have trouble in the earlier going before the builds mature. You're not going to perform like a level 50 when in the teens.

I'll admit I haven't really looked at the current state of KB vs KB protection but back on Live the rule was either slot for MAG 4 or go to MAG 12... there was almost no KB around that was more than 4 but less than 8 so slotting 8 was pointless. MAG 4 would handle the vast majority, but you needed MAG 10 or better to deal with anything that was stronger than 4. I do recall that there's a few KB powers that will beat MAG 12, mostly from Lord Recluse when he's buffed by his tower.

I find Unstoppable to be the worst power in the entire Invuln set, it amps up your resistances and recovery then if you're still in combat when it drops it's a death sentence. It may get you through one combat but you'll have to stop and wait for it to drop, retoggle, and then continue on with the next one... or enter the next combat, have it drop and then kiss the floor. It's EXTREMELY skippable and it allows room in the build for something more useful. Frankly that's the best I can say about it. Other than possibly as an IO mule, and there's better choices for that, it's not worth having and unless and until it changes to work like One with the Shield and similar powers. The 100% endurance and 90% HP crash renders it nearly pointless. It's been widely known as a 2 minute suicide switch ever since issue 4 at least. I don't recall when it's recharge was changed to not be possible to perma it, but it's been baggage ever since.

Unless it has changed... I haven't looked at the numbers recently... it only has a 3" radius around the character so it'll only affect players who are right on top of you.