Two Dollar Bill

The Prismatic Aether Disguise just overwrites your whole costume, so you could make your character look just like a standard Bane Spider NPC, for example.

My current Crab build doesn't have a patron pool. He's mostly focused on being durable, which the patron pools don't particularly help with. Though, I have used Mace Mastery in the past, and gotten some use out of Shatter Armor and Summon Blaster.

I play a support-oriented "squad leader" sort of Crab, buffing the team with Leadership toggles, debuffing and knocking down whole rooms of enemies, while engaging in both ranged and melee combat. His DPS is only remarkable if he's delivering AoE damage to a crowd, he slows down noticeably if he needs to fight one boss. Guns are fine if you are little and puny and have just four limbs, but Crab Spiders have a unique combat style in which their cybernetic limbs can blast targets at long range and then lash out to shred them in melee. A perfectly over-the-top combat style for a superhero setting! Recent animation changes allow you to make Soldier attacks using Crab animations.

I think they're similar enough that you could chose based on theme/concept and be just fine. In terms of how they actually play, the main difference for me is range. Thermal can do everything except Power of the Phoenix from long range. You can hide in the back or fly overhead and still heal and buff. Pain has (de)buffs that are PBAoE and if you want to get your money's worth out of them you need to jump in to the combat for best coverage. If you're not willing to dive in to a big group of foes a second after the Tanker goes in, you'll never get maximum effect from Anguishing Cry.

I guess my question would be, what is your attack chain? You have a bunch of big area attacks, though hold, confuse and disorient don't stack in a useful way. You've got some PBAoE and Kick slotted as an attack (complete with a proc) and your sniper attack. I think a more focused set of attacks that synergize well with your Rad Defender debuffs might be more effective. Maybe a decent single-target attack loaded with some procs to deal with bosses when there's no-longer a crowd of chaff for the AoEs.

I feel like it's spending resources on frivolous things it doesn't need and neglecting the essentials. - I do prefer to slot Blind as a hold and not as a proc dispenser, but right now with just two enhancements, it isn't even a good hold. Blind is your primary hard control power. It also stacks with Flash. Slot that sucker like you mean it, so it's fast and reliable. - Deceive is amazing. I love to sneak a bit ahead of the team and confuse all the enemies that drain endurance, cast buffs or summon pets. In a hard fight, it allows you to stay hidden while healing, buffing AND doing crowd control with zero aggro. - Phantom Army is great of course, but the best way to make it recharge faster is to slot it for recharge. Right now it's not even triggering Enhancement Diversification. Give it a +Recharge IO. - Regeneration Aura is basically a junk power. Although it was once common for teams to pause for a group hug to get buffs, it's very difficult to get teams to sit still for it these days. The only character who will regularly be benefiting from Regeneration Aura is you, and you don't need it. Put those extra slots in Blind. - Adrenalin Boost is great for that teammate who really needs a respec because his endurance bar is always empty. It's not needed as a heal and doesn't need to be 5-slotted with Panacea. Again, I would put the slots into powers that you will really be using all the time. - Empaths can get away with having horrible endurance efficiency because they have Recovery Aura, so maybe it won't be a problem, but if it is... Superior Invisibility and Mystic Flight are horrible endurance hogs, worse than Leadership toggles. You can greatly reduce their endurance costs and get some set bonuses with an extra slot or two.

Back on Justice my primary was Ill/Emp, and he was amazing. Today the game is so easy that you can play a whole task force without anyone needing a heal, and nobody even considers the value of crowd control. Your biggest foe is boredom since only a small fraction of your powers get used. I would look in to the Sorcery Pool because it gives you some completely new support tools to play with, like Spirit Ward and Enflame, and you can include Arcane Bolt into your attack chain, because Spectral Wounds and Blind is not exactly a chain. Recharge is definitely the most important thing to slot for, and that does mean you'll want ridiculously expensive purple sets, though you can certainly get zero-downtime Phantom Army without going all purple. If you want a secondary goal for IO set bonuses, consider some AoE defense. You can take a lot of damage just by standing next to the blaster who suddenly gets aggro. If you want your super support character to feel useful, consider exemplaring with lowbie groups that don't have all their IO sets. Build your character to exemplar well, not just to function properly at 50+1.

I've never liked switching to a gun to fire a grenade, and I have been pondering new buillds for my Banes to take advantage of the animation changes. I think this build looks interesting, but one of the things I like about Banes is their ability to combine ranged and melee attacks into a single fighting style. If the mace is just a funny-looking grenade launcher and I can't hit people with it, I might as well roll a Sentinel.

- You have gone well over soft-cap on some of your defenses. Due to how the game calculates To-Hit chances, your maximum useful Defense value is 45%. Having more than 45% could still help if you get debuffed or if you're doing incarnate content and your slacker teammates aren't buffing you with their own Leadership powers, but for most purposes 45% is all you need. - It should be possible to soft-cap your Ranged and AoE Defense without even taking the Fighting pool, just by using your +Defense Crab powers and IO set bonuses. - Enhancement Diversification is a system that gives you diminishing returns when you heavily enhance one specific quality of a power. For example, the way you have Stamina slotted with three Endurance Modification IOs, you are getting a 99% bonus, but you'd still be getting 83% with just two of those IOs. Aim and Hasten work the same. - Tactical Training: Leadership is a great power which will make your pets (which are lower level than you and less accurate) hit more, and you can slot it with a full set of Gaussian's Sunchronized Fire Control to get +2.5% Defense on all your positionals. Very few IO sets can contribute 7.5% to your build's defenses. - Frag Grenade is an AoE knockback that will force your pets and teammates to chase your victims around. Be a good teammate and give it a Knockback-to-Knockdown enhancement. - My Crab has 8 points of knockback protection and he still gets tossed sometimes. (Carnie Phantasms, for example.) It's easy to get from Blessing of the Zephyr, but only if you embrace one of the best features of City of Heroes... movement powers! Steadfast Protection is also an easy way to get some since you are already slotting the +Defense unique.

There are some expensive uniques in here that you can get with merits. I included the ATO sets, though you can get by without them. +Recharge is about what you'd expect with no purple sets. It has soft-capped Ranged and AoE Defense, the important ranged attacks, and your pets will enjoy as many buffs a Humanly possible to try to keep them alive and dealing damage. I suspect most people would replace replace the Blood Mandate in Call Reinforcements and Summon Blaster with a recharge-intensive set, but I think that having your own defenses soft-capped is worth sacrificing some uptime for your pets.

My first character on Homecoming was a team-friendly Plant/Nature Controller. I was flat broke and wanted to get as much +Recharge and +Max Endurance as I could get on a budget, and this is the build I came up with. I generally stand behind the melee characters so I can hit them all with Regrowth, and I can hit the whole fight with Seeds of Confusion if needed. Although I have a macro encouraging people to gather for buffs, many people ignore it, so I usually wait for them to bunch up to finish off the last few bosses in a spawn, then jump in and fire off Wild Growth, Wild Bastion and Overgrowth before they can run off. Despite having Tough, Weave, and Mind Over Body, he's really not very tough and relies on crowd control and hanging back from the fight to avoid getting smacked.

What's the story with Infiltration, Stealth and Grant Invisibility? If the movement benefits of Infiltration are not too critical, I think I'd skip the Concealment pool entirely, put the Stealth IO in Sprint, and take Maneuvers, which will help you hit all your soft caps and give your pets and teammates defense as well. You've got three Impervium Armor IOs for Psionic Resistance, and a couple more that give you a 2.5% recovery bonus but basically zero Damage Resistance due to Enhancement Diversification. If you took those five IOs and used them to 6-slot TT: Leadership with Gaussian's Synchronized Fire Control, you'd gain 2.5% to every positional defense along with assorted other bonuses and better accuracy for your pets. Is Psionic Resistance important? Sometimes, but Defense is more useful. You're going to get merits as you advance so I'd strongly consider assembling a set of Superior Spider's Bite. It gives you 3.6% Max End, which is like a mini accolade (the Atlas Medalion is 5% Max End) and the 5% Melee Defense isn't bad either. I like the new Warp IO set for Teleport which gives you a range bonus to all your powers and a 3% Endurance discount. Anything that improves range is especially good with Suppression. If endurance is a big problem, you might consider taking four slots of Impervium Armor in Fortification and/or Tough since the 2.25% Max End is the real prize of that set. You could also slot the Panacea +Hit Points/Endurance unique in Health. And put some more slots in Venom Grenade! Where would these extra slots come from? CT: Defensive, TT: Maneuvers and Weave are all over-enhanced to gain tiny amounts of Defense due to ED. You could recover four of those while losing basically no defense. TT: Maneuvers and Weave can be 3-slotted with LotG and CT: Defensive could go down to 2 slots, especially if your IOs were set to level 50. I'm also not sure you're getting good value from 4-slotting Stamina. If you intend to run Infiltration with no end cost reduction, that's a big drain. I think I'd lose the run speed from Stamina to make Infiltration less of an endurance hog and you'll be more efficient overall.

When my Crab was new and on a budget I did have a build that used pets. It was pretty similar to this. I didn't have any purple sets at the time, but I did feel that a few uniques were worth the merits. This build has soft-capped Ranged Defense, lots of ranged attacks, and the spider pets that have the sense to fight from range.

Well, you can make characters that are fun to play steamrolling through speed runs.... Alternately, there is some challenging content out there if you look for it. Run some Dr. Aeon Strike Forces with ridiculous challenge settings. Try some "801 missions" at Architech Entertainment. Exemplar with some lowbies. If doing story arcs in Talos Island is more fun than speed-running 54 ITFs, then by all means exemplar.

Definitely a different take on the normally Positional-Defense-oriented Crab Spider, though I would trade in many of these powers for Frag Grenade! If you like min/maxing for small bonuses, something you could do to make your endurance management a bit smoother would be to look at extreme enhancement bonuses that are being wasted by Enhancement Diversification, and turn some of the over-slotting into end cost reduction. For example, the Immobilize bonus of Web Envelope is far past the point where it's economical to boost it any more. If you traded in the Immobilize IO for the Immobilize/Endurance one, it would have no meaningful effect on the immobilize value but you'd get a lot of your endurance back. Likewise, Weave has a Defense/Recharge IO which provides virtually no defense bonus due to ED. If you swapped it for the Endurance/Recharge IO, you'd still be soft-capped to melee, but more fuel efficient. The recharge is worthless either way, but end cost reduction can still be meaningfully enhanced. TT:Maneuvers is in the same boat. You could improve its endurance cost without losing soft cap.

I really enjoy the Crab's combination of ranged and melee combat, though I do it with Frag Grenade and Venom Grenade as part of my melee attack chain and no Frenzy. Frenzy is difficult to use on a team since without a taunt you don't have a reliable way to gather aggro, while grenades are great no matter who's gathering the crowd. Sometimes I wish it had a bit more +Recharge, but this is how I like my Crab.

Crab Spider builds are pretty forgiving, but if there were a hard and fast rule, I'd say it was: Soft-Cap All Positional Defenses. Being even slightly below soft-cap makes you considerably easier to hit, and more likely to suffer a cascading failure from defense debuffs. So, I would try to shuffle things a bit to soft-cap AoE. Superior Frozen Blast can give you a fairly mind-boggling 7.5% AoE Defense with all six slots. Omega Maneuver - If you're soloing and you have plenty of time to stand around watching Omega Maneuver work, it's fun. On a team of modern characters that steamroll through a whole room full of foes in seconds flat, you may find it's... difficult to use to full effect. If you decide it's not working out, I highly recommend Frag Grenade.

Perma-Light Form Human-Only Peacebringers are pretty well documented, but I think that sacrificing a bit of DPS for Glowing Touch is an excellent idea, and being ability to use White Dwarf in an emergency also sounds great. How exactly do you envision White Dwarf being used in an emergency? If you see if as a sort of Personal Force Field that can deliver frustrating slow, weak, melee attacks, your current slotting can do that. If you see it as an emergency team support power that can use it's excellent AoE taunt to protect your teammates and absorb damage, I'm afraid it won't do that. It just needs more enhancement slots. I think the ability to become a serious tank with a real taunt at will is an absolutely amazing ability, a far better support power in many situations than a heal. But the best part is that you don't have to commit to being stuck as a Tanker all the time. (Sorry real Tankers.)

My favorite SoA is definitely my Crab Spider, but I do have a Huntsman. He's an alt but I like him better than any of my Sentinels. Could Huntsmen be made better? Yes. Would I allocate a developer to improve this very fringe build that almost nobody cares about? No.

I'm guessing that roughly one-third of my characters do have Hasten... often Controllers, or Defenders that might need to spam a single heal (Thermal Radiation, for example). My two favorite no-Hasten characters are my Crab Spider (tanky, no pets) and my Force Field / Beam Rifle Defender. Force Field is mostly toggles, and Beam Rifle is all about combining different attacks, not spamming the biggest one.

This is my Stunning Corruptor build. I also created a Mace/Dark Stun Scrapper, largely for thematic reasons, though he is still not 50 and doesn't have his final IOs so I can't really say if I recommend it.

I did mention this a couple of months ago in that Defender thread, but.... My main problem with Sonic Resonance is Disruption Field, the -resist toggle that you stick to your tank. It's a great power but it forces you to stay quite close to your tank all the time to avoid having it break. And it breaks anyway when you use an elevator. It's a hassle to maintain and if I wanted a Beam Rifle character who could only fight at close range, I'd make a Sentinel.... Also, I feel like using Sonic Siphon interferes with the zen of my Beam Rifle attack chain and combos.

A shapechanger has to compromise, and a certain amount of Human performance is sacrificed to make the Dwarf a capable tank. I feel that having some smashing/lethal defense on the resistance-based Dwarf does make a significant difference. Still, some of the more esoteric choices I made, like the +15% range bonus from Bombardment, or slotting Energy Flight to be a real movement power, could easily be ditched to free up a few IO slots for better Human attacks. My Peacebringer never quite made it on to the A-list to get purple sets, but Panacea could be fun in Glowing Touch. There's room in this build for multiple purple sets of course, and I didn't use the damage resist uniques like Shield Wall either, just the defense ones. A few other notes for the OP: - There are plenty of Defenders, Controllers, Corruptors and Masterminds that can heal their teammates, but none of them can turn in to tanks with a serious taunt and 85% damage resistance and wrangle up all the aggro in a room. I think Dwarf is worth slotting like you mean it. It's one of the unique strengths of the archetype. - Exactly what kind of slotting qualifies as the minimum usable Dwarf form is highly debatable. White Dwarf replaces your normal attack chain with a new set of attacks, it replaces your damage resistance toggles with its own damage resistance, and it even replaces your self-heal with a different one, and all of these need to be slotted separately from your usual Human powers. If you don't slot them, you'll find Dwarf form is very weak and sluggish and no fun to play. In that case you're better off using Light Form and hoping you can resolve the problem in 90 seconds and without a taunt. - On the bright side, all these Dwarf powers can give you set bonuses that benefit you in Human form and vice versa. - Pulsar is a Mag-2 stun and you don't have another stun power to stack with it, so it disorients the riffraff that aren't much of a threat anyway, while leaving the bosses free to attack you. A Peacebringer's native crowd control is knockback/knockdown. Your most powerful crowd control ability in Human form is actually Solar Flare with its Mag-4 knockback (easily converted to more team-friendly knockdown).

I don't usually offer these opinions because they're considered sacrilegious and heretical, but... you don't need perma Light Form, and it's okay to skip Nova. My own Peacebringer is Human 90% of the time, runs all the shields, and plays a bit like a Defender... blasting things and healing teammates. The flexibility to be the team's healer is one of the great features of the Peacebringer that many people ignore in their quest for perma Light Form ultimate DPS builds. The problem with Nova is that there's no shortage of DPS characters these days. It's extremely rare that my Peacebringer joins a team and says "What this group really needs is another Blaster!" but it's fairly common to be a team where nobody can heal. I also find Nova blasting gets very repetitive. Dwarf Form is a bit trickier. I will often go all night without using it, but I've also been in situations where it was an absolute life saver. I've tanked whole task forces with it when nobody else on the team could taunt, or partial task forces when the Tanker dropped out. Even if you're playing Defender, there are also situations that you can't heal or blast your way out of, and what the team really needs is for someone to grab all the loose aggro and get things back under control. Only a decently-slotted Dwarf form will let you do that. I feel like my slotting here is sufficient, but you decide how light you want to go. This Hero build was built using Mids Reborn 3.2.17 https://github.com/LoadedCamel/MidsReborn Click this DataLink to open the build! Argent Guard 210311: Level 50 Natural Peacebringer Primary Power Set: Luminous Blast Secondary Power Set: Luminous Aura Power Pool: Teleportation Power Pool: Speed Power Pool: Fighting Hero Profile: Level 1: Glinting Eye -- SprEssTrn-Acc/Dmg(A), SprEssTrn-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(3), SprEssTrn-Rchg/Global Heal(3) Level 1: Incandescence -- StdPrt-ResDam/Def+(A), GldArm-3defTpProc(23) Level 2: Gleaming Blast -- Dcm-Acc/Dmg(A), Dcm-Dmg/EndRdx(5), Dcm-Dmg/Rchg(5), Dcm-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(23), Dcm-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(25) Level 4: Essence Boost -- Prv-Heal/Rchg(A), Prv-Heal/Rchg/EndRdx(27) Level 6: Bright Nova -- RctRtc-Pcptn(A) Level 8: Radiant Strike -- KntCmb-Acc/Dmg(A), KntCmb-Dmg/EndRdx(9), KntCmb-Dmg/Rchg(9), KntCmb-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(27) Level 10: Teleport Target -- BlsoftheZ-ResKB(A) Level 12: Luminous Detonation -- Bmbdmt-Acc/Rech/End(A), Bmbdmt-Dam/Rech(13), Bmbdmt-Acc/Dam/Rech(13), Bmbdmt-Acc/Dam/Rech/End(29), Bmbdmt-+FireDmg(29), SuddAcc--KB/+KD(31) Level 14: Shining Shield -- ImpArm-ResDam/EndRdx(A), ImpArm-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(15), ImpArm-ResDam(15), ImpArm-ResPsi(21) Level 16: Thermal Shield -- ImpArm-ResDam/EndRdx(A), ImpArm-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(17), ImpArm-ResDam(17), ImpArm-ResPsi(25) Level 18: Quantum Shield -- ImpArm-ResDam/EndRdx(A), ImpArm-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(19), ImpArm-ResDam(19), ImpArm-ResPsi(46) Level 20: White Dwarf -- ImpArm-ResDam/EndRdx(A), ImpArm-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(21), ImpArm-ResPsi(31), ImpArm-ResDam(48) Level 22: Reform Essence -- Prv-Heal/Rchg(A), Prv-Heal/Rchg/EndRdx(31) Level 24: Inner Light -- GssSynFr--Build%(A) Level 26: Glowing Touch -- Prv-Heal(A), Prv-Heal/EndRdx(33), Prv-EndRdx/Rchg(33), Prv-Heal/Rchg(34), Prv-Heal/Rchg/EndRdx(34), Prv-Absorb%(34) Level 28: Hasten -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(36) Level 30: Quantum Maneuvers -- LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(A) Level 32: Photon Seekers -- SprEssTrn-Dmg/Rchg(A), SprEssTrn-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(33), SprEssTrn-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(36) Level 35: Restore Essence -- RechRdx-I(A) Level 38: Light Form -- ResDam-I(A) Level 41: Dawn Strike -- SprKhlGrc-Acc/Dmg(A), SprKhlGrc-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(46), SprKhlGrc-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(46), SprKhlGrc-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(48), SprKhlGrc-Rchg/FormBuff(48), SuddAcc--KB/+KD(50) Level 44: Boxing -- Empty(A) Level 47: Tough -- Ags-Psi/Status(A) Level 49: Weave -- LucoftheG-Def(A), LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(50) Level 1: Cosmic Balance Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A) Level 1: Sprint -- Clr-Stlth(A) Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A) Level 2: Swift -- Flight-I(A) Level 2: Hurdle -- Jump-I(A) Level 2: Health -- NmnCnv-Regen/Rcvry+(A), Pnc-Heal/+End(36) Level 2: Stamina -- PrfShf-EndMod(A), PrfShf-End%(37) Level 1: Energy Flight -- WntGif-RunSpd/Jump/Fly/Rng(A), WntGif-RunSpd/Jump/Fly/Rng/EndRdx(40), WntGif-ResSlow(42), EndRdx-I(42) Level 10: Combat Flight -- LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(A) Level 20: White Dwarf Antagonize -- MckBrt-Taunt/Rchg(A), MckBrt-Taunt/Rchg/Rng(42), MckBrt-Acc/Rchg(43), MckBrt-Taunt/Rng(43) Level 20: White Dwarf Flare -- SprAvl-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(A), SprAvl-Acc/Dmg(7), SprAvl-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(45), SprAvl-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(45), SprAvl-Rchg/KDProc(50) Level 20: White Dwarf Smite -- KntCmb-Acc/Dmg(A), KntCmb-Dmg/EndRdx(39), KntCmb-Dmg/Rchg(40), KntCmb-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(40) Level 20: White Dwarf Step -- BlsoftheZ-ResKB(A) Level 20: White Dwarf Strike -- KntCmb-Acc/Dmg(A), KntCmb-Dmg/EndRdx(37), KntCmb-Dmg/Rchg(37), KntCmb-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(39) Level 20: White Dwarf Sublimation -- NmnCnv-Heal/EndRdx(A), NmnCnv-EndRdx/Rchg(7), NmnCnv-Heal/Rchg(39), NmnCnv-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(43), NmnCnv-Heal(45) Level 6: Bright Nova Blast -- Dvs-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(A) Level 6: Bright Nova Bolt -- Dvs-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(A) Level 6: Bright Nova Detonation -- Bmbdmt-Acc/Dam/Rech(A), Bmbdmt-Acc/Dam/Rech/End(11) Level 6: Bright Nova Scatter -- Bmbdmt-Acc/Dam/Rech(A), Bmbdmt-Acc/Dam/Rech/End(11) Level 1: Prestige Power Dash -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Slide -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Quick -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Rush -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Surge -- Empty(A) Level 4: Ninja Run Level 1: Quantum Acceleration ------------ ------------

I guess my main question would be, have you tried Spiderlings and are you satisfied with how long they live? I think they die way too quickly in any sort of challenging team fight and never do enough damage to justify giving them a lot of enhancements. So, I have a couple of theories on their use: A) Don't bother with them. You can be a maceless Bane Spider with three strong ranged pets and not bother with waving around a non-functional Crab backpack. B) Take them, but slot them with the +Defense and +Resist unique IOs to keep your pets alive longer, and don't worry too much about their own damage. If you are taking the backpack I would definitely take Serum. You're going to have more aggro than your pets and a self-heal is a handy thing to have. Teleport Target is useful if your pets ever get stuck, or if you can't complete a mission because an enemy is stuck in a wall, and you can slot it with a Blessing of the Zephyr Knockback Resist IO, so you don't have to dedicate one of your free enhancement slots. I recommend converting Frag Grenade's knockback to knockdown. Besides annoying melee teammates, knockback can cause your pets (especially Spiderlings, which think they're good at melee) to "play fetch" into the aggro of another spawn.