Steampunkette

How about this instead: Healing Aura: Minor HoT component added. Heal Other: Cut half value, make it 2/3rds more healing through HoT. Absorb Pain: Just a massive Absorb instead of a heal. Resurrect: PBAoE usable while dead. Clear Mind: Increase duration by 45 seconds. Fortitude: Targeted AoE Toggle. Provides normal Fortitude to main target, lesser Fortitude to allies within 15ft. Recovery Aura: No Change Regeneration Aura: No Change Adrenaline Boost: No Change

Skirmisher Archetype Primary Powerset: Dominator Assault Secondary Powerset: Sentinel Armors HP: 1400-1500 Max HP Cap: 3,000 Melee Damage Scalar: 1.0 Ranged Damage Scalar: 1.0 Maximum Damage Buff: 500% at 21+ Epic Power Pools: Support/Control, Sustain Inherent: Skirmish When you make a ranged attack you gain 1 stack of the Skirmish buff for every 15ft away from the target you are at the time of casting, minimum of 1 stack. Ranged AoE attacks determine distance on your primary target. You can have a maximum of 12 stacks at a time. Melee attacks consume up to 3 stacks of the Skirmish buff, or 5 stacks for Melee AoE, and gain a scaling damage bonus based on how many stacks are consumed. If the maximum number of stacks of skirmish are consumed by the power, the melee attack triggers a control effect at Mag 2 with a short duration. The type of control is based on the powerset. In addition, all of your attacks generate additional threat in an area around your target. Archetype Uniques: Mag 1 Control Proc, Two stacks of Skirmish on hit. What's the Design Goal? Conceptually speaking this is an Assault based Tank archetype for something different from the traditional Brute/Tanker gameplay of "Jump into melee, hit attacks until things are dead, maybe hit a self heal" The goal is to keep them moving into and out of melee in order to disrupt the standard gameplay loop and create a more active gameplay style. By using Sentinel defensive powersets we ensure the AT doesn't have scaling defensive capabilities (or damage boosts) based on how many enemies are within 10ft, this ensures you don't feel "Bad" for not being surrounded and at full saturation of your taunt aura that gives you +Dam, +Def, +Rech, or whatever. It also opens up the relative importance of Cone-Based survival powers such as Rebuild DNA to further incentivize moving to range to maximize target counts and potentially gain more stacks of Skirmish. Powers like Dark Armor's "Obscure Sustenance" or Energy Aura's "Energize" could be retooled to be cones or targeted ranged AoEs as well. Why Assault? Underutilized and really cool, conceptually. Right now there is only one archetype which utilizes Assault powersets, meaning any design spent on an Assault set is dev time devoted exclusively to a single archetype, just like Manipulation sets for Blasters. By spreading that out a little, we get more options for Assault sets, and increase the impact of developer time in designing, and animating, more assault sets. On a personal note: I'd still love to see Kinetic Melee transferred practically whole cloth into an Assault set, with Concentrated Strike turned into a Snipe with a fast moving projectile, and Focused Burst's animation time cut down a bit. What are the Intentions of the Inherent? Firstly, it encourages long range opening attacks rather than the use of abilities like Fold Space to initiate a fight. For example imagine a Martial Arts/Ninjutsu Skirmisher opening a fight by using Masterful Throw to get an out of combat snipe off, followed by Explosive Shuriken, then hitting Combat Teleport with the smokebomb alternate animation before dropping a nice Dragon's Tail. At maximum range (150ft) Masterful Throw immediately provides 10 stacks of Skirmish. Explosive Shuriken only has a range of 80ft, so provides only 6 additional stacks of Skirmisher. You quickly reach the cap of 12 stacks so Dragon's Tail applies a Magnitude 2 Stun to all enemies it hits alongside the knockdown effect, and deals increased damage. Spinning Kick eats another 5 stacks and adds an additional stun to 2-3 enemies, possibly briefly locking down a boss. You're down to 2 stacks of Skirmish and possibly surrounded by stunned enemies. And then you're dumping stacks with Thunder Kick and more Storm Kicks. You can still use Trickshot or Shuriken throw at point blank range to gain 1 stack of Skirmisher per use, but without at least 3 stacks you're not able to apply additional stuns with Thunder Kick, and without 5 you can't stun with Storm Kick or Dragon's Tail. And since Sentinel Armors tend to provide less total defense than the Brute or Tanker versions, you're comparatively vulnerable when you're not adding control effects to reduce incoming damage. So "Ninja, Vanish" your way out of combat to throw off a couple more ranged attacks, then teleport back in to resume the melee fighting. In this way, the inherent encourages moving back -out- of melee, in order to build up fresh stacks and increase your overall damage and survivability when you dive back in. Your mileage will vary, of course, depending on which specific Assault powerset you're using for a given character. Energy Assault will probably focus mostly on single target attacks to build and spend stacks of Skirmish since they only get Whirling Hands as an AoE attack at all. Though when moving the Assault set over the devs could certainly remove Power Push to move several attacks to earlier levels and add in Energy Torrent or Explosive Blast. Or just bring in Power Crash for more melee AoE. And since the stacks you gain are based on the distance between you and your primary target, cones fired at melee range against targets who are in your face still only grant you 1 skirmish rather than the skirmish value of the person 40ft away that you hit. So jumping out is almost mandatory. How Would the Inherent be Implemented? Unfortunately, like Street Justice, each power that consumes stacks would need to have the bonus damage value baked in on a per-stack basis. They'd also need the information on what control effect and how long it lasts baked into the power as well. On the plus side, this gives us some interesting options to make sets different while using the same mechanic by granting the powersets a specific control effect separate from other powersets. On the positive side, because these functions are baked into the individual power, they could be made enhanceable. Ensuring that the archetype's inherent scales. How much additional damage, though, is the big question. For Street Justice you're looking at 5% for the first combo point, a further 7% for the second combo point, and another 13% for the third combo point for a total of 25% more damage on your attacks. I think that might be a bit much for an inherent, especially one where you control the stack build and expenditure. Something closer to 4% per stack, 12% maximum for Single Target, 20% maximum for AoE, might be better, overall. Why make the controls different? Theme, mostly. Each Assault set provides a specific control effect which reinforces it's theme in order to stack controls effectively, rather than having every melee attack do different types of control. This also makes the sets feel different from some of the other sets within the Skirmisher archetype. Arsenal Assault: Stun Dark Assault: Fear Earth Assault: Stun Electricity Assault: Deep Sleep Energy Assault: Stun Fiery Assault: Hold Icy Assault: Hold Martial Assault: Stun Psionic Assault: Confuse Radioactive Assault: Hold Savage Assault: Fear Sonic Assault: Confuse Thorny Assault: Fear 3 Fear, 4 Stun, 3 Hold, 2 Confuse, and one Deep Sleep. This also encourages teaming with Controllers and Dominators, to whom you can provide additional stacking, though potentially incompletely, in order to lock down groups. How does it Maintain Aggro? Without a standard taunt aura mechanic, and with no built-in taunt to the Assault Powersets, the Skirmisher is going to rely on a Gauntlet style aggro gathering mechanic in order to maintain aggro. It's certainly possible and potentially reasonable to downgrade that punchvoke down to pokevoke, like Brutes enjoy, but depending on powerset that might make crowd-aggro control practically impossible to maintain. Energy Assault, for example, currently has no ranged AoE and only a single melee AoE. With the ability to make ranged attacks baked into the primary powerset, I feel strongly that removing a ranged power to add a taunt to the powersets is overkill when the inherent could provide punchvoke. Particularly since any enemy that slips aggro and goes off to attack the Defender or Blaster is an opportunity for the Skirmisher to gain some additional skirmish stacks by lobbing a ranged attack at the runner while remaining in melee with other enemies that are currently aggroed. How would you structure the Epic Power Pools? I'd actually probably structure them a lot like: 1) AoE Immobilize, probably as a cone. 2) Debuff of Speed and/or Recharge, probably as a PBAoE or dropped pseudopet. 3) AoE Buff or Heal (Defensive) 4) AoE Buff or Debuff (Offensive) 5) Signature Power The first two powers give you a choice on how to keep enemies corralled in an area so you're better able to keep them at range while you're building your Skirmish stacks. Different APPs could put these two in a different order, or even bounce one up to 3rd or 4th slot in the progression. The second two powers help to define how you aid your allies to keep them alive or make it easier for everyone to fight your enemies. Something like Rejuvenating Circuit or Link Minds would go in the Defensive slot, Melt Armor or Tar Patch would go into the Offensive slot. The Signature power is your Soulstorm slot. For most other sets it would probably be a Sustain power. Providing Regen, Recovery, more Max HP or Endurance... For an example, consider the following Leviathan Mastery pool: 1) School of Sharks (Cone Immobilize) 2) Arctic Breath (Cone -SPD, -RECH, -DEF, Knockdown) 3) Shoal Rush (Targeted AoE -DEF, -SPD) 4) Soothing Wave (Cone Team Heal, Enemy -DAM) 5) Summon Coralax (Pet) Three really good reasons to jump out of melee, one of which allows you to better target an AoE heal on your teammates while debuffing enemy damage. And two of those reasons to jump out of melee keep your enemies clustered for when you dive back in. What would the Archetype Invention Sets be? While I'm certainly in no position to go over every set bonus for each set, I did outline the Uniques above. Let me explain a bit more: For the first one we've got a proc chance to just straight up apply a Mag 1 control effect. While this would affect most minions it would not affect Lieutenants, Bosses, or stronger enemies without stacking. However, since it's a Proc chance, you have a chance for your ranged attacks, or ranged AoE, to apply control, which they normally can't do. This would make stacking more viable, and could allow you to reduce Alpha strike damage when you initially engage. Largely invisible in gameplay, it improves your survival. Could have it apply to the power it's slotted into, or have it be a global proc chance. Have it apply 1 Magnitude of all the available control types simultaneously for stacking purposes, and give it a short duration. The second unique would allow any power it's slotted into to provide you with two stacks of Skirmish when it hits. Whether melee or ranged. This could be a good way to ensure your 'building stacks' phase functions better by slotting it into a ranged power so even if it's used at close range you get at least 3 stacks... Or you could slot it into a melee attack, so that after you spend 3-5 skirmish stacks you immediately recover two, allowing you to extend your 'in melee' time. "Important" set bonus: Control Duration increase. Somewhere in the set bonuses, there should be a blanket universal control duration increase, just like the Sentinel sets have a global +Range buff. Nothing huge or crazy big, but something fun as a treat. But what if that's Too Much Control? There's certainly a distinct possibility that being able to throw out Mag 2 controls with almost every attack you make being too dangerous if you maximize your time jumping in and out of combat to respectable ranges and maintain consistent uptime. However that could also be heavily mitigated in one of three ways: 1) Reduce the magnitude to 1.5. Now you still trap minions with your first control effect, but lieutenants are unaffected, and both bosses and lieutenants require a second hit to lock them down. Any enemy group with control protections, like Arachnos, takes more time to lock down, still. And your windows are vanishingly small. 2) Alter the amount of time the control effect lasts. A 10 second control is powerful, a 3 second control is much less powerful. Especially since you can't enhance for Control Duration. 3) Narrow the power selection that provides the control effects at maximum stacks to one melee AoE and one melee single target power. This one does run the risk of hitting the same wall as the original Sentinel inherent, however. Would this AT be Useful at High End? It really depends on how high end you want to go. For Radio Missions and Task Forces? It would certainly be a perfectly fine tank. A few team buffs offsets the lower defensive values and coverage of the Sentinel armor sets. Even in the Incarnate TFs they'd be quite capable of serving as tanks for a group. Again, a few buffs close up any gaps and they're able to handle the rough stuff. 4-Star TFs might be a little more dicey. 4-Stars are built around characters having big defensive numbers which Barrier and Support characters can provide, but the control effects from the Skirmish inherent would be essentially invisible due to the resistance to controls of most 4-Star enemies. In the event that the control-stacking aligns well, however, you'd have a tank which can reduce incoming damage significantly. More importantly, however, it would increase the viability of bringing a Controller or Dominator to a 4-Star TF without feeling like you're facing quite as significant of a tradeoff in capabilities. Due to the tank's ability to regularly provide control effects to help shut down enemies, even Archvillains to some degree, the tradeoff of strict damage increase to reduced damage intake could be worthwhile. Particularly if the Controller in question has the Kinetics or Marine secondaries. That said, they'd definitely be rough for specific fights. Like the Dr. Aeon 4-Star TF rumble with all of the important Vanguard characters in one small room. High movement tactics in that situation could result in serious problems. But what about Brutes? Brutes are in a pretty bad way, it's true. They're a tank with better single target damage than a Tanker when maxed out on +Damage, but a significantly lower target cap and range/area of their attacks. Add in that their inherent, and thus their archetype proc for +Fury, is badly broken. The quick jump to 85 fury and the insane difficulty of getting more than 85 fury means they should probably just get pushed up to 1.0 Damage Scale and get some other inherent, entirely. They really just need an outright overhaul. Making a different Tank AT wouldn't change that. While dev time is a limited resource and Brutes do need overhauling, I think increasing the playstyles available to tank is a worthwhile goal. Please don't derail this thread into complaints about Brutes. But what's the Fantasy Inspiration? Perhaps surprisingly to some... Batman, Spider-Man, Venom, the Flash, Black Canary, and more. Yeah, Batman's an expert martial artist and Spidey can fling a car. Both of them still fall back to throwing Batarangs and Web Shots when facing strong opponents, deploy control effects, and can't actually take many hits from your Doomsday or Rhino type characters. The Flash is, obviously, a high movement character who combines super-speed punching with tornado blasts or thrown objects. Black Canary's sonic cry is a show-stopping number but she's also a really strong martial artist who mixes it up in fights though that's probably an excuse for the artists to draw a hottie in fishnet stockings doing high kicks. And while Venom is often thought of as a Brute or even Tanker, he uses the symbiote to make ranged attacks throughout his career, including webbing enemies up in black gunk so he can close the gap. All the symbiotes do something similar, though some tend to make the attack sharper than others. And Batman, Spidey, the Flash, and others are often running distraction games to 'Tank' enemies away from vulnerable people or even their own allies to set other characters up for success.

Y'all... Damage Resistance Debuffs being resisted by damage resistance just keeps them in parity. Let's say you've got 50% Damage Resistance and I debuff you by 20%. 50% of 20% is 10%, right? So you go from 50% Resistance to 40% Resistance. Which means you go from taking 50% incoming damage to taking 60% incoming damage. Which is 20% more damage than you were already taking. 20% or 1/5th of 50 is 10%. The purple patch -does- impact it further. But it impacts it further in the same way as it does when you hit harder. So if you're hitting with a 20% debuff and the target has a 90% resistance they resist 90% of your debuff, leaving you with a 2% damage increase. (Which is 20% more damage than the 10% they're currently taking). Drop it down by .48 and it's 1.02% more damage from your perspective... But still a 10% damage increase to your target, relative to the damage they're currently taking. Now if you wanna argue the damage resistance debuffs are bad and need to be bigger... well... Not really. Because they stack, directly, with damage buffs on your team and make them hit even harder than they would, otherwise. Which is already enough.

A mastermind without their ninja (or thugs, or mercenaries, etc) is soon to follow them. But in the media, that's not exactly true. The conservation of ninja, whether heroic or villainous, clearly indicates that the fewer ninja on the battlefield, the stronger and more skilled the remaining ninja will be. This is also born out in other parts of CoH, when you have to fight your way to the AV through minions, lieutenants, and bosses to challenge the much stronger leader. I would like to suggest a slight change to Supremacy. One that will smooth out MM gameplay in general without adding extra power to them, overall. A passive power which provides 60% additional damage, and a 30% endurance discount. Yet for every minion, 10% damage and 5% of the discount is removed. This can help smooth out standard MM gameplay when a few of their minions die, allowing them to do a bit more damage. It also supports the conservation of ninja principle, and has a third benefit: It improves some less than optimal builds in a marginal way, increasing the number of ways you can play a mastermind. The "Boy and Big Robot" build would enjoy the boy gaining a 50% damage buff and a 25% end discount. The "Top 3 Minions" build would enjoy a 30% damage buff and a 15% end discount. The "Minionless Mastermind" would get to swing a whip that still does fairly bad damage at +60%, and costs less. It also tracks with their end cost increases for their support powers (Infrigidate costs everyone 10.4 end, but Masterminds 13, for example.) The extra 30% end costs exists to offset the additional 6 attackers the MM can bring, but if they don't have the 6 minions it's a burden on top of their precarious situation! However, this change does not A) Increase the ability of a Mastermind beyond it's current levels. You're always better with your pets, you're just less trash without them. And since it's a damage bonus applied to your character it counts toward the cap. A Whipstermind on a team with Fulcrum Shift doesn't deal any more damage than they currently do, which remains very low. Slightly less expensive, though. And a full clear of 8 Masterminds on the ITF will deal precisely 0 points more damage than they currently do. B) Make lower minion builds optimal. Even with a +60% damage bonus on your 3 core attacks and the entire Fighting Pool your base damage is still 0.55. So you're at a massive disadvantage without your minions, even before considering your force-multiplication abilities in your secondary that aren't having full effect without your minions to take advantage. It does make lower-count MMs slightly more attractive in team situations due to the issues of NPC AI and character count on the screen, just for reduced confusion. Conservation of Ninja. It's a solid quality of life improvement for MMs (particularly in the summoning phase when you start out with a 30% end discount) that essentially self-balances their damage and force-multiplication against the number of minions they have active!

We have Robot Arm 1, which replaces your upper right arm with a robot bit and allows you to change your gloves and chest independent of the upper arm. We have Robot Arm 2, which replaces both of your upper arms, and allows you to change your gloves and chest independent of the upper arm area. We have Robot Arm 3, which replaces your right arm, entirely, including some unique full-arm options, and allows you to change your left glove and chest independent of the right arm. So how about Robot Arm 4... Which makes both arms fully replaced? Mostly I just wanna make a character who gets the Cybertech Arm options on both sides, but I bet there's a few people who'd -love- to have the Fire and Ice options on both sides, too!

So hey! Peacebringers suck. Really badly. At every role. There's no reason to take a PB on a 4 star unless they're doing the animation-canceling damage dump that you already intend to fix. Without even that function, PBs will be essentially a carry in 4-stars since they're not as damaging as even a Dominator, marginally more durable than a Scrapper, and have very little in the way of support or control to offset their greater weaknesses. Yes, they can form-change into a Squid to do good ranged damage, but 4 attacks in exchange for suppressing all toggles and being unable to use pool powers or anything is a wild exchange. So my suggestions are as follows: 1) Give 'em .95 in humanform for both ranged and melee damage. So they're still stronger in their forms, but with less versatility, and the humanform is at least useful. 2) Give them a 500% damage cap like damage dealing archetypes. This gives them a higher ceiling to make them more attractive to Kinetics-centric teams. 3) Give them Brute HP values. Bigger than a Scrapper, less than a Tanker, to reflect their reliance on Damage Resistance. And the big one, probably the most controversial: 4) Kill Cosmic Balance as a single inherent and give them three toggled inherents with a 0 end/sec cost. The choices are Offensive, Defensive, and Balanced. Offensive toggle provides procs in the same way Shinobi does "Critical Hits". Defensive adds Punchvoke to attacks and a regen bonus. Balance is basically Cosmic Balance. The goal, there, is to essentially allow you to pick what Archetype you're calling on from the various previously-bonded characters. Even in the different forms. And then, since you plan to do the same kind of mechanics-fix with Warshades... Buff them up this same way. Only make their offensive toggle Scourge instead of Crits and their Defensive toggle provide straight healing per attack instead of regen to play up the "Lifesteal" identity. The end result? 1) Humanform PBs aren't as bad at survival as before, though a Brute is still going to be more survivable and deal more damage when capped (.95x500 is 475, .75x700 is 525) 2) PBs in general will have a better functionality as off-Tanks, but still lake the Aggro-Aura of even a Scrapper. 3) Being in humanform won't be as much of a DPS detriment, though a Blaster, Brute, Scrapper, Sentinel, or Stalker will still do more damage. 4) In Squidform they'll be able to "out-damage" Blasters while capped, but only have 4 attacks, and not be as able to cycle or specialize in ST vs AoE. Especially since Bright Nova Bolt does tiny piddly damage. These changes are also a ton easier to implement than the "Use all Powers in All Forms" suggestions, since they focus on changing up the AT's scalars rather than digging through spaghetti code.

Yes. That's rather the point. That portion of the community would haaaate this powerset and think it's the worst and the rest of us would go have a ton of fun flinging enemies around like ragdolls!

I call it "Chessmaster Control" Power 1: ST Knockback. Power 2: ST Knock Toward. Power 3: Ground Target AoE Knock Left. (If left isn't an option, knockback) Power 4: Power Build Up. Increased Knockback and adds big damage to these knock powers. Power 5: Targeted AoE Knock Right. (If right isn't an option, pulsing knockdown) Power 6: PBAoE Knock to Caster. Power 7: Cone Knockback with massive magnitude. Power 8: Ground Target AoE Pulsing Knock Up and Center. (Animation, flipping the chessboard) Power 9: Pet: Holographic Queen. Do the "Low Rez" body model and then slap one of the crowns onto it. All of it's attacks (Whirling Sword, Headsplitter, Slice, Disembowel) do big knock. Some is back, some is up, some is in. All the powers make black and white squares appear near the target, and then you get a 'gold' line to show where the bishop is moving, or a straight line for a rook, or the L of a knight, etc etc etc. The Tier 2 Knock Toward can be en passant! (This is actually a semi-serious suggestion. It would be interesting to play, but probably a nightmare to balance.)

So... out of curiosity, I zoomed WAY IN on the Crey Biotech image. I recognized Amanda Vines, Dean MacArthur, Jessica Flores, and a few others at the press event... Where is that from, and what's it meant to represent?

Eh. Not my monkeys, not my zoo. If the dev team want people to go to other zones to experience the game world, and they all go to precisely one zone, and that's acceptable, surely allowing them to go to various other zones to experience the game world shouldn't really be a problem. It's up to them to continue their argument that AP should not be the zone people level in, not me. The issue, there, is that people level using papers and radios. Which is why they stay in the zone you're in. A level 15 character getting sent to Talos Island is going to be bouncing to the hospital, repeatedly, while trying to get to their mish.

Okay... So leave Atlas and Mercy out. Problem solved!

With the AE you stand inside a single building entering and exiting a column of light. At least with papers you'd be running around the zone fighting crime!

People go to Peregrine for three reasons: 1) If you're level 40+ your options for running Radio missions (which are what is constantly advertised in LFG) your options are very limited. 2) Most players are Blueside. 3) Shadow Shard is difficult to maneuver around. The density of the mission doors doesn't need to be optimal with these key factors in play. Sure, Dark Astoria could be the preferred zone for radio missions, especially with the incarnate reward options, but then you have to explain how to get to Dark Astoria to newbs. Thanks to the Tunnel portal, Peregrine doesn't really have that problem. Level 1 character needs to get carried? Hit the portal to Peregrine and you're golden. Meanwihle Cimerora requires jumping through a few gates to go in. With this change, we'd probably see a -lot- more hero teams running around Atlas Park (highest filler population)... But is that -really- a problem when most hero teams run exclusively in Peregrine Island, already? In that regard it's just shifting where the Radio Teams spamming for players hang out to wherever it's easier to be. But for people who enjoy specific zones, or want to do a ton of content hanging out in Praetoria post-20, or make their supergroup a "Zone Hero Team" that mostly targets crime in a single place for RP purposes? It's a major boon. Plus people could do radio mishies cross-factionally in Kallisti Wharf, maybe, which could be fun and might result in it becoming a bit of a hub-zone just for a new place to spam radios! So on one hand we've got a boon for RPers and for Variety for anyone who wants it, and on the other hand we've got people making Atlas Park the heart of the game instead of Peregrine Island. That doesn't seem like a heavier thumb on a "Downside", to me.

Blueside they let you do stuff in any zone. Redside, every level 41+ tip mish is in Grandeville, sad to say!

I've also been informed that Message Man and Clockwork A87952 are the Praetorian repeatable mission contacts. Which is great! Now just expand their level range from 1-50...

I mean... the title's it. Let my level 50 character do radio mishies in Cap Au Diable and Brickstown. Add a "Holochannel" for Praetorian Zones to do radio mishies there, too. Still the same old madlibs content generation, just anywhere in the world. Even Hazard and PvP Zones because who the heck cares if someone wants to run around Recluse's Victory fighting pockets of Council or Circle of Thorns bases on instanced maps?

Ahhhhh... that explains it. Thank you! ❤️

I've clicked on a bunch of doors in Cap Au and gotten 0 monsters... Is it limited to specific zones?

Just what it says on the tin. We've got the Winter Horde which are pretty great for when you wanna do a Winter or Snow-Themed storyarc or encounter... but how about the Apocalypse Zombies? I'd love to be able to have Nightmare EBs in my AE Arcs. Same for the Mapserver event's D.O.O.M. minions. Having a "Reality Breaking" NPC with Code Gremlins and Unspecified Error minions could be a lot of fun.

Riotess! The rolling riot. Hard-left political character who supports the Scrapyarders and fights the Family, Tsoo, and Council/Column as her main goal. (Savage/Invuln Brute) Ionique! Cap Au Diable defender, she's a hero in the Isles fighting to protect the citizens of Haven from the Goldbrickers, Vahzilok, and myriad Destined Ones looking to conquer, kill, or crush the isle. (Elec/Elec Sentinel) Fortresse! Protector of Port Oakes, she mostly fights against the Marcones and Verandis in the ongoing war between them, but also fights against the Hellions, the Lost, and the other dangers of the eastern end of the Isla Diable. (SS/WP Brute) The Silversaint. Greek superhero who retreated to the Rogue Isles after receiving a debilitating injury during her superheroic career in Europe. Signing on with the Global Defense Force, she makes the Isles her priority but will fight wherever needed. (Staff/WP Brute)

I'm really struggling on a superhero name for this character: The idea is she's a Rogue Isles Superheroine. Elec/Elec/Mu Sentinel. (Though I may also wind up making an Elec/Elec Dominator version, as well, at some point). Right now she's "Stormlight" with the i for L trick in her name. It's a solid name, for sure. I'm just wondering if I can get something snappier for her. Any thoughts from our thesaurally blessed forumites?

Belladonna Vertrano Tights and Chest Detail. IDF Belt with legstraps. Please? I could make such cool characters with these things.

The only thing I really think would help Storm Blast without making it OP or whatever is just dropping the lockout on the storm procs being target-based. That would make it so multiple Storm characters can work together on a team without stepping on each other's toes, and also make Storm better at fighting AVs/EBs/GMs/Etc than it currently is. Put the proc-lockout as a debuff on the storm pseudopet rather than on the pet's target. Then -my- Storm won't lock out other players, and a single enemy could be struck by multiple procs in sequence (Lightning, Split Lightning, Quad Lightning) if the procs line up well.

What I eventually wound up going for. Focusing almost exclusively on having strong attacks, softcapped S/L, decent S/L resistance, and having enough recharge to have PA up almost permanently. (16 second cooldown) Between them and the Spectral Terror being available every 13 seconds I'm pretty decent at shrugging off large scale Alphas and cleaning up spawns fairly quickly. The character is currently 30 and pretty solid, honestly! She's never going to tear up Pylons in 20 seconds or anything, but that's never been my goal.

There's some really good advice in this thread. Allow me to add a little more: Snipe the everliving daylights out of someone to start the fight. Pick a dangerous Lieutenant, pop aim and build up, and remove them from the equation. Then grab some cover. As a Fire blaster, drop Rain of Fire between you and the enemy group. Sure, overlap -some- but in front of them so they run through it to reach you. The "Avoid Damage" part of the AI may cause some of them to turn around and run away. Since Rain of Fire is a ground target area of effect you can place it around corners while you're enjoying your cover, keeping you from taking all the alpha in one shot. Assess your HP/Defense and how many people are running through the rain. Pop a green if you need it, purples and oranges if it looks like you're going to get run down. Fireball and Breath of Fire as your next two casts on however many of them got through the rain. Then single-target any still-standing lieutenant. The remainder of the spawn should be easy to mop up after that. Mingle in your /Rad melee to tear them up quick and efficient. If you're feeling -particularly- froggy, or none of them run away from the Rain of Fire, drop Inferno instead of fireball/breath of fire for the big AoE damage to wipe the minions, then hit the LTs with your fireball and breath of fire. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.