Six-Six

Yes, that happens sometimes. No matter how good something seems on paper or in your head, sometimes actually running it proves otherwise. I've had fun with Dark/Martial and am having fun with Mind/Savage. I tried Ice/Ice and Fire/Fire and didn't really enjoy it as much as I thought. I had more fun Grav/Energy and (a parked) Elec/Elec but even those two are a far second from the first pair. I recently rolled a Fire/Martial so I'll see how he does. I hope you find a keeper.

I think of Dominators as Trollers with a more direct approach. You got your crowd control powers in your primary, and you have more straightforward attacks both ranged and melee in your secondary. While I enjoy playing both, I tend to lean towards Doms for more active (jump into the thick of things and thrash around) type of play. And I agree, you don't need a lot of def/res if things around you are locked down or dead or dying. However, what I've noticed is that most of my doms are late bloomers. They start off decent if you're careful. But as you hit the 30s and 40s, it's when things get really fun. Maybe it's me, maybe it's you, maybe it's Maybeline. I dunno. Give it a chance to bloom. Level 1-20 is rather misleading. Sort your affairs at 20-30 and you should be able to enjoy dominating with little effort the rest of the game. Also, I just tend to set the Domination button on auto.

I will now be spending the next hour or twelve customising costumes. 😃

It's out! Page 4 is out! oh boy. so many costumes to update 😃

If you can, try to get Group Flight. Flying Bots ARE. DA. BOMB. 😃

Heeheeh... I just thought of a parallel: Blaster: Think Green Arrow or Hawkeye. You've got a bag of tricks for every occasion and you use them all. Sentinel: (Can't think of an existing character, but...) You're a heavily armoured, unstoppable bloke... throwing pointy twigs. Again, I may be a tad biased towards blasters. 😃 Edit: As Page 4 dropped, I got the chance to revisit my old toons and I realised something interesting. I respec-ed 2 in particular, a DP/WP Sentinel and a DP/Nin Blaster. Regarding what I said about chasing certain aspects in each AT, I found that Sentinels can have comparative damage with Blasters especially in the earlier powers. My pistols, dual wield and suppressive fire had higher values for accuracy, damage, and recharge. Of course this came at the price of just barely slotting the WP def/res powers, which still ended up higher than the blaster. Take this with a HUGE grain of salt, though. There were countless other factors involved. But the takeaway still remains the same: Your play style and intended use will be the one to dictate which toon you end up liking. That's not to say you can't like both. 😃 Cheers.

Why not roll both and decide which one you like better. But here are my two inf: I learned the game with Sentinels. They are very forgiving because of their armour and the fact that they are ranged which gives you the additional defensive space between you and your enemy to mitigate the melee half of incoming damage. With that, I think SR on a Sent is the best version of SR. You can minimally slot it with just the globals and an end reduction SO here and there and you're still very very tough. So that's bare minimum. My archery/ninjitsu plays the role of the Tank in our All Archer SG. He's nigh immortal. When I got used to the game's ins and outs, I fell in love with Blasters (I have over 3 dozen now). While the Blaster doesn't have any inherent defences and resistance, you can still get some through the Tertiary and Mastery Pools as well as IO set bonuses. Blasters are all about damage both ranged and melee (though Archery/TA doesn't lend well to blapping), and a few CCs. You don't really need much armour if everything around you will be dead in 2 seconds. Between Tactical Arrow and Super Reflexes, you're basically choosing between crowd control and defences. Playing Dominators and Trollers, I've learned that you don't need defences too much if your enemy is either locked down or dead. But with the Sentinel, you won't mind the damage. Sentinels make up for their underwhelming damage with impressive armour. Blasters are the opposite--high damage with virtually no armour. Sentinels also don't get a snipe attack and generally have a shorter range. (I may be a bit biased towards Blasters). In terms of Inherent AT abilities, I found the Sentinel's Opportunity to be very useful in the lower levels, but rather irrelevant in the highers. Blaster's Defiance offsets your propensity to be mezzed... and you will be mezzed quite a lot. [Edit] I'd like to add that if you go the Sentinel route, you'll be chasing End Recovery (for all your toggles) and Damage bonus. For Blaster, the damage is there, so you're after a bit of End, a bit of Def/res (ranged def for hover blasters), and a bit of recharge. A lot of people compare the two ATs, but the truth is they play different. Give both a try, even just to level 20 (shouldn't take so long) or so to see which one fits your style.

I do that with my MM toons. One build has all 3 tiers of henchmen, and another only has 1. The latter is more for flavour and RP, but optimised enough to be viable for most content. I also used to have a Dual Pistols Sentinel with 3 distinct builds that switched whenever he switched Ammo type: Incendiary rounds + Mace Mastery was built around damage (haha, on a Sentinel, right); Cryo rounds + Ice Mastery was built around slows, holds and -recharge; and Chem rounds + Ninja Mastery for debuff. I even made a macro button for the switch along with a subtle costume change. Again, RP won over Meta as the build switching reset ALL the cool downs so he couldn't really do it in the middle of a fight. Incidentally, 3 sets of purple IOs, pvp IOs and ATOs made it quite expensive. Not sure if it was worth it. Aside from those, I found that rolling a new toon and grinding it over was more fun than just setting up additional builds. Hence why I have 8 Soldiers of Arachnos and 3 Widow/Forts, each with different builds (i.e. Huntsman, Crab, Bane, Hybrid + X mastery, Hybrid + Y mastery, so on). Besides, each toon (and thereby, each build) takes on its own personality. I also have 3 DP/Dev Blasters... again, each one with his/her own personality and slightly different build. I do have plans to make a 2nd build for my PB and WS when page 4 rolls out to try out tri-form... then again, I just might roll new ones and level them up all over again. 😃 I have a friend who uses 1 build for solo and one build for team. I remember chatting with him/her that the 3rd build is more fluid and tailor-fit for specific content.

I don't recall ever having trouble finding Sakai. He does appear on the map, and I feel the progression is intuitive enough to go to the doors. While I agree it doesn't spoon feed you the information, it does teach you feel around and interact with the doors. As for the powers disappearing from the tray, I run Breakout with almost all of my new toons and this has never happened to me. It has happened to toons that I've created, skipped the tutorial and straight to Mercy, THEN being parked for a few days without doing anything. When I log back to the toon, it's powers are gone from the tray.

What kind of monster sets fire to pandas???

I forgot to add that The Hounds of Love in Reunion, one of the top if not the biggest SG on the shard, runs TFs and Incarnate trials with sole purpose and explicit intent of familiarising aspiring players to one day lead them. They're called "casual" in the LFG, IIRC, and are scheduled weekly; and they're advertised and scheduled differently than the "regular" which almost always coincides with the WST and ones aptly labeled "badge" or MO runs. The league leader and his lieutenants of team leaders do a great job of informing everyone what to expect, what to do, what not to do, and tips and tricks that work; they even answer questions people may have regarding certain parts. Of course there are the hecklers and those who still go off on their own inconsiderate of the entire league. but most of the people there behave like they're on a guided tour. I haven't seen the like in Torch, Indom or Ever (the internet gods won't let me play on Excelsior)

While the intent is noble and community building, the saying "you can lead a horse to water..." may triumph in this situation. I suppose the most you can do is advertise TF/SF Familiarisation Run where 1) it's the opposite of Speed Run and 2) you call out basic story, objective, strategic directions, things to watch out for, etc. to get the team members cozy and comfy enough with the run that they might try it themselves. In the end, it will be up to the person to hopefully do the same, or at least grow the hair on their balls to take initiative to start a TF/SF on their own. The wiki has enough info to get anyone started... again if they wanted to... but the specific experience either from personal mistakes or one handed down by a mentor or trainer will still be invaluable. There was a time that I did learn the ins and outs of most TF/SFs by joining both PUGs and friend-led ones over and over (there are still some that I'm as good as a headless chicken during a prostitution raid) and have lead some myself. I also learned that I'm not too fond of PUGs and that I may not be cut out to be a leader. If a team member bit off more than he could chew, strayed from the group, is about to get ganked, or whatever, I just didn't care. I'm not too anal on roles (healer, cc, etc.) but if you can't pull your own weight, at least keep yourself alive so I don't have to double back and rez you. And spoilers, I won't.

cool beans. I didn't know that. still a newb troller. 😃 I am aware of how awesome deceive is. On a slightly different note, I did try (for the first time) the concealment pool for my Beast/ MM. I use Grant Invisibility on my wolves and lions primarily for theme: they're supposed to be stealthy hunters that sneak up on their prey. I tried monitoring their def and while the description says that the def drops when the stealth does, I don't see it in combat attributes. I don't know how to test it further. Another tangent with Group Invis or Grant invis with teams is something I read in another thread. Some people in teams don't like their costumes obscured by stealth powers. This is apart from what @BrandX pointed out about not using stealth to actually stealth.

I may be overly biased, but I think the problem stems from PUGs. in those kind of teams, everyone is just doing his own thing while trying to get through the TF/mission as fast as possible. Not only do they not coordinate, but I get the feeling they're trying to one-up each other by having the most kills... I dunno. I myself am not fond of PUGs. Maybe it's because i've been on really good teams where the members have coordinated attacks. For example, when I run missions with my friend, he and I --both blasters-- have an unspoken rule that he takes the right half of the mob while I take the left so as not to waste both of our snipes on one bloke. I've also witnessed probably one of the best "tanking" I've seen in years: this was when a tank jumps across the room which was filled with 2 mobs and us to yank aggro off a scrapper with a sliver of health left. Very impressive. And when we go for the pull, the tank of the team does his thing while the rest of us wait the ambush... except the stalker. Nobody minds the stalker. 😃

Go to Options > Windows then scroll down to Status Window Buff Display and make sure Hide Auto Powers is Disabled. From my experience, those icons seem to be lag-dependent and will sometimes disappear if you're suffering from considerable connection issues. If you haven't tampered with the Options settings, then they eventually return on their own.

It is. In Reunion, there were Invader tours (don't know if it's still a thing) every week, sometimes several times a week. Some bloke with Schweinzer as a contact and knowledge of the markers takes a team to all the exploration badges with the bank jobs optional. go in, get the badge, get out, next city. takes less than half an hour.

I only took superior invisibility. Its stealth is as good as Stalker Hide that I can stand in the middle of a mob and pick their noses without them noticing. I didn't want to make phantom army invisible with group invisibility as it defeats the purpose of them taking initial aggro instead of me. /dark has Shadow Fall, which I didn't take, but I did take Fade for a panic button. I don't think Time has any stealth powers. If you're talking about concealment pool it would seem redundant, besides, the def you get is only active when you're not being attacked... (though my combat attributes sometimes says otherwise, but I combat attributes is sometimes not on the level with the stats) which yeah you don't want to be, but it defeats the purpose of defence once you do get attacked.

@biostem until that happens, I try to make do with some of the auras like starburst glow and beast rage. some of the others have a surprisingly nice effect with the stalker-level stealth. 😃

Sorry... don't mind me. Had a comment but... yeah, nah. don't mind me.

I wish they'd roll out the wyvern jetpacks one of these days. Here's mine. But @Virtual Green's is much better. 😃

I feel ya. I sometime lose interest in a toon when I find out that a certain power hides or obscures the costume I spent time on. The latest one was my Warshade that turned into a walking Fluffy because of Shadow Cloak. It was making me choose between defense stats and looking good. Hard choice. This is also the main reason why I rarely play Stalkers. While most have a No FX option, some will also let you minimise the effects by playing around the customisation. In general, I've found colouring something Bright but with one of the darker blues/ultramarines work best (the black/grey leaves a haze sometimes). Other than that, I join you in your plight. Moreover, i wish the "stealth" levels of costumes/powers would be in the form of a slider, or at least something that you can control the opacity or transparency of your character.

@Ukase I feel ya. KB is our friend. Took me about a year trying out different ATs, powers and strategem. It was frustrating to die around late 40 and starting from scratch. But now I'm used to all of it, notoriety settings, no P2W, everything... that I play every toon with the mindset of permadeath. When some of them do die, I feel a great loss and have to take a step back to decide if the toon is casual enough to continue with a death on his conscience or if he's serious enough to be rerolled to try again. Most of my failed hard core toons die from lag or being mapserved and logging back in sprawled on the floor. haha. but a death is a death. While the fear of death has made the game much more fun, challenging and overall interesting for me, the downside is that it prevents me from joining most TFs and PUGs, thereby forcing me to solo most of the time.

@AspieAnarchy You are correct. You did explain it right off the bat. Sorry, I misunderstood. My bad.

I prefer the long way of the Invader. 1) Visit a broker to unlock Newspaper at level 5 2) Do X number of paper missions to get a bank job from a bookie 3) Rob a bank, get the exploration badge, earn a nifty temp power in the process 4) Repeat every 5 levels If you do miss/out-level a bank job, as one does doing villainous things all over town, then you can go to Lord Schweinzer. He's usually unlocked by the time I'm 40+ due to the content of the regular missions. Then you can do the mayhem missions over and over as there are other badges to be earned in them. The accolade isn't that important to me, so I'm never in any rush to get it. Besides, the 7th bank mission will award you a +max hp temp power (good for 24hrs in-game) while the 6th one gives +max end. That's like getting the Atlas medallion and TF Commander at level 35. And if you're so inclined, you can pick up other stuff if you beat up the right people. What's more is you can do this solo. And probably my most favouritest-est reason of all: you can destroy stuff and kill civilians. Red side is the best side.

I personally am struggling to find the motivation and logic behind this suggestion. Is it a rename of existing powers (Rad Blast and Atomic Manipulation) with a few switched powers thrown in? Is it a totally new power set? Because if it is the latter, then 1) some of its primary powers are redundant with the secondary. Now I know nothing of code, but I'm anticipating such redundancy may cause some problems. 2) it sure seems a helluvalot like Rad Blast and Atomic Manipulation. And if it's the former, why are we fixing something that aint broke? It sounds like a rather selfish request to satisfy a personal preference rather than a well thought of suggestion to improve a set. Additionally, I don't think it would be fair to the existing Blaster primaries for this proposed one to have 2 melee attacks while the others sets don't. In doing so, aren't you stepping into Dominator territory? Alternatively, the OP may want to try Peacebringers. The animations and powers are quite similar to Rad, and you get a nice mix of melee and ranged attacks as well as ST and AoEs. @srmalloy I hear ya! it irks me to no end how "most people" perceive all things radioactive as green. I always make it a point to change the colour of my rad toons. For all intense porpoises, Radiation blasts should be invisible to the naked eye. 😃