Zewks

Thanks for filling in the (snarky) details for me. I mean, I admitted my ignorance in the post, I never played these sets. What I was mostly going on was watching others who WERE playing these sets, and how they seemed to always take a good chunk of time getting everyone all buffed up. Guess Ill pay more attention to exactly what they are doing next time 😛

(TLDR version in quote box) I dont play a lot of Defenders, corruptors, or controllers (or even MMs for that matter). A large part of this decision not to play them, is just the sheer amount of "prep time", and finagling with the controls and UI that has to be put in every 3-4 minutes of gameplay. I started my MMORPG experience with Asherons Call 1, so Im no stranger to "the buffing process". Casting all those short lived buffs on your character and then on each armor piece you had (head, chest, upper arms, lower arms, hands, legs, feet - unless you wore a full body robe which reduced this to just head, body, gloves and feet). Took you a solid minute (including potential spell buff fizzles) to fully buff yourself. Only to then jump into a dungeon for the 9 remaining minutes you had to try to fight a bit and still get out with the buffs just wearing off to repeat the process. Now CoH isnt quite this bad 😛 However, take something like Cold Domination. In a full group, thats 2 powers per person you have to cast every group member, for a total of 16 power usages. With cast animation and lag, its about 1.5 seconds per power usage. This means fully prepping your team is going to take a solid 24 seconds assuming you arent wasting any other time. And at lower levels, end can be an issue, causing you to pop some inspirations, or wait a few more seconds for end to recharge. And this is a process that you have to repeat every 4 minutes (or closer to every 3.5 minutes). TLDR: This would dramatically help with the slog of "prep time" required for these types of support powers (MM's might enjoy it as well), but it would still keep the normal single target powers useful for in combat situations. IE: Say the powers drop but people arent paying attention. Now its up to the support player to pull a clutch save and get the buffs up and running in the middle of combat, one at a time. Now this is just my personal opinion. I know id be much more willing to play these types of power sets if the "prep time" wasnt as annoying. Im sure others probably disagree, but it would still be interesting to hear thoughts from those with experience playing these sets, and those who might be staying away from them.

Nice, this is great info! Do you find ninja's struggling with no resists even though their defenses are soft capped? And for keeping Fortitude up on all 6 pets... thats basically having to buff a unique pet at least every 20 seconds if not sooner. Did you set up any sort macro to help out with this?

Seems to be some overall lack of balance between some of the pets based on those values. Specifically with Ninjas But thats just on first glance

The the pets types themselves dont get any inherent bonuses to defense compared to each other?

So from the idea of "Easiest to hit the defense softcap" to "hardest to hit it", how would you rank the different MM pet groups? IE: Undead, Beasts, Bots, etc).

I think this attempts to do what Ive felt has been missing for awhile in a lot of the help and guides that exist... Namely, targeting new players who are NOT level 35+, who dont have any money to twink their characters. A guide that doesnt just say "All builds are viable with the right enhancements and incarnates". So I appreciate what the OP is doing, but at the same time, I have to say, there are a couple of things I disagree with. 1. Enhancements. Hitting things A single Accuracy SO in each attack power/pet DOES make a difference. 33% isnt something that is trivial. Its hitting 1 time out of 3, in a situation where you would miss 100% of the time. Missing in this game just feels bad. Especially at low levels where you have so few attacks in your rotation. Hitting your targets is more important than boosting your damage. If you dont hit, you do 0 damage. At the very least, I recommend maintaining at least 1 of these SO accuracy enhancements on each power that needs to hit. Another area I feel does absolutely benefit from enhancement at low levels: Healing things Heals benefit from 2 enhancements even at levels below 10. - Recharge: Having at least one 33% recharge on a heal can make the difference of getting that clutch heal in time or getting killed. Most heals have at LEAST a 10 second cooldown, many have much longer. Reducing this recharge time by 33% is pretty huge. Even at 10 seconds, reducing it by 3 seconds means getting that heal off before another 1-2 attack hit you from just one enemy. - Heal: Again, being healed for more is nothing to turn away from. Means you can recover from a bigger attack better, and as a MM, this is extremely helpful with your Pets who should be taking the brunt of the damage. Much easier to heal a pet, than have to resummon and then rebuff that pet. Focusing just on these 2 areas specifically for enhancements (rather than none) will greatly smooth out your play experience at lower levels. 2. Stamina Rather than saying "Stamina doesnt matter, until it does", I think this should be focused more on giving the right tips. Stamina for many new players DOES matter right at the start, because they are doing things they dont realize arent very resourceful. IE: - Turn off your travel power in combat - Turn off sprint in combat - Dont use a toggle just because you have it, sometimes they arent even needed but will drain stamina and reduce its ability to regen. - Dont use AoE attacks against one target (or often even 2). AoE attacks take a large amount of stamina - If you ARE going to use a toggle power, its probably worth slotting at least one Endurance reduction enhancement on it to lower its cost by 33%. 2 is optimal, but at low levels for a new player, might not be feasible. All of these things can obviously be countered later in the game, with proper enhancements to reduce stamina usage, as well as improving stamina regen. But early on for a new player, these wont be reliable solutions.

First time really dealing with a level 50 blaster... just curious if the numerous amounts of experience out there has determined the best alphas for them, particularly for Water primary.

Just curious. Seems a lot of the various primary defense power sets give you either high defense, or high resist, but not both. Meaning you will need to pick up the slack for the stats that are lacking by using other means. While there are many ways to lessen damage done to you outside of resists/defense, my primary question here is simple: "When it comes to IO sets, which is easier to build for? Additional +Defense, or additional +Resists??"

Not real familiar with the mechanics of this, or pseudo pets. If someone is willing to explain, that was be appreciated.

These types of posts really need to be separated into 3 unique categories: 1. Playing 1 to 49 with no twinking 2. Playing at 50 without twinking or many incarnates 3. Playing at 50, fully decked out in min/maxed IOs and incarnates. Mostly because there is a HUGE difference between all 3 of these gameplay points. When you have someone suggesting advice for #3 when someone is looking for advice for #1 or #2, it ends up not being relevant or very helpful. Likewise, a level 50 (even without proper IOs) is going to play a lot different than a level 30, just because they have all their powers and slots. Much easier even with standard SOs to meet desired performance levels at 50 than it is at 30. Its important for all the Veteran players wanting to help, to better parse the info the person asking for help is giving to avoid this. For example, in this post: From that alone -- Rampant alt-o-holism: chances are they dont have many fully decked out characters, meaning probably not a lot of resources to min/max enhancements while leveling/playing alts. -- doubts they will get them to 50: This clues us into how they arent gonna be power leveling, and how they most likely wont be leveling super fast. Means they probably arent doing ramped up mission difficulties (certainly not +4/8). Means they most likely arent twinking their character as they play. These 2 things alone should help us steer our advice to things that are practical for the player. -- Classes/builds that are reasonable with unoptimized enhancements slotted (probably no IOs) -- Not having the full assortment of powers available to the class for a good portion of the gameplay. Early powers need to allow for smooth, survivable gameplay on their own. -- Not having soft capped defense/resists/recharge, etc. If the class isnt very tough or tanky on its own, probably not worth recommending. This rules out unhelpful advice like "Blasters with the right IOs can solo tank things just fine". I dont want to sound unappreciative of those wanting to help, but this has been a big frustration for myself in this game, getting advice that WAY overshoots the scope of what Im actually going to be doing in the game.

Maybe im missing something, but both in game and in Mids, it says Single Target

I find that playing a character, especially when leveling up, is an absolute chore when that character has little or no AoE damage output. At higher levels, especially in groups, when people are running +4/8, having 90% of your attacks be single target when there are 20 enemies grouped up around you, just feels bad. Curious how others cope or get around this limitation when running MA?

I've read all the farming guides, and most seem to be built around active/afk farming of AE missions. Even the active maps bore me. Id much rather do normal missions, but I understand that those have a vast variety of enemy types, damage types, etc, which makes it much harder to min/max a defense strategy against them. I also understand that there will probably always be at least one thing that a tank/brute is going to be hurt by. Knowing that, Im basically looking for a general build combo to handle 75% of what might get thrown at me in missions. Also something that is more actively played, rather than just standing there letting aoe do their procs. More budget friendly the better, as im not rich. Any suggestions?

This is my concern. If Corr is able to have the same end result as defender with its support/buff/debuff powers "capping" out, but still have higher dps, I question why anyone would choose defender? Regardless, I ended up going Dark/DP Defender. The Dark powers are fire and forget, but they have such long activation times that its usually a bit before I can start using my attack powers.