Scarlet Shocker

I worded that completely wrong. I thought they were more susceptible to sleep (didn't know about Immobs) - and couldn't resist it so easily but I got it arse about face so to speak. Thanks for your correction

I think I read that AVs are immune to sleep - so this seems a good option

Salt Crystals is "paralyzed with fear" - and I'm also a big fan of quicksand. But Melt Armour is also very good, though perhaps less easy to explain conceptually. How effective is bio armour's taunt effect?

It's been so long since I ever took Super Jump that I did not actually know it had a "bonus power" these days

Thanks for reminding me how amazing this game is. It's easy to become a bit blase about how excellent this game is and the choices it offers, the differences in character and builds and actually the simple achievement of getting to 50 and enjoying the game for what it is. Sometimes we forget how lucky we really are - but it's posts like this that bring it back home. It's fantastic to discover another person's joyful journey - that's why we're a community.

ok I'm gonna take it back. I have used this power in anger now and it does perform much better than I at first believed. I still can't say I love it but I do recognise that my initial assessment of it was perhaps unduly harsh. I can see myself taking it again, especially if I could work out a way to make the footstomp be a key click rather than a mouse click.

This is the aura Glow in the costume creator. I see no evidence of it working. Other auras, including Glowing Aura (immediately below Glow) works fine but Glow does not show in any way shape or form I can see. I would also say that Slime has issues. You can see where the aura lands but not the drops of slime itself. There may be a rendering issue. I don't know if it's just huge but there are certainly visual issues.

I have this concept of a Tank/Brute (undetermined which at this point) that is based around a fearsome monstrous character that appears out of nowhere, terrorizes mobs and then batters seven bells out of them. Yes, there is a big nod to Swamp/Man-Thing here (I was a big fan of Man-Thing when he had his own book and ran with Howard the Duck) but this is more "urban" and much less esoteric than Moore's iteration of ST. I'm thinking of Bio Armour and Elec Melee as core power sets but with Force of Will & Presence as significant pool powers - plus a touch of Stealth and perhaps Pyre Mastery or Earth Mastery to give me a pool (I love both Melt Armour and Quicksand as powers - and they both give me a good -Def component) I do not know BA at all. so not sure if there are any Must have or avoid powers in it - I've been told anecdotally there's nothing you can drop from Bio - and it does give me that kind of Science-wrought mutation thing that then allows me to shock my enemies and his visage is so terrifying that they are rooted in fear or run screaming from his presence. His origin is probably science - I have it loosely as a scientist working for Crey - a lightweight power suit much more flexible and adaptable than existing the bulky Crey power suits we're all familiar with - but in field tests was thrown into a pool of toxic goop/DE shit when caught and battered by Jurrasik causing the experimental new micro-batteries to embed themselves in his skin, thus fusing his polarizing armour to his skin (but controllable for limited periods of time so he can appear human) and allowing him to project electric bolts when fighting. Because I'm taking two pools I know very little of, I find myself skipping a lot of electric powers - I also want Stealth to ensure I can creep up on foes unexpectedly - conceptually this is more about being able to merge with the environment and suddenly appear rather than being sneaky. I'd welcome your input into making this kind of concept real and advise on what I should (not) do. I also have an immediate question re Stealth. Given its recent modification to Invis is there any benefit to a Stealth Proc in Sprint to combine with the Stealth Power. (from the description it seems infiltration isn't such a good choice for combat but might fit the concept well - but Stealth does give me a proc slot which I'm short of otherwise. The purpose here is to build a fun concept toon with a twist, and not necessarily to min/max but if I can make it extremely strong I would be very happy with that. I should stress before I go because I don't think I was explicit enough that Fear is the thing. This PC's USP is the terror he creates in his victims. TIA for all incoming advice

I wrote the lore and the lore one 😞

I thought we'd have a go again tonight but I'm wondering if we'd be better off in Excelsior rather than Reunion. I'll be doing some shouts tonight over there around 7:30pm - feel free to join me

A wise man once said "Let Experience Guide You"

I actually have an active dislike of things such as rep - it can quickly become a way of trolling and is inherently divisive. Worse it often has a negative impact on newcomers who come to a forum and see a tonne of people with big reps and they have nothing. It can lead to a sense of elitism; us vs them. Getting rid of it is a verygoodthing(tm) in my book

you know that's not your browser, right? 😶

one of the things I loathe in the (mostly) rich lore of this game is the whole Well of the Furies shtick about how we gain Incarnate powers. It's incredibly poorly written, but the premise itself just grates on me like nails down a blackboard. "A wizard did it" would've been a far better explanation. I hate it for a number of reasons - not the least of which is we're suddenly gifted power by this otherworldly poorly explained thing that just "well it respects power so you get some too" with a horribly written backstory that reads like a badly produced clip show from your very favourite TV series. Trapdoor? Really? It feels like a completely missed opportunity to do something interesting with character development. It might have been nice to turn it into something related to character origins. It could have put the whole science, tech, natural, mutation, magic stuff to bed in a productive way, as an example - a nice idea that was never well utilized in game. I get that the whole thing needed content and I don't hate the later incarnate content - some of those TFs are fantastic, but the whole thing that actually turns you into an Incarnate lacks imagination and seems poorly thought out.

hi @Repodude If it helps you any, there's a small band of us running red content on Reunion a couple of times a week. Very casual and we're only lowbies still so if that's of interest you'd be welcome to join us whenever we run

I miss the days when we could confuse Vazhilok bombers and they'd blow their own teams up. Warwolves are weak to holds but a bitch to immobilize

It used to be that swapping builds was a complex process so it seemed that unless you did something like dedicated PVP and PVE there was little point to it. I don't know if that's changed but I struggle to see real benefits of multiple builds

Hopefully the OP will now have some idea of the versatility of this amazing game and have plenty of experiences to try 😄

I'm with you all the way on this. I get that you have a multitude of powers and should use (al)most all of them - sure, take a couple of powers for proc mules ( do that myself from time to time) that get very little use but I do believe in working within a team rather than being one 1/8th of a solo On Defiant live there were many "All Defender" TFs, especially ITF and LG. They always seemed to go down well and it would seem that Defs are the mean to which every other AT regresses.

That kind of goes without saying. You can play any toon and not play any of their main powers. It's why people have petless MMs.

Here I am not asking for specific builds, but rather principles of a good build. I've been playing with a range of Defenders (several are poison based as the more alert of you may have already spotted) but when I come to build one in Mids it seems to be... lacking: Mid-range Def that's neither here nor there, and difficult to get much Res either. So when designing a Defender, what should my optimals be to get the best out of it? I am presuming that this might vary depending on power sets chosen. Clearly play-style is also very important. Personally I like to team but have the ability to solo when required - so I might call myself a "Jack of all trades" - the Handyman build if you will.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squadron_Supreme Essntially they are JLA reimagined by Mark Grunewald for Marvel. It is a very good story and the trade is still available so far as I know. Also JMS did have a limited run retelling that story for the 21st century which was really interesting but sadly didn't go the distance.

I think <most> patron powers and APPs have a snipe. I'm a little ambiguous about what you're meaning in snipe for the purposes of this post. There are not really any ATs that operate at range with precision, for their major powers. Even blasters and other "ranged" ATs have a significant melee/close quarters combat element. That said, as has already been expressed, many power sets have at least one set with a very long range precision shot. But even the gun sets only have one. So not really a snipe. Approaching your question from a different angle (feel free to correct me if I'm doing it wrong) it could be that you want to play some kind of military guy with a BFG - Possibly a character inspired by a one Mr F Castle perhaps, or even Wesley from Wanted? If that is the kind of vibe you seek, I'd suggest that the rifles in the game are a tad underwhelming, both beam and assault and may lead to disappointment. However all is not lost. A Soldier of Arachnos VEAT that follows his beginning path to lvl 50 (if you're unaware you're guided and advised to choose a divergent pathway in your early 20s from memory) can be an excellent "bloke with a BFG" - and frankly if you want to walk into a room and deliver a sea of orange numerals consistently that is a very fine way to go. It does give a feel that it was inspired by Samuel L Jackson's AK47 speech in Jackie Brown (an otherwise largely forgettable movie IMO.) I shall refrain from posting the transcripted words here because when I was a kid my granny would kick my arse for using bad language but I'm sure you can find a reference on Youtube or similar if you absolutely, positively, need to. That does also give you some decent long range attacks which you can enhance with Patron pools to give him/her your own flavour. Have fun experimenting

my point is that I don't want the effect to be from an aura but rather a "full bright" effect of the eye/glass/shield itself - so that the surface material appears to either glow or reflect or be backlit. In the same way that we can cover our skin in the bright fluorescent Spectrum layer on our costumes.

He should really be on castors