ninja surprise

Yep - in-game stats show: Power Range: 40.00 ft. Effect Area: AoE -- 3.00 ft. radius (5 targets max) Attack Types: melee defense, lethal defense

Thanks! I'm going to give this a port to my current project: Axe / Electric Armor. I always had a soft spot for Battle Axe and the new version of it is a blast. My two other favorite brutes are: Miraculass - Staff / Invuln. Such a fun combo and concept with a secret identity and CC emotes. Fleas- Savage / Bio. Another superfun combo for when I feel like being more involved with clicking the Bio powers instead of being on Invuln's cruise control invincibility. On Live my favorite brute was Super Strength / Elec but I still haven't had the heart to recreate it. I still have the saved costumes though! I ported the concept over to a Peacebringer. New Battle Axe is a blast! The tornado attack is a sweet way of clumping up a spawn so you can chop 'em up. If you activate it while moving (like jumping from one spawn to another) it sucks them all through the air with you and drops 'em at your feet. It's hilarious! I was surprised to see that the T9 is a 40' ranged PBAoE and it's tremendously useful. They buffed one other attack into a PBAoe, so you have three AoEs and three single-target attacks, pretty good balance and dishes out plenty of damage with every attack doing knockdown. It uses a ton of endurance though, which is why I went with Electric Armor for the end recovery. Previously tried it with SR but burned out the blue bar so fast it wasn't funny. It'd be great with Bio, Energy Aura, Fire, or anything else with a Consume power to keep the pain train going.

I got into Doms because I like reading build & concept posts on the forums and keep thinking, "OOOO that looks like fun!" Got an Ice/Nrg, Fire/Fire, Mine/Savage, and Dark/Martial each to 50 before giving up on them and switching to back Controllers and Blasters because the Doms just didn't seem to have the same survivability or defeat things quickly enough. Now I'm trying an Illusion/Martial because I have a sweet concept the Dark/Martial didn't quite match, so hopefully the fun quotient will outweigh the wimpiness.

... or make Phantasm look like a giant toad.

Dual Blades is a ton of fun because of all the sweet animations. I take all the attacks, don't worry about super high recharge, and just click whatever attack is up. This way I can slot my attacks for +Def/Resist/Health bonuses and I don't get locked into clicking the same attacks over and over. Everything dies fast enough that I'm happy.

Your build looks really spiffy but I can't live without Orbiting Death. I'm trying a variation where I keep it as a one-slot wonder. I just love its visual effects!

I don't know if it's coincidental timing but there was a game change that buffed the mez and other side effects of baddies. It was most noticeable on Crey. Doing a Manticore right after the change, it took us all by surprise and we wiped a bunch. For a Human Warshade, you have to make use of the Hold and Stuns at your disposal. If you stack the AoE stun with Inky you should be able to mez most the spawn and hold a dangerous lieut.

Interesting build! Do you mostly play in Dwarf, and do blasting in Human form?

(hate it when the forum does that)

And the other big difference is which powers you get when exemp'd for TFs, etc. If you'd rather have attacks, go Brute, if you want armor, go Tank. Same for Corruptors vs Defenders. I wonder how the upcoming typed defense change will affect Invuln tankers in particular, but also everyone else who capped S/L defense that'll now get ignored.

Wohoo thank you so much! If you want to add some icing on this strudel is it possible to: Make Amy targetable but immune to teleport to it's possible to select her and search for her with a targeting bind? Remove Ghost Widow's fly from that TF where you have to gather Scirocco, GW, Black Scorpion, etc and lead them to a big room? She flys into the ceiling or floor and gets stuck too. Thanks for all the fixes!

One the one hand there's the pure numbers, on the other hand there's look & feel. Since Fire supposedly gives up all mitigation and other secondary effects in exchange for pure damage, Savage and Staff with their knockdowns and self-buffs and other secondary effects perform better overall than Fire's middling damage spread out as DoTs.

Savage Leap is fine for damage in melee, it just doesn't build as much Blood Frenzy when you use it close to your target. But if you have it loaded with procs (I have the +Crit proc in there) it's fine to use it any time it's up. What's even better is if you have Combat Teleport to TP yourself backwards and then Leap back for the +Frenzy bonus. I'll sometimes just Combat Jump backwards and Leap forwards again, but usually just Leap in place for the Procs. I really liked my Savage/Bio but re-rolled as a Brute to get more hit points into Bio.

Savage is good with a +Dam secondary like Shield or Bio. Just have to get used to some DoT damage ticking by. Both it and Staff are still better than Fiery Melee. Fire is such a disappointment. Yes, a -KB IO turns Mass Levitate into Mass Backflip. It's pretty funny. I paired Psi Melee with / Stone to add the +Fire secondary effect onto the Psi attacks to maximize elemental damage. Yeah, I think my first toon on Homecoming was Spines/Ice because I thought two damage auras and stacking slows would be neat. I got it to 50, kept IO'ing it out, trying to make it better... but when I get that Tips mission with Devouring Earth and they drop that stupid Cairn that buffs their damage resistance and I can't defeat the stupid pile of dirt with my 3 single target attacks... poor Iceberg Lettuce has been languishing on the back page of my alts list for a long time now.

Also: Stone Armor was the newest, so takes time to catch up. It can be good but if Yomo is noise-sensitive, Mud Pots sounds a little like someone chewing. It can easily be silenced with the sounds mod though. Having a good combo of sounds and animations is super important! I have a blast with my Savage/Bio toon, Fleas. Minimal FX makes it look like he just has some bugs hopping off. I like the Savage slashing sounds and Bio's slurping sounds. It's a good pairing of clicking activity and can solo the Eden trial. But for a good quiet combo I like Dark Melee / Super Reflexes. It's my main main. WELL.. except Soul Drain can be loud when you hit the target cap. Ice Armor has some nice sound FX like an iceberg breaking and clicks for healing, and endurance/defense. I want to like Fiery Aura except Blazing Aura makes my eyes hurt the way it pulses. Ninjitsu, Shield, and SR are all pretty quiet. But Shield and SR are set-and-forget unless you click the Mez; Ninjitsu has two clickies for End and Healing. Dark has some spooky noises if I recall correctly. I haven't played Radiation, Invulnerability, Willpower, or Regen enough to remember those sounds.

I used to LOVE Mystic Flight with the free TP power. Then I started using Combat Jumping with Teleport 3-slotted with Zephyr for set bonuses and I can't go back. P2W power when I need to fly/hover. If they ever fix it so that MF's TP can be enhanced and it really gets the free slots the combat chat says it gets while leveling up I'll try it out again. Personally I prefer taking Tough on SR for +6% Def and a couple other set bonuses and I turn it on occasionally when fighting lots of S/L enemies. Weave gets a few more set bonuses and gets me through Incarnate content. And with both I can slot sets with more flexibility than having to only chase +Def set bonuses (like +Rech and some Toxic/Psi resistance).

Yep, cheapest way to go is to craft your drops. You can even come out ahead crafting and buying a few converters to turn a random IO into one you need. I'll do that for Healing and Defense IOs and some other ones. Get a random Healing IO, craft it, convert it into a Numina or Preventive Medicine, and save 4mil inf. Same for getting Luck of the Gambler from Serendipity, etc. Or if you need the proc from a set and there's none for sale, there's usually a ton of the Dam/End or whatever the Uncommon recipe is. I'll buy ~5 of the uncommons, convert them all to the Proc and sell 4 to make my inf back.

Depends on what you mean by "a lot" but it's pretty simple: Take Tough/Weave. Two-slot Tough with the two Unique +Def from Gladiators and Steadfast. Slot up Weave and your 3 toggles. (And take all 3 passives and one or two slot them with Defense.) Then just 6-slot a couple each of Eradication, Touch of Death, and Mako's Bite and BAM soft-cap. When you have inf up the wazoo you can switch to the Scrapper ATOs and some Winter sets. Expanding on this: Level-locked IOs (like a level 33 Touch of Death) are always level 33, give a specific enhancement value (like +22.4% to Acc/Dam) and if you have a set of them, give the set bonus if you are level 30 or higher. An Attuned ToD can be slotted when you are level 22 and would give a level 25 enhancement value. Your set bonuses will be active from level 22 on up through 50. The attuned IO levels up with you until it hits max value at level 40 (24.1% to Acc/Dam). So the benefit to Attuned is you can get a max enhancement value at high levels while still keeping set bonuses at low levels. BUT there are also Enhancement Boosters and you can put up to 5 on an IO. So if you take that level 25 ToD and +5 boost it, it'll give about 25% buff to Acc/Dam, better than that level 40 Attuned IO. You'll still have the same set bonuses for the same levels as if it were attuned, and it performs better all the time than the attuned. See https://archive.paragonwiki.com/wiki/Enhancement_Booster_Salvage You can trade Merits for Boosters or buy them for ~1.1 million inf each. Attuned IOs cannot be boosted at all. Another thing you need to know about the market: it magically converts anything posted for sale to whatever level you're buying it at, or attuned. Example: Joe Farmer farms up, crafts, and posts for sale a level 50 Touch of Death Acc/Dam. You type /ah and look in Attuned / Melee / Touch of Death and see an Acc/Dam, and buy it attuned. The AH automagically turned the lvl 50 into your attuned when you bought it! So don't waste money on buying Catalysts, just buy IOs already attuned. In summary, go Attuned for cheapness and maximum flexibility, or boost for maximum enhancement value. As a returning player you need to know that Supergroup bases are completely free! Go into City Hall, register yourself a SG, then go build a base with storage. As you gather salvage and IOs you can store them in your base to share with your alts. Use the command /altinvite to invite all your toons into your SG without needing another player. And WELCOME HOOOOOOOOOOOOOME!

The auto powers also give you defense debuff resistance. Elude's optional but not a waste. It's a power that gives you the equivalent of combined Speed Boost, Accelerate Metabolism, and Force Fields. If you run out of endurance and toggle drop you can hit Elude and get insta-capped defense and regain endurance while fighting with buffed recharge and movement speed. PLUS IT ACTIVATES WITH A FRIGGIN DOUBLE BACKFLIP. It's one of the best T9's but still crashes with a complete end drain so you better be somewhere safe or have gotten some blue inspirations while it's up.

To keep things fresh I tried this with Brutes. We failed. The team was all 50's but only only about half were T3, some were just a couple Vet levels, and there were some wacky builds. We had a Street Justice/SR who hadn't taken any of the toggles except Focused Fighting and had all the attacks from the Fighting pool (but not Tough or Weave). He died a lot. In the last mission we could not defeat any of the Phalanx. Didn't matter what we summoned (nobody had Signature summons, just whatever random temps or Lore pets). We almost beat Yin but then the team wiped. Tried to defeat Numina and wiped again. My Staff/Invuln had done fine the rest of the TF but now would get defeated fast if Dull Pain was down. After 4 or 5 team wipes I had to leave to meet friends IRL so I don't know how it ended. It didn't look good though.

I'm totally jealous! Congrats on the run! Gotta go for Silver next time! I did a +3 KHTF instead. It was a blast. We had a couple first-timers and a good mix of Tanks, Brute, Corrupters, and an Earth controller that kept the Mary spawns in place. Every once in a while a squishy would wander off and get stabbed but we still finished in under 30 minutes. This is a fun game.

Dang, missed it by 15 minutes.

Excelsior also.

Yep both are the weekly so lots of people running both. Anyone up for a try? I'll be on my Bio/DM, code name: Lumpy Puncher.

Good tips all! I have envenomed daggers but no signature summon. It would be really funny to have all 8 tanks pull out 8 Posi clones to fight the Phalanx! I'll also need to get a Jetpack to fight the Longbow flyer things, since I can't attack from a Void Skiff and Combat TP doesn't keep me close long enough to do much damage.