WumpusRat

Closest thing I have to that is a character that's a mastermind in a mech that she can only use for a limited time (it's got power source issues). In her "base" form she's got an energy rifle and a couple of force blasts from her gauntlets. Then she can "power up" by calling in a mecha (using a prismatic costume of a cataphract) that can deploy smaller mech to fight alongside it in battle.

I play on an ultra-wide, so I've got a lot of screen real estate to watch stuff explode. I'm at work at the moment so I can't post it, and I tried drawing it in paint but...my drawing skills with a mouse are terribad. 🙂 But I'll post a screenshot when I get home!

Forming ITF, no tankers, no brutes, no scrappers, no stalkers, no dominators, no controllers, no defenders, no corruptors, no blasters, no masterminds, no sentinels. Good players only.

You could also have made the character a scrapper, and just taken the weapon mastery epic pool. It would mean not having your "batarangs" until 35th level, but you could have batarangs, exploding batarangs, caltrops, etc.

A story arc where you start off (falsely) imprisoned by Longbow and have to bust out, break some heads, and either clear your name (for vigilante types) or just prove they were dumb to try and contain you (for redsiders) would be a fun arc. 🙂

I take breaks every now and then, sometimes for a few months at a time. I just got back from one, in fact. I started to hit "burnout" (though that term isn't completely accurate, as I wasn't tired of the game itself) when I realized I was near the end of finishing up all my "D&D adventurers in Paragon" builds. I've made 30 of them, and ran out of classes to create builds for, and didn't have a new concept to jump into yet. So, I took a break for a bit. But now I have a new idea for a group of characters, so I'll be starting to get those up and running. 🙂

I don't "hate" any of the Phalanx. I nothing them. I don't really feel anything about them at all. None of the characters are very interesting to me, and they're basically just 'generic icons who you're supposed to look up to'. Well, except Manticore. He's the only one I feel anything towards, and that's just amusement at how many times you get to cave his face in on redside. The redside "Who Will Die?" arc lets you kick his ass like...four times? Five? Something like that.

Yeah, trying to get it done in PI is pretty much a lost cause most of the time. Nobody wants to leave the hotel-farm. Last year I got a bunch of them done because someone was organizing them in other zones when they'd pop up, and we'd all swoop in and start working on them. A large part of it also is that the halloween event is still in the first couple weeks, so everyone's trying to farm up. Once a lot more people get their farming done I'm sure they'll start looking at the other events for it, same with the haunted house mission, etc.

Beast/Nature works very well, and is thematic for a "druid" type. For my D&D characters-in-Paragon, the druid is a beast/nature MM. She has near-perma overgrowth (it's off by about 5 seconds, I think), so they actually do quite a bit of damage. And never use the Fortify Pack clicky. You dump all your damage in exchange for some defense. I just use the power as a mule for a couple of boosts (LotG, Shield Wall, etc) and take it off my bar. HOPEFULLY they'll get around to updating beasts (and thugs/demons) someday like they did for the other sets. They said "soon(tm)" after the first update, but that was two years ago at this point.

Depends on the MM, really. My bot/FF MM can cruise around in +4/8 in Dark Astoria pretty casually, but that's a pretty specific high-defense build with automated healing due to the maint drone, and I specifically tailored my build to give the bots incarnate-level soft-capped defense. It's not the most efficient though, that's true.

I'm guessing that's Lord of the Rings Online. 🙂 I'm currently playing that again, since I've been wanting to get back into a fantasy MMO.

Isn't this just a rehash of the previous thread? It's literally the same argument, with the same AV, the same AT being played, etc. So after getting shot down in that one, he just reposted it hoping for a better outcome?

The other powers that Tidal Force boosts are all situational. Water Burst's boost is a guaranteed knockup, which is handy against some targets, but against some EBs and AVs, it won't work at all. Also a waste to burn a boosted attack as an aoe against a single target, typically. Geyser has the best boosted bonus, being increased damage AND guaranteed stun, but again, against an EB/AV it might not overcome their protections, and against AVs it may just bounce off anyway with the purple triangles. Not to mention your tier-9 isn't always going to be up, and is kind of a waste against a single target unless it's the "final boss" type fight. Dehydrate's heal portion is boosted, but not the damage portion, so using that boosted is wasted unless you desperately need to heal yourself as much as possible. Which leaves Water Jet, which is one of your best attacks in the set for dealing with high-health targets like bosses, EBs and AVs, especially boosted as you can double-tap it rapidly. Not sure why you'd want to skip that.

The reason Thugs (and all MM pets) are "neutral" is so that it doesn't lock the character into a specific background or origin. Imagine if the Thugs were all Yakuza, for instance. That would pretty much require all Thug MMs to be Japaneze Yakuza bosses, wouldn't it? Or if you made the Thugs all "black ganger culture", same reason. Same would go for if the Demons set were all Circle of Thorns demons, or if Robotics were all Council robots, or Ninjas were all Tsoo. It would tie your origin/powers too tightly to one specific thing. All the MM primaries are "generic" so that you can use them with whatever background you'd like to have for your character.

For several Controller and Mastermind setups, you absolutely want to be in the thick of things. For Fire, Ice, and Electric control, they all have toggle auras that damage or debilitate things near you, so you want to get into the mix to capitalize on that, and Whitecap allows you to do that AND reduce the resistance of everything you land near. Double win. Additionally, several of the control sets' aoe holds and other powers are pbaoe, meaning you have to be surrounded by enemies to make full use of them. So again, you want to be in melee. Also, if you're standing within the Tide Pool, you gain bonus damage during the fight. And the more attacks that go off, the bigger the damage bonus. Controller damage is already low, so the more damage you can get means the faster things die. For Masterminds, Marine tends to work best with melee pets, and for that you want to be in the mix as well, to keep your pets within the relatively short range of Supremacy, the pet set IO auras, Leadership, etc. And again, Tide Pool + attacks = more damage for you and your pets. You also want to make sure you drag Barrier Reef into the mix so that it provides your pets with the pulsing absorption shield. Also, given that Toroidal Bubble and Power of the Depths only have a 60s duration, popping them off mid-fight is sometimes necessary, so you'll want to be right in the thick of things so you can drop them on all your pets. Not to mention that with bodyguard mode, using Whitecap to start the fight is a great way to absorb alpha strikes when you're at your strongest.