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.

Time is a solid set, but I wouldn't rate it as one of the best when it comes to the Ninjas (or Masterminds in general, really).The fact that the pets can't benefit at all from the copious +recharge it doles out is kind of a drawback. Farsight is a solid +def buff, but that's the only buff it can really give out to the pets, and it's around the same level of +def as the FFG from Traps, but without the status protections. I've only played it up to around 40 or so on two Masterminds, however, so take my opinion on it with a grain of salt.

My current favorites when it comes to Beast Mastery are: Nature -- Very thematic, and a "do everything" secondary. It's got a heal, absorb shield, +damage buff, +resist buff, enemy debuffs, etc. It's an extremely powerful secondary. Provides very durable, easily-healed (since they stack up nicely on targets) pets, and the buffs (particularly from Overgrowth) can turn them into little monsters, especially if you're running Entangling Aura (particularly if you have the Lockdown +2 mag proc in it) and getting into the mix with your pets. Trick Arrow -- It has no built-in heal, so you'll either have to rely on Aid Other, or be prepared to resummon your pets a LOT. It's a "kill or be killed" secondary, with heavy debuffs. The fear aspect of a burning Oil Slick can help protect your pets a little bit, and EMP Arrow provides solid CC protection for you if you fight within it, so it can help out a lot. But your pets WILL be very fragile compared to other secondaries. Thermal -- A solid all-around "do everything" set. Resist buffs, damage buffs for your pets (though Forge is only single-target, but with enough recharge you can get it on 4-5 pets easily), solid debuffs, and both an aoe and single-target heal. It's probably second to Nature in ease of play imo. However since the shields are fairly weak (+15% base for a Mastermind, so around +23% when fully slotted), the pets will still be on the squishy side. You'll have to heal them a lot. But Melt Armor will help them kill stuff quite quickly. Kinetics -- A little "oddball" in terms of secondaries for a MM, since it has almost nothing to help defend your pets other than Increase Density for a bit of smashing/energy resist and end drain via Transference, but oh my god it's fun. The sheer carnage of your pets with Speed Boost and Fulcrum Shift is hilarious. Nothing can flee, and they hit like trucks. Especially combined with full stacks of Pack Mentality for the +crit bonus. Thankfully they're all melee, as well, so if you sic them on one target they'll helpfully bunch up for Transfusion. But your pets will be VERY squishy to anything but smashing damage (they have some innate smash resist, combined with ID and the +resist auras they'll be pretty sturdy against that one damage type). Dark Miasma -- Another solid "do (almost) everything" set. While it doesn't offer much in the way of resists to your pets (Shadow Fall is only energy, negative, and psi), the sheer amount of -to hit that you can stack with the set can make your pets pretty durable. You'll have to follow them into melee to get the most out of Twilight Grasp, but that's not really a bad thing, since it'll tend to drag Fluffy (the Dark Servant) along with you, and he gives a lot of -to hit as well. Traps -- Your pets will basically live and die by the Force Field Generator. It provides enough +def that when combined with the +def IO auras your pets can be fairly hard to hit. The downside is that it doesn't offer much else to keep them alive. Triage Beacon is +regen instead of actual healing, and pets have fairly low max hp, so the regen it offers doesn't really cut it. However, if you use it tactically, you can survive quite a lot with a good Traps build. Lean into the Poison Trap, Seeker Drones (for the -to hit), and even Caltrops to keep the enemy from focusing the pets, and you CAN mop stuff up pretty well. But if the animals get hit, they're going to get hit HARD. Overall, Beast Mastery is the bottom-tier when it comes to Mastermind sets, but that's not saying it's "bad". It's like "of all the things I really really like, this is my least favorite, but I still love it". It's a decent set, but especially after the updates it's fallen far behind the others. Hopefully they'll get around to updating it "soon(tm)". It's been two years already, so I'm not holding out all that much hope, but we'll see. Ninjas are a slightly different animal (hur hur, pun), but in some ways very similar. They don't have the innate resists that the beasts do, but they have slightly higher base defense, so any set that capitalizes on that is solid. I haven't played as many Ninja builds as I have other sets, but the ones I've played and have worked really well are: Force Field -- This is a very "boring" but safe set for the squishy ninjas. It boosts their defense high enough that very little will reliably hit them, but as it has no built-in heal you'll have to pick up the Medicine pool, or be prepared to resummon them fairly often when something connects -- because they will go SPLAT if anything bigger than a lieutenant clocks them. Once you get all the +resist auras they'll be a bit more durable, but until then, very squish. LOTS of damage though. Especially if you pick up Force Bomb and Repulsion Bolt (though I'd advise putting a knockback-to-knockdown in this one if you want to spam it for the -resist, just so it doesn't send stuff flying too much). Empathy -- While Empathy overall is a pretty "meh" set, it does work fairly well in the hands of a Mastermind, because of the fact that you always have a team with you. Fortitude, with enough recharge, can be kept permanently on all six of your ninjas, which combined with Maneuvers from Leadership and the +defense IO auras, can make your ninjas pretty hard to bring down. With huge +recovery and +regeneration auras can keep them going unless they get slapped down hard (similar to Force Field, with no innate +resist power in the set they'll die if they get slammed by something big). I wouldn't necessarily advise using Empathy, as it's finicky and REALLY needs a heavily-IO'd out build with lots of set bonuses to really capitalize on. It can be fun once you do though. Traps -- Pretty much the same as for Beast Mastery with this one.

Generally the way I build a character is about as follows: 1) Come up with a concept for the character, theme, and powersets 2) Doodle around with the build in mids, initially just throwing together a build and seeing where the numbers pan out, then trying to hit certain benchmarks 3) Get the build to the point that I'm happy with it on paper, then go to the test server and put it together to try out 4) Fight random mobs in the portal corps parking lot, then do a 0/8 mission against Council, Carnies, and Malta to see how it fares before activating any incarnate abilities, then try it out at +2 or +3 using incarnate stuff 5) Take the build to DA and do a couple of Heather's missions (particularly the second one, since the first spawn in that mission has a tendency to be a 'double spawn' and has upwards of 20 mobs packed into a single fight) 6) Adjust as needed 7) If I'm happy with it, take it to live and start leveling up. Doesn't matter if it doesn't play as well at low/mid-levels as I know it's going to pan out in the late-game But #1 is the most important. Without a concept that I think will be fun, I just won't make the character, even if gameplay wise it would be statistically really powerful. And some mathematically weaker concepts are some of my favorite characters just because of how fun they are to play, and the personality I created for them.

I dunno how different it is than a walking houseplant, a gravitational singularity, coalesced energy in a vaguely humanoid shape, or any number of other things that just happen to follow you around. 🙂

I've mostly been trying it on masterminds, since it gives a decent variety of things (melee, ranged, mixed) to see how it performs within a "mini group" so to speak. So far it's worked VERY well for melee oriented pets, as you can tend to keep everything in the pool and keep chain-knocking them down with whitecap now that it's got a much lower recharge. For ranged pets it's not AS solid as some of the mobs will charge out of the pools and they'll split up, if it's a large spawn (for instance, some of the Talons spawns in the DA arcs come in 2-3 spawn 'super-packs', and have 15-20 mobs clustered together if you're running on x8). Overall, it's a very solid set, but for masterminds I'd much prefer the heal to be a pbaoe instead of a cone.

After playing with it for a bit, I definitely think Soothing Wave could stand being a pbaoe instead of a cone. Since almost every other power in the set is either radiating from you, from an enemy, a placeable, or putting you into the midst of melee (Whitecap), making the heal radiate outwards from you makes a lot more sense than having it as a cone. Having to constantly jump back and forth as a support set makes it a bit clunky, particularly as a mastermind with melee pets. You want to be in the mix with your pets so you can use Whitecap for debuffing and mitigation via knockdown, and having to look around to figure out where your pets are, then back up to line up the cone, then jump back into melee feels awkward.

Once you trigger Fiery Embrace, for those 20 seconds every time you attack it will proc bonus "Fiery Embrace" damage on the target. It's an extra hit for (depending on the attack) considerable damage. I think on my fire/fire brute it was doing around +140 damage with greater fire sword. It basically just adds a fire proc to all your attacks for 20s.

I have flight as the travel power and probably 90% of my characters, so generally I just point myself in the direction of a mission that's really far off, hit auto-run (well, auto-fly) and load up a video or something on one of my other monitors. Or I start doodling around with a build in mids on the other monitor.

Bear in mind that the hp cap for pets is MUCH lower than it is for players. On my robotics/marine test build, my pets have: Tier-1: 575 (863 with PotD) Tier-2: 768 (1153 with PotD) Tier-3: 963 (1445 with PotD) The pets aren't going to get +1200 hp. They'll reach cap long before that. The numbers above are the hp caps for the pets. As far as damage caps go, I BELIEVE they have +400% like most other things? I'm not 100% sure though.

So far Marine Affinity feels a lot like Nature but ... buffed. My thoughts so far playing it on a Mastermind: Soothing Wave is pretty much a standard cone heal, and the -enemy damage is pretty minor (at least on a MM), so it's not a big deal. Shoal Rush is a decent -def power, and the -stealth is kind of fun too to kick Arachnos banes and widows out of stealth. Toroidal Bubble ... feels a bit too strong. The resists are about the same as Wild Growth from Nature, but it also gives end/recovery debuff resist, recovery, end restore, and +jump height? Seems a little bit bloated considering the power is basically perma right out of the box. Whitecap is essentially Spring Attack, but with a -resist debuff tacked onto it. Fairly solid power overall. Tide Pool says it's a toggle but it's just a placeable field like Tar Patch or other things. I haven't gotten to really see the bonus damage from enemy defeats in detail yet, since all the pets firing stuff around made it a bit tough to really pinpoint, but it feels like it would be very powerful in the hands of a Defender on a team with a bunch of melees. Brine having both a -resist and a -max hp debuff seems pretty strong, but the long cooldown feels like it balances it out. Even if the duration is basically perma on a single target. Shifting Tides is odd in that it needs an initial target rather than just being something radiating from the caster. Interesting buff overall. Wellspring is a bit surprising in that it follows you around. I wasn't expecting that. Makes it a LOT more powerful than I expected. Power of the Depths is ... very powerful. In the hands of a Mastermind, VERY powerful. Bordering on too powerful. The fact that you can make it nearly perma without too much trouble (with just a thrown together build mine is about 10s off perma) and will boost the max health of your pets (!) as well, it's a very potent ability for a Mastermind. The +range on the pets is quite nice, as well. My tier-3 pet has 1500 hp with the buff up (compared to the 963 that a standard tier-3 pet has), which makes it FAR more durable. It makes the +regen much more valuable, too. Overall, it feels like a VERY potent set. Will definitely need some fine tuning as time goes on. Right now it basically feels like a semi-mirror of Nature, in that it does a lot of similar things, but the tier-9 buff is defensive rather than offensive.