WumpusRat

Well, I've never used two 3-part sets that both have procs in them, so it hasn't come up. But if it did, it would end up being like AAA-procBBB-proc Having the three set pieces together overrules the procs always being in the rightmost slots. However, they'll still be in the right slots of that series of enhancements.

I would be very leery of doing something like this. Given that MMs on HC get a MASSIVE reduction in recharge on the pet summoning abilities, the ability to just churn out fully-upgraded pets when you start losing them would be a bit imbalanced. I've had plenty of fights where I can just keep throwing out pets in tough fights that eventually the constant replacement of them ends up tilting the odds in my favor and I win. And that's without them being upgraded, as I'm too busy trying to just get more pets into the fight. If they popped out fully upgraded it would be way too easy. I believe the devs have stated before that they have zero intention of auto-upgrades for pets. I do agree that they need a bit more run-speed though. Maybe let +movement bonuses affect the pets, too, since a lot of times I'll end up with like +30-40% runspeed, which puts me pretty far out ahead of my pets.

I'm at work so I'll probably be slightly off, but off the top of my head: 97%-ish recharge in the power itself (4 x Def/Rech enhancements) 70% from Hasten 4 x 10% recharge from ATOs (splitting Superior Mark of Supremacy amongst the three tiers of pets, 4 parts Superior Command of the Mastermind in one) 2 x 8.75% from full sets of Preventive Medicine (Healing Aura) and Reactive Defenses (Maneuvers) 3 x 6.25% from 5-part Decimation in Aimed Shot and Single Shot, 5-part Positron's Blast in Fistful of Arrows 2 x 5% from 5-part Doctored Wounds in Heal Other and Adrenaline Boost 5 x LotG 7.5% globals I THINK that's about it. So in all, around 194% global recharge, and 97% in the power itself, for about 290% recharge total. 120s duration, and around a 22.5s or 23s recharge 15.5s recharge. Enough to keep it on 6 targets if I don't slack off. And if Secondary Mutation gives me Quick Reflexes, it becomes easier. <edit> Oh, duh. I had a brainfart and was calculating the recharge time on it being 90, not 60. With 60 it recharges in about 15.5s.

Keeping your pets alive with healing works fine at all levels as long as they have good resists or defense or both. I have a ninja/empathy MM and she works fine even in incarnate content. I have enough recharge in the build that I can keep fortitude on all six pets if I stay on top of the cooldown, which pushes their defense up to around 45% for range and melee, and 60% for aoe, though their resists are somewhat lacking, having only 35% from the three +resist auras, so when they DO get hit, they get hit pretty hard. But they have enough defense that it's not frequent enough that they're dropping constantly, unless I'm trying to go up against bosses at +4. Regeneration and recovery auras have a recharge of around 130 seconds for her, so with 90s uptime, they can be maintained about 70% of the time, and I'll always pop them before going into a big fight. While the pets not having a ton of HP means regen isn't quite as effective on them, being able to give them around 1200% regen heals them enough that combined with spot-healing and their own self-heals I only occasionally lose minions.

I've done all my trick or treating solo on my various characters so far. On the first one, I got all the vampires really quickly, and the rest kind of staggered in over time. On the second, I got all the werewolves quickly (like 5 out of the first 8 EBs I got were werewolves), and the rest over time, though the last couple spectres took forever. On the third, I got all the witches super quick (3 doors in a row had a witch EB), and the rest fairly average in distribution. On the fourth, they were pretty average in distribution. On the fifth (which I'm working on now), I've gotten 4 vampires, 2 werewolves, 2 witches, 1 spectre, and 2 mummies (but only 1 kill, as the first mummy popped and killed me in two swings).

This is where specific attack commands come into play. For instance, you can order SPECIFIC henchmen to attack, while keeping the others in bodyguard mode. I generally keep the tier-1's in bodyguard mode and order the tier-2 and 3 to attack in this case, as it keeps enough of them in bodyguard mode to split the damage effectively, and the tier-2 and 3 tend to deal the most damage. /macro T3at "petcom_pow Commando attack" (for instance) That will make your commando start immediately attacking the chosen enemy, while the rest of your pets remain in bodyguard mode. You can set up others for the other tiers of pets, and make them selectively engage various targets. It's useful to try and focus-fire one or two pets onto an enemy to attempt to peel them off of you. I use specific-command frequently when I'm playing mercenaries, as the spec-ops gain a 150ft range sniper attack with the tactical upgrade. You can order just them to attack from long range, and they'll engage with snipe. Then immediately pull them back into defensive-follow so they won't try to move closer to continue attacking. You can do this to pull and split spawns, or just try to pick off stragglers. You can also order pets by specific name (petcom_name <petname> <command>) if you don't want to order all the pets of a particular type to do something, or want to order just one (such as the mercenary medic or thug pyro) to hold back from attacking.

It would probably end up being one of my masterminds. Maybe the necro, I don't know. Though if I WERE restricted to one character, I'd end up getting bored of the game and uninstalling it after a few weeks. No variety = no fun, to me.

I always make sure my enhancements are aesthetically appealing to me. Like if I have 3 of one set and 3 of another, I make sure that the two sets are AAABBB. If it's 3-1 it'll be AAAB. Etc. Procs always go in the rightmost slots of a power. Same for mastermind auras. If any of the enhancements are attuned, they ALL have to be attuned, so they match.

He's talking about soloing, not running at x/8. The larger tanker aoes are irrelevant if you're not fighting enough mobs to make the bigger aoe matter. Also, I think you underestimate how fast fury builds. Even running at 0/1 it's incredibly easy for a brute to maintain 85% fury for nearly the entire mission, unless you're literally moving at a walk and stopping to go afk every couple minutes.

Vhaz, Arachnos, Longbow, Carnies, Malta, and Banished Pantheon are ones I can think of off the top of my head. I think some Nemesis might be able to as well, though I don't fight them enough to know for sure. And as SwitchFade said, Willpower has zero defense debuff resist, meaning the moment an enemy tags you with a debuff your defense crumbles. And while smash/lethal being capped is good against groups that only deal that kind of damage, Willpower doesn't really have much else in the way of resists other than psi. Fire and energy are two other extremely common damage types, and Willpower doesn't offer much resistance to them at all. My heavily tricked out Willpower brute gets absolutely MELTED by Banished Pantheon out in DA, because her non-physical resists are only around 50-60%.

All depends on what you like, really, and what difficulty you're looking to solo on. Tankers are probably the easiest AT to solo with, as it's fairly simple to build them up even with just SOs where you can plow through missions without much issue. Brutes are similar, though their defenses are a bit lower, but their damage is substantially higher due to fury. If you go nuts with procs tankers can be very close behind though. Masterminds are (at least to me) incredibly fun, since you've got a whole squad of friends with you at all times, and you can manage all sorts of interesting content with them. Their biggest weakness (at least early on) is aoe damage, which can crush you pretty hard, but they're very good at dealing with EBs in story arcs, making it a comfortable solo experience. Scrappers and Stalkers are fairly similar, with lower defenses than brutes and tankers, but very solid damage output. They can become quite tanky, but not to the point (generally) of just ignoring mobs. Sentinels are basically ranged scrappers, though they give up crit for the ranged damage. They can be quite durable, and most of their defensive sets are slightly different from other AT's, giving them a unique play experience even for a set you've used before. Blasters, controllers, dominators, defenders, and corruptors can all play solo, though they're more difficult (generally) than the above, either by virtue of being much squishier, lower damage, lack of CC protection, or a combination of several factors. They can sill work just fine if you don't put the difficulty too high too soon though.

Yeah, I believe bosses have something like a 9.25% or so chance to hit you regardless of how much defense you have. I remember testing it with my SR tanker one night (she's got around 60% defense to all positionals), and while the rank and file +4 minions only had a 5% to hit, the bosses had a bit over 9%.

For defense-focused builds, I almost always aim to get as close as I can to the incarnate softcap, since I like running the incarnate content. It's more challenging than endlessly farming Council in PI.

I've joked about this one a few times on that TF. "Hard Mode Katie Hannon, featuring the brand new badge: 50 Times the Victor!"

If you do Provost Marchand's "A New War" arc, the first couple missions throw 10 named villains at you. Makes it super easy to get Villain Disruptor.

How I play and lead TFs is pretty much the same. I want to get things done in a timely fashion, but I'm not out to break any speed records. And I'm completely fine with just caving in the faces of every mob on the path towards the objective. Sometimes it's a lot of fun to just leave a swathe of destruction behind you. And sometimes speeding things up can be nice, especially with sloggy TFs like Synapse or Citadel. If a TF is taking longer than normal (and "normal" is somewhat relative, but having been on both slow and short versions of all the TFs, I have a mental note as to what "normal" for me is for each one) but the group is chatty and we're having fun, I have no problem just tooling around and killing stuff while chatting. If nobody is talking and it's taking a long time, it does start to get a bit grindy. But that's pretty rare, at least on Everlasting. RPers tend to be a pretty talkative bunch in general. Some missions I DO tend to pipe up about things that might make it smoother/easier, such as the Moonfire TF having someone with ATT park at the entrance and just yoink everyone back to the start to avoid having to escort Dr. Roberta "Deathwish" Todd. For the most part though, when I join a TF it's because I either want the credit for it, the merits, some faster exp than soloing, or just to hang around with a group for a while. I tend to just go along with however the group is playing.

I'd like to see the Thugs, Demons and Beast Mastery mastermind sets get an update like the other four sets got. Since it was mentioned by a dev after that went live that it was being worked on and would probably be coming "soon". But then again, "soon" in development terms usually means anywhere from 6 months to 5 years.

That's one of the things I remember most about old-school CoH. Yellow and Green tram lines. "Okay, so you want to come join us in Peregrine and you're in Atlas. So you'll need to hop the yellow rail to Steel Canyon, then run north through the zone and hop the green rail to Talos, then run over to the docks area and hop through the ferry to get to the island..." <and 10m later when they were halfway there> "Oh dang, the person he was sidekicked to just had to bail. We're going to need to recruit another person to sidekick them..."

A lot of my slotting will depend on the powersets, end management, and concept. I'll generally try and maximize everything I can while keeping set bonuses to reach certain checkpoints of resist, defense, end management, etc. I don't use procs very often, and almost never use purple sets unless I'm absolutely desperate for more +recharge (like trying to make Phantom Army permanent). I'm a huge fan of set bonuses, so I don't frankenslot things too much unless I absolutely have to, or giving up a couple of set bonuses will get me something that I really want, or it's a power that I don't worry about set bonuses in (like Fortitude just being slotted with 4 defense/recharges so they're both at ED cap). I also use pretty much exclusively attuned enhancements, so that I can exemplar around as much as I want without worrying about things not working anymore. Health I generally slot with Panacea health/end, Numina regen/recovery, and Miracle recovery. If one of my powersets has its own end recovery or restoration tool I might drop Numina or Miracle, if I can use that slot somewhere else for another set bonus. Stamina is almost universally slotted with Power Transfer heal and 3 parts Synapse (end mod, end mod/runspeed, and end mod/recharge), to get almost ED-capped recovery, +22% run speed, and 10% slow/recharge resist. Combined with Winter's Gift's unique somewhere in the build and it's 30% resist to those, which is definitely noticeable (at least until a bunch of Tsoo go "nya ha ha, take 15 siphon speeds!"). I always try and get the ATOs into the build (and superior at 50), though they can be split up depending on what I need. Particularly the Mastermind set that gives +10% recharge for two parts, so I often split that up amongst all three pets for 30% global recharge. And the four-part bonus of the other set for another 10%, so 40% global recharge from just my ATOs. Though if my secondary isn't super recharge intensive I'll put the full set into a pet, as the higher set bonuses are pretty nice. A lot of my build/slotting choices will also be determined by the concept for the character. I'll take powers that fit the concept, ignore others that don't (even if they would be a superior choice from a min/max perspective), and generally try and build them to fit the concept. For my "D&D Characters in Paragon" builds, I'll try and have them conform as closely as I can to the class. For instance, the Paladin uses radiation armor with Ground Zero slotted heavily for healing instead of damage to replicate the "Healing Burst"/"Lay on Hands" ability that Paladins get. Of course if the Medicine pool had an alternate animation for Aid Other that was just a power activation instead of the tricorder, I'd have used that.

Beast Mastery isn't a bad set, overall. None of the Mastermind sets are "bad". BM is just the bottom of the pile in terms of effectiveness and mechanics for the pets. It's like being offered a bunch of food you like, and going "Well, this is my least favorite out of all the things I really like, but I still really like it." The biggest drawback is that Fortify Pack punishes you for using it. The pets gain damage and crit percentage based on how many stacks of Pack Mentality they have, and if you ever pop FP, it burns all those stacks and converts it into defense. Which wouldn't necessarily be bad, other than the fact that while FP is running, they can neither gain nor benefit from Pack Mentality. So they lose about 20% damage and crit chance, which is a HUGE blow to their damage output. Stat-wise, the animals are very solid. Decent resists, and defense on top of it. There's an issue with their attack chains though, in that there's a "dead zone" at the end of each attack animation which causes them to pause and do nothing for a second or two between attacks. Some of their cooldowns need looking at, as well. Lick Wounds has a 60s cooldown, and is a relatively small heal (around 100 hp), so it definitely shouldn't be on such a long cooldown for such a weak ability. Same with the Lioness +def roar, which lasts for something like 10-15 seconds, and has a 120s cooldown. I'm curious to see what the devs do with the overhaul of BM (as well as Thugs and Demons) when they eventually get around to it, the same way they did the other sets back in October of last year.

My favorite moment from back on live was getting to level 6 on my first character and picking up hover, and lifting off into the air to float around in the sky. Flight was and still is my favorite travel power. Just being able to fly is awesome. And from HC, logging in for the first time and seeing Atlas Park again.

A lot of it also depends on the EB/AV. Some of them, like Mary MacComber (god I hate her) have a passive power called "Positioning", which makes them actively try and avoid melee combat, but it's hyper-tuned so they'll just go sailing off at escape velocity and keep running for ages.

Pretty sure /ah predates HC. It was a veteran reward if I remember correctly, which existed on live. But yeah, I remember the days of being happy at finding a luck charm, since they'd sell for 50k or so. I'd hunt magical enemies specifically just to get more drops of them, to finance my early levels.

As far as the Family goes, I don't really see a pressing need to have them be an "end-game faction". They're not out to conquer the world, they're not threats on the scale that Arachnos, Council, or other things are. They're a bunch of crime families who manage drug trade, steal cars, run gambling dens, and the like. Redside definitely fleshes them out a lot more, but they're fine being a low to mid-range group. Once you're up to the point of saving the world regularly, fighting planar entities, and the like, a bunch of goombahs with machine guns who are trying to steal a couple cars seems like something that just doesn't measure up to the same level of threat. If they wanted to make some more Family-specific story arcs I'd be fine with that though. I just don't think they need to be running around being threats on par with Malta, Arachnos, Ruularu, etc.

I have a couple of characters with PFF, and what I generally use it for is one of two things: 1) A panic-button for when I need to get the heck out of a situation. 2) An alpha-strike soaker. Turn on PFF, jump into a pack of mobs, let them dump all their big attacks, controls, and other things, then drop PFF and fire off my own. <edit> Wow, necro thread. Neat.