Nyghtmaire

Late to the David Bowie love, but always love the David Bowie (Hell, my SG is the “Spiders from Mars”) Bowie - Queen Bitch

Here you go! Excellent resource from @oedipus_tex

Oh boy… go back to 1L. You left a lot out there. Don’t they teach adults to come correct anymore? (hint - “unlawful” doesn’t appear in any common law penal code. Not even a good try.)

Preach! Additionally OP, softcapping has an appreciable impact on survivability. Hitting 75% of a resistance vector just means you’re still taking an appreciable amount of damage. As an aside @Krazie Ivan, I just noticed your photo was of a motorcycle (checking the forums on a larger screen). On my phone, I always thought it was a wacky looking cat … 👀

[Not at my computer so can’t really dig into the build, but here are some initial thoughts] Foundational question: have you collected the +endurance accolades? If not, those make a huge difference. Also, you can swap the Preventative Medicine proc in Health for the Numina. Agree that the value from Clarion outweighed Ageless. You could just run with Recovery Serums for times you need a boost. Dirt cheap from the P2W vendor. I’ve never gotten Victory Rush to work well (I mean, it works, but always scramble to target a boss - a mini game unenjoyable).

+ premeditation.

Love it!! (Mother of All Bombs)

@Akalabeth I’ve been in your shoes it seems. While I played in Live, I was not in a place (career and family constraints) that permitted much of any formal TF/SF teaming. Tried one or two here and there, and was lucky (or otherwise, depending on your perspective) to run the initial incarnate trials. Fast forward to Homecoming and a pandemic, it’s a different story. I’ve found, without a single negative experience, joining a team and explaining at the outset that I haven’t a clue what I’m doing in the specific trial to be completely fine. Everyone has been helpful and most kind (play on Everlasting FWIW). And really, the first time or two is usually spent being zipped around by Assemble the Team or Team Teleport as those in the know zip from objective to objective. The mechanics in this game are pretty standard for the most part, especially if you have done any other games: stay out of colored patches around the big bad, aggro control mechanics, etc. There usually aren’t guides for most of the encounters because of that, and the Homecoming wiki is more than sufficient. Playing the content will give you the necessary exposure to specific enemy groups - like which minion or lieutenant needs to be taken out first (Malta sappers for example); the rest is dealing with a bag of hit points. Recommend being comfortable with your character, figure out the mechanics under the hood - defense soft-cap, ToHit calculations and such - and a willingness to court some debt all to be invaluable. Good luck and welcome to the game!

To follow-up with the above excellent advice, also bear in mind that resummoning pets is dirt cheap, with drastically lowered recharge and endurance costs. In an action economy and increasingly faster modern game, pets are cannon fodder on a team. There is usually something better to do with your fingers and attentional bandwidth than micromanaging pets.

My blaster for which this thread initiated is one of 14 dark themed characters in an overly tangled and complicated role playing story. As a consequence towards building to theme, figuring out how to make a non-optimized pairing efficiently and enjoyably work is part of the joy (err, at least for me). A Dark/dark/soul blaster is a real conundrum. Range primary with a PBAOE tier 9; secondary that suggests melee; middle of the road damage but with some proc options. While the melee ATs have amazing tools for survival, survival tools here are proactive (basically mezs) or a smattering of -ToHit debuffs. Blackstar is the outlier here: lots of -ToHit. I’ve tried 40+ different builds, a healthy chunk of which stemmed from this and related threads. Lots of ways to play, but I’ve had the most success across a majority of enemy groups with a blended playstyle that focuses on range defense, shorter cast times, and layered mezs. For example, pairing OG with Dark Pit for hefty stuns, Soul + Tenbrous. Tentacles for immobilizing multiple bosses, etc. @Nemu has a couple great posts on target selection, movement/LOS, and other global strategies applicable to all blasters (hell, all ATs) that’s worth taking to heart.

Amanda Palmer - In My Mind

Seconding the musical tastes. We had a couple discussions on these boards about good tunes. He was definitely a poster I enjoyed reading. My heart goes out to everyone touched by this loss. Condolences to friends and family. And as @DoctorDitko mentioned, Latin was the key. CJ Cherryh has a nice (free) tutorial; I intend to delve in Heraclea’s memory. https://www.cherryh.com/www/latin1.htm Edit / and in honor of his humor:

Pies! Gotta get my clown on…

You can check the sticky in this sub forum for more info.

Dark/shield is the classic.

Sailing on a different boat. I only PUG. Adjust around the weirdness of other players and strive not to be a pain in the ass (but also tend to slot KB to KD in my AoEs). But hey, I just love the madness.

Mainly for the added hold protection. Personal preference on my psy/fire has been for the added KB protection, but those are edge cases and definitely not a necessity. And agreement on the 4-power limit. I love combat teleportation with Martial - - just BAMFing around the map constantly, in and out of melee, very slippery. Also loving the perception proc in the Warp set. So many meaningful choices!

I don't have this pairing, but I have a Psy/Fire and a Sonic/Martial (concept to play with my offspring -- don't judge). For your build goals, I would throw together something like this: It softcapps S/L/E, employs FF +recharge procs -- with the exception of Storm Kick -- in three powers. For powers trying to leverage procs, slotted recharge needs to be kept as low as possible to promote the firing of the procedure. Lot's of good formulas and whatnot here: https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/21230-boppers-coh-tools-and-formulas/ Since you described using Burst of Speed as much as possible, Defiant Barrage is thrown there to give a chance for status protection before you have a problem. Ki Push could use more accuracy against +3 (+4 with level shift) enemies, but it is a trade off between the current slotting to reach S/L softcap and reliable hit chance. Since you had Throw Sand in your build, I kept it, using it as a recharge mule. But I can see layering it with the stun from Psychic Wail to be a useful approach to stun bosses. I haven't done a pass to properly order the powers for exemping either. But this will give you a place to start and some things to consider.

I’m enjoying the same pairing immensely, and yeah - jousting is the way. There’s a synergy that’s hard to express, but a very active playstyle. Admittedly, I mainly wanted to remake my earth/Sonic controller so I’m having fun with how well this works.

I was on a Monster Hunter league this morning with a /devices blaster (didn’t catch the primary). She made a beautiful design while the lead called out for additions to Adamaster and before the summons. Guessing the mines took off about 1/4 of the health. It was most incredible and the fastest I’ve even seen a giant monster go down (even Deathsurge).

Sounds like you just volunteered for “Badge Creator 2022.”

Giving pets inspirations is a baller move (and a good use for reds since they’re mostly worthless for the mastermind). Here’s a post from the past in setting up macros to feed those pets here: And here:

Level 18-23 is the mastermind minefield, a dead zone of littered zombies, bots, wolves, and thugs. T1 pets are two levels below the summoner, only one T2 pet. At 24, the second T2 appears; T3 at 26. By 32, cooling with gas. However, pack mentality can give a defense boost to your pets (along with regen as mentioned above). Between pack mentality and the ice shields (~12-13 with minimal slotting in the level 20s) defenses are starting to look pretty soli but not spectacular. Add maneuvers (~2% in the 20s) and the pet defense IOs (two for 5 each, 10 total), the pets can be effectively soft capped between even level minions. Before pack mentality, each pet is sitting at ~35 defense BEFORE pack mentality stacks are expended and before factoring in Arctic Fog. This builds off the pets’ innate defense (they also have a decent amount of resistance upon which those pet IOs can build). Really, this combo can be tanky in the extreme by the early level 20s. Just takes a little attention, like most mastermind combos. But it certainly builds towards the strength of the primary. Lastly and with the reduction in summoning endurance and recharge, who cares? Just send a stream of minions against your opponents, especially on lower difficulties.

Or rename stalkers to “Lovers.”

Your question is wrong. Why play a pure damage AT when you can do MORE? Or, why play a scrapper when you can play a tanker (better AOE and survivability)? See @Voltak’s soloing madness as to what can be accomplished. Or, what roles are you envisioning in a game with no clear role?