Gulbasaur

Even if they didn't, it's likely their lawyer(s) told them to act like they were under one. Making announcements prematurely or being too free with things that were discussed behind closed doors is usually seen at best as a bit annoying, and at worse as a breach of trust.

I mean, there's so little benefit to doing +4x8 unless you're farming that I really wouldn't bother, personally. Do what you enjoy. Looking at my build, I don't really use a lot of them. They tend to solve problems I don't have, if that makes sense. Lots go hard on fire and cold resistance (meh) or tox and psi resistance (you get a lot of psi resistance from Mind Link and toxic damage isn't enough of a problem to be a problem). My opinion: Contagious Confusion: either in Confuse (it has a good enough proc rate to be worth it) or Aura of Confusion (it only has to proc on one enemy to be effective and basically adds a +1 effect to the confuse, basically letting you confuse bosses. I wish there were more IOs like this, it adds mechanics, not just a flat bonus. The SoA ATOs are worth upgrading, because they're just the first set but better. This should be your priority. Hecatomb is pretty decent as a set. The +15% accuracy and +10% recharge are worthwhile. There are a few purple damage procs that are worth using. Non purples: The Preventative Medicine proc (in Health) is worth its weight in inf a thousand times over. Fortunatas have scaling resistances, so anything that gets better when your health is low is more valuable than it looks because it all multiplies. I quite like Power Transfer in Stamina as well - it adds a passive healing effect that goes off enough for me to think it's worth using.

I've just noticed you've skipped the single target Confuse - that's a power I consider unskippable! Enemies who aren't attacking you but are throwing round control effects, buffing you and nuking their former allies are one of the more fun parts of playing a fortunata, in my opinion. The Contagious Confusion purple IO is one of the better "special effect" IOs, in my opinion - it adds a second, no-notify AoE confuse effect. Confusing lieutenants is always worth doing, and going for support enemies (ritki guardians, shield bots, sappers, those longbow controllers etc) is a fun little minigame you can play. Confuse + Aura of Confusion is enough to get most elite bosses. If you get good at timing the purple triangles, you can also enlist AVs and Heroes to play with you.

The only thing I'd really say is to make sure you're whacking out control powers as much as you can. What you lose in hit points, you gain in the ability to confuse an AV. Your build looks pretty solid, otherwise. I generally try to fit at least one damage proc into all the attacks - sometimes two. Fortunatas a profoundly middle-of-the-road for damage, so more procs means you can be a bit crunchier. I think they're a bit all-or-nothing. Either they proc enough that it's near-constant (my storm/water makes good use of them, energy, peacebringers etc) or they only shave a few seconds off. Personally, I think damage procs might be better value. I use Provoke all the time on my fortunata! They can tank quite capably. I skip Hasten, as a rule, but I understand why people leave it in. Grant Invisibility can hold a defence IO, useful for LOTG or one of the +RES ones, and useful for keeping lemmings alive for a bit. Teleport Target (old Recall Friend) is very useful if you sidekick up lowbies and I use it more than you might expect. I'm a quiet fan of TT:Vengeance; you don't need it often, but when you need it you really need it. It's a fairly good defence buff with a decent-enough heal and all it costs is someone else's death. It's another one-slot wonder.

No, some of the clickies/mechanics were changed. Several that used to involve coordination now can be done by one player at a leisurely place. Things like the obelisks in the Hollows trial. The Abandoned Sewers Trial is, I think, the only one that escaped untouched. While I agree that most of the game should be soloable, the fact that some things can't theoretically be beaten by one strong player is something I miss. It takes the bite out of some of the trials.

I wish not everything was soloable. The task forces where you used to have to coordinate can now be done by a single player. It's a small thing, but that's a change I wish they'd reverted when the server went public.

I'll back this up - storm solos very well. It applies constant pressure in an area and suits a sort of hover-blaster style of play really well. Once you get Lightning Storm and Tornado you move from safely chipping away at enemy health to just wrecking things. It scales really well with knockback as you can game that for recharge, which has the downside of nuking your endurance bar.

Honestly, I'm not too surprised - I have never felt that fortunatas were particularly balanced. They have a good amount of AoE and sustain as well as having Dominate, which bypasses positional defence. Nice to see the side represented, though!

I've had a dual pistols/devices blaster and a traps/beam rifle defender. Dual Pistols is a fun set to play, although I wish there was a "we get it, you like twirling, now stop" alternative animation set. I couldn't help feel like it was a bit underpowered, though. Beam Rifle might be a bit too overtly sci-fi, but it's a very fun set to play that does a little bit of a lot. Devices has a good range of damage/utility and suits a solo blaster very well - caltrops are great and the mines are excellent for solo play. Traps is a bit of an odd set but great solo. It's a bit of a late bloomer (so arguably better on a Defender for solo play because you get several key power much earlier if you're playing slowly and pausing XP), Force Field Generator is amazing because it gives you a lot of defence and mez protection at level 8, although it does occasionally get lost and you can outrun it if you're not careful. Poison trap also lets you fight AVs more efficiently because of how hard it debuffs regen. Defenders also get a damage buff playing solo or in small groups, so they're more viable than they seem whereas Corruptors are pretty linear in their damage. If it were me, I'd go for a traps/something defender and proc out the secondary for damage just because of how much sooner you get the key traps/ powers, which is important if you're slow-road levelling.

Oh, it definitely has its uses, but I just don't like it. Storm/water, if you're abusing recharge, haemorrhages endurance so it's another toggle I can live without. There's also the visual noise issue that storm and water are already guilty of. My brother actually plays a /storm corruptor and I do hang out in his hurricane often enough.

Try /macro PA "powexec_name Phantom Army$$local Oh look, a Phantom Army!" OR for an image (no timer, though) /macro_image "Illusions_PhantomArmy" "Phantom Army" "powexec_name Phantom Army$$local Oh look, a Phantom Army!" You ca replace powexec_name with things like powexec_location target (if you want it to drop on a target) and then replace Oh Look, a Phantom Army! with something less cool.

Worm, a really, really good free superhero novel (seriously, it's outstanding) has a few shoutouts in the power classifications - terms like blaster and brute are used directly in terms of classifications. Master is basically a mastermind. It also uses the terms hero, villain and rogue in more-or-less the same way. It might be that they're all drinking from the same reference pool, but I think the start of the novel was at least inspired by CoH. It's it own thing, and I really recommend it to anyone who likes doorstopper fiction... it's very long.

That's good of you to say, @NetWraith I do try to plug it every now and again but I don't want to be annoying about it. Any feedback is always welcome - I've definitely missed a few things out that are worth doing. I've also got a Redside guide here:

Hope you enjoy it! There is a bit of a lull at about level 11/12 because the Hollows has unusual level boundaries for contacts, but I actually reran it recently, enjoyed myself and found it easy to pull teams together from the LFG. Have fun!

Generally, use ones that drop or ones that are cheap until about level 22. At 22, go to the University and work through the tutorial mission there, it teaches you the basics. Crafted standard invention origin enhancements at 22 will generally last you until level 50 because they scale nicely. You need a crafting table (the universities all have them, as well as a few other places) and a recipe. You can get recipe drops from playing, or you can buy them. You'll also need the ingredients, which also drop or can be bought from the auction house. Generally, when you can afford them. Personally, I prefer to buy them off the auction house for two reasons: they come attuned, which means their levels scale automatically; and I am lazy. There are some "special" enhancements that give you a flat effect, like the two that give you 3% defence, of the perfomance shifter one that gives you extra endurance - I'd prioritise those over getting set bonuses first because they give you a lot of bang for your buck.

I had a lot of fun with water blast - it's a very defensive powerset, having a lot of soft-control, reasonably good damage and a self-heal. It's more rounded than sonic and can take a lot more procs, meaning you do more damage overall. Sonic is a fantastic damage multiplier on teams, but I think it's a bit mediocre solo. Radiation emission is the traditional "solo anything" powerset, having one of every single debuff in the game, but poison is also worth looking at because of the sheer strength of its debuffs. Time is also very good solo.

I think Psi damage was always meant to be "different", hence the non-positional psi attacks. There's also the slightly off fact that there are two clear effect sets for psi purple woowoo blasts and white rings -maybe they changed their mind? Maybe they made two sets independently? I suspect early on that psi damage was meant to be endgame/elite damage but I have nothing to confirm that. In early game powersets, psi resistance was one of the harder ones to build up. I think toxic damage was originally untyped damage, but I could be wrong. Toxic resistance is also attached to a lot of early game heals, so it also worked differently to s/l/e/n/f/c damage. Basically, they're "miscellaneous".

Fortunata main... I can scrap, blast, mez, stealth, survive and buff without dipping into the pools... and Presence makes me into a viable tank. I had a mind controller back on Live. It's like that but with knives for hands and it's glorious.

I just played with this a bit and it's a vast improvement, without being overpowered. Thanks!

You'd never make it in Arachnos with an attitude like that. Use the tools available to you. Influence, infamy and information all buy you an advantage. Few worlds were dominated on the flight back from the hospital.

My one wish is the ability to crit at range, just because crits on psi wail would be absurd. That and the ability to edit my knifehands into the energy melee blobs. I like the blobs.

I can mystic fly slightly faster now and the Recall Friend that isn't called Recall Friend anymore feels much smoother, so I am not complaining.

Some support powersets really don't benefit you solo. Debuff sets tend to solo well. Time, Dark and Rad are excellent solo-friendly sets. Time can tank quite reliably and Rad is historically the "punch above your weight" support set - illusion/rad is still recommended as a "solo anything" set. Dark does good debuffage, a pet that does more debuff and also has a huge heal. If you compare that to a very team-focussed set like Empathy, Sonic or Force Fields, there's a big difference in solo-ability. They can do it, but a lot of their value is in bolstering teammates. Kinetics starts off with a very strong heal and a damage buff/debuff but the mid tiers are focussed on utility or teammate buffs, so a solo kineticist can struggle to level (from experience - my first character was psi/kin before the Defender inherent was a thing). Poison is great against single targets, but the small AoE means that spread-out groups can be really hard to go up against.

I play pretty much daily and have a nice guild I do events with. Looking forward to the expansion!

Defenders can build up defence like it's nothing. I've seen both corruptors and defenders tank really capably, although it depends a lot on the powerset.