Gulbasaur

It's a fairly middling set with a fairly middling secondary effect and slightly clunky animation, in my opinion. It can work well, but it's just not that appealing to a lot of players. There's nothing wrong with it, but it's not particularly standout and it's similar enough visually to, say, fire and dark (soul noir) to just be very ignorable. It's got reasonably good AoE, from memory, but water also fills out that niche extremely well.

My thought was always that they have Mez protection and it's called Dwarf Form. I get that's not what everyone wants, though and I'd love it if toggles got suppressed in different forms, rather than detoggled. Part of me says they already have Mez protection, it just comes at a price. I do think VEATs have a stronger base toolkit, though. They're better generalists than Kheldians, which are designed around form-shifting. Warshades certainly work best when you're swapping forms a lot and but peacebringers get light form which basically reduces Dwarf to an aggro-generator.

The attacks aren't great, but they are serviceable and very proc-friendly. I actually quite like Kick and Cross Punch - they both take the Force Feedback proc and turn a filler attack into a recharge generator. Because of the Containment double damage, they can actually work very well on a controller looking to pick up some brawling ability.

Wasn't the power Recall Friend, not Teleport Friend?

I'd like to see mission modifiers akin to the Flashback/Task Force system where you can add buffs, debuffs etc. GW2's Fractal system uses something similar - add temporary powers to enemies, make them explode on death, give bonuses for stacking/not stacking, give enemies a global damage proc etc. Nothing too overpowered, but enough to make you have to think about how to approach an encounter. Give players an option to add one, two or three mods to a mission as leader with rewards that scale appropriately. They're generated randomly or on a timer (so you can't just reset missions until you get one you like). Things like Players get a -res and -def debuff, which is cancelled by staying within range of each other. Players get a -res and -def debuff, which is cancelled by staying away from each other Enemies explode on death if not mezzed Enemies have a small +def +res aura for allies so AoE tank and spank is less effective. Enemies have a small +dmg +tohit aura so AoE tank and spank is less effective. Enemies have a small debuff aura that stacks X number of times Damage/debuff procs on enemy powers (like the incarnate procs) Enemies have a damage patch/aura that triggers at X% health meaning knockback and range have more value. Players are debuffed for standing still too long Players repel each other Enemies repel each other etc etc Basically, things that mean players can't autopilot into large mobs and have to adjust tactics to the mission.

I did it with a rad/rad stalker and found it pretty easy other than one mission where ambush spawns seemed to be infinite and not have a gap between them... that was rough. I dealt with it by just running to the objective and hoping for the best. There was also a mission where you had to take down 50 enemies that kept spawning on a timer - I didn't have any AoE so that was a bit precarious.

https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Leadership Widows and Spiders get the same values from the pool powers, slightly below Defenders overall but above everything else. For the TT:Blah powers, the values actually differ (or did, unless they were updated) with Spiders having an extra 5% base on TT:Maneuvers.

The difference in damage is less pronounced solo - Vigilance gives you a decent damage buff solo and if you've got -RES effects, there are some defender sets that can slightly outdamage corruptors. Defenders can also stack up a lot of defence quite easily from various sources, which may mean you need to focus less on set bonuses for defence later down the line. I found dark a really good secondary on my corruptor that was mostly solo. It's very, very safe. The pet is sort of a fun novelty more than a showstopper as you've basically got a second, slightly crap corruptor following you around. I did dark/dark, which is a bit different but absurdly safe solo because you just end up stacking lots and lots of ToHit debuff, meaning not very much can hit you.

If it works like the Teleport power Fold Space, then it's an AoE.

1. Tankers have an AoE taunt effect on most (all?) attacks, as well as often having taunt auras. You should be okay. 2. Nope, not even nearly. Some sets have big flashy powers with long cooldowns, but others mostly rely on bread and butter attack chains. I usually skip it unless I'm building something that deliberately abuses recharge (Storm, peacebringers/dominators spring to mind) 3&4. It's hard to tell without playing it. You can always copy your character over to the beta server and try it out on a theoretical build. 5. I actually find Hover works well, but enhancements will cover you most of the time. 6. You can - scroll down a bit, they're just hidden.

It depends on what and where you play, really. Redside and goldside hit you hard and early with psi damage from widows and seers. On my main, I've got psi resistance through the roof but almost no toxic damage resistance and I would say that toxic seems to come up a lot less often, but when it does come up it does so hard and fast.

Is this a levelling build, an exemplar-friendly build or an end-game only build? Solo or teams? Are you refining an existing build or is it purely theoretical? I'd argue that you're probably overdoing the survivability at the cost of having quite a limited attack chain. You don't have much single target damage, which is fine until you hit a boss and then I think you'll be tanking it out until the end of time.

Invisibility doesn't let you interact with things or other players. Honestly, I'd rather see Invisibility get a revamp as it's less powerful than Stealth with the IO stealth proc.

Sorry I Asked: resurrect a Defeated teammate while they are logging off. Chrono-not-that-way: direct a teammate without the Midnighter badge to Imperius while seven of you are waiting in Cimerora. Rescue Chickens: accompany a teammate on their first mission outside of an AE farm.

VEATs do really feel like they're made of spare parts (not that they're bad - they're not- but they do feel cobbled together. Arachnos mercenaries or something would be excellent as a parallel to Void Hunters and Quantums... all Arachnos archetypes are psychics per the lore (I think - soldiers are technically mind controlling themselves) so an anti-psychic squad would work well thematically.

I totally get what you're saying and I do think the epic archetypes all need a look at by the devs, however I still regard them as New Game Plus archetypes so adding in extra mechanics is a good thing. I think they add to the flavour of the archetype - something that, say, the VEATs lack (and I say that as a VEAT main). I don't want people to suffer, but I do appreciate extra challenge in a game that's not that challenging. A toggle or a Null the Gull option would be good though.

My experience - everyone is so absurdly overpowered by endgame that it doesn't matter apart from a very small slither of things. Play how you want to play. Really, truly, honestly this is one of the better games for "I just wanna play X" playstyles. I've run incarnate trials and task forces etc and I would never turn someone away for playing a sentinel. There was a set of screenshots of different totals going around a while ago. Check out Mids Hero Planner (in the tools section of the forum) for a build simulator - it's a bit complex if you're new to the game but it can give you an idea of what stats are like for which sets. Broadly speaking, 45% defence in smashing and lethal or melee, ranged and AoE and 90% resistance will put you in the really, really sturdy category, but "more is better" is a good rule of thumb and some sets have alternative means of protection (lots of healing, lots of absorb shield, control effects) that will let you get away with less. I think people can be a bit myopic about end-game builds, whereas in practice you'll be levelling for a while and level scaling is a thing in the game. The brute forum gets a bit clogged with farming builds, but Tanker and Scrapper armour sets are almost identical (Sentinel and Stalker less so) so it can be worth looking at those.

Back in the day, you had to hit 50 to unlock the Kheldians, and hitting 50 was hard. You had to earn it. Consequently, the Kheldian archetypes are a sort of "New Game Plus" with harder mechanics to deal with, many of which have been removed. The quantums are about the only ones that are still in the game and they're weaker now than they used to be. Now, Kheldians aren't the strongest and never were, and I'd argue that they haven't fared well since the introduction of IOs pushed almost every other ranged archetype into the niche that they filled, but they are unique and had unique challenges. A lot of the game's original difficulty is, well, just not there any more. Stripping it away further would be a real shame.

I've found that people will come goldside if you advertise it in the LFG clearly. You usually have to help them get there, but I found it pretty easy to put teams together. Anyway, I used a stalker - some of the missions are long and being able to just run to the end can help. Note, though, that a number of goldside missions have ambushes that ignore stealth, so it's not as reliable as it might be.

I think that's a really relevant thing to point out - Dark is an "ignore the rest, punch the bosses" set and plays like one. While the work you've done is impressive, there is the same issue with pylon testing that it's an artificial playstyle. -End resistance is also something that would be worth taking into account as endurance crash can totally eradicate an otherwise very sturdy tanker. As a baseline (which you rightly say it is), it's definitely some food for thought and every build has its what-if scenarios to contend with. Really interesting about Bio, though - I knew it was a bit OP, but that's really OP. Good work!

You'd enjoy a confuse-heavy build. Find that enemy and weaponize them.

After a bit of playing, I discovered this works really well with powexec_location target commands, meaning you can teleport yourself right up in your target's face at the click of a button. This is the nearest you're likely to get to that stupidly good opening scene with Nightcrawler in the White House in X-Men 2.

Looks good! Remember that storm summoning is as near to a control set as you'll get for a defender, so you lean less on Defence than you might with other powersets (what can't stand up can't hurt you). The main problem I find is lack of damage - I can basically lock down enemies from hurting me, but defeating them is a bit slow. One nice thing about Storm is that even if you get mezzed a lot of what you've done just carries on regardless.

This is (roughly) my build that I took to 50 a while ago. Defences are around 30%, with 45+ for Ranged, and I rarely take Hover off. It also has respectable damage resists. Solid-enough attack chain, enough soft control to take on elite bosses. I've got a fair few powers dedicated to managing endurance because of the amount of recharge I went for.

I really hate leaving it until incarnates to deal with endurance. So much of the game is spent exemplared down. @Hew This is what I did. It really does help keep things going. Dehydrate is a decent attack that also heals you and can also recharge endurance with a proc. It's a very easy pick for me. I really recommend going for Mu and taking Power Sink as soon as you can - it's a massive endurance boosting power. Conserve Power can also really help. Storm has a few big hitter powers with massive endurance costs and it's easy to burn out. I'd also leave Assault until as late as you possibly can as endurance is such an issue with storm. If you do want to go for Soul, take Dark Consumption. Managing endurance is a big part of running a stormie. Water can take a lot of +recharge procs from Force Feedback - shove everyone one you can in your build. Storm lives on high recharge (which sadly makes endurance even more of a problem). Put some damage enhancements in Tornado - it's one of your bread and butter powers and to not make the most of it would be foolish. It's a chaotic pet, but it also does a lot of damage. It's more powerful than a Blaster's nuke, just as a slow DoT rather than a big bang. I tend to not really use hurricane, if I'm honest. It's a decent power on paper (if you manage the repel effect) but people often get pissy about knockback etc. I usually skip the Fighting pool on non-tanky builds. You've got a hell of a lot of soft control (lots of knockdown) and I find it hard to justify, but that's me.