Gulbasaur

Most significant ones, in my opinion: All TFs are now (theoretically) soloable as no clickies have to be done simultaneously any more. I think this trivialises some things but makes sense for others. P2W vendor makes a lot of things easier to come by for the average player. Auction house prices are waaaaaay lower, meaning IOs are cheaper, meaning that there has been a very accessible power creep that has caused problems with the lack of very difficult content. Null the Gull lets you swap alignments freely.

There seems to be a bit of stigma about confuse, and I think it's down to two things: non-control characters vastly outnumber control characters so see it as pointless because brute smash and the (very small) XP penalty (that works out better over time). Confuse resistance is rare. It makes enemies start buffing and healing you. You can use it bypass "the team wiped because I wasn't paying attention" moments. It's great. Mind control is also a very decent set, although one with few frills. I'd like that they would update Containment to include fear and confuse effects like the incarnate equivalent does, but alas. I do think it's not the best pairing for sonic, though - that -res aura is very useful and you've got nothing to anchor it on.

I mean, this is a neat idea. I've thought about a "just throw money at it" build before focusing on temp powers - there's Summon Backup or something like that that I do occasionally use. The Signature Summons are also pretty awesome when you need them, but very spendy. Sonic attack has and always will have a fairly low damage output, especially solo. It's a much better power set on paper than in play if you're not always in large teams and the pets will mitigate this a bit but sadly it never feels spectacular.

I'd really like to see recharge and global recharge looked at more generally. Even the original devs said Hasten was broken and now it's not unusual to be rocking around with effectively two loads of Hasten just from enhancements.

I mean, I'm sure such people exist... in theory, at least...

The enhancement system is in a terrible state and has utterly obliterated several aspects of game balance. The game is too easy to make too easy. Everyone and their cow is rocking levels of defence that tankers would once have dreamed about and cheap recharge bonuses make emergency powers into perma powers. Remove most of the +defence set bonuses that give everyone an effective armour set. It's broken. Ditto most of the +recharge bonuses. You shouldn't be able to replace Hasten with influence. (I'd also add a bigger crash on Hasten.) Make it possible to enhance damage resistance debuffs. It's not possible for a really stupid design oversight, from what I remember. Ditto -DMG. Lower the Rule of Five to three. It's abused. I'd also call for the return of crashes on blast nukes.

Aggro (the game mechanic) takes a few things into account, including debuffs. If you're attacking and debuffing, you'll get more aggro than just attacking or debuffing. If you're debuffing enemy endurance, you'll be attracting even more attention to yourself.

I'm going to direct you to @Redlynne's guide here. Not exactly the same, but Redlynne's work is usually excellent and this is a very comprehensive guide.

Oh, nice. I stand corrected. Thanks.

Storm does more damage on a defender, importantly, you get some of the keystone powers much earlier. I had a great time with my storm/water defender. Water lets you take a lot of force feedback +recharge procs, which mitigates the long cooldowns on storm. You'll run out of endurance immediately but you'll go out in a pyre of glory.

I just want more messy hybrid archetypes like the fortunata, which is basically claws/psi/mind as a primary and leadership/super reflexes/whatever as a secondary. Gimme more hybrids! I want a kinetic melee/gravity primary with kinetics/energy armour ASA secondary. Let me make more jacks of all trades, please!

I move the proc between the two confuses pretty much every time I fiddle with the build - I'm not sure there is a best way. Either it procs on the AoE with its own AoE effect adding some extra magnitude or it procs on the single target adding some extra minions and lieuts. It's Six of one, half a dozen of the other.

While I think the ATs are broadly balanced and each has their merits, I really don't like brutes from a design concept. I've whinged about this before, but they took scrapperlock antisocial gameplay and gave it a taunt and more hit points... which means that you get rewarded with a higher damage bonus for getting into combat with more enemies... on a game with an aggro cap. "I like the game, but there just isn't enough incentive to kill all your teammates," asked the scrapper. "Do you have anything that rewards horrible gameplay?" "Why certain, sir" said the gameplay designers. "Leave the corruptors to deal with three +4 bosses while you herd minions on the other side of the map. Don't worry, support archetypes don't have feelings. Here is a massive damage boost for your troubles." "Thank you so much! I look forward to the release date!" " said the scrapper and then went back to his colouring in.

: O Thanks for the correction!

No, I just procrastinate a lot and real life has been sort of hectic so I just kept not starting. I totally forgot about Phipps, despite enjoying the arc. It has a lot of things that thematically link to a First Ward arc as Fortunatas and Seers are so closely related. I've added it now. Thank you!

Due to the horrible, awful, smelly broker system and the need to do three to five newspaper missions and a bank mission to open up several of the contacts... something with stealth to make them go a bit faster... I mean, the +stealth IO can be used from level 10 in Sprint and Stealth is a decent choice from the power pools so anything goes really. I'm a fan of stalkers over brutes for general purposes - if you want to feel powerful from low levels, they are really hard to beat. Grab the two special ATOs and you'll be powering through. Street Justice is one of the highest scoring DPS for single-targets but really follow your villainous little heart. I'd also recommend trying one of the VEATs. Once you get the endurance under control (don't take all the toggles straight away, only the defensive ones), they're outstanding. Thank you! This one was a bit harder to put together because the zones are less linear and there's the horrible, awful, smelly broker system to contend with. Early redside content is better than early blueside content, but the revamped blueside zones surpass it in a few places in my opinion. It's a more even experience, but it's also harder to pull together a sense of narrative at times.

Aaaaaand I did it!

The Mean Missions Guide or A villainous journey to 50 without powerleveling The Story is Actually Good - even if you're not! Yeah, yeah, I know. It’s easier to powerlevel up to 50, buy IOs and go back through Ouroboros in Flashback missions, but this creates a jumbled storytelling mess. Also, it creates a feeling of character development and your "oh, it's X again" moments become "hey, I remember this! I helped X do Y in Z!" as characters appear and reappear later, giving the whole story a sense of continuity and progression. The story is in the Rogue Isles less tied to geography than in Paragon City and more about themes and recurring enemy groups. I think that's pretty fitting for a villain. You're not there to make the world a better place for the greater good - you're there to make it a better place for you. You're playing the long game, here. Some storylines that start off in the single-digits don't really come to fruition until endgame. Some themes are also a bit inconsistent - the Destined One storyline sort of drifts in and out and it's counter-intuitively easy to miss it altogether if you're not directed to one particular contact. I’ve tried to cherry pick story arcs that meet the following criteria: Interesting missions (variety of objectives). Missions with unique maps or mechanics. Story flow - introducing characters and ideas that’ll show up again later. Rewards and unlocks, missions with temporary powers. Things I just think are cool. One important thing to note is that in the Rogue Isles and in Arachnos, in order to succeed you must show that you deserve success. Your contacts are rarely nice people and you are rarely doing nice jobs. Several missions give you a choice between mercy and murder, but that’s about as selfless as you’re going to get. Contacts aren't trustworthy and you need to start off small before you make a name for yourself. You have to prove your worth, repeatedly, and be prepared to defend your status. Please don't take this as canonical or anything like that - feel free to wander off the beaten track and read the comments below for other recommendations. Notable omissions are anything I think is too much of a faff to unlock and some out of the way contacts - I couldn't realistically fit everything in and redside contacts often have requirements before you can talk to them. Also not touched upon are tip missions, although I would say it's worth working through them to unlock your character as a rogue for a bit more variety (you can cheat with Null the Gull, but the tip missions are all fairly good and so are the alignment shift ones and remember that this is a story guide). As with my blueside guide, I'll periodically add to this to flesh it out as I go. Any feedback is really welcome! Contacts and Brokers One of the key difference between blue and redside mission gameplay is the fact that you have to unlock several contacts in a zone by first doing newspaper missions then a bank heist then unlock the contact. I’ll mark these where I can, but be aware that if you can’t see a contact you might need to go through a broker first. Remember - a theme redside is that you're nobody until you've earnt the right to be somebody, so why would contacts talk to someone so beneath them as you? You're just this fool who stumbled out of the Zig (or Galaxy City) with some help from Arachnos? Another key difference is how story arcs are linked - blueside and neutral/goldside zones tend to have a chain sequential contacts that move you along a narrative while redside quite often has two-contact chains with themes that are returned to in later zones. Included below are the names of the contacts, in order, with level bands taken from the wiki. A Warning about XP It is very easy to outlevel certain zones and for that reason I recommend you do not use any exp boosts. Other times, you'll get halfway through a zone and not be able to speak to the next contact. Over the course of the game, there was a (near) global XP buff and a reduction in experience debt, so the levelling process is now noticeably quicker than a couple of the early zones were designed for. You’re deliberately taking the scenic route here. The following macro will create a button that will pause and unpause XP gain, allowing you to more easily control your levelling pace. I've indicated in this guide the points at which you should pause your experience gain to get the most from the story - a general rule of thumb is at levels ending in 4 or 9. /macro_image "DayJob_XPBoost" "XP Toggle" "option_toggle noxp" Travel Redside zones are harder to navigate in places. The Arachnos map designers must have got a special deal on dangerous walkways and improbably large walls. I suggest grabbing one of the flight powers from the P2W vendor if you’re not a flier for those times when ground navigation is too difficult. A Note for Soldiers and Widows The Villain Epic Archetypes have their own contacts and missions and I recommend doing them when they pop up. They explore Arachnos lore and show why you’re not just another grunt and I think they're worth doing. Do be cautious about not overshooting your levels, though. Suggested Path Some of these, particularly in the late game, have a lot of crossover with my blueside missions guide. Redside never really had a high enough population to support addition of new red-only content so at a certain point you’ll have to dip into more neutral territory. Occasionally, things will deviate a bit but this is broadly the direction we'll be heading in. Redside has a lot more overlap than blueside and the zone level distribution is a bit... odd. Tutorial > Mercy Island > Port Oakes> Cap Au Diable > First Ward & Sharkhead Isle > Night Ward & Nerva Archipelago > St Martial > Grandville, Cimerora & Ritki War Zone. Levels 1-2: The Tutorials Okay, there really isn’t much here but you do get a couple of enhancements and inspirations for free and a run through of the basics of mission objectives. Breakout runs you through the basics of your standard door and explains how you, well, break out of the Zig. I recommend doing it at least once. Galaxy City is, in my opinion, less good as a tutorial and not really connected to the early redside story arcs. If you're concerned about character concept, Galaxy City has your fall to villainy happen on-screen, which you could either explain as an act of desperation in dire circumstances leading you down a path of selfishness in the name of self-preservation (useful for future rogues?) or you could be more vague about how you ended up in the Zig in the first place. Your call, really. When you’re finished, you’ll end up in... Mercy Island The temptation here is to skip the early levels by running Death From Below. Do not do this! Believe it or not, the zone actually has a fun little story arc that acts as a giant lore dump. You'll get your levels. Don't fret. There is a good variety to the missions and it really does show you a little bit of everything. Pause your XP at level 7. Operative Kuzmin > Fire Wire or Doctor Weber > Lt Harris I enjoyed Fire Wire’s mission a bit more, but there’s not too much in it. Lt Harris’ last mission is quite distasteful and you may want to skip it if abusive relationships or stalking are a specific trigger. This mission is unusually dark if you actually follow the dialogue, which is unusual as the rest of the redside content is more akin to cartoon supervillainy. Whatever you choose, talk to Dr Graves for an introduction to some of the further aspects of the game. It’s basically a glorified tour of the introductory areas, but it's not done enormously well. Don't worry - it gets better. Kallinda > Mongoose are worth visiting as she provides some insight into your status as a Destined One, which is a recurrent theme throughout the redside story, and he gives pops up later. Matthew Burke > Doctor Creed provides some general background stuff about the snakes and foreshadows something that'll turn up waaaaay later. Port Oakes After the very busy Mercy Island, Port Oakes feels a bit desolate but the few arcs that are here are very good. Make sure you do Mr Bocor’s mission to retrieve the Loa Bone – it’s a nice little temporary power. Angelo Vendetti (5-9) > Mr Bocor (5-9) > The Radio (10-14) I'd recommend then going back and finishing Dr Graves' next two story arcs - it's more tutorial stuff and the writing is wildly inconsistent, but it has a pretty satisfying ending that has a crossover to the blueside equivalent and has some foreshadowing for one of the Patrons. Pause your XP at 9 until you’ve started Mr Bocor then pause it again at 14. Cap au Diable You'll want to hit the brokers for this one. Dr Aeon seems to be the recurring lore point - he turns up much later. I'd start with Dr Shelley Percey - her arc and the one that she introduces are by far the more interesting ones here. Sadly, this is the point where you'll have to start grinding newspaper missions to get bank heists to unlock contacts from brokers. I highly recommend getting a form of stealth if you're running them solo to just save time. Dr Shelley Percey (10-14) > Marshal Brass (15-19) Dr Percey has a good mission after her story arc about the Council and nictus, which is a lore point that'll turn up later in Cimerora and beyond, but it also drops some good temporary powers. Martial Brass has a lot of stuff about Dr Aeon. Martial Brass also awards you the Entrusted with the Secret badge, which allow you to access Ouroborous, which is your go-to locale for time-travel and avoiding the ferry. Peter Themari (10-14) > Willy Wheeler (15-19) has bit of lore about about Longbow and Legacy Chain, both of whom are recurring enemies. Dmitri Krylov (10-14) > The Golden Roller (15-19) has a bit of lore about Facemaker and some fairly disparate missions. Bane Spider Reuben (15-24) has an enjoyable story arc and I also recommend Brother Hammond's (15-24) arc for some Luddite fun. Neither of them require brokers. Before You Move On Now would be a good time to do Death From Below and Drowning in Blood if you haven’t already done them as well as Virgil Tarikoss’ strike force. Seer Marino in Mercy Island should now be available as a contact that I recommend doing as has a good amount of Ghost Widow lore as is generally just quite well done. Your goal is to get to level 20, when you can swing over to Face and speak to the Facemaker herself to earn an additional costume slot. The University Now would be a good time to learn to craft some IOs. If you've been careful, you should have a bit of influence saved up by now. Head to the university in Cap au Diable and do the short tutorial there by speaking to Dean John Yu. Ashley McKnight (14-50) just outside the university can provide you access to the exclusive Midnighter Club, which you'll need to be part of much later on. Now would also be a good time to do the Silver Mantis strike force that starts in Sharkhead Isle. It's nothing special, but getting to level 22 will is helpful for IO purposes. Next, there are actually several very good, very overlapping zones that I suggest you kind of do in tandem if you're careful. Be aware that First Ward and Night Ward move into Praetorian lore, which is much less relevant for villains than heroes. I think they're too well made to not do at least once, though. Sharkhead Isle This is the point, in my opinion, where redside missions start to come into their own and you move from lackey to a more arcive player in the wider Rogue Isles story. Remember to run some newspaper missions to get the brokers on your side if you need to. Vince Dubrovsky (20-24) > Cage Crash (20-24) > Diviner Maros (25-29) is one of the standouts here, in my opinion as it introduces the first real Captain Mako lore. Dean Macarthur (20-29) is the first contact I'd head for as he doesn't need a broker's introduction and his whole story arc is just really fun and he introduced Leonard (20-29) who continues the same story. This is such a Saturday Morning Cartoon storyline that you really shouldn't miss it. Vincent Ross has the other story arc I'd really recommend doing as it has a decent story and doesn't need a broker. More Legacy Chain hijinks. You should also have the Bling badge by now, so I'd recommend seeking out Doc Buzzsaw (25-29) for her set of missions, which tie into the general lore of the zone and the Freakshow group. Lock your XP gain at level 29 and keep it there throughout First Ward if you go there. First Ward - optional First Ward is a continuation of the Praetorian Going Rogue storyline to some extent, but it's so well done that I genuinely think it would be a shame to miss out. It has memorable characters, cool story interactions and an element of choice that hasn't really been seen up to this point. All contacts for this zone are 20-29 and it starts off by talking to Carter Mortesen in Cap au Diable. Carter Mortesen > The Doorman > Nadia > Palatine > Noble Savage > Katie Douglas > Blind Makwa > Cerulean > Master Midnight > Vanessa DeVore There's the Seed of Hamidon raid boss pootling about in the middle of the zone - you can take it down in a team of eight quite easily and it's worth doing. It's done so rarely that getting a team together on the LFG isn't hard. It's a somewhat anticlimactic battle, but you get some badges from it. Nerva Archipelago There is a lot of lore here that turns up at end game so all three story chains are surprisingly relevant if you want to know what's going on. Keep your XP locked to 29 until you've unlocked the initial contacts - yes, this will mean churning through a lot of newspaper missions. I hate the broker system. Due to the slightly dense level ranges here, you may find it easier to unlock the 25-29 contacts, level up elsewhere and then come back at level 34 for the next wave. Darla Mavis (24-29) > Psimon Omega (30-34) > Technician Naylor (35-39) introduces Nemesis, who is a big player blueside and is part of the excellent Signature Story Arc Pandora's Box. Shadowy Figure (24-29) > Timothy Raymond (30-34) > Kelly Uqua (35-39) is your first real introduction to Ritki redside, and you'll see them later in the Ritki War Zone. Lt Demitrovich (24-29) > Operative Rutger (30-34) > Magu Mu'Drakhan (35-39) has a number of heroes if you want a challenge but it the least lore focussed of the three in this version of the levelling journey - it has a lot relating to the Circle of Thorns and the Mu. Bobby Curtin (25-29) is an excellent contact if you're a rogue, with some excellent morally ambiguous choices. Night Ward - Optional Carrying on the story from First Ward, we've got the fairly unique zone of Night Ward, full of gaslamp fantasy world-of-the-dead mystery, knights and magic. Start off by talking to Mistress Maria in First Ward for the introduction. All contacts are 30-39 but lock your XP to 34 if you're zone hopping. Alternatively you can go up to 34, head to St Martial and do some missions there and then head back. Mistress Maria > Montague Castanella > Ward > Sir Bedwyr > The Magician My only real complaint with Night Ward is that it just sort of stops. A few characters do turn up in later story arcs, though. Before You Move On Now would be a good time to visit Mr Rodney in Cap au Diable for the old cape and aura unlock missions, then swing round to Face and speak to Gorgeous Glenda to unlock an additional costume slot. I'd also recommend using your Ouroborous portal and speaking to Mender Tesseract (25-34) and Mender Lazarus (30-39) for some time-travel shenanigans. Pause your XP at 34. St Martial Hardcase is a very worthwhile contact here as he has four story arcs with two at 30-34 and two at 34-39. Johnny Sonata (35-39) has a set of missions that link back to Hardcase's set, but you need the Obsessed badge (which isn't hard to get). Of the broker-unlock missions, Voracious Virandi (30-34) > Jezebel Jones (35-39) is the one I'd recommend for story reason. There are a few other contacts here that are unlocked via badges, but I'll leave those to your discretion. Before you leave St Martial, you can visit Lovely Linda (40-50) in Face to open up your level 40 costume slot. Lock your XP gain at 44. Grandville The final redside zone and home of the four Patrons, all of whom have had at least some foreshadowing by now. You'll first be sent to Arbiter Rein to choose your patron and cannot speak to them until you've done this. I'd argue that Ghost Widow and Scirocco have the most relevance in terms of lore, with Captain Mako and Black Scorpion having interesting but less important roles from a player perspective. All four of them have four story arcs (two starting at 40, two at 45) and all four of those are pretty good. They also all have (roughly) the same end-goal, which is also the end of you Destined One storyline. Aside from the patrons, there are a lot of worthwhile contacts in this zone. Westin Phipps (40-44) shows a much darker side of Arachnos than you've been hitherto been allowed to see. Terence Dobbs (40-44) deals with the Arachnoids, which you may remember from waaaaay back in Mercy Island. His follow up contact is Dr Forrester. Television (45-50) is a follow up to the Radio's earlier storyline. Vernon von Grun (45-50) has an excellent arc fighting the Devouring Earth. Viridian (45-50) has a fantastic arc with varied enemy groups and a satisfying boss rush, albeit locked behind an array of badges. Operative Grillo (45-50) has some Snake-focussed missions that give some closure to your work in Mercy Island. Cimerora This zone is notable for just being so stylistically unique and making good use of time travel as a plot device, as well as harking back to some Kheldian lore. As you go in, talk to the Midnighter standing in front of you for further instruction. Personally, I think the story progression is a bit messy, but it's still worth doing if only because the task force is so good. All contacts are L35-50. Midnighter > Senator Decimus Aquila > Marcus Valerius Additionally, there is a villain-specific contact named Sister Airlia (40-50) with some missions that send you back to Rogue Isles and this zone ends with the glorious Imperius task force. Ritki War Zone I really like the storytelling in this zone. There's a good sense of progression and you meet up with a few characters we met earlier. Levantera (35-50) > Serpent Drummer (40-50) > Gaussian (45-50) > The Dark Watcher (45-50) There are a few task forces here, but for now give the Lady Grey task force a try as it most closely follows the storyline. Your glory lap here is unquestionably the Ritki Mothership Raid. Look for it on the LFG, head on over and join a league. Range and AoE attacks will help you, but if you don't know what you're doing then watch for instructions, follow the crowd and keep spamming those AoE attacks. Strike Forces, Trials and Signature Story Arcs At this point, you can access all non-incarnate content that isn't gated behind a badge. Most strike forces are popular enough to pull a crowd if you advertise it on the LFG. Most, if not all, are technically soloable, but not necessarily on every build. Call out for likeminded souls to assist you in furthering your goals. You can join these at any level above their minimum and will automatically scaled down to make sure there's some challenge. These are considerably more even in quality and length than the blueside Task Force equivalents. They've all got a bit of variety. I would say that there aren't really any standouts among the purely redside ones; they're all good but rarely great. Check the wiki for details, but here are some standouts: Virgil Tarikoss' The Beast Beneath the Mountain (15-20) has a cool final battle where you face a Hero and an Archvillain at the same time - and they're fighting each other in a possible threeway battle. Silver Mantis' Pirates of the Sky (20-25) is varied enough, short enough and ends with a battle where you have to summon the final boss by defeating his defences. Mortimer Kai's The Fire and the Flames (20-40) requires a badge from a villain/rogue tip mission. Mender Lazarus' The Fifth Column Overthrow is probably more relevant if you've already levelled blueside, but it's a good example of Ouroboros and time travel. Lord Recluse's Strike Force (45+) throws you up against a number of Heros, spawing at high levels. Try this one at 50, not 45. Redside has its own version of several of the trials, although in practice it's just a change of contact. The Signature Story Arcs, however, are different enough that they're worth doing on both sides. One exception is the Homecoming-exclusive Dr Aeon's Strike Force Chasing Fool's Gold; it's a strike force that makes use of unique mechanics and has an array of extra challenges thrown in to keep things spicy. The Shadow Shard The four Shadow Shard task forces are, to put it mildly, a thankless grind through repetitive missions with enemies that debuff defence hard and often resist control effects, ending in a moderately cool final battle after hours and hours and hours and I think they're great. For crying out loud, don't do them more that once, but they're a true rite of passage for any high level character. They involve a huge amount of travel, which is nightmarish for non-fliers or teleporters. If you can, grab the mission teleporters from the P2W vendor and coordinate who uses them, as well as the Ouroborous portal and maybe a jetpack temporary power. The scenery, however, is amazing. They sort of form one giant task force, and they suffer "a little bit" from pacing issues. Find a friendly group you can have a laugh with, put on some music and just surrender yourself to the grind. Dr. Quarterfield (40-44) > Sara Moore (40-50) > Justin Augustine (44-50) > Faathim the Kind (44-50) They have very, very little relevance thematically for Redside characters, but they do tie into the lore of Dark Astoria, which is Incarnate territory. What's next? Well, it's time for some incarnate-level content, but that's outside of the remit of this guide. I know it's a bit short for now, but I'll add to it over time. Any comments, let me know! I'm a big fan of missions and story arcs and think there's a lot of really great content there that goes almost unplayed due to the "must get moar levelz" mentality, which is fine but not for me. Thanks! Minor note: on my computer, the font sizes on this post are messed up and I cannot get them to stay the same size. It's all a Nemesis plot.

Broadly speaking - it's a decent enough guide but corruptors and (especially) defenders get more powerful secondary effects that occasionally raise the utility of powersets. Scourge plays a factor and so do the higher debuff numbers - defenders do 20% -res with most sonic powers, while blasters do 13%. Sonic is still a harder set to work with, but you'll get the most mileage out of it on a defender. Anything with -res has most value on a defender in a team, for example, because increases damage taken from all sources and defenders get the highest rates. Electric is arguably only viable on a defender if you want to make use of its secondary effect because endurance drain is a bit of an all or nothing thing and only defenders really reliably hit the tipping point. Dark is another with a very powerful debuff that blasters get comparatively low values on as ToHit debuff works very similarly to defence, making it a very powerful set while levelling because if makes you very, very survivable with relatively little investment. Dual Pistols and Beam Rifle both make use of secondary effects that might give them an edge on corruptors or defenders. For example, piercing rounds and piercing beam do -13% resist on blasters but -20% on defenders - on a team that could stack up the extra damage quite quickly. Both are quite proc-friendly as well, meaning you get better returns on investment to close the gap than with blasters. There's also the issue that for blasters, killing everything really quickly is often the best way to stay alive so they need to prioritise damage to a greater extent - a lot of defenders and corruptors get some pretty impressive debuffs quite early so immediate damage is less of a concern allowing them to work with "slow burn" builds more safely.

Incarnate content, raids, there's a fair bit of at-50 content to do. Don't forget to work on your accolades and head back through Ouro for interesting story arcs, then work your alignment to one of the neutral ones and work down the other side's task/strike forces etc. There's a lot left to do.

Welcome to Arachnos. Is this a build you're planning or a build you're using? Just interested I see you've taken Provoke - I get a lot of mileage out of it. I used it to pull aggro in BAF yesterday to pull both the AVs and fortunatas can tank very well, although you might want to lean a bit more into a tanktroller playstyle than a tanker/brute one. Your high defence mostly covers you for the debuffs so it's actually less of a problem in practice than on paper. Cascading defence failure is something I rarely see in practice but when it does hit it hits hard but you've also got scaling damage resistances from the Reactive Defence IO, CT: Defensive and Foresight (both all but tox and psi), which isn't really visible in the build planner. At 50% health, your resists are actually about 30% higher than they look. I'd also maybe think about the +Absorb proc from Preventative Medicine if you've got a slot for it. It's basically a "you need to start paying attention" warning system. For a blastroller, you're quite low on the control aspect and I think that's a mistake - what you lack in damage resistance you can make up for by just not letting enemies attack you in the first place. Immobilising enemies isn't as useful on a fortunata - your ranged defence is your lowest of the positionals and you don't have a lot of AoE. Out of interest, I turned Weave off and you still have defence over 50% with Mind Link up - I'd drop the fighting pool entirely if I were you. You're investing a lot for a very large defence debuff buffer and 23% S/L resists at the expense of both of the Confuse powers. They offer an absurd amount of damage mitigation to all but AVs and the occasional control-resistant mob. If you go Rogue, you get an AoE confuse power which you can use to stack magnitudes up quite decently. As you're almost entirely ranged, I'd also consider dropping Lunge in exchange for psychic scream. Swap the Dominion of Arachnos ATO set from Subdue and it'll start proccing Fear and -DMG at a high-enough rate to be worthwhile, even with the lower cone proc rates. It basically slows down attack rate to one attack per five second interval - that's pretty decent. You're also missing the global toxic proc ATO - this literally adds a toxic proc to all your attacks (not just the one you slot it in) and missing it out is, to put it mildly, very silly indeed. Hope some of that helps - feel free to ignore any of my advice (apart from the global toxic ATO - make room for that one).

Having obsessively tweaked my fortunado build to within a nanometre, it's just one of them things I knew about in too much detail. Vanden mentioned it here (forgot to add my source in the above post). Keep up the good work, Bopper!

VEATs have a higher base endurance recovery and regen. It's an increased base amount rather than a buff, so things that multiply regen multiply off the higher base (unless I'm wrong). Vanden did a breakdown of it here for endurance but I think they get a 5% higher base rate for both. Edit: It looks like Conditioning might be 20% not 5% so the standard base regen is 5% every 12 seconds, but VEATs regen 6% every 12 seconds (without factoring in Health, which multiplies off the base but effectively they get 20% more bang for their buck with anything that increases regen).

The most OP scrapper is probably a stalker if you disregard Titan Weapons... but Bio gives you a big DPS boost, and do does Shield. BS/Shield is fun. I ran a dark/dark/dark tanker and that was pretty reliably decent. Dark melee has some solid debuff on it, dark armour has two control auras that are fun to use and make up for the low defence and the epics are just nice utility. It's very endurance hungry, but it's also pretty fun to run.

Early blueside zones suffer from being a bit similar but at least they were navigable without flight - redside zones have pushed me to just take flight on every character because otherwise it's such a complete mess. How the walls-and-elevators design got past quality control is beyond me. I am 100% sure they were told to slow down travel to artificially inflate the time it took to get around to add fake longevity. I can't help but think the same thing happened with the godawful grind to unlock story arcs from brokers. I remember playing redside fairly early on and hating the archetypes. Brutes were just scrappers with crash helmets, corruptors were gimpy defenders and stalkers died in the tutorial mission. Masterminds and dominators were neat, though, even if dominators were just Safety Blasters. Combat on the two sides (before IO sets) was really, really different - blueside felt like you were working as a team while redside felt like you were just all coincidentally playing in the same mission instance. Nowadays, I love my fortunata but I'd left the game by the time they came out. I still have an overall preference for blueside ATs. I do quite like redside content, but I definitely spend less time there - in a way, it's just as generic as early blueside but with dereliction and inclement weather instead of skyscrapers and apartment blocks.