Gulbasaur

I literally had someone say "whoa" in response to my fortunata. That felt good.

It goes in and out and in and out... Who even knows any more? I've been enjoying tankers a lot recently actually, and my dark/dark corruptor is fun. No secret hidden builds, just forgetfulness.

My brother came to the conclusion that the only way to guarantee compatibility on his mac with a few things he uses regularly for work (and games, as a side effect) was to stop updating the OS. It's a shame how they actively shun backwards compatibility. Back in the day, they dropped the Classic layer, which was an entirely separate install, on PowerPC machines that could run it comfortably because other machines ran Intel processors and they wanted feature parity. Despite Windows being a complete mess in terms of the UI and how you access anything in the settings, the backwards compatibility on it is pretty remarkable. It looks like Wine installed via Homebrew might work for 64-bit programs according to this user on StackExchange. I think it depends on how much work you're willing to do for it to maybe work, sadly.

Oh, I tweak and tweak and tweak. I also go through phases. I have been umming and ahhing about maybe taking Total Domination on my fortunata for funsies, despite knowing that I am very comfortable with the build I use. On not enjoying it... widows can completely afford to drop the fighting pool if you move some stuff around, which opens up some more power slots for control if that's what you might enjoy more. My current thing in builds is "not really worrying about defence" and it's going fine, but other people think leaving Atlas Park with anything less than 45% is a suicide mission. I'm levelling a dark/dark corruptor at the moment and it's very sturdy for its level.

Nooo... confuse them! Confusing support enemies is basically a hobby of mine at this point.

Water blast is an excellent pairing - lots of opportunities for +recharge proc, self-heal which you can proc to recharge endurance and very good synergy between freezing rain and whirlpool. The defender version has strong synergy at very low levels.

The old forums had a guide to guides abou the VEATS, one of which sounds like what you want. You can access them on the Internet Archive. I know the widows ones are quite good, but I have no idea about the soldiers. Link here.

I've noticed a dip in Everlasting in the last few months actually. Not in numbers, just people using the LFG channel. Could be wrong, though.

Honestly, give the VEATs a try. I'd rank them as the most capable solo archetypes in the game because there is so little they can't do. They're never the best at anything, but being second best at everything is pretty useful. My fortunata is my "solo multiple AVs at once" character and I think one of the arachnos soldier builds ranks highest for sustained AoE damage and is in the upper percentiles for pylon tests because of the pets (and recharge breaks everything). They're both really proc-friendly, which makes things even better. The only real issue is that they are very mediocre until level 24 - when they get a forced respec with extra power pools.

If you want an overpowered knockdown defender build, have a look at storm/water. Storm benefits hugely from recharge and has a lot of knockback/down. Storm and water both take the knockback +recharge proc in several powers so you end up with +100 recharge pretty much permanently. Water also has a self-heal, which can take a +endurance proc, making it very self-sufficient. Freezing rain keeps enemies knocked down and lowers resistance so whirlpool obliterates them. Later, you get tornado (more damage, more knockdown) and lightning storm (more damage, more knockdown).

Hah, those are the four archetypes I really don't get on with. Blasters feel underwhelming, sentinels are just safety-locked blasters, scrappers are stalkers without the interesting parts and brutes are just scrappers with a damage bonus for scrapperlocking. That said, I only really play tankers, corruptors or defenders beside my fortunata main. I specifically like tanker sets that come with status effects - cloak of fear is a thing of beauty.

FWIW, some of the level 50 only content is very good, so it's worth getting at least one into incarnate territory. The raids aren't particularly hard, but they are mostly pretty fun.

I don't have to challenge him, he does it anyway. He had started asking about pets recently, but also doesn't really like masterminds. He did get on very well with a gravity controller because throwing washing machines at people is always entertaining.

The game occasionally cocks up references. I've ended up in other people's missions once or twice... Wrong team, wrong zone... Just there I was. It was probably some server error somewhere and nothing nefarious.

Recently, I've been playing with my brother a lot. It's a nice way to hang out and we're ploughing through story arcs at a leisurely pace. The reward merits are rolling in nicely. What's really nice, however, is that he is just there to have fun. No pressure for rewards, characters are dropped as soon as they hit a point of indifference, costumes and names as sublime as they are ridiculous. His power choices reflect this. Knockback was his first love and he's gone all in on it with Tornado. I'm sorta-tanking (although on a widow so I drop aggro like he drops alts), and he's just there having fun. Doesn't really care if he's defeated (I have TT: Vengeance, so he's being useful), doesn't pick up contacts, doesn't care about the meta... he just has fun. And it's great. I mostly team with people with lower levels than me (keeping your baby tanker alive is a nice little minigame) and spend a lot of my time exemplared. The game is so much more fun for me when I know I can't steamroll everything and combat moves from "drop the AoEs on the tank and wait" to genuinely interesting and occasionally even tactical. So, if you've ever complained the game is too easy, or that it's just a farm, or the you can solo +4x8 in your sleep, I urge you to put to bed your AoE tank'n'spank, perma-Hasten, IO'd to within a nanometre builds and roll something self-indulgent. 3-slot your knockbacks. Take all the teleport powers. Herd enemies with repel. If you're honest in the LFG (the words "chilled out" are a magic summoning spell for like-minded players) and you don't pretend to be a speedrunner, you'll enjoy it so much. The thing is, it's not even particularly ineffective. Remember, efficient isn't the same as fun and gathering material rewards isn't the same as enjoying yourself. So, roll the gimmicky, inefficient but entertaining and off-meta monstrosity you've always wanted to and go and get stuff done.

Super Reflexes has damage resistance that scales with your health that doesn't show up in planners, making it look weaker than it is. It's a solid set that picks up very early and continues to improve. Hybrid sets with defence and resistance are generally a bit better than pure defence or resistance sets, in my opinion. It's also much easier to add defence than resistance through pool powers and IOs, so that might be worth considering. Invulnerability on Stalkers remains very good, although it doesn't have an endurance management power. I took a stalker to 50 and beyond with Shield Defence and found it good fun and very sturdy. Don't fall into the trap of trying to build it like a tank - 75% damage resistance is still very significant and stalkers really don't have any way to hold onto aggro in a group so you'll rarely be the focus of attention for long.

Performance shifter is technically a proc, so the +end would only trigger when you used Rest. The reason it works so well in Stamina is that Stamina is power that's always on, so it just quietly does its thing in the background. I don't even think Rest can take any IOs other than the standard ones... For the prestige sprints, there's just nothing that great you could put in them other than the +stealth enhancement. The +2.25% resistance bonus you can get from adding in another enhancement isn't terrible, but it's really the best of a mediocre selection.

Yeah, same... I played a mind controller back before Containment was added to the game and it was quite enjoyable. Whoever decided that Fear was exempt from Containment damage was a very silly person indeed.

Ah nice. Peacebringers were my first love (after getting a defender to 50 in like issue 4 or something). I think my dark/dark tanker with cloak of fear and my fortunata really fulfil my control-tank needs, but it's nice to theorycraft. Fear is my favourite control effect because I like watching my enemies cower and it's not too powerful that it trivialises combat (which, let's face it, is an issue with the game). Kick and crosspunch are satisfying crunchy and each take a decent selection of procs (including+recharge), making them quite handy on a ranged archetype. Coupled with a "take half, skip the rest" support they're reasonably good. I actually think it pairs very well with rad as you pretty much set everything up and then wade into combat. I'd really like it if they gave a similar 15% bonus to the pool powers like jump kick and air superiority, but alas.

Yeah, outside of novelty builds I don't bother with Hasten. My storm/water defender was built to see how much I could abuse recharge from Hasten and knockdown procs to make Storm into something even sillier than it already is (turns out, a lot, but it's very repetitive). "You need Hasten" is up there alongside "anything less than 45% defence is pointless" (watch me solo AVs with 35% on a low HP AT, bucko). There's a lot of Generic Forum Wisdom in the game that I think needs to be debunked and people often read "X is helpful" as "if you don't have X, it will be literally impossible". At the back of my mind, I'm brewing up a build that has fun with the presence and fighting pools but I haven't decided on the AT yet.

Yeah, it's too similar, though. If I wanted a mind/psi dominator, I'd play my fortunata which has most of that plus half a scrapper. I'll give savage a look, though. I'm not wild about the throwing birds at people aspect, though.

Not a bubbler, but a lot of other AoE buffs work the same way. I've given up trying to gather people, either fire them off in combat when we're together or just let people miss them. If people don't want buffs, that's their choice. I've noticed this is more prevalent in some archetypes than others, due to different playstyle preferences. Alas.

I love my fortunata, I really do. It's the variety that I like - mixture of melee, range and control (and tankiness and the fact that teammates can piggy back off my toggles). But I want to try something else and dominators tick most of the boxes, with damage mitigation from defence and resistance being swapped out for perma-Dom damage mitigation by control. Any suggestions? I don't mean by theme, but feel, so I don't mean lots of psi damage, more a "jack of all trades" playstyle where I can swap in and out of melee and range easily. At the moment, I'm maybe thinking elec, earth or dark for the control element and probably energy for the secondary because I like knockback and am a horrible person (or rather I mostly play with someone else who enjoys knockback). Does this sound about right? Any reformed fortunatas out there willing to give me some advice?

I'd say the opposite is true. The redside ATs were designed around their inherent powers, whereas blueside ATs got them added on after the fact. Dominators can out-control controllers, brutes could tank as well as tankers but output much more damage, stalkers are better scrappers than scrappers, defenders vs corruptors is less clear and masterminds and blasters are both their own thing. Kheldians' uniqueness suffered heavily with the introduction of IO set bonuses whereas the VEATs are often considered very good all-rounders as soon as they hit their "real" powersets. I think villain ATs were designed to solo whereas hero ATs were designed to team. In the days before Going Rogue, combat in each game felt very different.

It starts at three but raises to five in the second or third zone... so you're right, it's not five, but six. (I'd forgotten about the mayhem missions and you'd forgotten about the increased number of broker missions needed.) Not always - most of the "at launch" CoV contacts need a broker introduction. While you can do them as Flashbacks, I'd argue that you shouldn't have to play the storyline backwards. Several story arcs introduce the patrons before you do their missions, which is good plot development apart from the fact that many people miss them because of the grindy broker system hiding the story arcs behind a four to six mission unlock.