Gulbasaur

As someone with a passion for the epic archetypes, gimme gimme gimme.

For GMs, the biggest issue is their very high regen, which is why debuff sets tend to do very well against them (and so many people use envenomed daggers). If you don't have some form of -regen, you need very high DPS to compensate. I think the highest non-pet single target damage combo is street justice / bio on a stalker. Bio has -regen and a damage increase, so that makes sense.

Oh, that's pretty clever actually. I took Provoke basically for down time Tips missions in Atlas Park as it's useful for keeping newbies alive. Using it to break up a group is a great idea. Incidentally, Enflame from the Sorcery pool is an excellent group-breaker as it creates a ground patch that follows the affected mob, which the AI freaks out about. It's sort of the the opposite of Confront as it causes enemies to just run away as they try to avoid a patch that repeatedly spawns underneath them. I've got it on my stalker as a kind of "go away" button. If you ever need an enemy to just be somewhere else for 30 seconds, Enflame is very reliable.

I don't think there's too much in it any more, but Everlasting generally had more of a population on the villain side of things. They seem to have evened out a bit over time, though, but there's still only about 20% of the population redside, which interestingly is about the same as it was on Live.

I have Provoke on my fortunata. Not an idiot - a tank!

The first character I solo'd an AV was my fortunata (which I hold to be the most glorious archetype ever created due to the sheer array of stuff at your disposal)... and then I solo'd many, many more. My defence is mostly at or around soft cap 75% of the time but my melee defence is nearly there all the time. AVs just become punching bags as most of my control powers mostly don't do anything against them although the psi damage is very nice at times. People who take a "soft cap or GTFO" approach are often a bit over-cautious in my opinion, but defence is definitely very important for single-target battles. I find having melee defence at or near soft cap is usually enough for AV battles - my ranged and AoE is nearer 35% some of the time and I don't consider that a problem. "Yes but what if XYZ?" I imagine you shouting - it doesn't matter. Widows have less hit points than blasters and I can still cut AVs in half so you can probably do it on your super cool scrapper. AVs won't one-shot you unless there's a very big level difference, even with low damage resistance, Apart from known outliers like Silver Mantis (who I can take down about 50% of the time unaided), I'm fine. Munch inspirations when you need to. That's what they're for. People who don't use them are ninnies. Anyway, some advice for bringing down your first AV solo: Since we're on Homecoming where a lot of convenience items are very readily available (my one criticism, really, as it can trivialise some things later on), you should definitely hit the P2W vendor for some extra goodies. Envenomed daggers help speed things up, but I've done it without. They pretty much negate an enemy's regen, which is one of the main problems with soloing an AV. The Backup Radio power is really useful either as a bit more DPS or a distractor for trash mobs that spawn. I've used the Signature summons and they're useful but slightly too expensive to be any more than a novelty - Positron is a total babe, though, with his debuff skillz. I find endurance becomes an issue in very long fights and the Recovery Serum is my backup for that. Nowadays, I turn AVs off where I can because they're more a battle against boredom than anything else - they don't really pose more of a threat to a high defence character than an elite boss and the fights tend to go on longer than is really enjoyable. The Ritki War Zone story arcs have some good AVs along the way, and the Admiral Sutter Task Force has a couple of double-AV battles for your self-punishment pleasure.

Farscape still stirs feelings up inside me. ❤️

Well, a mixture of both really. The very high baseline defence and better-than-nothing scaling resistances definitely help, but their ability to dispatch groups of mobs safely is helped a lot by control and debuff powers. An enemy who is Held is an enemy who isn't going to touch you, and neither is the one flip-flopping on the ground because of Tornado, or the three hit by the fear proc. Put it like this: they're a hybrid archetype, so hybridise. Use all the tools you have available to you, including melee. You're half-scrapper, half-dominator and you happen to leak some of your buffs onto your allies. People who call the VEATs support archetypes are a bit wrong, in my opinion. My build is here, and the whole thread is pretty good as others have given their builds and there's some discussion of playstyle and procs. Definitely use it as a template to build into rather than copying it completely - it's very good, but I make no claims to be the best there is. I'm actually trying a slightly different build at the moment, so definitely use it as a suggestion rather than gospel.

My opinion as someone who mains fortunata and has a build up that people have reviewed favourably: The tanker and brute meta for survivability is defence and resistance (and healing and absorb). Everyone else has a much wider array of tools to help survive and you need to use them.. Hold, fear, -recharge, knockback... use it all. Scream and Tornado both do pretty good recharge debuffs, which in turn delays enemy attacks. Dominate is one of the most powerful tools you have, so whack that on every lieutenant you see. Confuse early and often (support enemies, then lieutenants, then anyone else, bosses if they're annoying ones). Defence has synergy with -recharge as fewer attacks mean fewer opportunities to even try to hit you. Despite the high defence, don't think of a fortunata as a melee archetype or a sentinel - think of it like a dominator with some extra tricks. A lot of survival is based on aggressive, relentless use of control and AOE and then hacking your enemies apart in melee when they're more manageable. The Dominion of Arachnos fear proc is great in an AoE, because it effectively delays half the mobs for 10 seconds, which gives you plenty of times to mow down their friends. It's like in Austen Powers where the goons all wait their turn before attacking one by one - you can make them do that. You're not a mighty glacier, you're a hornets' nest after a bottle of Jack Daniels. I didn't take Tough. I tend not to take Tough, Weave or Hasten on principle as I think they're a bit broken, but not everyone has the same martyr complex as me. Nonetheless, my fortunata is the only build I've had to get unsolicited compliments in game so I'm fairly confident in the build I use. I made up the damage resistance difference with IOs where I can. I highly recommend getting the Shield Wall and Reactive Defences damage resistance boosts. I wrote a little guide to basic IOs here but it's very much for beginners so you can ignore it if you're more experienced. Set bonuses can build up a bit, but I'm probably only at about 30% DamRes and I tank AVs with my plucky little fortunado. There's also a +7.5% hit points one, which is worth getting. Also, unlock the four accolade bonuses, as those combined with the IO give you an extra 22.5 hit points. They take maybe an hour each to do and are worth it. I believe you have to get to about 110% global recharge and frankenslot Mind Link with defence/recharge enhancements. LOTG, purple sets, ATOs... you just need to keep hammering away at it with a large sum of influence. I don't take Hasten and mine is up over 75% of the time and I think that's fine for most content as I mostly team. I wouldn't quite go trying to solo +4x8 incarnate content, but it's certainly doable. At +3 I notice that enemies start taking a bit too long to take down to be worth the time. Also, I notice you have no melee attacks - they're all very powerful so I recommend you make a second build and try out with about half melee and half range and just chucking in some cheap enhancements and seeing how it goes. I tend to start of fights at range with control then close in and finish them in melee range due to the higher damage. The four ST melee attacks can form a very powerful attack chain with no down time, so it's worth trying it out at least.

I think about doing this a bit and I'd suggest you actually reverse it and build melee into a support set. Corruptors have the best melee modifiers and scourge does some extra damage. The fighting pool attacks are actually pretty respectable when you have all three attacks. There are a lot of semi-decent melee attacks in the pools, too. Sorcery and the other new pool each have a very good defensive power at the end. Sorcery has Enflame, which is actually a good control power (it's my "thin the crowd" button because it makes the AI go into flee mode) and the ward is a teammate-saver. Couple it with a midrange support set with a useful aura or buffs that affect you (kinetics, time? rad?) and you should be fine. Rad would work pretty well, actually, as the two debuff toggles work like a taunt aura in the amount of aggro they pick up and the -dmg and -tohit they do work like +Res and +Def. I'd argue that it has a few skippable powers layer on so you can pick up more melee. Kinetics basically works best in melee range and has a lot of -dmg, as well as some -recharge to help keep you alive, not to mention the ridiculous joy that is Repel. You can also give yourself a fairly large damage boost. Storm is actually a decent tanking set because you get defence and -tohit auras, although Hurricane in melee range is total chaos. Devices or traps or whatever it's called is decent as you can drop the buffs and debuffs and then go for gold in melee. It's very powerful, but needs you to stay roughly I'm the same area making it more solo friendly than team friendly. For primaries... It's harder as they're all ranged. Sonic does -res, which is handy.

Mu is very popular on tankers and brutes as it has two solid no-frills AoEs with quick animations which work really well with a tanky playstyle as you can just fire them off point-blank and hit everything around you. I'd argue there's less room for them on a tricked out VEAT. As Redlynne rightly says, they need slots to shine.

I met someone yesterday just called Influence.

As your foil, I put pretty much everything up at just over a million inf and probably sink prices back down a fraction. I actually find it relaxing doing the convert-sell loop.

They all have an AoE immobilise, which is very useful if you have a lot of AoE. You can get another spider pet if you take the mace mastery pool, although I personally quite like Mu for the AoE damage over time. If you've got utility powers you could live without, give it a try. You could always try it out on the beta server first. I'm a bit inclined to say that the patron pools probably don't really solve a problem that soldiers or widows have, so they're fairly low priority unless you want that extra pet.

I didn't have room for Fighting in many builds and my fortunata is pretty tanky. I don't take Hasten. I get a lot of use out of Provoke. My AoE attacks usually work at maintaining aggro, but Provoke is excellent if you've got overconfident teammates or simply debuff-centric teammates who get a disproportionate amount of aggro. I left it until L50, but I am glad I have it. My fortunata build is in the Best of Both thread. I'm inclined to having slightly lower defence in exchange for more control as defence debuffs are only really a problem if you seek them out. Incidentally, I started out with a similar two-build setup and really enjoyed it, but found I was spending more and more time as a fortunata and just went all-in there. Being able to adapt as a mission goes on is really cool.

I've got my bots/sonic mastermind up to 32 (just picked up the assault bot but not taken it for a test drive yet). Between the +DEF and +RES, we're pretty indestructible, and I'm aware that bots rely on assault bot for the bulk of the DPS, but I'm having trouble with it in terms of actual play... it feels like I'm just running around debuffing and doing a bit of melee and waiting for battles to end. I don't feel particularly involved. For pool powers, I picked up the Fighting melee attacks because I like the idea of a tiny old woman running round punching things with her robot army, so it's not like I'm not active in combat. I'm aware that sonic is quite a hands-off powerset, but even with the debuffs I feel like I'm just waiting out a timer on the fight. When I hit 35, I'm planning on diving pretty hard into the fire epic pool for some AoE attacks. So... any tips for a new-ish mastermind? How can I feel more like I'm contributing to a fight? I picked a mastermind because it was about as far in concept as I could get away from what I usually play (fortunata main, peacebringer and stalker next most experienced). I didn't take any of the ranged attacks because I didn't like the zap gun aspect of it. I think part of it is I'm not used to playing with pets so I feel like I'm not in control of a lot of the fight... it's just sort of going on around me.

Forty-five percent, Defence is made meaningless. They can't even move. My favourite tank is my fortunata. My favourite anything is my fortunata. I've seen blaster tanks, tankerminds, crab tanks, controller tanks, stalker tanks, scrapper tanks... not to mention peacebringers and warshades who are statistically the best tanks for the mid-levels. So, for all those blappers (No range? No problem), petless masterminds ("the game is too easy" - welcome to hell), offenders (sonic/anything is a wrecking ball) and crabberminds (a walking buzzsaw) out there looking for a new challenge - pick up a "squishy" archetype and make it into a tank. Debuff hard. Control well. Transcend. When you're confident you can do it, start volunteering as tank in teams. You'll surprise yourself.

Yes, that's the point. It's a version of a power that ten archetypes don't have (both Kheldian archetypes have a similar power). This game is all about soft control and combat flow manipulation (that's what tanks do), so being able to yank five enemies off an ally is incredibly useful. In a post-IO universe, even controllers can pick up scrapper levels of damage mitigation, which opens up a huge amount of room for build flexibility. My widow can tank about as well as my brute and provoke is a one-slot wonder (with Perfect Zinger making it into an attack) for making that easier.

Provoke is that taunt I took at 50 on my widow that allows me to tank somewhat efficiently and I think the latter powers are pretty decent. The widow alternative is single-target and ain't nobody got time for that. The 5-target taunt is a teammate-saver and I use it all the time of my fortunata.

Stalkers are so tough to beat with the ATOs, which create such loophole abuse that you can double-stack build up on two crits in a row about every 20 seconds or so. They're really one of the "everything else feels pale?" archetypes with ATOs equipped.

@Omega-202I had pretty much the same response to Sentinels - they're EATs without the flexibility. I'll second stalkers, though - they're really fun and you can pick up ranged attacks from level 35 onwards from the ancillary and patron pools. Grab the two special ATOs and they switch into a really fun and active playstyle as you proc Hide about every twenty seconds and can basically spam Build Up. My stalker is the only character I've ever done over 2k damage with in a single hit.

The struggle is real. Dominators and peacebringers have a similar melee/range/other feel but I just didn't get on with mine after a point. They just don't have the same "I can do anything" feeling. I'm currently enjoying kin/sonic defender - the -res you do takes them out of the defender damage bracket and the defender primaries are all pretty flexible.

Fortunata, hands down. It's pretty fun solo, can tank AVs and task forces and can carry low level teams if I'm running brainless tip missions in Atlas Park with a gang of lowbies. It's the perfect intersection of control, sustain and DPS. Next would probably be my stalker. With the two ATOs, stalkers really do become S-tier. When being able to hit a boss for over a thousand damage twice in a row routine everything feels a bit easy.

Mine is basically the same. I chose Arachnos for Lore because of thematic reasons, but otherwise yeah, it's the same.

I've started a kinetics/sonic defender and I have to say I'm enjoying having the healing and the damage output. 20% -res on all my attacks (which stacks!) and +25% damage on myself (which stacks!) mean that I can hold my own much, much better than previous attempts at defenders. I had a kin/psi defender back on Live as my first main and got it to 50 and it always felt a bit anaemic. I can't say I'll ever love kinetics, but sonic is making me change my mind a bit as I generate between 41% and 71 % damage boosts on myself and then 20-40% res debuff on my enemies. That's really quite remarkable at level 14 - it feels a bit more like a blaster with sustain that I'm used to on a defender. Kinetics also has a number of one-slot wonders making it actually pretty easy to work with levelling. Not sure how an IO-centric build will look