Gulbasaur

Just to clarify, I only do that by accident and I don't regularly do it. +3x5 is my standard solo fare at level 50, just because it takes too long to mow through bosses in groups. I don't particularly enjoy the slog of it. I can and I have but it's too grindy for my tastes. That said, +4AVs are soloable. Grab some envenomed daggers from the P2W vendor and that will help. It's mostly a bragging rights thing but you can definitely do it, it just takes a while. I don't tend to do +4 content unless I'm a group but +3 is the sweet spot for solo at 50 for me. In terms of playstyle... Don't hold anything back. I think fortunatas work best when they're played hyper-aggressively. Constant pressure. Berserker rage. Control combat as much as you can. If you want a scrapper playstyle, you might prefer a Night Widow build. Don't think sneaky stealth fighter (that's a Night Widow job). You know that scene in Kill Bill where the Bride uses everything at her disposal to utterly destroy a restaurant full of mafia warriors and literally announces her arrival? That kind of energy. MacGonagall when she found out Snape killed Dumbledore. Gandalf holding off the balrog. Wonder Woman crossing the trenches. Hold nothing back. You've got control, you can knock a boss to his feet from the other side of a room and you can make close friends light each other on fire, and that's all before you remember you can shoot knives out of your fists. Use all of it, all of the time. The only thing I sort of hold back are wail and the AoE confuse - I try to alternate between them so I've always got one at my disposal. I normally try to confuse lieutenants, unless there are enemies I know will help me like Ritki Guardians, Cimemoran Surgeons, sappers, Tsoo sorcerers etc. Basically any time you see an annoying enemy, confuse them so they annoy someone else. Confuse is, well, confusing as the xp tax puts people off - confuse speeds up combat so you end up with more xp for your time. Some bosses, like Fake Nemeses, are annoying enough that it's worth stacking confuse on them and topping it up over a fight. On my build (V3, basically - I constantly fiddle with it but that's basically it), the ranged is where all my control is. Scream does fear, tornado does knockdown, dominate is a hold and all three are good attacks. Use the AoE damage to whittle you enemies down and keep them from attacking you. Use your holds. Use your knockback. Open with your nuke, and if that's on cooldown then use your AoE confuse. Total Domination is a panic button because it's so slow, but it's there. I tend to use it most in teams as it's a handy thing to throw around a teammate who's struggling, but with procs it's a decent enough AoE attack. I only really go into melee when I'm fighting bosses or to finish enemies off when there are only two or three left. I hammer out the AoE as much as I can - the fear proc and knockdown are fantastic. But also, there's no shame in lowering your difficulty - I find I'm always pretty safe, but bosses take a while to hammer through on +4x8 and the gameplay slows right down to the point where it feels too much like work. Lastly, remember it's a game so if you're finding it a slog so solo then you're only cheating yourself. Also, it's 100% possible that if you like melee more then a night widow build would be more your thing, but I don't like them (they feel like stalkers without amped up crit rate) and tastes differ. Also also, don't feel like you have to follow it to the letter - swap things around. The build is good (which is why I posted it), but you might discover something better.

Not being able to invite people in later on if things get tough (e.g. Frostfire) can be a real pain.

Okay, so... I started around EU launch. I remember Croatoa being the hot new zone in town and the days before inherent powers. I remember paying the beta of City of Villains and then later doing the first crossover event as a peacebringer and someone sending me "how did you do that?!" when I shapeshifted because they had separate membership for a while and I was the first Kheldian he'd ever seen. It was neat. It was a simpler time, blueside. Team composition was crucial. Defenders were everyone's best friend. Controllers would make-or-break a task force (seriously, I remember having to go AFK for a fight and finding out that my team had found it so hard they decided to just wait for me rather than risk fighting a losing battle). Tankers were royalty. Blasters did epic damage that no-one could compare to. Scrappers were... scrappers. Combat felt very team-focused. Everyone had a place. Everyone had a job to do. Kheldians were always a bit of an uneasy addition... the fact that they had no clear place in a team made people sort of skeptical of them for a bit. I remember being told off for pulling on my PB because that was the blaster's job, until I pointed out that I could pull and take the fallout. I'm not saying that's a good thing, but roles were much more defined in the early game so someone who could do both always felt like an anomaly. CoV never quite rubbed me the right way. Teaming felt chaotic. Tactics were irrelevant - you just create a sort of deathzone and hope things stay in it. But, yeah, villains, I get it. Heroes create opportunities, villains exploit them. Every redside AT is built to solo whereas blueside that's only really true of scrappers. When everyone is DPS, you just have to DPS everything. That's fine. Not for me, but fine. Time passed. I got bored. I left. Thirteen? years later, I returned! What the hell has happened to combat since Going Rogue? Why didn't the original devs try to balance anything between the two "sides"? The villain ATs are stronger at so little cost, with few exceptions so Old Skool CoH combat has just... gone. There's no pulling of anything lower than an AV. AoE's happen when the brute stops walking, regardless of anything else. It's scrapperlock all over again, only this time there's a positive feedback loop. Knockback is illegal because it goes against the brute's constant need to generate fury so combat happens as soon as they find an enemy. Defenders and controllers are now roleplaying choices compared to corruptors and dominators. Peacebringers are verboten because someone saw on a google docs spreadsheet that they have low DPS due to a error in the data entry. Cheap IOs are fun, but when I can tank AVs on a fortunata, even I feel like I'm cheesing it a bit. At some point, the villains won... Please don't take anything here super seriously. I'm sure your team is marvellous. I understand the game changed, but I still wonder why the original dev team didn't do more to ensure most blueside ATs were still relevant. I sort of miss old-style gameplay a bit and it's refreshing when I get on a team of mostly blueside ATs as combat does feel more structured, even though I main a VEAT myself. There is a definite change in the average group scenario, from what I've seen and what I remember.

I'm doing something similar. I have a macro in my power bar that I use to switch off exp gain at levels ending in 9 and 4. There are a few arcs that go up to level 10 so you can go up to get that extra power. /macro XP optiontoggle noxp

My favourite ATs are all the hybrid ones and the more hybrid the better. Fortunata is my favourite, but I've got to the point where my plucky little widower is so overpowered nothing poses a challenge any more. Peacebringers are fun, but I've been there and done that. Dominators have melee, range and control, so that's varied enough to keep me happy. I rolled an elec/elec dom yesterday and he's fun, but I have some idiot questions. I don't want a build, as I enjoy making them myself, but some pointers would be nice. For perma-dom glory, it looks like I can get Hasten high enough to be auto-able and then bind W as forward+Domination... does that work or would I be spammed with "this power has not recharged" messages whenever I move? Speaking of which, do I basically just go all-in on IO sets with recharge bonuses until I cross the permadom threshold (with some margin of error)? Building up defences... fortunatas are basically dominators that traded out the higher mezz magnitude for lots of survivability. Like, "will outlive you all" or "can tank AVs" survivability. My dominator feels wafer-thin by comparison. Obviously, I'll play around with builds and bonuses a bit, but am I resigning myself to Tough and Weave for the bulk of my non-mez survival? So far, standing round corners after immobilising everyone has been my primary way of staying alive. How do things like Combat Jumping and Maneuvers scale on a dominator? It looks like I have a lot of attacks and control attacks... should I just pick the greatest hits or go all in? I want a solid melee and solid zap zap chain if possible. Any easily overlooked powers in elec/elec? Conductive Aura is less powerful than I was expecting at giving me more endurance, but it's an amazing defensive power as it wipes endurance out. I, under most circumstances, find pets an annoyance, but it looks like I've got two to work with now. How are gremlins? How is Voltaic Sentinel? I'll probably go Mu because I like themed sets and Surge of Power looks like a good dumping ground for the special effect Resistance IOs while having a DoT AoE is a useful way of finishing enemies off. Yay or nay? Thank you - any advice is welcome.

Definitely. I really like Shield because it layers up nicely out of the box.

It's a fun power. It really is. There's something very satisfying about it. It is also excellent for positioning groups of enemies into corners and it has a Hold magnitude of 3, which means it can hold a boss straight out of the box. However, positioning is often determined by other teammates' decisions, map layout and the position of other mobs and it has a target cap of five, which is too low to be useful in realistic circumstances. The endurance cost you can kind of work around with enhancements, but as it stands it's basically just a toy due to the low target cap and the fact that in the current meta the combat happens wherever the tank feels like stopping which means that knockback and repel powers are verboten.

I have tanked +4 AVs on my fortunata, and taken +2s down solo... a stalker could do that standing on their head with a few IOs and sometimes some envenomed daggers (which, admittedly, are so good they're almost cheating). The only ones that gave me pause were Praetor Sinclair at +4 (it just took me much too long and I got bored) and one of the RWZ ones when I forgot to heal. Nemesis took a while because he bubbled up every time I got his health to about 3% so I had to do the last chunk of his health bar about ten times before he finally went down. From my own experience of different ATs, a good defence set with adequate resists fares much better than the other way round for AVs. I've literally gone to answer the door while fighting a +4 AV while at the defence cap and then came back to carry on the fight. Yes, they might get in that "one good hit" that wipes out half your health, but if they don't get another good hit in for the next seven attempts, you're not going to hit the floor. If you do pick DA, definitely pick up as much defence as you can fit in. When you're in a long battle, scratch damage can really build up and the less of it you take the better. If you can get your positionals and psi up nice and high on DA, you should be able to tackle pretty much any AV there is.

Thanks, I thought this was the case but I couldn't remember. Have updated it above. Yeah, that one proc has two weird synergies. Double Build Up is great, and the stalker loophole makes it fairly ridiculous as you can reliable stack it on crits, but the tactics one is also counter-intuitive in how it works, but in a good way. It has very good single-slot value. I've seen reports that the +100% recharge proc in some pseudo-pet powers that do knockback over time goes often pretty much continually, as another weird interaction. I can't find the thread now that it came up in originally. I'm sure there are other procs where you can circumvent a mechanic with another mechanic, but those two proc bonuses specifically are worth knowing about.

I there is a vocal part of the community that values efficiency above all else, and efficiency often means playing the way they want to play without compromise. There are also people who think the best way to play the game is to never leave Atlas Park until you hit level 50 by using AE farms. Then there are the petless masterminds and melee-range controllers who take a different approach. I've always felt that the game is balanced around tanks rather than teams, which is why it's arguably more fun to play without them. If your idea of good is efficient at turning spawns into rewards, that's fine and I hope you enjoy running radio missions in PI and AE farms, but if your idea of good is to make sure your whole team is having fun, that's the team I want to be on. Knockback is fine, but like anything to do with positioning (including AoE placement and tanking tactics) you have to be conscious of what you're doing.

Maria Jenkins is slightly unusual as she offers you a full story arc and several mini arcs that are sort of related and regular missions. She also has several missions needed for a badge that's needed for another badge that's needed for an accolade that gives you a stat boost. A Hero's Hero and A Hero's Epic are "full" story arcs, which work like task forces if you do them starting in Ouro. The others are short story arcs that all link thematically but are presented as one-off missions.

Name rings a bell, actually... and thanks! Anyway, Doctor Fortune reporting for duty (then running goggles-first into the fray to punch something in half with his mind)

And I just wanted to say thank you. It's chatty. It's silly. There's almost no elitism. Roleplay adds an element of playfulness. I've never been on a server that has so much wit in random teams. I tried to like Reunion because I'm in England and it *should* work out better with the times, but it lacked the spark that Everlasting has, so I play with overtired Americans and people from Asia and Australia. It's amazing. So, yeah. Thank you!

Hybrid gives you a 2-minute buff, not an attack. Assault raises the amount of damage you do, so I would put it on then fire off your judgment to get the bonus from it. I just fire mine off pretty much whenever it comes up, to be honest. All hybrid powers are basically buffs - switch it on, then go into combat. A blue solid ring or a blue swirly thing? It slightly depends on what archetype you are. Sentinels and stalkers use rings to show that some powers will have an additional effect. If you control-click, it sets it to set that power off automatically as soon as it recharges and it has an opportunity to. A ring can also show that a power is queued up to be used next.

I've done my best, but have included a couple of the special effect IOs where I think they make a real difference. Think of them as something to work up to rather than something you need. I wrote a little guide of the ones I think give you good bang for your buck here. Widows are actually fairly easy to slot because they have a lot of one-slot wonders or powers that only really do one thing. TT: Maneuvers: 3 defence, maybe 1 endurance - it has a high defence buff (5%) so you want to make the most of this. TT: Leadership: 3 ToHit, maybe 1 endurance (if you can afford it, it's worth putting the Gaussian's "Chance for Build Up" proc in it as it goes really often when you're in a team, which gives you a fairly nice damage boost). TT: Assault: 1 endurance reduction only. Indominable Will: 1 endurance reduction only (but if you go for named IOs it can take a couple of the "special effect" damage resistance ones that can help a lot with survival). Foresight: 7.5% defence is really high for a power that costs no endurance, so slot it for 3 defence as soon as you can (it can also take special effect resistance IOs). Mask Presence: The defence buff is quite low (two thirds of it vanishes in combat) - I use it for a LOTG IO and nothing else. If you're going for zero fancy IOs, I'd put one defence or one endurance reduction in it and nothing more. Mind Link is a big deal and is really powerful, but you can't reduce its recharge much without IOs. Even if you use zero others, it's worth getting named IOs for just this power - look for defence/recharge ones and put all you can it - I think there are Hamidon origin enhancements that do this very efficiently? Until that point, put 3 defence in it. Elude is already really powerful - 3-slots of recharge will go a long way in getting it to feel more useful more often. It doesn't need any defence enhancements in it.

Pick Bright Radiation and then pick the darkest grey there. It changes the effect into a light, dusty smoke effect like they're standing near a smoke machine. That's the best I've managed.

I was in Pocket D this morning... it's definitely in the game.

Unless you want the set bonuses, yes. The ATO completely resets the timer on Build Up a couple of times a minute, so you don't need the recharge at all. In fact, recharge slots lower the proc rate, meaning you might end up losing some of the double build up. It's a bit of an IO-loophole but it's there so you might as well abuse the hell out of it. I mean, go for what you want with Ground Zero. Procs don't crit, so it's not crucial, it just turns a good AoE into a better one. 5% recharge isn't at all bad.

As a Doctor Charname, I can tell you there are more than a few Doctors, Drs and Docs about.

It really is, isn't it? If the task forces were more interesting, it might be worthwhile, but they just feel like filler from start to finish. They've got the worst kind of artificial difficulty and are, well, dull. Visual design is good. Enemy design is good. But... there's just so much of it and so little variation.

I tend to pretty much stick to story arcs, but something I've started doing if I just want to hop in and piss about for a bit is running tip missions at level 50 in Atlas park. Invite anyone, making is clear they can mooch exp as long at they try their best and chat a bit. "Bored of DFB?" is how I start it off in the LFG. Running +2x8 missions with super low teammates is really fun as it becomes a huge challenge to keep them all alive if you're not a tank. I do them on my widow, who's pretty sturdy and admittedly has a taunt, but it's really too low for most of them to do AoE death zone tactics so it feels really fast paced and chaotic. I find these groups tend to be pretty chatty too, as you can all bond over how boring DFB is after a while. Being on a full team and knowing it won't be a cakewalk makes it so much more fun.

I actually think ambushes are one of the few things that challenge me at higher levels. They add a dynamic quality to missions that I quite like. Then again, if you don't build for survivability (armour, control, debuff etc) they can hammer you so I know what you're saying.

Have you only been playing the early-added content? Most of the later stuff (mostly post-CoV and definitely post-GR) is considerably better paced. The dev team worked out what worked well and what didn't The RWZ, DA, FW and DW content is all pretty excellent. You can see in certain areas where they experimented with one kind of storytelling and learnt from it later - Croatoa is basically an earlyl testing-ground for a lot of stuff that you see later. I remember it coming out and it all feeling really fresh and dynamic. I like arcs that tell a story. I'd say that this is only really a problem for task forces where you're locked in. I do wish there was a better way of doing old missions than the Flashback lock-in, though. Eh. This is considerably better in later-added missions and kind of a moot point. I'd like to see some of the rarer map types used more, though (the faultline diagonal ones, for example). So every story arc has to have multiple factions at play? Nah. That's a storytelling constraint that we don't need. They basically do already. I don't think any of the later-added missions have defeat-alls. I really don't mind it, and it can give a sense of progression. One of the task forces has a sequence of hunts that take place across different zones and that can actually feel really awesome if your team coordinates it well. I think you're complaining about a lot of stuff that has already been fixed and is already known about. I don't think any new story arcs would have bland, defeat-all missions and the newer content sets a much higher expectation.

I did something similar - pick bright radiation then pick the darkest grey you can. It just looks like you're standing in a smoke machine.

Debuffs are part of the threat calculation and Chilling Embrace pumps out a lot of debuff. I'm not sure if the debuff mod is per-power or per-debuff, but that might explain why they have it better if they have three debuffs running on top of normal damage - they would get a much higher. It also ticks twice a second, whereas other auras are once every 1 or 2 seconds. Interesting... might have to roll one and play a bit. That's also one of the reasons why support sets are such good aggro magnets - their debuff mods can override other ATs' damage. Masterminds have a particularly hard time as they're literally twice as likely to draw aggro as any other set with support powers.