Gulbasaur

That's a really good point about the pets... I take it back!

Ranged Damage has Decimation and Pet Damage has Soulbound Allegiance. I played a bit with the Decimation one and it procced so rarely I dropped it. If you've got a short and quick attack chain it might be worth it, but otherwise it's a bit underwhelming. However, Tactics and the Gaussian proc have an unexpected synergy as it can proc off all your teammates, including any pets, every 10 seconds. This means that on a team of 8, it will proc about 50% of the time every 10 seconds, meaning you get nice little damage and ToHit boosts every now and again. If you have a mastermind with pets out, that goes up to about 85% chance for build up every 10 seconds, which is a nice little bonus. It's not amazing as +80% base damage isn't life-changing, but for a one-slot wonder it's pretty powerful on builds where you either have a lots of pets or expect a lot of teammates. I didn't want to list every proc there was, but this is a nice little bit of loophole abuse that it'd be a shame not to take advantage of if you run tactics.

I can tell you the least: Soldiers of Arachnos - they get the tanker/brute pool, containing ranged damage (which they have) and a pet (which Spiders have, Widows get confuse, which is a similar deal). I genuinely don't see any reason why you'd want of the other than flavour.

They vanish and replace themselves with a higher tier - it's not a defeat, just a gruelling meatshield army.

Red Caps in Croatoa win my vote for most annoying, as many of them have a chance to upgrade to a harder version, like minions to lieutenants and lieutenants to bosses, which means that fights end up taking far longer than they need to if you don't instant-kill all the minions, which at that level is a challenge.

There are a few invention origin enhancements that give you an instant boost to a stat, or add a special effect to an attack. Even if you're not super-mega-tricked out with IOs at level 50, there are a lot that add a lot to your build, starting at about level 10. Always buy them attuned from Wentworths/The Black Market/The Trading Post - You can access this by typing /ah in most outdoor areas, and in Pocket D. The reason for this is that they scale with your level, meaning you only need to buy them once. Most are a few million inf. The IOs have a bonus that affects you - if you add Steadfast Protection into a power that gives allies more resistance, they won't get the +3% defence from it, only you. There are a small number that specifically only affects your pets, but they are very clearly labelled. IOs also have a level limit, normally between 10 and 30. If you go three levels below the level of the enhancement, the bonus shuts off. How do I get a few million inf? Here is a guide. Here is another. Others exist. If you run story arcs or task/strike forces you get reward merits. You can go to a merit vendor and buy stuff through it. Generally, for a bit of cheap cash you can buy enhancement converters and sell them on the auction house, but if you're really clever you can craft cheap enhancements and convert them into ones that sell for a better price. You might not be super-rich, but you'll have enough to afford what you need as you're levelling. Stacking effects Generally speaking, you can't have more than five of the same effect from an enhancement bonus. If you use 10 Luck of the Gambler +recharge enhancements, you won't get all 10 bonuses - only the first five count. Some enhancements are unique, meaning you can only have one of them. Survival The Fighting power pool gives you access to Tough, which takes resistance slots. Combat Jumping, Hover, Stealth, Grant Invisibility and Afterburner all take defence slots. Health can take Healing slots and it is usually better value to put procs in Health than Healing enhancements, in my opinion. Steadfast Protection (cheap) Damage Resistance Slot +3% defence Gladiator's Armour (expensive) Damage Resistance Slot +3% defence Unbreakable Guard Damage Resistance Slot +7.5% hit points Reactive Defences Defence Slot +3-13% scaling damage resistance this gets higher as you lose hit points Shield Wall Defence Slot 5% damage resistance Preventative Medicine Healing Slot Chance for Absorb shield the chance increases as you lose hit points Panacea Healing Slot Chance for small (5%?) heal this also does the same for endurance and is worth taking for that reason alone Power Transfer Endurance Modification Slot Chance for small (5%?) heal this isn't unique but only one will actually trigger at a time Put in as many as you can fit into your build. 6% defence is better than it sounds. The two resistance bonuses mean you'll be taking between 8 and 18% less damage from (almost) all sources. The Preventative Medicine proc is sort of an emergency shield and has saved my skin more times than I can count. Additional ones dealing specifically with psionic damage (mainly useful if you're tanking): Impervium Armor Damage Resistance Slot +6% Psi resistance - not unique, you can have 5 of them Aegis Damage Resistance Slot +3% Psi resistance - unique, you can only have 1 Status effect resistance helps you recover from holds, sleeps etc slightly sooner but they do not prevent them from happening: Impervious Skin Damage Resistance Slot +7.5% Aegis Damage Resistance Slot +20% There are also several +Stealth enhancements. I recommend the Celerity one, slotted into Sprint - it turns it into a low-grade stealth power which is good for travelling round unmolested. Additionally, there are three knockback protection enhancements in the Karma, Blessing of the Zephyr and Steadfast Protection sets. One is probably enough for most builds - Hover can also mitigate knockback to a large extent. There are several other "chance to heal" and a couple of "chance for absorb" procs... the heal is only around 5%, but the absorb is about 15. I don't regret putting the absorb proc in my hold power, but it's also something I could live without. It's also worth going for the accolade passive bonuses which can give you 15% extra hit points. With those and Unbreakable Guard, you've got yourself +22.5% hit points, which is pretty notable. Increasing your total hit points also increases your regeneration and the size of absorb shields etc. There are a number of enhancements that increase your health regeneration... I'm slightly apprehensive to recommend these as they have a much more significant impact on archetypes that don't have problems surviving, but Regenerative Tissue gives you 25% Regeneration, which the highest you can get from a single IO. This will help you recover between fights a bit faster and stay upright in longer fights, but probably isn't enough to keep you from dropping without other methods of protecting yourself. Recharge This is global recharge - it makes almost all your powers recharge faster. For reference, Hasten gives you +70% recharge. Luck of the Gambler Defence Slot +7.5% recharge - you can have up to five of these, giving you a +32.5% recharge bonus as well as enhancing defence. If you have any defence powers, this is a very good use of a slot. There are a number of "one-slot wonder" pool powers like Grant Invisibility and Combat Jumping that you can take late in levelling just to use one of these enhancements if recharge is your goal. Force Feedback Knockback Slot Chance for +100% recharge for 5 seconds - if you have a lot of knockback powers, this can help keep your recharge generally quite high. For Kheldians, energy blasters, force field controllers, fortunatas etc, this can be quite noticeable. AoE powers are a good candidate for this - you only need it to proc on one enemy to get the effect. Endurance As a general rule: put an endurance reduction enhancement into the three attacks you use most often. Even if you run a lot of toggles, you might be better slotting your attacks for EndRed because of how often you use them than just doing the toggles. Panacea Healing Slot Chance for small (5%?) endurance boost. Miracle Healing Slot +15% endurance recovery. Numina's Convalescence Healing Slot +10% endurance recovery. Performance Shifter Endurance Modification Slot Chance for 7.5% endurance boost. You can put the Healing ones in Health and Performance Shifter in Stamina. Panacea and Performance Shifter are the best value mathematically. All four are more powerful than standard IOs under most circumstances. The accolade bonuses, mentioned above, can give you an extra 10% endurance. This also effectively improves endurance recovery by 10%. Damage and Extra Effects There are a few Chance for Build Up procs, which give you a damage and ToHit bonus for five seconds. Gaussian's is the only one I'd bother with - I'd usually put it in Build Up to make it even more build-uppy, but if you team a lot or are a Mastermind or Crab Spider you can slot it into Tactics as having more teammates including pets means it'll go off more often (it checks each person affected by Tactics separately, so more teammates = more Build Up procs) and you can kind of treat it like a critical hit mechanic. I have it in Build Up on my Stalker and Tactics on my Widow. There are a variety of damage procs you can put into your powers. These are a chance to do a set amount of additional damage. I'm not going to list them all, because you can look them up on the auction house and there are a lot of them. Check what enhancement sets a power can take on the enhancement screen and then use the filters to find a proc that suits your power. They generally start at level 10 for ATOs, 20 for control powers and 30 for attacks. Some general advice: Generally speaking, a power that does very low damage is a good candidate for a proc as you'll get more bang for your buck than you would adding another damage enhancement. If it does very low damage, adding an enhancement is still only enhancing a very small number, but a proc will add a flat amount of damage. You can add it to some powers that do no damage, turning them into a weak attack. It's also a way of sneaking round the diminishing returns of multiple enhancements, so you can add even more damage to an already very high damage attack. AoEs have a lower chance for it to trigger on each enemy to compensate for the fact that it hits a lot of targets. If you put a proc in a power with a slow recharge, it's almost guaranteed to go off, which is a good way of adding damage to things like nuke attacks or AoE holds with long cooldowns. Some pets can take procs, although they scale a bit weirdly for MM pets. As pet builds tend to be tight, I'd read a more detailed guide before dropping 10 million on procs for pets. There are also procs for status effects like hold and disorient, but they tend to be low magnitude, meaning they won't actually hold (or disorient) anything that's worth the effort. The Lockdown set has a +2 Mag Hold proc for 8 seconds, meaning you can upgrade a weaker hold power, albeit randomly. You won't be hitting Dominator levels of control, though. Contagious Confusion has a chance to confuse a fairly high number of targets within a fairly high radius without drawing aggro. It is quite expensive, but if you're feeling rich it's worth getting. I actually wish there were more procs like this - it's so unique. Sudden Acceleration has an enhancement that converts knockback to knockdown, which can turn annoying powers like Gale or Bonfire into very powerful control powers. The (expensive) Ragnarok set has a Chance for Knockdown proc that you can put into a power like Caltrops, which can make it into a more useful control power. Pets There are several enhancements that add to the survivability and utility of your pets - note that they affect your pets, not you. Masterminds will get the most use out of them, but certain other builds (crab spiders etc) may also see a lot of benefit. These create an aura around the player in a 20 foot aura, so keep your pets close: Edict of the Master, Call to Arms and (Superior) Command of the Mastermind (MM's only) add 5% pet defence Sovereign Right, Expedient Reinforcement and (Superior) Mark of Supremacy (MM's only) add 10% pet damage resistance (not psionics) Smaller bonuses (probably not worth it unless you have slots to spare): Soulbound Allegiance Pet Damage adds a chance for your pet to get a Build Up effect Commanding Presence Pet Damage resist taunts/placates Be warned, though, slotting for pets is often tight so you may want to think carefully about these. Try not to lose too much damage at the expense of survivability. Archetype Origin Enhancements Each archetype has two sets of enhancements unique to them, and each of those sets has one enhancement with a special effect. You can take them all at level 10 and then upgrade them at level 50. In most cases, they slot into an attack, although Masterminds have to put them in pets. Unless specified, they only trigger when the attack they're slotted into is used. Some are very, very good, some are nice but you can skip them until much later. The set bonuses for the ATOs are almost always very good, so definitely think about them later on. The following are noteworthy: Both Stalker ATOs are very powerful. Slot the Chance to Hide one in Assassin's Strike for double criticals and the Chance to Recharge Build Up anywhere it fits, then put Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control Chance for Build Up in Build Up itself for double build up a few times a minute. Get them as soon as you can afford them. The Form Empowerment one for Kheldians is a flat upgrade - get it when you can afford it. The other one you can leave until later. The Scrapper and Brute ones are a flat upgrade - get them when you can afford them. The Defender, Blaster and Corruptor ones are handy. The Soldiers of Arachnos fear proc works well in an AoE. Their toxic damage works like a global proc - it can go off in any damage power. Get the toxic damage one as soon as you can afford it. Get the fear proc one eventually and put it into an AoE attack for some damage mitigation. Controllers have an energy font and Dominators have a fiery orb, which are small, short-duration pets that lots of people find underwhelming. Apparently they work best in AoE status effect powers. Tankers with lots of resistance can probably skip the Chance for Res one, although the Absorb one is pretty good for anyone. Defence-based tankers should take both. If, like me, you left Live before the IO system came into full force, you might think "fizzle this shizzle, it's all too complicated" - it's not that bad, and hopefully this will help you get started. Any questions, please @ me and I'll try to help. Thanks to Veelectric Boogaloo for pointing out the Mez resistence and regen IOs and Erydanus for the specifics of the Stalker ATO.

Get both of the special effect ATOs at level 10. The chance to Chance to Recharge Build Up is global, so just stick it anywhere you have a slot while levelling. It's a game-changer. Slot build up for the Chance to Build Up ToHit proc only. The stalker ATO makes Build Up reset its timer to zero so recharge will actually hinder you by lowering the proc rate. With the ATO and the Chance to Build Up in Build Up itself you end up with double-build up a couple of times a minute. It's glorious. That, with the Chance to Hide in assassin's strike, and you'll be doing fairly epic amounts of damage. Rad has very good endurance management as it is with Gamma Boost - you don't need Agility at all. Drop it for musculature or something. Ground Zero has a fairly slow recharge, so it is actually a fairly good candidate for a couple of damage procs.

After levelling a peacebringer, I noticed that I would have to off-tank a lot more while teaming with brutes who have okay-but-not-great survival until they've IO'd out. Tankers are generally built to manage aggro, whereas brutes seem to treat it as an optional extra and let auras or pokevoke deal with it. It's a playstyle thing and as an off-tank, it's really obvious. It seems like the average tanker picks up Taunt but the average brute doesn't. It was part of my usual playstyle to stay in DPS until the brute hit red then pop into dwarf form and immediately take almost all the aggro with one button because the taunt duration on Antagonise trumped the pokevoke or aura taunts. Tankers seem to take Taunt more as well as just being sturdier generally and I don't remember ever having to do that playing with a tanker. It's a night and day difference if you're playing a secondary tank AT like PB or WS. Tankers don't need watching. Brutes do. Kheldians are rolling in damage resistance (3 L25 res IOs = 58% damage resistance + 10% from each DPS AT on the team - you can get that at level 22), so there is a period where they're several steps ahead of brutes and tankers, although tankers catch up and then overtake them much quicker. At 50 with IOs and incarnates, it's basically a moot point as brutes and tankers don't have too much difference in survivability, but while levelling it's really evident. No-one can out tank a tanker with Taunt, but I could smack the aggro out of the average brute's hands in two button presses.

Soloing Nemesis, who's basically a Fake Nemesis with a lot more hit points was a complete pain in the bum because his regen is high enough that with the bubble up you almost end up back where you started. I did it eventually, but I'm sure I took down the last quarter of his health bar about nine times.

Not to derail the topic, but I haven't found this to be the case at all on my fortunata and I'm far from purpled out (though I have one or two). Are you running a lot of pool powers? They often have a hefty endurance cost. It's comparable to any other toggley powerset from my experience. I agree the regen boost is pretty pointless, though.

The inherent is boring, sure, but it's actually really useful (more endurance is always good and they have a lot of toggles) and ties in with the lore (loosely, but at least they try). "I'm like you, but better" is a very Arachnos way of thinking. My Widow Fortunata can solo AVs, lock down elite bosses and tank task forces. I honestly can't think of anything I'd change about them that wouldn't push them into stalker levels of overpoweredness. I've not played seriously with a Spider, but I know they can be built to have absurdly high DPS (I think highest AoE and second-highest single-target after one specific stalker build) while still being pretty tanky. Maybe a reverse of the kheldian one would work thematically - they give out specific buffs based on team composition. A tanker makes everyone tankier, a blaster makes everyone hit harder and a defender makes everyone... more... defensive? I don't know. Call it "Coordination" or "Synergy" or something.

As a final note, I've swapped out the L50 choice of the accuracy bonus with the AoE taunt from the presence pool and slotted it with a psi damage proc. No ragrets. Magetank 4 eva. Thanks everyone for the feedback.

Eh. No better or worse than the forums, really. If you ask a question you'll still get three answers that contradict each other half the time.

That is correct. When more than one type of defence stat is relevant, the game always picks the one with the highest number. That is also correct. Attacks are tagged as melee, range or AoE, the actual range doesn't factor into it for defence. There was untyped damage in early versions of the game - I think most of it became toxic damage. Kheldians used to have to deal with unresisted quantum damage before they were nerfed to boring old negative energy. There are other damage types, done by a very few bosses in trials and raids. For example, the Hamidon does electrolyte damage that needs a special inspiration for damage resistance. The Terra Volta reactor one has a shield you need to go and grab periodically and I think another raid boss does a special damage type that you use an inspiration for that drops fairly often on the map it's on. In all three cases, defence is totally ignored, but there's a way of dealing with the damage using either inspirations or the shield so it's not a problem. There are also a handful of control powers that don't have a positional tag at all (unless they were patched on Homecoming, but I don't think they were). They're all psi and mostly from the Mind Control set, so if you really want to cover every possible attack you'll see outside of raids and trials, psi defence is one you'd need to think about. I think some of the Carnies have some control powers from Illusion that lack a positional tag and the Ritki use mind control powers a bit. This is actually useful for players occasionally, like then a Paragon Protector uses Moment of Glory the pure psi attacks are still very effective against them. The big one is really when you're fighting Numina as she has a few powers with no positionals and will either be elite boss or AV-tier so can absolutely wipe the floor with you if you're not prepared. The best advice is to just use a couple of inspirations to get your psi defence and resistance high enough to deal with her. There's one strike force where you go up against her with a few other heroes and most people just deal with that by taking her down first.

Yeah. I only knew because someone mentioned it on Reddit. A lot of information about CoH at the time was based on forum announcements by the dev team - the game misses quite a lot out or actually gives you wrong information. The IO tutorial says an IO's effectiveness "is constant and based on the level of the Recipe" in the tutorial, which isn't actually true as it shifts down if you exemplar.

Do you mean exemplared down (where your level shifts down to a lower one temporarily)? If so, then IOs scale down if they're too far below their normal level. Here is a guide to how the system works, if you're interested. Simple version is that, yes, lowering your level will make you IO enhancements scale down until you go back to your true level.

The patron story arcs open at level 35. You can do any of the four patron arcs and it unlocks all the patron pools, but you still have to do one of them. If you put it up on the LFG you will almost always get a decent sized team together for them, from my experience.

Hard disagree. I ran a peacebringer on the early days of live when they did unresistable damage... And I sort of miss that. Kheldians end up with such high levels of damage resistance that a bit of extra negative energy damage is something you can shrug off after a few levels. Those nictus crystals, man... they were a real challenge. They used to be a death sentence, now they're something you notice because of the weapon effect when they're lying on the floor... It made playing with a Kheldian feel different, now they're just seen as a roleplay class.

My last real mains have been a peacebringer and a fortunata.. that's the hole I'm trying to fill!

Following my love for the epic archetypes and their hybrid playstyle, I want to try my hand at a ridiculous mess and roll a pool party character. Minimal use of primary and secondary, maximal use of pools and temporary powers. I want to try a self-built hybrid with the following criteria: Melee attacks (will build up from Fighting, probably) Ranged attacks (harder to get from pools) Some sort of survival powers (Defence: not a problem. Resistance: much harder) Levelling-friendly. Happy to use IOs but won't be building up for them specifically. SOME use of primary and secondary powers is okay. I'm not totally against it. I'd probably pick up two or three ranged attacks. What AT would you recommend starting with? Part of me wants to say corruptor, maybe kinetics? They favour staying in melee or mid range and kinetics has a number of ways to increase your damage and lower that of your enemies. The downsides are the mediocre damage modifiers without Scourge. Dominators have never appealed to me as any AT that relies that heavily on abusing recharge (see also: peacebringers) always feels wrong to me, but their damage modifiers are surprisingly high. Maybe controller if I picked up some single-target mezzes for containment? The Arachnos sets actually look like an easy ride as they have a lot of passives available and everyone loves extra endurance. The trouble is that there is an expectation that you'll run leadership all the time, which I'm not adverse to really, but if I'm going to go for a pool party character, using an epic archetype feels like cheating. I could roll a sentinel and pick up some melee attacks, I guess... but there's something about them that puts me off. They feel very middle of the road.

/macro_image "SorceryPool_Translocation" "Translocation" "powexec_location camera:max translocation" Copy and paste this into your chat thing. It'll put a translocation power icon in your power tray that when you click it sends you where you're facing. You can change the last bit to "powexec translocation" if you want it to work with normal clicks.

Controllers need to use Contamination to get the most of what they've got (double damage for the win). Always open with a hold, immob, sleep or disorient and you'll literally do double your damage. If you can afford them, add procs for damage - there are a lot of cheap ones that add smashing or lethal damage that will help you hit a bit harder. Trap of the Hunter has a damage proc that can go in an immobilise power. Gladiator's Javelin has one for toxic damage that can go in your ranged attacks, but it's a bit pricey. It's worth having a look to see if you can sneak a proc into all of your main attacks as they can add a chance for extra damage to all your attacks pretty nicely. Procs aren't affected by Containment, though. It's literally a chance (normally around 20%) to do a set amount of damage every time you use that attack. If you want ranged attacks from power pools, you're very limited. Basically, it's the Sorcery pool or the Force of Will pool - they each have a slightly slow-animating ranged attack power. They both also have a survivability power that that is on a par with scrapper T9s, but desperately needs a lot of recharge in it. You can frankenslot them pretty well and give yourself a good panic button power. The Fighting pool has three melee powers that get more powerful the more you have - you'll never be a scrapper with them, but you'll have less down time and be able to do a bit more damage. They also take procs, so you can turn them into a reasonably good set of filler attacks, just make sure you lock your enemies down first so Containment triggers the critical hit damage. The other pools mostly have one or two melee attacks, but if you're going down that route you might as well go all-in with fighting because of the stacking bonuses you get from them. At level 35 you also get the epic power pools - most of them have one or two ranged attacks in that are worth taking.

A lot of the changes aren't actually live yet on Rebirth or Thunderspy - they're still in development. Good work is still going on, but most of it isn't ready for public deployment. The new Guardian AT is live on the test server but not the main server. The majority of the new costume options are still in testing, although progressing quickly from what I gather. There's a good write-up here about some of the problems they've faced and the frustrations of being part of a very small dev team dealing with a decade of patches and spaghetti code plus later additions to the code and cross-compatibility between different versions of the codebase and the problems caused by getting the new additions to work together without breaking things like NPCs or the entire animation system. There has been some really amazing work done on extra costume pieces and some UI work, for example. Due to coding differences, it's easier for other server sets to share new content, whereas Homecoming may require extra work to port over. Obviously, it's not a case of easy-vs-impossible as some people make out, but HC is more different in coding from the other branches so there may be cases where community content would have to be patched more extensively to be integrated. It's all really early in development so I think we're three months at least off things really being released as anything other than proof-of-concept stuff. Honestly, the quality of some of it is really good. Not talking about the new powersets, but things like BobbleWrap's customisable mastermind pets, extra costume slots and a pretty vast expansion of the whole costume system - things people have been asking for and are in development and seemingly progressing healthily. I would really like it if Thunderspy's removal of level restrictions for contacts was ported over, for example - the Flashback system prevents people from being added to a mission on the fly and it disrupts the narrative of a zone having to bop in and out all the time. Some kind of statement from the Homecoming team would be excellent about how they intend to work with or alongside the Ouro project to potentially integrate some of the newer content as it develops, but it's all so early in development I understand why nothing has been said.

From Paragon Wiki: So, I guess they use their psychic powers to make themselves pass under the notice of people around them. Attacking breaks the illusion because they're drawing attention to themselves and therefore "bursting the bubble". For the poisonous ray... radiation? Vaporised toxins channelled with gravity-focusing technology?

Try a stalker. When double-stacked crits on double-stacked Build Up is part of your standard combat rotation, you definitely feel awesome. They're in a really, really good place at the moment. Hitting for over 1k, solo, twice in a row, two or three time a minute creates very skewed ideas about DPS. They play like scrappers with special moves.