Gulbasaur

Could you post a screenshot of you defence and resistances? Without eyeballing it, it's hard to tell.

Thank you! Writing tutorials is something I really enjoy doing. The build is fairly flexible (and borderline overpowered) - the only time I've really had problems was trying to solo in the Shadow Shard because the defence debuffs are obscene (went into minus numbers!) and even then I held my own until I went up against multiple bosses. I also have a strange dislike for Hasten... I feel like it's cheating or something. It's the least balanced power in the game. 1) The absorb proc I have in Dominate goes off when I use Dominate. Dominate is probably my most used ranged attack (it's a hold that hits like a sledgehammer) so it's there often enough for me to think it's not a wasted slot. Any low-health build that relies of defence has the problem that when you get hit, you get hit hard. I've tanked Romulus in ITF with this fella - he could have two-shot me, but he didn't. The absorb procs are part of the layered defence and I'd be hesitant to lose either of them. It's nice to have, but it's not like it'd break the whole build if you lost it. However, if one goes off when you're into "oh shit" territory, either one of them will allow you to shrug off another 350 damage or so (absorb and resistance synergise well), which with the high defence should keep you going for a while. 2) You already have very high psi resistance - do you need more psi defence? It's still below all your positional defences, so what would you actually gain? Defence works off the highest relevant number, so this would only protects you from non-positional psi attacks, which are something that I think exists, but how likely are you to actually meet it if you don't seek it out? Is that worth losing some DPS for?

I've gone blaze on mine, and the fire ball as my sneak attack crit makes it worthwhile. Ring of Fire is an acceptable single-target ranged attack, but the real glory's in the surprise you're all on fire now impact of fire ball. Sometimes you just need everything to be on fire, is all I'm saying.

Actually, this is really clear and helpful. Thank you for putting it up!

But they also have zero power customisation. No colour changes, no way to remove redraw. Fortunata powers aren't even consistent within the powersets - they're literal cut-and-paste jobs. Widows are literally salvaged from spare parts. Not that that means Spiders shouldn't be looked at, but widows don't have it much better. At least their forced costume piece (the claws that don't fit their hands) are smaller. I'd really like it if the VEATs generally got a review like stalkers and Kheldians did late in live and tankers are getting now. They were overlooked by the original devs, possibly because their hacky nature makes them too tricky to work with, like the incompatible costumes.

Thanks! I enjoy writing tutorials and testing stuff out, so I'm glad you liked it. For levelling, I'd probably go for the second one. You have fairly high amounts of defence all the way to the end. Just to note that 1-24, you're basically a scrapper with leadership, so remember that the widow builds don't really start until you hit level 24. They're not too different, to be honest. It's just slots and utility powers. I think my power choices are the backbone of the build as they have solid melee, ranged and AoE damage and reasonably high levels of control.

It's tied to their animations, so it's likely less "they can't" and more "they can't remove it and it not look absolutely terrible or break altogether without serious work". It would involve giving every animation an alternative version, which is possible but low priority. You're welcome to download the server code from Ouro, try make the changes yourself and then offer it to the devs and see if you could port it over to HC. I know that's a mean answer, but it's also probably the only way it'd get done. Widows can't even select a no-redraw option or customise their weapons in any way, while soldiers can at least dye their backpacks and guns. The VEATS are a bit of a hacked-together mess.

It's nothing special for single target, but it really shines in AoE because you've got one DoT aura and two DoT clickies that take PBAoE procs (but are worth using without them). The single-target attack chain is a bit clunky, but it's workable. I'd say it's a bit of a late-bloomer, but when it gets there it really gets there. Even without the procs, it's pretty decent and I used mine in AE farms until I decided that was a boring waste of my time.

It also has regular absorb, very high regen/recovery and is also very proc-friendly as it uses a number of slow-recharge AoE attacks as part of its buffing routine. I think it'd be great as a tanker set.

Rad melee's contamination mechanic (single-target damage has a chance to have an AoE effect) works best when enemies are tightly clumped together and rad armour has a taunt aura and buffs that act off nearby enemies, so I would say brute if you're teaming. A scrapper would certainly be viable and I'd argue it doesn't make too much of a difference solo as you'll have all the aggro anyway.

I find (on Everlasting), the LFG channel is more reliable than the LFG menu. General advice for LFGs in all games is that you get out what you put in. It pays to be proactive. You're completing for places in teams, so make yourself noticed. "LF anything" is too generic and looks low effort. Say what you want and make yourself stand out. Be specific about who you are, what you're doing and what you want. E.g. "L25 dominator running story arcs in Croatoa LFM, any level welcome as long as you get here" or "L50 character steamrolling Council. Come and mooch experience and tell me bad jokes" will get about five tells in thirty seconds and a few more once you're inside the mission.

You usually get players across a whole range of levels and everyone is always pleased to join you. "Just do your best and try to keep me alive" is my only real requirement. It's good if you just want to run about smashing things and not worry about things being particularly hard. Leadership and the SoA equivalent helps as it somewhat increase the lowbies' usefulness, but I only really do it for stuff I could probably solo. I do one at +2x8 to test out my allies and then go up to +3 or +4 if it doesn't take too long. The only ones you really need to worry about are the tanks who pick up more aggro than they can handle. I mostly run these on my stalker who can nuke like the best of the best, but can't hold aggro at all so I have ended up in a pile of corpses once or twice.

I quite often run my Tip missions in Atlas and put "Tired of DFB? Join me for some tips in Atlas Park. L1s welcome" and it fills up in seconds and a lowbie character will usually level up about four times before you've left the first room.

Apart from a few one-off IOs, I don't bother. I have two characters I'd consider fully kitted out, and one of those I really did as a sort of exercise to see how far I could push it (pretty well as I've tanked Romulus on my fortunata, with a very good team but I couldn't have done that without the IOs).

I've been experimenting a bit - HP buff for fighting AVs and the damage proc for fighting general mobs seems to be the way forwards. Both on T3.

I run a similar build on my stalker. My thoughts: You don't need perma-Hasten on BS/Shield. I know this is scrapper blasphemy, but your attack chain has a lot of filler so you've always got something you can use. Do you really have that much downtime? The only thing that really benefits from it is OWTS as Active Defence can be made perma with one recharge enhancement. I know stalkers are lower down the aggro table than scrappers, but I almost never need to use my panic button powers. I've tanked with my stalker (you just need to do a ridiculously overwhelming amount of damage and the aggro is all yours) with Shield Defence without using the T9. I'd hazard that you can drop the Fighting pool altogether with SD because it's got a strong base to build off. Stick some damage in Parry. You're using it anyway to maintain melee defence. You use a lot or slots in Build Up. The bonuses from the set are OK, but I'd look at whether you needed that many. If you hit it, without fail, every time it comes up then keep it, but otherwise it's probably overloaded. Maybe a few damage procs in Shield Charge - it's slow enough to recharge that it's a good proc monster. Also, it's worth maybe setting up a macro to make it fire off on your target rather than aim-click.

This guide is intended to give newer plays some tips on how to stay alive in the game in as simple as way as possible. It won't go into the nitty-gritty, but will give you some tips and tricks to make your character feel sturdier. I'll be making frequent reference to this page on Paragon Wiki, which provides a list of most of the Invention Origin (IO) special-effect enhancements. IOs are an easy way of adding in more damage, defence, resistance or special effects to your attacks. You can craft them, buy them from a merit vendor or get them on the auction house. IO sets give you bonuses to stats if you use more than one of the same kind, but there are a few with one-off effects you can use to substantially add to your survivability. How does damage work? As a rule, attacks have a position (ranged, melee or AoE) and damage type (smashing, lethal, psionic, toxic, energy, negative energy. There are a tiny number of attacks that ignore position and a tiny number of attacks with a different damage type, but we can ignore those because you'll see them so rarely. Each character has positional defence, typed defence and damage resistance to each damage type. Positional and typed defence can be rolled into one, which we'll just call defence. Defence makes you get hit less often. Resistance makes you get hit less hard. Defence Using telekinetic blast as an example: This attack is ranged and does smashing and psionic damage. To see if it hits, the game looks as your defence for all three of those and picks the highest, it then does some maths and rolls a virtual dice and if you number is higher, the attack misses. The "always picks the highest" rule is important in understanding defence and how it works. An even-level minion will hit you 50% of the time with zero defence and things scale differently with level differences and enemy tiers, but the short version is all defence has value. Let's say our ranged defence is 7.5%, our smashing defence is 15% and our psionic defence is 0%. The game will only look at the smashing defence's 15% for this, because it's the highest. Many attacks do either smashing or lethal damage and (almost) all attacks have a positional tag. The "soft cap" for defence is 45% - any more than that is wasted for most content. If you can get it to around 20%, you'll feel a lot more secure as a squishier archetype. This means that to make the most of defence, you should focus on building up your smashing and lethal defence or your positional defence. How to I get more defence? Combat Jumping, Stealth and Hover both give you a little bit of defence. Maneuvers gives you a little bit more. The Fighting power pool has a the Weave skill, which gives you some more. It's about building up layers of defence to give yourself as much as you can without compromising any other part of your build. And, of course, purple inspirations - don't let them sit there. Unleash Potential from the Force of Will power pool can give you a fairly large boost to your defence, with a very long cooldown. There are a couple of IOs that give you an instant defence boost but they need to be slotted into a resistance power. If you're going for Weave, also unlock Tough as it's a good place to put these if you really want to make use of it. Other than that, it's about using IO sets to layer up either S&L or positional defence until you're comfortable. Resistance Using the above example of telekinetic blast, we can see it does both smashing and psionic damage. Unlike defence, these are calculated separately. Let's say, without any resistances, both do 100 damage - that's 200 in total. However, let's say you have 15% smashing resistance and 6% psionic resistance - now the damage is reduced to 85 + 94 = 179 damage. Not huge, I grant you, but those attacks build up over time. Resistance caps at 75% for all archetypes without their own armour powers, but that's pretty hard to get to, so just get what you can. Damage resistances are calculated separately, so you want a good coverage but smashing and lethal are the most common types of damage so are a good place to focus. How do I get more resistance? It is harder to increase resistance than defence. There are a couple of IOs that give you either global or specific damage resistance. Weave, mentioned above, gives you more. Many of the ancillary and patron pools have a power that increases your damage resistance. Don't forget to use your orange inspirations. Rune of Protection in the Sorcery power pool is notable as it's about equal to several T9 protective powers that you'd see on a melee archetype, but has a very long recharge. IO sets often give you bonuses to damage resistance, usually in pairs (S&L, E&NE, T&P). There are a few odd IOs that give you more resistance to psionic damage, but I would ignore them unless it's for a specific purpose. If you get to the point where you're kitting out in IO sets, you'll naturally end up with around 15-20% resistances across the board. Absorb Think of absorb as disposable hit points. Absorb procs are rare, but one I think is worth mentioning is Preventative Medicine - slot it into Health so it's always on and it has a chance to give you a fairly large absorb barrier when your health drops down a bit. Which one is better? Don't rely on one. Layer them up. Defence determines how often you'll get hit, and resistance determines how hard and you'll do better with a bit of both. Full example, borrowing the maths from here: I'm in a fight. I've already been hit and I have had an absorb proc of 250hp go off from Preventitive Medicine. A +1 lieutenant attacks me with telekinetic blast. I have 15% smashing defence, which means that his chance to hit me is around 44%, so he's more likely to miss than he is hit me. If he misses, which he probably will, I will take zero damage. As above, I have 15% smashing resistance and 6% psionic resistance. 250-179=71, meaning that if it hits, I take zero damage and still have 71 spare hit points in my absorb barrier. If I had zero absorb, I'd have taken all the damage. If I had zero defence, the lieutenant's chance to hit me would have been 63%. If I had no damage resistance, I'd have taken the full 200 damage. However, if it did hit, it'd still knock me back... Mez protection Knockbacks, holds, sleeps... they're all a problem. The easiest way to deal with it is to pop some light purple inspirations and just carry on with your life. These have another layer of calculation. First of all, if the attack misses then nothing happens, so defence triumphs again. Secondly, control attacks have a magnitude which determines how strong it is and you can build up protection against it. If the magnitude is ever higher than the protection, the status effect kicks in. Acrobatics in the Leaping pool gives you some protection against Hold and there are several IOs that protect against knockback. Rune of Protection in the Sorcery power pool provides *excellent* protection against a wide array of effects, although it's got a very long recharge. Thirdly, you can build up resistance against status effects, which makes them end sooner. The normal way through this is with IO set bonuses. Healing When you heal, you get health back - not much to it there. The Medicine Pool has Aid Self as a self-heal. This is an interruptable, medium-powered heal. It can be a literal lifesaver, but because it can be interrupted, it's not a guarantee. Defence helps here - if they can't hit you, they can't interrupt you. There are a couple of IOs that heal you periodically, although not many are very strong. Don't forget to use your green inspirations. Increasing your Hit Points There are a few ways to do this. Either with IOs (there's one for 7.5%, but there are also a few smaller boosts hidden in IO sets), or by going for certain accolade powers for passive bonuses (each one can be done in about and hour and a half, tops). More hit points mean that each attack is less of a threat, simple as. Regeneration This is the mechanic that heals you over time. Increasing your hit points will actually make you heal faster, but probably not enough to really make a difference in a fight. There are a couple of IOs that give is a substantial boost, though. Debuffs Anything that lower enemy ToHit makes them less to hit you and this take enhancements - it effectively raises your defence against that enemy. There are a few powers that reduce enemy damage by a percentage, which effectively raises your damage resistance against that enemy. ToHit Debuff can be enhanced. It's worth checking the power's stats - I'd say anything over 5% debuff is worth an enhancement while you're levelling as this will translate into you taking less hits, and therefore less damage. Wait a few seconds Let the tank take aggro, then go for your high-damage attacks. If you lead with an attack, enemies will almost always have time to fire back once before their attention goes elsewhere and if that's a group of eleven enemies, all with ranged attacks, that will hurt. Holding off a second or two can be the difference between life and death. The tank can take it. Stand somewhere else A little obvious here, but pay attention to the floor. If there are caltrops all over it and you see a lot of little minus numbers appearing above your head, it's time to move. Use your inspirations I'm pretty guilty of this, but remember they are there to be used and you can buy them cheaply at hospitals. A small purple and a small orange inspiration will go a long way to keeping you upright. Short version: Use pool powers and a couple of selective IOs to add defence and resistance where you can. Grab the accolades for a quick boost and grab the Absorb proc for a little icing on the cake.

What AT should you play? Here's a quick and dirty guide to the archetypes (and some powersets where they stand out), to help you on your way. I want to... Tank Tankers are the tankiest tanks and the hardest to take down. They can withstand a lot of damage, but dealing damage isn't their focus. Brutes are almost as hard to take down, but do more damage the more they attack or get attacked so benefit from being in the middle of lots of enemies. Their defences come in later than tankers so they can feel a bit anaemic for the mid-levels. Peacebringers and Warshades can shift into Dwarf Form and make very strong tanks, possibly peaking earlier in their resilience than either of the above as they can get huge survival buffs by teaming, but they are slightly less able to hold aggro and Dwarf form does very, very low damage compared to their other forms. Masterminds summon minions to control aggro around them, and take an unusual but powerful approach to tanking with very high damage capability and support powers, but when things go wrong, they go wrong dramatically. Beat stuff up Scrappers are stong melee fighters with random criticals. If you just want to run in and start fighting, this is the one for you. Stalkers can use stealth and hide mechanics to control when they critically hit. If you want more control over your damage and like a "technical" playstyle, this is the one for you. Stalkers also generate the least aggro of the four melee archetypes, so they're very safe in groups. Brutes can, in theory, do the highest melee damage but they take a lot of building up to get there and don't do as well against a single target on their own. They're more an aggresive tank than DPS under most circumstances. Peacebringers in human form have some heavy-hitting melee attacks, as well as good damage resistance and range. Arachnos Widows have a very solid melee attack chain, as well as strong team buffs and ranged attack and control. Arachnos Soldiers also have a solid melee option, as well as team buffs and optional pets and ranged damage. Blasters and Dominators both have a mixture of ranged and melee fighting, although they don't have much room for error with the weakest defences. Blast stuff and deal ranged damage Blasters are the obvious choice here, being all damage with no real protection other than more damage, with their secondary either focusing on melee attacks or utility skills. The devices secondary is a good choice if you want to swap out a little damage for utility and is good for soloing. Dominators combine ranged damage, some of the strongest control powers in the game and a few melee attacks. They're somewhat safer than blasters, thanks to the control, but take some building to feel at full power as they're very dependent on their inherent power (known as perma-dom builds). Corruptors and Defenders both deal ranged damage and have team support powers. Corruptors are more damage focused, while defenders are more focused on buffs and debuffs. Don't overlook them - some defender sets are fairly notorious for being able to take down pretty much anything in the game with no help, although it's a slow and risky ride. Controllers do critical damage on all controlled enemies thanks to their inherent, meaning they deal a reasonable amount of damage when they get going and do it from a position of relative safety. Some sets can solo very well, while others are definitely better in a team. Mind control is arguably the only one with a "full" attack chain, although all controllers are more than capable of doing damage. Sentinels combine resilience and ranged offence - they're never the strongest, but they're easy to use and they are pretty resilient, meaning the don't have the "one good sneeze will kill me" of many of the above ranged damage types. Peacebringers and Warshades technically can do the highest unmodified ranged damage in the game in Nova form, although their human form sacrifices some of the power for (quite a lot of) survivability. Arachnos Widows have a mixture of range, melee and control attacks available as well as melee options, and Arachnos Spiders/Soldiers have some of the strongest AoE damage out there, all while having very high defence, some resistance and melee options. Heal Pure healers are usually frowned upon in this game, just as a warning. If you plan to just hang back and heal, never attacking and never using any other skills, experienced players will probably see you as a hindrance. Healing does have an important role, but it shouldn't be all you do. Empathy and Pain Domination are the two most heal-orientated powersets, but if you ignore the other powers at your disposal then you are limiting yourself and, by extension, your teammates. Instead, try: Support Defenders are the undisputed kings and queens of support. Their buffs are stronger, their debuffs make enemies even weaker and then can heal harder than any other archetype. They can also handle themselves in combat, if they need to. Corruptors trade off some supportive ability for damage. Controllers mix support and control - buff your allies, hold your enemies and totally shutdown combat when you need to. Widows and Spiders have powerful team buffs at their disposal. Masterminds have a good array of support powers and can keep their minions (and their team) going for a while. Control Dominators have the strongest control skills in the game, although it takes some building to get them permanently high. Controllers bring control and support, which can turn a weak team into a force of nature. Warshades and Widows have access to control skills as part of their normal attack chains. Run around with loads of pets Masterminds are built around pets. It's their whole shtick. Controllers and Dominators have pets at their disposal. Illusion control is very pet-ish. Warshades and Soldiers have pets available later on. Do a bit of everything At level 35, you can unlock a third power set that specifically gives you access to powers that are unlike the rest of yours. Melee ATs get range, squishy archetypes get protective powers etc. You can pick from up to four Power Pools - powers that everyone has access to. Use these (sparingly) to add to your build and round out flaws. Generally, it's easier to add defence and melee damage than ranged attacks and damage resistance, though it's certainly possible. Don't go overboard, though - convenience usually comes at a cost of the powers being a bit mediocre, especially for the attacks. Some excellent powers require you to pick up one or two middling powers to get to the good ones. If you can wait until level 50, incarnate abilities are extra powers you can unlock that add a little bit of everything with a great deal of choice. They're generally used to round out builds. Roll an epic archetype - the four epic ATs are all generalists, but arguable a little more complex to use. What are the epic archetypes? Released later than the "main" archetypes, peacebringers, warshades, widows and soldiers/spiders (the game inconsistently calls them both) are all hybrid archetypes that do a little bit of a lot. Kheldians - alien (optional) shape-shifters that get buffed by being part of team. They have access to nova (ranged damage) and dwarf (melee tank) forms. Peacebringers are self-sufficient melee-range hybrids. Very hard to take down with a lot of easy-to-use survivability boosts. Warshades are their shadowy counterparts and have more of a ranged damage and control mix. They can use enemies and their corpses to buff themselves to fairly extreme levels of power. Soldiers of Arachnos - natural leaders that make a team stronger just by walking through the door (with their toggles on). Their power choices branch at L24. Widows start out like scrappers with a bit of range then end up either as Night Widows which favour stealth and melee attacks with a little bit of range for convenience, or Fortunatas which favour range and control, though can still pack a wallop in melee range. Spiders start off with a mix of range and melee, then end up either as Bane Spiders with strong melee abilities or Crab Spiders with lots of AoE and, eventually, pets. What are the differences between the four main melee types? Damage and survivability, but also they differ in playstyle. Stalkers really work best when you master proc fu and hides and calculated critical hits, while tankers are the slow and mighty glacier controlling the flow of combat from a position of relative safety. Most damage, least sturdy --- Stalker --- Scrapper --- Brute --- Tanker --- Most sturdy, least damage. What are the differences between the four main support archetypes? No one can buff, debuff or heal as well as a defender. They have mediocre damage as a payoff. Corruptors are their reverse - worse support, better damage. Controllers have access to control effects like holds, sleeps, fear, confuse and immobilise as well as okay support. They do double-damage to most controlled enemies, but that damage has a low base as a payoff.. Masterminds have high highs and low lows as pets can do very strong damage but fall apart like wet tissue at higher levels if you don't invest in a good build. Within the support power sets, there is a huge amount of variation. Radiation emission is known as a being very solo-friendly debuff set and kinetics is a very team-friendly buff set. Empathy and pain domination have the most ways of healing, but clever use of other sets should mean you never need to heal in the first place. I don't remember sentinels They're new! They're Homecoming's flagship new archetype. They play a bit like a ranged scrapper. I want to deliberately make my life more difficult The self-imposed challenge builds and unofficial archetypes: Petless Mastermind - lowest heath in the game, lowest damage modifiers, highest challenge, Blapper and variants - roll a blaster, but don't take any ranged attacks beyond your first, mandatory choice. Dip into the power pools where needed and stay in melee range. Pool Party - as soon as they're unlocked, only take powers from the power pools as much as you can. I want to make my life easier Consider purchasing one or two Archetype Origin Enhancements from either a merit vendor or the auction house, as soon as you can afford them. Each archetype has two "special effect" enhancements that add to the archetype's core mechanic. Some are excellent (the stalker ones are game-changers, Kheldian's Grace form empowerment is a flat upgrade), some are nice (brutes' fury bonus and scrappers' increased crit chance are nice) and some are a bit underwhelming (controllers' energy font, Essence Transfer's heal). They're worth a look at, at least. There are a few Invention Origin enhancements that have special effects and some sets of enhancements give you useful bonuses. It's worth having a look and seeing what you can add in. For example, the Stalker ATO resets the Build Up skill a few times a minute, so slotting a chance for Build Up proc in the Build Up power gives you a huge boost to DPS as the bonuses stack. Masterminds can get a lot of mileage out of six IOs that make pets much more resilient.

Thanks everyone.

I think it should have been a scaling proc like Reactive Defences' resistance buff. Lower health = more recharge... So you have to, you know, take a gamble and stay at lower health if you want the recharge boost. The buff as it is is too easily abused.

Look up BobbleWrap on Reddit. He's done it, I think. It's on the i24 codebase, though, so maybe you could collaborate with him to fork it to i25/26?

Annoyingly, that's the arc that made me wonder if I could do it. I'm not sure if they spawned as AVs or EBs (but there were 3 at once at times) and I could take down Statesman in a duo. Is it a SF/TF? If so, that's repeatable...

Oh, fortunata build. L50, T3 incarnates unlocked. Redside/Rogue but willing to change if needed. Decent IO setup.

Even non-RP teams. I run missions via the LFG channel (not the queue - its lockout mechanic is too annoying) pretty much every time I go on.

Or hero. I'm testing my build out to see if it can take down an AV and was wondering if there was a standard (or standard-ish) AV/hero to try out? I'm redside, so I don't really want to go over to do Maria Jenkins arc just yet because of the roguish confuse power because I'm on a fortunata and it stacks with my other AoE confuse, which lets me lock down elite bosses. Heroes are a bit hit-and-miss because some are secretly elite bosses (Sunstorm is labelled as a Hero but took him down in less than 30 seconds). I went up again Positron, who I think was *definitely* an AV-tier Hero (288k health) and took him out in about 3 minutes and I want more of a challenge. Alternatively, is there a distraction-free pylon preferred for the boring pylon test?