Gulbasaur

Some of it isn't even available by Ouroboros - I'd like to see the Origin mission chains converted into story arcs because that's basically what they are. There are a number of narrative-driven contacts that, for whatever reason, aren't classified as story arcs, particularly blueside. It's an early game quirk - story arcs seem to be something the early devs were a bit inconsistent about. Anyway, origins. Half-formed ideas: I'd actually like it if the origin power pools were locked into origins in some way, but I realise that it's hard to justify really. It's just me being a grump. I like having some limitations to play around. Epic archetypes used to have a locked origin for lore reasons. I know it's just a "interpret it how you want" thing, and things like the Origins of Power story arc promote an interesting discussion about what's really classified as a mutant, or natural, or magical for that matter... but lore. Origin missions aren't story arcs so there's little reason to do them. They're good! The origin powers, like apprentice charm - would be nice if they were upgradeable or scaleable or something. Maybe through a mission chain like how stores used to have to be unlocked, or the capes and auras required unlocking. I like unlocks. Let me unlock things. In the end, we're all Magic. The Well of the Furies, and by extension the Incarnate system, would appear to be magical in function. I'm sure someone could explain it as nanotechnology, or inspiring you, but the lore seems to suggest it has a divine connection and that's a short-circuit right to Magic.

8pm UK time! I will probably be there but am very forgetful.

Thanks everyone so far, particularly @EnjoyTheJourney for the small essay. Magnifique. Dominators are a real "I know I should like this but I don't" set for everything I've tried over the years. Energy doesn't have enough knockback to feel like I'm playing with knockback, which actually bothered me. The visuals are 10/10, but I was expecting ragdoll-a-go-go. I wanted ragdoll-a-gogo. I'll probably persevere with it up to 20 or so. I might try Dark/Dark next. Soul Noir goes with everything. A couple of the control sets have this casting animation that looks like you're handing someone a cup of tea over a tall fence that I really don't like so I'll play with the animations and see what looks good. I remember that putting me off Fire/ and Elec/ but I haven't really played with Dark/. This game is, how can I put it politely? not balaced around gameplay balance? so picking for aesthetics is ultimately one of the safest choices for vibing with a character, in my opinion. (I know the irony of saying that but maining a fortunata that is a gnarly mashup of about five powersets and has no visual cohesion whatsoever)

Eeeey Ugh fine How good is it on a dominator? I only really know it for its ability to absolutely break (the already fairly broken) Time support set. If Mind (or anything) matched Psi visually, I'd probably go for it. I like having sort of matchy sets, even if it's only visually. Thank you.

Hello. I like fortunatas and tankers and defenders and controllers and peacebringers and corruptors and controllers and stalkers... I don't like blasters or sentinels or brutes or scrappers or masterminds or warshades or soldiers of Arachnos, largely because they play like things I like but worse (subjectively). Dominators are next on my list. I feel like I should like them because they're very, very hybrid-lookin' and I like hybrid gameplay. At the moment, they look like fortunatas but worse (subjectively) but I'm willing to try. Please can someone answer my idiot questions: I like the look of gravity. I would go mind but I had a mind controller on live and fortunata takes a lot of powers from mind control so been there done that. Is gravity good? Looks very blasty, but I have blasts. Is it good at locking down enemies? Is energy a good secondary? I just like the glowy hands. I don't care that there is knockback. I like knockback. I am a horrible person. I just want to pew pew and punch stuff on the same set. Is dark/dark good? I have a dark/dark tanker and a dark/dark corruptor so I know that pissing -ToHit all over your opponents is good. Ice/Ice or Earth/Earth were my other choices. Ice has an aura and I like auras. Earth has a nice crystal motif and I like nice crystal motifs. How do you not take a trillion attack powers? It seems like I have a trillion attack powers to choose from. How is the fireball thing on the ATO? Is it worth chasing super high defence, knowing I can lock most things down? Is the confusion aura in the psi ancilliary power pool absolute trash? Can it be made good? Contagious Confusion looks like a natural fit for it. That is all. Thank you for your infinite generosity and essay-length responses.

Will free it up this evening.

Up for grabs (I won't release them until someone claims them): Shadow Self Lux Aurorae Mageclaw King Quantum Terraform Unit One

I got a Storm/Water defender to 50 and it's still one of the most fun, if most obviously broken, builds I've ever played. My comments: Storm is arguably stronger on a Defender, as many of the damaging powers don't trigger Scourge but do scale with Vigilance, meaning they do about the same damage solo or in small groups but you've got better buffs and debuffs. Storm is also a very late-blooming set, so if you're levelling slowly, your big-hitter powers will come in significantly faster. Gale probably doesn't need 5-slotting unless you really like that set bonus. If you're taking O2 Boost, throw an enhancement or two in it. It's a respectable heal, though nothing special. You almost certainly don't need the Fighting pool, and if you do take it, you should take Kick and stick a +Recharge proc in it. Survivability is rarely a problem, unless you're trying to solo an elite boss that can also fly. The more recharge you can generate, the more you'll run out of endurance. Consider Mu Mastery, if only for Power Sink. Storm is a very fun set to play if you enjoy chaos. Enjoy!

I think I only have it on one character, actually, and that's a specific "how hard can I break storm with recharge abuse?" build combining it with the FF +recharge procs in Water Blast powers. It turns out the answer is pretty hard. While a bit of recharge is nice, I don't include Hasten on any "serious" builds. It's just rarely necessary and recharge abuse takes out a lot of the game's challenge.

One of the best ITF runs I ever did was with all support specs, a fortunata and a sentinel. I held aggro on my fortunata (just about) on the AVs and we just liquefied everything else.

That's my main problem with peacebringers. You get an astronomical boost at level 6, another at level 20 and then you just kind of fart about with the same powers while everyone else is picking up new fun cool kid powers... until about level 40 when light form is finally up enough to be reliable and you're basically a mediocre blaster with mez resistance. Warshades have it a bit easier because they can basically fulcrum shift themselves. Anyway, in answer to the question... you sacrifice three skills to pets and two to upgrades, so your secondary can really make or break the set in terms of playstyle. I found that on my bots/sonic mastermind I was just sort of hanging round waiting for things to die while levelling. It felt very hands-off.

Oh cool - thanks!

Oh, it was a genuine "I don't get how it all fits together and a guide would be really nice" remark. I'd love to see a kind of detailed explanation or something!

Nice production quality and stylistic choices - it reminds me of indie RPG pamphlets in a way I can't quite put my finger on. Good use of images and a comprehensive guide to Praetorian content. As a fellow (if lapsed) guide-writer, I do suggest putting formatted for the forums for ease of access, if only because it's much more mobile friendly. Your name is a bit hard to read on the first page - perhaps in version 2, a text box or something would help with the ease of reading. I grew up in the era of GameFAQs .txt game guides, so perhaps that's just me being oldskool. Are you sure about the order of the incarnate trials? They do have a canonical order that I think involves the Dark Astoria story arcs, but that might be wrong. It would be really useful for someone to untangle that mess from a plot-purist point of view. This is me being slightly petty, but as you explicitly say it's you who compiled it, a "Resources Used and Further Information" section at the end would be courteous to those whose information you've used as it's unlikely you've only compiled it from one source. I usually try to give credit where I've got information from someone else (even little things like macros, etc). Alternatively, putting sources (including the web address in the opening paragraph) in footnotes can make it feel cleaner than a full text web address. Keep up the good work!

Honestly, I would make no more comments about reverting certain changes ever again if they gave fortunatas the option to use energy melee glowy hands instead of fortunata knife hands. I am placated by shiny things.

Rolling lots of dice... a common approach to damage procs, used as a phrase in a guide by @Redlynne (if you're around, hi, you write good guides)... proc overhall is coming. It's confirmed and I will be taking no further questions.

Sonic is, to my mind, a support/control set masquerading as a blast set and consequently it's much better on a defender because the debuff numbers are just that much stronger, and the nature of -res means its usefulness multiplies by the number of people on your team attacking to the point that going in as a blaster means you'll probably be contributing less damage overall. It's also fairly hard to squeeze extra damage out with procs. That said, it's a fun set thematically, but the melee version lacks synergy with the ranged version because you'll spend a lot of time hopping in and out of combat with cones. I'm not anti-cone (my dark/dark corruptor is cone-heavy and fun to play), but they do mean you have to think about positioning to a much greater extent and you need to stay at range to make the most of them. If you like hybrid-style sets, sonic attack is decent as it carries a respectable amount of soft control, but it's underwhelming as a blast set. My advice is actually to roll a sonic/sonic defender and make the most of those juicy resistance debuffs.

At some point between the end of Live and the start of Homecoming, many rewards were made more generous. Incarnate stuff, particularly, was made much easier to access and because of this there is less of an incentive to run incarnate content just for the rewards, compared to the ease of running +4x8 council missions ad nauseam in PI. In addition to this, DA mobs are often harder to just brainlessly wipe though. In terms of reward for time spent, PI wins. In addition to this, there's just a PI farming culture. Not everyone does it - Founders Falls and Talos both have mission farms that pop up on the LFG and I used to run a lot of tip missions out of Atlas because one overpowered player can carry a team of 8 lowbies very easy. Personally, I would like to see a peeling back of some of the easy rewards, capes and auras for free, and things like the Cavern of Transcendence trial being soloable as it makes it all feel inconsequential. tldr: PI is low effort, decent rewards. DA is moderate effort, better rewards, but the path of least resistance takes you to PI.

You know, the enormous one? The gigantic giant flashing crosshair that you can see from space? That one. Any mods to make it chill out a bit?

(double posted)

(I know this is a response to an older comment but) I use Enflame as an AI-breaker. Get overwhelmed? Pull one too many bosses? Enflame! Your enflamed enemy will run around randomly trying to get out of a patch that follows them.

I've used it as my main taunt on a fortunata build. It's solid. Unrelenting is a bit blah and it has a few "you just have to take this" powers.

We need the hips-wiggle walk on dwarf form as compensation.

It urgently needs a "less incessant twirling" option.

I'd argue that the thing that needs fixing about Mind is that Fear effects don't trigger Containment critical hits. Mind is a good blasty set, but the cone Fear doesn't give much benefit so it's sort of skippable. It still soloes very well. I ran a Mind controller on the very early days before the inherent power was added to the game - it was good, but then expectations changed and the meta changed. Sonic and Force Field are both clearly defined sets with +res/-res and +def/knockback as their gimmicks... only other sets all do it better and part of it was power creep. Force Field was edged out by IOs and the playerbase's obsession with knockback bad while tanking in the middle of a room and not using the environment to gain an advantage [Gulbasaur mutters incoherently for twenty minutes about the declining standards of tanking] and Sonic was largely eclipsed by sets added in City of Villains. Other sets provide resistance buffs with a broader toolkit and other sets provide stronger -res debuffs... with a with a broader toolkit. Peacebringers really do need a "modernisation" pass. In the time before IOs, mage-tanks were unique. Now blasters can swan in with their bling bling builds with 45% defence and resists. They're solid tanks, but their damage powers are either nukes or very under-tuned. They are great to level and are a Flashbacker's dream because of how well they downscale, but at endgame their niche is suddenly crowded out.