What pool powers to take/are good?

[graeberguinn]

Looking for beginner advice. Rolled a fire/time Corr up to 24. I have a feel for what primary secondaries to take, but I'm lost when it comes to pool powers. I've chose fly, mainly due to it's my fav travel power. And I chose manuvers. For myself and group support. Not sure on any character how to decide what to take. Any advise on how you decide what pool powers you take and why. TIA

[Darkir]

Tough and weave add a ton of survivability and hasten provides a lot of recharge allowing you to use your more dmging powers more often. Tactics helps get insta snipe but with farsight it's not really required for /time. I also like to take vengeance because if someone dies, that's a massive buff you can give the whole team, plus it's a slot for one LotG global recharge io.

[Sancerre]

just going to list what i consider the "good" power pools:

-Speed: Hasten is pretty much mandatory on everyone.  stacking global recharge is incredibly powerful and the only reason to not take it is to be the anti-meta guy for the sake of being different.  Superspeed is a very fast travel power and also can combined with a stealth IO to become essentially invisible.  Burnout is useful in some specs, but ive never used it.

-Leaping: Combat Jumping is an extremely cheap toggle (endurance wise) for good "air control" and a minor defense boost.  can be slotted with any number of the amazing defense IOs (luck of the gambler global recharge notably).  if you are getting flight, you should also have combat jumping for the "air control"...  you will feel the difference immediately.  its very difficult to not recommend this in every build just like hasten.  hard to recommend anything else in the leaping tree though (dont get acrobatics, there are easy ways to get knockback protection via IOs -- blessing of the zephyr)

-Leadership: generally all great group toggle buffs.  at minimum maneuvers is in a similar boat as combat jumping but much more expensive endurance wise.  vengeance is great for parties as is victory rush before you get IO'd out with end recovery bonuses/reduction.  if you ever have room for extra powers and you really dont want/need anything else, leadership pool is probably the place to go.

-Concealment: Stealth is similar to leadership maneuvers but harder to recommend because there is a stealth IO that you can put in sprint and it otherwise functions the same as maneuvers.  it is another toggle defense power though, so can be useful.  hard to recommend anything else in concealment though.

-Flight: purely for hover defense bonus and afterburner.  otherwise go with sorcery power pool

-Sorcery: Mystic flight is all the same, but Rune of Protection can be amazing.  While it can not be permanent itself, it can be rotated with other defensive toggle/click cooldowns (notably incarnate powers) for an effective permanent buff to your defensive stats.  Spirit Ward is also actually very good, but will often feel more like a forced pickup on the way to Rune of Protection.

-Teleportation: Recall friend is great in parties if you are also picking up a stealth package and plan to rush missions in a party.  Teleport foe is great to have when enemies get bugged behind a wall.  Kind of situational overall but it can definitely be useful

-Fighting: Tough & Weave are notably pretty good defensive toggles.  unfortunately you will need to pick up 2 absolutely useless powers on the way to them... and even then they are only "pretty good".  if you plan to ONLY play against smashing/lethal enemies (and avoid all other content) this is a solid pickup.  BUT a big footnote is that smashing/lethal is very easy to get from IO set bonuses and you SHOULD be getting one of the epic/patron defensive toggles that has smashing/lethal resist anyways.  Overall, it kind of feels fairly expensive to pickup 3 other powers just for Weave from that perspective.

 

i find myself gravitating towards the following in every build:

-hasten

-combat jumping

-leadership maneuvers & assault

-sorcery mystic flight & spirit ward & rune of protection

 

to me, it just feels not optimal if i dont have this as a baseline.

[Guffnat]

i find myself gravitating towards the following in every build:

-hasten

-combat jumping

-leadership maneuvers & assault

-sorcery mystic flight & spirit ward & rune of protection

 

Same here. Although I prefer Tactics over Assault during leveling for most of my builds.

[graeberguinn]

i find myself gravitating towards the following in every build:

-hasten

-combat jumping

-leadership maneuvers & assault

-sorcery mystic flight & spirit ward & rune of protection

 

Thanks. This helps extremely. How do you slot these powers? And what is the stealth IO for Sprint and how does it work?

[DSorrow]

i find myself gravitating towards the following in every build:

-hasten

-combat jumping

-leadership maneuvers & assault

-sorcery mystic flight & spirit ward & rune of protection

 

to me, it just feels not optimal if i dont have this as a baseline.

 

Pretty much the same picks here. Hasten, CJ/SJ or Hover/Fly, 2-3 out of the Leadership toggles depending on what my secondary offers/build needs, then Sorcery or Fighting depending on the build.

[Sancerre]

i find myself gravitating towards the following in every build:

-hasten

-combat jumping

-leadership maneuvers & assault

-sorcery mystic flight & spirit ward & rune of protection

 

Thanks. This helps extremely. How do you slot these powers? And what is the stealth IO for Sprint and how does it work?

 

-hasten: general idea is to slot it as much as necessary to keep it up permanently.  for a /time corrupter (thanks to chrono shift) ultimately you dont need to slot it at all as you only require a single lvl 50+5 recharge reduction if you have enough IO sets.  but you probably want to slot it up for 3x recharge while leveling and then 2x recharge at 50 until you get a lot more set bonuses.

-combat jumping: i wouldnt recommend slotting specifically to increase defense, instead there are a number of fantastic one-off IOs that can be placed in.  slot out as many times as you need to fill them in.  Examples: Luck of the Gambler (global recharge), Kismet (global +to Hit), Reactive Defenses (Scaling +resist all), Shield Wall (+5% resist all), Karma (Knockback Protection).

-maneuvers: mostly the same concept as combat jumping, but it gives slightly more defense and end reduction actually helps a lot on this skill, as well as being a great bonus to party members.  That said, this is a great place to add a defense IO set if you feel inclined.  Generally i would say either put some kind of IO set in it or just slap a luck of the gambler recharge in there and leave it alone.

-assault: not much you can do here.  a single level 50+5 end reduction helps with the end cost.  while leveling or before you get plenty of IO sets, you may consider adding extra end reduction slots here because it is pretty good to have one at all times.

-tactics: since you are running /time, farsight really overshadows the overarching need for this.  that said, it is incredibly beneficial while leveling to reach the +22% hit sweet spot for instant snipes, but whenever the current beta build goes live, that will mostly be a moot point.  you can also achieve +22% hit via clarion radial incarnate and farsight slotted with 2 lvl 50 IOs as an endgame setup.  once you are there, tactics is entirely unnecessary.

-mystic flight: slot out the blessing of the zephyr set or just the Knockback reduction IO.

-Spirit Ward: either slot out one of the healing sets or leave it alone.  while it is a good skill, because you can not use it on yourself and people are generally super tanky already when in a party with you (farsight + time juncture), it may not feel worthwhile to slot it.

-Rune of Protection: One of the Resist IO sets and/or some of the one-off unique IOs.  some examples: Steadfast protection (+3% all defense), Gladiator (+3% all defense), Unbreakable (+HP).

 

As for the stealth IO.  for running the set is called "Celerity".  For jumping the set is called "Unbounded Leap".  For flight the set is called "Freebird".  Sprint will accept leap or run enhancements.  The concept is that Superspeed reduces your threat range dramatically.  Then having stealth (either via the IO or the power) will collectively make you able to walk around (almost) any enemy undetected.