I rolled an Illu/FF troller recently and since I realized it's a VERY tight build I want to use the opportunity and go either with a teambuild and also with a solobuild.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: curious

I made a Grav/Thermo controller some days ago. I love his concept, but the sad truth is that at level 19 he can't solo for his life. As long as I can get a team he totally pulls his weight (except when people expect him to be their primary healer) and even duoing with one of @Swiss Army Wife's rare scrapper or blaster is a beautiful sight. But solo? Not good. Things should pick up somewhat at 21 with 3-slotted stamina, thus unlimited use of Propel, but it still seems likely to be a long, winding path ahead.

Any hints and tips would be appreciated. I guess Thermal is an excessively team-oriented secondary, but Gravity should theoretically be pretty offensive. Perhaps an alternate build with 3 reds in all primary powers? Or should I just resign myself to playing second fiddle?

My main, Archimagos (pictured in my icon), is 48-1/2, a Mind/Emp 'troller on Victory Server. He has lots and lots of missions that require teams. Anyone going to be on Victory blueside with someone in the right level range to help out over the next few days?

I just made a Controller (Mind/Thermal) and I was wondering, are 'Trollers soloable at higher levels? Right now I'm pretty badass, basically keeping all the baddies too indisposed to land any hits on my squishy self, but I'm guessing that'll probably change later on... any thoughts/advice would be appreciated.

Can someone explain to me what's so über about Fire/Kins? I've got a lvl 41 and she loves making out with the floor. She's the only Controller that I haven't been able to shift to Invincible once my pets were slotted.

How does Ice Patch [point-blank ground-placed knockdown] affect an already-in-place Frozen Aura [PBAOE Sleep]?

For instance, I know if you drop Ice Patch (or Ice Slick) and then hit the mobs with an Immob, the slick/patch is now wasted.

Is knockdown enough to wake up sleeping foes? Or will they just start falling down as soon as they wake up?

I'm building a Grav/Kin and could use some input on power selection.

( Powers I'm planning to take )

Thematically, he's a Master Magician and I'm trying to cast him as a Dr Strange/Fate type of player. Obviously he's mostly support but I do want him to do some damage where possible.

Any real obvious mistakes/gaps here? I can't find a good guide for Grav/Kin so I'll take links if anyone knows of any.

I'll also note my cockeyed optimism that I take this guy to 50. Probably be about 2 years!

Thanks, as always, for your feedback.

I tend to think of things in terms of spectrums (spectra?), instead of trying to put things into nice neat categories. Because often times things can possibly fit into multiple categories, and sometimes things don't fit neatly into any. So I got to thinking about defenders as AoE and Single Target, and as Enemy Effects versus Ally Effects. Because, you see, one day it popped into my head that in many ways Trick Arrow is the opposite of Empathy. Whereas Empathy affects only Allies and is slightly more Single Target oriented, Trick Arrow affects only foes and is mostly AoE. So I decided to actually create the spectrum and see how it went.

Yes, I realize this is further proof that I am a total and complete City geek.

Powers like Howling Twilight affect both allies and enemies (ally heal, enemy debuff). Powers like Repulsion Field and Disruption Field target allies, but only actually affect enemies. Please click the thumbnails for larger images.

DEF: // BLA: // CON: // TANK:

Please Subscribe to this post if you would like to be updated as I do more of these.

My main, Archimagos, newly level 44 Mind/Emp troller, took Indomitable Will at 41. I'm now vacillating between Mental Blast and Mind Over Body. Either one would be good—I can use the extra damage, and I can use the damage resistance. So I can't make up my mind.

Thoughts? Thanks.

Current Mood: curious

Just curious: Those of you who have Jack Frost as a pet, how are you slotting him and why?

The only pets I've had are Fire Imps and now the one for plant control. When I first get them 6-slotted, I've been sticking in two Acc, two Dmg, and two of the defense/resist auras.

Are there different considerations for Jack? Someone told me you could have up to 2 or 3 of him running around, but the pets I am familiar with, if you spawn a new set, the old set dies. Does Jack work differently?

So is it feasible to believe that ice domination will be available to controllers and thermal radiation will be available to defenders... sometime in the near future.

I know this info is probably available somewhere, but I have no idea where to look. I am a controller altitis sufferer and I would like to make Ice/Ice someday.
Thanks in advance.

Oh glorious Tankers... how do you feel about controller powers hold/immobilizes and such. I teamed with a tanker named Mikey Malone yesterday who said he disliked my controls because it made it hard for him to do AOE damage... I have never heard of this before... I thought the tankers job was to take damage and support damage output. Am I wrong?

...but does anyone have any suggestions for solo-able controllers.  I know the 'trollers are meant to be pretty much exclusively team players, but I prefer soloing (ah, scapperlock) and was wondering if there were any deviant power sets in the 'troller arsenal.

Tanx n' splosions
Crow

A Fire/Rad Controller (only my second ever Controller who's gotten past level 2) named "Purrmonuclear" (with a spectacularly garish costume: bright green and red tights with the "blend" color set, and cybernetic shoulders, forearms, belt, and legs—when I mentioned her to someone I'd teamed with as her while on an alt, he said, "Oh yes, who could forget the COLORS?").

Started out on Friday at level 1, skipped the tutorial.

By Sunday evening, she was level 28. And if I'd played more instead of reading some, I could have gotten farther. I'll never understand how people can have such a hard time at it. But then, I did literally write the guide on powerleveling… :P

It's insanely easy to level if you get into full task forces at the lowish end and manage not to have to sidekick. Positron, Synapse, Psyche, Citadel, boom. And I haven't even gotten to the point where I'm told Fire/Rad becomes a totally insane speed-leveling machine yet (which I'm told happens when you get Imps). As it is now, I'm having kind of a hard time soloing. :P

But then, you get XP faster when you team anyway…

Is playing a grav/kin troller who does NOT have SB such an absolute rarity? 

I was talking with some folks on the Justice For All channel and mentioned that my lvl 47 grav/kin doesn't have it.  (And truth be told, doesn't WANT it either.)

Had I leapt onto a table and screamed, "I HAVE RABIES!", I could not have gotten the responses I got to that simple admission of not having Speed Boost.  Immediately people started getting in my face about it, how no one would ever want to team with me (not true), that if I teamed with folks who didn't want SB they must be n00bs too (also not true), kins without SB are useless (very not true), I should have just played a defender, etc etc etc.  I mean outright BASHING.  On and on and on and on and on.  To the point where I suspect that people started adding notes to my name not to team with me.

It was unreal.

Finally someone stepped in and said, "It's her toon, let her build it however she wants."  But some of them still kept harping on it.

I shudder to think of what they'd say if I also admitted that the same character doesn't have Inertial Reduction, either!

Am I really that much in the minority?

I've never had a team invite rescinded when I admitted I didn't have SB.  EVER.  And I mean in PuGs of 7 strangers.  But this just completely astounded me...

Michelle
aka
Samurai_ko

EDIT, PART 3 (115 responses): For the record, I have emailed the mods to please lock this thread down.  I have gotten the clarification I wanted about Speed Boost and its role for grav/kin trollers, and both the positive and negative rationales and aspects of having it.  This post was not meant to start a flamewar, nor was this a "Woe is Me" post.  Therefore, to stop this from degenerating into more of a flamewar than it already has, I've asked them to please lock it.  Thank you to everybody who responded - you've given me a great deal of insight on this and a lot to think about.

Current Mood: rejected

That is, please double check my math.

I am part of a troller trio: 2 /rads and a /kin. Using only common IOs, I think we can get perma-2AM for the three of us, and the /rads can get perma-Hasten.

Note: I might come back later and edit this post to include numbers for +Recovery. [ETA] Done. [/ETA]

( Read more... )

I wonder if our trollers are going to run into endurance problems with this much recharge (I also wonder if naively purpling out some toons causes them endurance problems)....

[ETA] Assume AM and SB are 3-slotted for EndMod, so that their +Recovery is almost double their base values. +Recovery for the kin is almost 2*2*30, so including base recovery, he gets almost 220 points per minute. The two rads get an additional almost 2*50 from SB for almost 320 points per minute. And at level 35 with Transference fully slotted, every 10 [ETA] 30/2.6 = 11.5 [/ETA] seconds there is a chance for almost 2*40 = 80 more points. Heh, tallying up endurance consumption from attacks is too much work for now, so I still don't know if we'll be ok. (And I don't know if my friends are interested in going this route.) [/ETA]

So I was finishing the mission from Willy Starbuck "Defeat Gang Leader and Guards" where you have to rescue the mystic. I've done this mission several times. I always want the Mystic as a pet for longer than one mission. She's awesome for a level 10-15 contact. Her powers? She's a grav/dark troller. I want one! She looks pretty cool too. Reminds me of a crantz toon for some reason :^)

( Clickie to see a pic of my toon and the mystic )

So this just makes me want a /dark troller even more than the Carnie Master Illusionists. Has there been any word whether this is a possibility or a never will happen with the powerset proliferation? Can I keep my hopes up or should I just file this along with that yellow sports car of "will always want, will never have?"

Anyone else out there longing for a /dark troller? If so, what do you see as the ultimate primary/dark combination?

Current Mood: amused

I missed the 'what ATs do you just not like/not play' thread, but I just read it. Interesting.

But I must ask all my fellow players afflicted with altitis - what do you find yourself rolling up over and over, and what have you told yourself 'okay, this time I'm gonna roll this and actually PLAY it'?

Hi, I'm A2K, and I'm a kinetics FREAK. I have more played more kinetics than anything else - it's a swiss army set of FUN. Everything I need but defense. I've been trying to get off my kin jag and let other people play it - so now I'm hooked on my TA/A...and I now have four varieties of TA running around! Sheesh!

Next!

Okay, I am not trying to call Doom here. But these kinds of statements scare me.

July 17, Castle says:

Buff/Debuff effects are additive, and are massive "force multipliers" for teams. In theory, buff/debuff sets pay for this with lower offensive/soloing capability.

In practice, do to the additive nature of things, the benefit is grossly better than the cost. We've known that for a very long time. Even if we hadn't figured it out ourselves, Repeat Offenders publicly leveraged the mechanics to do stupidly difficult things easily.

So. What are we going to do about it? Not much. There are a few points that I want to iron out (exploitive stacking of Vengeance *is* going away once we get things settled) but the general case of additive Buffs/Debuffs is going to remain as is. Why? Because changing that would alter the core teaming dynamics of the entire game. It would be a change far greater in magnitude than either ED or the GDN -- probably more far reaching than both combined. Simply put: Despite it being a weakness of our system, it is not a weakness we can address without changing the very nature of our gameplay.

All of this isn't to say that all content everywhere will obey the same rules. There may be times, places or specific encounters where we change those rules. To date, those are few and far between, but I do expect there to be more of that sort of thing in future encounters.

I'd argue that the defensive capabilities of the other ATs are FAR TOO HIGH. When I was reworking Defiance for Blasters, I tried to slip in a major decrease to their defensive caps. I don't recall the exact numbers now, but it was something like 33% max defense and 50% max resistance. Obviously, that was shut down since the values remain unchanged.

Why should AT's be confined to one side or the other?

Discuss.