A real artist and player of the game noticed my comic and decided to do this piece after seeing New Friends, Part 8 - Sunset (Finale) which he found inspiring for some reason. Probably he couldn't stand how wrong I was doing some of the costume details like Garuk's horns

Speaking of, he's got a special post with samples of those particular horns because they give all us amateurs trouble

On the other hand, he said this was his first time trying anime-style eyes and asked if I had any input. I modified the faces a bit to be more in-line with the style here:

Psuedo-anime modification to Christopher Robin's art.

01: Gale

35%

01: Shriek

40%80%40%22%

02: O2 Boost

40%40%17%

04: Howl

40%80%35%24%

06: Hasten

69%

08: Swift

34%

10: Shockwave

22%87%22%13%22%

12: Steamy Mist

62%34%45%17%

14: Super Speed

35%

16: Recall Friend

35%

18: Freezing Rain

93%40%40%

20: Health

69%

22: Snow Storm

85%52%52%

24: Stamina

69%

26: Tornado

89%34%22%

26: Hurricane

74%24%17%

28: Siren's Song

40%40%40%13%

32: Lightning Storm

35%

Combos

When enemy groups are near a wall or corner, try this:

1. Turn on hurricane.
2. Before they see you, use Shockwave and Gale to knock everything back to the wall/corner.
3. Use hurricane to push any remainders back and to pin the rest down.
4. Use Freezing Rain. The enemies that have just gotten up will be further slowed and many will fall down.
5. Start attacking. Use Shockwave, Howl, and Siren's Song to AoE them to death. Switch to single-target attacks once enough are gone.
6. If high enough level, use Lightning Storm to add to your damage and keep them pinned (Tornado will NOT help here because it will toss people out of your controlling area.

In wide open areas:

1. Target the toughest enemy or the one most centrally located. Use Freezing Rain. Many will fall down, but have a heal inspiration ready just in case.
2. Use Snow Storm on the enemy you already targeted. This keeps them from running out of the storm.
3. Use Hurricane and run around the room trying to push any that weren't in the rain into the rain and prevent escape. If you have a good handle on the range of Gale and Shockwave, you can use these powers to knock runners back into the crowd.
4. Start attacking. Reapply Freezing Rain as needed.

Play Tips

Whenever facing a group that's extremely tough or too numerous, look for a door or corner. Stand just to the side so that as soon as they come through, they'll be debuffed by your hurricane before they can fire on you. Lightning storm and Tornado will keep them on their butts while dealing strong damage. If one gets too close or is blown where you don't want them, use Shockwave and Gale to deal with them.

Another note on Tornado, when fighting strong enemies like bosses or AVs, Tornado won't wander and will piledrive the bad guy constantly dealing damage while debuffing defense. Many people see Tornado and how chaotic it is and skip it, but that's a huge mistake.

While on teams, you won't want to use it because it will mess up people's nicely packed groups (and thus AoE damage), but when solor or when there aren't other little enemies around, fire away. Also note that for some types of missions, if all your tanks, scrappers etc. are focused on the AV and ignoring the minions, you can use Tornado and other powers to keep the squishies (yourself included) from being beaten too much.

While it may be tempting to not hit enemy groups with Snow Storm because of the endurance drain, remember that it's not just a slow power, but one that lowers enemy recharge rate too!

I'm also planning on some upgrades to the guides to account for new travel powers and several of my characters that have recently reached 50. There's a lot in mind, but it all depends on time .

01: Dark Blast

40%66%45%40%

01: Twilight Grasp

80%88%85%60%

02: Gloom

45%94%45%45%

04: Tar Patch

95%60%60%

06: Air Superiority

48%48%21%

08: Shadow Fall

95%41%52%48%

10: Recall Friend

42%

12: Darkest Night

69%41%

14: Fly

53%92%

16: Howling Twilight

95%60%60%

18: Swift

42%

20: Health

83%

22: Moonbeam

74%92%42%50%44%21%

24: Stamina

83%

26: Petrifying Gaze

62%40%22%18%

28: Fearsome Stare

48%48%27%74%

30: Tenebrous Tentacles

42%78%47%21%48%29%

32: Dark Servant

66%61%42%45%38%61%

35: Night Fall

48%95%53%21%

38: Blackstar

27%79%79%27%

41: Dark Consumption

42%83%66.75%42%

44: Dark Embrace

50%22%

47: Soul Drain

42%69%16%

49: Dark Pit

48%48%21%

All my builds are designed for max utility at the lowest levels. Generally, single target stuff low level, team support stuff, and most of all, your travel power and sneak/tp combo.

At the later levels, some group control and damage powers start to creep in. Depending on if you PvP or not, you might want to rearrange some of the powers in the 24 to 30 range (since the Bloody Bay level cap is 25).

But there's no question of what power to get at level 32. With 3 slots per level starting at level 33 and two slot levels per power level now (meaning you now have two levels of enhancement slots per one level of new powers), you will easily have Dark Servant fully slotted by level 34.

At this level, pay close attention to IO set bonuses. Based on the sets I chose and the arrangement of each, I managed to reach 25% damage bonus, 27% accuracy, 11% +hitpoints, and 68% Regeneration rate!

Play Tips

• A well known, but worth mentioning anyway, combo is the Soul Drain, Blackstar, Blue inspiration, Dark Consumption. With this you buff your attack tremendously, blast the hell out of everything, then gain enough endurance to drain whatever's left standing to put you back to near full endurance so you can keep fighting.
• The previously mentioned combo with Tar Patch as a trap and Darkest Night as a pulling move allows you to tank for the team. Once they hit the Tar Patch, run into range and fire Tenebrous Tentacles to keep them in place and proceed to use Howling Twilight, Dark Pit, and Fearsome Stare to keep them completely defenseless while your team destroys them. If you don't have a team, that's ok, because with tentacles and Night Fall, you can do a fair bit of damage yourself anyway!

01: Dark Blast

25%32%12%

01: Twilight Grasp

57%23%23%10%

02: Gloom

25%25%

04: Tar Patch

30%10%10%

06: Hasten

38%

08: Shadow Fall

35%14%15%23%

10: Darkest Night

38%

12: Recall Friend

19%

14: Super Speed

19%

16: Howling Twilight

19%

Here are some general percentages you can reach with only uncommon (and maybe one rare) recipies at the market. You can probably reach better results than I did with rares here and there, but I wanted this to be a completely realistic build that anyone could use.

At this point, you have good attack power, the extremely useful Tar Patch and the all-powerful Darkest Night. Though I don't keep Super Speed in my final build, I have it at low levels because the Stealth procs for Sprint are too expensive at this level. With Super Speed and Shadow Fall, you'll have full invisibility so you can do the awesome Sneak and TP combo (for faster mission and TF completion).

There's very little point to worrying about IO set bonuses this early into the build. Just focus on raw numbers and deal with bonuses later.

Play tips

• You will run out of endurance quite quickly so remember to turn off Super Speed before battles and only use Shadow Fall when sneaking or fighting things that use Energy, Negative Energy, or Psionics.
• Because you're attacks are quite weak, use Tar Patch a lot. It makes your attacks far more powerful and slows enemies too.
• Always use Darkest Night on bosses or large groups of enemies to lower their accuracy and damage. Don't forget that if you lay a Tar Patch then use Darkest Night to pull the enemies, they'll bunch up on the patch which means they'll all be debuffed.

Bind variables

By putting these special variables in your binds that involve chat or talking, the variable will be replaced with some information (depending which variable you use).

• $target

  The name of your current target. This could be someone on your team, an enemy, or an object (anything that can be targeted).

  /bind f8 team "Look out guys, there's a $target over there."

  This bind will call out your current target to the team. This is very important if you find a problem enemy or just want to play around. As with all chat binds, don't over-use it or you get annoying.

• $name – Your name.

  /bind f7 "local The great $name is ready for battle!$$team Ready!"

  This works if your character is the kind to speak in third person. I always replace the F7 "ready" bind with custom text of my own. I found that it was both confusing and annoying to say your custom text in the team chat, but you need to keep the game standard "READY" so you don't confuse people. This bind does both by saying some custom text in local chat which people can still see, but can ignore while still saying "READY" in the team chat channel like normal.

• $level – Your current level (not affected by exemplaring or sidekicking).

  /bind + "request Level $level stone/fire tank LFT"

  Sends "Level 38 stone/fire tank LFT" to the request channel (if you were level 38).

Okay, okay, i think you get the point. The rest are:

• $archetype – Brute, Defender, etc.
• $origin – Magic, Technology, Mutation etc.
• $battlecry – Your battlecry which is set in the same screen as your story. I don't often use this one.

So one more to bring it together

SHIFT+ENTER "beginchat "/send "freedom badges" [$name $level $archetype] ""

This is a channel bind that loads my chat box with "/send "freedom badges" [$name $level $archetype] " and puts the cursor at the end waiting for my text. When I hit ENTER, something like this shows up in the "freedom badges" channel:

	@Jordan Yen: [Screaming Gale 50 Defender] Anyone know if Kraken is out? @Jordan Yen: [Screaming Gale 50 Defender] Anyone? @randomdude: Blob sighted south PP

The main advantage of doing this is that normally when you talk in channels, all you see is the global chat name which doesn't tell you anything about the character they're currently playing. Doing it this way, you broadcast your current character's name level and type which is far more useful when forming teams and such.

Targeting

There are some seriously specific target binds available to help you target exactly what you want. I can't list everything here, so I'll just cover some examples that I use so you get the idea.

v "target_custom_next friend defeated$$powexec_name Fallout"
B "targetcustomnext friend alive$$powexec_name speed boost"

One of these makes a hard to use power simple by putting it on a bind. All you have to do is make sure that there is a dead teammate in your view. Then press the V key first to target said dead teammate and again to launch the power. It won't launch both at once, but at least you don't have to use two different keys.

The other works the same way first targeting a teammate and then hitting them with Speed Boost. This bind is very useful for powers like shields or buffs that you have to apply to your team one at a time.

Powers

/bind lshift powexecname teleport

Binds the left shift key to the telport power. It's far faster and more efficient to teleport using a keybind rather than to click the power, click your target location, and back and forth.

/bind f12 "team $target, come here$$powexecname recall friend"

Tells your team that you're going to teleport someone. This is useful so they know they're about to be teleported, but also as a way to signal to others who have recall friend not to bother trying to TP the same target as you.

/bind v "target_custom_next friend defeated$$powexec_name Vengeance"

Just like the above two examples, this takes two key presses to work, but is still faster and easier than trying to target the dead guy manually and then launch the power in the middle of battle.

Other references