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March 14, 2010
January 31, 2010
Updated: I16
 | 10: Shockwave |  |  22% 87% 22% 13% 22% |  |
| 12: Steamy Mist | | 62% 34% 45%17% | |
| 18: Freezing Rain | | 93% 40%40% | |
| 28: Siren's Song | | 40%40% 40%13% | |
Combos
When enemy groups are near a wall or corner, try this:
- Turn on hurricane.
- Before they see you, use Shockwave and Gale to knock everything back to the wall/corner.
- Use hurricane to push any remainders back and to pin the rest down.
- Use Freezing Rain. The enemies that have just gotten up will be further slowed and many will fall down.
- Start attacking. Use Shockwave, Howl, and Siren's Song to AoE them to death. Switch to single-target attacks once enough are gone.
- 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:
- 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.
- Use Snow Storm on the enemy you already targeted. This keeps them from running out of the storm.
- 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.
- 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 solo 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!
November 6, 2009
Updated: I16
| 01: Dark Blast | | 40%66%45%40% | |
| 01: Twilight Grasp | | 80% 88%85%60% | |
| 06: Air Superiority | | 48%48%21% | |
| 08: Shadow Fall | | 95%41%52%48% | |
| 16: Howling Twilight | | 95% 60%60% | |
| 22: Moonbeam | | 74%92%42% 50%44%21% | |
| 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% | |
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.
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!
May 14, 2007
Updated: I16
| 01: Dark Blast | | 44%85.75%21.75%21.75% | |
| 01: Twilight Grasp | | 70%57%57%32.5% | |
| 02: Gloom | | 44%85.75%21.75%21.75% | |
| 06: Air Superiority | | 43.5%43.5% | |
| 08: Shadow Fall | | 79%24%24%35.5% | |
| 22: Moonbeam | | 60%41%36.75%18%22%22% | |
| 26: Fearsome Stare | | 62%40%22%18% | |
| 28: Tenebrous Tentacles | | 44.5%44.5% | |
| 30: Night Fall | | 44.5%66.75%22.25% | |
Somewhere between 24 and 32, go and do a Repec trial and use it to put your build on track for this version. Do your best to get either a jump or run Stealth IO and then you can drop Hasten and Super Speed for Air Superiority (a strong attack that helps you keep enemies off their feet) and Fly (or get the jump powers… it's all a matter of preference).
Also, by this time, you might have started paying attention to set bonuses on IOs. Focus on healing, regen, and damage to make up for your defendery weaknesses (but definitely accuracy too. You don't want you heal to miss!).
Play tips
- Tenebrous Tentacles and Night fall work very well with each other. Typically, you will want to fire Tentacles first to root the enemies in place, then back up to fire Night fall (since Night Fall has a longer range, but a more narrow cone). Use this combo for hunting missions, badge hunting, or really anywhere that you find more than 2 or 3 enemies in a small cluster.
- If you do the Positron TF, the final boss is and Arch-Villain called the Clockwork King. He uses psychic attacks so stay close to your team to make sure that they're covered by Shadow Fall's protection.
- At this point, you have lots of options for control powers, but also good attacks with the Dark Blast powerset.
Updated: I16
Because of Recall Friend, I was set up for Teleport as a travel power which would work too, but I chose Super Speed instead for several reasons. First, the IO that gives stealth in run powers is very expensive. I could have had her fly instead and done stealth that way, but that didn't fit the character (one of the issues with doing character-based builds). However, I'm also a strong believer in making an effort to try different things and Super Speed is something I didn't use on many characters (I generally prefer fly).
Another reason for Super Speed is that the final power in the set is Whirlwind. A power I'd never taken, but looks like you're spinning around in a self-made tornado. Thematically, that's pure win.
Anyway, all that aside, this is built around being functional solo, but also able to team well by 16 for the Positron TF. Most importantly, you travel very fast and can drag slowpokes with you using Recall Friend. And because Super Speed with Steamy Mist makes you fully invisible, you can use the Sneak and TP combo.
Use Shockwave (with heavy accuracy) to control enemies) or blast runners back into a patch of Freezing Rain. Steamy Mist provides protection from energy fire and cold (used by Outcasts, CoT, and others in spades). O2 Boost, while no good for you alone, makes you greatly useful in teams and increases your chances of completing a mission quickly and efficiently by keeping your team members alive and immune to sleep, stun, etc.
Play Tips
- When anyone on your team uses an awaken, hit them with O2 boost to remove the stun effect so they can start using inspirations and powers immediately. This also heals them which is important if they were gutsy enough to come up before being fully out of range of attacks. Your well timed heal might save them from another death.
- When playing in a team, try to spread your attacks out among all the enemies (constantly switch targets) so your secondary effect of lowering damage resistance affects more people.
- When you see someone in serious trouble in your team window, but you're not in line-of-sight, TP them to you and hit them with O2 Boost a few times.
Combos
- (for multiple targets) Bright Nova Scatter + Bright Nova Detonation + Proton Scatter + Luminous Detonation. If you have your target's trapped (by terrain or because of a controller effect, you can start this combo with the White Dwarf Flare.
- (for single targets) Bright Nova Blast + Bright Nova Bolt + Incandescent Strike + Radiant Strike. By the time you finish this combo, your nova powers should be recharged so you can switch back to Nova and start again.
Play Tips
- Starting a battle in Nova Form is good to get a few good hits in, but then switching to human gives you better defense and access to your heal powers while finding a safe time to change back to Nova for the damage.
- Build Up is obviously a good thing to do before any combo, but try to alter the combo to use human powers first since the animation delay in changing to Nova form sucks away your precious BU time.
- Use Conserve Power just before launching your biggest combos and especially when fighting monsters and avs.
- In battle, if I find out there's a strong jtagwrite="mezzer"/> or some control effects that cause knockdown or such, I'll switch to dwarf until the effect/enemy are gone. Also if I'm starting to get in over my head, switching to dwarf for the defense firing Dwarf Drain to recover life. Your endurance will come back fairly fast because your attacks are too slow to drain it quickly.
I haven't gotten much higher than 24 so far so I'll update when I have something to say. The one piece of advice I can give people who like to slot their squids or Dwarfs is this: Though it may only be a bug that the devs will fix soon, when you do a respec, you can slot your Nova and Dwarf powers from level 1 instead of the level you got them. This lets you steal slots from low level powers that you might not have wanted to use for those powers.
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