DefenderVagz

With Vagabond Magus (ControllerVagz) at 40, and the new slots that'll open up for me when Issue 12 hits the live servers, I'm seriously contemplating the next incarnation of the vagabond. I was hoping they'd proliferate Thermal Radiation to defenders, but instead they sent the powerset I used for VillainVagz - Cold Domination. So now I have to figure out what sets to go with.

As an old-school Dungeons & Dragons wizard, the one thing Vagz' magic can't do (except in the Ultima universe) is heal. I'm also not really interested in repeating a powerset since that kind of defeats the purpose of making a new version. The vagabond's strengths have always been with fire, lightning, and pure magical energy/force.

Among the defender primaries, I'm looking at Cold Domination, Dark Miasma, Kinetics, and Storm Summoning. To me, Empathy is centered too much around heals, Force Field would be repeating the powerset from ControllerVagz, Radiation Emission just doesn't seem right (and I did it already with E.VAC), Sonic Resonance doesn't seem right (and I think would feel like a repeat of FF), and Trick Arrow... well, Vagz is about the sword, not a bow.

My concern with dark and kinetics is that I'd have to skip the heals and that might be a bit crippling to the sets. Dark might not really work for Vagz anyway, but kinetics still has some possibility. My concern with storm, even though that's the way I was thinking of going pre-proliferation, is that I've already done it with Jack Royale.

Which has me kind of leaning toward cold. It has some good buffs and debuffs, no heal for me to skip, and VillainVagz (The Gray Wizard) was a Cold Domination/Fire Blast corruptor, so it's something he's touched on already.

As far as secondaries, I'm pretty much committed to Electric Blast. In the beginning, I had to choose whether to make BlasterVagz (Vagabond Mage) fire/elec or elec/fire. I went with the fireball first, so now it's probably time to play with those lightning bolts. :) Dark Blast, Energy Blast, and Ice Blast would make good secondaries, too, but I think I'm leaning away from dark, energy might cause too much knockback, and while ice is an excellent blast set, I like to keep up Vagz' status as a dabbler by keeping his powersets as different as possible.

I would love to get thoughts, advice, and suggestions on this. It doesn't matter if it's from an IC standpoint, mechanical standpoint, or what. Any help would be welcome.

Ryu's Wings - poll

Traditionally, the tatsu or Japanese dragon is depicted without wings just as the Chinese and Korean dragons. Occasionally, they are depicted with wings, but when they are, they're usually small.

However, I've been browsing the web, looking for stories of Ka-Riu, and the last two I read specifically mention his wings. One of them even referred to his mighty wings.

The costume I've got now is wingless more in keeping with tradition, but I've been debating about adding wings, partly because most people (myself included) expect a dragon to have wings. Red scales or not, without wings people are going to think he's a snake- or lizard-man. I should add that, in my head, when in this "costume", he should appear as a dragon, not a dragon-man. But, you know: limitations of the game and all.

I would like to hear opinions on the matter.