Argentae

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Not to some. Real rewards are random and require me to stop and delete the readily identifiable crap or run off to a vendor/Wentworth's every time I fill up. It's a minor nuisance, sure, but one I'm glad I'll never have to deal with again. With tickets I can pick up what I actually need salvage and enhancement-wise then roll for recipes if and when I actually feel like taking the time to deal with crafting and selling.

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Exactly. And as I said, for lvl 50's MA is a golden reason to blow the dust off some old characters, but not getting tickets for some of the best missions removes a lot of the appeal. I was actually part way through a long arc and when I picked back up in the middle I was suddenly no longer getting tickets .

I really don't understand the reasoning behind this one, to me personally, it makes me want to avoid the Dev's pick missions, which seems kinda counter-productive?

Arg

Not for a level 50 IMO. And even for my younger alts, I like the tickets better as I seem to get much better results with Bronze/Silver rolls than I do with normal drops, at least when you average the results over time.

Arg

Seems kind of silly that some of the (one would assume) best MA missions don't award any tickets :-(. Kinda removes the entire point to doing great MA arcs with my 50s. I was REALLY looking forward to having a reason to dust some of them off and play them again... Now some of the best missions have lost all the appeal for that.



Arg

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Hell, I got here two years ago and I still don't even remember shrike except from his old posts.

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::nods::

I remember it all... As well as trying three different versions of my first Dom during Beta till I settled on Mind/Psi.

Then having the interminable fights with 515am, where he kept telling us all that all doms except Plant/ sucked on a team. He flat out ignored when I pointed out the glory that was PSW, but that was before /Psi was cool, back when you couldn't slot Drain Psyche for acc and everyone said /Psi was totally gimped .

Shrike... And Fishwork and Malrthad(sp?) and a few others I haven't seen in quite awhile. Fish was back a bit ago though I think.

I'd have picked PvE or Powersets/FX in a heartbeat. Storyline was the closest I could get. I LOVE widgeting with my characters, trying out different builds and tactics. PvE FTW!

To throw another Villain group into the pot, as far as ones that qualify as having a Center, CoT have oranbega under Paragon...

But my money's still on the Council . There have been several dev comments that the 5th column would make a return, and I think I remember seeing something about it being tied in with Boomtown's revitalization? ::shrug::

It'll be something to look forward to. Me I'm ecstatic that ALL my characters, even my newest alts will get a respec right off the bat. That will let me institutionalize my general preference for building to try out new powers, and then respecing into Stamina post SOs if needed once I've got some SO endred slotted.

/em thumbsup

As mentioned, it's not mutually exclusive. My VG on Triumph is in a coalition with some of the folks that did the first LRSF... We DO get together fast, focused VG teams on a regular basis, but I'm often not on or cannot stay on long enough to participate all the time, so PuGs or soloing is what I do a fair amount of the time too. I imagine you'll find that many folks do a wide spectrum of teaming. ::shrug::

515A:

Some of us, in fact a *lot* of the playerbase do NOT have the ability to dedicate that much time to playing. It's not how many months, it's how many hours were spent. For myslef, I have a 3 and a 5 year old child, and a wife, and a life outside CoX. Please bear in mind that not everyone gets to focus on playing and can get to play every day/night, or even anywhere *near* that frequency.

Nice writeup. I don't have enough time to *really* read through it atm, but a couple of things hit my eye skimming through:

1. The description of Dominations effects should probably be updated to reflect the actual mechanics as described by _Castle_ I.E a second control is spawned with a 1.5* base duration? It's worth putting in there to make the info complete.

2. Psi Dart is actually one of the better tier 1 blast powers with it's SUPERB dom (best at it in a team Hands down and walking away) building and added utility as a pulling tool. Many of the tier 1 powers are throw aways, PD is useful throughout the entire game, heck it even applies a 30% -rech! Just food for thought.

3. Psi Lance is actually the highest single target damage power in the set rather than Psi-Shockwave. Recommending just the basic slot is having it just as a pulling tool? Psi-Dart excels at pulling, I'd either slot Psi-Lance and use it for damage or not bother personally ::shrug::.

4. I'd definitely consider putting in the -rech values for the /Psi attacks, it makes a difference to some folks, and in some cases they are QUITE substantial. PSW is -50 for 20 sec! Man what a power... Psi Scream is also VERY hefty at -50 for 10 sec, so between the two you can put an entire spawn at the -rech floor in two shots. PSW can do it by itself, if it stacks? Not sure about that.

Anyway, kudos on the overall guide! /em thumbsup

Hasn't made it to the Dev digest yet... .

You mean that the only time a dev has ever posted on this forum is to point out a likely impending nerf rather than addressing any of the hordes of problems that we talk about on a daily basis?

Nope... Irony? What's that?

::wanders off in a bemused daze::

::reeling in shock::

[edit] Posi, You KNOW you're going to be swarmed by the... well.. surrounded by the Dom hor.. Err... the couple of us here will be yammering at you forver now right? [/edit]

Heh. Sounds eerily familiar. I'm used to Controller aggro from my main and stable of Mind/ Controllers, but on the Red side of the tracks? You should SEE the aggro a Dom gets. Very much what's being described above. Scratch a mob with anything but a zero aggro power (Confuse, Mass Hyp, Mass Confuse) and they will run right past the Brute beating on them and the Corruptor debuffing them to pound the Dom into a greasy stain.

Well, perhaps I overstate the case a bit... But NOT by much... .

Heh. Grav/Storm for the new uber FX Win! Can't wait to tryout a safeguard mission...

Somebody had to actually remain true to the spirit of the holiday...
'Sides, she plays CoH with me... So what more could I ask?

Great idea! And a big help to new controllers /em doffing hat

Relating specifically to Mind/ it's important to keep in ahem... mind... the tremenous single target control abilities that Mind brings to the table. Mind can not only layout more single target damage mitigation faster than anyone else (all out of the primary), but with the stacking of Dom, TD and TK it's the only set I know that can effectively hold an elite boss right out of the gate. Mind/Kin REALLY shines in the late game where Mass Hyp gives you alpha free access to all of FS glorious damage boost every combat. And Transfusion + Transferance -> immediate return to full bars if anything goes wrong. Mind and Kin have excellent synergy, though pretty much ANY secondary is great with Mind, all in different ways. Mind doesn't get much soft control because, frankly, it doesn't need it much. Though Obviously I'm not exactly impartial...

Just a followup to the durations times above:

I've since found that a lot of the duration discrepancies noted by other are due to the scaling of hold times. Mesmerize for example lasts about 38 seconds when cast on an even con minion with no duration enhancements when cast by a lvl 1 Mind Controller. A lvl 39 Mind Controller casting the same unenhanced Mesmerize on an even con minion will see a duration of 52 seconds. These numbers are clear and repeatable. Further testing between a lvl 21 Mind Controller and lvl 39 Mind Controller yielded a pretty even delta of 1.13 for duration for Mesmerize, Confuse and Dominate. In other words, all the single target holds lasted almost exactly 1.13 times as long for the lvl 39 Mind Controller as they did for the lvl 21 Mind Controller. Interesting no? Mass Hyp also scales though I haven't determined the ratio for that one yet. A lot more testing needs to be done to nail down the actual curve (if there is one) but it's worth knowing that such scaling is in fact happening.

Mind/Storm is moving up on my list too... Maybe I'll go make one, hmmm...

Yippie! Whoo Hoo!
My favorite guide gets an update!
Thank you very much...

I did some testing on a Mind/Kin build and all my /kin duration and recharge times match your listed times exactly, as does the recharge buff of 20% for a controller using Siphon Speed. I have heard from others though, that Speed Boost doesn't seem to follow the 80% Def/Control ratio? I haven't been able to verify this personally as I didn't have a teammate handy and willing to stand around and test recharge times with me (the selfishness of some people! ), but the person that told me that the /kin SB was running at 100% is a pretty reliable number cruncher. Can you confirm whether you have tested /kin SB in particular in I5? I may get a chance to test it myself later this weekend, and if I do I'll post a followup.

Thanks again, your guides are some of the best out there, and REALLY helped me get a handle on kinetics when I first started. ::raises a virtual glass::