_Ail_

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cauterization

Everyone knows setting people on fire makes them better. Where did you go to school?

(Note: For the dense, yes I am joking.)

I think sonic ought to do more -res since that it supposed to be what it is best at.

But Levitate has a longer activation time than lift, right? So they aren't identical powers. Lift activates more quickly, making it do better DPA if they do the same damage. So I am not convinced by your argument.

Lift was changed in the Dominator Archetype Revamp two years ago, and it is in this context that it was changed. It hardly seems guaranteed that the change will also proliferate to controllers.

For example, Power Push was changed to a 1.64 damage scale attack in the Dominator Archetype Revamp. But are any of the other versions of Power Push doing that much damage? No, they aren't. This is hardly surprising since the change was made to balance dominators and was done inthe context of the dominator archetype revamp.

Lift might get changed for controllers in some future issue for further balancing, just like Power Push might get changed in the blast sets, but it has been 2 years now and you really have to view the changes that were made as balance changes for dominators.

Thanks for keeping me honest. You are right, it is all speculation.

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...highlight=lift

And the like is all I get. I looked again through Castle's various posts in threads around the time of the dominator revamp and he doesn't seem to have let himself get pinned down. Of course, new devs now anyway so I am not sure what a quote from him would have meant now regardless.

You do get all of those "gravity is better for controllers" arguments that keep popping up though (like now in the controller forum) that conveniently forget that lift is better for dominators.

I do think it is interesting though that people keep harping about how gimp gravity is and forget that as far as damage per activation time goes, lift is pretty awesome right now for dominators.

Yeah, propel and dimension shift are lackluster/situational, but all of the older sets have the more throw away powers. Smoke and bonfire aren't all that great to many people, but that doesn't prevent fire control overall from being fine.

As others have said, maybe just some slight tweaks to make wormhole better and everything should be fine (if it isn't already.)

But this was specifically done just for doms to counteract the "gravity is better for controllers" argument. It is funny that people still make the argument though and seemingly have completely forgotten about the lift fix. "The grass is always greener on the other side," and human psychology is more at play than anything else here I think with all of the complaints.

I honestly think many people who complain about gravity just don't really play the set or want it to be another fire control or something. It really only needs very minor fixes to be absolutely competitive.

150 s recharge 40 s duration isn't that bad. This should be up most of the time pretty easily in high-recharge end game builds. I agree that in levelling up though, it might take a while. Luckily it is tier 9 though, so when you get it the end should be in sight.

They really get quite a bit stronger. I would recommend sticking it out. I realize you already knew this already and were just empathizing with the OP.

To the OP, I think you should focus on the IDEA of the character. If the idea/concept is cool, pretty much everything else is irrelevant. I think all of us play these games at least partially because we are just entranced with superheroes and/or the idea of having superpowers. So just come up with some novel take on things that you personally are excited about. If you are excited about the concept, you can weather the inevitable buff/nerf cycles because you like the CHARACTER not the MECHANICS of the character.

I think your gut feeling is accurate here in wanting a dom or defender. Both of these will have play styles that are not "tap 1,2,3,1,3,2,3 while having your shields on all of the time" and should help you liven things up.

For a dom, almost anything you choose is going to be new because Ill isn't on them yet. I would strongly encourage you to check out
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=236428
since it is still pretty accurate and amazingly comprehensive.

For a defender, you can try a traps character as has been suggested in this thread. Another thing you might try is storm, which has a lot of fun, cool effects that are dramatic and interesting. For secondary, /sonic is really good for defenders because of the extra -res (-20%, compared to a corruptors -15%) in the blasts.

Best of luck!

TA has -regen in EMP Arrow, but that does -recov and has a long recharge time.

Just pretend you are a blaster and occasionally throw out an AOE stun or hold.

I am sorry if I was too grouchy. As far as I can tell the OP was asking for one of:

(1) A way to make traditional farming builds more durable. This seems to be the most likely possibility because he wants something "that can take on a spawn/alpha, and put up nice AoE numbers, but also have survivability for tougher content". He also then proceeds to name a veritable laundry list of popular farming builds that he is thinking of. If this is the case, I think he probably should have just asked for ways to make farming builds more durable since that is what he seemingly wants rather than something that is "not a farming build".

(2) He genuinely thinks the AT combinations he is listing are not farming builds and that his desire for "Big orange AoE numbers" and "take on a spawn/alpha, and put up nice AoE numbers" are not something that virtually every farming build goes for. In this case, I was merely pointing out that he was misguided and that the builds he was mentioning wanting were apparently just durable farming builds. I then tried to point out a couple of interesting non-farming builds (or ideas for them) if he actually wanted to take that step.

I hope he has success finding whatever sort of build he wants and would be happy to offer more opinions about fun builds along with everyone else.

I'm sorry if I was sounding too strident.

It is just that one of the really nice things aboout CoX is the diversity among character builds. I think it compares very favorably to, for example, CO where in my opinion (have not done the free-to-play there so this might have changed things) there were really essentially only about 3 builds despite all of the supposed variety the system offered. CoX has genuine diversity in builds and powers, and that is nice. I don't want a "fix" to gravity to fix it by making it a clone of fire control, for example, where the only essential difference is that you have 1 pet in singy instead of 3.

It's radius is only 8 and it is just mag 2, but you might like it.

The flavor text doesn't make sense on a lot of powers. It can all easily be explained by more pseudo-science though so I think it is irrelevant...It creates a localized gravitational field strong enough to counteract the movement of a specific target. It's localized nature means it is strong enough completely to negate voluntary movement for that target, while still leaving them at the whim of gravity in general, so that they can fly off while still being unable to move themselves. That is, the localized gravitational force just makes them unable to move their own legs but they are still the b**ch of everyone else.

The important things is that immobs that do not apply KB resist DO have a point in the game with ice slicks and KB powers etc. For someone who want to make gravity "more unique", why on earth are you trying to make its immobs identical to all of the other control set ones?

As far as Grav/NRG, see my list of chars below. I think you just have to enjoy the knockback when you play the set. If you don't, it is probably not for you. The flip side of this though is that your list of changes is very likely to annoy people who chose gravity for precisely the reason that it was different.

(Edit: For the record, I leveled Luck years ago without any AE and just by playing through normal missions in normal teams. Luck was not power leveled at all, even for half a level or whatever. I did solo 45-50 though doing Warburg missions on the hardest difficulty, because that seemed like the easiest xp at the time, but there was a fair amount of normal team play in the character.)

You can't add KB resist to gravities immobilizes now. What about Grav/Storm or Grav/TA controllers who are counting on freezing rain or oil slick to make things get knocked up while also immob'd under crushing field. What about Grav/ dominators who team with a brute with foot stomp? It is too drastic of a change. If you don't like it, don't play Grav/ doms. Some people like them the way they are.

About the only change suggested in this thread that I could get behind would be the increased target #s and decreased animation time for wormhole, or also adding an AOE effect to propel. Most of the other suggestions just change the set too drastically.

Honestly, if you want a cookie-cutter control set, play one of the other ones...

The main thing it needs is just faster recharge, to be honest, and that is well within the cottage rule guidelines.

Trip mine has a base recharge of 20 secs (which can obviously be considerably reduced by various means) but time bomb has a base recharge of 360 secs (which is going to be long even if you have a lot of +recharge.) When you also factor in that in most situations, you could just lay a couple of extra trip mines and perfectly make up for a lost time bomb, the power becomes utterly pointless.

lol. Very funny!

Yeah, time bomb is pointless. You are better off just laying a couple extra trip mines in almost any situation where you might have used it. You can think up some small exceptions, but they start really straining the boundaries of credulity.

Traps as a whole though is a very powerful set, so I don't think it is a big deal. Just look at it as a way to fit another pool power in that you really liked.

I agree. People can go to Champions Online if they want a game where you get all of your essential powers by level 20-ish and then proceed to get various homogeneous buffs to round out your character.

Having actual different builds and different styles is one of the appealing things about CoX. It keeps you playing.

The sets mentioned in this thread probably do need some buffs, but I really fear what some of the suggestions would turn them into. An exaggeration but: TA becomes heal arrow, poison gas arrow (with extra effects), accelerate teammates arrow, disruption arrow (with extra effects), resurrecting arrow, glue arrow (with extra effects), quiver of choking dust, avenge teammate arrow, EMP arrow. There we go perfectly balanced.