_Ail_

QR

There is no point at all taking repel as a power to use with a grav/kin, because you can always stand in singy if you want the effect and have the bonus of not losing endurance.

You could take it just to slot kinetic crash if you are recharge-starved, but that it probably more of a dominator thing.

QR

(1) With the upcoming changes, you might want to change crush to lift since they are upping it's damage. You could 6-slot lift with Kinetic Crash, which although a knockback set will still give 68.9% damage enhancement.

(2) By taking hasten at 49 you are dooming the build never to lk down very well. Just something to be aware of.

(3) You didn't take wormhole, which is the "up every fight" hard control ability for gravity and should IMO be taken at 26 by every grav dom. Yes, it sucks that it has some knockback, but it is your only reliable AOE control ability (because the AOE hold has too long of a recharge.)
If you don't take this, just play a blaster or something, because you don't really have anything more than ST control and so might as well just use freeze ray while you do more damage overall because of your blaster-ish-ness.

P.S.: I don't have a high level /psi dom, so no help from me there.

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As requested by _Ail_, here is a link to a version (with dom) that refuses to use melee attacks. It does, however, uses all cones, just avoids PBAOE and strictly melee attacks.

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Thanks. Nice to see energy on top. I forsee a lot of ST ranged /energy builds.

QR

Nice. Would it be possible to add a Ranged ST damage category to the tables also? Presumably fire, ice and now energy (since it has power push, bolt, blast, and burst now) are going to pull ahead here, but I'd like to see the calculations.

With the ranged damage modifier being (as a percentage of the previous state, even if absolutely each was increased by the same amount of .3) being increased more than the melee modifier, I'd expect more doms possibly to switch to ranged damage.

Edit: I think you can be generous and include cones like fire breath in the ranged category. After all, if someone wanted to they could put some ranges in them and have pretty respectable range without a whole lot of difficulty.

QR

I think only very minor changes would put grav in line now. They could, for example, get rid of the knockback in wormhole or change it to knockdown. This would give you a reliable AOE control that didn't piss teams off. I think that is all that would be necessary.

If the devs don't like the above fix, other fairly minor ones would work as well. I really don't think it needs anything major.

Yes, the change to lift should be ported to controllers as well (where it will help them more than it helps dominators, since dominators already have single target damage attacks.)

P.S.: As far as changes to the assault sets go, though, color me pleased beyond belief. Very nice...

QR

OMG...I can't wait for the changes that my Grav/NRG is going to get.

It currently is the character I spent the *most* influence/infamy on of any of my characters, but is still noticeably more gimp than many of my other 50s. For example, there are many things it just doesn't seem to have the dps overcome in end game. This will be a very refreshing change.

QR

If you want a blastroller that: (1) Has a power set not available hero side; and (2) is thematic with matching sets, try an Assault Rifle/Traps/Black Scorpion corruptor.

/traps because it is not available hero side. Assault rifle because you said it had to be thematic.

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It's refreshing when you don't have to use the half-purp / half-red inspir strategy isn't it? I've always liked it when you can just get rid of them without any special preparation, but when it is still a good longish fun fight.

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If you are /Energy or /Mental you can always slot Kinetic Crash in Power Thrust or Telekinetic Thrust for the KB resist (and +recharge if you slot six) and free up a pool for Fighting (which will let you take Weave to help soft-cap). Any primary with a knockback attack can do it too.

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For that matter, if what you want to do is slot kinetic crash and take the fighting pool, anyone can just take fighting and slot kick with them.

QR

The thing about ice patch is that it's nice to have SOMETHING as an ice/ice tanker when you are facing foes that do psi or fire damage.

Then it is pretty much just chilling embrace and ice patch keeping you in the game.

QR

Nice guide. Since it is a guide, maybe mention a couple of things with Trick Arrow:
(1) Choose an appropriate origin for temp power to light oil slick.
(2) Pet bugs with the slick might drive fire controllers crazy, despite getting partially fixed.

All the experienced people reading are familiar with this, but a new player picking up the guide might need the info.

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SoC is plant's "up every fight" power...like Wormhole or flashfire or ice slick, etc. MC is definitely not mind control's up every fight power...it has terrify (and both mind and plant have sleeps.) I really don't see any reason why seeds of confusion and mass confusion need to be at all comparable, because they play completely different roles in their respective sets.


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This is not a good reason to argue for the imbalance between SoC and MC.
Powers need to be balanced against and objective standard, and what Castle has been doing so far (balancing animation time and recharge) is consistent with this idea.

It would be like saying, a Street Fighting scrapper primary has an attack at level 8 that did the same damage as Eagle's Claw, but had the recharge and endurance cost of thunder kick. However, it is balanced because that attack is most often used in the Street-Fighting attack chain.

Secondly, there is also some confusion about cause and effect here. Something that has a quick recharge is "up for every fight"... SoC is Plant's "up for every fight" because it is a good control that has a short recharge. (For mind, terrify) You can't use the fact that SoC " is an "up for every fight" to then justify it having a short recharge.

That said, I don't think mind suffers from having a long recharge on MC, and I find MC easier to use than SOC, and stackable with confuse. I consider SOC better as a crowd control power even though I find problems dealing with boss-heavy spawns. Plant and Mind do play differently. But these differences don't justify the vast disparity in the two powers' recharge and acc; similar powers should be balanced similarly.


BTW, I play both plant and mind controller...I'm playing the plant controller more these days than the mind controller.

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It is clear from looking at the control sets, though, that most do indeed have an "up every fight" AOE control that lasts a while and can serve to at least partially neutralize the spawn during the fight.

I don't think this is accidental and believe the sets were specifically designed with this in mind. So SoC really does seem to play an entirely different role than MC.

You can argue all you want, but do you know what? The current facts support me, as SoC does have a much shorter recharge than MC despite their other obvious similarities. Why is this? Well, because it is plant controls "up every fight" signature control, as I said.

Although you might see some reduction on MC's recharge, it is not going to get as low as SoC. This will not be because it is so uber because it doesn't aggro, but rather because that will be giving Mind Control a little too much "up every fight" control ability. For example, they would never (I think) remove Mass Confusion's aggro-free quality and simultaneously reduce its recharge to that of SoC, as this would make the set overpowered.

I agree that Mind Control does seem a little underpowered now.

30 secs seem fine for pve.

I mean, you already have the stealth pool and so either stealth or invis, which should serve you fine if you want to stay unnoticed for minutes at a time.

I guess there is the odd mission with +perception enemies where having phase shift might be useful for minutes at a time, but to be honest it just doesn't seem like a big deal to me.

QR

On my ice/ice tank I had just frozen fists and icicles as my only attacks until I hit 24, when I got frost. So sue me. I solod much of the time, maybe 70%.

Anyway, just rounding up to the aggro cap in a mish or outside and letting chilling embrace and all of your armors prevent damage and icicles tick away gives you plenty of damage. For example, I solod quite a few EBs with only frozen fists plinking away.

I since added frozen aura and ice blast to the chain, but while nice they are not necessary (although you can only pry the new improved frozen aura from my dead, icy hands after you defeat me.)

I guess what I am saying is: you are a tank. Play to your strengths, which are great defense and damage mitigation. Then just round up a lot of guys and plink away. You make surprisingly good xp/hour. In fact, I think that lots of Tanker builds can easily get just as much xp/hour as Scranker builds. They just need to realize what their strengths are and play to them.

This is perhaps a bit too much editorializing, but I am often amazed by the complaints I see on the tanker forum because they are completely at odds with my experience playing tankers. Playing them, they seem to roll through anything and are extraordinarily robust and strong. I think that perhaps what happens is people always build some half-[censored] scranker thing and then are both disappointed with the survivability (because they didn't take/slot appropriate powers) and damage (because they still have to deal with the tanker AT modifiers, despite the fact that they took and heavily slotted 11 attacks or something.)

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"lamas loosers".

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Myth: If you piss off a given llama so much that it spits/throws up at you, all llamas forevermore will spit at you on sight.

So all of you llama misbehavors, who only misbehaved once: Take hope! Llamas can still llove you!

I would recommend more something like this. Note that my first 50 way back when was a TA/A so I am more experienced with this and I have an Ice/Storm but I don't have an Ice/TA.

(1) I think you should just get hasten (as I have you doing) and have block of ice, rather than trying to use both block of ice and ice arrow. Block of ice is a whole lot better of a hold, so just get its recharge up enough that you can apply it fairly quickly twice to get bosses. I also tried your approach of 2 holds for a while, and the crappier of the two just started to annoy me and I never used it.

(2) For min/max reasons, if you get disruption you should get acid as well.

(3) Flash arrow is iffy. If you want to substitute it for chilblain that's fine, but honestly I think you'll want the damage of chilblain. I know some people like flash arrow, but in my experience it never turns the tide of battle and never makes a difference between life and death and never speeds things up. Doubtless people will come up with stories about how it saved their pet poodle though.

(4) As was already said, make sure you get an origin with a temp power that does energy damage, so you can light the oil slick.

(5) EMP arrow is much better than glacier. I completely disagree with recommendations to get glacier instead. EMP recharges slightly slower (300 sec vs 240) but it has twice the duration and is ranged.


Level 1: Block of Ice
Level 1: Entangling Arrow
Level 2: Chilblain
Level 4: Frostbite
Level 6: Hurdle
Level 8: Combat Jumping
Level 10: Shiver
Level 12: Ice Slick
Level 14: Super Jump
Level 16: Poison Gas Arrow
Level 18: Health
Level 20: Stamina
Level 22: Acid Arrow
Level 24: Aid Other
Level 26: Aid Self
Level 28: Disruption Arrow
Level 30: Hasten
Level 32: Jack Frost
Level 35: Oil Slick Arrow
Level 38: EMP Arrow
Level 41: Ice Blast
Level 44: Frost Breath
Level 47: Frozen Armor
Level 49: Hibernate

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As far as MC vs. SoC, they need to buff one or nerf the other. No aggro does not compensate for 4x the recharge, a 20% acc penalty and 24 levels. Personally, I do not find Plant to be overpowered, so my vote would be to buff MC. I wouldn't even care if they removed the no aggro. I have played both sets to 50 and the fact that SoC aggroes was never an issue.

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SoC is plant's "up every fight" power...like Wormhole or flashfire or ice slick, etc. MC is definitely not mind control's up every fight power...it has terrify (and both mind and plant have sleeps.) I really don't see any reason why seeds of confusion and mass confusion need to be at all comparable, because they play completely different roles in their respective sets.

Note: For the record, I play a mind controller and *not* a plant one...

I'm going with Spiritchaser on this one.

As far as consistent soloing from 1-50, Corruptor is your best bet. But for faster/safer soloing mid- and late-game, many Controller builds will start pulling ahead (i.e., the ones with fire/ and illusion/ and /rad and /kin as well as others.)

For a soloing corruptor, a sonic/rad is pretty good, with the only real disadvantage being that you get most of your good powers early and so don't really have anything to look forward to.

Thanks Luminara.

I'll have to try dark in an alternate build. Maybe I will just ditch fistful for that build and use explosive... My fistful has a fair amount of range enhancement on it, but that makes me want to stay as far out as possible to get the widest spread.

QR

I recently dusted off my 4 year old TA/A (my first 50) and respec'd and played today...wow...it has come a long way. At the rate it is getting buffed, it will be the next FoTM in a few issues. I still remember the "my ta/a can't kill a regen scrapper who is sitting there doing nothing with his toggles off" thread...lol

To be honest, I have been villain-side lately and it was the going rogue expansion that tempted me to play my TA/A again.

I used to have the psi epic but switched to power. I think rush is right and psi does offer more safety if that is what you want. tough+epic shield should make you pretty durable though. If you want to add in aid self, you will be really solid IMO. Yeah, I realize that's two pool picks right there, but you asked...

I also play at ranged but when your team has fulcrum you have to do this little dodge where you come in most of the time for fulcrum and then run away again for fistful, etc etc.

As rush says., power build up+emp makes you pretty safe. So power doesn't have all of the control of psi but it does give you an oh *&#@ button that's pretty good.

With psi you are definitely never afraid of bosses when soloing though, what with tk and dominate, and they are up all the time.

As rush says, dark is a good epic choice if you like melee. The only problem is that ta/a is so ranged-focussed and fistful doesn't work (nearly as well). I suppose if your secondary is electric or something, dark would be a good choice for epic.

Electric epic seems fine as well, but the immob in it doesn't offer anything because you already have entangling and although power sink is super-sweet, my ta/a doesn't really have endurance problems.

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I've been thinking of rolling a new Corruptor, one which will be good for both solo and team play. I've played both Sonic and Traps to 30ish on a defender and mastermind, but not quite sure how they'd work together as a corruptor.

It seems like the combo could place huge amounts of -res on hard targets like AVs/GMs in addition to gutting their regen; and it looks like Seekers > Howl > Siren's Song > Toebomb would be a good way to lay waste to large goups.

Can anybody who has played Sonic/Traps shed some light on this powerset combo for me? What are your impressions? What tactical "tricks" work well?

Any insights would be helpful.

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I think it will be nice and will help you leverage up your damage.

As far as "Seekers > Howl > Siren's Song > Toebomb" goes though, I would just do it in 1 step: Toebomb. Especially with poison trap not being what it used to be, I think the most important thing is just capping out your defense. You already have ffg. Also take the scorp shield and weave or maneuvers and you should be good.

QR

Grats! Sounds like you had a lot of fun.

Yes, even though I don't have ahigh level plant dom (other doms are 50) I think seeds of confusion is amazing.

I have to admit that when Lorenze Ansoldo gives my the kill scrapper misssion, I tend to just buy a bunch of reds and purples with him (regardless of what AT I am playing) and go to town against large groups of them. Cheating, yes, but so what?

QR

Ill/rad maybe?

Not enough endrdxs.

You don't have any in:
RI
tough
weave
any attack

QR

Since redside lacks the hazard zones (for the most part) that blueside has, redside soloing is usually mission based. This means that single target builds are the way to go IMO.

For primaries, I think ice, fire or sonic would be best (although there are certainly other possibilities.)

For secondaries, radiation is probably the best, although almost any will do (just keep in mind that if the set has a lot of "aid other" types of powers it won't be as much use.)

I think sonic attacks/radiation emission might be the best, but many others come pretty close. sonic/rad will make mincement of pretty much any EB-level boss at least, that's for sure, so you won't start going crazy when you get to the level 40-ish missions. You'll at least be able to get by them at the easiest difficulty level, and often at a much higher one. This is a bigger deal than you might think, because if you are soloing you will probably be merit-farming in Ouroboros at some point to help out your builds. There's little more frustrating than simply not being able to get some freakin' EB, despite the fact that you set the difficulty to the lowest and you just popped like 6 reds and 6 purples.