Zen_Concern

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I solo pretty much all the time, my attention span is too short to group and hafta always be here

But you could be right, because my oni has a hold so that may be why. One would think that if the arrow wasn't enough to freeze right off the bat though, if a second hold did hit it would show the animation for the second and not the first *shrug*

I think I have just frozen bosses with the arrow alone coz I use it as a lead in usually then send the pets in for the attack, so I know the oni isn't doing anything then. Now I'll hafta check on that to make sure tho.

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There is this really interesting thing about the trick arrow powers and animations. If a target is already under an effect of a hold or immobilize power the animation and the power itself take effect when you activate the power rather than at the end of the animation.

This is usefull for controllers and others who can fire a quick hold and then use Ice Arrow afterwards holding the target the instant they press the botton, and not worry about the long animation it does after.

You can test this yourself with ease. Take your oni out and have him use ring of fire on a target. Activate Entangle arrow and watch as it springs up BEFORE the arrow even reaches it's target. It will do this every time as long as the target is immobilized by your Oni first.

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Ok... I just got finished with the "Kidnap Vanessa Verandi" mission in the mission there was a temp pet called "PITBULL" from the family.. hes every thing a bruiser should be!!!!
Great defense (um damage resistance, forget defense=dodge in this game) the Super Strength powers but most of all.. The SHOTGUN!!!! The long range cone was soooo nice... and the way his AI was set IS THE BEST for a pet I'v seen for a pet.
the way he set up to a group of mobs pull out the shot gun and blast them, but once they scattered he’d charge in and take out the stragglers with his SS powers while the rest of the team handled the main group and if someone was in trouble he'd come to their aid (or maybe he just happened to choose the right mob to attack, not sure)….

all I ask is you give the bruiser a shotgun ( haven’t made it to the lv to get one so im not sure if he already does, but in the RV event on test I made a lv 40 thug MM but don’t remember if I seen him pull out a shotgun.) With the same spec and the same AI you gave the "Pitbull" pet

yea i know i got the same post in another thred but im not shure if the devs only read through this one or not

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I have to say that I love Pit Bull as well. I don't understand why the Bruiser can't work as well as he can.

I'll just point the developers to my sig.

My experience 180% opposite to yours then.

I have not been dropped by agro from Oil Slick, although DE have come close

Generally, against Nemisis and Carnies it is Oil Slick + Glue for the win. Well, Glue then Oil Slick in the case of Nemesis. Stupid Jaegers.

I just don't know how our experiences can be so different with this power. I mean, this is a power I open with to MITIGATE damage from agro.

The last thing I want TA balanced around is herding.

I don't think the developers are balancing around herding either, if anything, they are balanceing the game in order that herding doesn't happen. If not all sets work great for those that gather up large groups of mobs (definition of herding and a large group differs from person to person of course) I can live with that.

Like I said before, it sounds like a playstyle issue more than a balance issue. Which means that there is no reason from a balanced set standpoint that Oil Slick doesn't self light. That change is a heck of alot easier than changeing other powers around just to light oil slick.

Haveing it wait a couple seconds before lighting was something I suggested a long time ago and has probably been forgotten but that was always how I imagined the power would work.

I need to clarify, because some of us come at this game from a blaster first background and some obviously do not.

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IE tankers+controllers can't control 100% of the mobs, and the remaining mobs are not immeadiately delt with.


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See, I consider this to be my normal playing experience. I have never had an issue with agro. I should clarify that I get hurt, many times over the course of a mission, but when I have problems with agro, the only problem that matters is a face plant. Ergo, I don't have a problem with agro from my experiences with Oil Slick.

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2nd your playstyle would seem to involve alot of debuff and hide. VALID yes, and good for letting your front line secure aggro. But you effectively take any further contribution out of the fight while you hide.


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I hate players that hide. I am used to playing sets with massive AoE that have NO DAMAGE MITIGATION. You tend to find your own ways to mitigate damage since normaly the tank is not controlling all the mobs and frequently on PuGs the tank and the controller are controlling the same mobs. This carried over to my TA very well. I don't need to SIT in front of the enemy to attack them. Moveing and shooting is a really good thing. Removeing onself from the LoS of the majority of mobs after you have debuffed them is a pretty good idea.

Now I didn't say go run and hide and let the team handle things. I said, remove yourself from LoS from the majority of the mobs. If you need to pop out and Freeze a guy, immobilize a guy cool. If you have a handy pillar, rock, corner, tree, hell even a parking meter, you can keep some mobs from being able to hit you while you can peek around the corner and nail the other mobs. Generally, this will take the edge off any encounter and if there are other players on your team, they will have gotten some of the agro of the mob and the agro will be spread out. You can then just pop out and do whatever you want. You may get hurt, but we are not trying to go for the perfect defender keeping everyone at full health.

Oh, and Oil Slick works wonders if you have a blaster on your team against up to +4 mobs. Slot slows in Glue Arrow to keep them in the slick. Blaster AoE + Oil Slick = dead minions real fast.

I realize you group regularly with the same group of people and also play in PuGs. On my TA, I played in PuGs exclusively just about into my 30s. Then I joined a new SG and picked up CoV so I switched over to villains. Agro is a general problem for TA, Oil Slick has been no more dangerous to my character than any of the other powers. Actually, it is the only power I can use other than EMP Arrow as part of an Alpha Strike while in LoS of high level mobs so that makes it actually safer than any of the other debuffs.

So it all comes down to agro.

Frankly, you can controll the agro you recieve from Oil Slick. What kind of team your on will also make a big difference as well.

If you are going to claim that agro is a problem, start listing the specific instances, includeing team make-up, playstyle, and environment that caused you a problem.

In my typical uses of Oil Slick, I already have all the agro I am going to get anyway from my other debuffs. In a team, especially a team with either scrappers or tanks, agro from oil slick is not an issue for me. Between Glue Arrow and Poison Gas Arrow, I am not takeing that much damage and there is more than enough time for any of the melee players to get any agro I have gotten from Oil Slick off of me. Assumeing I am even in line of sight of anything agroed on me.

In teams without people to run in and grab agro, my debuffs are again just as likely to draw agro simply because there is no one else for the agro to go to. My AoE debuffs don't make the enemy want to come out and love me and if the rest of the team is not made of AoE damage dealers, alot of agro is going my way anyway. Which makes the damage that Oil Slick puts out really important since it allows the team to kill the mobs faster and thus makes me safer.

Now those are just two quick examples that are not specific of how I see Oil Slick and the agro it generates. If another TA user out there has different experiences, I would love to know about it.

Frankly, if agro is your only problem with Oil Slick lighting every time, it seems like a personal playstyle issue. Which is fine, but that doesn't mean that suiting the set to your playstyle is balanced. Currently, haveing oil slick not light everytime and haveing it's usefullness based on what secondary or primary you pick is not balanced. It is, underpowered in fact. Playstyles can be changed by the player, what the set is programmed to do cannot.

When is lighting Oil Slick a bad thing? Try really hard to think of something besides simpy pulling out the Agro issue because every instance of an agro issue is very specific and deals more with playstyle and game environment than an issue with the set.

Oil Slick lasts the same amount of time on the ground regardless of whether you light it or not. So when do you not want it to light?

Hey Duke Crowley, I actually teamed with you awhile back with my Merc/TA MM. Always nice to meet another player that is gung-ho in PvE and is willing to RP a bit.

Do you still have that arm eating addiction?

Every three minutes, you can kill white con minions.

Wait, hold the press, defenders everywhere are in awe.

Or, maybe not. Do you know anyone who fights White con minions in a team? I don't, and I certainly don't consider TA to be the best soloing defender set. Ergo, this set really helps improve a teams damage output, it doesn't outshine other sets. Hey, it's almost balanced.

Is there something really amazeing about killing white minions every three seconds? Should we nerf Rain of Arrows too?

Okay, putting all jibes aside, don't worry about the set being nerfed. It doesn't overperform even when you use every single power in the set and that includes EMP arrow. It still has room for buffs and that is if Oil Slick lights every time without requireing an attack to set it off.

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I don't understand the reasoning here.

Why should we have to take a performance hit as a price for getting a bug fixed

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I feel strongly that if they get the ingition fixed that this power will be nerfed after a little while, and most likely for good reason.

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Only if they increased the defensive power of the set. Which is why you don't see me clammoring for a better flash arrow.

One of Castle's recent posts.

In it he clearly refers to "not lighting every time" as a bug.

That is a recent post that I just did a quick search for and if I go through my private messages I will probably find more refrences to it being a bug. I'll search if you want, but take my word for it, the power was meant to light everytime you hit it with an energy or fire attack.

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If they the ignition rate higher than a 80% then the dmg needs to be nerfed.

Same if you make it auto-light.

It's just too powerful in it's current form to hold that sort of dmg and have an almost perfect chance of lighting.


The imbalance between lighting and secondaries NEEDS to be fixed.


However, adding up all attempts and success rates I got the following:

190 total attempts over the last string of posts. 142 times the slick lit.


Thats about 75% ingition rate.



The problem here? As with all random numbers we hit streaks. It's not reliable.

Making it auto-light to me actually nerfs the power in a way. No longer can I place it without getting full aggro on many teams.



NO instead what I would like is oil slick with a 100% ignition rate. Take the dmg down to 80% of the current amount. This way I can use it for dmg or control as i see fit. There ARE times ignition is bad juju for you.


Again FIX the lighting disparity between sets, for crying out loud. Trick Arrow lights it extremely clumsily compare to rad and elec, and several defenders cannot light at all.


PS. If you take it down to 80% dmg and give it 100% chance to ignite it comes out to around it's current effectiveness or a bit more, only it's reliable. I'd rather have reliable than thay extra 1/5 dmg.

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No, actually the damage should not be lowered. One of the reasons I am willing to accept a power ability to prevent damage to a team is because of the damage output of the Trick Arrow Primary. The two were always balanced against each other as far as I was concerned. TA in my opinion is almost balanced. It needs -regen somewhere other than EMP arrow but other than that, the set is pretty well balanced now with the new recharge times. Acid Arrow could use a larger AoE as well but I would be happy if it was made single target and given -regen.

I know what many others want is for this set to get a better -acc debuff in the form of Flash Arrow. Frankly, the set wasn't balanced around TA being a damage preventer. The whole purpose of the set was to be offensive rather than defensive and a self-lighting Oil Slick with the same current damage would go a LONG way to achieving that goal and still keeping the set in balance with other defender sets. It isn't going to mitigate the damage of Dark, or Rad. It isn't going to offer the protection of Bubbles or Storm even. I expect it to enhance the damage output of a team better than any of those sets however. That was the problem with TA before recent changes. It simply didn't boost offense as much as it's defense was lacking compared to other sets. Now the defense and offense were given a boost in I7, it comes close to being balanced.

Oil Slick was always meant to light, EVERY TIME. The developers balanced the set around this and _Castle_ even came out and said that it not lighting every time was a bug. If it doesn't light every time, then the set is still not balanced. If TA were to become more defensive than it is, then you may as well turn it into a clone of the other sets.

Just my opinion.

Oh, and if I have used Oil Slick I already have all the agro I am going to get regardless of whether I light it or not. Usually because I am useing every other Arrow and AoE power I have to maximize the effect of the slick while I have it out. Even then, the agro generated by Oil Slick is not noticeable. Hell, I can get as much agro from useing flash arrow before a fight. Glue Arrow nets me a fair share of agro as well even if I don't use Oil Slick. Which makes me wonder why anyone is worrying about the agro of Oil Slick when everything else in TA draws plenty of agro anyway? Bloody hell, I alpha-strike with my TA because I get tired of teams screwing up my Oil Slicks by spreading out the mobs.

Say, can I jump in and just point out that if this power is supposed to light every time, the developers should just have it light every time.

I mean, wouldn't that save alot of development time? Does it require a programmer to change and is that the reason that this power is still unbalanced for secondary defenders sets and primary controller sets?

Haveing to use a power to light the oil slick is unbalanced. There are no two ways about it. Some sets have to give up damage in order to light the Oil Slick. Other sets, can light the Oil Slick while still damageing the enemy. Some Primary sets cannot light the Oil Slick while others can. THIS MECHANIC IS BROKEN ON IT'S FACE!

Oh, and if all of this falls on deaf ears, yes it would be nice if Oil Slick worked. Nothing like telling a blaster to hold back their attack until after you lay your Oil Slick down and then have nothing to show for it after the blaster destroys the Oil Slick. The rest of the team is wondering why you bothered to waste their time. People wonder why TA gets a bad name.

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1. Lack of toxic resistance.

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According to Hero Builder, Power Surge with 3 Res SOs will provide 70% Toxic Res. (unless that is wrong)
With Hasten and Lightning Reflexes it can be up a little over 50% of the time.

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I feel that the best way to answer this comment is to point out that the final tier powers for defense sets are meant to be panic button powers. The developers said so when they changed Unstoppable and the other tier 9 powers and kept them from being perma.

So, other than extreme situations the set should be looked at as if it didn't have a tier 9 power at all. Which means there is a Lack of toxic resists in Electric Armor. If there any other issues with the list that I made, I'll be happy to correct or explain the list.

I am just going to list what I see as the weak spots of the set. In other words, I am going to list what I see as being problem areas that will require either a teammate to plug a hole or specific build consideration. Note, many other defense sets share ONE of these weaknesses.

1. Lack of toxic resistance.
2. No defense to make up for the hole in resistance.
3. Incomplete mez protection against common mez faced by the enemy in PvP and PvE.
4. Lack of an HP boost.
5. Lack of a Healing power, be it HP Boost or standard healing.

In exchange for these weaknesses, the Elec set gets.

1. All resistance based set, albiet with a resistance hole.
2. A +speed power.
3. Endurance drain protection.

Any wonder players see the set as lacking a bit?

If they are not going to plug one hole Porkchop, then I want the other hole plugged. I'm a plugger that way. This set is either balanced or it isn't and right now, it doesn't seem to cut it with this lame grounded protection they have.

I wonder if it is because irregular surfaces are all made with static meshes and the grounded ability is only coded to work off of the bsp geometry? That would explain alot, not just grounded but some of the memory consumption for the game, and problems with teleport too.

Personaly, I am all for loseing the knockback and immobilization protection and getting either a +regen or a self heal added to the set somewhere. Just my opinion.

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An easy way to consider it is:

Without any modifiers, you go from 0 endurance to full endurance in 60 seconds. So, Temp powers or Accolades which increase Max Endurance are also, effectively, increasing Recovery rate.

Stamina, 3 slotted with +3 SO's grants 149% Recovery, or roughly 2.5 End/second if you have the normal Endurance maximum.

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Amazing, guess we will need to get the accolades that increase HP and Endurance now for PvP. No chance that you guys will disable those accolades in PvP to level the playing field? Will those accolades possibly mess up the outcome of datamining?

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/em shakes his head in amazement

I don't know what you guys are doing, but our results are and have been completely different. The only time our Doms die is when the get too cocky and run off to solo 3+ heroes in a fit of "Domlock". IMO, more changes are not only not needed, but begin to have serious balance implications. We won 2 instances last night, 19 and 22 before ending the night despite having people playing characters they weren't used to. (Me on a Kin is not a pretty sight )

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I am preaching to the choir but I'll say it again.

PvP oriented SG > PuG

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ED and I5 nerfed the daylights out of tanks....

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Did it nerf them, or did it put them on a powerlevel par with the rest of the world?

The rest of your post is exaggeration of course, but funny.

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Defenders could get a boost to their inherent so that all they have to do is wave their hand and other ATs shatter like glass when touched.


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Of course, this had me howling.

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Specifically which AT's and powers do you think need to be increased?

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Personally, Defenders, Blasters, Dominators, and Stalkers in my opinion could use a boost to toggle dropping. I would prefer the mechanic changed to something else entirely though. I would much rather have toggle suppression since that is more effective and is at the same time more fun for the masses.

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Which would make it exactly like Thunderstrike. Not bad, although they would most likely adjust the damage way down.

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Nah, no knockdown for damage mitigation. The damage could stay exactly the way it is.

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One way to fix the xp leeching on Chain Induction would be to remove the hp damage.

I think it would be effective as a 'bouncing' short-duration (4 seconds?) Hold or Knockdown power, if paired with a useful additional component such as a defense, regeneration or recovery debuff.

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The most simple method of solving the problem would be to change the attack to a ranged AoE with a casting range of 5' (melee). Problem solved.

I would like everyone to remember this and consider it when they think about how good TA should be.

As much as a power like entangle can hinder the enemy, every second that you spend in the animation hinders your offense. This is not true of /TA combinations of either Masterminds or Controllers and is unique to defenders.

In other words, you lower your damage output to lower your opponents damage output. It has been for this reason that I have been pretty upset with controllers getting the /TA set. Masterminds having the set borders on broken but the villains need something like this set among their sets. It should have been a corruptor set, but that was not to be.

In anycase, it is something to consider when talking about balancing out TA and also talking about the damage output that you prevent from the enemy or put out yourself. TA seems to be built around sacrificing damage in order to prevent or increase damage. The way Oil Slick works is another example although a rather extreme example.

The above is what I have been keeping in mind as I made my suggestions over the course of this past month or two. Anyway, I just wanted to chime in on something perhaps not talked about as much as it should be talked about.