Cybercel

I have to agree with Lady DarkForce. Ice/Rad or Ice/Dark might work well for you. Ice/Cold might be worth looking at, too. You say you like the Ice Blast set, and it seems you like control, ranged damage, and being able to support a team. Any of those builds will let you do all of that, and they'll also be workable in PvP.

Ice/Dark is best on the control, with the secondary having a hold, a cone fear, and slow from Tar Patch. (Ice Blast itself has two holds, although the second one has a rather annoying long animation - Ice/Dark is great because you can drop that second Ice hold, take the Dark hold, and still stack holds on bosses.) It's ridiculously fun, and I absolutely love my Ice/Dark. She's quite possibly my favourite character, and I have 24. However, Ice/Dark is the worst build I have ever played when it comes to endurance usage. My level 40 Ice/Dark can eat through Stamina, and even a Corruptor's Speed Boost on top of that. I'm sure that, in part, it's build-dependent - if I went with a one accuracy PvE slotting on my blasts, it would open up slots that could have endurance reductions in. Taking Scirocco as a patron might help, since Corruptors can get Power Sink from his pool.

Ice/Rad probably has endurance problems too, I've heard people with Ice/Rads complaining about it. However, with Accelerate Metabolism, you might be able to alleviate your problems to some extent. Dark Miasma has nothing to help you on that front. Ice/Cold I've heard is pretty heavy on the end, too - it has just has many toggles, and I know my Fire/Cold isn't exactly endurance-light. If you enjoy slows though, it's probably the way to go, and you can make a really nice support build with it. All three builds I think can both be quite offensive, but at the same time great team support - I love that about Corruptors.

If you do go for Ice/Dark, I'll gladly hand along a few tips from my experiences.


EDIT: Oh, and yeah... agreeing with what's been said above... do not try to compare Brutes to Tanks. They're damage-dealers, not damage-takers, and are all about flying through missions as quickly as possible smashing everything in sight. In fact, it's best to just forget the CoH ATs when playing CoV. Sure, there are a lot of shared powersets, but just don't try to shoehorn them into the same roles, because those roles don't exist. Yes, CoV ATs tend to be fairly self-sufficient, but good teams on CoV are far more than the sum of their parts, and can race through missions. I've found CoV teaming really good fun.

Also, I greatly prefer the story arcs and contacts system in CoV to CoH. Some people just don't, and you might never change your mind. However, I found the later part of CoV much more interesting than the early part - I like the later zones more, and I prefer the arcs and contacts. It doesn't take long to get past Mercy and Port Oakes, so no point in writing the game off based on them. I'm glad you're giving it another go, you might find it gets better for you further in.

[ QUOTE ]
That's an interesting idea, but do you have another channel for the whole coalition? I've forgotten whether you can make channels in CoH.

[/ QUOTE ]

There's a coalition channel pre-existing in-game, and we've also made a global channel, Defiant 1AT, so we can keep in contact from alts not in the coalition, and across servers. Feel free to join that channel to ask for an invite!

I found when I had group invis that it's not too difficult to just give out a call to gather for group invis, and warn people at the beginning of the mission to move away a bit if they don't want it.

-50%, Filth. *sigh* Some people just never understand how this game works.

Semantics aside, well done Syn! It was fun having Kuroshi finally hit 50 with Eir by his side once again, after all the levels they got together months ago.

[ QUOTE ]
Was that last PvE supposed to be a PvP?

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, it was supposed to say PvP, gets easy to typo when writing it repeatedly.


[ QUOTE ]
Perhaps it's personal playstyle but I always found the debufs were more of a hinderance than a help in PvE...

[/ QUOTE ]

You're right, it is just personal playstyle, and you're obviously totally entitled to play how you want. Since most PvE builds use them as well, though, I think it may go some way as to explaining why you were feeling you'd managed to make a PvE build that couldn't manage at all in PvP. In your case, it's not so much that an average PvE build doesn't function well in PvP, it's that a rather specialised and highly personalised build isn't working well in PvP, and that's not really surprising. You've built a character to do one thing very well - locking down groups of foes in PvE, and that doesn't really translate.

As you noticed, many players have mez resist, and there are times in PvP when a Controller needs to be doing a lot more than just relying on holds, or other mez powers, to be effective at all. Sounds like you hit only those times. In team arena play or base raids you can probably expect people to have buffers keeping them free of mezzes, and in the zones, as I said, all it takes is hitting one of those annoying days that's full of Stalkers.

On a day with more squishies around, you might have had a rather different experience, though, which qualifies the statement that it's pretty difficult to imagine any Controller build being useless in PvP. Few squishies have mez protection, and it's harder to keep people buffed against mezzes in a large, open zone. There are break frees of course, but in my experience, it's not hard to catch people running out. Sometimes, even if they do use a BF or have a teammate de-mez them, it's too late for them, if you have team members nearby to join in and kill your target quickly.

It may be less your build causing the problem in some ways, and more the circumstances, and also just lack of PvP experience and knowledge. I don't mean that in any bad way, just that it takes more than a few fights to really start understanding what powers work well against who, when to use them, and how to effectively team in PvP. I really think that a good PvPer could take even a really gimped toon into PvP and find some use for them, even though a good PvP build would massively improve them. Conversely, someone who has no PvP experience couldn't take control of a perfectly-built PvP toon and destroy everyone in a PvP zone first time.

Your Rad/Rad Corruptor might be able to take him out. Maybe see if you can test it on someone beforehand to see if it works. Radiation Infection is -Def, and doesn't require an accuracy check, so you can put it on someone in PFF. I've used it to hold MMs in PFF before on my Ill/Rad Controller, although I don't think they'd slotted for def, which is why I say test it first. Slotted with three def debuffs, I suspect it would cause some real problems. If he doesn't have Dispersion Bubble up, you could then try Cosmic Burst to stun him and knock him out of PFF altogether.

I saw the post this came from, and have to ask... how much have you tried PvP? If you went into the zones a couple of times and happened to hit nights when there were mainly Stalkers around, I'm not surprised you think your build is useless - I know my how my Grav/FF feels some days, even if she's very hard to kill, and is built for PvP. Other days, I feel like I could use nothing but my single-target hold and still be really useful in PvP. Controllers are great if the people you're fighting against are squishy, especially if they're squishy and don't have good support. I think that's pretty much what Bridger meant in saying that he didn't think you could have a Controller that was completely useless in PvP, because even one hold can be enough to spell someone's doom.

Looking at the build, though... it does look like you have a very PvE-oriented build, and I don't doubt that you'd have a harder time with it than with many Grav/Rad builds in PvE. I'm a bit surprised to see you don't have the debuffs from your secondary, as they're fantastic in both PvE and PvP, and would probably help you in both. If you're really underperforming in PvP compared even to other non-PvP-built Controllers, that might explain why. Most rads I've seen take them, and they're really useful.

Edit: I've not really gone into any PvP build suggestions, since I'm assuming from your prior posts you're not hugely interested in such a respec. If I'm wrong though, I'll gladly give some advice - I wouldn't say I'm the most experienced, but I go have a Grav/FF Controller at 37 and an Ill/Rad at 36 with builds that function pretty well in both PvE and PvP, so I some some idea of the sets.

I love vBulletin, enough that I bought one. I pretty heavily checked out the other options when I did so, but really liked the look of vB best... and there's a fantastic community of people producing mods for it. I found it did everything I wanted, and I've never had a single problem with it - plus, it was easy to install and update, despite my being pretty clueless. I even managed to install a load of mods despite having no idea about PHP and so on, and my understanding is that in the newest version makes things even easier to do.

I'm pretty sure you can preview the admin side of things for the various paid ones out, and it'd be worth doing thing. I remember looking at test versions of Invision and vB when I was deciding which to go for.

[ QUOTE ]
Catch-22, if I have leadership, I need stamina, and I can't afford 6 picks. I like my blasts too much.

[/ QUOTE ]

Would you? My Empath runs all three Leadership toggles and doesn't have Stamina. However, I don't blast, so I don't know how well endurance would stand up with that much going.

You've left out accuracy in Siphon Speed, and still don't have many recharges in Transference. I don't have a Kineticist high enough to know for sure, but I remember being told there was no need for that many end mods in Transference. I'm sure someone else here could give you a definite answer on a good slotting for it.

I'd slot damage over recharges in Blizzard - you want it to finish things off, or you'll end up with a lot of angry mobs chasing after you.

If you go the Ice route:

I really doubt with Ice Blast you'll need to worry about not focusing on damage, because the three main blasts do a really nice chunk of damage each. They're quite endurance-intensive, but once you have Transference, you should do very well.

I really don't think you should be putting damage into Bitter Freeze Ray. It doesn't do much. It also has a really long, irritating activation time and animation - some people are dropping it altogether, and just using Freeze Ray. It's handy for stacking on bosses, but as a /Kin, you have Siphon Speed and can get Freeze Ray back up really quickly to stack. If you take it, I'd just go for putting an accuracy in it, and taking those slots for elsewhere. You also might want to consider slotting Freeze Ray something like 1 acc/2 recharge/2 hold so you have it up quickly, especially if you drop Bitter Freeze Ray. If you really want two holds to stack, keep in mind that the Patrol Pools offer holds for Corruptors, so you could still have two holds later on.

You'll really help yourself by slotting your attacks up more - they're slow to recharge, AND endurance-heavy, so one acc/three dam/1 recharge/1 end reducer wouldn't go amiss.

I really can't see any reason to be slotting up Air Sup for damage when you have such nice attacks in your primary underslotted.

A recharge or two in Transfusion wouldn't go amiss. Yes, you get Siphon Speed to speed you up, but they still make a difference. I feel it's especially important to have the kinetics heal up a lot because it's all too easy to miss the person who needs a heal, or to have the mob you're hitting with it die, cancelling the heal effect.

Siphon Speed is stackable, and you might want more recharges in it.

Consider three recharges in Transference - it's one of those powers that you can't have up too often.

You also might want to think about two accuracies in important powers that really need to hit. I know a number of kineticists who do this - if you tend to fight higher-level mobs, it can really be a pain having Transfusion, Siphon Speed, and Transference miss.

Do you really need Fly and Inertial Reduction? A lot of people are happy with Inertial Reduction alone, but it's obviously a personal preference thing, and does come fairly late for a /Kin. If you know you won't be happy with it as a travel power, do you really need it at all? If you've already got the vertical movement of Fly, I don't know how much use it would be. You could possibly take Fly so you have an early travel power, though, and then try out Inertial Reduction and respec if you're happy with just that as a travel power.

I realise I've suggested a load of things need more slots and not suggested where they might all come from... you could probably take the endred out of Siphon Power, and perhaps the ones from Ice Storm, if you need more. Also, I tend to think of slotted Health as a luxury, not a necessity - think about whether there are more useful places for those slots to be.

As was mentioned in another post, come I7, Ice/Kin will be very powerful thanks to Fulfrum Shift + Blizzard. It will also work on Ice Storm. Until I7 though, it doesn't work.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Um...I can't ride a bike....

[/ QUOTE ]

Have you tried? It takes a day, tops.

[/ QUOTE ]

For you, it might. That doesn't mean everyone has the same experience. People have different levels of ability when it comes to physical ability, reflexes, balance, whether you're talking about their natural ability or what they're trained themselves to.

I, for one, couldn't ride a bike until I was around 11 - and not through lack of trying. I then didn't ride for over a year, and did the 'impossible': forgot how to ride a bike. I have a good laugh every time anyone uses the ability to ride a bike as an analogy for anything, as a result.

While leg muscles and balance don't matter in PvP, reflexes do, as has been mentioned. You might have good reflexes, but that doesn't mean everyone else does. For those of us who don't naturally have very quick reflexes, or aren't used to playing games or sports that require them (meaning we've had little chance to practice and train them), things can be a little more challenging. I honestly think my reflexes have become better since I started playing, and especially since I started PvPing, though.

[ QUOTE ]
I love warburg, only place i can do pvp missions without being disturbed

[/ QUOTE ]

Well yeah, it's been great as I try to trudge through the last few bars of xp to 37 (and new SOs) on my Grav/FF. It's not so great when I actually want to PvP.

I'm hoping that the new content in RV will pull in people who otherwise might not PvP. I'm also looking forward to PvPing with higher-level powers; I don't like Warburg very much, so I've barely PvPed using anything above level 30, and I think it should be quite fun. I know how often I find myself wishing I had various higher-level powers when I'm in Siren's.

[ QUOTE ]
If you want PvP I would say get anothert game that dose PvP well rather than the half [removed] effort that this game offers up.

[/ QUOTE ]

Not much of an answer for those of us who perhaps weren't into PvP before, and wouldn't play a game purely for PvP, but really like playing our heroes and villains against other player-controlled ones.

The one time chat distracted me to the point of letting a Stalker get a kill in, it was actually someone from my SG being perfectly friendly, and I stopped to say something and he ASed me and killed me. You catch more flies with honey, right?

People can use whatever distraction tactics they want, they up to everyone to decide whether to fall for it or not. I dislike trashtalk more for the fact that it can get out of hand, to the point of making the zone unpleasant to be in for some people. That said, if someone starts having a go at me, I'm not above the odd comeback - it just gets really frustrating when someone starts spewing bile about the other side's tactics or abilities. I'm just as likely to stand up for how the villains are playing when I'm on as a hero, though. I don't mind it when people are clearly just having a friendly go at each other or joking around, or are saying things that can be taken as in-character, but when people are just constantly harping on about someone else in the zone or being really insulting, it really starts to bother me, and I don't see how it adds anything to the place.

[ QUOTE ]
Just to qualify this, I was using a Hastened Ignite>Slug>Ignite attack chain, which is about as high-damage as you can get for AR - the health was whittling down, but it was a damned slow process - especially when you consider that that particular chain can take normally out a Defender in 30 seconds or less.

[/ QUOTE ]

No, the Health was going down, then back up. Then RegenA dropped and it went down rather suddenly because I was standing in some fire laughing at you. Full Auto was rather amusing, too.

I would keep the extra slots in Regeneration Aura. Someone recently gave some numbers on how much Regeneration Aura increases your regen rate. I don't remember the numbers exactly, but it's impressive. I've heard it's more impressive if you fire off Power Boost before doing it, but haven't tried it out.

As a completely impractical example: I don't have a /Emp Controller, but on my Empathy Defender, three-slotted RegenA is enough that I can stand in front of my boyfriend's Ar/Dev Blaster in the Arena, let him attack full-out, and he cannot overcome my regen rate. This may say something about Ar/Dev, but suffice to say, normally he'd be able to kill me (even if a little slowly ), but he can't if I have slotted RegenA running. The Controller version will be weaker, but I'd imagine it's still quite nice. Unslotted, on the other hand, I always found it to be a bit unimpressive.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
EDIT: And yeah, you're safe from the Blapper, since I just can't see any of my toons in a romantic relationship with an HST tribute.

[/ QUOTE ]
Too weird to live, too rare to die - what's not to love about him?

[/ QUOTE ]

But could you really see him with Cybercel?

Oh! Duet (Sonic/Dev) and Interlude (Ill/Sonic) are together as well! You forgot about them!

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Hmmm..

Nrg/Nrg & Claw/Invul or Ninja/Traps & Mind/Psi or Ice/Nrg & Mind/Emp.... a tricky choice...

[/ QUOTE ]

Ahem. 'Scuse me, but since when was Vainglory interested in Mr Normal? She's way out of his league .

And Snaedis and Notion?...I've got nothing against this relationship, but as far as I know Snaedis is still straight.

[/ QUOTE ]

Oooooh, burn.

To be fair, last I knew, Syn's Claws/SR (Kuroshi) was hitting on my Plant/Psi in Pocket D, and he claimed that Kuroshi and my Empath weren't really in a relationship when I told him she wouldn't be pleased to find him flirting with the enemy.

*ahem* Now that I sound like a complete nutter, I'll just go... over... here... *runs*

If only my Ice/Dark Corruptor were less insane and capable of love, she'd have something going with Syn's Robot/Dark and we could have a villain couples fight.

EDIT: And yeah, you're safe from the Blapper, since I just can't see any of my toons in a romantic relationship with an HST tribute.

I went for three recharge/three def for a long time, but recently changed to three recharge/two def/one tohit for PvP. It's a help there for trying to hit people with def-based sets, tohit debuffs, or force fields.

Very nice, although I have to agree on the size front, especially of the text! I run on 1600x1200, and even with my glasses on was leaning right into the monitor to read that. I think if the colouring of the text were different then the size might be less important - tiny, relatively low-contrast text (like the white on the translucent background of the About page) is much harder to read than tiny black-on-white text. Not that I'm saying use black on white, just that the contrast being upped in some way might help it be a bit more readable for those of us with silly resolutions.

Oh, and some toons belonging to Synaesthetix and I might have something to say about the Marvellouses claiming to be "Paragon's premiere superhero couple."

I took a Mind/TA up to 16 on Defiant, actually after another post on the forums where Syn pointed out the amount of control it would have. I liked it so much that I deleted a Union toon so I could remake her on the server I usually play on.

My plan is to build her more for control than anything else, and you can tons of it, even from early levels. I went through Outbreak, getting the Isolator badge in record time for any of my Controllers - Entangling Arrow sets up Containment from the beginning, so I took that and Levitate, and rushed through the 100 Contaminated. Later on, Ice Arrow is great for holding bosses in a one-two shot with Dominate. Dominate first, then Ice Arrow, because Ice Arrow locks you into a rather long animation, but the hold comes before it's finished. I had a great time teaming up and being able to hold Troll bosses in those Hollows cave missions so easily.

I found I could solo pretty effectively with this combination, too - the sheer amount of control, topped off with the damage you can always get out of Mind (and with some resist debuffs in TA, you might be able to boost it later on) means it's not bad going.

The main irritations are on the Trick Arrow side, of course. At least some of the Poison Gas Arrow problems are apparently known bugs, from reading the US forums... but they've been known for all this time, and still not fixed. The animation times, and need to redraw the bow when switching between Mind and TA powers, are irritating, but you can get used to stringing TA powers together to save on redraw. Castle, over on those forums, has apparently said they'll be looking at the set as a whole at some point, but who knows what or when that means.

The main problem I had in trying to figure out which powers to take was the sheer lack of clear-cut information and numbers on the set. You might want to just try out everything, and plan on a respec once you know which TA powers you find useful.

Likewise, I can now invite to the Defender and Blaster SGs. Global is @Cybercel.

Speaking of the Blaster SG, we need more members so I have enough prestige to buy another room for the base. The current one-room setup is a touch claustrophobic.

Oh, and while I'm here... anyone interested in a global chat channel for the coalition? I realise the coalition chat is already pretty handy, but I'm thinking that since some of us play on Union or CoV, and I think everyone so far has their mains in other SGs, it might be useful? I know the one Syn and I have for our SG on Union is really handy, both for general chat and for shouts for help when everyone's off playing villains and you need a hand on the other side.