DrMike2000

I think you're talkiing about the Dominator change to Lift damage (to make it equal to Levitate) rather than the overall Dom damage buff, right, Rebel_Scum?

I'd really like to see this change passed on to Controllers, so Lift does base 40 damage at level 50.

I've dug out my old Grav Controller recently and been quite apalled at how dysfunctional she feels. She was my first Controller, so the play through to 50 was full of "woo-hoo! my holds last forever! this set is awesome! take that -> Propel!" and so on.

Having levelled 4 other Controllers to 50 since them, I'm now less easily impressed. Lift is low damage. Propel is incredibly slow to animate. These two factors really detract from Gravity's potential niche as the ST damage Blastroller.

I'd disagree.

Grav provides OK single target damage, but no AoE damage beyond the standard AoE immobilise. The pet, Singularity, is low damage but durable, not what you really want for farming.

I recently dug out my level 50 Grav/Empath (my first 50 Controller) with an eye to purpling her out a bit and running throuhg the Incarnate content when it arrives. I was quite dissappointed with what I remembered as "a surpisingly effective soloer" being slow and almost tedious to play.
You'll do OK playing at +4/x1, taking on very tough small groups, but playing +0/x8 means defeating large groups of soft targets using standard ST holds and immobilises (and Propel).

I'd rather farm with a Plant Controller or Illusion Controller than Gravity any day.

Interesting idea.

At first I was imagining this like the Vision's attack where he sticks his hand inside the target and materialises, but, if you're using other attacks (and their animations) its going to be more like leaving an active energy barb or something behind in the target.

I'm not too sure if I'd be happy to see this on any of my Energy Melee-ers. Two are boxers, the other one is superstrong, so none have any special "energy" powers. They're just punching hard, with some gamey special FX flying around as they do so.

In game mechanics, its definitely unique. I really like it.

On the whole redside feels like it has more fun archetypes. Blueside provides some basics, and then the redside ATs added a few interesting spins or just balanced them out a bit better in the case of Corrupters.

I prefer Controllers to Dominators on the whole. I like the buff/debuff sets a lot for their variety.

Brutes and Stalkers are both heaps of fun, but I'm not too sure about their longevity for me. Both revolve heavily round a mechanic that will be exactly the same for every alt I make of these archetypes.

Masterminds are definitely fun, and have a lot of replayability in that I feel I could easily make 5 or 6 and not get bored.

-Def attacks that require a To Hit in the first place do represent something of a Catch-22, its true.

One situation I did find them very handy was fighting Paragon protectors with my Poison Mastermind and Traps Corrupter. By the time the Protectors activate their insane defence god mode I'd already hit them with Envenom and Acid Mortar, and they were not impossible to finish off.

Oh, the other one is for low damage solo-ers who can then work Sands of Mu vet power into their attack chain. Rad Blast Defedners, for example, will love Sands of Mu if fighting Rikti, who are vulnerable to negative but resistant to energy.

-Def also allows Io slotting for the Achilles Heel -Res proc and three damage procs I think.

I usually get DO's at level 12, then make a bunch of level 20 IO's for level 17, because they give noticable better bonuses. 25% vs 16%.

I do all this in bulk to ease the tedium, like have one character craft them all and stick them in the SG bin for the others to use. If I wasn't making characters 10 at a time for my own private supergroups, I dont think I'd bother though.

The smart way to do this would be to build up a library of animations that can be re-used between sets. e.g. three 1.5 second unarmed melee attacks that deliver the contact 1.0 seconds in. Im pretty sure that some functional duplicates already exist.

Blast sets already have their tier 1 and tier 2 powers normalised like this, so in theory the various animations could be made available between sets. eg extend the X-ray Eyes animation to all tier 2 blasts.

Amen to that.

I've done this with 7 of my batch of 10 villains, and its been brilliant. I've had four sales in the 100 million mark, which has been more than enough to keep them in mid-level goodies like Thunderstrike, Crushing Impact, Steadfast uniques and KB protections.

I did it a bit suboptimally by your analysis, I just saved up merits till the characters hit 30 and then rolled random rolls in the 30-34 range, but it still worked pretty well.

Plus, I've fed the market with a number of mid-level rare recipes that net me 5 to 10 million a piece. I feel like I've done my service to the community as well as profiting myself.

One of the first lessons with IOs is to make sure you don't reduce the base effectiveness of your powers by chasing set bonuses.

Sometimes there is no dilemma. Thunderstrike sets in ranged attacks get nice bonuses and good values for your powers, they're just awesome like that. Lockdown in Tesla cage is pretty similar - good bonuses and good values.

I cant help but see you've slotted End recudtion sets in Short Circuit and Ball Lightning though. The set bonuses are cool, but you've got no Damage bonus in either of your AoE's there, which isn't exactly ideal for any Blaster, is it?

Some powers really demand frankenslotting, ie forget the bonuses and just treat IOs as mini-Hami-O's like Fulmens describes.

Short Circuit is definitely one of these powers. You want Recharge, End Mod, Damage and a bit of accuracy (base is +30% already) to get the most out of it, so frankenslotting is the way to go.

Ranged Defence is a good overall goal. Blessing of the Zephyr is getting its values dropped, so be aware of that. But even 20% ranged Defence will change the way you play, and puts you one medium luck pill away from the defence soft-cap.

For x8 its also worth pointing out that Darkest Night has a much bigger radius than Radiation Infection.

I'd recommend Traps - build up your Ranged Defence and AoE defence second, and use Caltrops to keep melee'ers at bay.

Cold and Storm are similar, they share three powers.

Storm the chaotic solo-friendly version that heaps extra damage and knockback into the mix, and provides mitigation from a player-based debuff- Hurricane. It protects you too, but can annoy teammates if you play badly (or they're prejudiced against knockback)

Cold is the team version - mitigation comes from ally-only shields and it packs some awesome debuffs that shine when taking on AVs and other things that are too big to solo.

And yeah, Air Superiority is probably better than Hover. Hover and Hot Feet don't work so well together.

Storm is pretty good for encapsulating Air and Water.

Fire or Earth as a primary...

Earth will be a slow solo-er - Animated Stone, Tronado and Lightning Storm in the 30's will all help, but you won't hit your stride till level 40 this way. The 12 month vet power Sands of Mu helps big time with earth, but you don't have that yet.

Fire on the other hand will be a great soloer out of the box pretty much. Hot Feet, Flashfire and Freezing Rain will let you chew up big spawns solo really easily. Fire/Storm will be endurance intensive, so slot Hot Feet with end reduction and damage equally, and dont forget to turn off Sprint when you're fighting!

Fire/Storm should fit your concept and be a lot of fun.

Try this for starters:

1 Char
1 Gale
2 Ring of Fire
4 Fire Cages
6 Hover
8 Hot Feet
10 Swift
12 Flashfire
14 Fly
16 Freezing Rain
18 Health
20 Stamina
22 Steamy Mist

It also lets you hold bosses in one shot still, and hold everyone else for longer. That's not nothing.

Fire does very well damage wise from level 8 onwards, due to contained Hot Feet damage. Spamming Fire Cages after Flashfire will usually kill of even con minions before the Flashfire stun wears off.

I skipped Stamina on a Mind/Psi Dominator with the intention of using Drain Psyche instead. It worked OK-ish, I guess, and that was with the added assistance of Domination re-filling my End bar.

I'd think twice about skipping Stamina on a Blaster. But, it can't hurt to give it a try.

Is it that hard to balance?

Its not really any different from Seismic Smash (Mag 4 hold) or Mesmerise (Mag 4 sleep) in that it affects bosses and minions alike.

A typical Controller single target hold lasts 22 seconds. Seismic Smash lasts 15 seconds. Maybe thats a good place to start? 15 seconds of -Recovery. A single target drain would affect a minion or lieutenant for less time than a typical ST hold would, but would affect a boss in one shot. Tweak that figure accordingly around the 15 second mark.

Using End Drain this way would make Electrical Control the "boss-holder" set sort of like Martial Arts is a low AoE boss-killer Scrapper set. Less effective against a big swarm of minions, better against a tough single target.

As for end drain on Electrical Blasts, I'd just add a non-trivial drain to the single target attacks and not base it all around the one slow animating PBAoE.

I'm really hoping that End Drain is a big part of the set.

Existing End Drain powers are flaky and often require specific pairings of powersets to work, but this is where the mechanism can be given its full due - in a Control Set.

Existing powersets have tied End Drain to low damage and dysfunctional secondary effects, but it doesn't have to be that way. If Choking Cloud was the only hold in the game, you might think that holds are flaky and unreliable.

A fast recharging single target drain that stops Recovery for 15 or 20 seconds and drains a +2 or +3 enemy dry in one shot, with slotting is quite doable without any additional coding required.

The net result is a bit like a stun, but has some differences. It affects bosses as much as minions, it doesn't establish Containment, and it doesn't prevent an enemy from running intelligently rather than staggering drunkenly, perhaps at superspeed.

It's bizarre.

I'd been planning to make a Energy Aura character to try it out, and thought maybe Superstrength/Energy Aura would be kind of a good fit for a "Unus the Untouchable" type force-field-clad melee fighter. I got as far as having a look at the new SS animations and picking which ones looked right. I figured this would be quite an unusual combo.

Then this comes along! Good job I don't care about being flavour of the month!

I think you have more than 5 "+6.25% Recharge" bonuses there.

I can see and recognise Positron's Blast, Glimpse of the Abyss, Entropic Chaos, two sets of Malaise's Confusion, Stupefy (that's 6) two sleep sets presumably that give that bonus? Call of the Sandman, right.

I'd drop the Malaise' from Mass Confusion and frankenslot that to give it maximum +Recharge along with some slotting and accuracy,. Having this and TD come up quickly makes them alternate-able per-spawn control powers.

Get 4 pieces of Basilisk's Gaze (+7.5% Recharge) into Dominate and Total Dominate, and make sure TD gets full Recharge bonus too.

5 Doctored Wounds in Drain Psyche for another 5%. Add an accuracy maybe in a sixth slot.

And maybe six slot Lift with Kinetic Crash - another +7.5% recharge there, plus KB protection as a set bonus, while retaining some damage slotting.

Take the extra slots from Mesmerise it functions quite well as a power with minimal slotting. The sleep generally gets broken before it wears off anyway.

Oh, and drop the Stupefy from Psychic Shockwave, slot that for damage. Its way too good a power to be used as a set mule.
I'd keep the following 5 6.25% bonuses: Confuse, Terrify, Psychic Scream, Subdue and Mass Hypnosis.


That should all get you close to a 70% bonus.

Gravity/Force Fields Controller is a good telekinetic/magnetic power combo

Similarly, Gravity/Electric Dominator works really well together as electromagnetic powers.

Earth/Storm and Plant/Storm are good "Earth/Planet" power sets

And of course Storm/Elec is the obvious thematic pairing for Storm with Defenders.

Fire/Rad is a great solo-er, targetting lots of lower level enemies. My advice would have been to hazard zone sweep once upon a time, but now you can run missions at -1/x3 or whatever you can handle.

Endurance will be a bit of an issue, but mowing down blue-cons pre-Stamina will give you plenty of inspirations.

Sands of Mu is also handy for dealing with tougher targets. It will outdo any of your existing single target attacks, and Radiation Infection will let you hit reliably with it.


I'd also count Mind and Gravity as good solo-ers (not as great as Fire or Illusion), since they both have good single target attack chains. They suit more of a +2/x1 difficulty setting. Gravity is bottom of the list for Dominators, but on a Controller, the beefy attacks in the primary make much more sense.

I like the 30+ game and the game leading up to it.

Some highlights of the later game for me:

Level 35 opens up Vanguard Merits and the Rikti War Zone. Thats a new minigame, if you will, a new currency to collect in order to get certain goodies.
Its also got some pretty cool storylines, in my opinion.

Level 30 opens up Warburg and the minigames therein. You dont need to be a PVP-er to do these and chase the nukes.

Level 40 opens up the Shadow Shard for heroes. No new gameplay there beyond a new enemy faction and the "minigame" of jumping between islands on Gravity Geysers without plunging to your doom, but its something well worth seeing. I really felt like I'd "made it" as a superhero when I got in there the first time.

30+ is also where the "minigame" of IO set slotting comes into its own. The fact you're now getting 2 slots per level on average instead of 1 helps a lot. Your income is better, and many of the better sets have become available in the late 20s.
I usually find leevlling up in this range much more rewarding because I'm completing sets, rather than say the teens, where I'm just filling in dull requisite powers like Fitness or travel in order to become basically functional.

40+ sees new factions like Malta and Carnies that are their own pecuiliar challenge to play against.

I think if anything, some of this stuff just needs better signposting.
The Shadow Shard is definitely tucked away. The Rikti War Zone doesn't really introduce itself to you - Levantera could be added as a contact automatically when you level up to 35.

Oh yeah, Patron Power pools and Epic Power pools can be quite character-transforming and empowering.
Defenders getting Oppressive Gloom? Cool!
My Plant Controller getting the Earth Mastery epic? Oh yeah!!
My AR/Traps Corrupter getting Scorpion Shield at 41? hoo boy!

Enemy targetted toggles are already there.
We just don't have one that does damage yet, discounting sticking a proc in Telekinesis or Rad Infection, but that should be easy to plug in ot the current spreadsheets.
We dont have one that draws a beam from the player to the target, or that breaks with line of sight loss as well as range. This could require new code.

We have weapons that appear/draw on activation of a click attack, eg Assault Rifle. Do we have toggles that cause an extra graphical element to appear on the character? Stone Armour covers that I guess. While the toggle is active, the extra elements get drawn on and move with the character's attachment points as they animate.

So I think all the raw code components already exist in some basic form.

I'm not sure how a continuous chest beam, for example, is supposed to work if ytou turn away from the target so your back's to them. Did Champions force you to face them and strafe while the beam was active? That might be new tech for CoH