EricHough

My overall impression of staff so far has been positive. It is a blast in the lower levels and looks to have a nice mix of AoE and single target attacks. I am also finding the various staff mastery forms a lot more useful than everyone was predicting. As blueruckus noted, even the secondaries that have good end management don't always get them very early and any melee build is going to be tight on slots until the early to late 30's in most cases, which means you might not be able to slot up all the end reduction or recharge you want, so being able to run form of the mind or soul for that extra recharge/end reduction is VERY useful pre 30 or so.

That said, I do think there is some definite merit to the criticisms of the set. The developers are STILL overestimating how valuable flexibility is in this game - while the staff mastery forms don't get shorted quite as much as dual pistols did in exchanging aim for swap ammo, you still give up a lot. In a classic MMORPG like WoW, EQ or even the new SWTOR, flexibility in an individual character is VERY usefull, especially in end game when you might only have 1-2 characters who are equipped or specced for raiding. In CoX where almost everyone has multiple alts and generally doesn't mind swapping characters to fill out gaps in a trial league flexibility in a single character isn't nearly as valuable.

One thing to keep in mind is that all 3 staff mastery forms sacrifice the to hit bonus that that build up and all its other replacements (follow up, blinding feint, soul drain) get. In exchange you get bonuses that, while none of them suck, are not really all that stellar either. Form of the body, the one everyone seems to think is the best form only gives you an 18% damage bonus at tier 3 - and you are NOT going to have that up all the time, as it drops off between fights, takes 3 attacks to build up and is going to be lost everytime you use a finisher. I suspect you are going to be averaging 10%-12% damage bonus at best and thats on a scrapper - stalkers, brutes and tanks get a lot less benefit. While it sounds good, I don't think it quite make up for the loss of the to hit boost and burst damage from build up (and doesn't even begin to compare to soul drain, follow up or blinding feint).

I think the form of the mind numbers are also a bit on the low side, although thats a lot harder to judge with recharge. The only form that seems to me to really give good return is form of the soul and that is mostly due to the difficulty of getting global end reduction prior to incarnate powers. I think at least the body and mind forms could use a boost - either slightly higher numbers in the current bonuses, or possibly a small to hit bonus that stacks up along with the damage/recharge bonuses. 2%-3% to hit per stack would be a nice extra that would not be overpowered and would be better balanced against build up, soul drain, etc.

I also agree that the top tier attacks are a bit on the weak side - serpents reach is ok, while its not as great as claws focus its a decent step above KM's focused burst, both of which are comparable attacks. However sky splitter is pretty sad for a 'final' attack - it has far to low damage for the long activation time and bumping up the recharge from 15s to 18s-20s with an appropriate bump to the damage would round out the single target attacks a bit better. All the other single target attacks in the set are very fast recharging (3s, 6s and 9s) so one slower recharging, harder hitting attack would round it out nicely.

My conclusion is that I love the set's concept and execution (and have already bought it on 2 accounts and have rolled up 3 characters that I am levelling up now) and while I have no problem with middle of the road sets, the set could have easily been a little better in single target damage and gotten a bit more from the forms without really overpowering the set or continuing the 'power creep' that everyone is talking about.

So far I have 3 staff characters:

1) Staff/DA brute, created because I have wanted to work up a DA brute for ages but I kept bogging down in the mid/late 20's when you have to many toggles/powers and not enough slots for end reduction. I am planning on running in the end reduction form until I feel comfortable with the end slotting/end recovery IO's I have slotted, then I can switch to recharge or damage depending on my mood
2) Staff/EA scrapper. At low levels, before you get energize or energy drain EA can be a bit of an end hog, especially with the recharge you get from entropic aura. So the end reduction staff mastery is a perfect balance here until you get to 28+ and have energize (or at least have your attacks slotted decently for end reduction).
3) Staff/Ninjitsu stalker - I wanted to try stalker staff and the only concept I could come up with fit ninjitsu best.

Electric control is a set best used from the middle of a mob so you can leverage the end drain to back up your sleep and chain confuse, so any cone AoE damage is going to be iffy to use at best with it. If you are going for a high recharge, perma-dom build you will find that sleet and ice storm will be up fairly frequently - between those and engulfing darkness you will probably have all the AoE you need. My dark/dark dom at L37 is at 85% global + 3 slotted hasten, has 5s-7s recharge on engulfing darkness (5s when hasten is up) and 34s recharge on sleet. I stealth in (or fearsome stare everything), open with the stun, sleet then ED - after a couple of single target attacks I can finish most things off with a second ED.

If you don't think engulfing darkness + sleet + ice storm is enough, go with fire mastery for fire ball + rain of fire. You lose the debuff of sleet but a targetted AoE like fireball works very well with a pbaoe like engulfing darkness - and both let you stay in the center of the action to maximize the end drain from conductive aura.

Well, the specific macro's I want to check out are all like the following:

"powexectoggleoff black dwarf$$powexectoggleoff dark nova$$powexecname sunless mire$$gototray 1$$bind shift+lbutton powexecname shadow step"''

"powexectoggleoff black dwarf$$powexectoggleoff dark nova$$powexecname eclipse$$gototray 1$$bind shift+lbutton powexecname shadow step"

Both macro's drop you into human form and then queue up a human form power to be activated (as well as switching around my trays and swapping out various binds that do the same thing in different forms, such as swapping my dwarf form teleport bind for the human form bind). The first one Q's up sunless mire, the second eclipse. I have similar macro's for firing off stygian circle.

Prior to whatever they broke, I could hit whatever key I had bound to these macros and the form change and power activation would happen with a single keypress. In fact, in many cases the power would queue up and fire off even if I was carrying a mez out of dwarf form. Currently I have to hit the key once to drop out of dwarf/nova form and then hit it a second time to fire off the power.

Just now updating my copy of the beta server, hopefully the character copy tool is working as I don't think I have a copy of my warshade on the beta server already.

EDIT: I have partial confirmation that the old behavior appears to be back - got on the beta server and tested the above macros out with my warshade and they appear to work as intended. I haven't been able to test the 'fire off the power even if mezzed' functionality as thats a bit more complicated to set up, but I am fairly happy so far.

Check out yesterdays patch notes on the VIP beta server (http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=286071)

POWERS

General

• Powers in macros that are disabled by powers that are toggled off earlier in the macro will now activate again, as intended.
  • An example of this is a macro that disables the Black Dwarf toggle and enables the Dark Nova toggle afterwards.

Have to copy my warshade over to test this out, hopefully they got it right.

A lot of darkness control feedback during the beta was far more controller focused than dominator focused. On a controller who gets much more debuff even from the primary set and can buff up the pets and/or debuff the enemies even more with their secondaries the haunts are not that bad. They are not awesome but probably have more potential.

I think a lot of feedback on how badly fearsome stare worked on a dom as an alpha breaker also got glossed over due to the controller love. On a controller, you can alternate the fear and stun since you have your secondary to add to any debuff from the two controls so the soft control from the fear is not as much of a penalty. On a dom fearsome stare does a lot less debuff (11.25% vs the controllers 15%) and without a debuffing secondary is not as good an alpha breaker on its own. That means a dom either has to fear things and then hit everyone with a single target control before opening up with attacks or open with fearsome stare then move in and follow up with heart of darkness.

The sad thing is that darkness control was touted as the 'special thing' dom's got to make up for being ignored in the previous proliferation pass but I think its a far better set for controllers than dom's. Don't get me wrong, my current dark/fire dom is doing pretty well but its more due to getting 2 great single target controls early on than it is due to fearsome stare.

My primary concern so far in slotting the ATO set has been to maximize global recharge bonuses (for perma-dom). So I have been focusing on slotting it in a power that either doesn't have an IO set with good global recharge or gives a global recharge bonus that I can get other places. For example, there are plenty of ways to get a 6.25% global recharge bonus so instead of placing a stupify set in a stun the ATO set is a good choice when you can easily hit the 5 set bonus cap by slotting positron's blast and decimation sets in attacks.

Because holds can take Basilisks Gaze sets, which give 7.5% recharge bonuses that are on a separate limit than the LoTG +recharge bonus they are a bad place to put an entire 5 piece dom ATIO although they are the best place to put the ATO proc. So what I do is 5 slot my single target hold, stick a 4 piece Basilisks Gaze set and the proc. Then I put the other 5 ATO's in a different control, such as a stun or immoblize. For darkness control either the fear or the stun would be a great choice for the ATO set - not only for the global bonuses but because if you slot everything but the proc you get some great enhancement bonuses - much better than a stupify or glimpse of the abyss (fear) would give you.

I have decided to re-roll one of my namesakes, Midnight Mystique, as a Mind/Dark dominator. she was originally a dm/sr scrapper and my first blueside 50, which is why I used her name as my global on my primary account, but I don't play her any more and a mind/dark assault works just as well for a vampire type character as dm/sr.

Not sure what I want to pair with dark control - I will probably end up going dark/fire, FA is the only assault set I really like, although dark assault is going to be a close second I think.

For a character that has healing abilities AND needs end reduction, Vigor looks pretty good as well - the T3 partial core revamp gives you 33% healing, end reduction and accuracy. While the accuracy might be overkill - it can also be nice with all the higher and higher level mobs we are getting in incarnate content.

Since the healing bonus should help both with healing powers AND with health or any health boost powers I am seriously considering switching to this on many of my melee chars that are currently using cardiac - although the damage resistance part of the cardiac is pretty nice as well.

Speaking personally the actual reward amount in a contest doesn't really matter to me as long as i think the contest is interesting enough on its own. While I don't have the kind of cash sitting around to offer 1B prizes to folks, I have enough for everything I want to do (and if I want more, I just grind out some hero merits, exchange them for LoTG +recharges or whatever is selling well on the market and pick up some cash).

Somethings that attracted me in the last few time I joined in on events (or wanted to join in but was prevented by RL):

1. Themed TF's that require specific costumes followed by a costume contest. I thought Stone's wizard themed Mortimer Kal SF was a great idea - I was horribly sick that day and had to miss it but I would do something like that again.
2. Group Challenges - the very first event I ever particpated in was something I think Huron put together. The challenge was to assemble a team of villains that had 1 of each AT type and run 3 or 4 of the L50 SF's, with the goal being to turn in the fastest time total for all the SF's, with each death adding extra time to the total and so on. The same characters had to run all the SF's, no alting out. This one was spaced out over a month or so to give the teams time to try several times.
3. Costume contests with unusual rules and special prizes - I don't get into CC's that much but when Layla challeneged folks to design characters that looked like her and Stone's main, I had a flash of inspiration and actually gave it a try. It helped that she offered one of her special dolls as a reward - not sure if you can offer this type of reward but the more interesting the 'challenge' in costume design, the more likely I am to try it out.

Those are the types of contests I find interesting. I don't do 'find the character' or scavenger hunts - I burned out on hunt the pixel games 20 years ago, plus I play this game to kill stuff so the more fighting, the better :-).

Some interesting riffs off the above ideas:

1) Small team iTrials - run a specific iTrial or set of iTrials with a specific team, going for speed runs with deaths counting against that.
2) More costume themed TF's: A robot themed Synapse TF, a witch themed Katie Hannon, a Cyborg themed Sister Psyche. I would suggest a Roman themed ITF, but thats TOO obvious. Maybe a Military themed Admiral Sutter or a Rikti LGTF.
3) Master TF speed runs - who can do the fastest MoSTF, MoLGTF and/or MoLRSF or some combination of all those.
4) Shard TF's - who can turn in the fastest time on ALL the shard TF's.

On the multiple TF contests each team would have to include the same characters for all the TFs and it would be most interesting to require a mix of AT - maybe restrict duplicate AT's.

You can sign me up as well Sept - Midnight Astral, 50+3 warshade. I have plenty of extra server transfers so moving to freedom from protector isn't a problem.

The only way I can see a live action bleach movie actually working is if they keep it short, sweet and to the point - and NOT give in to the urge to cover any one of the major story arcs. There is just to much detail in pretty much all the main story arcs to do that.

Although the earlier suggestion that they run up to the point where Byakuya and Renji retrieve Rukia and return her to the soul society would work if they could be sure of doing a second movie, I think it would leave to much of a cliff hanger at the end of the movie. While bleach fans would understand anyone NOT familiar with it would be left way hanging.

What they really need to do is the bare minimum to introduce the characters and have some story. Start out with Ichigo first picking up his soul reaper powers, have him get used to slaying hollows then go to the contest between Ichigo and Ishida which ends in him fending off the Gillain. Then end the movie with the big fight between him and the hollow that killed his mother - the fisher. If you put in some reasonable spaced flashbacks to his mothers death you could really get folks into the characters and give the movie as much of a plot as any shonen anime is going to have, at least in anything less than 100+ episodes :-).

The only other possibility would be to dive almost straight into the soul society arc. Introduce all the main characters in the hero group as quickly as possible (Rukia, Ichigo, Ishida, Chad and Orihime), then cut to Rukia being retrieved by Byakuya and Renji, then go straight into an abbreviated version of the rescue. You would have to leave out a LOT of stuff, but so much of early bleach is a lot of flashbacks in the middle of fights that give you background on the characters you could leave a lot of that out - plus all the filler stuff that really doesn't add to the plot (Don Kanonji, various random hollow fights, etc).