Freem

[ QUOTE ]

If that is true, then it begs the obvious question: why is it possible to spawn them solo? If the developers were not only certain it was impossible to defeat them solo, but specifically WANTED to ensure that no one ever defeated thems solo, thenit seems to me that the unbelievably simply


[/ QUOTE ]

If my memory is correct...
Originally the AV->EB system was such that AVs never spawned solo. However, players with builds capable of, and desired to, solo AVs, complained that they had to get additional teammates to pad their missions in order to spawn an AV. So it was changed such that AVs will appear on the highest difficulty setting.

This doesn't indicate that the devs intended for people to defeat AVs solo, but that they were willing to allow people who to make a choice whether they want an AV or an EB in a solo mission.

But it doesn't mean that they don't intend people to defeat AVs solo, either. dev intention has changed over time and I think the current state is acceptance that IOs and powerset selection can create AV-killers.


I think most AV fights are stupid and boring. My main gripe is stupid AI and lack of challenging fights. Instead we have the brute force "bag of hp with big damage". The same "bag of hp with big damage" is what causes people to dislike AVs for making player characters feel third rate, because no matter what, you know your tanker's handclap isn't going to be hitting for hundreds of hp damage...and your defender isn't going to be hitting like 10 blasters combined...

If we have better AI and better designed fights, we can do away with the whole AV mechanism. It'd be probably more difficult to fight a bunch of smart EBs with different powers, than one dumb AV. Win-win for everyone. People who can't solo don't feel outclassed because they were outnumbered, and people who can, get a higher sense of satisfaction at beating a more difficult challenge.

[ QUOTE ]

Also, yes, you can tank with it...by "herdicaning", but I have no experience with that, and I can't really offer anything to that particular idea...I'd rather have a tank, all I'll say.


[/ QUOTE ]

It's actually quite hard to do this now (without immobs), after the repel on hurricane was reduced. Mobs then to run through the cane and get knocked out of corners. If you use slows (snow storm and freezing rain) and gale mobs down, you can still do it, but it will be messy.

It's easier to herd with a tank...given that the tank is study enough, and that the tank knows what he's doing.

[ QUOTE ]
if your comparison of Mind Control to Plant Control is about level of effectiveness, you need to compare apples to apples: the powers in each set with similar levels of effectiveness. If you compare Mass Confusion to Seeds of Confusion, and come up with Mass lacking, but have "Terrify -> ??" left over, you have not said anything one way or another about which powerset is better.

[/ QUOTE ]

Did I give that impression? Sorry if I did, what I was comparing are the powers that act similarly to each other. Carrion creepers and Terrify cannot be directly compared because they work differently (under my method of classification).

If SoC were to have its recharge nerfed to mass confusion level, then plant would be left to alternating between Carrion Creepers and Vines. This would leave it short of control because in my experience Vines tends to recharge in 3 spawns, and carrion creepers in 2 spawns, for an average team, leaving the plant without control in the odd spawn. (I do not include sleep).

So it is true that plant control leans more heavily on SoC than mind control leans on Mass confusion, and that the other cc tools (sans SoC and mass confusion) of mind > plant.

However, since SoC and mass confusion are what they are, I consider plant somewhat better than mind at "crowd" control, but mind (vastly) better than plant at single target control.

[ QUOTE ]
And if Mind is fine as a set, I see no problem with it having Mass Confusion as is, even if Mass Confusion is terrible. Plenty of powersets have one or two pointless powers no one takes. As long as the rest make up for it, it's fine.

If you just want to compare what has the best confusion, fine, but no one really cares about that metric in a vacuum, right?

[/ QUOTE ]

Actually, I care that similar powers to have cost and efficiency standardized according to a certain metric in a vacuum. I find "how the set is doing as a whole" subjective and not useful when thinking about balancing powers. I understand that not everyone shares the same viewpoint

Anyway, I'm not asking for completely equality. It doesn't matter if they are not exactly equal (factoring some consideration of the entire sets' balance, since there is no perfect vacuum), but they shouldn't be so unequal that it is blatantly obvious. It would be like giving giving ice bolt the damage of blaze but justifying it with the idea that ice blast is a single target oriented set whereas fire blast a good AoE capability.

Yes. It is precisely because of that (basing it on player experience rather than knowing dev intention) that the argument that SoC is a every-fight control whilst mass confusion isn't doesn't hold when examining the recharge of SoC vs mass confusion.

A power becomes an every-fight control when its recharge is low enough for it to use every fight. If mass confusion were to have the recharge of SoC, it would become an every-fight control. If SoC had the recharge of mass confusion, it would cease to become an every-fight control.

It makes no sense to use a result arising from how fast a power recharges, to argue for/against how fast the power should recharge.

Yes, I did. My opinion on the two sets hasn't changed, so I end up posting the same thing when the same issue is raised.

There are (at least) two ways to classify the powers. The first position is classification by function, which is what kind of function the power fulfills in the set. Yours belongs to that camp, where mass confusion does not have the same function in mind control, compared to seeds of confusion in plant control (("frequent area control").

The second position is classification by effect, which is what kind of effect that power has. I fall into the second camp.

The reason I put myself in the second camp is argument from the first position can only be valid due to developer intention (i.e. the question of whether a power should be a keystone, or supplementary power, is fixed). Since developer intention is currently unknown, the question of whether something is a frequent area control is simply the question of whether the power recharges quickly enough to be used as such. Changes in a powers recharge, acc, end cost, etc often change a role different powers play in a set (as the recent dominator changes are demonstrating).

If Terrify is the frequent area control for Mind control, I would feel sad, because level 12 fearsome stare from a defender set is so much better as a damage mitigation tool.

Earthquake and Ice Slick are very similar powers. However, earthquake does not play the role in earth control as Ice Slick plays in ice control. Ice slick is the opener power (due to the lack of better, frequently up opening powers). Stalagmites is more frequently used as the opening power for earth control. It is possible to classify ice slick with stalagmites (opening powers), or classify ice slick with earthquake (area kd powers).

It is not possible to know whether the lack of a better opening power in ice control is due to design intention, or ill-design. There used to be some justifications in that Jack Frost was a more damaging pet, but that again was a sort of "guess the dev's intention" thing, but now the improved Pooman is much better than Jack Frost.

I'm not even sure all the control sets can become equal and yet different.

Plant isn't gimped without SoC...

Spore burst ~ Mass Hypnosis
Vines ~ Mass domination

?? ~ Terrify
Carrion Creepers ~ ??

SoC > Mass confusion

Telekinesis is situational. Until they let more mobs fit into it, or reduce its endurance cost, it's not a bread and butter power. Spirit tree likewise is situational, and I'm going to overlook it.

What Mind excel in over Plant is single target control. a single target confuse, a single target sleep, and a single target knockup.

Does Mind's single target control and damage justify having SoC and mass confusion so different? I don't think so. Plant also has a pet.

Now I don't think mass confusion should be exactly the same as SoC. But some buff is in order.

Same. I noticed this too, but I didn't realised it could be an exploit.
Are we not supposed to use it now, or it's "free game if it's there"?

[ QUOTE ]
In general, the XP you get for a mob which is partially defeated by a confused compatriot is not significantly reduced unless you let the other mobs do most of the work. If you or your team do at least 50% of the damage, you will get at least 80% of the mob's XP. And given how much safety the confusion provides, and how much the damage done speeds you up, it almost always works out to a net gain in XP over time.

[/ QUOTE ]

People here know that... many people in the game don't know that or believe the contrary and a large faction of those are unreasonable. I cannot be bothered to argue with unreasonable people.

Actually that kind of belief is the same as teams who insist on taking 5x the time plus debt to defeat +4s compared to defeating +3s, and think they are getting more xp because each +4 mob gives them more xp than each +3 mob.

I've gotten declarations at various times not to confuse, and even not to use fear powers. I just skip the power. Either the control doesn't matter because the group is strong enough, or they deal with the consequences. People are always allowed to do things to their detriment.

[ QUOTE ]
I have made 2 and stopped. Partly waiting for I15, partly knowing that once I finish my 3rd I'm done.


[/ QUOTE ]

I have one almost finished but not published, due to some technical difficulties.

But your second sentence hit the nail on the head; I only have slots...it's making me think twice about putting something up.

Earth/TA!

[ QUOTE ]
You can argue all you want, but do you know what? The current facts support me, as SoC


[/ QUOTE ]

That does not in any way constitute a proof. There are many powers in this game that currently suffer from grandfather clause inconsistencies back when powers were not balanced to an objective standard; there used to be many people who used that argument to "prove" the old Energy Transfer was balanced because Energy Melee was lackluster in every other way except for ET and Total Focus.

The trend is to tweak recharge, damage, and animation times to balance them to an objective standard. The question is how long it takes for devs to go through the powers...if ever.

If MC and SoC are never rebalanced, it's in no way going to affect my current level of enjoyment playing either set. But that doesn't mean they are balanced either.

[ QUOTE ]
Although you might see some reduction on MC's recharge, it is not going to get as low as SoC.

[/ QUOTE ]

Except that I never argued that MC should be identical to SoC in both recharge and accuracy, so I'd appreciate it if you don't make it sound like I were. The two powers are similar, not identical, as have been pointed out many times. The ease of use for an spherical AoE power (compared to cone), and the lack of aggro would make MC overpowered if it were identical to SoC in terms of recharge and acc.

However, they are similar enough that they shouldn't be this unequal in terms of recharge and acc on the side of SoC. MC should get either some reduce in recharge, or an acc buff. What exactly should be done would be up to what the objective balancing standard is, and how much leeway on either side of the equation.

[ QUOTE ]
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.

[/ QUOTE ]

The idea that Mind control has too much "up every fight" controllability compared to Plant Control is over-rated.

Mass hypnosis == Spore burst
Total Dominaton == Vines
Mass confusion << Seeds of Confusion
Terrify -> ?
? <- Carrion Crawlers

I don't think Terrify and Carrion Crawlers can be compared because they are so dissimilar. As for telekinesis, it is a situational power and it only hits about 5 while costing far too much endurance.

What Mind Control is better at compared to Plant Control, is single target control and damage, starting right from lowbie level. On the other hand, Plant Control has a pet and immobs (a pretty good AoE immob too). I find Spirit tree mediocre and don't bother with it.

On the bright side, Castle says that he has "added it to the list"... so changes coming ...next year.

This is very interesting, but while it would be nice to have that stance available (to male, female, and huge models) as an emote, I really, really would not like it to become the default stance of female models.

The first time I saw the female stance in Guild Wars, I thought "Yucks, worst thing ever", and felt really repulsed. It looks unbalanced to have someone's foot stick out toe-pointed, just to make a character look more "feminine". If female models in CoX get that stance I will never be able to play my female toons again.

This has been pointed out many times but nothing has been done.
On the other hand, the same applies to confuse and deceive...so...

[ QUOTE ]

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.


[/ QUOTE ]

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.

[ QUOTE ]

Hmm, must be different team make ups then. Whenever I'm on a team, I don't even HAVE to control; people steamroll through stuff regardless of whether I hold things or not. Heck, a few times an entire mob went down in the time it took Total dom to ACTIVATE.


[/ QUOTE ]

That kind of holds for any kind of controller you're playing?

"Before I can even do granny bowling on flashfire, the entire mob went down"
"Before I can stretch out my hand, wave an ice slick into existence, the entire mob went down"
etc.

Could go for anything too.
"Before my nova animated the other blaster's thunderous blast took them all out!"

That's what's fun about steamrolling teams.

1) Total domination is balanced in accordance with all the other AOE hold powers. So no, it shouldn't be changed.

2) Yes, telekinesis should be tweaked to either have its endurance cost lowered or the number of mobs that can fit in it raised.


Someone mentioned mass confusion. There's been a lot of comparision between it and seeds of confusion. I really won't mind it having its recharge reduced.

[ QUOTE ]

Why do I have to press the Howl and Scream buttons over and over? They're on this frequent, every-few-seconds recharge, as if the game wouldn't know I want to shoot my opponents as frequently as possible. Why can't I just hit the "shoot stuff" button? It seems like this combat is written more for a computer than a human being.


[/ QUOTE ]

I agree with this. The game is basically pressing a few buttons over and over, whether it's pressing the hold power on mobs, or pressing SB on teammates. It basically boils down to what kind of button you don't mind pressing over and over.

If you're not in the mood to press the SB button, just play something else that presses another button, until you're in the mood to press the SB button again.

That said, I can understand feeling frustrated when you feel you have other things to do to contribute to the team, but your teammates are spamming you for SB. Perhaps you could send them a firm reminder that you try to keep SB up, but it wears off quickly so please be patient and wait a bit for reapplication?

I'm still playing my Mind/Storm, although the storm nerfs have really disappointed me. I feel like the devs have stolen the bread and butter powers, thrown it to cold domination, then kicked the unique/fun powers down. Ah well, c'est la vie...

I prefer using my Ill/Emp more AV-heavy work though (especially if a friend is requesting my help). I just don't trust most "random emps" they recruit to keep up the buffs, for good reason.

[ QUOTE ]

(c) Before Wormhole, you have almost nothing to use as a "panic button" power to save your tail.

[/ QUOTE ]

Actually gravity has a great panic power... however, it just phase shifts everything and doesn't let you kill anything. But "panic-button"-wise, it's great.

I slot my single target immob for damage, and pick up a pool attack. Air superiority is nice. Generally, however, I prefer teaming, because I find soloing a controller boring (even after pets).

I have modest expectations.
Just enlarge the AoE radius to wormhole and I'll be happy.

Not bad: Interesting concept, lowbie runnable, but needs more work

Subjective Play Experience:
I like seeing new things in the MA. Maybe it's not the first arc that makes use of this concept, but it's the first I have seen, which is good enough for me. What happens is that you are trapped in a time loop, "Groundhog Day" style, and you have to run the same mission over and over again, with variations, until you get yourself out of it.

I ran it with a level 11 brute, and it gave me no trouble, the mobs being of standard Wyvern. I gained almost a level running through the arc.

On to the flaws. As I played through the arc, I got the distinct impression that it was written in a hurry, as if the idea was burning up in the author's mind and he had to set it down as quickly as possible. Then, after doing that, he did not go back and polish the arc. What gave me the impression was not spelling errors (nothing obvious caught my attention), but a lack of details and writing about what was happening on its own merit. Instead, there there was an overwhelmingly strong author presence speaking to me, author to player. I am not sure if this is intended, but it lessened the sense of enjoyment I got from the arc.

Overall, I think this is worth a play. But it is not living up to its potential. More attention paid to the text presented to the player wil improve the flavour of the arc.

The same argument for deceive/confuse pretty much holds for seeds of confusion. Plant can definitely solo early on...so can any controller. It's just not something I will recommend for a solo casual player, which the OP says he is.

Every spawn in a solo (heroic) mission is three mobs. Seeds of confusion, mass immobs, freezing rain against small solo spawns is a terribly endurance inefficient manner of doing things. I think gravity is best. As organicide pointed out, a great attack chain by level 8. Illusion, with spectral wounds and air superiority also works, but it's not that fast until Phantom Army is slotted up.

(I could also recommend a dark miasma defender. Dark/Ice or Dark/sonic. They are very controllerish but have reasonable single target damage from low levels. Very smooth ride all the way up to 50. However OP indicated he doesn't like defenders.)

NB: I don't have any high level plant controllers, but I got two lowbie plants (plant/FF, plant/thermal) up to 20. Maybe the influence of the secondary, or I'm an impatient person, but I found the lowbie solo experience to be around the level of ice or earth.