Frosticus

Which begs the question, how big do the numbers have to be before you'd consider it a nerf? This is a near 50% reduction in the strength of the power outside of leg-humping range.

I can't think of many situations where a power would be altered to this extent and it wouldn't be considered a nerf; deserved or otherwise.

It's not a nitpick as I already mentioned that as long as you don't want to kill the AV mind (both AT's) is great against AV's. When you actually want to kill them it is the worst.
Yes they can. So can fire. I think all doms with /earth can do it too. But as another poster mentioned, by the time that occurs the outcome of the fight has already been determined and in many team situations, even resolved.

You have to ask. Does being able to hold through the ptod carry much value? On the surface the answer is yes. What if it takes ~35 seconds to achieve? That yes turns in to a maybe. What if in doing so you will drastically reduce your outgoing damage and you offer little else to the encounter? That maybe starts to turn in to probably not much value.

Lvl 50 AV's just aren't dangerous enough to a team to require holding through the ptod. Now if a dom could hold through a lvl 53 AV's protection that would be a tremendous asset would likely be worth the reduction in any other contribution they bring to the encounter.

FWIW a mind dom is generally better off confusing through the ptod than holding. They can do it with much less degradation to their damage. Little is gained by actually holding them compared to confusing them for most cases.

Like Tex said, Mind is terrible if you actually want to kill an AV. Mind/psi is a very low damage combo (probably the lowest for doms) redeemed largely by the -regen of DP in this situation.

I wouldn't be surprised if a damage specc'd mind/rad puts out as much dps as a mind/psi. Pretending of course the dom could actually live for more than a few seconds in the aforementioned scenario.

You might want to confirm this on live. My build has them recharging in 59.955 seconds. The third one despawns 0.26 seconds before the power begins activating.

If you have enough recharge to force the despawn then you just have the 1.13 seconds that it normally takes from despawn to the first one being out.

63 second recharge will give you a bit over 4 seconds of downtime.

You require 302% recharge to have perma PA, but they will always have 1.13 seconds of not being active and even longer before they grab agro again as they need to cast an attack and have it hit.. I currently have 1.39 seconds of inactivity. I can tell a tiny difference from when I had 303.6% rech behind them, but in practice it doesn't seem to matter.


I'll be posting an ill/cold guide one of these days with a bunch of different builds that I've used. 155% rech (before hasten and slotting) + softcapped is not possible. Pushing s/l above 40% is unwarranted because Arctic Fog will be fixed one of these days.

You have no heal on a /cold so getting your def up high is a good idea if you want to do some really crazy things with the toon. That said, I took out just about every AV/GM with like 5% def including no insp/temps lvl 53 versions of the freedom phalanx. It wasn't until I started taking on multiple AV's at the same time that defense became important. It's nice for running x8 content as well as you will pull agro of your own.

I have little doubt you will clear the wolves map faster than me. I'm not slow at it, but...it took a long time. I'm not sure if plant could kill some of the AV's, just too low st damage. Or it would take forever and a day to kill ones like Seige/Dominatrix/Diabolique.

Zero deaths wasn't easy. At least not with inspirations shut off too. It took me 3 attempts and while I wasn't desperately wanting hibernate to come up sooner, it did get a fair amount of use on some of the missions where they attack with things I'm not well protected against. The first time Neuron killed me due to stupidity. There was three x8 spawns in the one room and phantasm agro'd the AV and promptly died. I watched it happen and knew he was going to transfer it on to me. PA was currently occupied with the other spawns and he two shot me. I knew I should have fallen back. The second time Malaise killed me as I attacked a member of his spawn that was bordering another and I thought was part of the original. He slept, then held, then killed me while PA dealt with the original spawn. That second one hurt as it was really far in to the arc.
AV's yes. GM's no. Tough to tackle the endurance issues though.
For clarity when I talk about global rech I exclude hasten/slotting. So just IO bonuses. The build I'm using right now has 135%, so 300.3% in PA w/ slotting and hasten.

If you are looking to do it on the cheap then stick with s/l def and the limitations on the enemies that brings with it. There is nothing wrong with that approach and it will still give you a very strong character for the rest of the game.

If you are looking to be able to take out most AV/GM's without temps/insp then the build has much steeper requirements. The power creep in the game has progressed to the point where it isn't hard to create almost any toon that can take out a handful of AV's they are strong against and rad starts with a major leg up in that department too. It is however, still very demanding to create a toon that can blow through most of the big threats. That build direction isn't for everyone and it can spoil the game for you if you aren't careful because once you've made a toon that can beat just about everything, there isn't much left to aim for.

No one said it was supposed to be easy

edit: I just threw a build together that has 119.9 sec rech on hasten and 40.3% ranged (so ~46% w/ RI) without the pvp IO, so it is certainly possible I'm sure as that isn't technically perma hasten.

What about Posi's market predictions and how negative they were? I'm half expecting him to make a doom post about the merger.

Truth. In addition to that Phantasm attacks really slowly to the point where it would proc way less and it would get less attacks off while buffed.

PA on the other hand attack quite quickly as they have a multitude of powers resulting in more chances to fire it and more attacks buffed while active. Plus as Local said x3 pets using it.

If you spent enough you could probably create an ill/storm that could pull off a faster defeat time of rikti pylons than my ill/cold/ice at 1:52. Which is to say, that is an extreme amount of damage. End consumption would be a nightmare though to build nearly as aggressive as that toon, so maybe not.

I imagine normal stuff still tries to run away from you even through the taunt of PA? I know spamming taunt on my bots/storm isn't enough to counter all the afraid mag that is on them from the storm powers.

Yes it is. Push it up as close as you can to 39%. RI will cover the rest against lvl 50's with 85% resistance to debuffs.

it will let you tackle a much larger scope of AV/GM's than s/l will.

If you build for ranged def it will let you take a res based epic to further increase your survivability. ie fire for a superior filler attack that is very endurance friendly, or psy for full mez protection and softcapped psy def which will let you tackle those AV's that like to use dominate a bit more easily. Or power for better endurance management if that is something you require.

In general this is something that most forum posters have been seeking. Compared to the cough demonic booster - I mean mutation booster -. People like to complain more than praise.

Additionally, even if you are against a merger there isn't much of a leg to stand on. You can either argue based on:
1. Ignorance of economics
2. Arbitrary RP of a game system in this one specific scenario while ignoring other RP invalid game systems.

You won't find a lot of people willing to step up to the plate and be stomped on in either option.

Most of the theory crafting is done on this site. You can generally find a few very knowledgeable people that are willing to talk about potential and min/maxing various combos. It isn't a hugely popular dynamic though as CoX tends to be pretty casual.

If you browse through the scrapper forum you'll see that group is pretty dedicated to the optimization mindset. They are very welcoming of other melee AT's as well (ie if you want to tweak a brute, they'll happily help). If you are looking to discuss min/maxing of debuffers though, you should generally stick to that AT's forum as debuffs tend to really muddy the waters by adding a lot of complexities.

To be honest though a lot of optimization and theory crafting around here is done basement lab style where you tweak something as far as you personally can before you release it to the general public for further analysis. It can take a bit to get used to, but at the same time can be pretty satisfying.

Anyway, have fun on your dark/dark.

Ya I know, which pretty clearly indicates that the rogue/vig status is the most useful as it has the least restrictions and the most content accessible.

They talked about rewards for staying loyal, it makes me wonder what they are to make up for losing access to an entire game world now that all the other negatives of being between states and crossing over fully have been eliminated.

This is a great change and I applaud War Witch (or whoever pulled the trigger on it). It just seemed like they were using some of the inconveniences to transitioning as actual content during the process. By removing it it sort of seems like they will need to shore up the difference with solid "loyalty" rewards. Which may or may not be in place already.

I'd like a cold MM for sure, but MM's already have traps. Traps is way more of an easy-mode than cold.

If trollers ever get traps then ill/traps (with similar investment to the toon posted here) will do everything this toon does to single targets faster and easier. And it will go through entire spawns much faster and easier (hello waltzing in and toebombing with 100% ease as it doesn't drop your invis and you have taunting pets keeping their attention).

Just being able to immob AV's all the time will drastically increase the damage of illusion and greatly reduce your risk during the time that PA loses agro during resummoning.

Not to mention while leveling up having access to both of the ultimate alpha absorbers (PA and seekers).

I place ill/cold among the top toons in the game when you factor in damage, survivability, and ability to tackle content. Ill/traps would exceed it in almost every way. I ported traps to trollers in my Mids. It is crazy.

Hopefully MM's do get cold, but I'm more excited about trollers getting traps.