Frosticus

Probably in reference to the huge tohit buff of rage allowing a person to skimp on acc. Which seemed pretty clear that New Dawn was talking about to me. This is really true if you start adding in some set bonuses that provide acc. It allows you to go proc crazy or end red crazy compared to most other sets.

KO blow also has a 1.2x acc modifier.

Get a lot of recharge so you have soul drain up as often as possible.

If you have enough recharge to run:
aimed>fistful>blazing then you should do so

For aoe use whatever one is up with priority given to RoA and Fistful.

Do you really need this explained to you? You always struck me as someone with fairly sizable game knowledge. What happened to it?

PA is a large part of the control matrix of Illusion. Would you still play fire control if Flashfire had a locked recharge?

It's an irrelevant question because even though I think Castle makes some nonsensical decisions he wouldn't make that decision.

Illusion is designed and balanced around SO's. Not every controller has a secondary that has ways of "softening up mobs". I can assure you that Illusion is a strong enough primary to solo most content on its own. It will be no different for a dominator in that regard.
I'm sure you are trying to make a point here, but it just isn't coming across. Not every power in every set has to work harmoniously. How well do grav powers work with dimension shift? How's the knockdown of earthquake work when I cast stone cages on top? Redundancy and/or conflict of powers certainly isn't unique to Illusion and it isn't even much of an issue for the set compared some others.
You DO have other things that will stop groups from attacking the dom. Confuse, PA, Phantasm+decoy, reduced threat modifier, flash and mitigation through foe defeat.

I get that you want more but it is unwarranted. Though if your premise is to nerf PA then ya I could see wanting and even needing more.
Anyway, Spec Terror is very good. It blows terrify out of the water and most people admit that terrify is the go to control for mind vs most spawns. Not only is spec terror capable of mezzing bosses (thus no need to be affected by domination really) it can also floor the tohit chance of a single tough entity and/or greatly reduce the tohit chance of an entire spawn.

You really don't need more control than spec terror offers in most team situations and when you do you still have confuse, PA, Phantasm+decoy, blind and flash to supplement as needed. It's not earth control in its ability to lock down 4 full spawns at once, but it doesn't need to be.
Gravity heavily relies on one aoe mez for the majority of its team mitigation. Wormhole in all its greatness is not any better than spec terror. Also last time I talked to singularity it told me it has wet dreams about phantasm+decoy and PA and what they do.

Mind also relies heavily on one aoe control: terrify. Or at least it does if we are sticking by your "non-uber recharge" parameters. Mass hyp tends to be verging on useless in most team scenarios and spec terror is considerably better than terrify in every way. If a low recharge mind dom provides enough control for a team than a low recharge illusion dom will similarly have no issues.

A great counter to bring up would be that mass hyp is awesome at preventing over agro of nearby spawns. Yep it is. You want to know what is even better at it? Group Invis. I kid you not.

I'm not sure if you are expecting doms to be the be-all-to-end-all in terms of control, but almost all non-perma doms let significant amounts of damage/agro slip through onto the team. They are designed to.


Spec Wounds will do:
86.6 damage
-33.8 damage after 10 sec delay

Comparatively:
lift/levitate
=69.7 damage
propel
=103.5 damage

It would certainly be decent provided you kill the target quickly (just like it is for trollers), but I wouldn't use the descriptor "brutal" myself and I see no reason for it requiring an sort of reduction.

Anyway, you shouldn't be so worried about how a low recharge Illusion dom will fair because they will be fine. You should be worried that a high recharge Illusion dom won't hold a candle to most other doms in terms of team control. It will however make up for that shortcoming with other strengths.

My obsolete defender archer deals more damage than your non-obsolete corruptor archer while also being a much stronger force multiplier. That is a fairly good reason to bother.

AND more recharge than a solo Kin AND more endurance than a solo Cold AND more healing than anything in the game.

If we accept that Fortunatas give some precedence to a self buffing, force-multiplying, ranged damage dealer then self buffing defenders would absolutely eclipse that established benchmark.

Cause FFGen gets you to 15%

Ya I guess so. If I ask someone how to get to the supermarket it is unlikely I require an explanation of how to operate my car and very unlikely I require the complete history of the automobile.

Granted maybe you run in to people that don't know how to drive and it is necessary. Is good that you have that information to share.

I don't personally see answering a simple question with a simple answer as "blowing someone off". I just see it as mirroring their personality style, which most people prefer. Of course if they want more information they are free to ask and it will be answered. I've just never seen anyone continue seeking that information in the specific scenario that they are trying to avoid a single person that is sending them "rude tells".

The great thing about life is that we all have different experiences. I can accept that your experiences have led you to believe that non-forum goers have the same understanding of the /hide mechanic as forum goers. I don't have to agree with it, but I can accept that you believe it.

I wasn't necessarily trying to get you to change that belief, but was more trying to understand the logical pathway you were taking to reach that conclusion.

Traps is the best set in the game at taking out big game.

Just to clarify:
PT lasts 40 seconds provided the target stays within the area. So it is pretty easy to perma and even stack a bit (though I can only think of one (even con) enemy that stacking the -regen is of value).
Acid mortar is also stackable and is reasonable easy to have 2 out most of the time. It also makes great use of the achilies proc as it rolls it every 5 seconds. If you have two out each rolling it every 5 seconds it will be on the target a lot.

Traps is fairly "set it and forget it" and as such gives you quite a bit of time to use other powers in between laying of traps. If you are a classic taunting MM this puts you in a pretty good position because you don't need to worry about your pets much and because it is so easy to have softcapped def with traps you don't need to worry about yourself much. This is different than therm or dark in most regards.

That means you can use personal attacks or lay trip mines to contribute direct damage to help take the target out faster.

So traps has:
- the best -regen by a considerable margin
- the highest persistent -res (or at least until freezing rain is fixed)
- lots of time to use personal attacks

The result is that many trap MM's view AVs like many other toons view bosses in terms of difficulty.

Well in all fairness the pets are ripped from the earth and look pretty dead including actual skulls. While not your typical "zombie" style of necromancy it could easily fall within it the classification.

Though the article is all over the map so likely just poor journalism at work heh.

Because I've never once seen anyone have that half hour conversation.

I have however seen people ask (someone frequently) in broadcast how to get rid of a spammer/annoyance and the single line response is:
/ignore

followed by:
thx

Considering that likely resolves the issue 9 times out of 10 the progression to inquiring about the /hide function as a result of receiving a "rude tell" is unlikely.

The only thing I'm assuming is that people generally won't drop an atomic bomb when a firecracker will suffice. If your typical response to a simple question is to submit an essay then that is fine. I just don't think what you consider typical is necessarily common. I could well be incorrect though and this could be a specific scenario that defies human nature.

My point is (and has been since this tangent came up) that /hide is not a special case. It is just like binds, IO's, Mid's, AE, SG's, Player events and everything else that forum goers are more likely to have a stronger working knowledge of than a non-forum goer.

My second point is that it is also largely irrelevant. The numbers for this game are low enough that even if 15% of players were actually hidden and you selected 30% for that aspect it won't really skew the results that much. It is however something to be aware of if it ever did become relevant.

Granted, but I'm still not seeing the logical path that would cause someone who is in an argument, or being harassed by someone (ie Rude Tells), to skip right to learning about hide without first learning about the options that actually directly address the problem.

I'm not saying it never happens, but rather if that is the evidence indicating casual players would know as much about hide as a forum regulars (which was the cause of this tangent) then that evidence isn't very strong.

If that is acceptable I could use similarly weak correlations to prove that casual players know as much about IO's and Mids as forum regulars. I sincerely doubt that is the case though.

It would take an entire guide to fully explain it. Which I do plan on posting one of these days...

In the mean time here's a couple places I've talked about the toon:
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=226677
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...ld#post2955641
Post with a couple of older builds. New build I'm using has 40% ranged def and perma Indom Will. Lost a bit of damage though.
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...ld#post2951309

Is your question: would you still play a set if one or more of the powers was randomly and arbitrarily changed for no reason? The only answer is - maybe.

Would I specifically still play Illusion if you massively nerfed PA so it was only as good as it currently is with SO's?...probably not unless other stuff was improved considerably.

Group invis easily fits into the same family as spirit tree. Spirit Tree was specifically designed for use on doms as plant was originally designed for them.
Spectral Terror.

If gravity and mind are acceptable team dominators from a control perspective then illusion will be fine.

Well mind and grav retained their direct attacks. Spec wounds is a better attack than any of theirs.

Group invis is a great power and fits into the spirit tree family of group buffs. While rare for dominators to have there is precedent.

Sup invis is the only odd duck, but it is actually just as redundant on illusion controllers as well. It is however a signature power of illusion, so likely isn't going anywhere.
There is no compelling reason to alter PA. Even if there is, it wasn't presented. Just stating "would you still play x" is not a compelling reason.

I agree it is probably a nit not worth picking. If our numbers were higher then it would matter more, but I believe the numbers are low enough that a variance of ~20% attributed to hidden players won't make much of a difference in the final numbers.

20% of a million is a lot of players. 20% of nothing isn't. We are on the lower end of the scale.

I'm not seeing the correlation between getting (likely rare) rude tells and wanting to hide from everyone.

Getting rude tells would lead to /ignore, /gignore, and /petition well before it would lead to learning about /hide. I

That said, I'm not dismissing that some people can and do ask about how to hide. People eventually ask about everything. I've never actually seen anyone ask about it in almost 5 years of playing and answering BC questions and I've seen a lot of weird questions asked. That of course is not indicative of people not asking about it, but rather just that I haven't seen anyone ask about the function.

Of course, but that assumes a problem that requires a solution where no problem necessarily exists.

For instance I have to get fricken spammed by tells/invites/request etc before I get the urge to disappear. Since that rarely happens I seldom feel the need to hide. So in my case I'd never identify the problem to the point where I'd feel inclined to ask 1. how do I stop invites and 2. How do I hide.

I play fallout 3 when I don't want to be around people. When I play an MMO I expect and even want fairly high levels of communication. But I'm just one person, same as the person in the example you cited.

I imagine if/when the time comes that he decides to make any definitive statements they will include reasonable variance.

I don't see him simply stating: ok exactly 23% of people use hide and exactly 9.6% of people are online during peak times. I'd much more expect a reasonable range.

The thing is that if the population numbers are low enough, even giving generous ranges for the values won't have a huge impact on the results.

True enough. Assuming you knew the question was available to ask in the first place...