IronYeti

I am skeptical of your criticism of the combination. Illusion/Sonic seems perfectly fine to me. Sonic shields are useful for Phantasm, even before Sonic Repulsion. Sonic debuffs are quite useful for effectively buffing the damage output of the otherwise unbuffable Phantom Army. Sonic Cage could be used to fill in for Illusion's lack of direct control.

And I haven't had any trouble with Phantasm's Knockback. Especially for keeping things in Liquefy... though honestly, by the time I got to Liquefy, I was a bit confused as to why I'd need it.

Superior is comparativer, but Extreme is superlativest.

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People should be spayed and neutered for using stone cages when in remotely tight quarters (anything with a roof).


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How do you spay and neuter one person?!? The horror!

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Apersonwithpoorreadingcomprehensionskillssayswhat?





(Your interpretation of "people should be ..." as "each person should be ..." is actually not unreasonable... I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to comment on apparent irony.)

My question, Zombie_Man, is do you bother to extinguish your cat before you put him out?

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Then again, I roll up controllers *to* control. (Part of why Ill just irritates me despite so many people loving it.)

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Mez effects are not the only way of controlling things.

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Actually, don't forget that resistance debuffs effectively 'buff' themselves.

So using Shriek 4 times with Enervating Field running doesn't yield a blank 110% buff, each debuff effectively separately multiplies your damage : 1.3 (EF) * 1.2 * 1.2 * 1.2 - which comes out to about 124% damage increase rather than 110%.

Unresistible Resist Debuffs Buff Resistible Resist Debuffs.

Hoo-ah for Rad/Sonic.

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This is not my understanding of how resistance debuffs work. As I understand it, the effective debuff resistance is (sum of individual debuffs) x (100% - resistance), where "resistance" there is after buffs but before debuffs.

So a target with 0% resistance and the debuffs described above, one 30% and three 20%, would have a total resistance of 0% - (90% x (100% - 0%)) = -90%. The attacker would get +90% damage.

A target with 80% resistance would feel significantly less effect from the debuffs. They would have a total resistance of 80% - (90% x (100% - 80%)) = 80% - (90% x 20%) = 80% - 18% = 62%. The attacker would get -62% damage instead of -80% damage; an effective +18%.

There is some multiplication going on, but not of one debuff by another.

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How do you complement a well played Trick Arrow Defender?

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So far my MA/SS scrapper is proving to be a good complement to his TA/A counterpart.

I heard if you auto-sidekick too much, you'll go blind.

Lewis -- by that argument, though, all stone (armor, melee, or control) powers would need to be changed. None of them have precise geometric shapes; they are all somewhat haphazard and "blobby". The mallet is not alone in that regard.

Yeah, comic book heroes don't beg for their favorite food during combat, right?

It seems to me that Wormhole first reduces the chance of enemies shooting back. But I have never taken a Gravity controller far enough to get Wormhole (I wish there were any decent* area control powers in the set before 26), so I am not intimately familiar with the power ranges, timings, etc.

* By "decent" I mean frequent (so not GDF) controls that prevent incoming attacks (so not CF) and allow outgoing attacks (so not DS).

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Sonic repulsion can be placed on your phantasm to make him sturdier.

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I have a level 50 Illusion/Sonic and I don't know how I never thought of this. I don't know that my current build has room for Sonic Repulsion, or how well I could handle the endurance cost, but it seems like a useful trick.

Edit: On second thought, backing out of tired, dead horse of an argument.

lolgramm[u]ur[u]

Some people really need to get over their costume-vanity. It's not just "their HP and debt", if they're contributing to the rest of the team. Not accepting a powerful buff means they're not able to contribute as much in combat. A buff is a buff. Take it. If it looks bad, complain to the devs, not the other characters. Teaming with other people is not a fashion show... everyone needs to make an effort to actually win.

After implementing all of the enhancement info, they had some letters left over. The decided to use some of them up by adding in this extra line. This pays off in the long run -- you know how large organization funding goes, if you don't use up your letters this year, you won't get funded as many next year. So when they have new stories and new details and new powers whose sentences run all the way to the period, and don't run out of letters, you can thank them for this quirky little detail.

(TL;DR version: dunno.)

Circular is a shape in two dimensions. Round is just a description. In fact, the first entry in Wikipedia's disambiguation page for "Round" is "the shape of a circle or sphere". So it works in multiple dimensions.

This has been your daily pettifoggery. Now back to the forum's quotidian remonstrations and blandishments.

What's wrong with orb and spherical? Round means the same thing as both of them. Your question just struck me as odd.

(Besides, an egg is round, but not spherical. So they don't actually mean quite the same thing.)

Heh. Snowstorm was worse before the bugfix, but better before the bug.

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Local Man: some of your endurance costs for toggles are inaccurate. This is a common mistake when reading City of Data: the endurance cost listed for toggles is per tick, not per second. You have to divide by the "Activate Period" to get the per-second cost.

For instance, Superior Invisibility has an endurance cost of 0.52 per tick and an activation period of 0.5 seconds. That means 0.52 / 0.5 = 1.04 endurance per second. The same numbers happen to apply to Enervating Field. I have not checked these powers in particular, but whenever I have compared the in-game power details (which are listed per second) to City of Data, they have always corresponded to this formula.

In some cases, you may want to check that your recommendations for slotting and endurance management correspond to the accurate numbers. I know I had to seriously modify my Ice/Storm slotting after I discovered this little "gotcha". For instance, you currently recommend slotting Enervating Field with 2 End Cost reducers; I would go 3. Even that third one is giving more than 0.1 end/sec, which isn't bad at all for a single slot (and quite helpful if you're going to be running a toggle that costs over 0.52 end/sec even after full slotting).

I am glad to see you got Choking Cloud right, though. The five-second activation period makes that one look like 4.16 endurance per second, which is just tragic.

Perhaps make a normal head, then throw it in a rock tumbler for a while?

Depends on whether you can afford a recurring-character lawyer or not. They get to appear on screen twice, and thus you can hold out for the second plea deal. If all you get is an extra, you'd better take the first offer.

Here is where Jack McCoy would explain that your opinion crossed the line and became an action when you exhorted your fellow players to brutally gun down Fire/Kins. Of course, this is approximately 30-40 minutes (plus ads) after Lennie Briscoe finds the corpse, tentatively identified as one "Leeroy Fire/Kin", and makes an inappropriate pun about him being "fired" or notifying his next of "kin".

*DUN DUN*

Storm can be very team friendly. It takes one of two things -- skill, or Fire Cages (or any of the other frequent, area -KB powers). A Fire/Storm is a damage monster, good solo, good teamed. Same for Plant/Storm as I understand it (my Fire/Storm is 33, my Plant/Storm only 9 or so).

Meanwhile, Kinetics does not have to be played as a buff-heavy set. Speed Boost does not take that long to apply, and only the most petulant teammates should be whining as long as you keep it up most of the time. There's no need to worry about the occasional lapse, in my opinion. Other than that and ID, you have Transfusion (which can heal you), Siphon Power (which debuffs the enemies, and buffs you), Siphon Speed (buff, and again buff you), IR (free travel power), Transference (free Stamina substitute), and Fulcrum Shift (HUGE buff for you and your pets). So there's plenty of selfish powers here.

I have never played TA very far, but its area debuffs should be quite useful both solo and teamed. Not sure why -def, -res, -dmg, -speed, -rech, sleep, hold, knockdown, and damage wouldn't be worthwhile.

I'm not really sure what your expectations on a controller are. You're going to have lots of control. If you're aiming for something else, why are you choosing this archetype? If you are aiming for control, pick something with lots of control (Earth or Mind primaries are good for this; Storm, TA, and Rad secondaries also good for it) and go to town. Until the high levels with optimized builds ({Fire,Plant}/{Kin,Rad,Storm}), controllers are not high-damage soloists; most never get to that point. It's not a blaster or a tanker. If you want a blaster or a tanker, go play one. (Edit: The "or a tanker" is probably confusing here... I didn't mean that tankers have high damage, but rather to add in the point that controllers do not have safety in the same way that tankers do. Ignore that point if it is unclear, I seem to have been babbling.)

That's not meant as a "get out of our AT" comment. I just want to clarify -- I'm trying to provide a reality check, as you seem unfamiliar with controllers and expecting them to play a certain way that they are not. If I've misread, please disregard the relevant parts of my post.

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"Taunt aura"? Hot Feet is supposed to be your primary damage source (that and Imps, once you get them). It's a damage aura. Your other powers are controls, so of course they're not going to be churning out the damage. They're busy churning out the control. Drop Fire Cages just often enough to keep up Containment, and rock those Hot Feet. That's your AoE damage output. At 32 you get Imps to add some single-target damage, and 38 Fulcrum Shift to turn mediocre controller damage into insane capped damage.

I'm not sure what you were really expecting from the only hero archetype that doesn't have a powerset based on damage.