Kerzak

I tok a demo of Lady grey in the mission to guard her, and used a stop watch as well as a demo analyzing program to time her triangles. Still 50 up, 25 down.

The confuse animation thing: it is not specific to confuse.

I tested with sleep, fear, hold (dominate), stun....they all did the same thing.

It seems the graphic is set to last a short time, and not the full duration of the mez. It might be something like it only lasting for the base duration, and not for the enhanced portion. For the most part, it is not noticeable against enemies you're fighting in missions because they usually die within the alotted time period, while Confuse tends to last much longer than the other mezzes.

I've already bugged it and sent info off to Castle about it.

Edit: After testing right now against some level 43s in Grandville, it seems that the graphic will last as long as the base duration. Against a level 43 minion, the Graphic lasted for 31 seconds, which is the correct duration for an Unenhanced Dominate from a level 50 Dominator (1.77 multiplier against -7 enemies, 17.55s base duration at 50). Not sure why it would obey the level modifiers, but ignores my hold enhancement.

Lately, I think everyone has noticed a lot of runners, but I don't think there has been a change to the AI.
What has changed? The numbers of lieuts and bosses spawning in missions.

Lieutenants in general were recently increased in overall presence on mission maps, and the lieutenants themselves are the ones I notice fleeing for their lives more than others. It isn't with all factions, but it's pretty consistent. Council lieutenants, for example, will almost always take off running when their hit points get low enough. However, this was all *before* the patch that everyone seems to be claiming changed things. Maybe gauntlet's changes are interacting with the AI in an unfavorable manner (where before gauntlet would have stopped them, and now it has a tohit roll and thus less of a chance to hit).

Like others have mentioned, Freakshow bosses are pretty consistent in running for their lives. Most lieutenents seem to do so as well. More lieutenants spawning lately equals more mobs that run, so it could seem to be an AI change, when in fact there hasn't been one, just an increase in the number of enemies that behave that way. Gauntlet suddenly having a chance to fail as opposed to always working will definitely allow for an increased amount of runners that can get away, which is a significant and noticeable difference.

Does anyone remember when Issue 3 was on Test and everyone was testing the Ancillary pools?

I know at that time, the scrapper and tanker ranged attacks were actually using their correct ranged modifier (0.5), but people found them to be wholly useless as they were basically ranged brawls with 6 second recharges. So, those attacks were changed to scale off their melee damage modifiers. I know, right now, that my Scrapper's Dark Blast and Laser Beam Eyes do not run off the ranged modifier, but have the same scale as my melee attacks, and a recharge time that is consistent with that.

Castle has posted in the past that a Defender using Dark Blast (ranged modifier of 0.65) would do more damage than a Scrapper (0.5 modifier). However, in-game, the scrapper dark blast doesn't use the ranged modifier, and the Scrapper does indeed outdamage the defender. No scrapper ranged attack actually uses the ranged modifer, and I'm pretty sure the same is the case for tankers.

Now, my question, why can't the CoV ATs get this same treatment with their Patron Pools? It seems kind of silly, we've been through this before and the lower ranged damage values were concluded to be nearly useless, I find it strange that they'd repeat this.

AFter testing around a bit with a few powers that have -recharge, I'd say it's..um...weird.

I was testing with Siphon Speed, my friend was using SHout (10 second recharge, not slotted for recharge). With 3 Recharge reductions in Siphon speed, his shout took 12 seconds to recharge (with 1 siphon on him). WIthout any recharge reductions, it took about 14 seconds to recharge (again, with 1 siphon on him).

Need more testing, I'd say. But it seems the recharge reduction enhancements are making the -rcg Less!
Also tested with Psychic shockwave but found it to be far...uh...stronger than I needed, but it seemed to have the same behavior (less recharge debuff with more recharge enhancements, although the Enhancement screen said "Recharge:" rather than "Slow:" For Shockwave).

[ QUOTE ]
_Castle_, the general agreement is that -recharge is not affected by enhancements. If that is the case, it shouldn't be showing up with a separate modifier (since it's not modified); if that isn't the case, I suspect at least the more observant players would have noticed by now.

[/ QUOTE ]

Maybe it is now in I7, then? Worth a test, I think.

Fire/storm may not be the best for damage, but I've been continually 3-shotted with my Dominator in Recluse's Victory. Always, always the same. Get Held, Enervating Field, Mental Blast. If they don't have a team mate, they may need to blast me more than once. Overall the encounter lasts roughly 10 seconds.

The problem isn't the quickness of the kill, it's the fact that it's a controller doing it. My encounters with Scrappers in RV have felt about right, I can hold them, or they can kill me. But they have to hit me more than 3 times! Tankers have always been Energy Melee, and they stun me, and I die, since I can't hold them no matter what I do, but then, they're supposed to be decent at damage and good at defense.

Controllers have low/minor damage for the most part, tacked onto controls and buffs/debuffs. In RV, all of this with 3x containment and the way too much base damage on the APP blasts leads them to be far deadlier than any other squishy.

And since Dominators are most-like Controllers, it's rather strange to see. Why is it that this other Archetype gets both longer hold durations, the ability to heal and buff themselves, as well as 3x damage? While I get an inherent I have to work to use, and very often die far sooner than it is ready, they just need to Char me and fire mental blast.

I can accept being 3-shotted by a scrapper, 2-shotted by a stalker, or an energy melee tanker even. They're melee, they do a lot of damage. But a controller? Um, no, that's a bit much, especially since we're supposedly damaging controllers and can't even do nearly as much damage as them.

I have 4 level 50 controllers. I know how they work. I really, really would not mind them completely losing containment at this point, having felt it from the other end, it's so horribly imbalanced. Although I'd settle for the APPs simply losing it. I'll really be amazed if this all goes live without any tweaks.

It really did nothing to a regen scrapper? Wow.

I remember testing it against a Robot/Traps MM who had Repair, Aid Other and Aid Self. For all three powers it cut off half of the base (Repair healed his robots by 50%, Aid Other lost 50% of the base but kept the enhancement bonus, and same with Aid Self). I'm surprised it doesn't work on Regeneration's powers.

+Perception works oddly, but I wouldn't have expected it to work on that anyway. I assumed any purely defensive (resistance, defense, healing) based buffs would be reduced, but it seems to be a case of the power description suggesting it is far better than it actually is.

A question though I have about the mez durations...was the Touch of Fear slotted for duration? If so, did weaken reduce the total enhanced duration by half, or only cut half of the base duration out?

Night Widows are broken. I'd say bugged, even.

I was running around in Nerva with my Mind/Psi Dominator (I think I was 35 at the time)...and came across a spawn with 3 Night Widows, all of which were -10 to me.

I knew they had high def, but something else is up. My single target attacks could hit them fine. Terrify could hit them fine...
But I could not touch them with Psychic Scream. That one power was totally and completely floored...by a -10 boss. I bugged it at the time, but I can't understand why it was only Psychic Scream that was so horribly floored, and not terrify also. If they had super high AoE def, I'd assume Terrify to behave similar to scream. If it was Psionic def, I'd assume the same thing.

Smoke Grenade wasn't even a factor. They didn't even need to turn on stealth. I just could NOT hit them with Psychic Scream.

As I said, I bugged it at the time, and I still don't understand it.

So does this basically mean that yes, heroes and villains will be able to change sides?

My Dominator isn't looking forward to being even less wanted on teams due to the sudden availability of Controllers at whatever level range. I love Controllers, but please, the Dominator's role so far would be completely replaced by a controller, and then some.

The accuracy penalty referred to is the same for all controller AoEs. In most cases it's a -20% penalty. Every controller AoE has this penalty to accuracy, the difference I believe he was referrring to is the fact that while other controllers will miss with it, they have pets to beat up whatever in a short amount of time, so the miss, and even havng to hit, or more just precautions and the actual need to control is not as great.

Mind only has 2 AoEs that draw aggro (Terrify and Total Domination, Terrify only having a -10% penalty). The 4 Minute recharge on Mass Confusion, in addition to its penalty to accuracy, just makes it feel fairly untasteful. I don't want a pet for Mind control either, it doesn't fit the theme of the set. And I love Mass Hypnosis too much, if they get a pet that will just break sleeps and not quite finish one enemy off before moving to the next (like every other pet out there) then it won't really help the set that much.

But then would it really be fair to make the penalty to Mind's control less than that of all other control power sets? I'm not so sure. Yes you have to rely on your ability to control more than any other controller, but does that really mean you don't deserve the same penalties as the other controllers?

But then, what will it do for you? Allow you to slot another recharge or duration in Mass Confusion rather than another accuracy? Would that really help that much with all of Mind's supposed problems? I don't think so.

THe only thing that I want would be a reduction in the recharge of Mass Confusion. A minor tweak that makes a power pop slightly more often. Levitate could probably be looked at as well, as I've never seen the value in it. Yes, if you absolutely must solo with your mind controller it could help you with damage, and sure they could up that. But dealing damage is obviously not the strong suit of any controller, that goes to pets or team mates.