Kyriani

I am fairly confident we wont see pool customization being paid for.

That said... the sorcery pool as a store bought pool makes me think that buyable pools are going to be the revenue generators to justify dev dollars being spent on pool customization.

I really can't argue with any of this. Different situations and circumstances will make one way or the other more optimal. Sometimes pets will be good sometimes not.

The only thing I can say is ask yourself what you're going to be doing for most of your play time. If you solo or small team alot the pets might be the better choice. If you spend most of your time in trials... especially trials that aren't pet friendly maybe it's not the best choice.

As a compromise you could always have one build with the pet and one without

Look I'm not going to do all the footwork for you. The forum search engine isn't exactly friendly especially when trying to find older dev posts -_-

The fact remains that there are dev posts explaining the underlying issues with power pool customization.

It's a fact that power pool powers aren't any different than primary/secondary powers in the sense that they can be customized just as easily. The fact that there are already shared animations between pool powers and AT powers just reinforces how relatively simple it would be to customize them. The fact that patron and APP pools are basically just copies of already customizable powers shows that a good chunk of the FX work is already there and done... on top of what's been done on the side for regular pool powers.

Every time a dev has chimed in about the slow turn around on getting pool customization in it has ALWAYS come back to the UI issue. If you want to be thick and cross your arms and just deny the facts I am not sure what else to tell you.

The bottom line is if the UI issue were addressed we'd have power pool/app/ppp customization. Maybe not every alternate animation/color scheme/whatever right off the bat but the ground work to add those would be there. The UI may not be the ONLY hold up but it IS THE PRIMARY hold up.

Are you really worried about dealing damage in an incarnate trial though? As a controller you're not really dishing out tons of damage. Is one extra single target blast from a pool going to make a huge difference? The patron pool still gives you an aoe (to go with your single target hold and immob for dps) and the extra damage from the pet (which will inherent things like interface procs) will probably exceed that single target blast's performance and at the same time leave you free to manage the battlefield.

Between controlling, buffing, healing and debuffing you're going to have your hands full as it is. Pets are fire and forget damage output AND they benefit from all that buffage to improve their survival. Add to that the amount of high recharge you'll have on your own and the extra you'll likely get from league buffs your pets will be available all the time even if they do happen to die.

Your pets also dont suffer from the mastermind "lower level than the caster" syndrome on the 1st and second tier pets which should help make them a bit more sturdy. You can also bolster them with all of the pet uniques from the IO's for 20% resistance and 10% defense on top of all your buffs.

One thing to remember. A mastermind without pets is generally weak. A controller without pets is generally not. Everything about a mastermind revolvoes around its pets. As a controller any pets you might have are just extra damage typically or mez/heals in fluffy's case.

The devs have actually said this. And when you think about it what they have said makes sense. Pool powers aren't somehow magically different from the powers we currently can customize. What was done for those can and has already been done for the pools. The issue is the sheer number of power sets that would show up on the screen at once. The UI was just not designed with that in mind.

Personally I think they should simply have a horizontal slide bar at the top that lets you cycle through each pool power with the typical vertical list of each power. That way you only have one or two powersets on the screen at a time and the UI isn't cluttered.

Here's a dev quote for you:

There really isn't anything but the UI to consider. Everything else is done.

The UI is NOT in place. That's the issue.

Allow me to explain. The way the game UI treats power customization is that it will show every power you have access to. Not just what you pick... but EVERYTHING you can access. Now what happens if the game UI showed EVERY power pool and epic power pool and patron power pool you have access to. You have a big hot mess. The UI is not capable of handling all that right now. The UI needs to be redesigned with those pools in mind... and ideally, will not show those pools until you're of a level to access them (pools at 4, epics/patrons at 35).

The UI is the fundamentally issue holding it up nothing else. Power pool powers are no different than current customizable powers. There is nothing really "new" to add for customizing them.

Like I said it doesn't necessarily have to be exactly the same as the npc's... just "inspired by" or "similar to".

Having parts that are exact duplicates but generic enough for players to use (Foreshadow's hair for example) and some parts that are close but maybe not exact duplicates (Ms. Liberty's belt for example) so as to keep the signature npc's unique, can work as multiple bundles that PS can sell to us without having to start from scratch or even create fully fleshed out "sets".

That said... as paid for products... whats the harm is selling us exact duplicates of every signature costume bit? We'll be spending cash on these and what better way to entice us to spend than with the things we are taunted with by npc's daily.

I could live with this...

In fact what I'd dearly love to see is some new costume bundles (Signature Costume Bundle #1, Signature Costume Bundle #2, etc) designed around unique NPC parts. They don't necessarily have to be exact duplicates but "inspired by" and "pretty close" would be acceptable. They also don't even have to be full fledged costume sets. Just parts. Think of Ms. Liberty's belt and shoulder options, Foreshadow's hair, visor and gloves, Mynx's letter shaped belt buckle etc. Take all that and put it into a bundle... there's probably a good 4 or 5 bundles they can put together just from enemies and npcs right now never mind as new enemies/npcs are added...

EVIL EVIL MAN CRUSHING MY HOPES AND DREAMS!!!
>=O

Can you please send the devs my begging and pleading to give us the diabolique costume parts???

Here's the proof!

This is not the chest detail we are looking for?

its why i stirred it up! to hopefully force the devs to take an unintentional leak and turn it into player useable awesomesauce!

This is not the power pool we are looking for?

Yes its a "standard" accessible at lvl 4 pool insofar as it is grouped with them when I do a respec.

I have not yet leveled a new character in the beta to see if it also appears there when I actually level to 4

EDIT: During the respec process the Sorcery pool is NOT listed with the epic pools nor is selectable at any level during the respec process

I must confess I thought exactly as you do... and that's why I made this post >.> so that the devs see how wonderful it is and hopefully wont rip this awesome looking costume bit away from me ;_;

Well as a mind/ff controller my primary attack chain would consist of Mesmerize, Dominate and Levitate. My aoes would consist of Terroize (slotted for damage), and Psionic Tornado. I was considering Repulsion Bomb as another aoe but it doesn't benefit from containment so I am iffy on that one and even if I did take it the spectral interface's immobilize effect wouldn't help for that power.

But the three single target powers I listed would all be cycled relatively quickly. When fully IO'd out the recharge time for each of those 3 attacks would be 1.76s, 2.13s and 1.56s respectively. With the two aoes having 10.31s recharge time for Terrorize and 5.67s for Psionic Tornado.

I'm figuring since containment basically doubles my damage its a bigger benefit than the -res debuff from reactive, especially since I have no pets (not counting lore pets) as a Mind controller.