Laevateinn
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Posts
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Joined
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Quote:For good damage and control, look no further than Plant. It does ridiculous amounts of aoe damage and is practically impossible to run out of mezzes since it has 60s on its every-spawn hard control (instead of the standard 90s). You'll want to take one of the APPs with good single-target blasts, i.e. ice or fire, since Plant's ST hold and immob have really bad DPA.Originally Posted by BL00DBATH
I am very familiar with how the powers of each set function. I think what I am trying to get from you guys is slotting ideas and what has the most potential, outside of fire control, to do good damage and control. I have always kind of hated the lack of aoe immob from mind and ill. Would all the slows in time alleviate that? -
People can chose to play or not play with anyone for whatever reason they like. You have no more right to tell people how to form their teams than they have to tell you how to play your character.
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Quote:I used to worry about this, but after many tests vs. Marauder in Lambda, I consistently got reactive ticks off him, which was pretty surprising since some characters ought to be able to hit the stack limit all on their own. My conclusion is either the combat window is misleading, or that hitting the stack limit is less of an issue than it's made out to be due to the short DoT duration or some other cause.Originally Posted by Zombie Man
Because there is a limit on how much Reactive can stack, then when you're on a team or league, you'll want to be able swap out Reactive for either Cognitive, Degenerative, Spectral, or Preemptive.
If you have evidence (not theorycrafting) showing otherwise, I'd like to see it. Even then, unless the discrepancy is significant, I'll probably stick with reactive, which is still the best overall. -
As a minmaxer, I went reactive on everyone. I play this game for fun, and the more powerful my characters are the more fun they become. That said...
I'm also a very strict concept player so I had to explain why everyone's attacks were setting people on fire. For some characters, e.g. my ice/cold corr, this took more thought than usual. The character's ice blasts are actually solidified air, so eventually I decided that at level 50, she'd gained the ability to selectively crystalize oxygen from the air rather than a mixture of all gases. The shards of ultra-pure oxygen she flings are a powerful chemical oxidant and, combined with the heat from the hypervelocity impact, sets things on fire. -
Quote:Luckily, I don't have to make this choice. In CoH, you can get both. I do so on all my characters.Originally Posted by Trilby
So, here is the question. If you had to pick between style and damage, and only 1 of those 2 choices, what would you pick?
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Chronoshift is 3 parts, a big heal with a smaller heal over time (not regen, so -heal affects it) for 30 seconds, a +end and a recovery buff for 30 seconds, and 50% rech for 90 seconds. Only the last is permable. On a budget build you can use perma-Chronoshift to help perma PA at the cost of 1 more power to monitor, or you can design to perma PA without it so that you can use it as a mini-Rebirth.
My ill/time is /primal, and */time/primal is one of few controller combos that has top-tier survivability without taking fighting pool since the powerboosted farsight is already just a hair from softcap. If you go earth you'll have more melee damage and control but earth only gives S/L def, and there are vast amounts of energy damage in trials. -
Quote:The game's strange way of telling you this is, when you try to queue, you will get an error message in the channel 'Looking For Group'. I've gotten error messages before from it saying X player needs to talk to their TF contact before the league can launch.Originally Posted by Wing_Leader
This also avoids the annoying problem of inviting non-VIP 50s to the league and not being able to queue up for the trial. There really needs to be a way for league leaders to isolate which toons do not meet the necessary requirements for play before sending invites.
The seemingly unrelated channel name and the fact that it's not added to any tab by default make it very easily missed. -
Quote:Instead of propel, consider taking Lift instead, which has:Originally Posted by Davpa_CoX
Instead of Hasten I took Propel. So far, it has worked out nicely. I don't find the recharge time without Hasten is terrible at all, so I think it is a good compromise.
- Higher DPA (about 25% better)
- Higher damage due to proccing DoT interfaces more often and corpseblasting less
- KU which is more useful than KB
- -Fly in case you need it
Propel's long animation, nearly 3.7 seconds long, is bad on defense-based characters who need to react quickly when the lucky hits start coming in. It's deadly (to you, not enemies) in trials where you have to move quickly to avoid autohit unresistables.
I don't think dropping haste is a good idea (it means that your chronoshift is no longer permanent, and the overall drop in recharge bigger than what Mids' shows you), but it's hard to find something else to drop that would give enough slots to properly slot Lift. Probably Poison Ray, but even that's pretty useful for the single-target -Res on AVs.
TJ is really a -ToHit -Dmg aura, and the slow is just a minor side effect.Quote:Originally Posted by magikwand
- consider dropping Time's Juncture. I know this is a handy power. It might even fit your theme. However, it is thirsty and redundant in my eyes. Time is chock full of slows. I would rather see you keep Time Distortion Field and drop Juncture, as it is a better method of control in my eyes. -
Re: PuG trial failure, being good yourself and knowing what to do makes a big difference. If your build can solo the Lambda warehouse/lab, it really doesn't matter if the rest of the team is falling to pieces. One skilled, well-prepared player can stop the Avatar/warwalker from wiping leagues on Underground, or singlehandedly make the Keyes reactor phase a cakewalk by being fast with powercells. Hard for a fresh 50 to do, yes, but you'll be +3 in no time at all so you are only at the mercy of the league's competency for a handful of runs.
On BAF some builds can solo doors on their own. I'll usually ignore the league leader's instructions to go to chokepoint, and camp the NE or SW door instead. By doing this, the chokepoint only has to watch for enemies coming from one direction, which increases their efficiency; NE door has the extra advantage that any runners from the choke will pass very close by you. -
Fire Control. My first controller and second character ever, made way back in 2008, was a Mind/Emp, since back then the pervading forum logic was that Mind/Emp was a "good" support character. It had feeble damage and negligible ability to support the team offensively, but back then I thought this was normal for a controller.
I played her for 3 years, rerolling her once to change the name. Along the way I kept seeing evidence that Mind wasn't all it's cracked up to be: the fire/kin who could destroy team-sized spawns in complete safety faster than fireblasters could, the plant/storm who rolled over and crushed everything beneath debuffs and confuses like a tank, and the illusionists who could control anything in the game except for Hami. But I stayed the course, trying to be content with my supposedly strong control ability. Her build became the most expensive one I ever played, with 4 full panacea sets and purples to crank recharge so high I could fort 7 people at once and sling a hard mez every spawn.
It wasn't until I played a fire controller and realized that she produced as many staggering, helpless enemies at level 20 as my Mind controller ever could that I gave up in disgust. She eventually got rerolled as Ill/Time when freedom was released, and would go on to become a vastly more formidable character with a much improved concept to boot - but I'll always remember Fire control as the powerset that showed me the true power of the controller AT. -
I don't say gratz for something as mundane as levelling, although I'll thank people who do so to me out of politeness.
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My suggestion for an SO-only controller is anything you like the graphics of. Powerhouse sets have the potential to blow all other controller primaries out of the water when well-built and played, but SOs do not realize any of that potential. Illusion takes high global recharge to be strong, for example.
I'd pick whichever primary you enjoy, and one of the generalist buffdebuff sets (Rad and Storm are notable since they mature early, Time/Kin/Cold are good as well if you can stand waiting till the thirties to be awesome). -
It's just hard to get good resist on Blasters, though. Tough + APP would be scarcely 45% S/L res. (Some defenders can get close to 70%.)
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Quote:Back before the softcap era, around i13 or so, I frequently read posts of support squishies withholding buffs (usually debuffers who were snubbed for not being healers) and tankers not using taunt (usually due to scrapper envy). Of course, such posts vanished with the increasing level of AT homogenization. Forumites aren't representative of the playerbase in general, and correlation does not imply causation - but it's an interesting coincidence.Originally Posted by Winterminal
...Really? That's ridiculous, and players like that should be ignored. I suggest trying a lower population server, I've never met a player that will deliberately withhold buffs simply to prove their worth.
Comic books are fictional narratives and have different requirements from a computer game. In a comic book it's fine for characters to be completely reliant on each other and play up the dynamic between their personalities. Try that in an MMO populated by random strangers, and the likely result is frustration and wasted time. The game should be balanced around the reality that being reliant on other characters, inevitably, means putting your fun at their mercy, not being able to enjoy your characters at your own pace, and being effective in a smaller number of situations.Quote:Not every superhero is Superman. True enough, Superman is a very popular title amongst comic book fans, and one of the best known superheroes amongst general population. For those who want to build heroes on-par with Superman (heroes that can do it all), the Devs have given us Ancillary Power Pools, IO sets with stat boosting bonuses, and the Incarnate System.
Take the X-Men and the Fantastic Four for a different example, another two very popular and well-known comic book titles. Here are two teams who are enthralling to read about because there is no one all-powerful person among them. You don't see The Thing or Wolverine shooting much, and you don't see Cyclops being the first one to jump into a horde of incoming enemies. Sure, Cyclops has some hand-to-hand combat skills, but he is just as squishy as any human while up close. Yet he is still an interesting and popular character.
There's nothing wrong with either version. But in the grand scheme of the wide comic book universes, the iconic superheroes who are known for "doing it all" are the minority. So a game based in a superhero universe has to be balanced around the fact that the majority of the characters likely will not be able to "do it all," and simply provide the tools/achievable levels of power for those who do wish to do it all.
Personally, I always felt that forced specialization was more of an MMO trope (specifically a D&D trope) than a superhero one. It's really MMOs, with their requirement to enforce forced teaming, that have inflicted crippling overspecialization on characters. Note that I have nothing against specialists who are only good at one thing. I enjoy playing with weak characters and being the Supergirl to their Cyclops. However, the option to do both needs to be more widely available, not just at 50.
Teamwork means combining your efforts to accomplish a task. You can work as a team even for tasks that you can do alone, since teams (usually) do things faster and more efficiently than solo characters; it's not in any way related to being reliant on others. I chose to team for the social experience of playing with others, rather than any mechanical benefit.Quote:"Teamwork" implies working as a team, relying on others for certain tasks while you hold up your end. Ignoring the fact that Fire/Kin controllers are considered to be a strong outlier amongst controllers... I bet your Fire/Kin wasn't always able to do all of that. I said in an earlier post: Yes, by level 50 and beyond, with all the tools available there, there will definitely be archetype homogenization. I believe the concern here is homogenization and/or lessening of significance of certain archetypes in the 1-50 game.
I do not wish to come off as condescending. Indeed, your post represents the desires of many players. I myself have a couple "do it all" iconic heroes. But the majority of my characters are not, and I think that holds true for much of the player base, around which the game has to be balanced. -
Quote:Since the IO age, I've enjoyed leading brutes around the Lambda warehouse, going toe-to-toe with multiple AVs at once, charging into a hail of bullets and supporting my team by filling multiple roles (tank, damage, support, control) depending on what they need - on controllers, defenders and corruptors. Characters that might once have been low-damage sidekicks can now enjoy the game in a superheroic, comic-booky way.Originally Posted by Vauluur
I love the benefits of IOs as much as the next guy, and I use them on all my characters. However, they sure do make a lot of powers and ATs feel broken or obsolete.
So I don't feel that my characters are broken or obsolete. However, people who lack the ability to design powerful characters will feel otherwise. -
Grav is weak, but it's helped by the fact that you picked a top-tier controller secondary to go with it.
Leadership is very hard to pass up, especially on controllers who get good mods for it. Unless it's completely critical to your concept, I would drop CJ instead for leadership. It eats more end (and you probably won't be able to run it without cardiac), but benefits your teammates and gives more defense. TP foe and dimension shift are unreliable, have very limited uses, and should not be needed anyway with softcapped defense.
As a pro-concept player I can see the draw of wanting to let concept dictate all build decisions. In my experience, however, it's better to let minmaxing take priority and then try to come up with IC justifications for the powergaming. It trains the mind to be creative and unconventional, and can lead you to better, more interesting ideas.
looking at the Mids' build I see the following issues.
- Grav distortion should be slotted like a blast, not a hold (the base hold time is plenty). Slot 5 decimations + apoc proc, if you can afford it.
- Temporal mending should be slotted 5 doctored wounds.
- Crushing field should be frankenslotted for acc, endredux, and damage and have 2-4 damage procs in it. It triggers interface DoT procs and is your main source of AoE damage.
- The slots in TP foe add no useful bonuses. Remove them.
- Wormhole is underslotted. It needs to be ED-capped on recharge.
- Slowed response is underslotted. It needs to be ED-capped on recharge.
- You can skimp on recharge in Farsight since it is very easy to make permanent. The +Per proc does nothing useful unless you want to PvP. Farsight itself already gives a huge perception bonus.
- Chronoshift is overslotted for endmod. You don't need that much endmod if you're using cardiac.
Try this. All attacks cap hitchance against +3 enemies, tons more damage from attacks and procs, Chronoshift is perma and slotted for heal, and better recharge on your key powers.
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I don't see why this is such a problem. AT homogenization is a good thing because characters get to be more versatile and less reliant on others. It means no more trawling the global channels for aggro management because everyone in the team has outsourced their basic survivability to someone else. It means no longer being at the mercy of support characters who deliberately withhold support just to impress on you how important they are.
The more homogenized the capabilities of ATs are, the less your fun is placed at the mercy of random internet strangers' ability to cooperate and be competent. You can enjoy your favorite characters solo or teamed, in any situation and any content. The result is more fun and less frustration.
Now everyone can take the initiative during combat and play in a superheroic, comic-booky way. There is nothing heroic about 7 people hiding behind a big guy taking potshots at the enemy. Maybe for the big guy, but not for anyone else.
Characters being good at only one "role" which fits neatly into the holy trinity of tank, support, DPS designed to enforce forced teaming is one of those great, stupid MMO concepts I never understood the reason for. Characters, especially superheroes, should be able to fill a wide number of roles simultaneously and have a range of options to support their teammates. With my fire/kin I can buff and control. If there's no tank I can soak up the alpha with massive layered defenses, if the team is low on offense I can help obliterate enemies with blaster-level damage. That's real tactics and teamwork, which will never be possible if all characters are shoehorned into roles which they must fulfill to the exclusion of everything else. -
In addition to the current changes, make AS deal a "cripple" debuff that inflicts -30% res and -200% regen that does not stack from same caster. This would give them a secondary role as hard target killers and make stalkers a viable alternative to debuffers (in the same way that tankers can partially compensate for defensive buffs).
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Quote:The problem with Gravity is it has broadly the same amount of control that Fire has (both of them have the standard ST hold, immobilizes, 90s rech aoe stun, and 4-minute rech aoe hold), minus the damage and plus some really slow animation times. When one set is a clearly better alternative to the other, as in this case, that's a balance problem.Originally Posted by Mercator
I admit I might be opening myself up for attack. But having just played through many levels of Gravity/Time, i'm having a hard time seeing what the problem with Gravity is.
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This was the last build I made for my Mind/Emp before she eventually got rerolled. It's both for teaming and soloing and keeps Fort perma on 7 players. My holy grail was perma-IW with 32.5 ranged def, although you can see I never managed it no matter how much money I threw at the build. For a cheaper build, I would lose all the defense and PvPIOs and use the slots to make up the lost recharge from not having panaceas.
Playstyle wise, Mind/Emp can solo fairly safely (if at a glacially slow pace) by using mass hypnosis/total dom/mass confuse every mob and picking off enemies one by one.
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Quote:Are you sure? Don't you think that giving fire a crashless inferno would instantly make it a much better performer (more than it currently is)?Originally Posted by DreadShinobi
lolwat? no.
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Quote:A low-level advantage is worthwhile, and I do consider this in favor of powersets that mature early e.g. Rad, versus those that mature late e.g. Kin, Cold, Time. However, this must be weighed against all other advantages and disadvantages that a set brings, against the fact that characters very quickly blow past 1-20, against the existence of exemplar builds designed to dominate low-level content, and against the fact that characters exemplaring down can fare much better than characters levelling up naturally, all of which reduce the importance of performing well at low levels. A more balanced perspective would also take into account the fact that high-level/incarnate content tends to be much more challenging, which is why a lot of minmaxing effort focuses on the 50+ game.Originally Posted by ketch
Again, you don't consider Mind's early advantages worthwhile. However, not long ago, the devs released statistics showing that the vast majority of characters created do not reach level 50.
I've already corrected your misinterpretation of what I said in my last post. Again you ignore what I clearly and unambiguously said to focus on a clumsy turn of phrase. Try not to steer the argument away from objective discussion of Mind control's deficiencies and towards character assassination.Quote:Apart from fun... in other words, setting fun a part... putting it to the side... our goal is to complete content. Let me ask, if we put fun apart, what purpose is there in completing content? Is it a goal in itself?
That's not my perspective. My perspective is that people should be given accurate information so that they can decide for themselves what they want to play. People trying to downplay weaknesses by saying that Mind has "middling" aoe damage, or hyping up strengths by saying that it can solo the Hamidon or "never take a point of damage" don't constitute this.Quote:While from your perspective, hard numbers may be a reason to play a set for many, and dare I say most, the subjective fun factor is why they play. -
Quote:This is more significant if you're playing a mind controller with very few ways to neutralize enemies (no defense, no debuffs, no resistance etc.), or if you're at low levels (which I already said). Well-built controllers aren't bothered by trailing enemies or aggroing multiple spawns at once.Originally Posted by Oedipus_Tex
IMO what makes Mind Control tick is that you can mezz things you accidentally aggro and they will forget about you. With any other set, once you tag an enemy with a mezz, when it wakes up it counts like an attack and it will come chasing after you. Mainly an issue in incarnate content when you need to haul it past lots of enemies, the new WWD arc where the goal is to grab and go etc.
That's the problem with Mind Control. It has a lot of little niche advantages that are useful in specific situations, but doesn't bring enough of the stuff that matters in every encounter (control and damage). It's a dish with too much gravy and not enough meat. -
Quote:Quite the contrary. People should play whatever they enjoy, which I've consistently said, but which people chose to ignore, since it suits their purposes more to paint me as a build nazi.Originally Posted by UberGuy
This is baloney.
By your measure no one should play anything that doesn't contribute AoE damage and kill rate. And by that metric, there are whole swaths of available powersets and even whole ATs no one should play.
Bunk.
This still doesn't change the fact that there are real differences in the capabilities of ATs and powersets. When powersets underperform, as Mind Control does, it's a balance problem and ought to be pointed out. -
Dark control might actually turn out to be another top-tier set if it gets fearsome stare, -ToHit in the attacks and a 90s aoe hard mez. Too bad for Dark affinity, though.
The only thing that strikes me is that both the stun and fearsome stare are cones, so it'll be a hassle if you have a PBAoE-focused secondary e.g. Poison.