Miladys_Knight

Currently Invoke Panic is: radius 15, Mag 2, end cost 22.75, 60% accuracy, duration 10.43, and recharge 60.

A level 50 set of Gimp of the Abuse plus a level 50 Nightmare End/Fear drops end cost to 12.74, duration to 20.64 seconds, and Accuracy high enough to make little difference.

Power boosted with Dom up the duration is 46.3 seconds and my level of +rech has it recharging in 17.77 seconds.

I replaced Ice slick in my Build because Sleet does KD, (as does most of my secondary) AND it gives -res. Having both of them was redundant.

A Terrorized mob that flops doesn't get to make his attack during his window of opportunity because he is affected by KD.

I24 solving these problems for Invoke Panic: Reduced end cost, higher accuracy, larger radius, mag3. Means that it may switch from being a nice shore up to Ice/ to a no brainer for any melee focused (perma) Dom.

I'll probably add it to my Elec/Psi. Having it go up to Mag 3 means that I don't have to have power boost to stack it and keep Bosses terrorized.

When I24 comes out Ice Slick + Invoke Panic may be better mitigation than Ice Slick + AA. Especially since Invoke Panic will cost far less end to use AND it benefits from Domination while AA does not.

It only works for Doms though. Domination + Power boost gives it the duration and mag needed to make it effective. Outside Dom and power Boost it deserves its maligned fate.

I think I know what it is too. DarkCurrent's ideas are good but I found a way to get the missing mitigation that I needed. Much earlier than incarnates.

My Dom is an Ice/Earth/Ice permadom.

What did I change about my build? I dropped Ice Slick, I dropped Shiver, and I dropped the medicine pool. I picked up Frostbite, power boost, and the presence pool.

As you may remember from my previous discussions I use Flash Freeze as an every spawn control. To prevent an Alpha, adding enough range to get to 80+ to the nearest target, is enough to stop the Alpha provided Domination is up (this is because it will one shot sleep a boss. If the boss isn't slept the rest of the spawn chain aggros immediately).

After Flash Freeze I move into melee range, using Block of Ice and Seismic Smash on any unslept targets on the way. When I am in the center of the spawn I use power boost and Invoke Panic. The time this takes allows the confuse in AA to take hold.

I follow up with, believe it or not, Frostbite. I discovered that the problem with AA is the fear in it. The mobs will move to the edge of the radius and stand just outside it, plinking you to death with ranged attacks while you are gobbling down end to run AA and getting no benefit from it. It actually scatters the spawn albeit very very slowly.

I slotted Frostbite for immobilize duration. With Dom up and the remnants of Power Boost it lasts a long long time but only 12 seconds of it comes with KB protection for the mobs.

I then follow up with Sleet and the mobs will begin flopping while immobilized, confused, and terrorized.

Glacier is usually up every others spawn so no worries there.

Those changes let me switch from struggling on +1/x4 to low risk on +3/x6. I went with Alpha Cardiac Radial Paragon as that not only solves the endurance issue it increases the terrorize and sleep durations. Adding in the Contagious Confusion proc let me bump to +3/x8. All of that lets me select other useful options for all the rest of my incarnate powers.

The change that needs to be made is that the fear in AA needs to be converted to a mag 3 terrorize. The mobs stay in the radius of AA that way and they are affected by layered controls.

It kind of depends on your theme. If you are doing a Nether world type character Dark/Ice is nice. The slow and -rech from ice stacks nicely with the -to hit from Dark. The Ice Epic is also very nice if the armor isn't a theme breaker for you.

If you are more interested in a "Fey of the Unseelie court" type character /Thorns would be very good.

Why? According to Arcanaville's analysis only the 2 bosses will be left from standard spawns. The scrapper on the team can take 2 steps and finish them off.

The question is did they make them fun enough. The answer for me is not fun enough that it vies for space in my build. Range 80 tier 3 > part time insta-snipe.

I don't yet know if my tactics will work with the I24 version. I have not yet tested it to see. The defiance buffing examples I have been giving are strictly I23.

You've missed my point. The boss has taken enough damage from the attacks targeted on them while I'm defiance buffing that the nuke finishes them and the spawn. It's certainly not meaningless and is a tactic that I have been using since shortly after D2.0 was put into place.

For my Energy/Energy/Force blaster as an example, vs a single boss spawn the single boss has taken ~2000 damage before the nuke without procs. In a Multi boss spawn, one boss takes about ~1100 damage and the rest take ~500 excluding procs before the nuke.

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...93#post4281893

By themselves, none of them that's why the end crash was too high a price.

I guess I should have mentioned that I defiance buff my nuke before popping it.

In a single boss spawn the boss is the target of my pre-nuke single target attacks. In a multi-Boss spawn I'll thrown in AoEs while defiance buffing. When the nuke goes off there's usually nothing left (barring targets missed completely by the nuke). Any bosses that have a shred of health left have their run AI fully engaged.

In a backwards type way, yes I do. The end crash was supposed to be the cost for damage that could wipe a spawn... except blizzard was the only nuke that could consistently achieve that.

That is what a nuke is to me. It wipes the board of anything that is a boss and lower and the cost is that it wipes out your end bar for 20 seconds. The gamble should have always been the 5% of stuff you always miss.

The change just gives us (in most cases) a really strong PBAoE. I'll miss my NUKE!!!! the same way I miss defiance 1.0 now that we have defense set bonuses.

Depends on the situation

Some situational stuff is just too situational. Old stalkers and old domination are 2 prime examples.

The changes to grav control are border case.

For me, I greet the snipe change as a transparent issue, I have snipe on exactly 2 characters (out of nearly 100). The Archer that has it uses it to pick off runners. My Empath has it to hold a Sting of the Manticore set and to shoot Hami once during a Hami raid.

I don't see this change to snipes affecting my powers choices on ANY of my characters that don't all ready have it as the change doesn't bring the power up to the minimum level of utility that I'm looking for in a power selection.

I may eventually build a defender that takes advantage of it but I highly doubt it.

I can give a metaphor that is a pretty good example:

The 900 pound man that has lost 100 pounds and now weighs 800 pounds. Yes, he has come a long way and made a huge change, but he is still grossly obese and will remain so until he's lost another 550 pounds.

The grav control and snipe changes are 100 pounds off of a 900 pound man.

Sure, as soon as you get over the fact that they do. Arbiter Hawk has as much as said so. He just wants to do it by changing the environment rather than changing the blaster. That just seems like a time consuming brute force approach to me.

Depends on how you look at it. If, for example Nova were changed so that it did 1 point of damage, was given 100 mag KB, and crashed your endurance for 5 minutes it wouldn't "technically" violate the cottage rule because it still does damage, KB and an End crash, so it still has all its previous functions. (and there would still be forumites defending the change. "just use blue pills for 5 minutes", or "always team with a kinetics user.")

It would certainly violate the "spirit" of the cottage rule since it would completely change the end results of the power within the frame of the game environment.

For me its similar to the Total focus change that took that from being a boss tool, to a high damage power with too long an animation.

The change will completely change the play style of most of my blasters, some of which I have had for a long time. Those who depended on the spawn wiping damage and had endurance recovery tools will be negatively affected. Those that skipped the nuke and can now take it will be positively affected.

This is why I'm in a "meh" mood about the change. It homogenizes the play styles of a good chunk of my blasters.

Over all its probably a good change, after any required tweaks, but I would still prefer more options within my power sets the same as we have always been given for our costumes.

If the devs make a change it's not random by definition.

Because changing things, by violating the cottage rule, and potentially ruining peoples character concept, lets us sell more new shineys to the masses?

Taking control of players characters by changing the powers is no different than taking control of the player's characters by proliferating mez without providing a mez avoidance solution.

Yep wouldn't be the first time either *cough* I13 PvP *cough*.

I'll also point out that the extra coding they did with Epic Pool powers when they violated the cottage rule there was the RIGHT thing to do.

Clearly you have never played Bejeweled not watched anyone that does like it play it.

The point being made here is that this is a game and the goal is to have fun. Taking slow snipe and using slow snipe is fun (if you didn't think so you wouldn't have taken snipe in the first place). Getting perma fast snipe would be fun. That in between stage would be frustrating as all get out.

I kind of compare it to food. Milk is good. Cheese is good. That in the middle, rotting, disgusting looking, curdling stage? That, I'll take a pass on, thanksverymuch.

Build up beats TD all hollow for every thing with the possible exception of PvP. If I could switch TD out for build up I'd all ready be respecing.

As a blaster the inspiration tray is ALL READY a part of my attack chain.

Virtually no one that I play with uses inspirations on a blaster in that way. Yellows have only 3 purposes in the game, Mog'd PPs, CoT ghosts, and Night Widows.

There are only 3 insps I carry as a blaster: Reds, purples, and break frees. EVERYTHING else gets converted into: reds, purples, and break frees.

Using yellows to convert snipe to insta-snipe is a waste of resources

No different than it is now. You can for all intents and purposes replace smoke grenade and cloaking device with a single IO plus Super Speed. I usually skip CD simply because it doesn't open up phase shift.

TD can be replicated with a Kismet and a single proc in Aim.

Half the powers in devices can be successfully substituted with single IOs. Most of the remaining powers are tedious and non-team friendly to use. The only "really good" power in devices is caltrops.

I'm sorry, but trying to say that perma fast snipe is a fix for device blasters (at the same time that it is practically free for defenders and corruptors but for no other blasters) is like saying that a little spackle fixes the San Andreas Fault.

I solo and I use them. What I'm not doing is wasting slots in them to increase the to hit buff in them Just so I can take ANOTHER attack that I don't need, that is only going to be non-gimp IF I slot up and use Aim and Build up for a purpose that I only use aim and build up for when fighting Mog'd Paragon Protectors.

Without fast snipe the snipe power is just as situational (and just as gimp) as ever. With fast snipe it's only marginally better than a range 80 tier 3. Range 80 tier 3 costs nothing you don't all ready have to achieve. Not the case with fast snipe.

Ergo - perma fast snipe > tier 3 > partial fast snipe > standard snipe.

Ie: without perma its not better than the tier 3 which means snipe won't be in the build which means 0 benefit from the change.