Morganite

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  1. Morganite

    Epicness??

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Oedipus_Tex View Post
    Keep in mind that Earth and Elec Dominators are worlds apart from Controllers. They do waaaay better damage early on. Earth and Elec (and Ice) Controllers take a long time to become self sufficient. They are great for teams but soloing one is not something I recommend trying. At least prior to level 41 or so when you get an actual decent attack.
    Eh. I think my Elec controller does pretty good damage. (Although this is based on procs in the AoEs plus Rad debuffs, I think this actually does things for Elec that it doesn't do for other primaries.) Got an Elec Dom too, which is faster on small numbers of enemies, but can't handle as large a groups... yet, anyway. (Though I might consider my Elec/Earth my flashiest character, since she crushes enemies with The Power of Love. That's kind of an acquired taste though...)

    -Morgan.
  2. Personally, I'd like to see drop rates for tips increase and/or allow more tips than just "enough" to drop and/or have tip drops stick around if you do a morality mission. (Alignment tip ones anyway.) The way things are now, getting tips can be a painful process for a character without AoEs. The limit on how many can be done in a day ought to be enough, I'd think.

    On the travel time issue... Well, sometimes travelling itself does feel pretty cool. But there's also times where you get sent repeatedly back and forth between ends of Independence Port. Or between Peregrine Island and Atlas Park. Or off *anywhere* to do something that, storywise, there seems no reason it couldn't be done by phone. That gets tiresome. I'm not sure most of that is actually a soluble issue though.

    It'd also be nice to have Traps as a controller secondary, but I'm not sure I expect that to happen. Doesn't stop me from wanting to make an Elec/Traps though.
  3. So, I got curious and decided to do some testing.

    Knockdown getting turned into knockback is a known menace for my Electric controller. I tend to solo on -1 to make things easier for my relatively-anemic-even-with-procs damage, and make regular use of Jolting Chain. If I level up in a mission, green minions can start appearing, which tends to make things more dangerous as enemies will get knocked out of my controls.

    I experimented with enemies of different levels, and looked at how far they landed outside of Conductive Aura (which has radius 20). My Elec controller is level 26. The weakest thing I was capable of hitting with both an immobilize and Jolting Chain without KOing it was a level 6 LT, which I would say landed about 5 feet outside of CA. A level 24 minion (the highest level where KD will turn into KB, barring a specific vulnerability) landed about 2 feet outside. In both cases I was standing as close as possible to the enemy before firing Jolting Chain. These are, of course, rather eyeballed measurements, judged relative to the effect of Conductive Aura itself. (Which has a radius of 20.) While I'm not confident of the exact numbers, I am pretty sure of the relative distance I had to move to bring the enemy back in range of CA, and that the difference between the two is pretty small compared to the overall distance travelled.

    If this works like I was under the impression it does (effective magnitude increases based on level difference), then it suggests that the function relating magnitude to distance is something non-linear. Whatever it is, it seems like any time knockdown is turned into knockback, the distance will be much further than one probably desires.
  4. How does using Seeker Drones as your opener compare to stealthing in and using Poison Trap? (Assuming, of course, one isn't fighting something where Poison Trap is ineffective.)
  5. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Aura_Familia View Post
    I would NOT like my buffs working this way. I played buffers like this in other games and found it annoying as hell. And teams like this (stay together constantly for buffs) to be annoying.
    That isn't what he's suggesting though. OTs idea refreshes things as long as the receiver gets close to the caster sometime before the duration runs out. They don't have to stay there to keep it. (And anyone who doesn't stay somewhere you can find them wouldn't be getting buffs under the current system anyway.)

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Auroxis
    I don't find buffing tedious, it's a matter of preference of how you want to play. When I want to just blast and destroy mobs, I play my Blaster. When I want to defend my team and squeeze in blasts when possible, I play my Defender.
    What do you do when you're playing a controller?
  6. I think the big difference with the knockback in AR versus various Storm powers, or something like Torrent or Energy Torrent from the scrapper APPs is the reliability. If they hit, they do it, and plans can be made around this. For a power with 50% knockback chance, that seems harder. It's too likely to just ignore it, but not likely enough to rely on as a mitigation effect.

    For such reasons, I might have expected Elec/Energy doms to be a major case of anti-synergy, but since all the powers with a chance of knockback are single-target, it looks far more manageable.
  7. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Humility View Post
    The difference, in my opinion is one of context, judgment and situation. Every time you use footstomp, ripper or assassin strike is likely a little different. Different targets, different terrain, different team interaction. With shields there is no judgment. There is no decision. Just a matter of targeting and buffing every 4 minutes.
    This, I think, really hits it on the head.

    Yes, as others have noted, a lot of things do come down to hitting the same buttons repeatedly. The variance seems to come up in what's required for maximum performance. For the single-target buffs, this may vary with team composition, but is essentially static for the life of the team - the maximum is to have everyone who wants the buff to have it, and everyone who doesn't want it to not have it, all the time.

    On the other hand, unless you're capable of consistently defeating entire spawns in x clicks regardless of circumstances, things do get a little more complicated. When my Dark Melee/Regen scrapper fights a Master Illusionist, there's a big difference between when I fight smart and when I fight stupid, in that the latter involves trips to the hospital. My Elec/Rad controller to maintain survivability has to avoid using some parts of her AoE damage chain in order to maintain survivability. My Katana/SR scrapper... okay, that gets pretty repetitive. But even then there's at least a question of "Do I go for the bosses first, or the minions?" and if I should have gone for the minions first, I will regret not having done so.

    As for the "If you find single-target buffs tedious, why don't you play a set without?" line... What if you didn't know? I didn't team much with my /Kin controller until the late 30s. Speed Boosting the Imps (during the period where this was potentially useful) for a hard target fight was no big deal. I had no idea that trying to keep SB up on a team would drive me so crazy. So now I do, in fact, avoid the shield sets, because as noted elsewhere, I don't think twice the powers half as often would be an improvement. Not entirely due to this, but in large part. I'm wary of even doing a FF or Thermal mastermind, even though my biggest issue would not come up much in solo play.

    (My biggest issue? Not having to reapply SB every two minutes actually. More how often I'll be trying to apply it and my target will have either gone out of range, or around a corner. And once I catch up with them, the next person will have gone off. Sometimes it feels like everybody's playing "Avoid the Buff". If the actual application was less of a hassle, the duration wouldn't bother me at all.)

    -Morgan.
  8. Shouldn't CC get some accuracy too? Or does it not do regular tohit rolls?

    I do think Elec can afford to slack a little more on the endred than most sets. The amount of recovery and transferred endurance it can get when in a good-sized group is insane.

    Hold duration is, of course, a different matter.
  9. I find a couple of contradictory statements in your post. You say purples are too expensive, but you have 6 PvP IOs in your build. Unless they are much cheaper than the usual of their breed (which I doubt), the cost of those would be enough to purple out your build, and then purple out someone else's build for spice.

    Once a power has two level 50 common IOs, the gain from a third is marginal. The third recharge in AM and Hasten is questionable, and if you run both Assault and Enervating Field regularly, moving the third slot in EF to Assault will give a better return despite Assault's lower base cost.

    The damage proc in Synaptic Overload is a bad idea. Normally, this power doesn't alert enemies to your presence, which has uses. But if they're damaged, once the confuse wears off (or if they have protection), they'll aggro you.

    Choking Cloud I would suggest either frankenslotting it (which can get you similar values, plus a bit of accuracy and the proc in only 5 slots) or trying to fit another four Basilisk's Gaze in there for more recharge.

    I'd say Consume is marginal for an Elec, but if you're fighting single hard targets regularly, it might have some value. I'm not sure I wouldn't rather just make sure I was carrying some extra blues (which, for my Elec, is any blues) before going into such a mission.

    And speaking of recovery, Static Field can be pretty helpful for that. I like an EndMod in there.

    If you're only putting one slot in health, you might as well use a common IO rather than the Numina's.
  10. I suppose playstyle is a big part of it. I tend to have an aversion to shield sets, because I learned on my /Kin that if I try to keep a team Speed Boosted, I'll be ready to start flipping out by the second cycle. I don't think twice as many clicks to do, half as often, would improve my mental stability.

    What I really think would be all kinds of fun would be Elec/Traps. Except controllers don't get traps. Well, maybe someday...

    ETA: Something else I forgot to mention is that when I made my Elec/Rad, I wasn't looking for something that would go well with Elec. I was looking for something that would go well with /Rad. (Specifically, that looked like it would synergize well with Choking Cloud.) Other than Fire, because while I like my Fire character, I don't want to do it again.
  11. I would put Electric on the "good early control" list too, really. Conductive Aura and Static Field are both effective with minimal enhancement, with Static Field perma-able by level 13. Jolting chain also has some situational usefulness, though I use it much less on my Elec/Earth Dom than I do my Elec/Rad controller.
  12. The choices you're describing sound a lot like what I've done with mine. I do tips sometimes, run AE arcs where I might be facing just about anything, or just regular story arcs... So having the mez protection helps a lot. And I don't have a truly incredible amount of defense (20-30 on most, with a big spike in psi due to IW), but it cuts down quite a bit on the damage I take from the stuff Flashfire misses. With good endurance reduction slotting it isn't too bad, as long as I don't screw up on Transference too much. (Mainly due to targeting an enemy that dies before I get the recovery. Part of why it's important to use Transference before things get critical.)

    Of course, Indomitable Will is a long-recharge click, so if you want that mez protection regularly, it helps to min-max a bit...
  13. Morganite

    Mu Patron

    Ball Lightning and Power Sink don't look like they'll help that much on the -recovery front. According to City of Data, the effect only has a 30% chance of happening in the first place, and lasts for 4 seconds. Drain Psyche appears to be a much more effective tool for that job.

    -Morgan.
  14. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Local_Man View Post
    Some "soft" control can be made perma quite easily while "hard" control is temporary -- e.g. Spectral Terror vs. Flash.
    This, I think, points to one of the big advantages of Elec - it's control is incredibly sustainable. From level 13 on, with some cheap sleep set IOs in Static Field, I could go up to fairly sizable groups of even level mobs and (as long as none of them were Fortunatas) keep them controlled essentially forever. I sure couldn't do that on my Fire - Flashfire has too short a duration and too long a recharge, and once it wore off I'd be out of options. Even with my Fire at well-enhanced levels, I think my (much lower level and less-enhanced) Elec probably equals if not beats it in mitigation.

    Maybe that's not such a good comparision, with Fire generally being considerd a bit low on control? Perhaps. But Elec's non-binaryness goes a long way. If an AoE hold or stun misses, that's *it* for that power until it recharges, which is going to be a while. Static Field gets to try again in two seconds. And, if you're like me and put it at your feet, anything that misses is going to be getting regularly drained by Conductive Aura, so enemies still aren't likely to get a chance to attack. And if more enemies wander in, they just get absorbed by what I'm already doing. It's very rare that I need to think of using a "panic button" power. (Which is a good thing, because I don't have one yet.)

    Probably Elec's biggest disadvantage is the delay between my opening Static Field, and when full control is established. I don't find this to be a major issue when solo, and it's not bad on small teams either. Large teams, yeah, it's going to do a lot less. But that's about how I feel on my Fire on a large team too - minions go down so fast, it's hardly worth the effort to try to control them a lot of the time. So more of my focus ends up on keeping particular nasties out of the picture and using my secondary. Not that it'd be bad to Flashfire every spawn.... but most of the TFs I've done have been at levels where I don't have that much recharge yet.

    As for things to pair with Elec... Well. Looking at the numbers, I'm not too thrilled by Cold. A lot of it seems to be -recharge, which feels redundant with end draining - by the time they get the end to attack again, something's probably going to have recharged regardless. Rad I'm finding to work quite well so far. Elec's end recovery makes the toggles much more managle, and the toggles reduce the chance that any gaps in control will amount to anything meaningful, as well as improving damage. Trick Arrow looks like it'd do more for damage output, but maybe a bit less for mitigation. Less risk from mez though. Storm looks like it could be a lot of fun if you're good at leveraging knockback.

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by seebs
    And as I recall, elec has a particularly NICE confuse?
    I'm a level away from it yet, but it sure looks that way. If it misses, you get nothing, but I'm under the impression that if it hits (and you have enough accuracy), it essentially *will* hit everything that's standing close enough together to chain. And if I'm reading the in-game numbers correctly, it doesn't notify enemies to your presence. Combined with the quite short recharge... Well, it's not the be-all end-all of confuses, but it still sounds like a power I'll enjoy using whenever possible.
  15. The hard part might be that Hot Feet is going to cause mobs that aren't immobilized to try to get away from you, and it has a larger radius. The immobilize from Mud Pots looks like it'll help keep mobs that get in there in there, but it's getting them in there that's the problem.

    Also, WoC's ticks are 4 seconds apart, which again cuts into it's effectiveness. According to Mids, the average dps from it with 4 procs will be... less than Mud Pots with no damage slotting or procs.

    I'm not certain that makes it worthless, but I'm sure it makes it questionable.
  16. ... Huh. I could've sworn someone said you could put endmod sets in them.

    Well, there goes the only place I would have actually wanted to put that proc. (And I actually had one drop when I was playing an Elec character too. >.>; )
  17. From what I've read about procs in pets, it should work on anything they have that does endurance drain - which is to say, everything they do, I think. It's something I'm contemplating once my Elec characters get to that level. I've noticed on my Fire controller that the imps tend to go after enemies that aren't controlled. As it happens, anything that's not controlled would be what I'd be happiest to see get some stuns applied to it. Especially since I've heard about Gremlins being squishy.
  18. Elec on it's own can keep a spawn pretty well drained most of the time, though the lack of reliable -recovery powers can be a problem against big nasties. Psi helps cover that, but I'm not convinced there's much other synergy. -recharge seems to lose meaning when enemies have no end most of the time. Fire might give some issues with DoTs waking up enemies in Static Field, although once they're drained that tends to become a non-issue.

    I'm currently levelling an Elec/Earth, and really enjoying the way the sets fit together to keep enemies flopping in the air far more often than they can actually attack me.

    Elec in general is a very quickly-maturing set, which can provide sustained control at very early levels. But it's kind of fuzzier. It takes some care if you want to use AoEs without having a lot of things still shooting at you despite your sleeps and end draining.
  19. I'm not sure what to make of this, but Mids doesn't seem to think the enhancement in Fly is actually improving your speed. Even if that's wrong (and it seems pretty odd), I might consider getting knockback protection from a BotZ knockback in there instead of getting it from something in a resist shield. Or maybe just rely on Domination for that.

    Static Discharge gets some benefit from the range enhancement, with the whole longer cone = wider cone thing, but why not use the proc instead in the other two powers? The damage enhancement aspect doesn't seem to add much after ED.

    The enhancement levels in Melt Armor seem kind of strange.
  20. I find myself somewhat bemused that a discussion which began as about neither transgender nor transsexual has become a discussion about it anyway.

    (Although I do like the phrase "mixed gender". A. Place first gender into large mixing bowl. B. Sprinkle second gender over first. C. Mix gently with whisk.)

    -Morgan. Under no circumstances use a blender; the pun isn't worth it.
  21. Although those details might not be relevent in this case. After all, alien species, those-are-sex-linked-traits-for-you-huh-human-physiology-sure-is-weird, yadda yadda yadda.

    I don't know. The idea seems pretty simple, given a classification set which I think someone suggested in a post I can't find now. What to put in a bio so that people who are completely repulsed by the concept can avoid (which seems like a reasonable courtesy in the general case), that people who *aren't* completely repulsed would not see as something to avoid. (With a useful bonus being to also drive off people who are only interested in shallow ERP, perhaps.)

    I kind of like the idea of having it mentioned in with (and in the style of) the rest of the bio, simply because anyone who's actually serious ought to be able to take the time to read your bio. And even if they don't recognize a term, I don't think that's so likely to lead to direct issues.

    -Morgan. Of course, I'm the type of person who just made a character with a concept that sounds like a reason for shallow ERP largely to blatantly not do any ERP, so my tastes may vary from the usual...
  22. As does Quicksand, but it takes slow sets. (Whether you'd want them, I don't know.)

    For that matter, so does Hot Feet, and it's almost at the cap.

    So I'm not sure that argument works.

    -Morgan.
  23. Quote:
    Originally Posted by TehGargoyle View Post
    So far, every time I've checked the auctions for even a single part of a set, it's usually somewhere up in the millions, even for the level 10 versions. I'm not counting the sets out completely, just trying to find a way to go with before I've got my hands on enough inf to replace the inventions.
    Some can be that expensive, if they've got interesting set bonuses. But a lot of useful stuff isn't. Also, make sure you're looking at recipes, not crafted enhancements.

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by AnElfCalledMack
    It also saps their endurance.
    ... Yeah, it's kind of hard to miss a bunch of mobs suddenly stop attacking because their end has flatlined. >.>
  24. Don't count set IOs out until you've checked the market. A lot of control sets can be had very cheaply. Useful set bonuses may be hard to find, but you can pack a lot of power into a small number of slots if you mix and match. Static Field, for example, doesn't seem to benefit a great deal from sleep enhancements, but sleep sets are a very good source of Accuracy/Recharge IOs, which help a great deal. Even some of the damage sets have their bargains.
  25. My Elec/Rad is only level 20 so far, but I think you've got the right of it. (At least mostly; I don't think this set needs a lot of global recharge bonus the way some do.)

    I'm not sure Conductive Aura is better than QR, but it's certainly pretty good. According to Mids, it has the same recovery bonus as equally-slotted Stamina and as much regen as equally-slotted Health, which seems to be borne out by the numbers shown in game. Although it may actually be improved by the period where the effects double-stack, but I'm not sure how the game handles that quarter-second interval.

    Static Field helps with pretty much everything, too. With the exception of Lady Winter (and even then I did pretty well), any fight I can survive the first ten seconds of, I win. Static Field is a low-recharge power that makes alpha strikes go away, so those first ten seconds usually go pretty well. And the endurance recovery part is significant too. Detailed Info says "1.88 AttrEndurance on target", which it looks like it'll do to you every time it hits an enemy. So, 5 enemies, hit once every two seconds... A lot of end? Well, I'm not sure it's quite like that, but what I can say is that I can turn off conductive aura, turn on enough other toggles that I'm slowly losing end, and start spamming Jolting Chain and Chain Fences, and as long as there's still a few enemies in the field, the drain be only "worrying" and not "catastrophic". Of course, I'll have more recharge at higher levels, but I'll also have more recovery... and generally avoid going into battle with Super Jump turned on. That, I think, helps ameliorate the low damage on the powers, that you can afford to spam your AoEs in a way that most can't. Procs help too, although market availability is pretty bad on some of them.

    (Static Field does have one major annoyance - for a power one wants to use *before* the enemy sees you, the range is extremely short. I think it's the only power I've ever seriously considered slotting for range.)

    As for running out of end on the last enemy, that's why I try to hit the stronger enemies with single-target attacks in between AoEs. I'm usually running on x3 with no bosses now, so a typical spawn has 2 Lts. I target one for a while, then I do the other. If I do it right, everything goes down pretty close to the same time. Also I start shutting off the rad toggles once a group is whittled down.