Obitus

Just want to note that I didn't quite characterize the quoted comparison fairly. The cycle time of Combustion in this instance is ~7.46 seconds, not ~10.6. Over a longer period of time, spammed Combustion will yield more procs.

My point was that Combustion isn't noticeably better over the short term, and is arguably worse in the final analysis because of the opportunity cost of tying yourself up for 3+ seconds per cast. Combustion isn't something you're likely to cast lightly, whereas Hot Feet stays on no matter what you decide to do. Usually I'd tend to advocate putting a proc in a click power rather than a toggle, but in this case I think the specifics favor Hot Feet rather heavily.

And that's a lot of words thrown at a relatively small slotting decision. Apologies

I don't want to be contentious, but neither of the above-quoted statements is necessarily true. Combustion's full cycle time isn't any faster than the once-per-10 seconds proc check on toggle powers. At best, it's a tie: 3.168 activation time + ~4.3 recharge time + 3.168 activation time = 10.636 seconds.

That's assuming you cast Combustion every single time it's available, which isn't a given either. Combustion's activation time alone represents a fairly high opportunity cost, whereas Hotfeet works in the background regardless of what attacks you use. Also, Combustion's area of effect (15 feet) is significantly smaller than Hot Feet's (20 feet).

Enhancing Hot Feet with slow is nice, but the lack of slow enhancement certainly doesn't make it a mediocre power. That's why God invented Fire Cages.

Armageddon has marginally more Endurance reduction than Obliteration has, and unfortunately there aren't so many slots available on this build that you have much leeway to use any other sets in your PBAoE powers. I think Doc's slotting of Hot Feet is probably the best option -- 5 Armageddon + 1 Microfilament. The Microfilament only fits in sensibly because Doc did use Armageddon and not Obliteration for the other five slots, though.

No Imps this time (Combustion instead), and less Smash/Lethal RES (52.8%). Endurance is more a concern for this build than it is for the one in the previous post, but still surprisingly manageable considering that this build runs Maneuvers. It's no worse than the Endurance on the build Silas is playing now, unless I'm misremembering something. (3.6 recovery + Performance Shifter versus 1.42 drain)

More survivable by an indefinable amount than the S/L DEF builds, simply because Melee/Ranged DEF covers you against more stuff, but the global recharge is still markedly lower than the other builds we've been discussing (clocks in at 177.5% including Hasten, or anywhere from 16-20% less than the various S/L DEF builds). Domination is not perma without the use of Hasten.

Finally got some time to myself on a computer with Mids' installed. I like where Dr_Dismemberment is going. Here's something similar:

Click this DataLink to open the build!
Only major advantages are that I skipped Imps in favor of Super Speed, and scraped up about 9% more S/L resistance. There are some minor slotting discrepancies otherwise, a little extra HP, a very tiny amount more net recovery, 3% less global damage, 6.2% less global recharge, a little more uptime on Embrace of Fire.

All of the above are matters of preference. Personally, I'm probably a little out of my depth here because my instinct is to emphasize recharge less.

Nice build btw, Doc.

Given what you (Silas) have said about your recovery situation, I don't feel the need to go through the kind of haphazard methodology I did last night to determine a good threshold -- and in any case, these two new builds (Dr's and mine) both have very slightly better net recovery than the build I posted last night. (which passed my largely arbitrary standard of sustainable ST attacks during Domination's downtime.)

(Edit: Oh, and a minor point, but probably worth mentioning just for the sake of consistency: The builds Silas posted earlier were using the T3 Cardiac boost, so that's what I've been using. Doctor's posted build uses the T4. Neither Incarnate abilities nor Accolades are turned on by default in the version Mids' I'm using, which is worth mentioning too.)

I'm kind of on the fence about this, for what it's worth. On the one hand, the devs seem to have done a good job of getting the above-quoted result, and I like the goal of "[reducing] (but not [eliminating]) the differences between classes" through Incarnate content.

On the other hand, and just from a thematic/conceptual standpoint, I'm not sure I like that so much of the extra power available comes from a pet. Scratch that; I know I don't like it. As someone else said earlier in the thread, I didn't submit my superhero registration to watch someone else do the work. I'm also not entirely sure that the Lore pets are balanced properly among themselves, but that's a separate issue and a different thread.

None of the above is to take anything away from the OP. Lore is a legitimate power as the game is presently constituted, and soloing a GM is a pretty crazy accomplishment for a Tanker under any circumstances.

Heh, sorry. When I said original friend's build, I meant the version of the build that was original to me. The way I try to juggle builds from the forum is to save one as 'original' and a second (the one I mess with) as 'revised.' So I guess I was projecting my file system here.

Yeah, Consume use is largely subjective. If using it often is doing the job and you don't mind it, then it's all good.

Thanks for the clarification on the other stuff. Will keep in mind. Any thoughts on Combustion? Like, dislike?

Just a few tweaks to your friend's version, most of which are lateral or debatable moves:

Click this DataLink to open the build!
Highlights: 32.7% Smash/Lethal DEF, 55.6% Smash/Lethal RES, 3.68 EPS recovery (before Performance Shifter proc), 1.34 EPS toggle drain.

The downsides are that you lose 5% in global recharge (still leaving Domination perma by about 1 second without using Hasten at all), 2% in global damage, and 1.9% in HP. You gain meaningfully in the endurance and RES categories, but not so much that I'd consider either build a slam dunk.

End really is the issue. Having run some really basic numbers (added for completeness, below), you should be fine with your melee single-target attack chain even with Hotfeet on, and even without Consume. (Domination should recharge before you run dry.) Consume is a damn nice power to have, but I'd want to minimize my reliance on it. YMMV.

Friend's original build: Blaze-Blast-Incinerate for a total damage of 885.18 and a total End cost of 18.11 in 4.488 seconds, or 197.23 DPS, and 4.03 endurance per second.

Add toggle cost of 1.4 EPS, Hasten cost of 0.125 EPS, and subtract from 3.52 EPS in recovery + 0.225 EPS from Performance Shifter proc to get a net drain of 1.81 EPS. Total Endurance is 112.5, so time to empty is 112.5 / 1.81 = about 62 seconds. Domination with perma-Hasten recharges 66.67 seconds.

Tweaked friend's build: Blaze-Blast-Incinerate for a total damage of 877.1 and a total End cost of 18.11 in 4.488 seconds, or 195.43 DPS, and 4.03 endurance per second.

Add toggle cost of 1.34 EPS, Hasten cost of 0.125 EPS, and subtract from 3.68 recovery + 0.225 EPS from Performance Shifter proc to get a net drain of 1.59 EPS. Total Endurance is 112.5, so time to empty is 112.5 / 1.59 = 70.7 seconds. Domination with perma-Hasten recharges in 67.8 seconds.

My rough calcs don't take into account the spamming of AoE powers, though, nor do they (lest you worry) really measure DPS except as a curiosity; I didn't account for Hot Feet or Embrace of Fire as I was more concerned with endurance drain.

The one thing I do wonder about though is that you don't have Fire Imps. Personally I can't stand the way Fire Imps look -- the way they move, the sounds they make, dunno -- and so I wouldn't rush to make the claim that they're essential, but would you prefer to have them? I take it you don't really want Ring, which -- though a decent power -- doesn't really serve much purpose in the build as presently constituted (not slotted as an attack).

I'll see what I can come up with pet-build-wise. Also may have a slightly improved version of the ranged/melee build posted previously.

The fact that he wants to hook up with the embodiment of death wasn't disturbing enough already?

Context and timing are everything. If you demonstrate that a Mage-style product is successful in a television format, and your competitors decide to cash in on that success shortly afterwards -- even by releasing an adaptation based on a prior creation -- then yeah: they're making a transparent and cynical copy-cat move.

Perhaps "rip off" is technically the wrong term, but it encapsulates the situation nicely.

No problem, man. Some loss in the translation is natural on the internet. I know I often come off as more strident than I intend. It's just that -- and this isn't a shot at you or anyone else in particular -- I feel like these mechanical balance discussions too often devolve into a subjective pissing match about who's better at playing what.

Perhaps I'm too sensitive to that trend.

I don't play on Virtue, but likewise, I'll extend an invitation to play with me on Triumph. Or perhaps sometime we could get together on Test and compare notes. I admit it's been quite some time since I played my Ice Controller; I played her almost exclusively for about two years before finally deciding that there were more fun-to-play options to take through the Incarnate grind. Then again, and to be fair, after that much time playing any one character, I can't very well say that it owes me anything. Perhaps it's natural that I'd tire of her.

Anyway, I may be rusty, but I'd be happy to do some Ice controllering with you sometime. On the few occasions that I've been privileged to see it, stacking Arctic Air was very impressive.

You know the best thing about martyred enemies?

They're dead.

It's a riff on the Men in Black -- mysterious people dressed in black suits that exist on the edge of perception.

Thank you for elaborating on the wider context I referenced. You do yourself a disservice, however, by arguing that the USA is intent on repeating "all of [Europe's] most grievous errors." Just read your second paragraph. Read it again.

We are not free of your baggage, btw. The Middle East remains to this day marked by European meddling. For instance, whose bright idea was it to put the Kurds inside Iraq's at-the-time arbitrary border? Hell, extremists over there are still angry about the frelling Crusades. Which isn't Europe's fault, but it is worth mentioning.

Also, and this may sound like a nitpick, but it addresses a bit of a peeve: America as a cultural entity is much much younger than its cousins in Europe. The United States as a continuously running government is no younger than most of the current systems in place in Europe, and significantly older than a lot of them.

If you're done then that's fine. I'm not paying you to talk with me about this, after all. Still, if you're done, then you'd have been better served by not saying anything at all, rather than the above-quoted flippancy.

Needless to say that in my opinion, the disadvantages of AA offset the disadvantages of VG, just as in your opinion, AA's lack of an opportunity cost is a "specific advantage."

No one said that your Ice characters sucked.

I'm assuming that if the battle even lasts long enough for the full extent of Ice's slows (here used as a catch-all for slow and recharge) to be relevant, the fact that the foes might scatter around a bit probably isn't going to make or break you.

Fair enough. AA can be detoggled, though, and requires you to stand in the middle of the action. Those downsides are sufficient to offset the flaws of VG by comparison.

Also, a PBAoE hold in a set that doesn't feature a stealth power is, by definition, not an alpha breaker. An alpha is a first strike.

Over-time, sustainable control is obviously Ice's strength. The question is whether that's a worthwhile strength in a game that generally features fast-paced combat.

Absolutely they should be punished. And they almost always are punished. There's a difference between saying that the United States should act honorably and openly and saying that the private correspondence of individual diplomats should be open for all to see, though. Diplomacy is about putting a nice face on. How'd you like your boss to have access to recordings of your every off-the-cuff mutter?

Jealousy has in large part characterized the balance of power since time immemorial. My observing that the greatest world powers have always been targets of envy and fear isn't a personal insult directed at you or anyone else in particular. In fact, some amount of jealousy is healthy in these interactions, because it leads weaker countries to band together against larger threats even before those threats become obviously threatening.

And it often feels like outside sources take great pleasure in ignoring the weight of world history when evaluating the most charitable and restrained major power ever. We have countless manifest flaws, and our position encourages criticism of those flaws. We are an easy target for the charge of hypocrisy, but just do try to keep in mind that our practical hypocrisy is obvious in large part because our ideals are so high.

The world is not a pretty place.

Yes, because clearly, the United States is a terrible blight on the world, a blight that should be undermined at every opportunity. No government takes espionage lightly. Frankly, a lot of Americans are fed up with their government for various reasons, but it's hard not to get just a little defensive when everyone else in the world is piling on too. Our government is a damn sight better than most any of the alternatives; it takes an extraordinarily perverse view of history to harp endlessly on the USA when the far worse flaws of her enemies are staring everyone in the face. Or, perhaps it's just cowardice: after all, the USA never threatened to decapitate a cartoon artist over a caricature.

FWIW, my problem with Wikileaks is that it's so obviously fishing for embarrassing details to release. If there are real abuses to reveal, then fine, cloak yourself in that peculiarly European self-righteousness that comes after 70 years of relying on the United States to provide free defense. Go to town. But releasing private diplomatic dispatches? What higher purpose could it possibly serve to let the wider world know that a US Ambassador thinks another country's king is a dweeb? Those kinds of details are gratuitous, purely intended to undermine what could be important relationships.

This is typical balance of power stuff here; the United States is seen as worse than it is -- viewed with jealousy and/or fear -- simply because it is the most powerful. It's hard to do, but I'd urge you to sit down and think -- really think -- about what every other powerful nation in history has done by contrast. Or, if you prefer, just wait awhile. We may very well see what happens when the United States loses its place in the world sooner rather than later. That won't be a happy day, not even for the most wild-eyed UCLA poli-sci professor.

In the meanwhile, I'd like to give a hearty shout out to our forum-moderator overlords.

Fair enough.

It wasn't my intention to get into a power-for-power comparison. I don't believe that that leads anywhere useful, because there's a temptation to get caught up in whether this-or-that power is most appropriately compared to another -- rather than an examination of the whole set's capability. For instance, I could go on at length about why I feel that Glacier is more analogous to Volcanic Gasses than Stalagmites, but to what end?

The point I was making is that Ice is given, in your words, a utility debuff that has no purpose but to pile on the same effect Ice gets elsewhere for free, and in ridiculously large quantities. Even the pet's alleged strength is more slow, with very little else going for it.

What's fascinating to me is that the one power without an attendant slow debuff is Flash Freeze, which by its name alone would tend to imply a deep slow, and which is so pathetic otherwise that you could frankly fold Shiver into it without any fear of throwing off the over-arching balance of the set.

No, no pit. I do wonder why you keep acting like Ice Slick is more than one power though. You've already stipulated that Ice Slick is Ice's version of Earthquake, and yet here you seem to be saying that Ice Slick is also Ice's version of Volcanic Gasses. ("VG-like pulse patch")

Then you act as if having both Ice Slick's "VG-like pulse patch" and a normal AoE hold is so uniquely powerful that it's basically an end in itself. How about having Earthquake's "VG-like pulse patch" and VG itself? Volcanic Gasses, by the way, has the same monstrously large radius that Glacier does. Volcanic Gasses is not a point-blank power.

Suffice to say that I don't agree with your theory that having a typical PBAoE Hold on a 240 second timer instead of Volcanic Gasses is an advantage worth crowing about. As you say, they're different powers; you can make the argument that a Volcanic Gasses clone would be less helpful to Ice, because what Ice lacks is definitive hard control otherwise, but Earth doesn't really have that problem.

The bottom line is that no other control set that is so heavily penalized on the damage front lacks as much as Ice does for alpha mitigation. It is a very effective set over time, provided you can leverage Arctic Air consistently. No one should stop playing it purely on the basis of forum demogoguery, but there are caveats that are relevant to a new player, just as there are for many sets. For instance, Ice's heavy bias towards close-quarters combat.

I was referring to your comment at the end, where you said that people's complaints arise in large part from not knowing how to play the set correctly. You're obviously free to feel that way; you're obviously free to express those feelings, even -- but those feelings don't lead to a constructive or even necessarily a civil conversation.

My reading of it was that you didn't mean to be abrasive, that the comment in question was just a gratuitous capper to an otherwise valid description of your personal experiences.

I hate to keep harping on wording, but what you said in your previous post implied rather heavily to me that you felt Ice is outright superior. To paraphrase: "After I figured out how to play Ice, I found myself pushing into situations with Ice that repeatedly killed my Earth character."

At the very least, you seemed intent to play up Ice's situational superiority, and gave no indication that you think Earth has offsetting situational superiority over Ice. I was wondering if you'd go into further detail about the situations where Earth dies easily, and Ice chugs along. (Which is why I asked you to explain why you felt Ice is superior.)

I don't think there's a lot of disagreement between us on this issue. I believe that Ice is serviceable too, or to use your word, I believe that Ice can be "effective." Ice does have a bit of a learning curve; like you, I frequently run into players who don't have Arctic Air, or even a halfway accurate idea of what the power does. It seems to be a common misconception that AA is a melee-biased analogue for Shiver, which isn't close to true.

That said, in the grand scheme of things, Ice Control is not a particularly skill-intensive set, if for no other reason than that it comes packaged with relatively forgiving ATs. It ain't no Storm Summoning. Once you a have a basic grasp of what the powers do, it's not difficult to figure out how to use them, or indeed what kind of performance you can expect from them.

Maybe I'm being dense (wouldn't be unusual for me even on a good day, and right now I'm on very little sleep ), but "unbreakable mez type" seems like a rather bizarre standard by which to judge power sets. I'm not even sure exactly what you mean by unbreakable. You list knockdown patches along with unbreakable mez as if they're two different things, and yet Ice Slick is the closest thing I can think of to an unbreakable, every-spawn mez effect in Ice Control -- and it's also a knockdown patch.

Clearly unbreakable doesn't mean simply that you can attack controlled targets without fear of reprisal, because almost every set gets one of those on an every-spawn basis (or near enough to every spawn, once slotting is considered). Even Mind Control indirectly gets that on an every spawn basis at sufficient levels of recharge, because it can alternate Mass Confuse with Total Dom.

You're also probably not trying to say that somehow soft control is unresistable, because that isn't true. Knockdown-resistant mobs may be comparatively rare, but the game isn't exactly overflowing with hold-immune mobs either. Ditto slow-resistant mobs. If I had a penny for every time I gritted my teeth while playing my Ice Controller against a spawn of Warwolves, I'd be a richer man.

So anyway, could you please elaborate on the standard of comparison you're describing here? Apparently it favors Ice Control in a way I hadn't previously considered.

The problem is that slow isn't just a secondary effect for Ice. Sure, it's nice to have. If it were just a matter of comparing, say, Frostbite with Stone Cages, I'd be happy to concede that the slow debuff is very helpful and controllerish.

Ice's overall control ability was apparently designed around what you call a secondary effect. Where Earth gets an every-spawn AoE stun, Ice gets a wide-cone slow. Where Earth gets a sturdy pet with an aggro-control effect on its attacks, Ice gets a pet with ... a slow aura.

Now, can you cherry pick a situation where all of Ice's copious and redundant slows are useful? Sure. But slow isn't even a particularly relevant stand-alone control/debuff effect to begin with through the vast majority of the game's content, because it takes a fairly long time to pay its potential dividends. You can't delay an attack that's already recharged.

Ok, but you did make a similar list of proposed fixes in this very thread. Again, I don't think we disagree as much as it may seem. We seem to differ on how clear it is that Ice deserves a buff of some sort, but with respect to the magnitude of that buff, we're at least on the same page, though perhaps not in the same paragraph.

Uh, and wow, that's a long post. Sorry.

Absolutely. You could also shoot for 20% DEF (or ~18.9% if you have the Inspiration-boosting Vet Badge) to the relevant types/positions. It's the same principle as the 32.5%, just less.

My Dom has ~19% DEF to everything but ranged (which is soft-capped). Comes in handy when I find myself (as I frequently do) sitting on a stack of medium Purples (~26% DEF each, for me).

Yeah, was wondering about that actually. I wanted to add Snipe in there somewhere because of that little quirk with Dom, but I was already hemorraging Recharge and couldn't think of a safe thing to drop other than Tactics/Vengeance (which would lose you an LoTG). I also like Rise of the Phoenix if you're going to take Fire Mastery anyway; I never plan on dying and rarely do, but RoTP is great to have in your back pocket in a hectic team situation where you do die -- plus it looks damn cool, and takes a number of useful set bonuses if you can squeeze out the slots.

I couldn't squeeze out the slots though, so that idea went bye-bye Will look over the build(s) again after I get in my fix for the hilariously powerful Reactive-boosted Rain of Fire.

Yes, Ageless and Reactive make double-Rage more attractive. I hadn't quite thought of it that way. Still, that'd be a very offensive-slanted build, which isn't necessarily a bad thing; it's just not a step I'm prepared to take on a Tanker. Not when Rebirth adds so much extra survivability.

FWIW, my INV/SS Tanker used to roll with very nearly perma-double Rage, and I couldn't stand it. It seemed like every time I blinked my damage was -9999%. I found after a time that I was purposely waiting til the last possible second to refresh one copy of the buff (and avoid the DEF debuff from the crash), and so eventually I respecced into a more survivability-focused build.

Like so many build considerations, this question is subjective. Hell, there are a handful of people over on the Brute forum who insist that they can't stand one Rage crash. But then, as so aptly noted in this thread, Brutes have more damage bonuses and so Rage doesn't provide as much proportional benefit as it does for Tankers. That goes double for double-stacked Rage, because the extra crash frequency offsets the over-time benefit of the extra damage buff. Anyway, for me, one crash every two minutes is just about right from a purely subjective point of view.

YMMV.