Oedipus_Tex

Umbral Torrent in Blaster Dark Blast is a major candidate. The base power has 100% chance to knockback, so its 100% chance to KD, -5.25% ToHit, with a cast time of 1.03 seconds.

Hmm. Many of the spawns standing around overworld maps are bigger than +0x1 so I don't think it's true most players don't consider it. I think most players probably consider an amalgamation of solo instances, overworld fights, and what it "feels" like on a team. Even if you just mainly run past enemies outdoors you're still likely to notice if you don't stand a chance against them.

The AoE hold, single target hold, AoE immobilize, and single target immobilize available in most Control sets are more similar than they are different. Aside from the animation speed and secondary effect attached they all do the same things.

The issue with damage and Ice Control isn't that you can't get Containment at all, its that you can't spam cages because that resets the -kb timer. The lack of damage is circumstantial; it has to do with an inability to easily combine cage spam with knockdown.

Mind misses out on immobilize for its dodgy Terrify power. It's Containment allegedly comes from Hypnosis. However, all the extra damage powers from Incarnate procs are Damage Over Time. And they break the your (single target) Hypnotize power, so you get no containment on Elite Bosses and up at all, unless your secondary allows it or you use temp powers.

The lack of Containment situation on Mind Control is so acute that my end game builds took Power Boost just so I could power boost the (standard) AoE Hold.. once per minute on a heavily IOed build or every twoish minutes with SOs. Mass Confusion is fine when it's up, which is 1/4th to 1/6th as often as staple powers in other sets.

Mind Control on Controllers is IMO in quite poor shape. For me it's much worse than Ice or Gravity.

But I also think Ice's badness is somewhat overdramatized. It's just not that much worse to me than Electric Control and in some ways IMO better, or at least a draw. Both sets do fairly comparable damage, and Jack Frost easily outtanks the Gremlins. Electric doesn't have the knockdown conflict, but it also has powers like Synaptic Overload which I might charitably call "difficult" to leverage in a team environment. Ice's main issue is you pretty much have to build for anti-mezz to make Arctic Air do its job.

(Well, actually maybe part of its issue is that people skip Arctic Air. Probably 50% of the Controllers I see lack this power, and spend the fight casting Shiver. As if an Earth Controller would skip Volcanic Gasses and just throw down Quicksand everywhere. )

Ice could use some adjustments, but Mind Control is flat broken at top level. The recharge on Mass Confusion is ridiculous given how much that set gives up to get that power, and Confusion really really really really needs to set Containment (which incidentally would also slightly help Ice Control).

IMO the business about Mind Control soloing 1 particular Task Force has done the set a lot of harm. That particular trick is so edge case that I'm always surprised that people put stock in it. To me it's no more relevant to the set's power than someone finding out that Personal Force Field can allow you to stand in melee with a dangerous AV.

Well, biggest one is that when Glacier is down, Ice Slick can be cast around corners. Because it is a slow patch, its usually best to not put it right under the entire mob. Instead stick under the feet of a few guys at the front of the pack. They won't be able to run fast, but everyone behind them will be going full speed--right onto the edge of the slick. They will all end up clumping together and make AoEing them down easier.

At the incarnate levels, alternating Glacier with Barrier provides pretty effective mitigation.

BTW in general, yes I do use the immobilize. I cast it one time so enemies can't move, then don't refresh it so they start falling. I usually jump in with Glacier (if it's up), then cast the immob a few seconds after while enemies are frozen, so that by the time they are unHeld the -kb has worn off and they start falling.

I have an Ice/Fire/Fire who happens to be my "main" character. That wasn't really planned, I just seem to gravitate to the character more than my others.

You'll want to build for recharge and defense, most likely Ranged defense with supporting S/L resistance (from the armor).

My build is constantly changing. Unfortunately, MIDs is not working for me right now but if you do a search on my name you might find some Ice builds laying around. I have some videos showing gameplay on my YouTube page if you want to watch those. The character is reasonably tough, maybe not "amazing." Probably much better than most people assume due to Ice Control's reputation, but I am also not a very good player overall.

This is the most recent of the videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHHiBCFPDOU

IMO among the most self-serving points of view a player can maintain is that there are dozens of powersets, if not entire ATs, in dire need of buffs, and not a single one that should be reeled in. It's a difficult belief to maintain in the face of objectivity: it's the belief that the developers make tons of mistakes, and when they do it always results in a too-bad set, never a too-good one.

The belief that some sets and powers are overpowered is identical to the belief that some sets are underpowered. There is literally no difference except for a belief about how developers should fix the issue. Both agree that mistakes and/or changes to the game have resulted in some sets not performing as they should. The difference is that one viewpoint is based on full disclosure, and the other on grabbing power. I personally consider it somewhat unethical to request changes to power sets while staying mum about sets like Plant Control.


EDIT: I just re-read that and it sounded witchier than I intended. I'm not sure what word I should use instead of "self-serving"--for the record I don't care if players are self serving, since they pay to be here. But it's a POV I hope the developers can see through. One of my biggest bones to pick with CoX design is that unwillingness to nerf when necessary has spiraled power design to some absurd lengths.


PS the power in Plant that unequivocally deserves a nerf is Roots. This is only semi-related to IOs, and only semi-related to Dominators. And by "nerf" we mean "make it obey the rules ALL other AoE immobilizes must follow."

I like Stone Cages. It's not 100% necessary but I always seem to find reason to use them.

I skip both Incinerate and Combustion on most of my builds. Incinerate has good damage but I hate the range of it. Combustion is slow as all get out and I find it very awkward to use despite its decent damage over time.

The proc in VG is usually a good bet, unless you prefer to put damage procs there.

I put it in Fireball personally because I will often cast it even at single targets due to its animation speed, and on most of my builds Fireball recharges faster than 10 seconds, which is the speed of the Knockdown proc when slotted in Rain of Fire.

It's a bit of a tricky question, calculating how much more survivable +Regen makes you.

For example if I said you will be taking 10,000 points of damage over a peroid of one minute, but have a regen of 10,000 points of damage over the same period, a damage model might assume I had taken zero damage. After all, I'm losing exactly as many HP as I get back.

But let's change the statement. Instead of taking 10,000 points of damage over a period of one minute, you will be taking 0 damage for the first thirty seconds, 3,000 damage at the 30 second mark, and the remaining 7,000 damage over the remaining period.

What makes Regen tricky is that if you ever hit either max or min HP, it basically stops doing anything extra. The benefit is in returning to Max HP (or at least toward it), not in sitting there.

In the example above, what happens after the 30 second mark is irrelevant, because you are dead. Regen provided no benefit at all for the first thirty seconds of the fight, because you were already capped; it didn't stack its benefits up in preparation for a big HP loss. Because of this, it provided no benefit at the thirty second mark, and after that you are dead. It certainly can add a lot of survivability, but it can also essentially add zero depending on how the damage arrives.