Oedipus_Tex

Power stacking makes this a little more complicated, but that's the essence of it.

The general rule is that powers without psuedo-pets work with Domination. In Electric's case, that's the single target hold, AoE hold, immobilizes, and first target hit by Synaptic Overload. Some sets have more powers it works with than others. In every case though a perma-Dom is a really scary abomination that way exceeds what the original intent of the Domination power was and creates a monsterously powerful character.

Do you actually have an end-game Mind Controller, or is this more speculation based on what you see in Mids? Not going to go too far into it here, but for various reasons Mind Control is quite far behind in damage. You can bring that discussion to the Controller boards if you want to explore it in more detail.

?!

As it happens, so does everyone here. You're welcome to your opinion, but I do think you should at least consider there are people in this thread who have actually played this set before. I personally have 4 Ice characters at 50.

Trick question. Illusion has a completely different kind of control than any of the control sets. The actual Illusion set's AoE control in a fast moving group is probably around the level of certain Corruptors and Defender sets like Dark Miasma. Phantom Army is great for holding the attention of a couple of enemies or an AV. It's a great power. But it doesn't completely displace Ice Slick or AA and such. I feel like I have to ask again: have you played this set? Have you played any Controller at all? You do at least realize Illusion is not available to Dominators, even though you deflected my statement about Ice Dominators to talk about Controllers again? I'm really not trying to be mean to you, but the level of confidence you invest in your judgments about sets you have no first hand experience with is a little offputting. There's good reason I don't make myself knownon the Tanker boards for making judgments about Super Reflexes or whatever even though I have mids and am pretty good with it.

Yes.

Not at the level of play we're talking about. Mind Dominators can make up for it, but not because the primary has great damage.


That's really not necessary. I'm more a fan of some of the posted builds than others, but in the spirit of fairness I think we need to give everyone a chance to participate without insulting them.

That's an interesting synergy I had never thought of.


What I mainly remember about Teleport from the last times I had it (besides running into verticle obstacles and spending way too long to ascend and go over them) is falling out of the sky after runing out of endurance halfway across some of the larger zones. Of course, now you can just buy a jet pack to help you hover in place. However because of this:


No, but you can use a Jet Pack. No character really has a reason to not be flight-capable post level 15 or so. I do like to have Combat Jumping as well, but I like to have CJ even without SS.

I suppose you could say that Ninja Run mimics portions of Super Speed and that part I can agree with. If Ninja/Beast run were slottable powers they'd be heavy competition for me versus Super Speed. But I would also call Ninja/BeastRun generally better than Teleport even if they are unslottable.

Super Speed also destroys Teleport for moving around indoors, in pretty much any of the iTrials or Task Forces, or anywhere else where speed really matters. I suppose you could use Ninja Run to get around and Teleport for when you need it, but I've very rarely encountered enemy groups where this strategy isn't better than just running past them. Most of the ones who would spot you in Super Speed are likely to spot you when you try to teleport past them as well, and at least with SS you aren't stuck hanging around for an extra second or two, unable to move.

You may have the strangest sense of powerset evaluation of anyone on the forums. I don't mean that as an insult. But your taste is definitely idiosyncratic if nothing else.

To the playerbase as a whole, I tend to think Teleport stands way down the list. It's a travel power that is slot hungry. That's an instant fail in my book.

Anyway why are you teleporting when you could just super speed in invisibly?

The problem with this is I already have Ice builds that aim to max out survivability. Unless the tweak to Shiver or Flash Freeze is massive, the powers won't outweigh the much better strategy of building for personal survivalibility. For most of my characters specifically, it means whatever Shiver or Flash Freeze does has to outweigh the benefit of having Aid Self and several armor powers. Meanwhile my Fire and Plant characters can still happily skip several powers, still take the additional survivability powers, and come out on equal footing if not ahead. Having skippable powers is a good thing if the other powers make up for it. In Ice's case I don't see what you could put in Shiver or Flash Freeze that would outweigh Combat Jumping, Aid Self, or Tough/Weave unless we're aiming for a massive departure from current mechanics.

I apologize if it seems I am piling on. You're kind of in the hotseat which is an awkward place to be, but I have some disagreements with the nature of your analysis.

My major issues goes back to something you said earlier about the ideal way sets should be balanced. The essence of my disagreement with only considering damage values for balance is that all "attacks" are not the same and utility is not a freebie that should not be considered. There are reasons to want Siphon Life, Divine Avalanche, Knockout Blow, Clobber and many others powers to recharge as fast possible regardless of what "chain" delivers the most damage.

Attack chains are an abstraction that guesses at many factors, cheif among them in the case of melee characters being immediate foe availability. It's possible I'm guilty of overestimating travel time between enemies, but that time at least feels to me like somewhere between 0.5 to 3 seconds or so in the sorts of environments encountered in radio teams. However long it is, it is clear in the case of at least one melee AT (Stalkers) that actual single-target damage delivery in most combat situations is very hard to predict, because for some sets/players Assassin Strike can be demonstrated to frequently lose its guaranteed chance to crit before the player can acquire a suitable target.

In any case, one specific reason to use a low damaging attack in many cases is that the enemy is light on HP, as Arcana said. Another reason would be that the realbest set of actions would be to nix the idea of an attack chain completely and mix AoE with single target, which is a possibility I don't think I've seen addressed (my apologies if it has). The main reason to do this is what I said above: all attacks are not the same. If the optimal damage chain calls for an AoE power but, say, Knockout Blow would be more useful against one of the gathered enemies, it makes more sense to drop the chain and do that. None of this becomes very relevant in pylon soloing, but that's why pylon soloing is regarded by many players as what it is: the amount of time it takes to solo a pylon.

Think of it this way: no one would argue that the recharge of Fossilize, the hold power that appears in Controller sets, is completely irrelevant just because that power also frequently appears in their attack chains. The recharge is relevant because the power also represents how often some type of additional act can be performed. It is always useful to have that at the ready, no matter what else may be recharged. Block of Ice sinks my Ice/Fire Dominator's attack chain, but it's still worth casting.

Unfortunately even at 2.1 seconds, redraw would still kill this set for me for pairing with most buff/debuff sets. I did do Pistols/Dark to 50, but the redraw drove me insane. I hate making power choice decisions based on such a cludgy mechanic and unless Dual Pistols and other weapons sets had animations in the 0.8 second range to compensate doubt I'd seriously persue them again.

A sneakier way to do this that I have seen some Fire/Storms use is to use Snow Storm on enemies near the front of the pack, then duck behind a corner. Enemies toward the back will run faster than ones at the front, and they all tend to clump together.

I agree that the issue of enemies being spread out is much overlooked in powerset discussions. It may be my imagination, but it definitely feels like mob sizes have been getting gradually more and more spread out with each new map.

For a Fire/Storm struggling with endurance I would consider taking the Mu PPP for Power Sink. Power Sink by itself will chip 65% of the endurance away from nearby enemies and restore slightly less than half your endurance bar per enemy hit. You do lose a single-target blast, but Ball Lightning is monsterous. Surge of Power probably works really well with Storm too, and its one of the few god mode's in a APP or powerset with a endurance recovery power that you can use to mostly eliminate its downsides (although toggles still crash).

So make it more difficult for teams of 8, don't eliminate them. Hate is a mild word for the way I'd feel about having the rug pulled out from under me like that. This is a game that has long provided the option to form largish teams, and rewriting that feature to turn this game into WoW at the last minute would be the first time I ever used the word "betrayal" to characterize a developer decision.

Would you also be writing your resignation letter as you did this?

There are no words that were spoken during ED or the defense nerf that could possibly equal the rage that would be unleashed if this sort of change ever happened. I can't for the life of me een imagine WHY you would want to do this, since a team of 4 can alreadyfight spawns of 8.

This. Thisthisthisthis.

Well, the animation time gets me too. But Teleport's endurance cost is very What The Heck.

I do wish we could execute any Costume Change emote as our custom Teleport animation (and just let longer animations be interuptible, since I believe all costume changes are anyway).