Oedipus_Tex

I reroll a lot. Going across the bottom of my sig, the number of rerolls is 3, 0, 3, 2, 5, 3, 0, 2, 6, 0. The Oedipus Tex character has been a Archery/Force Field Defender, Illusion/Storm Controller, Earth/Therm Controller, Earth/Storm Controller, Dual Pistols/Dark Corruptor and is currently an Earth/Time Controller. My Ice/Fire Dom is a spiritual reroll of my Ice/Therm Controller. Pinball Blizzard would be rerolled if I could find a suitable replacement for Force Field/Ice Defender, because he flatly sucks. I just haven't figured out a combo to move him to that preserves the concept and doesn't end with him wrapped in costume ruining ice armor.

I should add one fairly nasty but funny surprise: I never realized how much I tend to jump and jet pack around until I played an Electric Tanker. The ability of enemies to time knockback as I'm leaping is hilarious. Not specific to the ITF, although at one point I had to jet pack away from the Phallanx robots and they blew me out of the sky.

Thanks guys. Part of the issue was definitely something going on with the team... I mean, it's been a while since I was on an ITF that wiped 3 or 4 times before getting to the last mission. I seem to recall we might have had 3 Blasters, and a Peacebringer. We had a Nightshade who took over for tanking for me to some extent. Overall people were pretty good natured about it, but it was still embaressing to die 4 or 5 times during the first mission.

Interestingly, we did pretty well against the large groups of Elite Bosses and the all-boss group on the hill. During the crystal destruction phase I told the Rads that were with us to put their debuffs on the crystals and as long as I taunted everything close to that we did okay. I also did okay when I still had purples.. I just ran out really quickly. Luckily I had an email full of wakies from the MoM trial.

On the other hand, I think either Requiem or the other guy might have basically two-shotted me at one point. Granted, I was fighting him after recovering from the team's fourth wipe and had nothing but a Break Free to my name at that point.

Weird suggestion: try an Ice Control Dominator. Ice Control gets a lot of flack for some of its issues, but on a Dominator with a good damaging secondary it's actually surprisingly hardy. Domination provides mezz protection for 90 seconds at a time. If you decide to IO (which is not very expensive for this control set) you become a serious force to be reckoned with.

Now, according to... everyone... my Ice Dominator should be much worse than my other Doms. But it isn't, in my experience, mainly because I'm running around with a 25ft slow and confuse aura enemies have to truck through if they want to hit me. The set does have some frustrating periods, Jack Frost isn't the best, and the sleep power sucks. But melee ATs wish they could get something like Arctic Air, and if you build yourself to survive the onslaught, it's not so terribly different. If other sets operate at melee or range, I call what Ice plays at "donut range," because the game is all about hanging back far enough that is reasonably safe but keeping them inside your confusion ring. It's a game of cat and mouse that some people hate but I find thrilling and a bit psychotic. Regardless, to me its completely unlike anything available in other games.

Hi.

I have an Elec/Titan Weapon Tanker. I am very familiar with the ITF, having played it on various squishy characters. I only have played 1 Brute, 1 Scrapper, and now 1 Tanker past level 30. The Tanker is now level 37.

Anyway my Elec/TW Tanker has done fairly ok on playing lead tank on radio missions. I do have to rely on inspirations a bit but overall I don't die too frequently. I just got Tough so Smash/Lethal is sitting around 70% resistance I think. There have been some close calls but Elec's heal has come through.

However, I ended up on an ITF a few nights ago that proved very difficult for this character. The Romans were the biggest problem for me. I died many times, often right at the start of the fight. The long animation on TW sometimes meant I missed a heal or inspiration when I really needed it. I would go to the nurse after each mission and load up on purples and greens and try to eat them dilegently, but I didn't seem to be able to turn the tide. Part of that could have been lack of support; the TF was struggling bad enough that we actually gave up on the second to last mission.

My main question is, is it expected for a mid level Elec Armor to eat dirt a lot on the ITF? I probably won't be IOing this character ever, at least not all too seriously. It's not going to stop me from playing him, although the whole thing was pretty embaressing and I felt like I wasn't doing enough to warrant a spot on the team. The character has been pretty decent elsewhere so it wouldn't be a total loss, but it did suprise me how quickly he dropped.

Would it be overpowered if you could use the rezz while still alive for quick burst healing and endurance bar boost? It has a longer recharge than the main burst heal so you couldn't do it as often, but if you healed with the main one and needed a second burst you could use that. I've suggested the same for Empathy in the past (but having that be a full endurance and hp bar heal).

Actually, the reason I want Force Field bumped up the list is that in my mind Force Field is THE signature superhero buff/debuff set. You could have a game called "City of Heroes" where you bumped off any of the other buff/debuff sets, but drop Force Field and a major theme is missing, similar to how dropping Invulnerability or Super Strength or would be. For Force Field to be such a backburner set just feels wrong to me.

I don't have much to say on this topic. As a small pointer, though, for detailed discussions like this it's helpful to spell out power names. Acronyms are re-used thoughout the game, so it takes a lot of concentration for me not to read portions of the opening post as having something to do with Dual Pistols.

I would pin the "trouble" with Dominators somewhere else.

It's basically this: perma-Domination should not have been allowed to happen, because Domination should not have been flagged to benefit from global recharge. Even if that hadn't been recognized initially, that flag should have been flipped when IOs were released. I enjoy the mistake for what it is and greedily exploit it, but I also recognize it for what it is. A mistake, and something I exploit. (In the general sense of "exploit" BTW, not that someone is going to come along and ban me.)

There is never a free lunch in an MMO. Power is relative. Even if perma-Dom appears to fix some issue with Dominators, the issues it creates for overall game are obvious. And part of that is the effectiveness of low level and non-perma Dominators, because any sort of buff that further increases the top level power of the AT is probably unlikely given how good they can become.

I really wish the "Sword Circle" powers would get alternate animations. In the case of the "elemental" sets, having the character perform the "arms raised" motion or something else and then having the element (fire, energy, etc) burst out of the ground in a huge column would be very fitting. They have over 2 seconds of animation time to play with here so they could make it very interesting.

Other than that, the three original weapon sets: Battle Axe, Broadsword, and War Mace. They all seem to use very similar animations even though that doesn't really make a lot of sense.

There are a couple of other animations out there I just greatly dislike. Tough's "ape beating its chest" animation is really out of place for example.

All of that said, I'd still put all of these on the back burner if we could just get animation work done to finally rid the game of Hasten hands.

If you're going to skip Mass Hypnosis, bypass Mind Control completely and go with Dark Control, unless you are just doing this for concept. Mind has two main desirable things Dark doesn't: Mass Hypnosis and Mass Confusion. You're skipping Telekinesis anyway and Mind's attacks are worth much less than a pet.

If you want to play with aggro-free AoE powers Mind is pretty much the only ticket (well not really, there is also Electric or even Gravity now but those sit pretty far apart from Mind otherwise). Just make sure you actually take the powers that grant that, unless, again, this is a concept build.

Weird questions...

What happens to Dim Shift when the caster is Confused? If you cast it over an area away from the big bad at the end of UG and then stand in it, when he confuses you do you end up Phased and thus 100% protected from accidentally macing someone, being hit, or healing the bad guy? Kind of a weird way to use it and I'm not even sure how well it would work (esp with a 20 second duration)--it would also make you immune to being aided by allies but then if they are confused too they couldn't do it anyway.

Second question, are confused enemies inside a Dim Shift able to hit each other?

Third question, if something rezzes inside Dim Shift (example: Super Stunner) can it use rezz abilities that require a nearby ally? I assume it can since it's dead and this situation is probably rare anyway but maybe worth knowing.

Fourth question, if you phase a target that a support unit wants to heal/protect/buff, is the support unit smart enough to stop trying to do it, or will it just keep trying to spam its heals on the injured but phased enemy?

I should add that whether Ill/Dark is worth it may turn out to be more a question of whether Illusion is worth it. Dark is... well I'll just say that if released as planned, my Mind Dominator character will be rerolled instantly and it will represent a huge buff to a character I already considered very effective. I'm not sure where Illusion stands yet.

That's mainly because I haven't yet wrapped my head around how much damage and survivability the new Dark Control pets have. If it turns out that in most content they survive as well as PA does for various reasons, IMO Dark will stomp Illusion Control. It has none of the downsides Illusion does and will have most of Illusion's (and Mind and Fire and even one of Dark Miasma's) best powers. AoE Containment is no issue. Stopping runners in BAF is no issue. Mobs fleeing due to Fear is no issue. Delivering proc damage from interface to a large crowd is no issue. Bosses you fail to mezz suffer massive -ToHit and are much less of an issue. Your AoE hold even works around corners like (only) Earth's does.

Again this all hinges on how good the pets turn out to be. But at this point Dark runs circles around Illusion's AoE capabilities, and appears to excel in the specific area of tanking that Illusion is known for. It gets a direct port of Confusion, the only not-really downside being having slightly shorter range. Instead of Flash as the lonely PBAoE it has a Flashfire clone that is actually bigger than that power and lasts longer.

Mind Control, meanwhile, is as of this writing officially dead, unless you just really want Mass Hypnosis. They could still resurrect it by changing one or both sets, but that's where we are right now.

All of my characters are concept toons too, although maybe in a weird way. Although most are based on some kind of pun, I think if superheroes existed in real life most wouldn't be super serious all of the time anyway.

I have a lot of characters I like but somehow a few tend to stay with me more than others. One is The Cold Reader. Bio has been modified slightly to foretell his change from Mind/Ice Dominator to Dark/Something Controller or Dom. His in-game bio is below:

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Evan Trueday was once a phone "psychic" who manipulated callers into believing he could read their futures for $4.99 a minute. In truth, he had no powers at all. His secret was a technique called "cold reading," in which a hoaxter uses clues learned in conversation to impress his marks.

The tele-psych gig worked great for a while, but then Evan started receiving strange interception on his headset. It was picking up calls from a mysterious source. Aliens? Ghosts? Government agents? No one knows for sure, but they speak only to Evan, and by heeding their demands he gained the ability to summon occult shadows and intense cold.

While Evan retains a mind of his own, his loyalty to anyone but the strange voices is questionable at best. However, he still occasionally pauses to take a call from old, faithful customers who plan their lives around his "amazing" foresight, as well as pay his way.
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There is also an in-character letter from this character posted on the RP forum here that contains a bit more detail, and shows off the character's voice: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?p=4071202


The character's costume is relatively simple, loosely based on the idea of TV charlatan given real power. I hope one day to be able to include the mini-mic headset.

I'm wondering about Gravity/Trick Arrow. Is an Oil Slick Arrow considered an enemy for purposes of Dimension Shift? If so, can you OSA, light it on fire, phase the whole group, and watch them burn without any ability to counterattack?

It seems like you could also Wormhole them into one of Poison's Poison Traps.

Gravity/Storm has some bizarre implications. I'm not at all sure how Tornado would react to phased enemies. Does it lose aggro or just camp on them?

I've always wondered about that arc. Specifically, about the fact that you do the same exact mission twice with a very slightly different objective in the final room. And its always the same room on both missions.

It works okay but Mind is completely outclassed by Dark Control. Unless Dark Control or Mind Control is changed I won't be rolling any more Mind Control characters.

Icy Assault is completely average in damage. I don't know what the person up thread is talking about. It's not Fire Assault. Only one set is.