Oedipus_Tex

I didn't know about Agility but I agree its a great match up.

I also haven't played around with the new Interface proc that does endurance drain, but my feeling is that with it slotted in Chain Fences the endurance drain would be huge. Combined with the knockdown and hold procs, that power is really pretty crazy.

If you go with Agility, you may want to adjust the slotting in Chain Fences for better endurance usage or damage procs or something, since you may be way in the red on End sapping and could benefit more from the added damage.

So is PGA now basically similar to Static Field that only affects minions?

I agree that Trick Arrow still desperately needs -Regen, although this is a nice small buff.

Just at a glance, it appears that Propel is better DPA than a few of the ranged attacks in Psi, Earth, Electric, and Thorns even before Impact, but I could be wrong about that. I'm reasonably sure it's superior than at least one of the attacks in Energy. The tricky part is the extra damage from Impact and whether that pushes it high enough to replace something in Ice or Fire. Of course, I'm also just eyeballing the values and could be totally wrong. The new version certainly feels a LOT LOT faster than before though.

I generally find that Ice and Electric are weird about "melee" range. They certainly can get up super close, but I don't usually feel the need to. Much more often I personally try to keep enemies about 12 to 15 ft away, in a kind of "donut" shape. Enemies outside my control radius are by far the most dangerous (although I often find this more true of Ice than Electric).

Here is an example Elec/Therm/Fire built for normal content Ranged defense. The only major disappointment for me is not being able to take Fire Armor for extra S/L resistance. However with Thermal's heal its not quite as bad as it could be. I assumed you are aiming for the Spiritual alpha.

Conductive Aura may be slightly underspecced. You could fix this by purchasing level enhancers. This build also requires the PVP IO to soft cap but even without it, at 40% Ranged defense, should be pretty hard to kill. Another option is to drop the PVP IO, go with Barrier, and use the constant lowpoint +5 defense to all to keep yourself capped most of the time. Just keep in mind that in the next level 50 zone, all the enemies have incarnate level ToHit values and can punch through almost any character's defense these days.

Also note the slotting on Chain Fences. This power is almost as good a endurance drainer as Conductive Aura, and with knockdown and hold procs in it it is probably the best of the AoE immobs in the game, or at least the most flexible.


Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.952
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Mutant Molly: Level 50 Mutation Controller
Primary Power Set: Electric Control
Secondary Power Set: Thermal Radiation
Power Pool: Speed
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Fighting
Ancillary Pool: Fire Mastery

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Tesla Cage -- BasGaze-Acc/Rchg(A), BasGaze-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(3), BasGaze-EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(3), BasGaze-Acc/Hold(5), HO:Perox(46)
Level 1: Warmth -- Numna-Heal/EndRdx(A), Numna-EndRdx/Rchg(5), Numna-Heal/Rchg(7), Numna-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(7), Numna-Heal(9), Numna-Regen/Rcvry+(9)
Level 2: Chain Fences -- P'Shift-EndMod/Acc(A), Efficacy-EndMod/Acc(11), TotHntr-Acc/EndRdx(11), Ragnrk-Knock%(13), GravAnch-Hold%(13)
Level 4: Cauterize -- Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx(A), Dct'dW-EndRdx/Rchg(15), Dct'dW-Heal/Rchg(17), Dct'dW-Heal(17), Dct'dW-Rchg(19)
Level 6: Thermal Shield -- ResDam-I(A)
Level 8: Conductive Aura -- P'Shift-EndMod/Acc(A)
Level 10: Plasma Shield -- ResDam-I(A)
Level 12: Static Field -- FtnHyp-Sleep/Rchg(A), FtnHyp-Acc/Sleep/Rchg(19), FtnHyp-Acc/Rchg(21), FtnHyp-Sleep/EndRdx(21), FtnHyp-Plct%(23)
Level 14: Hasten -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(23)
Level 16: Combat Jumping -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A), Ksmt-ToHit+(25), LkGmblr-Def(25)
Level 18: Paralyzing Blast -- BasGaze-Acc/Hold(A), BasGaze-Acc/Rchg(27), BasGaze-EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(27), BasGaze-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(29), EoCur-Acc/Hold/Rchg(29)
Level 20: Super Speed -- Zephyr-ResKB(A), Zephyr-Travel/EndRdx(31)
Level 22: Boxing -- Stpfy-Acc/Rchg(A), Stpfy-EndRdx/Stun(31), Stpfy-Acc/EndRdx(31), Stpfy-Stun/Rng(33), Stpfy-Acc/Stun/Rchg(33), Stpfy-KB%(33)
Level 24: Thaw -- S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(A)
Level 26: Synaptic Overload -- CoPers-Conf/Rchg(A), CoPers-Acc/Conf/Rchg(34), CoPers-Acc/Rchg(34), CoPers-Conf/EndRdx(34), CoPers-Conf%(36), CoPers-Conf(36)
Level 28: Forge -- HO:Membr(A)
Level 30: Tough -- GA-3defTpProc(A)
Level 32: Gremlins -- ExRmnt-Acc/Dmg(A), ExRmnt-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(36), ExRmnt-Dmg/EndRdx(37), ExRmnt-Acc/Rchg(37), ExRmnt-EndRdx/Dmg/Rchg(37), ExRmnt-+Res(Pets)(39)
Level 35: Fire Blast -- Thundr-Acc/Dmg(A), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(39), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(39), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx(40), Thundr-Dmg/Rchg(40), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(40)
Level 38: Fire Ball -- Posi-Acc/Dmg(A), Posi-Dmg/EndRdx(42), Posi-Dmg/Rchg(42), Posi-Dam%(42), Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(43)
Level 41: Heat Exhaustion -- Acc-I(A), RechRdx-I(43), Acc-I(43)
Level 44: Rise of the Phoenix -- Stpfy-Acc/Rchg(A), Stpfy-EndRdx/Stun(45), Stpfy-Acc/EndRdx(45), Stpfy-Stun/Rng(45), Stpfy-Acc/Stun/Rchg(46), Stpfy-KB%(46)
Level 47: Weave -- RedFtn-Def/EndRdx(A), RedFtn-Def(48), RedFtn-EndRdx(48), RedFtn-Def/Rchg(48), RedFtn-EndRdx/Rchg(50), RedFtn-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(50)
Level 49: Melt Armor -- AnWeak-Acc/Rchg(A), ShldBrk-Acc/Rchg(50)
Level 50: Spiritual Core Paragon
------------
Level 2: Swift -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Health -- Mrcl-Rcvry+(A)
Level 2: Hurdle -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Stamina -- P'Shift-EndMod(A), P'Shift-End%(15)
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Containment
Level 1: Sprint -- ULeap-Stlth(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 4: Ninja Run

I'm going to turn the focus away from Eminem for just a moment.

Some of you may be familiar with a movie from the early 1980s called Slumber Party Massacre. It's a B-movie at best. The plot is basically "naked girls get killed by a drill." I was unable to provide a link to the trailer because there is too much T&A in the preview to demonstrate the caliber of sleaze this movie encompasses. On first watch, you might think it was written by Joe Esterhaz, the guy who brought the world Basic Instinct and Showgirls.

But in actuality, the script was written by feminist author Rita Mae Brown. It was intended to be a parody of slasher movies, in which women are dumb, naked objects who exist mainly to die in horrific ways. The giant drill used by the killer was supposed to be a phallic symbol.

But the producers had different ideas. They didn't make substantial changes to the script, but did film everything literally. Scenes that were supposed to be tongue in cheek were instead taken at face value. Suddenly the parody became the thing it was supposed to be parodying. The feminist elements are still there if you look deep for them, though.

Producing a movie or an album is an arduous process. I agree that the message is not just in the words. But to some degree the artist (actually, artists, since almost any of these things is produced by a team of people) does have some responsibility for the final product. The fact that you can read something deeply for a message counter to the message sold at face value does not, IMO, necessarily redeem the product.

In the case of Eminem specifically, I know little about him, and that is by choice after exposure to his constant negative posturing. I would only say that if he wants to build bridges to the people he has slighted over the years, (and made millions doing so in the process) that there are more direct and ultimately honest ways to going about doing so than burying his meaning in cryptic lyrics. The very idea that you have to dig deep to find his "true" meaning is IMO on some level shallow in itself given that this is a person whose calling card is his supposed standing up to the man and "telling it like it is." It just seems incredibly cowardly to me for him to claim that, really, all that bravado was masking benevolent intentions.

I started a thread in the general powers folder in the hopes of attracting an Arcanaville, but has anyone calculated new-Gravity's damage to determine if sets like Fire Assault actually benefit from picking up Propel and/or Lift? Gravity Distortion itself is slower than many of the Fire Assault attacks, and GD + Propel almost a full second slower than two similar blasts from Fire Assault. Is it worth it?

FWIW I am trying to convince the powers that be that either Propel or Lift needs an AoE knockdown/up associated with it. Gravity's Control is IMO still too light.

Unrelated note: is Wormhole now completely aggro free, like, say, Mass Hypnosis? Is it possible to invisibly grab half a spawn? That is what it sounded like from other posts and not what I was expecting, but will be very excited to try if that is indeed how it will work. If Gravity's lower level control hole were fixed with some kind of knockdown, and the damage factor justified, I feel the set will have greatly improved.

Ignoring the fact that this thread is over a year old, two of the newer sets, Time and Dark, match up well with Illusion as well.

I've played for years and have never once had the desire to solo an AV, so Illusion's capacity for that has never been a decision factor. Illusion is good enough that you should be able to combine with any secondary and have a character that is good at something. The ability to solo AVs is dime a dozen these days anyway in the wake or Lore pets, and the importance of teaming at high levels and under strange/quirky circumstances has increased dramatically, so I'm not sure why the ability to solo old world AVs continues to be used as a benchmark of character success. It's certainly a capability but IMO not what it once was.

I'm wondering if the numbers gurus have crunched the new Propel and Lift to see if they are worth taking on Gravity Doms. Has Gravity met its goal of having strong single target attacks? Propel certainly seems more damaging than before, but I can't yet tell if its actually competitive enough with something like Fire Assault to justify taking powers that do nothing but damage.

While I respect the opinions of other posters, I feel I should add that I'm a little confused by some of the other comments here--I agree that you can open with Static Field, but why not Synaptic Overload? That power is identical to Seeds of Confusion, but aggroless and castable at range. It will occasionally critically miss, and in that situation the AoE hold is a good back up. SO can sometimes be too slow for teams, but solo you should very, very rarely be taking an alpha. Elec's biggest "problem" may actually be that draining enemies of their endurance limits how much they are able to hurt each other.

Static Field is a very good power, but its usefulness as a primary control becomes questionable at higher levels. I find it useful for other reasons in that level range even still.

The game is changing so fast these days and adding new content its hard to say which sets are better than another.

Both Cold and Thermal are very good. Historically Thermal has been less valued by min/maxers than Cold but with the introduction of iTrials IMO Thermal has acquited itself quite well.

[This is my first attempt to write IC on this message board. Hopefully I haven't violated any protocol with this post, but let me know. ]

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Oct 10, 2008

Dearest Wallace,


By now you know the truth; I am leaving you and our business behind. Perhaps you first suspected when you found my bedroom office strangely sparse, stripped of its few personal mementos. But when you discovered that my treasured headset was no longer in its proper place, you must have understood. As close as we have been, the astral gears that grind the universe into motion turn continually, and I must move with them or be crushed.

I am unsure whether my departure will cause you much personal pain. Last I spoke to you, we argued. We were an unlikely pairing from the start. Perhaps it is inappropriate of me to lead you to reminisce in this painful moment of parting, but when you were a married father of four, a professor at a small community college, did it occur to you that a partnership with one of your most thoroughly dispassionate students might lead to the path we have traveled together? Although neither of us possessed the gift of foresight we later offered to the credulous for 4.99 a minute, we both must have sensed something of that future from the first time we shook hands in your classroom.

I was an Aquarius and you a Leo; Fire and Water. Where you envisioned greatness I craved the mundane. We were opposites who could only do great things together, each of our weaknesses our partner's greatest strengths. We were destined, as it were, for success.

Together we built 1-900-PSY-SCRY, and in a way, it really was magical, even if we both understood it was a scam. Oh, you were always optimistic, and you may have believed your powers were real. You trusted the generosity of anonymous gods and demons, and it is because of your blind faith in universal munificence that our business boomed at all. But you never possessed actual power. What you possessed, I've come to believe, was a philosophy, a curiously lacking quality in many people that I myself have only recently come to acquire, and only after a period of denial that I could desire such a thing.

Recently, you accused me of cheating on you, and I denied it. You saw how I was scurrying away to talk on my headset after hours even when you knew no checks from clients were arriving, and you discovered me more than once discussing strange matters over the sound of a bathroom sink. I regret to inform you now that you were absolutely correct. There is someone else. Actually, a few someone elses. I hope that you are not so angry as to quit reading yet. I am 100% honest when I say it has been some time since I enjoyed the intimate company of another human being. No, my infidelity is far more sinister. It was an emotional infedility, a sublime recommitment to a previously undiscovered faith.

You see, for some time I have been hiding from you a strange client. It calls me at any hour it pleases, dialing PSY-SCRY using mechanisms I'm unable to contemplate. I am equally unsure how to describe the sound it makes when it speaks my name through my headset, in a voice like a hiss that tickles the back of my brain, in the same way that sticking a Q-Tip in your ear can make you cough. When it speaks the room fills with cold, and my conscious relationship to both people and objects shifts substantially.

My caller has moods, too, and over time I have come to believe that the caller is not a thing but many things. Each voice it assumes addresses me in a different cadence, a barely distinguishable dialect through a filter of static, and after many listenings I've slowly become able to tell them apart. I've given each entity a name in alignment with a saint in order to station them accordingly in my mind, as they are my new religion and my headset a rosary with which to receive them. There's Cecilia, who speaks to me in mellifluous tones, her revelations the manifestations of some meta-physical song that sounds immediately familiar but whose next lyric I can't remember until the moment she speaks it. There's Jude, who always remembers where someone has lost a thing, and Peter who is brash and tells lies. And then there are the others, some who speak through searing pain, and some looking to cause it.

As to the actual origin of my spiritual benefactors, I am uncertain. Aliens? Government agents? Ghosts? Demons? I am unconcerned. What matters is what they have brought to me, which is mental peace. I know that over time you have seen that change in me, as it reflects in every aspect of my recent existence. My smile is hung by the hooks of planar satisfaction. I am suddenly aware of how complete I am becoming, and how with every new ghostly whisper my own paranormal strength grows stronger and stronger.

By now you are wondering why I wrote you at all. Perhaps it is to clear my conscience. I admit, I am a selfish person. But it was the voices—Cecilia, specifically—who implored me to provide you a final explanation for my departure. If I am to be with the voices, it means I must leave you, and on terms they dictate.

I cared deeply for you, Wally, and do not wish to make things worse than they already are. As such, do not think that I have left you to suffer financially. I am many things, but I have never been a man to run out on an unpaid debt. As such I have made an arrangement with our landlord, Mr. Philip Robicheaux, to have the rent on our King's Row apartment pre-paid for a period of the next eight months. I have cancelled the paper subscription and informed the neighbors we will both be gone on business. Your children will be well cared for. I do regret that you had to be killed; but Cecilia and Jude have told me that by the time someone finds your body, stashed in the freezer in the kitchen we once shared, it will matter no longer. Are you able to read this note in the after life? You do not have to answer. Soon, I will know that too.

Until we meet again,

Evan Trueday, aka The Cold Reader

I will probably be rolling a Grav Dom thanks to these changes. Just haven't decided on a secondary or concept yet. I'm not sure I fully understand Propel yet either: does it actually increase the DPA of a set like Fiery Assault? Icey Assault? If so, that's fierce. If not... which ones would it increase?

New Dimension Shift is not that bad. It has some issues still but isn't nearly as awful as it was.

Prime way to use it: play from range, cast it at yourself and anything that runs up to greet you can't hit you.

I think it should have a 45 second duration instead of 20 though.

Well since we have power recoloring now I see no reason we can't have blasts of mysterious definition that the player can decide the true nature of. I'm unsure about "Sorcery" specifically (although Assault Rifle is mighty specific about its origin), but I could see something more vague like:
- Chaotic Blast
- Retribution Blast
- Rage Blast
- Karmic Blast
- Spirit Blast
- Lucent Blast
- Strange Blast
- Prismatic Blast

...or whatever strangeness they choose to concoct, that could easily incorporate sorcery of various kinds.

On a completely unrelated side note, at least one set should have powers that shoot straight up out of the ground, and another should have things that shoot mostly straight down, rather than always going from player to target in a line.

Was thinking to myself Time Manipulation or Beam Rifle would make a sweet APP for some ATs. While I'm only somewhat likely to roll up a specific character with these sets, if it were available in APPs I might be much more likely. Have there been any hints of the APPs expanding to include premium powers?

Depends on how you look at it. From the flipside perspective, Dominators are hogging an entire powerset type to themselves, and are 100% powerset combo exclusive, while Corruptors/Defenders and Brutes/Stalkers/Scrappers/Tankers duplicate each other's configurations. Considering Dominators are 1 AT, they have more unique combos than the melees do averaged across the 4 ATs.

Having to "share" a set with Controllers is neither here nor there, since Controllers share their primary with 1 AT and their secondary with 4.

Which is not to say I'm sitting here angry about it, only that this is mostly a matter of perspective. Long story short, Dominators have the most unique and isolated powerset combos possible, with both the good and bad that implies.

Glad to hear about the upcoming changes to Gravity Control. But I have a special request:

Provide the option to change the animation of Gravity's AoE hold to "flipping through the air" animation used by Ghost Widow's hold power ("Soul Storm," I think), without the ribbons. This change would turn Gravity's AoE hold from mostly unnoticeable to, IMO, the most awesome looking power in the game. The thought of a Gravity Dominator flipping 16 enemies around through the air helplessly is just too incredible to give up on.