Oedipus_Tex

Plant Control, Super Strength, and Titan Weapons are Smash/Lethal. We need to see the set to judge.

Well, this basically already happens, but by-AT-by-powerset instead of just by-AT. In a way you could say that Weave does almost exactly this though.

Let's leave the makers of Always Online Auction House 3 out as as example company models we want to emulate. There isn't a company in recent memory that has a relationship that adversarial with their own playerbases.

Forgive my ignorance if this is a silly statement, but IMO it shouldn't matter what the outside source's healing capability is. We know that it refilled the character to full, so whether they are capable of healing 100HP or 1000 I don't think matters at that moment in time. You may not even have a guarantee that the heal will happen again, or it could be an unreliable splash heal, like from a Kinetics user.

The question I have is, when the external heal restores the target to full, does this mean the system has been "reset"?

I probably would look to make part of the change at the core combat mechanic level rather than an individual power level. Adjust ToHit (not Accuracy like I wrote) down in relation to total damage, with powers capable of doing less than 100-300ish HP base retaining their current ToHit and powers that do more trailing off. I'm just spitballing numbers though. The main idea would be to adjust the damage curve so that characters with modest defense started dodging heavy hits sooner than lighter hits. If my basic assumptions are right (they often aren't ) this would blur the edge off of the soft cap. People currently at the cap wouldn't feel much of a change unless they got hit with -Defense or an enemy with a lot of +ToHit.

This would be a critter-only change, by the way.

I doubt it would happen and the numbers involved would need policing (by you, I hope) but outside of infinite code rant, it seems do-able from a mechanical sense without rewriting a bunch of powers.

I agree with you.

(A second thing I would consider, instead of just buffing ToHit across the board, is making the Accuracy of individual powers vary more. If hard hitting powers had lower Accuracy and softer hitting powers had high Accuracy, I think it might smooth out the edges of the soft cap. But I haven't tested that idea with charts to see if it works like I think it would. The intent would be to make the jump from 40% defense to 45% not be as extreme because you already soft capped to a few attacks at 20% or 30% and so on.)

I'm not sure what you mean here but I think you missed part of my point. The set could be "lopsided" without necessarily being "overpowered" (my words) if it turns out that one specific build or combo (in this case possibly Illusion/Psi/Ice) is significantly better than all other options. I'm not quite convinced it is, but some of the arguments used to counter what I've said about the powers available to that combo could be the foundation for that argument.

Anyway, what I was mainly responding to was the statement that Dominators aren't competitive with Controllers because they lack debuffs. You have to pigeonhole yourself somewhat to get those debuffs, and there are many more possible objections to a possible powerset combo than just "it's overpowered" (quoting no one particular). You also do not necessarily have to have debuffs if you already have good DPS.

They are definitely going to have to walk on eggshells about the issue. For better or worse, Phantom Army is one of this game's signature powers and anything they do (including doing nothing) is going to probably attract criticism. FWIW, I'm okay with the power as an oddity but at the same time very, very glad this is the only video game I play with a power with those functions.

Also note that there is what we can call a stealth way to nerf the crap out of Phantom Army. It's actually already been partially done, with few people noticing. I'm being cryptic, but there are two specific changes to the game in the past few years that might as well have "we were trying to discretely nerf Phantom Army" painted on them, whether they were specifically thinking of it that way at the time or not. I suspect they were.

Traps is not available to Controllers.


Radiation has -500%, unless you're alluding to occasional overlaps in -Regen. EMP is on a 300 second recharge, and lasts 15 seconds. The actual final value is definitely not -1000% all of the time, even with IOs. (If you are talking about an IOed build, see comment about that below).

Drain Psyche slotted with 2 Heal IOs yields -916.6% Regen. Slotted with an actual effort to raise it, the number in Mids I'm getting is -987%.


Sleet has more of both. Not perma out the gate, but that's already really shaky ground for reasons I already mentioned. Everyone will have to decide whether IOs are allowed or not, and stick to it.


I don't think its possible to be incompatable with an invulnerable pet. Some combos may be more palatable than others, but that doesn't mean most wouldn't benefit.


It frustrates me how in these discussions we go back and forth over whether requiring IOs is a plus or minus as it suits the individual argument. [EDIT: Sorry, I wrote that in a moment of impatience and it sounds ruder typed than I meant it to. I just mean that it is very hard to talk about set performance when SOed Dominators are compared to IOed Cold and Rad Controllers as examples of what they are "less powerful" than. IMO the two things need to be compared side by side--if IOs are in for Controllers, they are in for Dominators too.]


If you take APPs into account, it can be brought up to a whopping "everything" because any set has the option to take whatever APP benefits them. If you choose to pick an APP you don't benefit much from, that's your "option," but it still makes the statement that Dominators can't get the debuffs of Controllers not exactly true, unless you avoid the options to do so.

Arguing otherwise is like saying "Illusion/Cold isn't that great because Illusion/Force Field is only so-so."

I'm actually not sure this is true. I don't have Mids in front of me, but I'm going to address the basic framework.


Controller debuff is limited to only some of the sets. Sets differ wildly in how much -Resist they provide, with a few providing none (Empathy, Force Field), and a few providing quite a bit (Cold). Kinetics is in the weird position of being a normally very damaging set that can't boost its pets.

The standard value for Controller -Resist is -22%. However, pets are exempt, so Controllers get -30% from Sleet and Freezing Rain. Time Manipulation has a special mechanic that allows -27% Resist on certain targets if you plan for it; this "special" mechanic doesn't actually lift Time's -Resist above Sleet, though.

All of this is important, because with any Dominator secondary you can access Sleet, which has the same -Resist values as the Controller (and Defender) versions, and only a 30 second duration to seperate them (Controller: 60s, Dominator: 90s). The Dominator version of Sleet is somewhat weaker than Controller Sleet because of the duration, but it's not clear to me that it is weaker than other Controller sources of -Resist, given that those powers mostly have lower values. There are a couple of exceptions but overall Sleet is extremely powerful on either AT.

Overall, in the -Resist arena, it is not a clear win for Controllers.



Now, -Regen. No question here. Drain Psyche is a -500% Regen debuff that is enhanceable. Controllers can't touch this. Moreover, because we just established that Controller debuffs come from their secondary, in order to even try they need a set that has both -Regen AND -Resist--they can't go halfies and pick up the second debuff from an APP.

Whether this is more or less of an advantage is hard to establish. On the one hand, it means you can pick from a couple of sets to see the big advantages. On the other hand, by my quick count only four Controller secondaries--Radiation, Cold, Dark Miasma, and Thermal--have both significant -Regen and -Resist, so if you want both you have to be selective there too. Some people may say that because only one Dominator combo yields significant debuffs that it's okay, although it may also mean the set is even more lopsided than on Controllers and pigeonholes you into a few very limited options.


Personally, I'd argue having damage values near-ish to a Blaster combined with an invincible army to tank for you should be enough though. Maybe somewhat more justified now that Blasters have crashless nukes... but again, only somewhat.


[NOTE: There is a sort of shell game that goes on with Cold Domination in particular every time this topic comes up that I hope to avoid this go-round. The up time of Cold Domination's -Resist and -Regen before IOs hovers at arounds 50-60%, due to the excessively long recharge of these powers. So, just a warning ahead of time, if someone is going to counter arguments about Dominator performance with an "IOs don't count" style of rebuttal, they also need to make them not count for Cold Domination. The same applies to other sets too, of course, but especially in Cold's case.]

Sleet is the power that would probably cause the most gnashing of teeth.

Not that I think that should stop them.

Or if nothing else, Defender Sleet should use the correct -35% Resist pet that Defender Storm does.

I haven't followed the changes very closely, but isn't Invoke Panic only a 15ft radius? Plus it's still just Terrorize, so the enemy will still be taking swings at you when you actually attack them. I suppose it could be useful if you mostly limit yourself to single target, but I don't see it working for my personal play style.

The upshot of AA is that as long as you don't get mezzed, it has no cast time. It is also one of the only control powers that is essentially always available. I think it has some headaches that need to be worked out--particularly for non perma-dom builds and builds without mezz protection/incarnate procs/purple procs/endurance reduction--but overall that the power doesn't get enough credit for what it does do.

To put it another way, if someone were to stick Arctic Air in a Power Pool like Invoke Panic is, I have very a hard time believing most people would skip it. I actually suspect it would become a beeline power for power gaming melee characters in particular, for reasons partially discussed in this thread.

Thanks for the analysis. Jack Frost actually has 25% defense to Psionic though, so I guess he's a bit more competitive than at first glance. Here are his stats, taken from City of Data:

+60% Res(Cold) for 10.25s
+10% Res(Fire) for 10.25s
+25% Smashing, Lethal, Energy, Negative, Psionic, AOE Defense for 10.25s
+35% Fire, Cold Defense for 10.25s


My Ice builds have been adding the two +5 defense pet IOs, and I take Manuevers, which all together add around +14 additional defense, which I suppose is a good strategy given how decent the base values are. I actually didn't realize jack had AoE defense until just a few minutes ago when I copied the data.

I really don't agree with that. It's a nice supplement but Arctic Air + Ice Slick is still much better than just a PBAoE fear. Skipping Ice Slick for this power, like one person above did, is IMO probably not a strategy for most people.

Of course, you can combine them all together, which is probably the best option.

It almost sounds like popular opinion is Ice Control has less control than, say, a Blaster or maybe even a Dark Miasma Defender, which is IMO not really the reality. It is somewhat worse than other controls sets but I really don't think the is as bad as a lot of people say.

True. High defense pets are relatively rare though. Until recently none of the Controller pets had any defense. Speaking of...

While I have your attention, can I ask a small favor?

Jack Frost now has 25% defense to most, 35% to Fire/Cold. The Earth pet has resistances that range from 40% (Smash) to 100% (Psi). Which do you think is more durable in most fights? What about after adding defense sets to Jack to get his defenses into the 40% range? There seems to be a lot of disagreement about whether Jack Frost is in the same class as Stoney. Are they generally pretty close now that Jack Frost has been buffed?

I think it's possible to argue it a number of different ways. Phantom Army is a definite judgment call. Determining what it should be capable of is difficult because even if it was a control limited to a single target, there are limits, which is why a single target Hold is Mag 3 and not, say, Mag 30 so it could more easily control a AV. I have sometimes heard the argument that what really matter is reward rate, and big targets don't provide as many rewards, but I don't really agree with that POV personally, because I consider clearing a big target "reward" in itself, if this game is to be anything but a farm.



I'm referring to AVs like Ghost Widow who heal off anything in vicinity and other enemies to which PA is immune. Modern AVs don't tend to be as weighted in favor of PA but some of the older ones seemed almost created with it specifically in mind.