Smoothjedi

I don't think it is worth it to go anything but the endurance reduction alpha, especially with plant. I mean, a 20% range increase on your confuse? That is extremely useful.

Second of all, the problem I have with going with anything but end reduction is the existence of inspirations. You are going to get more damage bonus overall from just popping two small red inspirations than slotting musculature due to diminishing returns. I'm going to assume whatever powers you are trying to empower will already be enhanced to 100% damage. Although yours is likely a little less, it makes the math easier.

Obviously if you are enhanced to 100% almost all the benefit will be lost to diminishing returns. Let's use the t4 enhancements. The Radial version gives 33% damage, and only 22% will be applied for 122% damage. Since a small red is 25% damage, you are still worse off than just popping a red. If you go core, you increase to 130%, not that much better than a small red. I can't really agree with you that this is pumping "out some serious damage."

Endurance inspirations are a totally different beast than all the other inspirations. They are reactive instead of proactive, and running out of it completely shuts down your damage instead of mitigating it a little bit. Personally I think the ability to dump your powers as fast as your considerable recharge allows while only draining your end bar to 25-50% before domination comes back up is well worth carrying a couple extra red inspirations to make up for the gap in damage.

Your post goes in so many directions I can't even begin to decipher what you are trying to complain about. I'll just take a stab at your last paragraph. I see all kinds of thanks in pretty much every official communication they have had with the player base. There's also veteran rewards that have continued to pile up, some of which are very cool. For one, I wish I had left my account active during some of the gaps I've had so I could use the auction house from wherever.

I mean what do you really want? It sounds like even if they sent you a personal thank you card, you wouldn't be satisfied. You are certainly snubbing the latest gimmick they have out. What is your recommendation?

Fair enough, but I think you get the general point of my argument. On top of this, what would cause server stress more than a higher population? These aren't independent variables; I was hoping for a follow up post to discuss my idea rather than an attempt to invalidate it through a technicality.

Freedom
24 members
BAF
Between 5-7 CST, 4/6/2011
Team up teleporter.

I wanted to say that I ran this trial for hours on end during the day yesterday without any incident at all. The problem seems to be load related, as they did not manifest until prime time, after 5pm. This could reflect why the problem never occurred on test server.

I don't understand these posts. The main purpose of the class is to inflict a large amount of damage over a small period of time. I don't understand why you have a condescending view of optimizing that. What other metric do you recommend for efficiency? Is it therefore wrong for a blaster to determine how to make the most of his attack chain, or controllers to get the most out of their heals/buffs/etc?

Performing high damage attacks and defeating enemies quickly seems like why someone would love the class. That is what makes it unique from the other archetypes. If that isn't how you intend to play one, maybe you could roll a different AT that might better specialize in what you enjoy?

I whole-heartedly agree with this mindset. Incapacitating and burning down your foes before they have a chance to attack you should be your primary goal. Seeing how damage you can try to avoid/soak isn't really the point of the class.

The goal of fire, especially going /fire/fire, is to kill everything before it escapes your initial CC. The sustained burst damage with embrace really helps this along significantly.

How much positioning do you really need? I mean you hit everything with confuse, it immediately clumps together, you drop roots, and then fire breath, fireball, rain of fire, fire breath, rinse/repeat. Finish what is left with ST attacks. It is going to take a lot less effort than trying to hit everything in a PBAoE.

You're doing something right if your problem is everything dies too fast. If that is truly the only downside of the powerset, maybe you should try bumping it up to +1 or higher. That would solve that issue real fast.

You can go in, almost completely eliminate a spawn with almost no alpha (sleep then confuse), and if things do happen to go awry after dropping all your nukes, you can just res, kill what is left or retreat and regroup. You lose very little time if you have frenzy. Optimally, the enemies shouldn't be attacking you enough anyway to be a concern.

I don't see what the big gain is about trying to soft cap defenses, especially with a fire ancillary. To me capping your damage potential is far more important. You rarely need the heightened defense with a control set + permadom, and when you do just burn a couple purples. A few small purples on an as needed basis outshines trying to build against the focus of the class imo.

I think the answer is obvious. Higher damage is better. Domination already increases your controls by 50%. On the Tin Man arc I was able to keep both AV robots perma-confused while we took down Mynx with a mind/fire/fire. Power boost just doesn't seem all that useful once you get permadom.

That is not a bad AoE build, but it looks like it is built for i19. As we were comparing live builds, it is out of the context of our discussion. It is much easier to do with 3 extra power slots. Although with i19 so close, it is not without merit.

I think the sarcasm is unwarranted, however, although if you really want to really name your character "SO HARD", go right ahead.

This is very true, and I pointed it out in my previous post. Both are possible, but one must sacrifice the defense bonuses to do this. My argument is that this is a preferable move to make.

Here is where you are wrong. Mind/Fire/Fire can excel at AoE and ST damage. I feel we got off track with the discussion. My point is purely that min/maxing your defense is not necessary with this build. If Fiery-Enforcer wants to go heavy ST damage, then great. I have no problems with that. I never meant to imply directly or indirectly that my ST chain was better than his. I merely gave my reasoning for choosing what I did; I liked having the secondary control effect of levitate instead of extra damage in incinerate or fire blast. I'm sure his bad *** for taking down a strong boss. However, I am saying that completely sacrificing all your aoe attacks so you can pump up defense with Kinetic combats is not optimal at all.

As I said, his build is great for soloing an AV. Here defense is probably quite necessary. However, taking this into any mission with x8 will be an absolute chore. Even in this case, you can perma sleep every enemy in the group, and just use your mega ST damage to take them down one at a time with no risk; you can do this with 0% defense without worry.

My suggestion for a compromise between our two builds would entail replacing boxing/weave/toughness etc with fireball, RoF and fire breath. Then you would have the high ST damage Fiery craves and the high AoE damage I demand. When you play against your AV, you can swap to Fiery's high defense build so when your perma mez inevitably fails to the purple triangles, you aren't toast. Personally, however, I think you could save yourself the money for enhancing a dual build and just burn a few purple inspirations when the triangles appear, easily softcap defense, and have a strong all around damage build. You have the advantage of doing all the preparation you need before starting up that AV fight, so I don't think this is unreasonable to do.

To Dromio - My build is posted in post 7. Also, I have a thread that discusses my disappointment with the alpha slot using my dominator as a reference.

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=244403

You're right, your build is probably great for soloing AV's, but it must be an absolute chore getting to him with no AoE powers. This seems like a decent secondary build, for when you know you're going to be hitting an AV. For anything else, it looks extremely cumbersome to play.

I think if you go fire, pick up fireball and rain of fire, enemies will be dead long before your seeds expire.

I disagree on this. There is a certain point where you start to have too many attacks. Taking Incinerate and fire blast I believe are unnecessary. Blaze, is reduced to a 3.675s recharge. Your build ends up wasting flares, which is great as filler. With less than a second recharge on it, it can become its own attack chain. Sprinkle in Blaze every 3.675s along with dominate (with some damage slotted) every ~2.5s, and you really don't have time to close into melee for incinerate or even really fire up a fire blast before one of these powers is up again.

For example, my attack chain typically goes: blaze, flares, dominate, flares. At this point Blaze is up again. If dominate misses, I'll throw levitate in to knock them down, and dominate again when they stand up. Low risk, no wasted powers or cooldowns, and effective.

I chose levitate over fire blast, but that may change with i19. Levitate is good KU mitigation and decent damage. Now I might swap levitate with fire blast since I plan on taking some stealth powers instead of fitness for LotG, which may not make the 7.5% from kinetic crash as appealing. I do like the KB protection it offers, however. We'll see.

I agree with you on RoF, but it works well on every other spawn that I have used my aoe hold rather than confuse, or single bosses I am holding to help mitigate their regen (great on longbow wardens), as once it is fired off it becomes off cooldown damage. Also it is good in groups where others are using immobilizes/holds.

I am splitting hairs here, but my build has 1.3% more recharge If I could afford apocalypse as you could (not to mention all those KCs), then I would break further ahead.

If I am alternating mass confuse and total domination to start fights, then typically I will need to start the third battle by ST confusing choice enemies such as bosses/sappers, and then roll in. My resist shield is typically just fine handling alphas from minions/Lts, and they are usually dead after my and the confused boss' opening bursts. If I'm really concerned I'll just pop an inspiration. By the time that 3rd group is dead, usually MC or TD is up and the cycle begins anew.

So to sum up, I can't see myself taking the time to close into melee for incinerate, especially when it can be risky and I already have plenty of ST attacks to use. If your recharge is high enough that you can't possibly fire off all your attacks before your chain is complete, you're better off picking different powers.

My ST chain is quite adequate, and I am not completely sacrificing my aoe damage to do so. My terrify is slotted for damage, and I have fireball and fire breath to handle large groups. Typically I am able to kill the entire group before whatever mez I have on them is depleted. Your build seems as though it would be dependent on sleep to ST damage enemies down, which although effective, is a painstaking process. This brings up a different question. If you are so focused on ST damage, why not just sleep an entire spawn and kill them one at a time? It seems like you'd be optimized for this scenario, which again would not require massive amounts of defense to accomplish.

This is the real crux of my argument on what you are losing. From what I can tell, you are forced to rely on a high defense, because large groups of enemies are difficult to kill quickly, creating a protracted battle that your defense then becomes necessary to survive.

I don't find Mind has "a ton" of controls. Most of the effects are soft control. This is my live build. Sleep doesn't get used very much, and Terrify is a strong attack, but subsequent attacks break this temporarily as well.
I find trying to min/max defense, as the previous poster does in their build, is not worth the effort. You lose too much for too little gain, especially considering how much time enemies are confused and attacking each other rather than you. As a secondary note, I don't understand how anyone with this AT could go without fire breath. There's just no good aoe damage without it.
Ice Mastery is a strong choice for other builds, but I really think Fire Mastery trumps it for this AT. You are already low on aoe attacks in Mind, and fireball really helps out with this.

This is a very interesting point. I had not even considered looking at the radius of these attacks. 10 ft does feel very underpowered, and I don't think it would be worth trying to sub in at this time. I'm starting to think I'll just stick with the Leviathan build I have now.

I'm not really looking for a single target attack, however. If you look at the build I posted, My Channelgun has a 1.6 recharge, and a 1.33s cast time. Longfang has a 2s cast time, and down to a 3.19s recharge. These two powers by themselves form a formidable attack chain, an 90% of the time one of them is up while I am doing ST damage. If they are not, I don't have long to wait. I feel another attack just isn't necessary.

As Pattern pointed out on the cone attack, a 5 degree arc and extra 10 foot range is a pretty significant improvement.

As far as -Acc goes, I think it is overrated. I can easily demolish a +0/x8. This is mainly possible because although I eat (and deflect most of) their alpha, my high damage generally eliminates any sort of a protracted battle. On teams min/maxing defenses over damage is generally worthless anyway as I'm not taking so much heat that I can't handle it with serum and inspirations.