The_Cheeseman

Personally, I like Hybrid. I don't think it's quite as powerful as some of the other incarnate slots, but then again, I have read the dev feedback and totally understand where they are coming from.

I can only speak for Assault, because that's what I have on my Dom and WS, but personally I really like it. 10% passive damage bonus is actually pretty nice, and over twice as powerful as an Ultimate Damage Increase (purple) set bonus of 4%. It's not as uber on my WS, since I can cap my own damage pretty much all the time via Mire, but my dominator thinks its great!

Also, using the Radial version adds some very nice burst damage to both characters while active. It doesn't exactly change the way I play them, but it certainly hastens the destruction of spawns while its active. I can activate it right before facing a major boss (EB or AV) and it significantly helps with taking them down.

I don't understand the attitude of "It's not perma so it's worthless". It's quite a powerful buff while it's active, and with a 50% uptime and only 2min downtime, it's easy to leverage it so that you have it available exactly when it's most useful.

Again, this is speaking only for the proactive Hybrid toggles, like Assault. The more reactive Melee type could be problematic.

Just wanted to chime in and say that while Mind may not be great on a controller, mostly due to lack of reliable containment and long-recharging AoE controls, it has massive appeal on a dominator, especially in a high-end IO build that has enough global recharge to achieve perma-dom (AKA, Domination recharges faster than it wears off, allowing it to stay up all the time). I have a Mind/Fire/Fire permadom, and it's by far the most absurdly powerful character I have ever experienced. Mass Confusion will destroy a x8 spawn by itself as long as you don't care about exp, and as long as you tag them all with a fireball or something, you'll still get drops. If exp is your goal, you can simply treat it as a second AoE hold that just does a lot more damage.

By alternating Mass Confusion and Total Domination to lock-down entire spawns, and then using Judgment to nuke a third into rubble, you can mow through missions with incredible speed in relative safety. Now, I also built for ranged defense, so I don't always bother leading with controls, preferring instead to just obliterate everything with my attacks while they plink away at me ineffectually. Even Archvillains and Giant Monsters are no match, as I can stack enough confuse magnitude to permanently disable them without ever even suppressing my stealth (it's funny confusing Ghost of Scrapyard, as his minions insta-die even before they get the chance to appear). Granted, I can't maintain enough DPS to actually kill them while maintain such a lockdown, but that is what your minions... I mean teammates are for, right? And confusing AVs is a great way to solo TFs, too (Mind/Fire doms have soloed master of Statesman/Recluse/Imperious in the past)!

So basically, Mind is fairly disappointing on a controller, and only so-so on a SO-only Dom, but it REALLY rewards heavy IO investment. And honestly, if you're making a dominator, your end goal is probably perma-dom anyways.

Honestly, I can't see why anybody would limit themselves to only soloing to acquire incarnate components. Granted, I play on Freedom, but I also play late at night (generally 11pm-5am EST) and I can always find people running Incarnate trials. You don't need to know anybody or have any special networking (I'm pretty much a loner in CoH, never really joining supergroups and soforth), just head to your server's meeting place (Pocket D on Freedom) and send a tell to whoever is recruiting. I've managed to fully incarnate 3 toons that way, with multiple T4's on each, and it's been outrageously easy. Granted, I've been playing MMOs for over a decade and trials in CoH are a cakewalk compared to raiding in games like Everquest, but I really think you're making things far too hard on yourself by avoiding the trials. Even if you hate them, they're so short and so much faster that it's probably worth the effort.

I think this thread is pretty funny. You can always tell the people who have played games like Everquest where raiding is a major aspect of the game, because they have such a strict, militaristic attitude. I used to lead raids back in EQ, and while I am generally a very casual, jovial guy, I warned everybody that when I am in "raid-leader mode" my instructions are NOT suggestions and failure to follow them will result in expulsion from the raid and possibly never raiding with me again (though fortunately, that level of severity is quite rare).

It's always been my attitude that you can do whatever you like when you're soloing, because you're really only affecting yourself. When teaming, you should be more serious because you're not only risking your own success, but also that of your teammates, who very well may take things much more seriously than you do. When raiding (or doing league trials in this game) your actions can determine the outcome of two dozen or more people's efforts, which is a big responsibility. Think about it, 24 people is enough to play a full regulation soccer game. How would you like it if a player on either team just started goofing off and kicking the ball out of bounds constantly, or just sitting on the grass doing nothing?

Therefore, I think the most important thing every trial participant should know is that everybody else on the trial is depending on them to put forth their best effort, not to screw around, and to maintain a positive attitude.

Ignorance should be educated. Inexperience must be compensated-for. But negligence and disrespect should never be tolerated.

I would like to further reiterate what the above poster has said: there are simply far too many variables in play to judge a character without playing it a lot in different situations.

You mention being disappointed with control ATs in DFB. Yeah, you will be. DFB is basically a massive DPS gank fest; lots of fairly easy MOBs to chew through, with no significant risk of failure. I have seen teams of almost entirely new players (except for me) who steamrolled DFB even though they didn't even know how to queue before I explained it to them. It's just way too easy to be an accurate introduction to teaming. I see it mostly as an express elevator past the "Pre-Stamina" levels (though that affectation is no longer relevant).

Control ATs tend to shine when the content is significantly challenging. Playing a controller on a steamrolling team feels very unrewarding, because MOBs are dying faster than you can lock them down, and your buff/debuffs just don't seem to matter. This is not a bad thing, and you can't let it bother you. Just do what damage you can and stay diligent for situations in which your powers suddenly become important, like overpulls, ambushes, or major bosses.

For every team where you feel useless, you'll eventually find a team where you're the MVP. Perhaps there are no tankers available, and the rest of your team is all blasters and stalkers. In this situation, a controller is a godsend, because it's your controls/buffs/debuffs that are preventing the MOBs from flattening your teammates before they can do their damage. Without you there to soften them up or lock them down, the team would fail.

Also, as mentioned above, CoH has a very swingy character development system. Some powerset combinations are heavily reliant on a limited number of key powers, and until you acquire and sufficiently slot those powers, can feel weak. Other combinations might come into bloom very early and feel relatively stronger, but then seem to lose ground as the late-blooming sets catch up. Some sets are also very open-ended, and require a lot of personal experience (and many respecs) before you really figure out how to play them to your enjoyment. The poster boy for this would be the Warshade: an AT that provides an almost overwhelming selection of attractive options and difficult opportunity costs, but provides equally overwhelming rewards for mastery.

I guess, in the end, the best advice is to simply try a lot of different sets. Read as much as you can about various builds here on the boards, and learn the strengths and weaknesses of those builds. Then, through trial and error, you will figure out what style of play you enjoy most and will eventually find a character that matches that style. Remember that you can't accurately judge a build until you've acquired and slotted its key powers, and then played it in a variety of different situations with various team compositions.

Most of all, don't be afraid to just roll-up a character and mess around for a bit. You have a LOT of slots to play with, and deleting a character isn't a big deal. As long as you had fun while playing it, you're not losing anything in the end.

*EDIT* Just wanted to add one more point. You mentioned playing WoW in your post. I used to play EQ, EQ2, FF11, and various other MMOs where item-centric character progression is most of the game's appeal. Creating a character in such a game meant that you would be spending literally years improving it, raiding and questing for tiny incremental upgrades along the way. In other words: creating a character is a massive investment. City of Heroes really isn't like that. There really isn't a great deal of depth in character development in CoH, beyond reaching level 50, choosing a good IO build, getting a few key accolade powers, and slotting your incarnate powers. All told, it really shouldn't take an experienced player more than about a month of casual play to completely "finish" a character if they have the resources available (enough cash for IOs, etc.). CoH instead focuses on providing a variety of novel play styles and semi-randomized content with customizable difficulty so that you can experience the game differently each time. Investing heavily in one character is sort of missing the point, and you never know how much you might enjoy a character you thought you weren't interested in at first. I'm sure every long-time CoH veteran has a story about rolling-up some weird combo they thought would be weak on a lark or as a joke, and then falling in love with it.

I just want to chime in and say that, as an INTP personality type, I adore this thread. I also want to point out how awesome it is that this actually warrants debate, and that it seems extremely unlikely that there will be any clear-cut conclusions in the end. True variety and balance is really a wonderful thing!

Just wanted to point out that while the other posters are correct, and confuse does have a net positive effect on your experience gain over time, the real fun starts once you reach 50, and just don't care about exp anymore. This is one reason why my mind/fire dom is my favorite character. All I have to do to annihilate a spawn is toss Mass Confusion, then throw a fireball and walk away. I've damaged them all, and so I will get kill credit, drops, etc. from them even though I really only needed to spend 5 seconds on the battle. Alternate that tactic with your spawn-melting judgement nuke, and then AoE hold a third spawn and spend some time burning them down. By the time you're done cleaning up all three groups, Mass Confusion should be up again!

This assumes greater than perma-dom levels of recharge, but it's worth the investment to play God. And perma-confusing Giant Monsters and purple-triangled AVs with literally zero risk is pretty fun, too! I've found I actually sold-off my Gladiator's Armor unique on that character, because it was so rare that I actually get attacked by anything, I felt the last few percentage points towards the ranged softcap weren't worth the money.

So yeah, confusion is pretty nice, is what I'm saying.

I played a MA/SR scrapper up to the mid-40's before the improvements to MA, and I found it to be lots of fun. Once CoV came out, I realized the Brute AT was a much better fit for the character, conceptually, so I have been patiently waiting for MA to be proliferated to brutes ever since. The closest we've gotten has been Street Justice, but since my character in question is focused on having especially powerful legs, the primarily punch-focused animations just don't do it for me. If only they'd allow me to use the MA kick animations as alternates in the StJ set...

For those curious, my concept is a feral beat-person, with large claws for feet (hence the kick-focus). Their race was enslaved for generations by psychics who used them for manual labor, until one of them escaped and met a traveling monk who taught him esoteric martial arts. He returned to his people, and developed a style of fighting in which one totally clears one's mind, allowing your primal instincts to take over, thereby avoiding the threat of mind-control. Personally, I feel that a Martial Arts / Willpower brute would be perfect for this, and so I continue to wait and hope.

I have to agree with what has been said about Mind control on a Controller. However, on a Dominator it's awesome. You don't have to rely on containment for damage, and Mind provides a large variety of control types to handle many situations. Also, permadom makes Confuse and especially Mass Confusion extremely broken, especially once you get enough recharge to basically alternate Mass Confusion and Total Domination every other spawn (maybe working-in Terrify/Mass Hypnosis if your team is moving quickly or pulling multiple spawns simultaneously).

Confuse also lasts much longer than most holds, so with Domination and perma-hasten levels of recharge, you can stack enough of it to permanently confuse archvillains or giant monsters, should you wish to.

For solo play, you get Mass Hypnosis quite early, which nullifies the alpha entirely and allows you to hold/confuse every target in the spawn individually before letting fly with AoEs from your secondary.

So yeah, Mind seems weak on a controller (I have not tried it myself, so I can't judge from experience) but it's borderline broken on a dominator.

Let me just say that I am a big fan of the Street Justice set, it's really cool! I have had a character concept for a martial-artist brute for years, but have never been able to actually play it, because Martial Arts was never proliferated to brutes. Now with Street Justice, my dream can finally become a reality!

However, there are some animations from Martial Arts that I really miss. You see, my character concept is very kick-focused, and while Martial Arts has animations for both kick and punch attacks for most of its powers, Street Justice does not. I think it would be very cool if alternate animation options were added for Street Justice that match certain Martial Arts animations. Here are a few suggestions:

* Initial Strike could use the spinning roundhouse kick animation from Storm Kick (animation time difference of 0.03s).

* Heavy Blow could use the side kick animation from Crane Kick (animation time difference of 0.6s).

* Sweeping Cross could use the spinning sweep animation from Dragon's Tail (animation time difference of 0.17s).

* Crushing Uppercut could use the awesome matrix-time flying kick animation from Eagle's Claw (animation time difference of 0.36s).

I don't know exactly how much work it is to allow alternate animations, but if they did it for Martial Arts, I hope they'd be willing to do it for a purchasable set like Street Justice!

My first run through Praetoria was a KM/FA scrapper, Resistance Warden arc. That was a bit painful, as Fiery Aura isn't particularly effective pre-20, and there were a few deaths. Mostly due to things like multiple Seer ambushes (a scrapper facing hordes of spread-out, ranged-attacking MOBs who use a damage type you have no resistance against, fun!)

My second trip through was as a resistance, running the Loyalist Responsibility arcs undercover. That time I used a plant/storm controller. Had almost no real issues. Was a bit slow at times, but I never really felt like I was in danger (unless I got sloppy and aggroed multiple spawns).

I am inclined to make the claim that any character that can control a spawn will have an easier time in Praetoria. The MOBs in Praetoria are equipped with better-designed power choices. They use a greater variety of damage types, including rare ones like psychic and fire that are more difficult to develop resistance against. They often come in larger groups (almost never will you see just 1 Lt. and 1 minion) and those groups tend to spread out more (looking at you, clockwork!) They also tend to pack more individually dangerous attacks, such as the syndicate sword masters, who had some attacks that could drop my poor controller to critical HP in one hit.

All of these issues can be dealt with via control effects. I'd say the easiest ATs to solo Praetorian content would be controller, dominator, and mastermind. Controller and dominator for obvious reasons, and mastermind simply because masterminds are always good for soloing (though watch out for the mission with all of the destroyer ambushes, those burn patches make pets go crazy). A corrupter or defender will probably do well also, assuming one chooses a secondary with strong survival or control powers, like Dark Miasma or Traps. Just beware of the few missions that include Elite Bosses (might be a good idea to pick-up and craft a backup radio temporary power for those).

Tanks, scrappers, and brutes should be okay most of the time, but are far less capable of dealing with enemies who use attacks they cannot defend against (an invulnerability tanker will not enjoy the Seer arcs). Also, the fact that many enemy groups use primarily ranged attacks means a lot of running around while getting shot. Defense-based sets like Super Reflexes will of course be just as bad as ever in the pre-SO levels, and will make for a somewhat painful experience.

Stalkers will be very polarized, some missions will be effortless (sneak in and find glowie or kill boss) while others will be unforgiving (multiple waves of character-targeted ambushes). But this is basically par for the course for stalkers.

Blasters will have a very hard time, I'd wager. The spawns tend to spread out a lot, making it difficult to hit all of them with a single AoE attack. Many maps, especially the underground and tech lab maps, often place multiple spawns in very close proximity, meaning that overaggro will be common. The large number of MOBs with primarily ranged attacks will make hover-blasting less useful, and the few arcs with elite bosses may actually be impossible to complete solo (The "save the Neutropolis reactor" mission springs immediately to mind).

Anyway, that is my two cents on Praetoria.

Honestly, I am thinking that a Night Widow would fit pretty well for River Tam. I mean, Night Widows are psychics with strong melee combat focus. They can softcap their own defenses and have good AoE capability with Spin, Eviscerate, etc. You'd have to get over the spiky claws coming out of her fists, but the concept is pretty solid.

Heck, you could even play off of the whole "escape from the Alliance" as "Escape from Arachnos", eventually culminating in becoming a rogue and moving to Paragon City. I have a hard time calling River a "hero" though, since we really don't know much about her morality, post-op. She spends 99% of the series insane, and only has a couple of lines after she gets better. Also, after slaughtering all the reavers, she seems perfectly ready to go to town on the Alliance soldiers before they were called to stand down. I'd say Rogue morality is appropriate.

I also don't think that Mal is a "hero" by any stretch of the imagination. Sure, he risked his life to spread the truth of the Alliance experiment, but I don't see this as a particularly heroic act. First of all, he was responsible for leading an entire armada of reavers onto the Alliance, a fate he himself claims is worse than death. Secondly, I personally think his motivation is less about helping people and more about weakening the Alliance via the exposure of their corruption. I mean, who did he actually help through his actions? He got a bunch of people killed, including some of his own crew, and all that he really accomplished was to create a PR issue for the government. I don't consider that particularly heroic.

Sure, the Alliance seems like a bunch of jerks throughout the series, but we have recall that we are viewing these events from the perspective of an outlaw brigand. He's basically an anarchist; he would love to bring down the Alliance, but has no real plan for setting-up a stable government afterward. This also does not seem heroic to me.

Throughout the series, Mal's greatest skills seem to be planning heists and inspiring the loyalty of his crew. He is capable with a gun, and can throw a punch when need be, but he is overshadowed in those capacities by others in the series, so I can't really see him being a scrapper or blaster. I'd say that Mal is a mastermind, probably either mercs or thugs. Definitely with the Leadership pool, and probably with some Presence powers as well. Can't really think of a secondary that fits appropriately, so let's go with traps.

Honestly, my favorite aspect of my Warshade is the fact that I can play aggressively and level multiple x8 spawns at once without being in significant danger, OR I can just turtle-up in Dwarf form and veg-out for a bit. Dwarf kills a LOT more slowly, but it requires very little real thought, so it's kinda relaxing at times. You just run in, Eclipse, switch to dwarf, and pound on stuff. I guess you don't always even need Eclipse, but it seems silly to not use it. There is something to be said for a character that can allow that much freedom to adapt to the player's mood.

It would be like having a mediocre tanker, a mediocre blaster, AND an outrageously powerful soul-sucking alien WMD all rolled-up into one! Sure, a permadom is extremely potent, but it's always the same play style. A warshade can emulate a number of different archetypes if you don't mind wasting some of its potential. And hey, when you're soloing, who does it really hurt?

I don't suggest doing this on teams, however.

If you want a primarily ranged character with the same "go-go-go!" mentality of a brute, I cannot recommend Warshade highly enough. Read the "MF'ing Warshade" guide in the player guides section. I'll tell you right now: it really is just as much fun as it sounds. Warshades draw their power from nearby enemies in the form of short-duration temporary buffs, so you're always flying around looking for more foes to feed your engine of destruction. The levels of mayhem you can produce with the Dark Nova form's built-in ranged AoE attack chain coupled with the silly damage buff provided by Sunless Mire and 85% resistance to all damage granted by Eclipse is mind-boggling. I promise you will not be disappointed.

I just wanted to chime in here and say that my necro/dark is an unstoppable juggernaut of destruction. I actually respec'ed out of Howling Twilight because I just never found myself needing it (but then, I don't usually try to solo at x8, I prefer more casual play). With all 4 of the pet Def/Res IOs, plus Leadership Toggles, plus fluffy frankenslotted for major -to-hit and healing, I rarely have to do much more than toss Fearsome Stare and start blasting with random jank like Soul Tentacles and vet attacks. Though, it is nice to know that I have some powers in reserve in case I actually run into a challenge somewhere.

Also, I want to throw a big shout-out to damage procs, especially the Cloud Senses proc. Necro is a bit light on the damage, so these procs help a ton. Nearly every attack that the Lich and the Dark Servant use has a -to-hit component, so the Cloud Senses proc actually allows them to put-out some respectable damage numbers over time. I am also quite happy with both a Touch of Lady Grey and an Achilles's Heel proc in the Grave Knights, since all of their melee attacks have a -def component, as well (I also stuck an Explosive Strike proc in them for use with Disembowl and Headsplitter, but that was just for S&Gs).

I also have damage procs in Fearsome Stare, Tar Patch, Darkest Night, and Twilight Grasp, which, while often not terribly noticeable in an individual battle, speeds up my overall kill rate significantly, especially against hard targets. Damage procs are, in my personal opinion, the bread-and-butter of Masterminds, since our and our pet's attacks do fairly pitiful base damage, naturally. Necro/Dark, as I mentioned, has tons of room for damage procs in almost every power, and uses them very efficiently, so I think they should be considered carefully for any build.

Then again, some procs are a bit expensive (Cloud Senses goes or 35mil+ easily) but I soloed my MM almost exclusively, so it was a long road and allowed ample time to procure funds along the way.

One of my characters is an angel-theme, max height, Valkyrie wings, shield and sword. Needless to say, I can't see a darn thing around her, and sometimes even just navigating cave or council base maps is difficult.

My solution: get the mutant booster pack and create one costume with you at the tiniest size possible. I set my height, build, and leg length to minimum, switched her wings to the tiny cherub wings, and got a translucent energy shield and vanguard blade, which I can usually see through easily. Whenever I enter a cave map, I just switch to my cherub form and everything is hunky-dory!

There is a time for looking bad-***, and there is a time for just wishing you could look at all.

I find it odd that you think making the worst-designed power pool of them all inherent means that they are adding new pools. The devs are simply working to enable the level of variety they intended characters to have from the very start, before they realized that their game pretty much sucks without Stamina. In other words, players have been unfairly penalized in the area of customization by poor power design the entire time, and by fixing that error, they are opening up the level of individuality that was originally intended.

Also, from a game design standpoint, creating new temporary powers via the invention system seems to me to be a strong indicator *against* the creation of new power pools. I mean, why spend significant development resources to design a number of new power pools, which must be balanced against other pools (and probably will need to be at least somewhat superior to most pools, to combat player inertia--that is, the inherent resistance players always feel against anything new) when they can cover any situational holes in the powers structure with invention powers?

Basically, you're making an assumption based on fairly illogical premises. You assume that just because they're removing one pool, they have to add another one to replace it. This is simply not true at all. The most important question a developer has to ask when adding a new feature is, "What is the purpose of this feature, and does this feature fulfill its purpose?" The only compelling reason to add a new power pool would be if the developers feel that there is adequate design space for a new set of powers that would add unique new capabilities to existing characters. If the devs think of something really cool that players should be able to do, and that either inadequate development resources or game engine limitations previously made impossible, THEN they should add a new power pool. But adding a new pool just because you removed another is a major mistake that will only serve to produce a marginal, "filler" pool that will probably be either useless or redundant.

Honestly, I think a great solution would be an inherent auto power that provides very high End recovery, but but that suppresses during combat, much like travel powers and stealth. That way, your character's actual combat effectiveness would not have to be altered, but the boring sitting on your butt doing nothing period between spawns would be minimized. Heck, do the same thing for HP regen, too. In fact, just get rid of Rest and turn IT into said power.

Obviously, this does not address the mechanical flaws of the Fitness pool's design, but it does help solve the problem of constantly sucking wind after every fight.

I can confirm that Mass Hypnosis does not suppress stealth. My Mind/Fire dominator uses a stealth IO in Super Speed in order to achieve total invisibility to make finishing tip missions faster. And it isn't just Mass Hypnosis--neither Confuse nor Mass Confusion suppress stealth, either. In other words, if you don't care much about exp, it is entirely possible for an invisible Mind Controller to completely destroy any given spawn with zero risk, given enough time (and assuming you can overcome every individual MOB's confuse protection). It's probably the safest character I have ever played, because even if Mass Confusion is down, I can just single-target confuse every MOB in the group, if I felt like it.

Honestly, sometimes it almost feels like cheating, but then I remember that Mind Control doesn't get a pet like every other control set, so it is a decent trade.

My guess would be that it checks the proc when you activate power siphon. Assuming you aren't a valid target for a damage proc, I doubt it will do anything. Worst case scenario is that it would actually damage you, but I think they generally don't let that kind of thing happen anymore.

Judging from how the power is written, all it really does is apply a To-hit buff to you and set a flag on your character that allows the other Kinetic Melee attacks to activate their inherent damage damage buffs. In other words, any procs in the Power Siphon power itself wouldn't have any way of activating when you use other attacks, as the effect of power siphon is essentially just enabling the special effects of other powers, so it isn't really checking to see if those other powers get used.

So basically, if I am correct in my interpretation, the chance for Psi damage proc probably won't do anything at all, and the chance for build up proc will only check once when you activate Power Siphon.