Warkupo

I'll just briefly re-list why I don't like it, since I had more reasons than just that (albeit, scattered through 3 different posts, so I'm not blaming you for thinking my argument is simple or anything.) and I'd hate to have my opinion misinterpreted.

-I don't really like fear. I'll admit it isn't useless, but it's not useful enough to me.
-I would rather be attacking than using fear, causing damage, and approaching the biggest mitigating status effect: Dead.
-To To-Hit penalties in the rest of your abilities are "good enough" for me, on my builds, in my specific case.
-Siphon Life is the only other real mitigation I need (from my primary, at any rate), and it has the benefit of doing damage, so I don't feel like I'm wasting time or anything.
-Mag 3 means it only affects things I'm not worried about when solo without taking something else to stack it, and on a team fear becomes less useful, so I stress to find a situation where I would be getting much benefit from it.

For these reasons I find it bad.

It's better than Group Fly, at least.

Fair enough. I simply think there are better powers you could be using than trying to be scary. At this point, however, all I have left are personal opinions and experience, and such things are impossible to debate (because it's like, my opinion).

Resilience is a good place to stick the Steadfast Global Defense IO if you aren't taking Tough. If you are taking Tough, it stacks well with the S/L resistance to make more noticeable.

Beyond that, Resilience is a good pick for when you need to focus your slots on other powers. It's usually better to focus on making a power good rather than having a bunch of powers that aren't very effective because they aren't slotted effectively yet. By taking Resilience strategically you can focus on making a power better, while simultaneously gaining some S/L resistance.

Sure, it's not a power you write home about, but neither does it have any detriments. Picking Resilience can only be a good thing (unless your picking it over something you *needed*, of course.)

And the Stun Protection is also nice.

If I may cut and paste a bit...

The To-Hit that is associated with fear is usually because the sets that have the most fear effects in them are of the Dark Element. Typically Dark Elemental Powers have To-Hit in *all* of their attacks, so using Touch of Fear, as an example, for the To-Hit debuff is pointless since you could have done *anything* and given a To-Hit debuff. The only reason you'd use a fear power is because of the fear effect, which is only marginally useful.

Fear having a long duration isn't much of a benefit either. Assuming the fear'd enemies are getting hit they don't act like they have a fear effect at all. Much like sleeping enemies wake up, feared enemies fight back. Having a long duration on an effect that already isn't doing anything is like multiplying a million by zero. You still get zero.

Besides that, most single target holds recharge fast enough and last long enough that you can keep an enemy held indefinitely, and the AOE versions last long enough to get the job done (most of the time.). Nevermind all the other obvious benefits to holding vs. everything else.

Fear is best used like you would use Sleep; To stop something that nobody is going to be attacking from joining the battle. Except that Sleep holds the enemy still and has a duration that is "long enough". Since the enemies are nicely tucked away where you left them you don't have to worry that they might run into the frey regardless of you.

Melee fear effects are useless in a team scenario most of the time because melee is where most of the AOE attacks are happening. Typical scenario is using ToF... and then watching as the enemy hits you in the face. Solo you probably don't need it as you have better forms of damage mitigation elsewhere.

Ranged AOE fear effects are better, but Sleep still overshadows it. Stuns and Holds overshadow those. Confusion overshadows those.

Immob is it's own funky self.

I have a fairly love/hate relationship with fear. Solo it can be quite potent, like the Stalker who AS's a group, scares them witless, and then finishes off another 1-2 of them before the gits even think to react.

In a group, however, with AOE's flying out of every orifice, it does about nothing. At least with sleep you can keep a group held and tucked away, or set up containment, or something. Fear on the other hand just makes the enemy animate funny every now and then.

On that note, I hate Touch of Fear. Once upon a time it was fairly good damage mitigation, but with the buff to Siphon Life and dark's general -To-Hittery, I find it a superfluous waste of time. Solo you can just smash their faces, and on a team you run into the problem fear ALWAYS runs into when on a team. By the time you get to Sappers, where it MIGHT be useful, you typically have an Epic Hold that can deal with them... Or just smash their faces.



OTHER powers I don't like:

Cloak of Fear: Totally outclassed by Oppressive Gloom, which does more or less the same thing more reliably at a fraction of the endurance cost with far superior accuracy. You can stack it with Touch of Fear and get fear on the boss, but if you're Dark/Dark you can also just keep shoving DARKNESS into his face and floor his To-Hit anyway. Combined with Siphon Life, fearing the boss just seems pointless. I won't completely write it off, however, the penalty to To-Hit it provides can be moderately useful when building for defense.

Smoke Flash: I can never find a use for this. You know what I do when a situation turns sour? Super Jump. I just friggin' leave. Besides that, Blinding Powder is RIGHT OVER THERE, which offers a myriad of better damage mitigation and doesn't sacrifice my team in the process. Perhaps if you were stuck with some horrible level of immobilization, and the enemy was in range, and you didn't have a break free, I could see a use for this. Such a situation remains to be seen.

Jump Kick/Flurry: Seriously? Just take Combat Jumping/Hasten. What makes these worse than Boxing/Kick is that you *never* should take these powers, because the alternatives are so vastly superior. At least with Boxing/Kick you are *forced* to take them to get to the good stuff. Which isn't to say they're good either or anything, but at least you didn't have a choice. Taking these powers is an admittance to not knowing what you're doing in my book (don't worry, I will teach you. I'm cool like that.)

Time Bomb: It has a NINE SECOND animation combined with a FIFTEEN SECOND COUNTDOWN. That's twenty-four seconds of scratching your *** before anything even *happens*. Not to mention Trip Mine is, again, RIGHT OVER THERE. Any time you are thinking "Hey, I could use a Time Bomb and..." just use Trip Mine instead. Put it somewhere you know they'll be. Time Bomb is absolute, utter garbage.

World of Confusion: I hestitate including this, as I *can* find powerset (Kin/ Defender) where this *could* work after you've slotted it with IO's. But that relies on a super specialized build around this one power, and besides that I typically find Kin defenders have enough damage mitigation in the furious horde of FS junkies they have in front of them. Dead enemies can't hurt you. Radius is crap, duration is crap, the fact it's eating my endurance is just insulting.

Group Fly: This requires so much slotting to even become *marginally* useful, nevermind that any situation where you'd want people flying can be solved with the umpteenth million Flying Packs everyone and their mother has access too. Even before then nobody took this power. The one time I encountered this power I thought I had some crazy status debuff, considering how much slower I was going and how crappy my ACC had become. Utterly useless.

Group Teleport: Just use the Vet reward. The situations where you need this do not come up so often that it requires you actually have this ready. Besides that, you had the option of taking teleport friend to even GET this, why not just do that?

Any Intangible Foe Powers: The sets that have these typically have other methods of dealing with enemies that don't force my team to stare stupidly at the enemy. Perhaps if there was some method of turning off the effect, via a toggle or something, this could be useful. However such a reality is not so.

Vigilance: I've already built my character so that I don't run out of endurance regardless of whether or not you're there, thanks. My Corrupters look at this power and have a hearty, joyous laugh at what a crappy deal Defenders got.

Acrobatics: A fallen Champion. Unlike Stealth, which I can still use to eek out that little bit of defense while simultaneously granting a global recharge bonus, Acrobatics doesn't really do anything useful anymore. A single knockback IO does, more or less, everything you'll need, and the Hold Protection is so low I didn't even know it was there until I looked this up one day. At best, Acrobatics is only good until you get the IO and eventually replace it.

Focused Accuracy: Another fallen Champion. With IO's I can slot every power so that it rarely ever misses, and what more accuracy I could want I could easily get from Tactics, which has the benefit of also granting my entire team accuracy, and doesn't eat my endurance like a pig. Since they both also take the same exact IO sets as well, I simply see no reason to take this power beyond not being ABLE to take tactics, and it's limited even then. The resistance to To-Hit debuffs are about the only thing this power still has going for it.

Weapon Mastery Epic Pool: This entire set is crap. Web Grenade does no damage, and offers immobilization, which is rarely needed on a scrapper who fights RIGHT NEXT TO enemies anyway. The ranged attacks deal lethal damage, meaning they'll often be resisted and thus you're far better off just taking any other epic power. Targeting Drone, for the scrapper, has all the same flaws as Focused Accuracy while simultaneously forcing you to pick some other crappy Weapon Mastery power. It's only good power is caltrops.

Entangle: Again, Roots is RIGHT THERE.


I think that'll do for now. I do want to mention that I don't think Stealth deserves to be here. It's still useful as another hole for Luck of the Gambler+Global Recharge, and still offers some defense, which is super-duper important for IO builds. Yes you *can* get the Stealth IO and get one of it's basic functions down, but until you can replicate all of them it still has a place somewhere. That said, after Combat Jumping, Maneuvers, the Set Bonuses travel powers give, and the usually required Fitness pool, the chances of it seeing the light of day grow dimmer.

I think you answered your own question? I found the things you don't seem to think useful 'incredibly' useful.

Especially being able to stack holds. With another hold power, typically epic pools, you can quite easily hold a boss. As a blaster even. That leaves me pretty happy. Assuming your team had some idea of one another you could also quickly hold a boss with the controller on your team, or the other umpteenth billion DP user you encounter.

The point was that if you do not enjoy thinking of ways to balance things, you don't have too. There's plenty of people to do that who *do* enjoy it and are quite good at it. Clearly discussing balance makes you upset, despite the fact that you apparently have opinions about it. Obvious solution is to just go do something else.

You aren't looking at the whole picture. Swap Ammo is available at a fairly low level when most of your powers are still quite hungry for slots. Take it strategically so that you can focus on a power that could truly benefit from getting slotted up quickly.

Keep in mind also that Swap Ammo turns Suppressive Fire into a hold, which can be incredibly useful.

Nobody is stopping you from being ignorant if you wish to be. Simply go play the game if that's what you enjoy, and leave the balancing act up to those that enjoy doing that.

I min/max, so very small incrementally insignificant differences are super important to me.

Oh, and rhinoceros, every time. It's got that friggin' sweet horn. Hippo has a doofy face and a bird affinity. Lame.

Positron got too much aggro pulling AE, so WW is tanking now. Got it.





It's a joke, calm down.