ketch

I think the problem is more a matter of the convenience of radio mishes outweighing the interest of the story arcs, but I do agree completely with your suggestions. I recall once when I wanted to share the Dr. Vahz arc with a friend. I had to run three bank missions until it gave me a contact with the arc. Then it sent me hopping back and forth between Steel, Skyway, and Perez Park. Finally, we got to face off against a fun EB, but it really didn't seem worth the effort.

I'd like to add my hope that missions going forward will be more like the recent mid-20's arcs blueside. Even though we don't have the same access to the story details as the mish leader, dialog and events in the mission give us a better idea of what's happening compared to older arcs.

Why?

I rarely would take both, but in this case I could certainly make an argument for it. Building for smashing/lethal means one is generally planning to spend some time in melee and Arctic Air won't floor the enemies recharge alone. Even Shiver alone won't floor +2 minions. The two acting in tandem will.

If one relied on AA alone, they would serve up about 50% recharge reduction to +2 minions; enough to double the recharge times on enemy powers. Toss in Shiver and you'll hit the recharge floor of 75%, doubling their recharge once again to 4 times its original length. Because of the nature of defense, there will always be a 5% chance for an attack to come through. However, you can assure that the 1 in 20 happens less often by lowering the rate of incoming attacks. This becomes even more important when facing off against enemies with defense debuffs. If you slow the rate of attacks, then you can slow or even prevent cascading defense failure.

That would be my justification for taking it in this case. Can you tell use why you wouldn't use both Shiver and AA rather than simply stating not to do so?

As for Tex's build, you could skip Cauterize to make room for Heat Exhaustion. Without seeing how it plays I can't say if that's a good idea or not. If you can provide enough mitigation to get away without the single target heal, then Heat Exhaustion would definitely help out in AV fights. In Thaw, I would focus on endurance reduction and recharge from the set you're using. Because Thaw only offers resistance to cold, the resistance enhancement is pretty limited in its usefulness. It's also a shame to miss out on the Achille's Heel proc in Melt Armor.

I've always found Ice Control particularly difficult to IO. I'll have to take a longer look at it when I have time.

It does share the same animation with both those powers. The electric effect seems more like the one used in the Brute and Scrapper version of Lightning Field than the Blaster version. (The blaster version seems to lack the concentric circles from what I can tell in the costume creator.) Perhaps, hinting at higher endurance drain values?

Well, there's an understandable bit of confusion. They really should rename the power in Poison since it functions so differently from the Poison Trap found in Traps.

Anyway, I've got my fingers crossed for something more like Volcanic Gasses than Poison Trap.

Actually, Poison Gas Trap is a placeable Hold and I have heard quite a different opinion of it from the Defender's perspective. The Lockdown proc helps with its poor duration and magnitude, but it is mostly loved for the huge -regeneration debuff.

Anyway, back on topic, has there been more than one image of the Gremlins released? I've been assuming there are only two, but I'm don't know if that presumption is based on a single source at this point.

I wouldn't judge it too quickly. Remember it's been described as a patch. I imagine the mitigation it offers is something like the on and off mitigation of a knockdown patch like Ice Slick when the team is attacking, but with the benefit of setting up containment, and a solid sleep like those found in other sets if people leave the enemies alone. Speculation, of course... I'm eagerly awaiting my chance to see it in action.

I have posted numbers that I feel make a fair case for Speed Boost. Perhaps, that 20 second reduction on a nuke is unimportant to you. Perhaps, RA's recharging 40 seconds sooner means little in your play experience. In my experience, it makes teams more efficient and enjoyable. I suppose one man's trash is another man's treasure...

Admittedly, we run across this attitude. I've seen it in other threads. However, I don't feel the people you've responded to have said this. We may try to convince you that Speed Boost is a very good idea. I may even try to convince you that it's a better option than controls at times. What we present is merely an attempt to convince you, not an edict that you must play as we do.

This is true, however...

You see, you have expectations from others as well. Your expectations of a controller to lockdown mobs is as much a demand of how they should play as my expectation that they should maintain Speed Boost on the team. Of course, I'm sure neither of us views our stance as something players must do, but rather as something they ideally should do.

My example was actually quite poor and only demonstrated the benefit of SB under the effects of Hasten. As you have stated, it's benefits are far greater when you consider the down time most individuals experience with Hasten.

Using Arcana's method, I've calculated the recharge time of Hasten with 3 level 50 IO's with and without the benefit of constant SB.

Hasten without Speed Boost: 183.9 seconds recharge
Hasten with constant Speed Boost: 147 seconds recharge

What's this mean for recharge of other powers? Hasten's 70% recharge only lasts for 120 seconds so we can estimate an average recharge bonus by multiplying percentage of time up by the Hasten's 70%.

Hasten without SB contributes an average recharge bonus of 45.7%.
Hasten with SB contributes an average of recharge bonus of 57.1%, additionally SB will be providing 50%.

Going to our previous example of Total Domination:

An average with Hasten and two level 50 recharge IO's: 104.5 seconds
An average with Hasten, Speed Boost and two level 50 recharge IO's: 82.5

Now I consider a 20 second difference in recharge on an AoE hold a not insignificant difference. For powers with longer recharge such as Recovery Aura, Unstoppable, or a blaster's nuke the difference becomes even more pronounced.

Blizzard: 360 seconds base recharge
An average with Hasten and 2 level 50 recharge IO's: 156.7 seconds
An average with Hasten, Speed Boost, and 2 level 50 recharge IO's: 123.7 seconds

Recovery Aura/Regeneration Aura: 500 seconds base recharge
An average with Hasten and 2 level 50 recharge IO's: 217.7 seconds
An average with Hasten, Speed Boost, and 2 level 50 recharge IO's: 171.8 seconds

Unstoppable: 1000 seconds base recharge
An average with Hasten and 2 level 50 recharge IO's: 435.4 seconds
An average with Hasten, Speed Boost, and 2 level 50 recharge IO's: 343.6 seconds

Again, we see what I consider some significant increase in the availability of powers. Blizzard is up on average more than 20 seconds faster. Recovery and Regeneration Auras come around more than 40 seconds sooner. Unstoppable can be used a minute and a half earlier.

I will admit it is difficult to express the benefit of additional recharge with a simple number because of the diminishing returns. Neither the ingame numbers or Jeuraud's "real world" numbers convey it's impact very well. The actual impact however, I feel, is very evident in the game however. When those key powers are up for use again most of the team knows why.

Let's skip straight to maths, shall we?

Let's look at Total Domination. It has a base recharge of 240 seconds; a reasonably generous enhancement with two generic lvl 50 IO's reduces that 131 seconds; adding 70% recharge from Hasten further reduces that to 95 seconds. Adding another 50% recharge, the actual "real world" value of Speedboost, reduces that recharge to 79 seconds. Since you've already stated that you'd like controllers to control, wouldn't it be quite helpful for them to have their AoE hold up 15 seconds faster?

That doesn't even touch the value of +recovery in SB (twice that of Stamina by the way).

Now, as for your view on alt'ing and difficulty... Being unable or unwilling to dedicate the time to building a character with ridiculous recharge, one would think you would appreciate receiving it from external sources a bit more or would be empathetic to people in a similar situation. For the guy sitting on 102% global recharge (or out the wahzoo, as you say) Speedboost, while still worthwhile for its +recovery, has a smaller impact than for the more casual fellow that's running on Hasten and SO's. I assume there are more of the latter than the former so I SB generously.

You have a very odd view of controllers, sir.

As a team advances toward speedier defeats, controls and the rather modest damage that controllers deal become less relevant. It's certainly nice to have mobs locked down, but if they've spent their alpha on the tank and won't be surviving the next 5 seconds then control becomes a trifling matter. Fortunately, a controller's function is not summarized by their primary alone. A controller can do a lot to help hit that point of destructive potential including SB and FS.

It's recognizing which powers will benefit the team and when to use them that makes a good controller player.

This bug has been driving me nuts. I managed to take on a few of the weaker GM's will my ill/kin prior to its introduction. Phantasm's decoy was a nice filler for PA's recast time, but with Phantasm's suicidal tendencies these days it's difficult to get him to cast it sometimes.

I've got to disagree with this. Controls, even of the duration and magnitude a dominator can put out, are less useful than the buffs and debuffs provided by controllers. By time one can lockdown an AV, the direction of the fight is largely decided; either they are going down smoothly or the team is going to struggle. Add to this the fact that any controller packing a source of -regen is going to make an AV fight going smoother, simply by reducing the amount of damage needed to overtake it.

Care to provide some justification for your stance? As others have pointed out, there are a number of things that controllers can add to a team to improve their survivability and overall performance. A dom will out-control a controller in most cases, but that is only one part of the role that either AT plays.

Subbing in 4 Basilisk, the acc/rech/hold from Essence of Curare, and leaving the +2 mag proc in Chameleon's build, it looks like he'd only loose 2 seconds of recharge and 1 second of hold duration while gaining the 7.5% global recharge. It seems worth it to me.

Get out of my forum.

And that is why a direct comparison can't be made. Controllers offer a great variety of things they can do with their secondary. Sets like Kinetics offer a very different advantage from a set like Forcefields. Doms, on the other hand, are much more consistent in what they have to offer from their secondary.