macskull

Oh, you can slow an MM's pets recharge and gain some measure of survivability against them. Err, wait, you won't be able to once I14 goes live. Oops.

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Spines has dissapointed me. Ripper should be doing damage on Head Splitter levels, but because it's an "AoE" does not do much damage, and does as much damage is barb swipe. How often are you going to use Ripper and actually hit more than one person within 7 feet? Impale's damage is being brought down (by 40 damage I think?), even though it's a power in the set. Only APP/PPP ranged powers should be reduced in damage, especially considering impale's range is only 40 feet.

Impale should stay the same.
Ripper should not get the damage of an AoE when realisticly your not going to hit more than 2 people.

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Your attack chain on a Spiner should include Impale, an APP attack (LBE or Shuriken), maybe Trow Spines, and Flurry.

Yes, Flurry.

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AR doesn't have a tier 3 is all. Why does Shout do more then Dreadful Wail? Stupid max target/cast time damage calculater....

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Because the devs decided that AoEs needed a damage nerf in a single-target spike environment.

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lolpvp

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Quote pyramid please.

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No.

heh

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The only way to eliminate this problem is to make everything exactly the same, and [u]that makes everything dull and boring[u].

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Rendering a few sets great and almost everything else garbage does not?

With the big variety of powers in this game, it's complicated to see that powers are balanced, standarized and made equivalent. But the way things are (for years now) isnt like anyone is even trying too hard.

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The same thing can be said for PvE. I'm not sure why everyone continues to apply this to PvP. When you want an AoE Blaster for a TF, you bring a Fire Blaster, not an Ice Blaster. Does this mean Ice needs a buff? Hardly. It's probably one of the best PvE single-target sets. The very nature of PvP ensures that some sets will always be better than others. There's nothing you can do to bring, say, AR up to par with Sonic, other than massively increasing its PvP damage.

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Because this game doesn't have anything even resembling balance. And instead of fixing it, they decided to make it even more unbalanced in the last issue. Any more questions?

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This.

Incidentally Tankers actually do have a higher base damage modifier than Brutes (0.8 vs 0.75) but that's quickly overcome by Fury (which builds faster in a PvP zone). However they decided to change PvP into "lolbuffs, we're going to make everything based around DAMAGE!" which means some really stupid stuff happens in PvP now (see Flurry and Kick).

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Actually that's only true in PvE. Take a gander at the PvP numbers:

Tanker Super Strength
Brute Super Strength

Look at the numbers if target is player. They're identical.

It's been like this since Issue 13. The devs saw fit to make Tanker and Brutes do equal base damage for some oddball reason.

So Nny_the_mad is definately mad, but not crazy. You are not imagining things, your brute is dealing more then your tanker. And even with 1 point of fury, you're still dealing more damage then the tanker, assuming both are using build up or not.

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Well, [censored]. Did not know that. lol AT distinctions indeed.

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What new imbalances were created?

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1. There's almost no need for buffers anymore thanks to DR and travel suppression.
2. Tankers are doing as much damage as Brutes (this is a general example, though this sort of issue exists on many levels across many ATs).
3. Controllers can no longer leverage Containment effectively thanks to the change to how mez works.
4. Some defense-based powersets became brokenly good with no consistent effective counter.
5. I could go on, I'm sure others could list more. I'm just pulling things off the top of my head right now.

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What are the new FotMs and why?

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I could make a really long and really detailed post on exactly why a given set is FotM, but that would take a long time and I'm tired. I'll leave it with this - as long as a set outperforms another one in a given situation, even by a small margin, people will choose it. The only way to eliminate this problem is to make everything exactly the same, and that makes everything dull and boring.

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What was *wrong* with it in the first place? Maybe they could reduce mez duration a little or perhaps limit it, DR was a good idea for IO bonuses...I dont remember it being that bad

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What was wrong with PvP? People complained about it without bothering to figure out how the system worked. The devs listened.

Biggest reasons behind the changes were:

1. Address various imbalances. Some of these were addressed but even more were created.

2. Eliminate FotMs. This succeeded - in a way. It managed to choke off some of the old FotMs but all it did was replace them with new ones.

3. Remove entry barrier. Nope, skill factor is still there.

4. Get more people involved. Maybe - there are some people around that weren't before. But there are a lot less overall because the changes drove away a lot of the really good players.

For some reason, they decided that completely detaching the PvP game from the PvE game would make it friendlier and more attractive to people wanting to learn PvP.

Not until you slot it. If someone really wants to knock you back/up, they will. KB protection is DR'd, KB enhancements in KB powers aren't.

1. yes

2. there is but it gets hit by DR

If this is for PvP... you don't need Fireball, you don't need Speed Boost, and you don't need Increase Density.

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Really, Siphon Speed too? Wow! Including Combat Jumping, by any chance? Please, oh please?! If I13 means the end of bunnyhoping I will officially forgive it every other possible shortcoming.

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Everything means everything (so in their effort to make "every set competitive" they inadvertently removed a Kin's role on a team, not to mention pretty much every other buffer). Not sure why people hate on bunnyhopping but whatever.

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Also, in terms of having your debuffs de-toggled... thats true,b ut that was /always/ true in the past, was it not?

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It was. A mez would drop all your toggles, but you could simply bring along Break Frees and you wouldn't have to worry about mezzes. These days there's no mez protection so when you get hit by a mez, you will get mezzed. Only your offensive toggles will get dropped, so this means that every time someone pegs you with a hold, sleep, stun, whatever... you'll have to wait for your debuffs to recharge and then toggle them back on.

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Also in terms of illusion... as an old illusion/radiation jockey, that will suit me just fine if its true, but if pets are still a dubious proposition as you say, then what makes it good? The damage you can deal yourself with SW and Blind are less than what mind does.

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Illusion can crank out a lot of -tohit with Spectral Terror and Phantom Army gives a good contribution toward damage dealt. Just because a set doesn't look to be "tops" on paper doesn't mean it won't do well.

Storm doesn't completely rely on toggle debuffs, though, it only has two (Snowstorm and Hurricane). The rest of its good powers are either non-targetable pets or patches. Between the removal of -maxrange, DR on -tohit, and melee AT debuff resistance, you might as well not even run Hurricane unless you're using it as a Stalker-catching tool or to scatter an MM's pets. If you can catch someone with Freezing Rain and keep the fight near you, you can use Tornado and Lightning Storm fairly effectively.

Therm could work too, I suppose - it does have a self-heal (subject to DR, whee) and nasty debuffs, but like you said you'd lack Aim to actually land them. Trollers have the same buff/debuff mods as Corruptors so the set would work just as well in theory but I don't know if the pairing with a control primary would detract from the set in practice.

Drones can hit you through phase. Me? Yeah. I just keep running and by the time that 0.75 seconds is up I'm usually well away from whatever it is they were trying to get me with.

Rest still protects from TP I think. But we can't really count that, can we? Do oranges still work?

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Because this game doesn't have anything even resembling balance. And instead of fixing it, they decided to make it even more unbalanced in the last issue. Any more questions?

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This.

Incidentally Tankers actually do have a higher base damage modifier than Brutes (0.8 vs 0.75) but that's quickly overcome by Fury (which builds faster in a PvP zone). However they decided to change PvP into "lolbuffs, we're going to make everything based around DAMAGE!" which means some really stupid stuff happens in PvP now (see Flurry and Kick).

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So, I'm asking directly: in the new PvP environment, what is/are some of/the best controller builds, especially for 1v1?

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Almost all the popular Controller builds took huge hits with I13 (Rad and Storm were usually considered tops and while they're still ok now they're a shadow of what they once were). Interestingly Force Fields now does decently (mostly because of PFF, which is getting nerfed in I14).

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My intuition (and their higher damage numbers) lead me to suspect mind control is a good bet, is this right? What secondary would go with it (someone suggested kinetics on the controller forums - this seems counter-intuitive to me, but I am a relative PvP noob, so I defer to experience). Is /rad still a good set or have the diminishing returns on debuffs made it useless?

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Mind, Illusion, and Fire are your best choice of primaries, paired with Rad or Storm. Problem with Rad is once you get mezzed, your debuffs get detoggled, and you will get mezzed. Not useless, just gotta hope they don't hit you once your toggles are up or you'll be in for a few seconds of hurt while you're waiting for them to recharge.

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I assume pets and location-based powers are still of limited usefulness at best (I dont remember travel supression applying to combat jumping)?

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They're more useful than they were before thanks to suppression. Still not great but better than before.

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Speaking of supression (and, earlier, of Kinetics) does travel supression apply to Inertial Reduction? I assume it does not apply to speed boost?

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It applies to everything.

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Also, changing tact entirely, with the changes (nerfs) to mezz effects and debuffs is Psionic Mastery still a good anciary pool to take, or is there another one that would serve me better?

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Stone Mastery is best at the moment.

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4) No they aren't. /Dark is terrible for PvP.

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Wouldn't go that far. Against anybody without defense, they are pretty amazing actually. Basically if you can land the heal, you're pretty much impossible to kill. It heals all your pets (and yourself) from like 0 to full in 1 heal, and recharges fast.

The problem is defense. Against defense sets, you're completely hopeless. If you can't land the heal, you're dead in seconds.

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I do a little PvP with my Thugs/Dark (zone and arena) and if I'm fighting a high-damage, high-defense build, I find myself reaching for greens very often. Otherwise it's pretty easy sailing.

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Isn't there a moment of Intangibility after TP Foe'd? I haven't been TP Foe'd forever and a day ago so I don't know.

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0.75 second "phase" period, yeah. Enough for a competent player to get out of whatever you're trying to TP them into (or phase).

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So with phase not really being an 'only effecting self' power anymore does it still follow the same supression as with Hibernate? Do they suppress each other?

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There's still the NoPhase timer for 120 seconds, yes. You can always switch between Phase and Hibernate during that 30 second phase window but after that, no.

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the funny thing this that more often than not im the only dom in rv - freedom running around with pff on.

if it was actually really really unbalanced, we'd be seeing more doms in pff than anything else, even stalkers.

it is my belief that this is another one of those nerfs driven by nubs that have no idea how to play this game.

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You forget though, many people don't play Doms because they have the misconception that they are weak. Almost every Blaster and Dom I've run across in zones has PFF, and I'm running a Spines/Regen build with 60% global acc, a Kismet, Targeting Drone, and at least 60% acc in all my attacks and even I usually just give up when I see them hit PFF. My MM's a different story and I've killed quite a few people in it, but that happens when you toggle debuff them (so they can't use Aid Self) and your pets aren't affected by DR so can still hit through it.

I think the biggest complaint about PFF as it stands on live is not the defense/elusivity bonus it grants but rather how it's on such a short recharge and has no suppression period like Phase and Hibernate do.

Wow, that's awesome. Just browsing this forum tonight and I'm getting that bug myself. I just need to figure out which toon (or toons, if I can scrounge up the cash! ) to have done...

Anything with massive end drain capabilities, really.