Mass Confusion vs XP....

Does mass confusion hurt your XP solo? With the new features coming out in I16 (if/when it is out) allowing you to have missions spawn as if you are an 8 man team…it seems like mass confusion will come in even more handy now solo.

Let me say that I love confusion/deceive powers. I feel lost with out deceive when I switch from my Illusion troller to my ice/storm troller.

I ask because it seems with mass confusion and no AoE immobilize that does damage it would seem that you have a chance to really hurt your total XP as some of the mobs will kill each other off before you can do any real damage to them.

I dunno if anybody's ever worked out the numbers for a solo player, but I suspect it still follows the "less xp per kill, but more kills per hour so more xp overall" scenario.

Thanks all and like I said in the original post I love my confusion powers but have not played with mass confusion yet and was wondering if it may hurt XP with out an AoE damage dealer in Mind.....unlike plant who has SoC and roots.


Also I was not even thinking about the APP powers and getting an AoE type power from there.....once again...thanks for the replys.

Whether you're solo or teamed shouldn't make a difference.

The rule is:

1. How long would the the fight normally take you if you didn't use Mass Confusion?

2. Multiply that by 3.

3. Now multiply it by the fraction of the damage you're doing, among all the damage that needs to be done to all the mobs, to bring them all down.

So long as you take that much time or less *between* fights to get to the next fight, the confuses can't be hurting you. The explanation's in my sig, but it's not for the algebra- or word-question-phobic.

It turns out that's just a crazy long time to find the next fight. And the thing to bear in mind is, if you're going to do only a small portion of the total damage whilst confused mobs annihilate each other, then probably it was going to take you forEVER to take down those mobs without MC.

The thing about solo is, mass confusion like any AoE power, is sorta dubious in utility to use only up against the roughly 3 MObs you'll get in mission doors. 3 is the bare-bones minimum, at least the way I play, for even considering to use an AoE.

If it's 3 bosses or 3 foes that mez, then sure, by all means, MC and follow up with Confusion if necessary. But that kinda thing will be few and far between solo.

I included a lengthy discussion about confuse powers in my Ill/Rad guild. The bottom line is that any loss in XP, if any, is easily offset by the great utility, fun and safety that Mass Confusion provides. I think it is probably variable on whether there is any XP loss or gain, but in either event, if you know to do damage to the targets of the confused foes, any alleged loss will be very small and it might be a net gain. Keep using it, and don't worry so much about small amounts of XP.

I say, use Mass Hypnosis, follow up with MC and Terrify. This means that if and when they launch their one allowed attack, it won't be aimed at you. But you wont lose much XP because they only get the one attack.

Mind you (heh), enemies only usually have a 50% chance to hit. so there's a good chance that they won't be hitting eachother all that much.

Also, since MC is on a hideously long recharge, you really CAN'T use it enough to lose a significant amount of XP from lost kills unless you take forever to solo a small group.

If the mobs deal damage to each other equal to 50% of each other's HP and you deal the rest, you still get 70% of the xp for the kill. So it does reduce xp per kill, but more than offsets this by increasing your xp per hour. If used well with damage powers Seeds of confusion can substantially increase your xp per hour. Mass confusion less so, but still noticeably.

And yet, you, like myself, will still get people complaining about the lost xp if you dare to use a confuse power

here is a nice graph to look on:
http://paragonwiki.com/w/images//8/8...e_xp_graph.gif

I use Seeds on most groups and have never noticed a Xp dip because of confusion. I know you lose it if they straight up kill one another but I was always told that as long as you do dmg to the mob you get the full amount of xp...

Thank you very much for your post. It reinforces my statements exactly - only much clearer. My figures were based on solo play in both radio missions and MA missions. I take the exp earned on confused mobs and unconfused mobs. It was a good two week trial. You will find that the minion exp difference is going to be higher because if you can't hold a Luit or Boss right off the back, they can take out a minion in one or two shots, not granting you much experience for the drop. However, exactly as you stated, the faster you run through the mish, the better the exp net gain averages are for you.

I do want to clarify one point though, at no time am I whining about the exp loss. I totally expect it and understand the penality by using the power(s). I just wanted to make sure that it was understood that there is an exp loss per drop when using the power(s).

Again! Great Post! Thanks!

There is a similar XP loss when anyone in the game who is not on your team damages anything, anywhere. The enemy -- which you might potentially have gotten to eventually and defeated for XP -- despawns, and you get none of that XP. Gone. Lost.

Obviously, you did not consider that XP to be "yours" in the first place, and thus do not consider this a "loss". The question is, why do you consider the XP to be "yours" when an enemy you confuse damages them and causes them to despawn? Do you consider every enemy in a mission to be your defeat as soon as you zone in? (In that case, you lose lots of XP if you stealth a mission.) At what point does the XP given by an enemy go from something you have to earn (not yours yet, no loss if it goes away) to being yours (so that it counts as a loss)?

That's the issue Enantiodromos is getting at. To him, you don't earn the XP until you kill the enemy, and you can't lose something you never earned. That seems sensible to me. My question is, how else would you put it? At what point do you claim to have earned that XP, such that you can "lose" it? Sure it can go away, out of the game, but that's the game's loss, not yours directly. I can see how confuse can make the game lose XP, but I don't see how it can make a player lose (earned) XP.