Tell me about World of Confusion

Hmmmm I would have to say that the Contagious Confusion proc in controller Arctic Air is pretty spiffy and perhaps a bit over powering.

My Ice/Rad has CC in Artic Air and Lock Down +mag 2 in Choking Cloud. I run about 5% defense to all and except to deal with the Alpha I don't really need Rad Infection. Once I'm in close/melee range it's all over for the mobs.

Not by a long shot. For one, the inspirations tray is size-limited, with other things that I need there, as well, and leaving to refill it mid-mission on the back end of a hazard zone is not an option. For another, Break Frees are only good to break out of a status effect, not to prevent acquiring one, as they simply do not last long enough to be used preventatively in every situation that might end up dropping my toggles. The pain with damage auras is that they drop, and lacking the old Strength of Will inspirations that actually did exactly this, there is no good solution. You can't protect yourself from the effect, and you can't really count on not getting hit by it.

In general, I hate "just use inspirations" suggestions, for the simple fact that HAVING to rely on an inspiration crutch for every fight (yes, every fight in the upper levels has some kind of status effect) just isn't practical. And even if, by some miracle of luck, I manage to get just enough inspirations, other ATs are just fine without them. That, to me, is indicative of bad design, and I would very much like to see some form of limited status protecting in SOMETHING available to all Blasters. At the very least hold/sleep/stun.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Which is exactly what I meant by that post. Unlike every other AT in the game Blaster mitigation is designed to be found in the inspiration tray.

The reason we have always been given that scrappers and tanks had status protection was that they were designed to be in melee and wouldn't survive without them even with high defense or resistances. It never made sense to me that an AT that was designed to be in melee 1/2 of the time was purposely designed without this.

No defenses, no resistances, I can understand. No status protection on top of that made no sense at all.

I would guess that blaster mitigation is designed to be found in teammates first, then minor active controls/debuffs second, and when those fail (or, preferably, when you predict they are likely to fail), then the inspiration tray.

Heroes, Villains ♦ Reviews ♦ Retrospect

If you like it there you will love it in mass confusion or seeds of confusion. Arctic air though already starts with mag 3 confuse and a fear effect iirc. The proc certainly improves Arctic air but in WoC its a game changer. I really would hate to try and use WoC to wade into a mob depending on its confuse for mitigation, the low chance of confuse, and the certainty of drawing aggro are not a good mix

By original design, yes. In fact, the old Blaster description (I don't know if it's still that way in the game, but it's that way in the manual) had a weak apologetic to the effect that you COULD probably solo this AT if you REALLY wanted to, but why would you want to? Of course, that was in a day and age when they had Controller hit points, much worse offence, no Defiance of any kind and actually weak melee attacks. Things have changed dramatically since then, and I've long been lobbying to have them at least slightly re-labelled as less defenceless glass cannon and more a light-defence, all-purpose fighter, as that's what they practically are. For heaven's sake, they have just about Scrapper hit points and actually decent defences later on, so they're practically there.

Granted, Defiance's ability to shoot your highest-DPS attacks while held DOES help a great deal, but it doesn't prevent droppable toggles from dropping, which is the big thing which ruins damage auras for me. As well, they are not, nor will they ever be, stand-and-fight fighters, so something which requires them to stand in melee and fight in melee is always going to get less mileage than it should. If anything, I'd rather see these auras as fixed-duration clicks that you can perma (withotu self-stacking) such that you can get a little more bang for when they're on without suffering a constant draining cost and, crucially, without them dropping, or perhaps even suppressing.

Back to the original topic, World of Confusion is terrible. Having played around with it for a while, I can safely say that it is completely worthless on its own, and slotting might make it only slightly less so. The confuse doesn't trigger almost at all, and even when it does, it expires before the enemies take action, or at most saves me a single attack from SOME of them. I guess improving the accuracy and confuse duration might help, but the ticks are so infrequent I often back out of melee before the power ticks even once. Ugh...

You know, this "tick" mechanic has always felt clunky to me. Sure, powers that tick every, say, quarter second to half a second, for them it's reasonably unnoticeable. But for powers that tick every two to four seconds? They tick so slow they are practically "off" the majority of the time, with enemies passing through them like they own the place. Personally, I'd much prefer a mechanic that affects enemies AS SOON as they are in-range and applies a constant effect. If the effect needs to have periodic gaps, I'd much rather see it self-suppress than rely on the world's slowest ticks. Basically, as World of Confusion is right now, it's like those on/off electrical walls in platformers that you have to pass through. Imagine how easy it would be to pass through one if it stayed off for 1... 2... 3... 4... seconds. You can be in and out and still have time for a coffee. Which is what enemies do to be. They stroll in, rip me in half and still get time to pick their noses before the power gets around to sending out a tick.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Actually I prefer it in Actic Air since it has a chance to proc every 10 seconds there and the radius is nice (the same size as Mass Confusion actually).

My Plant controllers only have the recharge on Seeds in the ~18 second range. Artic Air gives me almost twice the chances for it to proc.

I agree with your observation on WoC though. As I said before the Contagious Confusion proc is better than the entire power.

Well that's true but again it's the only blue side AT that this is true for (with the possble exception of defenders). All the other ATs have most of what they need for mitigation built into their power sets.

For me it's similar to saying that if there were no blasters there would be no real need for defenders (which is kind of what it comes down to.)

I've long since realized that blaster Epic powers (especially the armors) belong in the secondary and many of the utility powers that are in secondaries (Boost Range, Power Boost, Conserve Power, Targetting Drone, Smoke Grenade, Cloaking Device, Gun Drone, Voltaic Sentinel, etc) belong in the Epics.

I think I would really love and hate that if it were done and depending on how it was done. Ice with the only defense based armor might very well become the no brainer secondary. Then imagine devices getting body armor just insult to injury there.

Well body armor isn't done "correctly" either. It "should" also have an unenhanced base defense value (at the very least Smash/Lethal) of about 5% and it "should" accept both Defense and Resistance sets.

What does the toggle/auto power difference say to me?

Body Armor - base resistance 8.75%

Temp invul - base resistance 21%

there's a 240% difference in survivability there. I know that the difference is "supposedly" due to endurance useage but it makes it look like the devs anticipate that blasters will be mezzed ~25% of the time in combat.

It's too late in the game for that, but how about something that's more plausible - what if Epics opened up at 30, as opposed to at 40? More choices, more options and no powers that HAVE to be left off for so late they barely matter. They don't even have to open up at the same time, the lot of them, just so long as we can start taking them from a bit earlier.

How does that sound?

*edit*
The point is, I agree with you completely, in that unlike most other ATs, what's in Blaster epics is VITAL to Blaster survival and performance, yet comes about only in the end game. Giving them (as well as everybody else) access to those a bit earlier might solve a lot of headaches.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I've always thought that there should be a "blaster" power pool. It would only be available to blasters and it would contain:

1) A combat jumping equivalent (and it would lock out, or be locked out by, combat jumping)
2) A hasten equivalent (and it would lock out, or be locked out by, hasten)
3) Aid self equivalent (it wouldn't "have" to lock out aid self but it "could" be set up that way)
4) A clickable mag 10 mez protection, that can be clicked while mezzed, that lasts 30 seconds and has a recharge of 90 seconds (It should get the SoW, OWtS treatment). All that power would really be, is a free break free insp every minute and a half.
5) Physical perfection equivalent.

1 and 2 would open up at level 6. 3 and 4 would open up at level 14. 5 would open up at level 20.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I don't think there's any danger of critters entirely defeating each other during the 1.5 second duration, and as long as you get any damage in, you get xp.