Single Worst Powers as of 2010

Taking up three power picks and a bunch of slots that you could use elsewhere sounds pretty harmful to me.

Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.

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 meant more in the sense of "at least it doesn't do much damage if someone has it and uses it every chance they get." Contrast: Dimension Shift, Black Hole, Gale...

Fear in a vacuum by itself is pretty crappy. However, like sleep and confuse it has some advantages that are mostly built in to the powers themselves. What I mean is:

* Holds are the most potent. They flat out stop someone from attacking or moving period. They're short duration.
* Stuns are fairly good. They don't stop someone from moving, but they do stop them from attacking. They're slightly longer in duration most of the time.
* Sleep, confuse, and fear are softer controls. They can be weakened or even broken when enemies are attacked. These mezzes tend to have very long durations to compensate.

These powers also tend to have shorter recharges. Compare any AoE mez to Terrify or Seeds of Confusion. These powers have recharges of 40s and 60s respectively. Spore Burst or Mass Hypnoses are only 45s. AoE stuns tend to have a recharge of 90s, with AoE holds being four whole minutes. So even though the effects are weak, they can be on almost all the time.

It's also common for fear to come with a large -ToHit secondary effect, so that even when enemies do attack back, they do so at a reduced hit rate. Fear can slow down enemy attacks some even if they're constantly being attacked. But it only reduces so much. When combined with -ToHit though it can be a solid mitigation tool. So things like Fearsome Stare and Touch of Fear will still be useful even if enemies don't get feared or if the enemies are being constantly attacked.

So between all those, even if fear is a weaker status effect compared to hold, it's far easier to keep an entire spawn feared indefinitely than it is to keep them held. You also get other benefits like fast recharge or -ToHit. While some powers don't have all these (Terrify has no -ToHit), they tend to have one or two of those perks.

Not only does Invoke Panic not have ANY of those bonuses (the recharge is 60s, the longest of any fear -- the duration is only 13s for a Controller, which is shorter than even AoE holds -- and there's no secondary effect), but it has ADDITIONAL downsides that make it even LESS useful. For instance, it has -20% ACC. Touch of Fear has +20%, Fearsome Stare is base accuracy, and Terrify is only -10%. It also costs a huge amount of endurance (more than Terrify) AND can only affect minions. And the two prereqs can't be overstated.

Incidentally this is also why the Mental Manip power Scare is so useless. It's a short duration fear with no secondary effect.

Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.

Invoke Panic is weak. However, it does give you a breather. It helped me beat the RWZ challenge with an SO build. It is even more effective against normal conning enemies (on which I rarely needed it). I agree it should be improved.

It is a far cry from being as bad as APP Melt Armor or Barb Swipe.

Mostly a good list, Warkupo, although I disagree with some of it. One thing i do want to point out is that you seem to think that Group Teleport is a "group come to me" power. Lots of people think that, and it would be a decent power if that were the case, both for those of us without the veteran Assemble the team and for times when AtT is down.

The sad reality is that Group Teleport is not a "team come to me" power. It is a "teammates near me go over THERE" power. Yes, Team Teleport takes team members who are already near you and moves the bunch of you over THERE. So it isn't the group version of Recall Friend. It is the group version of Teleport.

I've seen some uses for it. Masterminds, for example, can get good use out of it for gathering your forces and moving them en masse into an enemy group. And Smurphy uses it a lot on his "challenge" teams in an attempt to push the envelope and see how many teammates he can kill, Fallout, and rez. Other than that, it is pretty useless.

A solo player who isn't under any particular time constraints can put a Time Bomb at the center of a group under cover of stealth, whereas a Trip Mine will explode immediately doing less damage.

That's all I got.

"Just use the vet reward" ignores that some players (even some very competent players) have been playing for less than 42 months, and also that in some circumstances it helps to be able to recall people more than once every thirty minutes. That said, you're right on about Recall Ally, since the vast majority of the time that GT is useful, Recall Ally will do just as well.

Edit: Also that apparently I am entirely wrong about how Group Teleport works. Go me.

Edit 2:
If you are stealthy, you can place a Time Bomb, get out of line of sight, and when it explodes you will garner no aggro. This cannot be done with Trip Mine against immobile or largely-immobile targets.

The only time I've ever used this was against the crystals on a somewhat unusual ITF, but there you go: something Time Bomb can do that Trip Mine can't.

I would still much rather an inherent that was useful solo.

... I'd forgotten this power existed. I'm going to put this over the top of Invoke Panic because nobody I know gets stuck with that pool power, whereas CoF is smack in the middle of a good set, like a bear trap in a playground.

Admittedly, Dark Armor is a playground for people who LIKE bear traps, but that's a different discussion. I like bear traps.

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.

This isn't entirely accurate. Granted Fear is the second weakest status effect, but it doesn't permabreak like sleep does when hit once. If I may quote from the wiki:

If you fear a spawn, none of them can move or attack. If they are hit with one AoE, they can all then attack ONCE, OR move. After they attack once, they have to wait until hit again. It doesn't just take one hit, then fear goes away (like sleep). So if the fear lasts for 30s, they have to be attacked once EVERY time they have an attack queued. Even against groups who are being attacked repeatedly there will be gaps where the enemy would have otherwise attacked but can't, which slows down their retaliation. It can be especially good for units who want to move into melee, because they'd have to be attacked twice to move, THEN attack. And if you're running around you can seriously waste their time.

Fear's not as potent as hold, stun, or confuse, but it WILL lessen enemy attacks and ISN'T pointless on a group of foes even if all enemies are being attacked by AoEs. It's kind of like -RECH in that it won't show its usefulness right away, but over the course of the fight will help weaken the incoming damage.

Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.

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.

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).

It's better than Group Fly, at least.

But ... flying ZOMBIES!

Weapon mastery can make a duct tape trick archer out of a Scrapper in PVE. If I was on an all Scrapper Mo I'd prefer one in team.

I use it to stack damage to the trip mine as in double toe bomb, the trip mine laid and then sets off just as time bomb does. I might double toe bomb, scoot back and get an Autofire in too as they kb. Thats a bit of open up damage on not so bad rechg more than quadrupling survivability. I think the trick is to know precisely the level of damage required so you don't go over board.

/Devices can make things a game of prediction and with the ability to set mobs +2 and say that ones blasters worth 6 people etc it can mean a different soloing experience.

Except that in the specific case of Touch of Fear the unslotted To-Hit debuff is twice what you get from any other power in the set (plus it stacks with the smaller debuffs you're piling up from your attacks); slotted for it, ToF puts out three times the debuff your other powers do. An extra 16% -TH is not to be sneered at in most cases.

Personally I love this power.. Its great to use on a Malta Sapper or any single foe that is just a pain in the butt..