Tell Me About Touch of Fear...

Hello! I have recently decided to make a consolidated analysis on the power Touch of Fear, and part of doing that includes started a discussion about the power. Please tell me your opinions of Touch of Fear as it pertains to the Scrapper Archetype. I will be posting a similiar thread in the Tanker, Brute, and Stalker forums as well, if you wish to express your opinions of the power within other archetypes.

The more details you can give the better. My overall goal is not only to examine how Touch of Fear works within the various Archetypes it can be found within, but also how it interacts in a teaming or solo situations.

Thank you in advance for any who partake in this discussion.

If you are not playing a character that's quite hard to hit already, Touch of Fear is an excellent single-target debuff and control. You can easily use it to neuter a boss by terrorizing it and debuffing its toHit.

It can be considered a rough equivalent to Parry, with the following important limitations.

• Unlike Parry, which helps you against all foes attacking with Melee or Lethal attacks, ToF's debuff only affect only foes you hit with ToF.
• Because it's a debuff, the foe resists it for being over your level. There's no equivalent limitation on Parry. Edit: Meant to add what Werner mentions, AVs generally ignore the fear and heavily resist the -toHit, making it non-useful against them.

While some people love it, and I'll admit that I've never used it (so you can discount my opinion if you wish), I consider it a waste of a power pick. It only works on a single target, so what you're trying to do is lock down a single target that would otherwise be too dangerous to survive. On a well-built Scrapper, the only single targets dangerous enough to need them feared are probably archvillains. Even elite bosses should only take a few inspirations. Archvillains are immune while the purple triangles are up, and if you can survive while the triangles are up, you might as well just keep doing damage while they're down instead of wasting DPS trying to lock them down.

Something to remember, Werner, is that you're long past most of the conditions I describe. Your Scrappers all have very high +Def by design, and you mostly know your target build early on, barring tweaks and adjustments. You skip straight past all the conditions I mentioned where Scrappers might find the power useful.

That's fine, I think we should remembver that not everyone is going to be as advanced as some of the regulars here; in particular they may not play on very high virtual team size settings or plan on soloing AVs. At least not at first. IMO ToF is a strong power for people in those settings.

Hell, I sometimes miss the control aspects even on my IO'd out Scrappers. My DM/Regen would like to be able to terrorize +3 Cim bosses - it'd actually make the fights faster. It's just not worth what I'd have to lose to put it back in the build, which I think is where you're at, based on your comments.

I use ToF in 2 ways. I don't have a DM at 50 (yet) so these are both during the leveling process.

1) Ghetto hold. Use it on one critter, whilst finishing another. As you are not attacking that critter, its nearly as good as a hold and available for a scrapper much much earlier.

2) Debuff. 11.25% -tohit, 20s duration so it is stackable without slotting. When leveling that makes a tough critter (such as an EB) miss significantly more often.

Don't forget, when *not* solo, Parry only helps you. But ToF can help others >_>

It also will accept Siphon Insight sets. Gives you a significant boost to the -to hit aspect of the power, and a nice bonus to Smashing/Lethal defense if you happen to have one of the secondaries that typed defense would be useful for (Invuln or WP, basically)

I used to find Touch of Fear reasonably useful on builds back when the debuff was insanely huge but ever since it's been reigned in, it's kinda been on the back shelf. I used to have it in a build back before the Siphon Life change was made but after the quick punch animation change was put in, mainly because it was a nice power to fill in the attack string if I was fighting something that would have eaten my face rather quickly (i.e. some AVs). I actually tanked AVs on a few TFs with it.

As a mez effect, I've never found it to be particularly useful. Fear just isn't a particularly powerful status effect as far as I'm concerned. The tohit debuff, on the other hand, is a beast when you slot it up. Drop it into your attack string in the place of Siphon Life and, though you'll be dealing a good deal less damage, you can still stack up some nice -tohit even against AVs.

For most IO builds, however, because it's single target and takes so much time to animate, it doesn't really have much use except as an IO set mule. I used to take it for PvP reasons, but I'm not in the least bit sure about how it would perform nowadays, especially with melee range and standard tohit debuff resistance. It might be able to take a single enemy out of the picture but that's not really useful when the only targets that are actually worth it, in a vast number of my experiences, are targets that Touch of Fear isn't going to have much effect on. You'd be much better served just hitting your target to get half of the debuff while still dealing damage.

I'm of the opinion that Scrappers do damage? While this power may have it's uses and some may like it in their tray for the versatility it adds to their play I hardly see the point. Being that DM is excellent enough on it's own, why not just ya know kill the boss instead of giving him some terror/-acc. I hate that this power takes up a place in the power set. Leave it to the supporty/debuffy/buffy types.

If you really need to put a fear or -acc on something to help you, a Scrapper, stay alive.. . . well. Then we've all got problems.

Taking it for the RP aspect or a concept player, just fine imo. Other than that? Nope.

Dmg dealers do damage, we were born with awesome health debuffs call high damage output. I say stick to that.


It had it's benefits a long time ago, it no longer does.

Concept builds not withstanding (heck, I'll take presence pool if it fits my concept), I have found that ToF has been margenalized by IO sets, specifically an over abundance of +def. For toons that couldnt achieve such levels of defense, ToF provided this ability along with the so called "soft hold." Even with air superiority on can achieve similar mitigation and with damage. With the advent of IO sets, by and large, when I choose to play dm, part of the reason I do is because 3 powers (ToF, SP, taunt) wont be picked so that I can diversify to/concentrate on other powers.

The spectrum of all melee in your assessment is quite large. Each would have different expectations. Stalkers in particular would find the fear and -to hit useful to make time to use their tricks, brutes to help build fury, tanks to help tone down a tough boss for the team. Not to mention PVP benifits of spamming fear.

While I find the entire discussion interesting and appropriate in its approach, it doesnt sway me into selecting it very often in my builds. The instances in which I find myself in really tough content, I'd sooner pop a purple, orange or green rather than think: I wish I had ToF.

I have a DM/SR Scrap now at 31, my second SR Scrap after my FM/SR, which I took to 50, and these are my comparative experiences:

My FM was a beast once I softcapped him, but leveling was a very up and down process. He could dish out impressive damage, but couldn’t take it without outside help, and I faceplanted a lot. I admit it was my first try at SR, so maybe I didn't level him up "correctly" in terms of power selection, which could have contributed to his squishiness. I just plugged away because I was looking towards the end build, but overall, he just seemed very fragile for quite a while.

My DM has been more durable in the early going. I'm sure the The ToHit Deb helps a lot, but I also rely heavily on ToF and Air Superiority. I typically like to ToF the Lt's, and use AS on the Bosses, while whittling down the group. I find the combined mitigation is pretty effective.

When I hit softcap, I plan on dropping both powers, as I really don't see much use other than as IO mules. But for the present, ToF is a very good leveling up tool.

ToF is useful to a low level scrapper to help mitigate bosses and thereby face them earlier in your career. It also is more useful in the lower level ranges where your defense has probably not built up to near cap levels.

It is useful to a higher level scrapper who wants to raise difficulty and face larger numbers of mobs (for the same reason - mitigate the boss/AV while you clear out the minions, or simply reduce boss/AV's to hit value).

Overall it's useful because it is a little-resisted effect across the game, both PvE and PvP.

It also has nice bang for the buck - fast recharge, and requires little slotting to still be useful. IT has quick activation and a relative long effect.

Overall - all nice power that I recommend.

Prior to the introduction of IOs, I found ToF invaluable damage mitigation. On a DM/DA I could lock down bosses and LTs while focusing my attack chain on the greatest threat in the spawn. I could even occasionally fear AVs.

After a few goes at IO builds, I quickly found ToF contribution to my damage mitigation became smaller and smaller. With an IO build, you can raise defense far above the To Hit Debuff values of ToF. That's before factoring in mobs resistances to To Hit Debuffs. ToF only affects a single target where those defense values provide mitigation from every mob.

There would be obvious benefits to stacking ToF debuffs with IO set defense values. Ultimately it becomes a question of opportunity costs. Selecting ToF means not selecting some other power that could have increased your defense values or increased your damage output.

If you can confidently state selecting ToF does not compromise defense values or damage output, then taking it would be a good idea. On my builds, I found keeping ToF required that compromise and as such is no long part of my builds.

General feelings regarding ToF from the discussion thus far: It's great until you've got capped defense.

And to that I ask: How many players either create builds without a focus on capped defense, are in the process of getting capped defense but the build is far off from complete or simply do not take advantage of IOs at all?

My conclusion: The common situation to skip or drop ToF is in the minority. If you take ToF, it can greatly improve survivability.

I guess I should have said 'significant defense' instead of 'capped defense'. That considered, I still think such circumstances that might diminish ToF's contributions are the minority. And even including those circumstances, ToF can still be useful, it's just the desire of the player to specialize the build that encroaches on ToF's utility.