Most useless/disappointing power?

Dark Armor - Soul Transfer. I never get to use it. It's a nice set mule, though.

Seriously, we had an 11-page thread on this, last active less than two weeks ago.

Yet, I can't hate the power. In fact, it's one of the reasons I even made a /Rad Defender. I just love the aesthetics of that power - effectiveness be damned.

"Eat tennis ball Evil-Doers"



*lob*

Why /devices? Devices gives you smoke grenade and cloaking device. You can literally sneak up to almost anything, take the same amount of time to deploy a time bomb as an end-crash nuke would have you end-crashed and do end-crash nuke damage.
/Traps on the other hand? Less damage and no stealthing.
I love it in /devices. Probably wouldn't take it in /traps. Obviously it doesn't fit all playstyles. End crashing nukes don't after all, and it's a clear "secondary" form of that (pun intended).

I don't hate group fly the way most people do either, but that's cause I get nostalgic by being able to joust. Use some set bonuses to offset the -acc and do some unsuppressed flybys. Yeah I wouldn't use it on a team. I'm very *aware*.

My nomination has to be Jump Kick. I just don't like that power. Combat Jumping and Air Superiority make it look silly, it's animation looks silly, and I've never had it on any AT whose numbers for it weren't abysmal low.

If you recolor it white, you can show people just how seriously you take your snowball fights.

Eh, its damage, activation and area are pretty much the same as all the other targeted AoE attacks that defenders get - in fact it's activation time (1.67s) is one of the faster ones as most have 1.67s or 1.87s; then there is psychic blasts slow 2.67s for psychic tornado (although PT makes up for slow activation by having a larger radius and better secondary effects than any other TAoE)

I can see how it LOOKS like it should do more, but it pretty much stands equal with all defender TAoE attacks.

My vote is for Voltaic Sentinel on any AT - for the amount of time it takes to cast it and the end cost, you would expect more out of it.

okay, this I have to take issue with. Could you explain why an anti-mez power is "useless" or "disappointing"? Or are you just a player who can't stand powers that are for your teammates and not yourself?

***

My most useless / disappointing power(s) are:

Burn: from the Fire Aura set. It's just too situational for even my task-force dedicated builds to use.

Electric Blast - Defenders: this whole set. Electric is already one of the weaker blaster sets, and knocking 60% of the damage off turned the entire defender version into a freaking pain. Okay, the new vigilence brings back some of the damage while solo... but on teams I'm still a bit irked that it only seems like kills arive with fulcrum shifted Thunderous Blast

Neutron Bomb - Defender: I'll sign onto this one. Okay, it's a ultra-strong debuff, and the entire rad set is good for racking up some awesome IO bonus's... but it still irks me that it looks like I'm going to deliver a killing blow... only to deliver a water balloon.

Serum - mastermind: Okay. I don't have a mastermind with this powerset. Just looking at the numbers alone though, I'm forced to agree with many players on the forums. For what it does, when you get it, it just seems like there should be something more.

The disappointing duration makes it useless. It's too annoying to use proactively, and reactive use is too late. I find it to be one of the most skippable powers in the game.

Gotta agree with Burn, especially on a Brute due to the way it works (for 2 seconds) with Fury. Big disappointment on my Stone/Fire when I realised that it was losing the Fury damage buff after a few seconds, my Shake-and-Bake Brute just didn't pan out as planned. Ground my way (mostly solo) through the most End-heavy and torturous Teens of any toon I've ever had just to encounter it.*

Serum is one of the only powers that I've taken in the past that's actually caused me to faceplant as a direct result of using it!

So, fighting an AV, slowly but effectively doing just enough to outdamage its regen, and then I think to myself "What the hell, I'll shoot up my Commando with this awesome sounding Serum!" Well, he basically performed the same, and after a minute or so he CRASHES! Thus allowing the AV to kill him with ease, leaving me to lose my edge in outdamaging its regen, while I'm left to scramble trying to resummon him while the other pets get picked off one by one because I'm too busy to buff/heal them.... and I faceplant. So yes, I blame Serum!

Anyway, haven't respec'ed out of Serum and haven't looked back, and by the sound of it it's still just as worthless.

Okay, I can halfway see your point on the length of the buff, but all anti-mez powers are like that. Clear Mind lasts for 1:30, Increased Density lasts for 1:00, Clarity lasts for 1:30, O2 Boost lasts for 1:00, Thaw lasts for 1:30, and Enforced Morale also lasts for 1:30.

So, as an anti-mez power, Clear-Mind is hardly the shortest in the game. Nor do I understand the reactive use to be too late. Defenders, Controllers, Corruptors, and Masterminds are largely supposed to play from a ranged position, and allow melee types to take point position. Melee classes come with an inherent anti-mez, although it is possible for several enemy groups to over come those mezes. E.G. Council in the Moonfire Task Force can overpower a Willpower Tanks stun resistance.

Just placing the anti-mez on an ally during this time and poof, they are back in fighting position.

I'm also pretty certain the developers have made it clear that the anti-mez powers are short for balance reasons. Yes, you can keep everybody on the team anti-mezzed... but in doing so you take up time when you can be doing something else... like attacking, debuffing, other buffing, or controller.

Pretty much. Tanks and scraps are almost eliminated entirely from the list of CM candidates due to innate protections, and the remaining AT's aren't all going to need CM all the time either. A good empath knows what to look for and CM's accordingly, and leaves much more time for...

Did I essentially repeat what you just said? Long story short...

Ditto.

Most of those are powers I'd avoid when possible.

May as well pop a Breakfree at that point, if being mezzed is a big issue. Quicker than asking for CM, in my experience, and either way a number of useful toggles will have been shut off because reactive mez protection is too late.

Dispersion Bubble is a million times more desirable than CM. A nigh constant AoE of mez protection AND defense, which is easily maintained while doing any number of other things. Take that, balance.

I just 1-2 buff squishies with Fort and CM and leave it at that, unless I notice someone is actually staggering about, snoozing or holding their heads or they call it. I can barely follow who I last Fortituded and who gets it next, adding CM monitoring into the mix would just cause my brain to melt.

Um... I'm just going through a list of stuff in my head here of the toggles non-melee's get.

I'm coming up with the Pool Power toggles for Leadership, the pool power toggles for tough / weave, the pool power toggles for combat jumping and acrocatics, the patron and epic pool powers with limited shields, choking cloud from radiation, a couple of AOE resist / stealths, and the debuff toggles on radiation and storm.

Okay, again, I can halfway see your point about some of these being turned off being a big issue for say a Radiation or a Storm which can easily depend on their toggles to keep enemies helpless or at bay.

For the most part, I'm just not seeing a real issue here in a teaming situation, which is what the anti-mez powers are for. If you are on a team and you have an anti-mez power, you probably shouldn't be taking point. Again, as already mentioned, in a teaming situation, you can pretty much forget about having to protect the melee types and just protect fellow ranged players / masterminds.


Okay, this is almost a fair point. My issue with it is that the Force Field sets gives up a lot more for this particular protection. The set has no enemy-status debuffs, and the dispersion bubble is limited in range. Against what each power does, Force Field is balanced for teaming situations.

Now, I will admit there is a fair point in Sonic Resonance having done a better job of handling the anti-mez field. Sonic Resonance gets several powerful buffs / debuffs and doesn't have the auto-skip knockback bubbles that the Force Field set gets, but Sonic Resonance has it's own other balancing, being a resist set instead of a defense set, and lacking protection against Psionics... which Force Field offers.

Now, I don't think I'm going to convince you that the anti-mez powers aren't pointless. My suspicion is that you've probably played a lot on Freedom or Virtue servers and just haven't run with teams that know how to use the anti-mez powers effectively. As I suspect that has been your in-game experience, I'm not sure I can fault you for finding the power choices less than desirable.

While only offensive (powers that directly affect enemies) toggles get shut off any more, there's still enough of those that getting them shut off can be bothersome. They are in Radiation, Storm, Dark Miasma, Sonic, Ice Control, Fire Control, a number of the Blaster secondaries, and I believe Earth Control. Perhaps more. A number of those have recharge times that make them getting shut off quite annoying.

The only way to use anti-mez powers effectively is simply to use them proactively. Which is to say, to prevent mez with them. I've seen some Empaths do that on teams, and more power to those players, but I find the prospect of doing so myself as an Empath to be far too irritating for aforementioned reasons. When playing other characters, I don't care whether I get CM or not. I'd be just as happy, if not happier to find myself within range of Dispersion Bubble or Sonic Dispersion.