Do you think Time Manipulation will work well with MM's?

Everyone, EVERYONE, claims to be a master of their respective AT. The problem is, you stated this as well as admitting you had very, very little time to test. If you were as experienced as you claimed, you would KNOW that a few minutes is NOT enough to test a Mastermind set and all of it's synergies. THIS is why I questioned you, or rather called you out on it.

Regardless, I may have been somewhat dismissive of you, but I still /responded to everything you said/. You didn't do the same, so don't call me out and then do what you claimed I did, but I actually didn't do ;P

Those Defender numbers look quite good to me. It's got TWO pretty good -regen and that alone is going to be popular.

The whole set has a lot of +recharge which won't affect Pets.

I think Time set looks good for Defender/Corr/Controller but not so much for MM. The debuff and buff on damage/resistance don't seem to be high enough. The healing over time is meaningless on primaries like Ninja who literally die in seconds when getting hit.

And that is Defender level. Time looks like it can be useful for every situation.

Wow, Temporal Selection looks very good. It even offers psionic resistance. Defender's level starts out at least 30%? Wow.

Minor observations by Mr. Obvious:

This isn't the final version / live edition of the powers.

Some changes could (not necessarily) change utilization one way or the other.

+Recharge, +speed, and Slow resistances are different animals.

Powersets do not operate in a vacuum. While some sets are stronger in teams than solo, some powers can be completely overpowered stacking with like-minded teammates.

With any totally new powerset, learning where, when and how to use the power is half the fun of playing it. Many new synergies are discovered by accident. This is not your mama's radiation infection.

Not pointing fingers here at anyone in particular. Some of the extra benefits of powers appear to be overlooked by some. Time juncture isn't hurricane in its degree of tohit debuff, but hurricane has no damage potential debuff. Temporal mending has heal over time, but also slow resistance. This can be critical for mastermind minions in pathing and attack situations - caltrops, earth thorn casters' quicksand, etc.

That said, yes. The game is balanced around SOs. In an SO game, Time is still a playable set. Although in the SO game, it's massive cooldown on one of it's two main sources of mitigation, Temporal Mending, becomes GLARINGLY obvious. The set, in the SO world, is a lot weaker. This is no surprise mind you. Very few sets do not get much better with IOs.

That said? I did some SO testing with Time, and it didn't take long for me to go "Ugh, Temporal Mending's cooldown is painful".

I personally think it should be put to 16 seconds. Twice as much as the other AoE heals, considering over time, Temporal Mending roughly breaks even with two applications of an AoE heal. This is probably the only power I have any real problem with. 18 seconds just feels too /long/.

That said, it's a good set, I personally like it. I'll personally play! Just not on a Mastermind. The Mastermind Creed is that "If something goes wrong, it's going wrong very quickly.". A lot of being a good mastermind is split-second responses and immediate solutions. Time's delayed nature, be that as it's part of the concept, is detrimental to this AT.

But, yes. I do enjoy the set. It's fun to play, although the sound effects are "Egh". Too much Sonic Screwdriver, not enough clocks.

OK, I had a bit of time to do some testing tonight.

I ran a few rikti missions out in RWZ at various difficulties. Nin/time, tier 1 cardiac.

I was able to do up to +2/5 or +3/1-2ish with sos & no problems, although +3 took too long for my tastes. Adding in the +5% def & +10% res ios and +2/6 rikti was doable without working too hard.

This is with very little micro. Basically none beyond all/attack and follow/defend.

That's solid enough for me. Not to mention fun I took the jump telekick on a whim, but it actually worked pretty well for getting into melee range for the pbaoe debuff aura.

DS/Time feels like this.

ie AWEsome. I think the stacked heal auras and debuffs and holds should make this a winner. I wasn't going to ask for a lvl bump but I just can't help it I wanna see it at full strength.

I took my Ninjas/Time out for a spin the past couple days. He's running on all SOs and tier 2 Cardiac.

Demons:
+1/x4(With Boss) was a breeze.

Council:
+2/x8(No Boss) was no sweat.

Devouring Earth:
+1/x5(With Boss) was slightly harder.
+2/x5(With Boss) was very annoying, but sustainable.


In the end I really like the set myself. The endurance is manageable. If you spam everything you have every mob, your endurance will bid you farewell. I basically just used Distortion Field and Temporal Selection when they were recharged, and kept a steady supply of Temporal Mending going. I was able to get though the entire fight without going below half endurance. I went with Ice Epics so I also had Frozen Armor, Maneuvers, Tactics, Hover, and Time's Juncture going at the same time.

On all but the Devouring Earth +2s I was able to breeze through mobs without losing any pets. Though if I was late with a Disruption Field, or if I was stunned and Time's Juncture was detoggled, or heaven forbid they both dropped, my pets were in trouble.

With the Devouring Earth +2s I was able to take down groups, but I ended up with 1-2 pets after the group went down every time.


Overall a very fun set to play! I just wish +recharge meant something to pets, and the Heal could be sped up a little for Temporal Mending (Not the ticks. The burst heal seems to come at the very end of the animation, but that might just be my imagination.).

It's not your imagination. Apparently the heal is designed to be proactive not reactive.

To be utterly fair, Council are a joke and aren't a good baseline for set testing. Also that aside, you're a Mastermind. Nobody said TM wouldn't /work/, but it's not any better than the true "Top 3" MM sets.

I'm sure the set will see play, especially due to being a new set. Doesn't mean it won't be played badly, like most MMs tend to do even with really simple to utilize sets. Hm.

Heck, even with my bashing of the set's heavily nerfed features as a Mastermind, I may still whip an MM out for i- wait, no. Underground Trial. Instant killing pets every 30 seconds with no way to save them.

Even though I'm an IO user and have every pet down to at 30 seconds or below, and it's very hard to manage >_>

Heavily Nerfed? Really?

+recharge having no effect on pets is NOT 'heavily nerfed,' it is a single aspect of TWO POWERS that has no effect on THREE powers from a Mastermind's primary powerset.

Everything else that is less effective on a mastermind is due to archetype modifiers, the SAME EXACT THING THAT EVERY OTHER MASTERMIND SET 'suffers' FROM.

That is not Nerfed, that's an aspect of game balance, and the +recharge is because of errors in pet AI caused when powers recharge too fast. Would you really want all of your pets using nothing but Brawl all the time, at level 50, when fully upgraded?

I mean, by your logic, every mastermind set in the game suffers from 'Heavy Nerfing' simply due to MM AT modifiers, lower HP numbers, and pet AI. Even the 'top-tier' powersets are Heavily Nerfed simply because they are on a mastermind.

You are considering this set SOLELY from a soloing perspective; YOU ARE WRONG TO DO SO. This set will be very welcome on teams of all kinds even before the mid 30's. Layered, stacking, complimentary buffs and debuffs are a huge advantage, and Time has these in spades.

/Time masterminds will be VERY welcome on teams, and have NO trouble soloing. Temporal Selection alone is damn close to Fortitude in utility, even from a Mastermind.

That's an interesting counter-claim, but let me refute that statement in a simple manner of; Not all Mastermind Sets Are Adjusted Equally. Traps being one of the major Mastermind secondaries that isn't quite as prone to the AT Modifier.

You're fine to say that /TM Masterminds will be welcome on a team, and you're right. In so much that people want to deal with the large amount of really, really bad Masterminds who do not know how to play their AT, let alone will have to skill to properly utilize /TM.

You won't win any argument if you begin to suggest that /Time is superior to /Dark, /Traps, or /Thermal, because the numbers won't lie. You won't be valued over them, but City of Heroes is such an easy game that nobody min/maxes AT selections THAT hard, except for scenarios where a true tank is needed and gimpy Tankermind Aggro generation can't be viable (and this happens a lot.)

Flatly speaking, when it comes to Masterminds? The best secondaries are the ones with extremes. Dark's superiority comes from it's utmost dedication to obliterating enemy ToHit, effectively beyond soft-capping your pets and ensuring their survivability with the strongest MM heal in the game, Twilight Grasp. Combined with CC that makes /Time's blush, actual +Resistance numbers, and Fluffy? Dark is by FAR the superior support secondary.

Why? Because Recharge isn't really that important. You might ask "Why?", and that's simple; unless you play in a static, random puggies aren't going to be that savvy with attack chains to be able to utilize your varying +30, +50, or +70% Recharge properly. Most won't even /notice it/. But they WILL notice a /Dark single-handedly shutting down multiple enemy groups and /yawning the day away.

Time can't do that. Distortion Field is a flatly weaker and inferior Poison Trap. That's the only AoE CC it has. While Time does have Time's Juncture for a -ToHit, I'm going to keep an actual notched count of how many MMs get themselves killed with it by using Pet Attack and going SPLAT because of Bodyguard Mode's mechanics.

Hint: A lot.

I already made a detailed analysis of Traps earlier in this trade, and shown that strictly speaking, Traps does everything Time does except Heal and +Recharge, but everything else it does it does SUBSTANTIALLY BETTER. If we want to bother with an IO comparison, a Panacea Proc in Triage Beacon is horrendously overpowered.

But it's no news that Traps is the best Mastermind secondary in nearly every situation.

Finally, Thermal is pretty much the God King of Secondaries for pure support. Why? Resistance buffs are very rare in CoX (Thermal or Sonic, with Pain doing it okay-like), and since +DEF buffs are so common, your pets can be soft-capped in teams pretty easily due to them, the Pet Aura IOs, and Maneuvers.

Thermal has proven to be the EASIEST way to make your pets into miniature tanks... armed with nukes. Thermal brings not only powerful +RES Buffs, two decent (for MMs) heals, but also devastating debuffs... one being a -Regen destroyer, which is showing to be Time's MAJOR weakness.

Heck, -Regen is Dark's primary weakness too, except Dark has Fluffy to counterbalance that, and Fluffy stacks.

Flatly speaking, you're half right. /Time won't have any problem soloing, but /Time won't make an advent of Masterminds being sought-after in any scenario. We're still redundant in BAF due to Lore Dominance, we're still gimped to crap in Lambda due to Speed Dominance, we've got survivability unmatched in Keyes but Keyes is also a giant "RUN AROUND!" fest, but this is probably our strongest trial.

With the Underground changes, MMs will be a bit more desired (Pre-changes, good luck finding a team. You were USELESS in the final quarter of the trial), except the Avatar still screws us up due to the confusion shenanigans. Clarion helps mind you but hey, forced Destiny slots \o/

/Time's fine, but you're kidding yourself if you think it's a new advent of MM superiority. Traps does it better, Dark does it better, Thermal supports it better.

Yes, clearly /time has issues with -regen, despite the first power (The power that enhances the other debuffs) having -100% regen for 20 seconds on a power that has a base recharge of 15 seconds. This is -100% regen even for masterminds.

It's trivially easy to get the recharge of that power down to under 10 seconds as early as level 20, and that power takes slow sets. Oh, look at that, there are two Slow sets on the Market; Curtail Speed and Tempered Readiness! Neither of those sets will get you to under ten seconds by itself, but they both have a global recharge bonus at only five slots. Let's look at what else is available on the market for /Time for early-levels utility.

Temporal Mending, well it's obvious that one takes heal sets, but Doctored wounds can't be slotted until 27.

Why look at that, Time's Juncture takes -tohit! Dampened Spirits is a decent 20+ set with a +recharge global bonus available on the paragon market.

Distortion field, time stop...slow and hold, both available before or right at 20. We've got your precious Basilisk's Gaze +7.5% accounted for right there.

Seems to me that what we have there is a simple and effective way to stack -200% regen on a target for ten seconds, easily focused on a single target. Sure an AV will resist that to whatever low percentage, but that's -regen on a Tier 1 power that is EASILY double-stacked permanently after the second application.

So, yeah. -regen weakness? Not really. There are other sets that have it worse. Let's do a graph of -regen over time with downtime taken into account? I'm thinking that a steady, dependable source of -regen is better than a single spike from a higher-tier power, even if that spike is higher.

You're badly overestimating the effect of -100% Regen. Badly. You're also considering the use of an IO Set to empower a set, which is bad, since IOs break any set, and IOs break sets far better than Time in far more absurd ways.

So, yeah. Your counter-counter argument failed because it's a counter-counter argument that is trying to make Time look better with the use of IO's. Do you want to know what set is ABSURDLY overpowered with IOs?

Traps.

Oh, and Cold Domination is easily the most broken set in the game with IOs. To freakishly scary levels.

See? I can do it too~