Which power sets need the most help?

Yeah, Titan Weapons would like a word with you, eth. It's the best ST and AoE DPS set in the game.

Fire and Dark both have much better single-target for Scrappers, and Fire has, while not as good as Mace, a decent AoE in FSC. Both also feature exotic damage. StJ might beat them both at ST.

For AoE, Dual Blades and Broad Sword are least partitive if not better. Electric and Spines are certainly better. Claws is probably even.

Super Strength is better, too, for non-Scrappers.

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Originally Posted by eth_Nargy I have. None of the TW attacks have jack on crowd control. Closest is Arc of Destruction, which deals good damage, but it still lacks the mitigation and target cap.

Whirling Smash blows Crowd Control out of the water for DPA, does nearly the same base damage, has a wider radius, and is a full PBAOE, not a cone.

Beyond that, Arc of Destruction (which also has a wider radius and does almost twice the damage of Crowd Control, with a better DPA even without momentum, though only hitting 5 targets) and Titan Sweep are both so infinitely much better than Whirling Mace and Shatter that there is really no comparison between the sets.

Then you have Defensive Sweep for filler.

Oh, and Follow Through is the one attack that actually beats Clobber for DPA, while the rest of TW's ST attack chain makes Mace's want to cry in a corner.

On top of all this TW has room for much better proc options than Mace.

I24 Proc Chance = (Enhanced Recharge + Activation Time) * (Current PPM * 1.25) / 60*(1 + .75*(.15*Radius - 0.011*Radius*(360-Arc)/30))
Single Target Radius = 0. AoE Non-Cone Arc = 360.

You were probably lagging.

Both powers have a recharge time of 12 seconds.

With ArcanaTime, Shatter has a 2.508s cast and Crowd Control has a 2.244s.

12/2.508 -1 = 3.78
12/2.244 -1 = 4.35

I24 Proc Chance = (Enhanced Recharge + Activation Time) * (Current PPM * 1.25) / 60*(1 + .75*(.15*Radius - 0.011*Radius*(360-Arc)/30))
Single Target Radius = 0. AoE Non-Cone Arc = 360.

There are a bunch of sets that could use a lift, but nothing stands out to me more than Blaster Devices.

Energy Melee is way up there of course.

The four support sets that in my mind are competing for a spot at the bottom are Force Field, Sonic Resonance, Trick Arrow, and Poison, each for fairly different reasons but most of it coming down to just plain not delivering like other sets do. Of these, Force Field bothers me the most because it's such a conceptually important set for the super hero theme.

The great part of all this is that Mace wasn't proven to be a bad set.

Mercs need an AI boost more then anything. Spec Ops need a REASON for stealth, so maybe the ability to critical, with a guarenteed critical while in stealth. Beyond that you can get a lot of mileage out of macroing in different targets for each of the Ops. Spreads the CC around. But they still do bleh damage for being the Lieutenant pets.

#1: Every blaster secondary but mental manipulation (self explanatory)
#2: Stone Armor - It gives up a lot to be super survivable, but now the most deadly and high level stuff, where you'd want to use granite, uses unresistable damage. Boss fights are also highly focused on mobility. In addition, you can use IOs to boost up to granite's survivability, but no amount of IOs will let you jump over a sidewalk.
#3: Elec - Needs some kind of high damage ability. Voltaic sentinel doesn't really seem to cut it, end drain has to be stacked to do anything and still isn't that great.
#4: Energy Melee - It might as well have no AoE (whirling hands is somehow even worse than burst), and the ST damage isn't clearly super #1.
#5: Force Field - More useful than before with the incarnate softcap increase, but it's a one trick pony while so many other sets can grant enough defense while doing other stuff.


Interestingly, I dont agree about ice control at all. It's my favorite control set, and I find it to be the best control set in the game, especially against higher level targets. It definitely takes longer to set up, though. The immobilizes are a bit silly too, the -kb needs to go.

I was on Beta and tested these changes as well.

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Originally Posted by JayboH Envenom & Weaken can actually stack if you hit multiple targets that are within the area of each other. They never even used to have any AOE. Now true, the full effect only hits the main target, and the aoe is small, but they are designed to recharge quickly for that very reason. Anyway, you can have a single target debuffed 1 1/2 times this way.

This is a mechanic that works well for damage augmenting debuffs, which can be readily stacked throughout combat and layered on bosses/EBs/AVs, but is terrible for mitigation debuffs. You need the most mitigation up front during the alpha phase of combat, and less as a spawn wears down. This setup does not achieve that and Poison works with a whopping -7.5% ToHit debuff and -15% damage to an 8 foot radius as the sum total of its alpha mitigation. Not only is this value incredibly low compared to every other set, but most of the spawn is not affected because of the tiny radius.

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Originally Posted by JayboH Poison Trap is now pretty good - shocking, I know. Procs are great here too I hear.

I agree. This is the best skill in the set and the only viable alpha option. That said, you are basically forced to enter melee range with no form of self buffs or heals in order to have a viable alpha solution. This is odd in the context of sets like Dark, Radiation, Time, Traps, Thermal, Pain, Empathy, FF, Sonics, or Storm which all have some form of protection/healing or a massive 30%+ aoe -ToHit debuff (Hurricane).

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Originally Posted by JayboH The heal is an issue, only because of travel time. It got buffed in healing strength recently also. I share your frustration over Alkaloid - I wish it was also AOE. MANY of us asked for it to become AOE during re-development, but I guess Synapse didn't agree.

I agree. The heal is an issue because of travel time. It is also an issue because no other set in the game is forced into a team-only power as an auto-selection at level 1-- except for Poison.

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Originally Posted by JayboH Yes, the tier 9 requires you go into melee range, and this is by design to add risk, no doubt to go with Poison Trap toe-bombing. The bugs were fixed so now you can enhance the -tohit in combination with the -tohit in Weaken, which is what you should slot Weaken with anyway. The end cost is high so if you can manage 5 or 6 slots here, that would be good.

This skill would be fine if Poison had some other form of self buff or self heal, a self-affecting ability to increase your durability along the lines of what every other set aside from Trick Arrow receives. I said this on the beta boards and will repeat it here:: this set plays like it was revamped on paper and never played by developers.

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Originally Posted by JayboH It isn't super god-awful but it could use little tweaks. The hold could use a secondary effect too.

It needs a couple solid tweaks and to have its -regeneration increased from 50% to something that is meaningful.

so is this a consensus (if not unanimous)

Really need help:
Electric Blast
Electric Assault
Energy Melee
Mercenaries
Battle Axe
Devices
Gravity Control (doms)
Poison

Could use a bit of something:
Ice Control
Force Field
Ninjas
Trick Arrow
Assault Rifle
Dual Pistol
Regen
Sonic Resonance
Spines
Blaster secondaries besides MM and Nrg