oedipus_tex

If you were very lucky/careful I could maybe see a permadom Mind/Earth having some success opening with Confuse tocreate safety and following up with Dominate+Telekinesis+Seismic Smash+Dominate, which on their own are 22 Mag worth of Hold in around 6 seconds. Earth Assault can Power Up the Holds for pretty good durations. Dominate has pretty good DPA for a Hold. You could throw Mesmerize in there to disable the AV periodically. Been a while since I looked but I think you need Mag 50 Hold to overcome a AV's protection. I'm not saying it would work perfectly, you're still a mostly unarmored character at melee range with not great stats. It would also probably take forever. But the potential is there. Maybe. A scheme like that will make short work of Elite Bosses of course.

Your best bet is probably some kind of permadom Mind Dominator. People used to solo the LRSF by sleeping the Freedom Phalanx and stacking Confuse so they kill each other. I've personally never tried and have heard little about whether it works these days. I think (but don't quote me because I haven't tried it in ages) that Hypnotize will sleep some AVs in one shot. I also forget if you need Domination active to do this. If I had to pick a Dominator that could possibly do this, it would be something like Mind/Fire (altho DoT might interfere with Sleep). RE: Psi Assault, Drain Psyche on Doms used to be bugged and you could enhance its -Regen to absurd levels. That was fixed a long time ago on HC, might still work on other servers. Psi Assault has attrocious ranged damage and I wouldn't want to try to use the melee attacks. Overall Dominators have a very rough go versus AVs and are the last AT I'd look to try it. Their controls mostly fail, they have few healing, defense, or resist options, they can't adequately protect their set or Lore pets, its just not a clean package. The only thing really going for them is the ability to discreetly stack Sleep/Confuse, mezz protection in Domination mode, and (maybe?) high Snipe damage.

Dark.

The Dominator ATOs in particular should be revised to work in attacks IMO. It is currently difficult to find a power to slot them in.

I think Martial's real issue is the damage is just baseline or a little above and there are few reliable secondary effects. The Stun in Thunder Kick should Dominate according to Domination rules. I don't believe it currently does. I think Explosive Shuriken should borrow the AoE knockdown effect from Propel. It's an explosion strong enough to shake the screen, it knocking stuff down is justified.

IMO Avoid Repulsion Bomb. It has a 3.3 second cast time which even with Containment works out to a DPA of around ~18 (without, it has a DPA of 9). That's barely better than casting most AoE immobilizes, but those recharge in 8 seconds versus 30. It's true Mind Control has few options for AoE Containment, but 40% chance to stun a minion is nothing to crow about it. If you do decide to take it, slot it with damage procs a la Acid Arrow. It's still a hard sell for me though, 3.3 seconds is a very long time to remain rooted for such a minimal effect.

Cold is a fantastic set that I swear I'll never play again until they reorder the powers. The 35 level wait for Sleet is brutal. Grav/Cold is solid if you can deal with that though.

I don't have the latest version of Mids so I can't pull up the builds, but I'm thinking something like the build below. Here it is out of Power Boost mode. 45% ranged defense, 42 en/neg with 35 S/L/Melee/Fire/Cold, all soft capped with one small Purple. You also have some resistance to run speed and recharge debuffs thanks to the Winters Gift sets. Recharge is 97% + whatever bonus you get from spamming Energy Torrent with the +100% Recharge proc. The one drawback is your single target Confuse has a chance to alert the enemy due to the damage proc. Probably not a big deal since you can just sleep the mob with Mass Hypnosis prior but still worth be being aware. And in Power Boost mode (I estimate Power Boost will have about 45% up time): Hero Plan by Mids' Reborn : Hero Designer 2.6.1.25 https://github.com/Crytilis/mids-reborn-hero-designer Click this DataLink to open the build! Level 50 Magic Controller Primary Power Set: Mind Control Secondary Power Set: Force Field Power Pool: Speed Power Pool: Fighting Power Pool: Leadership Power Pool: Flight Ancillary Pool: Primal Forces Mastery Hero Profile: Level 1: Levitate -- Thn-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(A), Thn-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(3), Thn-Acc/Dmg(3), Thn-Dmg/EndRdx(5), Thn-Dmg/Rchg(5), Thn-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(7) Level 1: Personal Force Field -- LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(A) Level 2: Dominate -- BslGaz-Acc/Hold(A), BslGaz-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(7), BslGaz-Acc/Rchg(9), BslGaz-Rchg/Hold(9), HO:Perox(11), Dmg-I(11) Level 4: Mesmerize -- Thn-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(A), Thn-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(15), Thn-Acc/Dmg(15), Thn-Dmg/EndRdx(17), Thn-Dmg/Rchg(17), Thn-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(19) Level 6: Confuse -- SprWiloft-Rchg/Dmg%(A), SprWiloft-Acc/Conf/Hold/Immob/Sleep/Stun/Fear/EndRdx/Rchg(19), SprWiloft-Acc/Conf/Hold/Immob/Sleep/Stun/Fear(21), SprWiloft-Conf/Hold/Immob/Sleep/Stun/Fear/Rchg(21), SprWiloft-EndRdx/Rchg(23), SprWiloft-Acc/Conf/Hold/Immob/Sleep/Stun/Fear/EndRdx(34) Level 8: Mass Hypnosis -- FrtHyp-Plct%(A), FrtHyp-Sleep/EndRdx(23), FrtHyp-Acc/Rchg(25), FrtHyp-Acc/Sleep/Rchg(25), FrtHyp-Sleep/Rchg(27) Level 10: Deflection Shield -- LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(A) Level 12: Insulation Shield -- LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(A) Level 14: Hasten -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(27) Level 16: Boxing -- SprBlsCol-Acc/Dmg(A), SprBlsCol-Dmg/EndRdx(29), SprBlsCol-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(29), SprBlsCol-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(31), SprBlsCol-Dmg/EndRdx/Acc/Rchg(31), SprBlsCol-Rchg/HoldProc(31) Level 18: Total Domination -- BslGaz-Acc/Hold(A), BslGaz-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(33), BslGaz-Rchg/Hold(33), BslGaz-Acc/Rchg(33), Lck-%Hold(34) Level 20: Dispersion Bubble -- LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(A) Level 22: Tough -- StdPrt-ResDam/Def+(A), UnbGrd-Max HP%(34), UnbGrd-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(36), UnbGrd-ResDam(36), UnbGrd-ResDam/EndRdx(36) Level 24: Weave -- ShlWal-ResDam/Re TP(A), Ksm-ToHit+(37), Rct-ResDam%(37) Level 26: Terrify -- Rgn-Knock%(A), Rgn-Dmg/EndRdx(37), Rgn-Acc/Rchg(39), Rgn-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(39), Rgn-Dmg/Rchg(39), PstBls-Dam%(40) Level 28: Maneuvers -- DefBuff-I(A) Level 30: Hover -- LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(A) Level 32: Mass Confusion -- CrcPrs-Conf%(A), CrcPrs-Conf/EndRdx(40), CrcPrs-Acc/Rchg(40), CrcPrs-Acc/Conf/Rchg(42), CrcPrs-Conf/Rchg(42), CrcPrs-Conf(42) Level 35: Conserve Power -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(43) Level 38: Force Bubble -- EndRdx-I(A) Level 41: Energy Torrent -- PstBls-Dam%(A), PstBls-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(43), PstBls-Dmg/Rng(43), PstBls-Dmg/Rchg(45), PstBls-Acc/Dmg(45), FrcFdb-Rechg%(45) Level 44: Cross Punch -- SprAvl-Rchg/KDProc(A), SprAvl-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(46), SprAvl-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(46), SprAvl-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(46), SprAvl-Dmg/EndRdx(48), SprAvl-Acc/Dmg(48) Level 47: Temp Invulnerability -- UnbGrd-Rchg/ResDam(A), GldArm-3defTpProc(48), UnbGrd-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(50), UnbGrd-ResDam(50), UnbGrd-ResDam/EndRdx(50) Level 49: Power Boost -- RechRdx-I(A) Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A) Level 1: Containment Level 1: Prestige Power Dash -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Slide -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Quick -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Rush -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Surge -- Empty(A) Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A) Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A) Level 4: Ninja Run Level 2: Swift -- Empty(A) Level 2: Health -- Empty(A), Empty(13) Level 2: Hurdle -- Empty(A) Level 2: Stamina -- Empty(A), Empty(13) ------------ ------------ Set Bonus Totals: 8% DamageBuff(Smashing) 8% DamageBuff(Lethal) 8% DamageBuff(Fire) 8% DamageBuff(Cold) 8% DamageBuff(Energy) 8% DamageBuff(Negative) 8% DamageBuff(Toxic) 8% DamageBuff(Psionic) 16.63% Defense(Smashing) 16.63% Defense(Lethal) 16% Defense(Fire) 16% Defense(Cold) 23.5% Defense(Energy) 23.5% Defense(Negative) 6% Defense(Psionic) 19.75% Defense(Melee) 26% Defense(Ranged) 11% Defense(AoE) 5% Enhancement(Max EnduranceDiscount) 4% Enhancement(Stunned) 4% Enhancement(Held) 4.4% Enhancement(Terrorized) 8% Enhancement(Immobilized) 8% Enhancement(Sleep) 68% Enhancement(Accuracy) 8% Enhancement(Confused) 98.75% Enhancement(RechargeTime) 12% SpeedFlying 76.3 HP (7.5%) HitPoints 12% JumpHeight 12% SpeedJumping MezResist(Confused) 51.25% MezResist(Held) 51.25% MezResist(Immobilized) 51.25% MezResist(Sleep) 51.25% MezResist(Stunned) 51.25% MezResist(Terrorized) 51.25% MezResist(Teleport) 100% (20% chance) 30.5% (0.51 End/sec) Recovery 30% ResEffect(SpeedFlying) 30% ResEffect(RechargeTime) 30% ResEffect(SpeedRunning) 8% Resistance(Smashing) 34.25% Resistance(Fire) 34.25% Resistance(Cold) 12.5% Resistance(Energy) 12.5% Resistance(Negative) 8% Resistance(Toxic) 8% Resistance(Psionic) 8% Resistance(Lethal) 12% SpeedRunning | Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Reborn : Hero Designer to view the build | |-------------------------------------------------------------------| |MxDz;1443;649;1298;HEX;| |78DA7594C96F126118C6BF0F0691A505AC959696162AD55A9482AD7AB169B4B51E2| |C49130FEE2281693BC90864C0448F1EBC7970BDD9CD837631D5C4B8FC11EA498DFF| |844B5CE292187C99F7A134993809FC98E75DBE67DE3743FAF29877EDE8D51121FDA| |37AB65CCE8C160B15A3A8EBAAE14867A7B59CA85D4EFA743722F5A4445A2BE4EB37| |1D1BE2872F4D4D25C68B464ECD8C6BAA9E17EEC922A51F2FA96ABEC9FC39AE4DCF5| |4B4C2B4CFBC9B50B379D528CF68250F47F55A3874A4A4E51293867631AB67CC6EE5| |4C3A5BAEA8C6953632D44B9F652970551DE23E21A508DB2238CB54E6C079E6A605E| |6C146AD10ADD2D4560812FDE45B9B1061CAFFC0DCFC0E7CCF740F539A6217EE30F7| |5BA2423B6AEDF0D20C2FCDF0E287173FBC6C819755AA75A0D6B16AE7D80A73EB03F| |02173DB1233BACC7C24794154AB38CFD838E734B3ED147892193AC11CA61A179EDD| |85671F2178A079A0F550E326732055D91467AF215052CC07CFBE1B8AA975DE046F3| |1BB6E8377C0BBCC35EA1980E700E61CC19C23986F04F38EFE61CF87A8A685BD8816| |F8B33B7975B53EAD41C9F9BF792EDB7F81DFC11F4C856A825C630B1E632DF65798B| |5B16F7CFF98E2ED78B6F6037C7E6C3F73C73E70081C64EE7CC9730950FF0EF8ECE8| |62CD455A185A18DE9F10BA714677163D2E8019E6AEF3E039F02CF315D9ECC15E7AB| |08F7E704CF2BB513BAB37CADA57AF107D38AB0F3EFB5F80CF99BB9F814FC16B7CD6| |756A16476D7C91F7B767019C07E79803B3E03DE66BF299C07E123F79B6037B9929E| |C2785FDA4B09F3784246695C433752A1BDED52A5DB565D5956ABF259AB428298B32| |6851862CCA84459954D6FF21843415977FFDBDAF7E7453546E8C7E6E289215AFF9F| |DC992F9E53F99FF001FFFFE4C| |-------------------------------------------------------------------| You can fault the slotting in the ally shields if you want and put more there. This build is making the shields provide +26 Defense as is. You could move some of the slots in Boxing or Cross Punch there if you are feeling guilty about expending defense there. I think its worth it personall though. It's also possible you'll find this is a bit too aggressive with the endurance cost of toggles balanced against up time for Conserve Power. If this is the case, I'd make cuts to Mass Hypnosis, which isn't contributing anything right now but recharge.

One nice thing about Energy paired with Mind is the Power Up effect multiplying the duration of Mass Confusion and Total Domination. On most other control sets the extra duration isn't that impacftul (altho it is for the secondary effects in Dark and Electric though). Mind Control though has a lot riding on enemies hit by Mass Confusion never waking up, especially when solo. If they do, you have few clean ways to shut them down again because Mass Confusion has 4 times the recharge of powers like Seeds and 2.6 times the recharge of Flashfire/Wormhole/Stalagmites. Terrify and Mass Hypnosis can somewhat help with this but neither is a very reliable power when you start facing huge packs (though they are quite good in certain kinds of careful play). Aside from amazing single target DPA for a Dominator, Fiery also gets Consume, which amounts to a free blue bar refill every 50 seconds or so on a permadom build. That, paired with the end bar refill from Domination, is enough to keep your bar full at all times and turn to a Destiny power like Barrier or Rebirth and/or extra slots in Health/Stamina that other Assault sets may be pushed to take in order to cover their endurance holes.

I would worry less about soft capping to every position than making sure you have some S/L resistance to absorb the damage that pokes through. With capped Ranged defense and no reason to be in melee range most of the time, you're probably better off adding Resistance and some form of heal (hence probably a resist APP and a Destiny that restores HP). Power Boost should be up about 40% of the time, pushing Defense up.

With Mind/Force Field, if you are spending money on it, IMO you are likely best served by the Primal APP and Rebirth Destiny. Primal gives you Power Boost which is critical to you for a couple reasons. The biggest is Mind Control's lousy access to AoE Containment. Power Boosted Total Domination is your best friend here. Power Boost and Deflection/Refraction field speak for themselves. Conserve Power should make running your various powers easy. You can skip Power Blast since it actually has lower DPA than your Mind Control attacks, as you can see below. Energy Torrent meanwhile provides fairly high AoE damage for a cone. If you decide on a secondary other than Primal I'd go with one that has both a pet and a resist armor. Mu, Soul, or Leviathan are probably the bests options here, each with their own advantages and drawbacks. Still I think Primal is probably best in show unless you really like pets. Or you could run both builds. The Primal version is the one I'd personally rather team with, solo it's up to you.

Basically, Gravity is just a good all around set for Controllers, which are a usually low damage archetype. Despite what animations might imply, the real heavy hitter is Lift, which is "phenomenal," while Propel is just "very good." Grav/Trick Arrow and Grav/Traps are also good options with similarities to Storm or Kinetics but basically anything paired with Gravity Control on Controllers is likely to be strong. Unfortunately the same can't be said for Gravity Dominators...this is a case where IMO in 90% of situations the set is stronger on a Controller.

The ability to slot -ToHit in Terrify is a carryover bug from the power being cloned from a similar power in the Dark Miasma set. The bug existed on live and has persisted as long as I can remember.

It's an interesting idea, but I'm on the fence about it. I think debuffs may be the last remaining avenue for making content challenging and the armor sets diverse. In particular I'd like to avoid adding more one-slot-wonder IOs like LoTgs or Steadfasts.

Before the Blaster changes that added crashless nukes and sustains, Martial Assault would have been fairly solid. As is it's a Blaster set without crashless nukes or sustains. Martial's cardinal sin is the same as Icy, Thorny, Electric, and Radioactive. There isn't a strong mechanism to build around. While Psi, Fire, Earth, Dark, Savage and Energy aren't perfect, they offer a strategy. Like, with /Psi, you're building around Drain Psyche. With Fire you're building around Consume, etc. On the plus side for Martial, Caltrops adds some AoE damage other secondaries lack, and it can sustain +ToHit that makes it easier to proc out attacks and hit with control powers. Envenomed Blades isn't a bad power at all. I wish it were more exciting though or offered more control. Even +Recharge somewhere in there would be unique and distinguish it from the rest of the pack. Dominators are the only archetype I can think of that lacks any +Recharge, +Resist, +Defense in both primary and secondary sets and there's a lot of reasons to think a "Martial Assault" set would be a good place for some of that.

Please don't do that. It's a fine opinion but there's pretty that's unprovable or debatable about it. I do wonder whether opinion will shift if more servers take the stance that 17 enemies isn't the ideal number for them. If they are willing to adjust that number I can't see any reason they wouldn't also find ways to address a Tanker handling 17 enemies as easily as 40. Aggro management could/should factor into tank play as much as anyone else.

An interesting thing about Fold Space in the current ruleset is that you can teleport or run away from the group you are fighting into a second group, Fold Space to gather them (which works because they are closest to you), and hit them with whatever without them responding, because you've exceeded the cap of 16. This actually works without Fold Space, it's just Fold Space makes it more obvious the second group ignores you.

Easier for who though? An increase in the aggro cap would not make it easier for Dominators unless their target caps also went up, for example. That's part of why pets are currently a mixed blessing for them, the pets lets them aggro more enemies than they can actually control. There are some kinds of powers that benefit a lot from better herding, immoveable psuedo pets mainly. Outside of farms, most powers would do somewhat but not outrageously more damage. That's why I'm on the fence about what would really happen if the cap changed. As someone who rarely plays melee, suddenly having the ability to have forty or however many enemies gunning for me and only able to disable half or fewer of them would absolutely not make life easier for any character I currently own. Mainly it would make me much more careful about overaggroing and leaving the tanking to an actual Tank.

Hi siolfir, I'll write you down as wanting to stick with 17. That's fine. I'm hoping we can stick to talking about that and allow other folks to answer. If this is the wrong space for the discussion I'll happily move the discussion to one of the other threads at the prodding of a forum moderator. Those folks work for free and I don't want to make their day any harder. So far this thread has had almost as many posts about why no one should be posting as posts about the topic. The only motive I have is talking about a topic I care about on a CoX server where I highly respect the development team. I think Homecoming has one of the strongest development teams and I like most of the changes they've made. I can live with 17. Or 25. Or 40. But that number is a conscience decision and because of how editable it is now known to be --which despite posts to the contrary was not known to be the case until relatively recently--it will always be a subject of discussion, just like all other aspects of combat are. Have a great day and thanks.

There are some interesting takes and ideas. Back on live even Arcanaville didn't really have any intel on the aggro cap (that she shared anyway). The developers were notoriously quiet about the specific mechanics. I remember one time a discussion with a convoluted solution involving psuedo pets with shared HP to work around what was presumed to be an ironclad limit on the number of enemies that could be tracked at once that was sort of similar to some of the suggestions, but that was just to make the aggro cap work. 😂 We thought for a long time the cap was the size it was because enemies were tracked in a C array that carried the risk of "out of index" errors. I have enough experience with CoX's nuts and bolts that I know a missing power animation can crash the binning process, and the code was always described as "spaghetti," so the idea that the aggro cap would an absolute mess was reasonable. The fact that it's apparently a clean piece of code is shocking. I've always loved this game but its reputation for being "built in a garage" precedes it.

I thought the question was reasonable. It's a discussion happening among developers across multiple servers as they iron out which deviations from the OG CoX combat engine they will be deploying. Homecoming has already deviated from vanilla CoX in a number of ways. This particular mechanic had enough questions raised by teams that the modders moved the setting to a config file to make it more accessible to more servers. Thanks for a reasonable and well thought out reply. I can see an argument for changing it or an argument for leaving it alone. Part of the question is "How similar to OG CoX is Homecoming determined to remain?" My thought is that on the one hand a player could end up herding huge groups of enemies that it could make the game pretty boring. On the other hand I feel like if a player can herd at that many enemies and not die and the problem is solved with an aggro cap, what can you throw at them with 16 enemies that could take them down? I'm personally leaning toward an aggro cap around 24-40, but that may be too big a deviation for some servers. Homecoming is both pretty avante garde and fairly conservative so it may not match up with their tastes. I like what the devs on this server have done overall and will trust their judgment for their own server.

There are lot of reasons people thought changing the cap may be impractical. For years it was unknown if the number was limited by the size of an internal array or there was some other limiting factor. The code for this game was started sometime in the late 90s, with the aggro cap shoehorned in (into the mapserver for that matter) after the fact. That this part of the code turned out to be so clean is a surprise. The OG devs never let on how it worked, and there wasn't a way to know until someone hunted it down. It's worth having a look at this to see how important array sizes are to CoX and its method of storing information: https://rubidium.dev/2020/03/07/code-archaeology-reading-city-of-heroes-bin-files.html

As always you impress with your builds Frosticus. How would you rate the updated Illusion/Trick Arrow against Illusion/Cold?

I appreciate you have strong feelings about this topic. I think highly of the Homecoming team and have strong feelings about City of Heroes too. I also have my own private server with a binning engine and the ability to change the cap for myself, so this question is more than just academic for me. IMO this topic comes up a lot for the same reason other topics come up a lot. The aggro cap is a fundamental aspect of the combat system. There are threads about it for the same reason there are threads about damage, recharge, accuracy, or the defense equation. If a Homecoming moderator would prefer to roll this thread into one of those, that is fine with me. I figured a discussion that would include the actual code mechanics would derail other discussions too much.

Thanks I'm familiar. Back on topic: Now that the mechanism for raising the aggro cap is known and has been sucessfully deployed what should the aggro cap be?