oedipus_tex

Jimmy, thanks for taking a look and for continuing to work on the power. If Defib is not meant to be a powerful sapping move, can I convince your team to set its drain to something like this: Restore area of effect to 20ft Endurance drain amounts: 100% chance for -15% endurance 33% chance for -60% endurance (critters only) This works out to "A 25% chance for -75% endurance, 75% chance for -15% endurance." With End Mod slotting, that would randomly drain 1 out of 3 mobs in a stack.; on average, 4-6 mobs in a stack of 16. That would hit a threshold of "maybe useful, definitely not a nuke." The reason I am asking for this is that even when reduced 100x in drain strength. when this power is combined with Electric Blast or Electric Control, it IS nuke-like. With any other set, its not really useful at all. To normalize it, reduce the guaranteed portion and give it a chance to really floor a couple of enemies. It would still be useful to the end drain sets, just not exclusively to them. If 33% chance feels too high and you want it even weaker, you could use a 25% chance (1 in 4 mobs).

Yes, they were instantly drained. I didn't use a power analyzer so I didn't see any more of the effect. The Sleep no longer seemed to reapply itself multiple times though.

It looks like there may still be some problems with Defibrellate. 🙂 This is what it drain with no Static stacks: Even if these numbers are fixed, I think this power will still face the same issue as the other endurance drain powers, because its still draining all enemies across the area of effect evenly. The reduction to a 15ft radius helps somewhat with lowering the target count. But what it needs is a chance to effect some creatures very strongly (I recommend a 40% chance for 65% endurance drain at top Static) but not all of the stack. It's okay to also keep the AoE -endurance but that shouldn't be too high. Maybe in the range of -20% to -30% (35% is Controller/Dominator Power Sink). [Note I tweaked the numbers above. I originally suggested 40% chance for -85% endurance, forgetting I was also recommending keep -20% or so endurance. These stack, so a creature that rolled unluckily would be drained of (65 +20) = 85 endurance, before IOs and purple patch. If you raise one you should lower the other.] If that it isn't done, I think this power will fall into the same situation where most of the end drain powers currently are.

I think Storm/Cold would be beyond anything the game could handle.

I wrote a couple of very long posts about this in the Electric Affinity set. I think the solution for Endurance Drain is a change in philosophy. We need to start thinking of Endurance Drain in terms of big drains, but to a smaller number of targets. Let's use Short Circuit as an example. It currently drains 35% endurance from all targets within 20 feet. So, one of two things happens. You either have enough endurance drain from other powers to follow up with enough to sap the spawn completely, or else you don't and the drain goes mostly wasted. In practice, this is why Electric Melee, Manipulation, and Assault have to be paired with a set that does endurance drain to have any value. What Electric powers need is a way to produce very large drains to a small number of targets. If you evenly drain 16 mobs to half endurance, it's meaningless. But if you completely drain 5 enemies in a gang of 16, it has tangible benefit. Endurance drain of this nature would need to only affect enemies and not be used in PVP. This is fair, because creatures for the most part do not rely on endurance to maintain toggles. Here's a profile for how a power like Ball Lighting might work under this philosophy: PROPOSAL: REVISED BALL LIGHTNING (Blaster) 100% chance for -7% Endurance (same as now) 10% chance for -85% Endurance (new) (only to critters) Endurance scales with the Purple patch. Also, the 100% chance for -7% stacks with the -85%, so if you roll the 10% chance, a same level mob is drained -92% (before slotting) and a +4 is drained by about -46%. Slotting for End Mod could bring this number upward. You wouldn't want to remove the existing 100% chance for drain from any power since players have already built around that. You'd just want to add a chance for a big drain to some of the powers. One point of contention is that I also think when these powers roll over from Blaster to Defender or Corruptor, the chance should adjust. For example: PROPOSAL: REVISED BALL LIGHTNING (Defender) 100% chance for -7% Endurance (same as now) 15% chance for -115% Endurance (new) (only to critters) You could also adjust pets this way. PROPOSAL: VOLTAIC SENTINEL blasts 100% chance for -10% endurance 25% chance for -85% Endurance (new) Chance numbers were adjusted upward because the player has no control over what the Sentinel attacks. I discussed in the Electric Affinity thread how there are other alternatives to rolling a percent chance. You could make the area very small, only hit Minions and Lieutenants, etc. Basically whatever you want to do to keep the number of targets low.

Thanks for posting. 🙂 I don't want to completely disregard your idea, but I personally think the sustain power in Energy is perfect where it is. It's both an instant heal and a heal over time. It's very strong, maybe the strongest of the sustains. Energy is a very click-y set, between the sustain, Boost Range, and Power Boost, but I like it right where it is. I haven't spent much time with Elec, Ninja, or Dark and they may need something. I will say IMO Elec Manipulation is a broken set in need of other major changes, along with Electric Assault on Dominators, but for me that has to do with the pointlessness of its endurance drains. There are ways to fix this, which I've been sharing in the Electric Affinity topic. Maybe the sustain power could be part of that fix.

Are you going to IO this character? Glacier is your only hard control. With an IO build you can get it so it recharges in about 60 seconds, so available every other spawn. I'd personally not skip it.

If you're set on Thermal, maybe try a Gravity/Thermal Controller. You won't be able to heal the pet, but it won't matter because your fire shields will make him nigh unkillable. You will be able to cast Forge on him. You'll also do more damage than most Controllers thanks to Propel. If you insist on Defender, I'd think about Beam Rifle as the secondary.

I've never seen this but it would be very cool if Jack can use that power now. Out of curiosity was it actual Ice Slick, or was it Ice Patch, the smaller PBAoE version?

This is a perfect explanation of these powers. 😄 I actually don't currently like playing any of the sets that have single target anti-mezz, because I feel pressured, like I'm "supposed" to take these powers, even though they are annoying to track, usually have very weak slotting options, and eat up a power pick. Fiddling with Clear Mind or Thaw makes me nostalgic for the old Speed Boost, in the same way I feel nostalgic for 16 hour airport layovers. Taking Clarion for my own mezz protection that happens to hit other players has become my out.

Gravity/Storm probably deserves a mention in here somewhere. I don't track things with pylon damage sessions, but just based on raw stats alone, Gravity/Storm provides very reliable damage from level 2 on, even with minimal slotting. However, as with all control sets, the damage is situational. Part of the reason Gravity and Storm pair so well is you can Wormhole enemies into your existing storm clouds, increasing the potential damage above other sets, which have to abandon their existing clouds, losing a lot of the DPA. This method isn't 100% sustainable because you eventually run out of enemies to port in. But it's very good on certain maps. I don't know that I'd pick it to solo AVs, tho it may be fine at that. For general purpose mob beatdowns though it's definitely a top contender, probably beat by Fire/ or Plant/Kinetics but little else. One thing to keep in mind about fighting at +4x8 is that minions and lieutenants often become very easy to deal with, so the value of high single target damage to knock out the bosses goes way up. While Grav/Storm doesn't have amazing AoE damage, it has very good single target, regardless of the number of enemies left alive, and when you get down to the final surviving boss, the combo of Lift, Propel, Tornado, and Lightning Storm focused one target brings down even highly resistant enemies very quickly and without any fuss. It actually makes my Dominators jealous.

It's too bad we can't design a custom costume that applies specifically when we are concealed. Would be kind of cool if a Stalker could turn camouflage or into a shadow or something when Hide is active. I also share your concern about hidden costumes. This is why I stopped playing Energy Armor.

I thought maybe the pet was removed for MMs because it's one extra creature in there soaking up chains that could have instead gone to the pets. That said, someone in another thread had a good question about Illusion Control and whether Phantom Army eats up chains that could go to a better target. Has anyone tested this?

Part of the reason I'm making this suggestion is because of the build advice I keep giving to Empathy/Pain/Thermal/Poison players. "Skip the anti-mezz in your final build. You're going to be taking Clarion Destiny anyway."

In my case at least I don't actually want it weakened, just rethought. Right now the biggest issue I forsee with it is the big area of effect and large number of targets hit. This should be revised IMO into a smaller number of targets hit but for a very large amount of drain. Where endurance drain powers have traditionally fallen flat is they drain an equal amount of endurance across the whole group of enemies, which is binary. Either you have enough endurance drain to sap the whole mob, which is amazing, or you don't and it's worthless. Currently the main way to ensure you have enough drain to sap whole mobs is to combine a primary and secondary set that can stack the drains. Just changing the amount of drain in Defib won't break out of that pattern unless the way targets are being selected is rethought. IMO to be useful the power should ideally hit around 1/3 - 1/2 of the enemy group. The drain amount should be strong enough that you can bank on at least some of the 16 member gang to end up drained. The way the enemies are selected is up to the power designers--it could use a smaller hit box, hit only minions, roll a percent chance, only hit enemies within 10 feet of a Sentinel, or something else. But if the power stays as is, equal drain across a big area, it will fall into the same hole that other endurance drain abilities have been stuck in for so long.

Is that a quarantine joke? 😄 Looks like I'm not going anywhere for about 2-3months.

Try going further into the zone, particularly on the left side of the map. It's possible the enemy group you're looking at here spawns close enough to the fence that it's part of the social hub area.

Atlas Park has some unusual mechanics that make it difficult to fling enemies toward the Atlas Statue. Basically because the developers expected players to hang out at the statue and by Miss Liberty in large numbers, enemies outside the left and right gates of Atlas Park are inside virtual "instances" where they can't be interacted with or seen by players on the other side of the fence. So, if you go over the fenced area and use a power like Wormhole to scoop them up and fling them back toward the Atlas statue, they fly through the air, and as they pass over the fence, they enter into limbo. You can still see them, but only as long as you're on the side of the fence they originated on. If you walk towards them and end up crossing the fence to the social hub, the enemies vanish before your eyes. They're still there. You just can't interact with them while you're on the social side of the zone. If you backtrack to the area you flung them from and look over at where they landed, you can see them from that vantage point. The enemies that are located behind City Hall don't seem to work this way. If you Wormhole them over City Hall you can rain them down on top of players hanging with Miss Liberty and they'll be visible. BTW my favorite power for playing enemy toss is Force Bubble in the Defender set. Repel benefits from level differences, and Force Bubble has Mag 10 Repel. When you are 49 levels higher than your enemy, that becomes Mag 60. Enemies literally teleport into the sky. It's hilarious.

While there are several secondaries with melee powers, the one that stands out to me is /Psi, because of Drain Psyche. I feel like the Dominator AT largely gets "priced out" of harder high level content because it can't keep up with survivability as things approach +4x8. Enemies are tuned to punch through Tanker and Brute armors and even a couple of hits can drop you quickly with no healing going on. Even at the Defense caps and Dominating every spawn you can, hits still get through, and they can drop a Dominator trying to hang out in melee unless you've got a good HP recovery source. Psi is really the only secondary that supplies that. And even with Psi you'll still have situations where you're alive until suddenly you just aren't, because a boss threw 2 lucky attacks. This is not to say other sets are bad or unplayable, but I do think Psi will have a much easier time than other secondaries climbing the difficulty ladder. The closest other one I can name is /Fire, which is ranged, lacks healing, but at least has endurance recovery in Consume.

Dark has a wolf pet because the powerset happened to come out right after Paragon paid a lot of money developing a 4-legged model for Beast Mastery, so it was economical to just give Dark a wolf.

Howling Twilight is a Mag 2 Stun that affects only minions. Medium-recharge Hard AoE control powers on buff/debuff sets are generally limited to Mag 2. Howling Twilight Repulsion Bomb Thunder Clap Dark Pit (in a blast set) Mag 3 is allowed on Sleep and Terrorize. It is also allowed on nukes, a few of which have Mag 3 Holds or Stuns, and quasi nukes like EM Pulse and EMP Arrow with their million year recharges. The above is why the Mag 3 AoE Holds in the newer Blaster secondaries are considered so egregious. Endurance Drain is technically a debuff rather than a Control and falls into a somewhat unexplored category. Regardless tho, I don't agree instantly wiping an entire mob of endurance with a power that Recharges in about 40 seconds is a great way to go. The issue you will run into is either this will be amazing on every build, or else amazing just on builds that combine Electric Affinity with Electric Control or Blast, with little in between. If I'm going to use a power like Defib, I need to know its going to take a few enemies out of the fight, but it also shouldn't be wiping out the fight entirely. The only real way to achieve that is to have it strongly drain a portion of mobs but not all of them. Interestingly, Thunderous Blast already implements a version of what I'm describing, on a different scale, with its percent chance to drain additional endurance. It's a true nuke so I think its okay if it's known to drain enemies.

For Defib, I'd have the power do a very strong endurance drain but only to a certain percentage of mobs. There are a few ways to accomplish this: Keep the hit sphere big but roll a percent chance. For this power, I'd use 40% chance or so for a very large drain. Keep the hit box very large but give it a small target cap (e.g. 5 enemies). Keep the hit box very large but limit the effects to minions only, or to minions and lieutenants. Make the hit box for the endurance drain much smaller. 10 feet or so (matches Power Sink). I'm personally mostly fine if the power does severely drain Elite Bosses--this powerset, with the Shock power, is highly geared toward that. But I do think the philosophy for this set, and the philosophy for endurance drain sets in general going forward, should be "lots of drain to a small number of targets" as oppposed to the historical "guaranteed drain to a large number of targets." The second consideration in all this is how this set combines with other powersets. You want the endurance drain to still be useful if it is combined with a set other than Electric Control or Blast.

I admit that sometimes this is frustrating. The worst offender in my opinion is Cold Domination's Sleet. Waiting 35 levels for that power has made me vow never to play Cold Domination again unless it is changed. There are other sets that wait til 35 or even 38, but they have a lot going on before that.

I haven't run actual numbers but Plant/Kinetics is probably the best for AoE with Fire/Kin either slightly ahead or behind. Any set with a Confusion power is always going to be hard to talk about with DPS because it depends on what you're fighting and how much of their rebound damage from hitting each other you include. Also, Plant is at least somewhat at the mercy of the spacing between enemy groups, because it needs Carrion Creepers to keep up.

Yes I know that Defib is stacking too high per the developer post earlier. My posts are more about what numbers "should" be targetted and how to make the power meaningful without being overwhelming. Right now the power is following a "huge area" philosophy as opposed to the one I was suggesting as an improvement, big drains but to fewer targets. GMs and AVs are highly resistant to -Endurance and should not be used as benchmarks. Elite Bosses are a mixed bag depending on whether they are true EBs or de-promoted AVs. Standard Elite Bosses like the ones in the ITF and the Lady Gray Task Force are extremely vulnerable to endurance drain, as are the ones in the Summer Blockbuster missions.