oedipus_tex

It does seem a bit weird to me that none of the Ninjas have any Ninjitsu powers. I'd think they'd be pretty good dodgers.

I'd love to see some numbers on Martial Assault as well. It feels pretty solid but with its weird power rules I've never been able to get a feel for it. Also very curious about Caltrops on Dominators. I've never played a set that has it high enough to find out if its worthwhile. Doms generally have excellent AoE immobilize, except for Mind Control, but Caltrops doesn't play well with Sleep. So...

Another argument for Power Sink is that, when solo, the more you disable the enemies, the longer your pets live. Dominators don't have many direct ways to keep pets alive other than their controls. Neither the imps nor the APP pets do outstanding damage, athough its much better than nothing. The gremlins each deal 87 damage every 4 seconds with their punches, excluding Jolting Chain. That basically works out to an extra couple of slots devoted to procs. It's mainly useful when fighting bosses in the cleanup phase of a big spawn. It's also why I build for Destiny: Barrier. One very nice thing about Dominators versus other squishies is with enough Recharge you automatically have mezz protection (from Domination). So you can take Destiny: Barrier without worry. And with Power Sink, you have no worry about endurance bar either.

Note that "actual" perma Hasten is less important if you have Jolting Chain slotted with +100% Recharge procs. That proc will fire pretty often and rarely if ever will you miss a Domination cycle or Hasten cycle if you are above around 85% recharge base.

Not to be the downer here, but Sonic is a disappointing set IMO. It's got some interesting things going on but the whole thing falls apart because it can't really compete in the IO game. If Sonic Siphon could slot a -Resist proc, or maybe even be an outright attack power you could slot as a blast, and Liquefy wasn't complete trash I would like the set better. BTW developers, if you are listening... Liquefy is trash. Garbage. Rubbish. It has the longest Recharge of almost any power in the game but functions close to Time's throwaway slow patch power. Plus it lasts 15 seconds less than that power. You'd think with that kind of Recharge and a name like "Liquefy" that it would do something cool, but it doesn't. A Blaster's nuke recharges 2.5 times more often than Liquefy does. In its current state its as bad as the the debuff powers Tankers and Brutes get in their tertiary APPs, except its the T9 power in an actual buff/debuff set. /rant Instead of Sonic I'd encourage you to go with Thermal, which does most of the same stuff but better. You'll lack the big Resist bubble but can make up for it with a self heal. You can slot -Resist procs in Melt Armor and, other than the time it takes to cast it, beat the AoE -Resist of Sonic handily. You can kinda make Sonic work (kinda) if you don't mind being in the lowest tier of buff/debuffers and concept is vital to you. But as it stands now I find it hard to recommend.

A Support set that provides Bio Armor type buffs to allies would be an interesting re-use of existing assets.

That bird power hits like a truck. If I'm not mistaken it deals T3 damage but has the recharge of a T2 blast. Mostly because of that 1 power Savage Assault has excellent Ranged damage. You're stuck with the cool looking but terrible "bee" power and other than that can just grab the bird and still deal excellent damage, even if you ignore the stacks.

It's something like that, but it looks like the debuff disappears if the enemy is inside the pet's radius when the pet expires. I could be wrong about that though. It's just how it looks like it's behaving in game.

It seems like the default setting for whether Group Fly affects you when used by other players should be OFF and you have to visit him to turn it ON.

Sleet is weird and possibly bugged. I believe if an enemy leaves Sleet's radius before the power expires the stay debuffed. At least I think that's the behavior I've seen on the -RunSpeed side. It's not easy to test. I believe this is a hold over from Freezing Rain where Storm players were encouraged to blow enemies out of the patch area. Watch this video for a not perfect example.

Domination mode is a flag on the caster. The flag doesn't transfer to pets, so none of them are capable of having an ability that does extra stuff "when in Domination mode." A few powers don't Dominate just because. Arctic Air is not a psuedo pet and totally could Dominate, they just didn't allow it. Synaptic Overload Dominates the first target in the chain but not any of the remaining targets, since the "caster" of the chain from the second enemy onward is the psuedo pet. Shadow Field does Dominate. I think, but am not sure, that it technically is an AoE Hold like all the other sets get, followed by a psuedo pet. Domination applies to the initial AoE Hold but not to the lingering pet.

Ice Storm does good damage, it just requires slotting for damage is the point I think Coyote was making.

Surge of Power is mostly a waste of time because Dominators soft cap Resists at 75%, so you're spending a slot for a big Orange inspiration and a forced endurance crash. The real gem of the Mu Pool is Power Sink and to a lesser extent the pet. Endurance Drain bides by none of the rules of mezz, it's a straight autohit bar drain and the only defense enemies have to it is End Drain Resistance. AVs have this resistance but other than special mobs (Malta Sappers, one of the AVs in the LRSF) rarely does anything else. Power Sink of course appears in other power sets--in Electric Armor, Blaster Elec Manipulation, Defender/Corruptor APPs. But it's on Electric Dominators where it just becomes sick. (It's not as attractive to Controllers because the Mu APP lacks a single target blast that most Controller's grab in their APPs). The short of it is other Control powers can miss, but Power Sink always hits, and if the enemy's blue bar is below threshold, they are out of the fight at that point and likely as long as you keep pressure on them. This is anecdotal, but I'm fairly sure I remember my Elec/Psi Dom flooring the endurance on every big boss enemy in the Summer Blockbuster trial. I am unsure whether I was exemped below Power Sink for that. Bottoming out every Elite Boss in the ITF is definitely a repeatable feature though.

I wish the whole dynamics of this power would be updated. On players, rather than adding a +Fly status effect like it currently does, it should probably grant a Fly temporary power that expires in 3 minutes, that refreshes if you come within 30ft of the person running Group Fly. There are plenty of in game examples of Fly powers that expire. On critters, what you said.

CoX was a game that was still changing even until its final days. Playing a game that was constantly evolving was the true CoX experience. That is why I am excited by the interest the Homecoming team has expressed in continuing to develop the game. I'm not particularly interested in playing a time capsule, because that isn't true to what the real experience was.

Thanks Philotic. That's very easy to follow. It looks like they created a Power class (or struct? it's been a while since I fooled with C) and each Power is just an object. I really don't know if this is typical of MMOs or just how the original developers happened to do it. Reminds me a bit of Neverwinter Nights or Baldur's Gate, where each power was its own C routine (tho obviously different than that since this is just a structure). Hoping I can get a server set up and do some testing. Is there a good place to get some coaching on how to set up the Microsoft Studio compiler?

Knockback could have a chance to expend powers that are currently recharged. Like, it literally knocks the power out of you.

This makes me wonder if a Reverse Scourge would be worse or better to have. I assume better because of less "wasted" damage overkill. CORRUPTOR: Your chance to Scourge is highest when enemies have full HP and lowest when nearly dead,

You're right not to skip Jolting Chain. It used to be a skippable power under the old proc rules. In the new system, it does decent damage and is a good filler AoE attack. Fill it with every damage proc you can, plus the global +Recharge proc. A lot of older builds did used to skip it though.

I would be totally down with Energy Blast and perhaps also Assault Rifle having an option to turn knockback into knockdown using a system like Dual Pistols has. That would allow players of those sets to turn their knockback on or off per shot. It would also mean you could actually slot for knockback distance, and make the decision shot to shot whether to use it. It's precisely because I am fine with this that I think knock Chance should be higher for Defenders, instead of just knock Magnitude. Especially in powers like Psionic Tornado just for the cool factor of making the entire enemy group flip over.

Why do I have this image of a Mucha Lucha body slam.

Interesting idea and kind of funny to think of weird ideas. Here's one for Dominators. When activating Domination mode your pet explodes and does nuke damage.

In the case of Energy Blast I have to assume the player took that power set seeing knockback as part of the equation. It's the main feature of the set. If they suck with it, well, that's their Yelp review to manage. 😄 For some reason the developers gave Defenders higher Magnitude knockback than Blasters, and from all appearances it was a belief that the extra distance would be useful. IMO it didn't work out that way. A better proxy for Knockback to make it analogous to -ToHit, -Damage, -Resist and so on is not its Magnitude but its Chance.

One question I have is whether the damage proc in Whirling Hands interacts with the incarnate ability that also has a chance for double damage. If it does, Whirling Hands becomes basically a mini nuke.

This is a good theoretical concept and you explained it well. Thanks for taking the time to write it up. I'm unsure on how some of the math particulars work out but I think that's the case with any suggestion. I can definitely see how it would be interesting. One very interesting side effect; -Defense, which is currently not widely lauded, would be considered very valuable.