oedipus_tex

On a Dominator solo its often to your advantage to immobilize enemies apart from each other because that way you can melee them 1:1 and not worry about melee attacks from enemies close by. Overall though I remember people always using the "cage" powers. In fact it used to be worse. A Fire or Plant troller would team up with me as an Ice Controller and then negate my Ice Slick with their immobilizes. Talk about feeling worthless. FWIW I wouldn't complain one bit if the developers came in suddenly and said "Hey guys, now Judgement powers recharge x8 more slowly." I still don't know what the developers were thinking with that power. Other than maybe that the game was going free to play and they maybe assumed only 1 or 2 paid players per team would actually have the ability.

Intangibility is generally frowned on because its confusing to team mates, who end up blowing their cooldowns on enemies they can't affect. Then they get mad at you. You could take it for use for solo, but there's probably better powers out there. I can picture a game where Intangible effects are more valued, but that game is Dungeons and Dragons (where running away is often a good option) and not CoX (where every fight is a beat down and there are no dangerous, low reward enemies who the best strategy is to avoid entirely).

No I don't think that. The people arguing against the change are arguing that. It won't result in that, because Chillblain represents the lowest potential attack value of the character. Would I cast it if it was low cost or free? I mean, why wouldn't I? Do you think I have never run low or out of endurance and had nothing worth casting? Why wouldn't you cast Chillblain if it was free and you were low on endurance? It would literally be the best option, which is the point. And no I don't currently spam it, because it deals the same damage as the single target Hold, but isn't a Hold. It costs almost as much to cast as the Hold. If low on endurance it's currently a terrible option.

I don't see any particular reason why Illusion shouldn't be proliferated to Dominators. Domination would affect: Blind Flash Confuse All good powers to benefit from Domination. Not that different from Earth Control, and arguably better: Stone Prison (but who cares?) Stone Cages Fossilize Stalagmites You may want to change out Spectral Wounds on Illusion Control, but it's not crucial. There are other Dominators (Gravity, Mind) that have blasts in their primary set and nothing was done to change those. If you're really worried it wouldnt benefit enough, or be too vulnerable to attack at melee, you could extend the range of Blind's AoE sleep effect from 8ft to 12ft and let that benefit from Domination. Most people don't even realize the Sleep effect is there in the base power because on a Controller it is only Mag 2, but on a Dominator it would be Mag 4 and Sleep bosses.

I like your ideas and I agree. I'd like to point out IMO the lowest hanging fruit in the game: Gravity Blast. How do we have a power as cool looking as Propel but no Gravity Blast? 🙂 1) Power Push 2) Lift 3) Repulsion Cone (cone with /kb/kd). Sonic has a suitable looking effect. 4) Propel 5) Aim 6) Mass Levitate (perhaps ranged?) 7) Anomaly - Teleport your selected enemy to a new location. When he arrives, an explosion occurs around him, injuring enemies within 12ft. Use Teleport Foe as base animation 😎 ?? -- lots of options for this one 9) Event Horizon - ranged nuke that teleports all enemies to the center point. use Wormhole as base animation.

You should also look at the way nukes are balanced, Here's Psychic Wail on a Blaster: Recharge: 145 Mag 3 Stun (enhanceable) -70% Recharge for 20 seconds Damage: 250 Accuracy: 112.5% (significantly ABOVE average) Radius: 25 Versus Ice Control's Glacier: Recharge: 240 (almost 100 seconds longer) Mag 3 Hold with 20% chance for +Mag 1 Hold -62.5% Recharge for 10 seconds (half of Psychic Wail) Damage: ZERO Accuracy: 60% (significantly BELOW average) Radius: 25 Comparing powers side by side this way out of context can be risky. But I also think the Blaster nuke changes reflect a change in game philosophy. The AoE Holds still seem to be under the old philosophy. That said, I wouldn't mind a "third wave" of changes in philosophy where we dial back on the top-level ability to roll over spawns easily. Doing that would probably require the creation of a whole new level 54 zone though, and require limiting the effects of the Destiny and Judgment powers--truly the place a lot of the overpoweredness is coming from.

Sorry but I disagree. "Power creep" applies to any game change proposal that improves quality of life. In most classic RPGs, characters have actions they can take they do not require expending mana/energy/a spell slot/what have you. In the early 00's it became popular to make all or most of a characters capabilities into spells/powers. So melee characters no longer have a "basic attack" that is somewhat decent. What got lost there is suddenly there is no "all the time" action for characters. There's a general pattern to all of the attack powers in the game. They were designed using the following ratios: Recharge time Endurance cost Damage Animation time was not (originally) considered even though it has a large impact on DPS. Accuracy is a fourth variable that is locked at the same value for the majority of powers, except for powersets where extra Accuracy is their perk. The Accuracy value does occasionally increase or decrease though to incentivize slotting. Occasionally, a power will be auto-hit, removing the need for Accuracy entirely. The reason the ratios matter is that when one of the values is out of alignment, it changes the slot-hungriness of the power. The big takeaway is that since every power is balanced using the same ratios, powers are therefor mostly interchangeable, and soon as one no longer fits the pattern of optimal DPS, it should be jettisoned. If the same ratio is used for all powers in a set, the attacks are interchangeable. The only solution for that is for some powers to be outliers. Secondary effects (stun, immobilize etc) can sometimes do that. Unfortunately, for nearly all existing sets, the T1 is the most "vanilla" power with few other characteristics to set it apart. Fairly typical slotting for an attack power is: x2 Accuracy x2 Damage x1 End Redux x1 Recharge However each of these parameters has different implications: Accuracy: If a power is extra-accurate or auto-hit, you can skip all/some Accuracy slotting Damage: Attack powers generally always need to be enhanced for damage Endurance Reduction: Powers that cost no endurance do not need Endurance slotting Recharge: This one is all over the place and depends a lot on context. Usually skippable on powers with already-short recharges. Auto-hit powers like Ice Rain let you burn less slots overall. So what does lowering endurance cost of the T1 power do? For one thing it (very slightly) relieves the slot-pressure on that power. The cost of most of these powers is already low. Here are typical endurance costs for T1 powers that Recharge in 4 seconds: Controller, Dominator (Immobilize): 7.8 Blaster, Defender, Corruptor, Scrapper, Stalker, Tanker, Dominator (Assault set): 5.2 With 2-slotted Endurance reduction those values are roughly 4.5 and 2.3. Although truth is not a lot of people slot endurance reduction here. So where I will concede is that on some archetypes where they already regularly use the T1 power a lot, the change might be too much. However, I also have to get back to my original question. Is a Controller using Chillblain really going to break the game? Really? Thank you again for the replies.

Draw in as a Repel effect, doesn't work, but teleport does. Unfortunately we are probably stuck with the Phase powers forever. Phase powers take Intangible enhancements and you have to deal with that somehow with any changes to code. There may be some possibility of an Intangibility IO set that drastically alters these powers though.

That seems like a pretty strong range of extremes. I don't think it is possible that the proposed changes would both have almost no effect, while also making the game a faceroll. One extreme or the other seems more likely, although I doubt it would be that drastic in either direction. On Controllers and Dominators, Tier 1 immobilize attacks cost 7.8 endurance. These ATs would most notice the change. I frankly do not a fear a game where Controllers and Dominators are casting Chillblain. Does anyone really, or are these objections rooted in something else? Meanwhile I don't bother casting a number of the Dominator T1 attacks pretty much ever after sufficiently high levels. They are just powers I am stuck with. Kinda sucks since some of them (the bee blast one for example) are kind of cool looking. On some archetypes the cost is already really low, in the range of 3-5. I doubt if a change would even hugely be noticed. It would give you an additional fairly minor, but not negligible reason to consider these powers. I admit I am less familiar with these ATs, although I have played them. They have fewer issues in part because they kill fast enough to get inspiration drops. So maybe you are correct and there is an issue there, and it's only the Controller/Doms that could use a lift. But again I sort of doubt it. Thanks again for the replies.

Thanks for your replies. I am however further entrenched in my position that T1 attacks should cost negligible endurance based on the comments. It's a T1 attack. It has a locked damage potential. If people spam it, good. These powers are for the most part not very useful. They hit one target. They are routinely skipped by most players. The damage from your own powerset is so poor the developers gave away freebie powers to keep the game moving. I disagree that this is an issue. Once a player reaches higher levels, responsibility begins to fall on them to manage their character. The current issue is it takes more knowledge of the game to manage the character at early levels than at high levels. It's been an issue since the game launched. I also remember when people hit the roof over inherent Stamina, which is why I am skeptical a low or no cost T1 power would wreck the game. But I appreciate comments anyway.

That's a great suggestion Redlynne. The basic mechanic is there, sort of, in Nature's Lifegiving Spores power.

For Controllers, that's the power I'm talking about. The single target immobilize. Chillblain, Ring of Fire, etc. I actually do usually take it when leveling up, because it's damage and it increase solo speed (to the small extent I deal with it). I rarely keep them after getting to 50. In overall, the reason I want this is I find it harder to balance endurance on a low level character than a high level one. To me, that seems flipped versus how the game should work. The endurance puzzle should start relatively simple and grow harder as you progress. I admit I may have oversimplified how this would affect damage-focused ATs tho. On Controllers suddenly being able to use the single target immobilize reliably is unlikely to change much of the big picture except to make it somewhat easier to pump through those early levels.

Here's how I'd personally want to approach these powers: Raise target cap from 16 to 40 (see: Judgment blasts) Unnerf accuracy Apply a -Special Resist to enemies hit with the power for X time, so any other controls used on them afterward last longer. E.g. for Glacier, apply -Confuse Resist so that Arctic Air's Confusion effect is stronger for the next 30 seconds. Mass Confusion meanwhile should be treated independently and have its cooldown reduced to 120 seconds or lower. It was originally set to 240 because there was nothing to compare it to--there were no other AoE Confuses. Now we have Synaptic Overload and Seeds of Confusion with sixty second cooldowns. Both powers have some disadvantages compared to Mass Confusion, but also Mind Control gives up a pet for this power. It really does not a deserve a cooldown that is x4 longer versus sets with tons of other functionality.

I don't agree with you. That's really I can say. I don't think a Tier 1 attack is strong enough to totally tilt the gameplay. Many characters skip their T1s unless forced into it because the damage is so low. My Dominators just remove them from the bar after leveling up enough because they are too weak. At least if they cost zero/low endurance there'd be reason to want them at all.

"Endurance Management" at low levels is not strategic. It's simply not fun. The "strategy," such as it is, is to rocket past the unbearable low levels so you can get some decent slotting. Making low level attacks cost no endurance will not greatly impact the end game, but will do wonders to make the early crawl less of a battle versus the blue bar. It's a huge weakness of this game.

If this has been discussed before on this forum, my apologies. I know we discussed it from time to time on the live servers. Like it says in the title, in my opinion we would solve major game issues if Tier 1 attacks for all archetypes cost 0 endurance. If there is some practical reason why 0 doesn't work, then some minimal number like 1 or 2 should work. I am playing a Controller right now in this exact scenario, whose endurance keeps tanking, leaving me with very little to do. The reason for this is simple. Endurance was an issue the original developers never solved. It was so punishing in vanilla CoX that everyone specced for Stamina, and then the developers gave us inherent Stamina. Still, the problem persists. It's especially bad for low damage characters like Controllers. The T1 attack represents the most basic capability of a character. It should be practically inherent to them and cost nothing to use. ATs with 2 T1 attacks (Blasters mainly) could get both free, or you could arbitrarily decide only the "real" blast counts.

Trick Arrow is an underperforming set on any AT, but particularly on Masterminds. Storm Summoning accomplishes what TA is trying to do, be an effective damage and debuff set that allows you to overlook lack of buffs. Storm succeeds because the damage is respectable. TA not so much. Adding damage to a few TA powers and cutting the recharge on Oil Slick to Storm-ish levels would help a lot.

Sonic is good at debuffing, but so are Dual Pistols and Beam Rifle when loaded up properly. Water and Dark are also solid choices. On a Defender, the Dark nuke with Power Boost beats almost any -ToHit power in the game. I have literally never seen a Thermal Defender in all the years I've played. The reason is probably that so little about Thermal benefits the caster directly. Just the PBAoE heal and the enemy affecting powers. There's no reason a Thermal Defender wouldn't be effective, I've just never seen one. Most of the Thermals seem to be Controllers or Masterminds, I suppose so they can heal their pets. You didn't list Nature but it deserves some recognition. Like Linea mentioned, its the least likely set to overlap with another player. Nature benefits from most of its powers so can be run solo or teamed.

The Fire epic pool is popular because Bonfire offers great control and Rise of the Phoenix makes you effectively immortal as long as you don't mind debt. Unlike, say, Dominators, Blasters don't lose a lot when they die, so you can play to your full DPS potential and resurrect (with a nuke!) when it goes south. Soul Mastery villain pool isn't a bad choice and is semi-thematic. It comes with two additional cone powers, one of which is an immobilize,

For placeable powers it may help to turn them into target clickables. /macro BL powexeclocation target "Blizzard" That will create a button labeled BL that will execute Blizzard at the location of your target, You can change "target" to "self" if you prefer to cast the power right under you. I find usually target works best for me though. You probably still want the "real" Blizzard power on your toolbar so you can see whether it is recharged. The macro button won't show you.

The mag in Wormhole needs to be fixed, or, perhaps, boss resistance to Teleport lowered. The fact that you cant TP +4 bosses with Wormhole seems like a miscalculation.

Granted, most of my experience is with an Elec/Psi Dom. But Electric Dominators and Controllers can in fact zero out enemy endurance and for the most part keep it there. Enemies will occasionally get a blip of endurance back and attack, but usually only for a low value attack, and only once in a while. With Power Sink it's possible to do this even to Elite Bosses. You're right it helps if they're knocked down tho, which is why Jolting Chain, procced for damage, is such a valuable power. It helps a lot if you take an Alpha slot that provides Endurance Modification. It also helps if you took Mu Mastery, where all of the powers apply -Recovery , and the pet helps keep them floored too. I'm actually surprised more people haven't seen the early Electric Control strategy: Static Field Run in with Conductive Aura running Ping pong enemies a few times with Jolting Chain while you wait for endurance to tank Go all out It helps a ton if you've set the game to always show enemy health bars so you can gauge when enemies are out of endurance. Other than enemies specifically resistance to endurance drain it works like a charm.

Great tip. BTW I forgot to mention the thing that makes me LOL most about this build. For this you'd literally be spamming Power Boost whenever it is up to double the effect of Arctic Air. Based on the Recharge in the build, it would be available about 50% of the time assuming normal proc rates for the +100% proc. Normally Power Boosted mezzes aren't a huge deal. But in Arctic Air, with a 30% chance to Confuse for 13 seconds (~7.5 against +4s) you'd Confuse everything in Range because duration exceeds average chance. This is one of the very few builds where you could the make use of the interface proc that provides Confusion chance. Normally, it sucks. But here it stacks with your already good chance to Confuse and provides extra Confuse saturation. What I'm looking at now is how far I can push this also bringing Clarion into the picture with its +Special effect. It means a 30 second gap in mezz coverage, so I'm looking to see if I can make this in a way to cover that gap. Stay tuned (or chime in 🙂).

If on the fence, I'd take Nature over Thermal. Thermal is great, but the area where Nature beats it is endurance management. Lifegiving Spores is one of the most overlooked powers in the game for leveling up. Slot it for endurance mod x2 and endurance reduction x1. Pre-cast it wherever you plan to stand for each fight. Now enjoy "free" bonus endurance--the power gives back more than it consumes. Hang out for a seconds after the fight to recharge a bit. The only downside is Spores cancels when mezzed. So you occasionally have to recast it. (Plus, after each fight is over, don't forget to manually cancel it. Takes a little practice to remember at first.)

First of all, as a Nature you should be thinking about your Alpha slot. IMO the best option for Nature is generally Vigor. Vigor gives you: Accuracy End reduction Healing Confuse duration and fear duration (lesser concerns but not a bad addition) What this means in effect is it allows us to underslot powers we'd normally have to slot heavily. Nature has 5 powers that need Heal slotting. Heal sets are generally pretty weak. So there's a natural temptation here. With Vigor we can put a single one or two heal IOsin healing powers and move on to sets that benefit us more. The reason for wanting Accuracy is it lets us shortchange Accuracy in our attacks for added proc damage--useful on low damage characters like Controllers. Endurance reduction speaks for itself. Generally speaking, endurance reduction is one of the best Alpha bonuses, because most IO sets lack adequate endurance red. Also Nature has two powers that indirectly benefit from endurance reduction: Lifegiving Spores gives endurance back to you, but also costs .26end/sec. If you reduce this, you get more endurance back than you put in. Overgrowth (T9) gives you Global Endurance Reduction. But also costs you a ton of Endurance to cast. Sneaking some endurance reduction in here can only help you overall. On the Accuracy side, the T1 Nature power can't take sets at all. Put a single Accuracy there. Combined with the Accuracy in Vigor you've effectively 2 slotted it without burning any slots. In other news: I'd skip Nature's Entangling Aura. It's not bad on a PBAoE character, like Fire. On you, it will mainly burn endurance. Other than that, there are no real skippable powers in Nature. The closest one would be the rezz, but that occasionally has its uses. I'd skip the rezz only if you exclusively solo. Your overall build should focus on Recharge. Try to get as many of Nature's powers as perma as you can.