noogens2

Was it an oversight or was the Arsenal set specifically excluded in the containment damage buffs?

Even after all the changes to it, it's still (in my opinion) the worst power in the set and I will die on that hill.

From what I tried, it feels worse than before. Grav distortion was the only instant AOE CC that gravity got. With this change, you'll have to drop this behind a wall or out of sight to avoid lots of retaliation. In isolation, this change would be a net win due to the stronger control with the repeated pulses, but in the context with the other powers in gravity, the set feels slightly slower overall and more situationally dangerous against things like ambushes where an instant CC could be the difference between life or death. Also the graphics are a bit too subtle and are not as obvious compared to other similar powers like volcanic gasses.

The target limit definitlely hurts seeds but I'm not sure it will make a drastic difference with the ways mobs are less bunched-up and more spread apart nowadays. A few updates ago, I respecced to get spore burst. My new tactics were to throw out spore burst get most of the mob and then do seeds which was bound to miss the mobs outside the cone. I think with the way that Homecoming is evolving, you need to layer multiple crowd control powers to be effective. With all that said, the changes so far make Plant feel more mediocre but I'll hold my judgment until after more extensive testing.

I wouldn't go earth/cold since that's very low damage combo, especially if you plan to solo and have a "selfish" build. If you decided on earth, I would go something like earth/storm or earth/Trick arrow. Trick arrow has an easier ride from 1 to 50 as storm doesn't really get powerful til the 30's after you can get slotted tornado and lightning storm. With TA, you can proc out the hold and acid arrow for more single target damage and a ghetto AOE power that's decent for something as low as the Posi TFs.

I went with mace mastery with my illusion/marine as well. I initially used fire app but I think mace had lots more utility for this build. I did a more general build with fold space, spectral wounds and procced shoal rush . I like to do serviceable damage solo and never like to depend on pet damage, especially on fast moving teams. One concession I had to make was to drop brine as I couldn't find the room to fit it in with fold space. Poisonous Ray in Mace Mastery and Whitecap both with -res procs would be decent -res debuffing for my needs.

When you have a macro that selects a specifc target and fires a power, you have to double click the macro. The first click will select the target and the second click will fire the power. Hopefully that helps. You can actually leave out the underscores if you want as well. /macro temp "targetfriendnear$$powexecname temporal selection" /macro distortion "targetenemynear$$powexeclocation target distortion field" /macro dimension "targetenemynear$$powexecname dimension shift"

This was the dominator version of the power.

I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere yet but the customized attribute monitor window is showing different things between live and beta. I've verified this with newly transferred characters and ones that already existed on beta. I'm not sure what Gravity is supposed to be but luckily I've been able to go in and recustomize the window to what I had before. This has been happening since the first public beta build. LIVE BETA

For a suggestion, what about another default chat tab that only has the "Looking for Group" filter enabled? This actually helps anyone who likes to PUG a lot and lets players easily see all the teaming requests without all the extra stuff shown in the global channel. I actually do this for every character I create.

I'll agree with the others saying that some of the changes are "balancing" the fun out of powers, especially regarding the long recharge times of many powers. Can I suggest that instead of just altering values at 2 to 3 times base values that we instead allow more incremental steps like 1.25, 1.5 and 2.5. For instance, epic holds could be set to 20 seconds which is 2.5 times the 8 second controller/dominator hold recharge and in my opinion a better balancing point than 24 seconds. The new dominator tar patch recharge could be set to 120 or 135 seconds which would be 1.33 or 1.5 times the base 90 second recharge. From what I remember from live, the original intent of the epic pools were to round out the ATs weaknesses and allow for some cross-AT functionality. For instance, all the squishy ATs got defense toggles, blasters got CC powers, and controllers got real attacks. I think that epic powers should still stay strong allowing for more flavor and more variety of builds. The overperorming powers should be "slighly" adjusted and the other powers should be buffed to compete.

I just tested this on a fire controller and it's much weaker there as well. It looks like a global nerf contrary to the release notes.

I played an end game arsenal/aresenal dom for about 3-4 hours and have these thoughts. The set is fun but the damage feels like on the lowerish side as it took me longer to clear mishes than my other doms. It may be due to the amount of heavy lethal resistance. Maybe allow more variety of proc slotting like Savage. Also single targe damage "feels" slower due to the slower DOT on the T9 power. Since this set is unique to the AT, would it be possible to have the knockback turned to knockdown for most or all of the powers? It would be nice to have the "knockback slot tax" be shifted to the fewer players who want do KB and make them slot KB enhancements versus most other players having to slot KB2KD enhancements. Making this change would free up slots on already tight dom builds. At the minimum it would be nice for trip mine to have that change since the power is meant to be the quasi-pbaoe power in the set. None of the other dominator pbaoes do KB. I wish there was slightly more flavor such as a pbaoe like dragon's tail but with a 360 gun fluorish.. Overall it feels a bit middling performance-wise but fun enough to roll on live. I already had a ghetto gun-troller AR/TA blaster so this will be up my alley.

I noticed that I've been missing a lot more as the mobs are running maneuvers. I also didn't know why I was faceplanting so fast until I looked at the combat logs. What is this Stygian Return power and why is it so strong for being autohit. Is this intended? It's extremely lame if it is.

I tried 3 general content end game builds on the test server. All the builds had fold space (my fave power) and skipped both flash and phantasm due to a tight build. I fought 4/8 difficulty missions with and without bosses depending on the faction but mostly tested on CoT and Council maps. ill/energy/ice - I wasn't fan. Energy's AOE is pretty lackluster and mobs tended to scatter because they didn't die quick enough. Adding Flash back probably would've helped the scatter but I probably still wouldn't have liked the combo. This build would probably be better for content that prioritizes taking down single hard targets. ill/sonic/ice - This combo is pretty nice and had decent clear times due all the -res being thrown around allowing PA to hit harder. Sonic is a also very solid all around assault set. ill/martial/ice - My fave combo. People poo poo on martial but it has good synergies with the right primaries and a decent build. Mob scatter was greatly mitigated by the knockdown of dragon's tail with the slow of caltrops and sleet. Dragon's tail's knockdown also helps with damage mitigation and frequently procs force feedback to help PA recharge faster. Out of the three builds, this one was the quickest on average clearing missions. If all you want to do is AV hunt then this would be the weakest of the three builds.