luxlorica

I had the idea to make a build that specializes in pbaoe and aura damage. What powersets do you think would be best for this? I was thinking Dark Armor for sure Death Shroud and Cloak of fear and Oppressive Gloom. Those last two aren't damage but they are effects. Maybe radiation Melee? Atom Smasher is a big pbaoe and irradiated ground in another aura damage source. Psionic mastery gives psionic Tornado, but Earth Mastery has Salt Crystals, Quick sand, and Stalagmites What do you think?

I see Mesmerize with a recharge of 12s while dominate has a recharge of 24s. I think that means the Mez does more damage overall, yeah? I dunno, I'm not really a builder

Does anyone have big plans for Psionic Mastery now that it is available for Tanks? Harmonic mind might eventually take some hunger out of Dark Armor? Lockdown special in Dominate for the occasional Mag 5 hold? Mind Blast for some high pitched wub wub sounds. Yah, I dunno. I like the theme of a Psionic Tank, and how hilarious to have a tank with more mind control that the mind control powerset. But practically it seems among the least useful epics... OR do you see an astounding use case for the Psi?!

Woof, dark/dark corrupter is pain... for me. I am not sure what kind of experience I was hoping for, maybe something like the blaster where things around you die. And even if you don't make it, when you come back there are fewer things because some of them died. Dark/dark corrupter so far is not that. My build is essentially the same as Snarky's above, some different choices, some different slotting, but the numbers are about the same. At around 30... - ThatS NOt fIftY!! Yes I know, but at thirty... - Its DIFFereNT at FIftY!! Well, I have to go through thirty to get to fifty. Solo, the damage is bad, like controller bad. You have to drop a million plus in accuracy IOs just to see some single digit numbers on a -1/3 mission. Dark Pit is a serious slot for you and a 2 second annoyance for them. By the time your animation is finished, they are back to punching you in the face. You have to throw down damage-light controls to save your life and if you take a moment to do something meaningful like a Moonbeam, half the mobs are right on your doorstep. You are like a controller pretending to be a defender pretending to be a blaster. In a group you are fine. The fire blasters will be filling up the screen so no one will notice that you are putting down tarpits and darkest night then twilight grasping to save your skin. I joke, but group play is fine. Solo play is rough. You need to use every trick to stay alive, use corners, try to snipe singles, drop a dot and then try to leash the adds. You end up crawling through content at mind controller speeds and it feels a little bad. Hover blasting helps you stay alive and you will have looooots of time to consider your life choices as your cones hit single targets from the mass of mobs boiling underneath you. Maybe your experience is different than this. But this has been my experience with it. x . x

Here is a Radiation Blast/Energy Aura sentinel for your perusal. Built for Defense and Recharge, it sports a predictably good set of defenses upwards of +30% with only Psi and Toxic in their 20s. Resistances are less impressive hovering around 45% with Negative, Toxic and Psi in their 30s. Incarnate Resilience and Melee support can push these up into the high 60s. Haste and Link Minds can be made perma prior to incarnates, but realistically that comes with the full and very expensive build. You will have your incarnates in place before you have tricked out your build. Neutron Bomb is procced out but it is also on a 5.4 second cool down (down from 15), so I don't know if the shorter cool down will sabotage the procs. The hardest hitting attacks are Atomic Blast, Dominate, and Proton Stream (with Mind Probe coming right in a few 0.1s under Proton Stream) in that order. Energize ends up on a 24 second timer (down from 90) letting the +regen (duration 30s) essentially be perma before incarnates.

Huh, I thought that was possible... Ahh well, I stand corrected. ---EDIT AhaHH!! it IS possible, because you can not only lower the recharge of the build but you can extend the confusion period such that the recharge is inside the duration. There is a build that does just that

So many changes coming. So many nerfs. So many interesting alterations to game elements. But Mind Control... ehh, pretty much the same. EXCEPT for the one guaranteed skipable power that seemed tailor made to annoy everyone else and keep mobs alive. Telekinesis. It picks up a mob and slowly moves it away from you with constant concentration such that anyone who wants to attack it has to go chase it down or at least get it back into range as it balloon-bobs out of aoes and into a corner. But now (with the upcoming issue) it is supposed to gather nearby mobs up and clump them together, which can make them convenient aoe targets. Its a big change that might make the power not only relevant but actually desirable, especially in a team setting. But do you think it will be enough to make Mind Control viable over all? I think its a good change. But Mind control as a power set is hurting. It is not just a late bloomer but a last second bloomer with its only interesting feature being the possibility of a permanent mass confuse assuming the build has enough mega-inf invested. Otherwise it does terrible damage, offers terrible survivability, no sustain, has no pet, and its only effects of note are on such long cooldowns that they might as well be p2w novelty purchases while Plant Control is confusing entire spawns from level 8. Do you think the new Telekinesis will make Mind Control great again... or ever?

So for the hypothetical blaster with dark blast, they can get Tenebrous Tentacles. Cool. But in Soul Mastery, they can also get Soul Tentacles. These look like the same thing. Is there any benefit to getting them both? The recharge of Tenebrous is about half that of Soul tentacles. Damage is about the same per activation.

I saw something in a comment that alluded to Broadsword receiving some development work. Mids however shows that the Katana is still superior to the Broadsword in every single category. Have I missed something or is Katana still king sword?

@Hyperstrike didn't you have a warehouse of builds at one point? I seem to remember seeing a whole list of them.

See, now I want to know what is the toughest thing available?

In an earlier form of mids someone built an AI into a separate fork of the software. It let you choose up to like three priorities like defense or dps or different kinds of resist. Then it would generate a build based on that. It was very brute forcey and could take a loooong time to generate. and the results were not optimal although it did strike near the targets you gave it. It is gone now, too many iterations in the past to be of use. You might be able to find it in these forms somewhere but it is little more than an antique curio now.

Of the pets available through the villain epic pools, which is most useful for the general life of a controller? None of them - yeeaaah, cool. But I am asking which among them. I want to say the Tarantula, because it can come with a defense shield in the same pool and a dead controller aint controlling nuttin. But maybe you have a view of synergies of which you are particularly fond.

Here is a build I was working on. I was aiming for sustain and recharge. I think the sustain looks good but the recharge leaves a bit to be desired. It does end up with perma PA, Tarantula, Fade, and double Tar pit by the very end, but it needs Spiritual and Ageless incarnates to get there. I only had room for two +10% recharge sets and that hurt.

I appreciate your input. I think I was mostly talking about leveling one as opposed to playing one. I too have seen PBs do amazing things and that's why I made one. But leveling them solo is pure pain. Until they get Lightform and can soak whole rooms they get pounded left and right. And you are right, the shields that are supposed to help you stay alive don't even become useful until you practically have lightform, and then you don't need them. But getting stomped by every villain out there makes a body want to go for anything that makes that doily sturdier. I see now why someone earlier was saying the class itself was designed poorly. If I turn around and toss the shields out then I am just laying down for the beatings, and I don't want to do that. But the shields themselves hardly have time to make a difference before they are obsolete. What build makes that better? Getting carried seems like the only way until lightform and a full build. So I am not saying that upper level PBs with sets can't be dominant. I'm saying the leveling human form to that point is heart-breaking. To be fair though, everyone told me it would be, so its not like I didn't know the road was rough.

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My goal is to play a human form...something, mostly solo. Yes there will be teams, yes there will be all the things, MSR, ITF, DNTZ, UPDG, all the things, but I will not have a regular group or a pit of time I can invest in so a lot of the time it will be > log in > police scanner > mission > mission > mission > out. So whats good here? I made a PB and it seems alright enough. Some pew pew, some punch punch, not very sturdy, ehh Is Warshade different? Is it better for solo play? I note that PB gets wastefully maxed with Lightform resistance-wise, but defenses become the hard to find goal. I already know that recharge is king for that perma light form and several other goodies that can be permed. Is Warshade human form pretty much the same? But Tri-form…: Thanks but no Bi form can give you…: Nope, sorry but no. You are just gimping yourself: Look I hate the squids and the beetles. I LOVE the look of the human form. PB seems as good as my normal experiments in mids so far. A little squishy. Kind of a run-away king at the moment at… what am I… ummm, 16. But I know some of you are great benefactors of Warshades, so tell me are they great or about the same?

When solo leveling, I often set the difficult to -1 and then start ramping up the team size to get more and more opponents. To my playstyle and my mind I imagine having more kills (arrests?) gives me more goodies, exp and chances for drops. But in trying out a tank with super strength, I find that they are not great with crowds (but really good on singletons) until they start getting their AOEs around 22 or 24. What about setting the team size at one and ramping up the difficulty level instead? I can probably tell you the effect after enough play on it, but I wonder if someone has experience on this already that they want to share.

I have seen it said that one should avoid boosters and attune, but I have often seen people talk about having a particular set at +5 and they seemed quite pleased about it. Is there a conventional wisdom about attuning vs boosting. Can one do both?

Mind Control x Anything Controller. I mean Dark isn't great but it will keep you mostly alive. Everything else just makes it more or less easy to run away. And the danger isn't always to your green bar but to your heart when you watch any other AT walk up to that mob that takes you 15 minutes to beat and slaps it out of that way like a garbage tier trash mob. Mind Control need some serious thought in this blaster-centric, control does nothing version of the game. I don't even dislike this version of the game, Mind Control just needs to fit into it somewhere rather than being the power-set devs forgot.

I DID, but now I have to re-figure and refactor. Now I have a loose collection of notes to throw away and revisit the idea of being involved in melee and how to best manage that. My selection of a damage set suddenly becomes very serious. Indeed I only know of two or three with anything like a heal in it. Would I be a fool to pass them by? I am understanding the other times I have seen other doms with Rad Assault. Now I get it. But is it that important? Psi has a big heal too if you can catch a crowd in it. Life Drain, as well. I must rethink my methodology Holmes. I must revisit those paths I once dismissed so casually. 🤔

A method of writing, often used in journalism, is to start with a synopsis styled statement and then unpack or elaborate that statement in further exploration of the topic. So if you see an opening statement that seems overly declarative, try reading a little further. There may by additional paragraphs that expand that thought and explore reasoning around the premise. So yeah, this is working out better than I thought. I am still a delicate little flower but so much more effective throwing hands rather than scowls. Now I need to look at the whole Archetype to see how best to use this new found knowledge. I still think Illusion is a bit overly scavenged, but leaning on the melee portions of the damage set really helps. Thank you @Spaghetti Betty 🙂

I think it is called criticism with reason. I don’t see any statements to the effect of “Its Bad”. What I see is “its bad because…” and then some reasons. If you don’t think the reasons are valid, those would be good places to add your own comments possible refuting that view. But “if you don’t like then you are bad” isn’t really a participating statement. Consider addressing their points rather than dismissing them just because. Ding dern rassin frassin. I should have guessed that. Well I do have a respec or two, lets see what some punchy punchy action yields. 🙂

I see you saying that aggression is the key but, in my limited experience, that key only opens the hospital door. Mobs will ignore the three decoy blasters lighting it up to get a shot at YOU. There is no way that they would know that you are the only important solo target on the whole map, its just broken clock syndrome that the one action the bad guys will always take just happens to be the exact perfect option to totally neutralize you. My play-style is everything, pour it on. Is there something not on cool down? Fire it. No saving for a special occasion, no waiting for a rainy day, everyone out on the field and all activations go go go. That might invite the idea that there is a certain chess game that should be played, a labyrinthine clockwork of options to be threaded with deep-blue precision. But if that is indeed the case, then good luck to the other 99% playing the archetype. And lets talk about sleeps for a moment. In the current, massive AOE, thermonuclear damage-centric game, where do sleeps have even the vaguest place besides on a museum shelf in the hall of used-to-have-been? And its not like the devs don’t know the state of the game. So why in the world would anyone replace a taunt with a sleep unless the idea is to compete for most cursed nerf. I shouldn’t give the devs too much static. I want to encourage the act of moving forward creatively and offering player endorsed content. Many of the offering have been great and well thought out. This one, however, has the flavor of “just show up” on it. But then again, maybe its me. Maybe I am expecting something that dominators are not. I have controllers that routinely maul 1x8 and 2x8 dressed in nothing more than end-reduction IOs at 20. This dom couldn’t fight its way out of a wet -1x3 with half again more levels. But perhaps that is how they are supposed to be. Dainty, risk averse, ready to run at the first red numbers. Maybe I am playing them wrong to expect to stand and fight, thinking that my whole bar should be enough to inconvenience the mobs. Maybe I am the drama. That could be. EDIT -------------------------- You know, all my damage set picks are ranged. Is that problematic? Should I be Blapping? Didn't think about that until jut now but I notice that the ranged powers do a lot less damage than the melee powers.