Peacemoon

Absolutely, and there is a huge game outside of incarnates and maxed out builds where people play without any set bonuses at all. Especially pre-40. So in addition to the argument that they’re still useful at max level content, they are also incredibly useful for lower levels and random groups. Something to really consider when deciding where to put powers, because some make hardly any difference until lower levels whilst others the difference will be huge.

The biggest buff ice has had recently is surely that enemies can still be knocked down even when effected by -knockback powers, like most aoe immobilises. whet about ice/darkness affinity? /Dark is a great set that can be used to boost a weaker primary. I didn’t realise flash freeze is a sleep not a stun!

Its tempting to slot for end mod but unless you have real endurance problems without soul absorption, the default is usually enough. I'd concentrate on the regen and recharge. Also any procs. It doesn't take accurate healing sets, but it does take accurate to-hit debuff sets. Go figure!

Absolutely, but my point was that /Empath powers for Mind Control are largely useless when solo, because so much of it is buffing allies. So it really is team dependent. I use confuse all the time when solo and it’s great, but it’s not charm and still wouldn’t benefit from /empath buffs. At least you can buff and heal your pet when you pair empath with the other control sets, not that it makes a huge difference probably. I think to return to topic mind/empath can be really good but like all empaths, you will be more team dependent. Dominators are better for solo play generally, but later on controllers can match/overtake once they get pets and epic attacks, if they choose more offensive debuffs/buffs sets which can amplify their own damage (storm/rad/dark/kinetics etc). So mind control/psych Dom will probably be more fun when solo for the majority of the game, and still bring good control and damage to teams. It has a much more aggressive style. Mind/Empath will bring more to a team in terms of support and heal, and you’re more likely to sit back and watch and intervene where you think it’s necessary.

Yes, which is why im debating Tactics on my Earth controller, because every earth power already does -20% defence. Plus with Freezing rain as well, it feels a bit overkill.

Mind control is a great set, and I have a character who is similarly psychic based who I’ve been debating whether to remake as a Dom/Controller (on retail he was Mind/Storm, but I want I change that). Psy resistant enemies do make me feel slightly cautious with Mind control/psych Dom. However levitate is smashing and you can add procs which will do different damage types. Also having an Achilles heel can make the character more interesting (and realistic?) I also thought of Mins control/empathy for similar reasons. The character has psychic powers, and immense capabilities to empathise with others hardship. Thematically I like this for him, but it makes him far too team dependent for my liking. Particularly as Mind Control has no pet, so you can’t even buff and heal your pet, like other control sets. So when solo you are effectively Mind control/blank! Other sets that you could try is the martial assault for Doms - gives you access to shurikens and kicks, and despite being blind he could use his psychic powers to focus his martial prowess. This could be quite cool, and gives him access to other damage types. In terms of damage, controllers do double damage to enemies locked down. They can amplify this with their buff/debuff sets (usually). Controllers are a fun archetype because they grow in power exponentially throughout their career. But like a DnD mage, they start off pretty weak.

Leadership is worth it if you can squeeze it in. It depends what powersets you have and what you can realistically skip, or not. Also it depends on your priorities, as ever. Sometimes it’s hard to know what you can skip until you’ve reached 50 and tried everything out.

I think the homecoming team need to walk a tight path between too many changes and no changes. My gut feeling is massive changes to sets would be more negative than positive. Little tweaks while still keeping the game true to what we know and love is the better path in my view. Mercs for example can be made a lot better without half of those massive changes listed above. For Pet customisation I think personally the first step would be palette customisation. Even if you could change their colours that would be a good start, and be very welcome.

Some great posts here already about the use of hurricane. Just to reiterate that it’s not a toggle you need/should always have on. Use it intelligently and it’s very powerful. Also the -hit from hurricane lasts 10 seconds, so once you tag them all with hurricane they remain debuffed for a little while. So you could turn off hurricane and go in for the pbaoe. I used it on my controller to good effect. For Defenders I imagine it would be even more useful because you’re not relying on control powers to lockdown mobs. Hurricane comes under ‘soft control’ which can be just as effective as an aoe hold. Hurricane obviously shines in enclosed areas where you can pin a group of enemies to the wall, floor their accuracy, then hit them with freezing rain debuffing their defence and resistance, and completely obliterating the poor defenceless mobs. Achilles heel -resist also works amazing in freezing rain, as the proc stacks with the regular -res from the power, liquefying their defences. I find snowstorm the most skippable power in the set, but that’s not because it isn’t good because it is a strong power, but the snare and recharge debuff didn’t seem so needed in a set where you are already debuffing them to hell and back. But it does highlight the power of storm. You can pretty much debuff every attribute of the enemy with the exception of -damage and -regen. The weakness of storm was always the knockbacks, especially from lightning storm. Now you can slow them to knockdown changes things completely (a bit like how it changes Grav control man wormhole into something really amazing). It’s quite exciting! As for /Rad I don’t know much about it. I imagine the pairing is less common more due to theme than power. Most people who go storm like to pair it with nature themed powers. Or they try to fill the debuff gap and link it to sets with -regen.

A big thing for me is the dominance of arachnos. I hate their architecture. I hate their constant presence. And I have no idea why it has to be so prevalent. When you play blue side you are not constantly surrounded by longbow in every zone. It’s just a city with villains in it... For me there are other reasons but that is the main one. Grandville especially is awful. Also because of the Arachnos you will always feel like a second tier villain.

What is the general consensus with leadership for Defenders? Naturally, Defenders make the best leaders of a team due to the type of player that plays them, and this is reflected in the huge buffs they get from it Defenders get the best buffs from leadership, so in my mind its hard to turn these powers down. Manouvers seems like a dead cert, because not only for the great +DEF but also the chance to slot Luck's +Recharge. What are the views on Assault and Tactics though, more nuanced? What about powers such as Vengeance and Victory Rush? Finally, what sort of levels is it best to take leadership at? I was tempted to take a lot of them very early... **Edit: some numbers courtesy of https://cityofheroes.fandom.com/wiki/Leadership Shows how great these powers are, particularly for Defenders.

Dimension shift has changed so much over the years. Originally it was just an aoe intangible that didn’t even root the enemies and would confuse the hell out of players when all these intangible mobs would run about but be unattackable. This was back in the really newbie days when no one knew what they were doing anyway! Then it rooted the mobs but you couldn’t cancel it. Now it’s a toggle, but I have to confess until I read the forums I forgot that it had been made a toggle! I always have a soft spot for this power because my first controller was grav/kin and it was my only aoe control power back in the day when teams would form to sweep Boomtown. Thematically I always thought it sounded amazing!

Cheers! Still leveling my Dark/Dark (32), but will use this as a guide. So far he’s been really fun. I love the pet, although he does tend to use his howl a lot (which I think is a ST immobilise?).

Regarding dark powers! The dark control immobilises lose their spell effect on targets periodically, so enemies are stood around and don’t look like they’re immobilised. I believe this used to happen to gravity at the beginning of CoH and was fixed, might be same issue. Also the umbra beast immobilise doesn’t have a spell effect on the target from what I’ve seen. Dark Affinity - Soul Absorption also doesn’t have a sound effect, or a spell effect on targets. Thanks!

Can someone explain how the pancea and peventative medicine procs work for the unititiated?

Thank you, this build is great! I'm pretty keen to have the Soul mastery patron pool instead of Ice mastery, just for theme. Any recommendations for how to slot the powers?

I’d settle for more diverse epic power pools, as many of the more recently proliferated power sets are not represented there for some ATs, whilst other themes now have more powers available (like rad armour/melee). So these are often the hole that would round out a concept build nicely. So for controllers, I’m talking about the sort of following epic power pools: Rad Darkness (my dark/dark has to rely on Soul patron, which fortunately is a thing) Streetfighting/willpower Some sort of sword martial arts/katana/ninja bio, thorns or spines Also I love Controllers but all their sets are very magic themed. It would be nice to have something more natural. e.g device control or gadget control. Web grenades, tasers, flash grenades for stunning them. Just thinking off the top of my head. It could be petless like Mind, but have faster recharging sentry guns to deploy, or something.