Riverdusk

Think I'd prefer the 45/60 version if I had to choose. That way at least it is useful as an opening power on a mob, and then your other powers take over as you enter melee. At 30 feet range it tends to lose even that one use to it.

I'm seeing illusion control for doms in City of Data now. Would swear it didn't use to be there and no idea when it showed up. Assuming it is what HC actually has planned and not another server or something. Have to say it looks pretty good. A damage immobilize replacing spectral wounds and an aoe stun replacing group invis. Phantom army looks like it lost its taunt (which is what they hinted they'd do), but looks like they get some extra effects on their attacks instead. I'd jump on it in a second. Wish they would have added it for this latest update. https://cod.uberguy.net/html/powerset.html?pset=dominator_control.illusion_control&at=dominator&data=cryptic

Yep, which is why I always build for a bit more than 123% even if that is what is technically all that is needed. The dom I remember from back in the day had exactly 125% and even then it wouldn't always quite fire off in time and would occasionally reset. I think just a hiccup of server lag can also mess it up. 127.5% is what I remember having as the true safe number being to where I never had an issue. That was back on live servers, so maybe it runs smoother on HC though, haven't gotten that much in the weeds over here on testing it.

I tried one long ago and it worked pretty well, think it was a plant/psi. Now a days you could even get by with as little as 90% global recharge or so thanks to P2W (+15% for up to 8 hours if you don't mind spending the inf) and the base empowerment buff (+20% for 90 minutes, and cheap). That'd get you to 125% recharge even without hasten. What I hate is having to restart my dom meter every time I go afk for more than 2 lousy minutes. Makes doms probably the least "casual" or "real life interrupts" friendly AT there is unless you can hit that 125% without hasten. But, only having to worry about redoing it once every 90 minutes with the base buff I don't find too bad and the base buff is pretty cheap. So I pretty much count on at least that extra "free" 20% and shoot for 110-115%, which you can do without quite as much sacrifice of other things. Oh, and I still typically grab hasten though, as if you are going to get to 110% global recharge, that also gives you perma hasten anyway, for when you do want to click that button.

In the same vein, please please also add a NoFX version for "Darkness Affinity Fade". The only thing worse than having a self power that makes you transparent is having a power that makes your WHOLE TEAM transparent, potentially against their will. I honestly hate using the power despite how powerful it is because I'm afraid I'm pissing some people off by using it. The real irony of that power is that it makes everyone transparent and yet doesn't even grant stealth. So, I think it often also confuses people.

One easy change would be to give the impervium armor 6% psi resist and/or Aegis 5% psi resist IO's toxic resist as well in an equal amount.

Yep, also tougher on MM's who's pets die and need to be resummoned. They also end up going without buffs for longer. I have that issue a bit with nature as well, lot of long recharge buffs in that set.

Well, there were two points of agreement. How the pets respond to damage patches is an issue and that grave knights could use some s/l resistance. I agree with both of those as well, give those poor grave knights some s/l resistance. Been thinking that for a while, they tend heavily toward melee and I see them as the bruisers of the set.

Deceive I found useful early just because you don't have a lot else early on, in the mid game against certain foes, and then more useful again at 50+ due to the confuse proc. Once you get the contagious confusion proc it usually turns it from single target into pretty reliably hitting 3+ at a time depending on mob size. I also am just a big fan of confusion powers for the fun factor. Love seeing a sorc healing me and hurricaning his buddies or a sapper trying to drain his own buddies, etc. It can be very useful/fun against certain mobs. Also of course Coercive Persuasion set has amazing set bonuses.

Well old thread, but also wanted to point out the numbers for spectral wounds vs. toxic dart as posted are very wrong. Not sure where they got that toxic dart does more, it very much does not. Toxic dart does just about 30 damage base at level 50 and with containment does 60. Spectral wounds does 50 damage base and with containment does 80. One of the few that doesn't do full double damage because I assume it takes the post healed back amount as the base for containment. But still clearly more than toxic dart. Also it is a flat heal back amount unaffected by enhancements, so at level 50 only 20 of it ever heals back. Once fully enhanced and with containment even if something does live long enough for it to heal back, spectral wounds is still easily outdamaging toxic dart. 60 x 1.95=117 vs. (80 x 1.95) -20 = 136 Maybe close enough if you are tight on powers and really want to open up further things in the pool, but definitely not better.

Include hostages with that as well. I find them even more troublesome to find than glowies usually. Simply because they are completely silent. Always wondered why they never "yelled for help".

Personally I find MM's are kind of a high floor, low ceiling kind of AT. They are one of the easier to play on lower to mid difficulties, you can just sit back and watch the carnage if you want. At the same time, I find they can be very hard to play if you are going for +4/x8 or trying to do "challenge" type of stuff. That is more when you need "the build", even moreso than most other AT's, and can need to be quick with pet commands. Their lower level issue I think plays in to that. And of course I find MM's tend to lag in fast moving teams just because the pets themselves tend to well...lag behind. One of the most important changes I think they need is just giving all the pets a move speed boost. But anyway, just my own personal feelings and they are still one of my favorite AT's. Most of my 50's are MM, controllers, or scrappers. So yeah, I'm also one that likes MM's.

I'm one much looking forward to mercs getting the buff they need and a bit sad they didn't. However, have to say I'm happy to finally see ice control get some buffs that it seriously needed, so I can't say I'm completely disappointed in this issue. 😀 I find there's usually at least a few good things in every issue, and of course it isn't going to be everything I wished for. I can't ask for much more than that, especially from a volunteer team.

I like that idea a lot, if it is technically feasible. I think on average my characters tend to end up with about 50% mez resistance or so, which would put the 8 seconds down to 5.33 seconds assuming my understanding of mez resistance math is correct, 8/1.5. And of course if you wanted to put the effort in to go for those bonuses you could cut it even more. Radiation Emission would be the set that would have a huge advantage (thanks to accelerate metabolism), but considering how dependent that set is on its toggles, that actually seems fair.

I'd be curious as to why a character having 4 offensive toggles was used as the baseline average to come up with the 8 second suppression duration? Was some kind of statistical analysis run that the average character has 4 offensive toggles? From personal experience and my own character builds having 4 offensive toggles seems to actually be on the very high end and not average. Therefore the whole rationale of 4 offensive toggles times 2 seconds each = 8 seconds as the baseline suppression implemented seems arbitrary/excessive? Also as others have pointed out the flat 8 second suppression takes away from player agency in choosing in which order to reactivate the powers, so I think that has to be kept in mind as another negative to a flat global suppression when determining a "fair" suppression period.

Have to say I'm in the camp of not having too many bad PuG experiences. In fact, it seems to be much less often than it was on live. I attribute that to the player base being, on average, a lot more experienced now a days, and honestly the game having gotten easier. Anyway, I also try to not look at them as bad PuG teams, but as an extra challenge. 😉

Also not true in my experience. I can almost always buy the recipe and craft it myself for quite a bit cheaper than just buying the pre-crafted version on the market. The big exception to that of course is attuned stuff, as you can't buy an "attuned" recipe or get one to drop (wish you could). And so then buying a catalyst on top of the recipe to then attune it does lead to it costing way too much versus just buying an attuned IO. Catalysts becoming a lot cheaper would be another way to "fix" that, but not sure a good way to do that. Back to the original post, as someone who dislikes crafting in almost every game, CoH's isn't bad at all and I think is one of the better done ones the way it stands.

Having played dm on both AT's quite a bit (dm is my favorite melee set), I can say that personally my dm stalkers and dm scrappers felt pretty equal. BU is up a LOT with the stalker ATO BU recharge proc plus you get the gaussian BU proc also up a lot more often with it. Dark consumption I usually skip anyway with how ridiculous its recharge is. I almost always have better ways to address endurance issues. So, honestly it really came down to the normal difference in feel between the AT's to me. The scrapper had a bit better aoe (if you proc out soul drain, otherwise they are equal), and the stalker had much better burst damage (which I found very useful many times to take out troublesome mobs in one quick hit in a set like dm that otherwise has no hard controls). Anyway, there definitely wasn't a "huge" drop in performance to me. DM makes a fine stalker melee set imo.

Overwhelming force chance for knockdown/damage is a must in zombie horde imo. Also, I find the lack of soul extraction in the original build a little....odd. It is actually your tankiest pet. If you are thinking you won't get much use out of it because of the way it is summoned, you can use /release_pets , instead of using dismiss, to create a body anytime you want. You then have to resummon everything, but with the summoning endurance and recharge reductions that were put in, it is easier than ever. The ghost lasts 5 minutes, so if nothing else I do it at the beginning of every mission and it only takes a few seconds if you have it all macro'd. But, even if you don't want to be bothered by all that, if nothing else it is a good mule for the special pet IO's. That then allows you to slot your perm pets with better stuff.

Super Jump got a lot better for me once I saw someone post the bind that lets me be lazy with it: /bind J "powexec_toggleon Super Jump$$++autorun$$++up" Also like it more as it now works well to get quickly across even the shadow shard zones thanks to double jump. Infiltration is my go to now though unless my character already has a stealth power in their primary/secondary. It is just so versatile and does so many things in one power. Not to mention the only tier 3 travel power that you can slot a LoTG in, so even if I'd normally be tempted to skip a travel power entirely, it is worth taking just for that a lot of the time.

Agreed. Also think it is a very bad idea to do any significant change to something now that you are unable to change on an existing character. Origin is baked in and unchangeable. As others have said, any actual mechanical impact and it'd immediately be meta gamed. Right now origin is mostly just a RP thing and I see nothing wrong with that myself.

I'd second this, since you said you are more interested in aoe. Plant controller with almost any secondary of your choice. It blooms early (sorry pun) and gets better and better. Edit: Tip, pick up your single target immob and/or arcane bolt from sorcery pool. Helps a ton with getting an actual single target attack chain going early. It isn't going to be a blaster or scrapper of course, but always seemed plenty fast enough to me.

Touch of fear is pretty good now and I'd definitely add it to the build, especially proc'd up as mentioned. If anything you'll be tempted to spam it to the exclusion of almost anything else when you are in at least a decent size crowd, and it is easy to spam with how fast it recharges. I do also like shadow maul personally, but I could see skipping that one if you really need to do so. I got pretty good at hitting multiples with it back when it was only a 45 degree cone, now that it is 120 degrees, it seems super easy to me to hit at least 3 (and it is worth it dps wise as long as you are hitting at least 2 things with it). The tanker version at 180 degrees is just silly, but not needed to be good. But, I'm probably also one of the few that always takes shadow punch. I like having the smooth attack chain early and without it the set doesn't feel "punchy" enough for me. I've seen others complain the set ends up feeling like you are always just sticking your hand out and things die and it feels weird, never had that feeling with mine. I also have never taken soul mastery to this point which seems everyone's favorite epic pool (usually go leviathan for the easy one power wonder of water spout). So, I can say my builds are probably not the min/max most optimal out there.

Yeah, this isn't going to change as has already been stated by a HC powers dev that no more scrapper armor sets are getting a taunt aura. I'd take an educated guess he'd not be for adding it as a pool power either. I think the firestorm taking them away would cause is the only thing keeping safe so many sets that have it now. Maybe we can get them to look at toning down the running/flee code though. In the meantime, if I want to play an armor set that doesn't have a taunt aura as a scrapper I look to brute or tank, or since I'm not a big brute or tank fan, more often stalker. At least with stalker compared to scrapper you can usually quickly burst damage kill your target so they don't have as much chance to run. I did try a dm/sr stalker that I didn't have too much issue with runners. Midnight grasp also helps since it immobilizes. Very useful against AV's who can be some of the most annoying runners, and another reason why dark melee is one of my favorite sets. Ice melee also a good choice thanks to ice patch and that set happens to be best on a stalker. Stone armor would have been fine if the immobilize effect of mud pots was more powerful, that'd be nice to see as an alternative. Right now the immobilize is only mag 2, and strangely isn't even enhanceable. Per City of Data, 2.25 seconds base, unenhanceable, with a 2 second activation. So that means +2 or higher level things can escape thanks to purple patch. and of course anything higher than a minion ignores it completely.

Are people sure that creepers can be buffed by fulcrum shift? Different set, and of course I might have messed something up, but in a quick test on test server of a plant/nature I did once, I saw zero increase in the vine attack damage after using overgrowth (which has a +66% damage buff) on the creepers. Roots and an epic aoe attack fulcrumed would still be amazing though, no doubt. I personally also am on the side preferring the sets with strong -res, as I know those for sure increase creeper damage. They also increase proc damage which is actually probably the bigger damage potential from creepers anyway. I still believe plant/storm or plant/ta are more likely to be the true aoe king.