Riverdusk

Every AT has their "pains". You adapt, you overcome, or you find a different team (or start one) that fits your preferred playstyle better. Personally I generally let people play how they want and have fun unless they are truly trolling or if the team has a special goal that is announced ahead of time. This game isn't that hard where you have to be 100% efficient all the time. As to the aoe immobilizes specifically, I'll give the melee a few moments to "gather", but if they fail to do so, I start doing whatever I feel is most effective. One of my favorite characters is a plant/dark controller so that one also has three different pets (flytrap, creepers, dark servant) that also like to immobilize things all on their own, so I'll actually even hang back a bit to try and prevent them from going crazy too early. A lot of times though melee are all off doing their own thing and also keeping things separated (each with their own taunt auras), or they make no effort to gather, or the mobs are of a type that don't like to gather and melee aren't trying to use LOS, or the blasters or incarnates incinerate everything in the first 5 seconds before things even have a chance to "gather". At that point I also alter my tactics as in a lot of situations waiting for "gathering" just means I'm standing there never doing anything. Edit: Forgot, also situations where people are knocking things all over and in those cases I'll try to use my immobilizes to actually contain the mobs from BEING scattered. Never fails though that sometimes someone throws a huge radial knockback power a split second before I throw my immobilize and then they are immobilized all over the place. 😄

Also for more AoE damage one of my new favorites is plasmatic taser. It is a temp attack power from the P2W vendor that is basically a clone of energy torrent. It is amazingly cheap for that kind of aoe power (50,000 inf to max out its charges (240) each time). I get and renew it throughout at least the early levels of all my new characters now. Wouldn't spam it too much in a team unless you can control its knockback, but solo it is quite good and fun, both in damage and in adding safety.

Yep, activating the pet window is literally an option that you have to turn on to then get the option to open the pet window. An option within an option. Always found that kind of strange and a bit of bad UI design to have it double nested. Especially now a days when eventually everyone gets pets (lore incarnate). And you certainly are not alone or a dummy. I have mine set up to always default to on when I create new characters now, but I still see this question asked in Help quite often and then have to describe the kind of silly two step process to turn it on.

I don't have a specific build loadout, but illusion/dark sounds like it'd definitely meet your needs. That was actually the last character I did back before the game shut down. I had no problem soloing, including a couple of giant monsters I tried (kraken and the real version of Jurassik). Also adds a tremendous amount of safety to a team as well as some very good endurance recovery (soul absorption) and some decent amount of extra damage (tar patch and of course your own attacks). Dark servant also will occasionally set containment up for you with its tentacles. You could check out this thread:

Don't think you are wrong about the automatic introduction, but you can still go talk to him even without an intro (lot of contacts are that way actually), if you know where he is and are the right level. He'll still offer you the mission to start things off.

Used to be, it was disabled. IIRC due to it being buggy.

There are also arcs where everyone gets the missions in the arc in random order (Striga's Stephanie Peebles is one example that I always remember is really bad about this). So unless you happen to get the same mission from the same contact in the same order (very unlikely in her case), you'd have to do each mission several times if everyone in a team wants to get the missions themselves and not just follow along with the leader. Would be another nice "to fix" to "unrandomize" some of these arcs.

Nitpick to the nitpick, you don't have to actually train to 35 to get the mission yourself. You can be 35 without training up and just go talk to Arbiter Rein to start the mission. That way you can complete the arc and THEN train up and pick that patron pool power at level 35 instead of having to wait until 38. Done it that way myself several times.

Just a quick look at my current character shows how questionable the descriptors are. Plant control entangle (the ST hold 33.64 dmg base at lvl 50) is listed as "high" damage. Arcane bolt (sorcery pool attack 45.27 dmg at lvl 50) is listed as "moderate" damage. Pretty sure "high" should be a bigger number than "moderate".

Okay, I couldn't just skip past this in the beginning of your post. Farming, AE, and "testing multiple builds", aka min maxing. If you really farmed your way to 50 and had an almost instantly maxed out character, one suggestion I'd have is instead to level up the "slow" way. You will get more of a challenge that way and you'll have more time in pre-incarnate content. It is still easier than the "old days" (as the whole issue goes beyond just incarnate powers), but it does feel closer to those earlier times. You can always exemp back down to under level 45 post 50 as others have suggested, but to me even that isn't quite the same. Exemping down you have more powers, more slots, extra accolades, more set bonuses, and you'll always be at even level with the team leader instead of at -1. Join a higher level team while leveling up can get you that +5 difficulty! Doing the content while actually leveling just has a very different feel. Now, that doesn't fix incarnate level stuff and I agree post incarnate needs some work, but that's exactly why personally I'm never in a race to get there.

Old thread I know, but I've been watching this issue for a while now as I know it is a common complaint among melee. Seems to be the new bugaboo after knockback complaints. The only melee I tend to play are scrapper or stalker and this hasn't particularly been an issue when I play them. This is of particular interest to me when I play a plant controller as spamming a contained roots is actually pretty good aoe damage. I'll always try to wait a couple of beats for melee to gather up mobs before I throw roots though. Problem is? A lot of times at least in the teams I'm in, I've discovered I'm just wasting my time. I've noticed the melees don't really make any effort to try and gather them. On a team with more than one melee with a taunt aura often it is the melees themselves keeping things "spread out" as they all head to different parts of the same mob. So, maybe the next complaint is people with taunt auras shouldn't be keeping things spread out? Anyway, a lot of the time the mobs seem to end up dying pretty much right where they were when they spawned anyway even when I don't use the aoe immobilize. Waiting or not waiting a lot of times I don't see a lot of difference. So, basically it comes down to it very much depends on the team for me. However, I will be annoyed by a tank/brute that isn't doing a good job gathering or makes zero effort to gather and then complains about an aoe immobilize though. A good tank/brute gathering them into a nice tight pile that I can then spam roots (and creepers and plasmatic taser and psi tornado) on is a beautiful thing, but a lot of time doesn't happen. And honestly I work with whatever I'm given and still have fun. I've always said I find the randomness and occasional challenge of a random PuG some of the most fun. And hey, to bookend this back to melees complaining about knockback instead. At the least an aoe immobilize stops the energy blaster and others from spreading them even further apart. Yes, I've often used mine to actually control the mob from teammates knocking them all over the place. 😄 Edit: Forgot one other common scenario I've noticed. I'll be on a team with other controllers who do immediately open with their aoe immobilize. At that point, nothing for me to do but join in. Then I wonder if people are getting upset with me even though I'm not the one who "started it".

Well, it is called MinFX and not NoFX. And there already is a MinFX option for ice shields btw. You can also tint thermal shields and force fields so that they are close to invisible. On some other powers though, the tinting doesn't work all that well at toning them down (like ice shields before there was a MinFX version). As to knowing which buffs are on you, there is always the buff bar to see (and control) which buffs you have on you. Honestly, I don't use that either. What I depend on is monitoring combat attributes which gives a much more clear accounting of what is going on with your stats than any visual effect of a power. Not all buffs are even close to the same (defenders are going to matter a lot more than a blasters for instance), so depending on the visual effect of the buff I find pretty worthless anyway. Edit: Another issue of how worthless the graphical effect of buffs are is when it comes to multiple of the same buff from different casters. You could have 1 leadership toggle buff going on you, or you could have 8 affecting you. Going to be hard to see the difference from any graphical indication on your character. You'll know only from the buff bar or from monitoring combat attributes. Of course I guess the argument could be made that the effects should actually be made 8 times as intense in that case. 😄

Great updates, but ugh, I'm ALREADY sick of the constant Rikti invasions and get sick of them every time the LGTF is the weekly as well. Even when it is only the weekly people tend to start ignoring them by the end of the week. That several more weeks of them in a row was thought a good idea...🤮

So agree, having a thousand little circles floating all around me gets annoying when it comes to both mind over body and indomitable will actually. I'm almost always in favor of minFX options in general.

They'd have to make something like that work on both "classic team UI" and "regular". This coming from someone who can't stand the "regular team UI" that was introduced later in the game's life and became the default setting unfortunately. The person who designed it obviously never heard of the word contrast.

Not sure it is totally up to date, but should give you an idea: https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Recipe

Problem I have with the daggers too is you have to constantly spam them (the debuff lasts 10 seconds). I often find myself forgetting to spam them enough. LR is much easier cast and forget since it lasts 30 seconds. Also, I wouldn't call -75% slow/recharge as minor. It isn't going to do much against AV's as they'll resist most of it, but it is worth using on normal mobs.

Was going to say something similar. On average it should take 5 tries which is 15 converters which you can buy for about 1 million. Typically even on a bad streak I'll get it within 10 rolls. Basically I tend to take those odds as long as the piece I want sells 2-3 million more than the rest of the set. And that is something I regularly see.

I think my current worst record is 37 attempts (111 converters used) to convert something in-set before I finally got the one I was going for. Something that should be a 1 in 5 chance. I've also often gotten it very first try though.

On my list to try/return to: Ice melee/Shield stalker (ice patch and frozen aura fixes) AR/Dev blaster (AR buffs) Fire/Dark controller (now that they are also finally making Fade less graphically annoying in the next patch).

IMO, it's an ideal AT for new players. You get the classic blasting that a lot of new players look for when they start and you are much more sturdy out of the box than a blaster.

Yay!

Might have to finally try the powerset again, nice! Love it. I can't even count how many times I've accidently switched power trays.

Yeah, I don't like forcing my idea of a "fun" graphic and my idea of "rp" on other players. But yes, the flickering is the most annoying part of it.

Yep, been asking for this forever and I avoid the entire powerset due to this. I myself might even be willing to put up with it, but I'm also forcing this on everyone I team with and that doesn't sit right with me. Even beyond the flickering bug, a lot of people also don't like their character and costume being turned into invisible wraiths against their will. One of those graphic effects I always wonder what the heck the original devs were thinking. Another option would just be to give us a minFX option for it.