Coyote

Doms are generally fine. Their only general issue is a lack of need for control in the end game. If the usability of Domination were changed so that it were more easily used, I wouldn't mind at all. But between cycling Hasten, Domination, and Power Up at lower levels, even before a Dom is perma, they have options to be powerful in every single Boss encounter unless you're playing at a high enough level to face Bosses in every spawn. And soloing. And if you're doing that before running a perma-Dom, then hopefully you're up to the task. Their defenses are definitely weaker than that of Controllers. And... so? Their offense is stronger. How is this unbalanced? For their concept of being a Control/Damage AT, they do it well. They control well, usually better than Controllers, and they do very good damage with their Damage set. The only think they "lack" is a nuke. Eh, a nuke would be nice, especially on an AT that chases Recharge, but lacking it isn't turning the AT into a low-damage AT. I mean, my AoE attacks on my Doms compare in damage to my Blasters (before Defiance), and the best ranged attacks from Blasters (BIB, Blaze, Snipes) are available to them also.

Well, Blappers get into melee starting at low levels. I'm not sure that a Melee attack set is necessarily that viable (though it might be if one of the powers included were a mez protection power), but an Assault set that starts with a couple of ranged attacks to cover early levels where range is really a defense, and then switches to melee for the back 5-6 powers would be pretty workable.

Proc IOs have a low chance to activate in Radiation Infection, so they're not usually used. But they do have a chance to activate on every mob affected by the power, so while the effect rarely occurs, it will happen more often if you bunch up mobs. Lingering Radiation, because it's not a toggle, actualy does have a good chance to activate procs. Lockdown in CC, like other IOs in toggles, isn't great, but the effect is great... a nice Hold on minions, or the chance to boost the Hold up to Boss level, so it's not a bad choice. Most builds will plan on running at least one of the IOs that grants Stealth, so if you also run Superspeed or Concealment, you get full Invisibility and in most cases don't need Smoke. That said, it is useful for preventing adds, for clicking on glowies without having to clear nearby spawns, etc, so it's not a bad power. And for Fire/Rad, it does stack nicely with Radiation Infection. With Dark Watcher's x4 in both powers, you end up with -45% or so ToHit debuff, as well as 2 5% Recharge bonuses.

Burst of Speed. Not that it's a bad power, but it's not a great PBAoE for its recharge... but it's fun. A lot of fun. I should combine it with Whirlwind someday.

Neither Fire Cages nor Hot Feet are very good with procs. You will have an End problem, but it can be overcome later as you get more Recharge so you can run perma-AM... well slotted with End Mod and Recharge, that can help a lot. Fire Cages is necessary to set up Containment, but over-spamming it can erase Endurance fast. I like an ATO IO for an Orb, and an Acc/Control/End Red ATO, and then maybe a 3slot for Acc/End. No need for more, or slotting for damage. Maybe if you had Fire/Dark, with the drain power to fuel Recovery, but Fire/Rad runs some expensive toggles and Accelerate Metabolism can barely make up for them, and then struggles to help with Hot Feet. It can't also make up for Fire Cage spam.

Guys, be sure to keep this thread going for a while. I want to see how long he lasts....

Fire/Rad can do it, but Fire/Dark is pretty similar and far better vs AVs. So it's not the wrong tree, but also not necessarily the right tree. Other top options are: Illusion/Traps (IMO, the top AV soloer) Illusion/Cold (see the thread by @Frosticus in this forum) Earth/Thermal (cheapest option) Earth/Traps (kind of hard to find a concept for the character, though)

The Irradiated Ground pseudo-pets follow the same rules, but I think it's because IG drops a pet every 5 seconds. And each pets starts its own 10 second timer when dropped... and ticks at time 0 (for it), and never gets to time 10. So it gets around the pseudo-pet 10 second timer by dropping a new one every 5 seconds, and each ticks once before it dies.

I'm thinking about opening one up regarding how the game is too easy because Defense is too high, and therefore IO set bonuses need nerfing. Think that'll do it?

Actually, the reason for some of the responses is that this HAS been considered. It's not just taken for granted. Come on, this is CoH, we have players who question and/or test ANYTHING. I assure you, I remember reading threads about the fees over a year ago. This is not uncharted territory for discussion. I'm not sure if this is a dead and dismembered horse, or just mortally wounded at this point, but it's been considered, discussed, and re-considered.

I voted Bio, but Shield and Rad came close. I think that Stalkers can really use help with AoE damage in most cases, so I like a secondary that helps with AoE damage. Of those, Bio, Shield, and Rad are the strongest defensively. Fire and Dark also help with AoE damage, but are clearly behind the earlier three in durability.

Helmet needs an integral grenade launcher. Just sayin'

Okay, to give a serious answer.... a lot of IOs are transferred all the time. Each time they do, they drain some INF into nothingness. I have seen prices as being pretty stable. LotGs have been at a stable level for a long time, as have Positron's and a few others I use as benchmarks. I feel that we would be seeing a lot of inflation without the inf sink of the fees. Even if it doesn't seem like much, a 10% drain that would be released into the economy would probably result in prices increasing by that much in a time period based on how fast IOs are churning... definitely faster than yearly. Considering how fast IOs sell at normal prices, I wouldn't be surprised if we'd get a 10% monthly inflation.

So you think the Auction House fees should be raised higher? I'm not sure I agree, but you make a compelling point here.

At the very least, this thread is illustrating that it may be worthwhile to put in the effort to prepare multiple builds for a character. I've never done it, but now I'm considering having an AV build that swaps out travel and AoE powers for survival and single-target damage powers.

That mission will spawn from 1 to 6 (because that's the max New Praetorians) depending on your "size of party"... so if you solo at +4/x1, you'll face one AV at +4. If you're +1/x3, it will be 3 random AVs at +1. I'm not sure if there is a chance that, like some other missions, an AV may spawn at one level higher just for funzies. I've done it multiple times, and it IS possible to pull one of them at a time... but it's HARD. And you have to pull them way off, or the others will eventually aggro.

This is why I say that //Ice is the best APP for Controllers... they can generally handle everythign else except large spawns (other than Plant or Fire). But Ice handles that best with a lot of AoE to clear minions fast, and the second option for offense is Stone because Fissure is good as an attack and also slots Force Feedback so it can improve its own recharge often. Both my Ill/Storm/Ice and Earth/Cold/Stone clear spawns at x6 surprisingly fast for Controllers who aren't Couch Potatoes (Plants).

TW/Regen Brute here. I was in the 30 so past most of the difficult times at the time of the change, but it does play more smoothly. No End issues and faster Recharges should make lower levels go faster, at the cost of some DPS at the top end. Given how high the DPS was, it seems fine to me. Defensively, the faster rotation with the knockdowns keeps the characters safer... that's more of a concern for a Brute or Scrapper than a Tank, though.

You can do pretty well with Fire/Psy and Mind/Psy... both can perma-Hold the AV up to +2 definitely, maybe +3. The lower DPS of having to spam the ST Hold matters less when the AV regenerates less. I'd go with Fire/Psy for this (I have one, he does +1 without trouble, +2 with occasional annoying breakouts from the Hold, and I"m not touching +3s until higher in Incarnate abilities). Mind and Dark can perma-confuse an AV up to +3 without much problem, and with -Regen from DP you can generally solo one. A lot easier on /Dark, as pet damage makes up for eating up about 40% of your attack cycle in non-damaging Confuse powers. Again, -Regen helps a lot here. I've soloed lots of AVs including the Kronos Titan on a Plant/Savage, but the Titan needed Envenomed Daggers, so clearly building for a Ranged Defense build is an option if you also have some sort of Regen power or way to regain health. So you can try for the standard of "fight at range with capped defenses and a way to regenerate occasional hits". This is my Fire/Psy's second option, as I think the build is soft-capped to both Ranged and AoE. So, if you really want to do it, you have several options: perma-Hold (Mind or Fire, or most primaries if you take Stone Assault as Seismic Smash adds a good amount of Mag). perma-Confuse (Mind or Dark, at this point damage will be the problem and you want a high-damaging secondary or Psy). I've done some AVs with Mind/Nrg. Ranged D build (Plant is best due to Tree of Life, otherwise Dark for -ToHit to squeeze out the last few % points, or Fire for damage, and Psy secondary for -Regen/+Regen, or Dark for a ranged self-heal). All of these builds are viable, and will play well in the rest of the game also. Note that they're not going to be top performers in "how fast I took the AV down", as the required Holds/Confuses will eat into damage, Psy is not a high-damage secondary outside of DP's effect, and a Ranged Defense build is going to work as well as a Ranged Defense build on many other ATs but usually without -Regen, Defiance for extra damage, and a tighter build to squeeze out perma-Dom AND defense. So if you're looking to do it, there are options. If you're looking for high performance at it, it won't happen.

Dark. Sonic's main strength is Resistance buffs on your allies. That's not very important for an Illusion Controller. Status protection and good -Res debuffing are nice, but not enough if you're not going to get serious benefit out of the Resistance buffs. Meanwhile, Dark is great all around. +Defense, +Recovery, and a ton of -ToHit and -Damage. As well as some -Res, and strong -Regen.

Fold Space is a great combination with the Traps powers, and you can use Recall Target as one of the prerequisites... with that, Acid Mortars are also "mobile".

I loved Herdicaning before they greatly increased the activation period on the repel effect. Maybe I was spoiled by having it activate so fast, but the newer, "slow to respond" version just felt so clunky to me that I haven't gone back to in. I do have Fold Space on my Ill/Storm, maybe I should try again with it to see how workable it is now that I'm not so upset about it anymore. Gotta say, though, with Fold Space, spawns get erased fast at +4/x6, and that's with Illusion (no AoE whatsoever from the primary). Bunching up mobs for Storm takes a high single-damage set and turns it into an AoE eraser with a 5 target cap. That's why I always suggest Gravity/Storm, because bunched up mobs for Tornado/LS is just ridiculously good.

One option if you can fit it into a build would be to run Cross Punch (which I feel is better than Explosive Shuriken, anyhow), and then use that first to line up the facing of the character before throwing Spinning Kick.

To note about Storm's "AoE"... it's not AoE. It has a very small radius, so it only hits mobs next to each other. It only counts as AoE when paired with Gravity (fortunately this is the case here), or with a Fold Space build. You need to have mobs packed shoulder to shoulder for Tornado and Lightning Storm to hit multiple targets reliably. The real AoE secondaries are Trick Arrows, Traps, and Poison, as they have AoE damage or proc-able Holds with large radii. For Gravity this isn't as much of an issue, but for other sets that need help with AoE damage, Storm is not the one that will help. Well, it will help with spawn clearing because it does so much damage in general, but it's not really AoE... it will work better on x4 or a max of x6, while the AoE sets will help all the way up to x8.

If done right and built for it, Endurance Drain can be very effective. If not done right, it's completely ineffective. Meanwhile, -ToHit or more damage is always useful, and you don't have to set up specific combinations and power uses. That's the real complain about endurance drain. I run Electric on a Sentinel and also Electric Control, so I didn't feel the need for an Electric Blast character... but if I did, then either Poison (for the -Recover from Poison Trap) or Energy Manipulation would be the ideal sets to pair with it. Because then endurance drain turns from "didn't matter because the damage killed the mob before I drained it" to "I shut them all down in 5 seconds, even though it took me 20 to kill them all".