Coyote

1: Psy Scream is a good ranged cone with 60' range that does good damage and -Recharge, while Crushing Field does very little damage. I would take the former first for damage, since you don't have damage patches that need mobs to prevented from running out of them, so you don't really need an Immobilize. 2: I'm not sure if it's a good concept to pair a long-ranged hover blasting plan with Drain Psyche, which is by far the reason to go with Psy Assault.Granted, you could start a fight with Wormhole, use DP and Shockwave, then back up to shooting range before the Stun effect fades. On my Fire/Psy Dominator I went with Mind Link to cap Ranged/AoE defenses. Mobs near me should be mezzed.

A vision of seers. I like the plot of Nemeses, but also a fake of Nemeses A dream of Awakened A tome of Spells A revenge of Knives of Vengeance A claw of Talons A (dark) day of (black) Knights A ball of D.U.S.T.

While you're considering this, let me put in some possible clarifications... with the caveat that I have not tested these myself. But I have seen posts from posters who generally know what they're talking about, giving two important details: 1: Mobiles take up a set space, depending on the model, but usually a 3' circle (I'm not sure about the height... if it's a cylinder then how tall it is, etc... so let's stick to ground area). 2: A mobile only has to touch, not be wholly within, an AoE in order to be affected. Now, assuming the radius is correct, a 3' diameter mobile who is the target of ToF "eats up" 1.5' of the power's radius with its own radius. So, the radius extends 4.5' outside in all directions. However, this radius only has to touch another mobile, not encompass it. So, if you have 5 mobs in front of you, all packed together side to side, and you target the centermost mob, you should be able to hit all 5 mobs since the innermost mobs on each side eat up 3', the center mob eats 1.5', and that still leaves 1.5' of radius left over to touch the outside mobs on each side. Assuming they're "packed", in other words, with no space in between their cylinders. So it seems that it should be able to affect a good amount of mobs in a packed situation. If it's not, then perhaps mobs have an "effective radius" larger than 3', perhaps by the AI trying to keep some distance between each other to make maneuvering easier.

Some secondary attacks benefit from Domination on their mez effects, weirdly. Seismic Smash gets +1 Mag... Total Focus gets +3 Mag and for a longer duration... Midnight Grasp isn't affected... Fissure gets +1 Mag but Whirling Hands doesn't. This is all from Mids, I'm not logging into the game to confirm all of the powers with the in-game stats, though, so it may not be fully accurate.

I think Dehydrate is a major power for Water/Storm (or Storm/Water), because by putting in a +End proc IO in there, it can help with endurance management more than using other attacks that don't have a chance to bring back Endurance. And it brings back health, and it can take an Achilles Heel to help the Storm powers do more damage.

Solo only. Once in a while, especially on a small team, it's useful for fighting multiple AVs. Once in a while, on a team, it's useful for intercepting an ambush while the team is fighting a lot of other mobs. Those are pretty niche situations for it. If you solo a decent amount, it's useful, and you can mule a purple set into it for when you're on a team, so it's not a terrible choice if you're going to team and solo. If you're going to only be a team character... I'd skip it. There are better options for muling, I think.

See, I think this is the basis of the argument, and why our arguments seem so incompatible with each other. I agree that Blaster attacks are meant to kill mobs, of course. And Dominator controls are meant to shut them down. And for both, having +ToHit powers (or lots of set bonuses) make them more accurate so that they are more likely to land. So we're in agreement so far... ... but where we diverge is that I don't see that the powers, or Aim, are advertized as "being capable of becoming auto-hit in some situations". It wasn't like that in Issue 1, and it's not like that now. They've always had a chance to miss, so I don't really them as not working as intended, if there is a small chance to miss. Now, I've said already why I think this is a good thing, so I'm not going to rehash that... this is just to say that "as advertized", to me, does not say that high-accuracy powers, even boosted with +ToHit powers, were ever and in any way advertized as not having any chance to miss in some scenarios. Quite the opposite, the game has always been very open about a minimal possiblity of missing of 5%. The point of the powers is to kill mobs, or mez them... they don't need 100% accuracy to be effective at what they do. Honestly, I always thought that there should be a bonus for having a ToHit higher than 95%... like a small chance of a critical hit or something, with the critical chance based on the excess to-hit, to show that 150% base chance is better than 100% chance. And I would support most methods of achieving this (with the caveat that we have to be careful to not make slotting for Accuracy be effectively a replacement for slotting for Damage)... but while rewarding bonus accuracy makes sense to me, I don't see why it's necessary or implicit in the combat design, to allow attacks to become auto-hit.

I didn't think so, until Vanden pulled out the Thread Referees, but then it turned good 😆

After combat begins. But my arguments have been about a Blaster hitting BU, then EMP Arrow, and then being guaranteed that no mob gets missed as they proceed to AoE the spawn with no risk for the next few seconds. Or worse, a Dominator (some of whom have access to Aim or an equivalent), who can do the same to a spawn even if it has Bosses. Right now, the chance that someone important is missed turns each spawn into a risky event that makes you pay attention. But allowing some builds to start a fight off with guaranteed AoE mezzes and/or kills on everyone within their mag limit or damage limit removes certain difficulties from the game without a chance of failure. Say, for example, Sappers... Rikti Guardians... Sorcerors... Sky Raider Engineers... etc. Over several spawn in a mission, you would normally have to deal with a miss, and have to have a way to handle the difficulty when one of those important mobs survives and shoots back, or summons something, or buffs the allies with a mez-breaker, etc. It's not mid-fight where the problem would lie, it's the ability to start off with a pre-determined sequence of attacks that cannot fail. And it wouldn't be every character who can do something with this, but for some it would be a great buff to the playstyle, for what appears to be merely a 5% increase in damage, mez, or debuff output.

Of course not, you have the right to them. But for a suggestion to be taken as a serious suggestion rather than as frustrated venting... you should establish why it would benefit the game, and you should establish arguments against reasons why it shouldn't be changed. You've seen some of those reasons posted above, and basically handwaved them aside just because you don't agree with them. Is it, then, unreasonable for those who have made the arguments to just handwave your feelings aside?

And not clamping the max chance to hit at 95% would increase DPS for a few builds by about 5%. Is that really worth removing all risk for some builds that can reach 100% chance to hit with a large-area control power? For a 5% DPS increase?

I've had very playable characters before they were perma-Doms. As I said, having Domination available, plus Power Up, plus Hasten, means that even with low recharge, there is always some buff available to make tough fights easier. And Domination can be hoarded, as you don't really need the double Mag, until you get to a boss fight. So unless you're in a team where the spawns are large enough to always have bosses, you're still effective, then you boost up to kill the boss spawn. And then when it drops, you use Hasten. And so on. It's quite effective, enough so that I'm not greatly worried if Domination were to be changed so that there is less of a jump from non-perma to perma-Dom. Actually, the only times I've had problems are when mobs are resistant to some major control that I depend on, like Plant going against Rularuu, or when I'm facing missions with multiple ambushes so I get shot before I get to throw out controls. A lack of perma-Dom hasn't really been any major problem.

Same... binds for all location drops including PA. With drops from Illusion, Storm, and Ice Epic, it's just too hard to keep clicking locations. Although, I do have several binds set up so that Ctrl-click drops Freezing Rain, Ctrl-right click sets up PA (and left click then drops it), then the same for Alt-click and Alt-left click, so I have to move my fingers less to find different keys.

Controllers and Dominators would love this argument, if you mean to give -Def and -Res to Held or Stun/Immobilized opponents. But it seems like a really major change to AT balance.

No, he didn't say mezzed targets. He said targets that don't normally move, like destructible objects in a mission. And also, if out of combat, which the AV wouldn't be.

The chance of a debuff or controll missing an enemy and leading to death, is exactly what makes the game more interesting. Because it's extremely rare to be in a situation where missing gets you killed without a chance to remedy the situation... throw another control, or debuff, or use an inspiration, or just retreat. But the difference where you need to remedy a dangerous situation, versus not having to worry about a dangerous situation arising 5% of the time (or more, if there are multiple dangerous mobs in a spawn), is a huge difference in playstyle, far more than a 5.3% increase in damage. Basically, if you can AoE control with 100% guarantee of success, followed by several other AoEs that also can't miss, then you can set up a push-button situation at the start of every fight knowing that it will work as planned. And then if the situation leads to enough damage to kill all the minions, then you know that you can start every fight with a number of powers used, and no minions left. No pressure, no risk. With a chance to miss, you might miss an important mob, and get punished, which makes you pay attention and react... a game where we kill as many spawns as we do, and doesn't introduce at least a very small element of risk, is a game that will become stale due to a lack of risk.

Not sure what it is, but it's pretty creepy. The game functions better with a chance to miss, so that you cannot guarantee that all mobs in a spawn get affected by a major debuff or control, so that you can't plan an attack sequence in complete safety. Allowing 100% chance to hit on attacks that aren't deliberately designed to be auto-hit will have lot and lots of ramifications, and I think it's not worth the time and effort to look into what they might be just to avoid the very occasional miss.

Hehe, it' s not a long trip: What a long strange trip it's been

Yes. My Plant/Savage erases things to a degree I never imagined. The damage you get from Plants + Creepers, added to Unkindness (with 2 -Res procs) then Feral Charge then a 5-stack Blood Frenzy is just unreal. Spawns evaporate. That's usually true with any set that has a mass confusion power, but adding in the damage from all the other sources, the -Def/-Res fron Unkindness, just takes it over the top. The only downside is that Plant really is a one-trick pony, so fighting things that are Confuse-resistant is a pain... I still recall one spawn of Rularuu with 3 eyeball bosses at +3. That was harder than an AV (but I didn't take the AoE Hold... maybe I should have ). And Savage doesn't have much in the way of defensive abilities, it's all about the damage. But leaving aside the fact that it doesn't have multiple tools for defense, on offense it could be the most destructive Dominator available. I liked it enough to make a Dark/Savage also, and I usually try to avoid repeating sets.

Come on, it had to be at least a bit amusing when 2-3 EA characters were zapping each other by Lady Liberty. All of the zapping with all of the other characters around could probably have replaced the Terra Volta reactor 😆 I kinda wonder why don't they just do that. The Freakshow keep attacking TV? Some Vigilante group should set a trap for them, catch like 50-100 inside there, use a Force Fielder to keep them in place, and then have a few EA characters on a rotating basis keep them all permanently electrocuted for the Greater Good. We could replace a leaky radioactive reactor with leaky over-staticked cyberpunk walking, talking, complaining, batteries. "H3y m@n, s+0p z@pp!n6 u$ !!!" "N0+ c00| !!!"

I have to say, that I like the proposed changes to Flash Freeze, mostly in the fact that they're pretty complex and turn it into an interesting power that is a draw to the set. Consider, otherwise, how rarely Sleep powers are taken. IMO, the details of how the proposed ice formations work, and exactly what controls/debuffs they provide, are necessary in the end to finish the concept, but in the beginning, the first two thoughs should be: 1) make the power interesting 2) make the power worth taking. Right now, Sleeps generally aren't except for Static Field, and that's because it's pulsing. And it's worse on a set that uses a knockdown patch so it pretty much breaks one of its controls with another.

I'd add Earth to the list of top Assault sets... and definitely agree that Electric is at the bottom. I also don't see much synergy between Dark and Electric. Savage really works great for Dark, Dark Assault is a nice pairing, Psy is good and also works, and Earth Assault is good in general and stacking more Force Feedback activations allows you to bring up the PBAoE stun more often, slot it for damage, and get a 300 pts PBAoE instead of just a stun power. But Electric... is poor on its own, and doesn't really work well with Dark at all. Earth also adds a Power Boost-like effect, with works great to get the ToHit debuffs to be really strong at the start of a fight.

Just to add a different topic to this topic 🙂 ... if you want to play a Healer and concetrate on Healing as your main purpose, I strongly suggest running a MM. You can be free to heal while you're still contributing to the team's damage. Also, if you're in a situation where the team doesn't need defensive buffs like Fortitude, the henchmen can always use them, so you don't end up with buffs that are useless because so many team members are softcapped in Defense or hardcapped in Resistance. Whenever I make a character that has a lot of team buffs, I try to make them as MMs, so that if I'm soloing or on a team that doesn't need them, I still can get mileage out of them by throwing them on the henchmen.

Thanks for the clear answers, CP. I'm quite fine with the rationale as stated... especially given that the power can be slotted pretty well with 4 slots since it doesn't need Recharge given its short Recharge, so spending 1-2 slots for Range is doable. Builds at tight and not everyone would want to do it, but it's an option. And I'm very excited to hear about the feature freeze... I'll clear up time for this weekend 😆😝

I don't think the snipe range buff was in the game when Psy Blast was ported to Blasters and some changes were made. Also, I'm not sure what is the relevance, but Psy Lance has 150 range for Blasters and 175 for Defenders. So the snipes themselves are also in the same "why not increased range for Blasters" scenario as the other blasts in the set. On the other hand, Mental Manipulation does get the increased ranges, including 60' on its cone. Just to add more data points, Psy Assault also gets the boosted ranges.