Coyote

Heh, heck with that. I'm considering reslotting my Ele/Shield Stalker, with no self-heal, with 2 of these. Considering the character has no self-heal or +regen other than Health, this should probably double his effective regeneration rate in combat. I can see Mesmerize as being another good place for it, if you're going to use Mez as a regular part of your attack chain.

Just to note... we ARE talking about yellow snow.... I mean salvage here, right? This is being manipulated, apparently, to push up its price by about 10-15k per item. Considering that most recipes will use 1-2 yellow items, maybe 3 at the high end.... this is going to cost someone crafting an IO about 45k more. Consider the cost of a single rare salvage in the recipe, and also the cost of crafting a recipe once you're in the 30s and.... does it really look like this particular manipulation is going to have characters broke where before they had enough money to craft all their recipes? The discussion is interesting. The puzzle of who is doing it, and why, and how, also seems interesting. But let's not take it too seriously and get too upset about it... it's peanuts even for your first character.

Well, Freezing Rain = Sleet, and FR is available much earlier, so I'm not sure that selection order really matters a lot. And I do think that Sleet should be available earlier for Cold Domination even though it would push Benumb back. Unless it just got swapped with Frostwork.

It's far better in Tornado. 1: Freezing Rain's DEBUFFS last for 30 seconds after the 15 second period of rain, but that's the debuffs. Achilles will only check while the rain is going on, which means that you get to check at 0 seconds (upon summons) and at 10 seconds. So you get 2 checks from each cast. Meanwhile, Tornado lasts for 30 seconds, so you get 4 checks per cast. 2: Each check has a lot higher probability to occur from Tornado, since it's a smaller radius. So you're getting more checks with a higher chance, so a lot more total activation of the debuff on a hard target. Note that putting it in FR will have one big benefit: with a larger area, it will roll on more targets. Given how few targets will be hit by Tornado, if you're asking for AoE reasons rather than AV reasons, then FR is definitely better, just because Tornado isn't really an AoE power unless you can manage to corner-pin a spawn, or unless you're a Gravity/Storm.

Just to note, Storm secondary with FF procs in both Tornado and Lightning Storm should average over 30% Recharge bonus during a sustained fight, which is when having PA permanent is more relevant. If you're traveling between fights, you do lose some Recharge, though, unless you stop to throw LS/Tornado up just for the Recharge bonus whenever they're recharged. Like leaving a trail of angry electric fart clouds behind you 😛

Good, thanks for the Accuracy buff.

Both of the 21-50 End Mod sets have a single-effect End Mod IO that says it can be slotted at 7... and it's correct. I actually slot the attuned version at 7, and then add the +End proc at 17.

I'm going double Electric. Damage will be a bit of a problem, but the ability to drain Endurance nicely with both sets looks very solid.

1: For a Mind Control character, a Dominator is definitely a better bet. Mind Control works far better with their abilities. For example, two Dominate-active Holds will Hold a Boss even if it has upgraded Hold resistance. 2: Both Psy Scream and Psy Dart put out a noticeable -Recharge to mobs, so you can lower incoming damage a lot from a single target even if that target is Hold-resistant. 3: Confuse has a longer duration, and also doesn't cause aggro, so fighting harder mobs can become easy if you first stack 2-3 Confuse casts upon it, and then start doing damage. 4: I know it would be expensive for a first-time character, but there is a Knockback to Knockdown conversion IO that can be slotted in Levitate, which would turn it into an unusual knockdown since they won't go far in the air at all. It would probably look quite reasonable for a psychic effect that causes a target to spasm and lose their balance badly. 5: At higher levels, you get Drain Psyche from the Psychic Assault set and that will help a lot with regenerating damage... combine that with slowing down damage with the -Recharge from psychic blasts, and you can tank a good amount of ranged damage from a single boss. It does require going into melee, using Drain Psyche, and then backing out again... but combine with Confuse or Levitate to make them temporarily unable to attack you as you go in and drain them, and it's not terribly dangerous. 6: Also at higher levels, Psychic Assault gets Subdue, which has an Immobilize effect and can keep hard-hitting Bosses away from you with a couple of casts.

I'm kind of doubting all of these kinds of simple solutions. The real problem with FF can't be solved by giving it more defensive ability: it's already a fine set up to some level... say mid 30s, maybe 40 or so. It has solid defensive abilities. What it doesn't have is a way to contribute to City of AoE-Damage-Is-The-Best-Defense, which is the usual case in the 40s. It's a rare 40s team that really needs more defensive help, so giving it Absorb... would be useless in the situation where FF is useless, and quite helpful in the situation where FF is already helpful. That's why I say it's complicated and there is a lot of discussion about what to do with FF. Because it's a defense-only set from a time when defense MATTERED, that is no longer relevant in today's "defense buffs need not apply" high-level game. Adding more defensive abilities to it wouldn't help, and giving it +Absorb with the idea that it can be used against unresistible damage... only matters in niche AV fights. It needs offense, but that doesn't fit. Or it needs the game to be changed for it. Which would of necessity involve huge nerfs to AoE damage, and I think we can imagine the outcry that this would cause. So... I'm talking a lot, but the short of it is that there is no short and simple "solution" to fix FF 😞

I don't think so. I mean, I think that fixing AT modifiers is a good idea in general, but also that it's a lot easier than fixing Force Fields. I agree with you that fixing FF should be important, but really, there have been discussions about how to fix FF for a while, and when you read several of them, you see that there are certain major and intractable problems involved in fixing FF... so it would require far more than the same level of effort to fix FF, as to fix these bugs. I just read a couple of days ago some comments from, I think, Captain Powerhouse, suggesting that TA is getting looked at. I'm happy to see that the devs are also spending time and effort on buffs, but it's also true that in many cases, buffing sets isn't that simple. Look at the suggested changes to buff Dark Melee's AoE, look at how long it took to create and then balance test the Tanker changes, etc. You can see that they're spending time on buffing also, but it's rarely a simple solution or else it would have been low-hanging-fruit-picked long ago.

Agreed. I haven't seen anyone arguing that a nerf should be done to a set because it can handle it. The reason to say "this can handle it" is not to justify a nerf, but to counter-argue against the argument of "but this will cripple the set". In other words... this is not an argument to nerf, but an argument for why a nerf may not have certain deleterious effects... but if the nerf isn't otherwise justified by game balance, or by balancing debuff values across ATs, then certainly just saying that the set is strong and can handle it, wouldn't be any kind of reason to actually support a nerf.

I haven't seen anything, but I wonder if the pretty spammable Absorb shield could make Gang War really tough.

I'm not sure what you're looking at, but I see far more buffs than nerfs. I mean, the sets that are getting nerfed are STRONG sets (Dark, Storm, Cold) and can handle it. Meanwhile, all nuke-based sets got a great buff from crashless nukes, and all snipe-based sets got a great buff from the snipe changes. And most AoE Immobs became more useful with allowing knockdowns to work so that area knockdowns and area Immobs no longer conflict, AND they work better with AoE knockbacks by turning them into knockdowns. I can go on, but really... go back through the changes made on the server, and I grant to you, there HAVE been some nerfs. But saying things like "Nerving everything serves nobody", when the evidence is that not only isn't everything being nerfed, but in fact there are far more powers getting buffs (and MUCH BIGGER buffs) than there are who are getting relatively minor nerfs. As I said before, I'm not for nerfs for the sake of nerfing. But a better balanced game has a longer lifespan and better gameplay, and it's impossible to always balance by boosting underperforming sets. Look, the Devs are heavily boosting weak powers (nukes, snipes, AoE immobs all were hugely boosted), while lightly weakening (25% reduction in debuff values, on what is probably the strongest AoE debuff for secondaries still leaves it as one of the strongest debuffs around) a few very strong powers. If a game is going to have nerfs (and most should), this is the way to go about it: bigger boosts on more weak powers, and smaller nerfs on fewer strong powers. These Devs are not nerf-crazy, as far as I can tell.

/Energy is great with it, as Power Boost will increase all the -ToHit. And the self-heal. And the duration of the Hold. And your personal defense powers to add to all the -ToHit. Boost Range work well with the shorter cone (Torrent already has a very long range). /Mental is also good, as it gives you a 3rd cone with a nice debuff on it. Mob spawns that are -ToHit, knocked down repeatedly, and attack at half their normal rate, are not that hard to survive especially if you go in and use Drain Psyche on a few guys and build for good defense.

I don't know if it will have any real use on teams, but for a soloing character, having 1500+ (with Absorb) hit points with an AoE debuff to draw attention away from the user can't be a bad thing. And as noted, it makes the set less clicky if it casts 10+ uses of the debuff for the animation time of one summons. I'm quite happy to have it in over the original AoE debuff. It's also different from other buff/debuff sets, to get a pet so early, while an AoE debuff is very ordinary, so on the concept of making sets different from other sets, it's also a good addition.

My main's an Illusion/Storm, so I'm personally affected by this. I don't LIKE it, but I can see the reasons for it, and as you can see, I'm in favor of letting the Devs try to balance the game as best as they can. A better balanced game will result in better gameplay, even if it means that my favorite character loses some DPS. And to be honest, it's hard to argue given that I've met just two AVs in the whole game (though I'll see about Reichsman this week) whom I can't DPS down. That doesn't seem like a character who will be crippled by the nerf and end up WEAK. Frankly, Storm is a very strong set, and it will survive fine, and Cold will also be fine, and Sleet in the epic pool for Dominators was clearly far ahead of the other -Res debuffs available in epics.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the math would be 1.225/1.300 = 0.9423, which is about 6% less effective. But that is assuming there are no other -resistance debuffs stacked on the enemy, which in that case the impact is even less. You're correct, Macskull made a conceptual error and said 25% less damage, when it would have been more accurate to say "25% less BONUS damage". Otherwise, by his phrasing, lowering the debuff to 0% would mean that the mob takes 0% damage, rather than 0% BONUS damage. Yes, lowering the debuff by 25% should end up with damage lowered in the neighborhood of your value, or even less against +level mobs since the level adjustment will lower the debuff. It will probably be about a 4-5% DPS decrease for most characters using the power.

Powers do not have to have identical debuff values, if they differ in other major statistics, like Sleet's huge area, and the fact that it's stackable whereas Envenom is not.

Ice/Dark is also a good combination, and IMO better than Ice/Rad. Ice is a bit End-hungry due to Arctic Air, and Dark Affinity helps with this more than Rad Emission. I wrote about /Rad as a secondary since Ice/Rad would generally not be on most players' radar as a well-performing set, while Ice/Dark would be a bit more obvious. But it's definitely a solid combination.

Hm. Dark Miasma/Affinity is being nerfed into the ground because a couple of powers now use the appropriate AT modifiers? I recall Fear powers being useless because mobs RAN AWAY when you used them. Toggle powers didn't remain on the body when the anchor died. Twilight Grasp's heal didn't work if the mob died during the animation of the power. And I think it had a longer animation time, too. Dark Servant had its own problems. Oh, and Regen was nerfed ENOUGH TIMES that it has its own nerf meme, because it regenerated from the first few nerfs :p. So clearly the devs, now or in the past, don't automatically nerf things into the ground. Seriously, let the Devs balance the game. Now, if you wish to argue that a nerf to a powerset makes that powerset underperforming, that is a very reasonable argument to make. It's helped by numbers, discussions of what the set can do, and so on. But blanket comments about how nerfs are always used to destroy powersets are unreasonable.

In the Dark Blast powerset for Sentinels, it looks as if Dark Blast and Gloom should have their icons switched. The heavier attack usually has the thicker arrow icon.

Although Mid's and other related character generation programs show Terrify as accepting ToHitDebuff and AccurateToHitDebuff sets, it doesn't have a -ToHit component and does not slot these sets.

MMs is a good choice. So is a Plant/Kinetics, because you get higher than usual Controller damage in Roots, and also because it's the most "fire and forget" primary.... throw Seeds, then start Kineticizing 😉 ... with occasional uses of Roots for damage. Roots, Creepers, and the Fly Trap will kill spawns that are fighting each other due to Seeds, and then you can finish the bosses with Fulcrum Shifted Seismic Smashes, while still having time to Transfusionette allies.