Death2Tyrants

The AT was designed to be a team support class. With a few exceptions, most controllers are fairly low DPS especially early on. For early levels you basically have to work in the attacks you can purchase from the SMART vendor in the starting zones, they are free so you can pick up 3 total; I usually go two ranged and one melee. If you have the cash you can pick up the charged attacks. You'll also have to figure out how to juggle a ST control rotation between attackers until you pick up more AoE controls. You can also opt in to take the ST immob (less optimal) or pick up an attack from the power pools (prefered). If you pick up the Immob you can respec out of it earlier. Power pools have a few good options with Sorcery being popular for the Arcane bolt, Enflame, and Teleport/Flight and the Res shield. Enhancements early on are pretty weak, If you have the coin you can slot IOs so you don't have to change out so often but enhancements don't really shine until the mid game. The biggest problem I see is with endurance. You can run the DFB or DIB to get the recovery buff from the trial. Besides that you can slot 2 End mods in Stamina and if your end is really tanking slot End Redux in your attacks. I focus on maintaining fluid attacking by doing so. When you gain some more experience playing the game I also recommend Mids Reborn, it is a build tool you can export to the forums to have people look at your build. https://midsreborn.com/

Someone was starting a group over on Reddit too, it may be of interest:

and Elec/Kin (not necessarily for slows in this case). Depending on the build the high power uptime makes it demanding to play. Still working on making it into a melee speedster.

Yes. It is similar to how you can have all player names and bars display all the time. The command has been around for a while. I think possibly even in the original game. It is a bit immersion breaking but it helps when you are moving around a map looking for spawns. There may be a slight performance hit with the setting but I haven't tested it in a while. I usually only run with the names displayed, the bars add too much clutter for my liking. Here is a full list of commands: https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/List_of_Slash_Commands

They display the names and health, endurance bars of enemies without selecting them.

Nice find and correlating this dysergy to Sleepnade. No wonder I was having problems with LN getting low to no KD.

Encouraging to hear. Keep up the great work. Thank you.

Clearly you understand what I am getting at and I agree with your response. I think area of denial was also the goal for the set's signature but the mechanics may not be there to support it in real gameplay. Most sets in the game have a signature/identity, it isn't limited to Control sets. I separate delivery mechanic from effect. IMO Why Symphony falls flat is it really only has one unique power, the pet with the echos. The Sleep -DMG is a nice touch but everything else is boiler plate with new eye candy. IMO despite it being a good set it isn't memorable for that reason. The one unique thing about it is the reason why some people hate the pet. One power isn't going to give this set a unique feel nor will the location based activation. Regardless people will play the set since it is gun based; you'll probably have some subset of players that won't play because it is gun based and in their mind guns aren't heroic. For this reason I recommend considering alt wrist launched and/or grenade toss animations. Smoke is close to being a great power, too much adjustment can make it OP. Sleepnade was decent when PROCable but it is just a dressed uo copy of Elec/ sleep patch with some differences. Forcing Controllers to crutch on PROCs for DPS is a subpar solution if we are going to keep Containment as is with its limited scope of triggers (Hold, Sleep. Immob, and Disorient). At this point Liquid Nitrogen is the biggest stinker in the set but hard to justify something else without being too powerful when you look at other Tier 4 powers in Control sets. I liked the Immobilize compromise just not the trigger conditions of wet. One of the earlier versions played better to my liking too. Perhaps that is the best way to approach the discussion by looking at other Tier 4s. IMO the only issue I see is Arsenal's Tier 3 is in some ways better than other Tier 3s. Comparing Tier 4s: Dark/ has a ST confuse Possess Earth/ has a Slow (-Run) and -DEF patch with Quicksand Elec/ has a spammable KD with Jolthing Chain. It can be PROCed and is basically better than a KD patch if spammed but at the cost of activation time. Fire/ has a resistable -To Hit Debuff and -Perception. Usually skipped. Gravity/ has Propel as ST DPS attack with splash KD. Ice/ has AA multiple controls and debuffs Illusion/ gets AoE hold Flash (the other sets get it as a Tier 8 Mind/ gets a ST confuse. Not so unique anymore since more sets get access to confuse; that is a good thing. Plant/ gets an AoE Sleep (not persistent) Symphony/ gets a ST confuse with Serenade. Not limited to LN patch but thinking outside the box, since the set is predominately grenade based, perhaps allowing the option to set up the control like Trip Mine or Poison Trap but at a distance and have the effect activate when an enemy is in proximity. Since we are talking about controls either disallow multiple instances, disallow stacking from the same player or adjust the numbers to allow overlap of multiple instances. The last option pigeonholes folks into +recharge to compete. 🤷‍♂️ Wish we had more time to hammer this one out. Still excited to see a new Control Set. I am hopeful something will get worked out. Edit: Maybe have LN start as an Immob and decay into a Slow patch. As an AoD power I liked the version that had the higher KD chances I think it was an Ice Slick clone that was used. I really don't think this will fix anything.

My criticisms of Arsenal Control isn't as harsh as some others but I do agree with many of the points made about the set. I am still excited to see new control sets released even if it only serves two ATs. The TLDR Slows and Sleeps are subpar controls. Arsenal has no unique signature. Arsenal Control checks all the box of following a theme of ejecting projectiles and grenades out of a gun. Mechanically, minus occasional wandering mobs, the set offers fairly good control with persistent location based effects. Whether deliberate or not, I find it complements /Traps and /Trick Arrow just fine. I think it is fine to break away from the boilerplate copy-paste some of the other sets are designed by. I don't like that the set has throwaway powers. I much prefer sets that have compelling choices for every power pick. It should be difficult to not pick a power. Min-Maxers will always optimize but the average player should be saying "picking between power A or power B is a tough choice". Some powers will always have more utility at lower levels which is fine as a power set design choice. I don't necessarily agree with this philosophy, if someone put effort into crafting a set every power should be a compelling choice to be played IMO. As a controller player not a fan of movement slows or sleeps either even if it is a pulsing effect. I would almost prefer to loose the Sleep for Fear even if I loose containment. Sleepnade is nearly in the skip camp while LN patch is a hard skip for me as it's knock down is too infrequent as a control or damage power. What makes some of the original sets memorable is the unique signature most of the sets had at the time of their release. Before the release of Dark/. Earth had Volcanic Gases which was a unique effect with a persistent hold patch. Fire/ was a bit out of wack(or should be the standard) but had some utility with Smoke and mostly DPS oriented effects with Hot Feet and Bon Fire. Ice/ was a a bit of a Fire/ clone with lower DPS. Movement Slow + -Recharge and AA are characteristic of the set. Gravity/ has Wormhole and at the time Propel was neat (but mostly eye candy) Illusion/ is the stand out with PA and offering some Invisibility support (leveraging threat reduction was the intent) Mind/ was very unique with prenerf TK and Mass Confusion. When most thought of petless Mind as being weak, TK in the hands of a pro was a marvel to watch Plant/ has Creepers and SoC which some complain supplants MC in Mind/. Symphony control has some of this signature with the echoing effects of the Reverberant. This set was also bold enough to boost DPS up which benefit one of the lowest DPS ATs. All this to say Arsenal Control doesn't have a signature IMO. It has a theme and is mechanically serviceable as a set but it doesn't have a signature power(s). I think this is what makes sets fun and memorable via uniqueness. I get it that with limited assets and an emphasis on reuse it is probably difficult to craft up unique feeling power(s) within a set. So Arsenal/ has: Theme = yes Mechanics = yes unique signature fun factor = no

Here is Boomie's archived build thread since there seemed to be interest: http://web.archive.org/web/20120905001059/http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=253197

Surprisingly the videos are still up:

There is only one example of Pylon soloing I can think of with Elec/; very much the exception. Can't remember the players name (maybe Boomie?) but he used to post his Elec/Cold/Mace shenanigans before shutdown. He soloed a Pylon but almost entirely depended on the Tarantula summons and Mace attacks; he may as well been playing */Cold/Mace cause Elec/ had little to do with the victory from what I remember.

From my observations in playing the set it suffers from low DPS, chain mechanic misses/interruptions issues and weak secondary effects. For starters it is a low DPS set if not the lowest compared to other sets; PROCs and Pool Powers are really the only way to bolster DPS. PROCs ties up set slotting opportunities; pools tie up utility pool picks. The pets are fairly fragile and don't contribute much aside from being short lived punching bags. Since they are melee pets they then to expose themselves to the harder hitting attacks but have no mitigation From a control standpoint, the chaining mechanics can hurt the set if the control misses the first target or if someone kills a target in the chain. The later part is is especially true for the confuse since it propagates so slowly. Other AoEs are applied to the whole group vs one or two targets at a time. The KB chain gives decent control but you basically have to spam it to get Ice Slick/Bonfire equivalence. The secondary effect only works well when you go "all in" since mobs can cast with 1 End. It works better when applying some -Recovery which elevates the set to a higher standing in terms of raw control. The other option is to spam -End attacks. Controller have a limited choice in secondaries that provide either effects, /Poison and /Kin being the standouts for -Recovery and -End(ST) respectively. Some targets are outright immune to the secondary effect as well so you have a situation where the secondary effect is outright ignored.