Shin Magmus

I went ahead and watched the video. Credit where credit is due, I didn't realize that Sleep Grenade was so fundamentally awful and bad that it actually increased how long fights took rather than decreasing it: you successfully managed to not use Sleep Grenade once in this video and it seems to have helped. I'll be sure to respec out of it (while wishing it was an AoE Immob), and not use it at all on my Arse Controller, since the slow isn't strong enough and it robs significant damage from Liquid Nitrogen. Thanks for enlightening me about the useless power. It was my bad for enhancing the slow in it and using it.

I've already reserved the best "Arse" name on Everlasting, and even if I don't like the set, I'm still going to make the character and take the name just so nobody else can have it.

Yes you did.

I'm going to embed 2 videos side-by-side and not use the Forum Link option, for ease of viewing and make this point. You guys be the judges. 2 different builds, one on Beta with Arse Control and the other on Live with Fire Control: both vs Yin TF at +0/x8.

Release Candidate 1: Thanks for adding -Fly to 1 single target power. Anti-Thanks for not adding -Fly to any AoE power: this is just another way that Arse Control will be glaringly inferior to good Control sets. Seriously, have fun playing this on Katie Hannon TF. ...and that's it. There were no other meaningful buffs to the set. Welp, this is what we're getting: it's better than nothing but worse than all other available choices. Now that we have the next round of patch notes, I will conclude with the statement I made while I was testing Arse Control in Build 4... All of my lv50 characters "work" (as in function). If my team literally wipes on something like the Ambush Waves on Posi1 TF or the Toxic Sewer of Apex TF, I can pop some insps (and maybe also Demonic Aura), and win the fight anyways... solo. My Melees can do this, my Supports can do this, and all of my Controllers can do this. As a general rule of thumb, I can insp up and be powerful enough (for a brief window) to win any fight solo. This is true even on hard support Defenders with full Leadership, who lack the Fighting pool at all, and whose kits are focused on buffing allies. It's just how this game works and how functional most sets are. Arse control dis-functional. My Arse Controller will be my one and only character who doesn't work. I'll need both a solid Brute or Tanker ahead of me to taunt enemies to hopefully reduce scatter, and also a real Controller or Dom to apply better slows -or- an AoE Immob (some sort of AoE -Fly) to enable my terrible character to perform at an adequate level: sad. Thanks to everyone else who tried.

That's consistent with the useless redundancy of Superior Invisibility on any Illusion paired with Storm, Cold, or Dark. Your secondary Stealth toggle provides slightly more Def in combat, infinitely more Res (to types valuable against most enemies), some tertiary effect like a weird mez resist, and it benefits the entire team as well as your pet. So on those characters, the primary Invis power is useless to ever run, and only taken as a 1 slot mule. That's an issue that would need to simultaneously be addressed on Illusion... but it hasn't yet so I don't think the dev team sees an issue with the redundancy. That relegates Cloaking Device to being a dead pick on 3 possible pairings for Controllers. But hey, whatcha gonna do?

Well we'll see what happens, but at this point we're just waiting on a new version to test. The sad thing is that this set trended pretty objectively in a purely upward direction with Build 3/4 being mostly buffs... and it's still this bad.

I'm fairly certain that the powers team wants Smoke Canister to be the unique signature power. The obvious issue is that the power still isn't good enough to beat Arctic Air (0.0s cast time and stronger effects) or Seeds of Confusion (has a cast time but more reliable instant Confuse paired with a lower CD). So Arsenal's unique signature power is just a worse version of set-defining powers in 2 superior Control Sets. Well that's what I *think* the powers team is trying to go for, since they refuse to explain any of the decisions or release a statement of intent for the set. Arse Control has an identity now too: it's the Control Set with the most ground patches. That's a workable identity. It's just not a workable gameplay plan without stronger slows or an AoE Immobilize.

See, I wish there was no escape, but if you watch any of the footage of my Arse/Traps the reality is that it's very easy for enemies to escape. Do you have a video of you pausing all attacking for 10s, then walking up and successfully toe-bombing (and the enemies not leaving the area)?

You sit and do nothing for 10s during a fight, just so you can walk up and place an incredibly slow casting mine? On top of that being really unhelpful to your team, I have to ask: why don't the enemies just run away during those 10s of you not casting anything? You have a recording of enemies politely sitting in your patches for 10s while you do nothing?

We're just waiting so I figured I'd get more data from a baseline everyone here should be familiar with: Penelope Yin TF: Please enjoy the footage of these few fights. This is very frequently ran content, often blitzed through on +0 though I've seen teams turn it up to get more XP since Freakshow aren't a terribly difficult enemy group. I tested on +0/x8 for the same experience, and picked this because Freakshow have some mobs which can fly. The results are comically sad. The idea that this set has slow fields and an Ice Slick of sorts, but that NONE of those powers inflict -jump or -fly, is genuinely hilarious. Watch these guys just fly out of Sleep Grenade at hyperspeed because they don't care at all about my weak powers. Caltrops stops this, but that's my secondary. I could manually throw a single target Immob from my secondary at every single enemy in turn, and spend the fight dealing 0 damage, but that wouldn't be very smart. I could also stop it with other highly specific powers from secondaries like Tar Patch or Glue Arrow, but why should I need to do that when Ice Slick or Quicksand or Carrion Creepers or any Control Set Immobilize will provide -fly effects in all of those sets? At this point, we've devolved into highlighting each individual weakness of the set one-at-a-time as a single problems: such as needing -fly. We then sit here waiting for a new build to bake in these effects into one of the existing powers. But all of these weaknesses combined just add up to be: Fire Cages (Wide Area Web Grenade, etc.) It's amazing how easy it would be to fix this.

As long as Resurrect is buffed in quite literally ANY meaningful way, then we are making progress. Lower CD is just one other way, but it needs something.

I also got flattened when I tried Arachnos, in both Build 3 and in Build 4 (after the bugfix). It's not even worth attempting again, Arse Control is too weak to fight them at +4/x8.

The only issue is that as soon as you add -Tohit, players can add procs. If the debuff is autohit, then at least it's not possible to add Accurate Tohit Debuff sets which means no Cloud Senses dmg proc. I'm less concerned with how the power makes enemies die faster (but it does need to do that, so this set can be relevant in any way), and more concerned with not letting Empaths have a proc nuke of any kind... Because Anguishing Cry is a vicious proc nuke.

A foreword from the author... Hi there, I'm the Mr. Shin who likes Defenders and Controllers. You may have noticed me mention that Empathy is the worst Support set in the game once or twice. Well it's the worst right now (after changes to other sets), and critically bad on Defenders in particular... but I did not always feel this way. 2 decades ago, my first lv50 on Live was an Empathy/Dark Defender. I am intricately familiar with playing the set both before and after power creep, and with playing its near identical analogues: first in Thermal and then later when Pain Domination was added. I recall when Pain Domination first came out, we noticed very clearly the changes to the set to bring it more in line with playing "better" with MMs, pets in general, and League mechanics. I also noticed the overt detail that no fewer than 3 of Pain Domination's powers are simply upgrades from their Empathy companion powers: this will be discussed in detail. These 3 powers offer incentives to pick Pain Domination over Empathy in an extremely literal way. I've mentioned this fairly often throughout the years, but after the Homecoming Team completed excellent reworks of Trick Arrow and Force Field, it makes Empathy's current state just stick out like a sore thumb. There is currently a patch being tested which brings minor buffs to a few other sets again, including a nice buff to Melt Armor in Thermal. In light of all these changes: Empathy is now blatantly the weakest choice you can pick, and that's a true statement if you play it well and actively use all of the buffs. On the other hand, If you play it poorly (don't click your powers, fail to buff, focus on reactive healing), it is even more egregiously bad. I think that next major patch is a great time to finally rework Empathy and bring it up to par with the best choices it competes with. Seeing Empathy finally be "good" would do wonders for Homecoming's power balance and new player experience, as we move into an era of a potential player surge. Read on below to see how I would fix Empathy. Fixed Empathy By: Shin_Rekkoha (Shin Magmus) (Numerical values listed below will be using Defender as the base AT. Reduce power values by known scalar ratios for other ATs) T1 - Healing Aura / T2 - Heal Other While these powers are ruthlessly boring, they have direct parity with the heals in Pain and Thermal: which seems to be the intended baseline for such powers. I dislike how long of an animation time commitment going with your PbAoE Heal is in all 3 of these sets, and this is a big issue when people put their Healing Aura on auto-cast: because it prevents them from being able to reactively click other powers. No changes are warranted here, but a short animation time reduction to every PbAoE heal like this (including Radiant Aura) would probably be good for the game. *No Changes -or- minor animation time reduction for ALL Healing Aura clones* T3 - Absorb Pain Here's our first directly inferior power. Absorb Pain debuffs the user in exchange for the massive heal, but it doesn't give them any real incentive to use this power over Heal Other most of the time. Pain got around this by making Absorb Pain buff the user's damage, which is a useful buff for focusing on your work. As Empathy is more defensively-themed, I think Absorb Pain giving Resistance is entirely on-brand. This buff not only makes the power more safe to use, incentivizing the player to go for it, but it diversifies what IOs can be slotted into the power. *Add Resistance on self after use / allow slotting Resist sets / +22.5% Damage Resistance (All) on self (unresistable) for 15s* T4 - Resurrect Here's our second directly inferior power. With the same 3 minute CD as Conduit of Pain but no buffs or secondary effects to the target or to yourself: Resurrect is the absolute worst "Rez" in the game. An incredibly simple fix is simply for this power to buff the target, using templates from other "Rez" powers. Conduit of Pain, Mutation, and Elixer of Life all give a very strong buff for a duration, followed by a weaker debuff for half that duration. This double-edged buff/debuff theme does fit those powers, but for an Empath's kind heart I don't think we want to debuff our teammates. In exchange, I propose the buff granted be weaker as balance for not having a "crash" or debuff. Resurrect should give the target +12.5% Defense (All but Psy) and 15% Res (All) for 60s. *Add Defense and Resistance on revived target after use / allow slotting Defense and Resist sets / + 12.5% Def (All but Psy), +15% Damage Resistance (All) on target (unresistable) for 60s* T5 - Clear Mind Here's our third directly inferior power. Clear Mind is identical to Clarity, but both are weaker than Pain's Enforced Morale which gives a minor +Recharge as well. The bigger issue is how much worse these powers are than Antidote and Thaw though, which provide damage resistance on top of valuable debuff resistance (to slows) in exchange for not granting +Perception. I've always thought there was a middle ground here, and that ground was giving both Clear Mind and Clarion the property of minor Resistance to Psy damage. It makes complete sense with the names of the powers, and it partially patches a current hole in both Empathy and Sonic Resonance. Crucially: Clear Mind, Enforced Morale, and Clarity are regarded as Dead Powers in your build because they can slot nothing useful, nor is adding slots to them ever useful. Most people throw in a Recharge IO and that barely makes any difference. Allowing the player to mule an incredibly useful Unique Resistance IO in these powers is simply giving them parity with Poison and Thermal Radiation. *Add Resistance on target after use / allow slotting Resist sets / +10% Damage Resistance (Psy) on target (unresistable) for 90s* T6 - Fortitude I genuinely don't have an issue with this power. It's unfortunate that sets with a single target buff like this have problems on MMs because they can't easily buff all the pets and still buff the player teammates, but that's not a gigantic issue. Fortitude has parity with similar powers like Forge and Temporal Selection: so buffing Fortitude is a dangerous move that would invite buffs to several other powers. The only issue with this power is that players don't use it, but we can't control that. *No changes* T7 - Revitalizing Aura (Recovery Aura + Regeneration Aura) It's best to just say this first: a pure Recovery buff is worthless on many teammates whose builds do not require help managing endurance. All good Recovery buffs in this game have secondary effects, usually +Recharge, to provide any benefit at all in these situations. Recovery Aura and Regeneration Aura also dubiously cannot be made permanent, in a game where support sets have completely defined themselves by (barely) reaching monstrous Recharge to "perma" buffs such as Overgrowth and Chrono Shift. So what we've got here is a power that is frequently, situationally useless... with the audacity to also say that it needs downtime. This is completely sound justification to merge Recovery Aura directly into Regeneration Aura as part of the rework. It's just good game design to do this. Now, for this new power, it needs a name and I think "Revitalizing Aura" fits the bill nicely. We're not done yet though. Increasing the duration is interesting but Overgrowth lasts for only 60s and Chrono Shift for 90s, and this power is very similar in scope and power to those. Leaving it at 90s duration "feels right", so that leaves lowering the CD. A reduction from 500s to 360s is reasonable for uptime that is nearly permanent, and with outside sources of +Recharge could be permanent. Now all that's left is strength adjustment. Recovery +200% -> +100%. Regen +500% -> +250%. Now grants debuff resistance, scales with player level, 64.88% resistance to -Regen/-Recovery/-End at lv50. This new power still provides incredibly potent buffs, but now it also insulates the team against debuffs making it more consistent overall at countering enemy groups which wield such debuffs. *Regeneration Aura and Recovery Aura combined / Power renamed to Revitalizing Aura / Base buff effects decreased, added debuff resistance to -Regen and -Recovery / decreased cooldown* *Power Stats: PbAoE buff (allies and self), size unchanged, 360s CD / +100% Recovery, +250% Regeneration on targets (unresistable) for 90s / +64.88% Resistance to -Regeneration, -Recovery, and -Endurance (ignores buffs and enhancements, unresistable, scales with player level) on targets for 90s* T8 - Merciful Plea (Empathy gets a NEW POWER) There's no getting around the obvious answer here: the solution is the thing that was increased on Trick Arrow during the rework and added to Force Field during the rework: Empathy needs a power that inflicts -Resistance on enemies. This is the only way for the set to remain relevant on teams at all when the players aren't struggling, and don't need Empathy for its defensive merits. However, in the interest of naming and theme: I strongly believe that the new power should be categorically unable to deal any direct damage. This means the power CAN'T slot set categories which contain "damage procs". I think this design constraint is not that limiting, and there are several solid potential ideas, but I'll throw out the one I like best: "Merciful Plea" ("Heartful Cry"). This should be a PbAoE debuff with a massive radius, very similar Anguishing Cry. This vector passively teaches new players that they should be near their team and move in with them: which will facilitate better synergy with Healing Aura and the Defender ATO procs. A -Resistance power needs another effect, and the obvious choice is -Damage so you can better protect your teammates and keep them alive. *Added new power "Merciful Plea" to debuff enemy Resistance / also reduces their Damage output / cannot slot any procs or be made to deal direct damage* *Power Stats: PbAoE 25 ft radius, 16 targets max / 120s CD / -30% Resistance (All) for 30s on targets (ignores buffs and enhancements) / -37.5% Strength to Damage (All) on targets for 30s* T9 - Adrenaline Boost This power is pretty cracked for what it does honestly, just like Painbringer. When enhanced for Heal(Regen), this buff can make a decent build completely un-killable and put them into a hands-off safety state for 90s. I see no reason to change this. However, if I was going to add anything, it would be that Painbringer and Adrenaline Boost should be the only powers in the game that give the target a small amount of "Bloom" like Nature, enabling everyone to heal the targets more during the effect and partially counteracting -Heal debuffs *No changes -or- Add minor +Healing (Negative Resistance to Healing)* That's it, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on this rework. Unless of course, if you just want to stop in to tell me that "Empathy is fine", in which case you really don't understand the game.

Having Burst and M30 Grenade on a Controller would be completely insane, in a good way. But I just think that's a bridge too far for this patch. WAWG would also be a dead Epic power and 100% not worth placement as a lv41 or lv44 Epic T3 when paired with any Controller primary that already has an AoE Immob... so like 80%of them. The value of the normal AoE Immobs that Controllers get is that, due to their low CDs, even if you could take one in an Epic Pool: you'd never need it for stacking because you can just re-cast Fire Cages or Roots so quickly (to Mag6, then Mag9, etc).

Dunno if Arsenal Assault will get changed much anymore since it's, yknow, not getting much feedback and pretty good overall. Just thought I'd mention that "Wet" is dead for now, so Arsenal Assault lacking it is no longer a specific hindrance when paired with Arsenal Control.

I think that's workable, but the idea of Flashbang doing it has some believable merit too and would give an AoE source of -fly. It's not unreasonable for an endgame build to use a 90s base CD power effectively every fight, so this would help vs groups of fliers. Getting hit by a Flashbang disorients you because of damage to your inner ear, which affects balance and therefore flight. The light blinding you would also make it impossible to see the horizon to maintain steady flight.

That would usually happen automatically as a side-effect of the AoE Immobilize you cast right after your Opener. It's just such an automatic part of most Control sets to have -fly and tie it to both Immob powers, that is is glaringly obvious when that effect is taken away. Anyway, here's my respecced build and the run on the same Carnie mission at +4/x8. Even with an additional Arse Control power taken, more Slow-enhancement into Sleep Grenade, and more finesse with where and how I can spam Sleep Grenade now... enemies run from me so fucking much. I open with Flashbang or Smoke Canister or one of these powers that are clearly intended to be Openers, then since I have no Immobilize I just immediately use Sleep Grenade (+Slow slots) and Caltrops (+Slow slots) together and hope that most of the enemies won't be able to run away. It's only moderately effective and not terribly enjoyable. At least the main CCs do disable slightly better now, and Tear Gas + Poison Trap at least does what I expect it to consistently.

If Tear Gas is hovering around Mag 3 for you, that's workable for Controllers because they'll use the same builds they currently use with Volcanic Gasses. Controllers run into melee then combo the power with either: Choking Cloud, Entangling Aura, Poison Trap, or The Cooler Poison Trap. This results in overrall non-stop Mag 4+ Hold on all enemies in the area, and it's the Crux of how my Earth/Nature Controller build works.

Well tonight after work I'll actually get to do some testing again, noice. About that Defense comment... They're probably not going to bump up Def more in Cloaking Device because it provides a lot of Def already by self Stealth power standards. Remember that the best self Stealth in any armorset (besides Hide on Stalkers) on the tankiest AT in the game: Shadow Cloak on a Tanker, provides 5% Def to all base. That value is implicitly higher than what Cloaking Device "should" be allowed to have. These toggles are still barely worth enhancing even at the values they currently have: I put a 2nd slot in Cloaking Device for a Lv50+5 LotG Def/End.

Confuse does not now, and never has, set up Containment. The check is for Immob, Hold, Sleep, Stun. So without an Immob, the 2 powers in your Arsenal (I'm funny) that apply reliable AoE Containment, which is not instantly broken on damage, are the 90s CD Stun and the 240s CD Hold Patch: that's it.

If I learned one thing from my life as a whole, but scaled down to just discussing our adventures on this forum over the past month: it's that you shouldn't give up just because something feels futile. Really small margins are beaten, with changes that have positive effects for many people, just because a handful of people tried their hardest anyways even when something seemed futile. It's the principle of the thing.

If anyone is following this thread, all meaningful discussion is still happening in the Focused Feedback: Arsenal Control thread, and a new build just dropped that buffed several powers but unfortunately broke Sleep Grenade currently. Most, but not all, commenters here are active over there as well. I'd recommend reading the Build 4 patch notes for a couple reasons. The main point is that they seem to have agreed to dispense a lot of buffs to Arsenal Control as a whole, and many of the buffs are similar to what I outlined at the start of this thread. There are buffs/changes to Smoke Canister, Tranq Dart, and Tear Gas: which are all analogous or identical to what I suggested. This is important not because it validates me personally, but because the set has moved toward having an identity and being objectively strong. Arsenal Control is now truly "The Patch Control Set" as it has tons of ground-targeted powers which can be used to finesse the locations of a fight and where enemies end up "stopping". Additionally, it has more direct comparisons with Earth Control. Not only do both sets have an especially Tanky pet, but they both have a version of "Earthquake, a version of "Volcanic Gasses", and have a ground-target power to slow enemy movement tied to a 45s CD. This means that you can do a lot of the same stuff in Arsenal Control... same but different (and maybe even better since the Confuse power will be a marked advantage over Earth): Lots of good stuff. The shenanigans with the "Wet" flag are still ongoing, but that's not as much of a deal-breaker anymore when the rest of the set is finally good. If this powerset is given a truly consistent AoE Immobilize: then it will be something that I genuinely want to play. One step at a time, or like... don't look a gift-horse in the mouth. I just wanted to say thanks for all the positive feedback here: especially since I didn't make this thread myself and expected this to quickly devolve into a flame war. It was actually pretty civil and productive (once you pretend Arcane doesn't exist). There's not much else to say here though, this thread is almost entirely redundant when the pitches in the first page are just stating how the set is now. It might be worth closing.

I saw a lot of overall positive changes to the set to improve aspects of underperforming powers and just fix other ones. The increased tohit debuff on Smoke Canister doesn't really even need to be tested for us to simply math out its effect (as experienced support players) and how much it will improve the safety of teams. I agree that it's ALMOST good. It's just a shame that I'm not allowed to make enemies stay within the patches, and I'm not going to struggle with more un-fun solo testing until at least that one critical bug is fixed.