Shin Magmus

No you haven't made friends, nu uh.

...I get that you still are hopeful for anything about this place to improve OP, but it's a lost cause. The GMs have literally shielded the most vile shit-stirring contrarian trolls ad infinitum here for as long as this forum has been active. It is 100% okay for someone to respond with "nu uh, [the opposite of what you said], feels fine to me" to any point you make, even if that point was "the Earth orbits around the sun." In fact, being a contrarian shithead is an easy way to get threads locked! You don't need to come from a place of kindness or communicate in good-faith, just "nu uh" until you bait enough people into disproving your "nu uhs" and presto changeo: Threadicus Lockicus!

Why ask questions you already know the answer to? Just skip right to locking the thread, it's clear what will happen.

This was a teachable moment, and teaching occurred: everyone did great.

Snarky, they aren't worth it. I do not need to elaborate.

...and you wouldn't have to spend 1.5 billion if PAs were easier to get, because then the price would go down for buying them AND SIMULTANEOUSLY you would have more yourself and not need to buy as many.

Yes, but as a direct result of that one possible avenue to get more Prismatic Aether is now gone. So if people want to complain on these forums that PA is too hard to get, then they need to also get involved with Open Beta and shout down the people against making PA easier to get. I did my part. Partially as a result of that debacle, I've just settled into the fact that having the best GM-Soloer is the ideal way for me to be able to harvest PA without needing teammates, at any time of day.

It's a perfect summation of the intelligence of the average CoH player. They will parrot a lie thousands of times, when their eyes can immediately disprove it. If +4 actually did anything, then why do the mobs coming out of the doors cap out at lv53 even when there are lv50s knocking on the doors?

Basically all procs in Volcanic Gasses suck, that's the long and short of it. The fact that ATO pet only goes off once (on initial cast) is bad, but the damage field and the hold pets have exclusive ability to fire only 1 type of proc (Hold or Damage sets), so it never works the way you want. I recommend extracting set bonuses from the power with whatever type of 4-pc or 5-pc bonus you're going for, such as the non-proc parts of Unbreakable Constraint or a Controller/Dom ATO set for Recharge bonuses. If you want to 6-slot the power, the extra slots can just be Damage/Mez Hamis since those will boost all aspects of the power.

Suggesting changes to Poison is Toxic.

I love Beam Rifle, it would be cool if any new Beam sets still had Disintegrate so that they could combo with each other.

Wow, that's a lot of angry assumptions when I was just asking if you tried the other similar self-buff options to compare them to Unrelenting.

Have you tried using the same character but swapping to Unleash Potential and using that before defeat? Have you tried the same but with Adrenal Booster? I'm curious what your death rate would be with a power other than Unrelenting, since you have other options to self rez (as you stated).

For some reason you wrote this as if to refute my point, but I just want to thank you for making my point for me Rudra. The difference between us is that I think: OPTION 1 Preventitive Medicine Mule, Travel Power + Universal Travel Set Mule, 60s: +34.6% all damage, +34.6% ToHit, and +34.6% Recharge Is significantly better than... OPTION 2 Dead Pick, Dead Pick, 30s: +25% all damage, +20% Recovery, +20% Recharge See, that comparison is really not flattering to Unrelenting: a power in the pool we are talking about buffing. Your arguments about using Unrelenting defensively fall apart when Rune of Protection and Unleash Will are superior choices in superior pools (again, with Travel Powers), not to mention that basing your survival around long CD powers is already an unstable build strategy and not needed by people with good builds. Furthermore, anyone picking Unrelenting solely as a self Rez has no idea how this game works or what myriad of options for ally and self Rezzes already exist. People who speedrun Advanced Mode have trays full of T4 Awakens...

Check the Experimentation pool and look at how Adrenal Booster completely outclasses Unrelenting offensively.

Vengeful Slice being this terrible is the single defining reason why intentionally avoiding the entire central mechanic of the set and not doing any Combos yields higher DPS than repeating the Attack Vitals Combo. An attack chain of Blinding Feint -> Ablating Strike -> Sweeping Strike -> Ablating Strike is the most DPS you can do within the set. This attack chain is simply spamming all of the "good" Dual Blades attacks, at like 210% global Recharge bonus with Hecatomb slotted in AS, while ignoring all of the "bad" Dual Blades attacks. Every Combo requires you to use a "bad" attack, for no reason other than the purely arbitrary requirement to be used in the combo. Vengeful Slice is a "bad" attack, and the attack chain of Blinding Feint -> Ablating Strike -> Vengeful Slice -> Sweeping Strike loses entirely because Vengeful Slice is hot garbage. I agree that this is the sort of thing that should be adjusted if only because it's common sense from a good game design perspective: when players are actively avoiding a set's mechanics in terms of optimization: you fucked up.

I WISH TO BE HUGEMAXIMUM.

This enemy can't be killed you say? Fair enough, there are things so much worse than death.

Illusion / Empathy is generally pretty terrible: this is my choice for the worst build. On top of the sets not having any meaningful synergy, the sets have significant active anti-synergy, and you are playing Empathy which is already dead-last in its category: Support sets. Illusion Control on Dominators has a regular AoE Stun and de-emphasizes the importance of Phantom Army a bit, but Illusion Control on Controllers is 100% about Phantom Army and getting enough Recharge to make them permanent (Perma PA). Phantom Army also cannot be affected by most powers in the game, which means you can't cast buffs on them. This means that when playing Illusion Control, the only things you want from your secondary are +Recharge on yourself, and debuffs on enemies. Illusion/Radiation was a FotM build on Live for a long time, for good reason. However most sets give something of value. Even FF, which is definitely mostly a buff set, gives the user some helpful mez protection and survivability, while giving 2 -Res debuffs to use on enemies. Those debuffs also knock down, and getting any knock powers means you can slot Force Feedback Chance for +Recharge in them to help out with reaching perma PA. You can use this logic to find some value in most sets, even otherwise bad pairings like Thermal will at least still give you 2 debuffs for the target you're fighting. Then there's Empathy: the entire powerset is designed to do something that doesn't work on PA or on enemies... all 9 of the powers are useless for your core functions. The only things you can do are use a weak heal on yourself, and give yourself Regen/Recovery Aura (which can't even be perma'd). It is in a league of its own for bad builds: do not recommend.

I'm gonna have to agree overall that Presence is hilariously bad compared to the other pools. It's also genuinely upsetting that Unrelenting has 1/2 the duration of other Pool self buff powers, giving it a base uptime ratio of 1:19... ONE TO FUCKING NINTEEN! So yeah, it could use some work. It ain't gonna get it though. One actually practical and good-for-the-game option would be for one of the Taunts in Presence to be changed into a toggle Taunt Aura. That would instantly make many armorsets on Scrappers, and all armorsets on Stalkers, much more pleasant to play by preventing runners. A good Taunt Aura would also improve the general gameplay experience of many "ranged" ATs by again, preventing runners going in random directions. It ain't gonna happen.

Bro you getting that new Vampire Survivors DLC? They just announced an official Castlevania crossover, so you can get whips with your whips and vampires with your vampires.

This power is genuinely hilarious, and it's one of those mechanics that is super interesting when fighting Adamastor normally or playing on small teams. It's also completely irrelevant to my GM Soloing Illu/Traps, because this power works the same way on PA as every other GM power: it does nothing LOL.

I'm kicking Imperious from my team.

For reference, and since it's SPOOKtober currently, here's my Illu/Traps Controller soloing Halloween Eochai in just under 2 minutes (in Boomtown). I used Amra's Build Benchmarks restrictions as well, so: No Insps No Active Incarnate Powers (except Destiny for survival) No Active Accolade Powers No extra temp summons or attacks of any kind No passive temp powers that boost Damage or Recharge

In ascending order of repeatable utility and genuine speed you have: < LOWEST > - Halloween ToT leeching, pathetically standing around: 10 per char one-time-only - Weekly Strike Targets, profitable for double merits, 1-2 per char weekly - Random chance from any mission completion, infinite per char at all times - Giant Monster Hunting, team activity often led from zone to zone completing several GMs, 0.33-0.66 per GM (on average), infinite per char but gated by spawn timers, daily per char only for Adamastor and Ghost of Scrapyard - Labyrinth of Fog full clears, League activity, 8'ish per char but extra GMs can be spawned to make this more profitable - Advanced Mode ASF, ITF, AND LGTF, team activity for decent players with actually built characters, massive rewards per char per day if speedrunning 4-star difficulty (~23 per char per day for an hour or less of gameplay) < HIGHEST > I have 3 of my mains with a powered costume effect, totalling 750 Prismatic Aethers spent. I've sold my fair share of them but am grinding to have the Electric Armor 250 bonus on another of my mains, currently at 150/250. Prismatic Aether "feels fine to me." Also this community voted against and killed 1 bonus Prismatic Aether for the AT Diversity Bonus on TFs; You only have yourselves to blame for that one.