Shin Magmus

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.

All Ninjas do Hide, for 3s, only after you cast Smoke Flash. During this window, they persist in their Hidden state and have 100% Critical rate. If you want them to be permanently invisible, there are 3 sets with a Stealth aura that can be taken on MMs and there's also Grant Invis.

Somewhat related: we had 3 Paladins up simultaneously earlier in the month (not the only instance of GM spam) and formed a League to fight them all at once. After beating Paladin #1, they lowered Paladin #2 and #3 to 50% health both in unison. I had seen this coming and backed far away, but it happened: they BOTH activated Coil Drain at the same time. This doubled the frequency of the Nega-Repel pulses so that people who normally jump back on reaction couldn't get away. I saw at least 7 people instantly die and it was quite hilarious.

Done: the easy video game is now even easier so that there is no incentive to actually try to be good at it. Everyone is Super!

Adamastor "feels fine to me". I've never failed to kill him a single time since the changes, and he's completely reasonable to solo as well. If you need help, I can send my Illu/Traps Controller your way. You could also just use Envenomed Daggers on those small pickup teams and be fine. Groups actually were taking down the GMs too quickly and easily, so the devs buffed them after the initial changes! GMs have a new auto power (Colossal) that causes them to gain Max HP in relation to the number of players around them; this is to directly counter big teams and leagues. A small team of 5 circumvents Colossal and keeps Adamastor at base Max HP, so you actually had a fine shot at taking him down. Maybe everyone on the team was just insanely weak?

Empathy stocks would be super-inflated for no logical reason, like GME was. I say send it; It would be hilarious to see people piss away their inf.

I always appreciate the TTs on my team, regardless of their size.

Snarky, if I talked that way to someone I'd have my comment deleted (and worse). Be Snarky To Each Other.

You're some kind of genius.

This entire time you'd already convinced yourself that wherever you move and fight is right, and wherever anyone else moves and fights is wrong. Whether they use Fold Space or not, you've already demonized your teammates in your mind because you keep using derogatory words like "very lazy". They were never going to be able to please you, regardless of what they did. I recommend solo play.

...Fold Space literally benefits melee players more than ranged players as melee AoEs are universally smaller in size, and (outside of Tankers) have reduced target caps compared to ranged AoEs. Fold Space benefits the melee ATs by grouping enemies together more closely, enabling them to get reliable target-saturated multihits with melee cones such as Flashing Steel and Crowd Control, that the default spacing of an enemy spawn is too spread out to allow. Ranged ATs can just stay where they were and shoot the far away enemy, while melee ATs would've had to move over to them (costing time). Fold Space is most beneficial to the melee ATs in the party, and often used by them.

Let me up an important aspect of MMO game design, which isn't actually something a simple as "class diversity", but rather the game's systems letting a player "feel useful to a party/team". Enemies that can use MoG-type powers are being brought up again because some builds have a harder time with them. But the other builds that can effortlessly cancel or otherwise neuter MoG, like your Dominator simply Holding the enemy before they can use it, are getting the opportunity to "feel useful". If you're on a team (playing the multiplayer aspect of MMORPG) then the Support ATs and CC ATs on the team are perfectly entitled to encounter some enemies and mechanics that enable them to "feel useful". The real issue with all of these threads is that their focus on solo play seeks to make changes to the game that will affect multiplayer play. OP says they're bored when an enemy uses MoG and then they have to wait. That means that the Support AT that can counter MoG will remove boredom from the game if invited to the team: the Support gets to make the game faster and more exciting for OP; That's good game design. If the game is nerfed and made easier, so that every build can solo every enemy easily, then it will be difficult or categorically impossible for people to feel as useful to their teammates. When everyone is super... no one will be.

I'm getting a bit tired of the preponderance of "nerf City of Heroes to make it even easier" threads lately. To add further to the list of ways to deal with MoG-type powers: these are powers that the enemy uses on themselves. That means that some of the buffs will be weaker if you hit them with the "negative power boost" effects of Poison's Weaken for example. You can fight their buffs with debuffs, and obviously -Def and -Res alone are still making a noticeable difference. You know that one guaranteed MoG on SBB, where one of the AVs will use MoG when near death? My Poison Defender single-handedly makes it so that the team of 3 players can reliably keep hitting that AV right through their MoG. There are some pretty good powersets in this game if you take the time to look for them...

Giant Monsters specifically were given a new passive power "Colossal" that causes them to gain +Max HP based on the number of players nearby. This was added to prevent people forming massive Leagues to remove all challenge from GM fights. It has the biggest impact vs U'kon Gr'ai, who is now hilariously tough to kill. So actually, the devs want monsters to present some sort of challenge no matter how many players are engaging. How effective was this change? Eh, results vary, but my Illu/Traps solo's all the GMs anyways so it's a moot point.

This is the crux of the issue, and it applies to farming in AE but it always applied to farming any enemy group or mission, even before AE. The reason that the first farmer was a Fire/Kin Controller was Fire Cages, and the reason that the first villain farmer was a Fire/Psy Dom was Fire Cages. Unless you character can instantly kill every enemy in a spawn, or has inherent Taunt procs, enemies will always try to run. So if you want to do an outdoor AE map, or want to speed-clear radio mishes or a traditional farm map in PI, then your only realistic choices must be Brutes/Tanks or niche Controllers/Doms. Lots of builds theoretically inflict massive damage on a low enough CD to be up every spawn, like a DP/Kin Corruptor completely loaded with dmg procs, but enemies run away while you're doing it. Having a powerset with a very strong autohit AoE Slow will not prevent enemies from trying to run, but it will make them run more slowly... partially mitigating the issue. I have a Fire/Psy Dom but Plant Control is the other good option and can do more damage in AE. You'll want your character to be able to apply as many of the 3x -Res procs as possible if you're solo farming, preferably very early in combat (Annihilation proc in Flashfire, followed by Fury of the Gladiator proc in Psychic Shockwave). Trying to farm without a plan is just an exercise in frustration, and chasing fleeing enemies around.

Bravely running away!

"There's no longer a disproportionately piss-easy option available, for me to turn my brain off and win for free, and that's terrible." It seems like NuCouncil are working as intended by bringing the difficulty up to that of the other available options. I recommend that people who complain (constantly) about NuCouncil read the patch notes for when they were released as to why: this is a choice of mission enemy faction that is supposed to have parity with Carnies and Arachnos. If solo leveling is that much of a chore for you, the Tunnel Witch AE mission is right there...

Well I hope you feel better and know that your opinions do have value. I recommend a break from this blighted forum, it can do wonders.