Bossk_Hogg

Ice also has defenses, better single target, better AE, and is more team friendly. Dark has solid KB in Torrent, equal/better ST, and better AE. Stacking to hit debuffs are quite solid when paired with any defense you have, and helps teams way more than random KB. Do you just hate energy blast so much that it needs to be at the bottom tier for basically everything? Time spent moving is time not spent blasting, and we've already established it's DPS is poor. Forcing them to burn a damn slot on every power is just kicking a weak set when it's down.

I'm a noob, but this is the method I use when I solo. KB gives me breathing space when I'm getting mobbed. makes the single target attacks more efficiently when you pick them off one by one while they're rag-dolling. Also. as a ranged fighter, I don't want melee attacks up in my face. if they get too close, they can hurt me. a little KB puts some comfortable distance to set up a chain. Sentinels have scrapper level protection for a reason.

I would LOVE to have the darkwand or something as an always out accessory for magic characters. /signed.

Fire has better AE by leaps and bounds. It's single target damage shouldn't eclipse Energy Blast's by any degree. Given that sentinels are rather survivable, the KB isnt nearly as important as on a blaster, and is of often questionable use on teams. Sentinel EB is pretty lackluster. It has a pile of 4 ST attacks that are basically identical in DPA. Great suggestions! I would also make Power Bust a 100% disorient, bringing it in line with Tesla Cage, Cosmic Burst, etc as harder control.

Emphasis added by me, but this is your opinion, and there are likely plenty of people that think Entangling Arrow is fun and useful. Again, I argued with those people for 7 years, so I know they're out there. I'm against removing or completely changing a power for everyone just because a few of us in this thread don't like it. I'm all for adding to or updating powers, though. So rather than break the cottage rule and swap Entangling Arrow out for something else, if you suggested "electrifying" Entangling Arrow and adding energy damage to it in addition to improving or adding to its debuffs, that I could get behind as it would vastly improve the power without removing the things some players already enjoy about it (like its effectiveness on AVs or just its graphics and how it's a classic comic book archer thing to have a net arrow). Then I'll submit my "marking arrow" option that also immobilizes and grants a 15% damage and 10% to hit buff for 15 seconds. I think it's OK to up the recharge, because no one is spamming it anyways. I know it's a dirty buff (boo! hiss!), but it would actually be useful and something not covered by other powers (and effect the user). I just dont think electrified net arrow would be useful with even a 75% recharge slow, as recharge slows are the worst debuff, offering next to no mitigation until the mob has cycled all of it's attacks. Flash Arrow still needs it's debuff upped. It provides pitiful mitigation, and they arent going to change the order in which powers are granted at this point, so it may as well be made into something that actually makes a real difference. You make a good point why Glue arrow's additional effect shouldn't be a control, but honestly I don't know what else to offer. More -to hit? - damage? Regen doesnt fit (and isnt really needed at that level), and -resist/defense are covered. TA really needs some mitigation help early on, and it should be something easy to code if we want to see it implemented, so I would use an existing effect. Ice Arrow may be "on par" with support holds, but support holds are pretty weak, and are routinely advised as skipable/not worth investing in. Unlike Dark and Time, TA isnt a top tier set. Paralytic Poison could also use a boost, but that's for another thread. Adding a splash debuff effect would be a good improvement, but again, what isn't already covered? Also, I wanted to clarify that the history lesson wasn't for you, but just any new folks. I know you're well aware of how it was at release (and helped push for the boosts the set has received since then!). If I gave the impression of talking down I apologize, as that wasn't my intent!

You can use apprentice charm (the magic origin basic power) to ignite it. If you aren't magic, you can revoke your starting origin one at the P2W vendor. Taser Dart (the tech one) might also work, but I used apprentice charm w my TA on live.

I'd go with a Null the Gull setting.

Preach! I wouldn't want to remove Entangling Arrow. If its debuffs were returned to their original scale 5, it would be pretty comparable to other tier 1 debuffs, especially since it recharges in 1/4 the amount of time they do. If Entangling Arrow was still seen as a problem for the set overall after that, I would rather add some additional effects and increase the recharge, as opposed to just removing it. Quick History: TA suffered from being tested in an environment that was saturated with defenders and sonic blast. Even Flash arrow's pitiful 6% to hit debuff looks pretty good when 8 TA characters throw it down. This led to the set being weak on live. Entangling Arrow is absolutely not on par with other T1 debuffs. Actual debuff amounts aside, recharge is about the worst of the debuffs, as it only matters after they have cycled their attacks and even then makes little difference. Compare it to debuffing damage, to-hit, defense, or resistance, which are more meaningful and have immediate impact. It also isnt even enhanceable. Then lets look at the T1 debuffs. Cold Domination has Infrigidate, - 31.25 defense, -37.5 damage. Dark has Twilight Grasp, one of the best heals in the game with a -6.25 to hit, 12.5% damage debuff, -50% regen Nature has Corrosive Enzymes, with -25% resist and -31.25 damage debuff. Poison has Envenom, -37.5% defense, -40% resistance, small AE. Radiation has Rad Infect, huge AE, -31.25 defense, -31.25 to-hit. Sonic has Sonic Siphon, -30% resistance, which I believe stacks. Time has Time Crawl, -100% regen, +75% recharge, and sets up Delayed. There is basically no amount of -recharge to bring Entangling Arrow up to par, unless we're talking a 300% recharge penalty. The only one that comes close is Time, and Time is so grossly OP that Time Crawl could literally do nothing and Time would still run rings around TA. Entangling Arrow is garbage, and contributes to TA's lackluster reputation and difficulty in proving meaningful team support until mid game. Let's stop pretending crap powers are anything but that. The first 4 TA powers seriously need a boost in terms of their effectiveness. Entangling Arrow, as established, is basically worthless. We've joked about a healing arrow, but some kind of targeted buff wouldn't be bad. I would envision a "Marking Arrow" that grants the team a to-hit and damage buff. Hell, have it immobilize. Flash Arrow needs a boost in it's effectiveness to at least 10%. Right now it's not even up to a single dark blast in terms of debuffs. Before the toggle anchor change, you could argue it's value as someone couldn't kill the anchor and drop the toggle. Now, toggles persist after target deaths, so the value isnt there anymore. However right now, the endurance cost is equal to 15 seconds of Rad Infection, so roughly an entire spawn's kill time. Flash Arrow has 1/6th the To-Hit buff of Rad Infect and no defense debuff. Flash Arrow needs love badly. Glue Arrow is also worse than the Tactical Arrow version, which recharges in 45 seconds vs Trick Arrow's 60. The effects are OK, if underwhelming. I would suggest adding a decent chance for a Mag 1 hold (minion only) to help the early mitigation issues TA faces. Ice Arrow is underwhelming, and not even as good as Tactical Arrow's version. It is also worse than an Ancillary/Epic Holds, which are supposed to be worse than primary/secondary versions. Up it's damage to Moderate Lethal with a Moderate Cold DOT. It will still be considerably worse than Freeze Ray but at least becomes more viable. The other powers are mostly fine. EMP Arrow should drop to 120 seconds. Tac Arrow's AE hold is 90 seconds, but lasts less time, so this would split the difference in effectiveness.

It could use an all-round buff IMO. The endurance costs on Envenom and Weaken are pretty high, and they could use another radius boost from to 15 feet maybe (from the current 8 vs radiation's 25' radius). Previously they had an advantage over toggle debuffs in that the toggles vanished if the anchor died. Since the changes on Homecoming, this is no longer the case. Moreover, mastermind AE debuffs are smaller in radius than defender/corrupter AE debuffs, but the radius of Envenom and Weaken were not increased when they were proliferated. The set also encourages you to play close tot he action with venomous gas only having a PBAE 15' radius. I thik it could use a self heal or additional mitigation. I would propose making Alkaloid function as is if targeting an ally, or be a PBAE heal over time if you are targeting an enemy/have no target. Injection in the medicine pool already offers an effect that differs based on whether you target an enemy or an ally. I'd also love to see Elixer of Life be usable with reduced effect on a living ally, similar to how Nature's Rebirth can either be a rez or a massive heal. Really most of the single target rez effects could use this treatment.

I think Ice is meant to have a fire weakness, just as Fire has a cold weakness, Dark has an Energy weakness and Energy has an Neg Energy weakness. How would one justify buffing Ice's fire resists? Also, it may not be the most popular power on the set, but some people do like taking Hibernate. Taking that away from them doesn't seem like a great way to fix inefficiencies. Ice Armor has a bigger fire hole than Fiery Aura has a cold hole (ice has 12.5% fire resist, fire has 20% cold resist). Fire is also a bit more common. I could see at least equalizing them. Also the 3 people who like it can cry they no longer need an invulnerability toggle because their set is actually functional. Burn the cottage. I'm sure there were some people who liked fear powers making enemies run, but the devs saved them from themselves too. Ice also needs some measure of built in Smash/Lethal resistance. It's embarrassing to try and tank at low levels..

You're basically a beam/devices blaster that has given up more than half your damage for Force Field Generator. IMO, not worth it. Granted, that sums up my traps experience as a whole. A few decent powers and a bunch of blaster secondary hand-me-downs. At minimum you need more in Acid Mortar and Poison Trap. Time Bomb is also basically useless, so you can at least get slots there.

Don't forget the dark epic pool, to disorient bosses with double Oppressive Gloom!

If you read Captain Troll's history, he thinks the original devs also all sucked and CoH was only fun by accident. Clearly he's the only one qualified to speak on changes.

I just wish I could fire a cone without a target selected... I think the incarnate ones actually allow for that. Nothing is more irritating than having it lined up then your target moves throwing your aim off.

The original post was made with the idea that a single power should be looked into by the numbers people and dealt with accordingly, though the thread of the thread's been lost along the way, veering into concepts for an over-engineered rework. Mind is fine, but a little bump wouldn't hurt. After seeing Elec's AoE confuse in action I can confirm that it takes a little while to propagate and it isn't a sure-fire confuse-all-the-enemies-in-the-spawn power; I'd need to get my hands on it to say more. Meanwhile, I have very high opinion of Our Lord and Savior Plant Control, which you can probably guess, but I'm gonna say something that you very rarely hear people say about their pet ATs or power sets: You're right, it could be nerfed. You could increase the recharge and decrease the duration by a third in each direction (25-ish second confuse on an 80 second cooldown), and it would still be really, really good. (Also, come on guys. "Thrall?" The proper term is "mindslave.") The main reason I don't think Mass Confuse's recharge should be reduced is that I don't think it should be possible to lock down an entire spawn permanently with one power. (That's why I'd be fine with buffing the accuracy.) Seeds of Confusion can do that, so when the topic of MC vs. SoC comes up, I always lean towards nerfing SoC rather than buffing MC. I don't know what kind of nerf would be most appropriate; I don't want SoC to suck, but it's clearly overperforming. Maybe reducing the max number of targets from 16 to 10 or 5? Can't permanently lock down an entire spawn if it can't affect an entire spawn Mind still has no AE disorient, instead getting a useless sleep. It's weak on control, and has no pet. I played a mind controller to 50 on live. I know they're at the bottom of the pack. Having sleep reapply similar to fear would at least bring it up some. Rather than nerfing all controllers, maybe bring mind up to Fire, Plant, Illusion, and Darkness?

If you're into enhancement converting, you should have all the inf you need. 1-2 million is nothing when you make 500k a flip. Better yet, just buy the good sets for 2-4 million. Everything is SO cheap now, and will only go lower as more people get into converting.

What would you do with time bomb? I agree it could use some looking into. But I can't think of anything. Maybe having it attach (as in "anchor") to a mob that detonates after some time (like a sticky bomb). That way you can target the boss and it will go off. It still wouldn't do too much AoE damage, but it'd see some use. Then again, I'm not even sure if that's possible. Well a "quick fix" in my opinion would be to make Time Bomb function like Crab Spider's "Omega Maneuver". Every time I use or see that power being used I think "That's what Time Bomb should be". I like your idea as well! I also feel it overlaps too much with Trip Mine. They feel kind of redundant. So maybe some sort of extra debuff attached to the Time Bomb could help distinguish it. All the people who take Omega Maneuver say it's not very good, either. Too slow. That can be solved by speeding up its activation time. It's a neat idea that is hampered by poor execution, but it would certainly work better than time bomb currently. Traps is pretty bad all around honestly. Triage Beacon is crap, and should either be mobile or placed on a target. Acid Mortar should also be mobile. With the changes to how toggle debuffs work, non-toggle debuff powers lose a lot of their advantage. Web Grenade is garbage (as is entangling net arrow). A no-damage single Target immob with no good debuff has no place in a support set. Seeker Drones arent terribly impressive for their downtime. Trip Mine is poor damage for the time involved in setting it up and time bomb is even more worthless. Traps has like one great powers: FFG. Acid Mortar and Poison trap are good. Everything else is meh to crap leftover from the worst blaster secondary. It plays counter to how good teams operate (steamrolling) and has stupidly long recharges for mediocre effects.

Sure, and in targeted aoe, posis blast only needs 5 slots... In single Target, ene blast kills so quickly knockback is a non issue Lol, no it does not... Energy Blast is soundly middle of the road in ST damage, at the lower end on AE, and lowish on control. It's DPS and DPSA is astoundingly unimpressive.

Seconding that sentinel energy blast needs a boost. It's damage per second of animation are all at the lower end of the sets, and doesnt have a hard hitting/fast animating attack like Zapping Bolt (82 DPSA), Blaze (108), or Bitter Ice Blast (86). The animation times and recharge make Power Burst in particular completely redundant and Focused Power Bolt nearly so. Additionally, with the Sentinel's short ranges you can often knock targets out of your own range. Given Energy Blast's random nature of knockback, this isn't ideal. It's one thing to have fixed KB, that allows for skill. Chance for KB sucks. I would add a chance for both knockdown and disorient to Power Bolt and Blast, with Power Burst a guaranteed disorient. Assault Rifle has Disorienting Shot on a 5 second recharge, Stunning Shot is on an 8 second recharge, Abyssal Gaze on 11, Tesla Cage on a 12, etc. Even with that Power Burst would be inferior due to worse damage. Then increase Focused Power Bolt's damage by 50% and drop it's absurdly long animation time from 2.9 seconds to 2.25.

I don't know if it was worth it or not. But I did it anyway. 3 recharge, 3 hold. Seems like the hold duration is kinda short. You can always put Neuronic Shutdown and Ghost Widow's Embrace in there for a chance at some extra Psy damage. The main thing is the recharge. If you find yourself short elsewhere, and you had to pull from something, this would probably be it. But I looked into it at the time and decided to slot it up. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, as they say. You're heavily reliant on these three powers. You want them to be as effective as they can be, even if it isn't optimal. This would violate the cottage rule, unfortunately. It's a good rule that I think should be kept. The cottage rule was a guideline anyways. Fear powers going from stuff that would get you insta kicked to actually useful by changing their mechanics. I mean, I guess it could ALSO summon a mine. Not like that would make traps remotely OP. Id prefer to see it get a souped up version of Omega Maneuvers, that taunts while debuffing and then blows up. Triage Beacon also needs love badly. Make it mobile and add recovery or healing aura. It's long recharge is in no way justified by the pitiful regen and immobile aspect.

I don't think Blasters have any AoE Holds? All the newer sets do (or another lockdown), and they arent done w the older ones, so I expect them to get one too eventually. Tactical arrow has ESD arrow, AE hold, 90 second recharge. Compare to Trick Arrow's EMP arrow, with it's 300 second recharge. Also look at Tac arrow's Ice Arrow, Glue Arrow and Entangling Arrow and weep. Trick arrow needs to be improved to at least be the equal of a blaster secondary... Atomic Manipulation has Radioactive Cloud, AE hold, 90 second recharge. It is at least PBAE. Plant has Vines, AE hold. Martial Combat has an AE stun cone. Ninja Training has an AE confuse cone. Temporal Manipulation has Time Shift, an AE stun.

TK is just a displacement tool right? MC having no pet is one of it's gimmicks, with the pet replaced by confusions. It's part of its identity and should stay that way imo. Maybe replace TK with just the psychic tornado from psionic blast Yeah, it's a cone that picks stuff up, then moves it away from you, eventually out of the cone range so they all immediately shoot you in the face. It drains an obscene amount of endurance, and is nigh useless. Design changes. It's why tanker toggles aren't mutually exclusive to preserve the gimmick of swapping shields for each battle. Fire and Plant are leading the pack in both damage AND control. If they aren't going to nerf them, then the other sets need to be brought up significantly. Normalizing pet damage/utility and giving one to mind would help a lot. Otherwise you need to make mind somehow even more amazing in control to make up for the lack of a pet. Incidentally, it's nuts that blasters have their AE holds on a 90 second timer vs controller's 240 second. The 5 seconds of duration advantage controllers get isn't worth it compared to being up basically every fight.

Mind control is sadly just a bad set. I suffered to 50 as one on live. They suck. Anyone who says differently hasn't played one of the good sets. I'd move Mass Confuse to 90 second recharge. Have Slumber and Mass Hypnosis reapply continuously throughout their duration. TK has legit never been a good power, so fuck the cottage and just give it a pet as a TK construct. You'll still a set that is lower in damage and control than a fire/plant/dark but at least I wont cringe when one joins.

It's even less of a factor, a those can be gotten from drops, or bought via AE tickets, so your Inf cost for that is lower than you think. That is still an opportunity cost vs just selling the drops.

I think the issue with that, is that it makes Sleep feel too much like Fear. I wouldn't be against it, but I think others would have something to say about it, heh. Who the hell are the sleep white knights? That makes no sense. What do you mean? Please explain. What I'm saying is, who actually thinks this would overpower sleeps, or that sleeps are fine as is? They're the worst of the soft control powers, and are routinely listed as skipable. Fear power are flat out better, and typically have a substantial to-hit penalty as well. Electric control's sleeps re-apply. That should probably be proliferated to other sets. At minimum, make a good IO set that has such a proc in it that guarantees it will reapply through the sleep's duration..