Redlynne

Ideally speaking, you'd want to have Telekinesis "pull" affected $Targets towards the anchor. You can't really "do" that with Repel without resorting to Rube Goldberg levels of pseudopets layering stuff together. The alternative would be a Wormhole-ish) Teleport to "pull" affected $Targets towards the anchor.

You can turn that on and off by toggling to different ammo types as the situation demands, during a mission. That's VERY different from going to Null the Gull and turning it on or off until you visit Null the Gull again. I shouldn't have to point this out to you. It's literally that simple. You even cited it to me. It CAN be done. The only thing standing in the way is ... people like you ...

A closed mind is a terrible thing to celebrate ...

I'm continually amazed by how people keep thinking that an AoE Immobilize toggle is better for containment than an AoE Hold toggle. You do realize that Holds set up Containment ... right?

Just don't forget how to use this bit of trickery (which the recent Tanker changes have modified somewhat) which I've posted elsewhere, but is worth posting again here in the context of an Ice/Ice Tanker build. Note that the Hop 'n' Pop can be used with ANY Cone attack (such as Empty Clips in the Dual Pistols set), it's just that Frost synergizes really well with it when Frost is enhanced for Range (of all things). Hope that helps. Some people know about 3D Cone aiming ... but not everyone does, so I figured this was worth repeating, particularly for an Ice/Ice Tanker build.

I suspect that there is just a natural (if wrong, but natural) sense that anything which is done to Mind Control for Controllers will wind up being wildly overpowered for Mind Control on Dominators (because ... insert reasons here, I guess). It's just an empirical assumption (flawed, but since when has that ever stopped anyone from making assumptions) that whatever Controllers achieve in this regard will wind up being 2x to 10x more useful/powerful/game unbalancing if ported 1:1 over to Dominators without any changes whatsoever (aside from removing Overpower and substituting in Domination). I'm personally of the opinion that it would be SAFER to road test (and play test) any changes to Mind Control on Controllers FIRST, so as to give the changes a thorough vetting, before proliferating those changes to Dominators LATER after a wealth of data (and datamining) and user experience with the changes has been generated concerning those changes. Doing Controllers before Dominators reduces the workload and keeps the changelog simplified in a way that is easier to manage overall. You then make changes to Mind Control for Controllers with the implicit understanding that those changes are not "exclusive" to Controllers, but merely being done to Controllers "first" with the Dominator version of the powerset getting their update "after" just in case something doesn't work, there are weird inter(re)actions or edge cases produced ... you know the drill. Doing it as a one then the other manages and mitigates RISK inherent in making any changes at all.

-10 Credibility. Mind Control was a Controller set exclusively from Issue 0 through Issue 5. The only reason why Mind Control is "better" on a Dominator is the Domination (and perma-Domination) power. The double magnitude of Domination is what supercharges Mind Control into useful levels of City of Statues again. I find your argument flawed. -8 Credibility. The easiest solution is to simply REMOVE REPEL from Telekinesis ... since that solves both the scatter AND AoE Containment issues even more easily. The slightly more elegant solution is to allow the Player to conditionally toggle on/off the Repel effect in Telekinesis while Telekinesis is toggled on so as to be able to CONTROL the Repel factor in an On Demand way. I find your argument flawed. -7 Credibility. You're entitled to your opinion ... but that's all it is ... your opinion, your belief. -15 Credibility. A Confuse power that draws aggro versus a Confuse power that doesn't draw aggro only matters when the affected $Targets SURVIVE beyond the duration of the Confuse. Aggroed but Defeated while Confused is STILL DEFEATED before they could attack YOU. As you point out, there is precedent for (and I quote) ... "a great every-spawn control power" ... (unquote) that is an AoE Confuse. Even more galling is that you are simultaneously asserting that a TIER 9 power CANNOT BE THAT. I would also point out that non-aggro on Mass Confusion is only relevant if you (or your Team/League) deals No Damage. As soon as anyone deals damage (or even any Notify Mobs powers at all), the non-aggro aspect of Mass Confusion is broken/negated. On top of that, Foes who defeat "themselves" (by dealing all the damage to defeat that Foe) means that no XP, INF or drops are generated for the Mind Controller nor their Team/League. You only get XP, INF and drops from Foes you deal at least 1 HP of damage to ... and as already mentioned, if you deal ANY damage at all, the non-aggro aspect of Mass Confustion is broken/negated. You're trying to "have it both ways" when you already know you can't. You can't use Mass Confusion AND inflict damage upon Foes affected by Mass Confusion without negating the non-aggro advantage of Mass Confusion, because the non-aggro advantage is "fragile" in the same way that Sleep is "fragile" and subject to being broken. I find your argument to be flawed, self-contradictory and hypocritical (on top of everything else). I could keep going, but after losing -40 Credibility on this topic, I honestly don't feel like continuing to refute your arguments is a worthwhile investment of my time nor energies with respect to this topic. However, if you insist on clinging to your ... beliefs ... in this matter, I think that Worf said it best.

Haven't been looking at an update for this build, but you can tell just by the date (22 May 2019) that this build is now basically hopelessly out of date compared to almost all of my other builds. It would however require a day (or few) for me to review this one for an update, so it just depends on the demands on time (which are somewhat more constant than I would like).

Oh ... the ALL OR NOTHING plan. Still amazed that it seems to be hard to comprehend that what is desired is Knockback ON DEMAND so that the Player can exercise a measure of control over their Knockback DEPENDING ON THE CURRENT CIRCUMSTANCES AT THE TIME ... because circumstances change from moment to moment ALL THE TIME. The One Size Fits All Solution™ only satisfies the lazy who don't want to have to deal with it, not the actively engaged who want to be clever/intelligent with their use of the tool. Come on, this shouldn't be that hard to figure out.

/jranger Spin the Wheel. BUY A CLUE!

As for Accuracy with that set up ... you're on your own there.

Well, we are talking about a 4.5 PPM versus a 1.0 PPM so I shouldn't be all that surprised to see that result. However, it does confirm one thing ... that short of having a full purple 50 Apocalypse (such as when leveling or not yet flush with INF to purchase everything) the Build Up proc fares pretty well during the 31-46 game while working your way on up to 50. Once you reach 50 you can (if you've got the INF) swap to an Apocalypse set if you want to. I'm just honestly surprised by how close a second place the Build Up proc weighs in at relative to the Apocalypse set. I mean ... 9.16 vs 9.972 is a difference of 0.812 DPS ... which is a whopping 48.72 damage differential after 60 seconds of continuous attacking. So yes, the Apocalypse set is better in the AoE comparisons too ... but not by all that much (less than +1 DPS) ... which I find kind of remarkable. For the single target rotation the difference was way more pronounced at +8.87 DPS differential, so clearly the AoE rotation leveraging the Build Up proc "better" than the single target rotation was. Still, reasonably decent for leveling on a budget.

You realize that we may wind up with multiple pages of stickies by doing this ...

Fixed that for you ...

This is a serious condition! We shall have to AMPutate!

Executioner's Shot -> Bullet Rain -> Empty Clips -> repeat Go ahead and calculate in the odds of a Force Feedback proc in both AoEs, since the full rotation is 1.848*3=5.544s and will be enough to eliminate any pause on either the current cycle or the next cycle. Run simulations for $Target quantities from 3 to 10 (Empty Clips is limit 10 while Bullet Rain is limit 16), since at 2 and below you'd want to switch to a single target rotation, if you can. That should give you a sense of the progression curve and how much it ramps up and down with the richness of $Targets to shoot at.

To a single target attack chain. Now run the same simulation again with the AoE attack chain where each of the AoE attacks is getting boosted by Build Up buffs and see what happens. This is the reason why I said in my original posts on the subject of slotting Build Up procs that the "true power" of Build Up procs doesn't appear in the single target attack chains ... it appears in the AoE attack chains. AoEs magnify the value of Build Up procs multiplicatively, but you can't slot Build Up procs into (most) AoE attacks, so you need to weave a single target attack with the Decimation Build Up proc into an attack chain with AoE attacks (the more you can activate within the 5.25s buff window the better!) to really reap the rewards. What your analysis is saying is that a Level 27 slotting versus a Purple 50 slotting yields an overall 42.38-13.9=28.48% damage enhancement differential on a single target rotation ... which makes sense, we're talking the difference between purple and non-purple here. I'm just saying that the single target rotation is merely one of many usage cases, because there are more where it can become relevant.

Cross-posting because it bears repeating here in the context of this thread. Yes I'm still cross about it after all these years ... why do you ask?

Mass Confusion suffers from being repeatedly hit by the One Size Fits All™ nerfbat from every direction possible. It's either unavailable most of the time or isn't being used most of the time. When it is used, it's extremely rare for the full duration of Mass Confusion to be in any way relevant since 10-16 $Targets will tend to defeat each other in a mass brawl relatively quickly, trimming their own numbers down and "wasting" a significant portion of the available duration (yet the full duration gets held against the power's uptime anyway, because ... spreadsheet math). And think of it this way ... when the AoE Control nerf landed with Issue 5 ... none of the other Controller Tier 9 powers got nerfed. ONLY Mind Control took it in the Tier 9, reducing the power to 1/4 of what it had been (double recharge, half duration) ... because, One Size Fits All™ ... and it's easier than Thinking™. Mind Control just go brutalized by the changes in Issue 5, and the powerset has never recovered. Other powersets had their AoE Immobilize and AoE Hold powers nerfed. Mind Control had their AoE Sleep, Toggle Hold, AoE Hold, Cone Terrorize AND AoE Confuse powers nerfed ... HARD. That's the majority of the powerset! And why did that happen? Because, One Size Fits All™ ... since it was easier than Thinking™ for the devs and Cryptic Studios at the time (and later Paragon Studios). I remember what Mind Control was like to play before and after Issue 5 was released. Before Issue 5, Mind Control was a STRONG Control powerset. It locked stuff down harder than any other Control powerset. After Issue 5 was released ... Mind Control barely rated as a Defender with Mez as the side effects on their powers. It was whiplash inducing. Mind Control got shoved into the ditch and had weights thrown on it to prevent it from being able to get out of the rut it was thrown into. Some of us are still waiting for the necessary dev attention to (and I quote) ... "Put right what once went wrong..."

Could ... but the compromises needed to do so are somewhat punitive. An easier solution would be to pull the Entomb proc from Suppressive Fire and put that slot into Hover and just add Kismet (or Karma for Knockback Protection, although Hover itself provides "poor man's Knockback protection" after a fashion while Hover is toggled on). Actually, I think the chain would look more like this: Executioner's Shot > Pistols > Dual Wield > Executioner's Shot > Piercing Rounds > Dual Wield ... repeat The important point is if the Build Up buff is active at the START of an animation ... not whether the remaining duration on a Build Up buff lasts all the way to the END of an animation. That's because City of Heroes runs on a Resolve First/Animate After system, where EVERYTHING is calculated and computed and "resolved" up front and then everything after that is just animation. This means that if you had a 4s animation activate when there was 0.1s duration remaining on the Build Up buff then the Build Up buff would apply to that attack, even though the buff expired before the attack could finish animating (or during, however you want to think of it). So long as the activation starts before the Build up buff expires ... it counts. So in terms of repeating attack chains, using the above, we get this (bolding for powers affected by Build Up beginning with underlined italicized attack): Executioner's Shot > Pistols > Dual Wield > Executioner's Shot > Piercing Rounds > Dual Wield ... (repeat) Executioner's Shot > Pistols > Dual Wield > Executioner's Shot > Piercing Rounds > Dual Wield > (repeat) > Executioner's Shot > Pistols > Dual Wield > Executioner's Shot In other words, no matter which Executioner's Shot gets the proc in the rotation ... BOTH OF THEM will result in buffing of Dual Wield, Executioner's Shot AND Piercing Rounds ... the only question is if Pistols will get buffed by the Build Up proc or not (1st yes, 2nd no). Here's the math: Executioner's Shot > Pistols > Dual Wield > Executioner's Shot > Piercing Rounds > Dual Wield ... (repeat) 1st Executioner's Shot (Build Up activates at the end) so difference between animation and arcanatime is 1.848-1.67= 0.178s 0.178 + 1.188+1.848+1.848 = 5.062 ... meaning that there's 0.188s buff duration remaining after the 2nd Executioner's Shot in which Piercing Rounds can be activated (use the power queue function while the 2nd Executioner's Shot is animating to make this happen!) Executioner's Shot > Pistols > Dual Wield > Executioner's Shot > Piercing Rounds > Dual Wield > (repeat) > Executioner's Shot > Pistols > Dual Wield > Executioner's Shot 2nd Executioner's Shot (Build Up activates at the end) so difference between animation and arcanatime is 1.848-1.67= 0.178s 0.178 + 2.64+1.848 = 4.666 ... meaning that there's 0.584s buff duration remaining after the 2nd Executioner's Shot in which the 3rd Executioner's Shot can be activated (use the power queue function while Dual Wield is animating to make this happen!) Bottom line here is that if you're staying on top of your attack chain, using the power queue system (seriously, USE IT!) in advance of animations completing (and you don't have too much network lag/latency going on so no pauses server side allowed!) you can have the Build Up proc buff duration last only 5.25s but wind up being used by either 7.524s of arcanatime (1st Executioner's Shot proc) or 6.336s of arcanatime (2nd Executioner's shot proc) worth of powers animations. In other words, you can "extend" how long the Build Up buff is "useful" for depending on how you "shape" the sequencing of your attack chain. The former affects 4 powers, while the latter affects 3 powers, and the only power that might be getting left out in all of that is Pistols ... the lowest base damage power of the grouping. The only difference is swapping Pistols in and out of the rotation (so as to keep it simple) in order to give Piercing Rounds time to recharge. And that's just the single target attack chain. 😎 That's not even looking at the AoE attack chain of Executioner's Shot > Bullet Rain > Empty Clips ... repeat ... where that Build Up proc is going to produce a MASSIVE increase in AoE damage production (and you're likely scoring a Force Feedback proc, or two!)! Note that with such a rotation, Executioner's Shot would benefit from its own Build Up buff after buffing the two AoE attacks, and the Build Up buff would expire while the repeat Executioner's Shot was animating ... which is what I like to think of as Not Too Shabby™ of a performance profile. That's because every time that Build Up proc happens, it's like a 100% chance damage proc bonus to the AoE attacks against every $Target that they hit(!) and that damage gets multiplied by the -Resistance debuffing from Slowed Response ... so it REALLY adds up in a hurry! And that's not even including the possibility of replacing a power with Hail of Bullets This was a major design point for my previous builds using these powersets, but isn't something I've laid out quite this explicitly before ... partly because I was trying avoid posting a third WALL OF TEXT CRITS YOU!!! in as many days. So while the Build Up proc for the single target rotation may not look all that awesome relative to having a damage proc (or an Apocalypse proc), there is simply NO COMPARISON to what the Decimation Build Up proc does for the AoE rotation! You need to think in terms of multi-use cases and different "modalities" of blending the powers together into attack chains before you begin to understand the FULL firepower that this combination can bring to bear. THIS ... is the "Aim"(ish) Build Up buffing for Dual Pistols ... having a ~15% chance to proc multiple times per 10 seconds(!!) from (the now very aptly named) Executioner's Shot which will happen independently of (and can stack with!) the Build Up proc buffing from Tactics(!). In heavy combat, particularly on teams/leagues, expect to see a LOT of Build Up proc buffing happening multiple times per minute(!). LOTS of them. 😎 That's because the recharge slotted into the power is low(ish @ Level 27) but the global recharge from the rest of the build is enormous (+197.5% before adding in Force Feedback procs!), allowing the proc chance on Decimation to be relatively high (14.87% ... which like rolling a 1 on a 1d6.725 die ... call it better than rolling a 1 on a 1d7, how about that?) while being able to use Executioner's Shot every 5-8 seconds ... repeatedly ... resulting in a Chuck Lots of Dice!! strategy for getting the Decimation Build Up buff to proc A LOT more often than you'd otherwise think it ought to be doing (or has a right to be doing?). Oh and Soul Drain lasts for 30 seconds. Join the Herd and Burn crew for even MORE damage buffing! You're Welcome! While leveling, just slot in Damage/Range set IOs until reaching Levels 47+ when HOs can be slotted. It's relatively easy to make such substitutions while leveling, but I want the build to show me "where I'm going" while I'm on my way there.

Let's just say that I don't ever plan on soloing any AVs and leave it at that. But yeah, in that context, it's really a game of 2 out of 3. The one thing that's nice(?) about Time Crawl's debuff to Regeneration is that it doesn't stack from same caster, meaning you only need to refresh it once every 20 seconds ... and the same applies to the debuff to Regeneration in Time Stop as well (20s duration, does not stack from same caster). That then gives you plenty of time to be animating other powers during those 20 seconds before needing to refresh the (combined) -150% Regeneration on an affected $Target ... which is useful in a Big Game Hunting context (although other powersets do it better/stronger). Switching from Soul Drain to Dark Embrace frees up those 5 slots to be used for something else, and with the Entomb slot in Suppressive Fire that then leads to all kinds of possibilities for shuffling slots off elsewhere (since there would essentially be 6 slots "loose" in the build) for plenty of variation and alternatives.

Especially since it breaks/shatters EVERY TIME YOU USE IT ...

Just in case the concept wasn't clear ...

Actually, upon reflection, it might be better to simply drop Time Crawl from the build so as to make room for Soul Storm (since this is a Defender) ... particularly if Time Crawl/Soul Storm is limited to being a One Slot Wonder™ power due to lack of slots. Time Crawl is "decent" in the early going as a single target neutralizer power, but once you've got Distortion Field the usefulness of Time Crawl really falls off a cliff in the context of this build (specifically, other builds are a different story). I say that because this build is primarily a (ranged) damage dealer with some (some...) support utility to it so as to enable that damage dealing capability. What Time Crawl brings to the build winds up being more "edge case than prime case" when compared to the utility of Soul Storm, particularly when looking at it in the context of a Soul Storm, Suppressive Fire, Time Stop combination for rapidly building Hold magnitude (since those 3 powers alone are mag 3 each) and could potentially form their own single target attack chain when used against Green Mitos (maybe with 1 other attack thrown in for filler). And that's not even counting the fact that Soul Storm deals damage natively while Time Crawl deals damage only with the help of a single damage proc. Yes ... a slight rebuild is certainly looking like it would be in order here ...

This was Ms. Givings, my Mind Controller in Issue 3 (4?) before the iron cored nerfbat MURDERED Telekinesis without recompense or apology (or even an admission of guilt for the slaying). Took forever to defeat all those Skyraiders in Terra Volta, since Containment didn't exist yet and I couldn't use Levitate (since Levitate would fling them out of the AoE) ... so it was just Mesmerize+Dominate for damage dealing with no Containment ... but boy did it feel like an accomplishment! Mass Hypnosis to put them all to sleep. Telekinesis to scoop them all into the corner without taking incoming fire. Mesermize+Dominate to take them all out without ever taking any damage ... over the next SEVERAL MINUTES. Controllers were ... slow ... when it came to dealing damage in those days, before Containment. It was all about the City of Statues experience when playing as a Controller. 😎 Now on Homecoming I've rerolled Ms Givings as a Mind/Nature Controller so as to have TWO AoE Hold toggles(!) and sufficient endurance recovery to fuel them both! Ms Givings is also a Villain Controller this time, because ... Trust your Ms Givings! ... is her $battlecry.