Redlynne

Depends on if it's a DoT or not. If it's a DoT, say goodbye to your Sleep powers working for Mind Control.

Procs do "instant" damage along with the rest of the damage output (unless the damage is delayed within the power's parameters, like is done with Lift). I have the Will of the Controller ATO proc for damage slotted into my Mesmerize (where it procs a pretty good deal) and it does damage up front before the Sleep effect 0.25s after the damage is done. This means that a damage proc on Mesmerize will break a Sleep that was already applied, but will not break a Sleep that happens after the damage is applied (which the power does natively).

Yes ... however you can swap Dimension Shift for Crushing Field if that is your preference. However, if you do swap Dimension Shift for Crushing Field, you'll need to use different slotting. For Dimension Shift, the Endurance/Recharge ATO is the ideal IO to slot and simply isn't replicated in other sets. Dimension Shift does not require Accuracy (and has no use for Accuracy enhancement). Crushing Field, however, NEEDS Accuracy in order to be useful because Crushing Field starts off with an Accuracy PENALTY on the base power, and has a very high endurance cost per click (you can easily burn your blue bar down by spamming this power). The big deciding factor (for me at least) is that due to the demands of the rest of the build Dimension Shift/Crushing Field power can only afford to be a One Slot Wonder™ power. As a One Slot Wonder™ my sense is that Dimension Shift works out better with only a single slot, while Crushing Field CAN work with only a single slot but Crushing Field really wants to have more than a single slot in it to get the most out of it (especially as a proc delivery power).

PPD Sergeant

Working on it.

Dominate Yes. The sequencing is different. The damage and the hold land simultaneously, so there's no opportunity to retaliate.

Counter-proposal: "Hard Mode" inverts the Minions and Bosses quantities. Every Minion spawns as a Boss instead ... and every Boss spawns as a Minion instead. So instead of lots a Minions, some Lieutenants and a few Bosses ... you invert those numbers ... a few Minions, some Lieutenants and lots of Bosses. Total numbers are still the same per spawn, but the weighting of what ranks are spawned in what quantities swap the numbers of Minions and Bosses per spawn group. Note that such an inversion would "work" as a Reputation choice from -1/x1 all the way on up through +4/x8.

Problem solved. Change it from a Click for static deployment to instead be a PBAoE Toggle and make it look like one of these ... ... except with green laser light beams coming out of it instead of blue or red. Problem of mobility REALLY solved.

That's only true if AV Regen is near zero and Resistances are also near zero.

Should be easy enough to test on the test server ...

Because damage happens first, enemies are NOTIFIED ... and they reply/respond to being attacked ... just like with any other damaging attack. They get to queue up their attack choice before the 0.25s delay until the Sleep/Fear takes effect ... and because City of Heroes works on a Resolve First/Animate After basis, everything about their reply attack gets computed and "laid in" to happen before the 0.25s later Sleep/Fear effect comes into force. It's just a consequence of the order of operations and how the game "works" under the hood. I just checked Flash Freeze and it works the same way as Mesmerize. Instant damage with notify mobs ... then 0.25s later apply Sleep. Note that this formulation means that Flash Freeze CANNOT STACK WITH ITSELF since the power does damage (breaking Sleep) before reapplying Sleep ... unlike Mass Hypnosis, which can be stacked with itself if you put enough sleep duration and recharge enhancement into the power.

Brutes have ramp up/ramp down cycles with Fury. Guts doesn't need to use any kind of Fury to ramp up/ramp down his power. He's a capable of delivering maximum devastation/power on his alpha strike ... which is a Scrapper attribute rather than a Brute attribute. But then, Guts is totally OP (except when he's not) so it's hardly a 1:1 comparison mapping.

I'll readily acknowledge that the blue/purple caves are more challenging for some Players than others, and that they're really good environmental camouflage for all sorts of things (like where the tunnel is). But I see that as a challenge to be overcome, not something to be done away with as an inconvenience or an annoyance. Not everyone is going to build their lair in Sinclair Mansion.

YES. Unfortunately I've been composing posts for the past 4+ hours straight in other threads so I'm going to have to defer my contribution to this thread till another day ...

Another way to look at this is to do "Minion Equivalents" for higher ranks for their HP (and I'm going to round off for simplicity). Minion = 1x Minion Lieutenant = 2x Minion Boss = 6x Minion Elite Boss = 12x Minion Now start thinking about what would happen if every $Target of Minion rank and above generated a small PBAoE field around themselves that granted +Resistance (All) to all the other $Targets of their Faction around them. I'm thinking something like this ... Minion = +1% Resistance Lieutenant = +2% Resistance Boss = +6% Resistance Elite Boss = +12% Resistance Needless to say, you shouldn't have any problems figuring out where I pulled those numbers from, given what I've been saying so far. Now, what this would do in actual gameplay practice is that it would mean that massed hordes of $Targets herded up together would become harder to defeat than the exact same number of $Targets scattered around. If you've got a "dogpile" of 10 $Targets that contains 2x Bosses, 3x Lieutenants and 5x Minions ... and ALL of their PBAoE Resistance auras are overlapping to cover everyone ... that's (12+6+5)= +23% Resistance(All) given to that "dogpile" of future XP, meaning you'll need to do more damage to them "together" than you would if they were all "apart" from each other. You could even vary the radius of their PBAoE Resistance auras like so: Minion: 7ft radius Lieutenant: 14ft radius Boss: 42ft radius Elite Boss: 84ft radius Again, it shouldn't be that hard to figure out the "pattern" of what I'm saying here, let alone the inspiration of where I'm pulling it from. This is actually something that I kind of wish City of Heroes had done WAY way back, since it would mean that it would give "scattering" and Knockback potential advantages over the "pure" dumpster fire strategy of Herd & Burn. At the very least, it would mean that using massed "nuke" attacks on closely packed high densities of $Targets would be "less effective" than doing so on more widely scattered clusterings. Want do do more damage to your $Targets? Well BREAK THEIR FORMATION you imbecile! Is it a "perfect solution" to the problem? By no means. Would it mean that the "leadership" of Lieutenants and Bosses would "matter" in any meaningful way that the Players would need to adapt to? You betcha they would. And best of all, it would mean that tactical positioning (who is where next to what) would become a LOT more important than it is right now.

I do wonder if this in particular is a possible knob for the devs to turn... Defenses come in two flavors ... Positional (Melee/Ranged/AoE) and Typed (Smashing, Lethal, Fire, Cold, Negative, Energy, Toxic, Psionic). Resistances come in one flavor ... Typed (Smashing, Lethal, Fire, Cold, Negative, Energy, Toxic, Psionic).

Close Quarters Battle requires different tactics and strategy than Open Field Battle. The fact that the close quarters "cramped spaces" environments to fight in is something that everyone needs to LEARN how to deal with ... even the snipers who would rather be a mile away from the action. It's that VARIETY of terrain and environments that prevents any one single build plan from "winning" over everything in all situations and circumstances. You can build a long range character, but still need to deal with tight confined spaces where long range is irrelevant ... just like how you can use Superspeed as your travel power pretty freely almost everywhere except the Shadow Shard and Grandeville due to environmental features. Yes the spaces are cramped and claustrophobic ... and that's a GOOD THING(!) ... because how you maneuver to fight in there, and how you move, is DIFFERENT than in more "open" settings and locations. That difference is important and shouldn't be sacrificed upon the altar of convenience.

Telekinesis is NOT trash inherently ... but it is made TERRIBLE by the STUPID decision to limit the Max Targets to ONLY FIVE instead of the 16 it ought to have. When you can scoop up an entire spawn group and repel them into a corner and HOLD THEM THERE for as long as your endurance lasts ... that's VALUABLE. It also happens to be UNIQUE. Changing the Max Targets limit on Telekinesis from 5 to 16 is so simple, easy and effective that I consider it developer malpractice to have not had it done by Paragon Studios. The Homecoming Team could fix this travesty of rank and rancid injustice in less than 1 minute. Because this is what use of Telekinesis is supposed to enable ... That's TEN Skyraiders all packed within a 10ft radius Target AoE around the anchor in the center, pushed into a corner of a catwalk in Terra Volta. If you can only do that to FIVE of them at a time ... you can't do THAT.

Mesmerize has a very GOOD reason for why it does damage first and then sleep 0.25s later. Because if you reverse that order of operations, Mesmerize breaks its own sleep effect ... because damage will break sleep. So you can't sleep first and then damage 0.25s later. That just means you get a 0.25s sleep duration (regardless of the power description), which will satisfy NO ONE. Fear ... on the other hand ... I'm not sure if the order of operations (damage then fear versus fear then damage) will affect the behavior of $Targets at all who are hit by Terrify.

I know why this happens. It's something I brought up to Arbiter Hawk, Synapse and Black Scorpion at dinner during the 2012 Player Summit, who were the Powers Team Devs at Cryptic Studios. I've posted this argument before, but I'll repost it here for clarity. Let's say for the sake of argument and illustration purposes that you've got a $Target that you need to hit 4x with an unenhanced power in order to defeat them (just to keep the math easy and convenient). What happens when you add damage, endurance reduction and recharge reduction (individually) to that power in SO strength enhancement amounts (+33.33%)? Unenhanced = 4 attacks = 4x animations, 4x damage, 4x endurance, 4x recharge 1 Damage SO = 3 attacks = 3x animations, 4x damage, 3x endurance, 3x recharge 1 Endurance SO = 4 attacks = 4x animations, 4x damage, 3x endurance, 4x recharge 1 Recharge SO = 4 attacks = 4x animations, 4x damage, 4x endurance, 3x recharge 1 Endurance SO + 1 Recharge SO = 4 attacks = 4x animations, 4x damage, 3x endurance, 3x recharge If you're paying attention (and I really hope that everyone is who is following this topic) ... you'll notice something wildly asymmetrical about that very simply put layout of factors affecting gameplay. 1 Damage SO >> (1 Endurance SO + 1 Recharge SO) Let me say that again, just to be absolutely clear. One damage enhancement is BETTER than 1 endurance reduction plus 1 recharge reduction enhancement. In other words, damage is better BY DEFAULT by more than what you can get out of the combination of two other enhancements COMBINED. The net result of this is that Damage enhancement winds up being "overtuned" in just the way that @Galaxy Brain is talking about. Damage enhancement is worth more because Damage enhancement is WORTH MORE than other types of enhancement. The ... solution ... that I proposed to Arbiter Hawk, Synapse and Black Scorpion at dinner during the 2012 Player Summit would be to have Damage enhancement function on different Schedules (A and B, instead of just A) depending on what type of Damage power the enhancement was being slotted into. The basic idea being that damage slotted into Single Target powers would remain on Schedule A (+33.33%) ... while damage slotted into AoE powers would shift to Schedule B (+20%). What this would do is that it would "widen the gap" between Single Target and AoE damage powers in terms of their throughput efficiency and help combat that enormous power creep that combined AoE attacks were capable of due to their high (on Schedule A) enhancement values. In practice, the difference would be between enhancing up to 2x damage (Single Target) versus 1.6x (AoE) using the same damage enhancement slotting, which while not a whole lot of reduction/nerfing would be enough to change the mental calculus among Players as to the perceived "value" of Single Target attacks relative to AoE. Basically, it would "open a space" in which AoE damage doesn't "win by default" due to excessive value gained from damage enhancement. It was ... kind of fun ... watching Arbiter Hawk, Synapse and Black Scorpion basically have a "face fault" moment there at the table as they all collectively recognized the problem I'd put my finger on for them, especially since it was one of those things where once you've seen the problem outlined THAT WAY, it kind of becomes hard to say that it isn't there or have any influence over the perception of relative value among Players who pay attention to these kinds of details. They immediately turned to the point of ... The Players Would NEVER STAND FOR IT ... which I readily agreed would indeed be an issue, since it would functionally mean nerfing every AoE damage power in the game used by Players. However, Black Scorpion then pointed out to Synapse that it MIGHT be technically possible to instruct the game engine to use different Enhancement Schedules for damage enhancements depending on what kind of damage power the enhancements were slotted into. So apparently they recognized that the TECHNICAL hurdle of making the game do what it needed to do in order to implement the idea didn't fall into the utterly impossible category. It would require WORK to implement, of course (because it always does), and they had NO IDEA if they'd ever be able to put the request on the SCHEDULE to actually do it if the approvals ever came through ... but it was very clear that there was NO expectation that the approvals would ever be made, because the anticipated backlash from the community would rival the combination of the Global Defense Nerf and Enhancement Dysfunction (that basically melted down the official forums for THREE DAYS!!! under the withering rejection of the forums community to those changes). Cuppa Jo still got a fearful look in her eyes whenever I mentioned that experience to her at the War College event for Tabula Rasa, so I know that she at least was really traumatized by that episode in the history of City of Heroes. However, if you're going to contemplate messing with the meta-game ... you can't just throw more HP at the $Targets. You need to ... change the SHAPE of what the Players can do in order to make the game more complex than just "nuking" everything with AoE as fast as possible. For me at least, the answer to that challenge is to keep the maximum damage throughput for Single Target attacks where they are (and always have been), while "nerfing" the potential maximum damage throughput of AoE attacks ... for what ought to be obvious reasons in the context of this discussion. This then "widens the gap" between what can be done with Single Target versus AoE in a way that makes the relative value of each a bit more complex and potentially dynamic. Because as I explained to Arbiter Hawk, Synapse and Black Scorpion at dinner during the 2012 Player Summit ... in City of Heroes ... Damage Is KING ... and AoE wears the crown. It was kind of disappointing to find out that all three of them agreed with me on the points that I had made, but they felt constrained in what they could do about it out of a (very real!) feel for the potential backlash that would occur if anything ... ANYTHING ... was ever done to knock AoE off its throne as the be all, end all, solution to every problem of generating enough DPS. And don't get me wrong, the reasons for not making those kinds of changes (then) were very very VERY real ... but the foundation for them was really a matter of social expectations and preferences than they were upon the basis of technical hurdles. Time resources needed to make the shift would be considerable, but the structure of the game engine code did not foreclose on the possibility due to premature optimization. In the end, the shutdown announcement happened a mere 6 months later, and the whole issue was essentially rendered moot due to the actions of The Battallion NC$oft. And the rest ... is ancient history ...

That doesn't get done in zero time either ...

Except, that the Stun would potentially "detoggle" a variety of $Target types that shouldn't be getting detoggled by Terrify. Same with a Hold effect. I'm thinking Ruin Mages for the Circle of Thorns and Tsoo Sorcerers as the obvious candidates for this kind of thing. Confuse, however, has no "detoggle" potential and thus would be "less intrusive" on this point of continuing powers as used by NPCs.

It's not hard to figure out. I posted the reason why (although I didn't highlight it for this express explanation. Okay ... so what does that mean? It means, that Terrify works like Mesmerize ... damage first/instantly and mez effect 0.25s later (lazy game design FTW!). This is why you can use Mesmerize on a $Target and they will get an attack off before falling asleep on you. I see this happen all the time when I have only a Sleep effect but no Hold on a $Target I hit with Mesmerize. Without something to PREVENT actions against my Controller, when damaged (which breaks Sleep) a $Target will attack ... and so long as they initiate that attack before the Sleep (or in this case, Fear) effect is in effect, they're going to alpha strike counter-attack you for using Terrify on them if you don't have something "stronger" like a Hold (or Lift) preventing them from taking any actions. Now it's possible that this little problem could be finessed by simply reversing the order of operations here. Instead of doing damage then terrorize 0.25s later ... instead terrorize first and then do damage 0.25 seconds later. Doing the terrorize first, instead of second might potentially solve the problem ... but then again it might not. The behavior might still wind up with everything you hit with Terrify still retaliating against you in a combined revenge strike (just like now). That's why I proposed the 1s Confuse effect to redirect that retribution, so it still happens, but it happens against other $Targets rather than against the Mind Controller who used Terrify. It's a stopgap to make Terrify "behave" the way you'd want it to behave as a Controller/Dominator. The basic idea is that Terrify invokes a brief (1 second) temporary "panic attack" that has the affected $Targets attacking anything nearby (that just happen to be their allies) because you're literally messing with their heads by that much (remember, Terrify is a Tier 8 power!). So basically they attack each other (Confuse) for 1 attack, which then consumes their retaliatory alpha strike potential (and burns it on all of them, instead of on all of YOU, the caster). After that, any retaliation fire they might throw your way is going to be more sporadic and spaced out over time, so it won't be a single collective spike of incoming damage for your Mind Controller/Dominator to deal with. Also, that 1s of Confuse duration could cause them to turn and MOVE against each other in an attempt to melee before ranged attacking (although the typical behavior would be to ranged attack when Confused, for what ought to be obvious reasons). So depending on what attack powers the Terrified $Targets have, there could be a variety of possible response behavior patterns that would be fun to learn (and therefore manipulate as a clever Player with this power change that I'm proposing).

Lowering the Max Targets limit of Telekinesis below FIVE(!!!!!) would an unforgivable crime worthy of a perpetual Debt Penalty. Full Stop.