Kaballah

Really not a fan of this diminishing returns scheme on targets over 5 / 10. Too complicated, no real justification for it. Just lower the AOE damage if you're going to lower AOE damage, applying diminishing returns to targets I can't control the selection of just sucks.

Please consider adding a trawl effect to GDF similar to Black Hole, it makes sense and would be fun. Thanks.

Big approval to the change to Synaptic Overload, the current version on live servers is very frustrating if you misjudge the radius between targets and it only lands on one (or it misses), this is much more friendly. Feels a lot more comfortable overall and more in line with the other control sets.

Good changes today. I was a little iffy about Psychokinetic Barrier, I think this is much more appealing.

I mean, it's not called Aura of Sanity

yeah I can not imagine skipping Aura of Insanity, it's the signature power of the set. everything else is just un-flashy "make me less likely to die" - not that any of that is bad, it's just all really basic numerical stuff without a big blatant effect on enemy behavior. e: it interacts in very nifty ways with Cognitive Interface and Control Hybrid, it's going to be a really interesting armor set late game 🤷‍♀️

It sure doesn't feel like a good opener, it just feels bad to try to leverage. I feel like it should be more like 10-15 seconds or more, especially in a team you would have to have super tight coordination for it to be at all helpful. Oh hey guys wait, let me open with this power and then all of you immediately blast away in the 3 or so second window it creates imagine trying to use this in a team of 8 people, like on a task force. imagine everybody knows what to do and is playing hard ball, not just following the controller passively. where is the "oh wow what was that?? that rules!" power in this set?

That's neat, I hadn't noticed that but yeah I agree that's pretty great as it is. Thanks for the info!

Glittering Column feels very bad, it just aggros enemies and immediately poofs and then they turn on the caster. Puzzled at what it's intended to be used for. Sparkling Chain doesn't seem to give any feedback when it misses, nothing in the log beyond "You activated the Sparkling Chain power." Would be nice to know what the chance to hit was or whatever. e: I'm looking for an analogue to Ice Slick, Bonfire, Static Field, Earthquake, or any of the other sets' staple "OH WOW CONTROLLERS ARE AWESOME" big showy power with high uptime and there just doesn't seem to be one for this set.

One thing I'd like to see is a Universal Control enhancement set, akin to Universal Damage.

Overall really happy with this how this set works, except I think Psychokinetic Barrier is very skippable. The absorb is fine, the 20% debuff resist in various types doesn't feel very exciting at all. Would rather have a narrower set of debuff resistance types in larger amounts or some other utility effect. The power FX makes it look like something awesome is happening and the mechanics don't really feel like a big deal at all, Memento Mori feels much more impactful. Otherwise I think it's a great set and has a bunch of interesting options to it, I really like Aura of Insanity because it encourages a lot of odd choices in incarnate power choices and gearing.

Very pleased with the changes to Electric Control, it's been my least favorite control set for a long time. Re: the change to Gravity control's Gravity Distortion Field, please consider having it do a pull/trawl, I think that would be a tremendously popular change.

yeah it's a great idea and I hope it becomes a common thing (e.g. how about a version of Storm/Hurricane that does a trawl instead of repel)

patches that have a durational effect are unequivocally a lot better than the standard click/done powers in my experience, these changes are very good.

Congratulations on finally pulling the trigger on AOE confuse rebalancing, it's about damn time. the Adaptive Recharge concept is very smart, good job finally making those "situational" top tier long recharge powers into something much more appealing instead of something easily skipped.

this is going to be an overwhelmingly popular change, sorry you're not on board but I predict there's going to be a huge number of new mind control users

My concern isn't about Bonfire specifically, something is drastically different for other powers as well (Earthquake). It's not because they were buffing each other with shouts either, this behavior manifests immediately when you start combat. I strongly encourage anybody with a KB power at all like EQ, Ice Slick etc to go compare how these powers are behaving on this beta/RC patch vs what is on the live servers right now. e: I don't thiiiiink those Cim mobs were buffing each other (I didn't see or hear them doing their shout buff or see the FX of the buff on characters) but I will test this some more with my various controllers with AE mobs too to remove that concern e: not behaving this way as of this morning (even vs. cimerorans) so I guess I could have been stupendously unlucky while testing earlier or something was changed/changing server side without a client update

The proposed change to Bonfire currently on Brainstorm are terrible. Generally I'm very supportive of balance changes the HC team have made but this particular one really feels like some bad math is going on. It knocks very infrequently, feels like about 1/5th as much as it does on live version. Please reconsider. e: some more observations: I 6 slotted Bonfire with a full set of Sudden Acceleration on it, and spent some time testing it on Cimerorans. It was only able to KD Surgeons as far as I saw, it literally never knocked anything else at all, not even once. Only Surgeons. e: something is VERY WRONG with knockback/knockdown across the board, Earth Control/Earthquake is also behaving wildly different from how it performs on live. no longer repeatable as of 8:40 US CST 2/13

Any of these types of powers that can be slotted for Endurance Modification, put a Performance Shifter +Endurance and/or Power Transfer +Health proc piece in them (possibly both but usually I am happy with just the Power Transfer piece) Every version of this category of power is a huge no-brainer for any blaster build, they are all very good and some are straight up bananas (drain psyche e.g.)

Post 50 you can just use Destiny/Clarion, which remains available when exemped down to 45. gearing for ranged def is also a massive help (some people prefer s/l def as mentioned earlier) although be aware a couple of the dumbest CCs with the longest durations are AOE, e.g. there's a Malta stun grenade with a duration of around 45 seconds. Clarion really fixes everything though if you mostly do 45+ content, it can be fired while CC'd and the T4 version gives essentially permanent status protection vs all types. adding to this, Blessing of the Zephyr 2-piece bonus is 1.25% ranged def which can be stacked up to 5 times if you have, say, hover/fly/evasive maneuvers and/or like combat teleport/teleport/fold space, if you can spare slots for this and value the extra speed/range or KB protection

This was with two characters, one that was already 50 and one that I got to 50 via the instant "level to 50)" command - I can just make a character now and level it 1 at a time though and get back to you. kind of looking like it's on unlocking an incarnate slot actually e: yeah leveling 1 at a time at the trainer to 50 didn't provoke it, it appeared once I did "Level 50 Plus" and it gives you all the incarnate slot unlocks, in between the new contact notification popups for Nolan and Ortis.

Getting a message on levelup / logging in a leveled character that looks like a broken/incorrectly configured contact:

Defender/Corruptor Psychic Mastery Epic pool versions of Telekinesis on the test server still have the original power behavior (5 targets etc) - seems like this is an oversight, fyi.

That's a reasonable workaround for intermediate+ players but the default behavior just sucks, especially for brand new people, of which we have many lately.

While you're tinkering with this set, consider making the location you can summon Storm Cell more permissive, it's really annoying to be constantly hunting for an eligible target location because there's an ineligible object or wall in front of the mouse or "target in air". E.g. the behavior of Teleport's location placement would be fine. For example, this is really annoying to be told "target is in air"