Kaballah

Well yes they're not comparable powers, because Seeds is dramatically better in every way that matters. NB: not asking to have Seeds nerfed here, but Mass Confusion and Mind Control in general are plainly in a really poor state, as anyone who has played both sets can see. No reason for people to get defensive about Seeds being a good power here. They are absolutely 1:1 in direct competition with each other as they're literally the only two AOE confuse powers in the game, and Seeds is just hands down way, way way way better.

"scope creep" is a thing, just shortening the cooldown for Mass Confusion is a very small change and shouldn't be a massive six month project to get implemented. I agree Mind Control is not in a great place overall but that one small change would go a very long way.

I feel like the cooldown for Seeds is a relic of when they were selling the Plant Control set for money, similar to how Titan Weapons was blatantly just plain superior when it was released.

in practice the cone of Seeds is easier to hit full packs with than the AOE radius of MC, I really can't see anything that isn't better about Seeds after using both extensively. I agree about reducing the 4 minute AOE holds too, these days it's something every AT can do with some varieties of Judgement.

The whole paradigm of 4 minute tier 9 "BIG MOVE" powers got dismantled with reducing cooldowns for nukes across all sets. It's really long past time to make Mass Confusion a little more on par with Seeds, Arctic Air, Bonfire/KD, Phantom Army and other much better CC powers.

Just inexplicable that the recharge for Mass Confusion is four times the recharge for Seeds of Confusion. Seeds is just plain enormously better in every way. The overall utility of Mind Control vs. Plant Control isn't too great either but reducing Mass Confusion base recharge to parity with Seeds would be a start.

It's a great pity how obvious this is, non-Granite Stone needs some good offensive feature like Bio's -resist/+damage.

this seems to be resolved

Aid Self works pretty good on ice armor tank vs most enemies, 6 slot it with 5 panacea 1 interrupt. The prereq can be satisfied with Injection, a reasonably useful power that doesn't have to be slotted with anything. tanks are definitely not a dying breed, sometimes I've been on teams that are 4 tanks out of 8.

You can fix that in several ways, e.g. with Superspeed or a stealth IO in Sprint or whatever. Confuse is hilariously useful and you can slot the contagious confuse proc piece from the purple confuse set on it, it's a really good power. It's basically 1/2 of Seeds of Confusion, i.e. the best power in the game.

Post 50 you just get Clarion and stop worrying about CC. There is also the Hybrid toggle but Clarion can have 100% uptime and even if you are already CCd you can still fire it.

You get to the point where all your defs are well over capped very easily without relying on stuff like Parry, so don't think that's going to make or break you. Any of these are just fine IMO. e: A useful thing about Broadsword is that it applies -def on everything, which is good for everyone in your team (at least up to the point where everyone is accuracy capped anyway) and you can also put Achilles Heel proc pieces on whatever you want.

Everything pairs well with Shield, if AOE damage important to you then pick really just any set/epic combo that has a lot of AOE. I gotta laugh at the idea one of these choices will be "bad", SD is as superb set and there isn't a wrong answer.

On my DP blaster, switching to fire ammo disables the KB. I actually have some of my DP attacks fitted with a KB set (Force Feedback) because it's useful to have strong, reliable KB when you want it, and KB definitely does not happen with fire ammo toggled. Oddly the KnockDOWN from the nuke does, but that's the only thing.

Damage auras are neat in principle but in practice they're really annoying to keep going because they get detoggled whenever you are CC'd, which is very frequent until late in the post-50 game.

Capped fire resistance is only part of it, if you have no fire def then you're going to be busy doing active things to avoid defeat. You can pile up all the fire def in the world though and fairly easily cap it both on brute or tanker (easier for tanker tho). Tanker has an advantage due to larger base life, which is magnified by resistance and later by bonus life added by percentage of base, from accolades or IO set bonuses and uniques. Various things that grant absorption (temporary health increases) like the proc from Preventive Medicine or Gauntleted Fist are a percentage of base health. Regeneration (even the base amount from your intrinsic but also the little bits you get from set IO bonuses) depends crucially on total health. The flat health from Panacea's proc piece is a percentage of base health. All this adds up, large base health is very powerful.

The animation can be turned off, but the time spent running it is still there from what everyone has told me.

Be aware you're going to have to live with weapon redraw for both sets, whether that bothers you or not (It bothers me). Water/Psi is really strong DP/Energy is also pretty great

I don't agree about Super Strength, I have seen Foot Stomp post-patch and it is utterly bananas in a character built for damage. Not sure about Psi Melee, I haven't seen anybody built to really optimize that yet (my own WP/Psi tank isn't that for sure). For most people though, I think the change is less about doing damage to stuff (which it definitely improves, sure) and more about applying Gauntlet to more stuff in a bigger area, in a fun way.

Post 50 the Blaster can reasonably have capped s/l resist and high defenses or vice versa, always-available status protection with Clarion, while Sentinel is stuck with that low base damage forever. Especially if you're supported by teammates, it's not a very even comparison. IMO Sentinels need some more design effort, I feel like they were designed previous to the Blaster changes in I24 that made them so much stronger.

I stuck with Combustion because even though it has a long activation time it still does very good damage and is painless to apply to max targets, unlike fire breath (which I skipped but sure, take it too if you like).

The attack chain is way more satisfying for sure, you can cycle 3 large-radius 16 target AOEs with a tap of Incinerate or whatever here and there, forever. If you wanted to break theme you could take Mu instead and have a really powerful cone too.

Echoing the sentiment that you shouldn't worry too much about people telling you what powers to use and where to be unless it's for a very specific thing like Lord Recluse perhaps. Also KB attacks can always be fitted with Sudden Acceleration, which can turn a really annoying power into an amazing one that breaks the game in half (bonfire).

Uh, no, there are like 3 sets that have shorter recharge for tier 1/2, and 16 seconds for targeted AOE is very normal, few exceptions. Can you highlight some sets besides fire that are faster? e: in any case rad/rad is a very good combo, -def is a useful secondary effect and you can put Achilles' Heel proc pieces on most of stuff if you like. My own rad/atomic blaster is one of most satisfying characters to play, good luck

"long recharge times" compared to what?