spiralmenace

two years later and i'm still more proud of this set than anything else (which, tbf, is not much) that i've written up for this game. also, the 20th anniversary dev team Q&A mentioned that they had a psionic defense set in super early development so i feel incredibly vindicated having come up with this 😅

bump. threw together alternate versions of the set for all the other armor ATs, with a handful of thematic skill replacements for each

you know, that's a really good point. i really like the flavor of the ability but i think the slot would need to be something pretty much completely different for tank-types. first thought is something to the effect of swapping the DoT out of outburst into its own power, then moving the retaliatory strikes into it as an exchange. Psychic Vortex and Outrage, as alternate names? i guess in that case invert would need to just be an ordinary pbaoe damage click, probably with some rebalancing to compensate how it doesn't require stacks to use anymore. not sure how i'd wanna handle that tbh.

i think you guys are vastly overestimating how useful status resistance is. copied from https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Resistance_(Mechanics): Resistance to status effects follows a different formula: SufferedDuration = AppliedDuration / (100% + TotalResistance) So 75% resistance to Sleep duration, for example, would not cause all Sleeps to affect the character for only 1/4 of their normal durations. Their durations would be divided by 1.75, which is roughly only a 43% reduction. More importantly, the formula means that achieving 100% or more resistance to effect durations does not cause them to end instantly. 100% resistance actually only cuts their durations in half, 200% cuts it to a third, 300% would cut it to a fourth, and so on. 20% status resistance on a level 2 scrapper is not going to make any appreciable impact on gameplay at early levels. it's not as OP as it looks

yeah, alright. after some thought i've redistributed a couple of the mez resists from t2 into t1 and t3, it shouldn't seem quite so loaded at a glance now. they're all still there so it wouldn't actually have any impact on gameplay. not gonna lie, i don't get why a handful of status resistances in one auto power is such a contentious idea when t2 skills in other comparable armor sets are even more loaded (looking at you, bio and radiation and willpower)

boy, if some relatively exotic mez resistance in a t2 power bugs you that bad you're really not gonna like when i point out that arachnos soldiers can have straight up mez protection to virtually everything in an auto right out of the gate https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=training_gadgets.training_and_gadgets.wolf_spider_armor&at=arachnos_soldier https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=training_gadgets.crab_spider_training.crab_spider_armor&at=arachnos_soldier https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=training_gadgets.bane_spider_training.bane_spider_armor&at=arachnos_soldier i won't argue that it could potentially be somewhere else. but to say it's OP to have it that early is a little excessive

honestly i can't really say there's much reason for it besides flavor. early game enemies don't tend to use most of those types of mez, and the ones they do are fairly rare so it doesn't even really matter in the long run imo. also how do you draw the conclusion that an offensive defense set with positional defenses, absorb, strong regen, and three offensive tools fills the same niche as willpower? WP is wildly different mechanically, the only things it has in common are high regen and psionic mitigation

the passive is mez resistance, not mez protection. resistance reduces the duration that status effects actually affect you, protection prevents them entirely i figure the passive resistance would be from about 20-40% based on level scaling. it's really just there for flavor since there's overlap with the toggle mez protection

let me just preface this by saying don't bother commenting if you're just going to be lame like "we already have willpower and super reflexes and energy aura 🤓" so basically my line of thinking is that an explicitly psionic-themed armor set would be neato. to differentiate it from the above sets i envision it as an offensive defense set in the vein of bio armor, fiery aura, stone armor. primary influences for this are Mob Psycho 100, Mass Effect 3 multiplayer vanguards, and maybe a little splash of Akira for good measure scrapper version: Tier 1: Movement Prediction. toggle, self +defense (melee) +resist (psionic) basic melee defense toggle, part of the bread and butter toggle combo. not much to say here Tier 2: TK Wall. toggle, self +defense (ranged, AoE) +resist (psionic, stun) the other half of the bread and butter toggle combo Tier 3: Mental Fortitude. auto, self +resist (smashing, lethal, psionic, sleep, fear, confuse, taunt, recharge) a little bit of "mind over body" baseline resilience for balance's sake. resistance to mental-type status effects for flavor. to be clear, this is not meant to be more than 20-40% total mez resist value based on level scaling. most of these mez types are non-existent in early game, plus the enemies that actually do use stun and sleep are not terribly common either. Tier 4: Clarity of Mind. toggle, status protection (immobilize, stun, hold, sleep, confuse, fear) +resist (psionic, tohit, perception) bog standard melee defensive mez protection Tier 5: Psychic Backlash. auto, self +stacks over time (spent automatically on receiving damage, attacker suffers moderate to high psionic damage based on stack count) here's where it gets fun. since the set is defense-based, there's pretty good odds that once a character is kitted out this power won't fire as often as it theoretically would while leveling. fewer HP damage hits, stronger retaliatory strikes to those that actually land. Tier 6: Safe Room. click, +absorb +resist (smashing, lethal, energy, fire, cold) environmental protection panic button. hits taken by absorb should also trigger backlash. also shores up a demerit on a later power Tier 7: Drain Psyche. click, PBAoE enemy -regeneration -recovery, self +regen +recov self-explanatory. for balance's sake, it'd probably need somewhat less value per target and a longer cooldown than blaster/dom versions. not gonna lie a big chunk of the idea behind this set is getting DP onto melee archetypes lol Tier 8: Invert Barrier. click, PBAoE moderate damage (psionic) self -stacks -defense another fun skill. spend backlash stacks to hit all enemies around you, but at the same time since you are exploding your shields your defense briefly dumpsters. use the absorb click preemptively to mitigate this. also this is probably the easiest "skip" power for pairs that have good AoE damage Tier 9: Outburst. duration-limited toggle, self +damage +recharge, PBAoE damage over time (psionic) chance to knockdown, delayed self -endurance -recovery a wildly offensive crashing t9. i envision this as lasting 45-60 seconds with a 40% end crash that neutralizes recovery for about 15 seconds after. use DP to mitigate that brute/tanker version: t1: movement prediction t2: psychic vortex (toggle, pbaoe psionic DoT +stacks over time) t3: mental fortitude t4: TK wall t5: clarity of mind t6: safe room t7: drain psyche t8: invert barrier t9: outrage (duration toggle, self +dmg +rech +retaliatory strikes [high psi dmg +knockdown] delayed self -end -recov) stalker version: t1: hide t2: movement prediction t3: TK wall t4: clarity of mind t5: mental fortitude t6: psychic backlash t7: safe room t8: drain psyche t9: outburst sentinel version: t1: movement prediction t2: TK wall t3: mental fortitude t4: clarity of mind t5: safe room t6: psychic backlash t7: psyche up (click, self +regen +recov +max health) t8: extend barrier (click, pbaoe repel +chance for knockback) t9: outburst all in all i think it'd be a pretty fun set. there's some glaring defensive gaps (debuff resistance, max hp, general resists) but every set needs to have a couple holes in its mitigation to not be grossly overpowered. also feel like there's a case to be made for rearranging some of the tiers at which certain skills are available, but eh. e: big note, i just realized this set is entirely missing knockback protection and honestly i'm okay with that. if anyone is familiar with MP100 then you'll remember how often people with their full-strength barriers get thrown around like pinballs in that, so it's 100% thematically okay for this imo.

gonna bump because i just ran into this myself. can't imagine it's intentional, and if it is then it's a fairly baffling decision

echoing the dissatisfaction already posted re: kinetic melee nerf. at the very least save that for once the set has gotten a rework on all ATs instead of wrecking the one AT it's actually reasonably good on 😕

@SwitchFade thanks for the links, definitely seeing some good ideas in those other threads. 👍 i hadn't initially noticed that terrify is so much worse than fearsome stare. could definitely stand to raise the damage and accuracy and drop the end cost a bit, also remove that vile 0.25s delay before the fear inflicts. that's probably a good chunk of why mind control feels so Bad

for what it's worth i initially thought that matching the cooldown on mass hypnosis with AoE immobs was a good idea, but upon a little further thought an 8-second cooldown on a 15-second aoe sleep available at level 6 is probably a really bad idea for early game balance. also matching mass confusion's cooldown to seeds of confusion is also almost definitely a poor idea given that seeds is (debatably) due for a bit of a nerf relative to its place in its own set

mind control needs some major help. it's arguably the most underperforming primary for controllers due to lack of ways to set/deal containment damage against groups and lack of damage overall, although it's significantly better on dominators thanks to their inherent and secondary sets. i propose rearranging the power order and buffing a handful of the skills current order: t1: mesmerize t2: levitate t3: dominate t4: confuse t5: mass hypnosis t6: telekinesis t7: total domination t8: terrify t9: mass confusion revised order: t1: mesmerize t2: levitate t3: dominate t4: mass hypnosis (reduce recharge to 20 seconds maybe? closer to AoE immobilize skills in other control primaries, the powerset needs a semi-spammable aoe containment setup) t5: mass confusion (reduce recharge to 90 seconds, not quite as fast as seeds of confusion but still magnitudes better than it has been. there's no reason it should have been that bad for this long) t6: terrify (also enable fear to trigger containment damage. why it never did on live is beyond me) t7: total domination t8: telekinesis (increase the hold magnitude from 3 to 4, to allow for control of boss mobs) t9: new skill: Subjugate, force a single enemy at a time to ally with the player until death OR t9: Psionic Nexus, largely identical to the one summoned by penny yin as a freedom phalanx hero actually no. put nexus in a psionic-themed support set akin to dark servant from dark miasma/affinity. feels like way past time that mind control was brought up to the level of other sets. it'd still kind of lack the same damage potential as other control primaries, but i feel like it'd gain some identity in being able to fairly rapidly cycle aoe shutdown controls.

oh, huh. guess i should have searched before posting unfortunate how weapon customization is handled like that. ah well, at least more posts shows interest in seeing a fix