Mezmera

I think this is a part of what the old live team got somewhat right. These aether things are for costume overlays, but in a game with so much customizability afforded you who wants to put on someone else's full costume? On live you had to run the itf to get access to the parts of the roman costumes, there was the ascension costume you had to unlock through incarnate stuff. I know the HC team doesn't want to feel like they are gatekeeping any costumes but having a bunch of costume pieces available for unlock you can use to enhance your look would do real well to attract people to run these new things they want people to try. If we could unlock the Seer robes or Desdemona's boots or something trading in these aether things I'm sure a bunch of people would look to run all of these new higher difficulty content. They could still keep the trade in low enough so that it wouldn't take forever for someone to get a bunch of pieces even with running them at the 1-star. Things like this would attract people to your content and a bit more away from AE. Food for thought.

I just use a 50+5 Accuracy IO. I want it to hit and debuff things, the proc damage is a bonus which lets me have this in my attack chain. I use Unbreakable, Gladiators, Mistral and two of the hold ones that get psi damage.

You have a plethora of pool picks here, an armor would be good. I get by just fine with Ice Arrow, Pistols, Exec Shot, Bullet Rain and Hail of Bullets as my chain, Oil Slick adds some real nice additional damage. Yes I don't like to slot procs into powers where they will have a low rate of fire unless its already part of a 5 piece set I'm going after for bonuses. But any -res proc I do slot where I can especially since you're the debuffer. As for the Force Feedback proc in Bullet Rain it has a high rate of fire due to the target count, I'd for sure slot that 6th. Acid Arrow I'm more looking to do some enhancement values while still having the -res procs. Pretty much all of the arrows in TA I'm aiming for +recharge. My defender has a full set of one ATO in Pistols and 5 of the other in Executioner's Shot. You might be better off with an ATO set in Oil Slick. Range and pbaoe have a bunch of real nice sets to choose from. I love Power Build Up with my TA/DP. I don't have the time to get off a bunch of arrows and then by the way run in for some Soul Drain goodness so being able to boost your damage right out of the gate is great for DP and then having a side benefit of also a power boosting ability is just too good to pass up. I use power boosting and also have Unleash Potential for some silly defenses when I want it. I also take the armor and the godmode (although it hardly gets used, I still have it in a pinch from a rez or something).

Yeah the regen you get from TA's debuffs makes Diamagnetic's insignificant. I go with it for the -tohitt plus most everyone runs Reactive or Degen so those stacks will fill up fast on teams. Agree about Flash Arrow, I'd drop a slot off of that Clouded Senses, you don't need the accuracy in this one nor do you want the proc. I slot my Oil Slick with 5 Ragnarock for those bonuses and an Achilles And yeah take your armors.

I'd have a look at Unleash Potential and Unrelenting.

You crazy! Ice Arrow is the best debuff in TA. I'd make room!

I don't play support characters very much but my TA/DP defender is one of my favorite characters. There's lots of target location powers I'd highly recommend getting some binds set up for a few of those arrows, once I did that it became such a blast to play. Dual Pistols is a very cool set to use with TA. Chemical Ammo plus Poison Arrow will net you tons of -dmg. Couple things: Piercing Rounds will be a wasted attack to have, you'll mostly be using chem ammo or fire ammo so won't be getting that -20% resist, I'd drop that one. My lead attack is Ice Arrow which I proc out but I put in a 50+5 Accuracy IO instead of that Ghost Widow one you have. Hail of Bullets I put a Fury of the Gladiator -res proc 6th. Oil Slick I slot 6th an Achilles. Bullet Rain I will slot 6th a Force Feedback proc. Acid Arrow recharges so fast those procs will be wasted on it, I slot mine with an Achilles and 3 Devastation I believe with that other -res proc. As for the Arrows I find Entangling Arrow and Glue Arrow to be the most skippable, everything else you should have. I do have Glue Arrow myself though and I know you can't skip Entangling so you're looking fine on the arrows. When I was building my TA I had to consult someone to confirm that I was seeing it didn't require tons of slots which I could then dedicate elsewhere if I liked. The best thing to do with TA is to enhance the values in the powers like recharge and accuracy. It's such a fun and cool pairing you should have a blast and it's a very strong character. Edit: As far as I know DP should be fine on a Corruptor, the nuke will see a good benefit from Scourge. I also do Diamagnetic for mine as well as Agility Alpha.

With these new challenge settings I decided it was high time to get serious with my tank. I gave her a complete overhaul that worked out quite well. Here's a few things I did. My Shield tank doesn't have a heal so I just got by using Rebirth but I needed a second heal and found since I'm already taking a taunt I could dip into the Presence Pool and chase after Unrelenting for that gem of a power. I switched to Melee Core Hybrid which you would probably want Radial for your Invuln. I went with the Force of Will pool so that I could amp up my defenses, regen and recovery in spurts when I needed it. Then my big ST attack takes hold sets so I dropped in the Entomb +absorb proc which stacks very nicely with the tanker +absorb, I make sure these are slotted in very optimal powers so that if they get chewed off as long as I'm staying aggressive attacking I'll have a high chance to gain more shielding.

I don't have experience with Thermal but I love my TA/DP defender, I can list out what I do with the attacks. Pistols: 6 Defender's Bastion Swap Ammo Bullet Rain: 5 Vigilant Assault + Force Feedback proc Executioner's Shot: 5 Apocalypse + Achilles Heel proc Hail of Bullets: 5 Armageddon + Fury of Gladiator -res proc Suppressive Fire is good for another attack but I'd proc bomb it, I use the hold from my primary that way to fill in a good attack chain. I also almost always run Chem Ammo for the harder content.

Well you either kill the telepaths or confuse them or let them run wild because no other control works here. You have 3 options, confusing works with maximum efficiency, killing them works too, the third option is to let the teles do whatever you like and deal with the consequences. Yes they hardly ever turn any but they will on occasion turn one. My confuses don't run out. Sleeps don't work to stop anything the teles want to do, the debuffs stay and they still turn the protesters. As for dimension shifting them no I haven't tried that since I don't play one of those but if you can manage to keep up 6 dimension shifting bubbles and can talk your team into it let us know how that works. You should know instantly if it halfway works because if you shift them one of those stacks of debuffs on you should be removed. I play all kinds of control and they cannot be stopped from animating when they want to turn a protester because I have tried most control I can throw at them. There's a reason confuse is such an efficient power in this itrial. Ha unnecessary but thanks. I have been doing the solo dom confuse method to get everyone their "Master of" since live. If I'm on Excelsior and someone's running a TPN I will join to get people their easy master badges. I was just saying of all of the itrials this is the one more people tend to fail because they are used to just brute forcing games. You couldn't have gotten a better person to respond on this one to give you more clarity.

Shield is a blast to play on tank and it can be built into a top tier lead tank. If you want to main tank though Rage is such a bad power to build around. You won't want to self handicap yourself when there's better builds to be had especially when you can get more out of the Gaussian proc in a Build Up power which imo is a better power to have than Rage. Foot Stomp is great sure but you can do better overall with other powerset pairings. Shield Charge is a jewel of a power which will pair well with any of the tanker aoes in their assaults. I do real well with the enlarged Spinning Strike from Street Justice and the Mighty Judgment. Of course if you wanted to just build a proc tank instead of a main unkillable tank that changes things a little but Shield is for sure versatile enough to get what you want out of it.

Yes Chords of Despair would seem appropriately thematic for some pop dance emote hold. My other control characters would be super jealous of something like this though, bad enough everyone and their mother gets Ghost Widow's awesome hold, except for actual control characters...

For me every once in a while he'd aggro to a squishy taking out a barrier which I'd need to run over and stand next to him and then he'd get back to my tank. I think the most problems can arise from extra melee with a taunt field of their own accidently dragging aggro across the courtyard away from the lead tank. Probably best to tell those scrappers to turn off Against All Odds.

I take it that the Emerald Barrier has high mez protection/resist so that you're not just going to get that nice -regen from a blaster spamming an ice hold. Maximum efficiency would probably call for a Dom to be on that Emerald Barrier since they'll be able to maintain control the easiest. As for tanking Rom I found he snuggles nice and close by making a concerted effort to keep him in range of the taunt field. No one else on the team had a taunt field so that made things easier and I would just spam taunt just in case it actually did do something through that "Unaffected". For me it was really being able to survive through the moments solo when everyone else should leave my tank to kill those barriers. I would spare all of my tricks for when I was solo since once everyone got back to Rom I was getting team buffs again and he was well debuffed that I didn't really need my good stuff until I was alone. I don't mind that he is outright untauntable but if the tanker taunt field has an effect to keep Rom's priority on you especially if there's no one else all that close then I think that's fine if it takes a little extra effort than just spamming taunt.

This is the biggest barrier to pvp. The QoL improvements given to pvp is nice with the pvp only accolades and this new create a character system. Ultimately though the attraction to pvp will not be driven by these QoL improvements alone, it'll be a real rebalance of pvp from its current broken form that may attract more to these arenas. A full revert to the old system isn't going to fix anything and likely creates so many more problems. While these features are cool and all it still is window dressing.

Correct none of your arrows stack on themselves. You're only going to get one value of Disruption Arrow along with all of the others. But they do stack from another TA user.

This is how I play my doms since they gave us Unleash. Heck I take Unleash on my Shield tank for the fantastic regen and recovery. Force of Will pool is sneaky good.

First off Plant is OP as all get out so lets not act like Seeds and Creepers aren't broken. Seeds has a ridiculously fast recharge for such a supremely useful power ability. Creepers does fabulous damage AND those vines each hold their own aggro which keeps baddies from attracting to you. Plant is the all being control that should not be. Then the Fire Dominator takes advantage of yet another broken ability that has been allowed to linger far too long in Bonfire with that KB>KD proc. Take that away like they would have quickly fixed if this was the live crew and you'd find a dom with average control and good damage output. Dark Control is decent control but lags behind in aoe hard control for better damage particularly ST damage. Mind Control has far more the superior aoe control over all else and has paltry damage output. You're relying on Terrify and Mass Confused targets to do your damage. The benefit of Mind Control is that on Dominators all that control is accentuated so then you can rely on your assaults just as well to get your damage. I think someone should refrain from giving abstracts about a powerset they don't play. The bar should not be Plant nor Bonfire or even Stealth Confuses which are being exampled as 'good' powers and sets which have broken good abilities that are bad habit forming and lead players to ask why can't new control sets be as easy peasy. The devs have done a good job here of crafting their own unique powerset independent enough to play how they want it to play.

There's a lot of the same powers but it's a completely different playstyle. Mind Control's animations are fast and fluid. Symphony's are clunky in comparison but you are netting much better damage output for a bit less optimal control. Fair tradeoff. You can keep these animations away from my Mind dom tyvm. I can play Symphony if I like.

The confuse is fine as it is. This set is already quite powerful without that confuse and then you toss that in as an extra tool at your disposal you're quite well off with this control. How something should work does not need to be dependent on how Mind Control's powers work, or Dark Control or Plant, this is Symphony Control and should behave on its own separate terms. The sleep could use modified so that it feels like it would get more functional use but I don't think it's damage component is the problem. And yet it's still a good power to have in its current form you'll just have to adapt to how it plays rather than how it should play. They've been tuning this set for quite a while, we've seen it a few days. It feels quite good to me that I can really only pick out the sleep as less than ideal so I'm going to acquiesce to how they see that they want Symphony Control to play.

Plus spawning them out towards the sea implicates that you must stop them before they make way off the island and off to destruction. The twin fight is pretty epic but those extra ambushes feel like a bit much. Those twins are already a handful to deal with. As for the Romulus fight I actually kind of liked it. Once the team got the hang of seeing the barriers come back up they learned to leave my tank and kill those barriers and then back to Romulus. I don't mind the usual ambushes on this fight but I'd maybe trim down all the extra ads in the area to start. These two fights add a significant portion of time to the task force which I think trimming down a bunch of the ads in specific areas on these last two maps would do a great deal in not making it feel like such a slog. I like these additions but now it feels like there's just too much needless ad pruning that needs to happen which undermines these two new features. As for the hostless tech it's a real neat addition. They are a bit hard to identify in a crowd and it does feel like there may be a few too many that spawn but altogether I like it. The biggest thing I would do is to look into how if the hostless gets controlled to stop taking over your teammate that your teammate shouldn't die after bit now that they were freed and the time ran out on killing that hostless. But I think that is something you're looking into. We had a bunch of control on the team which it felt pretty strong compared to how it could have been with the old shout mez protection. I don't think control was left behind at all on this and feel like 2-3 control characters would be ideal to have. I'd say some ad pruning is in order other than that fun stuff!

Having just run my tank through the new relentless ITF I like this change and it feels warranted if all these wicked holds are going to be thrown around. Prior to this on the rare occasion that my Against All Odds got knocked off from some Widow hold or something I'd forget to look down to turn it back on when I'm usually in the heat of things. Sometimes it would be more than these 8 seconds so not having to worry about this now is great. But I do see how some need to be quick to get some of these toggles back up and running. I don't know about anyone running 4 offensive toggles but I can see 2 being on for a lot of characters. Put me down in the camp for a 6s suppression.

All in all I think this is a well thought out set. All of the usual powers are there and that it even has a confuse power sets it up as a cut above and I even like that it does damage, confuses are real strong regardless and I see the intent behind not wanting any extra stealth confusing tactics. Confounding Chant's soft control with that strong damage cone is the bread and butter of the set. Symphony does feel a little sluggish but that's probably for the best with how good of a set it is. The set has a great mix of soft control with some real nice damage potential and a little bit of hard control for fallback. I also like how the pet interacts in the fight. About the only thing I'd say that could use changed is Lullaby. It is a neat power with that -20% damage but that's all I'm really going to use it for since it's best to lead in with those cones and seeing how you're starting in the more ideal position to start engaging the sleep is one you'll want to include in your alpha. That it pauses the damage from your other control I find that less than ideal. I could see the sleep aspect of the power getting better functional use as a pbaoe even if it does still pause your damage and could keep that -20% damage debuff. It's not so OP that I will feel dirty playing it. Cool set I will have one of these.