Mezmera

Honestly I thought the prices were going to be higher than they are for a lot of these. I don't find any of these costume overlays appealing especially in a game with so much character creation already afforded you and I can see how the baby mode will cause the dev team grief since it is a very immersion breaking look. I'm fine with how everything is tiered though. Since the page 4 update I've been hosting teams through Relentless Aeons which these prisms have created quite an interest to run this new creative content. I'm glad they are keeping the reward trade ins to just purely cosmetic because if there were to be some type of power enhancing trade in as well that would have the potential to create a power dichotomy. The players very capable of running these HM tfs I'm sure would be much more inclined to have a power reward instead of flair and most are reasonable enough to see that it should just remain flair. But for all of the complaining part of me wishes they'd just release a bunch of these costumes at lower rewards for those whining about how long it could take to get all of these things they couldn't get before and then offer a power enhancer for the 1500 PAPs for the players that would rather just have more powa to enhance what they are already capable of doing. Even though there's nothing in these trade ins that I want I still think this is a good idea, this new PAP currency, to generate interest in playing. The table is set and hopefully there will eventually be something released later on that I do find appealing enough to spend my PAPs on like costume pieces or maybe even Rularuu the Ravager. It's not like we didn't have a hell of a lot harsher grind on live just for that Ascension costume attained solely through incarnate content. If the devs are going to be spending their time creating such quality content and as an aside we'll have various costume rewards to generate interest in said content I'm all for it. I'm by no means a homer for the devs, I just find it amazing that we are getting such great stuff added on to a game that was supposed to be long gone. They should do what they feel is in good health for the game with whatever balance they feel reasonable.

I found that if a group was well enough clumped together I'd soften them up with Gleam as I'm running in to use that pbaoe Flash to keep them from roaming. Then the terror pet and the nice recharge on Gleam keep things pretty well controlled if anything tries to break free. This set very subtly has some nice aoe control, nowhere near the weakest. I also like to run into the middle like I do my Mind dom and let my defenses allow the group to clump up on me in melee range then use Flash much like I do Total Domination then get to work on them.

That immobilize is a skippable power to me but I appreciate that it's there for others to make use of. Outside of aoe immobs I'm not all too much of a fan particularly on a dom with so much great control already available.

Well a +4 AV is at 87% resist. So the original number put forth for the regular AV isn't far off. Plus then something like 4 stacks of Diamagnetic play into it on top of already capped defenses. I agree though the number doesn't seem all too impressive but much less so if it were a useless immob proc.

Having tested it out a bit I can see where @Zeraphia is coming from so I'll help elaborate on what she's seeing. The t2 being the ST hold and t3 the ST confuse is exactly how I'd want my Mind doms first powers to be available. The set gets the best stealth power without wasting a pool pick on Concealment. Then with Gleam and Flash if you play in melee heavy like I tend to do on my Mind dom there's not much difference in how those aoe controls get used while Gleam is a decently less useful power than Mass Confusion it's still a great hard control with better recharge. The terror pet is quite nice, not as great as Terrify, but still very helpful. The amount of adaptable aoe control in an Illusion dom is not far off from a Mind dom, minus how great Mass Confusion can be. Then on top of that all of those pets provide some great distraction and grind into a single target much like Dark Control. This has better ST damage than Dark Control which is known for top tier ST damage. The way Illusion dom's will be setup is fine but it sets the justification of a lot of other controls to be tinkered with.

No apologies should be necessary. Original energy comes off much more authentic, my only disappointment is that you didn't come like this:

Yes it is quite strong. It'll be the second best control below Plant and as you're alluding to it'll leave Mind and Dark in the dust, which hopefully some reshuffling comes about for some of the other control sets. I don't know what they can really do though to make it not as good as it is. The powers feel about right and all of the pets you have to take. The only real nerf would be to the pets and they already took away the taunt, how much do they trim from the set known for having great pets?

No thank you! Stacking this -tohitt onto an AV with Total Focus is a great weapon to have. Any power with a stun component that some people use in this way will be very negatively affected in an AV fight by this lack of creativity.

Ah well yeah you're going with 2 control powers for sure. It really depends on the control set as to what good powers it has to offer in those first 3. At least now you're getting a very usable attack. Some control sets could use a juggling but an aoe immob that does damage at t3 if that's its power available is a decent power.

Dom's tier 2 assaults are usually some of the better powers in their sets. They're melee attacks with high dpa to coax you into thinking of them as a hybrid assault approach. Bone Smasher available right out of the gate will be awesome! Dark's t2 is its best dpa power. Lots of upside on this for doms being able to skip a quickly obsolete power for a very strong one.

This is what I went ahead and crafted on test. The thing is an absolute animal.

I'll say at the very least having options in your first secondary power to choose from will give people more to scrutinize when they are looking at these powers. The characters with armor secondary's I haven't bothered to look at since I take mostly all the armors available. The characters with an assault I went ahead and logged most in to have a better look at those first two powers and I must say aside from my Doms I don't see much I will be reworking. My tank getting an attack with a very slight uptick in dpa isn't all that consequential to me when I consider with the t1's much faster animation I am afforded quicker responses to grab extra aggro or fix myself if some attack got through. Same for my blasters, it'll be hard to drop a ranged attack I can use while mezzed. My defender's t1 does some nice extra debuffing compared to a slight upgrade in damage with the t2 which I don't feel is better. As far as the rest of the powers being available earlier I understand the problem with the nukes but those nukes are already OP as it is, that's more of a nuke problem than a power availability problem. There's a much broader pallet of powers I now have to realize to be more choosy with. The most noticeable thing aside from the t2 power option is how deep you can get with the epic pools. To me the most intriguing part of this is the t2 option and the epic pools. Other than that it's hard to pretend we weren't already well past power creep especially for exemping what with all the extra slots and fully fleshed out builds of lvl 50 characters.

This is such a beastly powerset. The pets do great on their own and the control is just right where it doesn't take you out of positioning if you don't want to. If you're in melee and getting surrounded you can drop one of the aoe controls and watch as your pets devour the enemies alongside with you. It pairs well with melee style doms, real fluid. This thing is about to cause some strife between me and my main.

Well. Having the option to choose from the first two powers in the secondary will be real nice for a lot of characters. I agree with the sentiment that some power pools add just as much to the power creep as your main powers so by having some main powers available earlier at the cost of things like Hasten and Leadership powers isn't all that much power creep that it seems it could lead to. I wouldn't be looking to change most of my characters because of earlier access to powers since I'd still be choosing the same ones just in a different order BUT I will for sure appreciate the option of the t2 power out of the gate. Overall I like the idea. Excuse me while I go look at all of the characters I will be looking to respec.

On the Dual Pistols side of things here's what I go with. Pistols Swap Ammo Bullet Rain Executioner's Shot Hail of Bullets This is a very fine rotation and will allow for you to lay out those Dark powers while getting in your best shots.

Ice/Cold Corruptors are great all around for these. You can always use the defense shielding they bring along with their great debuffing. Ice procs great damage. Illusion is great but more so on the ITF for tricking those Hostless. Trick Arrow is a fantastic debuff set as well The backbone I look to build a run on these are 2 Colds, 1 Kin and 1 TA. I'll take a Nature to get the team tanky if its offered. Beyond those first 4 I'd look to get 2 great dps blasters usually Fire and I like an Energy Melee Stalker for that great ST dps. Then having a good tank to fall back on is always nice, you'll want one with great DDR and capable of decently high resists for those nasty Cim swords.

DDR caps at 95% which SR can easily attain. My Shield tank is at 90% without using Ageless, seems pretty close to me. Then Shield can bring much more to the table.

It'll fluctuate particularly when the next higher tier costumes come out but yeah I'd say 10 mil for these will still even be a bit high. So if these end up being anything less than the current 10 million then my example proves you're better off making better use of your merits and buying these PAPs which could very well end up being the value of 2 for 50 merits. The market will take care of this.

PAPs are hovering around 10 million which will probably be about where it settles. You could trade in 100 merits for a Winter enhancement and sell it for 20 million and buy yourself 2 PAPs...

It's the combination of debuffs in Benumb and a few of other debuffs plus then yes its the defense shields which the soft cap is raised quite a bit higher whereas the resistance cap is a hard stop at the AT values. Lots more versatility to bring to the team in Cold which really is nothing new, except the defense shields shine brighter now.

If you're organizing these things it's good to know what is good to bring. If you're joining a 4 star ITF and you see a bunch of meleers on your team you might want to tell the lead to reconsider team makeup or make up a reason to be excused. As someone that organizes Relentless Aeon's frequently if I'm pulling people from LFG my broadcast will look something like "Relentless Aeon lf debuff/dmg w/barrier". A lot of debuffers come with some shields, either resists or defense, but I'll certainly take a one stop shop character like TA that can provide quasi defense and resist shields without being encumbered by a cap. Barriers and Rebirth fill a lot of holes, effective debuffs are what are really hard to get through incarnates.

The thing is a lot of people run quite a few Barriers on these HM tf's and their teams usually will consist of some support characters like Colds and other buffers so you should be resist capped and defense soft capped. What TA does is that it gets around these caps and allows for even more buffing by debuffing the enemy of -50%+ damage (great resist shield) and -25%+ tohitt (great defense shield) by staying proactive and affecting the enemies. Plus then it also brings so much more to the table in other debuffing. I'd take a TA and 2 Colds all day on these HM task forces.

Gesundheit! Yes do see @Bionic_Flea's one topic that somehow doesn't involve @Jimmy