Foe Intangible powers. Where are they useful?

[Snarky]

I have some ideas where these powers are useful.  Obviously if you want to spam it you should delete the character and possibly your account.  
 

For me I am soloing a lot on this character.  To grab a glowie at the end if a mission this is a great cheat.  Also, solo when overwhelmed…. Intangible a bunch. Then deal with stragglers, heal, use inspirations watch the timer, drop Tar Patch and back into the chaos. 
 

Are these powers ever situationally useful on teams leagues or incarnate trials?   We never used them in Cosmic runs but I am curious 

 

Obviously if a team is about to implode due to pressure it is a hail mary.  Not sure I can think of any other good use

 

I will be taking it on my solo Corruptor.  I may have to make a separate build for teams with Leadership toggles instead.  Dark Dark Corruptors burn end like crazy and I am not going into toggles I have decided.  Maybe for teams and incarnate where I will get random buffs but not for my main build.  Even with Dark epics End Recovery power it is just too wild a blue bar ride for me.  
 

So, good bad or ugly expect to see a crazy little Vampire out there once in a while laughing like a maniac as I try to make this thing useful…

[Glacier Peak]

I've only ever seen them used on other players in PvP, and even then it's just annoying. 

 

In a solo setting, most circumstances are already heavily controlled. Choose when to attack the next mob of enemies or when to use certain powers. In a team setting, foe intangible powers might help in those scenarios you've described, but keep in mind it's also a double edged sword - they will not be damaged by attacks until they are back to normal from that status effect. 

[TheZag]

I saved my team from a wipe when a large ambush was coming and we had already agro'd another group and we were low on health from the previous spawn.....once.  Once in nearly a year and a half was i on the right character at the right time for dimension shift to be useful.  The power looks cool but is rarely useful and didnt make the cut in the respec.  Shrink down the size of the sphere,  add some swirly stuff from speed boost or fulcrum shift and make it into the wind control pet.

 

[DoctorHugh]

2 hours ago, Snarky said:

Are these powers ever situationally useful on teams leagues or incarnate trials?

 

I think you recently mentioned a TF gone south, due to an ambush while entering City Hall. I've seen some people mention using intangibles in situations like that to get a team past a sticky point. Not sure how many places that would apply though.

[Snarky]

37 minutes ago, DoctorHugh said:

 

I think you recently mentioned a TF gone south, due to an ambush while entering City Hall. I've seen some people mention using intangibles in situations like that to get a team past a sticky point. Not sure how many places that would apply though.

Yeah. I thought about that.  Unfortunately most of these are available later in the game and the city hall posi fight is max 15.   But I will take it and start using it solo to get the “feel” and then use it sporadically on teams.   

 

Another use I thought is when you are teaming but split.   Then a ton of agro “happens”. You can intangible their butts and get out of there.  I will test to see results 
 

 

[roleki]

I had a Grav/Dark built to perma-intangibilify Pylons in the RWZ back when they did Zone MSRs on Indom; it was actually intended to combat griefing but soon as I rolled it, they switched to instanced MSRs and the need subsided.  But it worked and was actually kind of hilarious.

 

ETA: She was named "Save The Clock Tower" and had a pretty accurate representation of the look of the woman from Back to the Future for whom she was named.  I had all her lines macro'd, it was a bona fide work.  She's since had a sex change and is patterned after Frank Booth.

Edited January 16, 2023 by roleki

[Erratic1]

I used to get thanks for making use of intangible powers in desperate and appropriate situations on my Gravity characters, but I have to say the uses were not frequent.

 

I shudder thinking about the one team I was on where the person used their intangible power on every pull. EVERY PULL! They seemed to think they were making life better for ranged characters, but I could not see why I would want to get close to targets to be able to impact them and so excused myself from that group.

[kelika2]

If you build your characters for the most possible outcome in most situations you will realize you never should take those powers

[Snarky]

I been using it for an hour solo.  It makes ghosting missions easier, due to the glowies near mobs scenario. It is a to hit check, so it misses some mobs.  Convenient if awkward way to take a 'partial' spawn down....roll the dice on how many.  Just picked up my T9 Dark Servant and accidentally confused that button with Black Hole as I was prepping to fight BAB as a EB.  Pissed him off but he went intangible and I finished summoning, eating insp, tar patch.  BAB took the Dark Servant down in one swing.  Oh well lol.

[Snarky]

1 hour ago, Snarky said:

I been using it for an hour solo.  It makes ghosting missions easier, due to the glowies near mobs scenario. It is a to hit check, so it misses some mobs.  Convenient if awkward way to take a 'partial' spawn down....roll the dice on how many.  Just picked up my T9 Dark Servant and accidentally confused that button with Black Hole as I was prepping to fight BAB as a EB.  Pissed him off but he went intangible and I finished summoning, eating insp, tar patch.  BAB took the Dark Servant down in one swing.  Oh well lol.

got on a very chaotic katie and she was fighting everyone on last map.  nothing helped a ton (needed blackstar on rapid fire lol) but Black Hole gave me some options when red caps were way too many...

[UltraAlt]

1 hour ago, kelika2 said:

If you build your characters for the most possible outcome in most situations you will realize you never should take those powers

 

If you don't min-max all your characters and, instead, build the characters based on character conception, there are instances where intangible powers make sense.

 

I don't know if I've used all of them, but concealment>phase shift was very useful on stealthing missions before the sunset. Homecoming has made some changes that have made it less useful.

 

I'm unsure if it still works this way (or really if it ever did) but, like Gravity Control>Dimension Shift, any phased character can fight against other characters that are phased.

 

You can also use intangle powers to take enemies out of action in order to defeat the ones that are not phase shifted.

So immobilize a mob and then Dimension shift the area that they are in. The ones caught inside can't fight you and the numbers that come out to fight you will be reduced.

If you really want to you could go inside of the dimensional shift to fight the enemies, and jump in and out of the area to attack or to avoid them from attacking you.

 

Finding what is useful in a power set or powertype is often a matter of understanding that bull-in-the-china-shop/hulk-smash isn't the only way to play the game/defeat opponents.

[Nyghtmaire]

Sadly, Black Hole doesn’t work like Dimension Shift. It goes for the entire duration of the power, can’t be ended earlier (lasting full 30 seconds), and there’s no way to affect whatever is in the Hole. Very, very, very limited use, especially with all the other tools in the Dark Miasma toolkit. 
 

That said, Dimension Shift is at least situationally useful, albeit limited circumstances. 

[kelika2]

8 hours ago, UltraAlt said:

If you don't min-max all your characters and, instead, build the characters based on character conception

If you cannot conceptualize that your character wants to be min-maxed then you should not be playing that character.  If you cannot conceptualize that your character can have different feelings or wants than your feelings or wants then you never conceptualized anything.  You just conscripted something.

 

Now, lets not back-pedal and blow this thread up by misusing the word "fun".  But min/maxing is a conceptual form of fun.  And I do acknowledge your theoretical form of concepted fun even tho a hypothetical form of myself strongly disagrees with your theory.

[UltraAlt]

2 hours ago, kelika2 said:

If you cannot conceptualize that your character wants to be min-maxed then you should not be playing that character.

 

That is BS and goes against the tradition of comic books.

And, I can play any kind of character I want.

 

You show the behavior of the L33T and most probably dwell deep within the end-game where you feel superior to other players.

 

So I'm going to explain.

You feel that the system is to be abused and pushed to the limit for nothing more than be as uber as possible.

 

I've gone through my min-maxing phase some .... has it really been that long  ... 40 years ago at this point. It was fun to see what I could try to tweak out of a gaming system, but, I have found, that a gaming environment is to be enjoyed by the journey within it. Min-maxing is such a small window that it leave a majority of a game untouched.

 

Spider-man has unluck. Tony Stark has a heart condition. Thor used to be gimp doctor that needed a cane to get around. Doctor Strange was a brilliant doctor that had his hands mangled so that he could no longer perform surgery. Etc.

You may be trying to say ... in the original Champions  RPG terms, that those characters bought those Dis-Ads so that they could use their points in their powers/

However, Stan Lee added in those character flaws to give humanity to those Silver Age heroes.

 

"With an innovation that changed the comic-book industry, The Fantastic Four #1 initiated a naturalistic style of superheroes with human failings, fears, and inner demons, who squabbled and worried about the likes of rent-money. In contrast to the straitlaced archetypes of superheroes at the time, this ushered in a revolution. With dynamic artwork by Kirby, Steve Ditko, Don Heck, and others complementing Lee's colorful, catchy prose, the new style became popular among college students who could identify with the angst and the irreverent nature of the characters such as Spider-Man, the X-Men and the Hulk during a time period of social upheaval and the rise of the counterculture of the 1960s." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Age_of_Comic_Books 

 

By making only min-maxed characters you are throwing out a majority of gameplay possibilities.

 

The game is less challenging when you mini-max. You don't have to think about using different tactics base on the enemies or your teammates or probably bother with tactics at all.

You can't explore all the different powers and the way that they interact if you are only going to go with the most mini-maxed character.

 

Any game has way more to explore than most players bother with exploring. 

 

City of Heroes is a superhero game. It is a about creating and playing superheroes.

Now you can play how you like. I'm not trying to stop you from building that mini-maxed clone. Mini-maxing is a cookie-cutter. It only has one shape. If you don't hold to that mini-maxed cookie-cutter shape, then you are gimping your mini-maxing - which you seem to indicate means that you shouldn't be playing the character at all.

 

So, when it comes down to it, focusing only on mini-maxing is being narrow minded.

 

 

I mean, there is no reason to bother with a costume, a base, or power customization if the true point of the game is only to be playing a mini-maxed character. 

So why did they even bother putting any of that into the game? It has nothing to do with how you pick powers or slot your character.

 

So much to explore and learn.

"Forget that! Get in the robot, and do what robots do!"

 

3 hours ago, kelika2 said:

If you cannot conceptualize that your character can have different feelings or wants than your feelings or wants then you never conceptualized anything.

 

My characters don't want to be mini-maxed. Do all your characters want to be mini-maxed?

Are you mini-maxed?

 

Yes. Think about it.

 

3 hours ago, kelika2 said:

You just conscripted something.

 

Yes. I must have forced my characters onto my accounts character list. They never wanted to be on my character list. I forcibly put them onto the character list.

How horrible of me... oh, wait ... you did the same to every character that is on your character list in any game you have ever played.

 

 

Interesting.

 

3 hours ago, kelika2 said:

Now, lets not back-pedal and blow this thread up by misusing the word "fun". 

 

Of course not!

You are apparently the supreme ruler.

What you says goes.

 

How foolish of me to make you feel defensive.

[Shred Monkey]

These powers are like sleep powers.  They're neat in concept, but you have to go out of your way to make them work.  Most useful when fighting solo or duo. 

[kelika2]

5 hours ago, UltraAlt said:

And, I can play any kind of character I want.

But does your character want to be played by you?

[Snarky]

My purpose in slow leveling this Dark Dark Corruptor (now at 34, running constant since Dec 27, all Redside content 1-29 done, all TF SF done through low 30s) was to learn how to use each power.  
 

I just added the pet and Black Hole as I moved from 29 to 34.  Now I am really starting to get Black Hole, even though I have only used it for a day.  This is because I have a good understanding of all of Dark Miasma tricks.  How they work.  What they can do. What they do best.  What they CANNOT do.  When you get to CANNOT it may be time to pull out a can of Black Hole.  And it is the only tool like it in Dark Dark.  And it serves that one purpose, and it does it pretty well.

 

I appreciate all the feedback.  I am still experimenting with it. Overall I am happy with this strange tool in the toolkit.  I like running the Corruptor because it is not the Blaster.  I have tools, I have leverage, I have traps, I have tricks.  I got a Black Hole!!!

 

 I have the P2W personal phase shift.  Someone posted you cannot interact with Black Hole enemies while phase shifted. Gotta test.  

[UltraAlt]

1 hour ago, kelika2 said:

But does your character want to be played by you?

 

Does any character in a story "want" to have their story written by the writer?

 

If they want to exist, they certainly do.

But most characters aren't thinking about the metaphysics of their creation other than to usually relate to a religion that an author is utilizing that exists in what some would call reality (I'm not sure what you would call it), a religion that they have created, or a religion that was created by other creators.

Some believe in "the creator" and others do not. I - having created the characters in the game - am "The Creator". 

 

You certainly didn't create my characters. NCSoft did not create my characters.

I'm not sharing my account with anyone, so they aren't co-authored/co-created.

 

As for my Lovecraftian character(s), they certainly don't even believe that I exist. They are too busy trying to summon up Lusca to eat those people in Paragon City that think they are heroes.

 

I guess one would say (other than you, obviously) that to my characters, I am "intangible". 

[Nyghtmaire]

1 hour ago, Snarky said:

I like running the Corruptor because it is not the Blaster.  I have tools, I have leverage, I have traps, I have tricks.  I got a Black Hole!!!

 

 I have the P2W personal phase shift.  Someone posted you cannot interact with Black Hole enemies while phase shifted. Gotta test.  

Thinking this is the first time I’ve ever seen someone excited about Black Hole. I’ll confess to not having tried it since Live. Eagerly awaiting your test with an open mind.

[kelika2]

2 hours ago, UltraAlt said:

Does any character in a story "want" to have their story written by the writer?

Ask Condiment Man and get back to me.

[Snarky]

5 minutes ago, kelika2 said:

Ask Condiment Man and get back to me.

Now (in my head) I hear the song "Condiment Man" Weird Al style set to Jeff Healey's "Confidence Man..."

[UltraAlt]

2 hours ago, kelika2 said:

Ask Condiment Man and get back to me.

 

Okay, do you have their global?

[Snarky]

7 minutes ago, UltraAlt said:

 

Okay, do you have their global?

Well, I lost you at the pretzel when you crossed it
Had your mustard, baby, but I lost it
I know your love was just a fry pan
No, you can't pull the wool over me, 'cause I'm the condiment man
I can talk old ladies out of their sugarfree
I can talk young girls out of their honey
You can talk all you want, babe, but I am way past bland, uh-huh
You're a real soft touch, but I'm the condiment man
I know your mother taught you how to bake a cherry pie
yeah you can cook
Your daddy taught you about hot sauces
And not get shook
Let me tell you something, baby, you better learn
If you're gonna spice the spice man, you're liable to get burned
Now, now, now, we were stretched out on the grill, baby, it's all fantastic
But you put on too little and it tastes about like plastic
And the food went flying across the counter
No discouraging word could be heard, 'cause I'm the condiment man
Now, maybe Chicago is where you're bound
But grease is a cheap perfume, it hangs around
And you roll the buns, now get to the food stand
No, you can't pull the wool over me, 'cause I'm the condiment man
No, you can't pull the wool over me, 'cause I'm a condiment man
Said, you can't pull the wool over me, 'cause I'm a condiment man

[Snarky]

ps, make your own damn thread.  this is about one subject, intangible powers.  not your unspicy social life

[kelika2]

So chaos is now bad, got it