A relook at Sorcery Pool's Flight

[Ultimo]

1 hour ago, Chris24601 said:

Arcane Bolt is definitely a pick dependent on your AT and concept.

 

I know for my spellcaster themed gravity controller, arcane bolt outperforms Propel in just about every metric and adds a nice batch of energy damage to an otherwise smashing heavy set.

Actually, I find Arcane Bolt is VERY useful for Controllers, as it gets double damage on controlled enemies.  Controllers desperately lack damage from their OWN powers, so Arcane Bolt is a godsend.  I'm not sure if Enflame has the same effect, it's hard to tell with all the numbers flying by...

[biostem]

I, for one, do NOT want the sorcery pool to be changed to be closer to the flight pool.  The added control and defense of hover are actually quite big advantages, and totally in line with that power pool, well, focusing so heavily on flying itself.  Mystic flight actually addresses one of the many issues with taking straight-up teleport, (though without being able to enhance the translocation component), which is fine IMHO.  While I agree with @Ultimo that arcane bolt is quite useful, I do wish is cast time was shortened.  I'd also like to see spirit ward made into a regular ally-only click power - I just don't think it is good enough to be a maintained toggle, (though the mechanic itself is novel)...

Edited Monday at 05:32 AM by biostem

[Ultimo]

I'm still unclear on the problem.

 

Mystic Flight has the Translocation secondary power.  Flight has the Afterburner power.  Are they not otherwise identical?  Hover affects each one the same way, and is a second power choice in either case.... so I'm not sure what the issue is.

[biostem]

3 minutes ago, Ultimo said:

I'm not sure what the issue is

My interpretation is the OP wants a hover-like power within the sorcery pool, so they wouldn't have to dip into another power pool and/or didn't have to take some other "filler" power in the pool in order to get rune of protection, (and possibly also still have a LotG mule)...

Edited Monday at 05:45 AM by biostem

[CoeruleumBlue]

On 11/2/2025 at 8:01 PM, Ultimo said:

Actually, I find Arcane Bolt is VERY useful for Controllers, as it gets double damage on controlled enemies.  Controllers desperately lack damage from their OWN powers, so Arcane Bolt is a godsend.  I'm not sure if Enflame has the same effect, it's hard to tell with all the numbers flying by...

 

Where are these Controllers people make that don't do a lot of damage? And even if I made a controller that didn't do a lot of damage, I wouldn't want to be forced into taking a power called Arcane Bolt when my controller isn't themed on being a spellcaster. I'm fine with it being an option, but no, controllers don't need Arcane Bolt to get damage. Most of mine don't even need the Epic Pools to get damage, though there's always been a toggle, pet, or something else I wanted from them so far, I just skip most of the attacks unless they have effects other than damage in them. I am wondering what kind of Controller builds you people are even running. 

[Uun]

On 11/5/2025 at 12:44 AM, CoeruleumBlue said:

Where are these Controllers people make that don't do a lot of damage? And even if I made a controller that didn't do a lot of damage, I wouldn't want to be forced into taking a power called Arcane Bolt when my controller isn't themed on being a spellcaster. I'm fine with it being an option, but no, controllers don't need Arcane Bolt to get damage. Most of mine don't even need the Epic Pools to get damage, though there's always been a toggle, pet, or something else I wanted from them so far, I just skip most of the attacks unless they have effects other than damage in them. I am wondering what kind of Controller builds you people are even running. 

Earth and Ice are notoriously light on damage outside of the pets.

[srmalloy]

21 minutes ago, Uun said:

Earth and Ice are notoriously light on damage outside of the pets.

And when you're up against opponents who are resistant, the lack of Containment drives your damage down significantly.

[Doomguide2005]

9 hours ago, Uun said:

Earth and Ice are notoriously light on damage outside of the pets.

This ^

My various Earth Controllers are great at mezzing/controlling multiple mobs if need be,, but there's a reason I proc the single target Hold and paired it with Storm on my main Controller.  I have yet to recreate my Retail Ice/Sonic thinking Sonic's resist debuffs would help with damage.  Turns out multiplying a tiny value is still a tiny value.  Couldn't fight its way out of a proverbial wet bag without bottoming out endurance.  Granted a whole lot has changed since then but ...

[Zormico]

I like the Fly and TP combo as most of my toons have either fly or TP, so having both in one is great.  but I do have mine bind so I double tap it to toggle on fly and TP reticle, and another key to fly and TP to target.  TP to target macro/bind is imo what makes TP the best travel power.  teammate ran off and engaged a group 2 rooms away, TP to him...why bother running through doors or caves when you can blink to him.  if they changed the power I wish they would make it so you could add range to translocation like you can the normal TP pool 

[srmalloy]

8 hours ago, Doomguide2005 said:

thinking Sonic's resist debuffs would help with damage.

The problem is that Resistance is also Resistance Debuff Resistance -- so if you have a power that is a 10% Resistance debuff, and you use it on a target that's 90% resistant to the type of damage linked to that power, they resist 90% of your debuff, so their resistance drops to 89% -- yes, they're taking 10% more damage than they were, but the difference between a 200-point hit that gets resisted down to 20 and a 200-point hit that gets resisted down to 22 isn't going to be noticeable except over the long haul -- and a controller isn't durable enough to easily hang in a fight with a mob that can hit 90% resistance.

[tidge]

For extra damage on a Controller, I pretty much always go Force of Will.

 

1) Mighty Leap (for travel)

2) Weaken Resolve (reasonable debuff, plus can %damage at range)

3) Wall of Force (Exceleent AoE cone, with a control piece)

4) Unleash Potential (as a self-buff, holds many good sets)

 

Project Will isn't bad (it also has a control element for Controllers) but typically I don't have the slots for it, and certainly not at low levels. I typically don't have a place in my control/attack chains for it, whereas the Weaken Resolver debuff can fill a gap should I have one.

[biostem]

11 minutes ago, tidge said:

For extra damage on a Controller

One interesting little quirk I've found is that toxic dart from experimentation, does a big chunk of extra lethal damage upfront, for its containment effect - probably to avoid weird behaviors from it's primarily toxic DoT effect.  It also animates and recharges quickly...

[tidge]

1 hour ago, biostem said:

One interesting little quirk I've found is that toxic dart from experimentation, does a big chunk of extra lethal damage upfront, for its containment effect - probably to avoid weird behaviors from it's primarily toxic DoT effect.  It also animates and recharges quickly...

 

Yep, pretty much all the 'origin' pools have containment effects on the attacks. It isn't something unique to only one of them.

[Chris24601]

1 hour ago, biostem said:

One interesting little quirk I've found is that toxic dart from experimentation, does a big chunk of extra lethal damage upfront, for its containment effect - probably to avoid weird behaviors from it's primarily toxic DoT effect.  It also animates and recharges quickly...

They all have containment effects.

 

The main thing I have against Toxic Dart is that it uses a weak looking toss animation and not the wrist launcher animation.

[Doomguide2005]

6 hours ago, srmalloy said:

The problem is that Resistance is also Resistance Debuff Resistance -- so if you have a power that is a 10% Resistance debuff, and you use it on a target that's 90% resistant to the type of damage linked to that power, they resist 90% of your debuff, so their resistance drops to 89% -- yes, they're taking 10% more damage than they were, but the difference between a 200-point hit that gets resisted down to 20 and a 200-point hit that gets resisted down to 22 isn't going to be noticeable except over the long haul -- and a controller isn't durable enough to easily hang in a fight with a mob that can hit 90% resistance.

Yeah aware of that now not so much many issues ago.  But this was pre inherent fitness on top of the fact it was leveling yet and just barely beyond 20th.  I'd have been super excited by hypothetical 200 damage.  But 3 white con foes (that lovely number tossed about by Jack) was more than I could handle without hitting bottom on end before they hit the ground and it would have been more like 20 damage boosted to 23, Yay.   It was horrific struggle and I've no doubt things would be vastly different for many reasons these days between procs, inherent fitness, START vendor etc.

[Jacke]

On 11/2/2025 at 7:01 PM, Ultimo said:

Actually, I find Arcane Bolt is VERY useful for Controllers, as it gets double damage on controlled enemies.  Controllers desperately lack damage from their OWN powers, so Arcane Bolt is a godsend.  I'm not sure if Enflame has the same effect, it's hard to tell with all the numbers flying by...

 

I use Arcane Bolt on Controllers too.  And I believe that as with Containment, Arcane Power adds the same damage again.  So Arcane Power and Containment does three times the damage.

 

 

[biostem]

3 hours ago, tidge said:

Yep, pretty much all the 'origin' pools have containment effects on the attacks. It isn't something unique to only one of them.

What I meant was odd about how toxic dart behaved was that the containment effect was front-loaded lethal damage, whereas the power only does a trivial amount of it, then a larger amount of toxic DoT...