Ben_Arizona

I'm speaking on the basis of playing a non-energy /dev blaster, but knockback might well be your friend with /dev.

Caltrops are a staple tool for /dev as a defense because the AI for melee-preferring enemies handles caltrops very poorly. If you hover out of reach, they will instantly recognize that they have no path to you and start pulling out pistols, shurikens, etc. However, they do not recognize the obstruction of caltrops and will frequently run onto the trops, realize they've run onto caltrops, run for the edge of the caltrop patch (away from you), get off the caltrops, realize they want to melee you, turn around to run at you over the caltrops, realize they're on caltrops, and repeat. This entire time they are running around rather than attacking you. What tends to end this cycle of wackiness is them getting past the center of the caltrop patch before they realize they're on caltrops - if you then knock them back over the patch again before they get to you, they'll begin the cycle again.

One thing I like to do against a group of strong melee-favoring enemies such as Cimerorans is throw down caltrops between me and the spawn, place a trip mine on the near edge of the spawn to get the Defiance bonus from the long-activation power (since /dev, as people will remind you endlessly, lacks Build Up), and then open fire. Most of them die running back and forth on Caltrops, the first group to get across is blown back by the land mines, and generally nobody but the engineers even bothers to try their ranged attacks because they know they have a path to me even if it's completely terrible. Mostly they die before they actually manage to complete their attempt to chase me down. That's how my /dev blaster was farming the wall before I started buying her any IOs - who needs softcap defense when nobody ever figures out how to attack you?

It may sound like a jackass thing to say, but I've found the simplest solution is not to let resummoning zombies bug me. The role of my zombies is to beat the crap out of things and probably die, so why worry about it? It's not like it'll hurt their feelings, just pull some more out of my pocket and keep going.

Lately when I zone in and out, my binds for tray toggles reset to their default ("Alt Tray Swap" is Right Shift, while I normally have it set to right shift for Alt2 Tray Toggle and Left Alt for Alt Tray Swap. Is this a known issue with a fix, or should I be filing a bug report, or what?

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im still bugging for a clergy day job and adding a non-denominational chapel to some part of paragon and rogue.

i figure keeping it general allows people to play it as they want, whether they are priests, rabbis, wiccans/witches or Buddhist monks.

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So you're aware that generally American "non-denominational chapels" bear no resemblance to non-Christian architectural and artistic motifs, right? I've seen a few exceptions, but most of them are just Christian chapels with the crosses taken down.

My personal favorite Confusion story was throwing Mass Confusion onto one of those little groups of a Warrior cowering from a group of Freaks you see all over Talos. The Warrior completely wrecked the Freaks in moments.

When you see it and experience it, it's very possible not to notice - because the effect of Defenders is generally to awesome up the entire team, it can "feel" like you're just hanging around while the scrappers and blasters are being awesome.

Then you get on a team with no or few non-Defenders, and you realize that the enemies' faces are melting off because of what you're doing - the scrappers are just a nice substrate for it, not the entire source.

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Well if they are playing like they're farming that means they DO control enemies, throw transfusion and transference, and have very high kill speed. To me that is a great contribution to the team *shrug*

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Transfusion and transference, yes, to heal and refill themselves. Controls - maybe you've got classier farmers than I do. Kill speed? Oh yes. But the point is that kill speed without controls and buffing doesn't lead me to feel like I've teamed with a controller, it leads me to feel like I've teamed with a scrapper with flashier special effects.

Nothing wrong with a scrapper on the team, but they don't lead me to expect controls or team support - just a lot of killing.

Transference's endurance drain isn't always insignificant. Slotted for endmod (which I found desirable anyway so that Transference would be a full refill), Transference can crash a nearly-full "normal" enemy's blue bar to zero, which can drop their toggles and proactively prevent them from using high-cost powers - in particular, this is useful to keep BP shamans and witches from summoning thunderstorms.

It doesn't usually help against EBs and higher, but with multiple kins it can. I've seen a couple of kins working together keep a giant monster's endurance floored, which is actually quite helpful. In the special case of a kin/elec defender or elec/kin corruptor, this is even more worthy of note.

They can be excellent teammates when they actually want to be. Sadly a large number of fire/kin players, when on a team, will continue to play as if solo farming, to the point that if I join a team that I see has a fire/kin on it I do not form any expectation that they will bother to actually control enemies or buff the team.

If you want to actually play a fire/kin as a controller and teammate, you will find that you can be very effective on multiple levels. However, you are likely to face the expectation/assumption that you are a farmer.

I have seen three kinds of characters take Group Fly. In ascending order of number of players I've seen with it:

#3: Masterminds who want to be able to reliably get their henchmen to high or out-of-the-way locations, or want to see their robots' foot-jets.
#2: Newbies who didn't know it had a -acc penalty.
#1: Griefers. There aren't a lot of ways to grief in CoH, but dang if people aren't giving it their best shot.

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Tho I would really love an actual Spell Control. I really like the Rune of Warding temp power effect and think that would make a unique visual power set. All the animations could be arm movements like a traditional spell caster with nifty magic symbols like the Rune of Warding gets.

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The main issue here is that it is not origin-independent, or at the very least must be stretched to fit non-Magic origins. While there are already sets that feel origin-specific (AR, /dev, /traps, most MM primaries) it's my understanding that this is considered generally undesirable from a design-goals standpoint.

I would agree with taking AEs out of all the low-level zones with one modification to the plan: add an AE branch to Pocket D. It's both easy to get to and out of the way, and would allow hero and villain players to co-op AE material before level 35.

(And honestly, a virtual-reality arcade in Pocket D makes a lot more sense than one in the Rikti Warzone - that shiny new building sticking out of the wreckage and bombed-out city just looks weird.)

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no hard controls with Mind but mind is strong damage.

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..Hold and Confuse aren't hard controls?

Mind control is very good at AoE control, actually. The thing is that only Plant is actually good at AoE control in very early levels - everyone else has to wait. (I'm probably forgetting another set with a good early AoE control, but Plant is the one that jumps out as being strong early.) Once you get Terrify you can use that every spawn, and Mass Confuse, Total Domination, and Mass Hypnosis are all there for when you need something more than that. I'm not very experienced with Sonic, but being bad at area control is mainly a problem with your level - Mind Control is one of the better area-control sets once it has its powers in place, in my opinion.

Even if you aren't setting out to PL, good luck finding a pick-up group that isn't a PL team without a coalition, taskforce channel, or other such resource. New players don't have access to those, and the way you normally meet people and get into them is through grouping and content, forming a bit of a nasty circle. In the mid through late levels, this starts to abate somewhat as you'll run into people looking for taskforces, trials, raids and such - but it's not actually a new player's fault that those situations are his first "live" grouping experience. He may have soloed, but by designer intent, any build can solo on Heroic, and some things that are good ideas while soloing on Heroic (drop Rain of Fire into a spawn so they're too busy running around to murder you) will get you slaughtered on TFs.

My only current speedster is an AR/kin corruptor. His premise is that he's a black-market pharmacologist and chemist, and he's enhanced his own speed with a less potent and less addictive version of his popular "Speed Boost" drug.

Because power-dampening fields are increasingly commonplace - even Architect Entertainment has them installed in every building as a "convenience". Someday, perhaps soon, somebody will make the technology portable, and Lord Recluse refuses to be off-guard when it happens.

Oh, I love my mind controller. It's just really disappointing that my plant controller has a superior version of her top power.

Aggrolessness isn't a big benefit to me for Mass Confusion, because Confusion's recharge is short enough that if I want to start softening up a group without alerting them I use that instead - Mass Confusion's recharge is long enough that it gets reserved as a panic button. Mass Hypnosis is nice situationally (but Plant has the very similar Spore Burst anyway). Total Domination needs heavy slotting to even begin to be functional. Terrify is nice.

It's just really hard to compare them in any way that doesn't end up heavily favoring Plant.

Edit: To clarify my thoughts a little: Confuse, the single-target version, is an excellent power - it recharges quite quickly, so you can throw it around with reckless abandon, and being aggro-free means that in a situation where you aren't spotted you can confuse most of the spawn with it about as readily as with Mass Confuse. If you are spotted - well, Mass Confusion's vaunted aggrolessness that supposedly balances it against Seeds isn't really doing you much good in that situation.

It's not bad, but it doesn't have any blow-you-out-of-the-water synergy.
Assault Rifle has a lot of AoE. Devices is pretty weak on offense, but defensively quite strong. Neither enhances the other in any particularly unique way; as noted AR/EM has more specific synergy to it.

Don't believe people who say /dev "takes too long to be useful". It takes too long if you decide to lay down a dozen trip mines, but that's not how it should be played - throw down some caltrops, and if you're soloing you might place one trip mine for the Defiance boost before you open fire.

Saying that most of the secondary is useless on teams is only true if you consider trip mine and time bomb to be "most of the secondary". (Even those are useful in some TF situations, but they're the exception rather than the rule.)

This is also why the green glowy aura emits from the enemy and not from you.

Now, that said: Mass Confusion isn't the "problem power", no. It's the jewel of the set, the thing Mind Controllers look forward to through the first half of their career as their defining attribute. It is probably one of the set's best powers.

..and everything it does is done better by a level 8 power in another set.

The problem is in the combination of these two facts.

I would've thought the problem power would be Total Domination - that one just feels like a dang load. Maybe it's the fact that so many powers come off as potential problem powers that's the problem here..