Frosticus

It would be really neat to see, but unfortunately we don't have such information. In fact the information posted in this thread (as pointed out by the OP) is antiquated and at this point not much more useful than a conversation piece.

New info would be great, I wonder if it would show a significant positive increase for stalkers and doms...

Umm by and large this game has attracted NO audience. Do you have any idea how many mmo players have never even heard of CoX? I don't either, but it is vast.

The ship has NOT sailed from a marketing standpoint, nor from a rebranding standpoint, nor from an expanded target market standpoint.

It sailed because of Castle and Posi dynamiting any possibility of integrating pvp with pve in i13.

In fact this game has almost no pvp reputation at all in the market. In the eyes of most it is neither great, horrible, or anywhere in between, it is nothing. However, in the limited scope that this game has covered it has gained a pve reputation. One that has prevented it from growing even with industry leading innovations such as AE, or even when the world can't get enough super hero action.

Surely because one mainstream MMO tanked due to a bad move no other company should ever take any risks... Thankfully even the team here isn't that carebear or else you wouldn't have AE to plug into.

Marketing isn't voodoo magic.

Your last sentence is cute. If you repeat it enough it might even be true.

Ya but what do you do once you've used a contained terrify? wait for it to cycle again?

The problem I've found it that you either choose between a contained terrify or a contained epic aoe. You can't get both unless TD was up...Well that isn't entirely true at least for fireball if you go right to the range limit of terrify you can get both contained on one masshyp.

At any rate, lets pretend both terrify and epic aoe (fissure) are contained for a troller with a 30% -res that is:
(27.55+30.6) x 1.95 x 2 = x 1.3 = 294.8 dam vs even con
For my /kin at dam cap that is:
(27.55+30.6) x 4 x 2 = 465.2 dam vs even con

That doesn't even kill even con minions and you've got no way to keep aoe containment going so fissure is cut in half after that and terrify has a pretty slow recharge. wtf should I do?

PS. I'm familiar with thunderclap, I have a fire/storm that can aoe stuns every boss spawn. I had a mind/storm for awhile, but ended up ditching it in favor of fire/storm for a lot more damage and imo better control synergy (flashfire+thunderclap+fissure = whole lot of stunning going on). In fact my fire/storm which everyone always says fire is way weaker than mind for control is capable of running boss maps as well in near perfect safety. Much faster than my mind/kin, but not as fast as my plant/kin.

I dunno what to do, the mind/kin is one of my older toons and I've tried so many times to make it perform well with each differeent ancillary, flight, leaping, high res build, high def build, high recharge build..none of them feel very powerful to me. Maybe I'm just expecting the wrong thing.

No link, but would you make one if it was available in i16?

Umm you don't need to be rude as I've already REPEATEDLY said it is probably the way I'm playing mind.

I have enough tohit+acc to reliably hit +4's and I'm usually around perma hasten recharge due to /kin and the ff proc in fissure. I really don't see that needing to be improved.

The problem if you check again is that the control options of mind don't work well enough for me.

I use high defense because I fight +2 boss spawns. They hit you twice and you die, simple as that.

I stopped measuring a toons performance in normal pve some time ago, it just doesn't compare to what is in AE.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but what you described wouldn't work on anything higher than luts and you kill so slowly that Total DOm ( a base 4 min power) is up twice a fight?

The other scenario you go on to describe is exactly what I already said was the problem, having to wait to cycle between TD>MC>TD, if the team moves faster - and lets be honest I'm a /kin, if it can't kill spawns in less than 40 seconds something is very very wrong.

Your suggested use of terrify in conjunction with MC works in the exact way I don't want. I want the confused mob to tear itself apart, but I want to do enough damage where I still retain 90%+of the xp and just gain a heap of speed (like I do with plant). Terrify does nothing but slow that encounter down. I'm not interested in a "time out" I'm interested in killing quickly.

We just seem to have a disconnect here. I'm talking about two specific cases where I find my mind/kin to be very subpar.
1. Boss teams - it just doesn't have enough control or damage
2. Normal mission teams - we move too quickly and I end up doing nothing (well what I consider nothing, ie st controls and masshyp) because td and mc cycle too slowly even with perma hasten.

I can tell we are playing on two different levels because you are talking about clicking hasten like it isn't up all the time. If I'm running perma hasten and find everything too slow I'm not sure what I'd do if it was even slower like what you are describing.

I've heard people use TK for every- spawn aoe containment, but I rarely seem to get more than ~5 with it, it there some way to make it hit 15-17 like I need?

If you don't mind me asking because I hear this a lot about mind, but what are all these options?

My mind/kin which is arguably much better set up to spam mind controls than most other combos is governed by recharge entirely. My options come down to what is recharged, not some neverending stream of choices.

If MC is up then that is my only good aoe control. If TD is up then that is my only good aoe control. In quick teams I'm often left with only mass hyp as any kind of aoe control. I like terrify, but it sure lets a lot of return fire on aoe centric teams ime. I mean even under high recharge MC and TD take 80 seconds to come back, so if the team is moving faster than 40 seconds per spawn I end up spamming very subpar stuff (imo).

Like I said though, maybe mind just isn't for me. It was fun leveling the toon, but I never felt very strong in teams, not compared to my earth dom, plant or fire troller. Better than my grav troller though

No I listed the IO's on my build that make a difference. Seeds is slotted with mostly befuddling's. Other than the kb IO and the 3% def IO my build really doesn't cost much more than a SO'd version. It made me enough inf over 2x xp weekend to slot a bunch of purples and what not, but it is already so strong.

My mind/kin has a very similar cheap 44% s/l build, but it has been disappointing. I can't create consistent aoe containment to leverage fissure. I can't handle huge spawns well enough to dispatch them on my own, when I use mass confusion my xp plummets because I don't have very good aoe damage and can't stop them from using a lot of melee on each other. Unlike seeds backed by CC and roots and fissure where I usually net 85-90% of the total xp, but way faster.

Back when troller epics were OP'd and doing ~double damage I loved my mind/kin. I could two shot entire spawns with masshyp+fulcrum+fireball+terrify, but now no matter what I do and what epic I use I just get a bunch of uncontrolled and very angry mobs on me.

I think I'm switching my plant/kin over to ice app in i16. At which point the aoe comparison won't even be in the same stratosphere, not that it is right now. Like I said though, maybe I'm just using mind wrong because the damage is subpar as is the control imo.

I dunno, I generally make w/e pugs I'm on, I've never been opposed to dropping people that don't carry their weight. Usually by the second or third mission the team is pretty impressive.

I've been on bad pugs and they certainly create a lasting impression, but by and large most pugs (that I play with) have no issues with the content, but I'll adjust the factions we face as necessary. ie pug A might never graduate beyond freaks and council, but pug b might run arachnos just fine. I've found the main thing that keeps people happy is the pacing. It is by and large a decently fast game, I hate when people try to suck the energy out of it, by biting of way more than they can chew. I'm aware other people like that though.

Don't get me wrong, I'd give it a whirl as it sounds interesting. I'm just not sure how well the casual player base would handle it considering their misunderstanding and inability to already use wormhole. Your idea for dimshift sounds like wormhole 2.0 - even more complicated and cool.

Afaik this wouldn't be possible, or at the very least it would be very difficult. Damage buffs are global.

There are ways to achieve what you are more or less seeking, but overall it is at least a 50% reduction in containment and I for one don't see that as necessary or warranted.

The only way I'm familar with achieving a per target damage boost is through the critical mechanic. And the critical mechanic always works outside of the damage caps. You can either reduce containment or reduce the damage cap. One way hits all trollers and depending on how it is implemented - across all levels. The other way hits a targeted few outliers and only when they start to stomp all over the game.

I have quite a few controllers and two lvl 50 /kins so I'm not personally keen on either, but if I had to choose one I'd take a bullet on my /kins before I made every troller combination suffer due to what /kin can do.

While I've never been against an increase to defs or corrs I think your logic is flawed.

Outside of the cases where the devs have cut corners and failed to create a meaninful difference between def and other versions of powers this is generally what you see occur.

I'll just use energy blast because everyone has it. (pretend this wouldn't scatter all over the map heh)

Def hits group with EF, explosive blast+torrent at same time 2 blasters use eB+E torrent and a tank uses footstomp.
= 363 base damage. Add in enhances, AM, rage and, aim for all three ranged toons
=1029 damage. Add in EF
=1338.9 total team damage.

Corr hits group with EF (12% scourge used), same blaster combo as above and tank too.
=383 base damage. Add enhances, AM, rage and aim for all three ranged toons.
=1056 damage. Add in EF
=1293.6 total team damage.

Oy! didn't take long before the team with the defender surpassed the team with the corr even WITH scourge. Not to mention the defender team is SAFER.

It is ONLY in cases where the devs cut corners and gave everyone the same strength powers (ie tarpatch) that things start to get out of whack. That isn't corrs or defender's fault though and not something that should be rectified with global buffs.

At a glance it is usually between 2 and 4 additional teammates that most Defenders have significant enough forcemultiplication to edge out the Corruptor version in team damage. And that ignores the added mitigation.

I'm all for buffing both AT's, but most of the reasoning being thrown around right now supports set specific adjustments/fixes far more than global changes.

IMO sets that are fairly well balanced right now:
rad emission
sonic
FF
storm (except nado)
Cold (though def sleet needs more differentiation)
Thermal (when ported to defs)
Dark (though tarpatch needs to be distinguished among AT's)

Sets that are imbalanced:
Kinetics
Empathy
Traps (if they don't do any work on it)
Trick Arrow (mostly OSA, but imo it still needs more punch for defs).

Most arguements I've seen say things like "corrs are x higher damage than defs and y lower buff/debuff, but overall corrs come out ahead".

Very true. While solo.

Corrs by design solo better than defenders, they have high hp, higher base damage, earlier attacks, scourge and enough mitigation to get the job done effectively. On the other hand defenders team better than corrs. That is also by design.

The problem is that while defs clearly are better in teams when the individual sets are balanced properly, they lose some of that distinction when corners were cut. The other problem is that the game is so easy that the extra value defs bring to teams can go completely unnoticed as a couple corrs make everyone steamroll things too.

Other than specific powers being incorrect and a subjective "fun" argument there is really nothing else to base changes on.

As for trollers, I've posted my thoughts on them before and I can assure everyone that what happens on these forums is not reproduced in game with trollers as virtually no one in game slots their immobs and holds for damage (I do heh) so that only leaves one case where they are severely imbalanced, but I suggest we all wait until i16 before attacking that set.

Meh, I deleted my em/fire and my em/regen pretty much the same day ET was gutted. I didn't even log the stalker and the only reason I logged the brute was just to see the animation as I'd only used bitterfreezeray a couple of times a long time prior to that.

I really didn't need to "try out" the change to know that a toon(s) I enjoyed because of their overall feeling of speed would no longer be fun when that speed was taken away.

Who know's, maybe he hates the psyscream animation or something and realized it would be vital to achieving solid performance and just said F it.

I almost rage deleted my fire/storm troller and my storm/sonic def due to the nerf to LS without even trying it because I can use a calculator . The only reason I didn't is because they are loaded with lotg's, miracle and other expensive IO's that I'll eventually get around to stripping. I've played each of them less than 1hr since and before they were getting over 90% of my playtime.

I mean AE has made it so you pretty much have a "start at 50" button so deleting toons carries far less weight than it used to. If something about a toon PO's you, just delete it and make a new 50 the next day or two. That's where the game is at imo anyway for better or worse.

I'm not really seeing any way they could turn it into a damage buff without it being possible to benefit from without having interacted with the target enemy.

ie. My mind troller sucks really bad at ptod EB's, I can't control them at all and my damage is sad because I can't control them at all.

If containment provided a damage buff, then I could just pull a minion over and keep sleeping it and apply the damage buff I receive onto the EB.

To me that doesn't really fit with the term "containment" where you benefit from locking down your target.

There are lots of ways to go after containment (or outlier troller builds) in general that doesn't involve a drastic change to how the mechanic functions, but I think we should all just wait to see how Fulcrum plays out post i16 before continuing down this path.

Sounds like 90% of pugs post 30, let alone any kind of organized team I don't see it as the players' fault that the pve game is so easy. I mean it was really easy before IO's and now that you can have HO-like performance on every power by lvl 25 for barely more than 2 full sets of SO's... well.

I have it in my final spec as I like toggle pulling and I think DN +pb'd fearsome stare should still make a sizable dent in the tohit chance of 52+ bosses as my hope is to only build for about 30% ranged def.

But ya, if it ends up being like RI has been for my various rads (and it appears it will be) then I doubt it will be seeing much action time in most play scenarios. I'd like it if it was needed more, but at the same time if that was the case even with powerboost then things would probably be too hard without it.

I don't disagree with anything you said, but I'll just point out that I'm currently running (solo) a +2 boss map and I engage 15-17 bosses at the same time. If I felt my plant troller was limited to 4 bosses at once I would have never rolled it, I would have just done some kind of perma dom. I generally only die once every 4-5 runs of the map.

Granted IO's are doing some of the leg work here (3% def unique, 1kb protection, 2 full sets enfeebling), but my mind/kin is very similar to my plant/kin in terms of survivability numbers and maybe it is just me, but can't do squat in such a demanding scenario.

Once you can quickly control such a situation virtually everything the normal vanilla pve game throws your way is... pretty easy because it can all be one shot controlled (for the most part).

As mentioned hotfeet does the brunt of the work.

If you mean why you don't see many "attacks" slotted for damage? well fulcrum puts you at the cap really easily (even post i16 ). It is one of the major advantages of playing a /kin controller; they can slot for max control and still do capped damage.

To you I say, "stay thirsty my friend".

I posted that so that you won't get discouraged and just to ensure you were aware of why you were getting the feedback you are getting (or at least a part of why).

I certainly never implied this. In fact my statement about expanding the target market would suggest that this "massively large elventy1111!!! gung ho pvp audience" is in fact outside of this game. Ergo "expanding the target market". Shifting the activity of an existing customer is generally not as conducive to earning revenue as adding more customers, unless the shift makes them start paying a lot more.

Perhaps that is a part of why pvp always seems like an afterthought. Without significant marketing to support the branding of a "pvp atmosphere" it would probably result in a very small increase in subs and primarily just be about shifting existing players around.

Think of it like when a female designer adds a men's line of clothes. Or closer to home, how many game companies have started targeting female players in what was once thought to be an almost entirely male market. Such things don't just happen it usually takes considerable effort to get the message out.

In the end though that boat has sailed as far as I'm concerned. Reinventing image is difficult, probably too difficult and lets face it, more than likely a waste of time for this game.

Though I have wondered how awesome this game could have been for people like me. I mean I obviously like this game I'm at my 39mth vet reward now, but the grass is always greener. I've always felt like something (well several somethings) are missing that prevented this game from taking off. I know I always enjoy my time in the arena, but for w/e reason have always felt it is has very limited accessibility. That doesn't make a lot of sense I know, I mean it is in lots of zones, but I'm not sure how to better describe it. I guess I think it feels like too much effort is required to activate pvp.

Case in point, standing around outside of a mission waiting for a couple laggers to show up. /duel would friggen make my day then. And I know they have greatly eased travel times and/or the necessity to even move to get to a mission, but ya.


EDIT: did it ever occur to anyone that a large part of why the arenas failed was because the majority of the features didn't' work and the UI was (and pretty much still is) a complete mess? Can you imagine the fallout if AE was implemented and subsequently ignored that badly? it would make the initial Posi posts look like a stroll in the park.

Ya I've found perma carrion creepers to be absolutely useless vs Nem, I hate how npc's attack it, I much prefer getting all the agro. And vines is way worse than total domination. Not to mention spore burst (if plant ever had reason to take an aoe sleep) is pretty crappy too compared to masshyp when you are actually going to fight the enemy.

I wish plant had a way to drain its own endurance bar in a matter of seconds while getting shot up to death... I really do.

Unfortunately plant can't push a few enemies back into a patch, but it can kill them all in less time than the mind spent repositioning them for someone else to do the job. My plant troller has more cat skins in her collection than my mind troller.

Anyway, I actually like mind, I've just never been impressed when I use it in teams or when I've seen others using it in teams. I'm sure there are some pretty amazing mind players out there though.

As for levitate and lift --- lift should be buffed. If the reason it was lower before was due to overall set balance I think it is safe to say that balancing perspective has gone out the window in favor of per power balancing quite some time ago.

Well if you understood my feelings about "one shot" anythinging AV's, you wouldn't have to ask.

Deal with it. Just like the limited number of Blasters that enjoyed and leveraged old definance.

Corner cases, while interesting often get swept aside for the good of the majority. I think it would be silly to pretend there weren't more blasters who felt "negatively affected" by the defiance changes than would be the case in a dim shift change.

Then there are doms, and not to mention pvp. In fact I'd go so far as to say that when a very small number of people are effectively utilizing something it will do absolutely nothing when it comes to changing it.

I have nothing against the 10 people doing that, and even credit their resourcefulness. In fact they are so impressive I bet they will easily adapt and become even stronger.