Laevateinn
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Posts
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Joined
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Quote:The real advantage of Illusion over all other controller sets is that PA works against almost everything that foils controls. Purple triangles, mez protection, all-boss/EB spawns... none of them give a perma-PA controller pause. In addition, while a lot of controllers are good at mezzing hordes of minions and Lts (i.e. the weakest and least threatening enemies), illusion can control single spawns of very strong enemies. For this reason it's a very versatile, powerful controller primary, especially when you get as little out of your secondary as an empath.Originally Posted by ketch
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Quote:Winter horde look ugly, though - they're just palette swapped hydra men.Originally Posted by Snowzone
I'd love to get the Winter Horde.
Rather have Hellfrosts from redside. -
Quote:Why are you ranting about people wanting to build for defense, then? I don't get it.Originally Posted by Local_Man
Dude . . .
I wasn't responding to your post or your build. I didn't even look at your build. I agree that it is possible to create a build that provides good slotting for the Powers AND some Defense, especially S/L with Ice or Rock armor or S/L/E with the armor from the Mace PPP.
Mine was just a general rant about the trend on the forums. -
Quote:Yet you can't post a build that has significantly better enhancement values than the one I posted, nor can you point out how it's deficient in team support ability.Originally Posted by Local_Man
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Quote:Having good powerset combinations does nothing to prevent a character from having a coherent theme and good name. On the contrary, minmaxing helps you avoid the unimaginative, unoriginal ideas that are prevalent among concept characters. How would you explain a Rad/Sonic defender's powers? How does someone with control over kinetic energy summon fire imps? Why would someone fight with a shield if they had fire powers? Trying to find answers to these questions provokes original thought and trains your imagination.Originally Posted by Stone Daemon
Characters built around a certain theme with a good name are always more fun to play than ones built specifically because they have a good powerset combo (at least, to me they are).
P.S. Here's my answer to the last question:
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High defense builds that also have high (permahasten level) recharge, and do not sacrifice enhancement values or skip key powers are immensely powerful, but they're:
1) expensive;
2) not easy to design, especially on secondaries like /Therm, that demand heavy slot investment and do not self-buff defense or recharge.
The easiest solution is to take one of the APP shields that give defense, but this creates difficulties with concept and you may want powers from other APPs.
Here's an example with 45 S/L/E defense using mace mastery and Spiritual core paragon. All attacks are designed to cap hitchance vs. +3 enemies, except Cinders (94.4%). Hasten is 2.9s off perma. You can subsitute ice or stone mastery, although I think those really work better on a build where you have more free power choices.
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Your build is not softcapped, since half the defense from Stealth suppresses when you are attacked.
It's also a bad idea to chase set bonuses at the expense of enhancement values. As an example, adding 1 level 50 defense IO to focused senses in your build gives more ranged defense than the 6 red fortunes in Invisibility give you.
For an SR, I recommend not running tough, and only using it as a slot mule for the +3 def IOs, however there is no consensus and many SR players disagree with this. Try it out, if you feel it doesn't help your suvivability you can turn it off to save end.
The build below is just to show you one way of getting the defense, the attacks themselves can be slotted however you like. It is also less endurance heavy and has better recharge.
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IIRC, this change occured when all non-enemy-affecting toggles were set to suppress rather than detoggle when mezzed. Previously, when mezzed, your hover would detoggle and you would fall down. It's debatable which result is more dangerous.
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Quote:I look at any specialist abilities they contribute to my roster as a whole, reroll them into better powersets, or delete them.Originally Posted by Little_Whorn
How do you all find enjoyment in your "lesser" heroes? How do you escape that niggling feeling that you could be killing/supporting/tanking/etc better with one of your mains? I guess I just want to figure out another way to look at playing this game so that I can be perfectly happy just playing an interesting powerset (like /poison or dual blades) rather than the most efficient or powerful one.
I have a few characters that still exist only because they're experts in the things that my heavily minmaxed generalist builds don't specialize in. You won't find an Inv/DB tanker anywhere near the top of the performance scale. But I have one sitting around for the days I need to, say, drag AM around on Keyes; she now has enough damage to also double as a high-survivability scrapper. Similarly, even though the best blasters are outclassed in both defensive and offensive power by the best melee characters, I have a Fire/Fire blaster I'm keeping just in case future content needs ranged DPS above and beyond what the debuff ATs can manage. (I'm also considering rerolling her into Fire/MM.)
Sometimes I reroll characters into better powersets. My Mind/Emp got rerolled as Ill/Emp; not only did this vastly increase her control ability, she got much better damage and survivability out of the deal too. As part of this change she got an improved concept that fits her name (Lady Divine) and costume better. Previously she was some weird hybrid of Angel and Prof. X, now she's a photokinetic that fights with her army of light and hurls light blasts, complete with glowy light aura from APP Temp Invuln. Minmaxing improves concepts, it's true.
In general, though, I don't feel the need to make dozens of characters; I'm happy just playing a few well-crafted ones. -
Quote:To an extent they do. The more self-sufficient characters are, the less they need the healing, recovery and defense that empathy gives. However, debuffs always matter because not only do they help you solo, they multiply the offensive power of the team and you can never really have too much offense.Originally Posted by Deathstroke33
I guess I have a second part to that question. Do either lose their usefulness in end game where everyone has incarnates and full set bonuses? Do either power sets have an advantage then, or is it the same argument?
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Quote:Vanguard are bottom of the barrel for single-target DPS, but they're very AoE-heavy (the boss has 2 TAoE attacks, the Lt 1) and pack a wide variety of damage types. Unlike storm elementals, who have broadly comparable AoE, they do not tend to run themselves out of endurance.Originally Posted by Leese
All the pet comparisons I've seen focus purely on DPS, and Vanguard is poor at that apparently, but do they have other qualities that make up for that?
The Lt likes to go into melee and get itself killed so you will have to babysit it. -
You are in RKLand, yes? We should get together, and you can show me what the build can do. (And are you sure it's not the /kin talking?)
@Laevateinn -
I took the mez protection one. It's true that a Destiny slot is a really high price to pay for a perma-breakfree (esp. since IDF are not very mez-heavy), but I found that being able to ignore mez and just focus on survival made me play a lot more effectively. The QoL improvement is really significant.
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Quote:Nobody's saying that only the best powersets should be played. That's just a strawman you use to avoid any productive discussion. What we're doing is pointing out the relative advantages and disadvantages of each powerset. The decision of what to play ultimately lies in the player's hands.Originally Posted by Oedipus_Tex
IMO the only real way to "lose" City of Heroes is to play it with the mindset that only the best will do. "Average" performing sets just aren't far enough behind the "top" ones for that sort of analysis to matter, nor is the game hard enough to need to excessively min/max. There is also no pressing reason you need to be able to farm or solo an AV on your 10th or 20th character.
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Quote:You can't compare power to power just because they have the same effect. The control ability of the entire set must be considered as a whole. My point in comparing Flashfire vs. Total Dom + Mass confuse is to show that, discounting TK which is very tricky to use, both sets are actually fairly close in terms of every-spawn hard control power, which is a huge point in Fire's favor considering it does so much more damage. Mind is overrated, because people like to portray it as an extremely control-heavy set, which is only true if you go by very artificial metrics like counting the number of control powers it has.Originally Posted by Amy_Amp
You really want to compare Mind control to Fire in terms of control and poorly at that? How about making better comparisons like Total Dom versus Cinders, or TK versus Bonfire, Mass Hyp versus Flash? Mind control isn't overrated. It's just a set that you can't simply go up to a mob, disorient it, and go from there. You actually have to think about what you are doing and how you can use the numerous tools in the best manner for the current situation, ie figuring out how to use Mass Hyp in an effective way on a team even after combat has started versus simply saying it's only useful when solo.
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Quote:They also get 10,000% knockback resistance, which makes them more or less immune to any KB that is not flagged unresistable.Originally Posted by Kyriani
In general, sets with comprehensive status protection that includes knockback protection tend to give about 10 mag protection.
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Illusion is one of the better choices, for the reasons said above. Illusion works fine without a lot of attention, letting you focus more on the empath side when things get heated without losing effectiveness. With PA to tank for you, you're free to ignore defense completely and go all out on recharge. PA offers stealth and aggroless control that works well against all the things that foil most controllers - mez immune enemies, masses of bosses/EBs, and AVs.
Having played both Mind/emp and ill/emp (100 levels of the former and 50 of the latter) I wouldn't recommend Mind in general or Mind/Emp in particular. Mind has no spammable immobilize to set containment, so on controllers it's forever doomed to be low damage. Illusion at least procs reactive well - my Ill/emp solos pylons in 5 minutes, no Lore pets.
Mind's control ability is overrated. Total Dom and Mass Confuse combined have only the same uptime as Flashfire. Mass Hypnosis + Terrify make up for the shortfall but the advantage isn't as significant as some people think. TK is terrain dependent, endurance heavy and has a low target cap. What Mind does have a lot of is single-target control options. It's fun in the low levels to juggle bosses with Levitate and turn off Mary's hurricane in the KHTF, but at high levels where the game is all about steamrolling large spawns of enemies with the occasional AV or three thrown in, it's pretty lackluster. -
The Paragon Market sells XP boost tokens, if that's any consolation.
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Incidentally, I just went and snagged Stardriver on Virtue based on Samuel Tow's post above.
Last week I also had a concept for a girl who gets her powers from an antique pocketwatch. Watchgirl was available.
I don't pretend that these are anything but freak occurrences, though. Good names are still rare and precious things. -
Quote:Radiation infection on its own is good mitigation, it'll comfortably see you through 1-50. But if you have cash to burn, you can build for high res/def in addition to rech because:Originally Posted by Narkor
I've found my debuffs to be quite reliable, but can they really be considered real mitigation? Say, the -To-hit from Radiation Infection is pretty high, should I even bother trying to increase my defenses?
- Rad infection does not floor the ToHit of Trial enemies (They have 64 base, fully slotted Defender RI is about -50). RI is also reduced by the purple patch.
- Defense helps when fighting enemies e.g. AVs which resist debuffs heavily, or when fighting above the target cap.
- Defense makes you more mobile. You don't have to worry so much about keeping everything inside the RI area of effect, which I think is significant for defenders, who have less ways to make enemies stay put. Sometimes there are situations where you take fire without having the time to lay down debuffs e.g. speed TFs, moving through the base in Lambda looting phase.
- Defense means you don't die instantly if detoggled (IO defense does not suppress when mezzed)
RI also has a hideously long animation.
My own Rad/Sonic has 45 ranged defense, enough recharge for perma-hasten, and the musculature alpha. It's fun dropping EF on a huge mob of warworks and watching judgement hit for 700.
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Ice's AoE damage will be lower, since there is no spammable fireball - good fire blast builds toss a fireball once every 5 seconds or so. Also, on corruptors, Fire Blast (the power) is really, really good, enough that it may push fire's ST damage significantly higher than Ice's, but I haven't crunched the numbers. Ice also has a slightly worse damage type - its attacks are usually about 40% lethal.
In exchange, Ice gets freezing ray, a much better nuke, -tohit on bitter ice blast, and the advantage of cheap impeded swiftness procs to use if you decide to proc out. It's not the best, but it's still pretty good. -
For the primary, Fire or Plant. They both offer adequate control and adequate damage, which I think is lots better than superb control and poor damage.
For the secondary, kin or any of the powerhouse debuff sets (rad, cold, storm etc.) -
All the scrapper APP powers damage are wonky in Mids' if you have average damage enabled.
In-game, [blaze mastery.ring of fire] sez:
Code:5 Ticks of 13.76 fire damage over 9.20s on target 3.00 magnitude immobilize for 17.88s on target 5.00%% chance for 68.82 fire damage on target Only against minions and underlings 10.00%% chance for 68.82 fire damage on target Only against targets tougher than minion class
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Quote:Looking carefully at the video in that post's signature, PBU actually does buff his defense while it lasts. So consider me proven wrong.Originally Posted by StormDevil
That will be very disappointing if true; I've no reason to disbelieve you, it's just that I was given conflicting info last week (over here).
EDIT: Or are PBU and Power Boost that different from one another? -
Your bubbles are underslotted. At a minimum, I'd probably slot them 3x LotG (including the +7.5 rech), replacing the slotting in the dispersion bubble/maneuvers with 2x Enzymes. Note, if you want really, really good ally +def, this basically locks you into taking powerboost. Otherwise your bubbles are no stronger than Cold shields.
As far as soloing AVs go, you have 2 problems: 1) Mind has no immobilize, so you miss out on some Containment damage until you stack enough holds to overcome purple triangles, and 2) you don't have a debuff set to increase your damage. Pre-incarnates, my mind/emp didn't do enough damage to solo an AV even at -1 and with all the damage that could reasonably be crammed into the powersets, including double purple procs + PVPIO damage procs. You will probably need Lore pets or Confuse trickery to solo AVs with this build.
You don't want Hurl boulder. Take seismic smash instead for the Mag 4 hold and huge damage. Losing the thunderstrikes there does not put you below the softcap.