MinMin

Sorry, I'm not clear as to what's wrong ...

Are you having endurance issues or overall performance issues or something more specific?

Drain Psyche will let you get rid of Stamina, but it needs to recharge reasonably quickly to allow it. I would recommend you start out with Stamina and respec it out if you go to a heavy recharge build down the track.

As you say, Fire/Psi is about damage and Mind/Fire is about control, but the overall picture is more complex than that.

The Fire/Psi combo works well. Buildwise, Fire Control has a large number of skippable powers, which is good, because most of Psi is worth taking now. With Smoke and Drain Psyche you have abilities that most other Doms do not, and between Imps, Hot Feet and the Psi AoEs, your damage potential is quite high. On the downside, a Fire/Psi is difficult and expensive to perma and the nifty secondary effects from Psi don't really bridge the gap between Fire Control and the other control sets. Also on the negative side, is that psi defense and resistance while supposedly rare, tends to be huge when it is present. That same issue is also why Fire Control makes such a good pairing with Psi, because you can use the primary to make up for the shortfall.

The Mind/Fire combo works well also. Mind Control is hands down the control set. It specialises in areas that remain useful in the higher levels and provides many different control options. It's also a superb PvP control set given that its powers are essentially typeless for defense purposes. Mind Control also tends to be easy to perma and has a unique place for the MoLRSF challenge (although, Fiery Assault isn't particularly helpful for either of those). Combined with Fiery Assault, you basically have the best of both worlds, with the best control and the best damage, although the build is very tight.

Given the choice, I'd personally go with Fire/Psi. For me, Drain Psyche is just that good and I love the overall flexibility with some odd situational powers like Smoke and Bonfire available. I also find that while Mind Control has a million good control powers, it really has only the one good alpha strike power and that's on a relatively slow recharge. Fire Control is the flipside, in that all it really gets is the one good alpha stike power

The reason I've seen in the past for not staggering server shutdown is that there are common servers shared across the main servers. Things like the global chat server, the markets servers, the login server and whatever the MA runs on.

I should also mention that the Announcements board has Friday's maintenance moving to Thursday instead.

Goodness knows, we wouldn't want to see consistency rear its ugly head.

Look, I know we live in an odd time zone (and mine is odd even for here) and I know it is the least populated. I know that the devs didn't specifically target us when the maintenance time was changed to hit smack in the middle of prime time, but why on earth can't a maintenance "to prepare for double xp and reactivation weekend" be done concurrently with the Monday one just gone?!

Also, the maintenance periods which have historically been 45-50 minutes have now stretched out to about an 1 hour 20-30 minutes.

I want to adapt. I really want to adapt. You're not making it easy.

And I'm really, really sick of seeing "I'm sorry for the inconvenience" on the announcements. You know what would demonstrate that you're really sorry for the inconvenience? Having a bit of consideration for the people you're inconveniencing, and keeping the inconveniences to a minimum, instead of the seemingly constant stream of them!

My personal preference is still for the other self buffs with the only questionable one for me being Aim, and I'm no fan of Thorns for aesthetic reasons.

Power Boost, simply put, just doesn't do enough. Yes, it's versatile, and I don't think I'd ever skip it if I were to take a set where it is present, but it's no incentive to take a such a set IMO.

It is sort of an argument of extremes. Given the choice, I'd take Earth any day, and that's from someone with well over 100 levels of Fire Control characters.

And don't be too down on /Icy. My Plant/Icy was terrific fun and I too love ISC and pretty much all the Ice swords. It's also not too bad with damage, but you will have to maintain a constant stream of attacks to do that damage. The one big caveat (and another reason for avoiding Fire Control and Hot Feet specifically) is that the set drains your endurance incredibly.

I'm as annoyed by uncontrolled knockback as the team is. It's not an issue of laziness; it's an issue of optimal performance of AoE damage powers. Thunderstrike + Static Discharge isn't much of a combo

Well, now that I've gone back and looked at the numbers, I'm curious as well. My last two Doms were /Elec and /Energy in that order and I vastly preferred Elec. Must be Build Up.

Right with you up until you got to the Mind/NRG part. I cannot in all good conscience recommend Energy to anyone but the crazies who like sub-par builds.

I respecced out of Thunderstrike. I'm no fan of long animating attacks and the KB is just annoying, both to me and my team. It's not as if I don't have a full attack chain without the 4 low level attacks (well, 3, I don't tend to use Charged Bolts) and Static Dischage.

I have recent experience (read: from L1 after I15) with a Mind/Elec. It gets all its good single target attacks early. You get Build Up for damage purposes and Static Discharge is a nice cone attack. I'm even being pleasantly surprised by Voltaic Sentinel.

Fiery Assault is also a good secondary for damage purposes and the two sets combine well (no secondary effects from /Fire is fine considering the abundance of control in Mind).

I'm also a big fan of Psi. It's a good set now, with some early strong powers like TK Thrust (I wouldn't have stopped laughing if you'd told me I'd be saying that a year ago) and excellent utility in Drain Psyche. Mind Probe has always been good and now even Psychic Scream is good. PSW has fallen far, but it's still amongst the best AoE damage powers for Doms.

Well the global chat server and the markets servers are global. I suspect the login server is too.

I believe Redoubt said 2100 or 9pm AEST. I have a meeting across town from 6 to 8pm so I might have to lead a second team a little later than that.

As I understand it they've just chosen the time with the least people on.

It's not much fun for the people who *are* on at that time, but there doesn't seem to be anything but maths driving this. And I don't imagine whether it's Monday or Friday makes any difference. Least people on is least people on.

I'll either adapt or move on. It'll be a shame if I have to move on, but I doubt there's anything NCSoft can do about it. A change in maintenance time was bound to hit someone after all ...

I was so looking forward to US Daylight Savings Time when maintenance switches to a more reasonable time for me.

Now this?

I'm kinda stunned. I don't normally get on until 9:30 or 10:00 pm most nights, and I don't normally play much later than 11:30 to midnight. This change means I lose two days of play from each week.

OTOH, the maintenance usually only takes around 45 minutes, so what I'm really losing is the opportunity to play SFs or other organised play on Mondays and Fridays ... and I can't remember the last time I did either on a Monday or a Friday due to the already annoying maintenance periods.

I need to think about this. Right now, it just feels like a kick in the teeth.