Muon_Neutrino

Wait, what? I wasn't talking about set bonuses, that was the entire point of my post. I think something got lost in translation here, I wasn't trying to insult anyone or anything. Just putting some info out there in case you weren't aware of it.

And I didn't give you any rep, negative or otherwise. If you got negative rep, it wasn't from me. Besides, since my rep is turned off any rep I left someone would show up as neutral, not negative or positive, no matter which type I left. I think the rep system is silly, and I don't really use it anyway.

All the dark sets in CoH are interrelated, and they're not really going to be able to port any of them until they plan out how to port *all* of them. Presumably they're putting that task off until they have more time to work on it.

I personally wouldn't say that illusion has little control. It's got the standard ST/AoE hold, an extra ST control in deceive, and a standard every-spawn AoE mezz in spectral terror. Even discounting PA as misdirection rather than control (which is fair), it's still got the standard set of control tools. It is true, though, that like gravity, it has to wait to 26 to get its every-spawn mez, which might contribute to any 'low control' feelings that might be present.

And I can't wait for Illusion to get ported to doms, simply because it'd be a control set that might actually have a chance to keep you alive against a PToD eb. It would be a hell of a novelty to fight a downgraded AV *without* hammering back purple pills like they're going out of style. *That* might actually be a reason why they're holding off on proliferating it, since it compensates so nicely for one of the dom's main weaknesses.

Not exactly. While most do go for IOs for the set bonus, there are advantages to using them even if you never use two from the same set. A double aspect set IO actually has 5/8ths worth of a single aspect IO for each type of enhancement, so overall it offers a total enhancement equal to 1 and 1/4 generic IOs (or SOs, if you're using about level 25-30 IOs). A triple aspect IO has 1/2 of a single aspect's bonus to all three types, so it overall offers 1 and 1/2 of a normal IO's worth of enhancement.

It's possible to use this fact to jam large amounts of enhancement into a surprisingly small number of slots. I have particular combos of cheap IOs I usually slot my blasts and melee attacks with that, with level 30 IOs, gives me roughly the equivalent of 2 acc, 3 dam, 1 end, and 1 rech in only 5 slots. It's also possible to do things like 2 acc, 3 dam, 2 end, 2 rech with 6 slots. So even if you totally ignore set bonuses, there are still reasons why you might want to use set IOs.

Unfortunately, I don't remember exactly. I don't think it was *that* recent, but I'm not sure it was long enough ago to be pre-i15. One could try digging through the patch notes, but, well, I'm lazy.

As far as the activation time goes, it *is* possible that the animation time is set incorrectly and is rooting you longer than the activation time, but it never felt *that* slow to me post-buff.

Yeah, I saw that, which is why I changed 'faster than' to 'on par with' in my statement. I meant 'on par with' mostly in the sense of 'some are a bit slower or faster, some about the same, but they're all in the same general area'. Blind is slightly faster, I just didn't think the amount was that significant.

I think the difference here is that I tend to come from the perspective of a non-decked out character. My /ta controller is just frankenslotted and doesn't have hasten, so her main hold is coming back in more like 5 seconds instead of 2.5. Once I've fired off my alpha controls and debuff arrows, I usually spend most of my time spreading around my ST holds. What ice arrow does for me is ensure that I almost always have a second hold available immediately to hit another target or stack on the boss I just hit, instead of having to wait. If I had 100% or more global recharge factoring in hasten, it certainly wouldn't be nearly as useful, but I don't.

Well, my /ta is an earth/TA, and I've got freezing arrow. I specifically took this combo for maximum mezzing goodness, so of course I took every mez power I could get. I don't particularly see anything in particular I'd want to swap out for it - the powers I skipped were salt crystals, flash arrow, and stone prison, and I don't see any of those being more useful. I don't have hasten yet, but it's only a few levels off at 49. Even if I don't end up using it much while hasten's up, I still see it being useful when it isn't, as well as for exemplaring. It's always been quite useful for me on the way up.

It does take a while to fire off all those arrows, but I'm not sure there's anything to be done about that at this late stage in the game. The animations can certainly be trimmed as much as possible, but ultimately the powerset is just structured around tossing a bunch of different debuffs from a bunch of different arrows.

That said, there are some changes I'd make - although more in terms of its utility as a defender primary than anything, as I think that's where TA really needs the most help. /TA on controllers isn't actually *that* bad, as you noted, mostly because the controller's primary can take over the defensive role that TA isn't very good at by itself.

TA's real problem as I see it is a lack of defensive ability when it's the characters sole mitigation. It's got decent offensive buffing, but it's bad at keeping people alive against large spawns, at least when OSA and EMP aren't up. I would personally tweak several of the lower level arrows - double the tohit debuff in flash so it's actually noticable, increase the -recharge in glue arrow to ~40%ish, give PGA 100% chance to sleep (although still only mag 2), and add a mag 1 stun to disruption arrow for stacking purposes with the defender secondaries that don't have holds. (And of course fix OSA, but that's a given).

How many of those changes would get ported over to the controller/MM versions of the set would be up to the devs, but it probably wouldn't be all of them.

Yeah, but that's not what the cottage rule says. It doesn't say "only if an effect was in the launch version of a power 6 years ago can you not remove it", it says that the effects *currently* in the power can't be removed. That likely includes the fear effect. As much as it's generally reviled, there's still almost certainly *someone* who's using the fear effect for mitigation. And that's the person the cottage rule is designed to cover.

Like I said, between the cottage rule and the same balance concerns that caused them to add it in the first place, I doubt the devs would consent to removing the fear effect.

One thing to keep in mind about the cottage rule is that you can still *add* functionality to a power, as long as it still *also* does what it used to do. Look at the conserve power -> energize change in electric armor: the recharge drastically changed, it gained a heal and a regen buff, but it still provides a click self endurance discount buff, so the cottage rule is satisfied.

Applying this to burn, what the cottage rule says is basically that, whatever you do to the power, it must still summon a flaming patch of fire under your feet. But it can get stuff added on *top* of that. However, I highly doubt the devs would agree to remove the fear effect. Keeping that in mind, this is what I'd do to the power:

- Decrease patch damage from .06 pet scale damage per tick to .05 pet scale damage per tick.
- Decrease patch duration from 10s to 8s.
- Increase patch radius from 8ft to 10ft.
- Add a regular AoE attack to the power - basically, make it an AoE attack that also drops the burn patch. This attack does 89 damage (slightly more than most scrapper PBAoEs, probably DoT over 3ish seconds), 10ft radius. Recharge unchanged, end cost becomes 11.856.

Total effects? Overall damage goes from 167 to 200, with ~45% of the damage frontloaded even if the target escapes the patch. Radius increases from 8ft to 10ft, but the end cost does rise some (although still heavily undercosted compared to a regular AoE attack). This makes the power much more useful if you don't have some means to keep foes in the patch, without increasing the damage by too much for those who did have some sort of slow/immob.

Erm, the cast time is 1.83 seconds, which is right on par with all the other controller ST holds except mind's and fire's. Perhaps you haven't tried it since the most recent set of animation time reductions? And while it does no damage, does that really matter? It's not like your ST hold is a real damage powerhouse for you either way. It does have a shorter duration, but it's not *that* bad, especially given the power's most likely uses.

Mind you, trick arrow *does* have several problems that could use looking at, but freezing arrow isn't one of them.

Oh hahaha, nice! A pity your personal weapon is a whip instead of a gladius...

Well, shields with just the stock levels of defense is indeed somewhat on the squishy side for a tank, and so, many choose to boost it. However, while the fighting pool is certainly the most common way to increase defense, it's not the only way. I've got a shield/mace that softcaps with maneuvers instead of tough/weave (about half of the extra end cost, and 2 fewer power picks), and I know some have pulled it off without any defense boosting pool powers beyond combat jumping (although they spent a lot more money, I bet).

There are still enough cheap sets which boost positional defense that it's possible, albeit difficult, to manage it on a budget without the fighting pool. You'll probably have to dip into some slightly more expensive sets, but it's still doable. If you want, you can take a look at my current build for ideas:

Click this DataLink to open the build!

I had a version which softcapped without needing to take hover as a BoTZ mule, but that was before the reduction in BoTZ's defense values (now gives 1.25% ranged/1.88% AoE - not shown yet in mids, mentally subtract 3.75% ranged defense from the totals shown there). She's at 40 at the moment with almost all of the IOs bought, and I'd estimate she's spent less than 30 million (although she didn't buy the performance shifter proc or steadfast 3% herself).

The 35 generics do give about 4%ish more enhancement per slot than the 25s do, but the total difference for 3 is only about 4.5% after ED. Given that level 25s are often cheaper, you can slot them 10 levels earlier, and they save you the expense of 2 generations worth of SOs, I personally would rather use 25s instead of 35s. You can definitely do either one, though - it's just play money, after all.

Please do let us know how it all turns out in the end, and how much of a difference it seems to make. My own characters always IO up as they level, so if I'm going to have certain bonuses, I get them gradually and far before level 50. I'm curious how noticeable the jump will be to suddenly go from an SO'd 50 to an (even modestly) IO'd one, since I've never experienced that myself.

And yeah, it can really be that cheap. With all the talk of spending billions of inf on a single character, it's easy to not realize that you still can get quite decent builds for considerably less than a hundred million.