Oedipus_Tex

I think this question boils down to whether City of Heroes is a "world" or a "game."

Personally, I think CoH could use a few good kicks in the direction of "world" and for that reason would like to add weather, as well as other lots of other types of small things. The overworld maps, as they exist right now, feel like empty space between mission doors, and have almost no reason to exist except to keep us from hearing each other when we broadcast for teams.

I believe Power Boost does work with Volcanic Gasses as long as its active when you cast the pet. I think it makes the duration of each of the individual holds longer. I'm basing this mostly on instinct as I've never tested it. Power Boost is a VERY strong power though. Because you mainly use it during the opening seconds of a fight, when enemies tend to launch alphas, it serves as a kind of "anti-alpha" armor power as it boosts toggle defenses and -ToHit for the duration of the PB.

I believe it will fire once every 10 seconds for every enemy that is inside the Hurricane. The proc does not stack, so if it fires on one of the enemies it won't go off again until the next cycle.

That's a very nice build. One thing I'd recommend at least considering is swapping the Psi APP for the Primal one. You'll lose mezz protection but gain a second damage type (Smash/Energy instead of being mostly Psi) and Power Boost. I love love love Power Boost on a Mind Controller, especially one with massive Recharge like this build has. Say hello to enemies confused for over a minute at a time, and held in place by Total Domination for 50 seconds or longer. You really have to try it to believe the change it can make for Mind Control.

Try building something and posting. You can search the forums for some other Mind builds as a starting point. Possibly take a look at my Mind/Cold build a few pages down.

If you just cast Dimension Shift, Gale, Tornado, Lightning Storm, and run Hurricane constantly you're guaranteed to cause massive issues. Teleporting enemies behind the Tank while he's moving toward them is a favorite griefer technique too (and one some poorly played characters actually sometimes use).

Adding Group Fly to that combo of powers would make you almost unbearable to have around.

Bonus points: Put Snow Storm on enemies and intentionally knock them into unaggroed groups... if you think you can survive the results.

It would only heal on the first cast and almost certainly is not worth slotting.

If we're talking about IOed builds, you really cannot judge Cold Domination until you reach high levels and start IOing. Cold is a monstrously powerful set on its own turf. In a single-target contest I'm positive nothing can touch it; Benumb, in particular, is a game changer in that specific scenario. Whether that means Cold Dom is "more powerful" than other sets depends entirely on how much weight you give to the ability to fight single hard targets. For this reason I find the current hype surrounding Cold Dom somewhat overdone.

Illusion/Radiation is also a very powerful combo but IMO, like Ill/Cold, the combo isn't so much better than every other Illusion/ combo that it justifies the sheer numbers of Ill/Rads out there or the somewhat ubiqitous belief that Ill/Rad is the "best" Illusion combo.

One point in favor of Ill/Cold over Ill/Rad though is that both Illusion and Cold benefit tremendously from lots of Recharge, where Radiation really does not. Since Cold was balanced around its long Recharge times, cutting them back cause it to gain ground very quickly on other sets when the IO game begins. Perma-Benumb and Heat Loss (at least the endless +endurance part of it) are huge boons.

For the specific task of soloing AVs or charting on the kill-a-pylon contest Cold Domination is probably "better" than Radiation. It is a very single-target oriented combo and nothing really competes with some of it's monster single target debuffs. But IMO Illusion/Radiation itself is an already grossly overrated combo. The fact is Illusion Control is so good any combo you pair it with is guaranteed to be good at something.

Let me add one other thing: if designing a power like Hasten that is supposed to give players the ability to get good Recharge in bursts, it absolutely should not benefit from its own Recharge bonus! This should have been fixed the moment the words "perma Hasten" were first coined, in beta test.

Let me start with what I think they got right:

- The class system. I think the "pick a primary and secondary, then later pick a cross-class tertiary if you want it" was genius. It creates swimlanes of freedom but sets up rules and limitations that make creating a variety of characters viable and interesting.

- The sidekick system. Especially Super Side-Kicking.

- The costume creator in this game is stunning.

- The AE is an incredible thing (but read below).


What I think they should have done differently:

- Defense mechanics, no questions asked. I'm positive the developers agree.

- Archvillains and Giant Monsters. IMO this is the #1 mechanics issue that should receive a visit in a future issue. Fighting big bosses in this game is anticlimactic, not particularly balanced, and IMO an area where the competition really blows CoH away.

- PVP designed from the ground up as part of the game.

- Animation time for attacks should be tied better to Recharge time for powers.

- In addition to the HP and Energy meters I would add a "Balance" meter. The Balance meter controls whether you get knocked down or back from an attack, not a "chance of knockback."

- Distinguish between "Holds" and being physically "Encased." This is more flavor than anything.

- More focus on actual heroics. The game Freedom Force did this brilliantly I think. AoEs should be powerful, but using them indiscriminately should be discouraged, because of all the damage to the people you're trying to save. Powers like Group Fly also make a lot more sense if the people you're "saving" aren't invulnerable and can't jump off a cliff with impunity!

- Features implemented in the AE should also appear in the "normal" game! I can't stress this enough. Why so much time spent creating a way to build custom creatures, recolor them, give them custom powers, and have NONE of it appear in the main game? It is absolutely bizzare. I was hoping Going Rogue would address this weirdness, but no dice.

Anything. But since you asked for something specific, Plant/Fire/Fire Dominator would be way up there.

Well, this may be the post that sails a thousand angry responses, but IMO none of the support sets pairs particularly well with Energy Blast. The benefit of using a Corruptor or Defender blast set are the heightened debuffs that you receive in compensation for your lower damage. Energy Blast just ends up with higher mag knockback, so you get to knock stuff around more without it dying as fast as your "benefit." The only 2 sets that also have no real debuff to speak of, Archery and Assault Rifle, at least have rather amazing nukes on 60 second recharge to balance them; Energy Blast has a massive knocback nuke that, on a Defender, won't even kill minions, will tank your endurance, and make your teammates want to kill you.

As for Force Field, you will have no trouble knocking stuff back with that set if you want to on its own merits. Adding Energy Blast to it is fairly (not quite entirely) redundant. There is also the matter of combining a team heavy primary with a secondary that has been known to cause teammates to mutiny.

None of that is to say you shouldn't try it anyway. But IMO you could do a lot better with just about any other set on either of those ATs.

I was a D&D nerd in middle and high school (late 80s to mid 90s). In 1996 I started playing an online text game called Gemstone III which ran on AOL, then transferred to a beta test of the spinoff game Dragonrealms. I briefly quit that game due to cost (this was when AOL was charging by the hour) and got started playing free MUDs. I played for about 8 months on a MUD called The Forest's Edge.

When AOL went free, I went back to Dragonrealms and played one character continuously for about 7 years. I worked as a support GM for that game for a year before swearing off all MMO-type games for a while. I spent some amount of time playing a Priest in WoW, but never had a top level character and never in the year or so I played, experienced a raid.

About 2 years ago the state I live in got hit by a hurricane. My power was out for 2 weeks. I was complaining about this to a friend so he let me come over to his air conditioned apartment. He pulled up City of Heroes and showed off his character. I said that game looks terrible and I'd heard it got a lot of mediocre reviews. He said try it. I did and I hated everything about it. I didn't know about sewer teams and was really bored running around solo. Then I got invited to my first big teams. Wow. Ok, this was the game for me. Chaotic, crazy, well designed team bouts that were more about fun than "challenge." It was everything WOW (and Dragonrealms, but in a different way) weren't. So it's pretty much been the only game I've been playing for the past 2 years.

I think Web nade might be particularly useful for dealing with AVs and elite bosses, since they don't tend to resist immobs like they do other mezzes.

To me Empathy (and Force Field) easily translates to Psi.

Just to clarify, most "real" damage dealing characters make a laughing stock of the Fire/Kin character once they are hit with the +Recharge and +Damage he or she provides. A lot of Fire/Kins never come to understand this and try to act like the superstar they are on a solo farm. I can see why, on a team that's speedrunning so fast that its hard to keep people in Range, Speed Boost might drop. But in most general situations the teamed Fire/Kin's priorities should be support first and damage second--in particular keeping recharge and damage in top form on the people who actually specialize in high damage. +300% or more damage means a LOT more on a character with base damage values higher than the Controller's.

See any obvious holes in this build? Although I rerolled my Mind/Cold troller as a Mind/Ice Dom, I still have him mothballed and am considering rolling back to my Controller roots. As much fun as Dominating is I have to admit the Cold shields and debuffs were pretty amazing too. I also think I've found a build with huge recharge and capped ranged defense, which I'd struggled with before; it requires the PVP +Defense IO, tho, so not sure I'll actually complete it.

With the upcoming Alpha Slots, Recharge will be able to be pushed even lower than is shown here. I will also need to take slots out of Hasten eventually.

Below are the estimated Recharge values if the full alpha slotting takes place with the Spiritual global IO (which I understand won't happen in i19). Values are overestimated because I only calculated the 30% Recharge that is immune to ED. It's also possible I calculated incorrectly: