Oedipus_Tex

I felt compelled to add one very nice thing about this change for me: taking Hurdle will no longer make me feel like I have to jump constantly to move at a reasonable pace.

So there you are. Young and alive. Maybe a little hung over. No matter. Tonight is your night. You want to be where the PowerSets are. So soak up that ambience, cat. Take it there. You've paid your cover, tossed a few back, and that's when the night's getting loud, and you're on the scene again.

You show up late. It's fashionable. And the action is humming. All around you, you see...

MIND CONTROL was working the door. When PLANT CONTROL shows up, he examines his ID with unmistakeable bitterness, because he's sure he's too young to be doing what he's doing.

ROBOTS is hanging out by the side of the dance floor with her usual clique. They are all perfect and beautiful and make it clear from their body language they have no use for anyone else here. Reluctantly, you envy their lifestyle. But you also just kind of hope they all die.

TRICK ARROW came out tonight with one objective: find a rich control set husband to get her out of debt.

RADIATION EMISSION is hiding in the corner, wondering why she can't go out one single time without running into someone she used to date.

KINETICS and FIRE CONROL are from out of town. They heard this place was like the AWESOMEST bar EVER so had to check it out. To get directions they went to the bar's website and posted 37 requests for assistance. Not that it mattered, because they got lost anyway.

FORCE FIELD has finally worked up the courage to approach the girl he's been eyeing all night. He says a few words and she smiles brightly. But then he just stands there awkwardly for 3.5 minutes before speaking or moving again.

Frat brothers ICE and STONE ARMOR would be cute in a jockish way if they weren't wearing hideous oversized sunglasses, stonewashed jeans with gold thread in a clover pattern circling the butt, and neon-pink Aeropostale shirts with popped collars and a message that reads "$TANK."

Out of the corner of your eye you notice FIERY ARMOR ash his cigarette in SHIELD DEFENSE's cocktail. (The janitor, ENERGY ARMOR, notices too.)

ENERGY BLAST is swaggering around the bar with his shirt unbuttoned. "Yeah, baby, I got so much mitigation," he says. You're thinking, "For you, I don't even have the two seconds it would take to find out."

Power couple DARK MIASMA and FIRE BLAST have just had their first argument. "Ok look," Miasma says, "I'll just forget you said anything about Black Hole, and you forget I said anything about Blazing Bolt."

EMPATHY stormed out earlier in the night, when she realized PAIN DOM was wearing the same outfit. Later she'll ask MEDICINE to hang out, because what everyone needs when they're down is the company of a less attractive friend.

When ELECTRIC CONTROL walks into the club, there's an audible gasp. Someone didn't get the message that Drag Disco night moved to Wednesday.

GRAVITY CONTROL had way too much to drink tonight. After several failed attempts to impress anyone, he heads to the parking lot to sob uncontrollably and tell STORM SUMMONING that no one else understands him.

MENTAL MANIPULATION is drinking a PBR while plugged into an iPod and working on his blog via a PowerBook. Today's post: "World of Confusion." It reads in part, "So I found World of Confusion and it was like total hilario, like total irony you know. And like now I look over and see all these preppy APPs copying my gig, and I'm like WTF @ U?"

DUAL PISTOLS has spent most of the night in the bathroom admiring herself in the mirror. ENERGY MELEE is doing the same thing, except she doesn't like what she sees. By the time either joins the action, the night is pretty much over.

Well... honestly the VEATS needed a nerf before this happened anyway.

But the issue you see again and again and again in builds is that you can double-dip by taking Defense based powers and slotting LoTG. It may finally be time to make that unique (as much as I'd cry about it).

I don't know that this is going to make already powerful builds more overpowered so much as as it's going to make some of the less popular ones more viable. For example, on Controllers it evens the ground between Illusion/Radiation, Illusion/Cold and the other combos by making perma-army more attainable to less popular secondaries with fewer trade-offs.

Another vote for C# .NET. Not only is it free to get started (you can see the link provided by james_joyce below), if you're familiar with Windows applications at all the logic behind a lot it will be immediately familiar, at least in terms of creating basic application functions like button clicks and drop-down menus.

The reason I say C# and not Visual Basic is that C# bears a closer resemblance to C++, should you ever desire to start working with that. It's also my feeling that people who pick up C# tend to do better at switching to Visual Basic when the project requires it than vice versa, simply because Visual Basic is the easier to "read" language, IMO. Also, you may be thinking "I'll never be good enough to do C++" but with baby steps you might surprise yourself. Since C++ is the language most big budget games are written in it's a great language to know if you ever decide to do mod video games, for example, as you can do with stuff like Civilization IV (a game that actually ships with its source C++ code for you to toy with; IMO an ASTOUNDING resource for the aspiring game programmer).

Note that knowing C# or VB will also allow you to develop develop for Silverlight, Microsoft's Flash competitor (used on sites like Netflix to broadcast your movies). That is also free to get started with, but requires you to download Microsoft Visual Web Developer, a separate tool. Personally, I am a former Flash developer who now prefers to work almost exclusively in Silverlight due to cost savings.

(Note, however, that my clients sometimes want things developed in Flash anyway. That language is ActionScript 3, which I actually find to be "learner friendly." It is, IMO, much easier to learn the basic steps of writing a game in Flash/ActionScript than almost any other tool/language. However, I also find that as projects get more complex ActionScript can become frustrating, due to limitations that language has. In particular, ActionScript's insistence on making Arrays generic objects can lead to HUGE programming headaches that C# sails by; on the other hand, I have lost countless hours yelling at C# on my computer monitor because I can't figure out what load path it's using to grab external pictures/sounds/XML files etc.)

The deployment limitations of .NET can be frustrating, as james_joyce noted in his post.

I have no experience with Ruby on Rails but after reading Jame's praise for it may need to check it out.

For teaming the main thing I slot prior to DOs is Endurance Reduction or Recharge, whichever makes more sense for the power. After DOs I start slotting semi-normally.

In general, the types of powers I think I'll be picking up are things like Grant Invisibility, Invisibility, Hover, Combat Jumping, etc. The central theme there is powers you can slot with Luck of the Gambler +Recharge and still have them operate fairly well. Three slots of that provide +22.5% Recharge, which is almost as good as some powers (but not cheap).

Recall Friend is also not a bad power to pick up.

A few of my characters may be able to pick up some flavor powers I originally skipped, e.g. Force Bubble, Telekinesis, Bonfire, Repel, Increase Density, Snow Storm, etc, since none of those really require much slotting to be helpful.

My few characters without Super Speed (all of whom have Hasten, which I never skip on Controllers) will be able to take that and use the single slot either for -kb or stealth.

Did the person by any chance ask you to join his super group first? There is a known, small faction of super group elitists who invite people to team, try to impress them with their 'leet' skills, and ask you if you want to join. If you say no you get kicked, usually with a curt /tell (I got "Disappointing." /kick) I'm not allowed to post the name of the group here. The only thing worse than their manners is their gameplay. You'll know the group the instant you get on the team too, because the first thing you'll hear is:

HERDING TO HERE
HERDING TO HERE
HERDING TO HERE

Mixed with:
AM IN ~~10 SECONDS~~
GATHER FOR RA!!!!
GATHER FOR RA!!!
AM IN ~~5 SECONDS~~

Anyway, I haven't had many problems with getting kicked from groups. Mainly just that one semi-notorious band of complete losers, who might actually just be trolls pretending to suck as much as they do.

What if in addition to their normal effects, Repulsion Field and/or PFF acted like the Swap Ammo toggles and changed the behavior of Force or Dispersion Bubble? The powers are somewhat mutually exclusive anyway, so this would give us reasons to run them together.

I don't know if someone else has ideas about what the combo could achieve, but one suggestion is to have Repulsion + Force Bubble eliminate the Repel aspect of Force Bubble and change it to a debuff (-Range? -Damage? -Speed? -2000% Knockback Resistance, so if they get hit with knockback they go flying further? Periodic chance for Knock Up? AoE -Regen? -Intangible, so phased enemies come back as valid targets?).

Well I think if we're going to break it down far enough, the argument ultimately becomes "why solo a Controller at all when you could just go Dominator and 9 times out of 10 have an easier time?" I think we're talking less about what is best than what is functional.

In my experience Mind Control on a Controller has 2 major downsides.

The first is AoE Containment. It shares this problem with Illusion, but Illusion literally has an army to make up the damage difference.

The second is fighting elite bosses and AVs. I found it very, very frustrating, because establishing Containment is so difficult. However, now that we can go Villain, I believe there is at least a temporary job power that can help alleviate this.

The lack of a pet never bothered me one way or another. I can't really say Plant or Ice's pets are that great (although if we call Carrion Creepers a "pet" perhaps so). I always valued the Earth pet for its survivability more than its damage. Fire and Electric get pretty significant damage from the pets. Illusion is basically a Mastermind with a couple of control powers. Gravity's pet is good but the set is not comparable to Mind in a million years.

Now the thing about Mind Control is I've found it a bit of a roller coaster in terms of performance. It starts out way ahead of the other sets in performance. Then at around level 15 its slightly behind (climbing the lift hill?), and holds that position for a long time while you make your way to level 26 for Terrify. Even then, I find it still requires you to get all the way to level 33, with Mass Confusion slotted, for it to really take off... then at 41-47 other Controllers start getting Contained AoEs, and may surpass you in damage.

However, if you keep going to 50, and start building for massive recharge, you edge more and more on other sets, who aren't really benefitting as much from dropping recharge on things that recharge semi-quickly anyway. If you take the Primal APP (IMO the best for most Mind Controllers) eventually you can use Power Boost to obtain ~50 seconds of Containment from Total Domination every 60 seconds or so. At that point, you are not only ridiculously survivable, but doing damage at least on par to average sets. To wit, my Mind/Cold Controller was doing Carnie radio missions on +0x8. I did die from time to time, but the fact that he could do it at all, combined with his excellent ability to provide mitigation on teams, impressed me.

In terms of teaming, I have lvl 50 Earth/Storm, Ice/Therm, Ice/Rad, a FF/Ice Defender, but the Mind/Cold is who I'd reach for everytime a team seemed hopeless and someone needed to go get their "best toon," because he could almost always carry the group past impossible odds with a combo of stealth, Power Boost, and sneaky sleeps and confuses.

We should add that this game is changing over time. With the introduction of "tip" missions, which tend to reward you for actually completing the objective each day instead of farming the mission for XP, Mind Control is a shoo-in set because it's amazing at being able to stealth objectives. At various times I have even walked kidnap victims to exits with a bare minimum of fighting by just sleeping or confusing each enemy group as I stroll passed.

All of this said, I did recently try rerolling my Mind/Cold troller as a Mind/Ice Dominator. The change resulted in him gaining even better lockdown, earlier access to power boost, but has made him contribute less to AV and monster fights where I am on a team. He is currently level 34, but showing lots of promise.

It depends on what you're looking to do.

Electric is probably not the best at "control." However, neither is Illusion, and that set is still great.

Electric does do some things well:
- Only set in the game with a toggle power with negative endurance cost (i.e. it feeds endurance to you instead of the reverse)
- Provides powers that, because of their "chain" aspect, allow you to get around high defenses (an aspect many of the conversations about chains keep missing)
- Provides of a method of getting around status protection
- Only endurance drain set that allows you to mezz enemies first, and then drain them (other sets require you to endure the onslaught of damage if you don't instantly floor enemy's endurance)
- One of only 3 sets in the game that can mezz enemies prior to starting a fight
- One of only 2 Control sets that can slot Chance for Knockdown in the AoE cages
- Only set in the game to my knowledge that can slot single damage procs into an AoE (Jolting Chain)
- One of only 2 Control sets that gets two pets instead of 1 (or none)

None of this is to say the set is amazing, but IMO there's more to the story than just how much lockdown you can get.