Oedipus_Tex

Mixed feelings. First the good: the new content is great. It's thrilling, well written, and more interactive than previous stuff. The environment looks nice, and there are some new enemies that look impressive.

However, I'm not completely sure about this expansion. I say this not to despirit anyone, but because I think honest communication is better than walking away without explanation.

To put it simply, I find the level range of the new content very limiting. After 3 hours of playing a new alt, he is already level 10. This is the natural result of teaming. You can tell me I should "slow it down" or "not team" but my response to that is "or you could put the bulk of content in the level ranges where we spend most of our time." Kicking us out of the region at level 20 adds insult to injury on this count.

Morality missions are interesting, but I'm not sure I'm sold. Again, this is because I mostly team. The problem is, for teaming purposes, we've just split the player base again. Now if I'm looking for a team I have to worry the leader will pick a morality mission, and if I complete it my "points for the day" go toward whatever random alignment we just went with. The actual actions my character takes in missions of whatever morality are pretty much identical and split only by a dialog tree some other player clicked on. If I am mistaken on this point and the ability exists to "op out" of alignment fame then disregard.

The lack of a power proliferation hurts. The new power sets are still nice, but since we got two of them earlier and they can't back track to Praetoria it means if I want to try something new I have only two power set options, one of them a melee set and the other a low damage Control set.

I wish I could rave about new enhancements, costumes, interface improvements, etc, but I saw very little of that kind of thing. There were a few new costumes I noticed, and those did look good, but it really wasn't what I was expecting at all.

On the enemy groups, a few of them look really nice (Ghouls, Clockwork). The others register visually to me as visually identical in terms of costumes, though their powers look cool. This is a personal preference thing, in that I've always been more excited by the outlandish costume types (Carnies, those witches in Croatoa, etc) than other content.

The one thing I will come down hard on is the fact that APPs and PPPs are in some cases flat out broken. I could forgive this with a lot of game features, but since the only retreat from this situation is a sweeping nerf I'm afraid to even touch them.

Overall what I think about the expansion is that the content itself is overall good, but targeted in curious places. That may appeal to some people, but for me, who mainly teams and sticks to content between levels 25-50 it feels light. I don't regret buying the expansion, of course, but for selfish reasons wish it had been built differently.

Well I think at least part of the issue with Force Field is you are basically a walking anchor for the team, and that competes with the positioning you need in order to take advantage of your knock and repel powers.

Good synopsis in the previous. The only thing I'd add is the other major difference, which is -ToHit affects all positions and damage types, where +Defense is normally limited to only certain attacks.

Well, at least Force Fielders can now go villain and pick up the Mace pool for a defense-based slash/lethal shield. My FF/Ice Defender will definitely be going that route. And he will also get the AoE immobilize power, which will finally allow him to somewhat use his rain powers when solo.

Hope I'm not too late to add another.

In Dual Pistols, I'd love an alternative animation for Bullet Rain (the one where the bullets bend through the air) where instead you fire a bunch of bullets and they ricochet around the area of effect. It might look a little silly fired into the air sometimes, but IMO its much less immersion breaking than the bending bullet trails we have now.

Now that heroes have access to the PPP pets, I'm wondering which ATs benefit most from them. I'm not familiar with Villain builds at all. Are the pets worth taking? Are there particular ones that are especially good?

I'm looking at the current epic proliferations for Controllers, and noticing that Fire/Kin/Leviathan looks like a real contender for farm builds. It loses the extra HP and the single-target punch from /Stone but gains a second AoE blast and Hibernate. Here are the powers you would get:

- Water Spout
- Bile Spray
- Hibernate
- Shark Skin (defense based shield)
- Summon Coralax

While Bile Spray is a cone instead of a radial power like Fissure, that second AoE in Water Spout does 271.4 damage at its base. Unlike Tornado, it does Knock Up instead of back. The base Recharge is 180 seconds, so it can be worked down to about 50/50 uptime. The cast time is just 1.15 seconds. Bile Spray is slower than Fissure and a cone; however it has huge range (base 60ft) and deals more damage.

While I'm not dedicated to the idea of farm builds I think this could be an interesting time for us.

IMO it's a matter of opinion but the difference to me is Seeds an opening power, and not a "pre-tanking" one that you throw prior to starting the fight. The comparison is not Seeds versus Synaptic Overload, but Seeds versus Synaptic Overload plus whatever you layer on it that starts the fight. Plant Control is not at liberty to make this distinction.

The same holds when compared to Mind Control. SO does have a base 5% chance to miss. However, it also has a 100% chance to be active 4 times as often as Mass Confusion. The recharge is equivalent to Mind's sleep power. I think it's extremely competitive in that department, so much so that I'm not sure Mass Confusion doesn't need a recharge reduction to compensate.

In no particular order:

- Gravity Control. Can we please, please, please, please have the "flip you in the air" animation from Ghost Widow's hold ("Soul Storm"?) as an alternative for Gravity's hold, but without the glowing "eels"? Can you imagine how epic it would look to use that animation in the AoE hold power?

- Broadsword, Battle Axe, and War Mace. They all currently use the same animations. Would really like to get something that conveys the full "weight" of a the mace and axe, as currently they are held like a sword. The "whirlwind" attacks in particular are a spot you could put something cool. I've seen the work you've done on Katana and Dual Blades and think the other melee sets would look amazing with such styles (although I'd honestly prefer sticking to something "Western" looking considering how many "Eastern" styles we have.)

- Traps, Devices. I would love a reskin that is "magical" looking instead of mechanical, featuring glowing orbs, arcane circles, and magical crystals. And perhaps one that has a 'tiki' look as well.

- Hasten. No graphics option.

- Anything that's using the animation currently used by the Thunderstrike melee power. That's the one where you slooowly jump into the air, then slooowly come back down and bring your fists down. The animation time obviously can't change, but the animation could be a lot more interesting.

- Electric Control, Electric Blast. Option to have some powers to originate from the sky instead of from your arms.

The APP and PPP sets are currently... problematic.

BTW for those of you seeking screenshots of the powers, I apparently only thought to take one when my access still worked. Below is a pic of my Elec/Therm test character working a farm map for test purposes.

Unfortunately I didn't think to take screenshots during my tests, but did apparently grab one shot during a test of Electric control (paired with Thermal Radiation in the shot):

In the pic you can see the effects of the electric cages, aftermath of Synaptic Overload, the effects of the Static Field sleep power, and Conductive Aura around the toon (who is colored pure orange). The pets are in the lower portion of the screen and have the Thermal shields cast on them.

Given the difficulty of Going Rogue's missions and its low level range, a "pure" healer would actually fair better in Praetoria than in COX in general. That's not to say they are necessary, but there is a lot more death thrown around than in the main game.

A couple of quick points about the set now that we can talk about it. There's no real order to these comments, and they represent only my opinions.

- I agree that Storm (and Cold Domination) are poor choices to pair with Electric Control. In addition to the rain powers waking enemies in your sleep patch, if you bowl an enemy backwards it can break powers that chain from enemy to enemy. Overall it was the worst of the set combos I tested, and maybe one of the worst combos I've ever worked with between a Controller primary and secondary.

- Regarding the chain effect: A lot has been said about this, but we need to be clear that the odds to hit ALL of the enemies in an area with a chain power are the same as if you were aiming for 16 enemies in a regular power, or about a 44%. Where chains differ are in the chance to miss lots of enemies. The math on this is tricky but typically you have a higher chance to roll a critical miss but the same chance to hit everything.

- About the overall level of control. This set is quite capable, thanks to Synaptic Overload. If you look at this power, you will note that it is a ranged, non-aggro version of Seeds of Confusion. It has the same accuracy and recharge. The only issue with it is its chance to miss all targets (5%) due to the chain effect mentioned above. With this set, you probably want to open with this power, but then have a backup power to use if you miss completely. I used the AoE hold. Missing is frustrating but the enemy won't know you tried to attack it anyway.

- The damage is better than Ice Control. If you've played that set and been ok with it you will be more than fine here. Especially since Electric has an actual opener power (Synaptic), and fewer inherent power conflicts.

- This set kind of rocks at endurance drain due to a critical difference between it and other draining sets: you can lock stuff down with it and drain them before they're unmezzed. Ice Control can't do this with -Recharge because it requires the enemy to take a swing, and Electric Blast certainly can't either. The way I approached endurance drain was to lock the enemy down at first, then drain them so they woke up with no ability to retaliate. They will still get some swings in (again, see Ice Control) but couldn't do it as often.

- There is a debate about slotting Conductive Aura with procs, and whether the proc affects the caster, enemy, or both.

- Best secondaries for a Controller in my opinion: Trick Arrow (a great combo that was soloing at level 41 +0x4 with no enhancements), Thermal (shields, heals, and +damage for the imps, but especially the -200% Recovery for 40 seconds in Heat Exhaustion!) and Force Field (mezz protection + free endurance recovery). Radiation was predictably good. Kinetics was pretty blah, for me, because it just makes more sense to lock stuff down and then drain it than to drain it slowly while risking your tail up close. As mentioned, Storm was poor. Cold's endurance recovery power isn't really need and Sleet is a poor compliment to the sleep patch. I didn't test Empathy because Thermal seemed like a better choice in most departments.

- Overall power score: approximately equivalent to Earth Control. Far better than Gravity (I don't get the comparisons there at all), and somewhat more powerful than Ice. Not as cut and dry as Plant, Illusion or a Fire/Kin. Definitely worthy as a control set even if bumpy from time to time, especially if paired with a strong secondary. The chaining effects may still need some work, but Synaptic Overload is already VERY powerful most of the time, so if it ever becomes more reliable, expect a recharge increase.

- If you're going to do endurance drain, you want to slot Endurance Mod in more than just Conductive Aura. Don't slot chain powers. But slot the cages, and the imps.

I would vote for changing the core mechanics for "squishy" characters.

For characters with a native Armor power set (Tanker, Brute, Scrapper, Stalker): game mechanics remain unchanged. They defend using their highest defense value.

For characters without a native Armor power set (Blaster, Controller, Corruptor, Defender, Mastermind): game mechanics are revised. Instead of defending with their best defense value, they defend using the average. For example, if an attack is tagged Smashing, Ranged, and Cold, the character defends using the average of those three defenses.

The reason for doing it this way is it still allows the high defense to be useful, but not uniformly so, while simultaneously providing a reason to keep using Force Fields and the like, because they boost defense to several positions instead of 1 or 2.

The problem right now is its too easy to cap to 1 or 2 positions and have that carry you through. That option, IMO, should only be open to armored characters.

I always think of Earth/Storm, Earth/TA, Plant/Storm or Plant/TA Controllers.