Oedipus_Tex

I'm not surprised that it's been done. I do think it's still not one of Earth's strengths. A challenge, yes.

I want to say one thing though, and I hope it doesn't come across as too dismissive. AVs are mostly soloable because of the strange way they are designed. Soloing an AV is simply a matter of having some decent attack strength, good defense or a pet with good defense, some heals and endurance replenishers, and (especially) a -regen power. I don't consider it strictly "challenging" because the deck is heavily loaded in favor of a very few powersets. It's interesting that it can be done, but IMO more an indication of some seriously broken mechanics than a demonstration of the power of a build.

I get the same error and failure to install.

EDIT: Found the fix. I owe it to being forced by a certain vendor of photo editing software to fix a product they wouldn't provide tech support for when their DRM scheme broke. So, hats off to the tech support person I cursed out last month for that company's epic endorsement of every reason people choose to pirate software instead of purchase it.

Anyway, for me the problem was Vista wants to install to this directory: C:\Program Files (x86)\

But that doesn't work with some older programs. When I removed the parentheses around the x86 it installs fine.

BTW this fix also fixes the problems with a product whose initials are CS2 if you ever have to reinstall it after changing operating systems.

I don't understand what you mean by "tank it." Do you mean make it survivable for a tank? I think for that to happen it would depend way more on the Tank and the secondary set the TA was using than TA itself. I would never, ever trust a TA to keep my team safe the way I'd trust the other Defender sets. I think people give this set too many breaks. It's a good idea for a set but it needs a swift kick in the pants before I'd put my faith in it. I'm sure this will que outrage among some TA supporters, but these things are a matter of opinion.

It does help some. Ice/Thermal is pretty good at keeping the pet alive through most normal encounters. Epic Bosses are just too tough for him though. The Earth pet is a lot more survivable.

I'm actually not a fan of corresponding sets. What I like about Controllers is that there are very few sets in the Primary that are the "perfect" match to a set in the secondary. I personally think that the strive to keep sets matched holds Blasters and Dominators back. I especially don't want to see new Controller sets limited to what happens to be a match for a Dominator.

Take a suggested set like Insect Control. There is no exact Insect secondary, but there are plenty of conceptual matches. Insect/Radiation (I'm a mutated insect myself), Insect/Sonic (I'm able to summon insects with a sound, like the pied piper), Insect/Thermal (a "fire bug"), Insect/Kinetics (a speedy bug), Insect/Trick Arrow (I'm a... guy who controls insects and uses a trick arrow).

I think Electric Control would be just fine if the opportunity cost is low and its easy to port the set over using existing assets. However, it doesn't bring into new conceptual territory the way Pain, Shields, Demons, and Dual Pistols have. Not to mention I'm really tired of characters with 'Tesla' in their name.

That's how I use Repulsion Field in Force Field and yeah it's not toooo bad. You just have to think of the toggle as a "I can turn this on and then turn it off when I just don't want it anymore" instead of "I should have this on all the time."

My favorite time to use it is when a squishie on the team is getting chased. Toggling on and running to them is often faster than trying to click on the guy following them and mezz (which can miss). Plus unlike an attackk there is no run speed penalty when you send something flying with this, so you can turn it on and still make an escape.

I think what you mean is:

A single-target no-damage mag 3 immob.

An AoE slow with bottom of the barrel -Recharge that combines the worst features of an anchor power with those of a power on recharge. By far the worst of the various pure-AoE slows available (Shiver--even the Blaster version, Quicksand, Snow Storm).

One of, if not THE worst single target holds available.

Flash Arrow, which is Flash Arrow.

I stand by my opinion on this one.

The Stealth IO isn't that rare, I didn't think. I've never had trouble getting it for a level 50. The Jumping one might be hard to come by, but Celerity +Stealth is pretty common, not that expensive, and you can slot it in Sprint.

I can sort of see an argument for why Stealth isn't terrible for everyone. I'm in the camp that thinks that any *entire power* that's replaceable by an IO kind of sucks tho.

I agree with most of what you said but just wanted to make a note about comparing damage between Full Auto and Hail of Bullets. Full Auto has a target cap of 10, versus Hail of Bullets' target cap of 16, so on a per-use average against large groups Hail of Bullets will out damage Full Auto by a significant amount (assuming the numbers above are correct). Full Auto will, of course, recharge faster.

Perfectly said.

I want to add that even if you do choose to use graphs and charts, there are additional pitfalls we should keep in mind:

1) Categories or rankings should be treated with skepticism. You can't simply classify things by "Best AoE" and "Best Single Target," rank powersets against each other, and declare anything that doesn't do well in at least one group bad, because those categories are made up to fit the situation. Surely we'd call foul if someone created a category called "Most Flexible" or "Best Performance Against a Resisted Damage Type" or "Best Crashless Nuke" or "Best AoE Knockback" in order to show Fire Blast is underpowered.

2) Ranking sets against each other implies that differences between each set on the hierarchy are uniform. It also implies that a sustained DPA chain is representative of a set's damage, when in fact some sets may change rankings when examining various power combinations versus enemies with different levels of HP or within certain game contexts (e.g. some sets will do better at two-shotting, some at three-shotting, some at opening with a mezz followed by a two-shot, some at finishing an enemy if one shot out of the chain happens to miss, some at switching between single targets and multiple targets, some at sustained DPA against a single target, etc.)

3) DPA calculations themselves do not tell the full story. Do you know what the DPA of Hot Feet is? Infinite, because once the animation plays it never ends. Anything with an overlong damage effect really screws with assumptions about DPA, especially when damage ticks overlap with follow up shots. Fire Blast has an incredible DPA, but it's actual DPS, while still good, is lower than what DPA would imply. DPA tells you what damage departed your character toward the enemy, not when it hurt or killed them.

4) With Dual Pistols specifically, any calculations performed should use whatever type of ammo yields the most favorable results for the set. In most cases, this is Incendiary or Lethal. The fact that the user can switch to other damage types/secondary effects is gravy, from the perspective of measuring damage. Why would you check damage levels on a power using anything other than the best version of that power available? This hasn't been an issue before because we've never had the ability to change the function of a power, but now that we can, we really have to use the best possible scenario.

I'm sure I'm walking into another firepit but I feel like this powerset has really taken an unfair beating. It's true "the numbers" as presented by some folks, show that the set is low damage, and I agree some tweaks are in order. However I also think the case against DP has been drastically overstated and the full value of ammo switching not fully considered or explored. I don't blame folks for taking the positions that they do, but I think this set in particular needs a very thorough analysis, not a simple evaluation-by-table.

Actually what I thought originated this discussion was that Tankers and Brutes have the same defense and resistance caps but different damage ones. A Brute can be buffed to Tanker levels but not vice versa. At least that was said in the last four or five versions of this thread.