Oedipus_Tex
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Posts
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Joined
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It's because some veterans can take travel powers without a prereq.
You can recolor primary and secondary colors in game at the costume shop. Travel powers and APP powers can't be recolored, yet. -
Kinetics.
Actually I am lying. I do play it, but I can only take so much of it. Everything about it is great except one thing. Speed Boost.
Talk about a love/hate relationship with a power. I love having it cast on me. Maintaining it is something else altogether. Something about combining great effects with a 2 minute duration with a run speed boost that lets allies dart out of range constantly adds up to me wanting to set the Kinetics set on fire.
Although I always hope a Kinetics character will want to team with me. -
Quote:Dominate, sure. World of Confusion... why? Controllers and Defenders both get it, at the same level, and it's the same power for both. And why would I ignore powers in the APP? Are those powers less "real"? They may come later, but they do come.Originally Posted by Altoholic_Monkey
As far as I can see you can really only compare two powers from the same set and both of those powers come from the APP pool and not the main powerset. You could have just easily added in Dominate or World of Confusion from the defender APP pool as well.
For the record, Dominate for Defenders does 36.1 damage with a Recharge of 16 seconds. That's half as much damage-per-recharge as Controller Dominate, and one quarter as much when Containment is factored in. It also has a shorter mezz duration than Controller Dominate and no chance to Overpower. I don't know why the Controller APP blasts are better than the Defender "core" blasts, and the Defender APP mezzes are worse than the Controller "core" mezzes, but they are.
We could play this game forever. "Are you going to discount that the Mind Controller can do X Y and Z?" Read the numbers how you want, because if you're intent on it you will find some flaw or another. I left the snipe and the nuke off of the chart because I'm under the impression that most Empathy Defenders skip it. Maybe that's wrong. I'm not committed to it one way or another; my only point is to show that the numbers are very close, the Controller possibly having an edge. It has never been my intent to stop people from playign Empathy Defenders.Quote:Even if say you didn't, don't you think if you're using powers available at level 41 you should also include Psychic Wail to your chart too? Or are we going to discount the fact that a Defender has access to all the powers in the chart by level 28 and a controller will have access to 4 powers by the same level?
But all of this explanation is really pointless because I don't think, for a lot of people, the numbers matter as much as world view. They believe the set is inferior, so it must be. I guess those folks are still fans of Trick Arrow [runs].
[Edit: I'm a little confused. Did you just edit your post to remove what you originally said. If so I'll edit my comments to reflect your edited argument. Thanks. -OT] -
I looked over the table and realized I could slide things around to present a slightly better case for Psi Blast by comparing TK Blast to Levitate and Mesmerize to Will Domination. of course real DpR calculations wouldn't be based on a power-by-power analysis. I just want to show that if nothing else the sets are very close in damage, with Mind Control possibly doing more damage.
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Quote:Originally Posted by Fire_Minded
Ok, now iv heard it all.
Mind/ Controller Primary can out control a /Psi Blast Defender, but by no means can it out damage it, nore can it do the same amount of damage.Not even with containment, not ever.This is also not including the Nuke /Psi gets.
I have no idea where you came up with this, or where anyone else would say that it can do what youv claimed.
I won't claim to be perfect. I was going to leave this thread alone because I felt like it was just going in circles, with me asking why people only compare characters to other characters within the same archetype and folks replying to say because, well, they are the same archetype. It seemed pretty clear despite our rationalizations for each of our outlooks that we weren't going to convince each other of much. Neither side really budged and I'm not interested in getting into a flame war.
However since you challenged me on the numbers I decided to post what actually led me to ask the original question. I won't claim these numbers are perfect or even relevant, but since Mind Control is basically a blast set with some heavy controls thrown in, it seemed like an ok way to do the evaluation. I didn't look at it as deeply as Arcanatime or anything like that, just comparing the damage-per-recharge of various powers.
Now I'm sure someone will say a different Controller could get even better numbers or more reliable containment which I won't dispute. The only thing I ever meant to point out is that it doesn't make sense to call a Mind/Empathy Controller a poor choice but then say Empathy/Psi Blast is just fine. Especially when you consider that the numbers from Mind Control are accompanied by powerful mezzes that Psi Blast doesn't match. Not to mention, Mind Control gets even more damage from enemies it can Confuse--from range, without pulling any aggro, prior to even starting the fight. -
Quote:Yep. It started as "pulse rate" but I flubbed it when I labeled it with seconds. Will fix later.Originally Posted by JohnnyKilowatt
Shouldn't that be "seconds per pulse"? 0.2 pulses per second means one pulse every five seconds.
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Based on rule of thumb alone I think you guys are right that the selected targets are random. My reasoning is only that if it selects enemies sequentially what we should be seeing from Ice Slick is 10 guys down 80% of the time and a bunch of people conspicously standing up. On the other hand I swear Ive seen cases where there us that one guy who manages to truck all the way from one side of the slick to the other without falling. It could be just luck. I think it's pretty easy to test just by finding a group bigger than 16 and see if they all fall. To eliminate distance from centerpoint as a variable I can immob them first and wait for the -kb to wear off. Sitting in the airport now but will look onto it when I get home.
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I played a little bit with demorecord tonight but didn't figure much out about the timing yet. Watching the animation of enemies fall, though, the graphic implies that they are protected from subsequent knockdowns up until they start trying to stand up again, but can get knocked down while the trying to stand up animation is playing. I haven't figured out if there is a standard speed that they stand up or fall at.
I did, however, find out that Ice Slick has 1070 HP.
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One other thing. When I came up with these numbers, I assumed that an enemy in any stage of the knockdown animation can be knocked down again. Reality may be somewhat different. How long do you think the lockout period is between consecutive knockdowns?
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So I've been trying to quantify how effective knockdown zones are at keeping enemies occupied. I've noticed some work better than others but never really known why. I'm hoping to gain a better understanding.
This is what I know. There are three main variables that appear to be at play:
1) Knockdown Chance - the chance of knockdown each pulse
2) Max Number of Targets - the number of targets the power can hit
3) Pulse Rate - how often the power 'tics'
There is also a less obvious variable as well:
4) Duration of Knockdown Animation - how long the enemy is occupied by a knock. I assume this value is a constant. Things will be tricky if it is not.
The powers I chose to look at are Ice Slick, Earthquake, Freezing Rain, Liquefy and Oil Slick Arrow.
Base Numbers
- It turns out that the Pulse Rate of all the zones is 0.2 seconds.
- The duration of the knockdown animation is not known to me. I assumed that it is 2 seconds long.
- I'm not sure if Arcanatime is a factor in the calculation, or how to begin incorporating it
Results Table
- Pulses per second shows how fast the zone pulses (0.2 seconds for all)
- KD chance per Tick shows the % chance of a knockdown.
- Max Targets shows the max targets the power can hit, according to Red Tomax.
- Streak Chance refers to the chances that at at any given point in time an enemy inside the zone is currently occupied by the knock animation. Note that Streak Chances are very low when the zone first activates, and don't reach full effectiveness until the length of time equal to knockdown animation duration. This number assumes Max Targets hasn't been exceeded.
- % Standing At Any Time is the inverse of Streak Chance. It shows the odds that a given enemy is standing at any particular point in time.
- # Standing At Any Time refers to how many enemies are currently standing up at any random point of time if there are 16 of them in the zone and we ignore the Max Targets parameter.
- % Standing At Any Time (Max Targets) refers to the percentage of enemies left standing if we assume 16 enemies are in the zone and the knockdown effect can only hit as many as Max Targets allows.
- # Standing At Any Timerefers to the number of enemies currently standing up if there are 16 enemies in the zone and the Max Targets parameter is used.
Now, I'm not totally sure about some of my assumptions here. The longer the knockdown animation time is, the more effective the zones are. The other parameter I'm not sure I have right is the Max Targets piece. If there are more than the number of max targets in an AoE, how are targets selected? I assumed it is always the first 10 targets, but if it is a random selection process then the numbers will be very different.
Thoughts? -
Quote:Thank you. I think this is the best explanation anyone has given so far. I disagree with the logic but it at least summarizes why people give out advice like they do.
This is not saying that people are ignoring the overall performance, but the other option would be to tell everyone that asks about making an Empathy Defender to "delete/don't make a Defender, just make a Controller instead". The assumption is that people pick an AT because they want to play that AT - it is, after all, the first choice you make when creating a character. Since the options for Defenders don't include a pet at all, there's an amount of ambivalence towards the exact secondary chosen. Since the options for Controllers offer most powersets that will have pets, and one that doesn't, the one that doesn't is referred to as "worse". -
Quote:Controllers with pets do have synergy with Empathy. Mind Control doesn't have that particular synergy, so I can see why some people say Mind/Empathy isn't ideal. But Defenders don't have that synergy either. The differences between Controller and Defender Empathy are very small. It leads to two possibilities:Originally Posted by Jade_Dragon
Well, let me put it this way. If a Mind/Empathy Controller is no better than a Empathy/Psi Defender, does this in any way change the fact that Controllers with pets DO have synergy with the Empathy set, and can use their Secondary on their pet? It seems to me that the Defender comparison is unrelated to the difference between Controllers.
1) Both Mind Control/Empathy and /Empathy Defenders are ok despite not having a pet
2) Both Mind Control/Empathy and /Empathy Defenders are not ideal because they lack a pet
For what it's worth, I'm in camp #1.
The problem is a lot of people seem to maintain an option 3, that Mind/Control Empathy is not ideal, because that's a Controller, but on the Defender it's not an issue because no Defender has a pet. My question is why is Mind Control only compared against Control sets and not against the total available possibilities? If Empathy Defenders work fine without a pet, Mind Control should as well. But it doesn't, according to a lot of people, because a Controller is compared against a Controller and a Defender against a Defender, without comparing a character against a character and reaching a logically justifiable conclusion.
No I don't think that.Quote:Are you saying a Mind/Empathy Controller IS better than a X/Empathy Controller?
I also don't think the reverse though, that Mind/Empathy is worse than other trollers. Mind Control/Empathy works like an Empathy Defender with a lot of mitigation. I would actually argue that there is more synergy between Mind/Empathy than something like Fire/Empathy, mainly because Mind/Empathy is better united by overall purpose. It depends on the focus of the character of course, but for team building I'd want the Controller who keeps a team safe over the one who keeps a bunch of fire imps alive. Soloing changes the equation, but again the Mind/Empathy solos much better than most Empathy Defenders, and most people who play them are ok (or at least accustomed to) how solo-unfriendly the Defender is; it seems unfair to dump on Mind Control about it.
Hope that helps to clarify. -
Quote:No. What I am saying is it is logicially inconsistent to say that a buffing Controller without a pet is a poor choice, but a Defender is better based on the fact that no other Defender set gets a pet. I don't think buffing Defenders are bad, but I am also not someone who thinks a buffing Mind Controller is bad either.Originally Posted by Jade_Dragon
You seem to be saying, "Defenders suck, Controllers are better." You seem to be saying this very loudly. Very loudly.
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Quote:Very but IMO the bonus should be .34 or .5 to require a bit more stacking to get there.Originally Posted by Ben_Arizona
This does make me incidentally wonder how popular (if at all) sets with mag 1 protection to specific mezzes as a set bonus would be. Obviously having the bonus once isn't terribly useful, but I could see players of squishy classes being willing to spend a couple of their set bonuses building up hold or stun protection.
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Take a look at the Earth/Sonic guide too. The Sonic shields and Thermal shields are basically the same power.
I think of Thermal as the "pet master" set for Controllers. I've had more luck keeping pets alive with it than with any other set, and the damage bonus you get from Forge is the best continuous single target damage buff a Controller can provide.
The Earth pet protected by Thermal shields is game-breaking good. The pet already has 90% resistance to Mental attacks, and it just so happens that's one of only two damage types you can't shield against. Once you throw in your heal powers you are running around 24/7 with a near-resistance capped tank with good damage and decent holds. I have never tried it but I suspect the pet could tank an epic boss or better. Actually killing it as a Earth/Therm is another question.
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Quote:Make that one more reason to go Controller.Originally Posted by Necrotech_Master
...vigilance...
But seriously. I'm not interested in telling people not to play certain combos. I'm mainly curious why so many people will tell you certain combos are bad purely based on archetype without accounting for what the character's actual output is. Modifiers and innate abilities are great and all, but ultimately they add up to a character than can pull a certain amount of weight. And it really makes no sense to say "Well that total level of output is just fine on a Defender, but since other Controllers can do so much more, it sucks on a troller," because that's the same as saying it sucks on the Defender too. -
Quote:It still can't synergize for Defenders. Why are you ignoring the output of the character, and looking only at the archetype?Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison
Because Empathy can synergize BETTER with any other primary for controllers.
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Quote:My point is not to discourage people from playing Empathy Defenders. It is only to ask why so many people embrace Empathy on a Defender but tell you not to play Empathy paired with Mind Control.Originally Posted by UberGuy
I'm sorry, if this is the core of the problem you're describing ... play with smarter people, or possibly try to educate them.
Most of this game, especially on the default settings, is easy enough that it may not matter much who you bring to do a job. Hell, sometimes it doesn't even matter if you have someone to do a job like "protect" a team. Bringing more protection or more damage means that your team can fight with more abandon and thus possibly progress faster. More XP/time, more drops/time, less time per merit earned, what have you. That's all the focus on "who does it better" gets you.
But here's the thing - beyond a point, it doesn't actually matter who's providing extra buffs, because at some point you either reach mathematical caps and floors in the game mechanics. Does it really matter if someone on the team can mez all the foes if they can't hit anyone on the team? Do you really need anyone with tanking capability if the whole team is mez protected and at their regen rate cap? Does anyone care that a Mind Controller might be able to out DPS a /Psi Defender when there are Spines/Dark Scrappers and Fire/Mental Blasters on the team?
Between the operating extremes of "it's easy, nothing matters" and "we're gods, nothing matters", there's things like small teams taking on possibly more than they "ought" to be, perhaps because they want the challenge. In these cases AT can matter. If you lack other mitigation and want someone to tank, a Scrapper may not be able to pull it off, because they aren't as hard to kill as a Tanker. If you have plenty of mitigation but a Tanker is your main source of damage, you may progress noticeably slower, because a Scrapper or Blaster can really deal a lot more damage in general. These are the situations where people may want to choose what they bring based on comparing ATs to what's needed. -
Plant Control gets a free pass on this issue because it pretty much can't avoid causing -kb. I think even the pet runs around tossing that out. And that particular situation is why I think Arctic Air is critical on an Ice Controller who runs PUGs.
On the other hand, what I'm always wary of is folks working so hard to be third rate Blasters that they end up making poor Controllers, and a significant number of folks who spam AoE immobs fall into that category. -
Quote:I still don't understand. In the end, why does the AT of the character determine its focus more than the actual abilities it has? The icon has no impact on gameplay except determining your expectations. It is the actual powers the character has that determine its power. A Mind/Empathy Controller ends up playing like an Empathy Defender with better mezzes. It has the single target blasts, medium AoE damage, can't farm for the most part. It has no pet to heal but neither do Empathy Defenders.
If someone specifically asked about a comparison between Mind/Empathy Controller and a Empathy/Psi Defender then your comparison would be valid but in most cases people say "I want a Mind controller, is Empathy a good secondary?" In that case the answer is not really, a debuff focused secondary will synergize better with Mind than a buff based secondary will (this applies regardless of which buff based secondary is being considered). It's not that Emapthy is a bad set for controllers it's that for a Mind controller specifically it's a poor secondary since it doesn't support their primary purpose as well as other sets.
The buffs in Empathy don't "synergize" with ANY of the Defender secondaries, but why is this not an issue for Defenders but an isssue for Mind Control? Because Mind Control is selected from a different list of powersets? If we listed all of the Defender secondaries next to the Controller primaries when you made your selection would the Defender secondaries no longer be as good? Or is it because Empathy Defenders get access to their buff powers earlier? -
Quote:That's the thing though. Even accounting for the differences between ATs some power combos perform well at something they aren't "supposed" to be good at, at least by player logic. From the look of it, a lot of people write Mind Control off, because they feel anyone with a purple icon should have a pet. They aren't bothered that the character with blue icon, who has no pet, worse damage, and weaker controls also doesn't have a pet, because that's not an option for people with blue icons. Why all this attention to an icon and not actual output? A more consistent opinion would be either that Defenders need pets or Mind Control is fine without one. To have the opposite of both views at the same time is "mind boggling". <rimshot>
different powers perform differently on other ATs, its minor differences, but its true
That said, I didn't consider the Leadership toggles, and I can see how someone interested in those would skew Defender. On the other hand, in light of the current Defender anti-healer rebellion, it's hard not to point out the irony that one of the only major differences between Controller and Defender Empathy is the heals! Fortitude, of course, is slightly better for Defenders as well, but IMO this doesn't make up losing access to the over-one-minute snipe-mezz a Mind Controller gets at level 8, to say nothing of the fact that all of the powers in Mind Control ignore positional defense, making the damage skew even heavier in favor of the troller. -
Quote:Thanks for sharing. I'm curious about your reasoning though. The only thing an AT defines for me is the icon you get in the teamlist. If someone has a Scrapper icon but plays like a Tanker more power to them. With Controllers in particular, various power combos seem to produce a huge variety of different roles, including psuedo-Blappers (Fire), and psuedo-Tankers (Illusion).Originally Posted by Adeon Hawkwood
A powerset should always be considered in relation to the AT that is using it. To use your first example. Empathy is a set that is primarily based around buffing a small number of allies. On a Defender it is the rpimary and therefore the defender's main focus. The only real limitations for secondary is that Assault Rifle and Archery are considered problematic since you frequently need to switch between blasting and healing/buffing.
For a Controller the Control set is the primary focus and the choice of secondary should ideally be one that complements it. Empathy best complements a set with a single powerful pet since that best utilizes those powerful buffs when solo. A solo Mind/Empathy Controller gets the same benefit from Empathy as a solo Empathy/Anything Defender but with a different primary he would get much better utilization of his secondary.
I know it's popular to talk about Empathy as a "buff" set at the moment, but to me what this set is all about is really keeping people alive. And since Mind/Empathy can not only do that better than Empathy/Psi, it can actually outdamage it (I'm pretty sure), and can use 3 of its powers without pulling any aggro at all, its strange to me to see tons of Empathy/Psis and maybe 1 Mind Control/Empathy. If the set can pull the weight, why would we let an icon decide what our "focus" is? -
Everything LocalMan said.
Earth/Thermal is an incredible combo. I find it more survivable but also more "frantic" than Ice/Thermal, in the sense that there are lots of things to be clicked and not enough time to click all of them. The Ice handles that part better because of Arctic Ai, but the Earth survives better against mezzing enemies.
Personally I would advise taking Hasten somewhere in there. Thermal has a few powers on long-ish recharge, and you'll get a lot of bang out of Hasten even if you never perma it.
I personally skip Rise of the Phoenix on all my Thermals. It sounds cool but the recharge is long, the endurance hit is crazy, and the damage it does not only won't kill most things, it does knockback and draws aggro to you at the worst possible time, when someone is just jumping back into the fight and you're out a huge chunk of endurance. I found the rezz on Empathy, Pain, and Radiation much better, and was happy to leave it to them when on my Therm. If you're really worried about it, take Thaw and carry extra wakies, and simply Thaw folks after they awaken.
I'm not a fan of Super Jump. Keep it if you like it, but for me, unless it's part of the flavor, it's Super Speed or nothing/Ninja Run. -
I'm wondering if others have noticed that some people form opinions and give advice about powersets based mostly on the archetype, without really cross comparing their comments to other ATs. How much sway should the AT icon have on our opinions of a powerset combo? A few musings below.
Mind Control/Empathy Controller vs. Empathy/Psi Blast Defender.
If you ask about how Mind Control/Empathy plays, some people will tell you not to do it because Mind lacks a pet to heal, and having a pet is "one of the biggest reasons to play a Controller." Meanwhile, they will tell you that Empathy/Mind Blast works fine. What seems to be missed is that the Controller outcontrols the Defender (obviously), and actually matches or betters it in damage, excepting the nuke. How is the fact that some Controllers get pets a disadvantage for Mind Control, but the fact that no Defenders get pets a neutral for Psi Blast?
Dark Miasma
Some people say this set shouldn't be proliferated because it makes Defenders unique (on heroside). But how does Dark Miasma make a Storm, Trick Arrow, Kinetics, Force Field, Sonic Res, or Empathy Defender more unique when those sets can't use the powers anyway? (For these purposes I'm speaking purely about the argument that it makes Defenders unique, and leaving arguments about overpoweredness aside.)
Fire Control/Force Field vs. anything Mastermind
Back to the pet thing. Why do some people insist that for a Controller, obtaining and protecting a pet sets some sets far ahead of others when there is an archetype that completely kicks a Controller's butt at this and adds the ability to solo AVs more easily? The answer could be extra controls, but when folks are advising everyone to go with the control-lite Fire Control it makes me wonder. Maybe my assessment of Fire Control is wrong, but aside from farmability the Mastermind completely rules it, at least on the protect-a-pet ability. -
I think IO bonuses should suppress when you are mezzed. And probably also for some period of time after you die.