Oedipus_Tex

Well then allow me to continue.

You lack mezz protection outside of an incarnate ability. Moreover, to get said mezz protection, you have to skip either Barrier or Rebirth, which puts your survivability further behind builds that can take them. You may have +Regen, but that has very little to do with "taking an alpha" as you claim. The number of high end builds with purple slotting who can't "take an alpha" after eating a purple is probably smaller than those that can, especially if we are vague what enemy group we are talking about. Needless to say, that huge survivability bonus you think are getting from Drain Psyche is much less clear cut when you realize that not only do characters with Barrier or Rebirth make up for some of it, but are better able to protect teammates and pets with a buff that actually matters, which in the end could circumstantially topple your DPS. Your Lore pets, if nothing else, are fighting enemies without heals or buffs to protect them. You discounted th ability to protect teammates in order to elevate your build, but guess what, other builds can do that thanks to the incarnate abilities you had to skip.

I shouldn't need to mention, but will, that your AoE "controls" have radii of 15ft (PBAoE), 12ft (PBAoE) and 10ft. Psychic Shockwave has a 25% chance of Mag 2 stun, 6 second duration, so calling it a "control" is a pretty big reach, unless stunning 1 in 4 minions within 15ft for 6 seconds with minimal chance of overlap can be called competitive.

The build is overall pretty good and I have no doubt it performs well and dishes out serious damage, but you really need to dial back some of your claims, because this what you are really claiming is not that this character can actually do all of these things, but that the damage is generally high enough that some of them matter less. That's a different kind of statement altogether.

I'm sorry your lack of experience with other characters has led you to believe your armor stats are at all unusual or exceptional.

You're evading the statement. The statement is not that you can acheive some level of control. It's that your Blaster is not competitive with Controllers or Dominators who specialize in control. You are not "mass controlling" spawns except in a limited way that suits your boasting.

I'm not convinced your build does this, unless you are being cheeky with what the term "mass control" means. If you're implying that your Blaster is competive with control classes like Controllers and Dominators for control, you are mistaken.


This requires clarification. Your defense and resistance are average at best, you have no significant survivability buffs or debuffs except for +Regen from Drain Psyche. You can eat purples or use Barrier but so can anyone. Once again, if you are implying your build outperforms classes that specailize in this area, you are mistaken.

Overall, I think it's not hard to build the "best" character when you control what categories you choose to measure and how much value to put on each of them.

Maybe, but that is why I said if that happened, Seeds of Confusion would get to keep its above average Accuracy mod, Recharge, and mezz duration.

If we choose not to change the Confuse chance as I described, then full stop, I think Seeds of Confusion needs its recharge changed from 60 seconds to 90 and its mezz duration cut in half. The 37.25 second duration (versus 14.9 in Flashfire and Stalagmites) is ridiculous for a power with its recharge and accuracy. It needs to give something up. And not something IO builds can just ignore, because the whole point is that Plant Control is overpowered.

A 95% chance to mezz instead of 100% could conceivably allow the power to keep its current stats. Note that this change would be in sync with the mechanics of the other AoE confuse which never gets brought up, Synaptic Overload, because its hit mechanics limit it.

But you can make Stone look like Ice, so this doesn't really hold for me.

From the way it was explained at the time, it seemed more like the issue was just tht they thought it was ugly, although I'm fairly sure avoiding "yellow snow" was at least a consideration. What's unfortunate though is that with some powers sets the appplication wasn't universal. I think Storm Summoning, for example, can color some powers vividly and not others.

In terms of Water Blast, I'd personally be surprised if it wasn't given the "icy colors" palette. Or maybe that's just wishful thinking. I'm not often grossed out by this game's graphics, but a few times I have seen players use the "goop" aura as blood and it did turn my stomach.

What you just wrote in 4 points you could have summed up in one: "Maximum possible damage obtained from a perfect chain is all that matters when determining the power of a melee set." And I firmly disagree with you.

But that's irrelevant, because you still haven't demonstrated that Staff Fighting fails to generate actual damage. You've demonstrated that it fails to generate CombatDamage, an idiosyncratic measurement that no doubt produces some number, as any "analysis" would, but a number whose value is of questionable predictive ability except to itself and its creator.

I agree that an Avian Blast set would be incredible. Hopefully unlike Beast Mastery they would keep the concept of Avians seperate from Insects. I think it's okay for them to be combined for BM, but would really want insects seperated from birds for the derived sets.