Rigel_Kent

Just going by the numbers, Scream beats Tornado for both DPS and debuffing. But in practice, you'll often find yourself in the thick of melee as a Rad/anything-but-Dark defender. This helps keep things bunched together where you want them, but limits the effectiveness of ranged cones, even a relatively big cone like Scream.

Still, it'd be a shame not to have both Scream and Tornado, since you'll often be in a team with some kind of tanker or controller type to keep things bunched together at a distance.

Prediction time! Bookmark this page to rub it in my face later.

I predict one power will be a crummy hold.

I predict I will add the crummy hold to the Defender Issues thread as yet another "buff/debuff" power controllers do better than defenders.

I predict the set will not have a "green numbers" heal, but will have a regeneration buff.

I predict the set will be unpopular, especially among defenders, and won't get much play after the first few weeks. It'll be more popular than Sonic Resonance, though.

I predict the few people who stick with the set will do amazing things with it.

Bonus wishlisty prediction out of deep left field: I predict one power will summon a temporary pet with the same costume and roughly the same powersets as the summoner. Think "Austin Powers From Five Minutes From Now". EDIT: Doh, someone in another thread beat me to this one. Oh well, I'm sticking to it.

My only thoughts on Spec Ops apply to all pets as general design principles.

Pet power recharge times should not exceed the recharge time of the summoning power for that pet. Otherwise you're opening up a loophole to resummon and rebuff pets to get their powers back faster.

So giving Spec Ops mag 2 mezzes on a 45 or 60 second recharge would be fine. (See: Dark Pit, Thunder Clap.) 90 seconds, the base recharge for the Spec Ops summoning power, would be the absolute maximum for any Spec Ops power.

There's also the matter of making pets affectable by recharge buffs and debuffs, but again, that's all pets. Spec Ops are just especially affected by the devs' attempted AI hack.

Traps

Balance Issues

• Acid Mortar: Damage dealt by Acid Mortar after it despawns (due to damage over time) counts as non-teamed damage, reducing XP and inf rewards.

Everyone forgets the green-headed stepchild of buff/debuff sets.

Poison
Poison Trap/Noxious Gas. One is like Mass Hypnosis, except with an interruptible sandwich break animation time, aggro, no range, and not much duration. One is an unenhanceable debuff aura that requires you to maneuver a pet into melee, a very long recharge time, a high endurance cost, and again, not much duration. Now, to be fair and balanced, I'll say something nice about these powers. They're better than Intimidate, and almost as good as Group Fly. Yay.

Careful, the +end proc gives 10% end to a power's target, so slotting it in enemy targeted powers is counterproductive.

Or make it a toggle

I'm assuming we're talking about 1-slotted Stamina here, and ignoring complications like recovery flooring from debuffs or having a full end bar. If my math is correct, the proc is slightly better than a level 50 common IO in 1-slot Stamina.

Performance Shifter proc: 20% chance of +10% endurance every 10 seconds, which averages out to +12% endurance per minute

Base stamina: +25% endurance per minute

Stamina + proc: +37% endurance per minute

Stamina + 1 level 50 common IO: +35.6% endurance per minute

As you can see, the difference, 1.4%, is about the same as a weak set recovery bonus (2xTempered Readiness = 1.5%). So definitely prioritize enhancing other powers and completing sets over "upgrading" Stamina to the Performance Shifter proc. You might even decide the consistency of a the common IO over the random rolling of the proc is "worth" the 1.4% average loss, and that'd be a reasonable choice.

You're way ahead of the curve just by having Fortitude well slotted. Four teammates with Fortitude kept on them means four teammates you'll rarely need to heal. I like a lot of the things you've done with this build, even the unusual stuff, like taking Power Push and slotting it for knockback (and why shouldn't you?). Here are some things you might consider if you're planning to respec and want to boost your overall team support ability.

1) I'm a little surprised not to see Clear Mind, Regeneration Aura, and Hasten. Although mez doesn't turn off all toggles anymore, it still detoggles a few key powers, and your squishy teammates would be glad for you preventing it. Regeneration Aura is equivalent to Instant Healing; you'd have a lot less to fear from aggro when Regeneration Aura is up. Hasten is because your primary and secondary are 18 clicks, 0 toggles, and so you leverage recharge bonuses to the max.

2) Absorb Pain may not be a good idea without Regeneration Aura to keep your own health up. Remember, for quite some time after using Absorb Pain, you cannot be healed in any way except for regeneration buffs. If you do have Regeneration Aura, Absorb Pain is fine, though most Empaths end up using only one or the other of Absorb Pain and Heal Other; that is, even if they've taken and slotted both HO and AP, they ignore one, which is a waste.

3) Recall Friend is not a necessary power for Empaths. It's fine to take it if you want Teleportation as your travel power, or for using Vengeance on a dumb teammate who wandered off alone and got killed, or for helping teammates reach a mission door faster. Otherwise, it's a six-second period of you and a teammate both doing nothing useful.

4) Recovery Aura represents more baseline recovery than Stamina (+200% for 90 seconds out of 500, compared to +25% all the time). Therefore, slot for slot, a recharge SO in RA adds more recovery than an endmod SO in Stamina. That's not even taking into account that RA can benefit teammates.

5) Have at least one attack slotted for damage, for the common scenario of a high HP punching bag that doesn't threaten your well-buffed team. 4 or more slots in Power Burst, or other attack of your choice, is fine; two attacks is even better.

I'm not a fan of Tactics except as a stepping stone to Vengeance (on autofire). By level 35, your teammates should have fixed any tohit problems on their own.

Your primary power set is full of I WIN buttons. If you feel that's not enough, Tough + Weave + Shadow Fall + APP toggle + Maneuvers gives you a fair amount of defense and overlapping resistances of common damage types, in case of lucky shots landing before you can achieve lockdown.

If you're not married to Moonbeam, another power might do you more good. The ability to inflict a single large tick of damage is a nice perk, but only if you're going out of your way to not use DoTs. And that would be silly. With sufficient recharge, a Dark Blast + Gloom chain does the job fine without Moonbeam; add Boxing to the chain if you've dipped into Fighting pool.

Dark Pit: Love it or leave it. 2-slot Dark Pit isn't going to do anyone any good. Either increase its slots so it can function reasonably well (needs acc, stun, and recharge), or trade it for a power that does function well with few slots.

You may be able to respec a slot or two out of Stamina once you get Dark Consumption, depending on your playstyle (nuke lots or nuke never) and build (endredux lots or endredux never).

Soul Drain could use some slotting love; its accuracy is decent out of the box (x1.20), but you do want to hit as much as possible with it, and get it recharged quickly.

Storm, the original tank mage.

After much consideration, I have deduced that there is only only logical explanation for Core Rebirth getting out of beta in its current state.

It's clearly a way for devs to trap pure healers and subject them to even more ridicule.

To further that goal, here are some changes that I would suggest for Core Rebirth:
* Change it from a click to a timed auto so it fires every 120 seconds regardless of what the user is doing.
* Add a huge, obnoxious "INCARNATE ABILITY DESTINY CORE REBIRTH HEALING" float text over every affected entity's head when used. In green letters.
* Gray out all the user's powers that are not heals for its duration.
* Display a huge, obnoxious "GATHER FOR INCARNATE ABILITY DESTINY CORE REBIRTH HEALING IN 5" "... 4" "... 3" "... 2" "... 1" float text over every nearby entity's head when used, then fire it off 5 seconds later. In green letters.
* Reset the user's badge title to his or her highest healing badge when used. Preferably Empath.

==========

Though, to be serious, since this ability caters to the healer types, perhaps it should give that kind of player what they want? Either shorter recharge & shorter duration, or additional ticks of heal after delays, or granting a temporary auto power that self-heals per tick. I'd still never use it, but it would make certain players happy.

The only problem I foresee for fire/cold corruptor relates to the sets being possibly too good.

Between all the primaries you'll want and all the secondaries you'll want, that leaves few choices for a travel power, Medicine pool (if you're into that), self-defense toggles, and other pool powers. Thank goodness for inherent Fitness.

City of Data says 25% chance of an 8 second (6 in pvp) mag 2 hold.

Crafted Gravitational Anchor F

DP is underpowered. But that shouldn't be a deal-breaker for you. City of Heroes is not the kind of game where you have to play the "best" class build and equipment setup to succeed.

1) Try updating your bio and costume

If you play City of Heroes, whether you admit it or not, deep down inside you want your character to look good. Sometimes all it takes is a quick makeover to reignite interest.

2) Don't use Swap Ammo as it was intended

Instead of Aim, the devs attempted to make a set of toggles that switched between equally good modes. They failed. Treat Swap Ammo as a "suck" / "don't suck" button, because that's what it functionally is. Fire ammo all the time.

3) Embrace your secondary

Taken together, blaster secondaries are some of the most redundant and useless sets in the game. But individually, certain secondary powers can be very useful, especially if you're playing a weak primary. Case in point: My level 2X psi/mm blaster has exactly two primary powers (one is Aim), and just about all his secondaries so far. Sometimes putting your build in a mirror and looking at your secondary as though it were your primary can open up a more interesting blaster playstyle.

Psi Blast's single target beatdown, which rivals Ice's, also deserves a mention. Except, of course, against psi damage resistant critters, /psi's ST attack chain is huge.

So huge, in fact, that there was a full scale invasion from the PvP forums onto the Blaster forum to spread DOOOOM 3 years ago when /psi was being proliferated to Blasters. Man, what a headache that was.

Anyway, /Psi is easy to build with a recharge-happy primary like Kin or Rad, or a recharge-needy primary like Storm, TA, Traps, and Empathy, where you're stuffing your build full of recharge buffs and bonuses anyway. It's nice to have heavy hitters with fast animation times, but you need lots of recharge to take full advantage.

As an added bonus, although /Psi's two AoEs aren't the greatest for damage, they do bring a heavy dose of -recharge debuffing over large areas of effect.

Trick Arrows

Balance Issues

• EMP Arrow deals enhanceable damage against electronic critters, but does not accept damage enhancements or Targeted AoE Damage invented enhancement sets.

Graphic Issues

• The icon for EMP Arrow suggests it's a stun/disorient, when it's actually a hold.

Hello, OP, and welcome back to the game!

Except in extremely laggy conditions, like trials and raids, the two most acceptable autofire powers on an empath are Hasten and Vengeance. If you've got your incarnate Destiny buff, maybe that. If you don't have any of these powers, autofire will almost certainly do you more harm than good.

As an aside, I urge you not to play Empathy as your first defender. The set is full of traps and pitfalls. It entices new players to make serious build and gameplay mistakes by placing highly situational powers (heals) at the top of the list (where the "good all the time" powers are supposed to go).

I encourage every new player's first buff/debuff set to be Dark Miasma. Although it is a slightly flawed set, in that it is not Storm, it will introduce you to a broad range of gameplay concepts: heals, slows, soft mez, hard mez, anti-minion powers, anti-AV/GM powers, PBAoEs, targeted AoEs, cones, drop powers, toggle buffs, toggle debuffs, even a pet. If you get Dark Miasma to level 50, you can apply that experience to any other buff/debuff set, and already be an expert from level 1. It does fine with just SOs, and if you want to buy IOs, many of the IO sets for Dark Miasma powers are affordable. Finally, it's a good set for soloing, and the best powers in the set come fairly early, so you can develop good playstyle habits at low levels while soloing.

I don't think this would be a waste of man-hours at all. Once you've animated a 2-handed mace, you can continue to use those same animations for the 2-handed axe, the 2-handed broadsword, and even future powers that have yet to be implemented.

Temporary Power: Street Sign, anyone? Staff Melee? With a pool of several 2-handed animations to draw from, these will be a snap to implement.

Castle felt it was important to balance blasters by making all blaster sets perform equally in a useless state that should be avoided, that is, while mezzed.

While we're at it, we should also balance defenders by normalizing their primaries while in a useless state that should be avoided, that is, while AFK and autofollowing the tank. Replacing the tier 1 of each primary with a Healing Aura clone ought to do it.