Rigel_Kent

There's a big disconnect between World of Confusion's numbers and the numbers of other mezzing powers in this game. Accuracy/chance-to-effect, duration, radius, and mag are all terribad, all at the same time. Some aspects of the power blaze totally new, unique ways of being bad: the super slow tick period, the secondary effect not always applying along with a damage hit, and the duration not increasing for archetype or level. Some powers are give-and-take, this one's suck-and-blow. It's like something taken out of some trinity-type MMO where crowd control is supposed to do nothing by design, to keep tankers and healers in every team required, because it doesn't look anything like a City of Heroes power.

That said, because it's so bad out of the box, the Coercive proc improves it by that much larger a factor. I know it's said that powers aren't balanced around IOs, but pretend this one is, and either slot Coercive or don't get it at all.

For reference, Coercive Persuasion is a 33% chance to make each target fire off a "Contagious Confusion". This doesn't confuse the target itself... yet. When Contagious Confusion fires, 5 enemies within 20' of the target (this includes the target) each have a 33% chance to get a mag 3 confusion for 10 seconds. Even though it procs less often, and isn't as good as controller controls, it's much stronger than World of Confusion itself, thanks to mag, duration, and radius that don't suck. Even the chance to proc isn't so bad, if multiple targets are inside WoC's radius, which results in a multiplier effect due to the way Contagious Confusion works.

Freezing Rain poofing debuffs bug means my stormy slots some accuracy and Kismet +6% just like everyone else.

(But the Kismet doesn't go into Steamy Mist, I need def and res enhancers there!)

Well, there's "bad", there's actual bad, and then there's Presence pool.

Some powers are fine, when in normal PuG teams doing normal content, i.e. no uber fire/kin farmer making everyone else irrelevant. Some powers take careful slotting and have a huge learning curve, but do have some sort of use if you're committed to it. And some powers might as well not be in the game.

ALL the original human faces from City of Heroes launch are disabled.

After the CoV expansion, some players complained that the "villain faces" were duplicates of the "hero faces." Those players were wrong. They are, in fact, darker, sharper, frownier, more villainous looking versions of the original human faces. It takes a sharp eye, but close examination reveals that not one is an exact duplicate.

Nonetheless, the original human faces are disabled, so the only way to have an original human hero face is to have it grandfathered in and never visit the tailor.

Sure, 20' "would've been even nicer" (see 2nd paragraph of my last post), but unwanted Speed Boost makes that difficult.

All right. So staying 80' away from enemies and buffbotting, except for the occasional panic nuke, screech, or siren's sn0g, would've been Psylenz's best option, in this team, with these players. I've seen this kind of situation before. Debuffers aren't the only case where you have to rein yourself in if your teammates are a bit handicapped. Blasters and offenders in general have the same problem.

Still, I think it would've been even nicer if the Kin would refrain from Speed Boosting him so he could stay in the sweet spot, close enough to the movement-floored enemies to benefit from FS, far enough not to be a Rikti sword pincushion.

Or the devs could just let us delete buffs and this whole thread becomes moot and everyone goes home happy. Right?

This may be outside the scope of your guide, but I find Steamy Mist to be a great costume change power. (Thunder Clap too.)

Too sleepy to actually read right now, so all I have is a typo for ya.

Membranes work nicely.


Better and simpler just to allow recharge enhancements. Yes, it's an excellent power, but the duration is limited. And the already complex enhancement system becomes easier to teach to newbies if all recharge times can be modified in simple ways.

Either that, or stick to the non-customizable system all other MMOs use, where recharge times cannot be changed for anything. That's simple, too. (Though dumb.)

Kinetic on the team and I'm not allowed to get into the Fulcrum Shift zone because I'm the bubbler?

Does the kinetic's right to not be a healbot outweigh my right to not be a buffbot?

Storm Summoning

Graphics

• Summoning Freezing Rain directly beneath yourself, while hovering away from the ground, causes the raindrops animation to be displaced to one side. (The ice slick animation and debuff/damage power effects are placed correctly. Hovering or standing at ground level does not have this result.)

I dunno. In my experience, if a debuffing type of defender is taking that much damage, I look to the teammates to fix the problem. Tanker to hold aggro, controller to mez enemies or buff the defender, blaster to put out more AoE damage than the defender (which shouldn't be that hard).

The alternative is for the debuffing defender to stop doing what he's best at, and buffbot or leech instead. Aggro problem solved, at the cost of XP rate for the whole team. Against deep purples, this is a sad necessity, but against +1s it shouldn't need to get to that point.

Love Repel. Great power.

Good enough to overcome the practical reality that controller Kinetics is all about maximizing DPS, farming, and maximizing DPS while farming? Fat chance. Thus Repel's reputation.

Still, I love to hear how all Kinetics powers can be put to use in non-farm content like this, for those of us who venture off the beaten (plowed?) track. Since that's where I've seen most /kinetic controllers really struggle to support teammates not named "Imp", use or carry break frees, or do much of anything. Maybe someone can use your test results to start writing a specific non-farming Kinetics guide! Keep us up to date.

I never fault someone for being in "melee". If the support types on the team (especially controllers) are doing their job, the critters should be harmless at any distance.

Besides, being within 20' (Transfusion's radius) of an enemy critter isn't really "melee" if you're a cold defender, the critter is movement floored, and takes a full ten seconds to move 20'. More likely the the cold defender was faceplanting not because of his position but because he was the only one without ice shields. Not having SB would have helped him stay in that sweet spot just within Transfusion's radius.

If you're roleplaying a theme, always choose theme over utility. Maybe you'll pass up some powers that some consider "essential", but that just means your learning curve will be a little steeper. Once you've become very good at using "second choice" powers, you'll be more useful to any team than a newbie who doesn't know how to use his cookie cutter build.

For example: Two of my controllers have skipped "essential" powers (Char, Seeds of Confusion) for thematic purposes: my fire controller is smoke-free, and my plant controller only makes things grow rapidly. That just means I focus my power choices, slotting, and practice on "second choice" powers (Flashfire, Strangler). Besides, I'm not at much of a disadvantage, since a lot of "second choice" powers, like these two, are darn good powers anyway.

Unless the team is playing on the Nintendo Hard setting, in which case the fast XP rate compensates for your bloodshot eyes, clawed hands, and fried nerves. (Especially since there's no way they could have done it without you.)