New efforts!

[Arcana]

Are you talking about Unrelenting? That part of it was scrapped in early I24 beta, maybe even before it went to beta.

I was under the impression that crash protection of some kind was still being worked on, either for I24 or I25.  As late as a couple weeks before the shutdown announcement I was talking to Arbiter Hawk about it, within the context of Blaster tier 9 crash elimination.  I know it had all but been decided to never make crashing tier 9s in the future specifically because they were seen as a problem to solve.

I believe one of the next archetypes in the queue to be reexamined in a post-incarnate light were tankers, and I believe those changes would have included tier 9 changes across the board  (much as many blaster I24 changes ended up triggering cross-archetype changes for things like snipes).

[pinballdave]

<snip>  Oh, and I think this was after they toned it down a bit.

I had plans to roll a Bio/Staff tanker the instant I24 landed.

Bio/STAPH indeed :p

[Lupur]

*snip*

Haha, I remember watching that video when it was first uploaded. My thoughts now are the same as then.. "rly?.."

You're right about the wet tissue thing, but then again, that wouldn't really be a thing I'd take to main-tank a serious venture, just for hella fun.

Nothing like some heart-pounding yo-yo-ing green bar action while burning holes in your monitor from staring at your clickies, begging them to hurry.

It always felt super awsome to solo AVs or multiple bosses in really close fights - I remember actually cheering at the top of my lungs a couple of times in TF's where I'd be the last man standing purely due to clicky timings /flex  :P

The thing that really appeals to me about REG is the inevitability of "It doesn't matter how badly you crush me, or how many times; I'll just keep getting back up untill I put you down."

This would be even more pronounced in a Tank :D

o7 lup

/vigilante4lyf

[Arcana]

The thing that really appeals to me about REG is the inevitability of "It doesn't matter how badly you crush me, or how many times; I'll just keep getting back up untill I put you down."

Dark Armor built for recharge has an even more spectacular way of doing this.  City of Heroes allowed a lot of crazy things, but you cannot claim to have experienced them all if you haven't played a brute that uses Soul Transfer in its attack chain.

I remember being in an LRSF where I cleared out an entire building of Longbow that way, and my teammates thought I was completely insane.  One of them just hovered over me and kept speed boosting me, but offering no other help, just to see how many times I could die and re-rez.

[Waffles]

Watching Arcana go on about this game brings me back...


Arcana, settle the score once and for all. Warshades vs Peacebringers, No budget.

[Joshex]

Are you talking about Unrelenting? That part of it was scrapped in early I24 beta, maybe even before it went to beta.

lol, lol.. sorry all this talk about several topics had me loling writing replies and just canning them cause they'd just be bragging too hard.

yeah... 2 topics:

1:Incarnate content and enhancement boosters causing tanks to run off and do their own part of the map.

2:crash protection

yeah..................... as far as I'm concerned you didn't need incarnate powers, enhancement boosters or special crash protection powers to do any of that with a good build.

yeah incarnate powers and crash protection would allow less credible builds to solo with no chance of problems but.. ANY decent build-er could do the same without it.

nigh immortal tank builds are out there. with the damage to spare. insane damage. like a nuke. they don't use incarnate content, boosters or any of that tripe yet will still go clear their own part of the map just as fast (if not faster). Not Just TANKS either, there are some awesome scrapper builds, MM builds, Troller builds, blasters, doesn't matter the build if you know how to use it.

once I rebuild my tank (when the game's back) I'll gladly take anyone on a free-ride, if you can stand my tank's personality. however unlike those incarnate and boosted builds the time I spent as a squishy has taught me to use good mob control and keep them away from squishies. I never get complaints cause I mob the groups near the entrance take the inc to my next mob etc. then finish up in time to go help murder the groups others haven't finished up yet.

a good tank 4 slots (or more) Taunt and uses it, sometimes on auto (as necessary). It keeps the squishies alive. a good tank fast types "I'm merging 3 mobs, careful! give me two seconds to kill half of them and get agro back!"

A good tank knows where the trouble spots are in the path of squishies. a good tank watches the map and keeps track of where the squishies are and races to help if there is any significant or sudden color change. taunt and the strongest attack should always be the first powers activated when in range unless balance has already been restored. Even so such squishies who have been forced to solo should be escorted or have their path cleared, they can help, that's fine after all they should be able to enjoy game play too. there must however be a balance of letting them have a few and giving them good EXP/inf flow.

at least that's my policy.

[Fanta]

Watching Arcana go on about this game brings me back...


Arcana, settle the score once and for all. Warshades vs Peacebringers, No budget.

You don't need her for that (by that, I meant common knowledge). WS all the way. I had a PB in Perma LF. Sure it was hard to kill, but the AoE damage/utility a WS had made it hands down the winner.

[blacksly]

On the other hand, Earth doesn't just have single target DPS, it also has power boost.  Power boost synergizes well with Mind because it has such long duration sleep and confuse effects in the first place.  In fact, power boosted mass confusion under domination can actually be made perma.

Actually, those durations are exactly why I'm not so high on Mind/Earth.
When I plan characters, all are planned to solo AVs somehow. The Dominators are always planned to perma-Hold AVs. And the rules that I have for combining Dominator sets are as follows:
1: anything/Earth will work, because Power Boost + Seismic Smash make up for slower Hold activations
2: Fire/anything and Mind/anything will work, because Mind and Fire have such fast Hold animations
3: Most of the other primaries will work only as long as the secondary has Power Boost (or Gather Darkness)

Now, I never even consider the duration of Sleep and Confuse, simply because the duration is so long that adding Power Boost to them is irrelevant. To put it another way: the duration of Mass Hypnosis is how long until the mob gets hit, otherwise it's permanent with or without Power Boost. You can always refresh it to keep mobs permanently Slept without Power Boost. Similarly, you can usually get enough Confuse duration for any purpose with or without Power Boost.

The last question is Mass Confuse, where Power Boost does make a bit of a difference. However, I question whether it's a relevant difference, because if you do try to perma-Mass Confuse mobs, they will in general beat each other down to the point where there are no more than two (or sometimes one), at which point you could use a single-target Confuse on one, and a single-target Hold on the other.

Even in the case of multiple AVs, I think I'd rather use Mass Sleep, then Drain Psyche to prevent regeneration, and then pick a single victim at a time and perma-Hold him, than play around with Power Boosted Mass Confuse. While I can see how Power Boosted Mass Confuse would work as a replacement, I think that Mind/Psy will work as well against groups of AVs, and in the meanwhile the -Regen is both better against a single AV, and having the defensive boosts of Drain Psyche will allow for a more aggressive play against chaff groups.

[blacksly]

"Might" is a tricky evaluation if your tier 9 crashes.  Crash protection was coming to I24, but now you have to consider the build costs of going that route relative to what the opportunity cost of those powers and slotting are.

Also, not all melee defensive sets had "god mode" powers.  Some had useful but not the same kind of power: Willpower and Shield had weaker buffs that didn't fully crash, Dark and Fire had rezzes (albeit an interesting one in Soul Transfer).  What you call "god mode" powers were given to Electric, Energy, SR, Ninjitsu, Invuln, and Stone.  On top of that, Elude was less useful in the age of inventions, and Electric's was arguably not worth the cost for scrappers and stalkers (because of resistance caps).

Also, curiously every single one of them was vulnerable to mind control, from Granite to Elude.  A room full of mind control critters would instantly nullify the usefulness of all of the genuine tier 9 "god mode" powers (things like Strength of Will would be useful, but its not considered a god mode).

As an addition, any melee-based character will have an issue against enemies that debuff strongly. The Devs gave out resistance to -Def since it was such a major hindrance to Defense-based melee characters, but there isn't all that much resistance to heavy Recharge or To Hit debuffing, and a lot of builds are still vulnerable to sapping. I really think that any character that wants to try to make a serious claim for "best against all content" needs to either distract attacks (Illusion or Earth with a resist-capped Stoney), prevent attacks from happening (most Controllers/Doms, and Mind most specifically), or prevent attacks from landing (SR for melee, and Dark/Dark for ranged). In general, while melee characters are often faster through content than ranged control characters, the control characters are the ones who avoid most of the nasty tricks that the Devs put in specifically to slow down characters who are too resistant against pure damage output.

[Arcana]

Now, I never even consider the duration of Sleep and Confuse, simply because the duration is so long that adding Power Boost to them is irrelevant.

There's at least one case where its relevant: power boosted mind control with perma-dom can perma-confuse RV AVs.  Between sleep and confuse, a single power boosted mind dominator is actually capable of controlling, and then soloing one at a time, a full dual and even triple spawn of RV AVs without heavies.

In terms of attempting to perma-hold an AV through triangles, Mind/Earth has an additional mag 3 hold in seismic smash compared to, say, Mind/Fire or Mind/Psi.

[KennonGL]

I never could get the hang of Dominators. 

I think it's because I couldn't get out of the mindset of playing them like Controllers.

I just couldn't make the shift in playstyle to take advantage of their differences.

[Arcana]

Arcana, settle the score once and for all. Warshades vs Peacebringers, No budget.

If you're just soloing around, I think Peacebringers did not fall too far behind Warshades.  But if we're talking high end builds and unlimited budgets, I'm afraid Warshades have too much going for them.  On the defensive side Warshades had massive scaling powers, in particular Stygian Circle and Eclipse.  At the low end, these powers don't hit enough targets to be difference makers.  But at the high end, there's just nothing Peacebringers have that can close that gap.  The gap is not as bad on the offensive side, but Warshades still have an edge against large quantities that doesn't suffer too badly when fighting a single target.

How would I address this?  To reduce the gap between them, I would probably:

1.  Remove the health crash from Light Form
2.  Increase the number of photon seekers by one for every four levels above 32.  In other words, spawn 4 at 36, 5 at 40, 6 and 44, and 7 at 48.
3.  Add small (~3.75%) smash/lethal/energy resistance buff to group energy flight, and resistance (not protection) to sleep, confuse, fear.
4.  Make Incandescent Strike more like Thunder Strike, with an AoE component.
5.  Add an AoE ally effect to Conserve Energy
6.  Change knockback effect in Solar Flare to Knock up
7.  Reduce recharge on Inner Light from 90 seconds to 60 seconds

[Arcana]

I never could get the hang of Dominators. 

I think it's because I couldn't get out of the mindset of playing them like Controllers.

I just couldn't make the shift in playstyle to take advantage of their differences.

They tended to play better when played like Blasters with an awful lot of mez.

[Teikiatsu]

They tended to play better when played like Blasters with an awful lot of mez.

Agreed.  My wife played them like blappers and never looked back.

[Winter Fable]

So if Dominators were the best solo(with uber builds?)who were the best for teaming.Defenders or Controllers?
Could one troller or one defender bring more to a team?

[Aggelakis]

So if Dominators were the best solo(with uber builds?)who were the best for teaming.Defenders or Controllers?
Could one troller or one defender bring more to a team?

Controllers. Their support numbers were only marginally below defenders, but the mez more than makes up for the difference. (Mezzing something is 100% support.)

[Thunder Glove]

I never could get the hang of Dominators. 

I think it's because I couldn't get out of the mindset of playing them like Controllers.

I just couldn't make the shift in playstyle to take advantage of their differences.

I had exactly the opposite problem.  I made my only Controller about two months before the shutdown, a Dark/Dark who only got to level 20-something before the game closed.

By contrast, I had two L50 Dominators (one 50+3, one 50+2), and I made the latter shortly after the shutdown was announced.  I liked their ability to do direct damage, and bosses were easier to manage with Domination's guaranteed +1 Magnitude on control powers (as opposed to Controller's random chance of +1 Magnitude).

They tended to play better when played like Blasters with an awful lot of mez.

... interesting, I also did this backwards.  The only way I was able to get my Elec/Elec Blaster to level 50 without dying over and over was to play him as a half-assed Dominator, emphasizing Tesla Cage and Mu Mastery's Electric Shackles.

[Arcana]

1:Incarnate content and enhancement boosters causing tanks to run off and do their own part of the map.

2:crash protection

yeah..................... as far as I'm concerned you didn't need incarnate powers, enhancement boosters or special crash protection powers to do any of that with a good build.

We were talking about the ITF, and the ITF brings special considerations.  Any tank can solo a map, but then again any well-built anything can solo most standard content (anything short of an AV, say, can be done with decent, but not overly powerful builds).  The ITF is special because the content is always scaled for a full team and Cimerorans pose special problems for a solo melee archetype, specifically stacking phalanx defenses and huge amounts of -Def debuffs.  You can soft-cap almost anything, but without defense debuff resistance you'll lose that defense and a huge chunk of your protection against Cims very fast.  And if you can't kill or mez then quickly and you let them pack together too closely their phalanx defenses can make them literally unhittable.  Even Invuln tanks with capped resistances and well-slotted invincibility can see their mitigation, and then their health bar right behind it, melt.

[Arcana]

Controllers. Their support numbers were only marginally below defenders, but the mez more than makes up for the difference. (Mezzing something is 100% support.)

In general I agree.  The average controller will tend to provide more utility to the typical team than the average defender because controllers essentially have two support sets to the defender's one.  You might argue some corner case exceptions. 

I could see someone claiming Dark/Dark defenders having comparable or superior team contribution to say Ice/FF controller.  But even those would be debatable.  And not every team benefited from excess control, like say an otherwise all melee team.  There, a defender's stronger buff/debuff numbers could be decisive.  But put it this way, whenever someone asked for help on a team, if I was on one of my blasters, defenders, tankers, scrappers, masterminds, stalkers, kheldians, VEATs, brutes, dominators, or corruptors, I would ask "what do you need?"  If I was on a high level controller, I would say "omw."  There was generally no need to ask what they needed.

[Auroxis]

There are some powersets that simply shined on Defenders due to their strength in defending the squishies (which is what controllers primarily do). Empathy's ability to strengthen squishies with Fortitude (PBU fortitude even), give heals when damage does go through and also give them crash-less nukes with Adrenaline Boost made the need for controls much less prevalent.

Then you get the Defender's secondary which generally contributes more offensively to the team than a controller's primary, especially /Sonic.