Most Useful Ability

I think you need to evaluate "powerfull" and "usefull"

for example, scramble bombers is overly powerfull, but i wouldnt call shear rediculous quantities of raw dps usefull.   (If the scrambled bombers get only one volley off before dieing  (which is practicly guarenteed), they have done more damage per antimatter than a guass rail gun blast... by a factor of about 1.4 BEFORE phase missle upgrades.   WTF.)  (does not take into account armor modifiers, in which case, since bombers and cap ship abilities both do 75% damage vs capital ships... your right back at a 1.4 ratio... thats 2.8, if the bombers get 2 volleys off... and if the bombers survive to despawn, 11.2, which includes a ~10 second window of transit time before the bombers fire thier first salvo.)

A usefull ability, would be like the progens shield restore... i have no idea why that is not seriously up there on that list.

 

I am preety sure your list is built for single player i assume? cause donov's shield restore is, yes, amazing in single player, but much less usefull in multiplayer... unless you somehow manage to survive to mid-late game without your enemy also reaching this point.  at which point you already won.

as far as super abilities, i think your completly wrong.

Marza's Missile Barrage  (uber)

Kortul's Volatile Nanites  (I have instapopped advent battleballs with this.)

Akkan's Armistice  (not dieing = good... 3 of these = never endinggame)

Maurader's phasenode  (if you can get this, it is amazing.)

Radiance's Cleansing Brilliance 

Death egg's Planet Suck

Sova's Rapid Manufacturing

Donov's flux field

Progens' Resurrection

Rapture's Domination

Skirantra's Replicate Forces

Vulkoras's Disintegration   (never has the AM to use this when its needed (aka, almost dead))

Kol's  Finest Hour   (it takes 30 seconds to pay off the initial AM cost... )

Halcyon's Anima Tempest  (scramble bombers beats this easy)

Revelation's Provoke Hysteria  (this just plain sucks)

 

 

Mind you, I am slightly anti-advent biased.

 

Er . . . Colonize.  Where is Colonize?  You're not going to get very far without colonizing planets.

Why isnt EMP Blast up there on top or Ion Bolt?!?!?!

 

How do you function as TEC without those?!?!

 

i personally find vertigo more useful than vengeance

armistice is really annoying

never found cleansing brilliance very good, probably im just not using it effectively but still

first thing missing that came to mind is shield restore on a progenitor.

vertigo is nice indeed (vengeance is useful with a radiance using animosity) just against strikecraft alone.

malice + cleansing brilliance is nice but hard to pull off in MP (much easier to get working in single player).

I never play TEC usually but I detest Armistice. Makes me want to smash things into my monitor screen. So it must be useful for the TEC player.

 

I'm not going to bother with a full list of my own...but I have to seriously question why Embargo and Shield Regeneration didn't make the list...and phase space node as well as drain planet are also serious contenders amongst the super abilities...

Hmmm....  if I were to rate them in the same style as you, these would be my choices:

Advent

1) Iconus Guardian's Repulsion
2) Halcyon's Telekinetic Push
3) Progenitor's Shield Restore (comboed with shield projection)
4) Rapture's Vertigo
5) Halcyon's Amplify Energy


Vasari
1) Subverter's Distortion Field
2) Skirantra's Scramble Bombers
3) Kortul's Jam Weapons
4) Skirantra's Repair Cloud
5) Jarrasul's Gravity Warhead


TEC
1) Akkan's Ion Bolt
2) Marza's Raze Planet
3) Kol's Flak Burst
4) Akkan's Colonize
5) Dunov's EMP


Overall:
1) Subverter's Distortion Field
2) Iconus Guardian's Repulsion
3) Skirantra's Scramble Bombers
4) Halcyon's Telekinetic Push
5) Progenitor's Shield Restore (comboed with shield projection)
6) Akkan's Ion Bolt
7) Kortul's Jam Weapons
8) Skirantra's Repair Cloud
9) Rapture's Vertigo
10) Jarrasul's Gravity Warhead


For Super Abilities:
1) Akkan's Armistice
2) Progenitor's Resurrection
3) Kol's Finest Hour
4) Marza's Missile Barrage
5) Jarrasul's Drain Planet
6) Dunov's Flux Field
7) Antorak's Phase Stabilization
8) Kortul's Volatile Nanites
9) Sova's Rapid Manufacturing
10) Halcyon's Anima Tempest

There are many players who consider this ability mandatory for TEC to function effectively in the late game.  Among many other functions, it's the only true counter to a Kostura barrage, making your fleet invulnerable to avoid the damage.

im curious, what's so great about repulsion anyway? from what i can tell it only pushes ships a little distance away, also it seems to drain the iconus guardian's antimatter very quickly, i had 4 guardians and none of them had enough am to cast either shield projection or repulse for a while

You make tons of illums or carrier cruisers and some iconus guardians. You jump into the enemy gravwell. The enemy has the proper counters - HCs for illums, LFs for carriers. You launch repulsion. His Hcs and LFs get pushed so far they cannot shoot at you, while your illums have a longer range - they can fire their hearts out and are completely safe.

There is also this OP-edness of repulse in that a cap ship pushed by a repulse field loses his momentum. You can't escape a guy who chains repulses to prod your cap ship, your cap will not be able to move and get away. It's basically immobilized. Since it's the only non-cap ability that immobilize a cap ship, it's so powerful.

Properly positioned and timed, repulse is amazing. Like N3rull stated not only an you basically negate HCs and LF, but you can really control the positioning of the battlefield while maintaing the integrity of your battle ball. You can absurdly frustrate the caps and cut off avenues of retreat and nullify kiting if you do it right. Obviously if you are heavy in strikecraft and LRM you can hammer the opponent at range with extreme prejudice. The exceptions are assailants with their nasty range and ability to rip shield-heavy guardians, but you can't have everything. In longer games, I also found opposing players tend to get frustrated and settle for shooting my destras and flak (who are often up in their face at the repulse 'edge'), which is fine by me since they skip my caps and illums instead focusing on units that are built to take lots of damage. Still subverters if played right can stop your repulse tactics cold.

so is repulse actually disadvantageous when you're using destras against lrms?

also, how good is anima tempest? i notice much of a difference when i used it, didnt seem worth the antimatter

is amplify energy aura a better choice at level 7? the rate of fire bonus seems pretty small even at max level (22% i think)

also, what do you use vengeance for? i thought it would be useful against lrf focus fire and star bases, but i've never really tried it out because i saved antimatter for vertigo instead.

If used naively, yes.  If used carefully, you can use it to prevent retreat and block the enemy from maneuvering, which is still exceedingly powerful.

It's good; I'd reserve antimatter for TK push if that's a priority, but if I have strike craft supremacy this is a good ability to have.

Halcyon is a great capital ship, and virtually any skill combination is viable.  I'd always make sure to have telekinetic push, but aside from that it's really up to you.

Good against LRM's focus firing capitals and starbases, that's about it.  I personally think vengeance is the better ability, cutting the enemy's damage and letting you better tank it with the Progenitor and Iconus.

what's the point of deceptive illusion besides clearing mines? its easy to tell that its an illusion just by reading the infocard ("abilities disabled"), so...

Yes it is...but I highly doubt you are going to waste the time to pick the real illuminator....either you are FFing on something important, or you aren't....

TK push really? I don't think TK push is better at dealing with stirkecraft than Vengence. Especially when the strikecraft are targeting a starbase.

Also I would say overseer heal is best ability that Vasari have now. Distortion field is no longer a free ability. U can't lock down the enemy fleet so if you distort field in the middle of them, you will pretty much lose that overseer.

Let me try to formulate my own list here

TEC:
Missile Barrage
Raze Planet
Flak Burst
Akkans Colonize
Missile Batteries

Vasari:
Overseer Heal
Scramble Bombers
Egg Nanites
Egg Planet Suction
(Honestly these are the only ones I use/Need)

Advent:
Shield Bubble
Restore Shield
Mothership Colonize
Vengence
Meteor Storm

Here's what I think is a big reason for all the differences in opinion (and I believe it's been mentioned before)...useful and powerful can be entirely different depending on how you define them....

For example, energy aura is extremely powerful for large fleets...but it isn't exactly a useful ability...

Ion bolt isn't a very powerful ability...but it is very very useful for specific things (interrupting missile barage, killing fleeing caps) and in some cases can be invaluable...

I would be very careful in criticizing TK...it easily disrupts bombing runs and several halcyons with TK can essentially prevent any successful bombing runs for a very long period of time...Vengeance is nice, but each individual SC does very little damage on its own...even if you have lvl 3 vengeance, late game that isn't going to do you much good as one or two bombing runs by Vasari or Advent bombers will easily kill a capital ship or structure...