Zen_Concern

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Most likely the reason it does not matter at all is because every one with status effects have more than one they can and will chain to keep you permadisabled.

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Disorient, Hold, and Sleep are all on the same suppression timer. If suppression gives you immunity to one, you get immunity to all three.
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Yet sloting knockback only seems to push things further, not manage to knock back anythign that is strong against knockback in PvE.

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Torrent with three knockback SOs lets my scrapper knockdown Malta Zeus Titans a good percentage of the time. Without those enhancements, Torrent does nothing against them.

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Aha! Maybe thats why my Mastermind can't knockdown anything with Whirlwind.

That is a benefit and a negative.

With RI and Darkest night you can cast the debuff on the opponent and stay at range.

With Hurricane you MUST close with the enemy in order to debuff them. If you don't then you will be peppered from range until you die with only Freezing Rain as your defense providing a -recharge debuff to protect you.

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As Concern stated earlier, the KB on hurricane is currently wacky crazy in Pvp. This is not intended, and is supposedly going to be fixed. When I run it in pve, I KB maybe a single mob every five seconds if I'm trying to corral a group of five. The unreliable and spaced out nature of the KB in pve is actually a source of mild frustration for me.

As for the few silly people suggesting making hurricane a clicky, please for the love of god go make a stormie now. The entire strategy of pve hurricaning (and thus the vast majority of a stormie's team defense) would be utterly ruined by such a change. I get enough grief from people who automatically glare at me for turning it on. Why don't we just make radiation infection and darkest night clickies while we're at it?

Seriously, I haven't pvp'd much at all with my storm, but I don't want my pve defenses to be destroyed because someone couldn't think of a sensible solution to a problem I'm not even sure is much of an issue.

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i just wanted feed back, so thx.

i just remember getting held in a corner (starting with tp foe) for 4 mins.

i feel hurricane is pretty much an def armor(-to hit) with kb and anti-range.

Now to compare darkest night and the rad inf is kinda wrong. it's better to compare the power to Artic Air and Choking Cloud (and maybe Hot Feet with the cons). but all those have heavy to-hits place to them for their effects to take place.

would you suggest hurricane be even'd up to the other PBAOE toggles or keep the auto hits and be a click?

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I'll say it one more time. There is a to-hit check on the knockback portion of the Hurricane.

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The other night in Croa...I was teamed with a blaster who just wanted to start every batttle. She knew it wasn't smart, but she enjoyed the rush. My TA was much better at debuffing mobs in that situation because I could quickly FA them and PGA them after she opened with an AoE. If that had been Rad...it would have been much harder.

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Thats pretty funny, I was going to say one of the worst things about that situation is how long it takes a TA to apply their debuffs. In 2 seconds with Rad I have already slowed mob recharge to a crawl AND lowered most if not all of the damage of a mob by 30% ignoring the additional -res debuff. That mitigates a hell of alot of damage to the teammates in the start of a battle and gives me the time to either spot heal if needed or hit RI up on a problem mob that isn't going to be taken out immediately. To compare, in the two seconds I debuffed the mob the TA defender is still in his Flash Arrow animation having provided no mitigation at all to the team.

Honestly, TA is slow when it comes to debuffs if you are operating in a reactive capacity. If I am not starting fights with my TA then I am probably way behind the curve when it comes to mitigating damage. At the very least, I need to have Flash Arrow on the next mob BEFORE the other teammates attack or I am going to slower than any other defender at mitigating damage. The animation times are a real hindrance to both Arrow and Trick Arrow.

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Or they have this lovely bit of knowledge called positioning, and use cone knockbacks to blow enemies toward walls or corners or Tankers. Or a power called hover, with which they can turn knockback into knockdown.

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Surely the great Mieux must already know these things since he is such a skilled player. The obvious answer is that it doesn't suit his play style and therefore is not something to be discussed or considered when it comes to discussing Trick Arrow/Arrow or the skill it takes to use them.

Obviously, you can only discuss skill if you play the same way HE does or it doesn't matter and we are getting off track.

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My only complaint about it is that it's auto-hit. A level 15 NPC with hurricane managed to keep a level 40 on the floor for a good 5 minutes straight.

I don't mind the debuff being auto-hit, but the auto-hit knockback has to go. :\

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The knockback is not auto-hit. In fact, very few things in this game are actually auto-hit. If it was auto-hit every mob with-in the Hurricane AoE would be sent flying back every single tic of knockback. However, that doesn't happen, instead only a few are sent back and that is due to the power missing them with the knockback. The -acc debuff is auto-hit however.

In the latest patch, _Castle_ notes that Hurricane is now bugged and that will be changeing. It was doing something like 20 knockback checks at once or something of that nature. It was pretty wild.

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I believe either Rooted or Granite Armor allows you to ignore repel. Not really sure which.

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The point being that only DA, FA, and Ninjitsu don't have the KB protection that Acrobatics fills, which does not make it a useful way to avoid kb on EA, Regen, Invuln, or Stone - who do protect against KB.

This isn't necessarily a problem, but it does make such advice kind of suspect as to its quality.

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One of the directions the developers are trying to take this game is that different team make-ups will not have counters to every negative thing in the game. They are trying to do that in anycase or at least trying to make it as hard as possible to have teams that have counters to everything.

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[Given the nerfing that was given to Regen with IH and MoG along with Phase Shift and Kheldian's Quantum Flight, these were certainly PvP nerfs. I fully expect you to nerf hurricane which is needed. Also fix the toggle droppers. Hurricane and things like that should be made Clickies like IH was with long recharge times(to be fair). I'd leave Stalker's Hide alone though. They are pretty weak without Hide and since you can buy IR goggles in a zone if your side is doing well along with all the leadership powers tossed on, this should be adequate.

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Ummm ...

Hurricane's not an "Oh crap!" power like most of the ones you listed. It's a debuff -- a standard part of the defense a stormie gives her team.

If you go through the big toggle dropping powers defenders have, most of 'em are KB and repel powers, which as many people have pointed out, are largely resisted by the folks they're supposed to be used on. The toggle drop aspect was added to these powers because they're supposed to be bad news to melee-based mobs and toons. If the KB and repel aspects are entirely nullified, then these powers won't be functioning as intended.

But thank you for nerf-herding ... while trying to prop up your own hobbyhorse

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Noooo, what are you doing? Let them make it a click. A click that can't be detoggled by mez or de-toggle attacks. Let the idiots suggest that and watch in horror at how truly powerfull a storm defender can be. It would be rediculous but hey, they asked for it. Think if the Ill/Storm controllers. You wouldn't be able to drop Hurrican and their Illusionary pets could continue to pound on you even while they are slept, held, disoriented, de-toggled or whatever and they are invisible.

HAHA! These guys want to make it a click debuff? Oh, my god I have seen everything.

Besides in the thread that Mieux refrenced it looks like Castle was looking at the Corruptor version of Darkest Night and not what a Defender could do. Which would explain why our experience and his numbers don't match. Honestly Mieux, if you have played Dark to the high levels do you honestly think that darkest night is only a 30% to-hit debuff slotted with 3 SOs?

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Castle said that FA and SG are the same base value *AT modifier. SG is thougth to be 10%. That puts FA at 12.5%. With three SO's. FA is just under 25% debuff. That's a stick debuff...that goes where they go. Think about the math. How many attacks does something need to be out of RI, a 30% debuff, before a permernant 25% debuff is better? (let's ignore the added defense debuff for the sake of argument).

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You were doing better when you just explained how you thought the set was effective.

If you are going to ignore the defense debuff of RI why not at least slot it equally to Flash Arrow. Stick 3 to-hit debuff SOs into it and see how it stacks up then. I think flooring mob accuracy is a slight bit better than having a sticky debuff that only makes minions miss half the time AFTER you get SOs and slot three of them in the same power. Call me crazy.

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Grenades are lethal because of the explosion (very hot expanding gasses - fire) and the shrapnel of the grenade casing

[/ QUOTE ] Standard grenades in the military do their damage from concussion and shrapnel...most of the damage is from shrapnel. The fire damage is incidental if there is any. There are incindiary grenades which are intended light things on fire. Whether Exploding Arrow is one or the other is arbitrary...but the idea that it would be all smash/lethal is totally plausible even if it is not convenient.

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I think your on to something there though mieux. An incindiery explosive Arrow. Something that explodes, and drops ignite patches like the demolitionists do. Hey, now that would be a usefull Arrow power.

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Heck. I'd vote for nixing the whole freakin "purple arrow" system entirely and just making some variant of PvP suppression apply to AVs and Monsters.


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I would swear this is what they have currently just working in reverse. It supresses the Monster/AV's mez resistance.

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I thought the purple arrows were on simple timers that raised and lowered their MAG resistance completely unrelated to the amount of mezzing flying about.

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I wrote that after spending an hour working out. I wasn't thinking straight. Your right. Thats what happens when you don't hydrate properly.

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Heck. I'd vote for nixing the whole freakin "purple arrow" system entirely and just making some variant of PvP suppression apply to AVs and Monsters.


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I would swear this is what they have currently just working in reverse. It supresses the Monster/AV's mez resistance.

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I cannot seem to EVER light oil slick outside.

[/ QUOTE ] I haven't tested with specific as to inside outside, but I do notice that BA has a very unreliable effect outside when I'm hunting. When I was teamed with the /Rad defender, she lit 100% of the time outside with her Rad attacks.

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Begining to see why I think Oil Slick should light itself after a set period of time? Just think if you were a TA/Psi defender who doesn't read the forums.

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I'm not sure this proves what you think it does. When I fire PGA at a Tsoo sorc...and he teleports before the arrow fires....the patch shows up on him...and in the location he was before he teleported. What happens graphically, is not necessarily what happens functionally.


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Actually, that doesn't always happen. Sometimes the debuff appears where he ends up but no debuff graphic appears where is was standing HOWEVER every mob around where he was standing will have a purple cloud around their torso and in fact have their damage debuffed.

The cloud in Poison Gas Arrow's case has nothing to do with it's debuff. I actually wish they would get rid of that animation because it makes it hard to see smaller mobs like red caps, gears, rubble etc.

From what I have seen of the power, there are two debuffs that don't stack with each other. One is applied upon activation and the other is applied from a spawn created by the Arrow wherever it hits. We could always ask the defender rep for a certain answer though.

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I don't believe this is correc.t The debuff is applied by the patch...not the defender...otherwise they would stack. I can stack debuffs with Dark Servant.

As you point out, Glue does two things. It applies a sticky debuff which is not dependent on its existance and it also reinfects anyone who enters the patch. This means that after the patch is gone, mobs are still affected by the debuff.

Now, I don't have a dev response saying this is how it works, but as you said, it helps to know how the power works, which appears to be different than your understanding.


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Mieux, that would be one thing. You have basically said that the patch applies a debuff of a set duration to anything that enters the patch. That is only one thing. The more that you post about TA the more I get the feeling that you are telling people that they don't know what they are talking about yet don't even know what you yourself are talking about.

Check it out for yourself though Mieux. Fire at a moving target when other targets are around it. The spawned debuff will appear wherever the arrow hits the moving target. If the mobs outside the debuff spawn are slowed then you know that it also applies a debuff upon activation of the power by the defender and not just by the spawn itself.

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you couldn't stack patches, just the debuffs from patches.

[/ QUOTE ] lol...right. But because of how GA is implemented, the debuff would stack. Because FA has no patch...it is not instantiated as a pet. Thus, it's debuff appears to be controllable. A self-canceling pet creates a "new" caster and thus the debuffs would stack...AFAIK.

I don't know this is correct. Maybe the devs could make it self-canceling, non-stackable. But Castle already said that Tar Patch cannot stack with "itself" but it can stack with another Tar Patch. I presume he meant from the same caster...as we saw back in I4.

The bottom line is calling the choice of solving the issues a "cheap way out" is, IMO, a cheap shot without being able to explicitly lay out what is and what is not possible and underscores the ad hominem approach I've seen GP and other "TA Sucks" posters take.

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Mieux, if you had thought for five minutes (maybe) about how the powers currently function in this game you would have realized that Goofy was correct in saying that they took the cheap way out.

Flash Arrow, Smoke Grenade, and Smoke were changed so that their debuffs are removed when the power is cast again and then re-applied on the second application. This was done specificaly to prevent stacking. So it is possible that when a player activates a power to remove that powers debuff from the enemy.

Two effects are applied when you cast Glue Arrow (it helps if you know how the power works). One is that a debuff is applied to every mob in the AoE effect of the power on casting of the power and this is due to the TA defender. Then, a pet or spawn is created that casts it's own debuff every tic. These already do not stack. Obviously they can make non-stacking debuffs.

So, removing the pet and applying the same mechanics of Smoke Grenade and other powers could work.

Except that you really wouldn't want them to do that unless they actually did allow the power to overlap for about a second. The reason is that the instant a -recharge power is removed, recharge timers go back to recharging at the rate they were before the -recharge hit as if they had spent the whole time recharging normally. In other words, every power will be recharged and it won't matter if you hit them again with a -recharge.

I understand that Glue Arrow does not follow some of the straight forward mechanics of the game that you are used to but I would have expected you to understand what Goofy was saying after you spent all that time going on about how people were making comments about Trick Arrow but not understanding how the powers worked.

All of this aside Glue Arrow does need -fly. Spamming Entangle Arrow doesn't cut it. Why do I need two debuffs to do what Tarpatch does in one? That is the story of the TA line. You need two powers to do what other debuff sets do with one and you don't even get any vaseline. You just spend more time debuffing to achieve the same result or you don't provide the same result, console yourself that you are not as good a debuffer as other sets and continue on your merry way.

I have had nights where it never failed to light. Then I have had PvP experiences where it just laughed at me.

Seems like it has the same streaky attitude that accuracy does sometimes.

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States please don't listen to whiners defience takes my scrapper out quickly in pvp. I clock a blaster they ge hurt bad next thing i know my sr scrapper get 2-3 shotted bye-bye.Defiance works anybody sayin otherwise wants an unfair advantage.

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On the other hand, players could point out that supported blasters could be unbalanced in PvP with defiance since a supported blaster could have complete mez protection and capped defense as well as capped resistance. All he needs is defiance to allow him to cap out on offense and suddenly entire teams can fall prey to the uber buffed blaster.

That would justify changing defiance to a better power in PvE so that it doesn't affect PvP as much. I understand though that in your narrow view of the world, any benefit to blaster PvE is an automatic cause for them to be unbalanced in PvP and thus you will oppose any change to blasters even if they do kick your but in PvP.

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Under the watchful eye of Lord Recluse, a select few villains have survived long enough to earn a place in the elite inner circle of Arachnos. Forging close bonds with one of Recluse’s top agents, these once fledgling villains have gained access to new and more dangerous powers. With their newfound strength, villains are now able to unleash chaos and mayhem onto the very streets of Paragon City itself.



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Interesting, so Mayhem missions are locked to level 40+ players only apparently.

Looks like I need to start PLing.

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The real code to make yourself Invulnerable to AS is as follows.

Up, Down, Up, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right B, A, Select, Start.

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Actually for CoH that is as follows:
W, S, W, S, A, D, A, D, Space, Menu, Quit, End Game Now

Sure fire way to stop them stalkers cold.

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He's really going to flip out when oil slick is six slotted.

I'd like glue arrow to effect flyers. It doesn't have to have a -fly but can't it slow flight speed?

I'm not having too many problems with Flash Arrow. Usually if I can't hit with flash, I'm missing with my secondary as well. I can't recall how I have flash slotted, I think 2 Acc, and 1 Recharge.

I understand what you're saying about self lighting but I really enjoy the fact that my teamates can light the slick. Sometimes I think that's why they keep me around. I'd rather have them fix the pet issues or maybe make the slick invulnerable to non-fire damage. I really think Oil slick should ignite 100 percent of the time if you hit it. I hate seeing the "You'd defeated the Oil Slick" message with Blazing and not having it ignite. I've had streaks of it not igniting solo even when hit.

I don't mind the radius of Acid Arrow. I just wish the graphic would be reduced to match the actual radius.

I'm actually enjoying my TA defender. I can see why some of the defender veterans don't like the set but for me, it's the only defender I have. None of the other defender sets appeal to me.

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Oil slick is invulnerable to every damage type but Fire and Energy. When it doesn't light up that is by design. It apparently just doesn't light up sometimes and they have already increased it's chance to light once I believe. It's great that you like your friends to be able to light it but I would rather not be hampered by a mechanic if my team composition happens to not include someone who can light it. I have been on teams with my TA where the only person with a chance to light it is myself and I only have blazing arrow to light the damn thing. It really sucks when Blazing Arrow misses twice in a row. It is essentially a waste of the long rechargeing power.

I knew you would flip when you saw Oil Slick. Every defender does when they see the damage.

The set still needs to have some tweaks done to powers like Entangle Arrow and Ice Arrow (debuffs should last longer and entangle needs to be made like Web Grenade). Acid Arrow really needs to have a larger AoE at least twice the size. Oil Slick needs to self light since many sets have a very hard time lighting it (just think about how a psionics defender will light it or an Ice controller) and if it is self lighting then they don't need to have that little oilslick pet which will get rid of the problems with pets targting the slick and in the case of singularity "humping it". If Flash is supposed to be identical to Smoke from the controller primary then it should auto-hit since smoke auto-hits and supposedly defender debuffs are supposed to be more effective than controller debuffs. If it misses it isn't very effective is it?

For all of my complaining about TA, these are the only fixes I am asking for. I think this is all it would take to put the set on par with Dark and Rad in terms of team benefit. Do you think I am asking for too much?

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After PvPing with TA, I really like that they chaged PGA to a targeted AoE

[/ QUOTE ]Very good point. When I first read Castle's post, I had Arcana's reaction. Then I realized that sometimes it's hard to find a spot to locate it...like if the target is flying, or in situations where mobs at are various levels. I've seen DA get stuck on some wall or ledge and not affect anyone. That's why I'd like the power to be able to do both...including the use of friendly's for a drop point. Of course I'm probably asking for something the tech can't support.

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Since I like to stay pretty far away from battles, I like to put DA in mid-air. It has more shock and awe factor in PvP as well as people ask try and figure out what power was just used.

The important thing though is that it covers as much area as possible and even sometimes keeps flying mobs in it's AoE. Just a little something I picked up to help anyone get a bit more out of their TA defender.

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Story in a nutshell:
Trick Arrow used to have 4 Targeted AoE powers. That made using the set incredibly difficult (although, it was pretty cool.) During the test period, we decided to change 2 powers to standard AoE attacks. Poison Gas Arrow was one of them.

Originally, Poison Gas Arrow would leave a large pool of gas that lasted almost a minute. Any critter entering the gas cloud would be debuffed and a small chance of being put to sleep every quarter of a second. When we changed it to a normal AoE, though, the chance to sleep was left at it's original level. While that was fine for a power activating 4 times a second, for a one shot chance, it was patheticly (sp?) low.

So, I increased the sleep chance to a 'better' value. It's still not 100% of the time, but you should get between 50% and 66% of minions when it lands.

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What percentage chance will MMs have? I ask because FF has a pretty large hole in it in regards to sleep and I would find it really scary if MMs start busting through FF defenders and sleeping them before killing them.

Granted, my TA defender is going to love this change in PvP. Flury Flechette may not like it so much

I smell a re-match.