Wintry

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  1. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Emnity View Post
    3) Are we screwed in the BAF and beyond thus far? Anyone tested this? I've hard a rough row to hoe on the new tip version DE... and was being told last night that the enemies in the new incarnate content make defense a running joke. If this is so, what are we defense-based folks to do?
    This came up in another thread as well. Those DE have higher ToHit than any pre-50 DE as the following screenshot shows:


    For a Widow it's easy to deal with though. It's adviseable for an NW to get some overcapacity on your defense, not just 45%. You also have rather low (27%ish iirc?) DDR and thus a decent amount of def beyond the softcap is the best way to ensure you won't have to start popping purples to offset just any minor def debuff that's bound to hit you now and then.
    Especially when you take into account also it's easy for a Widow to get more def.

    My Widow has over 70% on all positionals (without the bonus from Hide that suppresses in combat) and almost never needs to worry about any def debuff or slightly above average tohit, bar some severe cases of mass def debuff by large IDF mobs. But even the latter rarely cause issues now.
    DE specifically are a walk in the park at that point, as long as you watch out for the Quartzes as per usual anyway.
  2. Notice of the Well, yes it was. It dropped from Khan/Barracuda two days in a row, but it also seems to have been fixed before the next morning.
    Basically you could get one on tuesday and wednesday, but on thursday it stopped - miraculously without even a patch deployment during that morning's downtime.
  3. As it currently stands it looks like I'll have a tier 4 on 5 different toons on the 15th - including a tank.
  4. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Nihilii View Post
    I've heard DEs in tips have higher tohit. It used to be that DEs at level 50 were level 49 rocky dudes and nothing else, because the faction capped at level 43 or something, so maybe they created "new" identical DEs for tips recently and threw higher tohit on them.
    Confirming this. After reading your post I examplared down to 39 through ouro, went and checked some equal level DE in the east of FF and then the DE in the arc's first mission and they both showed as having 50%.

    In that case, it's not all DE that have 64% tohit, but it's at least misleading when it comes to working out a lvl 50 IO set build to state 145% is another important defense mark for you, since for many the DE in tips are the vast majority of DE they face altogether at lvl 50.

    So, going back to where this started...
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Katie V View Post
    45%: This will protect you against almost all enemies that are less than +6 to you.
    59%: This will protect you against Praetorian/level 50 DE, Battle Maiden in the Apex TF, and probably a few others.
    70%: This will protect you against summoned pets.
    145% (attainable by a Katana/SR scrapper in Elude, and probably nobody else): This will protect you against Devouring Earth buffed by a Quartz Emanator.
    Knowing that there are also a whole different kind of DE - you call them Praetorian DE apparently, right, ok, fine - which seem to appear in places many visit very regularly and have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Praetoria or Praetorians (except perhaps the time at which they were first added to the game?) that might hurt a bit if you'd been made to think you needed 14% def less than what is in fact the case to offset their tohit would be good.

    PS: Perhaps a nuance before people start interpreting all of this wrongly.
    The whole reason I thought you were wrong on DE ToHit is the fact I've checked it myself before because I got hit at the least to say annoyingly often on my just softcapped toons and verified it was indeed higher ToHit that was causing it. Logically I came to that conclusion because the DE I get in my tips are all the DE I ever see. Low levels ones maybe every once in a long while, but they don't come bug me trying to get those hero merits every day and I know I'm far from alone in that.
    In that light I think it may have a negative effect if you choose to point out the ToHit of one group, referring to them by name, while there are most likely two completely different groups with very different ToHit sharing the same name and, additionally, they are also both commonly encountered.
  5. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Sailboat View Post
    And the non-Praetorian DE have been missing me all these years because they LIKE me?

    Can you substantiate this claim somehow? Please don't take it personally, but we see a LOT of offhand misinformation tossed out on the forums, and I'd like to pin this down one way or the other.

    Is it possible that you've been hit a lot because of quartz emanators and misinterpreted the cause?
    Click on the thumbnail which was in the post you quoted as well?

    Again...

    This is just a regular hero tip mission with your everyday DE.
  6. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Katie V View Post
    Level 50/"Praetorian" DE have a base 64% to-hit. All other DE have the same base 50% to-hit that the vast majority of enemies have.
    My bad, it's 64%, not 68%.
    But you're not right about it being just lvl 50 Praetorian DE.
    It's all DE.

  7. Wintry

    Solo Khan?

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Necrotech_Master View Post
    reichsmans stats if you look at them show he has 90% res to everything off the bat, so his unstoppable does little to nothing
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by DSorrow View Post
    His Unstoppable should put him at the Resistance cap which for NPCs is not 90%. For them it's 100%.
    This got me curious about it so I hit him with a Power Analyzer MkIII again on my last couple of runs. Once each time before the fight started and I kept monitoring it as he went down into the unstoppable phase.

    His resistance with unstopp are obviously not 100% since that would mean he takes no damage and we can all see the 1s coming from his head indicating he does, but I presume you meant 99% and that is indeed the case. With Unstopp he caps at 99%.
    The difference with what he has without unstopp though is a little bit bigger, because without unstopp his resists were 'only' 70% - just as listed on ParagonWiki.

    His unstopp does something like 68ish % if I recall. I thought that should've been 70% too, but the number was slightly off when I scanned him at least.

    Considering all that I'm sure a cold/sonic with sleet, heat loss and a decent sonic attack chain could hurt him perfectly well out of unstopp and I'm inclined to believe will probably still damage him somewhat with unstopp up. Whether or not it's enough to offset the regen during unstopp or the unstopp downtime is long enough to offset the health regained during the unstopp uptime I'm not certain about, but I'd consider it a possibility worth trying.

    Time for me to dust that cold/sonic toon off and take it to 50.

    Meanwhile I'll have to try and come up with a way to actually survive such a long lasting fight without PA. I imagine just insps will run out...
  8. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Oedipus_Tex View Post
    With the magic of incarnate sauce, I have stumbled across a build that gives me capped Ranged defense and enough recharge to gain perma mezz protection. This build would have been unthinkable six months ago. But this is the dawn of a new age!
    I have pretty much the same on my ill/rad troller. Perma-IW, perma-Hasten (2-slotted), perma-PA, perma-AM and softcappped ranged def to boot. It's pretty neat indeed.
    Thanks to perma-PA it was already pretty awesome solo before I last respecced and put in the softcapped ranged def, but now I laugh at the stray mob that moves away from PA or the one ranged hit mobs can throw at me per minute due to the old PA disappearing as a result of being cancelled out by me casting a new PA before said new PA taunts the whole shebang again.

    Definitely, definitely a fan of the new doors being opened up allround as well.

    At the same time however, I sometimes miss many of the challenges that were daily business pre-i9 - before there were even IOs. The new rep settings alone don't seem to make up for it. Solo maybe, yes, to an extent. But once you're running a story arc with a proper team in which everyone has sets and level shifts and who knows what even setting the rep to +4x8 - something that was unthinkable and not even possible back then - still results in you walking right over everything pretty much with your TV remote in one hand, the other in a bowl of crisps and your nose on the attack hotkeys.

    At least that's how it is in my experience these days, though not everyone might be getting that same feeling - I wouldn't know about that.

    PS: One thing that is quite annoying on said ill/rad though is it keeps Hasten, AM and IW up at all times... whilst being limited to 1 power on auto - grrrr .
  9. Copied from the in-game detailed info tab of Teleport Foe:
    Quote:
    2.10 magnitude teleport on target after 1.17s delay

    10000.00% resistance to teleport for 15.00s on target after 1.30s delay
    Ignores buffs and enhancements
    unresistable
    At first glance I would say no, since it looks to me like you can't stack the actual TP effect itself at all since it has no lasting.
    But I'm not entirely sure about this.
  10. Quote:
    Originally Posted by StratoNexus View Post
    I think the tower order should change depending on the team.
    Kind of an open door, which I don't always reiterate explicitly - apologies if that would've made it clearer to you.

    Ofcourse, it goes without saying the strategies you can use and which of them is the most efficient for a particular team depend on that team.
    This was, however, more generally speaking.

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by TriAngel_EU View Post
    I've noticed many people still find themselves strengthened in their belief none of this is true because they still complete plenty STFs without even touching blue. This is entirely possible and it can even go smooth, but to be perfectly honest if you took down red, yellow and green before killing LR and it worked just fine that's not because blue doesn't do anything notable, that's just because you happened to have a team that could've taken down LR leaving both blue and red intact as well.
    I would've thought that was enough hint as to me being aware there is no set order that any team leader needs to blindly hold on to in disregard of any and all circumstances.
  11. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Werner View Post
    Yes, a +4 boss will be more likely to hit you than an even-level minion, but 45% will still give you the lowest possible chance of being hit.
    This. Exactly.

    Also, for reference: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=115184 - Arcana's Guide to Defense v1.4 - Updated for I7

    It shows you (with the knowledge that most enemies have a base tohit of 50% at equal level up to +5 to you) why you still get a lowest final chance to hit with that defense. All defense / tohit business happens before the multiplication with the acc modifiers in the final chance to hit formula.

    Yes, 45% is the softcap and is what you need to give most (not all) enemies the lowest final chance to hit possible against you, under the assumption there are no tohit buffs or the likes at work.
    The 5% final hit chance however is used far too often as that is merely the result of an example scenario showing the effects of having softcapped def against minions of +0 through +5 in level with the default base tohit. The fact this 5% gets thrown out there too often with no context whatsoever seems to have lead to many players thinking it should apply to lieutenants and bosses as well, which it doesn't.

    Basically it comes down to this: in comparison to +0 for the first 5 levels in difference between a critter and you it's their accmod that goes up. Beyond +5 the level difference no longer raises their accmod, but their tohit instead.
    Tohit you can counter with defense, but that's beyond +5.
    A higher accmod just gives them a higher chance to hit, regardless of your def (well, up to capped hit chance ofcourse. ) and that results in damage you'll pretty much just have to find a way to deal with.
    Higher ranks also affect that accmod.
  12. WARNING: Lots of text ahead.

    The main thing that gets done plainly wrong on many STF runs in my experience seems to be the tower order and it often causes much more trouble than anything else at times. I'm not sure if it wasn't mentioned by the OP because they took the towers down in the right order or they didn't, but it was simply taken for granted as it so often by so many people. People are used the towers making trouble and Recluse being a bugger to an extent even without them, depending on the sort of team used.

    Like I said, perhaps this wasn't an issue on the particular STF runs the OP started this topic about, but I'm gonna throw this out here anyway even if just because this is a good opportunity to bring it to the attention of all those people who still make STF a lot harder for themselves and their teams than it needs to be.

    So... sorry for off-topicness, but I think this may be useful regardless.

    In a distant past I used to start with red and leave blue altogether as it seemed sort of useless. I think it was endurance infusion at some point or another, but today I'm not even entirely certain of that anymore. What I do know for a fact is what they do today.
    When I lead an STF I always take them down in the order blue, red, yellow and green. There is always someone trying to argue me on it and telling me to do red first, but that really is bad practice.
    Red these days about doubles his damage (+105% iirc) and blue caps his recharge at +400% as well as giving him +30% tohit (those who still tell me to do red first also think the tohit is coming from yellow, but that's just defense). Not only does the recharge given by blue translate into a higher effective damage multiplier than he gets from red, it also means he attacks more often altogether and with that gets a chance to go through a def based tanker's def more often. Additionally the tohit is just annoying.
    Bottom line: blue is the real killer nowadays.

    On the only tanker I have myself each and every of these tower effects become extremely easy to perceive since it's a shield/dark tank. I'm largly def based and I self-heal with Siphon Life.
    When I go into the fight (although it isn't a fight at first obviously, but you get the point...) I use 0 to 2 lucks (depending on if there's an emp with fort or other def buffs on team, etc...) to bring my def at or over 75%. Thank goodness AAO and Taunt are autohit making it generally easy to keep his aggro, but when he does start running he runs like a hyena on speed. When he sticks to me he attacks... like a hyena on speed as well. If for whatever reason I let my def drop substantially below 75% the hits start coming in at such speed an emp can almost never keep up anymore.
    When blue explodes he pretty much goes into snail mode. He attacks slower and he moves slower - visibly slower. If you've never paid attention to it before, do so. Even if he doesn't run around but just stands there attacking the tank you will very easily be able to see he's a lot slower all of a sudden. It is however still a snail that packs a punch and the emp's heals are still all I have to rely on at this point.
    Then when red goes down the damage drops again. This time - most obviously - not just the DPS he's putting on me, but the DPA as well. Many of his attacks that took me down to very low health before only still do half health at best. At this point it gets rather relaxing.
    After yellow goes down I can finally hit him again and with that self-heal by means of using Siphon Life. The only thing not possible yet at that point (unless you can debuff heals in some way - I seem to recall there's an option, but I forget which it is.... Cold Domination I think?) - with just green left - is killing him due to the huge heals.

    I've noticed many people still find themselves strengthened in their belief none of this is true because they still complete plenty STFs without even touching blue. This is entirely possible and it can even go smooth, but to be perfectly honest if you took down red, yellow and green before killing LR and it worked just fine that's not because blue doesn't do anything notable, that's just because you happened to have a team that could've taken down LR leaving both blue and red intact as well. It's all in the team you've got - that makes all the difference.

    If anyone reading this knows of himself he's one of those who thinks I'm telling fairytales I'd advise you to bring a Power Analyzer MkIII temp on your next STF run and scan LR before you start killing towers.

    TLDR; blue, red, yellow, green.
  13. Wintry

    Solo Khan?

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Nihilii View Post
    Now of course this is 3-4 characters and not one, but I'd wager the cold/sonic did most of the job.
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Nihilii View Post
    I could see a cold/sonic specialized in ST damage (maybe taking the fortunata mistress as an epic, with so much -res flying around pets can add a significant amount of DPS against a lone big target) taking him down solo without temps.
    Surely if I'm reading this correctly the 3 others served as pets. Not being funny, but what I mean by that is if a pet can add substantial damage due to the -res than the others on this team would also have been adding more substantially than it may've looked like perhaps, thanks to the -res, right?

    On the upside I suppose my suggestion of cold/sonic in the OP may not have been far off from what might have the best chance at it then. Staying alive to grab the MO however could be a bit tricky...
    It's at least going to be a hell of a lot more tricky than it was for me with 2 perma-PAs. Come to think of it I didn't even use a single insp on my run either. I imagine anything without a PA to hide behind is going to burn insps like mad even if just to top up HP to 100% to be on the safe side for the next hit after the streakbreaker forces one.
  14. Wintry

    Solo Khan?

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Gypsy_of_Paradox View Post
    But consider also you only have 10 shots from the gun to even damage him.
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by DSorrow View Post
    The thing I'm not sure on is how many times you might need the ray gun, if more than 10, it would be impossible.
    Time is not a factor really.

    I've said this many times to many people, but now I've pretty much proven it: 1 person needs 1 charge on that temp power.
    If more than one person has the temp that's cool... if someone crashes or disconnects.
    If people have more than 1 charge that's cool too... if they want to tease some Atlas Park hellions with it between the 4th and 5th mish to sort of unwind before starting the final chapter.

    I've dualboxed 2 Khan runs start two finish now the past 2 days (on the first attempt MO failed 'cause I got mapservered on 4th mish when the ambush spawned), on both I spent forever and ever from the moment of attacking Reichs till all his buddies and he himself were dead at last and on both I also fired the temp once at the very beginning and never again.

    Teams just tend to never allow you to witness for yourself that that one shot is all you need since no matter what you say there's always a few people spamming it.

    Anyway, bottom line: the question we should be asking ourselves is does one toon have what it takes to begin with to consistently keep Reichs' health dropping even in the Unstoppabble stage? It's not so much a question of if said toon could do it at speed as well, 'cause you have all the time in the world when doing this.
  15. Wintry

    Solo Khan?

    Is this possible?
    I mean, unlike LR on STF Reichs doesn't have tricky things like scenes directly copied from Arachnophobia or anything, but my concern is much more basic: considering Reichsman's resistances, his max HP, the resulting regen and - worst of all - the way he spams unstoppable I'm not sure if it would be possible for any one toon.
    I just successfully completed a 'solo' MO Khan today, but I say 'solo' because I dualboxed that one with an ill/storm and an ill/rad. I've seen on that run first hand that even with all the rad debuffs and a freezing rain on him at all times he went down very, very, very slowly (the TF in its entirety took 2:57:50 to complete) . That was with debuffs and psi damage from two toons, making me wonder if 1 toon could put out enough of eith... no, both preferably, to do it.

    Has anyone ever tried this?
    Could something sonic perhaps do it? Maybe cold/sonic? (That would be awesome, since I'm in the process of making one.)

    If it's possible, I'm gonna have to give that a whirl as well.

    Edit: Before someone says: Yes, I realize cold/sonic wouldn't be a troller. I posted this here because I've only really done these kind of challenges with trollers so far so that's what I have experience with when it comes to the matter. I am, however, open to any suggestions if people were to deem another AT more fit for the job.
  16. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Katie V View Post
    145% (attainable by a Katana/SR scrapper in Elude, and probably nobody else): This will protect you against Devouring Earth buffed by a Quartz Emanator.
    SR Stalkers as well for a fact. I imagine probably everything SR which most likely even includes the Brute.
    And you can also add the Widow to that list - they get there easily, even with just an LotG in Elude.

    Also, you're right in the fact a Quartz adds 100% tohit, but if I'm not mistaken DE have 68% tohit by default making your magical number 163% rather than 145%.
    Again, a Widow can get there easily with Elude and perma-ML.