Adeon Hawkwood
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Posts
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Joined
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Quote:Well with continuous powers such as Caltrops and most toggles the proc only checks once every 10 seconds which limits the effectiveness. Personally I tend to find that there are better places in my build for those slots but I have met people who stack procs in Caltrops (or similar powers) and swear by it so it really comes down to what works for you.Originally Posted by Madadh
Would it make more since to stack procs like this in a power whose base damage was much smaller? Something atill with an area, like Caltrops perhaps is what I'm thinking? -
Quote:Yeah... you're completely missing the point. I'm not arguing about whether or not merits should be purchasable with tickets, frankly I don't care one way or the other. However pretty much everyone who has argued against it has put forth the argument that an exchange rate of 200:1 is completely and utterly unreasonable and I'm simply asking for them to demonstrate why.Originally Posted by Sharker_Quint
ok.... NO. what part of that word do you not understand? there is absolutely no reason to mix merits in with tickets at all. merits have nothing to do with AE and should stay that way. and your silly little conversion rate would never fly. stop fighting a losing battle.
Based on the rewards currently available for both merits and tickets the 200:1 ratio is pretty accurate and if I was deciding which to farm I would use that in my calculations (we'll ignore for the moment the fact that I don't find farming particularly interesting in the first place).
If you want to posit that with the current reward structure 200 tickets has less buying power than 1 merit you're welcome to do so but please demonstrate a situation where that applies.
The general consensus amongst people who follow the market is that random rolls produce more inf over time than direct buys.Quote:Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
Why would anyone bother with making random rolls with AE tickets if they can trade them in for merits and buy exactly what they want. Having to make random rolls is the consequence of running AE missions. Changing that defeats the purpose of making the rolls random in the first place. -
Quote:Sure the exploiters can find exploits faster than the devs can fix them, and sure these exploits would then lead to reward merits. Sure you can farm tickets in large quantities and then convert them to merits.Originally Posted by Aura_Familia
The point is that the exploiters can find exploits FASTER than the devs do. All it would take would be one exploit and there would be MASSIVE farming of AE merits and (with your RIDICULOUSLY wanted low conversion rate) mass Reward Merit farming. NOT. A. GOOD. IDEA.
My ss/fire brute would be parked in the AE permanently if they could allow you AE to Merit conversion.
My question is: What would you buy with those merits?
Lets say the devs implemented a 200 tickets = 1 merit conversion. You get on your brute and farm up some ridiculous number of tickets, for the sake of an argument lets say 100,000. You then go and convert those tickets to 500 merits. Now what do you spend those 500 merits on?
You're not buying rare salvage, the merit price for that is 20 merits (or 4000 tickets) for a random piece when you could get a specific piece for 540 tickets
You're not doing rare recipe rolls, those also cost 20 merits (or 4000 tickets) but if you spend the tickets on directly in the 30-34 or 35-39 ranges (generally considered the "best" option) they cost only 3700 tickets (which equates to two additional rolls).
You're not converting them to A-Merits, those are on a 20 hour gate.
You could be direct buying two LotG 7.5%s (and one random roll) but is that really a better option than 27 random rolls? The market forum would say no.
So, if people did start farming tickets for the express purpose of converting them to merits what would they buy with the merits that is more valuable than what they can currently buy with tickets?
Every argument I've seen against this has focused on the Time to Merits ratio but at the end of the day what really matters is the Time to Reward ratio. As far as I can see at a 200:1 conversion ratio a tickets to merit conversion option does not decrease Time to Reward below what is already available with tickets, it simply opens up options. -
What was accompanying it? Hercules Titans are pretty nasty LTs but a single one should not cause serious problems for any reasonably well build character (let alone a Scrapper). You might need to move a bit to avoid the burn patch but other than that it should be a simple fight.
That being said Malta as a group are tough so my first thought is that while you were focused on the Titan some of the minions got you (or most likely a Sapper drained your blue bar). -
Umbral pretty much covers my feelings on the matter, the only thing I'd comment on is this part:
Quote:Regarding IO Set Bonuses the ratio is actually 1:2 ResistanceOriginally Posted by Umbral
I agree with that in principle, but I don't really agree with how the developers have translated the quantitative assessment into numbers, since it seems that resistance can be considered to be valued anywhere between 2:1 resistance:defense (most survivability toggles) to 1:8 resistance:defense (IO set bonuses).
efense not 1:8 but I agree that that is out of line with toggle powers. However even if you changed the set bonuses to a 2:1 ratio (or even just 1:1) for most damage types there aren't enough resistance bonuses available to make building them up a practical option for anything other than Psionic and Toxic.
If the devs decide they want to make IO Resistance set bonuses attractive compared to defense ones I would say they need to do the following:
1. Replace all single type bonuses with dual type
2. Increase the base modifier for dual type bonuses from 0.63% to 2.5% (or maybe a value in between, see below)
3. Add more sets (in particular damage, resistance and defense sets) that provide decent resistance bonuses for a wider variety of damage types (or possibly in some cases replace the less useful bonuses in existing sets).
4. (Optional) Reduce the level of the resistance bonuses in some existing sets (some sets have high level resistance bonuses as the 3rd slot bonus, if the scaling for resistance bonuses was increased these might need to be reduced to compensate)
Regarding the base modifier setting it to 2.5% would maintain the 2:1 ratio that toggle powers have. For example a Huge Smashing/Lethal/Melee Def Bonus provides 3.75% Smashing and Lethal Defense, with the proposed scaling a Huge Smashing/Lethal Resistance Bonus would provide 7.5% Resistance. I think this would be fine but I can see a valid argument for using a slightly lower scaling (such as 2%) if those values seem high. -
Not sure where you got 3700 from. In any case the cap was raised to 3534 in I18:
http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Hit_points -
Quote:Really? The only person I see making that last comment is Silverado. Most of the other comments are more along the lines of "well you can't afford a Lamborghini but you could buy a very nice Volvo and it's not a bad idea to keep your bike just in case the Volvo turns out to have a busted transmission".Originally Posted by DumpleBerry
I'm feeling a theme of the thread:
"I'm used to riding my bike around everywhere. It's way faster than walking, and super efficient. But, I've heard about these horseless carriages. Worth it or not?"
"Lamborghinis are expensive, buying a car isn't worth it."
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Quote:Honestly I still fail to see how allowing exploiters to trade tickets for merit rewards would allow an AE exploiter to gain greater rewards than they can already get by just trading in the tickets.Originally Posted by PumBumbler
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=243411
Patch notes like these show that it is a constant cat and mouse game of finding exploits and patching them. AE just makes it way worse since it can be exploited on a larger scale. Linking tickets to reward merits would be a field day for the exploiters, IMO. -
Quote:It's not quite one stance for each weapon type, similar weapons use the same base animation set. For example both Assault Rifle and Pulse Rifle use the same stance and the various single handed weapons (broadsword, war axe, war mace) are the same stance.Originally Posted by StrykerX
Yep. Essentially Brawl has a separate full set of animations (male, female, huge, male flying, female flying, etc...) for every single weapon type in the game. Well, more specifically every combat mode, and each different weapon uses a different combat mode plus I think a couple other things do too. That means there are literally dozens of Brawl animations that are all slightly different depending on what weapon is to be held in the off hand, plus the shield bash, sword pommel strike, and kick animations. That's an awful lot of new Kick animations to create (even if they can be mostly just cut and pasted with a few tweaks) to eliminate redraw from one pool attack.
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Quote:I would say Electrical. The difference in S/L res between Temp Invulnerability and the other shields is tiny and in the level 40-50 range pretty much every enemy group has at least one unit that deals energy damage whereas dark, psionic and toxic are a lot less common (although when you do meet them they tend to come in large amounts).Originally Posted by Robert_B
What Res would be the most useful IYHO fro that range?
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Quote:The main weakness of Assault Rifle is it's horrible single target damage. Against Minions and LTs the AoE damage more than compensates for this but against bosses and AVs it is a lot more annoying. The easy solution is to use ignite to make up for it (this is particularly useful for Defenders since Ignite does Blaster level damage). Since NPCs will try to leave the Ignite patch it's best to immobilize or hold them to keep them stationary. While Defenders can take a hold in their epic pool Web Grenade is still useful for this simply because of it's fast recharge time (and the fact that it's available earlier). Some people use Caltrops slotted heavily for slow to keep enemies in the ignite patch but at the end of the day Web Grenade is the easiest and most reliable means of doing so.Originally Posted by _Malk_
This intrigues me, and I was wondering if you could elaborate on it a bit.
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Quote:You can do an effective slotting without the really high end stuff. Obviously it's not as effective but it can still make a character more effective than using generics.Originally Posted by Silverado
400m can buy you a grand total of 2x Kinetic Combat triples and maybe an LotG +rech.
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Quote:In general Frankenslotting is more effective than full sets at enhancing a single power since you can pick and choose the aspects you most want to enhance. The downside is that this way you don't get the set bonuses which can potentially increase the effectiveness of all your powers. To use a simple example on my AR/Dev Blaster I have 5 pieces of Positron's Blast slotted in four different powers. This gives me set bonuses totaling 10% recovery, 36% accuracy and 25% recharge which is roughly equivalent to slotting an accuracy SO and two-thirds of a recharge SO in every single power.Originally Posted by Magellen
So the Frankenslotting can be as effective (if not more) than getting the whole set of something then?
I have bought a few sets in the past for other toons (KB resistance, etc)
but it never occured to me to nab an IO enhancer from one set, another from another, etc, etc
Now the actual enhancement the powers themselves get is (after ED) 47.7% Accuracy, 95.1% Damage, 47.7% Endurance Reduction and 26.5% Recharge (plus a damage proc of varying usefulness). Alternatively with Frankenslotting I could, for example use the same five slots to give it 54.5%/96.12%/63.6%/53% (stats in the same order) giving a large increase in recharge and small increases in the others (although I do lose the proc). This isn't a brilliant example since the Targeted AoE Damage sets have a limited selection of enhancement varieties (the only IO without a damage component is a rather expensive PvP IO which limits my options) with other powers. The downside is I'm losing the set bonuses I listed above.
The big advantage of Frankenslotting is that it allows you to fit about 1.6 SOs of enhancement in each slot.
Regarding Hamidon Origin enhancements (which Dark Gob mentioned) they are also useful as part of a Frankenslotting build. They are equivalent in power to 2 SOs which can add more power than Frankenslotted Set IOs. The price is very variable but some useful ones are reasonably cheap. In particular Nucleolus Exposure can normally be had for about 30million and boost damage and accuracy which is always handy. -
Quote:Not true, resistance debuffs are always resisted by your resistance after buffs are applied but before before debuffs are applied. This is why defense is subject to cascading failure but resistance isn't.Originally Posted by GavinRuneblade
I was thinking recently of the way that -resist sort of affects itself. So if you have two effects for -15% resistance, the first gives-15% and the second -17% since resistance is also resistance to resist debuff.
Well the extra resistance resists resistance debuffs but it doesn't increase the effectiveness of resistance buffs (I think that's what you were asking).Quote:Does an orange inspiration do the same in reverse for players in PvE?
DDR and Mez Resistance should also resist debuffs to themselves but to the best of my knowledge there aren't any powers that debuff your debuff resistance.Quote:What about Defense Debuff Resistance? Any other form of mez debuff, or -regen or anything like that? -
Done correctly IO Sets will increase the capabilities of a character. Most IO builds aim at increasing the recharge and/or defense of a character (although a few have other goals such as health/regen). This can be particularly useful for a Willpower tank since Willpower comes with a moderate amount of defense already and adding additional defense (generally Smashing and Lethal defense) can have a large increase in survivability.
The downside is that this can get very pricey, very quickly. The most popular set for boosting S/L Defense is Kinetic Combat which due to the nature of the drop system is rather pricey (the Dam/End/Rech goes for about 100million and even if you skip the others are still a tad pricey). You can look for cheaper sets instead (Smashing Haymaker, for example) but these will generally have less useful bonuses. Realistically if you want to do this right you should plan the build out in mids and will probably need a respec to, at the very least, shift a few slots around. Also you might find you need to wait to earn the cash to complete the build.
An intermediate option you might want to look at is Frankenslotting. IOs that boost two or three aspects of a power provide more total enhancment than regular IOs. For example slotting two level 50 Damage/Accuracy IOs (form different sets, obviously) will boost both Damage and Accuracy by 53% as opposed to the 42.4% you'd get from slotting one Damage IO and one Accuracy IO. In this manner you can get more enhancement from each slot increasing the potency of the powers or allowing you to shift slots to other powers. Since you don't care about set bonuses you can focus on cheaper IOs (most uncommon IOs sell very cheaply) all that matters is how many aspects the IO covers (the more aspects the IO enhances the higher the total bonus, triples and quads are obviously the best but they tend to be rarer and more expensive). -
Assuming the power hits each proc will have a chance to fire and if multiple procs fire then they will each deal damage. Since it's an AoE each target will be checked independently.
Since each proc has a 20% chance of dealing 71.75 damage it's not really worth slotting them in place of damage enhancements. Each proc adds an average of 14.35 whereas a damage SO adds a garunteed 31.2 damage. So it's not worth considering adding procs until you've got 3 damage SOs (or equivilent) and sufficient accuracy. Even then recharge or endurance enhancements might be a better option. -
Quote:Well first off why would they do that? Malta's goal is to eliminate all super-powered individuals who won't work for them. Reichsman represents a pretty serious threat since he's trying to take over the multi-verse and doesn't seem like he'd be willing to join Malta. Even if they did decide to try and convince him to join them having their top general go to negotiate directly goes completely against their modus operandi. They have a heavily compartmentalized cell structure for a reason. Their top leaders set things up so that finding one of them is almost impossible simply because their own troops don't know who they are. Having one of them voluntarily go to meet with Reichsman goes completely against that.Originally Posted by Golden Girl
But maybe Malta made contact with Reichsman first, rather than him making contact with them?
If they'd setup a dialogue/background for Gyrfalcon that established he was a moderately senior operative that Reichsman was trying to "convince" to divulge information on Malta's leadership I'd be fine with it. Establishing him as one of Malta's top leadership doesn't fit with the lore. -
Quote:DMystic covers one reason, but the other is that it doesn't really fit with the rest of the Malta lore. In the Project World Wide Red arc you go to a huge amount of effort just to track down one of Malta's Directors, the idea that Reichsman can just waltz into our dimension and make contact with a member of the "Council of Leaders" (who presumably outrank the directors) is really hard to believe.Originally Posted by Golden Girl
What's wrong with him? I think it's cool to see one of Malta's leaders show up.
The other AVs are more realistic, both Vanessa and Countess Crey would be relatively easy to find and the Nemesis robot present is established to be a fake but Gyrfalcon has no justification other than "we need a replace AV, fast". If they'd put something in to establish that he was just a random senior Malta operative I wouldn't mind but making him "the Malta Group's top general and the only known member of the organization's mysterious Council of Leaders" doesn't really fit with the rest of the Malta content unless Reichsman is a heck of a lot better at finding people than Crimson, Indigo and the rest of their organization (some vaguely defined governmental counter-espionage group) -
Quote:The problem there is that the Soul Mastery version has twice the recharge of the Dark Mastery version.Originally Posted by Gilia
Soul Drain does stick out for such a trio among the Epics. How easy would it be for you to become a villain and do a patron arc? The problem with Dark Mastery is you're waiting till 47 for the gemstone. If you do a patron arc and grab Soul Mastery, you can get it at 41. I also would think having a hold attack on your Defenders might come in handy for when you want to lock down some particularly nasty targets. Soul Mastery would give you that, and Dark would not.
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Quote:Must Have:Originally Posted by Torrynt
Ok so the ancillary question on this becomes, which trap powers are must haves, good, and eh.
Force Field Generator
Acid Mortar
Poison Gas Trap
Seeker Drones
Situational/Personal Preference:
Web Grenade (becomes must have if paired with Assault Rifle)
Caltrops (is very useful but you can manage without it)
Triage Beacon (becomes must have if you do Hamidon Raids)
Trip Mine (utility varies somewhat depending on solo/team, how much patience you have and how much AoE you get from your blast set)
Don't Bother:
Time Bomb -
Quote:If you're set to -1 TFs still spawn at +0 to prevent them being to easy.Originally Posted by Ray_Ray
We all have our diff set at -1 / 1 player. And the enemies are still whites and yellows.
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Quote:Not really. Based on info BaBs released in a couple of threads a long time ago the method used to prevent redraw in Brawl is a rather nasty hack. It would be technically feasible to do so for Kick (and other similar powers) but doing so would be a lot of work for limited return.Originally Posted by Ang_Rui_Shen
That's odd, since the kicking animation present in Brawl very plausibly does not. I suppose there's not much use in requesting a change?
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Quote:Well his bio always made him out to be a fallen wannabe-hero rather than an out and out villain (link) so it's not entirely unreasonable that after the events in the Hollows he reformed. It would be nice to have a little more info on it though.Originally Posted by Scarlet Shocker
Frostfire, one of the signature lowbie encounters, is suddenly appearing in high level content and fighting along side you against Malta.
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Quote:Oh, I know WHY he's there in terms of the development cycle, he still bugs meOriginally Posted by cursedsorcerer
The only reason why Gyrfalcon is in the game is that in the beta, Gyrfalcon was Akarist of the Circle of Thorns, who the beta testers criticized as not actually being a villain.
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Traps goes pretty well with anything really. Traps/Ice is a good choice for extra mitigation having several powers that stack well with Traps. Traps/Sonic is probably the highest damage combo. The other sets are somewhere in between.