Adeon Hawkwood

Well since PBs get flight and hover for free while WS's get Teleport and Recall Friend for free I think the only fair option is to replace the PB's free hover with free Group Fly (and replace the group fly in their set with hover). I realize this seems unfair to WS's since the PB's are getting a T4 power for free but the fact that WS's can move teammates around while PB's can't seems even more unfair.[/sarcasm]

Ok, in all seriousness I can see why devs gave them the lockouts on the power pools but in practical terms I think opening up the Teleport pool for PBs and the Flight pool for WSs would be a fair and equitable method for handling it.

All team oriented characters are perfectly capable of soloing if they want to and some people enjoy playing them solo (for example I have a Traps/AR I love soloing with). However depending on the powerset combos not all can handle EBs equally well.

Personally I tend to check the wiki before doing a flashback so I know what I'll encounter but a warning would not be out of placed.

AR/Dev is not as low damage as people like to make out. It has two weaknesses, poor single target damage and and no aim/build up. The former means that it has trouble with taking out bosses and the latter impacts it's ability to front load damage.

These two combined do mean that AR/Dev doesn't have the raw damage output of other Blasters BUT on teams it's AoE damage output is still very competitive compared to most other Blasters (the Main exceptions being Archery, Assault Rifle and maybe Fire especially with Build Up).

Solo AR/Dev does suffer more from the inability to directly front load damage. This is circumvented somewhat by pre-placing a trip mine before combat. Not only does this give a decent Defiance boost for your first few attacks (roughly equal to a small red) it also provides passive defense against melee attackers by damaging them and (hopefully) sending them flying. The lack of single target damage is mitigated by using Web Grenade and Ignite although the long setup times makes this impractical except against bosses and some fo the tougher LTs.

Playing at -1 makes a very significant difference. Besides the obvious fact that enemies have slightly lower hit points your attacks do 11% more damage and get a 5% bonus to hit (although most people slot enough accuracy to make this irrelevant) while their attacks do 10% less damage and suffer from a -10% to hit bonus.

The -10% to hit in particular makes a huge difference since it is equivalent to a 10% defense bonus. for a Blaster without any defense (from IOs or such) it prevents approximately 20% of the damage they would normally take at +0 (and the effectiveness goes up substantially with even a little bit of defense from IOs). Combined with the damage reduction at -1 you deal about 11% more damage and take about 28% less. Additionally the -10% to hit also means that debuffs and mezzes are a lot less likely to hit.

To some extent this is a fundamental problem with the set itself. Since it's a debuff only you you get no benefit UNTIL you start dropping the debuffs after combat has started. The other sets all have at least some ability to initiate combat with some benefits already in place.

Not as far as I know.

There is loot in the game, specifically the Invention enhancements system. The good news is it's completely optional. The base difficulty of the game is balanced around characters using regular enhancements and while inventions allow you to increase your power level beyond what is possible without them you can still enjoy the entire game without them and you won't have to worry about getting turned away from teams because of your gearscore or anything (ok, there are a few idiots who do turn people away for not having IOs, but they are by far the minority).

If you want to get deep into the invention system then it offers a lot for people who enjoy doing the spreadsheet min/max type of thing but there aren't really any cookie cutter builds. Everyone has their own opinion of how to build a character and even two characters with the same powerset combo will frequently have some differences in terms of power assignment and slotting.

Actually the amount you get is based on what you would get for killing an enemy of your own level modified by the con-level, the size of the team and the relative level of the team members. It works out roughly the same as dividing it with a bonus but not identically.

I'm pretty sure this is wrong, AFAIK drops are generated for the team and then randomly awarded. You definitely get fewer drops on a per kill basis teamed as opposed to soloing.

I'm glad you understood it, I just reread it and it's a reminder that I need to proofread more.

Correct, the critical difference is that Maneuvers uses the 'ranged'* defense scalings and CJ uses the 'melee'* defense scalings and for some ATs this can affect which is better. Specifically in the case of Tankers they get 2.5% from CJ but only 2.275% from Maneuvers.

*Note: I'm referring to the terms used on paragon wiki and redtomax for the AT scaling factors, not to be confused with Ranged Defense and Melee Defense (the positional tags)

Once you reach level 6 you get access to the power pools. If you select one of the two powers available from them (which you can do at any time after level 6) then at level 14 you get access to a third power int he selected pool. Four of the pools (Teleport, Flying, Leaping and Speed) are referred to as the "Travel Pools" since the 3rd power is a travel power. So essentially there are four travel powers that anyone can get.

Here's the rough break down:

Teleport: Pros:The fastest power (if you're good at it), allows for full 3D movement. Cons: High endurance cost, sucks in tight spaces, can be nausea inducing in some people

Super Speed: Pros: Fast movement in all environments, provides some stealth capability against NPCs. Cons: No vertical movement so you have to detour or use temp powers to get around it, older computers can have trouble rendering stuff fast enough

Super Jump: Pros: Provides a nice balance between the speed of Super Speed and the mobility of Flight. Cons: cannot remain in the air permanently, having to bunny-hop in areas with low ceilings gets annoying

Flight: Pros: Perfect 3D movement, can remain in the air indefinitely. Cons: even with slotting it's noticeably slower than the other powers.


Personally I prefer Super Jump but plenty of people like the other ones.


Additionally you can get temporary powers that provide limited travel powers. Here's the ones I can remember:

Raptor Pack (Jet Pack): Basically unslotted flight with a limited duration. These are available in a few ways. The easiest (if you're between the levels of 5 and 10) is to go to King's Row and talk to the cop there. He'll give you a radio that you can use to do random missions. After you do a few you'll be given a chance to prevent a bank robbery, doing so gives you a raptor pack with 2 hours fuel.

Zero-G Pack: Equivalent to unslotted Super Jump, gotten in the same manner as the Raptor Pack except you have to be level 10-15.

Ninja Run: The only permanent "temporary" travel power. This is given to all people who purchase the Martial Arts Booster pack. It falls between Flight and Super Jump in terms of speed and between Super Speed and Super Jump in terms of vertical mobility.

The Blast/Melee sets with weapons have a 0.05 accuracy boost (except for archery which get 0.155 boost). However in Trick Arrow EA is the only power with an accuracy higher than 1 (it has 1.2) so Trick Arrow does not seem to be getting an accuracy boost (unless we are to assume that for balance reasons it has also been given a match accuracy penalty).

That's not true, it expends 20.8 endurance. This was actually covered above. The way the blaster nukes work is that they drain a normal endurance cost (20.8) however additionally for every target they hit they also apply a debuff to the caster that drains all endurance and sets recovery to 0. A mechanic like this could feasibly be added to every single power in the game however there is an issue with doing so. Specifically endurance reduction enhancements would not affect it. Endurance modification enhancements could feasibly affect it but would increase the drain (which would not be desirable). So it's not a particularly good method for implementing such a system.

As others have mentioned you can't directly transfer inf or items between sides, but it is possible to find players who will do a currency exchange with you. Smurphy runs the biggest one, although he takes a 5%-10% fee, you might get better prices elsewhere but this does require a degree of trust.

Here's a link to Smurphy's thread:
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=218862

EDIT: Curse you darn Goat.

Also Standard Code Rant applies. A lot of things that are easy to describe but a lot harder to do in practice. Additionally some things that are easy to implement when you first write a program are a lot harder to implement later on if you didn't put the basic framework in place initially (the issues with HOs are a good example of that).

Well at least in the case of Traps the rest of the set is awesome so while it would be wonderful to have a useful T9 it's not wenough to kill the set on it's own.

True, but overall I'd say it's not as useful to a team as SB. The mez protection aspects are nice but most people with mez protection powers (ID, CM, Clarity etc.) opt to use them re-actively anyway due to the short duration. The big advantage of ID is the resistance buff and while it is useful on it's own it doesn't significantly change a team's power. It's helpful if you're facing enemies with a lot of energy and smashing attacks but it's probably not a deciding factor in the team's ability to defeat enemies.

Speed Boost on the other hand adds a significant recharge boost to the team which means that potentially game changing powers (like nukes, powerful AoEs or long recharge buffs/debuffs) are up more often which provides a very noticeable benefit to the team overall.

As a player I wouldn't feel bad about not keeping ID on teammates (excluding a few edge cases like fighting GW in the STF or a situation where a player really needs the extra resistance) but by not using SB I really feel like I'm not giving the team my all.

The (potential) large issue with this is that those endurance costs would not be enhanceable so it greatly decreases the usefulness of endurance reduction enhancements and means either endurance costs go up for people who use them or down for people who don't (depending on if the devs bake a certain amount of assumed ER slotting into the costs or not).

In general NPC abilities that are based on player abilities use the same tags. Numina has quite a few abilities taken from mind control so I suspect her attacks do not have a positional tag.

Conversely Mother Mayhem's minions in the Praetorian arcs have psychic attacks taken from Psi Blast and based on testing with my scrapper those do seem to have positional tags.