Zem
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Posts
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There's plenty skippable in AR.
1. Absolutely skip M30. It's a terrible AoE, really. Twice the recharge time as Buckshot... same damage. Nearly twice the cast time. 50% more endurance cost. Almost three times the unwanted spawn-scattering knockback magnitude. With the recharge you're planning, Buckshot will be on a pretty short timer. M30 will do more harm than good.
2. Ignite is debatable. It's best against AVs and GMs that won't run from it. Stationary objects with tons of hit points, etc. Paired with Black Scorpion's Web Envelope it can be efficient against lower-rank enemies that are tightly packed. Otherwise it's not that great.
3. Sniper Rifle. I think with the lack of a big ST hitter in the set, people are tempted to take this, but snipes really aren't that great for ST dps and slotted for damage, they aren't the best things to use for pulling either. Even if you did soft cap and felt like that would let you get Snipes off in melee, it's still not a great idea. Again, with your recharge, just spam Burst+Slug for better ST dps. Burst also allows slotting of Achilles' Heel -res if you're into that. You might take Sniper Rifle as a set mule, but this is another skippable.
As for soft-capping, I wouldn't knock myself out getting there. Get your 30ish ranged def and call it done. -
Quote:I wouldn't hold my breath on end reductions. Far as I can tell, all of these powers are balanced by damage, recharge, and end cost. You can compare them to similar powers in other sets (cone AoEs, T-AoEs, etc.) The real problem with flamethrower from an end perspective is as Neo pointed out. It becomes an endurance waste when, due to the slow DoT, the power can't deliver ALL of its damage before the targets are killed by either you or your teammates. Reducing Flamethrowers DoT duration and more front-loading its damage fixes that. It still costs a lot but that's because it does a lot.Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha
Seriously, please god reduce the endurance costs. Flamethrower, for something that animates that slow with it's strange DoT activation, to have such a horrible endurance cost...eesh.
M30 and Buckshot end reduction would be nice, too. -
The only things AR really needs are:
1. Flamethrower's duration reduced. Shorter duration. Heavier DoT ticks. See also: Fire Breath.
2. Full Auto's damage and target cap brought on par with Rain of Arrows. If I can manage to line up 16 enemies, I should HIT 16 enemies. And don't bother telling me that cones usually only cap out at 10 targets. Cones also usually hit harder than TAoEs. So one or the other, devs. Right now it is inferior in every way except endurance cost, and I will gladly pay 5 more end to equal RoA's damage and target cap. Even then, on a corr RoA will still have the Scourge advantage, but there's not much to be done about that.
That's all that needs to be done. With the above changes AR would be solidly better than Arch in AoE, so there is no need to make it better in single target. Want that? Pick a different set. Variety is the spice of life. -
I've thought about getting rid of Sniper Rifle on my AR/Dark. I do occasionally use it, but honestly never in a situation where I couldn't just move closer and hit slug + burst or Nem Staff. With Shadow Fall and a Stealth IO, I can pull AVs more reliably single by getting up close then super-leaping away while firing Slug or something just before I am out of range. Heck, I use the same tactic to single-pull Honoree with my Stalker's patron Dark Blast.
So really, it's just holding a Snipe IO set for me I guess. I don't use it all that much. -
Go with the Ice/Rad. Focus on the single-target blasts and Freeze Ray early on. Delay the AoE. Slot RI with tohit debuff, NOT endurance reduction. Use it right after Mass Hypno and go to work with single target stuff, helping out on the controlling with Freeze Ray. I think you'll find that fits better. If you can get your gf to Confuse LTs and Levitate bosses (or Mesmerize them if you want to kill them after the minions) then you'll be golden.
If you want to stick with AR, go with a /Dark. I think it's even safer than /Rad in the long run and between the two of you (three if you count Fluffy), there will be some sick controlling going on. Not that /Rad isn't a great idea too. I think perma-AM isn't too hard to reach if you have Hasten and some IOs. While that's no speed-boost or fulcrum shift (nothing else is) it's still going to help a bit with damage, end recovery, and recharge for both of you. -
Ignite does about 6.7 scalar damage over 10 seconds. Looking at that in terms of just the cast time in an attack chain, it's VERY good damage against a single target and fairly insane vs. multiples if you can manage it. Of course, those are very big "ifs" and require immobile foes so in the long run I don't think it's nearly as useful as the single-target heavy hitters that other sets have.
I'd happily give up M30 and Ignite for Aim and a Blazing Arrow clone. And while I'm making wishes, they can make Flamethrower a shorter, heavier DoT like Breath of Fire.
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Quote:You may want to factor in the ability, post i16, to crank up the spawn sizes while soloing. Anyone wanting to do this will want to take a hard look at an AoE primary like Fire vs. a more single-target focused primary like Ice.Originally Posted by BlueBattler
What would you say are the strongest soloing Corruptors?
For me, the benchline for a toon that I consider to be a good soloer is if they can solo at Level 4 difficulty. -
Personally I prefer Corruptors, believing that their secondaries (as with Controllers) are "good enough" for support work so why not have more damage? But until Going Rogue hits, this is still more of a redside vs. blueside decision I think.
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Quote:Mid's is out of date when it comes to AR's cast times. Use City of Data. Flamethrower is 2.33s. Buckshot is 0.9s.Originally Posted by Hart
It sure feels like it, but I suppose 1/2 a second is hard to judge from experience. My experience is that it's closer to Flamethrower than Buckshot, and Flamethrower is a 3.5s cast compared to Buckshot's 1.67. Mid's says Mako's immobilize is even longer, but if it doesn't cause redraw..
The cast time of Web Envelope is 2s regardless of whether the mace is drawn already or not. Here's a chat log I just took:This was with no weapon drawn. I queued Burst while the web envelope animation was going on. You can see the activation of Web Envelope at 22:59:17 followed by the activation of Burst at 22:59:19, two seconds later. Re-draw time for the mace is built in to the cast time as it used to be for many weapon-based primaries before they were re-worked. If already drawn, it will just have a slightly longer attack animation to make up the same two seconds total. Oddly enough, I was getting no redraw time on Burst after firing the Web Envelope. The rifle just appeared in my hands. Slug, however, works as you'd expect, taking an extra 1s from activation to damage in the following chat log.Code:08-29-2009 22:59:17 You activated the Web Envelope power. 08-29-2009 22:59:17 HIT Immunes Engineer! Your Web Envelope power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 65.01. 08-29-2009 22:59:18 Readying Burst. 08-29-2009 22:59:19 Legionarii has defeated Legionarii 08-29-2009 22:59:19 You activated the Burst power. 08-29-2009 22:59:19 HIT Immunes Engineer! Your Burst power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 63.19. 08-29-2009 22:59:19 You rattle Immunes Engineer with your Burst for 31.27 points of lethal damage and decrease their defense! 08-29-2009 22:59:19 You rattle Immunes Engineer with your Burst for 31.27 points of lethal damage and decrease their defense! 08-29-2009 22:59:19 You rattle Immunes Engineer with your Burst for 31.27 points of lethal damage and decrease their defense! 08-29-2009 22:59:19 You rattle Immunes Engineer with your Burst for 31.27 points of lethal damage and decrease their defense!
Code:08-29-2009 22:59:56 You activated the Web Envelope power. 08-29-2009 22:59:56 HIT Legionarii! Your Web Envelope power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 37.85. 08-29-2009 22:59:56 HIT Immunes Engineer! Your Web Envelope power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 29.00. 08-29-2009 22:59:56 Legionarii MISSES! Pilum power had a 5.00% chance to hit, but rolled a 12.57. 08-29-2009 22:59:57 Readying Slug. 08-29-2009 22:59:58 You activated the Slug power. 08-29-2009 22:59:58 HIT Immunes Engineer! Your Slug power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 73.25. 08-29-2009 22:59:59 You blast Immunes Engineer with your Slug for 190.33 points of lethal damage!
Also has some energy, though not as much as the S/L. As with any defense power, it matters when you stack it on top of other bonuses. I originally had not planned for Scorpion Shield. I was going for ranged defense, and I did end up with about 32% total, but I also ended up with a fair amount of energy. With scorp shield up, I actually have more total energy defense than anything else and with a few debuffs, I am dodging S/L melee attacks like an SR scrapper. With all the long rooting animations in AR, it's inevitable I'll take melee attacks and this makes it a whole lot less painful.Quote:The defense shield is nice for avoiding AoEs and the occasional random mez, but it's smashing/lethal defense, not positional defense. -
It's not really double redraw. I don't think redraw times have been removed from the cast times of epics the way they have for other powersets, so BS's Web Envelope is 2s to cast whether the mace is out already or not. Mako's School of Sharks is about the same cast time.
You do incur the redraw penalty for pulling out your rifle again afterwards though with BS. I still prefer his set on corruptors because of the defense shield. Given most corruptors lack any personal mez protection, avoiding hits is the next best thing. -
Ignite really needs a hold or immob due to the AI fear it generates. Even a good slow won't keep them in it the whole duration as it has a very small effect radius.
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It was a leading question, I admit. The reason you can't take over the world is because it *changes* the world. Change isn't really something MMOs do well. Heroes can save the world a million times and afterwards it's pretty much as it was before, ready to be saved another million times. Villains can't do the opposite in any satisfying way because the world isn't THEIRS when it's all over, despite what any mission ending text might tell them. It's again pretty much the same as it was before you started. You're still one villain thug amongst many. Ruler of nothing you survey. Meh.
What I think would help is more story arcs that present themselves as "opportunities", rather than someone who thinks they are your better bossing you around. That's one reason I think the newspapers and mayhems (yes, even though they are glorified bank robberies) feel more like I am working for myself rather than following orders. -
Quote:What happens when you win the world domination story arc? What's next? A bank robbery?Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison
I'm with you on this. Where's the world domination story arc?
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Television Mastery
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I think it's time for a Dr. Aeon patron pool.
1. Monologue - 30' radius Sleep. -percep 50%(self)
2. Emergency Base Teleport - Instantly arrive at your secret underground lair (you have one, right?), automatically failing the mission you were on. Best used with keybind that also delivers a pithy one-liner explaining how your enemies days are numbered, you'll be back, yadda yadda.
3. Temporal Anomaly - Call upon your future self for aid! Summon an aged clone of your character to fight at your side. (Note: Due to temporal scaling effects, your clone will not fight at the mega-powerful incarnate level you are, of course, destined to achieve in the future when you take over the world. Sorry).
4. Targetting Drone - Hey, we have to put an FA clone in all of these sets, right?
5. Orbital Strike - Call upon your space-based "laser" platform to strike down your enemies... and anyone else who gets too close. Keep your distance! -
I've only tried Dark but to me it seems they fit together perfectly. Everything in Dark works at range, which is where you need to be to line up AR's cone AoEs. You don't need to duck into melee range for a heal or buff as you would with Kin. I've heard people like Storm as well, collecting spawns into a corner and then AoE slaughtering them. Rad, I am sure, works pretty well too so long as you aren't using Choking Cloud.
Only actual downside I've seen so far with my AR/Dark on teams is if there's a Kin. Very difficult to get into Fulcrum Shift range since I am usually not in the thick of things. I can see why AR/Kin's love that, but I don't know if I could deal with the reduced survivability. My AR/Dark with +def from IOs is *very* tough. Great at avoiding mezzes and indeed entire alpha-strikes after leading off with Fearsome Stare (and if necessary stacking on Darkest Night and summoning Fluffy into the middle of the spawn... if it really looks that bad). Dodges as well as my ninja stalker and heals faster. Fantastic vs. ambush lines if Tar Patch is up. Drop it, fade back, let them pile up into it then step in with Stare. Slaughter. -
Quote:It's sounds great when you use an extreme example like that, but it's not like there are many players at the one-hour-per-month average. You're talking the very end of the bell-curve there. Sure, you can think of their vote as cancelling out some 24/7 psycho-gamer on the other end, but... so what? The vast majority of opinions in the per-player metric would be coming from the fat middle of the bell-curve where people are playing a decent average number of hours per day. I think that will give you a good enough idea what is hot and what's not without telling the one-hour-per-day players that their opinions matter half as much as the two-hour-per-day players but, oh, thanks for the fifteen bucks anyway!Originally Posted by TopDoc
I think "one hour one vote" is a more useful statistic. Does it really matter what someone thinks if they only play the game for an hour a month? Kind of, since their $15/month is just as green as someone who plays a couple hours a day. But the person who plays a lot more probably has higher level characters, and more of them. They probably have a better handle on what the different ATs are like, and which ones they prefer. I'd much rather get their opinion.
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No more five-letter minimum I guess. Somewhere there is a whole pile of used underscores stacking up.
Thanks, Niv! -
Quote:If you have enough defense, you may want to save the placate for another AS rather than blowing it on a normal attack. Really depends on the attack you're using to follow Placate. You have a random chance to critical anyway which is even better on a team. Might be better off just scrapping until there's an AS opportunity and THEN placate+AS. This is harder for a resistance or regen stalker to pull off in a large combat where they might have aggro other than the placate victim and they might prefer to just use a normal attack after Placate.Originally Posted by Chaos Creator
BU-> AS-> placate something->Scrap for awhile.
In the early levels, AS might also be used just by itself, unhidden if in a situation where you're not likely to be interrupted. It has a pretty decent base damage number and the same chance to cause a random (although normal 1.0x) crit. It's likely not the best choice once you have a full attack chain. -
Quote:No. I would say the Blaster is 24 times more popular in that example assuming the one hour of Blaster is all those people played that day. In other words, I think you should look at each player as having one "vote" in the popularity contest. But it's a vote they can subdivide by AT. I, for instance, could say I vote 80% corruptor and 20% stalker in the popularity contest. Or rather, if they looked at how much time I spend on each AT on average per day they might come to a conclusion like that.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Now replace the single player playing 24 blasters with 24 players playing one blaster each for an hour. Statistically speaking, the two situations are identical (in terms of the statistics we can collect). My hypothetical question is: are these situations statistically identical in actual fact: do they represent the same fundamental information about the popularity of the two archetypes?
This is the metric I'd care most about if I was making money off this game. I get the same amount of money from the person who plays 2 hours a day as from the one that plays 12 so I should care at least as much which ATs he's playing. I might even care more if I had data showing that casual gamers were less likely to burn-out and quit sooner.
I could care less about XP earning rate or any other performance metric because those numbers don't matter unless they matter to the players. And if they matter (enough) to the players, they will show up in the popularity metric. -
I'm pretty bad about this myself in just about any game I play. The worst thing I can be given in a D&D-based game is a Bag of Holding because that sucker will end up containing an endless variety of scrolls, potions, wands, and miscellaneous magic items I may one day find a use for "when I really need them."
I have no problem using infinite-use items or (in this game) temp powers. It's the consumable ones that must be hoarded and never used.
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It's not really a "double" Assassin Strike. When you get a random scaling crit outside of Hide with Assassin Strike you still see the words "Assassin Strike" float up but it's really a 1.0x normal crit rather than AS's special 1.8x crit from Hide.
So when this sync bug happens to allow a double crit and you're using AS, you see two "Assassin Strike" reports in the heads-up, but in combat log you'll see it's one 1.8x crit and one 1.0x crit.
Not that that isn't nice.
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Quote:To what end? What do you want to balance? Popularity or XP earning? I think Blasters are fairly convincing evidence that the two aren't exactly very well correlated. They'd score pretty low in your metric given how much more likely they are to die and earn debt than pretty much every other AT. Isn't it a metric like this that drove the Defiance changes at a time when Blasters were revealed to also be the most popular AT in the history of the game up to that point?Originally Posted by Arcanaville
If I had access to the devs' datamining tools, the statistic I think I would most want to pull (related to this matter) would be total XP earned per archetype per day per level, normalized as a percentage of the total for that level. In other words, how much bars of XP is each archetype earning per day, summarized per combat level. Analysis of that information would probably reveal a lot about cumulative patterns of play.
I suppose it would be interesting to see what, if any, change in popularity was wrought by that exercise and if indeed the metric used to drive it has improved at all for them. -
Quote:Yeah, hang on. Let me wipe the tear out of my eye. No, it's not sympathy. I am just laughing THAT hard. I'd love to have a Scrapper fan explain to me how having better criticals AND a higher damage scalar AND better survivability is their "special thing".Originally Posted by Wavicle
Actually, I talked to quite a few scrapper players who were irritated that Stalkers were getting better at crits which was "supposed" to be scrappers "special thing".
When they buffed Stalkers they had to improve something and I for one am glad it wasn't hiding or running away. I'm sure there are plenty of Scrapper-heads out there who think that's OUR "special thing."
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Quote:What if 'x' is beer?Originally Posted by Smurphy
I leave any team where a player says "we need x".