Techbot Alpha

Originally Posted by Laevateinn

Great stuff!



I'm stealing this.

Originally Posted by Call Me Awesome

I guess I was wrong on how the steadfast worked, I thought the power had to be available.

Temp. Invuln should be an "always on" toggle so the power being on is a moot point; I toggle on all my armors when I log in and never turn them off.

Originally Posted by Call Me Awesome

A few thoughts on your last build. First, the Touch of Death, Obliteration & Mako's sets offer positional defense, while Invuln already has significant typed defenses... you'll do much better using sets that offer typed def. Things like the (if you can find/afford it) Kinetic Combat or the FAR more affordable and available Smashing Haymaker.

4 slots of Reactive Armor is plenty, it'll ED cap your resist (slotting all the resist IO's in the set) with decent endred. 4 also gets you all the bonuses you want. I generally toss the Steadfast unique into a 5th slot in TI since I grab that at level 1 and RPD in the 20's.

Taunt is an EXCELLENT place to get some really nice and cheap set bonuses; the Mocking Beratement set grants 1.8% additional endurance and 2.5% S/L def along with 7.5% recharge. Perfect Zinger offers 10% regen, 5% recharge, 2.5% damage and 3.13% S/L defense.

Since you're already 50 the best slotting for Invincibility is 3 Cytoskeleton Hamidon enhancements.

Once you approach the defense soft cap Unstoppable is a wasted power... I wasn't sure when I first respec'd into my issue 13 soft cap build and retained it. After 20 STF's, 4 of them MoSTF runs and innumerable ITF's and other TF's I haven't used the power a single time. If Lord Recluse buffed by his towers, Romy and his puffballs of doom and most everything else in the game can't make Unstoppable useful I decided to drop it.

Resist Elements is entirely skippable as has already been mentioned; it's minor protection against a rare damage type.

Tough/Weave are vital parts of your defenses however; I highly recommend getting them if you want to maximize your survivability. I fully understand how tight the build is, but dropping Resist Elements, Unstoppable & Build Up will make room in your build.

Originally Posted by CBeet

Villain invasion?

Nyahaha- Oh wait, he's dead..

Interested, but I'll have to have a plotting session on who to bring for it. See you on the battlefield

Edit: I could blow the dust off of my Bane Spider if there's going to be a significant Arachnos presence, though it's also tempting to level up and unleash Doctor Von Goldfish.

Originally Posted by TrueMetal

As a MM you shoudln't have been getting any agro. When fighting multiple heroes your brutes (or dominators, or whoever is in charge of agro control) should be keeping the agro away from the squishies, and you should make sure you're out of the AoE agro range from the heroes.

If squishies start dieing you'll lose buffs and dps and things'll get dicey. If the brutes can't hold of more than 1 hero they should use inspirations untill they can. If that means getting a new full tray after each hero death than so be it.

Of course this isn't as easy as I make it sound, at least not for PuGs where noone really know eachothers skills and play styles.

Originally Posted by Star_Seer

I would say try reading Call me Awesome's guide to the getting softcapped.

Ditch hover, resist elements and unstoppable and pick up char, fireblast and fireball.

Don't get hung up on Psi, smash psi users first.

Originally Posted by M_I_Abrahms

Actually...that person was right all along. I got to participate in an RSF last night, and I got pets summoned, and it turns out, they don't help. At all.

The 'extra damage' you refer to, even after Power Boosted Vengeance turned out to be fractions of a Hit Point. And that was if they even hit, was wasn't often.

Actually, the guy running the SF last night suggested having them up for damage resistance, which would work, had my secondary not been Traps. I had to run in to lay all my useful powers down, which meant the pets ran in and, since they're six or seven levels below the Heroes, were only marginally tougher than the buffing Vet pets.

The weird part for me was that apparently these Heroes are the only AV class enemy that didn't get the scatter protection. Every other AV I've faced with a burn-like power would actually stand his ground while in the patch, and these are even con critters, so they're getting the full effect.

Originally Posted by Zamuel

It would be nice for AVs to have to face similar rules as the players do but with key differences due to their AV status. Arguably a few powers could be excusable as AV-exclusive Ancillary/Patron Power Pools. A lot of the problem is that AVs, while soloable by some, are considered team content and with what our powers are they seemingly NEED to cheat.

Originally Posted by Prof_Backfire

It's possible that the reason most enemy groups are level limited is the same reason groups that go from 1-50 sometimes have problems in progression. The Hellions and Skulls have few, simple powers and work well as a low level group, but how could you expand on that up to level 50? And do we even want to be fighting Hellions in different outfits for the whole game?

Originally Posted by konshu

It's just a consequence of development proceeding through time without revising older work. The Hordelings, Hoarfrost Demons, and Succubi were introduced with CoV. They were never backported to CoH, though it could be done.

Basically, the Circle enemy group blueside does not have Hordelings, etc. in the spawn list. It's about that simple. Once they are added, any canon missions that are republished will contain the new NPCs. If you ask me, I'd estimate it would take a person about a day to fix this - assuming it has to be done manually and cannot be automated in any way.

If you're doing an AE arc, you can make your own Circle enemy group. Include all the mobs you want; exclude all the mobs you don't want. The player's level will indicate what out of the list actually shows up. So you CAN have Hordelings on blueside - in AE - and you CAN avoid the ghosts, you just have to manually enable it.

However we won't ever have them in regular blueside missions till devs essentially "recompile" the older work to include them, which they are disinclined to do.

Originally Posted by Schismatrix

That's actually pretty accurate. As i recall, the Future Freedom Phalanx in the final battle is supposed to be all juiced up on Synthetic Hamidon Enhancements, so there is a good reason in that particular instance for them being so much more powerful than normal.

Originally Posted by Scarlet Shocker

Fair points both. However, I'd argue that dumbing down causes a massive disruption to the game by giving an unrealistic expectation that (for want of a better expression) the "end game" is soloable. My own feeling here is that it's an MMO and sure, you might be able to solo the end of level bad guy but the game is built for a team - maybe just a small team (see my Trio of Doom post for more of my philosophy on this if you care to) but it's not built for a single AT to work from 1-50 without using the cooperation of our colleagues and friends on the servers. Were that true it would not only be an offline game but the distinction that Trow has also complained about in other threads would not be so prominent. We get 5 distinct ATs, plus a choice of epic. The ideal for this game is the Magnificent Seven (plus a spare.)

In this, the Devs have to walk a very difficult line and I believe they mostly do it pretty well - but to go on to your second point, I think they are victims of the "fanology." Fans seriously love the game. I know I do and I'm not alone but it's kind of like cars. When you get a car you love you want to get under the bonnet and tinker and tweak. So the fans work out what the best builds are (and often I'm sure they do things the Devs never expected) and so the game becomes easier and so the Devs sometimes address certain issues mechanically. LRSF might be meant to be the crowning glory, but it's an exclusive SF (you must have a patron before you get it, why?) and yet when you actually get to the end game, with a team of the right composition who are coordinating, it's pretty much a walkover.

That's a problem of computer games down the ages to some extent. The levels go smoothly but the end of level bad guy owns you unless you know the right buttons to mash in sequence. To be fair most missions in CoX tend to be a lot smoother than this and Paragon could do a lot to make the baddies more interesting - but change is universally hated and they have bigger fish to fry.

Is the mission imbalanced? I might sound contradictory here but I hope not. I think it isn't. When you get to Atlas Park, you've bested some of Pargon's finest and some pretty tough Longbow. But that's it. When you get to Atlas you've got the big guys. The guys every other hero wants to aspire to, waiting to face you, in a great comicbook showdown. That's the equivalent of going up against the Avengers or the JLA or the X-Men with a bit of a boost from the Fantastic Four. It really should be tough I believe and sure, it should be possible to fail.

If it wasn't and every two-bit wannabe with a grudge and the power to mentally control plankton would have walked over Paragon ages ago. If you fail, it's because you've got a way to go - not because they are too good.

Originally Posted by Stormfront_NA

It seems KB always goes against the player, when I get KB from a mob, it always knocks me towards the mob... Ha ha ha

Stormy

Originally Posted by American_Angel

This idea should be fairly easy for the Devs to implement.