Arcanaville

What's your rationale for both positions?

Of specific relevance here, damage mitigation stacks, attacks don't.

That's always been my original impression, more or less: supplemental powers to supplement powerset combinations that were light on some things or wanted more of other things.

The problem with fighting is that it uses offense to prereq defense, and that first hurts things with no defense but tons of offense - blasters in particular - and then starts hurting everyone as the devs rebalanced the game to ensure everyone had reasonably high offense.

Power pool melee attacks were always iffy except as a conceptual thing, because this game makes a strong distinction between melee archetypes and ranged ones in what melee is allowed to have (defense) but like most games (and CO fell into this problem face-first) it doesn't make a strong enough distinction between melee and ranged attacks individually: a melee attack in CoH is a ranged attack whose range is permanently debuffed. There's no benefit for a ranged archetype with tons of ranged attacks to get a melee attack unless the melee attack is stellar in some way (i.e. Air Superiority) because there's no minimum usable range for ranged attacks.

Further up I described my rationale here. When a player takes aid self, there's a very high probability they don't actually own any heals. There's a meta game situation here where the game decides Aid Self is valuable enough to require a prerequisite, but at least both prereqs are things the player is unlikely to have. Whether they *intend* to use them or not, if nothing else they are interesting extras.

That's vastly different than if the game were to say, if you want a power, it requires a prereq cost, you have to take two more copies of brawl. Obviously, that's a prereq cost that is not even trying to be an interesting meta-game choice. Boxing and Kick are not quite that bad, but they are dangerously close to that and far away from the Aid Self/Aid Other situation for damage dealers.

Every power choice doesn't have to be optimal, but they should at least be interesting. Redundant attacks aren't interesting in my opinion. I'm fine with maintaining prereqs, and I'm also fine with them being things res/def minmaxers will gain only limited benefit from. But they should try to offer some reasonably benefit to the non-min/maxers, and they at least should do something interesting, even if completely non-optimal, for the min/maxers that take it only as a gateway to tough/weave.

In fact, min/maxers don't really have a problem with the prereq: they've been taking tough/weave for years without blinking an eye. Its the non-min/maxers that build for concept for which the prereq imposes a much higher opportunity cost. Lowering that cost without eliminating it by adding utility to those prereqs adds almost nothing a min/maxer really needs while benefiting the non-min/maxers enough to make Fighting less of a chore to add to their builds. You just have to straddle an admittedly very fine line when it comes to adjusting the prereq value.

I can't ascribe motivation in this case, but I can say I've been uncomfortable about the prereq in fighting being basically worthless for most offensive-oriented archetypes for a very long time.

We'll see. But even if that is true, its still a problem to avoid to have to decide which of the two attacks in Fighting will require a prerequisite if the order of the powers is shuffled. Assuming the devs want to change the prequisite metagame requirement in the first place. If they did you could simply eliminate the prerequisite of tough without altering order.

Anecdote: on beta I'm now using Nova against single bosses. It works because I'm stealthed: I don't have to eat the cast time of Nova with the boss punching me in the head, and I can then chain BU/Aim/Nova/Fastsnipe. That's a lot damage in a very short window: with Defiance buffs it can two-shot some bosses.

There is a point when high AoE becomes high single target damage. And apparently its when your AoEs are hitting for scale 4 damage.

Health also buffs regeneration by +40%. I don't think the two effects are directly comparable. You're implying here that a tier 1 power should not offer any more mez resistance than any other tier 2 power but that's not generally true.

Consider Weave, a tier 4 power, offers 48% resistance to immobilize. Combat Jumping, a tier 1 power, offers 8 points of actual protection against immobilize. CJ is vastly superior to Weave when it comes to immobilize even though its a tier 1 power. But that's because neither is a mez protection power specifically: both are defense powers offering additional mez protection, and that protection is bundled with different things. In particular the lower immobilize resistance of Weave is bundled with a lot more defense than CJ's immobilize protection.

In general, you want higher tier powers to have better value than lower tier powers, but that's taken as a whole, and not usually comparing individual effects separately.

You are wise, grasshopper.

Not any more.

When I explicitly tested this on the beta servers, both Weave and Cross required two of the three earlier powers to be selected before they became available. If those three powers are boxing, kick, and tough, in any order, you'll be forced to take either boxing or kick to unlock weave. Which is exactly, precisely the situation we have now on live.

Your suggestion presumes a simplification of the problem that doesn't concern itself over things like whether players who want kick are trivial sacrifices:
Mine doesn't. It also doesn't actually address the problem with weave at all, because players would be literally in the same position as now, the only difference would be they would be taking tough earlier. They would still be taking one of boxing or kick and then tough before unlocking weave.


I would prefer the complexity of my suggestion as it hurts no one, helps everyone, and the complexity you point to is something no player would care about, because no player would have to deal with. Only the developers would, because its design complexity but not usage complexity.

I would rather crack an egg with a time machine, if the alternative is taking away someone else's eggs for no reason.

You'll forgive me if I choose to disprove this statement not through logic, but by pursuing a solution that addresses all of the issues mentioned simultaneously with a time machine.

And I said that doesn't address the complete situation, in the rest of my post. What your suggestion does is:

1. Eliminate the prerequisite for Tough, on the assumption the devs would allow that.

2. Create a prerequisite for Kick that didn't exist before for players that wanted Kick.

3. Do nothing for people who want to take Weave, and end up taking a power with limited incremental utility to their builds, since they will still have to take either boxing or kick to satisfy the two power prereq for Weave.

They can be redeemed if they commit galactic mass murder. But some crimes are unforgivable, like lying about moving a rock. There's no second chances for that crime.

Its extremely easy if the league follows directions and does it slowly and carefully. Basically, the strategy is to stage three groups of players targeting each door, have each group bring their door down to a low level, about 5% or so, and then on a signal finish off all three doors. Times three bunkers. There aren't really any special gotchas or catches beyond that, although making sure everyone does exactly that three times in a row *is* the special gotcha.

Technically, a couple of catches are that interface can leave DoTs running so you have to be careful residual DoT doesn't accidentally kill a door early, and sometimes people forget to call off pets and they finish off a door so usually Bunker Buster teams don't use any uncontrolled pets. In fact, its probably safest if each team brings the doors down to about 30%, and then everyone stops and designates one shooter from each team to bring the doors down to 5%. That way you don't have a fast team accidentally overshooting their door; one player can easily control the damage on a door down to a safe level.

Someone asking for a tank thinks they need more aggro control and redirected damage mitigation. They may actually be correct given team composition and player experience, or they may just be incorrect due to their own inexperience. That shouldn't be judged too harshly.

However, someone demanding another player build or play a particular way can be judged more harshly because an inexperienced player should not do that, and an experienced player should know better.

AR's snipe should be the fastest fast-snipe at 0.67s of cast time: its total rooted time should be less than one second. If its taking as long as your pic suggests, post in the bugs thread. That's definitely not intended.

My concern here is that we'd be taking bonuses intended to make boxing and kick less of an opportunity cost for people who don't need boxing and kick, and spreading them out between boxing and kick. That seems problematic to me because with just normal stacking it would be difficult to simultaneously make full triple stacking reasonable without making single stacking too weak (which is why I suggested unlocking the maximum benefit with either attack rather than splitting it up between the two).

And it would need something for SR that cannot benefit much from mez resistance (even against the couple it lacks protection to) and cannot make use of DDR buffs at all.

And the issue of players not wanting their characters to die is best served by making them immortal.

However, that's not the issue here. The issue here is:

1. Some people like and want to take Boxing
2. Some people like and want to take Kick
3. Some people do not need Boxing or Kick, but do want Tough and Weave
4. The people who do not need boxing or kick and take it as a prerequisite are often taking a power that offers no actual benefit or additional capability to the build, even if its a lesser capability.
5. The devs are unlikely to remove the prerequisite requirement for Tough and Weave

So I perceive two solutions that actually resolve all of those problems simultaneously and within the constraints of what the devs are likely to do:

1. Offer an alternate prerequisite that's more useful
2. Make Boxing and Kick more useful to people who do not need more melee attacks

The problem with option 1 is what I specified earlier: you have to be very careful to make an option that is attractive without making it so attractive you compel people to take the fighting pool. But it has to be attractive enough to not be a waste of the power slot. An additional problem is the devs don't want to set the precedent of making a power pool with six power choices, which then would compel them eventually to normalize all the others with six - just like adding a fifth to the travel pools compelled them to add a fifth to the others even though the fifth power in the travel pools was obviously done for reasons totally inapplicable to the other pools.

The problem with option 2 is you can't make a melee attack more attractive to people who don't need melee attacks unless you make them so good of a melee attack they start directly overshadowing primary and secondary attacks which is also something the devs do not want to do. The way to side-step that problem is to give the melee attacks benefits other than melee offense. And my option 1 solution becomes an option 2 solution by making the alternate prerequisite power something unlocked by the melee attacks.


If you have a less complex suggestion that satisfies these requirements:

1. Doesn't take Kick away from players
2. Doesn't take Boxing away from players
3. Maintains the prerequisite requirements for Tough and Weave (and Cross)
4. Doesn't make the Fighting pool overly compelling to players that were not already attracted to the pool
5. Provides a benefit generally attractive to a wide range of archetypes and powerset combinations

I would be happy to hear it. But "just let people take whatever they want and skip boxing and kick" doesn't.

Its still only five actual power choices.

That was an extremely jarring aspect of the morality system. It didn't actually allow you to choose *morality*. It let you choose actions, and the game imposed morality upon you, often in a manner completely inconsistent with what your intent was.

This was especially bad on the Jedi side. Ironically the dark side was somewhat simpler: it was usually stab his back or stab her back or stupidly offer your back to someone. But whoever wrote the Jedi side has some very interesting views on what is "good."

Only took me eight.

Not everyone enjoys or has the same mind for juggling numbers around, but for the most part this is a practice thing. You start to get comfortable knowing what kinds of IOs are out there, what certain favorite invention sets do, and you start building up a bag of tricks.

Some rules of thumb:

1. If you're building for recharge, you should remember that most purple sets have +10% recharge in their fifth spot. So try to use purple sets whenever you can, as they provide a large recharge buff.

2. When you can fit them it, take defensive powers and put the LotG proc into them. That's +7.5% recharge each. Almost all build can squeeze a couple of those in there.

3. Go to Paragonwiki's enhancement set page: http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Inventio...hancement_Sets Its one of the best ways to "browse" the invention system. Start looking for those recharge buffs, particularly the higher ones. Scroll down until you get to holds, and note "Basilisk's Gaze." See the red +Recharge bonus. That's one favorite for recharge buffs because its high (the colors are inspired from the conning colors in the game: red is higher, purple is even higher) and because it arrives with only four slots.

4. If you are building for defense, my advice is build incrementally. Start with your build with all of your powers, and your defenses slotted with SOs in Mids. That's your base. Look at your totals. Start thinking about what you want to try to improve. Start replacing slots and enhancements with sets that have bonuses in that area. See how the numbers change. Start getting a feel for how high you can push the numbers, and how fast your slots disappear when you do. That will show you what the tradeoffs are. Then its just a matter of playing around with it to see what works better than worse.

5. Just like above, browse Paragonwiki, and see where the bonuses are.


Also, there are people who can min/max builds significantly better than I do in many respects. You never stop learning ways to squeeze more out of the system. The important thing is to have fun with your builds while you're learning.

Synapse said the same thing: a sixth power would be problematic. On the other hand, I don't want to take either Boxing or Kick away from players who want those powers.

So I suggested he just make Tempered Focus automatically unlock for anyone who took Boxing *or* Kick.


There are no obstacles, only opportunities.