Arcanaville

Hmm, by my calculations, you should have (with even SOs) 84% from elude, 20% from having the three toggles, for 104% defense to everything. Then weave, combat jumping, and hasten give you an additional 9% (about), 5%, and 5% respectively to melee and ranged, 123% total.

Its actually an interesting build, toggles instead of passives in a perma-elude build. The passive equivalent burns 12 slots (4 extra in each passive to get to 20%) to your 3. But then you need more endred in FA, and you slot your attacks with endred (I don't). You burn two additional power slots (weave/CJ). I like it actually: it gets to about the same place by a radically different route, which is neat.

The one thing about this build that must make it a bit hectic is that you have three powers cycling - hasten, PB, and elude, and without quickness, PB and elude are a bit tight, you have to be really on the ball to cycle those properly. So much so that I'm wondering if you actually have PB on auto, and you click hasten, since it has the better overlap.

Plus, retoggling the 1-5 toggles that go down every other elude crash must keep you busy.

Something to consider: weave is giving 9% to melee/ranged, and CJ is giving 5% to melee/ranged. 14% total. If you dropped both and took dodge and agile, dodge would be 12% defense to melee, and agile would be 12% defense to ranged, 2% less than weave/CJ, but with zero end cost and they can't be detoggled. It seems a good trade, unless my weave/CJ numbers are out of date.

If you look at your nova slotting, I'm guessing you slotted 2rech/4dmg based on someone's recommendation. That recommendation is based on the fact that BU+Aim+4dmg = the blaster cap. BU+Aim is a heck of a lot of accuracy, so slotting more accuracy is not especially helpful against most targets a blaster is going to nova. Thus, 2rech makes the most sense to get faster nova cycles.

Same holds true for any other power - 4dmg + BU + Aim = the cap. However, if you always combo BU+Aim, you can only have it up every 30 seconds or so, there will be lots of times when you are attacking without BU/Aim coverage, so only slot powers 4dmg that you can always time with BU+Aim, not things like power blast. If you mainly use TF as an opener, BU+Aim+TF will be damage capped. But TF will come back in about 10 seconds or so, and if you need to reapply it, you'll have no way to boost its accuracy without popping insights. TF at the damage cap doesn't normally need to be reapplied against a single target (you've almost halved a boss' health), so this might not be a major problem. Unless you go after more than one boss.

I am kinda curious about some of your slotting. I've never seen a 6-slot hover with one defense slot. Is that mainly historical (originally 1 slot of defense and then the rest were added in as speed) or was there some other reason for that specific slotting.

Also, I'm wondering, since you have power burst heavily slotted, if you superspeed joust. I ask because I've found the end cost of SS and stealth to be too high to sustain constant attacking, so both of mine were slotted for endred (SS is plenty fast and a single slot of extra stealth defense didn't seem worth it).

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Managing your toggles isnt a big deal to me. It is of course the best to switch em on for certain mobs. But yea I can run all those toggles (FF, FS, Evasion, Weave, Tough, Focused Acc, Combat Jumping) constant. That is with two end reducs in FF, FS, EVASION. One end reduc in weave, two end reducs in tough, Three end reduc in Focused ACC, and an end reduc in Combat jumping. Without conserve power though, I might have to rest maybe once in a mish, depending on the size. Plus this build gives me the option to go perma elude with all toggles for a total defense of 124% melee and ranged with 114% AOE. That is a little tougher managing the toggles though

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Hmm, if you are only getting 124%, that sounds like a build with no quickness or hasten, so elude is maybe 5-slotted rech 1-slotted defense. 72% + 5-slot passives 20% + 3-slot toggles 32% would be 124%. Drop one slot on lucky and 2 in evasion and that would be 114% defense. Or it could be some other slotting configuration that brings weave and combat jumping into it.

Regular perma-elude with hasten and quickness gives 84% + 22% +5% = 111% defense. If I need more melee, I flip on FF which is 5+1 slotted, for 151% melee, 111% ranged/AoE. I don't have any way to get better ranged defense; it does get tempting to respec in FS, no slots and endreduce, to get 131% ranged. Without elude, I'm stuck at 62% melee, 22% ranged, and I think 18 or 20% AoE. Its good enough for unyielding missions, but dicey for invincible.

Even with all those end reducers slotted, those toggles burn a ton of end. Do you slot end reduce in your attacks also, or do you pace your attacks (outside of elude or pre-elude)?

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Done more playing around.

At 42 nobody objects to ST now, on the other hand you don't really notice it either. ST casts a single target fear effect six times during it's duration. The fear seems to last about 20 seconds (not sure, hard to test this) and does the standard cowering in fear bit now. I really only noticed ST doing anything when I was soloing after I re-slotted for more recharge. Solo, versus 8+ enemies of +0 to +2 levels, with three ST out at once, I noticed an increase in control to the extent that I could stop casting Blind and just chain cast all three pets.

That's really what it took before I noticed ST having an effect on the fight. Fights in groups don't last long enough to get enough STs and ST fears going to make a difference. I didn't get to try ST on any AVs or monsters so I don't know how it stacks up on them. It might be useful in the reactor on respec trials, mabey.

Anyone else testing it? Especially in the 27 to 31 level range? Last note: I don't care how it works in PvP, it needs to be good in PvE first.

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Tested it at 38 in an invincible mission with a lvl 40 Envoy of Shadow. The ST only seemed to cause Air Thorns to take off and fly into the air and attack me when it seemed to miss on the cower (and it doesn't AoE cower +2s a whole lot). It pretty much owned anything it zapped with the targetted fear. A single ST can keep an entire area cowered - I got it to grab three +3 behemoth Lts and a couple minions.

Against +2 Envoy, it is capable of cowering him, but with only one slot I can't get enough of them out there to stack fast enough to keep him permanently cowered. But a single ST can get him. I did not test accuracy much, I had RI on him the whole time. It was very useful at the end to cower him and prevent him from using healing flames, although its also possible I spammed LR on him so much it hadn't recharged yet.

The main problem with spamming ST is that keeping PA, phantasms and ST out while running EF and RI leaves precious little endurance left to spam lingering radiation, the rad set new secret weapon.

I'm guessing from testing it that ST would now become a highly useful thing for places like respec or the capes mission.

It is definitely a very useful little pet now. Conceptually, I don't agree with its aggro shifting to me, but in that respect, its much like the PA when they expire, and certainly easy to work around. The PA grab aggro back, so prior to phantasms PA+ST would be a useful combination (and would allow an ill controller to slot PA for damage, you could alternate between PA and ST and not worry about needing perma-PA for aggro control). Scatter is minimal, and less than phantasm knockback so effectively zero. I wish it cost a little less end to cast, but overall its much improved, and I like the fact that it works differently from other fear powers - I like the uniqueness of it.

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I want to say your comments have been great. I encourage you to post your builds here if you wish, to show the diversity of build styles. I wanted to show every newcomer to the game and people who have not played SR the advantages of it being more "free" to variant builds than other power sets. My personal build experience is targeted specifically to proving that you don't have to slot toggles and then Respec out of them later, not for max dps, not for AV efficiency, nor anything else (unless you want to count my personal enjoyment).

Your comments have shown already how the build could be more defensive, more efficient, or both, which helps to emphasize how different the build paths can be and still be successful. I definitely went the way of offense over defense.

I still want to hear from all CAK-ers (those who specialize their build to include the Disorient effects of Crippling Axe Kick), and I would still like to see a build that has somehow managed to fully slot five attacks, the toggles, passives, and Elude. I'm guessing that build would not have Hasten in it, which would reduce the attack rate, though.

And hey, I read guides were rated often, who do I have to Thunder Kick around here to get at least a couple stars? Maybe if I kick myself I'll start seeing stars...

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Based on your posted build, I think its fair to say that it isn't so much offense over defense but travel-power utility over defense. My scrapper went superjump, which gave me vertical movement and pretty good overall travel speed, replacing superspeed and teleport in your build. In place of CAK I had jump kick, which does great knockdown against tough targets like freak tanks (it was just hilarious cycling JK as fast as it recharged on the Kronos Titan).

Separate from that, my passives came in earlier by displacing recall friend and bumping everything else down a bit. Where your build has more offense is in slotting - the 5 slots in FF I eventually added were taken from MA attacks, but that's about an average loss of one slot per attack on the way up prior to 6 slotting, not too bad (actually it was deep in the 40s when everything was 6 slotted, it was 5/6 for a good stretch in the late 30s).

Tsoo sorcerers are a pain for everyone, but you can avoid them - ink men are what SRs can fight in Talos that most people try to avoid. If you have PB and perma-hasten, its very hard to be detoggled even with 4 inkmen, and even if you are detoggled, its usually for a split second only (other scrappers can actually be held for several seconds if their mez protection breaks, ours can't be shut off so we break mez fast if we get mezzed at all).

To fully 6-slot 5 attacks, passives, toggles, and elude is 60 slots, and unfortunately, you only get 67. Thats seven slots left for hasten, stamina, health, Focus Chi, and epic powers (aka conserve power), assuming you don't slot travel. Its probably a very rare slotting configuration. I have heard of 4 attack plus passive + toggle builds, but they generally aren't perma-elude builds, and do not need to heavily slot either elude or hasten. They do generally need stamina.

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Dark_One, let me describe my state of mind with my character, and it might tell you why my build is the way it is. Smersh is wrong in the sense that this cannot be a pre-Respec build, one of my main points in posting a build guide was to show the versatility of the SR set.

By that I mean this: you can go toggles or Elude, or a combination of both, but there was this wide-spread perception that you had to go toggles first before Elude, and then Respec, which has resulted in a ton of cookie-cutter SR builds, precisely when SR should have the largest variation of builds, compared with most other power sets.

I wanted to stress that there has been no FS, no Evasion, and only one slot in FF, and the MA/SR Scrapper could still excel, so as to encourage non-cookie-cutter builds, and promote a greater variation with experimenting with the build.


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I actually played out MA/SR with just FF and the passives to 50 (no respec, I still have all 4). From my experience, taking the passives at 24, 28, and 30, and not slotting FF at all is going to make life very difficult for an SR scrapper. My main tactic revolved around luring foes into melee range where my lack of FS was not an issue and relying on a well slotted FF. I'm all but certain that Freak tanks will kill that slotting prior to elude, even with the speedier dragon's tail. Plus, with agile so late, at the very best you have zero ranged defense from 1-23, 12% at 24, 18% from 25-26, and 22% at 27, fully committing all those slots. Doing so means DT can't be well slotted as a fast damage mitigator until 29. The 20s are going to be very rough with this slotting progression.

This makes the lack of challenge an interesting flaw. I have challenge, and I didn't use it primarily on runners, I used it as a pulling tool. If you have just FF, no FS, and no tough, you are not going to run into a scattered crowd of +2s, you're going to die. Challenge is how I managed to hunt Talos from 19-22 at least before SOs and with piddly ranged defense (and at least I had agile already).

I'm one of those people that believe there is a lot of versatility in the SR set in the sense of elective toggles, but I think the choice of selecting the passives so late and denuding FF of slots is too extreme, I know it wasn't easy the way I played out. Having 24% melee defense and no other defense at all in most of the 20s would have been bordering on suicide solo.

And end draining - that one slot in FF is defense, and FF drains enough END to want to at the very least slot one end reduce in there.

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I rarely used Total Focus until the late 30s.


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Well, if you wanna get all technical-like, no one does

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It's great on the Peregrine Island docks and in the late 40s by the Portals in PI. Lots of single baddies there you can stun with TF and then kill with no effort at all.


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I hit so many things with total focus around the portal that the villains around there used to just fall down and pretend to be dead when I was in the area. I enjoyed it so much that I never figured out in all that time that in fact, if you have boost range or slot for range, you can snipe everything in that area except for fake nemesis and master illusionists, and they really can't do much of anything to you if you hover above them. Especially death mages - its really sad watching them try to climb the hill just to get closer to you (not so sad if you hover too close to it and they actually do get into mez range, though). Only the possessed scientists can fly up to get you, and they are only minions and LTs - easy pickins.

You can in fact outrange fakes - theoretically. The problem is that fakes have about the same range as your visual targetting range, so even if you outrange them, well, you can't really shoot them. Master Illusionists have crummy range, but they must have read the forums, because they too love 6-slotted hover. Sniping them is not a good idea, at least from the air. On the ground, you'll be superspeed-kiting a lot.

I dont really notice a lot of singles near Portal, though, depending on time of day and who else might be in the area. Occasionally a lot of single behemoths, but its no fun thwacking a behemoth with TF, thats shooting fish in a parking lot. The fun part comes with the dual bosses - dual death mages were what I liked to tango with especially.

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Cool 4 seconds 6 seconds.. dont matter to me.. aim buildup.. snipe.. dead..

thats all that matter to me..

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What it confirms is that knockback makes snipe usable in combat in situations other than the initial strike, something I've always known implicitly, since I use snipe in combat. If you knock something over, like a boss, the couple of seconds it will take for him to get up means you can get a snipe shot off without interruption (assuming you aren't surrounded by other nasties). I've heard that AR's snipe is 6 seconds, so this is an advantage of our snipe over other sets.

It also means if you are in a group fighting an AV, use snipe if you can. Its net dpa is between bolt and blast - so your net dps will go up.

BTW, if you have the endurance, torrent should also be used. Its fast activation time means even though its damage is low, its dpa is surprisingly high. Its dpe sucks against a single target, but if you are running conserve power or have RA on you, during an AV fight torrent also boosts your damage output significantly.

To maximize damage against something like an AV, cycle bolt, blast, and burst as fast as they recharge, but fire snipe preferentially over bolt, and fire torrent every time it recharges. Use BU and Aim when you can. If you have explosive blast, fire it only if slowed or everything is recharging, which is very rare for energy with all its primary attacks. This isn't 100% optimal, but its easy to remember. This presumes equal slotting of all attacks, and I know not everyone 5+1 slots torrent. If you don't, fire torrent during recharge gaps when you don't have an available attack.

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Just wanted to pipe in quickly and mention that Activation Accelerations, also known decrease interupt time..do not actually accelerate activation


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Actually, all the enhancements I've seen call this "Decrease Interrupt Time." I've never heard of them referred to as "accelerate activation." Is that a hero planner term, or are there interrupt time enhancements that call themselves "accelerrate activation"?

My experience matches yours, though, in that these enhancements do decrease interrupt time for interruptable actions, but do not in any way appear to alter activation time or total time.

Eh, I decided to just do the other powers, just to see what turned up. This is highly preliminary, and I explain why below.

Here's the timing information I get for the other energy primary blasts, after several demorecord runs of each power, each power in different positions in an attack sequence (to factor out a lot of things, too complicated to go over here).

Power bolt: average time 2.141s, min time 2.107s
Power blast: average time 2.008s, min time 1.874s
Power burst: average time 2.121s, min time 2.103s
Energy Torrent: average time 1.484s, min time 1.209s
Sniper Blast: average time 3.988s, min time 3.879s
Explosive Blast: average time 2.052s, min time 1.840s

The timing numbers are very consistent with a couple of odd numbers attributable to lag. Power bolt and power burst very consistently show 2.1second timing. Power blast and explosive blast show a range of times in the 1.8 - 2.0 second range. Snipe seems to hover in the 3.9-4.0 timing range.

Torrent is the oddity. Its timing fluctuated wildly, from 1.209 seconds, to 2.003 seconds. Even throwing out the 2 second timing as being very far from the other times (and probably due to momentary lag), there is still a range of about 1.2 to 1.5 seconds for torrent, which is doubly odd because I've always thought torrent was about as fast as everything else. But the numbers were very consistently lower than 2 seconds (except once).

Anyway, take these times with a grain of salt, I think there are large uncertainties in the timing numbers based on a number of factors, including lag. The only numbers I'm sure of are the snipe numbers, because I beat them into the ground under highly controlled circumstances and with a lot of repetition. The other numbers are based on a small number (about 4-8) of firing sequences.

I quote both the average time and the minimum time for a specific reason - there is a case to be made for the minimum time representing the "true" time of the attack, since lag can only increase the timing of an attack. The problem is that because these times are differential times within an attack sequence, its possible that lag could increase the apparent timing of one attack and shorten the apparent timing of the next attack in sequence. It might take serious work to factor that out.

BTW, to anyone wanting to attempt this, a couple words of caution:

The game actually takes time of flight of blasts into account when calculating when damage lands. If you record torrent, torrent's damage lands on different targets at different times. This is why ultimately timing an attack based on the time from activation to when the attack lands is faulty.

Queued attacks always fired faster than attacks that I timed by attempting to click-fire the attacks as they came ready. Its clear that the actual amount of time that an attack "costs" is best calculated from the moment of activation to the moment when the next attack can be activated. Thus, timing the start of one attack to the start of the next attack makes the most sense and using queued attacks guarantees that the time you measure is at least theoretically the minimum it can be. BTW, this also means timing attacks by timing the power button is also faulty.

Demorecord files contain no information on what the user did to activate powers. So if you don't get your queued attacks to go just right, throw the demorecord away and do it over. The timing in that file will otherwise be suspect, and there is no way to know if an attack's timing was thrown off by user timing issues.

Last thing, my numbers are consistently lower than warcry's quoted activation times, which are:

Power Bolt: 2.0
Power Blast 1.7
Power Burst 2.0
Sniper Blast 1.3
Torrent: 1.1
Explosive Blast: 1.7

I do find it interesting, though, that I get the same firing time for bolt and bolt and burst, and power blast and explosive blast, which agrees with warcry in that respect, and torrent much lower than all of them. I suspec that the activation times quoted by warcry are not the entire time the power takes - note the very low time for snipe. I believe that those times are low, because separate from the activation time there is also a cool-down time after a power fires but before you can activate the next power, and in the case of snipe, there is a "windup" time (look in the demofiles, there is an actual "windup" action). That would explain why my numbers are consistently higher than warcry. Lag can't fully explain that, because my numbers are consistently 0.1 seconds higher for bolt and burst, and consistently 0.3 seconds higher for blast and EB, which makes no sense if you think the difference is caused by lag.

At some point I will take a look at Aim, Push, and Nova.

Here's the short version, for those that aren't interested in reading the rest: energy snipe is four seconds.

Ok, here's the long version.

Although I've seen the six second number, I've always just assumed that it was a typo, or an old number from Prima, or whatever. I assumed everyone knew that energy snipe actually fires much faster than that. My own experiences with snipe include actually clocking snipe in TV back when I was 24, in order to perform a particularly interesting form of long-range hover sniping of skyraiders.

So anyway, one day I make a post regarding dps for energy blasters, and someone tells me my calculations are wrong because snipe is 6 seconds and not 4. Hmm, first thing, I go test it, and sure enough, its 4 seconds. Can't imagine what's going on here.

Long story short, eventually I decided to start asking around, and oddly, everyone was quoting me the 6 second number, which was really driving me nuts, because I couldn't find someone timing snipe at 4 seconds. I finally got someone in my SG to time snipe, and she got 4 seconds. So at least I knew it wasn't just me.

I sent a PM to a red name (I'm not sure if I should share PM messages, so I won't quote it or reveal the name, but it wasn't geko, just so you know) and asked them to test for me. They got 5.3 seconds.

That turned out to be the rosetta stone of sorts, because it got me to thinking that maybe everyone is timing snipe using different methodologies. So I began looking at how someone might go about timing snipe.

All I care about is how long does snipe take in an attack chain - how much time does it "cost" you to fire a snipe. I don't care how long it takes snipe to fly through the air and hit its target, and I don't care about internal intricacies of snipe timing - just how many seconds will I lose if I fire a snipe.

Well, it turns out the red name in question timed snipe this way: Click snipe to activate it, and time the amount of time it takes for the snipe button to show that its actually fired (depressed). When I time that, it takes a little more than 5 seconds, consistent with the 5.3 seconds of time.

But this is how I timed snipe: I target something (that will live long enough to conduct the test - at lvl 50 a behemoth LT works great). Then I display a clock (I run CoH windowed) where I can see it, and at :00 seconds I activate snipe. Before it fires, I queue power blast. Then I watch the sequence fire. Based on chat messages as well as the visual appearance of the firing animation, the snipe strikes the target at about :04 - 4 seconds. However, its possible that the snipe is actually tying you up longer than that. The telling thing is that the power blast lands at :06 - 6 seconds. Now, there is absolutely no way for snipe to take 6 seconds if power blast is actually landing at the 6 second mark. If you believe that power blast takes two seconds, then snipe is taking 4. If you believe snipe takes 6, then you have to believe that power blast takes zero.

I tried this with different combos - snipe+blast, snipe+bolt, snipe+torrent. I consistently get the combo taking 6 seconds, implying that blast, bolt, and torrent all take about the same amount of time, and if that time is about 2 seconds, snipe is 4.

Here's another way to test snipe - fire snipe on a target, and then time how long it takes before it becomes available again (and you can fire it again). Without hasten, snipe becomes available 16 seconds after firing. With hasten, snipe becomes available 11 seconds after firing. This is what you would expect if snipe took 4 seconds, and the recharge was base 12 seconds. If snipe was 6 seconds, then the base recharge would be 10 seconds, and hasten would be speeding that up to 5 seconds, which is too much, it should be 6 seconds (10/1.7 = 5.9). That extra second is not a lot, but should be measurable.

Of course, this is informal timing, me eyeballing a clock. I could use a stopwatch, but there are issues there as well (including me using a stopwatch and firing at the same time).

I got the bright idea to make a demorecord of snipe in action, so I could play it over and over again to get an average time for snipe, that would average out my own reflexes on timing, but it occured to me that was silly. The demorecord file itself has the timing information in it.

If you've ever looked at a demorecord file, the very first number in every line in the file is a relative timing number. It says how long to wait (in milliseconds) before performing the action specified on the line. In other words, demofiles look something like this:

0 do A
5 do B
0 do C
0 do D
15 do E
3 do F

This file says to do A now, wait 5 milliseconds and then do B, then do C immediately, and do D immediately also, and then wait 15 milliseconds and do E, then wait 3 milliseconds and do F. The entire sequence takes 23 milliseconds, except that whatever F is, it will take however long it takes to do F.

So if I demorecord a snipe+blast+bolt combo, I can find out exactly how long it takes in actual milliseconds, not including lag. Important to note, that if lag alters the timing at all, it will be to make things take longer than they should, not shorter.

This is an actual sequence from a demofile I made - although I've deleted about 12000 lines out of it, and I calculated the actual offset time for each line and added it to the left:

0 3190 0 1624 MOV A_SNIPERBLAST
0 3190 0 1624 FX OneShot 1716 POWERS/ENERGYBLAST/SNIPERBLAST.FX 0
0 3190 0 1624 FXSCALE 10 10
0 3190 0 1624 ORIGIN ENT 0 0
0 3190 0 1624 TARGET ENT 1700 0
1478 4668 50 1624 MOV A_2HANDCAST
1478 4668 0 1624 FX OneShot 1719 POWERS/ENERGYBLAST/ENERGYBLAST.FX 0
1478 4668 0 1624 FXSCALE 10 10
1478 4668 0 1624 ORIGIN ENT 0 0
1478 4668 0 1624 TARGET ENT 1700 0
3057 6247 16 1624 floatdmg 1700 101
3057 6247 0 1624 floatdmg 1700 157
3760 6950 7 1624 MOV A_RAPID
3760 6950 0 1624 FX OneShot 1725 POWERS/ENERGYBLAST/RAPID.FX 0
3760 6950 0 1624 FXSCALE 10 10
3760 6950 0 1624 ORIGIN ENT 0 0
3760 6950 0 1624 TARGET ENT 1700 0
5543 8733 0 1624 floatdmg 1700 31
5543 8733 0 1624 floatdmg 1700 126
5880 9070 34 1624 MOV A_2HANDCAST
5880 9070 0 1624 FX OneShot 1732 POWERS/ENERGYBLAST/ENERGYBLASTSINGLESHOT.FX 0
5880 9070 0 1624 FXSCALE 10 10
5880 9070 0 1624 ORIGIN ENT 0 0
5880 9070 0 1624 TARGET ENT 1700 0
7551 10741 66 0 Chat 3 0 You have defeated Behemoth Overlord
7551 10741 0 0 Chat 3 0 You have defeated Behemoth Overlord
7551 10741 0 8 POS -1480.609375 0.046875 -3371.09375
7551 10741 0 1624 floatdmg 1700 79
7551 10741 0 1624 floatdmg 1700 63

The first column is the relative timing numbers from the start of the sequence (the second column are the absolute timing numbers from the start of the demofile, its how I calculated in the first place - everything else is actual demofile content). Here's my interpretation of what is going on.

At T+0, snipe is activated (A_SNIPERBLAST and POWERS/ENERGYBLAST/SNIPERBLAST.FX).

About T+1.5 seconds later (1458 milliseconds) snipe actually starts the firing animation (A_2HANDCAST and POWERS/ENERGYBLAST/ENERGYBLAST.FX). This is probably just the way the snipe animation is broken down.

At T+3 seconds (3057 milliseconds) the damage numbers appear. Its important to note that I queued the next attack immediately upon clicking on snipe - way before it fired. At this moment, there is an actual queued attack that will activate just as soon as I am free to act.

T+3.8 secs (3760 ms) is when the demofile records the start of the next attack (power blast). This implies that snipe is done - I can act 3.8 seconds after snipe activates (but more on this later).

T+5.5sec (5543ms) is when power blasts damage numbers appear. This is 1.7 seconds after initial activation.

T+5.9sec (5880ms) is when power bolt activates. This is 2.1 seconds after initial activation of power blast, so this implies that power blast has a time cost of 2.1 seconds. Very close to the expected 2 seconds.

T+7.6s (7551ms) is when the damage numbers from bolt appear, and the behemoth is defeated. This is 1.7 seconds after activation. If power bolt has the same "cool off" period that blast has (notice above that there was a lag between when the game recognized that a power "hit" and when the next queued attack was allowed to fire) power bolt is also about 2 seconds.

Now, if these numbers were affected by lag, they should be higher than actual "inherent" timing. But there is simply no way to fit a six second snipe into these timing numbers, the margins of error are simply not that high. And given how close the timings match our expectations of bolt and blast, there is no reason not to trust them for snipe.

Thus, snipe's timing is about 3.8-4 seconds.

Now, for those still reading, maybe this seems like a heck of a lot of work just to demonstrate what you might already know. But there seems to be more than a few people out there who think snipe timing is 6, even though I have no idea why. If there are people out there who have tested snipe to be anything other than 4 seconds, I'd like to hear from you, what your testing methodology is, and how you arrived at your measured number.

I also throw this out there as a means for other people to discover more accurate ways to determine the timing of certain events, especially attack speeds which have short intervals (and are therefore much more difficult to arrive at a decent time for, as opposed to, say, finding out how long conserve power lasts). Its actually sufficiently accurate that it is possible the time I'm getting for power blast - 2.1 seconds, might be fairly precise, it might be more than 2 seconds, and snipe might really be 3.8 seconds instead of just 4.

Its also possible that these numbers are a little fuzzier than that. It's just possible that the game sends an animation notice slightly ahead of time to give the game a chance to properly start and run the animation. But that seems unlikely to be a factor of more than a tenth of a second or so.

To get tenth of a second timing, I'd want to do dozens of tests to try to eliminate lag as a factor (either average out or contraint test the numbers to get the minimum time/best speed of the effects).

At some point, if no one else does it, I might try to figure out what the exact timings are for all the other energy blast attacks, but right now that sounds too much like work on a friday.

SnipeFu suggested that I post this, so I'm posting it here first. It seems to be a small technical issue for primarily energy blasters (although I'm guessing everyone's snipe timing is probably similar). I didn't want to start a brand new thread, because it might seem like I was going out of my way to challenge something in Snipe's guide, when in fact I'd rather just contribute some updated information to it.

And as to why did I go through all that trouble just to prove energy snipe takes four seconds. Ummm, blaster-lock?

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So why the double standard for ST? Why is it interior to all other fear powers, which provide equal or greater protection through cower/root? If the devs would come out and say "thats too powerful", then I could at least accept it.

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I think geko has said that making ST an instant lockdown power is too powerful, in the opinion of the devs, by virtue of changing it from when it practically was one.

I'm not, nor did I ever, claim that ST is better than or the equal to FS or other fear powers. You're assuming that the devs were too stupid to give us better fear powers. It is equally likely simply they don't want us to have them, which is why they are tweaking ST so much.

In any event, as I said before, there is a difference between stating the power is broken, and stating that other powers are better. The question is not whether another hypothetical power would be better - thats a question for the suggestion box. The question is does ST provide sufficient benefit that its worth taking over taking nothing at all - on average across all Illusion controllers. Individual controllers will of course probably disagree on this point.

So when you tell me that other fear powers would be better, that isn't especially meaningful to me, because I'm not approaching ST from the perspective of "am I getting what I deserve, oh lookie at what they have over there." There is no double standard, there is just the one standard of judging the power on its own, without comparisons to the other fear powers.

I would only consider judging ST relative to other fear powers when considering the balance of entire sets, vis-a-vis the net ability of illusion vs the net ability of dark.

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But its like they dont get whats actually useful in the game (ie, claiming scattering on blizzard is good control).


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Look at the situation with knockback, where so many people think it is totally worthless, and so many other people think its invaluable. There are quite a lot of things in the game that a lot of people think is just plain self-evident, except it aint.

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Seriously no build critiques? I would love to hear what you guys think of the build, how I could improve it and what epic pools would work best with my powerset.

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Hmm... ok.

I am not a fan of slotting cone into torrent. I use superspeed to position it during combat, and the lower range actually helps with scatter a bit. I'm also not a big fan of interrupt in snipe, but since I apparently have the fastest snipe in all of Paragon, that's probably why [I've actually reported it].

Since I use SS in actual combat, I slot it with endrdx, not speed. I very rarely need the extra speed the speed would give me, relative to the END I get from having endrdx slotted (in my original build its actually 3 slotted with endrdx, which I know is a bit extreme).

A lot of people say slotting health isn't worth it for blasters, but I notice. I would probably more aggressively slot health, and less aggressively slot hover. But I have hover/fly, and I have power boost, so I suppose it depends on how much 6-slot hover actually helps you in combat.

I'd probably also shift the BU and Aim slotting from balanced to 4 in BU and 2 in Aim. Both BU and Aim's acc buff do a really good job of allowing me to hit all but the most troublesome targets (i.e. the dreaded bubbled drone). Given that, I'd want BU more often than Aim. Switching slotting still means that over the long haul you will get to use BU and Aim just as often in total, just BU more often than Aim.

I'm not an elec expert, but since you aren't fully slotting EB anyway, I'm wondering if it wouldn't make sense to steal an additional slot or two and add it to TS. Or double slot power push with acc. Push is really a bumper-boss power, and it tends to be really important that it not miss. Slotting higher might make you more viable against higher level bosses, if you care. Especially if you are getting rid of TS anyway. Or save the slots for the Epics, you might need them.

I've played around with the EPPs. Everyone seems to like TI+FoN, and its a good combo in general. I've found that TI makes me take less damage in areas where I would have gotten beaten up a bit, but I haven't found it to be a life saver in the one area I can most use it - mezzing bosses. When FoN was unstoppable, no question that would have been the way to go. Now, its a bit more situational. Munitions might be a better choice for me, because flak can't be turned off, but its so low, it only delays the inevitable for me. And I burn a lot of END constantly, so the toggle drain of TI can actually start to become noticable, even under conserve power (admittedly, I tested it 6-slotted for maximum resistance).

The EPP I haven't played around with yet, but I'm planning to, is ice. Ice is unique for me, relative to the others, because ice has s/l defense not resistance. Why that matters is because I'm currently playing around with perma-power boost.

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How would that be better than just slotting PA for recharge, and recasting PA? Assuming you were worried about controlling even con and lower mobs, that is. (If you didn't slot PA for recharge, anything even con or lower is dead long before you need to worry about recasting PA.)

This is the key problem w/ the "new" ST. It only affects things that are uselessly weak in any meaningful way. Anything that is actually a threat to you, and so needs to be controlled, is only scattered.

We have strategies for "using" this, from the old ST days. You can cast ST behind the mobs, so they'll tend to run toward you. You can use ST to create a "safe" zone from melee mobs. But those are all weak.

I'm OK w/ ST being a bad power, but let's just not pretend that it isn't bad.

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I threw it out as an example of a set of strategies that would work. Its probably a useless discussion to wonder whether its "better" or "worse."

But my own direct experience with the PA is that slotting for damage isn't foolproof - the PA don't always take even and +1 down - they always do for small 3 minion mission spawns, but not for overlapping groups (5-6 evens is often enough to split up the damage enough to leave a lot of them left behind) or the larger spawns in the zones. Slotting for recharge to get perma-PA means they'll hardly every kill anything, ever, especially at lower levels.

Having additional tricks in the bag is never bad. Spectral Terror (the proposed version) might be good, might be not so good. But the real question is whether or not it works. I've heard people tell me flash is worthless because it draws aggro. I happen to disagree, because my definition of broken is obviously different from someone who thinks flash is broken.

I think the ST that induces a massive "flee" is broken. I don't think (from the sound of it) that the proposed ST is broken. What I don't know is if the proposed ST is appropriate for my playstyle. But I'm ok with having powers that aren't appropriate for my playstyle, and wouldn't presume to judge them only on that basis. Bonesmasher isn't really appropriate for my playstyle either - even if you gave it to me for free, I'm unlikely to use it. That doesn't make it broken.

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Anything that is actually a threat to you, and so needs to be controlled, is only scattered.


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It sounds like higher level foes will be both scattered (a little) AND controlled:

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• It has a Terrify attack power. This power can affect more powerful foes (even those not affected by the Cloak of Fear) and should cause most foes to run in fear, but only for a very short distance, and it should only affect a couple of targets (narrowed the cone area significantly, and decreased the run away time). The affected foes should only run far enough as to get out of range of the ST Terrify attack, so ST will switch to another target.
• Once the affected foes run out of range, they will tremble in Fear (even those not affected by the cloak of fear).


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This is what I'm basing my impressions on. A little scatter and a little control sounds like what illusion is all about. IF (and this is a big IF, I know) it works like it sounds, then there is a higher level element to ST. What I'm hoping for is that the ST, given a choice, will always target the highest level foe it can in range, so the terrify has the maximum benefit. If it doesn't during testing, then that would be something I would suggest.

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Again, like all the other ST apologists, you fail to comprehend the futility of controlling -con mobs. If for some reason controlling -con mobs is important to you, I suggest you post your build, or your strategy, on the Controller forums so we can help you be effective.

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If ST worked the way geko is saying it is going to be changed to, then this strategy would have been reasonable from 26 to 32 (pre phantasms) for ill/rad:

1. Set up near the spawn point
2. Hit a good center target with RI
3. Hit the anchor with blind
4. Cast the PA at the anchor

then

5. Cast it into the group just prior to the PA evaporating.

Let it lock everyone down while you wait for PA to recharge.

or

5. Cast it on yourself (make sure the group is slightly out of range of the terrify)

When the PA expires, instead of having to run for it (or even if you do) the ST will act to kick them back a bit. Also, in larger groups runners do escape from PA aggro - especially in overlapping groups.

Especially in squishier groups, having the foes run a bit and then cower might be useful - hitting them with blind when they've rushed the blasters is also good, but then they stay held still in the middle of the squishies, when I would rather they run a bit forward, where they are more easier to keep track of.

It would be nice if the fear component of ST extended to higher level mobs, but that is not the same thing as saying its broken unless it does. I'm sure there are people who wish that SW didn't heal back, but thats just how it works. Evaporating damage is never "helpful" either, but that's life.

The devil is in the details, though; I can't say for sure how or if it will be really useful to me, especially at lvl 37. But I'm certainly not an ST apologist - I have enough on my plate defending knockback, defending fear at the same time would give me an aneurysm. Knockback, elude, radiation, fear, burn, invuln - why didn't I roll a fire/eng blaster and stick with that?

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here's an idea. change spectral terror to spectral delight (or something like that) and make it draw any nearby enemies towards it. medium sized range, but let it take damage. the guys aggro on the pet, and when its killed, they aggro on someone else.

or even, make it into a female of the phantom army, but make it dancing, and any nearby enemies just huddle around her and drool. like sleep, they snap out of it when you attack them.

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Oh great. Another herding tool. And one that generates influence thrown at its feet, too. Yep, that's what illusion controllers need.

OK, as long as we're coming up with ways to make the ST entertaining, how about giving the spectral terror teleport foe. Foes keep trying to run, the ST keep teleporting them back. That sounds very much in keeping with the chaotic control Illusion is supposed to have. Plus, for any foe affected, that sounds mighty scary. That would make it both a scatter bot and a gather bot, and if it could get a consistent lock on those fleeing flying freak LTs, I think that is an excellent trade.

I think the intuitive/counterintuitive thing comes from thinking about multi-typed damage attacks as being either parallel attacks or serial attacks. What I mean is this:

Some people think of an attack that does energy/smash as two attacks that each do one type of damage, bundled into a package. Under those circumstances, if you have a defense against energy, and another one against smash, you would expect the defenses to work independently or in parallel. I.e. if you had 15% defense to energy, and 30% defense to smash, you would expect that you would have a 15% chance to deflect the energy portion of the attack, and a 30% chance to deflect the smash portion of the attack. Under that mode of thought, the current game mechanics are better than what you expect - under current CoH game mechanics you are actually getting 30% defense to both - contrary to but better than what your "intuition" says ought to happen.

On the other hand, if you are thinking that energy/smash attacks are a single attack that has an energy mechanism and a smashing mechanism (i.e. a baseball bat that discharges energy when it hits) then you would think that defenses would work in sequence or serially. In other words, first the attack has to bypass your smashing defenses, or it wont hit you at all, and then the attack has to bypass your energy defenses or it still wont hit at all.

It is clear, from geck's post, that the devs consider the attacks to be parallel, not serial attacks. As such, multiple defenses against the same attack type should stack, but - and this is the critical issue - defense from one type should not stack on top of a completely different type of damage just because that damage happen to "ride along with" another damage type.

Given that perspective, it makes total sense. Arguing that it is counterintuitive fails to recognize the conceptualization of the attack types that the devs have in mind.

And BTW, if you are a proponent of the serial theory of damage and defense, then you still ought not to get an additive stacking of defense, you should be getting a multiplicative stacking. In other words, if you have 15% defense to energy, and 30% defense to smash, and your base to-hit is 50%, then really, you have to believe that what happens is that first the attack has to hit you at all (50%), then the attack has to bypass your energy defenses (15%) and then has to bypass your smash defenses (30%). Your effective to-hit is now 12.75% ( (1-0.5) * (1-.15) * (1-.3) ), not 5%, meaning your effective defense is now 87.25%, not 95% (50%+15%+30%).

Suppose SR defenses couldnt stack, and then the devs fixed the stacking problem. But suppose when they did, they made an mistake - when a villain fired a gun (a ranged weapon) in melee range, focused fighting and focused senses stacked. That would be a bug - it wouldn't be in keeping with the devs concept of "ranged" and "melee" defense. It might not be your concept of how they work, but its the dev's concept that counts.

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Done.

While we're at it we also support multi-team matches (like 4 teams of 2 Heroes each all duking it out).

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I wonder how much more effort it would take to generalize this to allow for "friendly fire" contests. In other words, fights in which AoE affects *everyone*. Would be interesting, don't you think, if AoE damage could theoretically smack your own team mates, and conversely, enemies could actually "steal" AoE buffs?

Should make combat with illusion/radiation much more, err, interesting.

New idea for improving spectral terror:

Make the villains flee, but only in straight lines while looking back at the ST. If they run into a wall, they get knocked down and disoriented, while little birds dance around their heads. Oh, and they should drop their weapons on the ground when they take off.

Makes it much less nasty in orenbega, and fun like heck to use.

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Oh, and can the spectral terror look like Martha Stewart? Just wondering.

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Naw...It should look like Hillary Clinton. MUCH scarier.

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No.. No.. No... A naked Bea Arthur.

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Uh, no. We were all in agreement that having the mobs flee, never to return, was not the appropriate behavior.

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Just a reminder, still no answer to my question. What a power costs and what an effect is has no bearing on anything. I contend that "bad side effects" are valid balancers in the game, and can be made to balance against the benefits of a power.

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If spectral terror was better than ahnold, you might have a point. However, its not, and you dont. Why argue with someone who enjoys playing ina counterproductive fashion (ie, tossing freezing rains on a fire tank, galing to ruin AE damage). You play a mediocre set to cause frustration. You like to gimp yourself, and play inefficiently. Good for you, continue to enjoy playing poorly. Most CoH players dont, and want their powers to be good.

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I wasn't talking about spectral terror at all, so I don't see how its effectiveness bears on anything. I was talking about game design principles in general, and why I think sometimes powers will have side effects that aren't optimal, and that was unavoidable. Whether those side effects are appropriate from a balance perspective is a different issue. I do think the "make a run for the border" behavior was too extreme. The proposed change sounds like it makes more sense, even if it isnt what everyone wants, including some people who want to make ST effectively a hold.

As to what I play, and how I play, what I like, and what degree of frustration I cause, good for you that you can tell that without teaming with me. Because then you can avoid me if we ever cross paths, which sounds basically like a good idea. I'm not sure if its true that most CoH players play efficiently, but I do know that most CoH players are not crazy about teaming with players who throw insults around.

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Concerning discourse, perhaps we can conduct it without resorting to ad hominem remarks. Although this is the internet; perhaps that's too much to hope for. At any rate, I'm sorry that you felt condecended to. I was trying to be as clear as possible. My admittedly verbose reply was meant to reveal the fabric of my perspective so that you could better see where I'm coming from.


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I asked a very specific question, and I quoted the specific statement you made in reference to it. You did not state that bad side effects ought to be balanced, you said they should not exist at all. I asked why you thought that. I got a response explaining the purpose of the game to me, and explaining how spectral terror works, with footnotes. Explaining what you mean by "arrest" is pretty condescending, unless you think I'm a moron. And since none of it has anything to do with my question, its completely non-sequitor.

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My question was, on what basis do you make this assertion? This statement doesn't talk about spectral terror. It seems to argue that any side effect they put into ST you don't like demonstrates some sort of lack of understanding or error on the part of the developers.


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I make it on the simplest basis possible; of what is fun and what isn't. When one's powers hinder play, it is not fun, and is therefore an undesirable play element. As I wrote in an earlier post, an alternate solution for tempering Spectral Terror would be to reduce its fear duration.

As for the developers lacking understanding, I think they've already demonstrated on several occasions that they lacked the foresight to gauge player reaction to power set changes. Case in point, Geko's assumption that players would prefer knockback to knockdown. I think you'd have to concede that point, anyway.


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I'm not required to concede that point, because I prefer knockback to knockdown a majority of the cases where I have powers with the effect.

BTW, this still doesn't answer my question. You are still giving me reasons why you don't want bad side effects. I'll concede that particular fact as a given. The question is still why do you think that they are inherently a bad idea. You suggest here in the specific case of ST, trading a bad side effect with a weaknening of the power. I'm assuming you are implying that it is always true that most people would prefer that sort of trade. Well, I'm here to tell you that if I could remove the knockback from my energy blasts in exchange for lowering the damage, uh, no. Same thing for my illusionist's pets. Drop the damage of nova in exchange for taking out the END crash? I don't think most blasters would be thrilled there either.

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It seems clear to me that not only can powers have deleterious side effects, but that such side effects represent one of the few ways to perform any balancing in the game at all. By your statement, the END crash at the end of elude is a mistake on the part of the devs - they ought not to be creating challenges by putting an undesirable side effect in the power, but should do something else entirely.


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Anticipating this argument, I'd written a paragraph dileneating a power's cost and its effect. I deleted it because I thought the distinction was too fine to easily argue. I've since reconsidered and concluded that there is no difference. However, as you mention Elude, I'd like to point out a trend to you: powers such as Adrenalin Boost and Mutation have had their disorient drawback removed, and now that Perma-Unstoppable is no longer possible, the power itself has fallen by the wayside. If Elude is ever made so that it can't be made permanent then it too will follow Unstoppable into semi-retirement. The developers realize that powers with penalties result in powers that are infrequently used and commonly complained about.

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Just a reminder, still no answer to my question. What a power costs and what an effect is has no bearing on anything. I contend that "bad side effects" are valid balancers in the game, and can be made to balance against the benefits of a power. You seem to be suggesting that such a balance attempt is inherently wrong. As such, it shouldn't matter to you what the side effect of a power is, or what its benefit is, only whether the side effect is purely benefiicial or not. If its not, by the thesis you are presenting, the power is broken and should be changed.

As to AB and mutation. Mutation had a disorient crash on the rezzed guy. That was seen as a serious problem if you cast the power in combat, because the person you cast it on would be in serious jeopardy a minute down the road. So people would cast it after combat when things were safe, and ride out the dizzy. As such, the side effect was being dodged. The devs decided that giving a rez a dizzy crash didn't make sense, and so removed it. I'm guessing that the devs simply decided there was no good reason for AB to have a self-dizzy; it was a penalty on empathy they decided it didn't need.

But none of this proves the devs are starting a trend towards removing all side effect balancers. Far from it, you specifically mention unstoppable, proof positive that the devs are still keeping power balancers in the game.

As to elude, you state that IF they weaken the power by making it non-perma (something a lot of people think they are going to do, but there is no evidence to support) then less people will take the power. I agree. But that doesn't address my point. Elude already has a serious side effect, the END crash. Yet people take elude, and happily play along with it. If the END crash was taken away, but Elude made non-perma, I think more people would be less happy with elude overall, even though this new version of elude has no bad side effects. In other words, people don't just look at side effects, they look at the balance of a power as a whole. The END crash is a better situation than the power being made non-perma, for at least a lot of people.

Which is my point.

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Why is it inherently wrong for powers to have challenging side effects?

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The main mechanic of City of Heroes is to arrest enemies, to do so quickly[1] without accruing debt.[2] All powers (including those related to travel) must be able to help the player execute this mission.


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Condescending, verbose, and non-sequitor is not an effective mode of discourse, especially when performed simultaneously. My statement was in response to this statement of yours:

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Game challenges should originate from the environment or from other players, not from the controls or side effect of powers themselves.


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My question was, on what basis do you make this assertion? This statement doesn't talk about spectral terror. It seems to argue that any side effect they put into ST you don't like demonstrates some sort of lack of understanding or error on the part of the developers. It seems clear to me that not only can powers have deleterious side effects, but that such side effects represent one of the few ways to perform any balancing in the game at all. By your statement, the END crash at the end of elude is a mistake on the part of the devs - they ought not to be creating challenges by putting an undesirable side effect in the power, but should do something else entirely. What that something else is, I can't imagine. Perhaps everytime I invoke elude, an ambush attacks me or something, maybe.

Whether the side effect is appropriate is a separate issue. Completely running for the hills and hiding in a closet in an indoor mission was extreme. The proposed change seems to be more balanced overall. It remains to be seen if the effect actually works the way the developers envision, and separate from that whether the effect the developers envision will be useful. But it seems a step in the right direction.

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No, not really, I fail to see how one can employ tactics without communications. Particularly when you omit the basics, like "Ready?" "Attack" and such. I've been in teams like this, gave 'em a chance a few times, sorry to report they all stunk.

In one instance I had to drop a team because the leader didn't speak English. I felt bad, since it was no fault of his own, but really, if there's no basis for communication, there's no basis for a team. This is why they made that Team Channel thingy, you know?

But I'll take your word for it in this special case of yours of course.

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Teamed with people from my SG, most of us are such good team players, the only actual coordination we do as a team involves F7. The team chat channel is for making fun of each other, not coordinating tactics, 99% of the time.

And I've been on random teams where people all knew what they were about well enough that lots of endless prattle was not necessary at all. None of this "ok you go here, and then I'll be here, and then when you go there the controller will do this, and then..." Outside of trials, where the experienced ones tell the newbees whats what, those verbose-tactics teams (outside of the teens where lots of new players are still all working such things out) tend on average to have problems actually executing those tactics. In fact, I haven't even been in a non-TF team past the 40s where I saw any of that sort of team tactics discussion. YMMV, of course.

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Wow, it sounds good to you? Great, then maybe we can convince Geko to let you have my Spectral Terror and I'll take your Thunderclap in its place.

Game challenges should originate from the environment or from other players, not from the controls or side effect of powers themselves. If the immobilize side effect of Spectral Terror made the power too strong, then decrease the fear duration.


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Why is it inherently wrong for powers to have challenging side effects? Its challenging to deal with a set that has knockback, but its fun mastering the skill of using knockback. Illusion is considered the "chaotic control" set so I accept that ST is going to have some form of flee, or scatter, or something. Whether its the right amount or not is the point of debate. But saying the power is broken just because it has an effect you don't like isn't really productive. I doubt it will ever be a true lock-down power.