_Ail_

Originally Posted by UnicyclePeon

I just never liked Whirling Hands on a non-melee character who has an AOE Immob but has no confuse power to cause clumping. It also has a super small area. I just dont see melee/aoe as a prime mode of operation for this character. However, holding a single tough foe and putting melee and power burst on real fast for a quick kill of necessity seems ok. Basically, single target melee is surgical.

Lewis

Originally Posted by Tater Todd

You should...

1. Try Stalkers now on BETA they are...wow lol.
2. Try Ice Armor especially once you Get Icy Bastion makes you play like a Scrapper. Ice armor is now a nice mix of defense, -recharge/-dmg debuffing and massive Regen.

Originally Posted by BrandX

Using temp powers to acheive a concept just isn't the same. Okay, I did it once with Nemesis Staff, but that was it! And that was a perma power to do it, and I never actually used it, I just liked to wield it when standing around ^_^

Originally Posted by BrandX

Sad really, as I've had a few Dark Armor Scrappers I wanted to take Phase Shift for concept with, but I couldn't see myself taking Stealth and skipping the in set stealth power, and taking those extra two powers for it was a waste :/

Originally Posted by _Pine_

I see no reason to do this.

1). You should not be copying characters from trademarked/copywrited sources, so giving us the players more ways to do so is in direct violation of federal law and the user agreement that CoH has.

2). If this is just so that the players can have more choices... I suggest you go play CO. Which did exactly what City of Heroes planned on doing to start out with in the alpha.

http://web.archive.org/web/200110051...com/powers.htm

You could pick any power from any powerset. Complete freedom! NO CLASSES!

However people were either really dumb and picked Invulnerability/Flight so that they were... Invulnerable and could fly. Or else they would pick Uber/Awesome and that was all you saw on the game (besides those invulnerably flyers of course). This made the game INSANELY hard to balance.

There are so many people with so many preferences and so many ideas of what is normal and common. There is no way to please everyone.

I recall one time, I forget the exact context, but a dev thought about releasing some sort of power and then thought against it because they figured people would want it animated differently, or instead of one model they would want a different model. So eventually he decided not to even do it. (something about a shark if some one else remembers this exactly and can find/post a link to the post).

I still say we need a machine gun melee set that shoots flaming exploding chainsaws that turn into flowers after exploding..... >.>

Originally Posted by Obscure Blade

My AT? Sure! I mean, I'm just a Citizen, which means I'd be completely invulnerable to her.

Originally Posted by DoctorWhat

To be fair I also don't enhance until I get SOs at 22 (Aside from what I get as drops), but that's because I want to save my Inf. Teaming alot helps mitigate your own weaknesses as well as popping yellow skittles now and agian.

There is, although, another reason I wait for SOs before enhancing. It's fun to see the difference between a 'wimpy little unenhanced girly hero' and a 'enhanced locked and loaded death dealer'.

Originally Posted by KnightofKhonsu

...Defender since my Kin/DP reached 50 and well on her way into being an Incarnate.

I am looking at three different character types here. All are direct fire support; however, I'm not sure which main power that would pair with them. Here's what I'm looking at.

#1 - Trick Arrow / Archery - or - Traps / Archery - or - Time Manipulation / Archery

#2 - Traps / Beam Rifle - or - Force Field / Beam Rifle - or - Empathy / Beam Rifle.

#3 - Empathy / Sonic - or - Thermal / Sonic - or - Sonic / Sonic.

This is my second defender I intend to take to 50. I've never used these powers so I am curious of what I listed, which are the best for paring. Conversely, if you have a suggestion for another primary type, please do so. Thanks!

Originally Posted by New Dawn

I don't believe that there is a power that the majority are skipping consistantly. There is what you might skip because you don't see the usefulness but there is no reassurance that the majority are skipping it too.




Whatever is annoying (end consumption) you can build to mitigate it, if its counterproductive on someone else then don't use it on them, if its situational on one AT you then have to check how situational it will be on another AT. The Devs don't always tailor make things for each AT. Sonic Repulsion on a ranged pet can be of value and now the set is ported to Masterminds, I would guess the Devs will wait and see if its popular among Masterminds. If so then I'd guess it will stay.




Rads don't always get to perform as well as TAs at times, the anchor is the first thing to get defeated. It's not the fault of the Devs when people cause underperformance. The forum is not an only source of peoples views either someone ingame, could decide that TA is useless. People actively seek out sets that are "said" to be weak. We will all build differently, play differently, team with different people and I know you could come down to comparing total debuffs versus total debuffs of other sets but then again other sets may not have Oil Slick or EMP Arrow. Other sets are reliant on an anchor etc, etc. In theory TA to the Devs may not need to be underperforming at all but in reality, players of TA may not be debuffing in good order or hard controlling key targets in good time. Each defender set offers something different and overall can't quite be compared directly. The way I expect to tank for a TA versus something may not be the same way I can expect to tank that same thing for another defender and I think it's important to have the best dynamic for whatever defender is in play.




For many other defender sets there is the reactionary element, you can't just buff and run as you could with a forcefielder. Forcefielder is almost a fire and forget set with most people probably and sensibly so, taking the power build up. Ofc there are alot of powers skipped that could be used in a reactive light but more likely those ones are a bit more ranger friendly. I find after buffing people I have a few minutes of not really concerning myself with them. I can spend more time lost in my attack chains. Not so on another defender where I am proactively doing more to mitigate damage spawn to spawn and then maybe get an attack or two out.


I do think the days of "Healer" and TA thread crossovers is behind us. Problem though is every individual TA power underperforms compared to what is average for other support sets, and it takes twice as many TA powers to get the same effect of one power does in other sets. With only 9 powers to pick from that is a very heavy flaw that can't be ignored, and TA really doesn't have enough synergy amongst it's powers to overcome this.



What I have done is pull up my TA/A build and pull up my Dark/Dark build.
In 3,3s:

I put out -30% res with Tar patch and I otomh can't add any more res debuff procs to anything within the primary not that it should matter.

With TA I put out -40% res and can stack another -40% progressively later and then have 2 powers within the set that can have a res debuff proc not that it matters.

I am not saying all is equal, other effects count, the grand total of what each set can do versus an AV and its spawn or just a normal spawn matters, one set may win versus an AV and its spawn whereas another may be better versus a normal spawn.

In PVE there are different outcomes one set maybe better versus ambushers, one set maybe better at preventing a nearby group doing a perception check on a team that really doesn't know when to pull or where to stop.

Because I believe in playing around different defenders differently my main worry is somebody trying to make it easy for me to play around different defenders the same way.

Cast times, debuffs over time, effect per end, aoe size, anchor versus no anchor taking into account AI, xp/time, potential, subject, player behaviour. There is more than just doing power to power but I don't disbelieve that there can't be a buff of some kind, dropping that 15s of -end recovery after EMP would be a buff in my mind. Thats 15s of not losing endurance. It probably effects non defenders more though.

The testers must test and compare defenders. It can't be that hard to sit there with a stop clock as well as compare team survivability potential especially when they should know how to go about things and exactly whats meant to happen.

I play all defender sets and look for surviving by different means with them, I'll admit thats my main concern along with fun.

Originally Posted by Oedipus_Tex

I would also love AA to get a nice graphic that is more like a "snow globe" than just a ring around the caster.

Originally Posted by JayboH

Synapse has said he has no reservations when it comes to this, as the lines between good/evil are blurring, and the same goes for giving empathy to villains. This was quite awhile ago but he did say this regarding poison defenders.

Originally Posted by Miladys_Knight

I wouldn't make any of the changes that you all are suggesting. I'd simply make the range of Ice Slick and Flash Freeze the standard 80' and then reduce the recharge of Flash Freeze to 45 seconds.

AA is where I would make the changes. I'd increase the pulse duration to once every second instead of every 2 and set it up so that it could stack up to a mag 4 confuse 10-25% of the time.