Samuel_Tow

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A lot of people have complaint about CoV not being evil enough.


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It can't be 'evil' in any real sense or nobody would play.
But it could definitely use more comic book style evil, of the black tophat and waxed mustache variety.

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What CoV suffers the most because of is its basic premise - it's a City of Villains. There's just no fun to be had being evil in a city where everyone is evil and everything is dirty. It's kind of like Dungeon Keeper without the Lord of the Realm. Not much fun.

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The way I put it?
Recluse has immense technological means but absurd and camp motivations. Nemesis and Malta have absurd and camp means but cutting-edge motivations. They win.

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I think what I like about Nemesis is that from all angles he seems like a goofy, campy villain with a garish theme, but all of that is merely a façade for a fiendish intellect and utter ruthlessness in accomplishing his goals. His entire theme is to put heroes off guard until they see his true face.

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That's how I've always seen it. His entire premise may be absurd to an exception, but the fact of the matter is that below it all is a fiercely-intelligent, plotting mind that actually succeeds as much as he fails, which is more than we can say for most villains.

Recluse, on the other hand, seems like a slovenly slob. He has the resources of an entire nation and with all that he just barely manages to run a couple of plots - the Destined One ordeal that ties into Recluse's Victory, and The Web in Grandville. Granted, both are massive and ambitious, but he's pretty much squandering the resources of a whole chain of islands for them, because his method of rule is excessively wasteful. Simply put, history has shown that a state built on infighting does not last.

Not that that doesn't have a place in the game, mind you, but not as the rule-all big bad, especially not in a contemporary civilised world where he has to hide behind the UN to avoid being bombed back to the stone age. In a fantasy world, or a post-apocalyptic Earth or something like that, sure. But not in this universe.

Personally, much as it pains me to admit it, I think the Malta would be the best candidates for being nation rulers, simply because they seem to ACTUALLY have an understanding of government and economy. The way I see it, they'd have a USSR-style despotism, where people would go to designated workplaces, live in designated homes and watch designated programming where sock puppet politicians pretend to argue with each other to give the people some semblance of belief in justice and freedom while the Malta Group's board of directors actually run it all from behind the scenes. And that would be a lot more believable and, at the same time, a lot more terrifying than "Raar! I R evil!" Arachnos anarchy. Seriously, it's like Recluse is only one step above Dreck.

The worst part is a phenomenon I've noticed that happens with sci-fi when authors try too hard. See, sci-fi is generally about... Well, science and technology. However, when people go so overboard that they get into the white togas and glass spires or space god aliens from outer space, there comes a point where sci-fi actually crosses over into fantasy, and almost completely. I give the Chronicles of Riddick vs. Pitch Black as an example. Where the prequel was an almost Aliens-style space horror, the sequel had an empire with an emperor that did with religion and their spaceships had faces carved into them and so forth.

This is how I see Arachnos and the Rogue Isles. In a world that's mostly contemporary, we suddenly have this futuristic odd-looking monarchy with black spires and ornate buildings of Combine architecture, soldiers in power armour built after spiders and a distinctly impractical ideology. I'd buy a ruler if his soldiers looked like soldiers and his buildings like buildings, but Arachnos looks like something that escaped from a fantasy colouring book and had magic replaced with technology, cut-n-paste.

To me, that's just unbelievable, and that's saying something in a game with aliens, ninja, zombies and robots.

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You don't think being a hallucinogen and highly addictive are negative effects?
Also, it's obvious that Dyne suppresses female hormones/increases male hormones, as evidenced by the fact that you never find any apparently female Trolls
/em tinfoilhat

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Oh, dere girl-trolls.

Now.. what you say bout troll talk? All me saw was big words. Like to choppa.

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Not all of them are so big and ineloquent.
I just presumed that maybe the superadine-induced transformation into a Troll is fatal most of the time for women.

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Some of them, however, are still pretty big and still pretty eloquent

On the subject of Superadyne, the negative effects are very, very clear mutation, significant brain degradation to the point of induced schizophrenia, uncontrollabe rage and heavy, heavy addiction and dependence. While there isn't any evidence of it, I would say it's pretty safe to say that extreme cases can lead to complete breakdown of vital functions as the body is pushed beyond all limits of safety and reason.

We know even perfectly normal humans are capable of extreme feats of burst strength, enough to snap handcuff chains and break bones, when under the influence of certain drugs. The result of this, however, is that these people do extreme damage to themselves in the process, tearing muscles, dislocating joints and at times even breaking their own bones from the strain. Even if we assume that the Troll's greater muscle and bone density coupled with their increased metabolism and regeneration can protect them from that, the fact that they are essentially constantly raving madmen with no regard for personal injury, as well as constantly mutating further and further, it's not that big of a stretch to claim that this would leave them as a complete and utter mess after several years of it. After all, we've seen what happens to the bodies of professional athletes after years of riding them hard.

I'm not sure you'll find many evidence of the negative effects of Superadyne in fiction, largely because it hasn't been explored much, but you can always play with the limits, exaggerate, stretch and colour up a bit to come up with pretty frightening implications. Personally, that's what I find to be half the fun of writing fiction - taking given situations and finding ways to escalate them without contradicting anything

I'm not sure what "pure" superadine the family are using, but I'm pretty sure Underbosses and Consiglierie are described as having "minor super powers," which is what allowed raise in the Family hierarchy. I'm not sure there is canon evidence to the Family ever taking drugs, themselves (at least not Superadyne) and instead keep largely to shoguns and tommyguns.

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How many times have you heard a Kin (or anyone for that matter) yelling at a Tanker to Taunt?

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Precisely zero. Maybe it's me, but the teams I'm on, even if they're the "doin mish want in," don't tend to have people who go out of their way to request others do something specific. I've occasionally spoken up about obvious things, such as "Hey, if you use Freeze Arrow on the boss and I hit him with Freeze Ray, we can hold him immediately," or "If you're going to blow things around with Gale, see that you blow them into a corner" but that's about it.

Never noticed whether the Tankers I play with have Taunt one way or the other. Most of the time, it takes me a few missions to figure out who the Tanker even IS.

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How attached to your concept is teleport? Soul Transfer? I would recommend dropping those two powers and replacing them with Health and Stamina. Dropping Confront is another possibility. It would make a tremendous impact on your build.

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Teleport is quintessential. It's practically half the reason this guy exists. Conceptually, he appears out of nowhere wherever shadow or darkness reach, or sometimes just out of thin air. If I could, I'd customize it to look like sort of an inky explosion, but that's beyond the scope of this game at the moment.

To Soul Transfer, very. I LOVE self-rez powers. Since I typically don't care about dying in the slightest, a power which brings me back to live is AWESOME! I've had no end of fun with Revive and Resurgence, and I've no doubt I'll have twice as much fun with a power that debilitates everyone around me when I resurrect. It's a little less concept than rule of cool, but the other half of this guy's concept is that he's already dead, so getting up after being beaten down is pretty crucial.

Confront I COULD drop, but that's one of the tools that Scrappers have that I find indispensable at solving all those niggly little annoying things that typically frustrate me out of my skin. Things like stopping runners, pulling when needed, saving the [censored] of team-mates who get ganged up, keeping the attention of bosses and so forth. It's not concept-crucial, and in fact isn't really part of the concept at all, but ever since I forced myself to take Scrapper Taunt back in I3, I've been in love with the power. Now it also has a 75% range debuff. What more can I ask of from a power that always hits and costs no endurance?

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In regards to Dark Regeneration, Acc, end, and recharge will net you better survivability than heal slotting. (this changes when you consider IO sets) Between Siphon Life and Dark Regeneration you've got some powerful healing going on. Against bosses/AVs,(or any single target) Dark Regeneration will not be as big a heal, but those targets are also generally harder to hit. For your build I would recommend 1 Acc/2 end/2 rech/1 heal or 2 acc/2 end/2 rech. If you're running missions on anything over Tenacious, the 2nd accuracy will be of better use than the heal. If DR misses, you just wasted a big chunk of end for no heal. 30% is still a big chunk of burst healing, 2 recharges lowers it from 30 seconds to 16.4 seconds, nearly doubling your healing when measured over time.

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Tenacious only. I don't like how accuracy stacks up against me when I go higher in the levels. If I could, I'd fight nothing but even cons. I'm going to stick to a single accuracy slot, just to keep things consistent between all powers.

On recharge vs. heal, though, I'm kind of concerned. The build I had on Mid's lists the current heal with two slots as 736 points out of 1339, which is around half health with a single enemy. However, I just fought the Cimeroran Traitors for the first time, and I realised that against a really hard-hitting boss, that ain't gonna' matter one way or the other. I'll probably go with your suggestion of accuracy/2 end/2 rech/1 heal. I should be able to spare a slot.

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For Dark Consumption, I would still recommend against end mod slotting, but if you feel you can spare the slots, 1 acc/2 recharge/1 end mod would be nice against single targets, but I usually fine I need my slots.

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I'm curious here - why recommend against slotting endurance modification in there? At base, the power only fills up a quarter of my endurance bar, which means that unless I hit (actually hit, not just catch in the AoE) at LEAST three people and still have some endurance left before I use it, I'm going to end up with a lot less than a full bar. One of the reasons I loved the change to Soul Drain was that I didn't have to look for big crowds if I wanted to use it at all. That's sort of what I'd like to have for Dark Consumption, so at LEAST one endurance modification is in order. Two would be ideal, as I'd like to get as much out of it as I can. Being that it's so cheap, I most often use it when I'm within 10 endurance points of running out.

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Oh, consider a Tohit debuff slot in ToF instead of fear. Better mileage IMHO.

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Good point. I never bothered to check, but Touch of Fear also has an 11% to-hit debuff. That's pretty serious, and over twice what the rest of the powers have. Well worth at least single-slotting for, absolutely agreed. I wouldn't get rid of my fear slot, though. Might as well put four slots on the power.

From the looks of things, it seems I'm better off skipping Tenebrous Tentacles after all, as it's always better to have a few slots extra than a few slots too few. It would allow me to add an extra one to Dark Regeneration, an extra one to Touch of Fear and perhaps even switch Hasten for Health and multi-slot that. Oh, and put another endurance reducer in Teleport

I think that's pretty much all settled, then. Thanks a million once again, Desmodos. You really straightened this build out for me. Today I stared at it sad and depressed, looking at how many slots I was short and how many things needed more stuff, and I'm thinking about it now happy and content that it's all going to work out. Couldn't have done it without you!

*edit*
There we go!

Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1,401
http://www.cohplanner.com/

[u]Click this DataLink to open the build![u]

Revenant Jack: Level 50 Magic Scrapper
Primary Power Set: Dark Melee
Secondary Power Set: Dark Armor
Power Pool: Teleportation
Power Pool: Flight
Power Pool: Speed
Power Pool: Fitness
Ancillary Pool: Darkness Mastery

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Smite -- Acc-I(A), EndRdx-I(3), Dmg-I(5), Dmg-I(15), Dmg-I(36)
Level 1: Dark Embrace -- EndRdx-I(A), ResDam-I(11), ResDam-I(23), ResDam-I(29)
Level 2: Shadow Maul -- Acc-I(A), EndRdx-I(3), Dmg-I(5), Dmg-I(7), Dmg-I(17)
Level 4: Murky Cloud -- EndRdx-I(A), ResDam-I(11), ResDam-I(23), ResDam-I(29)
Level 6: Touch of Fear -- Acc-I(A), EndRdx-I(7), Fear-I(21), ToHitDeb-I(42)
Level 8: Shadow Punch -- Acc-I(A), EndRdx-I(9), Dmg-I(9), Dmg-I(17), Dmg-I(36)
Level 10: Obsidian Shield -- EndRdx-I(A), ResDam-I(31), ResDam-I(31), ResDam-I(34)
Level 12: Siphon Life -- Acc-I(A), EndRdx-I(13), EndRdx-I(13), Dmg-I(15), Dmg-I(19), Dmg-I(37)
Level 14: Teleport Foe -- Acc-I(A)
Level 16: Teleport -- EndRdx-I(A), EndRdx-I(42)
Level 18: Dark Consumption -- Acc-I(A), RechRdx-I(19), RechRdx-I(31), EndMod-I(34), EndMod-I(46)
Level 20: Dark Regeneration -- Acc-I(A), EndRdx-I(21), EndRdx-I(27), RechRdx-I(42), RechRdx-I(46), Heal-I(48)
Level 22: Cloak of Darkness -- EndRdx-I(A), EndRdx-I(48)
Level 24: Hover -- Flight-I(A), Flight-I(25), Flight-I(25), EndRdx-I(36)
Level 26: Soul Drain -- Acc-I(A), EndRdx-I(27), EndRdx-I(37), RechRdx-I(40), RechRdx-I(48)
Level 28: Confront -- Taunt-I(A)
Level 30: Death Shroud -- Acc-I(A), EndRdx-I(39), EndRdx-I(39), Dmg-I(39), Dmg-I(40), Dmg-I(40)
Level 32: Midnight Grasp -- Acc-I(A), EndRdx-I(33), EndRdx-I(33), Dmg-I(33), Dmg-I(34), Dmg-I(37)
Level 35: Oppressive Gloom -- Acc-I(A)
Level 38: Soul Transfer -- Heal-I(A), Heal-I(43), EndMod-I(50), EndMod-I(50), Dsrnt-I(50)
Level 41: Petrifying Gaze -- Acc-I(A), EndRdx-I(43), Hold-I(43)
Level 44: Dark Blast -- Acc-I(A), EndRdx-I(45), Dmg-I(45), Dmg-I(45), Dmg-I(46)
Level 47: Hasten -- RechRdx-I(A)
Level 49: Swift -- Run-I(A)
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Level 1: Brawl -- Dmg-I(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Run-I(A)
Level 2: Rest -- RechRdx-I(A)
Level 1: Critical Hit

You'll note there are probably plenty of slots wasted, but looking at it, I honestly couldn't say a power anywhere is missing slots such that I'd want to pinch them from somewhere else. I went a little overboard on Soul Transfer, but I figured I could indulge. That's the benefit of having a few slots too many - you get to slot what you want, not what you HAVE to

What about the Legacy Chain, though? They're clearly good guys.

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Arachnos.
... wait, arachnos? Yeah. Yes, Recluse and crew are evil. Yes, some of the rank-and-file are fanatics, hardcore, out for themselves - but the rest are a police force/army. Are they joining out of any real loyalty to Recluse, or because "this is my home, this is a good way to get a leg up and get a better life/looks good on the resume/looks good politically?" RL example - how many of the Soviet Union's army were fanatic communists, versus "This is at least a steady paycheck and meal, and better than working in the field?" I know, Arachnos rank-and-file dialog doesn't always tend toward that, but for the most part, well... 18-21 years of propaganda before joining up has an effect.

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A couple of factors to consider for this admittedly interesting look at Arachnos:

First, it's not just rank and file dialogue, it's ALL dialogue that comes out of the mouth of an Arachnos soldier that makes them seem slightly worse than just bad. "Hey, if we stand over there, we can harass people right as they get off the ferry. Wanna?" I don't remember the exact quotes, but plenty, PLENTY of them take Recluse's order to "test" the Destined Ones with more than a little glee, as they have essentially been given free reign to harass and even kill people with absolutely no repercussions. And they're loving every moment of it.

The other is that Arachnos already HAS a rogue faction - the Rogue Arachnos, unsurprisingly. Technically, if there are good guys within an evil organisation, you'd think they'd become a lot more apparent in a splinter cell, but that is not the case. In fact, the Rogue Arachnos are just as bad as the Classic Arachnos, making it hard to believe that there really are an appreciable amount of not-all-bad guys in there. Sure, a traitor here, an informant there, the odd commander with a conscience I can get. But an actual population of redeemable Arachnos would likely require yet another splinter faction, at which point it just becomes a stew.

To my eyes, it seems like the developers were so eager to paint the Isles as a shithole, if you'll pardon my expression, that they painted themselves into a corner with an irredeemably overexaggerated faction ruling over everything.

I'm really hoping Going Rogue will do it better. It HAS to, being that an unclear morality is kind of its selling point. You can have the whole world be a rat's nest and still claim that, so maybe we'll get a dictatorship that's at least slightly believable.

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Remember a few of us take Stamina.

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Which costs three power picks and a few slots

'Course, with Grant Cover costing 0.078 per second, then eh. Why not? Don't mean I'll slot it, but eh. Why not?

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It's supposed to be ugly. The powers that be in Sharkhead are Cage and Mako, and I don't think either of them care much for urban renewal and environmental protection.

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Yeah, but even Kirk Cage's headquarters is a dump. Even Villa Requin, the place that's supposed to be the high-end off-limits island where the rich live secluded lives, is still dirty and black and white. I understand that the point to making the Isles into Depression City where everything is dark and dirty and rotten to the core and any beauty, peace or order you might find are just a farce belying still more corruption and evil, but... Well, that's not a place I want to be in, both personally and conceptually. All of CoV makes me feel like I'm playing Bioshock - something happened, the place got ripped to shreds, everyone's dead or corrupted, everything's broken or on fire... Obviously something interesting happened, but I got there too late, so all I ever get to do is pick through the rubble and kill anyone that's left.

I actually agree with the Rick Dakan quote someone had in their sig: "Yes, we could have one city that was all heroes and one city that was all villains, but that would be a pretty stupid way of doing it, wouldn't it?" Sure enough, that's exactly what City of Villains is - a whole city of nothing but villains. And that corrupts its very nature. Good needs evil to be good, and good has PLENTY of evil. Evil needs good to be evil and... Evil has almost no good anywhere in sight. The most we can hope for is a slice of this rat hole, and that really doesn't fit a villain with vision and audacity such that he could control the world. It doesn't have class, and that's a game-wide problem.

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As for enemy placement... I think it matters for more than street hunting - the type of enemies you see on the streets can add a lot to the atmosphere of a zone, and none of the enemy placing in CoV is as incongruous as in some older zones of CoH. I'd expect the CoT to be lurking in any out of the way area, wooded or otherwise, but if they were placed according to the same logic as Founders and Peregrine they'd be sacrificing hapless citizens in the middle of the St. Martial streets and under Recluse's statue in Grandville.

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Well, for the most part that's true. In King's Row, Circle of Thorns mystics are only ever found on rooftops whereas Clockwork robots are largely found in empty lots, construction sites or near powerlines and substations. On the other hand, the Skulls and the Lost rule the streets, like street gangs should. In Steel Canyon, Tsoo and Hellions are everywhere, with Council troops preaching in the streets like they should, but you can only ever find Vahzilok conducting their business in the alleyways and spaces behind buildings and tucked away next to the war walls, never on the sidewalk in plain view of the street. There are good examples, Founders' Falls just happens to have CoT ceremonies on the banks of the river for some reason.

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When Going Rogue is released do you want the contacts and missions to be more like those of CoV or of the original zones of CoH?

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You want an honest answer? I would like them to be like the original CoH contacts in the old zones. I HATE HATE HATE the CoV contacts and their crappy, pointless, two-mission "story arcs" that don't mean anything and don't amount to anything at all. I despise how few missions they have - the cost of them being "better," which they aren't always. I abhor how they lock me IN THE SAME DAMN ZONE for everything they do until I'm sick of looking at it and never seem to have missions that matter for more than their little neighbourhood. I don't like them. I never have. I never liked the Hollows or Striga or Croatoa contacts, and while I like the Faultline story arc, it's decidedly NOT something that deserves to be split between four contacts. Hell, it's not even a quarter of Crimson's World Wide Red and that his one ARC. He also has approximately 20 mission mini-arcs, each with about three or four instances. The whole Faultline storyline is about as big as four of Crimson's missions, that's about it.

I liked the old CoH contacts. I liked the fact that they sent me all over town. These are problems that concern the whole city, it makes sense that you'd have to travel the city to fight them. I like their long story arcs with long, elaborate storylines. Yes, sometimes they waste time with a lot of nothing. I STILL prefer that filler to a three-mission arc and call it a day. I like that their arcs link together with each other and tell the full story of many enemy factions, and that they have an effect on the city.

Far as I'm concerned, City of Villains is City of Heroes lite: all the "fun," a fraction of the zones, contacts, stories and missions. Like I said - less is not more. I like my big zones, I like my long stories, I like my travel and I like my many-missions arcs. To me, catering to everything being "convenient" takes a lot away from the actual feel of the game. It makes me feel like they're saving a buck here and there, and I do NOT like that.

Ideally, I'd like Going Rogue to go back to its roots and introduce many interesting and diverse zones with large expanses of land. I'd like it to return to the serious contacts with serious stories, as opposed to the episodic quirps and in-jokes that so many CoV contacts are built on. I want my feeling of this being an epic game back. Because CoV makes me feel like I'm a low-life hustler clawing at success one morsel at a time. And that sucks.

I like my game big and expansive, not small and compact. Yet again, less is not always more. In this case, it's plain less.

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Taunt is there for a reason too. It's their for the tanker's role.
It seems to me that a tanker not taking Taunt is denying the whole point of the archetype.

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My SD Tank doesn't have Taunt nor does my Invul and Ice. When I use them, teams seem to go quite well.
What do you say about my Tauntless Tanks?

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So, about them healers

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Dark Regeneration should be slotted for Acc, endurance, and recharge. 3 targets are enough to heal 90% of your health. You want the power available to you as often as possible.
Dark Consumption is over slotted IMHO. 4 targets would completely replenish your endurance, but you'd likely use it when your end is around 25-50%, so 3 targets is usually sufficient. 1 Acc and 3 recharge is recommended. Use your fourth slot elsewhere.

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Putting those in the same quote as they address the same issue - from what I've seen, yes, both Dark Consumption and Dark Regeneration do indeed fill up from about three people. The thing, though, is that I wanted to get some mileage out of them when fighting a single tough boss or elite boss, as that's probably where I'll end up needing that healing and endurance the most. Are you confident that there's no point in doing that? If you are, I'm more than willing to dispense with that, given that the build given doesn't actually gain those heal and recovery slots until, like, the 40s, which I haven't even gotten to. I'm keeping one in Dark Consumption, however, as that's saved my bacon when I've accidentally run out of endurance more than a few times.

*pre-post edit*
The reason I only have two recharges in these things has to do with how level 50 Common Inventions overslot and cut down thanks to Enhancement Diversification. For the most part, three Commons are only negligibly better than two. For damage and defence, I can live with that - I want as much of those as I can muster. For things that... Aren't damage and defence, though, a third recharge reducer often doesn't do much of anything. For instance (off memory) Dark Consumption came down to 96 seconds with two recharge reducers and 90 seconds with three. That's down from three minutes. Frankly, at that scale of recharge, six seconds aren't even going to register on my radar.

I'm not above three-slotting things for recharge when slots permit, of course, but when slots get tight, those are some of the first things to go.

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You've invested 3 defense slots into Cloak of Darkness for 2% defense. Those slots would be better used elsewhere. You could use them in Obsidian Shield for your Psi-resistance.

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You mean three slots that gained me 2% defence over what I was getting with base slotting? Hmm... That's an old slotting, actually, something I did back during I5 when we had no real numbers and no good way for me to tell what I was actually getting. Why I kept it without checking the enhancements return I will never know, but good call. Removing those when I get the chance.

I'm not going to discontinue my use of Cloak of Darkness, however. Not only does it protect me from Immobilization, it looks too damn cool to give up. I LOVE being a yell-glowing Dark Fluffy

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You're planning to use hover as your sole source of knockback protection? That could be dicey at higher levels, though the new Flight Mag in hover makes it more feasible than it used to be.

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Originally, yes. I'm not into Sets and this guy doesn't really fit the notion of an acrobat with Acrobatics, so my choices are limited. These days, though, I'm using it for that, plus easier use of Teleport, plus combat mobility. Hover 3-slotted for fly speed is actually faster than unbuffed ground movement and close to what I can get with Sprint on, plus it allows me to fly over enemies that it would be less precise to jump over. Plus still, it's actually well in concept for this guy to at least hover. Plus yet again... It just looks cool

It hasn't done me wrong so far, though. It's worse for knockback protection now than it was when I got it, but it does the job, plus it offers me a negligible amount of protection to stack with Cloak of Darkness' negligible defence.

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I'm likely saying this in vain, but you should SERIOUSLY reconsider your stance on Stamina. If ever their was a secondary that begged for Stamina, Dark Armor is it.

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The problem for me has always been power picks. Currently, with Teleport Foe, Teleport, Hover, 9 primary powers, 8 secondary powers, Fearsome Stare and Dark Blast, I have 22 powers spoken for. That's 22 out of 24, which doesn't leave enough room for Stamina. I already dropped Cloak of Fear, but I honestly can't justify dropping anything else, as all other powers are either tremendously useful (read: anything in my primary and secondary), very heavily character-required (read: Teleportation) or really, really cool (read: Hover, Cloak of Darkness, Fearsome Stare and Dark Blast). I'm not against Stamina, not any more, but I don't tend to take it unless there is both conceptual justification and free power picks for it.

For instance, I picked Stamina on my Troll girl because none of the Epics fit her in the slightest and having the whole Fitness line (including both Hurdle and Swift) was actually well in-line with her concept. This guy isn't really right for being incredibly fit. The only reason I'm even considering Swift is because Teleport is really crappy for moving around inside a mission and lacking Super Speed, Fly and Super Jump makes exploration and locomotion pretty slow.

Still, though, I'll salvage three slots from Cloak of Shadows right now, but I'll probably wait for your reply before I consider salvaging slots from Dark Regeneration and Dark Consumption. If I salvage enough, I could pick the damage slots out of Soul Drain and have myself a nice squealing tentacles patch

Oh, and Desmodos, in case I haven't said it yet: Thank you kindly for your help! It may seem like I never listen, but I really appreciate what you've done to help me, and it HAS made a difference. Thank you.

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I can add code into the MIDDLE of a post, unlike the online editor which always pushes code to the end

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Quick note to make - it's only FireFox that pushes code to the end of a post. Internet Explorer, and I've tested this with 6, 7 and 8, will insert code right where your cursor is in the text field. I'm not sure why that is, but trying it now cause IE8 to ask me to allow an ActiveX script to run for the pop-up link window, so I assume how each browser handles these is what makes the difference.

Because I prefer FireFox, however, I've learned to simply never insert code. I've become "hardcore" and type all my tags by hand

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Sharkhead is far from my favourite zone, but I'll take that any day over being sent halfway across the city to Perez Park by a contact in Founders Falls.

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And I'd take travelling from the Storm Palace to Perez Park and back to the Storm Palace over spending five days straight in Sharkhead Island. There are ways around travelling, such as Pocket D, Ouroboros, veteran rewards, mission teleporter and so on and, push comes to shove, just out and out travelling, which never really takes more than a couple of minutes, not most of the time, anyway. There is, however, no going around the fact that Sharkhead Island is UGLY and I'm FORCED to spend at least 5 levels there because there is no alternative zone. CoH-side, you have AT LEAST one alternate zone for every level range, often having three or even four. CoV-side, you'd be lucky if you had two.

[ QUOTE ]
The visuals of the zones are a matter of individual taste, but at least the enemy layout of redside makes some kind of sense. The CoT in Sharkhead are in Potters Field - a creepy graveyard that people avoid (understandably.)

[/ QUOTE ]

Sure. Which only really matters if you're street hunting and isn't actually true all the time. Yes, CoT are in Potter's Field and that forested are in St. Martial because... It looks like Perez Park, I guess, and the Carnival are almost exclusively at their circus. Why are there Nemesis Soldiers battling Circle of Thorns on the beaches of Sharkhed Island, then? Why are there Knoves of Artemis on the roofs of warehouses in the Gutter? Why are there Tsoo in St. Martial's Jackpot? Or Skulls and Hellions on the isles AT ALL? What are the Vahzilok doing at the airport in Cap Au Diable, clear across the island from where they have any business being at all? I can see why there are Circle of Thorns in the hills around the PTS, but why are there any in the Luddite Farm forest? Why aren't there any Arachnos Soldiers in Nerva Archipelago when there is a Black Helicopter with full crew and Quartermasters and Arbiters and even a Fateweaver scattered all around the islands? Why are there Devouring Earth on St. Martial at all?

There are a few examples of good enemy placement in City of Villains, as there are a few good examples of enemy placement in City of Heroes. Monster Island and Monkey Island come to mind, as well as how stringently enemy groups are positioned in Terra Volta. You can't find Devouring Earth anywhere there isn't open soil, usually found in areas of devastation, and if you're looking for lost, they're always at the bottom of big trenches, where you'd expect the homeless to take shelter out of the way of the Freakshow and Sky Raiders skirmishes. Faultline also has Freakshow inhabiting the Freakshow camp and Lost inhabiting the Lost camp. Oh, and Sky Raiders inhabiting the Sky Raider camp. There are examples of both sides.

[ QUOTE ]
Villainside contacts are memorable - they have unique appearances and well defined speech patterns. Heroside contacts are a pack of sickly looking (what's with the coughing?) non-entities who all talk in exactly the same way, and for every interesting mission they hand out they've got three defeat alls to do first.

[/ QUOTE ]

Villain-side contacts may be memorable, but there are barely a third UNIQUE contacts in CoV as there are in CoH, and what contacts there are don't have a quarter of the missions that CoH contacts have. CoV contacts aren't remembered because they're memorable. They're remembered because there are so few of them so little to do for each it's perfectly easy to remember. I may not recall all the generic CoH contacts, but when I start doing their missions, I know who is who. I just don't always remember all the missions like I do CoV-side. There are so many I couldn't see them all in three playthroughs, and that's if I kept track of who I've worked for and who I should work for next.

The Midnight Club, Cimerora, the War Zone and Ouroboros HAVE helped quite a bit, and they're going in the right direction. However, there's no denying that CoV has no more than a third of the content there is on the hero-side, and while people may argue that it's BETTER, the fact that I can quote most of the contacts takes a lot of the quality away, especially when you consider that most of it ISN'T better, it's just shorter and closer by. Easier access to a crappy story, however, does not make it better, just more tolerable.

Ideally, if CoV got a brand new villain zone that wasn't a broken-down slum and used more colours than just grey, black and brown, THEN maybe we can talk. But the fact of the matter is that I am sick and tired of running through the SAME contacts in CoV, and I can ALWAYS find a path through CoH that's completely unique from what I did last time if I cared to look. This is NOT true for CoV.

[ QUOTE ]
Red-side has much less of the "Run all the way to China...then come back" style of mission arc. While there IS still some of that, it's not too bad. Granted, some people don't LIKE being zone-locked for the duration of an arc. But, personally, I feel there's enough variety within the various arcs that it never gets that claustrophobic.

[/ QUOTE ]

Enough variety? There isn't enough variety in the WHOLE GAME villain-side, let alone enough variety within a single zone. Black Victorian-style buildings give way to grey tower blocks, which give way to brown rackety shack ghettos... ALL OVER THE PLACE. The only way I can tell whether I'm in St. Martial or Nerva Archipelago or Mercy City is if I fly up and take a look at the whole map. It's like how sometimes you can't tell if you're in Steel Canyon or Atlas Park or Galaxy City... But then you head over to King's Row or Faultline or, hell, Skyway City, and you know where you are. Grandville is memorable, I'll give you that, but beyond that? All black, grey and brown.

*edit*
I didn't mean to be a jerk with this. It's just that it really seems like they wasted a perfectly good opportunity to add at least SOME variety to the game. And I'm right with you on:

[ QUOTE ]
As to the red-side "Oh look! MORE LONGBOW!" issue. PLEASE don't get me started on that. I'd just overload the language filter.

[/ QUOTE ]

Post 30, that simply kills, and it grates ever more in a game with this little variety. Too much Longbow and their bases are terribly optimized for performance. That's actually the symptom of a greater disease - CoV doesn't seem to have a point for the most part. I thought I remembered all the story arcs being good and engaging on my first pass through to 50. On my second pass through, I realised they were all "Go there and do that for me, then I'll pay you." For heroes it's kind of justified as... Well, you're a hero! Plus, most arcs either advance the plot (Countess Crey has been arrested and convicted!) or reveal some crucial canon information (The Circle of Thorns are 14 000 years old, you say?). Villain-side... Not so much. "Hey, we're gonna mess up the Scrapyarders real good! Go beat them up in these four abandoned buildings!" or "I hate Council! Go beat them up!" is a story, technically, but not a very interesting one. These story arcs leave neither interesting information behind nor seem to matter much one way or the other. Hero-side, when you take out the Nemesis 40-45, then 45-50 people talk about how the Nemesis Army should be dispersing soon (except it's not). CoV-side, I can honestly say that the arcs that actually matter are exceedingly rare, and even those that do amount to little more than a cameo appearance (read: Pyriss). Time After Time sort of matters and Pia Marino's arc reveals interesting info, but beyond that, it's more busting heads for kicks and giggles. Oh, and money.

Replying to myself, but anyway:

I'm facing a bit of a conundrum. I fiddled around with Mid's and came up with the following build:

Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1,401
http://www.cohplanner.com/

[u]Click this DataLink to open the build![u]

Revenant Jack: Level 50 Magic Scrapper
Primary Power Set: Dark Melee
Secondary Power Set: Dark Armor
Power Pool: Teleportation
Power Pool: Flight
Power Pool: Fitness
Ancillary Pool: Darkness Mastery

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Smite -- Acc-I(A), EndRdx-I(3), Dmg-I(5), Dmg-I(15), Dmg-I(36)
Level 1: Dark Embrace -- EndRdx-I(A), ResDam-I(11), ResDam-I(23), ResDam-I(29)
Level 2: Shadow Maul -- Acc-I(A), EndRdx-I(3), Dmg-I(5), Dmg-I(7), Dmg-I(17)
Level 4: Murky Cloud -- EndRdx-I(A), ResDam-I(11), ResDam-I(23), ResDam-I(29)
Level 6: Touch of Fear -- Acc-I(A), EndRdx-I(7), Fear-I(21)
Level 8: Shadow Punch -- Acc-I(A), EndRdx-I(9), Dmg-I(9), Dmg-I(17), Dmg-I(36)
Level 10: Obsidian Shield -- EndRdx-I(A)
Level 12: Siphon Life -- Acc-I(A), EndRdx-I(13), EndRdx-I(13), Dmg-I(15), Dmg-I(19), Dmg-I(37)
Level 14: Teleport Foe -- Acc-I(A)
Level 16: Teleport -- EndRdx-I(A)
Level 18: Dark Consumption -- Acc-I(A), RechRdx-I(19), RechRdx-I(31), EndMod-I(34), EndMod-I(42)
Level 20: Dark Regeneration -- Acc-I(A), EndRdx-I(21), EndRdx-I(27), EndRdx-I(42), Heal-I(46), Heal-I(50)
Level 22: Cloak of Darkness -- EndRdx-I(A), EndRdx-I(31), DefBuff-I(31), DefBuff-I(34), DefBuff-I(40)
Level 24: Hover -- Flight-I(A), Flight-I(25), Flight-I(25), EndRdx-I(36)
Level 26: Soul Drain -- Acc-I(A), EndRdx-I(27), EndRdx-I(37), RechRdx-I(43), RechRdx-I(46)
Level 28: Confront -- Taunt-I(A)
Level 30: Death Shroud -- Acc-I(A), EndRdx-I(39), EndRdx-I(39), Dmg-I(39), Dmg-I(40), Dmg-I(40)
Level 32: Midnight Grasp -- Acc-I(A), EndRdx-I(33), EndRdx-I(33), Dmg-I(33), Dmg-I(34), Dmg-I(37)
Level 35: Oppressive Gloom -- Acc-I(A)
Level 38: Soul Transfer -- Heal-I(A), EndMod-I(43), Dsrnt-I(46)
Level 41: Petrifying Gaze -- Acc-I(A), EndRdx-I(42), Hold-I(43)
Level 44: Dark Blast -- Acc-I(A), EndRdx-I(45), Dmg-I(45), Dmg-I(45), Dmg-I(50)
Level 47: Tenebrous Tentacles -- Acc-I(A), EndRdx-I(48), Dmg-I(48), Dmg-I(48), Dmg-I(50)
Level 49: Swift -- Run-I(A)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Dmg-I(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Run-I(A)
Level 2: Rest -- RechRdx-I(A)
Level 1: Critical Hit

The problem is that, as with any build planned on paper, I ended up missing a fairly obvious point that I really meant to address - psi resistance in Obsidian Shield. I meant to slot resistance there to combat those annoying psychics in the 40s, but ended up somehow completely forgetting about it. Now I'm looking to pinch three slots from somewhere to do that, but... Well, I can only see MAYBE finding one extra.

Forget about Cloak of Darkness, I'm starting to think I can't even afford Tenebrous Tentacles. I really wanted this power because I thought it looked cool, but I'm starting to think it may be better if I dropped it. The cone is HUGE, but lacking any other reason to be at range, using it would be annoying and it doesn't actually seem to do all that much damage for the endurance it costs. I'd lie if I said I didn't want it, but I have four extra slots in it, so I'm thinking of replacing with something simpler, like Health or Hurdle or such. That'll give me all three slots and even one more to spare.

I'm chiefly worried about endurance on this one, hence the many endurance reducers. So far it seems to do well, and I can HOPE that Death Shroud will help further (as opposed to digging me even further in) and if that pans out, then I'll see if I can't pinch a reducer or two off somewhere. But for the time being, I think I'll have to plan without it.

I wanted to ask for advice on what to change, but since I'm restricting myself to only Common Inventions, I don't think anyone would have much to say. I'd certainly hear you out if do, of course.

P.S. Or I could take Hasten
*edit* Or Provoke!

Apparently so. Oh, well, I guess my shielders will take it and single-slot it for defence if it's that cheap.

[ QUOTE ]
Taking Grant Cover, one power pick and no additional slot, doesn't in any way gimp your damage. I don't remember the exact numbers, but I think there's about 23 powers and 67 additional slots at level 50.

[/ QUOTE ]

It's not about power picks and slots, it's about running yet another toggle. Not having endurance tends to gimp one's damage, as damage tends to cost endurance to dish out. Taking powers to mitigate that, then, gets into the real of costing powers and slots.

[ QUOTE ]
Rightly so, in my opinion...every Origin-specific suggestion I've seen didn't survive first contact with people's character concepts.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's pretty much how it goes. If origins had been much more rigidly defined in meaning back at Launch, forcing people to conform to whatever they were meant to mean, it could have worked. Of course, that would have produced a game nowhere near as cool as the one we have now, but at least it would have allowed origins to mean something. But five years in, when people already have years and years of character backstory which such origin definition would outright deny? That just can't work.

Look back on the Origin of Powers arc and what a controversy it created. "What? So my character has powers because of an even that happened several thousand years ago in Earth's history? But he's an alien that's several MILLION years old! How does that work?" So they we had to argue that maybe the contacts were wrong (that Virgil and War Witch contradict each other helps) and that that's just one way to gain powers and others had powers from elsewhere and so forth. But when Positron (the one in Steel Canyon) starts talking about how all technologists are somehow connected... Yeah, not buying it. Not all technology characters are inventors! Of course, you have certain of these Origin of Powers "storytellers" using pretty heavy forum and meta-game lingo and sound like a player more so than a character, along with the appaling quality of the rest of the Midnighters stuff leads me to believe that this was a cheesy, cheap attempt to explain Powerset Proliferation (a term Positron the character uses exactly, bleh!) that actually falls flat. At least I like War Witch's story of Oranbega and how detailed and well-written it is. Unlike Synapse's story of Science. It's two paragraphs of basically nothing.

Ahem...

Simply put, making origins meaningful at this point is unworkable without burning the majority of people's concepts established thus far. I know I would suffer greatly, as my interpretations of origin tend to be somewhat non-conventional. Hence, my problem with it.

I still hate how villain-side content land-locks me on the same island, visiting the same five doors, following the same 5 routes day after day. Once I hit Sharkhead Island, I know I'll be bored to tears for the next five levels because I'll I'll see is grey buildings, black sand and the Hell Forge.

Oh. Joy.

Not that there's much to see even if you zone. You switch from one black-grey-brown dump into another that's almost exactly the same, anyway.

And as much as people talk about redundant missions and faceless contacts hero-side, the fact of the matter is I've been here for five years and I STILL don't remember all their names, locations and missions. Villain-side, I knew all the contacts with all the missions and all the locations within a few months. Less is not always more.

[ QUOTE ]
Tenebrous Tentacles and Oppressive Gloom stack beautifully. I had both of them on my BS/DA for a while and it worked great. Hit em with TT from range and hop into the crowd running OGloom, and suddenly you have all minions hit with a de-facto hold.

[/ QUOTE ]

That was sort of my thinking. I remember a Fire Controller first taught me the beauty of doing things that way. I believe he used a combination of Fire Cages plus Bonfire to have a de facto hold, which I found very impressive at the time. I really did think opening with the tentacles and jumping in to stun them would yield some interesting results.

[ QUOTE ]
I understand your decision to drop Cloak of Fear. I did the same thing as soon as I realized how hard it was hitting my end bar for very little return. I would pick it up again if they did one of three things:
1) lower the endurance cost significantly, down to the base cost of Dark Embrace would be fine (.26/sec I believe)
2) Increase the magnitude of the fear to mag 3
3) Increase the accuracy to at least the normal 75%
All 3 of those things combined are why I dropped the power. If they changed 1 I would consider it, change 2 and I would be sorely tempted, if they change all 3 I would pick it up again in a heartbeat.

[/ QUOTE ]

For me, it's a case of cost vs. effect. With THAT low accuracy and magnitude, its effect is negligible. I was willing to be sold on it for its to-hit debuff, but that gets applied for five seconds every five seconds, meaning that one miss leaves an enemy undebuffed for the next five seconds, and another miss... And with FRIKKIN 0.67 INHERENT ACCURACY, there is no BLOODY way in HELL I'm slotting this thing to such a level where it will hit anything even close to every time. What's worse, the Fear is also applied for seven and a bit seconds every five seconds, which means a miss would free an enemy. Compounded on enemies still firing out of Fear occasionally and the fact that Fear + Stun STILL means stumbling enemies, rather than cowering enemies, and its effect is very much negligible. The cost, though? Astronomical. Was this power ever so damn good that it had to be driven into uselessness in all but the most heavily-Inventions-slotted builds?

Really, I could, possibly, get behind a limited-cover mitigation setup. After all, isn't that what Word of Confusion is? Mitigation that's only effective some of the time? I could, theoretically, if the power wasn't THIS expensive to run. I don't consider partial mitigation, ESPECIALLY on a Scrapper who already has mitigation coming out the wazoo for being a Scrapper in the first place, to be that big of a benefit, so having that big of a cost attached to it is just. Blarg! Do not want! Not, finally, when Oppressive Gloom offers three times the mitigation (literally three times) for a minuscule fraction of the cost and it's in the SAME set.

I cannot and will not consider using this power until/unless its inherent power accuracy is raised AT LEAST to 0.8, the same as every other damn AoE control power, or at least has its fear to tick duration ratio improved. A cost decrease alone will have to be VERY serious to make me consider it in its current state. dropping it down to Oppressive Gloom 0.08 but with health damage might get me to look into it again.

[ QUOTE ]
In fact, tanks were lacking in fulfilling their role so much in the game because they weren't taking Taunt that the DEVs instituted Gauntlet on all Tanker attack/damage powers, so that Tanks were force to take at least some of the agro that they were intended to take.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's not true. Gauntlet was instituted either before the change that made Taunt into an AoE, or at the same time as that change. It's ridiculous to say that "Tanks weren't doing their job" when the game launched with Taunt as a single-target-only power and many Tankers instead took Provoke. Somehow, even before then, Tankers still managed to do "their job" (which is a heck of a way to describe playing a game) with only single-target taunt or, because that's fairly useless at controlling large aggro, just their own bodies and their own attacks. Believe it or not, there was a time when Tankers were considered to be more than mere taunt bots.

To illustrate, I play Scrappers, and a good Taunt aura is a HELL of a lot better than a single-target Taunt will ever be at controlling aggro.

Furthermore, you may choose to stay behind and protect the squishies from errant enemies that stray their way, but that's your choice in disregarding the Scrapper's intended role, which is a boss killer, and that's coming straight out of Jack's mouth. Since they have not been rebalanced or repurposed since he left and no-one has spoken about altering their intended purpose, claiming that's what they should be doing is false. Scrappers do damage. If you choose to not use it on the targets that NEED to be damage hard and fast, that's up to you, but those of us who do choose to do things otherwise are not, in the slightest, in the wrong.

Furthermore, the notion that squishies cannot take care of themselves is absurd. Yes, a boss and his whole posse barelling down on them is always bad news, but we're talking stragglers that slip by the tank, right? Surely a Controller would have an errant debuff or two laying around, or a Blaster would have a hard-hitting melee attack he can't get close enough to the boss to use at the moment that can take care of it. I mean, as the sole melee on a team more often than not, I miss a LOT of stragglers, and with just Confront, it's hard to control them, yet my (usually sidekicked) allies still seem to be able to handle one or two minions by themselves.

I'm going to say that, occasionally, dividing responsibility like that is prudent, very much so. I had a doomed Hollows team fighting +2 Minions of Igneous that we managed to salvage by having one Tanker take point and control aggro and one Tanker hang back with the squishies and catch things the first Tanker missed because it was the squishies who always wiped and we melee soon followed when we lost our support. But that was a team seriously struggling at level, like, 12 or some such with players who were, for the most part, badly inexperienced.

[ QUOTE ]
Oppressive Gloom causes far more wandering than CoF ever will. It is the stun wander specifically that lead me to drop OG in the first place. Since mobs do not wander, the fear duration does in fact over lap. I don't know what powers you've been using that have fear, but wandering or running is not the common result of the effect, though it can happen.

[/ QUOTE ]

Honestly, I've been using Oppressive Gloom for a few days now, and I can't say the wandering has bothered me. I don't really have any PBAoE attacks and what drains I have are easy enough to get three people out of a crowd with. I will admit that Cloak of Fear I simply never used much. It always put an inordinate amount of strain on my endurance pool, and I never had the slots to spare to slot it enough to be useful. Maybe it keeps them in place, I don't know. My experience, however, comes from Touch of Fear, and pretty much half the time I put someone under the effects of this, he either takes off running or teleports away. Bloody Xbox Armour Rikti! As far as utility goes, I'll take a power I can use that provides only slightly less than a power that provides only slightly more but I can never, ever afford.

[ QUOTE ]
My DM/DA build uses 60% from slotting and 54% accuracy from set bonuses. Mid's calculates this 108% accuracy. That's before factoring Soul Drain.

[/ QUOTE ]

Mid's hero designer calculates against even con enemies. Even if I drop my difficulty all the way down (not that I run high - never more than Tenacious) I'll still be facing +1s a lot of the time. Provided the bonuses you listed act like accuracy and stack with accuracy slotting, your final to-hit would be (1 + 0.6 +0.54)*0.65 = 2.14*0.65 = 0.93197, or around 93% final to-hit. That's not capped, but it's well good enough, however that's more than I can do even if I used three level 50 Commons. You're looking at 114% accuracy enhancement, and three 50 Commons would only add up to 0.9908 post ED. And that's at level 47 and up. Before that, it's significantly worse. If that's what it takes to make this power work, I'm REALLY having second thoughts about ever taking it.

[ QUOTE ]
On an IO build, the endurance costs of CoF are simply not a concern. Proper slotting will actually net you recovery.

[/ QUOTE ]

Obviously I know next to nothing about sets, but even so it is incredibly difficult for me to imagine that. The power costs slightly less than all three of my shields combined, and I'm barely managing to run those and Cloak of Shadows. I'm not sure about other Dark Scrappers, but I enjoy Cloak of Shadows greatly and have no intention of discontinuing its use. It helps give me a TINY bit of defence and I simply ADORE the way it looks. And keep in mind, I'm not even running Death Shroud yet. When I start THAT up... I don't dare even think. But even if I concede that Inventions might solve that problem, the fact remains that I'd just rather stick to what I know best.

I understand you're not trying to argue and convince, and I can respect that. It's just that I was all but convinced I could find some use of that power and juggle my toggles to run it somehow, but finding out it has THAT kind of accuracy just begs the question "Why?" Oppressive Gloom already does worlds more than I could actually ask of it, and it does so practically for free. Dropping it is out of the question, and if it's going, I really have no use for another form of mitigation that won't stack with it.

I'll see what I can get out of Dark Mastery. I'm most interested in Dark Blast, honestly, as I really want this guy to have a blast of some sort. I'm not terribly excited about the other things, looking at them, though I mist admit that they don't look too bad, either. Torrent sucks, obviously, but I don't have a problem with Petrifying Gaze. It is in character and I'd never refuse a ranged hold. Tenebrous Tentacles also looks like a SERIOUSLY massive cone (for a Scrapper) that still does at least fairly decent damage and immobilizes stuff so it doesn't wander We'll see how that goes, but I can't imagine finding enough slots to make Death Shroud work for the next few levels (currently 37) and it's even WORSE if I try to keep Cloak of Darkness on top of that. Frankly, if I had to pick between Cloak of Darkness and Death Shroud, I'd pick Death Shroud, and I'm not in the slightest a fan of damage auras. People keep telling me they pay for their own cost, but the fact of the matter is I always end up spending less endurance with them off than I do with them on.

Read and comprehended, but it actually serves to heighten my dislike of Cloak of Fear. It has lower than average accuracy, which I wasn't aware of. Red Tomax says a native accuracy of 0.67... ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!? That's worse than Fault and Hand Clap, and for a power that only works on minions and even then at a stupid high cost? This is absurd. I'll have to run a few accuracy calculations, but it looks like even with three level 50 Common accuracy enhancements, the power STILL won't go over the magic 90% accuracy mark against +1 enemies. And it's not like it can overstack like Oppressive Gloom can. It ticks once per 5 seconds with a Fear duration of 7 seconds and a bit and a to-hit debuff of 5 seconds, meaning it has to hit every single time. Which it won't.

I honestly don't know what sets can do for Cloak of Fear, but looking at it, I can't imagine they could do enough. And even if they could, that's not a solution for me.

You know, reading through your write-up, I was ready to say "Well, I have the power and I'm keeping it, so I guess I'll have to find something to use it for." After seeing the power's actual stats... I'm ready to respec out of it. Like, right now. This power is bad. It costs a ridiculous amount, it fears enemies, which causes them to run more often than it causes them to cower (in my experience) and now I find that it can't hit the broad side of a barn even WITH ludicrous overslotting. I guess I could settle for it working only somewhat some of the time, but really. At that cost and when I can have a power that has to miss THREE TIMES in order for its effect to skip that comes at almost no cost whatsoever... My choice is pretty clear.

I was going for a D3 Scrapper - Dark Melee/Dark Armour/Dark Mastery, all powers from all of those. I had to give up one power for Hover, and I was planning to sacrifice one from Dark Mastery. Torrent, maybe, because that looks (haven't tried it) pretty bad, but if I'm skipping something, it looks like this is going to be it. I can't believe I put Death Shroud off for this... Not that I'd have slots to run it anyway, but damn!

Here's a follow-up question, though - now that I've seen how good Oppressive Gloom is and how little it costs... Just what the HELL am I going to do with Cloak of Fear? It costs seven times as much (0.08 to 0.56) and applies an effect that's actually weaker (so weak as to be crappy) where enemies will cower... Sometimes, and at other times will run away freely, and still manage to attack every once in a while and it STILL only catches minions.

I... Guess Cloak of Fear could stack with Touch of Fear to scare bosses, but seriously now. I could stack Touch of Fear with itself for less cost and only slightly more time and do so much more reliably than this. So what the hell do I do with this thing? I already have it

[ QUOTE ]
Alt_oholic,
I think your big picture is skewed. A scrapper's job is to kill. It's not a tank sent in to manage aggro. It's not a defender sent in to buff, debuff or heal. It's not a controller sent in to lock the spawns down.
It has one job: Destroy the enemy.
Grant Cover detracts from that role by forcing the scrapper to hang around either others with GC, or way too close to squishies to provide what defense it does provide while increasing the risk for squishies by bringing more aoe down on their heads.
Either way, it interferes with mobility and thus damage output.
Selfish? No. Job minded? Yes.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree completely. Scrappers kill stuff. That's what they do. If they "help the team," they do so by doing what they do best - kill the stuff before they kill the team. Scrappers are not Tankers, their job is not to control aggro or buff their team-mates. That Scrappers CAN do that is completely besides the point, especially on a team WITH a Tanker. A Scrapper that's not killing is wasting his time and putting his team in danger by not doing his job.

And before we get into Taunt, that has self-worth. More often than not, Taunt/Confront will stop and return runners and the 75% range debuff will bring ranged enemies closer to the Scrapper/Ranker so as to avoid straying too far to chase them.

Grant Cover has almost no self worth and helps in killing stuff and surviving long enough to kill almost in no way whatsoever. What's doubly worse is that it comes at a COST, and not an insignificant one, at that. Not only does it cost, it's not that strong, it's range-limited and requires the Scrapper to do things that not only don't help the team as much as KILLING STUFF does, but can actually put team-mates in danger. Easy example - fighting the Psychic Clockwork King the other day, I specifically asked my sidekick to NOT stand near me or behind me, because he was getting near one-shotted by Psychic Scream. Fighting Bobcat later on, I asked him to keep away and stay to the side, because he was getting slaughtered by Spin and whatever that cone she has is called. When teaming with a Scrapper, there are fewer spots more dangerous than next to said Scrapper.

And besides, I find the notion that "the big picture" means that I have to build for teaming to be absurd. I build to the strengths of my AT and my powersets and I build to facilitate my playstyle. If that means build for soloing, then build for soloing I will. If that means build for killing stuff and killing stuff only, then so be it. Grant Cover may help, but it doesn't help enough to justify its cost.