Aett_Thorn

My Claws/Stone Brute on test laughs at you all. Odd Combo will one day make it to live servers, but until then, he's happy on test, dancing and spinning in Granite Armor.

Really? That seems like a pretty good argument to me. The devs have repeatedly and emphatically said no to this idea. And it's their game. Every lead this game has had has said no to the idea. They're not going to put it in.

That's kind of like saying "Just because the boss said we shouldn't drink on the job isn't a good reason not to do it."

What numbers have you shown? Seriously. Where are the numbers that back up exactly what you say? Because the only ones that I've seen from you don't support the claim that you are trying to make about them. Their tools fall into a number of categories:

1) Always on mez protection (Force Field and Sonic)
2) Mostly always on mez protection (Traps)
3) Stealth, allowing you to get first shot (Dark, Cold, and Storm)
4) Buff/Debuff set controls (Dark, Storm, Radiation, Traps, Trick Arrow)
5) Accuracy Debuffs (Radiation, Dark, Trick Arrow, Traps)
6) Blast set control powers (all blast sets to some extent)

Now, the only sets that don't have SOMETHING to help you take out the enemy before you takes a shot at you are Thermal, Empathy and Kinetics. I have yet to see anybody seriously state that Kinetics is underpowered and needs a serious buff. Empathy can do some very nasty things on a team, and is very much a team-focuses set, and the same thing with Thermal. Those sets are designed with a teamer in mind. If you want to solo with them, you don't get much to help you, and that is by design because of how much they can help the whole team.

So, again, you want your support characters, which act as large force multipliers on teams, to be able to have 100% reliable protection from Mez effects like melee does, even though melee characters cannot possibly buff the team/debuff the enemy anywhere near as effectively as your support characters. Is that right?

Again, if you are consistently succumbing to the weakest mob in the field consistently, you are doing something wrong.

Well, when 2/3rds is available to bypass ED, then you'll be at:

S/L: ~78%
E/NE: ~52%
F: Still 90% capped
C: ~17%


Also note, that while the percentages might not be that large, let's take a look at it another way. If you are at 70% resistance, you are only taking 30% of incoming damage. At 74%, you are taking 26% of incoming damage. If an attack normally does 100 points of damage, you've gone from taking 30 damage to 26 damage, a 13% reduction in incoming damage. At 78% resistance, you're now taking 22 damage, a 26.7% reduction in incoming damage from your current 70% resistance.

Yeah, as soon as I said it, I thought to myself: now there's something I should play. Making all of the auras as light-white as possible, and you can write it off as frost or something. Now, if only we could make the Ice Melee attacks black (Dev's, there's such a thing as black ice: get on this!).

The only reason I wouldn't think there would be synergy with those powers (at least more so than usual) is that Oppressive Gloom/Cloak of Fear should take care of most minions anyways, so Ice Patch wouldn't be as necessary. Now, if you could get your Ice Patch to only affect the bosses and lieuts, then we'd be on to something. But if it's knocking down something that is stunned already, then it's not working to its full potential like it might with the other sets.

It's certainly not a bad combo of powers to have, I just see the other sets getting more use out of Ice Patch than Dark Armor would.


Now, if you wanted to make a melee Controller, then I'd say that Dark/Ice is the way to go. Once you get Oppressive Gloom, Cloak of Fear, Ice Patch, Freezing Touch, and Frozen Aura, you've got stuns, fears, holds, sleeps, and KD. The only thing you're really missing is an Immob and a Confuse, and you can get the immob and another hold from your APP if you so choose. Heck, go Stone APP and you can get another Hold, a ranged AoE stun, and an Immob. Go crazy and with your three power picks from no longer having to pick up Stamina, and go Presence Pool, to pick up another Taunt, a ST fear, and a PBAoE fear. Doing all that would get you:

2 ST holds
2 PBAoE fears
1 PBAoE stun
1 Ranged AoE stun
1 PBAoE sleep
1 Placeable AoE KD
1 Immob

That's nine control options. Nothing should ever touch you, as long as your endurance holds out.

While I do agree with most of your points, I also see it more like this:

When I come up with a character concept for a game called City of Heroes, most of them tend to be more heroic in nature. Certainly, the other half of the game is called City of Villains, but the base game is still regarded, in my mind at least, as City of Heroes. As such, the majority of my characters would never be evil. It's just not how I see them. Certainly, if I want them to get a patron pool, or some badge over on villain-side, I might take them over there briefly, but for most of their career they will be hero-side.

I think that a lot of people play this game to be heroic, and so make more heroes. The corollary to that is actually a game like Grand Theft Auto, where you play it to be villainous for the most part, so you don't mind doing evil things.

Certainly, everyone is entitled to their own opinion on this, just wanted to throw out another point of view.

Aye, but some don't give you their number until you're almost done with them. Heck, I did one of the level 1-5 contacts the other day, and didn't get the guy's number until I was level 5, and done with him anyways. Fixing that would be great, but if it's not fixed for everyone, a Vet reward for it would be nice.

Vet rewards are meant to be fluff. They aren't supposed to be anything nearly as large as a new powerset.

You pay $180 a year to play the game. The Vet rewards are thrown in for free. You do NOT pay $180 for the Vet rewards.

Okay, yup, you're right. I was just looking at the number at the bottom of Invinc that Mids had. It was only showing 1.5% for one enemy in range. However, if you look at the effects tab, it'll show you what the actual value is. 5% base, plus 1% per enemy (the 5% only starts when an enemy is in range, though), gives you base 6% with one enemy in range. Slotted to 1.56% or so will bring that up to 9.36% increase. So there ya go.

There's no way that it should jump 10% from one enemy. It should just just over 1.5%. There's still a huge problem with that number.

Yeah, I chalcked that up to the difference between his 38 and my 40 (since Mids's base is one enemy in range of Invinc). But there's still 4-8% Defense unaccounted for.

No, that's not what happens. Just to be clear, slow resistance resists the effect, not the time the effect lasts. If you got hit with an 80% runspeed debuff, but you resisted 20% of that, you'd have -64% runspeed.

Status resistance does this. DEBUFF resistance, which Slow Resistance is, resist the amount of effect, but does not lower duration.

You seem to be under the impression that those powers need to be cast on the entire team. They don't. Except in high-level missions with a lot of Mez powers, the Tankers and Scrappers probably don't need CM, but the Blasters, Defenders, and Controllers might if you have a bad Tanker on the team who causes aggro spill-over. If the tanker is the focus of all of the attacks, then few people on the team should need CM at all.

Increase Density is nice for Defense-based Tanker and Scrapper sets, giving them another layer of protection, but the support characters that aren't getting hit don't need it.

Powers like that aren't meant to be used on all seven other players on your team. Use them accordingly, and they take much less of your time.