45th_Parallel

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Sleek tights for gloves and boots!! All other new options pale in comparison to finally getting these oversights corrected!

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Indeed. Thank the costume gods for finally adding this! I have have half a dozen costumes that use tights sleek and it it was always annoying to not have matching gloves/boots.

How about merging the markets at the same time

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I just got my thug to 40, and shes having some issues, but im looking past them.
However, in RV, if a hero jumps you, just unleash gang war and run like hells end, that is what I find the power good for.

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Wow your Thug is 40 already? I have some questions for you then.

How is the Bruiser?
Does he have ranged attacks, or only melee?
Does he prefer melee range fighting?
What defense toggles does he use?
Does he have status protection?
What attackes does he cycle?
What attacks does he cycle with both upgrades?
Does he have any AE kockback abilities (I hope not)?
How hard is it to keep his rage up?

What new attacks do enforcers/punks get with the second upgrade?

Can you post some screenshots of your Bruiser?

My quick and dirty estimates put the Brawl Index at about:

Charged Brawl = 1.38889smash + .94444energy = 2.333
Havok Punch = 2.2246smash + 1.4444energy = 3.669
Jacobs Ladder = 4.174 energy only

Not too bad really. I wonder what Thunder strike will be. Something in the 6ish range would be darn nice.

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So you are correct that it is a 6 percent reduction in overall damage, and (s)he is correct that it has the same effect as removing an SO from a 6 slotted power. The thing is that as you put more damage SO's into a power, each one constitutes less of the overall percentage of that powers damage.

All that being said, I wouldn't much care for a 6 percent damage reduction on any of my characters either.

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This is essentially correct (and I'm a he, even though my current avatar isn't ).

Anyway, the point is that if you say that someone damage was dropped by 5%, then people say "Oh well, thats no big deal." If you say, Radiation defenders can now only 5 slot attacks, that 6th slot is now removed forever, then people would say "OMG [censored] this is the supidest change evar"!

I'm just trying to put it into some perspective. Trying to make people see that damage buffs always work of your base damage while -res works on your overall damage, and that a 6% drop in your _overall_ damage is huge!

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I'm not sure why you challenge the percentage change? Say you do 100 points of damage. Old EF let you do 137.5. New EF lets you do 130. 137.5/130~1.05.

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Now lets take an example that might actually occur in reality. Lets assume your base damage is 100 and you have 5 damage SOs, AM running, and you hit Aim. 100*(1+(.33*5)+.25+.66)=356. Remember that -res works on your total damage, not your base damage.

356*1.375=489.5
356*1.3=462.8

Thats a drop of 26.7 points of damage. That is 26.7% of your base damage gone. If you are at the damage cap it's 30% of your base damage gone. Thats like hacking 1 damage SO off of every one of your powers. Don't try to pawn this off as some minor change.

I think this does boil down to yet another PvP nerf that affects PvE. But give me a break, EF is a toggle. Dropping a toggle on a defender in PvP is as easy as taking candy from a baby. Defenders have zilch for status protection. The fact that EF is a toggle balances out the fact it has a higher effect.

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The decrease is fairly minor. For defenders, it's really a 5% reduction in damage output.

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I'm not sure where you got 5% from. At the very least, this is a 25% reduction in the power (from 37.5 to 30). And the truth is that -res effects work on your total (with buffs and SOs) damage, not base damage. This nerf amounts to almost taking 1 damage SO out of everyone one of your powers.

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The principle of the thing is that a dev said that EF was not reduced, and those saying it was were mistaken or lying. Seeing this patch note now after the comment that was posted when this was first brought up is a bit disturbing.

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I agree with you that in principle this nerf was disturbing. But I would go even farther to say that in practice it is even more disturbing. I mean forgetting that they called us liars and all that, I just doesn't make sense in the game. Even after their 3rd spin doctoring of the response, the logic still doesn't add up.

Defense was lowered so you have to nerf damage output, huh? Anchor based toggle debuffs are too "easy to use", wha? And if you apply this logic to the game uniformly, powers like DN, FR, and TP should have been affected as well, but they weren't. Why does this special brand of resoning apply only to EF?

This change is crap. It is nerfing for the sake of nerfing with no justification. My only guess is that some AT in CoV was getting this power to stack with other -Res effects in some way, and thus it needed to be nerfed. Though I doubt you'd ever get the devs to admit they are nerfing CoH because of CoV.

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Dev Note:
This power has always been very strong and easy to use, despite its high endurance cost. With the overall decrease in the power of defensive buffs, this power had to be weakened or Radiation would be too strong compared to other Defender primaries and Controller secondaries.

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So, is this the story you're sticking to?

Calling a anchor based toggle debuffs "easy to use" is a complete joke. Do you even play your own game? Your anchors will die many times during a fight requiring constant reapplication of the debuff. Status effects (to which defenders have no resistance) will also drop the toggle. You're lucky if the buff is up for 60-80% of any given fight. The slightly higher -res value somewhat compensated for this. Now you've gone and removed that. Yet the ridiculous end cost remains *sigh*

TP and FR are fire and forget and stay in effect for the whole duration. They are self stackable by the same caster. They dont' even require a mob to target. In "ease of use" they are far superior to EF. Using this as an excuse to nerf EF strains all logic.

I also fail to see what the overall decrease in defense has to do with -res debuffs. Did you mean to nerf the -dmg aspect of the power but nerfed the -res instead? I mean the -res has nothing to with defense per se. It is more of a team damage output buff. It would be analagous to nerfing siphon power because defense was lowered. Again, this just doesn't make any sense.

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Given the massive drawbacks of EF, it should be stronger than TP or FR in effect.

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I never thought I'd see the day when a defender begins to believe that their defender powers should somehow be better than the next defender powers.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Elvis has left the building.

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Oh please, that is NOT what I said. I said it should be stronger "in effect". That means the drawbacks in end usage and application of the power are such that the actual effects (ie the -res debuff) should be more potent. Being weaker is some ways, it should be stronger in other ways. You know, that little thing called balance?

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Original Post edited to add "but not" - Tar Patch and Freezing Rain are classified as differently.

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So... what's "classified differently" mean?

Is it because Enervating Field is a toggle, while the rest are click powers?

What's makes Enervating Field the "beneficiary" of such love?

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My thoughts exactly.

Must be the Toggle nature of the power I'd guess.

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What a load of utter crap. Being a toggle is a HUGE disadvantage.

-It requires a mob anchor that often dies during combat, cancelling the debuff. TP and FR keep going strong if mobs die under the effect.

-It takes a truckload of endurance to maintain, much more than TP or FR

-It cannot be self stacked by the same caster like TP and FR

-It drops if you are mezzed, or hit by any status effects. TP and FR are not.

That is a load of bull. Given the massive drawbacks of EF, it should be stronger than TP or FR in effect.


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All powers that debuff Resistance have less effect than they did before Issue 5. This includes all versions of Enervating Field BUT NOT Freezing Rain or Tar Patch.

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Yeah right. A global change for "all resistance debuff powers" that only affects one power!? It's getting really hard to swallow this tripe. If you're going to make up lies, at least have them make sense.

This is still a terrible change. Just keep it the way it is for gameplay reasons. Who wants to be constantly checking their range from every mob that dies. This reallly hurts gameplay. The system is ridiculously complicated and doesn't really accomplish much.

If you must implement this change however, please make it only apply to SIDEKICKS. All the people who are powerleveling are always SKed useing a bridge character. Those of us on a regular team and are not SKed shouldn't have to worry about this range garbage.

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Actually i want them to keep them at +1.

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As do I. (Granted this is from a 30+ point of view though)

I do not know about the lower level.

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I agree as well. Post 30 the +1 mobs are a godsend. They make missions moderatley challenging (though still pretty easy imo). Plus, they make the in-mission xp a lot better. A mission with all +1s and the higher completion rewards makes doing missions somewhat close to outdoor hunting (though outdoor hunting is still clearly superior).

After leave 30, +1 should be the minimum mob you get in a mission (including bosses). There should also be a healthy amount of +2s as well.

In any case Statesman, when you fix the +1 "bug", please make sure you only do it for the sub 21 levels. Leave the 22-30 levels as they are. I would even say you should make the post 30 level missions even harder (at least until the difficulty slider goes in).

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We ARE going to do something to the 22+ mobs...

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Such as.....?


Are you refering to scaling them up more for missions? Or the additional hit point thing you've been talking about?


In any case I agree with the original poster. Post level 22 (not 20 since you can't get SOs yet) missions should have many +1 level mobs. Post level 30, +1 mobs should be the minimum, and +2 should be common (though +2 bosses would be too much). Also, missions should scale up to LT and Bosses much faster with more people in the group. Duo missions should have a lot more bosses in them (post 30).

This is the only way to make missions viable for xp. Outdoor hunting xp is just far too much better than missions. The increase mission rewards help, but it's still not even close to outdoor hunting.

Great post. I agree with pretty much everything. Just a few points:

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Electricty and Ice secondaries, in my opinion, just don't cut it.
They have nothing going for them.

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I mostly agree with this. However, I think you are highly over-rating Fire sword circle, and other than getting build-up early, energy is pretty much crap too. I think all the secondaries other than devices are equally crap (well, elec is still the worst of the worst).

The ice secondary does have one thing going for it – it has the best root by far. Chilblain provides a good attack slow as well as an immobilize, so it provides for some damage mitigation.

Also, you never make mention of Ice’s holds or slows. The damage mitigation provided by holds/slows is 100x better than the paltry 5-10% def bonuses you get from pool powers. Why even bother with super speed/stealth/kiting when I can hold several mobs and take zero damage? Not to mention that holds make several types of mobs practical to kill, that other sets would have to pass up on (tsoo sorcs come to mind). In fact, the only thing that saves the elec set (for me anyway) is that it gets a hold.

Also, I agree with you that hover/fly is not as great as many make it out to be. However, I still see it as being useful for Energy or Ice. As you pointed out, they have to pick small groups of mobs the proper level to get optimum xp. Fly is by far the best scouting power, so in real time spent looking for outdoor mobs, I think flight will help with level speed.