_Tundra_

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Hall of fame = 1000+ ratings with an avarage rating of 5 (rounded to the nearest whole number, so actually 4.5).



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Are you sure about that? The only quote I've seen said they would be rounding up, which would suggest any score averaging >4 would be rounded to 5. A little more forgiving, but probably still not resulting in vast numbers of HoF arcs. From Ex Libris:
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The Hall of Fame is where the best player rated content goes. To get to this rank you need to have over a 1000 votes with an average of 5 stars (we round up). Getting into the Hall of Fame changes your standing in the mission browser, moving it further up the queue.


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Maybe that's been clarified or corrected in something I've missed, though...

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Aren't most Recharge Buffs non-resistable anyway? And designed that way precisely so that sets such as SR which have inherent recharge resistance don't only get 50% instead of 70% from Hasten?


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Doesn't matter if you're Super Reflex or not, you still get 70% from hasten.

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Aye, that was my point- the "Recharge buff/debuff immunity" idea wouldn't work.

It's impossible to actually prevent Hasten (and virtually all other recharge buffs) from giving you all of its allocated recharge buff, because it's flagged as a "non-resistable" buff.

The only thing you could do to prevent a toon from getting any benefit from Hasten would be to massively debuff their recharge so that they were at least -70% below the lowermost recharge cap.

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It must be possible in some way, since Strength of Will has been successfully flagged as unaffected by attack rate changes (including recharge buffs). A similar, switchable, flag could be attached to other powers (or whole powersets). So, the toon would receive the buff but the recharge rate of (some arbitrary subset) of their powers would be unaffected.

Of course, being *possible* wouldn't stop it being a fantastically bad idea...

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Fire Control gets +25% to its hold and stun durations.

Activating Hot feet makes you immune to +recharge buffs and -recharge debuffs.

Now, how does that effect the combinations:

Anything but /Rad or /Kin:
Woohoo I can hold for 25% longer! I am t3h ub3r!
Wow, im immune to -recharge debuffs. Thats pretty handy!
Hmmm, I cant get sped up anymore. Well, its not too bad, I cant do that to myself anyway
Overall, its hard to argue that this would be anything but an average buff for fire control (heck, Id be pretty pleased with this on my Fire/Storm).
Rad:
As above, with the sorrow that the +recharge from AM would be lost. Overall, Id say toon was about averaged out.
Kin:
[censored]! YOU NERFED MY TOON TO HELL! Em/ TOYS OUT OF PRAM!


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I think this illustrates a couple of things quite well which might help explain why your arguments don't always go down very well...

i) You really do think like a soloer, don't you? The majority of players will be at least as annoyed at not being able to receive buffs from teammates as not being able to self-buff.
ii) You haven't quite thought through the implications of the suggested change. Immunity to +recharge buffs also makes all slotted recharge enhancements, IO set bonuses and Hasten completely ineffective. Do you imagine there are many Fire/* controllers taking advantage of none of those things? So in fact it's pretty easy to argue that it is not a buff to Fire control.

Finally, since you keep repeating that what you want is balance, a nerf/buff cycle etc. and seem mystified at being misinterpreted perhaps you could have picked a less willfully inflammatory thread title than 'In praise of Nerfs!'?

Much as I still enjoy CoH/V, I'm finding these days that I really have far too much going on in my life to fit gaming in. Since I can't see that changing in the foreseeable future I don't really feel I can justify carrying on paying for a subscription for a game I'm not playing.
So, it's been fun - thanks to everyone here for helping to make it that way. I expect I'll turn up online once or twice between now and when my subs run out to say goodbye to folks.
Have fun!

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Aye, hated CC on my Rad, cause of the long recharge, dont care if it doesn't work so long as its still on when I come round

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CC will still drop - it's only toggles effecting self and allies that get this protection (unless I'm reading it wrongly...). Nice as it might be I think CC, as an AoE Hold, counts as an offensive power

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Freedom Corps couldn't operate in the Rogue Isles. Hero Corps could.

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Freedom Corps (their Longbow division at least) already operate in the Rogue Isles in vast numbers... Not aware of any Hero Corps presence there at the moment.

I also don't see any reason why the PCC missions need to be presented by the same faction red and blue side, though (cf. Wentworths and the Black Market as different front ends for the same system)

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(borrowing wife's account again, sodding Maestro) I know the OP, who's in two of my supergroups. I have a BS/SR scrapper at fifty. I have had the same problem as the OP, in that mobs since I12 seem to have been hitting her much more often than her 40% defences would have me believing. Prior to I12, I could happily leap into an eight person team's enemy mob with wild abandon, even set to Invincible difficulty, and barely see three hits land before the mob was dealt with. With, or more often, without a tank. Even Boss-level mobs would miss more than not, but since the latest issue she's taken everything the enemy world has thrown at her, to the point where my level fifty scrapper has a date with the deletion button once I get my next vet reward respec to remove her last set IO's.

I would always open with Parry, and keep it more or less double-stacked amid my usual attack chain and would still get hit a lot more since I12. Maybe luck doesn't favour myself and the OP anymore, or something is actually wrong with SR now. Either way, it's no longer going to be part of my future scrappers.

As for my scrapper's powers, she had every attack but for Slash and Provoke, and every secondary. All defences slotted with three end redux and three defence, level fifty IO's with one Gambler +rech global. Mid's build code for this char unavailable, due to never having used Mids to plan it.


Anyway, it means I get to make a new char.

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It sounds much more like you've found or been affected by a bug rather than that an intended change to SR that needs a buff to rectify it. I have to say I've not seen it myself (and have played by SR quite a bit since I12).

Best thing you can do is bug report it with as much detail as possible - things like this do tend to get fixed (even if the wait can sometimes be long enough to be frustrating) but I can't help thinking you'll regret it if you delete a lvl50 toon only to read a couple of weeks later that there's a bug fix on Test that would have sorted it out...

What are the numbers in your combat log reporting as enemies chances to hit you? If something screwy is going on with your defence it may show up there.

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Nothing at present does untyped damage, although the mechanic to do so is there. At one point they considered Assassing Strike for (some) untyped damage.

It quite clearly is game breaking, But not in above system. The untyped damage would be unbuffable, and controllers base damage is not exactly high. In fact, its low!

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As I recall, it was viewed as game breaking not because you could do too much damage to the things you're meant to be attacking, but because lots of things you aren't meant to damage at all are protected by 100% damage resistance, which is bypassed by untyped damage.

So it doesn't really matter if the base damage is low - if a system lets you break something unbreakable it's... err... broken.

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any thoughts?

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Does anything currently allow players to do untyped (and therefore unresistable) damage in PVE? My understanding was that the Devs had ruled this out as having too many potentially game-engine breaking consequences, but perhaps that's changed?

My favourite was hitting 50 off the XP for the 'Heart of Hamidon' exploration badge, shortly after XP for such badges was introduces (I7, I think?)

Made for some nice screenies...

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Except that the link you provided shows +0.67 Knockback, which is Knockdown, not Knockback.

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The link I provided shows +0.67 knockback.<----EoS.

Its not knockdown.

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Knockback less than Mag 1.0 is Knockdown.

For example. Golden Dragonfly. Any argument that that the in game effect of that power is Knockdown? Notice the magnitude of Knockback in the power description.

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Shannon's right on this one. A pure knockdown effect would look like this from Air superiority "+0.75 Knockup". Normally they're indistinguishable, the only difference being when you hit something that's either ranked way below you or a KB weak mob (eg. Clockwork). KB with Mag <1 will be converted into normal KB and knock the mob away from you. KU with Mag <1 will not, so the mobs are always knocked down.

End Of Days Earth/Storm/Stone lvl50 (great toon, but with the amount of chaos he causes I normally refer to it as an out-of-controller)

Neutrino Ghost Rad/Rad/Dark lvl50 (the one toon I brought over from the US servers)
Howler Monkey Sonic/Sonic/Electric lvl50 (shouty support toon)
Absorbicon 501 Kin/Elec (made in my first week on the EU servers, but keeps getting overlooked, somehow...)
Crystal Veil FF/Dark (Extreme defence build support toon)

DVM Elec/Elec/Force lvl50 (single target engine of destruction)
Maxwell's Demon Elec/Fire/Fire lvl44 (Maximum AoE chaos)
Mannekin Elec/Mind (PBAoE damage/control combo)

Why yes, I do quite like Electric Blast... there have been many others deleted at relatively low levels.

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Ypu do get some to hit buffs used by the mobs even at low levels. For example the Bone Daddy uses soul drain or the RiP Leuit's use tic-tacs.

But you are correct in saying they are normally quite small. If you have almost any type of defender or troller on your team, they will have bigger tohit debuffs than the mobs have to hit buffs. Fluffy for example is quite able to give a - 0.43 tohit debuff as his two opening moves.

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DEF debuffs, OTOH, are really common at all level ranges (eg. practically all gun and blade attacks, just to scratch the tip of the iceberg). They're normally quite small, but they stack and as a result a RES based toon will typically get quite a lot of them stacked against them rather quickly, increasing incoming damage quite a bit.

ToHit buffs are certainly rarer than they used to be, but they aren't all small - DE crystals are positively scary if you're relying on DEF...

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I'm currently thinking about the one where you get a personal force field, (can't remember the set name) any pro's or cons to that set?

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My Elec/Elec uses Force Mastery (the one with PFF) and finds it very effective. A lot of the powers in both the primary and the secondary work very well at close range (and Short Circuit and Power Sink only work at close range, of course) so the huge extra survivability it offers really plays to your strengths. I'm thinking mainly of Temp. Invulnerability and Force of Nature there, but PFF is also great as a panic button or (more often) for soaking up an alpha strike.

Any advice beyond that will depend very much on your playstyle. Mine plays bets as a Sapper/Blapper and is built to make best use of the very strong melee attacks in /Elec. If you prefer to stay at range you'll have different views... Regardless, I'd strongly disagree with Thunder Strike as a good attack for team (or even solo) play - it does solid damage to its main target, certainly, but the KB effect is very counterproductive for your other attacks, your main means of damage mitigation (End Drain) and your teammates. I also don't like the slow animation, which will tend to get you killed... In fact I actually prefer Lightning Clap for those occasions when soloing when I really do want to knock things back and have it in my current build instead (also a cheap way to get KB protection and a nice Recharge boost from IOs).

You also have the ability to stack holds without needing to get one from your Epic pool, which is helpful - Shocking Grasp is also too good an attack to turn down in my book, my main attack chain usually involves Lightning Bolt, Charged Brawl, Havoc Punch and Shocking Grasp - pretty devastating.

Lightning Field is nice (I do have it and use it) but I tend to find the End cost rather prohibitive most of the time. Also, your other attacks are sufficiently strong that most things won't stay alive for long enough to allow LF to do many ticks of damage against them...

Hope that helps.

First off, a good guide - should be a useful resource, so congratulations!

If I might make a suggestion or two...

Since you're explaining Resistance, Defence and the differences between them, I'd have thought that maybe point 1 would be "What is Defence? What is Resistance?" you sort or deal with that in passing in point 2, but never directly. Just IMO, but I think if you start by making clear the concept "Defence stops things hitting you, Resistance stops things hurting you" then everything that follows will flow more naturally. 1% Defence = 2% Resistance is a point well worth making, but not all that useful until you've explained what the two things are!

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There are many debates about the virtue of mixing defence and resistance. For instance, Ice tanks (which are defence based) often like taking “tough” ( a pool power) to get some low level smash/lethal resistance. This is because smashing and lethal damage are often the hardest hitting in the game, and thus this damage type is the most likely to get them the dreaded “unlucky streak”. Shaving a little bit of damage off the occasional unlucky excesses can help.

However, it is worth bearing in mind that mathematically, in terms of average damage mitigation “more is more”. Consider our hero with 20% smashing defence. Given the option of 20% more smashing defence, or 40% smashing resistance, what would you choose?. Does the 1% defence = 2% resist apply?


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What you say in this section is quite right, but it's probably worth mentioning that for a toon that relies upon defence (with a small "d", meaning either Defence or Resistance) you will very rarely be face with a hard choice between the two, and adding some Res when Def is already maxxed out (or vice versa) will be valuable.

Hopefully that all came across as constructively as intended...

From my own experience, it's a very, very low damage powerset combination no matter how you build it - so I prefer to play Tundra as a Tank/Controller and let the rest of the team worry about dealing out damage. But then I spend most of my time in Granite, so you might find things to be different...

Personally I didn't bother with either of the Ice Swords - admittedly that wouldn't suit everyone but I didn't like the look of them and they weren't a good enough attacks to force me to take them, so I went for extra utility (the Presence pool - Provoke in addition to Taunt helps make up for your slowness in Granite) instead. Frozen Aura is a good power now and would be a very good substitute for one of them.

You don't seem to have picked Hasten - I think you'll really want it once you start using Granite and it's nice even when you're in other armours.

As far as the order of power picks goes, I won't say too much since it's a build that benefits enormously from a post-Granite respec IMO. I would say, though, that the powers that make you an effective Tank prior to Granite are Rooted, Mud Pots, Earth's Embrace and Ice Patch and personally I'd want them all in my build as soon as possible. In my own build I put Ice Patch in before Stamina, I rate it's survivability bonus so highly. Stone Skin, OTOH, only really serves the purpose of capping your S/L resistance when in Granite form and can easily be left until later in the build.

One more note that's again very much personal taste - it's often forgotten that Mud Pots is also a Mag 2 Immobilise as well as a Slow. That means you can do fantastic amounts of damage to a crowd of minions with Ice Storm from the Arctic APP is you want to stick with the Ice theme, and Ice Bolt is a really nice attack too.

Hope that's of some help - I can't point you to the Stone/Ice guide I wrote about a million years ago as I don't think it survived the board wipe and I no longer have the original.

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Sorry Tundra, it's unlikely I will expand on the given options at this point. (I did briefly consider allowing a Warshade or two, too.)

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That's fair enough - and like I said I doubt I can commit to a regular night anyway. I do already have a couple of appropriately themed toons I could exemp down if there happens to be a spot free on a team when I'm on - End of Days is Earth/Storm and Tundra is Stone/Ice.

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But I may occasionally slip and hit Gale or Tornado at 'inappropriate' moments.

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There is no inappropriate moment for a Tornado - just inappropriate teammates...

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Later on, when Tornadoes and Storm Clouds start popping up, it may be worth going more into the AoE Immob than the Slick, to give the swirling winds of doom static targets to shred.

Of course, I may be talking complete drivel.

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Hardly speculation though is it - you've already seen it in action (albeit with Stone Cages rather than Frostbite). Ice Slick isn't going to work well with Stormies around anyway IMO.

Anyway, now that I'm here... most likely wouldn't be able to commit to a regular night in any case, but just out of curiosity would you guys consider stretching the concept to allow Electric Blast as well? Seems to fit with the whole stormy weather idea (and I was already planning an I12 Elec/Mind blaster...)

A couple of things that stood out to me...

I'd try to squeeze in a Force Feedback chance for +Recharge in Fault - even when the proc gets fixed from its current broken state it will still be very good in that power (at the moment it's so good it's almost a cheat mode, but I wouldn't expect that to last). You can still get the recharge buff from Stupefy and just miss out on the ranged defence - worth it in my book.

Secondly, I wouldn't go with Mu on a SM brute myself - the -KB from Electric Fences takes away a huge amount of your damage mitigation from all your KD powers (Fault and Tremor in particular). The Web Envelope from Mace mastery worked better for me when it came to holding enemies in place for a Burn patch (assuming that's what you want the Immob for).

Just realised I'm not sure whether you're already at 50 or this is just a planned build to 50 - if the former there's not a lot you can do about the PPP choice I guess but not the end of the world!

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That said I've never managed to spot the "+Recharge" icon either so I've been a bit confused with it over the last few days

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Try monitoring your recharge rate with the attribute monitor - it's rather easy to spot when it fires then!

Like I said above, the 90% comes from my own testing hitting single targets. Naturally with a chance that high you'll hardly ever see it fail to activate if you hit two or more targets since it checks for each one. Until I tested it I thought it was activating every time, but that was just because in normal play I'm hardly ever attacking single targets.

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Does it really enhance Rocky's attack speed and/or just the speed with which he's recharged? And does the same go for the attack cycle of the lightningstrikes from LS?
I expect it only affects the recharge of the power itself, not the attacks speed cycle, but got some other signals from this thread...

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In both cases (and for all other pets as far as I know) it boosts their attack speed. LS fires *really* fast...

In Rocky's case, it's quite noticeable - especially when he's in Hammer mode. The 'quirk' with this proc encouraging pets to rush into melle is hardly a problem in his case, either!

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Aha. That´s what i thought. So it´s 100% now then? Should be nice indeed

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It's 90% now. It's passing it's check 9 times out of 10 instead of failing it 9 times out of 10 (tested at some length with a Stone Mellee Brute using Fault on single targets). Bound to get fixed at some point.

One way you could up the recharge is to find a home in a nice quick AoE power for a Force Feedback "Chance for +Recharge" proc.

Gale isn't a bad choice, since you have to pick it anyway. I went with Fissure from the Stone Mastery epic pool - I figured since I was going to be spamming it, it might as well be a power that did some damage! I went a little crazy on Force Feedbacks on my Earth/Storm - Animate Stone and Lightning Storm both got one so they can buff themselves. It's very noticeable on Stoney as he's normally more than a little slow with that hammer...