wumpusrat

I grabbed the name Pack Mistress for my BM MM when they go live. Still debating a secondary for her.

Any idea when that might be, btw?

I have mine set to:

/macro GO petcom_all dismiss

Tier-1 pets are always pretty squishy. And when you've only got tier-1's and a lone tier-2, they're soaking up the brunt of the damage, so they tend to die a lot more often. Once you get your second tier-2, and then your tier-3, you'll start seeing the wee 'uns dying less, since the incoming attacks will get spread out a bit more. My DS/Therm is 25th now, and my pets started dying a LOT less once I got the second tier-2. Once I get my demonlord, it'll be full-on face-stomping/soul-devouring time.

I'm enjoying my DS/Therm MM so far. With fire shield up, they're fairly durable, and I LOVE the fact that those damnable little scrapyarder demolitionists don't just destroy my pets, because they're so resistant to fire. I've had a lot of fun getting revenge for all my other MMs who used to tear their hair out fighting those guys.

This is still my favorite "holy bleep" miss streak of all time. It's with a pseudo-pet, though, and they clearly don't get the streakbreaker.

http://i37.tinypic.com/2n6zuqe.jpg

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The idea of 'the tank' is that it's a tough machine that prowls around the battlefield. It's extremely hard to bring down and its weaponry is devastating.

CoH Tankers are indeed hard to bring down but they aren't really that devastating compared to the other melee ATs.

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And they shouldn't be.

I'm sorry if Superman seems to be your mental image when someone says "Tanker". Superman isn't a Tanker. Superman is Superman. He's an AT all to himself.

If Tankers had Scrapper-level damage, why would anyone ever play Scrappers?

My favorite confusion moments/targets:

* Rikti Comm Officers. They open their portal, the guys come out, and immediately start wailing on the portal itself, and the comm officer who summoned them.

* Sky Raider FFGs. 24% defense bubble.

* Paragon Protectors (bosses). Some of those guys will do a BIG number on their buddies. I saw one haul off and crack his friend (another PP boss) with Total Focus. Took about half his health with one shot.

* CoT Ruin Mages. They drop earthquake, and it starts bouncing them around.

* Banished Pantheon Death Shaman. They sumon their undead, who turn around and start beating on them.

Basically any pet-user is a fun target for deceive. I love making mobs fight, and when they summon "allies" who turn out to beat the stuffing out of them, it's even more fun.

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Also sitting at about 145% global rech and somthing like 60% global dmg buff.

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Widows must have a VASTLY higher +recharge cap before DR than Trollers do, then.

My illusion Troller has 100% global recharge before AM and Hasten, and with both running, 200%. In PvE.

In PvP? It drops to around 75% or so, and that's WITH AM and Hasten.

Seems kind of odd that a Widow would have double the recharge cap...

I think it's a bit of a leap to say "buffers still do just fine" simply because an empath can do okay and make a difference. Of course you can "make a difference" if one side has an empath and the other side doesn't have any healers. Empathy buffs are +damage, +regen, and +recovery, along with their heals. The impact of DR on those buffs isn't as noticeable. The only thing that's really impacted is their healing, but if you're using absorb pain, you can still hit people with big heals a couple times. However, what about all the other sets, who DON'T have access to something like AP?

Now try the same thing with a thermal. Or a cold dom. Or a FF character.

Then say "oh, it's just fine, my buffs made a big difference".

One set doing okay does NOT make up for all the others being crushed under DR. If every OFFENSIVE set except for one were sucking wind in PvP, would it be just fine, because everyone could just use that one set and still be effective? Would you say "damage-dealers are just fine, look at this one set"? I don't think so.

You COULD do it, but it would require you to set up a bind that started the pet naming process, where you'd manually enter a new number for them each time you summoned one.

If you want it to do it "automatically", no, there's no way to do it, unless you were to somehow make 999 different keybinds.

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Because the percentages aren't what they were before I13 right? Because squishies should benefit from the maximum (PvE) percentages on top of the 40% resist they already get? Do you really beleive that there is a support toon that is "solely" based on only one type of buff? I think many of us haven't stepped far enough away from I12 to look at I13 PvP from a differnt angle.

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Just as an aside, that 40% resist that squishies get? That gets hit by DR too. It gets dropped down to around 26% or so. My defender, who with her APP shield has 65% resist in PvE, has around 30% in PvP. That's WITH the free resists I get for being a squishy in a PvP zone. My /Pain mastermind, who has 75% smash/lethal in PvE? 30% in PvP. And she doesn't get the 'squishy shield', since apparently MMs aren't considered squishies.

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I get it. Really I do. We want support toons to be able to turn us into PvP gods and godesses again... and we shouldn't have to stay near that support toon to get the maximum benefit. We feel one buffer's contribution to a team should completely turn the tide and allow us to act foolish, wreckless and be 100% offensive with no worries about getting hit and/or hurt. Buffers and support shouldn't have to *think* about who to buff... who *needs* the shileds more, whether it's the right time to heal, or who isn't at the cap. No... it should just be spammable support powers than offer the ability to put them on auto and win. No, sorry that ship has sailed guys. It's not the end... it's the beginning.

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Actually, no, I don't think you get it. It's not that people want support characters to "turn them into gods". They (and I, as a player of support characters) want support characters to actually MATTER. If my arsenal of buffs is only giving people a tiny FRACTION of what they're giving someone in PvE, something needs to be looked at. When my Therm corr's shields grant 22-23% resist in PvE, but only 2-3% in PvP? That's broken. The fact that if I have heals, I can get two, MAYBE three heals off before my heals are rendered completely useless is broken. Why don't peoples' ATTACKS suffer from DR, too? If my healing is getting weaker each time I use it, why aren't attacks weakened each time they're used? Seems like that would be fair, right?

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DR does not affect everyone the same. It causes a reduced ammount of buff for the toons that already have enough of that particular buff. Another way of saying this is DR will allow support toons to provide the most def and res to those who lack them the most. For those builds that require def and res the least, well those toons may have to look at, appreciate, and take advantage of other contributions offered by these support toons. This isn't that hard to adjust to.

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Actually, it hits the people who DON'T have high resists/defense the hardest. You know, the support/squishies. Those are the people who are impacted most by DR, since their DR "caps" are skewed to be extremely low. The people who get the biggest benefit are the ones who DON'T need it the most. Tanks, stalkers, scrappers, and brutes get the biggest benefit out of buffs, while the squishies (the ones who have innately LOWER resists) get a tiny fraction of the normal buff amount.

I'm not even a hardcore PvPer, and I despise the i13 system. It's turned PvP into a pure game of "who can spam the most damage the fastest". That's all it is now. Before, if someone had support, you could try and time your damage spikes to drop them between their healing, ply them with enough debuffs to overcome their buffed resist/def, etc. Now? Spam damage. They'll die. Because nobody can keep them up long enough, due to DR and HD.

PvP used to be more fun, as a support character. I felt like I could make a real difference. Now? People barely notice I'm there, save for the "hey, a defender, free kill!" moments where someone takes a second or two to gank me. Since if I try to fight back, I'll just die anyway (low damage, low resists), and if I try to heal myself, heal decay kicks in and my heals become worthless, while the person fighting me just has to keep spamming damage until I die. And if I try to run? Too bad, they just keep hitting me, and my movement is suppressed, so I can't flee. If I heal, I get suppressed too.

Zone PvP is a joke right now, imo. The devs turned it into a game of FOTM damage-spamming. Whee?

Actually, she always cons yellow. I was out there at 50th to fight the giant monsters and saw her, and she was yellow con to me.

Pre-32 I was very unimpressed with the necro set. Once I got the last upgrade, though, everything changed. They suddenly became a VERY potent set, and a lot more fun. Plus the grave knights started doing some majorly sick damage. Critical headsplitter ftw.

As far as mercs vs thugs, it's all situational really. In a pure damage output scenario, the thugs are superior. They simply do more damage. Especially now that they changed the bruiser's handclap to knockDOWN rather than knockback. Mercs, imo, need a little bit of tweaking. The spec ops' controls need to have their recharge cut in half, and the soldiers' damage bumped up just a bit, say 10-15%. Those two changes would pretty much "fix" the merc set, in my mind.

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I wrote up a huge post here responding with hard stats but it was blocked by the damnable "the form you submitted" error.

The summary:

wumpusrat, some of what you are saying is disputed by City of Data, particularly the bruiser's resists. You can only use recharge sets with the thugs and zombies sets. Thug resists are better than you think, only beaten by mercs unless you are fighting an enemy with exotic attacks. And other sets' mez protection is mostly about PVP centic mez types. Bots mez protection is 1 point of stun and 4 points of sleep otherwise.

It may sound like it, but I am not saying that thugs pwns everything. However, it has most of the advantages of bots and mercs combined but none of the disadvantages.

Most notably, it has more defense and similar, but differently distributed resists to bots, especially with recharge sets.

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The bruiser has 26% smash/lethal, and a smattering of single-digit resists to a couple other things (fire, toxic, and cold I believe). So does the commando from the mercs. The oni from the ninja set has 26% smash/lethal and 52% fire resist, as well as some defense, making him hands-down the toughest tier-3 pet. The assault bot has 26% resist to cold/psi/lethal, and the lich has negative, toxic and cold resist of 26%, making him the 'squishiest' of the tier-3 pets, but his controls generally make up for it, not to mention his lifetaps.

So while the bruiser is "tough", he's hardly a "tank". When I said he doesn't have any more resists than the other pets, what I meant was that he was not a "tank"; his resists are comparable to the other pets, while some have more than he does. You made it sound like his resists were HIGHER than the other pets, which is what I had issue with.

And I wouldn't say that thugs have "none of the disadvantages". Again, you seem to be overestimating them, and ignoring their own weaknesses. The tier-1 thugs have zero resists (other than the arsonist having some fire resist), the tier-2's only have lethal resist. They have no status protection at all.

Also, bear in mind that generally the bruiser is not going to benefit from the maneuvers aura of the enforcers, unless you're standing right on top of the fight. The aura radius is about 40 feet or so. I used to have a screenshot of my two enforcers standing at the exact distance apart for their maneuvers to still work, and it wasn't that far. A lot further than the fight is generally happening. So, typically the bruiser is going to be "on his own" as far as benefiting from the enforcers.

Additionally, I actually find the prot bots' bubbles to be superior to the enforcers maneuvers, for one reason: it doesn't drop when a bot gets out of range. The moment one of your pets steps outside the maneuvers radius, they lose all the extra benefits that the enforcers give them. This is one of the reasons the arsonist tends to die so often (that, and because he's using AE attacks which draw a lot of aggro, and he's got zero resists to most damage).

Thugs rely a LOT more on the mastermind to back them up than some other sets (most notably bots and necro), due to the fact that they're built purely as damage-output, with little else. They have almost zero controls (the only ones being gained with the upgraded bruiser), whereas other sets have numerous controls to back up their damage.

As I said, thugs ARE a powerful set. But you honestly do seem to be trying to make them out to be the single best set, hands down, and that's what I disagree with. Thugs are the "one trick pony" of the pet world: they do damage, and nothing else. While this makes them SEEM like they're more powerful, they don't have the versatility or breadth of powers that the other sets have to compensate for their slightly lower damage.

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I've often heard that thugs leads in AoE power.

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Eh, I dunno. Bots do some serious AE damage. I'd say they probably out-perform Thugs in pure area effect capability, due to the assault bot having the two missile swarms on 16 sec recharges.

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But hey, every set has its advantages, right? Bots get up to 12 defense from shield that are double stacked on 4 of their bots.

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Yep. Bots are VERY durable.

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Then I talked to a Thugs/Dark who was attempting to get crazy tank stats and learned that enforcer maneuvers are actually stronger. And stack to EVERY thug. And in a team each thug set buffs every other thug set. And they can slot recharge sets to get 10% def and 20% res.

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Thugs, by themselves, aren't very tough. Admittedly, the enforcer +def from maneuvers is probably a bit high (if you use Ninjas as the example; or Ninjas are too low if you use Thugs as the example). The tier-1's have no resists, and no defense. Super-squishy. The enforcers have lethal resist, and defense once you get them trained up. And depending on how you want to slot stuff, you can get the +20% resist and +10% def in every MM set; it's just EASIER as a Thugs MM, since you can dump it into gang war.

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The only advantage I can think of that the "tank" set has over them is the occasional protector heal (plus cold/psi res), and that you get a personal shield of 12%.

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Actually, there are several advantages that the other sets have over Thugs. Thugs are all about damage output, with a sprinkling of defense on the side. They have very low innate resists (second lowest of all MM sets), and no status protection. Make no mistake, the Thugs set is arguably one of the more powerful sets MMs have. But it's not the "hands down, bar none" winner, by any stretch.

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But what about other sets that can debuff enemies? Oh, thugs can do that too? And they get +tohit as well?

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Thugs don't really debuff much. They have a little -def from some of the gunshots, but that's about it. And the +tohit is all of 5%, when you have both enforcers out and within range. So while it's handy, it's honestly barely noticable if the MM him/herself is nearby.

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Ninjas! They get an inherent defense bonus... which is less than enforcer maneuvers.

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Yep. Ninjas need some defense love. However, there is no set that delivers more single-target damage. I've watched my squad of pajama-wearers tear down EBs in literally under 10 seconds, if they all get into melee on it, without me debuffing them. With debuffs? Ouch.

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What about synergy? Dark is better at a distance but poison has a power that works in melee... oh they get both.

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Actually, Dark Miasma works just fine in melee, too.

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But what about that set that gets a tankish boss, scourge, and fury? Oh, that IS the thugs set.

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There's nothing really "tankish" about the Bruiser. He's got no more resists than any other tier-3 pet, and less than some. And his 'fury' is negligible; it drains INSANELY fast, and builds pretty slowly. The Arsonist gets scourge on some of his attacks, yes. But he's suicidal.

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So, am I not getting something here? Certainly theme is a strong reason to be some other set, but I'm talking about power advantages.

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I think you're overstating the Thug advantages, and downplaying their weaknesses, as well as downplaying the other sets' advantages.

Bots are incredibly durable, have solid resists, and can lay down some major AE carnage at 32+. They have the best status protection of any pet set, can heal each other, bubble, and chain-stun via seeker drones and photon grenades.

Mercs are very solid, and when backed up by a secondary that can boost their resists/defense, are VERY tough (my Merc/Pain's pets have around 60% smash/lethal resist; ever seen a tier-1 pet shrug off a rikti boss smacking them with their giant energy sword? Mine do), not to mention having VERY nice controls, albeit on a very slow recharge (2m).

Ninjas are, bar none, the masters of single-target damage. You haven't seen things die "quickly" until you drag all your ninjas into melee on something and let them attack. Anything short of a boss dies as fast as you can shift targets and order them to attack.

The Necro set has the most controls of any set. The Lich is insane with controls. If you back them up with /Dark, you're basically a controller with heavy damage output. Oh, and did I mention that the Grave Knights get crits, just like Scrappers? Seeing a GK pop off a crit for 800+ damage is funny.

What it really boils down to is this: I like the Thug set. But the other sets all have their own advantages. Some could use a little tweaking, to be sure, but it's definitely not a case of the Thug set outperforming everyone else by leaps and bounds.

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Um, excuse me?

While Dark Servant does not take damage, it is not permanent until killed. Which means it actually does need to be up faster than it recharges normally at times.

I really wonder if the developers just hate Dark Miasma on general principle.

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You do know you can put other sets into the pet that have recharge bonuses, right? Or just raw recharge SO/IOs?

The dark pet doesn't do damage. The recharge-intensive pet sets were for pets that do damage (hence why they have damage components). Why would you want to slot it for something it doesn't do?

How you got that the devs "hate dark miasma" from that just boggles me.

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The warning we get is actually the Rikti forcibly dropping the War Walls so that they can actually get into the city zone. If they didn't drop the War Walls, they'd never be able to get inside.

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Why wouldn't they be able to get inside? It's not like the war walls have a ceiling. It's open to the sky.

Seems kind of like "shooting fish in a barrel" if the rikti wanted to start dropping BIG bombs down on the city.

Biggest problem I could see for crossing over would be dealing with John Edwards. That guy is a d-bag.

>.>

<.<

*runs*

I'm just kind of curious why they're so determined to attack Paragon City and the Rogue Isles. Same for all the other "world conquest" types. What makes this place the focal point for everything they do? Why haven't they conquered the REST of the world yet?

You'd think after getting their butts kicked over and over again in one location, they'd shift their focus and stomp the rest of the world flat, and then just bomb PC and RI from orbit.

Or maybe they're just insane. They do fit the definition of it. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results...

The main reason I think Illusion might be "iffy" to be ported over to Doms is because in the hands of a Controller, the PA and pet are doing most of the damage, so it being able to soak up all the aggro with invulnerable pets isn't as big of a deal. For a Dom, however, with them able (especially now) to throw down nearly Blaster-level damage, having a trio of invulnerable pets to soak all the aggro/attacks may be borderline overpowered. Given the propensity to shoot for massive amount of +recharge to get domination up as often as possible, you're looking at perma-PA as well.

While it would be fun, I'm not expecting Illusion to be ported over to Doms anytime soon.

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* Squishies have a DR'd defense cap of around 20%. For non-squishies, it's somewhere around 50%.
* Squishies have a DR'd resistance cap of around 40-45%. It's slightly higher for ATs like Scrappers and Stalkers, to the point where a Tanker will cap off at around 55-60%.

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Depending on whether or not masterminds are judged as "squishies", my merc/pain/elec mastermind caps out at 30% resists, with patron shield, tough, and world of pain running. Normally she's at the resist cap (75%) for smash/lethal, and around 62% energy.

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Sweet old lady: "We should stop paying them in influence. Nobody wants silly old influence. Instead we should pay them in baked goods! A cookie for stopping a purse snatching. A slice of pie for foiling a bank robbery. And if they save the whole world.. I'll make my secret recipe Pineapple Upsidedown Cake with baked brown sugar... just for them."

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I'd save the world for an awesome pineapple upside down cake.

The problem is that you're assuming WAY too much about me. You know nothing about me at all. My point was that he was whining about how someone could have "earned" a badge through (in his words) "cheating", whereas I pointed out that, by the same token, if he had farmed any of HIS badges/accolades/etc, then he was doing the exact same thing, in a different section of the game, thus was being a monumental hypocrite.

The fact that you felt it necessary to start frothing and throwing insults at me speaks volumes about you. I actually PvP much more than you do, if you only go out there for an hour a week or so. I may not be GOOD at it, but I do try. I don't see either as "sides".

So tuck your self-righteous attitude back into your pants, and kindly shut your trap when you know nothing at all about me or what I do, eh?

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just because you feel your pvp epeen

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Seems like we have another idiot


Im really sorry if you did not fit into a social group growing up but just because you feel like you are part of a group here (The Badgers) doesn't mean you need to be such a moron and show a low level of intellegence by slinging mud at what you consider "Outsiders". Whether its the PvPrs or Farmers, no one is any different than you.

Seems silly to me to continue to your little battle because you think your Badge epeen might be threatened. Must just be in ignorant thing


I am willing to bet things go a lot better around you when you just dont speak.

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The irony of this post is just staggering.

While the combat window might CLAIM you have 147% recharge, you actually don't. My illusion troller has 190% recharge with AM and Hasten running in PvE. Enough that PA is nearly permanent, and AM/Hasten are perma. The moment I step into a PvP zone, my actual recharge drops by a LOT, even though it still claims to be 190%.

AM/Hasten are no longer permanent (have around a 10-15 second gap), and PA has around a 20-25 second gap between recharges.

Which is around a recharge of 80% or so, instead of 190%.