AnElfCalledMack
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Posts
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Joined
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Quote:How? AS is still an interruptible melee attack, with very heavy critical damage and a chance of an AoE Fear and to-hit debuff. It's just a better fear/debuff.Originally Posted by Negate
I"m all for it but wouldn't that be breaking the cottage rule?
Changing Conserve Power to Energize didn't break the Cottage Rule, because Energize was still a power that reduced the endurance cost of your other powers, even though the discount and duration got reduced. The Cottage Rule is just about removing functionality from a power. -
Quote:Well, we could, but we probably can't be bothered. Personally, I'd rather play the game than get all caught up in whether the Stalker crit boost is working as intended. You're the one who was interested, and the Stalker scaling crit rate needs very tightly controlled circumstances to keep all the data comparable. In short, if you're out to test a probability down to anything like 3%, it's going to take a lot of work. If you don't feel like putting in the work, you don't have to, but we're not going to be that interested in "I only crit 4 times in 26 hits! Something's broken!", because testing it *does* take that much work.Originally Posted by Jibikao
This is so involved!!! lol I haven't created any AE at all. I don't think I'll go with the AE route.
You guys can try the test too you know? :P
As foar as knowing how to do it, though, there have been some rather impressive results from things like this. Arcanaville and others have found some really significant bugs, like defense stacking, through very similar methods. For example, to test the randomness of the RNG, there were a number of people logging their combat chat as they played and sending them to Arcanaville. She ran an analysis on millions of to-hit rolls and found that there was a small bias in the fourth decimal place, which barely ever matters. If you fine-tune your accuracy really carefully, you can sometimes squeeze an extra 0.01% out of the system, or maybe be robbed of 0.01% you'd "paid for", but nether of these effects is significant compared to the minimal effort required to cap your to-hit. But to get decent data, they needed millions of rolls. To spot a 3% difference, you're going to need at least tens of thousands of hits.
Frankly, I think an easier test would be to get a combat pet of your own, line up against an AV with one attack that you resist strongly, and set your T1 attack to autocast, then go have lunch. For a comparison, dismiss the pet, then repeat. That'll let you generate thousands of crit chances without taking up anyone else's time, though you're only looking for a 3% boost, so you might need mroe data. -
Statistics is a funny thing. 20 hits is way too small a sample to accurately test any sort of random number generator. For example, that "four crits in 26 hits" thing, with a crit chance of 28%, has a 6.68% chance of occuring. That's not an insignificant chance. If you really want to test your crit chaces, start logging your combat chat, because if you can count the number of trials you've used without some sort of mechanical assistance, you haven't made enough for a decent statistical analysis. You want on the order of tens of thousands of data points, minimum, before you can make decent conclusions.
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Chad Gulzow-Man: I agree with you on every point but one. Regeneration on a Brute could be a serious balance issue. Brutes' very high HP means that +regen is powerful on a Brute, and Regeneration has it in spades. I'd suspect that they might get both Broadsword and Katana as primaries, since they're so similar, but miss out on a secondary.
Also, I'm not entirely sure about Axe Stalkers, though you could do a nice urban-legend style "huge guy with an axe that you somehow never noticed" vibe with it. Probably Axe/Willpower. -
Quote:Air Sup is fantastic on a Controller if you're planning to solo them at all before level 32. 'Trollers have very few sources of good damage, and can swap Air Sup between smacking a mezzed enemy for Containment damage, or keeping a bad guy on his back while you get the spawn under control. Brutes can aslo get some good use out of Air Sup, as they need as many attacks as they can get to build Fury, and Air Sup animates really quickly.Originally Posted by firespray
Air superiority is nice, but I can never seem to find a good place for it in my builds. My melee-centric builds don't need it, since they already have plenty of melee attacks, and my ranged builds wouldn't use it, because they stay the hell out of melee.
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Quote:Well, Empty Clips is a fairly mediocre cone attack, but Pistols isn't exactly fantastic either. I'd say it depends on how you plan to spend your early levels. Solo or in small teams, Pistols will let you use Scourge efficiently and be a lot gentler on your blue bar. In a large team, though, EC will be hitting all its targets, and a target-saturated AoE is pretty much always better than a ST blast - especially a Tier 1.Originally Posted by The_Pancake_King
Is 'Pistols' (the T1 DP power) worth taking? I am starting a DP/Traps corruptor as well and I am sort of torn on whether or not to take it. On one hand, I think once I have a few powers under my belt I may not have time to even bother with it. On the other, it could do quite a bit of scourge damage with it's fast refresh.
Later in the game, I wouldn't expect you'd notice the lack of either of them. Bullet Rain and Hail of Bullets are both much better AoEs than Empty Clips, and most of the single-target powers are better than Pistols. But levelling without one of them is going to be painful, so it's probably something you should cosider dropping in a respec. -
Quote:...Originally Posted by CapnGeist
I think the moderator killed the discussion. Let's get the ball rolling again!
Cole: Good Emperor, or best Emperor ever?
Also, I feel like we need a tag of some sort for signatures that says "Don't blame me, I voted for the Hamidon." For Resistance people to wear.
My first Praetorian voted for the Hamidon.
Well, not voted as much as felt that Hamidon was a manifestation of Gaea's wrath, and that we needed to stop abusing and destroying the environment for the sake of making Nova look pretty for the Emperor.
Sure, the Hamidon trying to wipe out humanity entirely was a little excessive, but there was an important message there that the new "praetors" are ignoring, and it could doom what little of humanity that remains.
Oh, and this character wasn't pure Resistance - she ran two Loyalist Responsibility arcs, after the Crusaders were a bit too crazy, even for her. There's little enough wildlife in Praetoria as it is to start writing it off as "collateral damage". -
Quote:I don't know... I'd say Recluse is more of a Vetinarian.Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha
Amen to that. The few little bits of writing I've done for Recluse have always been very much inspired by Terry Pratchett and Lord Vetinari. You've got to be pretty damn smart to keep a mess like the Rogue Isles spinning. It can wobble a bit and grow the odd edge...but it still functions.
I think the only more Vetinari-esque character would have to be Nemesis.
And if anyone hasn't read Terry Pratchett before, I have no sympathy for your ignorance
Go and cure it.
... Okay, just put the knife down. I'll stop making puns.
Anyway. Recluse is actually keeping the place running, and yes, I'd say he's read his Machiavelli and actually understood it - the people of the Isles fear the power of Arachnos, but very few citizens hate Lord Recluse personally. Nemesis, on the other hand, claims to be "running" everything, but doesn't really have the same approach to the machinery. Nemesis wants to make everything run his way, as clockwork as his automata. Recluse is far more organic - like Vetinari, he's prepared for the little screw-ups while he keeps the whole system running. He's as adept, or more so, at reading how society is going to run than making things run his way. -
Quote:Ever heard of Willpower? Regeneration is percentage-based, so the more HP you have, the faster it'll come back for a WP/ Tanker. That is, +10% HP just is 10% mitigation when your mitigation comes from regen. And the other resistance tankers will welcome this, too. I know with Fiery Aura it's mostly a question of "Can I last twenty seconds to cycle Healing Flames again?", and it's not uncommon for me to drop into flashing red, hit Healing Flames, then finally finish off most of the minions to get some breathing room. As an added bonus, Healing Flames' 40-ish percent heal is now even more HP restored.Originally Posted by Dz131
wut? hp caps? If you're down to the point where your extra hp is actually going to come in handy, you're pretty much on your way down anyway(eg. you failed).
Unless there's like 10% of extra damage mitigation I'm missing somewhere tankers are basuically brutes with a weaker soloing game.
Extra hp is just a noob buffer so your new lv 50 tanks can survive sometimes where your new lv50 brute wont. When both are at the top end it dont matter.
the only exception I think is pvp because you're harder to take down.
Even if you're a Defence tanker, a bigger HP pool means that those 5% of attacks that get through your defence can be bigger and still not have your HP be dropping over time, thanks to the increased regen and the larger self-heals. So, yes, a higher HP cap does make you tankier - it's a part of the way the HP and healing mechanics work. -
Ah, another Fire/Fire. I knew there was more than just me and Grey Pilgrim. Welcome to the club. And no, few things handle excessively large spawns solo better than a Tanker, and with Fire's mix of AoE and ST damage, they can handle "with bosses" very comfortably. I'm also quite fond of Rise of the Phoenix - if you're in a bit over your head, or a damage spike comes through at a bad time, Rise gets you up, re-toggled, and able to hunt down a boss while everything else is stunned.
One of the problems, though, is that Tankers stack very badly. On a team of 8, more than about 2 tankers will result in aggro fights, as each tank tries to position for their own AoEs. Blasters, on the other hand, don't really support each other, but at least they don't get in each other's way. Dominators can alternate their slow-recharge controls, and stack their faster ones to take out troublesome bosses. And, of course, stacked Controllers, Defenders, and Corruptors can turn anything into an engine of destruction. While they're not going to perform as well solo, they're fantastic force multipliers. -
KM/Elec Stalker here, and it's been a balst, but yeah. You sound like you want a Scrapper - you get Power Siphon in its full glory, the insta-recharge procs in CS, and fantastic ST damage with Burst for teams. And, of course, you can take either Willpower for great overall survivability with a minimum of clickiness, or Regen if you'd rather have your survivability on tap.
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Quote:1. It's close - Yami is more "darkness" than "black", but the Wind of Darkness has its own ring to it. Not sure if that fits what you're going for, though.Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
I have to agree - we have a pretty cool community here. It's rare that I can say a game taught me something, but this one's teaching me many, many things. Hell, these very forums basically taught me English
I want to focus on two things that really caught my attention so far, as I'm starting to really narrow it down, so lest me ask the following two questions:
1. Would Yamikaze no Rikimaru translate into Rikimaru of the Black Wind well enough? That's one of the strong contenders so far as, to the best of my understanding, it has the right intrinsic meaning (i.e. it doesn't just translate right, but it also comes off right) and it's one of the few names so far that actually has the right ring to my ear. It has the benefit of also fitting in the name field character restrictions.
2. Would Shinikaze no Rikimaru translate into Rikimaru of the Death Wind well enough? This is, so far, my other strong contender. It has the benefit of being more easily recognisable by non-Japanese speakers, as "shinigami" tends to be a popular concept in anime and anyone who's watched anime for some time will have picked up on the word for death at least partially. Plus, it has a really nice ring to it. The downside is it's a symbol over the limit, which means I'll have to swap out Rikimaru's given name.
I would like to avoid using "shinigami" itself just because it's too popular a concept and I wouldn't want to take the easy road of cashing in on it. There's a certain level of pride I hold for coming up with unique concepts, even when they're not nearly as unique as presented. The main point is to have a name and a look that doesn't make people go "Oh, you mean like that other thing?" Death Note's shinigami, Bleach's shinigami and Soul Eater's shinigami make the concept too popular for me to use as original work.
I feel really good about this. It feels like I'm pretty much one step away from doing a rename. Thank you so much!
*edit*
On "aka:" Being a Naruto fan (just about), that was one of things I considered. Kiba's little pup Akamaru was explained to be called that because he turned red (well, orange, but they said red) when it hulked out, so it was one of things I considered. Unfortunately, "Akakaze" just doesn't have the right ring to it, and I think it's the redundancy of the "ka" sound that prevents it from flowing well. That's certainly not a strong reason to reject it, but pretty much half the reason I rejected Kazeguro was because the name's flow irked me. Still, thank you for the suggestion.
2. I'm not that sure. I vaguely feel that "shinikaze" would me more like "dying wind" than "Wind of Death", but "Shinigami" is definitely "death-spirit". Also in that vein, it'd probably be "Shinigaze" as a compound, just like "Shinu" + "Kami" gives "Shinigami". -
Quote:I gave up on Serpent Drummer's arc for this reason. You'd think a Tanker, even if you are Fire/Fire, would be able to handle the "Protect Lady Grey" mission, but I managed to fail it before I even cleared the room she was in. I overdid the AoE a little, and the Warhulk that spawned in the guard group proceeded to drop a triple-Vengeance Ignite patch underneath LG... who decided to just stand in it and die, since I hadn't "rescued" her yet.Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
Multiple hostages on those outdoor city maps with a million places for them to hide. Multiple hostage with different names (so targetcustomnext doesn't work) are even worse.
Multiple blinkies on giant outdoor maps or the cargo ship map. Especially multiple blinkies that don't disappear when you click them (so targetcustomnext keeps targeting blinkies you've already clicked), and the blinkies fade in so they're hard to see.
Multiple lead-outs on big maps.
Any mission where I have to keep an ally alive or the mission will fail. The allies are inevitably squishy and stupid and attach themselves to the tank. Double bonus points when the mission is against Nemesis, in which case the allies are squishy, stupid, and stick to your behind like glue until there is a lieutenant to chase down and kill first. Then they do that, then resume standing right next to you.
Then, of course, comes "rescue the Ambassadors", where the first ambush managed to run into Vengeance range of the first spawn as I was taking down the lieuteneants, and the Rikti ambassador ate a triple-Venged alpha strike from a +0/x4 spawn. Another mission failed in record time. I would have really appreciated a "Thanks, but no thanks" option for "allies" - they stand there, still vulnerable, and stay out of the hot zone.
Frankly, I don't really mind the Vengeance - a resistance tanker isn't taking that much more damage from a Venged spawn. But if I'm protecting idiotic, squishy mission objectives, it's really noticeable. -
Well, it depends on what you liked about melee types. If you loved the "Dive into a spawn and watch them fall over" gameplay, I'd say stick with Tanks, Scrappers, and Brutes - Mez protection really helps for this. Melee sets, you're looking for AoE, and probably early, so Spines, Electric Melee, War Mace, and (a little less so) Fire Melee, Broad Sword, or Katana with certain secondaries. For armors, you should consider something with good 1-50 survivability - Willpower, Regeneration, Invulnerability, and possibly Electric Armor or Fiery Aura. The defense sets, like Stone Armor or Shield Defense, have better end-game performance with very high defense, but until you get there, it's a difficult ride. And at the really high-end, a Willpower or Invulnerability character at the defense softcap is incredibly sturdy.
For Blasters, it's hard to go wrong, but Fire/Ice is a tried and true way of getting heavy damage and powerful survivability tools. If you want to use Sonic Attack, though, I'd suggest a Defender or Corruptor - the higher debuff values will more than make up for the lowered damage modifiers, because each hit is making the next hit much harder.
One last suggestion I might make is Dominators. They play a little like blasters, in that you have to proactively take out dangerous targets before they overwhelm you, but you get a number of tools to remove someone from the fight without just defeating them. As an added bonus, it gives you a strong mix of melee and ranged attacks in the secondary, and beating up a Held foe in melee is perfectly safe, so you can fight up close as suits you. Nearly any Dominator combination will work well, but many work best with a certain strategy - Mind/Energy leans on the sleeps and single-target damage, while Mind/Fire is much more about using Dominate and Levitate for control while your AoEs kill everything. -
My personal experience of Fire Control is that it really likes a bit of soft control in the secondary (/Earth, /Ice or /Energy). Still, /Fire probably has the damage to comfortably drop things during Flashfire's stun, so you should be safe enough at the end of the stun - two things Charred, one a charred corpse.
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Quote:For that matter, making debuffers turn on their friends is handy, too. A Tsoo Sorcerer is a great confuse target - low damage, healing, and heavy to-hit debuffing. Even confusing Devouring Earth lieuteneants to deny them emanators is a good option.Originally Posted by Lord_Thanatos
Not to mention the times where the confused enemies use their buffs on you. Stacking AMs from Rikti Guardians is win.
I'm not sure what happens if you kill a Nemesis lieutenant while he's confused, but if you did get the Vengeance...
Generally, if you're worried about XP, confuse things that do something other than damage. They're often very annoying normally, but when confused won't reduce your XP per mob much, while rapidly boosting mobs per minute. -
Quote:I don't know, Tiger. I've read a few of your posts. I'd suspect Grammar Protection, rather than resistance. When you're affected, it lasts for its full duration, but it takes a fairly high level of grammar to affect you.Originally Posted by BlazingTiger
i dont drink the enriche im a member of the...Grammar Resistance!
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Quote:Actually, the Chance for +End proc (or at least the Performance Shifter one) will check every time in the chain. The problem is, when it fires, it will give 10 Endurance to its *target*. If you're sapping as a form of control, that could be painful.Originally Posted by Carnifax_NA
Really? I thought any offensive proc will jump properly without issue (any chance for damage, chance for a debuff or a chance for a mez) but any ones that can give a beneficial boost to the caster won't (chance for End or chance for Self-heal for example).
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Quote:Up: Not on your own. However, if there are Dominators or Controllers around, keeping Freeze Ray up might help the control specialists get everything set up. Only do this if you know the others are trying to hold the AV, and Freeze Ray and Petrifying Gaze aren't great damage powers.Originally Posted by Oedipus_Tex
Archvillains and elite bosses are a little trickier. Some of them have what are called "purple triangles (because of the ambient buff graphic) that grants them +50 status protection or some such. Basically enough that when the triangles are "up" holding them with a Corruptor is probably not possible. When the triangles go "down" you may be able to do it, however.
Down: AVs with the triangles down have the same protection as a Boss - two stacked Freeze Rays (or FR + PG) will hold them. EBs, with or without the Triangles have mag 6 protection, and will take 3 stacked holds - you'll need Petrifying Gave along with stacked Freeze Rays here. -
My Fire/Fire tank spends an awful lot of time solo, and I haven't regretted taking Taunt. It really is helpful for pulling, and helping clump up spawns to be incinerated. I can only imagine that PBAoE Brutes would find it just as useful, especially when there's no corner to hide behind. Still, each to their own. I'm sure Elec/Fire will make large numbers of things stop moving quickly with or without Taunt.
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Quote:Cymbals are the instruments.Originally Posted by Kryph0n
Only if they come with a little hat and symbols (is that the instrument?)
Little hats with symbols would be cool, though. New costume part! -
Quote:It's also plausible if you're facing a single enemy with a single, slow attack (like Buckshots and PPD Suppressors in the low levels, or some Rikti at the higher end) and they've just used it, so you know that you have five seconds before anything else can hit you. Again, that's mostly useful when you don't have a complete attack chain, but that's when these types of enemies are most common - in the low levels, before you finish your chain.Originally Posted by Zem
And that's correct IF you always have an attack or chain of attacks whose damage will exceed that of AS in the next 3 seconds, bearing in mind that AS can also be interrupted. It's a gamble you should only use if you're soft-capped and not facing a lot of enemies or they're not aggroed on you (or mezzed I suppose). For any stalker with a complete ST attack chain it is probably never a good idea.
Or to put it another way, it's often better than just standing around doing nothing. -
Quote:Uh, the tier 1 power of any secondary is forced. You don't get to opt out of it.Originally Posted by Atilla_The_Pun
That's not what I got from how it was announced in Beta.
My understanding was that very few took the Tier 1 power from their secondary and this is to encourage them to do so by indirectly giving them more damage as a reward.
I'll admit that very few people were *slotting* their T1, or including it in their attack chains, but every Tanker took it. -
I think it's time to blow this town...
Oh, you meant a build?
Well, yeah. Hard to say without knowing what you're trying to do, but I'd move the third slot from Health (if you're not going to use the uniques) into Fire Ball for a fifth piece of Positron's Blast. 6.25% Recharge is usually pretty hard to get in a melee build, and you'll get more survivability out of cycling Healing Flames faster than from that third, ED-capped Heal IO in Health. -
Quote:Final Fantasy Tactics, I believe.Originally Posted by Caemgen
Errr, should I feel silly for not knowing what FFT is?
Also, sorry I didn't get back to you with those refs, Tartyr. I'm still hanging out to see the results of everyone else's characters, though.