Arcanaville

With regard to DPA, that's the general rule, but of course exceptions are made: the aforementioned Blaze, and the insta-snipes themselves, have much higher than normal DPA.

Sonic Blast does that. Of course, for eight of the nine powers they instantly wake back up, but the one that's left is a doozy.

Its long overdue because as you seem to be aware of, "so many people have spent so long insisting so vehemently that their gaming experience somehow wasn't complete without a water-blasting set" and its a concept that has not had an analog within the game until now.

As to things not specifically well represented in the comic book genre, what this game apes are superheroes (and supervillains) as a concept, not individual powers and abilities per se. There aren't really any masterminds as implemented in City of Heroes in the comic books. There aren't really Defenders as such, or Dominators. The aim of the game is to cover as much conceptual ground as possible, not concentrate as much attention as possible on the few most popular points in that conceptual ground.

That's also why our costume editor looks like Comic-con exploded at Mardi Gras. The game isn't trying to focus as much attention as possible on all the minute details of the most frequently represented spandex in comic books. Its trying to provide as much shotgun coverage of as much conceptual space as possible.

The attitude that we should judge game content based on how well represented that content is in the most popular mainstream comic books is actually one that has been discouraged for as long as the game has been in existence. We don't compel our players to be "mainstream."

They may start doing so because snipes are no longer drags on a powerset, but as to it being required now; because why exactly?

Consider this: insta-cast Blazing Bolt won't even be the highest DPA single target attack in Fire blast: that honor still goes to Blaze which is becoming an 80 foot range attack.

Every blaster set is improved at least a little by the insta-snipe, but while some sets improved quite a bit, did Fire Blast really improve by a dramatic amount? Would fire blast have "fallen behind" without the snipe?

A blaster set with three ranged attacks with DPA of about 1.25 DS/sec will outperform energy blast with its insta-snipe. That's like 10% higher DPA than Focus. There's lots of ways to build a set that leverages the snipe changes, but there also seem to be lots of ways to make blast sets that could easily do without them. If the changes are popular they are more likely to build blast sets with snipes, but that's not the same thing as being mandated to do so and I don't see the forcing function.

A video demonstration would allow for quantifying what "very active" means relative to endurance burn rate.

I'm objecting to the idea expressed by the words, which would not be resolved by changing the words, unless your original words were mistaken.

I said the devs do make changes based on feedback, and you said you agreed: you only reserved the right to judge if those changes were acceptable. But your original statement explicitly stated that you believed the devs ignore feedback when making changes and that seemed unambiguous.

You also referred twice to "a third option" which suggests you think there are two sides. In fact the phrase "take a third option" is common enough to be a trope. As I said, I don't believe there are two sides in the contexts we're discussing.

This line of thought doesn't account for the possibility that F2P listings are loss-leaders to build an environment that allows Valve to better monetize revenue generating listing space.

Translated into English, what that says is that he took Freeze Ray at level 8, then Aim at level 10, then Ice Storm at level 12. Each of those powers, like every power, has a base initial slot which is labeled (A). It also says at level 13 he put two slots into Ice Storm, and at level 15 he put another slot into Ice Storm and one into Freeze Ray. Then at level 17 he put two more slots into Freeze Ray.

That's what he did in Mids, so if you want to create the same build in the game you would take the powers at the levels shown, and then add slots at the levels shown to those powers. Mids records not just what powers you take and what slots you add, but the exact order you do it in, and Mids forces you to do it in the program the same way the game will unlock and give you power choices. Short of a bug, if you can do it in Mids you can do it in the game, and if you can't do it in the game you can't do it in Mids.

So, if you wanted to make deadboy's build, you would take the powers listed at the levels listed down the left, and at the levels where you get slots instead of powers you would put those slots into the powers shown. Your first two slots at level 3 would go into Ice Bolt. Your next two slots at level 5 would go into Ice Blast. And so on.

In terms of what to put into them, deadboy is suggesting that prior to level 22 when SO enhancements become available, he slots one accuracy, one damage, one endurance reduction, and one recharge TO or DO. My guess would be that the order you would slot them in would be something like accuracy first (accuracy always first), then endurance, then damage, then recharge. The alternative is generally accuracy, damage, endurance, recharge.

Why is deadboy slotting Ice Storm first, before Freeze Ray? Because Ice Storm is a damaging rain power, while Freeze Ray is a hold. He's probably looking to enhance his attacks first.

I should point out that when some people make builds in Mids, they are trying to communicate the end state build, and don't pay close attention to the order in which they do things because they don't intend people to necessarily play the build in the precise order it is created. I don't think this is the case with deadboy's build, but its something to be careful about when you see builds posted on the forums, particularly fully slotted level 50 builds

Then why are you presuming any changes to blaster ranged sets are coming that would hurt Water Blast?

"Paragon Studios would love the initial burst of revenue associated with attracting new players through Steam, but because those people are likely to play the game for only a short time and then drop it they would most likely be disruptive to the existing long-term playerbase and cause a net loss in subscriber revenue over time."

I don't believe that to be the case. I know the devs said, on more than one occasion, that City of Heroes player retention is, or at least was prior to Freedom launch, extremely high. That our subscriber base was either stable or shrinking slightly at the time forces the logical conclusion that the game does not attract new players at a high rate.

But that's not the same thing as saying:

Even calling them "third options" implies there's what the devs want, and what the players want, as if all the players want the same thing or that there's a direct dichotomy between what the devs want and what the players want in general. Its fine to state the devs are doing things other than what you personally want. Its not reasonable to conflate the devs not doing what you want and not doing what "the players" want. The devs often do something other than what I recommend. That doesn't mean every time they do that they failed to listen to "the players." They just failed to obey one player.

You could also say that in most cases, hasten also makes a character worse, by burning endurance. Most builds in existence are endurance constrained, especially ones that care about recharge at all. The notion that endurance constraints generally get outleveled is a myth almost as old as the game that won't die. Since most builds in existence are endurance constrained, while hasten allows them to do what they do faster, it also forces them to do less. Without powerful endurance management of some kind, this is an impossible constraint to avoid without being idle a lot.

Some high end builds escape endurance constraint, but leveling from 1 to 50? Unless it has conserve power or power sink or powers like that, not likely.

My current what-if I24 build has burnout, because when you have energize burnout's costs aren't that bad but it gives me an emergency way to recharge the heal (likely the regen in energize won't stack) and double Nova. And I don't care how impractical double Nova is, I'm keeping cabs around for that.

Not exactly. The way it works is that Chilling Embrace is going to buff you with pulses of Absorb that are base 5% of your health bar and last three seconds. Every three seconds you'll get another pulse of absorb, replacing the old pulse.

Absorb shields take damage before your health bar. So after defense causes some attacks to miss, and resistance reduces the damage of the attacks that do land, the remaining damage hits the absorb shield first. Damage has to blow through that shield before it can touch your health bar.

So lets say something is shooting at you with attacks that do about 10% of your health in damage. At level 50 that might be a minion hitting you for about 120 damage per hit, which seems reasonable. If you have high defense but no resistance, then most of those attacks will miss. But occasionally one will hit. The absorb shield will absorb about half that attack, and the rest will go through and hit your health bar. Most attacks miss, but the ones that hit blow through the absorb shield and still hit your health bar. Absorb doesn't help you there, you need regen or healing to recovery that health. The absorb shield will on refresh itself.

If instead you have high resistance, you could reduce the damage per attack from 120 down to lets say 60 (the equivalent of 50% resistance). Now, more attacks land but when they do the shield absorbs 50 out of 60 points of health, and only 10 points hits you. If the attacks come frequently enough, after the first one lands if another lands in three seconds it will have a free shot at you landing for full damage. But if the attacks only come every three seconds or more, the absorb shield will, in this case, be absorbing over 90% of all incoming damage. In the defense case above, the absorb shield was only absorbing about 50% of all incoming damage, and sometimes it just sat there doing nothing (because attacks were missing) and the absorb was basically wasted.

The way I would put it is that resistance improves the efficiency of absorb. Not all the time, and not in all cases, but in many cases, particularly the ones close to your survivability limit. Resistance makes it more likely you will use more of your absorb shields and less will go to waste. In that way, resistance improves the performance of absorb shields in a way defense doesn't. Because in effect Absorb shields are vulnerable to burst damage, and resistance reduces bursts. Defense doesn't to the same degree (it makes them less likely, but no less damaging when they happen).

Now since resistance doesn't slow down the rate of attacks hitting, pure defense with no resistance wouldn't help absorb all that much in real life. But in real life, most blasters have ways to ensure they aren't literally getting hit in the face *constantly* - they have offensive mitigation, for example. Knockback, holds, slows - all these things prevent the blaster from being hit constantly (if you're a blaster and you're being hit constantly, you're being dead constantly also). So given that most blasters have to have a way to at least slow down the rate at which attacks strike them, its resistance that in the real world will tend to have a greater impact than defense when it comes to improving Absorb's efficiency. But of course the best thing would be to have lots of both.

I mentioned it to Castle several times over the years, probably since 2006. And I'm aware the ability to use the effect has existed for some time, including in powers like Benumb, in general. Benumb was the trigger for all sorts of weird game engine questions, like why are some mez protection powers strength-enhanceable.

It does occur to me now that the "technical issues" he hinted at might have in fact been that he was concerned there were certain powers that would go berserk if this ability was added either player-wide or in enhancements that could be slotted in said powers, and the tech didn't exist to easily resolve those issues game-wide short of making a lot of exceptions to how it could be used.

If you're lucky, you picked Ice Manipulation. Absorb synergizes with resistance in a way it does not with Defense, at least in the way Blasters are getting it (basically, as rapidly ticking small chunks, which makes it better to take damage as frequent small chunks than fewer larger chunks which will tend to cut through absorb pulses).


Would this be a bad time to tell you my Energy/Energy blaster is built for pure recharge, and has the only secondary slated to get a click heal?

This comes up a lot, and its difficult to really discuss around except to say that the math backs up some of it, but moots most of it.

Probably the most direct statement I can make about this issue is that there are no non-regen models of survival. All survival is based on assuming that we have a health bar we're trying to keep above zero, something that keeps trying to refill it, and incoming damage. And actually, all models for defense and resistance basically assume they modify incoming damage. In effect they *disappear* under the standard models.

All models are regen models. There is no sharp boundary between something that is "regeneration based" and something that is "defense" or "resistance" based. That's an artificial distinction that puts a continuum into three arbitrary buckets.


As to the psychological issues, in fact my study of that phenomenon concluded that in this one area, Defense and Regeneration are more alike than either are to Resistance.

Besides Bonfire and Snow Storm which have already been mentioned, there's also LRM in Munitions. Its a sniper ranged AoE attack. If you like attacking from range, this might be an interesting opener option. It hits pretty hard (slightly less than a normal snipe) with a wider radius than Explosive blast and strikes up to 16 targets. In fact, it deals slightly more than half the average damage of Nova, but with no crash.

The only downside is its recharge is long: 240s. That means even fully slotted you're only going to be using it maybe once every two minutes. But on the other hand, slotted and with BU stacked on it LRM will kill even minions outright.

I think its unlikely min/maxers are going to take the enhanced health recovery (or absorb) coming for Blasters and try to stack even more regen on top. Regen doesn't stack like that compared to the accelerating returns for defense and resistance. I think in general those that built for moderate regen will probably continue to do so but get additional health recovery on top, those that build for high defense and/or resistance will go for stacking that mitigation on top of the new regeneration, and many of those that went psycho regen will take the new health recovery coming and back off their prior regeneration efforts to build for mitigation wrappers around that health recovery.

Its the same list its been for a while, which boils down to anything that doesn't generate infinite rewards, crash the servers, or perform Judeo-Christian miracles.

I'm Mister Green Christmas, I'm Mister Sun.
I'm Mister Heat Blister, I'm Mister Hundred and One.
They call me Heat Miser, whatever I touch
Starts to melt in my clutch.
I'm too much.

More directly, it was really easy to make a superhero movie not about them that people didn't want to see.

My understanding is that it just applies a large negative KB strength enhancement to the power its slotted into (actually I suggested that as a possibility long ago and was told it caused problems: not sure what they were but apparently they were surmountable). If so, there's no way for that to occur randomly for different targets. It could theoretically flicker off and on, but then it would, in a power like Bonfire, knock everything down, then randomly knock everything out of the fire. It would always be all or nothing.