Augury

I think there is horrible inequality going on.

I mean, women can wear pants AND skirts, but guys can only wear pants? What's up with that?

You can always add powerpool attack powers, like boxing/AS and then if you're a big enough vet run tactics to make Sands of Mu worth using. Combine those with propel and containment and you should be doing pretty fair damage, if that's what you want to do.

I'm not too familiar with /rad, unfortunately, so this is the best advice I can really offer.

Well I was wandering through Faultline today (great zone, great story arcs!) and came across a block of buildings with a "Pinnacle Apartments" add on the wall leading up to it. Two buildings with a cast iron gate, a pool area and some plants.

For some reason this struck me as a great place to RP. Sort of like a Melrose Place in CoH, where people who "live" in these apartments (we obviously can't ACTUALLY we live there, but hey, pretend is fun too) can meet up, hang out, share teh dramaz, and such?

Plus it'd be an ideal place to house heroes. There's construction going on and police fighting criminal elements all over the place, so it's not really that safe for your average people (who might not want to live there anyhow) but would be great for heroes, who could then keep Faultline clear of crime more than just by patrolling it every now and then. Maybe some government subsidisement or something.

Probably a silly idea, but what do people think?

Yup, it's that time again. With Iddy, my controller who scraps, rapidly going on 40 I'm starting to think of new amusing and weird builds that might work for me somehow.

What I've gotten so far is by stacking FF's dispersion bubble with hover, maneuvers, combat jumping and weave I can get better defense than a non-eluding SR scrapper.

Except that's kind of where I run out of ideas for what to do with it. Defenders aren't the AT I'm most familiar with either, so that definately doesn't help either. So basically, what would an SR-level defense defender be doing, besides not getting hit a whole awful lot?

Suggestions plx.

[ QUOTE ]
Controller Weave is 4.5% base defense since I5 (prior it was obviously far better).
It was always 90% of Tanker Weave.

[/ QUOTE ]
I thought Weave was always a flat 2.5% or something equally silly and low like that? Guess I remember wrong. O_o

Just wondering when Weave changed to not be completely useless (depending on your AT) and wanted to confirm that Controllers get 4.5% base melee/ranged defense from it now.

[ QUOTE ]
I wouldn't go cutting the recharge (since that would be increasing the damage output), but some sort of endurance reduction to psi tornado might be good.

[/ QUOTE ]
My thoughts exactly. By that token though the other AoEs should probably also get an endurance discount based on how hard their base damage was hit.

Well, me, I would like to talk shop for a second with the more number inclined here, since in the other thread it's been mostly overlooked. Why? Because while we're obviously not going to come to any kind of agreement here on the debate of if it's a warranted change or not, crippling or not, or a fix to something that wasn't the problem or not, we can still review how we'll all feel about it afterwards.

After these changes, does anyone feel the numbers still add up properly on the controller EPP AoE attacks? Because I don't think I want to take the one I had planned for my latest controller, Idunn, anymore. Now I'm not asking people who don't care about effectiveness as long as it's fun. Sorry guys, numbers need to add up.

Psionic Tornado: 23 endurance cost. 2.43 BI attack (halved from 4.86). Now, no need to hem and haw about what AT ranged modifier they're on, because BI is relative to the ATs brawl damage.

2.43 BI is about an "in between" amount of base damage relative to power pool attacks. Kick is a bit lower, boxing a little more. Air Superiority is better, and Flurry is definately better damage. Single target, but still, to give you folks an idea.

Now, I have AS, boxing AND flurry on my controller. Flurry with assault and siphon power is almost good enough to be a nice solid chunk of damage. AS is reasonable but it'd take you plenty of time to AS one mob to death. Boxing is just so the woeful brawl which isn't affected by containment doesn't enter my attack chain.

This is a reasonably solid chain, equivalent to a bunch of varying strength scrapper first powers, basically, when contained.

So, my question is... is it fair or reasonable to expect someone to spend 23 endurance, 20 seconds to cycle, on an AoE that doesn't even do the amount of damage that Air Sup does? Because to me that feels exorbitantly out of whack.

Of course, Psionic Tornado is the worst example of the bunch, but that doesn't make it any less valid. Consider also that to do the same kind of damage with it now you must have containment up, which means at the least an AoE immob of 15 endurance or so.

Now I know, sometimes, maybe even a lot of times you will have containment up, and hell with these changes I wouldn't recommend using Psi Tornado if you didn't already have containment up anyway.

What does this mean? To me? If I take this power I lose another power that I could 6 slot for far greater effectiveness, and gain a power that cycles slowly for rather unimpressive AoE damage even with containment, with an absolutely dismal damage per endurance ratio.

It's further reduced in use because if you do take it, and you do use it, it's a lot better to only use it if containment is up anyhow because the situation demanded it, so you don't have to pay an extra 15 endurance to get the damage you did before without containment. This makes it more situational and less useful.

All discussion of wether the EPP AoE attacks needed to be cut in half aside, even if they should be the above should, IMHO, illustrate that the currently proposed solution is far too inelegant and not only reduces the power in damage, but makes it too expensive to warrant using, makes it more situational to use, and will inevitably result in people just getting something with more bang for their buck.

(ironically fire ball with its lowest reduction and relatively lower endurance cost is least affected by these issues so fire/kin/fire actually takes the smallest hit)

EDIT: Heck forgot another very important point. Reduced damage means that you're actually paying more endurance and time to get the same result. Of course, wether you should try to attain the same results as before is debatable, but the rest of the evidence above stands and is far more solid as a basis against the un-nuancated proposed change as it stands.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
They will still give "a bit more damage", it's not like it's all taken away.. Fireball with Containment will still equal Blaster Fireball in damage.

Blaster epics don't turn them into tankers or controllers either, although they include control powers and shields.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't see why Controllers can't have a lv 2 Blaster power when Blasters get lv 2 controller powers and Tier 9 Tanker powers. I can still kill a boss faster than any troller on my blaster and I can clear an 8 man spawn faster than any Fire/Kin on my blaster.

[/ QUOTE ]

Nobody is taking away the Fireball. The control powers in Blaster epics are on Blaster mez scale, not controller mez scale. Your argument would work if blasters got a ST hold that had the same duration as controller holds, doubled if they shot at the target first with a tier 1 blast.

[/ QUOTE ]
Controllers ranged damage modifier is already lower than that of a Blaster, same way a Blaster gets lower duration from hold compared to a troller, so an extra reduction to that damage was not needed. The blasts also have a higher end drain( which is waaay too high now, considering the damage done )compared to the Blaster version, which is already significant.

Also Controllers don't get things like Aim and Build up, which is what really sets Blasters apart as the main damage dealer.

[/ QUOTE ]
And Defiance helping to deal potentially 300% (was it? max value..) buffed damage?

Chiefette

[/ QUOTE ]

500%, full Defiance should get you to the damage cap. Controller's cap is 400% I think, but with containment they get double that, which is what the real problem is here.

[/ QUOTE ]
But only if they have fulcrum shift, and fulcrum shift as a power breaks the ED/Post-I5 paradigm more than any other power in the game.

[ QUOTE ]
that would nerf Kin defenders though, not just controllers.

[/ QUOTE ]
Yes, and corruptors. Your point?

They should just nerf FS, if you ask me. I'm practically waiting for it. Hell Iddy is a /kin and I would totally welcome the change, because FS actually plain deserves it for being a power that will make everyone in a team cap out on damage in a game where you're supposedly not capping out on anything without a lot of effort.

Or is that just me?

Some verification would be nice?

My first post said Psionic Tornado, so I'm talking about that one, and I'm all confused now.

[ QUOTE ]
Erm, nope. Tornado doesn't do Containment damage.

[/ QUOTE ]
... Um, if tornado doesn't do containment damage after this patch then why did it's damage get cut in half to begin with? I assumed because the reason for cutting the damage was because containment was supposed to double it, so I assumed tornado would now be affected by containment.

My first guess is PVP, because in PVE psionic damage isn't so unhinged it needs to be cut in half with no containment damage given to the power.

By the by, there is a flaw in just halving the damage of say, psionic tornado. Even if this does keep it as strong as say a blaster nova with containment (I'm skeptical) consider that a blaster can just fire off a nova.

A controller would have to FIRST set up containment with AoE, which will easily take you a good 15 stamina. Then toss on psionic tornado. 40 stamina, and twice the activation time.

Think the devteam overlooked that little tidbit.

Fulcrum shift is not a good thing to underpin nerfs on. Fulcrum shift is just uh... well, as far as I can tell the best buff in the entire game. There are plenty of controllers with few options for damage that don't have FS.

I guess the "controllers are support" thing is what put me over the edge. They used to be support, but after Cryptic shoveled containment onto us, and nerfed most of the "hard" AoE control (this is less bad for some sets, but take a look at grav as to how hard some sets can get hit) I have a hard time believing we're not supposed to do damage.

Why else would they give controllers an inherent power that relies on damage?

Sauce

[ QUOTE ]
• Controller Ancilliary Powers:
- The damage of these powers was made artificially high originally, to make them desirable. In general, the damage was set to be roughly equivalanet to that of a Blaster. When Containment was added later, this was not taken into account. As such, these powers all do roughly twice the desired damage under Containment conditions. This series of changes is aimed at bringing these powers closer to balance.
- Earth Mastery Hurl Boulder: Base damage reduced from scale 3 to scale 1.64
- Fire Mastery: Fire Blast: Base damage reduced from scale 2 to scale 1.1
- Fire Mastery: Fire Ball: Base damage reduced from scale 1.6 to scale 1.05
- Ice Mastery: Ice Blast: Smashing damage reduced from scale 0.8 to scale 0.2, Cold damage reduced from scale 1.2 to 0.8
- Ice Mastery: Ice Storm: Removed unresistible PvP damage and added Containment.
- Primal Forces: Power Blast: Smashing damage reduced from scale 0.8 to scale 0.2, Energy damage reduced from scale 1.2 to 0.8
- Psionic Mastery: Psionic Blast: Base damage reduced from 2 to 1.
- Psionic Mastery: Psionic Tornado: Base damage reduced from 0.35 to 0.175.

[/ QUOTE ]

Discuss.

EDIT: I love, after reading a few bits here and on US, the pervading (non controller) sentiment of "OMG THEY'RE SUPPORT CHARS!". No, back before AoE control was nerfed, back before a boss was the highest thing you could use any mez on, that's when controllers were support.

I know, I played a grav/storms, and she was awesome, but couldn't kill a damn thing.

The global hit to all AoE control effectively removed controllers from that niche and Cryptic gave us all a clear message when they introduced containment.

If controllers are supposed to be a support AT they should unnerf AoE control.

Idunn is growing into her powers slowly (which are divine in nature from norse mythology) and the wings come when she attains valkyrie-like status. They just kind of... flourish to life. Flying is definately something associated with valkyries, so that's pretty much that.

My stone armor brute won't have them though, considering she can't fly and if you can't they just... sit there looking awkwardly inanimate. So I'm weaving that into her story, and that she's quite annoyed to be part of the wingless type of demons.

Not sure if this is helpful or not but Balaaj is actually natural, heh. She's a demon so her powers are natural for her. I believe the resurrection of Eres will actually give her some honest to god powers (rather than commanding mercs and using devices and traps), so that would be magic?

At least that's how my brain works through it. Eressos is still a human with no innate abilities at all, and got her abilities (and resurrection) through magical means. Meanwhile there's no class of "newly revived" that is expected to have certain powers so can't really be natural.

[ QUOTE ]
Chalk it up as a victory for the 'how dare they play in my zone without my permission' brigade.

[/ QUOTE ]
Actually it's more like the "how dare they tell me I need permission to play the game my way in a zone made for that type of gameplay" brigade. You're more in the "how dare they kill me without my permission" brigade area.

Big shock why most people are siding with the first camp over the latter.

What Syra means, I think, is that she doesn't want this to be a story that people read seperately but she can never make reference to IC inside the game.

Yeah, this story is going to be significant in the real backstories of oh, about four characters.

I'm going to help Syra write it incidentally. And by help I mean sit in the back of the car and repeatedly go "you're doing it wrong!". >_>

Is it worth it on a thugs MM? The bonus is miniscule and it sucks end, so I'm inclined to just say "no". But I'm getting dispersion bubble (not the singles, too much work) so maybe stacking makes it worth it.

But I'm really thinking it's not ever worth it.

Auron meets Lulu (meets Quistis)?

I hope I don't get smacked down for this, since it's not really City of Heroes related. (although I did make a City of Heroes port of the character in question!)

First, pictures!

http://enichan.no-ip.com/newise-01.gif
http://enichan.no-ip.com/newise-02.gif
http://enichan.no-ip.com/newise-03.gif

Basically my character - Iselsis - from one of my Exalted roleplaying games is getting a drastic makeover soon and several things came together to create her new look. I just had to draw it to get the image out of my head, and I'm quite proud as I think it's my best work to date.

The story behind them:

Before, my character had short hair. She's also a half-demon (hence the ears) and basically kept herself covered up so as to not be seen as a freak. She's gained some self esteem since then though. She used to wear a big greatcoat (like the russian ones), a bodysuit underneath, heavy toed boots, a hat drawn low, and a scarf over her face.

Well, her armor - the coat - blew up when she had to blow herself and a badguy up to stop them from getting into a clinic (which is bad stuff, people die that way). Then later the demon that should be using her body - but who is apparantly kept out by her force of will - took over briefly and her hair grew; the demon likes it long apparantly.

The whole "only your force of will is keeping you going" THEN reminded me of good old Auron. <3 As luck would have it, there's a character in the party who dresses in those big scholarly asian robes. Which gave me an instant idea on how to make one of those look gooood on a girl, despite being men's clothing.

Plus, my characters sister is going to summon a demon-which-is-armor to replace her old one, which would be the second picture. That one was hell to do but eh! I lived.

Then all I had to do was add snazzy glasses and viola!

Just had to post here and ramble since I'm so proud of it, and I don't go to any art forums or anything. >_> Shame I can't recreate it in the CoH character generator in a million years.