Auspice

No, man. Azu quoted a person who posted on this thread in 2005, and there's no posts between him and that poster.

what the hell Azu, this post is 3 years old.

That's one heck of a thread necro.

I don't agree with this setup because I pug.

With smart people you want to fort the damage dealers.

I play reactively with my auras and fort the person who contributes most to team survivability. If it's a tank and he doesn't need it (I'm probably second), then I fort damage dealers first.

IMHO a defender who needs fort to keep themselves alive is an affront to nature. Either that, or the tank is. Either way, I'll contribute far more to the defender living by hitting mobs with ice slick than I will by keeping fort on him.

I assume to some degree that my end bar can handle other people's lives, and fort is an offensive buff in my storybook, unless the tank is incompetent. If the tank is a scrapper, all the better. Two birds, one stone.

Impeded Swiftness and Positron's Blast procs are also unresistable in PvP.

I can get some screens to show, if need be.

Dev response to this has been extremely underwhelming.

"Play it, you'll see!" seems to be the case here when you've already stated that, with a few exceptions made for stalkers and the porting of psi assault assumedly minus PSW + a new power, the powers are exactly identical to powers we already know with the difference of AT modifiers and access to different alternative powersets (especially epics, heroside). It does not take a super sleuth to determine what psi blast will do on a blaster. It doesn't even take one whit of thought to figure out what super reflexes will accomplish on a brute.

I'm actually happy that Storm made it redside. Corruptors are well-suited for it; it is a troublesome set in general to handle, but I think that will be no different than blueside. My big issue comes with the fact that MMs got it too. I'm a MM player, and have been since I first started, and storm is an incredibly powerful set in a MM's hands. I'm not happy about this because MMs are by and large the only redside AT that hasn't been gimped in some form or fashion. Don't think so? Look at the number of MM players redside, or the price of pet recipes. People don't organize red hami raids on my server anymore because the raids end up as 50% masterminds. MMs didn't need storm, especially when it's a notoriously hard to handle set in PvE. People will be running around with bots/storm blowing everyone and their mom around in PvE. When i12 launches, I will not be rolling a VEAT. Why? I do not want to be teamed with a thousand storm masterminds played by third graders. At least now they play dark miasma, which is pretty hard to mess up. You cannot datamine how idiots will play storm in beta, although I suppose you can datamine how little damage they take when played by an expert.

Brutes got the stick again. Unsurprising? I can't think of a single person who seriously wants to roll Super Reflexes on a brute. Considering EA is a functionally similar set, and most of the people selecting that sort of brawler concept probably already made invul or WP brutes, SR is kind of a worthless pick. Brutes want Ice, but the devs keep hammering on how fury generation is slowed by it, which I don't buy for a minute. No one who actually understands how fury generation works really thinks ice screws with fury. Considering I can max out my fury bar on a stunned LT hitting only brawl and energy punch, I think that excuse is REALLY tired. And right after claiming that Ice screws with fury, you give brutes a set without a taunt aura. After looking at what you guys gave to scrappers (the world!) I think it's time to stop messing with brute players and give them the sets they've been clamoring for - or at least come up with a decent reason why they shouldn't (eg. hibernate is broken).

I'm a paying customer, but if this is how the devs want to look at the game, I'm probably not going to be paying much longer. I already took a break from this game, but if the devs don't want to even look at PvP (or villains in general, especially brutes) at all, I'll give someone else my monthly fee.

On the plus side, at least they fixed Hollows. How many years has it been?

Well, either way, it's not in your guide <3

Very important, not listed portion of your guide:

All procs, except for (iirc) the Lady Grey: Chance For Negative and Apocalypse: Chance for Negative are unresistable.

I have not tested all of them, but for certain:

Neuronic Shutdown, Ghost Widow's Embrace, Traps of the Hunter, and Unbreakable Constraint are unresistable; tested on an electric armor brute with all shields up and in powersurge; did identical damage compared to the same brute with no shields or tier 9 active.

I'm sure the value of procs just changed for some people.

Or keep trial accounts from being able to send emails.

On alternate advancement:

In EverQuest, once you reached the level cap, you could continue to gain experience beyond the cap. If you did so, you would gain "alternate advancement points" or AA points. It took more time to level to an AA point than it did to gain the final experience level.

After gaining an AA point or points you could spend them on minor ability tweaks or modifications relevant to your class. A character could get a small boost to heals, or spell damage, or critical hit rate, or maximum health, health regen, mana, and so on. Some of the abilities cost more than one AA point and there were dozens of them total, many with tiers - you could buy some of them more than once, and the bonus stacked.

All in total, since it took a very long time to level in EverQuest (days or weeks) it was extremely unfeasible for a single character to obtain all or even most alternate advancement abilities. However, as the game became older, large numbers of AA levels became more prevalent and older characters became disgustingly more powerful than recent, well-geared characters of maximum level.

This system is awful, for numerous reasons - when CoX becomes a game of "whoever plays the most is the best" and not "whoever picks the right powers, slots them right, and plays them right is the best" is the day I find a new game to play.

I like IOs, because a relative noob like me (six months in) can have a 120 million infamy IO build if he or she plays the market right. I like it even better because it is not essential to playing the game well, and a character slotted with common IOs and SOs will be very functional in high end PvE and even PvP, although not exceptionally strong. This is not the case in many other games where alternate advancement and high gear tiers are essential to the game, and not having top tier equipment excludes you from over half of the game's content.

Again: If CoX becomes a game that is not casual friendly I will not play it. That is not because I am a casual player; it's because the developers will not be looking at their target market, and I cannot give game makers who do not put their customers first my money.

Actually, that's not entirely true. While your metaphor does have merit, it isn't the only story. Playing as a gimp does require skill, it's just a different kind of skill from playing the most hax thing you can make and taking on the most hax things in the game.

That being said, I think that the ironman challenge is a bit silly since it is primarily a power build challenge and secondarily a play skill challenge. While it is difficult it isn't really the same as throwing more factors into the pool (enhancement and inspiration usage, full access to powers, etc.).

A better analogy might be that you can't call Michael Jordan the best basketball player of all time if he wasn't the best at both rebounding and three point shooting, and completely ignore other facets of his play, including playmaking and exceptional ball handling skills.

That's not to say that the best three point shooter isn't a great player, but without all the variables in place, he's not really playing basketball, he's just shooting three pointers.

3. Villains have no access to ally grantable +perception in Sirens. Either switch the order of sonic repulsion and clarity or add it to thaw or the ice shields.

4. Not being able to use accolades while exemping favors power gamers at the expense of casual players who got their accolades later. Let accolades be used in PvP zones regardless of what level they're earned at.

1. Hero and villain combat is not balanced, especially in the 40+ game. The most popular suggestion is to open up a set of APP for villains and allow them to respec out of their patron pools to get those.

2. Many people feel that the balance of irresistible effects in PvP needs to be reconsidered. Changing irresistible effects might be another way of balancing heroes and villains.

3. Brutes, tanks, and scrappers are entirely absent from high end team PvP. Consider adding resistance or protection to Cage to some of the sets that aren’t as good in PvP (invuln, stone, ea) and make taunt less easy to shake.

4. There aren’t any meaningful rewards to encourage participation in PvP. Add zone rewards that are for PvPing, not for doing PvE activities in PvP zones.

2. People often have to reset matches multiple times to get an acceptable map. Add selectable maps, as well as the ability to eliminate maps from the selection while still having a random pick.

2. There are no options in arena matches that aren’t just “kill the most people on the other team.” Add objective based instanced PvP like capture the flag and king of the hill.

5. There’s no open zone where heroes and villains are able to team. Allow heroes and villains to team in Warburg.

1. Fly is not a viable PvP travel power. Add protection to –fly, possibly to an underused buff such as O2 boost, antidote, or one of the ST FF bubbles.

I think that's 10.

Anyway, signed on everything in that list, but those are the stuff I want the most. I'd also like to sign on the mastermind issues, and I think that being able to summon in the OAS period would be a good tradeoff.

I feel pretty disgraced by this guide. Literally everything aside from the comments about bots/ff being extremely durable is pretty wrong.

I mean sure, TG is one of /dark's mainstays, but it ISN'T /dark's only focus. I'd have to say FS is hueg for /dark. The set was a control/debuff set for defenders. It hasn't changed much for MMs, except that MMs have a party that gets the heals. There's so much awesome in /dark that I can't help but wonder what would possess you to suggest that it's only good for TG.

As for traps, while caltrops are nice, I wouldn't even come close to suggesting it as a core power. IMHO traps don't come into their own until you get acid mortar. It's a very "alpha strike" sort of set that focuses on taking down a lot of guys really fast. Traps has a really wicked alpha when done right, and you don't have to kite guys into trip mines to do it (although it helps).

And detonate + lich goto + soul extraction = joy. While you have to be close to the pet to bomb it, most of the time I'm mad bombering people in close range anyway, and the lich will happily spam control to cover me while I blow him up. I think detonate is exceptionally good for a necro/traps mm, but most other powersets can skip it. That's honestly pretty good because most of the other traps are not skippable. I'd never run without ffg or poison trap, that's for sure.