Avalanche_EU

1) No advanced shader effects
2) No antialiasing
3) Questionable anisotropic filtering
4) Vertical sync not working
5) Horribly distorted sound regardless of sound settings (using Bose USB Speakers)

Despite the lack of all of the above features the performance is abysmal compared to the Windows version. Even if CoH was the only game I owned I would still create a bootcamp partition to run it in. The Mac version is just plain bad imo.

I find that sticking toggles on a lieutenant at the back of the pack lasts longest. People generally wipe out the minions with AoE and the scrappers go straight for the bosses as they are the greatest threat. The lieuts near the back are often the last to drop, even in disorganised PuGs.

But yeah somtimes when it all goes horribly pear shaped you are just too busy to blast. I didn't really mean that, I meant the ones that stand around occasionally passing out buffs if you beg for them and complement them on their shoulder kittens.

However, I think a lot of the time it's down to people just not knowing the stats on things, which is partly the game's fault for having such vague power descriptions. Some of the secondary effects are really fantastic. I boggle at the emp/psi's that don't have psychic scream. "Hello? It's a 62.5% AoE recharge speed debuff for 10 seconds! and it's aoe damage! It's probably doing more damage mitigation than half the empathy buffs. That's more than Snow Storm, more than Freezing Rain, a little less than Lingering Radiation and over three times as much as Glue Arrow! Slot it up and spam that mother. You will need to heal less, which means you can blast more and everyone is happy!"

Even Storm can mess itself up with scatter. A tornado can turn a simple 10 second 'dump debuffs, aoe to hell' fight into something that drags on for ages with people dying.

My first Stormie was a hurricane addict, desparately trying to accuracy debuff every living thing into submission but I'm much calmer with it now. If there is another defender/controller around then it's usually enough to snow storm, freezing rain, tentacles and then O2 the tank now and then whilst blasting.

Tornado is definately a solo power or a "The situation is already completely out of control and if I don't use tornado now then people are going to faceplant" power.... or a power to pull round a corner with when you've had too much coffee.

Knockback usually just ruins opportunities for everyone to do AoE damage and slows down the speed you move at. Sometimes I use hurricane and fly over to the other side of the bad guys so that I'm knocking other people's knockback back towards the team and the debuff patches. That's a great use of knockback!

I don't think it improves flight speed. It just removes the inertia associated with flight so I guess reduces total flight time if you turn a lot. Inertial Reduction from Kins is the same. Still nice for zooming through missions without getting yourself stuck on pipes and desks and such!

I think the terms 'pure' defender generally means 'lazy empath with gimped build' and offender means 'I'm built properly and didn't just fall out of WoW and into this game with the same conceptions'.

I think that in general, if you are having trouble soloing on your defender then you're likely not contributing to a team as much as the next man either.

EDIT: Should also point out that people should be able to play the game however they like and built how they like. I just get very annoyed at 'pure' defenders advertising themselves as such, then somehow making out like you should be privelaged to have them in your team and ultimately spending 90% of their time standing around with their thumbs up their [censored].

I have a load of Stormies and even I hate knockback. There is bad knockback where you are just sending everything flying and then there is good knockback where you are using knockback to work with the team and minimise scatter, or reverse-herd things.

NRG is 'bad' knockback because you can't do any damage without causing it and sonic or dark both have 'good' knockback powers because they are fast recycling cones that let you position stuff.

Sounds like you want storm/nrg so you can go crazy solo with some bad knockback. I can totally appreciate the carnage though, it's very satisfying. You'll probably die a lot though.

I think Kin is busy in a bad way. You can build any defender to be clicking one power after the next back to back and staying busy. In fact I'd say that if people aren't doing that then they aren't being the best they can.

However, I felt that with Kin I was having to refresh the same stuff over and over repeatedly in order to keep the team buffed at that same level. Kin was 'bad' busy not 'good' busy. Trick arrow was similar. By the time you have used all your debuffs then you have to refresh them all again. You waste so much time recycling your primary powerset that you end up playing half a character.

Each to their own though. I'm sure loads of people love playing Kin. But any set can be busy, just take more secondary powers if you find yourself standing around not being busy on a defender.

For primary I would go Storm, Dark or Rad.

Kin is a bit.. 'meh' solo to be honest. Even at higher level it's just a bit.. I don't know.. dull. The buffs are really short and it's a pita to spam siphon speed, siphon power, transfusion (the heal in particular, as fast as you can fire it off, because you're taking massive damage from most of the mobs, compared to other debuff sets) and then transference because those buffs and heals just cost you most of your endurance bar.... and then it's time to do them again and you're wondering when you actually get a chance to blast things and make use of those buffs. Kin is nice on paper solo but not in practice. It's great in groups but equally busy and can get repetitive fast. You don't get to use fulcrum to its full extent solo because it needs loads of mobs to be really nice and with no ther debuffs, you faceplant against decent sized gangs. Maybe if you paired it with sonic for siren's song, or got mass hypnosis in the 40s. I still think it's a horrible solo set though.... and in teams people screaming for speed boost will drive you nuts long before you get to be excited about fulcrum shift.

Anyway... after that rant! Storm, Dark or Rad are all great solo and in teams. Personally I would recommend Storm primary and Dark secondary. You get so many tricks for different situations. Dark is definately the best synergy with Storm, which is definately the most fun power set in the game. And it's all about fun at the end of the day.

Couldn't the same be said for most inherent powers?

Gauntlet is (vaguely) useful at lower levels when people don't have their aoe pulsing taunt auras or taunt power. It's not really that good at all. Try doing a hard mission at lower levels with an invuln tank with no taunt and do it again with an ice tanker with chilling embrace. Massive difference in aggro control. (In fact I think tanks post 10 without taunt or some kind of taunt aura need a kick up the [censored]. Would they expect to group an empath with no heals? You are not a tanker if you're going to lose your defender or controller the instant they do any kind of AoE control/debuff that has a negligible damage component)

Same for defenders and blasters. You get better damage and endurance early on when people aren't able to slot out powers with SO's to make them viable. It lets defenders blast early on when you just didn't have the endurance to cope with it before.

The effect is still noticeable at higher level. You only have to take a stormie and go to town in a group with storm powers and blasts all over the place and then try and do that solo and wonder where you endurance is. All my stormies are ultra slotted for endurance as well.

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Apologies to the person who sent Pixie Dee a tell yesterday, you didn't get an answer because I was just logging out to delete her...

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Woo! Drama alert!

Let's hear it then

QFT! A kin with superspeed, stealth and teleport.

To be honest, they really need to trim the TF's down and redesign the older ones. They are just repetitive and boring, especially in comparison to the newer content like the Faultline story arc.

It's not that bad. It had a really bad rep following the changes because everyone kept quoting blaster or controller numbers that were in some Prima guide. It's around 7% slotted for defenders.

All the defence figures went flying down anyway, because of the way they changed defence and accuracy and mob to hit coding.

Maneuvers is absolutely fine and imo more useful than adding less than a damage DO to someone's dps. If it were 15% of total damage then fine but it boosts base damage, pre-enhancements. Boosting somebody that is fully SO slotted for damage from 200 damage to 215 damage is just.. whatever. I'd rather the extra chance to not get completely toggle dropped by some annoying half a second sleep attack.

Skip... gale???

HERESY!

EDIT: I think thunderclap is about the only thing you can really skip in Storm and even then it's a nice emergency power for some damage mitigation when you get detoggled and find yourself with hurricane and snow storm on cooldown and a bunch of angry mobs in your face. I respecced into it on my storm/elec because he's gone all a bit blappery lately, now that I've developed a short circuit fetish.

I think it's a wonderful set. Definately my favourite in the game. Hard to master but very rewarding.

I used to slot tornado with 3 damage and still do on my controllers because of the AoE immobs but on my two storm defenders I'm much, much happier now slotting it with 3 disorient.

Had you already flashed some of them once? There is a bug with flash arrow if you repeatedly flash mobs then the perception debuff drops between applications for a split second.

Try it out. Flash some mobs, move within aggro range and then flash again. They will aggro on you during the brief time that the debuff refreshes itself.

It's not so much a 'bug' though. It's part of the design that stops it from stacking with itself. It has to drop in order to refresh itself without stacking.

Any updates on the oil slick fiasco?

I logged in once with the new Issue, watched my oil slick fail to ignite, logged out and double clicked the dark age of camelot.exe again.

Would be nice to think they are working on it in some capacity.

I went for Aim on my TA/A so that I could slot my nuke 3dam/3rech and my EMP pulse 3hold/3rech.

The damage bonus isn't to be sniffed at either.

I haven't played yet since the new patch though so I have no idea how the new enhancements might affect slotting and whether aim is still worth it.

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I think one of the problems people have with Stormies stems from some people running Whirlwind all the time.

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Hurricane has a really tiny endurance drain. It's steamy mist and snow storm that have equally large drains. Overall it's not so much of a drain but if you are blasting and then summoning lightning storm or tornado (big endurance costs) then it's easy to find yourself running out, especially when soloing. You use a lot of endurance trying to keep the mobs incapacitated, which doesn't leave enough for your bloody awful damage.

I ended up respeccing into 2 end redux in snow storm and steamy mist and just one in hurricane. Oh and forget leadership powers. I don't know what I was thinking when I got those but I respecced out of them pretty fast.

I must say that I'm enjoying Short Circuit. I used to think it was a waste but it's a godsend for soloing. I stuck 3 disorient in my tornado and between that and short circuit I can solo much faster and safer now. Tornado pulls from out of line of sight for the win imo.

All the ATs confuse powers are ridiculously powerful imo. They are effectively hold powers that increase your dps and get you free buffs and heals.

I've always picked up the confuse asap, 6-slotted it and used it very aggressively. Especially Seeds of Confusion, which is hands down one of the best powers in the entire game imo.

Shiver and Snow Storm are very similar debuffs. One is anchored and one is a clicky. I have both because you can never have too much -recharge. Chuck in arctic air, freezing rain and ice slick for even more -recharge goodness.

Mobs attacking (usually each other) once every half an hour *is* control imo.

Posion needs a lot of work imo. They should change it to being LBAoE -DMG cloud that pulses short bursts of sleep and lasts the same duration as glue.

It's always seemed streaky for me and I was so upset about this power that I shelved my bumblebee (still a firm favourite character).

It's just too streaky. Once I see it fail to light in a mission it pretty much never lights for the rest of the mission.

I have 2acc SO's in my gales and wouldn't have it any other way. It really does have a hefty penalty and needs quite a boost to be reliable vs higher lvl mobs.

I don't think it's redundant with hurricane. They are two different things entirely. Gale shifts entire spawns against walls and into corners. I need it to hit everything, not just 50% of a group, which would contribute to scatter (the devil). I generally use it several times in quick succession as a primary shaping tool and then pin things in with hurricane, once I've positioned them.

I slotted 2acc 1rech 1end on my storm/elec and storm/darks.

EDIT: Should also mention that on reeeealy tough groups I often drop a freezing rain first, then start positioning with gale, to further improve its hit rate on scary things.

Storm is one of those power sets that can be spectacularly good if played well and spectacularly unhelpful (to the point where your team would do better if you were not there) if played badly.

I thought elec was a pretty weak secondary for storm to be honest. I enjoyed my storm/dark a lot more and I would imagine that storm/sonic would be great too. Elec is a bit.. meh to be honest.

If you barely have time to lay down a disruption arrow (20% resist debuff) and ice a straggler then team was amazing without you so that's not really indicative of how good the set is.

Any number of AoE resist debuff patch defenders/controllers would have been even better. Freezing rain would have been the best thing you could have done had you time for only one aoe debuff as it does 5 things very well. Disruption Arrow is junk in comparison. *shrug* Like I said, I like my TA/A but other defenders can debuff faster and better, which is sad for a set comprised of mostly aoe debuffs. Most defender secondaries using an AoE or cone would have done comparative damage to (or possibly more than) the oil slick if the mobs were dying so quickly anyway as oil slick takes 15 seconds to do all its damage.