Blood Red Arachnid

As much as I wanted an age progression on the team, I am really annoyed that many of the previous cliffhangers weren't dealt with. At all.

I use walk for three things. First, if I want to shut down all of my toggles really quickly. Second, for screenshot caps.

And third, whenever I want to look awesome. My favorite place to walk is currently at the beginning of the final phase of the DD trial.

Ice slick is suffering from issues. On my troller I combine it with Freezing Rain to have even more KD while debuffing the enemy group. The problem usually arises when one of two things happens:

#1: Someone else uses a group immobilization. This actually happens a lot, since pretty much all other controllers and dominators and corruptors and defenders will spam their AoE Immobilize on every single enemy group despite it not really doing anything. This has a -KB effect, so ice slick ceases functioning.

#2: Someone will use a power with incredible knockback that blows all of the enemies out of the patch.

I play defenders. I assume the reason why defenders are becoming rarer is because corruptors can essentially accomplish the same job while having a higher damage output. Although defenders have higher buff numbers, the difference isn't always that noticeable.

Red side needs moar stuff in general. I'd go into a long winded rant about how it needs things, but then I'd be one of those guys who goes into long-winded rants.

It is unfortunate that he is leaving. However, this can be a good thing. I haven't had G4 in a long time, and I've messed the Sessler. Hopefully he'll get a job that is on satellite and I can see him again without paying extra money.

/sign. It seems pretty cool. Sometimes I just want my toons to have shiny tight pants.

I'm totally going to delete all of my stalkers now that the proc is changed. Like, for real.

I say things in another thread and then thread gets deleted. Me sad now.



But I am looking forward tot his new change. It makes balancing things easier.

I lmao'd, then made an appoint to show this to my sister since I think she'll lmao, too.

I could've sworn I made a lengthy post about this in the past... I'll have to dig it up. BRB.


EDIT: Found it!


"Something that I always found fundamentally different between mutants and the other power types is that mutants are your kids, your friends, and your family. The other origins are seen as tools, as knowledge, as something extra that is added to the ordinary man. Tony Stark is a man who has a super suit, Green Lanterns are regular men who are given power rings, the fantastic four were regular people who got zapped into having powers, ect. In all of these cases, the superhero is a regular person who gets something added on to them. Another minor aspect is that these usually involve adults who have branched off from the next and are expected to be all mature and stuff. Superpowers here are more or less considered exotic weaponry.

But not mutants... no, those are the people who are born with their powers, and this is a bit of another primal fear that humanity has: something being seriously wrong with their child. By the mere context of expecting a human and not getting one, it makes mutants despised abnormality. The roles of the family fall apart, the social norms of adolescence are cast aside due to a horrendous power displacement, this is what makes people truly afraid. Now, you can make a case that this segregation can happen with all forms of powers, but you have to wonder exactly how often it is that little Billy is going to ingest a top-secret superserum and become Big Billy Boy Wonder before he gets out of middle school. When contrasted to how often it is that some child has a gene that, through the limitlessly intricate and not fully understood complexities of biology, has given him heat vision, it becomes a mutant issue instead of an all origin issue. No parent would want to send their kid to school with Johnny Storm.

Then there is the hunted issue. While the arcane need some kind of ritual/artifact/umpteen strange things, science needs rigorous and possibly dangerous research, technology needs assembly along with trial and error, and natural is just as its name implies, the mutant is a source of power that just happens. The genome has produced an aspect of power essentially for free with no strings attached. This isn't just "unfair" to the other origins. This is a shortcut to any opportunist who has the will to attempt it. The arcane and the natural want to use the mutant as a tool for their own gains. The science and the technology want to dissect the mutant to learn what makes them tick. The mutant is left segregated because they violate the established social contracts of power allocation, and likewise hunted because that very same power makes them valuable to whatever goal that anyone can have."


And another:


"Outside of segregation, I really have come up with three ideas that could easily be a mutant based story. The one that I called dibs is when an individual amasses a mutant army in an attempt to be the progenitor of neo-mankind. I actually came up with a story like this that I have as a reoccurring theme for all of my mutants. I call it the Bartholomew Legacy, and the story goes that Dr. Adrian Bartholomew some 20-25 years ago discovered he had genetic hotspot that would cause super powers in his children. Long story short he has a big ego, declared himself "the future", then used his employment at fertility clinics and sperm banks to "sow his seed" through the population of California. Next thing we know a bunch of red-haired mixed-race babies with frighteningly strong superpowers are born en mass. Fragmented, segregated, scared, and distrusting of society many of Bartholomew's half-children who didn't turn to heroism began to eagerly await Bartholomew's return from prison. My "dibs" would be if they did this story, the main villain behind it would be Dre. Adrian Bartholomew.

The second idea is quite simple, and it plays off of a biological fear that we have: the swarm. If you see one mouse, it may scare you. If you see 10 mice, it most likely will scare you. If you see 1000 mice, there is no doubt that it will scare you. The idea is basically an individual develops the capacity to manufacture an army out of whatever biological process they have. Maybe they bud out plant life, or maybe they go through mitosis and make multiple copies that way, or maybe they have a messed up reproduction cycle that lays 1000 small eggs that develop freakishly quick once hatched. It could be cool if you make the mission right, and just pack together the spawns and then inflate their sizes but only make them minions. Definition of Zerg rush right there. However... this story is quite similar to Hamidon.

The last idea is yet another biological fear: the plague. Distinct from the swarm in the sense that they are microscopic, the plague is the boogeyman of the modern day. An arc that I had toying around with in my head (I do that a lot, since fully making an AE arc to my perferred specs can take several weeks) is one where a plague has symptoms so severe that it is fully incapacitating the entire population... except for mutants whom are immune (along with other other things such as robots and aliens). The world starts to go gang-land-with-super-powers; organizations like the vanguard and the midnighters quickly find themselves fleeting and paralyzed by an enemy that they can't fight. While organizations fall left and right, the missions in the game would have the actual mission population (NPCs, enemies, all) dwindling really quickly, with most of the streets empty with the odd individual passed out in the streets. The only enemies you find would be that odd boss-level enemy who is a mutant loitering around. It can't be done in AE, but the fun part would be having your character afflicted by the plague, with their stats decreased while inside each of the missions. Enemies would be scaled accordingly. Of course, the source of the plague would be a mutant who produces it (and thus himself is immune to it), and the fight would be heavily based in toxic damage."

All of my characters move. A lot. Probably the character that has the least amount of movement is my tank. This is for a good reason, however: he has the innate power to cause enemies to huddle and gather around him, and he has a taunt aura with nice buffs to take advantage of this fact. Of course, he'll still move sometimes like to get into better positions or to take out enemies in the spawn that have scattered and such.

I might quit if...

They introduced a new type of enhancement level (mega-ultra rare!) and then designed content around the idea that you have full sets of the mega-ultra rares.

I've seen a few games do that, but so far CoH's policy to balance around SOs is good.

Hard to pick a favorite...

So far my favorite powerset is my grav/thorn dom. That is, unless I am mistaken, not uber in any sense. It is fun and it is kind of strong, though.

My favorite character is a kin/elec stalker. Currently, Kinetic Melee is pretty uber for a stalker due to the 0.67 second Assassin Strike it has, and the bug that makes it so Burst is 100% critical from hide. Elec armor is arguably one of the weaker armors, though. Until I went and IOed him out he was squishy as all get out, and even after IOs he's still kind of squishy.

The way I had always heard it, women have several times greater connectivity between the right and left lobes of their brain (not sure how this works, since I heard this from a dumb-down version many years before I even learned what Corpus Callosum), and because of this they are more likely to harness hidden abilities with their mind in superhero lore. Men, having less connectivity, go with the simpler solution of bashing things with a rock.

They're probably there but just not as common, since women are more likely to have psychic powers.

Incarnate powers are better based off of the power set than the AT in general.


Now, for stalkers the three Alphas that you usually end up seeing is Musculature, Nerve, and Agility. Musculature is the default since it does more damage, and a lot of players who don't have issues in their build simply go with it. Nerve gives accuracy and defense, and the accuracy can help out sometimes. Agility gives recharge and defense, and recharge is another way of giving more damage. The chosen way to slot these is based on what you need: If you need defense, go with Nerve or Agility. Accuracy, go with Nerve. Recharge, go with agility. If you are otherwise set, go with musculature.

Judgement consists largely of whatever you want. The ones that can be used at point blank range are Ionic, Pyronic, and Void. The ones that need to be further away are Vorpal and Cryonic. Arguably Void and Vorpal are the best for a stalker: void cuts their damage by half, and Vorpal gives you a defense boost.

Interface again whatever you need. I made another post about it which I will direct you to here: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...16&postcount=7

Lore is kind of tricky, and it depends on what you want to do. If you want to just flip out and kill things, pretty much any core form will do. If you want support, different radial versions each have different buff powers that aren't listed on the wiki. Most have a heal, though. The bigger decision is whether you want to go core or radial: Radial does less damage but is up more often and has a seldomly used heal, void does more damage but is up less often.

Destiny is also about what you want to accomplish. If you are kind of a squishy stalker, you'll want barrier or rebirth. If you have endurance problems or want recharge, ageless is the way to go. Clarion is for team support or if you want protection against terror and confuse. Incandescence is for team support and leading mostly; the stun is nice but if you use it for the stun you'll tick off all the teammates who don't have a teleport prompt.



For reference, my kin/elec stalker has the following incarnate abilities:

Alpha: Musculature Core Paragon ~ damage
Judgement: Void Radial Final ~ damage + enemy damage reduction
Interface: Paralytic Radial Flawless ~ Enemy damage reduction + defense debuff
Lore: Robotic Drones Core AND Radial superior ally (I have both) ~ damage and 5% defense buff
Destiny: Rebirth Core Epiphany ~ Heal + max HP.

I fear I have unleashed a monster. It stood snarling at the gates and I foolish opened them, sending forth a flow of resentment now freed from its cage.



As cool as this sounds, there's a couple of issues that pop up. Most of the PVP MMO things I have seen have a larger divide between a players health and their damage output (either directly in the HP stat or indirectly via a limited bank of healing items). This is there largely to prevent the dreaded OHKO that can plague so many systems, letting players be capable of actually defending themselves instead of the kill or get killed that a 1:1 HP to Damage Output ratio can make. If you don't deal with this issue, then PVP combat quickly devolves into whomever can attack first instead of whomever has better tactics.

Now, the game's current solution to this problem is to give everyone resistances. This is much less than ideal: merely giving resistances to all the classes doesn't distinguish classes based upon survivability via resistances anymore. This is quite horrible, actually: My Dominator and my Stalker suddenly have the same resistances, and my resistance based stalker is now inferior to the defense based stalker because they get their defense bonuses with a resistance bonus where I am essentially just another blaster or something like that. The ideal solution would be to increase everyone's HP by a scale amount. Giving each class an unresistable buff to HP equal to that base max HP. At 50, a blaster gets 1204.8 extra max HP, a widow 1071 HP, a tanker 1874, ect. This, of course, would have to increase the HP cap of each class while in PVP zones only. Then, when everyone has 2000 HP, that 1000 damage Assassin Stirke is still quite deadly but isn't lethal, and resistance based toons can more adequately distinguish themselves.

The two biggest difficulties with this suggestion come from percentage heals and the tech. Green inspirations heal based on max HP and not a fixed healing amount, so their potency will have to be halved. The tech limitation is whether or not the maximum HP can be altered in such a way as I described, by having selectively active increases and breeches in cap while in a PVP environment. The alternate to this suggestion would be to halve the damage of all attacks for PVP, but this will affect NPC combat, and also alongside of it the potency of all heals will need to be cut in half, as well as the power of procs, or anything that affects or mitigates damage in a linear fashion.


The second issue with this game is movement. Mobility in the game was designed to be free and largely non-consequential to enemies that all come with various ranged attacks. In a PVP environment you will have players that only have a means of attacking another while being in point blank range, and while fighting against an opponent who is faster than you this can lead to problems (run, fire a shot at a safe distance, run some more, fire a shot at a safe distance). Being designed for PVE from the ground up, melee classes were given no special means to close the distance between themselves and their enemies since enemies would rarely run, and almost never run away quickly.

The solution to this problem eludes me, however. There are a couple of ideas I've had, such as giving Melee toons the ability to dash forward very quickly via a temp power, causing all travel powers to suppress when using any offensive attack, giving in innate max speed debuff for all non-melee toons, ect. Whatever works will work. Currently there is travel suppression which is applied in a seemingly random manner. I would prefer it if travel suppression was applied in a more consistent manner: all ranged damaging attacks and directly applied debuffs slow for a certain amount of time. Teleportation being the exception, which is halted immediately after all attacks for a short time. Melee attacks will suppress powers for a much shorter duration than ranged attacks, if at all. This in theory should allow meleers to catch up to rangers and fight them adequately enough.


My other concerns are with debuffs and mezz, though I am not certain that an issue "exists" right now as much as I am just afraid that a permadom can stack mag 50 hold on someone rather easily. The flip side is a controller needs the mez to be present to dole out their damage. It becomes a big mess when factoring in resistance based sets and IOs and defenses and all that, so mezz will have to be an issue that is monitored rather than one that is just "fixed".

EDIT: I suppose the easiest thing to do is to grant trollers perpetual containment damage like the trial AVs. After all, it isn't realistic to expect a player with 10 mezz protection, high defenses, and access to breakfrees to be mezzed long enough to lay down the damage from containment

I soloed Silver Mantis on my sonic/archery defender, even leveled. I didn't see what the big deal was; just stay out of thorntrops and you're good.

There is also three-dimensional thinking and planning that can be considered skill. In one of the few arena matches I got into, I managed to win it by using my toon's shift+click to teleport power to warp around while sniping the tank who was chasing me and could obviously bash my head in. I got a few shots before he figured out that he could use a nearby ledge to block attacks from a certain direction, forcing me to have to engage him in a more head-on manner.

I've been wandering into PVP zones as of late to see how things go. My experience so far: Empty. Got myself a Warburg nuke on a toon that should be nearly defenseless in the area, but didn't get ganked once. Didn't see anyone else. Didn't hear any chatter, either. Didn't find anyone on search.

Though when the devs showed up in the zone as giant snowmen I partook of the event to fight them off. It was quite fun, and on occasion the team I was on would have to fend of griefers. Strength in numbers!