Blueeyed

Oh, and yay! Contact interface upgrades! No more lagging the local servers every time I open the contact window!

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But, see.. yet again we're forced into being Recluse's lackey. This is one of the major complaints many villain players have about this game. I can understand wanting to do something generic as it's incredibly easy to do, but compared to Kheldians, this is a poor, poor archetype.

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So, basically being an energy hero with half of your backstory already drawn out in excruciating detail and is stuck as a Freedom Phalanx errand boy/girl would be so [u]very[u] less horrible from an RP viewpoint compared to a character with a fairly open backstory and being a Recluse errand boy twice a level.

After all, it's not like a lot of people have been complaining about the overwhelming tendency to be stuck fighting other villains and Arachnos.

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That said, I have no problem doing this if you guys don't. Just let me know what missions you want on Ouroboros and I will do my best to get them there.

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There are a good few missions which either provide temporary powers, advance important parts of the local stories, or are otherwise just damned entertaining or showed that a relatively large amount of work was placed into the particular mission. Some ones that come particularly to mind :

Rescue party goers from Trolls, Science 15-19 timed mission, is probably noteworthy since it includes a (lackluster, but useful) Self-Heal power, and helps show the conflict between Trolls and Outcasts, which is rather lackluster elsewhere.
From the same level range, the Mutant Rescue the auction house workers is *very* important for helping explain where the Outcasts are getting work. Other, less visible but still noteworthy, Natural $TsooName's tattoo parlour, Scroll of the Horned Dragon, Tech Recover Manny's trophy, and Rescue Bribed Police Officer are all pretty worthwhile.

Anything Crimson or Indigo sent you to do that isn't a street sweeper is probably worth putting into the Flashback system, either as single missions or as some sort of mission arc. Those things are very well-written, and they feel surprisingly heroic.

There are lots of really excellent missions out there, between all the street-sweeping, but it's rather difficult to experience a lot of it, even with multiple alts. I've only seen the "Rescue the Auction House Workers" one once out of fifteen-odd characters to make it past that level.

I don't mind having so much content that it's unlikely for one character to get it all normally. But it'd be nice to have the option of experiencing a lot of this stuff on different characters without analyzing the crud out of your contacts or making ridiculous numbers of alts.

It's possible, but we'll have to see if NCSoft wants it done before we can do so without violating the spirit of the EULA. Technically speaking, it's not reverse-engineering their code, but I'd personally rather not get bent over and reamed, at least without dinner first. I'm going to do some generic stuff and pass it by Lighthouse once I get home, but I assume LH will need to pass it by legal team.

It's actually physically possible to do this easily yourself, or for me to provide it to you, but doing so violates the rules on [oink!] files and could be construed as passing around copyrighted material. If NCSoft is willing to provide the bandwidth for these files, I'd love to help them help us, but it's questionable how much of doing so is acceptable.

I've made a few lists. These are based on a parse of the various demorecord files I've accumulated, so they may be missing some of the really odd ones, and may include copies of existing files, or ones with unusual positional formatting, but they're probably a start. These are of all known music\* names, not just the ones missing.

All Hero Music
All Villain Music

There's a pretty significant difference in numbers, compared to what I got from the remote access stuff. I've only got access to the Windows tools right now, but when I get home from work, I'll do some comparisons to see if we can further isolate things.

I'll see if I can slap together a .zip of the various media files and get it uploaded to a site. I've got microphone setups, and spent some time early on trying to document these things for demorecord editting.

EDIT: corrected; didn't see this forum before.

Arcanaville, I think the concern is that it'll be too focused on what's 'relevant to the character', rather than too early in the mathematical chain.

Knowing the benefit for Focused Fighting is +1.85 times modifier Defense Melee is actually fairly useful. It's not easy to put it into in-game terms, but it still tells you that it's more than twice as good at preventing Melee damage as Dodge is. Given that the whole issue with powers is knowing what they do in relation to each other, since you only have so many selections, this would get what people want.

What I'm concerned about would be that you don't know Focused Fighting does +1.85mod or +13.875% melee defense until they've already purchased the power, and possibly having to do the math in reverse if they've slotted it. I can honestly see that being done, especially given the emphasis on 'real-time'. While it would be a nice QoL thing, compared to finding out how powers work before you've irrevocably chosen them without loading up Mids or coh.redtomax would be a much, much more major thing.

Detention Field : Increase the bleeping effects. Take the ones from the Rularuu and drop them straight into this power, if need be, but they must look a hell of a lot different.

Repulsion Field : Either go insane with the magnitude here, or slap a debuff on it. This power's worthless against knockback resistant enemies, and you've got enough knockback cheaper, elsewhere, for everything else.

Repulsion Bomb : Slap a debuff in it, or balance it with my Warshade's Gravitic Emanation. Pick one, but this "defenders get half a power for full price" junk is getting old.

Force Bubble : Yay, hurricane, except it doesn't do half of what hurricane does! A slow, a defense debuff, a tohit buff on allies, anything in here. It's not a bad power, as is, but again it doesn't do much against the enemies that all your other knockback powers don't work on.

The native resolution for a MacBook Pro 17-incher's screen is 1680 by 1050 pixels. The 15 inch version's native resolution is 1440 by 900. Check to see if those settings are available. City of Heroes does have widescreen support, but I'm unsure that it'll read settings correctly for Mac hardware.

Hopefully that'll help things.

Some of those drops are a little strange to me, as well. Some of these things I just can't see using Magic : Vahzilok are zombots, Sky Raider rely on jetpacks and robots, the average Rikti have no ability with magic as a definitional thing, Nemesis is the Steampunk Doctor Doom, and Freakshow, Goldbrickers, the Family, and Crey all show no real magical ability. Malta might kidnap a specific magical hero or villain, but they don't really show any affinity for it in their normal troops. The Council actually have no magical creatures, only things made by serums, scientific experimentation, and kheldian exposure (all science), with a mutant at the head of the line.

This can be hand-waved away by simply saying that the Rikti mugged a Circle of Thorns boss right before you beat him/her/it up, but that doesn't really fix the balance issues. As Brad pointed out in chat yesterday, most recipes are an equal balance of tech and magic, but players are going to fight enemies that either drop 50/50 or drop all magic.

Oh, and recipes seem to drop at the enemy level, as welll; Diaos1 has picked up a good half-dozen level 25 recipes while trawling Bloody Bay.

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I wish it was easier to get lower level salvage for my high level characters though, since it's cheaper to make the lower level IOs that it is for the level 50 ones. <_<

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I think that's the idea -- if you need influence that much, they want you exemplaring around anyway.

I think they need a lot more pure tech, particularly since I'm unaware of any good middle-range tech enemies that can be exmplared down too... And it would help if they thought a little harder about the drop tables.

My level 40 warshade has a load of 45 and 50 IO recipes he can complete, but a lot of 40 IOs are reliant on tier 2 salvage.

Sadly, it still means that despite the high aggro risk, location requirement, and status as a primary power, you're still better off running Manuevers than Hurricane against a 40+ AV. And there is absolutely no warning about this.

All right. It's been more than a year since I originally wrote this guide, and since then, there have been a good many changes, both in terms of game effects and in terms of our understanding of the game's internal mechanics. I've finally gotten around to testing those which were believed to change (thanks for checking that, Erydanus). The following information may not be perfectly accurate as of late i8 -- I've tried to test what I can, but there are some limits to how much time I can put in -- but it is as close as we're likely to get.

As most of us have found out by now, the basic concept of Primary powers being better than Secondary, and Secondary powers being greater than Pool powers, a concept that's been echoed around pretty often, is pretty much clutch left over from when the developers thought it easier than discussing the more complex mechanics.

The point of this thread is to list and analyze the different powersets, and the difference between their performance while in the hands of a Controller as opposed to a Defender. Using this and the direct guides, you can find the exact value for Controller secondaries. You can also use this to decide whether the concept you've got going for you would work better on a controller, or a defender.

Short and Sweet

The following characteristics are known through-out the two ATs.
[*]Damage : Controller base scales from 97.8% of Defender damage at level 1, to 84.6% at level 20 to level 50. Direct damage sources can be contained to 170% of Defender damage at level 20 to 50 - this does not apply to quasi-pets or summoned entities. [*]Heal - Other/Aura : Controller healing applies at 88% of Defender healing rates. Test Case : All Defender Primary heals.[*]Endurance Drain : Controller drains operate at around 88% of Defender efficiency. Test Case : Transfusion. This attribute is often rounded against critters.[*]Movement Slows/Recharge Debuffs : Slows have been altered to operate at the same values for both Defenders and Controllers.[*]Control - Disorient/Hold/Fear/Immobilize : Controllers control at 125% of either the duration or magnitude when compared to a Defender power (seems to be mostly duration-based) - Test Case : ThunderClap, Ice Arrow[*]Defense/Resistance Buffs : Controller values are 75% of Defender ones. Test Case : Sonic Barrier, Steamy Mist[*]Damage/ToHit Buffs : Controller values are 80% of Defender ones. Test Case : Siphon Power[*]ToHit/Damage/Defense Debuffs: Controller values are 80% of Defender ones. Test Case : Enervating Field[*]Resistance Debuffs : Controller values should be 75% of Defender ones. Test Case : Sonic Siphon[*]Recharge/RunSpeed Buffs : Controller values are at 100% efficiency of Defender ones! Test Case : Speed Boost[*]Recovery Buffs : Controller values are 100% of Defender ones. Test Case : Recovery Aura[*]Regeneration Buffs: Controller values are 100% of Defender ones. Test Case : Regeneration Aura[*]Knockback/Repel : Controller values are 100% of Defender ones. Test Case : Force Bolt[*]Perception Debuffs : Controller values are 100% of Defender ones. Test Case: Stated by _Castle_.[*]Perception Buffs : Controller values are 80% of Defender ones. Test Case: Clarity, Clear Mind, Tactics.[*]Rez: All rez-other powers are equally efficient for Defenders and controllers.[*]Mez Protection Buffs : These work at 80% effectiveness for Controllers. Test Case: Iakona's Data.[*]Range Debuffs : These appear to be the same for both Defenders and Controllers.


Empathy[*]Healing Aura : 88% efficiency.[*]Heal Other : 88% efficiency.[*]Absorb Pain : This one's interesting. The heal works at 88% of the Defender values, but the self-damage also applies at 84.6% of Defender values (post-20).[*]Resurrect : 100% efficiency.[*]Clear Mind : 80% efficiency on mez protection, 100% on +perception. 90% average[*]Fortitude : 80% on the ToHit buff, 80% on the damage buff, and 75% on the defense buff. All are useful, so taking the average, we get 78.3% efficiency.[*]Recovery Aura : 100% on the recovery buff.[*]Regeneration Aura : 100% on the regeneration buff.[*]Adrenalin Boost: 100% on regeneration, 100% on the recovery, and 100% on the recharge.

Averages to : 93.81%

Force Field[*]Personal Force Field : 75% resistance, 75% defense.[*]Deflection Shield : 75% defense.[*]Force Bolt : 100% knockback, and 84.6% damage (containable to 170% damage). To be honest, at half a brawl, the damage is ignorable, so I'm putting this at 100% rather than the 110% or so that damage would likely set it to.[*]Insulation Shield : 75% on defense.[*]Detention Field : 125% on duration.[*]Dispersion Bubble : 75% on defense, 80% for mez protection. Averages to 77.5%[*]Repulsion Field : 100% on knockback.[*]Repulsion Bomb : 125% on disorient, 100% on knockback.[*]Force Bubble : 100% on repel.

Averages to : 93.3%

Kinetics[*]Transfusion : 88% of the heal, 88% of the endurance drain.[*]Siphon Power : 80% on both sides.[*]Repel : 100% for knockback.[*]Siphon Speed : The recharge and movement buffs and debuffs all operate at 100% effectiveness.[*]Increase Density : 75% for resistances. 80% for status protection, averages to 77.5%[*]Speed Boost : 100% for the recharge, run speed buff, and recovery buff.[*]Inertial Reduction : 100% effectiveness[*]Transference : Endurance drain operates at 72% effectiveness against critters and 87% against players. Endurance recovered is 80% of the Defender value.[*]Fulcrum Shift : 80% effectiveness on all buffs and debuffs.

Averages to : 89.5%

Radiation Emission
[*]Radiant Aura : 88% on the heal.[*]Radiation Infection : 80% on the tohit debuff, 80% on the defense debuff.[*]Accelerate Metabolism : 100% on Recovery buff, 80% on the damage buff, 100% on the recharge and movement speed buff, 80% value for mez resistance. Putting this at 90% average.[*]Enervating Field : 75% on the resistance debuff, 80% on the damage debuff. Putting it at 77.5%[*]Mutation : 100% on the rez, 100% on the recharge buff, 80% on damage buff, and 100% on endurance recovery buff. Putting it at 95% effectiveness.[*]Lingering Radiation : 100% on the recharge debuff, the slow, and the regeneration debuff.[*]Choking Cloud : 125% on hold duration.[*]Fallout : 84.6% damage (no longer containable).[*]EM Pulse : 125% on hold duration, 88% on damage. Although I almost never see this used for damage, I'll place it at 106.5% effectiveness for simplicity.

Averages to : 94%

Storm Summoning[*]Gale : 100% on knockback, 84.6% on damage (containable to 170%). Since the damage is a joke, I'm putting this at 100%.[*]O2 Boost : 88% on the heal, 80% on mez resistance and protection. Putting it at 84%.[*]Snow Storm : 100% effectiveness.[*]Steamy Mist : 75% on both Defense and Resistance.[*]Freezing Rain : 100% on the avoidance mechanic, 84.6% on the (ignorable and uncontainable) damage, 100% on the slow, 75% on resistance debuff, 100% on defense debuff. Putting this at 92% effectiveness.[*]Hurricane : 100% on repel, 80% on tohit debuff, 100% on range debuff. Putting it at 93%.[*]ThunderClap : 125% duration[*]Tornado : 125% on stun duration, 100% on avoidance mechanic, 100% on knockback, 84.6% on (uncontainable) damage. Averages to 102.4% effectiveness - really should be rated higher, since Controllers powers with knockback prevention easily negate the damage difference.[*]Lightning Storm : 84.6% on (uncontainable) damage, 100% on knockback, 88% on endurance drain. Averages to 91%.

Averages to : 95.8%

Sonic Resonance[*]Sonic Siphon : 75% effectiveness.[*]Sonic Barrier : 75% effectiveness.[*]Sonic Haven : 75% effectiveness.[*]Sonic Cage : 125% duration[*]Disruption Field : 75% effectiveness[*]Sonic Dispersion : 75% effectiveness on resistance buff, 80% effectiveness on mez protection, averages to 77.5%[*]Sonic Repulsion : 100% on knockback. Tempted to place this higher due to pet utility.[*]Clarity : 80% on mez protection, 100% on +perception. Averages to 90%[*]Liquify : 84.6% on damage, 100% on knockdown, 100% on hold duration, 80% on toHit debuff, 80% on defense debuff. Averages to 106.6%.

Averages to : 88.7%

Trick Arrow[*]Entangling Arrow : 125% duration.[*]Flash Arrow : 80% effectiveness on tohit debuff, 100% on perception debuff. Averages to 90%.[*]Glue Arrow : 100% effectiveness on slow and recharge debuff.[*]Ice Arrow : 125% effectiveness on hold, 100% on slow and recharge debuff.[*]Poison Gas Arrow : 125% duration on Sleep, 80% on the damage debuff. Averages to 102%.[*]Acid Arrow : 80% effectiveness on the defense debuff, 75% on the resistance debuff, 84.6% on the damage (containable to 170%). Averages to 102%[*]Disruption Arrow : 75% effectiveness on the resistance debuff.[*]Oil Slick Arrow : 100% on the movement slow, 100% of the knockdown, and 84.6% of the damage (uncontainable). 95% average.[*]EMP Arrow : 125% on hold duration, 88% on damage. Although I almost never see this used for damage, I'll place it at 105% effectiveness for simplicity.

Averages to : 100.7%

If you find any errors or miscalculations, please tell me.

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[starship troopers] "Would you like to know more?" [/starship troopers]

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Surprisingly, no. I already know more. At points, I've known more than Statesman, or at least more than Statesman was willing to post.

What I want is to be able to find that information without having to drag it out of Statesman's brain, or look through Iakona and Red Tomax's wonderful data. I want to be able to simply pop open the Help->Menu text, or check the Official Powers page (which hasn't been meaningfully added to since I joined). I want to know how much Stone Skin is worth without having to go through five or six guides to get up-to-date values.

I don't want to know more, so much as I want to have normal players get a chance to know.

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or provide enough information directly to put both groups on an even footing.

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DingDingDingDingDing!

We have a winner!

You know those information boxes, and the Menu->Help, and the power descriptions? Why don't they tell us half this stuff?

Yes, some powers are complicated. 99% aren't. The remaining 1% would still be helped with better imperfect descriptions. Make Information boxes (yeah, that thing you haven't seen since the tutorial) that tell how some mechanics work, and give more in-depth power and mechanic information.

I don't think the permabuff aspect is what the development team has this aspect in to negate. It's not exactly a useful metric in that matter. I expect it's more to ensure that there is a cost, and to prevent possible abuses (hiding behind 'stuff' would be the most obvious).

I must play my mastermind incorrectly.

Is there some rule against summoning and then buffing as we fight? I mean, I'm sure 3 minutes of doing nothing for a 15 minute mission is really delightful, but it hardly seems necessary.

I suppose it, likewise, it should be impossible to recast the summon? Mastermind pets don't automatically get replaced, after all, so it shouldn't add to your "set-up" time. I dare say 10% resistance is more than worth 20 endurance every 5 minutes.

And, finally, assuming you're not losing a pet ever, we all know exactly how much you need a resistance or defense buff at that time.

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I really, really can't remember the last time I've said : "Stop the team, we need a Blaster."

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Or, "If we could only find a Controller."

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Er, I can actually say I've said that recently. Trying to stop Diabolique is a PitA without decent, long-lasting immobilizes. I'll also take an Ice/, Fire/, Earth/, or Mind/ controller over any Emp/, Sonic/, Kin/, or Trick Arrow/ (and I happen to like Kin/) when toying with Vahzilok.

Also, have you ever been to a Hami raid?

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We wanted there to be a reason to have Archetypes other than Blasters and Defenders on your team. Controllers will find themselves greatly desired in the final battle if the team wants to have any chance of winning.

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BWAAAA?

This a typo? Don't they mean :

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We wanted there to be a reason to have Archetypes other than Scrappers and Controllers on your team. Tankers and Blasters will find themselves greatly desired in the final battle if the team wants to have any chance of winning.

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I really, really can't remember the last time I've said : "Stop the team, we need a Blaster."

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Oh absolutely they do. The buff scales are higher than the Controller ones. The team our sgs were thinking of would have 2 Rad Defenders, an Emp or two...and a Kin with some muscle. Barring that you then go to the Fire/Kins, Ill/Rads, Mind/X and some muscle.

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Any of the important buff scales? Tohit debuff? Sorry, John, but that only works at less than 5% of the base effectiveness. Recovery, regeneration, recharge buffs? Hah, those aren't buffs, they work just as well in a Controller's dirty hands as a Defender's. Same for regeneration debuffs.

I suppose I should be proud that my kineticist will take one fewer Siphon Power, and Transfusion does a whole 13% more, but it's not going to really get my attention compared to what a Controller can do for the rest of the damn mission.

Given how borked the City of Heroes version of mission sharing is, and how long many of the Heroes arcs are, that's not particularly surprising.

I dunno about you, but it's fairly uncommon for me to run into people who rolled the same 1/4 that I did and have the same contact, and are at the same mission in a mission string that can be more than twenty missions long. I know that, outside of Scanner missions and the Special Event missions, I've never had a chance to use Mission Completion. Even in the Hollows.

Maybe I just haven't had much luck with PuGs.

Please read the dev digest at least : Doctor Brainstorm says they want to stick with the four pool solution that they're currently using.

They just hit *really* hard. Elite Bosses are teh l33tsawces.

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A large team could easily minimize the number of "filler" missions needed in order to unlock large string of Mayhem/Safeguard missions. Additionally, Safegards take at most ~5 minutes to complete. This would greatly encourage MM/SFG teams over running Story Arcs.

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If the award is only given to the mission owner, even the largest team would only be able to get one chance at an item every six missions. This would only encourage people to all align their missions and do the Safeguards at the same time. With a properly calculated rate of Pool B recipes, the actual reward rate would be no higher than that of the average story arc.

If we're stuck choosing between a lot of people running newspaper missions or a lot of fifties completely unable to get Inventions content, I know which one I'd prefer.

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Mayhem/Safeguards To Be Included in Story Arc Pool - NO!, bad idea, precisely because we don't have a flashback system. If I want a level 30 recipe set that gives my pets a chance to taunt, and I'm currently level 50, I can't pick up level 30 Mayhems. It's the same problem as Story Arcs.

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That's actually an interesting idea : make some of the potential drops for Mayhem missions but not story arcs include the highest level recipe for any sets which have already been bypassed.