Blueeyed

It's fricken powerful.

Just as a general note for those reading this guide : the value for WormHole, particularly combined with Thunder Clap and Hurricane, has raised exponentially. It's not possible to control entire spawns constantly with just those powers.

[ QUOTE ]
I wonder what the Dark Melee Assassination power will be like.

[/ QUOTE ]

Think Tenebrous Tentacles.

*em inserts hentai joke*

Basically, the best ways to tell you're dealing with a Mary Sue/Marty Stu character is :
<ul type="square">[*]Waaaaay too much knowledge. Particularly if it's some information that can't be viably explained[*]Directly related to everything that occurs in the series.[*] Named the character after yourself, or are willing to answer to the name of your character.[*]Tragic youth.[*]Immune to death (at least, until the end of the series).[*]Choosen by random cause to get various abilities.[/list]And, of course, the most notable : Overly able to ignore the laws of cause and effect. More information can be found here, which despite the incredibly bad background colors, is a very useful essay on the subject. Also, a google search for Mary Sue litmus tests may also give some help.

Mary Sue's and Marty Stus are most common in younger writers who want to associate with a character they're taking as a position voice, but overdo it. Mary Sue/Marty Stus aren't always a bad thing - a well enough written one is ignorable - but they tend to break any sense of immersion in a storyline. Even ones such as McCaffery's Menolly, who isn't a horrible example (although a bit obvious of one), make the storyline feel much less complete and more artificial. Bad ones, like Wes from Star Trek : The Next Generation, make people want to grind their teeth. Also, Mary Sues have a nasty habit of making every other character, even other main characters, expendable to the point of ridiculousness, which tends to hurt the story.

While I understand that we're talking about a world where people can and do regularly fly... Well, you have to understand that people are willing to overlook the obvious errors, but won't overlook cheesy dialog or campy storylines. See Star Trek, Star Wars. Mary Sues are most common in fan fiction, but canon ones exist as well.

Back to the course selection...

Problem 1 :
[ QUOTE ]
Cassiopeia, the lovely psionicist who gave her life during the early days of World War II; and Matthew Barnes, born and raised in Equinox, who enlisted during World War II and joined the 1st Hero Brigade as M-1.

[/ QUOTE ]
Badge texts (viewable here, at vidiotmaps.com, or from the comfort of your own client) read :
Tank : [ QUOTE ]
M1, a hero from World War I, is honored today with a statue in Galaxy City.

[/ QUOTE ]
Patriot also reads that Cassiopeia rescued the planet from a comet and was recognized as a citizen of all countries, far from a political figure. While this is not the Shivan comet that she defended us from (five heroes died assaulting Shiva, Cassiopeia acted single-handedly), this may confuse newer readers, who only notice the Patriot badge in Atlas Park. Using a seperate hero may be preferable, but is not necessary.
Suggested Revision -
[ QUOTE ]
Matthew Barnes, born and raised in Equinox, who enlisted into the 1st Hero Brigade as M-1.

[/ QUOTE ]

Problem 2:
[ QUOTE ]
Her parents moved into a small but cozy house in Paragon Heights, and Kelly grew up there through the 1930s and 40s.

One cold night in late December, 1951, nineteen-year-old Kelly was hurrying home from her secretarial job.

[/ QUOTE ]
Galaxy Girl is stated as being part of the "Crey secretarial pool" before becoming a hero. Crey's existance as a notable section in Paragon City occured more recently. Not only would bumping the date up be more consistent with this information, it would also help deal with problem 3.
Suggested Revision -[ QUOTE ]
Her parents moved into a small but cozy house in Paragon Heights, and Kelly grew up there through the 1970s and 80s.

One cold night in late December, 1986, nineteen-year-old Kelly was hurrying home from her secretarial job.

[/ QUOTE ]
This would give her a station in the relatively new Crey Biochem group without making us fanboys go "wha?", while still leaving enough time for enough big rescues for a major statue and the renaming of an area to occur.

Problem 3 :
The last section of this text suggests that an older Galaxy Girl rescued random civillians: while noble, this does not go along the lines of existing plaque text, which states that Galaxy Girl healed Ms. Liberty at the last second rather than herself. Rewriting the text to fit that circumstance may be preferable to reconning the plaque, as well as more thematic.

Here is a good place to start.

Image code isn't active on these forums, so you may want to use direct URL links while the edit session is available.

The short version of this is that Flight needs to be viable. Compare Hover to Combat Jumping. Players with Combat Jumping will leave the power on constantly, recieving protection to status effects, some defense, and a movement buff, in all circumstances. That's not the case for Hover. Pre-SOs, you don't turn it on unless you're hoversniping. Post-SOs, you *might* be able to stand slowly edging toward the enemy. Might not. Still takes three slots just to do that.

We paid for vertical movement by giving up a power. That's a big cost in this post-ED world - I coulda bought a great pulling tool, an attack that beats the first 4 from Claws primary, or Hasten. We shouldn't have to give up a further two slots just to bring a power up to par.

I understand that Hover can't be a travel power. It comes at level 6, it shouldn't be as powerful as a seperate tier. But, just by as much of a definition, it shouldn't be a situational power.

Hover's starting value, 4.2 feet/s, is far too slow to be viable. Even Mental Blast moves faster than that, nevermind a hero sprinting along at 31.5 feet/s.

But we understand that you don't want us going at Fly's base speed of 50 feet/s. That'd make Fly valueless. So, let's take a good portion below that, oh, 35 f/s - not as good as slotted Sprint or Hurdle, but still a decent speed - and take that to be the maximum we want. As another point on the bar, let's take base movement speed, 21 f/s, cut down a bit do 18 feet/sec (so people don't waste the first slot), and assume that's what you want base hover to be at - there shouldn't be a penalty for a power like this.

Just for general information :
[ QUOTE ]
Vertical Sync - I can't see a difference with or without this enabled. It's recommended to have it on, though, and it doesn't alter my framerate, so why not, right?

[/ QUOTE ]

Vertical Sync is a computer game technique used to prevent 'visual tearing'. It prevents the GPU from drawing a new frame until the beginning of a new video scan. Older cards, such as the Geforee 5xxxFX series, are likely to need this active if you want to actually see the interface overlays. Newer cards (and even some older ones) don't need it active to prevent the flickering, but might suffer some horizontal alignment problems with it off, nothing too sever. Vertical Syncronization causes a small framerate decrease, although it may not be noticable in a game such as CoH/V. It does, however, cap your framerate to the monitor's refresh rate, if you're wondering why you can't beat 60 FPS... well, there's also another software cap sometimes, but v-sync is often the reason.

Oh, and BillZ, what's the specs on a system that can handle those levels of detail at 30 fps?

Arc Salvo, if we're going to start balancing classes or powers around the assumption that they either carry a few thousand reds or are joined at the hip with a Kineticist, we're going to have a few problems in even the best situations. Since ED, no one's regularly reaching the +damage cap on their own, and it's rare for scrappers to even reach half of theirs on average.

For more exact numbers and math... (for post-SOs)

Non-Claws scrappers :
100% (base damage) + 95% (SOs) + 100% * [10/23] = 238% damage.
* 0.05, for minions : +11.9% base damage (equal to >50% blaster health)
* 0.10, for LTs : +23.8% base damage (equal to between 40%-50% blaster health)
* 0.15, for Bosses : +35.7% base damage (equal to nearly 40% blaster health)

Claws Scrappers don't get Build Up, but instead get Follow Up (as well as a higher chance of critting on one of their two big power moves) :
100% (base damage) + 95% (SOs) + 35% * [(10/6) * (19/20)] = 231.58% damage
* 0.09, for minions : +20.84% base damage (equal to near 50% blaster health)
* 0.14, for LTs : +32% base damage (equal to nearly 40% blaster health)
* 0.19, for Bosses : +44% base damage (equal to slightly under 40% blaster health)

Note that Claws scrappers suffer from such incredibly poor base BI/sec that they're currently facing developer attention. Yes, it's that bad. If you don't believe me, grab Swipe and Slash sometime. It's worse than AR.

[ QUOTE ]
what is the leroy jenkins playstyle?

[/ QUOTE ]
It's a slur originating from World of Warcraft, where a player, in a staged setup, listened carefully while a plan was hatched for taking on a particularly difficult part of a Raid. After that point, the player then yelled Leeroooooy Jenkins in chat and committed electronic suicide in what's probably the ugliest possible way.

In general, a Leeroy Jenkins is doing something that's either suicidal or otherwise ill-advised.

Red Tomax's Site contains a lot of the information available from the game, including much that isn't really easy to find or notice on a normal run through. It's not all-inclusive, but it's not a bad place to start. Also has info tabs on most enemy groups, too, if you need that.

Beyond that, there's Web of Arachnos, which contains some background information, and according to Troy_Hickman, there's a CoH bible somewhere (likely where we mortals can't get our grubby fingers on it).

Beyond that? You're free to go with whatever you can make up.

Oliin, and I'll quote my post here :
[ QUOTE ]
For example, my Elec/En can either use a combination of a BU, and a Lightning Bolt, and an Energy Punch to kill a single enemy, or I can switch and instead use a BU, Lightning and a Charged Bolt, saving the Punch for another target.

[/ QUOTE ]

The difference isn't a use of Build Up in one situation or the other. The difference is the use of a BI 2.7778 attack (Charged Bolts) instead of a BI 5.4454 (Energy Punch). In both situations I was already using BU and Lightning Bolt. However, even a small boost in damage brought me from needing Energy Punch to instead needing just Charged Bolts.
Given that this (in one example) could save me from wasting a good 2 brawl off Energy Punch's attack during a Build Up cycle, I'd consider that a good thing.

I don't expect, nor should we expect, Defiance to average or typically work on the same level as Build Up or Aim, for the same reason that Brawl doesn't compare well to Energy Punch and that Sprint doesn't work as well as SuperJump.

[ QUOTE ]
Ok then. Perhaps I'm just being a bit dense, given that I'm up a bit later than I should be at the moment, but what does using BU have to do with defiance? Or were you just using it as an example of a predictable damage increase?

[/ QUOTE ]
The build up and such is just an example of a possible attack series against a target. The point was that, with even low values of Defiance, you can actually 'save' attacks.

I won't intentionally have an enemy beat me down to minimal values of health (most of the time, at least. I'm prone to abusing the living **** out of defiance as much as the next blaster). But you can't go forever without having your health drop a bit (unless you're something like Ice/Dev). If you use that inevitable damage, you can save attacks and perform slightly better.

That's a bit hard to prove, Concern. Unless you've manipulated highcrit powers, you've got no way to move crits onto enemies with more health rather than those with less. I'm not aware of any of those within Spines.

As a result, you're stuck wasting half of your crits against enemies who a normal attack would kill. Defiance causes an extra predictable amount. You can use an attack combination that would leave enemies with just a sliver of health, and instead kill them. Of course, you risk some wastage, but that should average out equally with that of Criticals - except, again, Defiance is predictable.

For example, my Elec/En can either use a combination of a BU, and a Lightning Bolt, and an Energy Punch to kill a single enemy, or I can switch and instead use a BU, Lightning and a Charged Bolt, saving the Punch for another target.

I won't call Defiance a great inherent, but it's not useless. At least, not when it actually works.

(In a post-SO situation) it only takes +10% dmg to equal Criticals on minions. According to this horribly inaccurate chart, you reach that before you're even at half health. For the 30% bonus it would take to break even with Scrappers on bosses, you only need to be at 40% health. I dunno about your experiences, but that's not exactly a rare thing for my Elec/En, and unless I'm trying to solo a boss, that's not exactly the situation where I *have* to gulp down green pills as fast as I can.

The issue with Defiance is that it does give a nice value even when the player's in decent shape. It just has the forbidden fruit of a full defiance bar that players just keep obsessing over.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I grabbed a copy of the "Defender Issues" post a couple weeks ago and am working through it in my spare time. Considering the length of it, I will probably have gotten through it sometime in Janurary.

[/ QUOTE ]

it is now mid-january.



[/ QUOTE ]

At least he said that he probably would not be able to get the results in :

[ QUOTE ]
Just a quick update: It's probably going to take longer than expected for this. I'm sorry, but things are busy, busy, busy here. I'm pretty much booked solid, but I'll find time to get through this as soon as I can.

[/ QUOTE ]

Better than the "I-will-look-at-valid-issues-and-disappear" Geko response.

[ QUOTE ]
Defiance is great for the "I don't give a crap about debt" playstyle, in my experience.

Or the LEEEROOOY... JEEEKIIINS playstyle.

Those two playstyles are often inter-related.

[/ QUOTE ]

It's great if you ignore it. A passive that easily gives a significant bonus to damage in all but the simpliest tasks? It's far from horrible.

Only problem is that it doesn't *look* like it's doing anything. Who notices an extra 5% damage on each attack? And that bar? It doesn't move an inch til you're at the last 10% of your health!

[ QUOTE ]
hey i was just wondering is defiance added in after your initial dmg is calculated or is it already calculated with your dmg
just wondering thx in advace

[/ QUOTE ]

Defiance is calculated at the same time as all other damage buffs. For example, if you have 3 +damage SOs slotted in an attack (+95%), have been buffed by one Kinetics Siphon Power (+25%), and are at 30% health - assuming the numbers here are right - (+70%), your attacks will do 290% of their base, unslotted and unbuffed damage. That's compared to 100% health but with the same slotting and with one Siphon Power, which would cause your attacks to do 220% of their normal damage.

Defiance is subject to the damage cap (500% of base damage.)

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
http://www.openmindcreations.com/j5/coh/defiance.jpg

Note: level 50 blaster
At 1/3 or so life I had .1 defiance, it wasn't until I was almost dead that the bar actually went up.

[/ QUOTE ]

Thanks for the screenie Slyer, that's exactly how mine works too.

/e Looks at chart:
=>50% Health: +18% damage buff
< 40% Health: +35% damage buff
< 30% Health: +70% damage buff
< 20% Health: +140% damage buff
< 10% Health: +280% damage buff
< 5% Health: +400% (this is the damage cap for Blasters as of Issue 5)

/e looks back at screenie:
http://www.openmindcreations.com/j5/coh/defiance.jpg

hmmmm....
Is that working as intended??

[/ QUOTE ]

If you assume 1.0 to be equal to +400%, and 0.0 to be equal to +0%, then it's 'working as intended'. A 0.1 Defiance value will be roughly equal to +40%. Someone at 1/3rd health should be experiencing values between 35% and 70% (0.875 and 1.75, respectively).

The Defiance bar makes defiance seem worse than it actually is. It only takes +10% to +30% damage to break even with your average Scrapper's benefit from Criticals. You get those benefits well before 33% HP; you actually 'beat' Criticals by a good deal at 40% health. The Defiance Bar just makes it look like you're only getting minimal benefit.

[ QUOTE ]
It's supposed to kick in at 50% health, not 33%. Which is what I see when I play my blaster. It doesn't begin to kick in until my health is at 1/3rd or less of max. If it's that low, I'm already bugging out unless I have support healing me.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes... but 0.1/1.0 defiance is roughly equal to +40% damage on that scale. That corresponds pretty well to 33% health, although it's a little lower than the chart given here would suggest.

You get a benefit long before that, just the bar doesn't show it.

To be exact, you get an average benefit equal to Scrapper crits at roughly 50% health; that still shows up as less than 0.1/1.0 Defiance (scale recently changed, would now show up as ~4/100).

Honestly, just changing the scale the defiance meter works on would cause a huge boost in how much people liked it. Even better - turn it into a single reported number.

Here's some testing, done with a level 6 Elec/En (concept build) using an unenhanced Lightning Bolt. Max HP 166.8. Enemy was a level 1 Hellion, for ease and survivability.

166.8 HP : 100% HP : 36.59 energy damage - 100%
92.9 HP : 55.7% HP : 39.62 energy damage - 108%
81.6 HP : 48.92% HP : 41.34 energy damage - 113%
73.2 HP : 43.88% HP : 45 energy damage - 123%
40.2 HP : 24.1% HP : 70.98 energy damage - 193%
38.2 HP : 22.9% HP : 76.86 energy damage - 210%
15 HP : 8.99% : 95.38 energy damage - 260%

These values are significantly off the numbers given in the features update I linked earlier in this thread.

All inflicted damage was caused by Jingle Jet 'accidents'. I allowed one regeneration tick to occur, counted to two, then right-clicked on my health bar and fired the blast as soon together as possible.

I'm pretty sure that the chart isn't right, but I'm at work for the next hour and a half (and can't use the CoH client at this workstation). When I get home, I'll probably try to test and get some exact values.

I do know that there's some benefit. At 25% health, my lowbie Elec/En (concept) blaster is capable of killing an enemy with just one Energy Punch, which would normally leave them with enough health for a Brawl and a Taser.

It's just not always there, and I agree with you that the values on that chart are off - I was hoping that bringing them up in this thread would result in either Statesman or one of the website information managers taking a look at it.

[ QUOTE ]
Doublechecked Defiance - and its working for us (internally and on live). Can anyone give more details about this issue?

[/ QUOTE ]

My experience, and this can probably be better explained by the more experienced blasters, is that defiance works properly a good 98% of the time. However, in some situations - most noticable right after a large amount of your health bar is taken away or healed up - it seems to suffer some problem with not being updated. Note that this isn't always accurately reflected by the defiance bar.

I've personally had 0 defiance at one HP (and in one memorable event, revived at the hospital and kept something around 0.8 defiance at full health). It's not common, but when it occurs, it's very irritating.

As a secondary issue, Defiance seems useful to a Blaster only when they decide to actively abuse the power (combining, say, Stealth, a fall from the Flight cap, and a Thunderous Blast). In normal play, it's second to only Vigiliance in inherent powers, it simply doesn't help good blasters, and doesn't encourage bad ones to do better.

EDIT: can we get confirmation that the numbers from here are correct, or, if not, can we get the right ones?
[ QUOTE ]
=>50% Health: +18% damage buff
< 40% Health: +35% damage buff
< 30% Health: +70% damage buff
< 20% Health: +140% damage buff
< 10% Health: +280% damage buff
< 5% Health: +400% (this is the damage cap for Blasters as of Issue 5)

[/ QUOTE ]

I could swear that I've been at ~45% health and gotten no benefit at all fairly regularly.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I grabbed a copy of the "Defender Issues" post a couple weeks ago and am working through it in my spare time. Considering the length of it, I will probably have gotten through it sometime in Janurary.

[/ QUOTE ]

Just a quick update: It's probably going to take longer than expected for this. I'm sorry, but things are busy, busy, busy here. I'm pretty much booked solid, but I'll find time to get through this as soon as I can.

[/ QUOTE ]

Alright, I'll continue to keep it updated. Thank you very much for telling us, and for being polite about it.

Is there a chance of an updated ETA? Or is it really busy there?

Yah, the accuracy buff makes Defiance 'good' enough to use for the first 12-20 levels, if you're willing to abuse the inherent. Don't need to slot accuracy significantly and you'll still hit more than those Defenders with -def debuffs. If you've got a few lucks (or even ruggeds) in your inspiration tray, you can run through most of a mission at those levels without having your health bar move significantly.

Not viable later on, and if you've got some moral problems with borderline explotation of a inherent power, not viable even at the start.

My Storm Summoner (and Force Fielder... and every defender but my Kineticist) would be quite willing to trade ya Vigilance for Defiance, but I guess that's just more proof that Defiance really isn't on the right class.

[ QUOTE ]
The recorded dialogue was clearly scripted, but I always theorized that the actual gameplay was real, that the guy was just filming a normal instance raid (without sound, since a player normally doesn't record that), that Leeroy really did act that dumb, his guildmates really did try to save him and got wiped, and then later they decided it was funny enough that they went back and reenacted their dialogue (unconvincingly) for recording. I don't have any first hand information, but I guessed that high level players wouldn't sacrifice that much item decay for the sake of making an artificial film that could have been done more 'cinematically' (we don't get to watch Leeroy die, for example). The visuals struck me as much more realistic than the recorded dialogue - it really does look like a guy panicking as his team gets wiped.

[/ QUOTE ]

A lot of evidence suggests that the whole thing is a fake, or at least several of the players are 'in on it'. The most significant evidence is that a lot of the equipment worn in that movie either comes from later in UBRS, including a few pieces Leeroy himself is wearing. Those players knew what was in that room, and would certainly know better than to join him rather than just have him run his [censored] back to the instance.

This event was the equivilant of a HO'd player running into running face first into the Monster Isle off portal corp.

Add in that late-game raiders were regularly dropping in 100% repairs EVERY raid (my Druid ended up doing so three times during one run just through the first six bosses in MC), a comparative weak hit isn't that bad or that expensive. It's not like you're going to buy anything but Arcane Crystals and Elemental Fire at that point, and the market only has so much to start with (particularly compared to the amount of molah you make doing a prep run or two through Dire Maul for buffs).

That said, yes, there probably were situations like the Leeroy Jenkins event that happened without scripting.

Fan story was very well written, story arc, while overly reliant on shock value, is still a nice turnup from some previous ones.

May I ask why Numina keeps showing up as some writer's dues ex machina device? I don't think any of us expect a primary hero to get toasted - like the Voyager or Jean Grey, these people seem to be effectively immune to death - but for one of the 'Surviving' Eight, she really doesn't have much of a role.

This is the second time I've seen her in the comics, and both times, she ends up being used simply as a rez ring. Are there any plans to add some degree of personality, or even just drag her along on the next incarnation of Bill and Tedd's Excellent Adventure? (Given her tendency to revive, heal, or bring back people, you'd think she'd have been the first being, astral or not, to reach, say, the hospital in this issue for example.)