BurningChick

And, just to demonstrate how easy a map full of Fake Nems can be, I present:

Arc #264535

I honestly wasn't sure whether I should file it under "Comedy" or "Horror".

Apparently, farms full of Fake Nems are rather easy.

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If you're just Hami mito farming, why bother rolling a defender at all? Just bring 8 blasters and have at it. Tanks, control, mitigation, healing are all worthless in that scenario.

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Kin / ice? A couple blaster-scale rains, lots of recharge and damage for everyone.

But I digress.

The mito thing can't go on much longer -- it's become farcical.

The rewards from AE can be the same, or even slightly lower, than the rewards from plain ol' PvE and people would still use it.

No travelling to missions.

No fed ex missions.

No crossing zones.

In RWZ, you can team cross-faction.

Auto SK / RSK.

Ability to tweak mobs to your particular toon's weaknesses.

AE is /awfully/ convenient compared to PvE.

Re: defenders numbers.

Do eeeeeet!

I don't even know if I could properly understand it, but it'd be fascinating nonetheless.

Plus ... I think that (de)buff sets haven't seen the same kind of intra-set balancing that, say, scrapper secondaries have had. I also have a pretty strong suspicion that a thorough analysis would show some weirdness and outliers.

On the other hand, it scramables my head to think of the permutations you'd have to consider. Team size, spawn size, purple patch, resistances, Repel, team make up, what Fluffy's up to, slots, synergies and lack thereof with secondaries ...

Yeesh.

But I digress.

My spines / WP scrapper, made on a whim, turned out to be one of my favourite toons. Most of my other "made on a whim" toons end up getting deleted because I can't quite find the synergy between primary and secondary, but I like this scrapper precisely because it's so hard to put together a bad combo for scrappers.

So ... thank you scrapper forums

Being able to go from 1 to 50 by ostensibly playing the game, but facing no risk, within a day is not ... hmmmm ... a particularly good gaming experience.

I'm normally not one for jumping on bandwagons, but something's gotta be done about the AE -- it is, in its current incarnation, one of the worst possible introductions to the game.

Anyway, here's my suggestion: for the upcoming 2X xp event, don't include the AE in the bonuses. In fact, nerf the AE rewards over the weekend. Employ a carrot and stick approach to getting people to do something else.

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I recently listened to a (very amateur) interview with him about his Geek Mafia books, and the interviewer had a City of Heroes related segment. Rick made a comment that he found it "interesting" that Cryptic was going with a classless system for CO, as he'd originally wanted for CoH. He said "interesting" in a "and they told me that wouldn't work" tone of voice.

So-- Rick wanted a system radically different from what was here at release. We don't know exactly who wanted it to change-- Jack? Michael Lewis? Richard Garriott (who Jack quoted a few times after he took over as lead designer) or someone else at NCSoft? Would Rick have continued to fight the idea as a lead designer? ED was far out enough that asking the question might be totally irrelevant, because the system could have been radically different at release. It's also possible that it would have ended up the same way, and that ED would still have been done.

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I think the classless system was way out of Cryptic's ability to implement during CoH. The devs have struggled, more or less since closed beta, to balance how powers interact with each other in a relatively closed power system. An open power system ... with the original devs ... and, yeah, I can see why CoH's development was in trouble.

IH, Stamina, and Quick Recovery? Together? Who'd ha' thunk!

I think Dakan's got some frustrations over how things went down, but, IIRC, he still came to back to write for Cryptic.

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I definitely don't. Tanking Rommy on my scrapper isn't a problem. Tanking the nictus away from Rommy and the rest of the team isn't a problem on my scrapper. Tanking anything with one of those ambushes descending down upon me IS a problem ...I dont need AAO saturated that badly ..I just need to stay alive.

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Just to point out ...

A well-built scrapper, facing anything under +5s (and, guesstimating, +6s for a twinked scrapper), is generally unkillable in PvE while bubbled. That's why I think the OP's position of, essentially, tanking for the team with his blasts slotted for debuffs and soft-capped defense is misguided.

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I honestly have no idea how they got the powersets done as quickly as they did as well as they did.

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Jack stood over them yelling, "Git 'er done!"?

Edit, just because it's me: but Geko and The Guy Before Geko weren't always so hot at figuring out how powers would work together. Like ... giving a relatively squishie defender a 50' AoE repel with HUMUNGOUS end drain that mucks up AoEs and calling it "squishie defense".

But, since I am a nice person at heart ...

From what I've read about CoH's tortured development, what they did was a monumental achievement. And it's amazing how much of it they got close enough to right to make the game hugely entertaining.

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By this standard defenders are just fine.

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Just throwing this out there:

(De)buff sets haven't been given the mathematical once-over since release, making them one of the /very/ few groups of powers that haven't been rebalanced in relation to each other since release. And, while (de)buff sets in general work well, there are some sets that really could do with tweaking.

Again, just throwing it out there.

I was MEOOOOOOOWING!!!1!1 my way through the 40s on my FF / Rad, and came across a scrapper who kept on dying even though he was bubbled.

He got on my case on how the healer hadn't taken Resuscitate. I shut off my toggles, told the team that it was time for a lesson in how FF works, and did nothing for the next couple minutes -- just as the ST buffs were wearing off.

The scrapper shut up once everyone came back from the hospital, and I kept on getting ph4+ xps. Yo.

I'm ... confused.

Like, really confused.

You're going for soft-capped AoE and ranged, while also slotting your blasts for ToHit debuffs? And slotting Repulsion Bomb with a disorient set? And Life Drain with debuffs? While /not/ maxing out the def bonuses from Dispersion Bubble and Maneuvers? You're taking Speed over Leaping or Flight, which both have powers that give +def? You want to max out your use of Force Bubble, but don't have any +range in Tentacles? You want maxed out recharge, but you're 2-slotting hasten? You have a, seemingly, team-oriented build, but you've skimped on the +def for Insulation?

You seem to be going off in a few different directions at once, and I honestly can't see where you're going. Your only powers slotted for damage are Total Focus, a melee power, and Blackstar, a PBAoE ... but you have built your toon for survivability at range?

That's a whole lot of contradictions, and I can't this build working out all that well.

So: what do you want this toon to do? Team support? Soloing? AoE carnage? What's the goal in maxing out recharge? Why the focus on making Force Bubble useful, but having few powers that can reach its edge?

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As an aside, it's absolutely true that it's another debuffer task force, which is damn frustrating. For those complaining about requiring certain ATs to succeed in the SF, that's how it feels for non-debuffers in the rest of the high profile task forces. Annoying.


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On the other hand ...

With the tools the devs have, it's probably tough, bordering on impossible, to make a TF that's possible for 8 blasters to do (without temps) that a team of (de)buffers couldn't sleepwalk through in half the time.

It's just how the game works.

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Nothing else in the SF posed a serious challenge to us, but we worked on Reichsman for over 30 minutes, and while we cleared the ambushes and kept up a steady steam of damage, it was never enough to actually kill him. His "unbreakable" ability always kicked in, and restored him to 75%ish health. Possibly it would have been different if we'd had a Mastermind to use the temp power intended to shut off Unbreakable, but as I understand it, that temp power doesn't even work correctly at present.

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Just to chime in -- we had two MMs on a four person team (thugs / dark, thugs / traps, fire / kin, shield / SS). Both of the MMs tried firing the temp before, during, and after Reichs fired off Unbreakable, but the temp seemed to do nothing to him.

It's funny. We had the survivability. We had the DPS. We had the (de)buffs to sissify Reichs. We had the patience to do this on a four person team. But we couldn't freakin' beat him down because of what amounts a giant, stinking pile of lame called Unbreakable.

Like a number of old-timers, he's been letting his subscription lapse, but shows up when something tickles his fancy.

But we can't get past server selection since since Paragon is doing internal testing on the servers

Normally, I try not to agree with ER 'cause it makes my head hurt ...

But my dom (fire / fire), with the same build on Live and Test, goes faster along the Cim walls on Test than on Live. I.e., sometimes neither Cinders nor Flashfire is up before I'm moving on to the next spawn.

Big caveat: 120+ recharge bonus which makes Consume and Domination pop fast so the end burn isn't all that noticeable.

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As far as I'm concerned, the only must haves are a good tank and a decent healer

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Irony. You has it.

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I was gonna' say something, but you beat me to it

And where does this "healer" business come into things, anyway? Is "healer" a generic term for defender, even though not all defenders have heals? Are only defenders with heals worth teaming with?

Blaaargh.

FWIW, my fire tanker, teamed with a FF defender, is borderline unkillable without turning on her toggles. Heals are vastly overrated by waaaaaay too many players.

And, uh, this concludes my rant.

I've never, ever been able to get that amount of damage by simply playing the game -- even my dom, weighing in at something like 350 hours, only has 11 million. After I farmed her to 10 150 or so hours previously.

So ...

The traditional way to get that type of damage is to hit Rest in front of a mob that cranks out as much damage as you can regen before the next hit comes in. And then let CoH run for a day.

Bonus HP does NOT count towards the badge; only base damage does. I.e., if you're running with a lot of +HP bonuses and powers, the mob has to drop you down to your base HP before the damage even registers towards the badge.

The math behind all this gets complicated since each AT has its own max regen and base HP, so there isn't really a one size fits all kind of mob for everyone. But, on the last toon I got this badge on, I parked myself in front of a yellow, machine gun-wielding Council minion ... and let the PC run for hours 'n' hours.

Edit: a couple other things to keep in mind:

If you're in a mission, you won't get auto-logged.

When you're going for the time spent in PvP zone badges, grab an Ouro mission since you can't be auto-logged while doing a TF.

My fire / fire perma-dom's good for Cim -- the Romans guarding the walls line up quite nicely for acid reflux spew.

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... Repulsion Bomb ... provides minor damage ...

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It does the same damage as Neutron Bomb (scale 1), which makes it one of the best direct damage powers available to defenders.

Building for defense is, IME, the best way to go. It /sucks/ being the squishiest person on your team, but with a foundation of Dispersion Bubble, Maneuvers, and CJ / Hover, it's not all that hard to come up with 30ish defense which takes you from "squishy" to "not bad".

I haven't tried it on my FF / rad, but you can ram a /LOT/ of procs into Neutrino Bolt. Since the power animates and recharges so fast, I'm pretty sure that'd be quite entertaining.

Good luck

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I finally got to test my high level fire/fire dom (was bussy testing every set's early level experience) and I was easily able to sustain a full attack chain with just Flares, Fire Blast and Blaze. No need for extra powers and that was without activating Hasten.


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On my fire / fire, at 50, with 120 global recharge + Hasten, I could chain Incinerate> Flares > Blaze > Flares > Incinerate. Live, I can do Incinerate > Flares > Blaze > Incinerate > ad nauseum. The total DPS, just guesstimating, isn't all that different between live and test. And I was pleasantly surprised at what happened when I ate a bunch of reds.

But ...

Exemped down to 16 with 67.5 global recharge, no hasten, things were different. With Flares, Incinerate, and Char, I couldn't get a good ST flow going. And that's with /far/ more recharge than any lowbie / newbie would ever be able to get in CoV. I HATE standing around waiting for powers to recharge. HATE it. One of things I like about CoX is that, by the teens, most of my toons always have a button to click that does something useful, but I'm losing out on that.

The extra damage out of dom nice, but ... Fire's quick animations seem out of place when you're sitting around with nothing to do. And, crikey, that time not spent dominating is time not spent on building domination.

Well ... that's not quite true. I could fill time by using Cages, but that power has a massive end cost, and is, frankly, a death sentence on lowbie teams due to its ability to grab aggro. Keeping mobs out of melee's a nice idea and all, but if you want a decent Fire Assault attack chain, I'm pretty sure that Incinerate went from "nice" to required, and that makes immobs a pretty mediocre way of reducing incoming damage.

I wonder if we'll be seeing doms putting Brawl on auto?

Hmmm ...

What I'm getting is that the increased end drain and recharge times will still push people towards high recharge builds, for perma-Domination, reasonable recharge times on powers like Consume, and for being able to make decent ST attack chains without having to take 4 or 5 ST attacks (or calling cones ST attacks).

The changes are like 2 steps forward and 1.75 back, especially since I don't see things getting better in the lowbie game since the game's not exactly awash in buffs that increase recovery or recharge pre-20.

So ... I dunno. Castle's set out to revamp Doms, but either I'm not quite understanding what his goals are, or he's missed the mark. My dom /might/ be more effective at lower levels, but she feels wrong.

Repulsion Bomb's now good -- it does the same damage as Neutron Bomb, with low magnitude KB (i.e., knock down) and a chance to disorient minions. Bonus: it has no AoE cap, Castle knows about this, and he's been letting it slide for ages.

So ... take The Big Three + Repulsion Bomb, and the other powers to taste.

I'd also add on Maneuvers and Tactics to leadership (you'll softcap your teammates' def at a hair under 45, and it sucks to miss).

You'll probably want stamina unless you're a masochist.

Aaaaand ...

Lots of blasts.

Also, have a peek at Fulmens' guide.

And, for god's sake, don't take Aid Other. Once you have a heal, you're a healer, and if you aren't spamming that [censored] power, someone on your team will call you out, say you suck, and demand that the leader get a healer. [censored] that [censored].

Oh, and Fulmens will write you out of his will.

Kudos to the Castle and the other power people

And, for Ryu: dude, seriously chill out. If you hate the game and its devs, move on.

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Again its still a weak cop-out just like all the other invention and pet stuff. First it was the taunt sets, then they gut all pets for recharge, and now this. Seriously if they cant work around the system then they need to hire someone who can. Its just not fair.

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Whhhhhaaaaaaahhhhh.

I might not like all the things the devs have done, but I do know that 1.) they play the game, too; 2.) that they are trying to make the game better; and 3.) Paragon /has/ hired people who can tweak, fix, and massage 6+ years' worth of spaghetti code, which is no small feat.

Dark control / dark assault is also an obvious combination.