BurningChick

Fulmens' take on FF is a good one. If I were ever to haul my bubbler out again, I /might/ swap Force Bolt for Repulsion Field, but that's about the only difference I have with his summation.

And, to reinforce what Fulmens said: once you have a heal, you're a healer. For a small, but noticeable, group of players, if you aren't constantly spamming that one power, you are a bad player and they will constantly call you on how lousy a healer you are. Don't give them the that entree.

Further, if they start grousing that you don't have a heal (a scrapper* called me out recently for not having a /rez/ on my bubbler), stop bubbling him. And then point out that it's generally better to not take damage in the first place. Players like this need educating, and experience (or, in this case, debt) is an awfully good teacher..

* What kind of idjit scrapper manages to get killed ... while bubbled?

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Posi has publicly stated that he doesn't like repetitive, aberrant behaviour. But ... WTH. Accolade requirements are larded with badges that require farming to achieve.

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Well, that was apparently the old philosophy. Nobody wants that, including (now, apparently), the devs.

Synapse indicates that they aren't going to revisit the pre-I14 badges, but I hope that the new stuff going forward is more fun and dynamic.

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/Vent on
I wish the devs (especially Posi, since he freakin' designed the badge system) would be more consistent with regards to rewarding / punishing aberrant behaviour. The +HP and +End accolades are among the best rewards in the game, but can only be realistically obtained through farming villainside. This has been an issue since I7 went live, nearly a year after the devs officially started cracking down on farming.
/Vent off

Honestly, the devs should revisit the truly grindy badges that lead to accolades. I don't have any problems with the likes of Empath or the crafting badge (leave those to show who really are the determined farmers / badge hounds), but if the devs are taking a stand against farming, they should show some small amount of consistency.

Edit: the damage badges should also work off TOTAL HPs, not BASE.

I hope the devs revisit some of the goofy requirements for villain accolades.

10 ... million ... damage?

100 ... Paragon Protectors?

Time spent in PvP zones?

Gladiator matches?

How many villains, legitimately, get 10 million damage playing 1 to 50? My fire / kin corruptor and fire / fire dom had no more than 6.

There aren't a lot of Crey arcs villain-side, and there certainly isn't an arc stuffed with 'em. I had to spend hours grinding in the Fab to get this badge.

PvP is not popular. How many people get the time spent badges by actually PvPing? How many grab an Ouro mish and door sit for 5 hours to get these badges?

The damage requirement is goofy. For my two toons with this badge, I rested in front of an AR Council mob for /hours/ to get this one. I got the badge about a year ago on my dom. I play her a lot, but she's only at 10.1 million damage. My 50 spines / WP scrapper has ... 2.2. At least he doesn't need the badge for an accolade. But still ... WTH?

When was the last time a villain started a gladiator match for anything other than the badge? 2005, some time just after Hallowe'en?

Posi has publicly stated that he doesn't like repetitive, aberrant behaviour. But ... WTH. Accolade requirements are larded with badges that require farming to achieve.

Edit: brain fart -- just remembered that the 100PP badge is for opening up Viridian. But it's still a goofy way to open up one of the most interesting high-level arcs villains have.

A lot of the cool kids are slotting def buffs into Shadowfall. If you poke the numbers for a bit, recognize that -ToHit and +def stack, and throw in the +def unique from the resistance set, you'll realize that you can reach completely silly levels of safety relying on Fearsome Stare, Fluffy, blasts, and small amounts of defense that quickly add up.

Which means you won't have to use Darkest Night for most fights. Which leaves you with more end and more time for punching mobs in the face.

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thay cannot be sued by US copyright laws for someone having a character that looks SIMILAR to a copyrighted name/face/character/fart smell this si teh same reason people cannot sue Wierd Al for the songs he makes, or comapanies for making iPhone clones. All this is, is NCSoft taking draconion measures to "protect" themselves from now non-existant copyright lawsuits.

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Dude, Marvel and DC can /sue/ NCSoft for carp like this any time they please.

The question is whether or not the comic book companies would win. After NCSoft blows through a rather large amount of cash they don't have to pay their lawyers.

Jeebus, people.

Ya'll aren't lawyers. Don't offer up legal advice.;

Castle won't, at this point, add anything new to FF. He just ... won't. At five years in, what is in FF now is what will be in FF when the servers go dark. He might twiddle some numbers (like he did with Repulsion Bomb), or ask for an animation to be changed, but that's it.

That's not to say he's happy with FF -- he probably isn't. The set has too many powers that are easily skipped. And it has too few powers that benefit from heavy slotting. And, frankly, it has a surprising number of powers that are generally counter-productive.

At this point, we should simply be grateful that this isn't I6, the buffs work surprisingly well, and we have a rather decent T8 power.

I think the devs could've done a FAR better job with FF 5.5 years ago, but that's water under the bridge.

But ...

If we could turn back the clock ...

1.) Defender sets should've been mathematically balanced against each other. They weren't. And, as far as we know, they never have been. IIRC, even Arcanaville has called the this task "non-trivial".

2.) FF shouldn't have been balanced with "fun" and "theme" in mind. The Final Three + Detention Field should've been tested far more rigorously to ensure they actually increase performance instead of aggravation.

3.) We should've had a variant of Conserve Power. It's thematic, ups offensive performance without directly increasing damage output, and is a kind of buff otherwise not grantable by a defender (unless I'm mistaken, which I could be).

4.) Force Bubble's one of the goofiest powers the devs ever designed. It's nucking futs to think that the single target heavy hitters, like Cosmic Burst, don't have the base range to reach out FB's edge (and they've had their range /doubled/ since release). And don't get me started about PBAoEs. It should've been a giant slow, -recharge power. The end result would've been the same as the crock o' horse crap we ended up with (reduce the amount of incoming damage, make it hard for mobs to reach melee), but it would've been wrapped up in a widely useful power.

But that's just me.

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hmmm.... it took me ONE year for my FF/Elec the first time, and that's supposed to be a less offensive secondary than /Rad.... hhmmmm...

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There's not a lot of synergy. FF works best when you can plink away at range.

Rad has always worked best up close and personal (especially before Cosmic Burst's range was buffed). Rad's a good blast set, but it needs reinforcement from its primary to really shine, something that simply can't be got from FF.

Anyway, I'd get frustrated with the combination and move on to something else.

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If you roll a Force Fields controller and don't keep the bubbles up on people, I'm writing you out of the will. Just saying.

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I think you're writing all of us out of the will since, frankly, I don't think you like people.

Just sayin'.

Dark Miasma's also a good set for keeping (most) teammates alive. Although it's lack of pre-emptive buffing means zerging blasters will face plant around you. A lot. But you have an AoE rez to cover that. And the smart Dark Miasma player has Vengeance.

But ... Dark is a relatively busy primary compared to FF, and doesn't leave you, the defender, with a whole lot of time left over for punching mobs in the face.

FWIW, it took me 5 years to level my ff / rad to 50.

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But I'm no longer sure that Force Bolt is a gotta' have. Just IME and all that, but I think it's skippable. And I know it doesn't really benefit all that much from slotting.

If you really want mobs out of your face, take Repulsion Field.

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Haven't I been saying this for years? Especially the last line.

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Maybe. I admit nothing.

But you also used to argue with me, Fulmens, and Canadian Guardian that FF had /9/ gotta haves

Force Bubble doesn't need slotting -- it's one of the cheapest toggles in the game.

As for RWZ raids and bubbles -- good raids typically have layers of +def, -ToHit, -damage, controls, and all manner of nasty things to do to mobs. Force Bubble is, IME, overkill.

And, OMG, I can believe I'm about to say this ...

But I'm no longer sure that Force Bolt is a gotta' have. Just IME and all that, but I think it's skippable. And I know it doesn't really benefit all that much from slotting.

If you really want mobs out of your face, take Repulsion Field.

The new(ish) Repulsion Bomb (nee Turd) has made me rethink my former love of Force Bolt.

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For most people (this is opinion), they're exterminating Comm Officers by the 1000s, and that's going to take between 10-15 hours to go from 1 to 50 depending on how lucky they are with PUGs...

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On random PuGs, I took my FF / rad from 42 to 50 in 4 or 5 hours. For none of the PuGs was I the leader.

Few of the teams I was on were anything /close/ to optimal; most were, at best, sub-optimal with folks going AFK for long stretches, folks who didn't know what enhancements are, and one guy who only used Inferno, rested, and then waited to use Inferno again, &c..

If I'd taken a more active role in leading the teams, I probably could've shaved my time down to 2 or 3 hours, and possibly less, again just setting up PuGs and being on the ball about /kicking door sitters and leeches. And taking more defenders and fewer tankers.

That is 1.) nuts and 2.) shockingly easy. 3.) it's even more shockingly easy when you consider that a.) we're talking about me and b.) I did it with a freakin' bubbler, the least force multiplierish of the defenders.

I can't see the newbies sticking around for long if they can "beat" the game in 20 hours with lolbuilds, few skills, and no tactics. And if new accounts split, and more old accounts drift away to other games, NCSoft might rethink its recent investments in the game, and that's good for no one.

Thank you

Hi folks,

My first arc is too large, and I have to trim some of my custom critters from a custom group.

But ... I can't seem to find a way to do it in the MA.

How do I do this? I believe I have to nuke 2 of the critters to bring my arc's file size down to "legal".

Thanks!

Any word about bases, SG-oriented raids, and PvP?

I resubscribed just so I could see the MA.

/em pokes this thread

NCNC still hasn't sent out e-mails telling folks that there is a reactivation weekend.

And I'm not seeing an announcement on the front page.

But there is a link in the updater. Since people with inactive frequently look for game info there?

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In the future could we get notice of the "free weekends" before they are activated?

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And:
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I would like to know about [the unannounced freespec] as well.

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With the not-so-recent departures of half the community team, I'm guessing that Niv and Ex are over-burdened and, understandably, some things are slipping through the cracks.

Y'all should send out some e-mails; I only found out by checking out the boards, wondering if I should re-up for I13.

It looks like the update was to bring CoH's website in line with that of Tabula Rasa -- one company, one look. To me, the main differences are largely cosmetic -- TR's site has little flags in the top right for the international sites, CoH's doesn't (probably an oversight -- there should be a link to the EU stuff up there); CoH's middle column is wider and right side column is skinner than TR's; TR's site has a search field in the left column.

But the two sites look /very/ similar now.

So ...

Curiously absent from the announcement is some kinda' mention of The Vault.

Is it still on the radar, or has it been pushed back past I13?

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As of right now I own 459M Infamy, after market fees, worth of Respec Recipes. I will let you know how much these are worth in two weeks.

I like this move a lot. However, it butchered my schemes.

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Interestingly, in a move of stunning foresight, I dumped almost $200,000,000 in respec recipes yesterday.

Howdy,

Some thoughts about FF:

Repulsion Field is identical for defenders, controllers and MMs. The same power (be it called Repel, Repulsion Field, etc.) is almost identical (I think only activation times change, with the FF version being slower than the EA one) for Defenders, Controllers, Blasters, Stalkers, Corruptors, and MMs. It is ... quite odd ... for one power to show up in so many different places. Even odder is that it goes from being a Tier 2 (IIRC) for kins, to Tier 7 for bubblers, all the way up to APP for blasters.

Just IME 'n' all that ...

FWIW, I've just spent the last half hour or so playing with Repulsion Field and I think I've found an annoyance: the effects for the power go well past the power's AoE. There are actually 2 "fields" that emanate from the bubbler: one goes about 12' out (coming up on Dispersion's edge), and a smaller one that lines up more closely with the power's actual 7' AoE.

And, for the numbers people, it actually does seem to keep mobs from being able to use melee attacks about 50% of the time. That is ... nothing to sneeze at. But, again, it's an effect that's hard to leverage if you also want to use PBAoEs like Short Circuit or Irradiate. In the same vein, it's tough to use Force Bubble with anything but single target attacks, and the heavy hitters like Cosmic Burst require additional slotting for range to reach Force Bubble's edge.

You definitely do get damage mitigation from Force Bubble and Repulsion Field, but the mitigation comes at the cost of offensive effectiveness for defenders. Hurricane, at least, has the benefit of being tied to a /very/ effective debuff that more than compensates for any loss of offense. Hurricane's size also means that it is easier, with skill and practice, to keep mobs clumped or in corners so that the you don't really lose any offense.

OK, that bit was long-winded, but ummm, the next point will be better.

I was going to say something about Repulsion Bomb having a 10 foot radius and how it'd be tough to ram 16 mobs into that small a space. But it turns that its radius is 15 feet, the same as Neutron Bomb's. Both powers do identical damage (scale 1), so I don't why.

FWIW, none of FF's top 3 powers has an AoE cap.

I wonder what Castle thinks of FF as it stands?

It certainly is an odd duck in a defender's hands -- the set seems to have been made to go hand in hand with the assumption that distance is damage mitigation*, but CoH has evolved into, especially on teams, an AoE zerg-fest that doesn't jive with 50' repel powers.

I mean ... the set works well most of the time. And you can do some interesting things with set bonuses (up to and including milking more def than my freakin' EA brute can). But it's missing some, you know, 'zazz. Damage mitigation is easy to come by in CoH, and defender FF isn't that great a performer on teams that already have good mitigation -- the set is too focused on mitigation, and isn't even the best at mitigation in all situations.

Anyway, some suggestions.

Def debuffing resistance. All other sets that rely heavily (or, in the case of WP, minimally) on def have it. I'd gladly give up the borderline pointless immob resistance in DB for this.

A debuff (or two) added to Repulsion Field. If a mob can stand within it, and the bubbler can deal with the nutty end drain, the power should, you know, DO SOMETHING. No other class of powers in the game has the potential to drain so much end and yet deliver so little. Make it worth my while to risk being in melee with an AV.

Force Bubble: can't be fixed into the "always on, always good" power States figured it should be for defenders without redoing the power. Solo, many primary / secondary combinations lack enough ranged damage to deal with Castle's 3 +3 minions at FB's edge. Teamed, it tends to be overly dangerous since it's awfully tough for teammates to pull aggro from the bubbler once the mobs get spread out.

Detention Field needs to be a click / toggle hybrid.

Repulsion Bomb: its range should be bumped to 55' from 50 so that it can more easily be used at Force Bubble's edge. Without slotting for distance, Force Bubble comes /awfully/ close to negating this power.

/sync can also be used to help with rubberbanding. Just a wild guess on my part, but a coalition-mate was having problems with nasty rubberbanding, and I suggested /sync. It pulled him out of it.

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Wow this thread is old. I had fun reading my post on it - some things came to be that I suggested, other things got addressed in different ways. Saw a lot of posts from people I havn't heard from in a while too - some more missed than others.

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You know what?

I miss Statesman.

No, seriously, I do.

He took a lot of heat for things that weren't his call, but /still/ had the stones to come out and interact with a lot of ... hmmmm ... belligerent people, including, at times, me.

Looking back, I got quite hostile over FF, but I've since come to realize that, at some point in the distant, distant past (possibly before Geko and Statesman were even on board) that distance would equal defense (well, mitigation), and that the single target game would be as good as the AoE game. But AoE keepaway meshes very, very poorly with other AoEs, and CoX, for better or worse, is largely AoE-driven.

Statesman did his best with a design cobbled together out of spit, twine, and old chewing gum, but some bad design decisions were made /very/ early in the process that are so fundamentally entwined into the game that they can't really be fixed. Some things can be fudged ... but not really fixed. Force Bubble's now cheap, and Repulsion Bomb is worth taking and slotting, but the idea of actively keeping mobs out of melee with KB and repel (versus using tankers, immobs, and slows) just doesn't work all that well as a force multiplier.

The distance vision got borked over any number of times (including difficulty settings 2 and 4 which generally offer greater rewards over time than settings 1, 3 and 5). But, here's a tidbit straight from Castle, "Range *is* a defense, sort of. For everything except Lieutenants, a range scale 1 attack is 60% of the damage of a Melee scale 1 attack."