Captain_Fistula

My Tank runs without TI, and people are always shocked. I'm trying to work on an "always unstoppable" build...

[ QUOTE ]
/bind lbutton+lshift "powexec_slot 2"

[/ QUOTE ]

Hmmm, doesn't work. "powexec_altslot 2" is needed to call the #2 tray. If I try to link them "powexec_slot 2$$powexec_slot 2" it is no different to me trying to link the two powers by name =/

Combat Jump is Immobilise, AFAIK. Acrobatics is hold. I think some of the combat pool powers offer a boost against some control effects, though.

Carnifax said it was Mag 3 like domination (as I specified, clarification is needed) - but I have had a hit with it fail to sleep a boss. Not sure if Death mages (a test I performed first hand) have extra sleep protection, or if it was jsut that I could only find one 3 levels higher than me, but there you go...

So does this mean that mesmirise is an artificially lame power, due to it having a ridiculously below-average ability to beat an opponent's mes protection?

Bit of a specialist query, this. I want to bind shift+lbutton (left mouse button) to teleport, just like I have with my controller. Easy peasy, no problem. The difficult part is that I want to set it so I can use left mouse button for both human shadow step and dark dwarf step. However, /bind shift+lbutton "powexec_name Shadow Step$$powexec_name dark dwarf step" ONLY ever tries to exec the dwarf form. My hope was that in dwarf form it would give an error message for the human one, then perform the dwarf one, and in human form, do the TP, and then give an error message for the dwarf. Or, alternatively, just do it and not even hassle me with an error message, I naively hoped.

Any idea of easy ways to sort it out? I toyed with the idea of binding the execute to a slot, and adding a $$ line to swap the two teleport powers on clicking a macro that changed form - but if I go straight to nova and vice versa, it would get confused. Would a pause between commands help?

[ QUOTE ]

Aren't Death mages bosses? And Mesmerise is a sleep and Domination is a hold, both Mag 3? They need mag 4 for anything to affect them. You'd need to stack two sleeps or two holds on them normally to do that. One of each won't work.

[/ QUOTE ]

Urm, if you re-read the thread, you'll see that is the point. Death mages ARE bosses, which is precisely what I needed in order to see if hold magnitudes on their own (without damage) would reset sleep magnitudes, etc.

The experiment being to test a number of things, the most obvious being to see if alternating between Mesmerise and Domination resulted in both of them beating the mag protection of the boss, (result: sleep and holds alterating with each hit after an inneffective application of both) or if sleep doesn't work in conjunction with holds (result: no matter how many times you alternate between the attacks, it requires at least two consecutive sleeps for it to work, due to holds resetting the sleep) or if Mesmirise doesn't stack, due to its damage portion "waking" the foe before re-sleeping him, thereby resetting the mag to sleep effects (result: can't sleep bosses with damage dealing sleeps [mesmirise] except with critical hits - hard to prove without testing on several identical bosses)

A confounding factor is "critical" (+1) bonus controllers get to mags (allegedly) and the +1 bonus mesmerise has according to an earlier poster (my test seemed to disprove this, but not conclusively), and the obvious fact that Mesmirise might be specifically coded such that damage from subsequent Mesmirises doesn't interfere with sleep effect and/or magnetude, but it DOES with any other power, as per the afore mentioned theory that when the effect drops, so does the magnitude.

<deep breath> hope that makes sense, as it made my head spin.

[ QUOTE ]
Salvage can be farmed - you just need to spend quite some time to get a decent amount.

[/ QUOTE ]

Howso? As I remember when it was first introduced the powers that be made a big point of the fact that "drops are random, to prevent farming" etc. Has that changed? Or were they fibbing / misleading people to deter them from farming?

Yep, quite right, I just tested this myself. However, I am sure when I first created this character, prolly last November, I'd have an enemy held, and would hold,sleep,wake an enemy in the meantime. It might just be my imagination playing tricks on me, it could've been a patch, it could be the way the powers were slotted combined with their durations relative to level, or it could just be I was subconsciously holding weaker minions first and then holding, sleeping, levitating more powerful enemies that the holds were wearing off of quicker.

So, hold-sleep leaves to hold intact after you damage them and thus deactive sleep. I was unable to verify if the deactivation of sleep through damage means: the default mesmirism (does damage) can't be used to stack against the magnitude, as its damage would be "breaking" the previous sleep effect, and thus undoing the magnitude; or if sleep-hold leaves the magnetude of sleep in place, or over-rides it with hold.

I tried to attack a death mage (35, my char is 32) with Mesmerise / domination combo, I didn't seem him get held, but his nearby lieutenant killed me before I could say for sure, and I couldn't find any more bosses nearby to test it on safely. That does seem to suggest that the domination and/or the damage from it and/or the damage from subsequent mesmerises resets the magnitude of the sleep, even if the holds are still active.

As an aside - how does Telekinesis's Magnetude apply? Is it, like choking cloud, a tick every X seconds with a constant "knockback" creating the movement, but more accurate and higher magnetude?

Aha, very helpful information. Properly slotted and combined with some more holds and maybe a to-hit power such as Aim, or tactics, etc I could see how it could quickly give your holds a vital edge. Shame that my Defender's hold powers (EMP and Atomic Blast) are too slow cycling to be able to super-smash someone's protection, but it's good to know, could be handy for support with someone who is more mes-centric.

How does the Radiation Emission "Choking Cloud" power fit into this, incidently? Likewise for the sleep effect of TA's Trick Arrow. Does it "tick" every X seconds and do an AoE mes check? Or is it like Mag 1 and always active as long as they are in the AoE? Or does it do a variety (randomly does different mags)? Or does it always do a hard 2 or 3, but is very innaccurate, and "misses" a lot? And if so, can it's accuracy be improved by to-hit buffs like tactics or Aim from a blaster powerset?

*AND* does a power like the epic "power up" boost mag as well as extending duration?!?

Do you know what mag Mesmerise is numerically? Sounds like it is 4 with maybe a 5 critical... Are the epic holds higher mag?

[ QUOTE ]
IF a target is held, and you cast a sleep, it'll stay held. So

a) a sleep doesnt break a hold

[/ QUOTE ]

Urm, no. My mind-controller's sleep will over-ride the hold. So, if I dominate an enemy, they are held, and I can get out several levitates (pure damage) without losing the hold. If I I hold them, then sleep them, then levitate them, they go to sleep, then the levitate does damage and wakes them and they are not still suffering frm hold effects. Or at least it did when I created the character months and months ago, it may well have changed in the most recent issue, as I have barely played it.

Will test out the the sleep / mass hold thing presently. I guess I'll also have to test to see if sleep nullifies the hold mag too. Cheers anyway.

It's an economy sink. It is to prevent an economy becoming saturated. Of course, as prestige is non-transferrable between SGs, it is 99.999% less useful than, say, a sink for influence would be. I think it likely that because influence can be transferred for prestige, they feel rent is necessary to stop super-rich players with tons of influence from being able to generate obscene amounts of prestige and thus end up with every base being ridiculously large. Unfortunately, as it stands, influence still runs rampant with people using it to twink their lowbies, and bases are tough to pay the rent on.

Also, as savlage can't be "farmed", it makes it unfair that there is an economy sink in position that penalises use of materials that are extraneous to the economy in that sense.

Sleeps and Holds (mags) don't stack, which is what I gathered from the link I posted. But do their magnitudes counter-act each other, much as sleep effects counter-act (override) a hold effect.

IE:

If a target has mag resistance of 10 and I hit it with critical mesmerise, it would have 6 resistence left to *sleep*. I hit it with another two sleep, and he goes under and is sleeping.

If I hit him with Mass Domination - what happens? It does no damage, so THAT wouldn't cancel the sleep, but I assume that it trying to apply the Hold effect would over-ride the sleep and, as it is well under the 10 mag resistance to holds, would have no tangible effect.

SO, what happens to the mags? Sleep *effect* gets cancelled, does that kill the stacked sleep magnetudes, resetting them to 0? Or do they continue timing out behind the scenes, active even though the effect is inactive?

What I am getting at is:
If I alternate my two main single-target mind-control attacks (Mesmerise and Domination) - will I be able to build up the magnetude of both independantly, or will the hold over-ride the sleep, maybe vice-versa, constantly resetting the other back to 0?

Ideally I'd like to see rent to be relative to either: player activity or base usage.

If your super-group goes inactive except for a couple of core players it is ridiculous they few players have to pay a fortune whilst desperately trying to fill the group with more people.

Ideally I'd like rent to be determined by the number of active players (IE online and in SG mode) actually making use of the base during a time period, or a surcharge for using items.

And non-operational bases (like my CoV one) shouldn't be accrewing rent at all. I wish I could scrap my base (now that my SG on CoH is totally inactive) rather than have it accrew month after month of rent for maybe a week's worth of usage.

You need a base online to entice members, which means you need to be paying vast amount of rent *before* you can get enough players in your SG to justify it! That makes no sense in terms of gameplay.

I think you misread my point. I know if the sleep / hold effect is on, as I can see it. However, the cumulative "mangitude" of it, which is needed to over-ride the target's inbuilt mes protection is invisible. It is not the "effect" that is the issue, but the invisible "magnitude" value, which is described in the link at the top of my post.

... people tell you that you should "know better" than to do something perfectly sensible and innocuous, because having achieved level 50 means you must subscribe to every piece of heresay and speculative superstition that they have convinced themselves is true.

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showf...fpart=1#815523

^^^ I've just been reading that (old) guide to magnitude and control effects, but it's left me with a few questions.

1. Has that changed substantially recently.
2. Does the magnetude effect of sleep wear off if any enemy is being hit
3. Does sleep interfere with hold magnitude

The latter one might need some clarification...

My mind-controller has mesmirise and dominate. If I hit someone with sleep, they become slept instead of held. If I hit someone with hold, they become held instead of slept.

Does this also occur with the magnitude? Does the sleep effect (paralysis) being replaced with the hold effect mean that the "sleep" magnitude is replaced with the hold magnitude?

Does that mean alternating these two attacks will mean the cumulative magnetude of the effects experienced by an enemy stays at the base 3-4, as the 3 (four with a critical) hold is replaced by the 3 of the sleep and vice versa?

And, RE: 2 - If the sleep effect is cancelled by the enemy taking damage (or being healed) - does the magnitude applied also expire, or does that stay "on" even though the effect has been cancelled?

Oh, and how does duration vs recharge rate vs accuracy enhancements figure into these? Does the enhanced duration apply to the magnitude too? Or just the length of time the effect is applied for? Obviously the accuracy is contingent on the accuracy of the powers and the probability of applying the magnitude difference.

Any ideas?

PS: I think the whole magnetude engine sucks. It sounds like a really clumsy way of handling Control Effects, and explains why they have so many problems balancing them.

Could someone outline the strategy used quickly, and any tips for us wannabe raiders on Union who keep crashing the server with excess numbers?

Do the temps from Siren's Call have any attack powers that might be solid candidates? Maybe some of the top-tier powers?

[ QUOTE ]
They should just bin hammy as its no fun. (...) give players some thing better than a no fun lag fest of about 4 hours where the only thing your sure to come away with is a bitter tast in you mouth.

The Devs need to pull there fingers out of there collective [censored]'s and give the players a fun challenge.

[/ QUOTE ]

Damn straight. I would LOVE to talk to some of the devs involved, just so I could demolish their arguments and call them a bunch of imberciles to their faces. Having worked in the field of games development, the more I read and learn of Hami, the more I realise it is a cluster-fewk that they don't know how the hell to fix. It is textbook "how to ruin an RPG" stuff. I remember reading this guy's website ages ago on "how to build the perfect RPG" and at the time a scoffed and said "pshaw, that's so old and geeky." I find it sad that a modern RPG demonstrates all the text-book faults he listed.

[ QUOTE ]

Womble spoons are not needed so much, sure its an interesting debate, but the key is in getting the right people at the blob without the noise of 60 other poorly dressed heros without half a clue turning up.

None of this is anybody's fault but the devs btw. As i said after the first raid, when half the people didnt get a Hamio etc. Why the heck is the only end game encounter requiring more than 1 team so broken?

[/ QUOTE ]

I am inclined to concur, but really, anything where the cosmetic appearance of characters can make the practical business of killing a monster impractible is clearly and fundamentally flawed, and needs to be reworked. If they can't get it to work right, then removed. This isn't a "gameplay" issue, and everyone trying to look at it from that angle is WRONG and chasing a red-herring on a unicycle.

There may well have been "gameplay" / "strategy" flaws for us to learn from, but we'll *never know* because 5 mins of server side lag before a move fires off is a joke.

And as for all the other theories, all well and good, but really, what do you expect "organisation" to do when it takes 5 mins to fire off a power? A player can be dead several times over in the time it takes to respond to an order, and no amount of strategy or discipline can change that.

Secret 3 team raid with a good balance of players, try working with that, the teams in different combinations. Then you might be able to learn something without 98 additional players slowing everything down to a crawl.

The problem was the lag, I think. It was so bad it was impossible to get moves out with any sort of speed or co-ordination, and I couldn't see any singularities about in order to attack hami, dunno if the lag meant no-one could respawn them quickly enough, or if they all got drawn somewhere else, or what?

When it takes 5 mins between move activation and it registering, you have no way of responding to things quickly, and as I have no idea how the server prioritises input, etc - chances are some moves and effects were being calculated before ours were.

The key to it is probably playing smart and with small tight groups, rather than the "everyone and their dog" approach, which must've been close to crashing the server, and actually DID manage to crash my CoH client at least once.

While I don't want to tell the devs they should redo the monster, they SHOULD go about setting it up in a way that doesn't encourage over one hundred players to all crowd on it in one go, thereby freezing the zone.

While the monster being nearly unkillable might not be a bug, *taking 5 mins for a move to activate clearly is* - like it or not, if Hamidon causes players to act in a way that brings TECHNICAL issues, rather than play issues, about, it's gotta be changed, no two ways about it.

Woohoo! Go me! And expect to see my dark squid floating around Paragon in the near future!