Carnifax

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So, what's the busiest US server? I need to make travel plans.

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Freedumb.

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You misspelled it.

Virtue is also very well populated, but on the other side of the continent.

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Assuming that we're talking about Behemoths' here then yeah, I always feel a bit sorry for them as well. They just stand there waving their arms in the air and flinging their ineffectual fire bolts in a rather pathetic fashion while we just mow them down.

The Behemoth Overlords are even worse. They look really hard but they're basically wusses. On some maps they cause more trouble by blocking your view of the dangerous stuff than by actually attacking.

Poor behemoths. They really need a buff.

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They got one already (well a fix), that annoying Invun aura they get which makes them a right pain for my Necro MM if they get going.

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Who's worried?

Sometimes when the apocalypse happens the best thing to do is sit back and enjoy the fireworks...

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I'm not worried. I'm also not convinced at all there's any sort of apocalypse going on whatsoever, unless reorgs are considered apocalypses nowadays.

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At least with Nova form blasts you can make the knockback useful by floating above them and turning it into knockdown.

[/ QUOTE ]Human Form peacebringers can (and, in my grumpy elitist opinion, should!) do this with Combat Flight, too.


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edited for.. like.. you know.. 'shades dont get combat flight..

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Yep, which is why I never take Dark Detenation on a Shade, and by the same token would avoid the PBAOE of Solar Flare. Hell I avoid using Grav Emittion on most teams because of the knockback. Even when it's into walls they'll tend to end up in a long line against the wall. When I do use it it's generally to knock stragglers back into the middle of the ruck (or add a fresh spawn in if I'm going through Eclipselock ).

I'd feel cheated if I could only use my AOE Damaging power in such a way that it will only hit some of the enemies, to keep from scattering them all around the shop.

The Col is correct, EMP has a Recovery crash, not an Endurance one. In other words your Blue bar stops recovering End for a while but doesn't get wiped like it does with Blaster nukes (Knightly is also right, EMP takes some End off your enemies too)

As long as you remember to switch off your toggles (which you won't need anyway) it's fairly easy to handle.

On my Grav/TA alterating the holds is a great way to mulch through mobs. On an Illusion/Rad I'd say its less useful since they're PBAOE, and Illusion has 2 other excellent crowd control tools in PAs and Spectral Terror.

I'd probably still pick up EMP though and forgo Flash.

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KB is great mitigation when solo, but on any half good team it just tends to slow things down.

Just be careful the first time you solar flare around a footstomping brute and knock everything out of his footstomp range

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And any really good team will have learnt to cope with it and to react accordingly. Storm defenders and controllers might have a hard time getting a PuG of newbies because they are so strongly associated with knockback. Experienced players dont mind, because they know how to handle the chaos and to use it in their own favor.

This might sound arrogant, but if there are team leaders out there who would kick you for using Knockbacks, I would counter with if they cant handle a little knockback, then theyre clearly not up to my standards and I'd kick them in return.

Gale is a completely different animal however and anyone using it after level 10 should not only be kicked but taken out and shot.

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Thou shalt not take the name of Gale in vain (seriously, it can be really handy)

I struggle to see a situation where a PBAOE Knockback damaging power is consistantly useful. Even in Hurricane the knockback isn't handy at all even if you are playing Meatgrinder (ie pushing the enemies back into the center for the tank), its the Repel that's more useful.

Even on my Warshades nuke the knockback is a pain since although everything will be dead their lovely Endurance filled corpses are now scattered around the place making it difficult to feed off them.

At least with Nova form blasts you can make the knockback useful by floating above them and turning it into knockdown.

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Ah, well, usually when I say DPS I focus on AVs and the like, sturdy targets, I should've clarified that. Burst is what kills regular spawns, and on a team with good tempo it hardly matters what the secondary effect on your blast set is. One Howl is usually good enough per spawn.

I tend to view Sonic Attack as a second debuff set rather than a blast set though, heh, but that's just me.

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Me too. My 30-something Dark/Sonics is an AVs nightmare and I've got Howl slotted with Acc & Recharge over damage (Howl + Tarpatch is lovely)

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Ah, the trick with Sonic is the -Res. Calculate the DPS increase your debuffs add to your teammates, and consider it your own. Then you'll see that on large teams, Sonic Attack indirectly deals the MOST damage.

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I'm not sure that's true simply because Sonic has terrible AOE. I suspect Ice might actually beat it with their Blaster version of Ice Storm and Blizzard (plus a better Cone attack)

On a smaller team though where AOEs are less important Sonic rules. A nice tip with it is to target a teammate who pumps out lots of single target damage and attack the same target he is. They'll melt the enemy.

Personally I'd go Ice just because it's got a nicer balance of single target, AOE and some nice control.

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Actually, seeing FFM's post US side about trying to play there without his normal characters, money, vet rewards etc, I couldn't help but feel that that might actually revitalise my playing experience for me! I haven't logged in for longer than an hour for months, but starting from scratch again might actually hold my interest!

Yeah...probably in a minority here

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Starting afresh without the Vet attacks is horrible. I've a few US chars on an inactive account. I missed my Sands of Mu and Blackwand too much. I'd forgotten how horrible it is trying to level a Controller with just a Hold and an Immob.

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Maybe I'm just being nostalgic and associating a time without plenty of inf, an sg base, vet and booster pack powers galore with a time when the game was wonderfully fresh and new for me.

Either way, it does appeal to be that controller with just his hold. Especially if i rolled on Freedom and was able to team at any time.

I don't think i'd miss my mains much either, after all, I'm not playing them atm anyway!

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Yes but then you get a Freedumb After School Special team. I always feel very, very old when one of the team who've been dancing outside a mish for 10 minutes while the leader looks for one more* says "lol gotta go my mom wants me to do my homework lol"

*(which is another really irritating thing about a lot of Freedom PuGs, they seem incapable of operating at less than an 8 man team, even if it take 10 minutes of standing idle at the mish entrance to find one more. WE COULD HAVE FINISHED THE STUPID MISH BY NOW!!)

I think I'm getting too old.

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And would help them test them out to see if they are working properly.

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I think the problem there is they don't want Test to be unoffical PvP server and making IOs freely available there would sorta encourage that (or just plain encourage people to play on test server with uber builds and then moan when they got wiped)

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Because i can maximise the damage(or so i thought) from phantasm and gain more recharge. In the build i´m tinkering with i have 4 seconds of downtime on pa at 180% global recharge(perma hasten).

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But Phantasm doesn't really need the power itself to be recharged quicker (which is what those sets are for), he rarely dies.

I'd love to know if the slotting of things like End Mod or Knockback sets to boost the speed a pet / pseudo-pet attacks at is an intended operation of those sets or if they're going to be changed in the same way as the Intensive Recharge sets (well not in the same way currently as Castle made a mess of that and it obviously wasn't tested properly).

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But i need the global recharge Thats why slotted it.

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Ah, I see, sorry.

I'm uncertain on the usefulness of Forced Feedback in Phanty (or any pet really) compared to a nice vanilla Knockback/Recharge. Someone brainy do the math for me.

Note that (as far as I can tell, and I did do more testing last night with a pseudo-pet) if you can slot the Henchies with an i11 Set IO (things like Defense Debuff, ToHit debuff etc) any henchies which use powers which have that effect will be speeded up by the recharge.

For example slotting a Lich with ToHit Debuff/Recharge set IOs will speed up things like his Dark Blasts & Fearsome Stare as they have a -ToHit component. Real Numbers backs this up (and I did some tests with End Mod/Recharges in Lightning Storm which did decrease the amount of time between blasts and thus gave me 14 blasts when I'd expect 10 in its 1 minute duration)

With Thugs slotting -Defense/Recharge IOs will have a similiar effect on any of their shooty attacks which have a minor -Defense in them, or for Grave Knights speeds up their lovely Sword attacks

I'm still really unsure if this is intended or if Castle is going to fix this in some shape or form in the future.

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It's in his carnie arc. You have to kill a bunch of demons (actually pratoreans) to empower a magic item, or some such guff.

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Poor little demons.

They never hurt anyone (well apart from the souls of the damned, but they were asking for it) and you lot are using them like Duracell batteries.

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Actually, seeing FFM's post US side about trying to play there without his normal characters, money, vet rewards etc, I couldn't help but feel that that might actually revitalise my playing experience for me! I haven't logged in for longer than an hour for months, but starting from scratch again might actually hold my interest!

Yeah...probably in a minority here

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Starting afresh without the Vet attacks is horrible. I've a few US chars on an inactive account. I missed my Sands of Mu and Blackwand too much. I'd forgotten how horrible it is trying to level a Controller with just a Hold and an Immob.

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Because i can maximise the damage(or so i thought) from phantasm and gain more recharge. In the build i´m tinkering with i have 4 seconds of downtime on pa at 180% global recharge(perma hasten).

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But Phantasm doesn't really need the power itself to be recharged quicker (which is what those sets are for), he rarely dies.

I'd love to know if the slotting of things like End Mod or Knockback sets to boost the speed a pet / pseudo-pet attacks at is an intended operation of those sets or if they're going to be changed in the same way as the Intensive Recharge sets (well not in the same way currently as Castle made a mess of that and it obviously wasn't tested properly).

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The answer is obviously Illusion Control/Storm Summoning. With Hasten.

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The OP has already played a Stormie secondary though (although I agree, Ill/Storm is fantastic)

As far as the "What other secondary for the Primary I don't pick to go with Forcefield" I'd say Trick Arrow. Illusion & Grav both get complemented very nicely by Trick Arrow (although with Grav it takes a while to bloom).

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Level 18: Phantom Army ExRmnt-Acc/Rchg(A), ExRmnt-Acc/Dmg(19), S'bndAl-Dmg/Rchg(19), ExRmnt-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(21), ExRmnt-EndRdx/Dmg/Rchg(21), S'bndAl-Build%(25)
Level 32: Phantasm SvgnRt-Acc/Dmg(A), ExRmnt-Acc/Dmg(33), ExRmnt-Dmg/EndRdx(33), ExRmnt-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(33), ExRmnt-EndRdx/Dmg/Rchg(34), FrcFbk-Rechg%(34)
Level 35: Tornado Achilles-ResDeb%(A), ExRmnt-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(36), ExRmnt-EndRdx/Dmg/Rchg(36), ExRmnt-Acc/Dmg(36), ExRmnt-Acc/Rchg(37), LdyGrey-%Dam(37)


Sadly i need that recharge and i´m currently out of respecs.
Hope they will fix it as soon as possible.

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Why do you have it slotted in Phantasm? Knockback set IOs are nicer as they'll affect the speed it fires off its blasts (at least that's what a combo of Real Numbers and my testing of End Mod set IOs with Recharge in Lightning Storm last night suggest).


And for the record my test details :
Power Set : Umbral Blast
Power Name : Dark Extraction
Slotting : 1 level 45 Acc/Recharge/Damage Expediant Reenforcement

With this slotting ToHit rolls still give a base 75% chance of hitting same level minions (tested with Nemises Jaegar & Nemises Hussar)

Just used my alternative build to just slot my Fluffy with a level 45 Acc/Recharge/Dam IO.

Fighting same-level Nemises (both a Jaeger and a Hussar) the To-Hit chance was 75%. So it doesn't seem to be working at all at the mo. Which is rather annoying since I have one in my live build, and will be keeping his one for this secondary build.

On the plus side I'll get a nice little boost to my Fluffies once it gets fixed.

Hope they fix it soon

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Well NCSoft seem to be making statements to websites etc.
What about us customers?

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They do? Where?

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Oh my god what have I done?!?!?!?!

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You fool. You foolish fool. You unleashed the Puns That Should Not Be on the world. All is set to crash and burn in a groan-tastic Apocolpyse of puns and bawdy limericks.

(although Kudos on the last one Mumsie. How the hell did you come up with that)

Deceive is certainly excellent, especially early on. It's also the most amusing power you'll get probabl, depending on who you use it on. I love using it on anyone that drops an AOE Mez as part of their attack string (CoT Earth mages for example or, later on, Carnie Illusionists & their Flash attack).

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I've one either slotted in or ready for my Warshades Fluffies so I'll see if I can tell what effect it has. I'd that the Col is correct though and its a screw-up from the Recharge fix.

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Cheers Carni.

That's what I'm guessing is wrong too... in blocking Recharge Inheritance they've blocked ALL inheritance (any stuff slotted in a summon power usually affects the powers of the pet(s) as well as that summon power).

Hopefully they can make this like the Purple Set so that JUST recharge gets blocked (although there's an issue with the Purple Pet set not passing damage to at least one pet when exemplared - Photon Seekers).

Interestingly enough, in my Sonic/Elec Defender's Voltaic Sentinel the pet's powers are still affected by recharge that's inherited from the Endurance Modification Sets, but not the Purple Pet Set...

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Real Numbers still reports that the End Mod/Recharges I put in Lightning Storm are still reducing its time between blasts, but I may do some stopwatching to confirm that too. If so I'll never understand why more Stormies haven't picked up on it instead of focusing on Performance Shifter.

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I'd double-check your Masterminds if you've got these slotted in their powers. I *think* the way Henchmen slotting passes the numbers along is slightly different to normal (non-controllable) pets, but I wouldn't be surprised if this bug is affecting everything across the board.

Easiest way to check is to watch the pet tohit rolls on your combat tab. If you just have Recharge Intensive pet IOs in them, they'll have base accuracy (75% ToHit chance versus even-level foes). Damage slotting is working exactly the same way, so affected pets will be hitting at roughly 50% normal "slotted" damage.

My PA are currently hitting even levels at 75% (even though the power has well over 70% worth of accuracy slotted) and only inflicting Base Damage when they connect (100% compared to their "slotted" 197% Damage). Note it's only Recharge Intensive IOs that are affected, Other IOs/SOs/etc buff pets normally.

It's possible that this is confined to only the Illusion set. We really need more information here - the Recharge Intensive sets are both brand new so not many folk will actually have many of them slotted yet. The only reason I've been personally testing them is I've started IOing an Illusion/Empath since I13 hit.

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I've one either slotted in or ready for my Warshades Fluffies so I'll see if I can tell what effect it has. I'd that the Col is correct though and its a screw-up from the Recharge fix.

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The trouble with Flash is it also requires you to run into the middle of the spawn, causing you to die before the animation finished.

EMP Arrow >> Any Other Hold in the Game

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Fixed. Some people say EMP is better but I prefer the range of the Arrow version even with a smaller AOE (EMPs AOE is unholy)

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let all u sad doom saying idiots speak ur mind

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Except all the sad doom saying idiots have actually been right you mean?

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not really considering u lot said merits were doom.

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Have you seen the supply in the Auction House recently?

(not that I'm saying its pure doom, but its certainly made certain things rather hard to purchase)

I think basically this forum will be merged with the US, as it makes little sense to be running 2 (and always did). I doubt the servers will change at all (but I'd be happy if they did).

In other words I agree with Khorak, all they're doing at the moment is getting rid of unneeded excesses in their operation.

I would be a little worried for the French and German servers though in terms of what to close next.