Celidya

I usually hate the "what's the best blabla" threads as they tend to be pointless, however this one seems like an interesting question, and i sure asked that myself a few times, but i couldn't come up with a good answer.

So, i'm trying to think about what would be the best incarnate trial character, i mean, a character that would really be helpful to any itrial out there, and help filling the gaps that are common in random trials. The point would be to run them and farm astrals/empyreans with a character that is comfortable to play, and can make any itrial feel like a smooth ride by bringing useful stuff to the raid.

I think ideally it should:

-have debuffs that work well on the AV we face. I'm thinking regen, and offensive debuffs mostly ? Most of the damage comes from gimmick attacks that no amount of debuffing will reduce anyway. So allowing more damage seems more useful than trying to debuff the AV damage.

-some buffs and heals to bring survivability, maybe even a rez

-enough damage to be able to solo some objectives and/or hold my own if the team is failing hard

-clairon + tactics for UG

-good survivability

-anything else i forget ?


So far the best character i have to play on trials is an Ill/Time controller, and the more i think about it, the more it seems close to what can be the best in there. It has enough damage to manage some of the objectives (like BAF prisoners), it can take alpha and tank a bit with the pets for tricky situations, it has good buffs and useful debuffs, and it can survive pretty much anything with a softcap and some resist. However, it's really lacking serious -regen and a rez.

I feel rather useles on my brutes, scrappers and other offensive ATs so, they seem out of the question as they only bring damage, which is usually not enough in the harder trials.

What are your thoughts or favorite characters to run through trials ? Any idea on the character you would love to have in any itrial ?

In the database editor i see 15/07/2012.

I tried a few builds and so far only Phantom Army seems to be an issue, it doesn't work with any Alpha, no matter what build i use, specs, etc... I checked in game and the alpha works fine on my Ill/time. I'll report that on the Mid's forum i guess, as the recent update didn't fix it. It doesn't seem to be a known bug, unless it's somehow linked to the temp powers recharge bug.

Edit: well, registering is disabled on the Titan network forum. Sigh.

(I am Nastya, somehow i messed things up and used a very old account instead of the good one)

Thanks for the answers already The issue i have is that Alpha indeed shows its recharge bonus on Phantom Army, however, the actual recharge in Seconds doesn't change. It's not recharge capped at all as even with no recharge from anything but Alpha, it doesn't work.

On a new build with nothing i can pick Phantom Army and slot the incarnate Agility, it shows 33% recharge in the power but it stays at 240sec. Other powers update as usual though.

ANy idea if there's a workaround or a way to fix this through the database editor ? Seems like i won't be able to make an ill build until it's fixed My database version is July.

TW/DA doesn't seem that bad, i did some testing after PLing my tw/da brute and dropping about 1500 incarnate threads on him, with mostly Obliterations in the AoE (and overall bad end red on most powers), i'll rely on the agility alpha (or whatever is the english name) with 45% end mod, 33% rech and 20% defense, as well as the endurance destiny buff, it seems lighter on endurance than my spines/dark so most likely to be a lot more sustainable.

That said, my standard for endurance is quite bad as i don't aim for soloing AVs with no insps, at some point my spines/dark spent more end/sec than she could recover while sitting idle, thanks to the great amount of toggles... so the destiny buff alone was enough. On the TW/DA i have about 1 end/sec recovery after all the toggles (and i run a ton of them, including CoF, tough, weave, maneuvers..) so i consider that good enough, with a few blues if needed for long fights.

I sure won't purchase that stuff, however, to give more precise "feedback" if it matters.

The issue is NOT about having something interesting for every player every week. I don't care much if what's on the store isn't interesting for me each week, however, i'd just like to see the good stuff being released instead of getting pushed back in the hope peoples will buy the other junk meanwhile.

The only decent thing (and i mean, stuff that looks worth its price and worth a weekly release) for the past 3 weeks has been the autumn aura for me. While i didn't buy it as i'm not interested, i'm actually fine with it and it's a decent item in the market.

The undead survival kit was an insult to anyone's intelligence, the dog is almost as bad though it had at least some dev time behind to justify 1/10th of the price (as i'm sure they'll release dozens of other useless pets on that rig to make some profit out of it anyway). Vanity item ? Hell i'll sure don't forget to make fun of anyone buying them and make some comments on the beast to make sure they think twice about buying such things later. They'll have a run for their money on being the laughing stock if they want to feel unique. Good thing, i've only seen one today on my server, and most of the peoples on the server chat were already making fun of it and adding that to the pile of useless stuff to avoid buying.

Though i'm just wondering what's the point currently: infuriate and alienate the VIP playerbase while making some profit on newcomers who don't realize the real value of such stuff ? Because right now releasing such "deals" while on top of that providing awful support and updates full of bugs is quite a sure way to do it. And each week i see more and more regular players disgusted and angry at the market.

So yeah for the very first time since i play this game i went from being confident and appreciating the Paragon team to feeling the same as in most other games. So now i just hope that the other new game coming out in december will drive all the free players and compulsive buyers away and bring some reality check to Paragon Studios when it comes to which part of the playerbase is worth pleasing, and where they'll get the money in the long run.

At least make some "sales" and use common sense for marketing, or just pretend to not be such a bunch of greedy marketing guys, because right now the only thing i get out of that shop is that the team behind it doesn't deserve ANY cent that i don't find necessary for what i really need. That's pretty much like these little shops were you step in, grab the only item you want then pay and leave fast with a bad feeling because you know you just got robbed and had no other choice, rather than the friendly one where you feel like staying a bit and look what's on sale because it looks nice, it's priced fairly and the seller is friendly enough. Not exactly a good feeling and hardly a viable plan once all the "buy it now" crowd will move to the next game with all the cool kids on it, imo.

I guess they plan to put the fun stuff they have once they run out of crap to add before it. only issue with that mindset, at least for me, is that i'm beginning to think about playing something else while waiting. A ridiculously overpriced dog that does nothing but follow me around isn't exactly what i'm looking forward when it comes to "new content"...

The least thing they could so is to put some kind of monthly calendar like the weekly TFs so at least it's not a new disappointment every week. It gets old.

I think ill/time is quite awesome as a melee controller, one important thing to keep in mind is that, more often than not, max range doesn't help illusion as the pets tend to run back or stop attacking. I found myself often having to jump and run past the mob group so the mobs are on the way between my pets and me, and the pets can then aggro the mobs... until somehow the fantasm starts picking his nose.

So with ill/time i went for the melee controller route... and it's quite epic so far, i'm used to just "tank" stuff, i teleport straight into the spawn then take the alpha while the pets run up to me and by the time the group/league can catch up i gathered a nice pile of debuffed mobs who barely hit anything else than me or my pets. The point is to take advantage of the unique ability of illusion controllers to aggro and gather up to 5 or 6 times more mobs than any tank, thanks to the pet aggro cap.

I think time juncture is a good asset to cover the melee defense hole and focus IOs on soft capping ranged/AoE, which is great as there is little melee def on the desired sets for controllers anyway.

After much thought i'm currently planning that respec build, with the crazy idea to keep the softcap to ranged/aoe without Power Boost, adding one AoE to the build (it's too frustrating without) and a patron pet on top of that for more pet goodness, so i can have 8 pets without temp powers and make fun of masterminds Oh, and Water spout for even more chaos.

Here's the build if it can help any melee ill/time, i'll respec into it in the next days, though it's based on full incarnate and no exemplar of course:

Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.952
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

No Titan Weapons yet ? So that leaves pretty much the path aura for anyone not dumb enough to buy for real money some IO sets you can get in a day or two of playtime at lvl 50 considering they're average at best. I guess the price of those will be worth a laugh though as usual. The whole Paragon Store and the marketing plans behind it are really a shame. The only decently priced items are powersets and some of the costume pieces. It's beyond me how anyone can buy some IOs that aren't even worth putting on the market because they're crap anyway. I guess i'll start giving them for free on my server channel instead of deleting mako's when i loot them, at least it will save some players' money.

Whoever is behind that should get some serious reality check, or play the game for more than 2 hours before joining the marketing team, seriously. This would be like selling common white no-stat vendor armor in your average fantasy MMO for real money. Anyone i talked in game about the shop only makes fun of it and of the total non-sense it can be. Most of the junk between 100 and 800 points would barely sell at 20 or 40 points for a laugh or to finish a build here and there, i won't even comment on the costume toggles and stuff like that, that's a dead horse. If you really want to sell some stuff at least put some dev effort behind it and come up with something that can somewhat pretend to be worth it instead of aiming to rob the newbies with such "deals".

Just stop playing in +0/x1, problem solved. With +4/x8 the judgement powers aren't enough to one shot everything and most "normal" factions will put up some decent challenge for the average team.

Don't be so quick on the Spine burst vs Spin. I have both a spines/dark and claws/dark and i've been hesitating a loooong time between both, and which one to make my main scrapper. Claws/Dark is awesome AoE in AE farms with 50 mobs piled around you and... that's all. In a normal +4 x8 spawn or incarnate trial spawn, the mobs are scattered over such an area that Spin will at best hit 3 or 4 of them.

On the other hand, Spine burst hits 7+ constantly when jumping right into the middle. Add to that the cone, claws one sends mob away and can be hated by the team, while spines one can be spammed easily.

So yeah, claws has better damage, but with such restrictions it's most of the time faster to clean mobs one by one than to hope to gather them into Spin tiny AoE. Radius is the main stat to look for on an AoE because Spin could be one shoting bosses for all its worth, it would still hardly hit more than 3 mobs in normal play, while i can easily wipe most of a spawn on my spines/dark during the alpha strike.

For ST dps, while still far from competitive, i found the reactive proc and the invention procs to help enough on spines to not feel such a shame when trying to finish a lonely boss. The Ripper => impale attack chain is not that bad, so even if it didn't improve at all compared to the other sets, it improved enough compared to the mob health bars to feel somewhat decent. At least enough to make me feel my spines/dark was a much better scrapper all around than my claws/dark, who couldn't AoE more than 3 or 4 mobs in most of the normal groups/tfs/trials where mobs die in 3sec flat and before moving two feet.

I had for a long time a recharge oriented build (up to about 120% global rech + hasten on top of that), and though it wasn't on a dark/dark but a spines/dark, it wasn't that effective for survivability. The issue was not to recover the lost health, but simply that the alpha strike from a large spawn was often enough to either outright kill me before i could heal, or hurt so bad i had to heal at the same time, and the second round would kill me the next second.

After switching to 80% rech and s/l soft cap, it's not even close, my survivability went through the roof. I don't think defense debuff is that bad, i consider that more as an additionnal layer: if defense fails i can still use the usuall /dark armor strategy involving jumping in/out of melee, kiting, spaming heal and breaking LoS to wait for debuffs to wear off. But most of the time i can kill stuff before it kills me, which is all i need.

So i'd advice going for defense over recharge

While the idea is rather well thought out, i don't really like the idea of turning CoF into a clicky power for several reasons:

-the visual effect, it's actually the main reason i take CoF on all my DA toons: floating ghostly skulls coming out of the ground around me ? Pure win. Actually the aura could do absolutly nothing at all and still cost 0.52 end/sec, i'd still take it for the visuals, that's how much endurance doesn't bother me with any decently build toon
-i don't think DA needs more clicky powers. Dark regen is already a fairly long animation, as it was stated above, on top of forcing redraw and being a "rooting" animation. With such a power the beginning of the fight would be, jump in, fear, then dark regen to recover from the alpha, then start to attack, that doesn't really sound great. On top of that it doesn't help with attack chains, build up, etc.
-stacking it with presence pool would be a bit much IMO. A scrapper/brute/tank with pbaoe fear potential greater than most controllers ? Not counting the Dark melee fear

Not debating the value of the fear itself but, such changes would mainly bring some survivability, which DA doesn't really need, as pointed quite often, it's one of the most well rounded sets and in a good spot in terms of survivability compared to other armors. DA is a good powerset, it has no huge resist hole, no OP strong point (hello 90% res farming), and a bit of everything for potentially the best scaling out of all powersets as it doesn't need a whole lot of something but mixed buffs to shine, exactly what is easily provided in general team/raid environement.

I think if the auras have to be changed (and again, they are probably the only powers to deserve a change), it should be in the area of utility and efficiency rather than mitigation itself.

The glaring points for me:

-we should have an incentive to use both auras and get some benefit out of it, they're rather high tier and signature Dark powers, i can't think of any other set in the game with two key powers being mutually exclusive/overlapping like that
-they should be interesting enough to be serious picks to consider, but not mandatory enough to be forced: they're not key elements to the set survivability and they have never been, making them a cornerstone of the powerset would be too much i think, especially as they are both visually intrusive and do not fit all players
-their slotting potential should be balanced, as stated above, currently CoF is a "many slots or nothing" power and OG is pretty much a one slot wonder unless going for a stun set bonus.
-they shouldn't bring more mitigation or stacking with other powers than they already do, as they already do it well: greatly reducing the damage coming from minions and offering stacking potential is not something to underestimate. OG allows any crappy mag 2 stun from primaries to one shot stun a boss, CoF allows to passively turn all minions into "nothing" if you cut your damage aura and stop using AoE. That is awesome synergy with Dark Regen and allows to take on a boss with capped heal power and very little added damage provided we pay attention to keeping the fodder alive and feared

I'm not sure how to achieve that, though i think it has to be in the theme of the set: small effect with a single mob, great effect with a crowd. I think it should be something like a stat buff, as devs seem to like it these days, for the amount of mobs in the auras. Nothing as critical and powerful as the specialized sets based on that. How about a little To Hit buff per target withing range of CoF ? Minor Endurance reduction buff per target in range of OG ? Something like that, which would require no huge change to the powers (visual, animation), nothing really noticeable in end game with full IOs and incarnates, yet helpful enough to make it smooth for the leveling process.

While probably not doable, i would love some special mechanic, something like, each target affected by CoF and/or OG triggers some combo point, and each one of them reduce a bit the endurance use on Dark Regen, rewarding the player for using all the tools and stand in a crowd where DA is as its peak performance, however it's highly unlikely to happen, and would be a lot of work/change for something that isn't really needed anyway. If some dev power has to go on existing powersets, there are much more critical issues out there, as it was pointed above. DA is already in a comfortable spot in the food chain of defensive powersets.

One key element to think about as well would be to reduce/remove the negative effects of the auras: OG tends to scatter the mobs, CoF might occasionally make them run a bit between their cowering phase, or stay on the spot while the player moves. That doesn't fit too well for a melee set where most players will want the mobs to stay around them and come into melee.

JayboH: for the endurance, please consider one thing as well: most powersets have a native endurance recovery power, that's why DA appears so "bad" sometimes, let's take a look:

Dark armor: Nothing outside of tier 9 involving a death
Electric armor: pretty much infinite endurance with a lot of tools
Energy aura: same
Fiery aura: consume, very effective
Invulnerability: nothing, tier 9 is barely better than DA self rez has an endurance recovery tool
Regen: Quick recovery
Shield: Tier 9, lack of hard crash makes it decent
SR: same as Invuln, no real tool outside of tier 9 and the crash is prohibitive
Willpower: quick recovery
Ice armor: Energy absorption, hibernate
Stone armor: special enough to barely fit in there because of the granite special mechanics


So out of 11 defensive powersets (i don't count Ninjitsu as it's stalker only, and the power changes make for a whole different story for stalkers), 7 have innate endurance recovery tools they can use without huge penalties. 6 of them have virtually infinite endurance because of clicky powers to restore all their endurance.

By design DA doesn't have any real endurance recovery power (Tier 9 is about as much of a little gimmick for that as it is for Invuln and SR) and it's one of the 3 only sets designed to have that weakness. It is, however, the ONLY single set in the game able to have such a huge HPS with a single power, and it's the only set with Regen who can heal several health bars in a single fight. The only other set without a real tier 9 designed to keep you alive is Fire, which isn't exactly a survival reference.

That said, i really think that, yes, the endurance usage is balanced. DA can't be compared for that to sets with innate endurance recovery tools: if DA didn't have the need for some blue outside help, it would make powersets like electric armor quite pointless because these sets not only have lower cost with most of their powers, but they have special powers designed to fill their blue bars. They trade utility, CC or massive heal power for that luxury to spend the blue with no limit.

If an armor set needs help, that's SR, as it combines the lack of heal, the lack of endurance recovery, and a rather random survivability with a high end cost as well. Dark Regen is not supposed to be spammed, it's a costly "heal !" card that needs to be used with proper thought and not abused unless dedicating enough ressources to make it possible. And unlike SR, DA can achieve great survivability and performance. Invuln is in a pretty good shape as well and it doesn't have endurance recovery either. And oddly enough, most of the powersets with infinite endurance and no blue bar issue will drop on the floor well before a well played DA toon.

Balance ? It's there, and that's exactly why DA doesn't need a "buff" or a nerf: it has limitations, it's not perfect, but someone picking DA makes the choice to have powerful tools and no health issue, but to depend on the blue bar for survival, as much as someone picking EA or ElA makes the choice of going all out and never worry about endurance, yet they'll have to play more carefully with their health bar.

And that's the beauty of diversity, some players will prefer one or the other, and nobody will be forced because of concept as you can turn anything into a dark blob and add enough electric auras and stuff to make DA look like something else. And honestly, with more than HALF the powersets having recovery tools, and only 2 of them really having endurance woes, i'd rather have it stay like that. Some peoples like to have some challenge and not just run blindly into stuff. It took me 3 years of tinkering, building, saving, respecing and thoughts to come up with a build with no endurance issues for my spines/dark scrapper, that made me more proud and happy of the character than any other character i ever had. That's the kind of stuff that should stay in the game. Don't remove the challenge and diversity, anyone who enjoys the playstyle of Dark Armor will find a way to make it work. It can be done ! It's not even that hard. Anyone who doesn't like it anyway will move back to other powersets and not give it much thought.

Oh yeah, and if it even matters, DA is probably one of the worse sets in PvP i think.

That said, i strongly support the change proposed above: lower the animation time of auras. This might as well be done for the whole set. The amount of time a DA toon with pool powers has to spend toggling up after a death is quite ridiculous Or just allow them to be cast on the run in PvE zones.

Seems like someone messed up, April's fools is NOT in November.

Mastermind Mastermind: you summon Masterminds who then summon their own Masterminds who summon Masterminds who...

Oh joy, another 10mn story arc and some useless single costume part... Way to "pass" on a week of fun content.

I agree with PleaseRecycle, if anything this thread only shows that the issue is not with Dark Armor but with some specific players and especially that dark regen is fine overall. So what's the point now ? Get some dev attention on a fine, fun and challenging set and have it nerfed to the ground to fit the casual free players who don't want to invest a single cent into the game and learn its mechanics ?

Dark Armor is the only armor set i want to play, all my melee characters are /DA for a reason, it's one of the most fun melee defense playstyle i've had in any game and it's part of what draws me back to CoH most of the time. So it can't be *that* bad, and i'd say it's far from nerf worthy as long as we have some ridiculous powersets around like fire armor or shield. And that last one is probably in the same category as well, as far as i remember shield with SOs is pretty much a worthless end hog compared to a fully slotted lvl 50 shield toon.