Chaos_String

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Either way, it's you who has the silly sense of entitlement: that you can join a team and be so unilaterally concerned with your own playstyle and refuse to adapt to those of your teammates.

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This is so dumb it's ridiculous. Last I checked it wasn't the /kin characters running around telling people to 'taunt plz' or whatever.

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I get asked to do specific things all the time. Playing a tank, I get asked to pull AVs, herd up a room, or just generally put myself in harm's way. The announcement "Indy is lead tank," implicitly is the same as, "Indy, go get hammered by those 2 stacked spawns of +4s plz."

Nobody asks me to "taunt plz" because they don't need to. I hold aggro without being asked to hold aggro. Just as nobody asks my grav/kin to "SB plz." Because they don't need to. I just SB them.

Maybe as my tank, I should turn off my taunt aura and just let the pissy, selfish kin get plastered to the floor every time he tries a fulcrum shift (which, according to his own words, he does to maximize his OWN damage and fun, not mine or anybody else's.) And then maybe he would speak up about the fact that I'm not holding aggro--as he should.

Just as I'm right to remind him (once) to SB the team.

This whole debate is ridiculous, and I've been on both sides of the issue too. At one time, I would have sided with those who say, "I'll SB if I want to SB, and be vindictive/defensive if you dare to prod me for it." But I was wrong to have an attitude about it. I've publicly owned up to that mistake, adapted my playstyle, and become a much better kin.

For those who are so stubborn and self-centered as to cling to their excuses for not buffing, change must come from within, or not at all. Perhaps some folks just aren't cut out to take pride in a support role, or to play unselfishly, even if they can still be front-and-center 7/8 of the time.

Let me conclude my arguments by saying that I find such players irksome, especially when they're belligerent or conceited in addition to being poor team players; and that I am not given to suffer fools lightly when the star is mine.

I've offered my testimony in this thread merely in hopes that it will motivate some players to re-examine how simple and effective it is just to make the effort to SB everyone. If anyone has ever truly been on both sides of this issue, it is I.

So, for the final time: kins, SB your teammates.

I use shift+lbutton because it's easy for me to grab shift with my pinky.

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Illusion/Kinetic here, and i'm not so bad [censored] I dont need to SB people, I just plain old dont want to be anyones buff bot so they can flex their muscles even harder and be the teams big star. No you do not get to suck up my FS then bemoan how i'm not maximizing YOUR playing.

I simply dont care if your getting the max outta your play because i'm busy getting the max outta MINE.

The sheer entitlement is simply silly. I'm not playing the game to make your pimped out scrapper easy and fun to play, i'm certainly not playing so you can flex and say "See how awesome I am?".

I will simply have to accept I'm a horrible buffer, but then again I didnt make the Illusion/kinetic controller to be a buffer, I made it because "I" would enjoy playing it and maxing out what "I" can do with MY controls and damage.

It simply isnt my job to make your play experience more fun and easy for you any more than its yours to make my controlling and damage better by expecting you to play micromanager with YOUR powers for my explicit benifit reguardless of how much it sucks for you and your fun. PERIOD. No exceptions.

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And it isn't my job to let you play on my team, or to finish my ITF/STF/LGTF/whatever. If that's your tude brother, you can go play by yourself. *kick*

Edit: perhaps one day, instead of being jealous when someone whom you've speed-boosted "Flexes their muscles even harder" and becomes "the team's big star," you'll realize that team play is cooperative, that everybody's job is to help everybody else, and that the big stars wouldn't be shining nearly so brightly if it weren't for you.

On the other hand, you may never come to this realization, or even if you do, you may never be satisfied with it.

Either way, it's you who has the silly sense of entitlement: that you can join a team and be so unilaterally concerned with your own playstyle and refuse to adapt to those of your teammates.

The best way to use Shield Charge is to walk into the group so that AAO is saturated, giving you the full +dam buff, and THEN use Shield Charge. This means you basically teleport to right where you already are.

You can't exactly remain stationary; you always teleport, but you can just aim the power at your feet so that you don't actually go anywhere.

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Chaos, it wouldn't look bad for any Kins.

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What wouldn't look bad?

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Why? Well I'll ask you this. Do you need or want SB?

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I do fine without SB. And if I'm not getting it, I don't ask for it more than once. After that I'll just snap to the fact that I'm teamed with a poor kineticist, and play without SB.

I'd never design a character not to be self-sufficient, or to rely on specific buffs. I'm a soloist first and a team player second. But I'm a good team player when I team, and SB is a huge force multiplier, so most of my toons are significantly stronger with it, especially the ones with really powerful buffs or attacks which are on long(ish) timers--like Shield Charge, Buildup, Fortitude, AM, Full Auto, OSA, RoA, and so on.

Sure, kineticists bring more than just SB to the table-- in fact, I expect them to do a whole lot more than just SB. But if they don't SB, then a different buffer/debuffer (even a different kin) would very likely bring more to the table.

Like I said before, in my post on pg.2 of this ridiculous debate, my first 50 was a grav/kin, and at first it really bugged me that people constantly pestered me for SB. And I was defensive about it. And I told people that if they bothered me, I'd never SB them. And I explained all the things I was doing instead of just SBing them, and how important those things were.

But at some point I turned a corner in my understanding, and realized that keeping up the buff on everyone is right up there with Fulcrum Shifting when it comes to the impact I can have on teamed play. So now, I save all the angst, and just take the time to keep people SB'd (within reason--I don't chase people around or follow some jackass who won't stay with the group).

Watching buff icons isn't hard. They're color-coded. The emerald green one that matches the color of half the buttons in my tray, the one with the big ">" on it, is Speed Boost. I can tell at a casual glance whether someone has it or not, when it's flashing, and when the buffs need to be refreshed. And I refresh them, without being asked. And therefore, nobody ever bothers me about it. If they don't have it, they know they'll get it shortly if they just stay on task. They know this because I give them no reason to doubt it.

I still do crowd control, kill bad guys, throw Fulcrum Shift, and heal the melee fighters when they're hurt. But I know that SBing teammates is a high-priority task, and I'm not slack about getting it done.

And that is the way a kin should be played on teams, no matter what else they're bringing to the table. And the ones who think that they're so badass that they needn't bother SB'ing teammates? Aside from being arrogant, they're wrong.

That's odd. Mids is usually spot on. Did you leave out the Steadfast, or turn off Weave?

2 lvl 50 defense IOs in Weave will give you 1.93% So, yes. But 2 Cytoskeleton HOs would give you 1.9% and reduce the endurance cost of Weave by 0.13 end/sec.

Alternatively, you could slot Power Thrust with 3 Explosive Strike for 1.88% ranged def and a 1.5% global damage buff.

Edit: yes, your calculations were correct.

By the time you get AoE defense of any kind, Vahzilok will all con gray to you, even the AV.

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Why play a kin if you don't wanna SB people?

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To have fun?

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It's fun to play a support class and not support?

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Hell, just from this comment alone, I feel like rolling a Kin, taking SB and not use it once.

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Actually I think by doing that, you would be emulating an awful lot of the kinetics players in the game these days. I've played entire TFs with */kin controllers who never, ever speed boosted anyone, even for AV battles. Unless they were asked, and then they either got snarky, or just speed boosted the one person who specifically asked.

The snarky ones are usually fire/kins who think that they're more powerful than their 7 teammates combined.

While playing my 50 BS/SD scrapper, I was invited to a farm as a fighting 50. Normally I don't care for farms, but the fire/kin who invited me was an old friend I played with years ago, so I joined. We split the map, me going up one side and him going up the other. I had a lowbie SK'd to me, who happened to be a kin with SB. So the lowbie followed me and just kept SB on me, did nothing else.

Not only did I rip up my side of the map faster than the fire/kin, but cleared the top of the map and met him part-way down his side. This was a purpled-out fire/kin who has been farming for years and AFAIK, was well-regarded as an efficient farmer. And I didn't just outpace him once, but two times in a row.

So, to all those who say, "Why should I SB youse guys when I can just kill everything myself?" I say, "SB me and I will show you."

So, again, to the kins out there: SB your teammates. It's probably the biggest difference you can make.

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At 50 basic

Recipes 20
Salvage 50

At 50 maximum
Recipes 29
Salvage 80

8 tickets per salvage and 75 for bronze roll (45-50)

The basic level 50 requires 1900 tickets, the maxxed out 50 requires 2815

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/em bow $$ say Thank you, Catwhoorg!

So 1500 tickets is enough to "fill" a level 50's recipe and savage inventories about 1/2 to 3/4 full. (Assuming no "cherry picking" with the rolls.) Is that comparable to in-game content? Excluding farms*, with a typical team, is it common to max out a level 50's recipe and salvage inventories every couple of missions? (Assume you completely empty them when they get full.)

*Because we already know that farms give very good rewards. And because we're not allowed to build farms in the MArch, it would be appropriate to compare MArch to farms.

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Re: recipes

Your analysis ignores the fact that the "regular" content will provide pool A, pool B, pool C/D (if bosses are present), purple (if mobs are lvl 50+), and common IO recipes. The MA tickets in your analysis are generating only pool A recipes.

Re: salvage

The "regular" content generates a mixture of common, uncommon and rare salvage. The tickets in your analysis are generating only common salvage.

[/ QUOTE ]Can you give me specific percentages?

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Nope. If the actual drop rates have been made public knowledge, I'm not aware of it.

Pretty much everyone holds up better against Skulls and Outcasts than they do against Vahzilok.

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At 50 basic

Recipes 20
Salvage 50

At 50 maximum
Recipes 29
Salvage 80

8 tickets per salvage and 75 for bronze roll (45-50)

The basic level 50 requires 1900 tickets, the maxxed out 50 requires 2815

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/em bow $$ say Thank you, Catwhoorg!

So 1500 tickets is enough to "fill" a level 50's recipe and savage inventories about 1/2 to 3/4 full. (Assuming no "cherry picking" with the rolls.) Is that comparable to in-game content? Excluding farms*, with a typical team, is it common to max out a level 50's recipe and salvage inventories every couple of missions? (Assume you completely empty them when they get full.)

*Because we already know that farms give very good rewards. And because we're not allowed to build farms in the MArch, it would be appropriate to compare MArch to farms.

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Re: recipes

Your analysis ignores the fact that the "regular" content will provide pool A, pool B, pool C/D (if bosses are present), purple (if mobs are lvl 50+), and common IO recipes. The MA tickets in your analysis are generating only pool A recipes.

Re: salvage

The "regular" content generates a mixture of common, uncommon and rare salvage. The tickets in your analysis are generating only common salvage.

Yes, my BS/SD defeated the Kronos Titan in that mission, too. It's just an AV, and cons as one in the target window.

Debuffs don't break fear. Attacks do.

My first 50 (Chaos String) is a kin, and boy did I ever hate "SB PLZ!" Just all the whining at me, as if I didn't have better things to do than SB everyone all the time. I mean, I can control stuff, buff team damage, do damage of my own, heal people... the list goes on and on. "I will speed boost you when I get around to it, and if you whine, I don't SB you at all!"

And then, one day I realized that on solid teams where players have strong builds, there is literally nothing better for me to do than make sure I keep everybody speed-boosted. It's just such a huge force multiplier. Blasters nuke more often and get back into the fight faster. Scrappers get some scary attack chains. Emps can fort more people. Debuffers can throw out more debuffs. Tanks get their self-heals back more quickly, can taunt and attack faster.

So I bloody well SB everyone, as nearly all the time as I can manage. I can still do my own thing. Keeping one buff on 8 people isn't really that time-consuming. I still get to do crowd control, and help kill the bad guys, and you can bet I'll never pass up a good Fulcrum Shift. Even my powerboosted heals for >600hp in an AoE have their correct time and place.

But I've come to realize that SB is really very high in the pecking order of things I should be taking care of.

Very few kins, especially new kins, realize this--chiefly because they don't want to realize it. They like to think that whatever they're doing on their own is having more impact than adding 2 SO's of recharge to every single power of 7 other people. (Along with giving them another copy of Stamina and making them totally immune to slows.) I don't really need to iterate how absurd this really is, though, right?

Kins, if for some mysterious reason you're over here in the tanker forum reading this, keep your team SB'd. Seriously. You do NOT have better things to do. Trust me.

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The idea of the Defense was that with the 15% Already there, its like a Free Parry. And that means I have one less parry I need to maintain and can take an Alpha better (I like to Tank with my scrapper)

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Yes, but you will need 2 Parries on top of your other defense to reach the softcaps (45%) to melee and lethal and floor enemies' chances to hit you with those types of attacks.

For most PvE situations, 1 Parry will give you some very sturdy defense, especially with all your cool powers like Cloak of Fear and damage resistance and Dark Regen backing it up. In fact, I'd say that in most normal situations 1 Parry will be ample for you.

But if you maintained stacked Parry on top of all those things, you would be virtually indestructible by melee attackers or by lethal damage. So I thought it would be a good idea to plan out single-parry and stacked-parry chains that you could transition into according to the circumstances.

I'm really only an expert on BS/Shield and I don't use Parry at all unless I switch to my leveling build for exemping down pretty far, but I know that for your build, it's something you definitely want to make room for in your attack chains.

Well, you don't really need the AH -res proc in Whirling Sword. But you DO want it in Hack, and Gladiator's Fury in Headsplitter. You also want damage procs in every attack if possible.

You might consider relaxing your recharge a bit and aim for a

Hack > Headsplitter > Hack > Disembowel > Parry

chain for when you only need 1 Parry, transitioning into a

HS > Hack > Parry > DE > Hack > Parry

chain for when you need more defense. This will greatly reduce your +recharge requirements, which should allow you to slot damage procs into every attack, (preferably 2 in Parry), and -res procs in both Hack and Headsplitter.

That's going to be the best bet for you. While your build chains Hack > Headsplitter > Disembowel very nicely, the attacks themselves are missing a lot of juicy procs, and then the chain loses all its potency if you're just swapping in Parry for every other Hack. Better to plan for Parry being in there, relaxing the recharge, and getting the procs into those attacks.

I have very little experience with Dark Armor, so I'm not really qualified to tear apart your build, but believe me that although your chain is pretty tight with all the recharge, it's going to stop doing decent damage pretty abruptly when you start leaning on Parry. It just doesn't have the -res and damage procs to perform well under those circumstances.

It just occurred to me, however, that this is pretty obviously a blapper build with as many melee and PBAoE attacks as ranged attacks, and as such, will get a lot less mileage out of softcapped ranged defense than purely ranged blaster builds.

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Yes, but the only way I can find without using a PVP 3% defense IO is by slotting stupefy into energy punch.

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Forget about Stupefy. (-3.13%) Move Mako from Power Thrust to EP. Slot Power Thrust with 3 Explosive Strike (+1.88%). Move 3 slots from Thrust over to Short Circuit, slot Cleaving Blow (+0.63%). Add 2 slots to Combat Jumping, slot 2 lvl 50 +def IO (+0.87%).

This hits the softcap. It uses 2 more slots total, but Short Circuit needed 3 more slots anyway, so in effect you're saving 1 slot. Thrust still does what it's designed to do (and does it better), and the highest DPA attack in the entire build is now slotted as an attack.

Seems better to me.

Clowns. Funny, silly-looking circus clowns that will stomp the [censored] out of you if you aren't hella careful.

It's all about the clowns; if you wanna impress me with your custom mobs you better come correct with the bozos kid.

Just kidding. I have enjoyed some of the clowns though.

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I really liked the Butterfly Effect

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The first one was good. Not five-star material, but good. The second and third suffered from sequelitis. Nothing new, or particularly fun in them.

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and welcome to Arxhtect Entertainment,

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Aeon has good comedic potential. I enjoyed it too, but it wasn't the sort of arc that impresses me greatly.

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and turgs Ghost arc is one if my favourite arcs in coh, canon or not.

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Agreed. Easily, far and away the MA arc I enjoyed most. That's actually the one I was thinking of when I referred to an iconic plot that, while not especially original, hadn't been done in CoX. It was extraordinarily well-executed, nuanced, and emotional without being maudlin.

I've enjoyed most of the DC arcs I've run. And I did run yours, Caleb, although frankly I don't recall it being one of my favorites.

What I'm looking for in a story arc is something that the developers either haven't imagined or haven't seen fit to give us in the "regular" game. The Devs seem to favor telling little bits of backstory or filling in blanks they've left in their own creations--in any case, using Dev-created NPCs seems to be a prerequisite for making the DC cut.

But that's really not what I'm looking for. I'm looking for something thematically different, iconic, or compelling that the devs haven't offered us. Not just apocrypha to the CoX canon.

That is to say, I appreciated the one horror-themed arc I ran just because it was bizarre and unsettling. I enjoyed another arc because it had an iconic plot: while not especially original, it was something that I haven't seen in CoX so far.

The devs have given us substandard tools, relative to the ones they use. We can't recreate an ITF, let alone create something more epic than an ITF. We can't make maps. And what maps we have are subject to a great many limitations.

We have very limited file size to work with, as well.

I use ITF as an example, because I remember my first time running it, hacking our way through Roman legions, coming around a corner into a bowl canyon, and seeing the 5th Column mega-robots under construction, and just was beside myself. "Oh snap!" It was very cool.

Totally stale now, of course, but awesome the first time around.

We get very few tools to compete with "Oh snap" moments like that. And the devs are taking the few we have away, little by little. Custom critters are all well and good, but they seldom invoke "Oh snap!" (Although some of the AV/EBs I've fought have come close.) So that leaves iconic plots, compelling dramatic or comedic moments, and... well, very little else.

I'm presently working on a story arc inspired by the short stories of H.P. Lovecraft, simply because CoX hasn't offered us anything remotely like that. But actually implementing the story outline I made in a series of 5 missions? Frustrating as hell.

My idea is that the arc is a simulation, testimony provided in a murder case, allowing you to relive a sequence of events experienced by a certain hero. In the first mission, you are to experience his first meeting with an iconic ally. I had conceptualized it this way: the two meet in college, where they are both students by day, heroes by night. So naturally, I pulled up the college basement, and made it a free captive mission, right? For a first meeting, yes?

No. Because you can't free a captive in the university basement. You can fight a boss, collect an object, but not free a captive. Or meet an ally.

So I came up with a different idea, using a different map. And it was a pretty good map: an alleyway above a dock in Mercy Island. (This time they were both young collegiate Midnighters who hadn't met one another just yet.)

But again, no dice. (This time because I also needed a collection, to introduce a very, very dangerous book.) No collections are possible in the Mercy alleyway. So I tried making it a destructible object, but... that wasn't really what I wanted, and I didn't like the way it played...

..and frankly I'm not happy with just putting it in an abandoned office and calling it good. It's an iconic encounter. It should be in an iconic location, one that isn't so ubiquitous as to nullify the sense of macabre and the unknown I was working so hard to create.

Edit: and don't get me started on the fact that Hydra tentacles can't be manually selected from the list of Hydra enemies like virtually every other type of enemy can be. Oh no. No. You have to go with random Hydra enemies, and try to hedge them into the appropriate level range. And then you hope for a spawn of mostly tentacles with only a few Hydra men mixed in. Bloody well absurd.

So I've gone back to the drawing board, trying to revise my story outline. Just because of the absurd limitations of the tools I've been given.

What I'm getting at is this: no, I don't care for most of the arcs I've experienced in AE. Most of them just don't offer me anything new or compelling. Some of them do, but most don't. And I'm starting to see that my expectations have simply been too high.

I don't blame the authors; I blame the extreme limitations of the mission architect. And it's only getting more limited as time goes on and content is removed due to exploits.

One point I'd like to interject here for the OP and anyone else who is having survival issues with an Invuln:

Invuln is a hybrid defense/resistance set. As such, it depends as much on good defense as it does on strong resists--especially when it comes to FCEN damage.

Now, we're probably all clear on how Invincibility works, but just in case, it gives you a defense buff for every target in its aura, up to 10. The aura is basically a melee-range aura, so in order to max out your defense, you have to have 10 targets in melee range.

The thing is, for defense to be of any use, it has to be there BEFORE you get attacked. Willpower's regen buffs can come a second or two afterward and still do just as much good for you, but with Invincibility, the buff has to be there BEFORE you take the alpha.

This means jumping right into the middle of the most dangerous spawns.

Now, most tankers I've played with who are iffy on survival tend to approach a spawn hesitantly, maybe trying to pull with taunt, or edging their way up to a spawn in hopes of breaking up the alpha srike by only aggroing half the spawn at a time, or whatever.

If you are playing an Invuln, this is a huge, huge mistake.

For an invuln tank to be successful, you have to be decisive and very confident that your defense will come through for you. And you have to try to get as many targets in melee range as you possibly can, before they wake up and start attacking you.

If you are playing this way, there is really very little in the game that you can't handle. And if so, I'd chalk it up to overpowered custom critters in AE missions.

Buf if you're having trouble in regular PvE too, then either your build is very wonky, or you're not being decisive enough when it comes to leveraging Invincibility.

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Ma was nerfed again today. Now tickets are limited to 1500 per mish no mater what. Personally I think this is terrible and I won't be AE'ng it anymore unless it's a friend who wants me to check out their arc. No recipes, no salvage and now tiny ticket amounts have gone to far attempting to stop farming. My biggest concern was for the really good toons out there that can handle hard mish's and now there is no reward for them doing those hard mish's.

I believe it to be so funny that these attempts to stop farming are taking place when they still allow "farming" channels in chat. Isn't that a blatant disreguard for the farming rules? Why not deleted them. How about all the farmers who charge people for pl'ng. I know many have been reported but nothing is done to them.

Instead AE is being nerfed because of farming and it's just been nerfed to far now to even bother with AE anymore. : (

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AE is the sacred cow for the developers because their professional reputations are riding on it. It is the only thing of its kind in any MMO, and while it was in development I'm sure a lot of people were rightly skeptical that handing the keys to game content over to the playerbase is a lot like handing a monkey the keys to the company car.

In the end, if AE turns out to be a source of endless new content for players to enjoy, then the developers are geniouses; and if it turns out to be little more than a huge exploit that kills the game, then they're a bunch of idiots who have no business running an MMO.

So it's easy to see why they are quick to err on the side of caution when it comes to the whole "exploit that kills the game" thing.

Seen in the light of comparison to PI/TV farming, it's pretty clear that they are being unjustly single-minded in their attempts to stop AE farming, but they clearly have their reasons for doing so.

Just did an AAO-saturated test on my BS/SD. Took down the pylon in 5:53, which calculates to 236DPS.

...and just did a test with only the pylon in range. 8:40, or 201DPS.