Chompie

Man, I think these sorts of things all the time. Especially when they say "I hope my children grow up to be just like you!" My heroes aren't exactly what you hope your kids will grow up to be.

I mean, ALL of them have perfect snarky responses, up to "I killed my parents"


Yaaay, Steelclaw list! ^^

Brilliant!
The only problem is the messiness that comes along with the forum's inherent hatred of edits. Cause you can't edit a post after X amount of time.

Still, this will be an excellent resource! I might have to help.


EDIT: Wh-... huh? I did a search and only found 22 threads started by Steelclaw in the last two years! That can't be right.

Hehe!

Destined to Die --- Assumed Longevity
Scantily Clad --- Overdressed

I.. can't remember any other characters right now!

To elaborate- At level 30, you go talk to the City Hall Representative (for heroes) or your beginning contact (for villains)

Right? I think?

And even Assault Rifle!
Buckshot, Grenade, Flamethrower, Ignite, and Full Auto all affect multiple targets.
Pair it up with, say, Mental Manipulation or Fire Manipulation and you get a couple extra area powers to go with it!

My Fire/Mental blaster spends about half her time throwing Area attacks around.


Really, a big consideration about an AoE build is not always how *many* Area attacks you get, but rather how strong, fast, big, and early-to-get they are. Fire Blasters can get Fireball at level 2 and Fire breath (so strong!) at level.. 4? 6?


Or maybe you want to do something a little different with an AoE-Heavy character! You could pick, say, an Ice/Fire tanker! I have one of those too- I spent a lot of my solo time going through hazard zones like Crey's Folly and wiping out big spawns of Nemesis to level up. Good AoE power despite being a Tanker.

I'm going to stop typing now.

Ooooh, fun!

Scantily Clad: Ms Fanservice, Combat Pragmatist, and... wow, it's really hard to find these when you're not just bumping into them while browsing. >_<

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Awesome Blossom (Plant/Kin/Psi) has gotten some compliments (and she isn't even scantily clad!)

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I can always count on someone to say that!
My favorite character name- Scantily Clad :3

Destined to Die is another pretty good one, but really, how can you beat that name? You can't!

... I love you.

This is the right thing to do. Whenever I'm on my stalker, I try to make a mission team (though it rarely works out, oh well).

Anyway, yes. VERY yes.
You even got Nethergoat to be relatively nice!

I think Mynx is pretty low on the trainer totem pole. When asked "where does nobody go?", Skyway City is simply ignored. Because nobody cares about it. Not even enough to say that nobody cares about it.

Wait..

Maaaan. Namechange is my favorite forum functionality on every forum. But no more! Yuck.

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(QR)

IRL, I love night. I stay up all night. I hate day.

In game? Screw night. Messes with the colors of my costumes and generally annoys me.

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This.

Night lasts forever, when you want to take a screenshot in decent lighting.

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Quoted for freaking truth. I hate it when it's night time in game, because it's all like "Let's just tint everything dark blue. That'll be great looking, yeah. >_<

And it's especially bad in Wentworths' where the consign..ers.. and walls and such look fairly daylit and all the players are still in darkbluelighting. Yuck. I'm okay with darkness and night-time, but nighttime just using arbitrary tinting on all models is obnoxious. Though I confess that I enjoy watching buildings light up as the sun goes down. So nice. :3

I rarely run AE missions, but when I do, it makes me soooo happy that I don't have to see the dreaded bubbles.

"MY SIDEKICK IS 47 FEET AWAY! MY SIDEKICK ENTERED THE ELEVATOR A SECOND BEFORE ME! OKAY IM OUT OF THE ELEVATOR NOW! MY SIDEKICK IS PICKING HIS NOSE! MY SIDEKICK IS EATING A CHEESEBURGER!"

AAAAAAAARGH!

Of the ones you listed, I would say Dominator fits your wanted characteristics. Their damage right now is pretty anemic, their damage after the Issue 15 patch should be pretty darn good (except for endurance issues of painfulness).
Their playstyle is odd but fun, one of them can add a good chunk of protection and damage to a team (a stopped or dead enemy is a harmless one).. Mind Control is a particularly fun set from the early levels- I'd reccommend that, it rocks.

Every single AT is fast at leveling if you're on an 8-mans team. Solo-wise, Dominator... should be middle of the road.



However! I also think Blaster might be a good choice. Half the teams searching for people call them useless for teaming, and the other half are the FUN teams who like blasters. Ludicrous damage output, with an extra-special excellency in AoE and sudden burst damage. They really do help a team run well, it's just that not everyone realizes it. Funny how it works, a Damage class being underappreciated.

Blasters are smooth and fun in the early levels, and get more challenging to play well as you level up. Solo, they level.. variably. You will find some missions retardedly hard, and others a breeze, but generally a good pile of inspirations can get you through the tough times.



For your other choices-- Controllers... okay, this is just my opinion, but they are completely and totally no fun until high levels. And I don't actually like them in high levels either, they're just slightly less poopy. Everyone else swears by them but I.. no. No controllers if you wanna have fun at low levels.
Scrappers.. Good damage output, some are pretty fun from low levels, but.. I don't ever hear "this team needs more scrappers" unless it's sarcastic. You can get on teams, but it's pretty rare when a leader actively seeks out freaking scrappers.
Masterminds... I don't like playing them either. You don't hear "This team needs more MM's" either. I have little to say about them.

Well, I'm certainly switching my Ice Armor to white. So much nicer. And my blaster's fire shield epic is gonna be blue or green or dark red instead, because tinted fire is SPIFFY!


Hrm. Interesting arr pea alterations from color customization, eh?
I wish I had some good ideas, but I suppose they'll come in time. They always do.

PloughKindly (If you know what I mean)

Prissy_Kinda (lulz i insultz joo)
PrissyKitty (It is so un-you that it WORKS! I like this one)

PugKnowledge (Oxymorons are fun!)

PreeningKiwi (Hee, kiwis are funny!)

PugnaciousKid (Well, not so much)


And PeaKay and PeeKay are pretty good too.

Edit: Boldly edited for clarity.

I liked My First Rommy Strategy.

I flail around and pull rommy around the room like I'm crazy (of course). Scrapper who somehow has scrappertaunt taunts a fluffy thing into combat with him.

Rommy and I stand twelve feet from each other and engage in an epic eye-laser duel. Seriously, that's all we did for like five minutes straight while the rest of the team fought the fluffy things up on the platform.
Apparently, Rommy likes eye lasers as much as I do!

(QR)

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Does Anyone Else Think...

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Nope.

Next subject line!

When I decide to take a snipe (AKA not a blapper), I put interrupt reduction into it. This allows me to A: Point-blank snipe, or B: Start the snipe on a fleeing foe, and then leap back into LOS of it before the snipe does its second Line of Sight check, without interrupting it.

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Considering the entire point of "tl;dr" is to be obnoxious, one wonders what other acronyms fulfill this role. For educational purposes only, of course.

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IBTL
PEBKAC


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Parentheses, Exponents, Bultiplication, Kivision, Addition, Cubtraction?
IDK. IDDA.

Any power I can imitate silly samurai sounds with is a good finishing move for me. Heavy Mallet and Greater Fire Sword work for that.

On Blasters, pretty much everything is good for a finishing move, but I'll have to say that TK Thrust and Blaze are epic enough to do the job right.

And Vengeful Slice.. come on. Swordyuken! Win, right there.

And Fire Sword Circle. Whoosh, ominous spin, ba-FOOM!, everyone falls over!

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I do hope you continue. I learned more about set bonuses from this post than I have in a couple of months.

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Thanks! ^^
I kind of went on a giant public transportation nightmare yesterday, but now I am back. Should have some dead time tomorrow to continue.

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Did you make this post with FOE, or the old fashioned way?

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Right as I was finishing the post, I went "Is this beyond the maximum post length? Damnit, FOE does that, doesn't it? And it would have made all these damn hex codes and crap a lot easier! I need to remember to try that out." And then I didn't. @_@

My desk usually has water, and for an hour or two every two or three days, Vanilla Coke. Water is there most of the time, but delicious Vanilla Coke I ration because
A: It's not the healthiest thing ever, and
B: It's not as unlimited as water.

(QR)
On a barely-related note that this somehow reminded me of (like seriously barely related), I'd love it if Ties were an option for all upper body costume sets, not just jackets. I have a character who really should have the whole bikini + oversized tie look going on. Because it's hilarious.

.. Yeah, anyway, I agree that people can't make legs. I sure as hell can't when I'm drawing, though in CoH my characters' lower bodies don't look abominably boring. Still, more lower-body options would be soooo soooo nice. Doodads, man. We need more doodads.

I'm really curious about this. Since I first started using Set IO's, I've been kind of baffled at how hard it is to get certain set bonuses, and how others are common but give practically no benefit.
So, I'm going to give a vague overview of the current set bonus distribution (courtesy of Mids' Hero/villain designer), and then complain about how I deserve better Damage and Resistance bonuses.

[u]Let's start with Defense Bonuses[u]:
Defense bonuses generally come in three flavors: Melee/Smashing/Lethal, Ranged/Energy/Negative, and Area/Fire/Cold- Weighted with the positional being twice as powerful as the elemental defenses.

AoE/Fire/Cold- Almost always 5th or 6th in a set's list of bonuses. Averages somewhere around 2.5% per bonus.
Ranged/Energy/Negative- Almost always 6th in a set's list of bonuses. Averages somewhere around 3% per bonus.
Melee/Smashing/Lethal- Almost always 6th in a set's list of bonuses. Averages somewhere around 2.75% per bonus. There are considerably less sets that give this bonus than there are of the AoE and Ranged ones.

Using the Super Reflexes Standard, these bonuses are retardedly strong. Just one of these is like adding a full-on +Defense SO to an unslotted Super Reflexes toggle. 20% of a SR toggle. Not bad, not bad at all. Also, they're worth about 50% of an unslotted SR passive. Quite nice indeed.
Not quite so strong when seen from the Tanker's perspective: an Ice Tanker scoffs at their pathetic elemental defense bonuses (and then snaps them up anyway, where else are you go to shore up your Fire Defense or flail around trying to softcap?), but a Shield Tank still finds their Almost-one-SO of defense useful.

Keep in mind that Defense Set Bonuses become *more* visibly powerful the more defense you have. Each one you stick on makes you tougher to hit than the last, until you reach your friend the Soft Cap (45% defense).
Also keep in mind that it's pretty okay for Defense bonuses to be up to three times better than other Set Bonuses, because you really need one of each flavor of Defbonus to keep it rounded out. And because they're primarily 6-piece bonuses.


[u]Now we leap to Accuracy Bonuses[u]:
Accuracy Set Bonuses only differ in the amount of accuracy they grant you. The bonus goes into ALL powers that need a check to hit something. It's better with To-Hit bonuses to team with, but beefy accuracy makes most of your stressfull MISS!'s go away.

Accuracy bonuses are overwhelmingly present as 4-piece bonuses, though there are several that are somewhere else in the bonus list. 4-piece bonuses are wonderful, because your average Rare 6-piece Set has two recipes in the Task Force Drop pool. You can ignore those and still get the handy 4-piece bonus.
Most of your Accuracy Bonuses will come in the flavor of 7% or 9%. Most characters have a place where they can slot Thunderstrike, Crushing Impact (both 7%), Scirocco's Dervish, Obliteration, or Positron's Blast (all 9%). There are plenty of other Accuracy bonuses scattered throughout Mez and Buff/Debuff sets, but those are not always useful to put into your powers.

So, let's call Accuracy an average of 8% per Set Bonus. Because it is, so long as you ignore the seven purple sets that each add 15%. I mean, who cares about those?
So, one ACC set bonus is comparable to one Accuracy TO in ALL of your powers. Hey, that's not bad! Four of them gives you roughly 32% Accuracy to everything. The equivalent of the "golden standard of accuracy"-- one SO in everything that checks chance to hit. Wow, that's actually pretty impressive. With four Accuracy set bonuses, you can either remove your Accuracy Enhancements from most of your powers and still do just fine, or you can keep them in and be quite accurate even against the +3's and +4's that you folks seem to love so much.

In a word? Worthwhile.


[u]It's a bird, it's a plane, no it's Recharge Set Bonuses![u]:
Now here's a popular one. Recharge is extremely desirable, because it's a great benefit to everything but Toggles and Autopowers. And even some toggle powers enjoy it (like Hibernate!)
If you were to research how many people try to fit Hasten into their already tight builds, you'd understand.

Recharge bonuses are usually found in their natural habitat of 5-piece bonuses, though they are fond of migrating to 4-piece and 6-piece locations for special occasions.
Most Recharge bonuses are found in the 5% and 6.25% range, so I'm going to call it an average of 5.75% per recharge set bonus. This is, again, ignoring the fact that there are nine purple sets with +10% recharge. We all know they're broken. Why else would they cost so friggin much?

I don't have a whole lot to say about recharge bonuses. Yeah, they're good. I suppose it's worth noting that they have both diminishing returns (each bit of recharge cuts the time required for a power to recharge by less and less) AND totally-worth-it returns (a high-power attack chain or perma-insert-power-here is pretty good yes?). But I don't know what else to say about that. This is some fatiguing typing stuff, you know?


[u]Let's get right to Damage Set Bonuses[u]:
Damage Set Bonuses make me sad. Let me make you sad about them too.

The damage set bonus is a wanderer... never settling down, never finding a place to live. There's no place where you're really guaranteed to find one. They show up in Bonus Slot 4, in 5, in 2, and once in a while in slot 3. Nobody cares about slot 3.
Damage doesn't have the versatility that Recharge or Accuracy do. There are plenty of powers that have to hit something or have to recharge that don't directly deal damage. So, you could expect Damage to be pretty easy to stack set bonuses on, right? Wrong.
On average, a Damage Set Bonus will give you 2.5% Damage, maybe less. That is less than 1/3 of a single [censored] TO. Now, considering that my "holy generic blast setup" is something like 33% Acc, 33% End, 33% Rech, and 95% Dam... how in the hell am I even going to notice something so pathetic? I can use Flares, and the [censored] Defiance buff is more than twice that pathetic set bonus. And don't think that those precious purples will make up for it! Only 3 of them bother to improve damage (Ranged damage, pet, and cofuse. Really.), and you know how much they give? 4% bonus damage. Yippee. That's a whole half a TO. Not even.
Just pop a small red. It's ten times more effective than your silly set bonus.

Seriously, what the hell. Damage also diminishes like a [still censored]ing [censored]. Damage bonuses always add from the base damage. So, no matter how what your slotting or current buffs are, you're still getting like SIX extra damage from each of those set bonuses. On a NUKE. Froma BLASTER.
And if you get hit with Fulcrum Shift or something? Bye. Your puny damage set bonuses don't even count anymore, the +Damage Cap will see to that.

Okay, I'm done.


[u]Please don't throw fruit- Resistance Set Bonuses[u]:
Resistance already gets kinda shafted by inspirations. Apparently the Resistance Cap is more desirable than the Defense Softcap. Anyway. Letting the numerics speak here. Purples are, as always, ignored.

Fire/Cold Resist: Slot 3, 1.26%ish average, six whole sets use it.
Energy/Negative Resist: Slot 3, 0.8%ish average, three whole sets use it.
Smash/Lethal Resist: Slots 4,5,6; 1.4%ish average, three whole sets use it.
Toxic/Psi Resist: Slot 6, 1.26%ish average, seven whole sets use it.

The only single-element resistances worth mentioning (read: are in more than one or two sets) are Negative, Toxic, and Psi.
Negative: Slot 3-6, 3%ish average, 6 sets.
Psi: Slot 6, and a couple Special IO's. 3%ish average, 9 sets, and one Aegis Dealie.
Toxic: Slot 6, 2.5%ish average, 9 sets.

Why would I ever actively seek them resistance bonuses out? I don't have anything else to say, I'm tired of researching and typing and "thinking". Draw your own conclusions. (Hint: Resist Set Bonuses suck)


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So the question here is: WHY?
Why is damage so crappy of a set bonus, while Acc and Rech are so good?

Tune in later for when I remember to come back to this thread and add in +HP, +Regen, +END, and +Recovery. Then, I'll say that Mez Resist and Debt Protection are not worth thinking about! Then I'll complain some more! Or maybe I'll forget to ever finish this post! Maybe it's already past the maximum character limit! OH, THE POSSIBILITIES!

See you later, folks.

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[Curse of Weariness] lasts for 10.25s.

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Just like how Stamina lasts for 10.25s. So, not really.

Curse of Weariness is, like the Mystic Fortunes (and I believe the new Stalker Woo Im Scary Assassin effect), a granted Autopower. It stays on you, undeletable, for something in the vicinity of 5 to 15 minutes. And yes, it is pretty mean.

It's certainly possible to fight while it's on you, but you've got to be really, REALLY careful about it.


Now, if you were soloing Gaussian's arc like I did, that explains why you didn't experience it before then. Vanguard Sword Bosses (and not even all of them, I think) have access to Curse of Weariness. I'm guessing that the mission you were on had a named boss. Whether that boss scaled down based on difficulty or not, it has access to Curse of Weariness, and used it, and totally messed you up.



Actually.. I'm shocked I knew something that apparently isn't very common knowledge.


EDIT: And I'm pretty sure it doesn't directly set your END maximum to 50. It's either a -50points or -50% modification, cause I remember having slightly more than 50 endurance with the debuff on me.
It doesn't even need to change your recovery rate, because how much end per second you recover is a function of recovery rate *and* maximum endurance.