ClancyClown

Nice, I was hoping there would be some new content soon.

Sorry to see you go, but I know what you mean. Fair winds and following seas.

Why not just post some times and see who signs up?

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Interested but anticipating wife aggro...hmmm

[/ QUOTE ]I've been wracking my brain trying to figure out how to pitch this to my wife without her becoming (more) convinced of my insanity. There is no way to package it in an accpetable fashion. Someitimes I miss the days when I was young and stupid and did stuff like this as a matter of course. Now I am expected to be sane and rational... On the other hand I will be intrested in seeing how this turns out!

Heh heh, that was a fun SF. And, it was was probably my only opportunitty to do an LRSF until I get around to leveling another villain to 50. I couldn't really inflict my MM on a fast team . (truthfully, FF gets old on large teams).

The lag was surprisingly tame for a full team with 3 MMs. Not at all like the old days.

That's what I thought. In any case, I'm game if you have room for a Robotics/FF MM.

Welcome back. I come back occaisionaly myself to sampele the new content.

We probably teemed at some point, your toons sound familiar, but its hard to remember. Stargazers SG is pretty familiar, I teamed with more than one member. I also recall spending a couple of hours leveling in Bricks with Pitboss and some other players (pre-Issue 1?), as well as doing a couple of missions. Pitboss was such a strange name it stuck with me.

Out of curiosity, are you going to be clearing the maps or just taking a leisurely pace and killing whatever stands in your path?

I'm not story driven, so it depends upon the overall structure of the side-switching mechanism. I would like to move one of my tankers red-side if only for balance. Likewise, Spinnaker finished all his lvl 50 arcs long ago, so a trip to red-side would be a welcome opportunity, but I would eventually want to bring him back.

How about lumping the history and exploration badges together under one tab and using the newly freed tab for those pesky crafting badges? As it stands now, the history badges are pretty thin.

A lot depends upon exactly what you typed in. Bind is pretty complicated and this guide doesn't really address /bind. You should check out some of the great /bind guides listed here: Guide to Guides. My personal favorite bind reference is still The Incomplete and Unofficial Guide to Bind.

I recommend that you first read through the guides to get a basic understanding then build some simple binds and macros using the standard keyboard commands. Once those work, you can set up the G15 to prevent you from having to remember weird keyboard combinations.

Hmm, maybe they don't want to tip their hand to the spammers? Mystery is fine with me.

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The problem would be people claiming his SG has an unfair advantage when others learn they have a dev on board.

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A much more real problem would be getting pestered by players thereby ruining his gaming experience. Who wants to bring their real life work to a game?

I've heard of favoritism from GMs in other games (it probably happens in all MMOs), but I would imagine favoritism from a dev would be a lot more rare. Presumably a dev would have to use his Dev avatar to do anything not normaly achievable in-game, and that would be very traceable. GMs are supposed to be able to do stuff in-game, so figuring out that it was an act of favoritism might be a bit more easy to hide.

Great job on the event.! It was fun, and I hope to see it back again soon.

Wow thanks, great news. I was beginning to think you guys had gone off the deep end.

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This system is SEVERELY broken in the way that it encourages and rewards only the most "uber" of Uber Guilds, and leaves smaller guilds (and individuals) completely in the cold.

[/ QUOTE ]It seems to me that, except for the current accounting problem, the system is actually OK. Even a small SG can get the basics within a few months of dedicated play (working ,teleporters, crafting tables, and reclimators), unless their toons are lvl 25-40 (but that’s a different problem).

Additionally, the advantage afforded by defensive corridors and the like are relatively small. Base defense really comes from the players, not from the fancy equipment. You don’t have to have the best of everything to have a raid capable base. Just the players needed to defend it. (Limiting the number of attackers/defenders to 8 for a raid on a one IoP base would be a good idea though).

A large SG with 4 items of power will be at a relative disadvantage to the smaller/newer SGs with 1 or fewer items. The large SG will have a smaller list of possible raid opportunities since there will be fewer SGs with the same or more IoPs. At the same time that SG will be raided more often, and by a larger variety of SGs. They will struggle constantly to keep their stuff. That’s the way it should be.

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Do the resistances stack and apply to all debuffs?

[/ QUOTE ] Yes.

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I agree wholeheartedly with the spirit of this proposed change, but I think that it misses the primary problem with Defense-based sets (in PvP at least): the overpowering nature of toHit buffs. With a single click, an unslotted Aim, a moderately slotted Build Up, or a heavily slotted Focused Accuracy/Targeting Drone negates an entire Defense-based line, even fully 6-slotted.

[/ QUOTE ]Understood; we're still working on this.

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The message is really good news. The message behind the message is even better. I am glad to hear that you haven’t put the defense based sets into the ‘finished’ pile. Thanks for keeping at it.

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Hibernate (Tanker and ancillary): Reduced its End Cost. Your toggles will not drop. It has a Recovery Boost. Fixed(improved) its Cast time. You can only stay Hibernated for 45 seconds.

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If this is the only change then this represents a major and inexplicable nerf. At least with phase shift we can leave it on as long as needed. On the other hand, if we can continue to taunt or otherwise affect mobs through hibernate it would be a major upgrade.

So the question is, are we being buffed or nerfed here? A bit of clarification would go a long way so we know to be jubilant or despondant.

Circeous, please check and see what you get by comparing the issue IV ice to the issue V invulnerability. You understand the spreadsheet better. I may have made an error here. This is just plain silly.

Just for fun I plugged the Issue IV numbers for Ice into the spreadsheet. Guess what... Invul still wins for everything but Ice. Even if ice were left alone it would stay at the bottom of the heap. Why does Ice need these nerfs?

Will a red name please explain? I am a bit confused here.

Well, no dev response since the 26th. They are probably too busy with:
A. Getting Korean version of COH ready
B. Working the COV alpha and preparing for the Beta
C. Fixing issue V stuff for the ATs that have more players

This does not bode well. They will eventually fix it, but it could be a very long time. Reminds me of Mind Contollers, weak from the day of release, got nerfed into near oblivion with the increases to mob hold resistance (and AV immunity), and didnt get buffed until after issue 2. Saw the same pattern with DA scrappers, their end usage is still silly in issue IV. If the pattern holds, fixes won't be made until nearly every ice tanker now being played has made it to 50 or been deleted in disgust. The Devs are performing triage and there just aren't enough ice tankers to get their attention.

One possible solution, which I think I have seen elsewhere:
Do two passes for Bosses and AVs. The first pass would be the usual hit check. If its a hit, a second pass would be made to see if all or a portion of the damage is taken (some of the attack misses, or slides off). This would work nicely for the autohit powers as well. The damage could be made 'chunky' to retain the feel (e.g. 25%,50%, 75%, or 100% damage). The problem of course is that the Devs probably don't have time to code and debug this kind of a change given A, B, and C above.

Sigh, I will enjoy playing my Issue IV Ice tanker, fragile as he is, while I await the issue V hammer to shatter him. Hey how about those sonic and archery sets? Can't wait to try em on live...

Bleh - no more underdog power sets for me.

Statesman,

Thanks for setting us up with the thread, and thanks to whoever put endurance recovery into EA, it was badly needed.

The accuracy adjsutments should help everyone adjust to the 'new' game, and it is appreciated. While we have your attention, please examine the variance in survivability between Ice tankers and the other sets. The gulf is still quite large. With the exception of malta, a well built ice tanker will underperform every other well built tanker set by a large margin. The reasons, listed previously in this thread by many players, include:
* Large number of defense debuffs/accuracy buffs
*Availability of luck inspirations to mimick (and even exceed) our power set
*Lack of cooresponding resistance inspirations to mimick resistance tanker powers
*All or nothing nature of defense, and the AV one-shot
*Severe endurance drain from running large number of toggles (probalby fixed by new EA)
*Susceptibility to fire in addition to toxic and psi

There have been many suggestions for fixing Ice, including:
*Adding more resistances
*Adding some sort of area accuracy debuff
*Adding some sort of area damage debuff
*Remove permafrost slide all the powers down a notch, and add a cool lvl 32 power
*Have Eneragy Absorption buff resistance rather than defense
*Give defense/resistance to psi and/or toxic
*Adding ablative armor
*Translating damage into DOT to give Ice a chance to recover

As far as the individual powers themselves:
*permafrost - This power clearly needs to be reworked into something useful
*hibernate - A lvl 32 primary power that is inferior to the lvl 20 pool power phase shift.


My thoughts:

Energy Absorption
First off thanks for the endurance recovery! However, when EA was changed to hit only 5 targets, Ice tankers complained about the limited number of targets being drained and the reduced taunt factor. Clearly the COH staff listened. Reducing the defense buff/mob, and increasing the number of mobs to achieve that buff to 15 would seemingly solve the broblem. And it does, except this severely aggravates the Ice Tanker AV problem. Although we can start a battle with an AV surrounded by minions, inevitiably the minions, lts, and bosses are gone long before the AV. This means that the Ice tanker will be casting EA with one mob in range at the time he most needs the defense. Ice tankers are already well known for being squishy around AVs, this will further exacerbate the problem.

I think most of the ideas for 'solutions' in this thread have merit. One thought I had was to remove permafrost, slide all the other powers down, and give ice a power similar to granite, only oriented more toward defense with a little resistance, you could even call it permafrost. This would solve several problems, but would of course introduce new ones. Another possiblility would be to turn permafrost into a 'click' resist all power which would solve most of the problems.

At a minimum I would like to see:
Reduce the vulnerability to either psi/fire/or toxic so we have two weaknesses like the other sets
Address the extreme number of def debuffs with no ability to mitigate
Address AV one/two shot problem

In short, i would like to see ice brought closer to 'par' with the rest of the tanker sets. I don't expect the pecking order to change, but it would be nice to not be so far behind.

In any case, if you are going to leave things as they are, or just do minor tweaks, please explain how Ice is the (near) equal of fire, stone, and invul. I would be really interested in knowing the build we can use that helps Ice match the other sets.

Thanks

Awesome job. Small correction. One of my entries should read:
Spinnaker Spines- Invulnerability

Not Regeneration.

Also please add Dark Siege- (with the '-') to the lvl 50 Warshades list

It would be extremely helpful if the global chat documentation were more easily accessible, perhaps a hyperlink in the features update anouncement. Hint hint..

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they need to make this trial MUCH harder. the sewer trial is over the edge. this is wayy under the bar.
{SNIP}

but this was definately THE FUNNEST mission i've done to date.

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Heh heh, win it and then make it tougher for the next guys even though it was fun as it is? It is fine as it is, with a good mixture of fun and difficulty. The guide definitely makes a difference here. Won it once, lost it once had great fun both times. The only change I would like to see is a wider level range allowed lvl 39-41 can make it too easy to outlevel.