ClawsandEffect
-
Posts
7232 -
Joined
-
Quote:A few hours? It's rare that I manage to stay logged in from one post to the next anymore.Originally Posted by DarkGob
This is getting out of hand. I can't even stay logged in for a few hours now.
I had to log back in to make this post. -
Quote:My BS/DA scrapper rocks pretty hard on ITFs. It's partly because, as I mentioned, I can stack my melee/lethal defense into the stratosphere with Parry.Originally Posted by DarkGob
Dark Armor's mitigation isn't too helpful on the ITF. I took my Dark/Dark Brute through it once, didn't go too well. S/L resistance is mediocre for an armor set, the stun from OG isn't going to do much against most of the Cimerorans, who have mez resistance. I think the bosses can buff the minions to give them resistance against the Fear from Touch/Cloak of Fear.
Mind you, I still haven't come up with a satisfying build for my Brute. I'm sure whoever it is who trumpets Dark Armor as an awesome set (Dechs Kaison?) will come in here and say different.
Moderate S/L resistance for a scrapper and very solid defense makes him tough to hurt. If you do hurt him, he has a monster heal, and if you manage to kill him through those things he's going to get right back up, stunning the crap out of you in the process.
A softcapped DA tank does pretty well too. My wife has a DA/Fire tank that is built similar to Dechs', and he was unkillable in it. -
Super Reflexes is a beast in an ITF. It has so much defense debuff resistance that you literally have to be hit by 10 of them to even move your defense by 1%.
Shield can be pretty good too, if you slot Hami-Os in Active Defense you can get pretty close to SR levels of DDR.
Ice tanks are alright, as are Energy Aura.
Invuln is absolutely godly in that TF, it gets decent DDR and it resists 90% of the damage in the TF anyway, so the rare hit that gets through is barely going to tickle you.
And just about any secondary paired with Broadsword or Katana will fare pretty well. If you have a moderate amount of defense to begin with, you can get your melee/lethal defense into the stratosphere by leveraging Parry/Divine Avalanche.
Regen actually isn't the best bet. It has no DDR at all, and your ability to soak damage is very dependant on how much is coming in. The Cimerorans will be at 95% chance to hit you very quickly, and regen can't heal that much incoming damage fast enough to live through it. -
Quote:Carnies and Arachnos can have a significant amount of Psi flying around as well, depending on exactly what spawns in the mission.Originally Posted by StrykerX
Yes, but how many groups are all psionic damage? Psychic Clockwork are nasty but those only show up in a handful of missions and all-Seer missions are pretty rare too (usually you have IDF, Warworks, or PPD too).
And Arachnos are everywhere these days.
(Also, some Longbow Wardens with put a hurting on you with Psi.) -
Hmmm, great minds think alike.
I rolled a Dark/MA as well.
He's languishing at the moment, but I'll get around to playing him eventually.
I figured out a build that wil soft cap everything. And I do mean EVERYTHING.
-
Quote:If they don't already play the game, or any other NCSoft game, how are they to know they AREN'T buying the master account?Originally Posted by Silver Sanguis
I very much doubt that anyone who would buy CoX accounts would bother buying anything but the master account.
That's kind of the point when you sell an account to someone: You sell it to someone who doesn't know any better.
Ebay item listing would be deceptive enough that someone who wants to play the game but never has would be told they have the opportunity to purchase an account that already has numerous level 50 characters on it. They would NOT be told that it is attached to a separate master account which can later be used to reclaim (steal back) the account that was sold.
And since buying and selling accounts is against the terms of service of the game (and I think PayPal as well, because it's not a physical object and there's no way to verify that the buyer received the item sold), the buyer has zero recourse to get their money back. -
Quote:Yes, the devs read this stuff.Originally Posted by Mint
Do the dev's read this stuff were talking about, cause if so were giving them all good ideas here for a regen tank. They might actually make a regen tank cause of our discussions here. A few tweaks here and there and this set might actually be not only slightly sturdy but one of the better sets to see and play with.
The recent tweaks to Regen when they ported it to brutes were VERY close to some suggestions I had made back in December or January. And also very close to a number of similar suggestions I had seen over the past couple years. It wasn't a new idea, I just brought it up most recently I think.
It doesn't necessarily mean anything, but for the numbers to end up within 5% of where I suggested (and dead on with the regen debuff resistance) is a helluva of a coincidence. It's also possible that they were entirely unrelated and I just guessed damn close to what they were going to do anyway. *shrug* Who knows, it's highly doubtful they'll ever come out and say "Yeah, we got this idea from Claws.", so I'll probably never know if I had anything to do with it or if it was just a coincidence.
Arcanaville has had the devs use a suggestion or two over the years as well, most notably the addition of Elusivity in PvP. And probably a few more ideas that were never made public.
I'm sure there are other cases of something that someone suggested ending up in the game, but those are the only ones I know of offhand. At least a couple of the devs read the Suggestion and Idea forums on a fairly regular basis, they just don't post in it because any idea they post in would be taken as an indication that they're going to do it, and they don't want that.
But the devs DO read our ideas, and the mods and Zwillinger probably point them toward anything interesting if they hadn't found it yet.
(I still like EvilGeko's idea for a resistance boosting aura) -
Quote:There's a timer on it. Had you done it recently before you didn't get the option?Originally Posted by MAD UMLAUTS
SSA1
I run it on a villain toon that i have reinforced the alignment yet i dont get the option to get the v-merit. -
Quote:That's my guess as well.Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
My guess is he got an answer that he doesn't want to accept and if he told us what it is he'll get the same response that CS told him.
-
Consider a recipe like Luck of the Gambler +7.5% Recharge. You can slot it in any defense power and gain 7.5% recharge that applies to all your powers. And you can slot up to 5 of them in a build for 37.5% recharge to everything. That doesn't sound like much, but when you combine it with other sources of global recharge you can get some ridiculous recharge rates going and do things like make very long recharge powers permanent.
If we could memorize that recipe, we could just have one character that stood around making enhancements all day and pass them out to all our characters, and eventually everyone in the game would be completely IOed out because the recipes would have become worthless and anyone could pick them up dirt cheap.
The problem with that is, once you have X% of the population completely IOed and making a mockery of the hardest content in the game, the devs would have to re-balance the game around IOs being readily available to everyone, making it harder.
Why would THAT be a problem, you ask?
Because Free and Premium players are not allowed to use IOs unless they pay for the priviledge.
Being able to memorize recipes would have the end result of the game becoming one where you HAVE to pay in order to even make progress through the game.
That would completely defeat the purpose of the devs adopting the hybrid business model. No one is going to play a game that is insanely difficult because they can't use the thing the game is now balanced around. It's not going to entice people into paying for VIP status or IO access, they would just go play a game where they aren't expected to shell out money just to be able to complete a mission without dying 30 times in it.
It wouldn't kill the game, there would be enough VIP subscribers to keep it afloat, but it wouldn't grow the game either. -
Quote:Okay, here's the skinny.Originally Posted by kchammy
I hope I made this question clear enough to answer. In essence, I understand that getting a "1.65% resitance to cold" might be desirebale, but at the cost of a major damage potential? Im trying to understand why IO sets are such a great thing.
Somebody set me straight, and thanks in advance!
IO sets aren't such a great thing when you only have one of them in your build. Where they become a great thing is when you think about the fact that those bonuses will stack up to 5 times.
Now, most IO sets skimp a little bit on accuracy or recharge. You're only getting 38% or so accuracy out of the enhancement itself, but that set might contain a 7% or 9% accuracy bonus. And that bonus applies to ALL your powers, not just the one you have it slotted in. Also, set bonuses are not affected by ED.
So, if you have 5 sets that give you 38% accuracy in the power, and they all contain a 9% accuracy bonus, all 5 of those powers will have their accuracy enhanced by an additional 45% on top of the 38% the set provides. And any other power that needs accuracy slotting will get an additional 45% as well.
And that's just ONE bonus the set provides, most of them have 5 different bonuses that all work the same way.
Say you have a set that also gives you 68% recharge to the power when fully slotted, and that set has a 6.25% recharge bonus in it. 5 of those sets will net you an additional 31.25% recharge to any power that recharge will function in (practically all of them).
Now suppose the two set bonuses I mentioned above were both in the same set. The set gives the power it's in 38% accuracy and 68% recharge. But if you slot 5 of them, you are gaining 45% accuracy, 31.25% recharge, and 5x any other bonus the set grants. Say one bonus is 2.5% ranged defense and another is 2.5% endurance recovery. And rounding it out would be a 10% regeneration bonus.
So, slotting one of those sets will give you 10% regen, 2.5% recovery, 9% accuracy, 6.25% recharge, and 2.5% ranged defense. Not very impressive, right?
Now slot 5 of them into your build. Now you're getting 50% regen, 12.5% recovery, 45% accuracy, 31.25% recharge, and 12.5% ranged defense. Sounds cool doesn't it? You've more than compensated for the shortfalls of the set's enhancement values, and added other stuff that has nothing to do with that attack, like the regeneration and recovery bonuses to your character.
When you have a lot of IO sets slotted into your character, you can achieve things like soft capping defense on characters who were never meant to be able to, get long recharge click powers up to permanent status, gain insane amounts of accuracy in order to hit higher level enemies, and add recharge in order to achieve your powersets better damaging attack chains.
And in the process of doing that, chances are you will have more than made up for any deficiencies the sets themselves have through bonuses.
THAT is why IO sets are such a great thing: The ability to stack the bonuses from them to achieve things not otherwise possible. You'll never get a blaster to 45% defense to anything on SOs, but with enough IO sets, it's not only possible, it's actually fairly easy.
Make more sense now? -
Quote:Shield and SR. Or any other set that predominantly uses positional defense.Originally Posted by McCharraigin
Which of the Brute/Scrapper secondaries get the biggest bang for their buck using Touch Of Death? -
Quote:It'll be nice for those players who have the extra money, but only get to play a couple hours a week. As opposed to the whole "If you don't have several hours a day to devote to the game you don't get to have those things" we have had in the past.Originally Posted by Chad Gulzow-Man
I know what you mean. Touch of Death and Mako's Bite are both highly sought-after for min/max builds due to the defense bonuses they offer.
It's still not striking me as "pay to win," as I'm sure SOMEONE will say before the end of the week, but it's definitely shifting the current balance between those players with spare cash and those with spare time.
I only get to play a few hours a week and I'm broke, so it doesn't help me much.
I would LOVE to replace my BS/DA's level 50 Mako's Bites with these, that way I could keep my soft cap while exemped down to level 27. Not going to happen anytime soon though.
That said, the devs need to be REALLY careful what all they offer this way.
Example: Offering LotG +Recharges in this way would probably be a bad idea.
The cost is enough to deter people from kitting out entire characters with these versions of the sets, but if you really want to, I suppose you could.
It's not quite "pay to win", but it's getting dangerously close to it.
Edit: Purples and PvP IOs should remain in-game rewards only.
Making them account bound is a nice touch on them, it stops people from buying a bunch of enhancements and selling them in Wentworth's for profit. -
Can we PLEASE get the damned forum log-out bug fixed?
I've had to re-log in 6 times in the last 6 minutes, it doesn't even keep me logged in when going from one forum section to another.
I'm not one to complain overly much about things, but really, it's been almost 2 years and we're STILL getting randomly logged off, even when we click the "Remember Me" button. -
Broadsword/Dark Armor scrapper.
I made him back in the day to pair with my wife'e Ill/Storm controller (an odd but effective pairing)
I almost deleted him countless time while I was leveling, and needless to say, I'm glad I didn't.
Once I figured out his current build (which is softcapped to all positions with double stacked Parry), he became my go-to character for any new high level content, and became my in-practice main. (Claws is still my main, but my BS/DA gets way more playtime these days)
He's just a beast. I've outlived just about every tanker set there is at one point or another, and I can soloa large percentage of the AVs in the game with him.
I never thought that character would end up being so powerful back when I rolled him up, just because I'd never seen the combo before. -
Quote:In Integration, just like Brutes got when Regen was ported to them this issue.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Right now, its too close not to consider reexamining the set before porting to Tankers. You're going to have to do it anyway when you start deciding where to put the taunt aura, which the devs have all but stated must be there.
The taunt aura is already there.
Edit: I like EvilGeko's proposed IH change. Resistance per enemy in melee would be an interesting mechanic, and it would not only make Regen more survivable, it would also make it more unique. -
Quote:Can't do anything right at the moment, but I'll try and remember to throw you one in te near future.Originally Posted by MrBones
Thanks for the responses. Are any of you guys willing to post a mids build to give me an idea of how to accomplish this?(softcapped defense, almost max or max hp, and high regen)
-
I'm still of the opinion that Perma Dull Pain on a Regen tank is a reasonable performance expectation.
We can't ignore the fact that IOs exist, doing so is silly. On SOs alone, I'm willing to concede that Regen as-is would need a couple buffs before being ported to tanks.
But when you start adding IOs to the equation, things change drastically. Pyro already proved that at least one secondary can softcap the most common defense types. I also suspect that Titan Weapons would be able to do similar with positional defense (a power similar to Parry, and lots of cones to slot Eradication in, for both ranged and AoE defense)
Expecting most tanker secondaries to be able to hit 40% defense with moderate IO slotting is not unreasonable in my opinion, and we've seen what Regen scrappers can do with large amounts of defense. (Mine is virtually unkillable when I'm buffed, and quite tough all by himself) Granted, Regen has no DDR, but neither do Electric, Fire, or Dark and they do great when you add defense.
42% S/L resistance isn't too bad, it's more than any non-melee AT can obtain, and would soften blows enough to prevent two-shotting by the most common damage types. (I would not recommend trying to tank Dr. Aeon with a Regen anything though, he hits HARD) Just under 20% resistance to everything else is on par with what Energy Aura reaches, and isn't too far under Invuln (who hit around 30% I believe), it is also more exotic resistance than Willpower gets.
Perma Dull Pain is easily achievable without making sever sacrifices elsewhere (why would you NOT slot a Regen for recharge anyway?), and with accolades and a few set bonuses a Regen tank could be walking around at tanker HP cap at all times. And the HPset bonuses are usually found in the sets that you want to slot for defense and recharge anyway, so it's not like you're making sacrifices to get them.
Basically, the two things most commonly added with IOs would take a Regen tank from mediocre to awesome. Good defense, coupled with a little bit of resistance and MASSIVE healing potential? Yes please.
I strongly suspect that if tanks got Regen, a moderate level of IO slotting would put it in a position of surviving things that would kill other tanks dead (and conversely being killed by things other tanks would survive).
Edit: Bunny makes a good point as well. If you're going to compare FA and Regen directly, you can't ignore the presence of MoG. FA has nothing that even comes close to adding that much mitigation, even if it is only for 15 seconds. -
Quote:That is essentially what I'm saying, yes. But I'm basing it off of common sense. How frequently do you see tanker builds, of ANY set, that DON'T make use of pool powers and at least moderate IO slotting to increase their effectiveness?Originally Posted by Arcanaville
If you're saying its *possible* to build a hypothetical regen tanker that is pretty strong, there's no argument there.
Do you see Fiery Aura tankers that refuse to use pool powers or IOs at all and tank just fine? I don't. Fiery Aura needs Acrobatics to function as a tank, at bare minimum. Tanking without KB protection is juts not feasible. That's an example of a set that absolutely requires a pool power for basic functionality.
How is Regen needing Tough and Weave to achieve enough survivability to serve the same function any different? It requires the same number of power choices, and not a whole lot more slotting.
If your baseline is how well a tanker set works when you use nothing but the primary set, with no pool powers, and no secondary powers for mitigation, then a lot of tank sets have issues.Quote:But that's immaterial: when we ask if blasters are too strong or too weak, we don't paper-calculate what the absolute best strongest blaster is. We don't look at range-capped blasters with acrobatics and say they are fine. We look at blaster performance in the actual game and when they drop dead too often we say there's something wrong. Are players going to play regen tankers by loading them up with power pools and have totally unslotted attacks for most of their existence to get to performance my SR scrapper can get with just a few inventions and aid self?
Probably not. And when I consider what a likely regen tanker is going to look like at level 15, at level 25, and level 35, I find its performance to be not so good.
Fiery Aura is still the best comparison there. It sacrifices survivability for more damage, but that kind of means your secondary powers are pretty important. If you look at Fiery Aura and subtract it's ability to deal damage (which is what you're doing when you ignore secondaries), then the only advantage it has over Regen is higher resistance. Regen has the advantage of a +HP power and much higher passive regeneration (which is at levels mathematically impossible for a FA to reach with just FH, Health and Integration). If you look at JUST the Primary set and ignore everything else, FA and Regen would basically be a wash in terms of survivability. Yet FA is considered a viable tanker set and Regen would not be?
SR crumbles in the face of large to-hit buffs, because it has nothing but defense to rely on.
Invuln turns into tissue paper when you pit it against Psi damage. And it's not all that great against exotic damage types either.
Willpower is nearly as vulnerable to burst damage as Regen and lacks any kind of self heal to use when it takes a few hard hits in a row.
Stone Armor can't defeat a simple flight of stairs when it's in Granite form, unless you take teleport.
Dark Armor has several problems when you subtract pool powers and IOs. It needs Acrobatics as well if you don't use IOs, and it has endurance consumption problems if you use all the tools available to it.
In terms of how well rounded they are, Shield Defense and Electric Armor are in the best shape.
Every tanker set has issues that people have been using pool powers and IOs to circumvent for years now. We've been doing it for so long we barely register the problems anymore, because the means to avoid them are common knowledge.
And now when the idea of a Regen tank is brought up we suddenly ignore the fact that tanks almost always shore up their weaknesses with pool powers and IOs, when they've been doing it for years?
Start playing some other tank sets with zero IOs or pool powers and tell me how it works out.
(No, seriously. I want to see how the "good" tank sets fare when you don't allow them to shore up any weaknesses they may have with things from outside their primary) -
Okay, so now it's Regen with no pool powers, such as Tough or Weave? And without taking secondaries into consideration? How does that have any bearing on how the game is actually played? I don't know about you, but I have never seen a tank try and tank something by just standing there getting beat on.
When you go to compare a powerset, you need to take into account ALL powers available to that character. If it is available to a free player, it counts. (and last I checked, power pools were available to free players)
I did the math of what a Regen tank would look like, with reasonable pool power usage. On ONLY SOs. No IOs of any kind went into the calculations. Accolades were calculated in because they are available to free players and VIPs alike.
42.9% S/L resistance (between Resilience and Tough)
19.4% E/N/F/C resistance (that's more resistance to those types than Willpower gets)
A 900 HP heal every 30 seconds.
Better than 50% uptime on Dull Pain, which cranks your max HP to 3,354 when active, it also heals 75% of your HP back.
569% passive regeneration from Fast Healing, Health, and Integration.(607% if you take Physical Perfection)
The ability to reach 1600% regeneration when Instant Healing is activated.
14.8% defense to all, between Combat Jumping, Weave, and Maneuvers.
90% resistance to all but Psi, and WELL beyond soft-capped defense, available every 2 minutes for 15 seconds at a time. (On most teams that are running nothing but SOs, an average fight will take about a minute, so you can use MoG every other spawn or so and soak the alpha)
And ALL of that is on SOs, and achievable by level 33.
You can do even better when you add IOs into the mix, as Pyro Master proved with his build. He used Martial Arts because Storm Kick has a 10% defense boost attached to it. That means that with a relatively inexpensive build you can achieve slightly better than 35% defense to S/L/E/N, with ANY secondary.
You only need 55% global recharge and slotted Hasten to achieve perma-Dull Pain, at which point our theoretical Regen tank will be walking around with 3354 HP all the time. That equals out to healing around 100HP per second with passive Regen alone. Then you add any defense you managed to acquire (starting at 15% to all but Psi, you can go typed or positional if you want)
Any build that manages perma Dull Pain is going to have at least 25% defense, so only a quarter of the attacks fired at you will hit. Then that 25% of attacks will be resisted by at least 20% (40% if it's smashing or lethal). Anything that manages to move your HP bar will be healed back at a rate of 100HP per second, and you can heal back 900 HP every 30 seconds, or you can pump your regeneration up to ridiculous levels and get closer to 200 HP back per second (maybe more)
Regen won't be nearly as bad on a tank as you make it out to sound., even on an only moderately IOed character or on SOs.
Edit for clarification: That's what a Regen tank would look like at level 50, and the HP total with Dull Pain up is including accolades, which is a reasonable addition, as they aren't difficult to get and require nothing not accessible to everyone. If you start slotting IOs you'll hit the HP cap by accident from there while chasing defense or recharge. -
Did I strike a nerve?
Because that's a LOT of angst over a set that you think is so terrible.
If it's so terrible, and will be the worst set tankers ever got......please explain to me why it's so important that you spend that much energy smacking down an opinion you disagree with. I'll bet you spent at LEAST a half hour on that post, am I close?
If it's that bad, you can just not play it when it comes out and everyone will be happy. Or does the idea of someone ELSE playing a Regen tank just offend you that much? -
Quote:And one step closer to the entire game consisting of a payphone and a single door that leads everywhere. (Nevermind that in AE's heyday there were people who thought it WAS the entire game)Originally Posted by Mental_Giant
One step closer to my dream of being able to instantly teleport anywhere for a mission.
Eventually someone will complain that you have to take 3 steps to get to the door and they'll change the spawn point to be right next to it. -
Quote:I would actually play that.Originally Posted by Scene_EU
MST3K MMO: You have to endure watching awful B movies. XP is gained by riffing, you can only play Mike or Joel, but at least you get pets
-
Simple answer:
The game is balanced around Primary and Secondary power sets having 9 powers.
That, and the fact that the devs WANT you to roll more characters are the primary reasons you will probably never see additional powers for existing sets.
You mean you've never even TRIED playing a different character? Your FM/SD was the only character you've EVER created? That's kind of odd, I rolled probably 40 different characters before I settled on the one that was going to be my main. Not trying to say you're wrong for doing it the way you are, it just seems a little odd to me that you're not even curious what other characters play like.
And playing 2 or 3 characters isn't altism. Altism is when you have more characters than you can cycle through in a month of playing a different character each day. -
As far as I'm aware, the stuff you can earn in-game isn't available in the market at all.
I'm pretty familiar with most of the in-game earnable items, and I've dug through the market extensively. So far I haven't run across a single item in the market that you can earn via gameplay.
Edit: Except for a few of the temp powers, now that I think about it.
So, I guess that's your answer: Don't buy temp powers in the market.