ClawsandEffect
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Quote:Originally Posted by Auroxis
Enzymes enhance Defense as well as Defense Debuff.The game doesn't have different coding for buffs and debuffs. They are exactly the same thing. A debuff is just a buff with negative numbers instead of positive.Quote:Originally Posted by NICKisdaBeast
I don't understand how this is possible!
*cries* -
Reasons why it will be Back Alley Brawler who bites it:
1) The zone he is found in is being destroyed, so removing his character model won't affect anything, because his model is being removed anyway.
2) Of the 8 possibilities, he is the only one who is not a Task Force contact. That means rewriting a Task Force will not be necessary.
3) He is the only character among the 8 possibilities who duplicates another's exact powersets and AT. Statesman and Back Alley Brawler are both Invuln/SS tanks.
4) The devs are probably going to ensure that all 5 basic Hero ATs remain represented among the games signature characters. There are THREE tanks among them: Statesman, BaBs, and Citadel.
5) He has very little presence in the game at large, only appearing in 5 missions total. Removing him from Recluse's Victory won't have much effect, he can easily be replaced by Citadel.
6) The developer who used him as his redname alias no longer works for Paragon Studios. It is unlikely that anyone else will take up the mantle, and equally unlikely they will kill off a character being actively used as someone's redname. It also isn't too likely they will kill off one who has not been used yet.
7) His inclusion in the tutorial will ensure that new players become familar with him prior to his death. It has very little impact when a character you've never encountered is killed, and ALL of his in game appearances happen after level 30.
(Synapse will probably be safe for reasons 2, 4, and 6. He is a TF contact, he is the only Blaster representative in the Phalanx, and is currently being actively used as a developer's redname alias.)
All of those reasons add up to Back Alley Brawler making the most sense to kill off as a major game event. He is an iconic character in the universe, but is not so widely present that a lot of retconning would need to occur if he dies. -
Also, by having him appear in the tutorial, it gives the NEW players a chance to connect with the character. Which will give it more impact when he is killed later.
By doing that, he's not just "the trainer no one talks to in Galaxy City" he's "that big dude who helped me out when I first started".
If he weren't in the tutorial and they killed him off in a later story arc, the new players won't have any clue who he is, because he won't exist in Galaxy City for them to see.
It has more of an impact when a character you are familiar with is killed off than it does when a character you've never seen before is. BaBs is a fairly iconic character in the CoH universe, redshirting him in a story arc without ever introducing him to the new players via the tutorial would be a huge disservice. -
Quote:The tutorial happens at level 1. I think it's a safe bet the story arc will take place after level 1.Originally Posted by Xzero45
Thing is, he's just been featured in the new tutorial and I think the devs might be more reluctant to go back and revamp content they just made rather than ancient content that needs to be updated eventually anyway.
Ever notice how there is no mention of Dr. Vahzilok after level 20? That's because both the new Positron TF and teh story arc you fight him in both conclude by level 20, and Dr. Vahzilok has been defeated and is no longer a factor.
The game's timeline is very much based on your level. Level 20 story arcs happen before level 30 story arcs, and the tutorial happens before any of them.
Back Alley Brawler can appear in the tutorial and be killed off in a higher level story arc later because the tutorial has already happened. -
Quote:Back Alley Brawler.Originally Posted by SlickRiptide
Who do you think is going to die in the signature arcs?
He makes the most sense.
A) They're destroying the zone he is a trainer in anyway, so they can remove his character model without impacting anything.
B) There is no need to rewrite a Task Force with a new contact upon his death. The other 7 all have Task Forces that they are the contact for, Back Alley Brawler does not.
C) The developer who used him as his pseudonym no longer works for Paragon Studios, and it is unlikely someone new will use it. Same could be said for Statesman, but States has always been the game's flagship character used on all it's promotional material, so it's less likely they'd kill him off. -
My money's actually on BaBs.
With the destruction of Galaxy City, it leaves things open for him to be removed as a trainer, since the zone he is a trainer in is not going to be there anymore.
He's the only one of the Phalanx that can be easily removed from the game world, since Galaxy City will no longer be there for him to train people in, removing him will have less impact than any of the other Phalanx members. He is also the only Phalanx member who is not a contact for a Task Force.
Posi, Synapse, Sister Psyche, Citadel, Manticore, Numina, and Statesman all have TFs that would have to be rewritten if they were killed off. Back Alley Brawler can simply be removed as a trainer, and they're already destroying the zone he's found in anyway.
BaBs is the easiest character for them to kill off without making more work for the devs, so it makes the most sense for it to be him. -
Quote:Why does everyone keep slotting their /Regens for Melee defense, when it is just as easy to slot for Smashing/Lethal defense and makes more sense?Originally Posted by LIinfinity
The +21.75% Melee Defense set-bonus is also nice. Couple this with the powers Weave & Maneuvers and your Melee Def is 31%. That is a significant amount in PVE.
Two words: Machine Guns. They are the single most common defense debuffing attack in the game, and /Regen has zero defense debuff resistance. And no matter where the enemy is in relation to you, machine guns will ALWAYS apply their attack against your ranged and lethal defense, meaning all that melee defense you worked so hard at getting will be stripped away by 3 bursts of machine gun fire. 4 will put you in the negative.
There are a lot of enemy groups in the game that use machine guns, so that scenario would be happening quite frequently. With Smashing/Lethal defense, it will still happen, just not as fast, and you can pop a luck or two to avoid complete defense failure. -
Not sure what you mean here.
If you mean "Will an Incarnate Shift affect the level of things that drop" the answer is, most of the time, no.
The only thing that has a level that will be affected by an Incarnate Shift is an SO enhancement that drops at the end of a mission.
If you were wondering about levels of IOs, it will have no effect on them, because IOs don't exist above level 50.
If you were wondering whether it would affect the frequency of drops, the answer is no there as well. The only affect you would see there is you might get drops slightly faster, but that's more of a case of you being able to defeat things faster than it is anything the level shift is doing directly. -
Quote:Really?Originally Posted by DMystic
And Ninjitsu has Sleeping Powder.
So in all of two sets we have 3 powers for an entire AT that can slot an IO that uses an effect the AT was based on.
My point still stands.
How many sleep powers are there in the entire game? 18 total, across ALL ATs.
Blasters have access to 6. Tanks get access to 5. Controllers get 7. Defenders get 4. Scrappers get 3. Brutes get 4. Masterminds get 2. Dominators get 8. Corruptors get 4. And Stalkers get 4.
No one really gets all that many powers that can slot a sleep set. I think the maximum is 5 on a given character, which Dominators can achieve with Mind Control/Electric Assault. And, unsurprisingly, the ATs that specialize in crowd control get access to more sleep powers than the melee ATs.
Blasters are an anomaly, they can have up to 4 sleep set accepting powers if they go with Sonic or Psychic primary paired with Electric secondary and Ice or Munitions APP.
Out of all the melee classes, only Tankers get more sleep set accepting powers than Stalkers. -
Quote:I thought it would be fairly obvious that you wouldn't receive the benefit of slots you hadn't placed yet, so I addressed the other possibility of what you were saying.Originally Posted by Teamsaver
This.
I didn't know if the OP was planning a build for a toon he hasn't actually hit 50 at yet, or planning a rebuild for one. As you level up the order of slots is important, but when respeccing, not so much.
Since we were talking about 2 different things I guess you were correct after all. -
I'll probably reserve my global name and a few others that I already had and lost over the years.
Not too pressed about it though, if I don't get 'em, I don't get 'em. I'm gonna try really hard to make sure I at least get my global there. -
I go with Spiritual for one reason:
If you're slotting sets like Kinetic Combat to get set bonuses, the powers they are slotted in are short on recharge. Especially if you're trying to save slots by only 5 slotting and adding a Mako's Bite quad or Hami-O to get more accuracy.
The extra HP and regen are just gravy. -
Quote:Electric Melee stalkers can slot the set in their tier 1 and 2 attacks.Originally Posted by DMystic
Even funnier the main ATs that use Placate (Stalkers,Banes,Widows) generally don't get sleep powers.
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Quote:I'm more or less in agreement with this.Originally Posted by Johnny_Butane
-Additionally, giving all VIPs Going Rogue for free doesn't feel fair to those of us who paid for it still fairly recently. At the very least, giving VIPs who owned GR prior to i21 something for it in the way of Paragon Points or a discount in the store is in order, IMO.
(very strange to find that I agree with JB on something, given our rather heated arguments)
A compromise that I at least would find acceptable would be:Quote:Originally Posted by Zwillinger
This is noted, and I can understand the sentiment.
VIP players who paid for Going Rogue separately should retain access to it if they drop to Premium status.
VIP players who got it for free with i21 should NOT retain access to it if they drop to Premium status.
The way I understand it is you get to keep anything you earned with vet time or paid for with real money when your subscription lapses and you become a Premium player.
Since the people who will be getting Going Rogue for free with their subscription did neither of those things to get it, they shouldn't retain access to it when they go Premium.
I'd still be mildly annoyed by it, but if it worked like that it wouldn't feel so much like we were sold something when it was known we would be getting it for free at the time it was sold to us. Since it was stated that Freedom has been in the works for over a year, that would put it right around the time GR pre-orders were being sold.
I understand that CoV was once a separate purchase that was later given for free, but the difference lies in the fact that CoV was originally marketed as a standalone game that just happened to be compatible with another one, while GR is an expansion that requires you to already have the game to utilize. Also, there was a longer period of time between CoV being released and everyone getting access to it for free than we have here. -
Quote:Originally Posted by Melancton
1) What explanation will be given for whoever of the Surviving Eight loses the adjective "Surviving" as to why they did not get medically teleported?
If it's Manticore who bites it, it can be explained as being his own damn fault.
Seriously.
He hacked into the medical transporter system to gain his teleportation powers and his Teleport Arrow special attack.
If his hacking destabilized the code the system uses to lock onto his signal and 'port him to safety, it is very possible his transporter could fail to work at a bad time and leave him very, very dead.
It would also be a good storyline to lead into Sister Psyche turning into a villain. Like, she turns on the Freedom Phalanx for letting her husband die. -
Quote:Unfortunately, as per BaBs before he was canned, Staff Melee is probably the single hardest new melee set they could make at this point.Originally Posted by Hercules
Sigh, another flavor of MA. I'm still awaiting my Staff melee set.
Staff Melee will need a completely new combat stance developed for it (which was one of the reasons we got Shield Defense 2+ years or so after it won the poll), so just laying the groundwork for the set is going to eat up a lot of time.
Nice to see the devs are giving us a real street fighting set. The alternate animations for Martial Arts were okay, but they still didn't look very "street fighting" to me. Looked more like a "right handed boxer" set.
Hopefully the set looks as cool as it sounds. -
Quote:This is not correct.Originally Posted by Teamsaver
The order that you place the enhancements in a power has no effect on how they work in the power, no. But if you are assigning slots to a power at different levels (like 2 slots at 20, then the next two slots at 26, and so forth) you are not going to have the benefit of any enhancements you put in the higher slots, until your character gets to that level.
When you 6 slot a power, you have the benefit of the enhancement of all 6 slots regardless of what your current combat level is. This is because the game has no way of knowing what level you put those slots in at. This is part of the reason an exemped character is more powerful than one that is actually that level: They have more enhancements affecting their powers.
You WILL, however, lose any set bonuses from pieces that are more than 3 levels above your current level. And it counts that by individual pieces. So, if you have 5 level 30 Obliterations and one level 50 slotted in a power, you will lose the defense bonus if you exemp below 47, even though the rest of the pieces are still active.
It gets confusing, but the net effect is that it does not matter what order the enhancements are in your powers in. -
Quote:The Protector bots will occasionally shield another player, but it happens very rarely. That's the only instance of a MM pet targeting another player that I'm aware of.Originally Posted by Derangedpolygot
EDIT: although, come to think of it, $target shows as "$target" if you have no active target. The pets themselves only target enemies, not players. They would never say a player's name this way.
It might even be a glitch that causes it to happen too. I've been bubbled by an MMs Probot before, but I don't know if it is actually supposed to do that. -
Quote:Do you mean keep up with a Fire/Kin in damage output? Because that isn't going to happen with an Ice/Kin under any circumstances.Originally Posted by Test G
I am working on an ice/kin troller. I need a good build that isnt too expensive but could keep up with a fire/kin. anyone have any ideas?
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Quote:They aren't copyrighting them, they're trademarking their specific version of that character.Originally Posted by Lost Ninja
I can see she is also a character in the Sandman comics, but how do a comic publisher copyright a character that has been in the public domain for thousands of years?
Example: Marvel Comics does not have Thor copyrighted, because they can't for the exact reason that the mythological entity known as Thor has existed for centuries.
They CAN, however, trademark the image of a long-haired blonde guy with a winged helmet, who wears a red cape and wields a hammer, who happens to be known as Thor.
If you want to use the character of Thor in a comic book, or a novel, or a movie, or a video game, Marvel can't do anything to stop you, so long as the character's description and/or appearance does not infringe on their trademarked version of that character.
The reason NCSoft does not allow us to create characters named Thor is because they are preventing us from infringing in Marvel's trademarked character, not because there is any copyright on the deity known as Thor.
For the exact reason I explained above: The versions of those characters that appear in the game are not infringing on anyone else's trademarked version of them.Quote:Further more if they can. How come other legendary characters that have also been 'stolen' by comic writers are allowed... some even used in the game? Eg Grendel
The developers and writers can use those characters in the game because they have full control over them. They can create versions of them to use in the game that are not infringing on anyone's trademark.
They don't have any such control over what the players do though. We are prevented from using those names simply because the developers can't control how we use those names. If Thor were an allowed name, sure, a lot of people would create characters true to the traditional version of him. But just as many (probably more) would rip off Marvel's version of Thor, thus infringing on Marvel's trademark.
The simplest solution is just disallowing any names that COULD be used to infringe a trademarked character, rather than having to decide on a case by case basis whether a character is in violation or not. Saves the GMs a ton of work. -
Quote:Of course not.Originally Posted by Sailboat
I admit I don't know Dominators very well, but is a Plant/Psi Dom really the ultimate character?
A Broadsword/Dark Armor scrapper is the ultimate character.
That's kind of the point. If you ask 100 different people what the best AT and power set in the game are, you are likely going to get at 100 different responses.
For the OP, the ultimate character is a Plant/Psi dominator, while I have never gotten a dominator of any kind past level 26.
For ME, the ultimate character is a Broadsword/Dark Armor scrapper.
For YOU, the ultimate character is almost guaranteed to be neither of those things.
And for anyone else it's the same, the ultimate character is whichever character fits how they enjoy playing the game the best. Hell, I like my BS/DA scrapper so much it will be the first time I've ever repeated power sets (I'm rolling the same combo as a brute when Broadsword is available to brutes).
The only thing I think the OP is doing "wrong" is he's comparing low level characters to one that is level 50 and IO'd out the wazoo, and presumably is a perma-dom. Of course the low level character is going to feel weak compared to the one you've dumped billions into.
I look at how awesome THIS character is NOW, instead of playing him and thinking about how much more awesome my other one is -
Quote:This.Originally Posted by Adeon Hawkwood
Maybe it's cliche but I enjoy each of my characters for what THEY can do rather than what other characters in my stable can do.
And there's nothing really cliched about it.
Don't compare your characters to your other characters. Every single time you compare one character to another, it will fall short in some way.
Example: None of my characters can touch my BS/DA scrapper when it comes to surviving against a single hard target.
My solution: I don't use that as my metric for whether or not the character I'm playing is good.
If surviving against a hard target was the only criteria I had for deciding if a character was worth playing, my Claws/Regen scrapper, Fire/Fire blaster, Sonic/Devices blaster, and DM/SR brute would all have been deleted by now.
They haven't been deleted because they are all good at different things, and I don't hold them all to the same standard.
My BS/DA scrapper survives well, but his damage output is a little anemic, especially AOE damage. My Fire/Fire blaster, on the other hand, satisfies any desire I may have for high damage output.
My Rad/Sonic defender can solo a Giant Monster. But he doesn't have so much as a single AoE damage power to his name.
My Claws/Regen scrapper can fight indefinitely without needing to stop at all. But he is vulnerable to large amounts of burst damage, which makes him suitable for minion clearing.
My Sonic/Devices blaster can solo very well, and very safely, but he lacks the kind of burst damage punch that blasters are desirable on teams for.
All of those characters shine in different situations, and expecting them all to be on equal footing in all of them is asking for disappointment. -
It could go either way.
Either A) It will stay the same pending a respec, or B) it will change automatically.
Since Repulse was a Repel power and not a knockback power, I don't believe it accepted KB IO sets, and there is no such thing as a repel enhancement. If that is the case, then they can just swap it out and it won't break anything by people suddenly having IOs in a power that are no longer allowed. -
Quote:Well, the one that doesn't get Scourge will get Defiance and a higher damage scale.Originally Posted by Hercules
I have a dark/dark corrupter that's been gathering dust for a while. Just wondering what the difference will be playwise other than one gets scourge and the other doesnt?
I expect Blaster Dark Blast will outdamage Corruptor Dark Blast by a little bit. Much the same as the rest of the sets. -
Quote:Different animations for what is otherwise the same powers.Originally Posted by DarkGob
I thought MM-style Dual Pistols were the same as the set Dual Pistols? The attacks are the same.