ClawsandEffect

I took a few minutes to actually recreate the build in Mids, slot for slot.

Melee: 31.2% Ranged: 23.7% AoE: 20%

S/L: 29.1% E/N: 35.4% F/C 31.5%

The only time the game will ever use the positional defense over the typed is in the case of pure smashing or lethal melee attacks. And the positional only beats the typed by 2%.

Max HP: 1984.3
Regen: 984% (with 10 in range of RttC)

Resistances are at about the average for Willpower, so the difference isn't being made up there.

I REALLY don't see how that build could tank an ITF without a lot of support, or munching inspirations like they're going out of style. With only 31% defense max to the attacks the Romans use cascading defense failure is almost guaranteed to happen nearly immediately, and the build doesn't have the HP and regen to back it up.

The OP said they did it, and I'm not disputing something I didn't see. But I don't see how it could be possible to do without a lot of support filling the holes in the build.

Edit: I'm not saying the build couldn't work just fine running missions, and I'm sure it could even survive an ITF, the only thing I'm doubting is it's ability to TANK an ITF. I'm NOT calling the OP a liar, I just don't see how it could do it, unless the OP is just THAT awesome of a player.

This is a good point actually. A very good point.

What happens to the game if enough people decide that playing for free is a better deal than paying $15 a month to play a couple hours a week?

NCSoft has proven several times they are NOT shy about pulling the plug on games that aren't making them money. Auto Assault, Tabula Rasa, Lineage all gone, or soon to be gone.

If enough people decide that they would rather play for free and nopt really buy any microtransaction stuff, suddenly you have a game that has the exact same population it did before, but is now actively LOSING money, because half of those people are playing for free now.

It's a more realistic scenario than some are giving it credit for. How many in this thread alone would cancel their subscription tomorrow if you could play for free without really losing that much? Probably better than half. That cross-section would probably extend more or less the same across the game.

So what would NCSoft do if their game retains the same population, and costs just as much to operate, and is suddenly bringing in less than half the profit it was with the subscription model?

There are 2 ways they can go with a free to play model.

1) Make the entire game free and not really take anything away from people. Result: People aren't spending money anymore, game goes dark because the profits dropped below what NCSoft finds acceptable.

2) Make the game free, but charge people small amounts for every little thing they do. Result: The game starts bleeding players like an arterial wound and the game goes dark because not enough people are even playing anymore to provide a profit level NCSoft finds acceptable.

If this game's profits drop below the threshold of what NCSoft will support and stays there for more than a couple months, they WILL pull the plug on it. They've done it at least 3 times now, and I don't think they'll hesitate to do it again. NCSoft does not CARE about your play experience, they care about their bottom line. Caring about our play experience is the individual dev teams' jobs. NCSoft just decides whether or not they will support a game.

The only way a free to play model is going to happen is if the devs can guarantee NCSoft that the game will continue to be profitable using that model. Looking at games that have failed after going free to play, that's going to be a real tough sell.

Is my outlook on this a little pessimistic? Yes, but it's also very realistic. If CoH goes free to play, I'll be anticipating the game being shut down within 18 months.

Exactly what I was trying to express. I don't really care if someone chooses to build some particular way because it suits their playstyle better. I do it myself all the time.

But slotting a Willpower character for positional defense under the impression that it is even doing anything is kind of silly.

That's not a matter of building to suit your playstyle, because what you built for is being ignored by the game in favor of the defensive values that are higher. You don't get to decide that the game will use your positional defense values simply because you want it to. It is going to use whatever value is highest, in this case that is the typed defense.

It would be one thing to build for positional over typed on a character that has little or no native defense (Werner and my Sword/Dark characters would be a prime example of this), it is another thing entirely to build for positional defense on a character that is designed to use typed.

What the OP did is similar to slotting Kinetic Combat and Eradication on an SR, you end up with mediocre defense all around rather han playing to that set's strengths. Slotting Ice Armor and Energy Aura for positional would be the same kind of thing.

If the character were viable with positional defense, I wouldn't have said anything. But the OP posted a build that new players will likely see and think that would be a good way to slot a Willpower character, and regardless of what the OP has achieved with the character, it is wasting slots and enhancements on set bonuses that are doing literally nothing at all.

Rowdy said what I was thinking, but he said it nicer than I would have, so I'll just go with what he said.

You have gotten more powerful.

The devs CANNOT make pre-existing content more difficult, or it will become impossible for people who are NOT incarnates to run it.

Lets look at level ranges:
STF: 45-50
LRSF: 45-50
ITF: 35-50
LGTF: 45-50
KTF: 45-50
BSF: 45-50

Now, ALL of those Task Forces can be run by characters who are not even level 50 yet, much less Incarnates. Would it be fair to increase the difficulty of those TFs because Incarnate characters might run them? Not in the slightest.

Simple solution: Increase your difficulty settings when you are running these with Incarnates, instead of running them on +0 and complaining that they are too easy.

No, I don't care about microtransactions for those things.

What I DON'T want is to have to pay a fee every time I want to roll a new character, or enter a new zone, or unlock a contact, or play a new powerset, or change my costume, or any number of other things that are currently included in my subscription fee.

If they charged $5 every time you wanted to roll a new character, I would have been charged $35 this month alone.

Oh, you want to go from Atlas Park to Kings Row? That'll be $1.99 please.

Oh, you want to make a character with a new powerset? $2.99.

You want to advance past level 10? $2.99. Past 20? $2.99. Past level 30? $2.99. And so on.

It doesn't bother me that microtransactions exist. The idea of having to fork over money every time I want to do ANYTHING new is what bothers me. The things microtransactions exist for now are purely optional items that do not affect your gameplay in any significant way. If it were changed so they charge you every time you want to level your character or go to a new zone, I'd be done so fast it's not even amusing.

I am not necessarily against free to play games in general. What I AM against is business models where how far I can advance in the game is determined solely by how deep my pockets are.

Game mechanics doesn't have anything to do with whether you should PvP with a Rad/Sonis defender. Other PvPers say you shouldn't, but they only view a select number of builds as viable for pvp anyway. I've PvPed with one myself. I've found they suck in zone PvP but they're awesome for 1v1 arena duels.

It's not about Mid's being wrong either, because Mid's does not decide how defense works in the game.

Have you looked at the OP's build? Positional defense is in the 20's, while typed defense is in the 30's. The OP was building for positional defense, and even said so.

It's not a matter of "I want to use this defense instead" because the game is completely ignoring the positional defense in favor of the typed defense which is higher. That's what I was trying to get across: It doesn't matter if her build works for her...because her build is NOT WORKING AT ALL.

Her build is STILL using the typed defense numbers, regardless of her preferences in the matter, because that is how defense works in the game. All that positional defense? The game has never used it, and it never will.

The only places in that list that make any sense to put them in are Stamina and Physical Perfection.

The +end proc gives endurance to the powers target. For Dark Consumption, Power Sink, and Lightning Field, that will give endurance to your enemy. Power Surge would give you a 20% chance to get 10 endurance every 6 minutes or so, so that seems kind of pointless to slot it in.

I was referring to builds that can slot many of them in passives, so they will actually benefit you.

I really see nothing I could accomplish by doing that. I suppose it could be amusing, but I've pissed the OP off enough at this point.

But changing a single number in the power's data is easier than rewriting the entire power to function differently.

Therefore, if the powers were to be adjusted, the devs are much more likely to do what takes the least time and effort. Especially since this isn't a needed change, it's just one that people would like to see.

This.

Removing the level gating of hazard zones was one of the best things they ever did. I couldn't even tell you how many times I had to quit teaming with my friends because a random mission location ended up in a hazard zone I couldn't enter.

Gating something like this would only serve to make the game even MORE focused on end game stuff than it is now. The way it is now I can play my all tier 4 incarnate character on a team with my friend's level 35 character. If you gate a new zone to only allow level 50s in you are going to split the players into distinct groups, which is a bad thing in a game that is touted for being able to team with anyone at any time regardless of level.

New zones is not the answer to more Incarnate content. If we're going to get new zones I'd MUCH rather they be new zones for EVERYONE, not just tweaked level 50s.

Set it to lose 4 end per target. You'd lose 64 endurance if you hit the target cap of 16, plus the cost of using the power itself. It would take 80-some end away in total, and you'd be fine as long as you had a full end bar when you used it. If you were low on end it would still end up being a full crash though.

That way there would still be a penalty for using powers that were designed to have one, but the penalty wouldn't be quite as crippling as it is now. A full crash on a character that relies on a lot of toggle powers is pretty devastating if they happen to miss a couple targets with their nuke. Especially if one of them is an enemy with a mez power.

Blizzard works the way it does because it's a pseudo-pet rain power. Things can run in and out of it, so it wouldn't be fair to drain you for the 30 things that the power affected (not that it would make much of a functional difference).

You can be all 3 on the same server. This isn't like some other MMOs where you have to choose your faction and once you do can never create any other faction. You can create a hero and turn around and create a villain on the same server without deleting your hero.

Also, since you bought Going Rogue, your archetype (what we call classes here) isn't dependent on your faction. You can have a heroic Dominator or a villainous Defender. I have a heroic brute and a villainous blaster myself.

The only catch is you have to start the character on the appropriate side or in Praetoria. Once you hit level 20 you will start getting Tip missions, if you run 10 of the appropriate alignment (Hero, Vigilante, Rogue, Villain) you get a morality mission which will let you switch to that alignment. Do that twice and you can switch all the way to the complete opposite alignment (Vigilante and Rogue are the "in-between" alignment)

You don't have to go through all 4 to go from hero to villain. It goes Hero - Vigilante - Villain one way, and Villain - Rogue - Hero the other way.

The funny thing is, I was NICER about that than Umbral would have been.

Umbral often seemed to actually revel in people getting pissed at him for the way he said things.

I really wasn't trying to be a dick, it just got taken that way.

No, I did not word it to be as "offensive as possible" If that was my intent, I could have done a much better job of it. I worded it to be HONEST. If I think someones build is bad, I don't sugarcoat my opinion of it. I could have just said "your build sucks" and left it at that, but I went to some effort to explain WHY your build is bad. Nice to see that my effort and honesty were appreciated.

As far as the words that I was "throwing around" go:

Asinine: This is my opinion. The way you built your character, in my opinion, is asinine.

"better than yours in every measurable way": Yeah, you removed the first part of that sentence, which defines the context in which I was saying it. Those words were "numerically speaking". The sentence was: "Numerically speaking, my build is better than yours in every measurable way"

"better than yours" is an opinion, but "numerically better than yours" is an observable and provable fact. ALL I was saying there was that my build had better numbers, that's it. You can look at it yourself and SEE that my build has better numbers.

If you want to get offended by what I said, that's fine, you have every right to get offended by whatever you like. But if you're going to get offended by something I said, get offended by what I ACTUALLY said. Don't CHANGE what I said to MAKE it offensive. By removing the first two words of my sentence you completely changed the context and meaning of that sentence into something offensive, when what I actually said shouldn't be considered offensive. Well, unless you are routinely offended by the truth, that is.

I can understand getting offended by someone saying "my build is better than yours" because that is subjective. But, that's not what I said. I said my build was NUMERICALLY better than yours, and that is just the cold hard truth. My numbers ARE better. That is the ONLY thing I meant by that statement.


You're right. I don't have a Claws/Willpower scrapper. But, I DO have a Claws/Regen scrapper, a Dual Blades/Willpower scrapper, and a Claws/Willpower brute. The brute in particular is relevant, because there is very little numerical difference between a Claws/WP scrapper and a Claws/WP brute. Scrappers and brutes have the same base values for all of the secondaries they share, AND all their pool powers. Defense, resistance, and regen numbers will be the same between identically slotted builds. The only place you will find any differences at all are HP total and resistance cap when using Strength of Will.

In game, the brute will perform better because it's higher HP will make the regeneration more effective. That's really the only difference between them.

So you went through a lot of effort to shoehorn positional defense onto a character that has no ability to make use of it at all.

The game checks against whatever defense is highest, and ignores ANY other defenses that may be present. Your typed defenses are still higher than your positional defenses, even though you went to all that trouble to add positional defense to it, so the game will NEVER check them at all. As far as the game is concerned, that positional defense DOES NOT EVEN EXIST.

It's not about what I think is the right way to do something, it's about the FACT that the game is ignores positional defense when typed defense is higher. That is NOT my opinion, and is NOT subject to argument. That is simply how it works.


Yes, that is EXACTLY what I was saying.

Maybe your build isn't as tough as mine then. I have no issues killing Carnies at just about any difficulty I decide to set it at.

I am also softcapped to all 3 positions, so maybe that has something to do with it.

Not everything about Incarnates is a win/win. If you want to retain the usefulness of any sleep powers that deal damage, pick a different Interface.

If you want the extra DoT from Reactive, you'll just have to accept that your sleep powers won't work anymore.

I want Siren's song to keep working, so my Sonic/Devices blaster will be getting something other than Reactive. Maybe the -to-hit one would be useful, since I'm not softcapped to ranged yet.

It's all about choices, and it isn't like they added a DoT to every power against your will. You chose to add it, so if your sleeps don't work anymore you only have yourself to blame for it.

What would the purpose of this be?

The only characters it would even be appropriate for are ones who could reasonably weigh over 1,000 pounds.

Not to be grotesque about it, but have you ever seen what happens when a normal human body falls from a great height onto concrete? The human body takes quite a bit of damage, probably a lethal amount. The concrete is unharmed (though it IS a little messy). Human beings just don't weigh enough to cause that kind of damage to the ground when Super Jumping.

You DO realize they would have to redo every single attack animation in the game for that, right?

You can't just turn an emote on and start attacking, because emotes and attacks are mutually exclusive. If you attack something while you are doing an emote, the attack animation overrides the emote and it does not turn back on afterward.

I also have it on good authority (from BackAlleyBrawler about a year and a half before he left) that it is not as simple as adding an emote to a travel power. Each travel power has it's own animation, they aren't even very similar to how emotes work.

You didn't sound like you were directly attacking my input, but you WERE sounding very much like you were saying that Cardiac is the only viable option, and that's just not true.

Carnies. Dark Armor scrappers rip through them, especially if your primary deals lethal damage.