Col_Blitzkrieger

Long story short, Siphon Life got its damage doubled*, its endurance cost lowered by about 1, and its recharge shortened by around one third. It's a proper attack now, not a weak utility heal-wannabe power anymore. The heal is just a side effect now.

*(Roughly, based on what I remember off the top of my head; older threads would have the exact info on what it was and what it is now)

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lots of fury + build up + against all odds dmg buff + lightning rod + shield charge.

[/ QUOTE ]Some of that might probably go to waste, because Lightning Rod (and Shield Charge, probably?) use the pet damage cap, which is 400% (100% base + 300% damage buff) if I recall correctly.


Also, that Chance for Smashing Damage proc in Lightning Rod will damage you when it procs. Not sure if it'll also damage the enemies.

That Touch of Death proc in Chain Induction will horribly break the jumping charge (procs in CI replace the high jump chance with whatever the proc chance of the proc is for some bugged reason).

Just noting such things, that's all.

I'd like a 50 of every villain AT, myself. Sadly I can't stand how widows pre-24 play, so I can't be arsed to level one up.. As for the others, I just haven't found the right powerset combo yet. Ah well. Maybe one of each hero as well, but hero ATs (except Warshades) are boring so I'll likely leave them for last.

My MM most likely could solo a GM if only they didn't RUN AROUND IN PANIC ALL THE TIME UNTIL THEY GET DRONED [censored]. Ahem. Yeah, if I could get one to hold still, I'd totally kill it. But villain GMs are cowards. Soloing AVs is usually cake, unless they have fancy gimmicks that directly counter me. Soloing a TF I'd probably be too lazy and easily-bored to attempt, but maybe someday.

500 badges on my main is another goal of mine I'm slowly creeping towards.

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I'm a controller, you want perma SB get a defender whose job it is to buff, I control stuff and kill stuff. And if you want FS stand close, you may also get healed and plenty of end but thats as it may be not what you should expect

[/ QUOTE ]And I say just because it says 'secondary' for the powerset doesn't mean you should neglect it. :b

Funny, it works without the 'l' in front of 'shift' for me. Can use either shift key depending on mood that way.

I think SS puts out more AoE DPS than Fire due to the Brute version of Fire Melee swapping out Combustion for Cremate, and Foot Stomp + Rage being grossly overpowered.

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Midnight grasp does superior damage, am i right?
does siphon life do roughly the same amount of damage?
also shadow maul does high damage, but i know for a fact that Siphon Life does less damage... you do the math


jbWarsmith out!

[/ QUOTE ]You should keep up to date with patch notes. Dark Melee got buffed in i13.
So, no, you don't know this for a fact, because it simply isn't true anymore.

It's the Reformed badge. Defeat 1000 Longbow in Gaussian's arc to receive the badge.

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of all people, your Medic is the one throwing one (grenade).

[/ QUOTE ]Not anymore. Shoots it from the rifle now, was changed to reduce redraw and such, in the same theme of changes that allowed GKs to use Dark Blast/Gloom with their swords out.

I still say they should give the commando Ignite. :>

Would be nice to hit people consistently instead of getting 'Miss Miss Miss Miss Miss' most of the time. (This both happens with my Warshade with 2 Acc SOs in each attack and a 9% ToHit buff from Nova Form, and my Brute with 3 Acc IOs in each attack)

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I dont know what you were doing wrong, but for future reference do this.

1 member die in mob of longbow on left of chopper.

Move up to mob of longbow at bottom of steps and kill it, cut scene starts.

Move to top of steps, tp the corpse from last mob to you.

Everyone draw a shivan, cast vengence on corpse and shivans, rez corpse.

Eat 4 lucks, 1 orange each.

Numina is the 1st target coz she can rez, next do Sister then Posi, then whoever you like that looks low on health, we normally do States last.

All stay in melee range or in range of the healer if you have healers.

For that to work, you need 1 person with TP or the vet power and someone with vengence.

[/ QUOTE ]Yeah we did all that. Pay attention to what I'm saying, the rest of the heroes died just fine. Statesman just wouldn't get any lower than 10% HP even though we kept pounding on him for like an hour.

The other heroes are fine. Statesman having a zero-recharge damage nullifier power is what got us. How much more -res do you need than Tar Patch and a Sonic/Sonic? That should've already put us around 2/3 of the -res cap (not to mention the freaking chem nuke), though I'm not in the mood to run numbers through my head at the moment.

The whole problem is just Statesman, and Statesman alone.

I'm just [censored] off by now. It's been around six months since I first attempted the Lord Recluse Strike Force. Six months. This was -after- I had discovered my fondness for Badge collecting. And in six months' time, still not a successful run.

And it's not because the teams suck, either. Not in the general sense, at least. I've never been on any of the fabled 'dream teams' for the LRSF, with a Granite Brute and Mind/Ice Dominator and who knows what else. They probably wouldn't take an Elec/Elec Brute anyway since you apparently need some god knows how specifically planned out team to defeat [censored] Statesman. Arrrrrrrrgh.

8 people, a Sonic/Sonic Corruptor, and a MM with Tar Patch, stacking ridiculous amounts of -res on top of a Chem Nuke, with 8 Shivans out... And Statesman just won't freaking drop. His HP just merrily shoots up when his zero-recharge Unstoppable is active. I don't even see orange numbers when he uses it, I don't see anything but grey 1s from whoever is actually able to damage him for the grand total of 1 damage per hit. What the hell. He regens back up to 75% despite the huge amount of -res on him, everyone has 4-8 or more red insps stacked on, and when it wears off and he drops to 10% again, BAM, Un-freaking-stoppable.

How the hell is this meant to be done without 8 of each freaking warburg nuke anyway? How do people actually manage to complete Master Of runs of this when he freaking Hand Claps the non-melee ATs to death if they happen stray too close to whatever the AoE size is? I can't wrap my brain around this.

I'm just going to make the logical assumption that my badging toon is cursed, and those are two (lol, three) badges I'll never ever have. Because six months of trying is just retarded. I realize it's the hardest task force in the game. But it doesn't even seem -mathematically- possible without 8x3 nukes, so how do people get Master Of badges for it? I don't know. I guess I never will know. The devs say the game is balanced around SOs. I'm on generic IOs, so I'm already stronger than SOs despite not having set bonuses.

Funnies thing? I actually completed the LRSF once. On the wrong toon. I just wanted the Apocalyptic badge for the accolade. I stuck around just for morbid mental laughs, and... We killed them all. How the hell we did that, I'll never know. Statesman managed to die somehow. I was on my Thugs/Dark Mastermind, who is not my badge toon. We had a Thugs/Dark in today's team as well, and States refused to drop. So it can't have been -my- toon that tipped the scales.

So what the hell am I missing?

*goes to sleep it off*

No.

Also, this is the wrong section, Player Questions is upwards a bit. :P

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which would in turn explain why the Ouroboros travel power is a "Temp" power - something that has never been satisfactorarily explained

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It's a Temp power because that's how the game allocates powers which are not gained through sets or pools.

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then how come items like the PPD Costume power, the paid Rocket Pack and the Self-destruct are not in that class?

[/ QUOTE ]Anything for which your character doesn't have to lift a finger in-game to acquire, goes under Inherent.

Clicky mez resist is good. It doesn't drop if you manage to detoggle due to endurance drain somehow, and it also doesn't cost any endurance to keep up, itself.

It's pretty impossible to outlevel content now anyway, thanks to the 'Stop Gaining Experience' function.

Basically, in that patron arc at level 40, after a long period of getting her to around 40% health she got a lucky hit on my Bruiser with Soul Storm and my Twilight Grasp managed to miss. Bruiser dies, GW moves to my other pets, heals herself full with a Dark Regeneration. Not fun. Oh well.

Not hard, a few laps around the docks in Nerva... Get a group, makes more of 'em spawn, too.

Already in-game. You need the Untouchable badge. Good place to farm it is the docks in Striga Isle.

On the subject of new AR models, well, there's always the issues of what looks ridiculous and what doesn't. Some already existing examples are already pushing it, such as firing grenades or jets of flame from the tommygun or sniper rifle.

There was a shotgun model in a beta or something at one point, but it got pulled after BAB saw someone using Full Auto with it.

Without temp powers I came oh-so-close on my Thugs/Dark Mastermind during the patron arc. Haven't managed to get at her with either of us at 50 though, I'd guess Heroes have more opportunities to face off against her.

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them

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unique

[/ QUOTE ]Does not compute!

Not sure if this is worth the development time, snce you can just tap your attack key every ten seconds, or target a distant Hellion, for costume contests. If it'd be easy to do for the devs and non-obtrusive for those that don't care for it, sure, why not.

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Again, as Gravitos already said, you ever played a Merc at high lvl?

[/ QUOTE ]Yep.
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its intended only a limited ammount of pets will engage melee with 1 mob.

[/ QUOTE ]Source of this info, please.

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Fullauto's. They use it at the most wrong moments, cleared nearly a full group of mobs, 1 mob left. 10 health left of a mob and Commando starts his full auto.

[/ QUOTE ]Knockout Blow, Rain of Fire. Same issue.

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Redraw animation. No you dont have to put your gun away when u take down 1 mob and 12 are left. Keep it and continue attack. Waste of time. AR blaster dont have to do this, even I dont have to do redraw my bow every time i do a power.

[/ QUOTE ]Enforcers and Punks do the same thing.

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Nearly all powers they have are massive DoT based. This means if 1 mob is left and about 25hp left, 1 merc starts his 5x5 DoT. At the 2nd DoT hit, the other 6 decide to do fullauto, a long animation DoT. Result... 10 seconds wasted for 25 stupid hp.

[/ QUOTE ]Another exaggeraton. 10 seconds? It was never -that- bad, even -before- Merc attack animation times were buffed. Besides, only 3 pets have the 6-second Full Auto type power, not all 6.

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Seals snipe. Again, they hardly use this power. It seems u have to keep them 100ft away and then let attack them a mob, only way i managed to get them to use snipe.


[/ QUOTE ]This one I admit I might be wrong on (will check), but didn't the recent pet AI change fix this? You know, the one where all pets use long range powers even at shorter ranges or melee.

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retarted

[/ QUOTE ]lol.
And many people would likely argue that the Arsonist/Bruiser/Entire Ninjas primary has even more retarded AI.

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Being 100% ranged doesnt always means its 'good'.

[/ QUOTE ]It's better than melee in most situations.

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They fall out of bubbles (/trap)

[/ QUOTE ]They do not. Both the FFG and the pets follow you around. Why would they?
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often miss healing from the team (since they mostly closer to the brute, who is in center).

[/ QUOTE ]They also don't need the healing nearly as much due to being ranged, and away from most of the chaos and flying AoEs, which are, coincidentally, closer to the Brute. On top of that, ranged pets are much easier to heal for the MM him/herself with AoE heals from Dark Miasma and Pain Domination.

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Also the upgrade animations remains still the LONGEST of all other primairy (dark being fastest, ninja/thug followed, then bots, way below is merc).

[/ QUOTE ]Doesn't matter anymore as of i13's changes to the pet upgrade system.

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-Remove at least 1 DoT and replace by instant dmg.

[/ QUOTE ]Hardly a critical change, but giving them Slug couldn't do any harm.
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-Ditch the stealth or make it usefull like Ninja (crit)

[/ QUOTE ]A suggestion I've made a few times. Agreed.
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-force LRM and snipe shot being done at any range (not 100ft+ only).

[/ QUOTE ]I still need to check whether that AI update fixed this or not. It really should have, since for example the Bruiser uses Hurl in melee now.
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-make heal non-interuptable (like zombi/bots).

[/ QUOTE ]Agreed.
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-STOP the freaking redraw after every freaking mob. (they never got normalisation like AR blaster got).

[/ QUOTE ]Same for Enforcers/Punks and you have a deal.
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-give them some non-SL damage. Not only flametrower commando, but tier1 or 2.

[/ QUOTE ]Robotics is the extreme here. Ninjas and Thugs still have their only sources of non-S/L damage condensed into one pet. Giving the Commando Ignite would probably be more in line. Heck, everyone loves burn patches (Arsonist, Assbot).
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-Reduce flash/teargas recharge, reduce duration

[/ QUOTE ]Why reduce duration? Just cut the recharge in half. Heck, I'd almost be as bold as to say to boost the duration on top of that.
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-reduce upgrade time.

[/ QUOTE ]Unnecessary as of i13.

And yes, give the Commando his Gun Drone, too.

Overall I agree on your general views of what in Mercs could use tweaking, though. I still think you're putting too much emphasis on the whole "DoTs suck" thing though.

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What about leveling the field somewhat? I guess that would be unthinkable because ALL MASTERMINDS ARE GODS, right? Thus parity within the AT is out of the question, since we can't mess with the established pantheon.

[/ QUOTE ]Please point out one example of where I've ever said this (except for the all MMs being good part). It's obvious that Thugs is one giant leap above the other primaries. This became even more obvious in i13 where Thugs is the only MM Primary that can slot the Recharge Intensive Pets unique pet aura IOs, and thus double stack the 5% defense and 10% resistance IOs.
Way back when I made him, I didn't know this, though.

Still, I've never said the other primaries shouldn't be buffed a bit to catch up. You're just blowing it all out of proportion by implying that a team wouldn't notice the difference whether or not their Mercs MM is actively fighting or AFK at the door, whereas Thugs could probably solo the LRSF (exaggeration there for illustrative purposes, but that's the general tone your posts give off).

Do a little search and you'll see several suggestions from me on how to improve Mercs. Never have I said that Thugs should remain -the- choice of MM primary. But removing Thugs from the comparison table, Mercs isn't nearly as bad as you're making it sound. In most situations, Ninjas would be worse, especially in the hands of an inexperienced player. And yet, all the MM primaries can perform the typical MM accomplishments, such as soloing AVs without too much trouble, among other things. On a team, the primaries are even more balanced, except for Robotics which has silly amounts of knockback.

Heck, leaving Thugs on the comparison table, you could say all other primaries are useless. But comparing MMs in general to other ATs, they all do their job. Thugs just do it better than the others in most if not all aspects, whereas the rest of them all have their distinct weaknesses. You think equally experienced people don't whine about Ninjas, Necromancy? Low-tier melee pets getting oneshotted by being sneezed at, compared to the pure-ranged Mercs which are naturally safer, and can actually DPS more efficiently since they don't need to run. Grave Knights pretending to be Blasters unless you have them on a GoTo leash at all times. Ninjas having no initial debuff/control volley (not counting Oni's single target Hold, lol) or an agro soaker to add survivability to their nonexistant Defense values.

I could go on. If there's any MM primary food chain, it pretty much consists of only three tiers. Thugs, Robotics (not in my opinion, but...) and the others - Mercs, Zombies, Ninjas. Other people seem mostly happy with Robotics, though I'd say they could use a lower-level offense boost. But the remaining three could certainly use a boost to bring them up to the standards set by the two favorites.

Which still doesn't make them any less capable of doing the job of an MM primary properly, unless the persn in question is playing Ninjas as their first MM ever.

It does Superior damage. Yes, you shouldn't even have to ask, take it. :P