Crazy_Larry
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Posts
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Joined
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Quote:Simplistic system? As opposed to what, load in and win, like everything else in this game?Originally Posted by Nihilii
Picking a specific powerset is what you consider strategy?
I can see why a simplistic system returning to the roots of the Heal/DPS/Tank would appeal to you.
Hate to break it to you, but everything in this game is pretty damn simplistic. Something that requires you to actively pay attention is a huge plus in my book.
And are you not allowed to bring green inspirations or use lore pets for this raid?
EDIT ^^^Or destiny as mentioned above? The fact is, EVERYONE has access to heals, not just healers. Also, healers are (were) the most useless thing in this game because +res and +def are pretty easy to cap for an entire team. Nice to see them becoming useful. -
Quote:Oh no, NO, I'll have to use strategy?Originally Posted by Nihilii
Be awake all you want. If you don't have ally healing powers, nothing you can do will prevent your teammates from being disintegrated and Antimatter from healing himself.
This sounds far too difficult. -
You mean there's finally something in the game that requires me to be awake to finish?
Sounds awesome, frankly. -
Even if Interface is fixed/changed, Fire/Cold takes advantage of it better than most toons. You can hit a mob at range 4 with AoEs in just a few seconds. I actually prefer Diamagnetic because you can open a mob with a 100% chance for a little tohit debuff and then stack from there.... but right now it IS hard to not to go Reactive (I have and use both)
Fire/Cold is good because it's going to out-damage just about anything and it can get to s/l soft cap easily. Sleet is also a pretty good survivability power as it knocks things down and diverts their attention to escaping rather than running toward you to smack you in melee range.
Fire/Cold is deceptive in how survivable it can be. But it's real benefit is versatility. A team almost CANNOT FAIL an encounter with a well played fire/cold. Whether you're playing fast and loose or slow and turtled, you're bringing everything you've got to the table. You aren't dependent on anything other than having green in your HP bar. This, IMO, is what puts it over traps and anything Ill (Illusion loses it's luster when things are going too fast/out of control because it depends too much on pets). Fire/Cold is a firecracker that's always ready to pop. -
Well, it's because Fire is, for most purposes, simply the best.
The devs still maintain this illusion that the secondary effects of the other sets actually mean something (particularly knockback.) While there are somewhat gimmicky reasons to choose other sets, in the end, Fire is always going to out-damage all of them, which is hard to turn down.
That said, Fire/Cold is my favorite, with Fire/Dark slightly behind. The main reason being Rain of Fire + slow + -resist + SCOURGE to go along with all of the other goodies found in Fire Blast, Cold Dom, and Dark Miasma. Fire/Rad and Fire/Kin are also great. They're more straightforward buff/debuff -> huge damage. Fire/TA can also be a fun little ball of AoE destruction. -
I think it would be pretty difficult to go anywhere but Cardiac, unless you took Mu Mastery. Then it would be between Muscles and Spiritual. That decision would then depend on much global recharge you're slotted for.
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Quote:Originally Posted by Wanted_NA
Your build has perma Heatloss and Benumb? If so, I would really like to take a look if possible. Because mine even with 106.3% Global Recharge, or 176.3% with Hasten (which is perma), I was not able to achieve perma Heatloss/Benumb without using the T4 Spiritual Alpha. Benumb was 3.3 Second off perma and Heatloss is like 8 seconds off without the Spiritual.
Benumb has 83.3% Recharge in it, and Heatloss has 91.7% Recharge. Adding another pure recharge IO to Benumb only cuts less than half a second of the recharge, and Heatloss loses on like 2.3 seconds off.P
P.S: My build has 33% Ranged defence and 20% to everything else, BTW.
My Benumb is about 4 seconds off perma and Heat Loss is 15 seconds off perma. I don't really see that as justification to go Spiritual, personally. I can't run dry of endurance in 15 seconds (reasonably) and I don't think -too- much damage can be done in terms of regen in 4 seconds of Benumb downtime. If I/my team is in a war with regen, I'll use Force of Nature and that'll help too. I just think it's a pretty big sacrifice to dedicate basically your entire Alpha Slot to close up those tiny down times.
Here's my build. You can look/critique all you want.
http://www.cohplanner.com/mids/downl...8EF51F3649DFB4
Typically running Muscles, Clarion, Diamagnetic. The latter 2 plus my high defense make me incredibly difficult to kill, which makes me rather happy.
And I actually was not aware of this bug. I may need to swap out my end redux IO for another recharge in light of this information.Quote:Originally Posted by Wanted_NA
The animation time isn't that bad, but the debuff is definitely worth it. Just keep in mind that Sleet/Freezing Rain are bugged and the debuff will only last 15 seconds if the target doesn't get out of the rain range within 15 seconds. And since the Pylon is stationary it will never be doing that, lol. So Sleet Debuff will need to be cast every 15 seconds to keep the debuff up. -
Well if she's Sonic Blast, you're definitely going to want to go Fire to burn things to the ground the fastest.
I'd probably go /cold or /kin. Rad would be a little redundant. I know no one wants to hear, but it really isn't as perfect a set as some would lead you to believe. Cold would stack more debuffs nicely, kin would stack huge dmg.
/dark would also work really well for more debuffs and some control (actually, thinking about it a little more, this is probably how I would go.) -
Quote:These are also great. I would like the game to remember to sort my salvage by rarity, as well.Originally Posted by Canine
Rework the Powers Window.
Let us resize the window.
Separate the powers into tabs.
'Archetype' for Primary and Secondary pools.
'Pool' for Power Pools and Ancillary/Patron Pools
'Temporary' for (duh...) temp powers. And display temp powers in 3 columns, to reduce the massive amount of scrolling that'd be required otherwise.
Also, give it a 'Most Recent' Tab and let you activate powers from the window instead of having to drag them to a tray first, so that people can easily find the damn Molecular Acid and Pacification Grenades in Lambda and use them with minimum faffing about.
That'd be the biggest help with QoL that I can think of at the moment.
Oh, and I almost forgot.
Make the damn 'Friends' Window remember how you had it set up.
Having to Open Friends, Switch to Global Friends, then having to sort the names and click the little arrow in the lower right, every damn time gets tedious fast...
Another one is fixing respecs. I wish it was like mids and just let you assign slots without having to "click to the next level" after assigning every slot. And changing it up so that we can take out more than 10 enhancements would also be dandy.
Bonus: YES I WANT TO SELL THAT SALVAGE. NEVER ASK ME AGAIN. -
1. Fix lag or stop designing encounters that invite it. If a map can't handle 24 people at a certain stage of a trial, change the trial. Period. The BAF becomes utterly un-fun at one point almost every time. Rikti raids are unbearable, etc.
2. Delete cut scenes or let us vote to skip them (like Guild Wars does.) I mean c'mon, these cut scenes are lame as it is. No voice acting, they use the same generic emotes. They pretty much look universally stupid.
3. Add a "backdoor" to maps so that escorting hostages isn't so painfully boring. You rescue them, show them the back dooor, mission over. Using my fingers, I can count the number of fun escort missions on a fist. Meanwhile, I don't have enough fingers and toes to count the number of times they've been painfully frustrating (hell, half of the captives don't know how to use elevators, STILL.)
4. EVERY mission objective should be audible. Hostages should scream for help. Destructible objects and "actionable" objects should make noise like typical glowies. Running around a map looking for random objectives isn't fun. At least if they make noise it's a little easier.
5. I don't know if it counts as QoL or not, but balance blast sets. I hate the fact that I can only really enjoy Fire because all of the other ones have such glaring holes. Obviously the devs are OK with the power of Fire, so in my mind the others should be worked on the bring them to its relative level of damage output so we can have a little more variety in what blast sets people play. Perhaps the only other blast set that doesn't need buffing is Sonic, as the power of its secondary effect may actually make up for it's lack of damage output, unlike any other of the sets. -
Quote:If by "using the reactors in Neutropolis" means fighting around them, then no, that's lame. If we get to go INSIDE to something completely fresh and unique, then yes, that's exactly what I want.Originally Posted by Golden Girl
The Anti-Matter Trial will use the reactors on the island in Neutropolis - but you might fund the Hamidon Trial more to your liking
Even the new map on the new hero-side TF. It's very cool (and I wish they would do things like this for content that is likely to be repeated, rather than lower level stuff that largely becomes ignored) it's still just an old map that's altered to have new features.
I mean, when you step into the Eden trial, it feels so much different than anything else in the game. Even if that trial has become somewhat easy and the "epic-ness" has faded somewhat, it FEELS epic, and the devs need to be incorporating that feeling into the new Incarnate trials. I hope, as per Golden Girl's post, they have. -
Quote:A thousand times this. Currently, as people begin to figure out or think they've figured out the method, these trials are getting less and less fun and fast.Originally Posted by Oedipus_Tex
I posted this in the other thread, but I think it bears repeating here.
Is there a program that can tell the difference between a character that is doing nothing, and one that is standing around because he or she was instructed to do that by the team? If the answer is "no" you've just run into why this system is fundamentally flawed. You cannot reward "teamwork" by providing incentives to individuals. Individual incentives conflict with team directives by definition.
This system isn't just not working, it's arrogant. I don't mean that as insult to the developers, because I think it was developed with the best of intentions. But it needs to be understood that when you tell a player that he or she only got such and so reward because of his or her "average" performance, there needs to be a way to back that up. What is that I am doing with my Dominator that pegs me as worthy of Uncommons and Rares but not Very Rares? Is it luck? Am I getting screwed by other teammates gaming the system? Is the leader in on it or is it accidental? What can I do to be more likely to get a Very Rare? Not only do I know know the answer to these questions, IMO it is harmful to the game that I should ever even have to consider them. My teams succeeded at that the trials. That is what I should be worried about.
In short, this system discourages actual teamwork and encourages a strategy of trying to game the mechanics by identifying the technical checkmarks. Specifically, it encourages people to blow spawns away before teammates can get to them out of fear they'll do the same and rob you of your rewards. When your teammates are your "frenemies" teamwork naturally suffers. The results are exactly the same as if the Statesman Task Force only gave merits to people who helped kill the towers. It's arbitrary and cannot possibly work. Ever.
In the end this system can only go two ways: screwing people it shouldn't, or being so inconsequential that it may as well not exist. As for being able to "balance" it for every single powerset combination and archetype, I don't just doubt that is possible, I think it's worthless to try. All of the effort spent doing that could be spent making the powersets and archetypes themselves equally powerful across the board, which we all know will probably never happen--in this game or in any game--not because it's an unworthy goal but because it is unrealistic.
Though I think this can still work:
Quote:Originally Posted by Crazy_Larry
Personally, I wish the system was basically this:
No power activations (disregard powers set to auto): no reward
Very few (I don't know what the right number would be here, but something pretty low while high enough to prevent people from loading in, helping with 2 mobs and afk'ing) - very low chance of "good" rewards
Any number of power activations over "very few" - standard randomized reward (very rares being, I don't know 5% chance?) -
Quote:It's still random. That's the problem with most of the testing ITT, you can be way down on the "participation scale" and still get a very rare, theoretically. Or way up and still get a common. So when someone says "I ran 2 BAFs and got 2 very rares and this what I did" it doesn't mean what he did -works-... but it might.Originally Posted by Jetpack
Color me confused as I just got 3 rares in a row on the MA scrapper with no Incarnate abilities, other than the Rare Alpha.
Personally, I wish the system was basically this:
No power activations (disregard powers set to auto): no reward
Very few (I don't know what the right number would be here, but something pretty low while high enough to prevent people from loading in, helping with 2 mobs and afk'ing) - very low chance of "good" rewards
Any number of power activations over "very few" - standard randomized reward (very rares being, I don't know 5% chance?)
I think once it gets more complicated than that, it becomes unfair fast. I'm all for keeping people from afk'ing and door-sitting alts. I'm completely against methods that encourage a-hole team leaders to put themselves on a team 3 to fight ambushes on the BAF by themselves while everyone else must fight AVs because he thinks/realizes he has better chances of good drops that way... AND WHAT ABOUT THE MASTER MINDS, WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE MASTER MINDS? -
While I have beef with the maps that have been put in place over the last few years, I wouldn't put my troubles in those terms.
My problem is that everything must be reusable now. Back in the day, the devs worked their ***** off creating maps like the ones used in the Eden, Sewer, and hero respec trials. The result was something completely unique that made those encounters feel "epic". Or at least unique.
Now everything is reused and recycled. The biggest end game encounters are set in chunks of map that we've seen elseware (the warehouse in Lambda was new, but it's not much to write home about and it was also put elseware in the same issue.)
Setting goes along way in setting the tone of an encounter, I wish the devs would realize this and go back to the days of old when designing some of the new trials. -
Quote:It's hard to say about the Lore Pets. I took Clockwork because A) I felt like they were all equally good with slight advantages and disadvantages, B) I knew I liked the Mender's healing/buffing abilities in particular, and C) I thought they were the coolest.Originally Posted by Rad_Avenger
Still need to work my way up to the T3 reactive ... only got T2 last night. I sense some Lambdas and BAFs in my future. Interesting that you were able to get really close to my time and I have the Patron pet out. I may have to reconsider Musculature / no Flares, interesting data point!
The T4 pets ... Wow. I mean, wow. That's amazing. So you like the Clockwork pets? Haven't opened Lore yet, was thinking the Warworks pets looked boss (that's what the Scrappers all seem to have, lol), but man if you're in the 1 minute range, the Clocks look to be just as good.
Thanks for sharing.
I will say that the boss hits hard as hell with Musculature and my debuffs. Like, REALLY hard. In another test I solo'd Chimara in under a minute, and I saw a 1000+ dmg attack fly off at one point. I don't know if Victoria hits harder, but if she does, it's going to be ridiculous for a toon like a /cold.
EDIT: And keep in mind that build has spared no expense, and it is rather expensive. But my feeling is that while Flares and the patron pet is optimal for DPS, perhaps they put you in a tough spot as far as slotting? I know having ~100% rech while maintaining soft cap can be pretty hard to achieve, and if you have less rech than that, you might need to stick with Spiritual. Not sure, but I can post my build if you want. -
I just did some testing tonight. Without lore pets: 3:45. This is with Musculature, T3 Reactive (proc, not -res) and using, primarily FB, Blaze, FB, Fire Ball attack chain (no flares or patron pets. 1 Apoc proc and 1 Glad Jav proc, both in Fire Blast. I'm not really spec'd to kill pylons.)
With T4 Lore pets (Boss + Invincible support, Clockwork): 1:20 - Wow. -
My thoughts:
I can't be persuaded to believe that the devs are stupid enough to consider damage delt what-so-ever in the caculation of activity. They know better than to put the many "buff first" characters so far behind the curve.
Activity is likely caculated by power clicks and possibly movement. Though some power clicks may be more heavily weighted than others. IE: and attack may be worth 2 points to a buff's 1. An AoE attack may be worth more, etc.
No matter your activity, it's still random. If you meet the maximum (or a very high) activity threshold, you simply have a higher chance of getting the better rewards. No matter how active, you're probably still most likely to get an uncommon.
There may be a mimimum activity threshold which if you do not surpass you're automatically given the 10 thread option, as I'm yet to hear of someone afk'ing a trial and earning something better. -
Quote:Yeah but once you have the uncommons you need, then an uncommon becomes essentially 8-threads whereas a common is a solid 20.Originally Posted by Master Zaprobo
But threads are ludicrously easy to stockpile. I have over 200 now, while I'm still waiting for a Rare reward table.
Trading in Astral Merits is the way to go. A quick Tennis Courts BAF is worth 20 Incarnate threads (i.e. a Common component) all on it's own.
After a while I was hoping for anything BUT uncommons. They were just the least useful at a certain point. -
I'm an active player and up until a couple days ago I didn't know you could get a Common reward table, much less 10 threads. Then yesterday, a buddy had to leave a trial suddenly. We let him door sit the rest of the trial and he ended with with the 10 thread option.
After running a BAF this morning in which an MM (who had NO attacks what-so-ever) claimed he had gotten a common table 4 times in a row (again, I've only gotten this once) I started to thinking maybe power activation had something to do with it. I ran 2 more runs in which, in addition to my usual activity, I decided to make sure I was shielding people (toon is a fire/cold) during EVERY SECOND of the trial. Any time I wasn't engaging an enemy, I was buffing.... each run awared me a very rare.
Activity certainly plays a role. I'm just not sure exactly how it's caculated. Does it count movement? Auto powers? -
Quote:Yeah, I've just never -felt- like Flares was needed. A fire/cold's attack chain is often interrupted by so many other things that I never really focused in on what is the absolute best DPS. I'd be curious to know what all I'm missing out on, if anything. Currently I run 100% rech + Hasten and Musculature. Fire Blast is slotted with 5 Apocs (minus the dmg) and a Glad Jav proc.Originally Posted by Rad_Avenger
You could certainly make the case for not taking Flares.
I needed it to take down a Pylon.
Of course, in these days of Incarnates, who cares about Pylons ... there are scrappers out there pounding out 500+ DPS, which is just amazing.
And I've taken down a Pylon without Flares in under 5 minutes. -
I'm just tired of people, whether intentional or not, griefing my extra Asteral Merit by clicking computers.
But to your point, there's also be at least one dude on Freedom broadcasting that he has one slot left on a BAF even though he doesn't even have a team... just so tons of people will send him tells. It's actually kind of funny. Your situation seems like a lot of work for little grief caused (what's to stop you from just inviting one more person and going?) -
Quote:But I don't take Flares.Originally Posted by Fiery-Enforcer
Which has an even lower DPS than the 2 attack chains I listed.
I'd be curious to know how much lower it is, though.
EDIT: Just I just noticed that the OP does take Flares. My apologies. I should skim less. -
Quote:You keep implying that my Benumb is underslotted, but again, I think we're viewing it from two different perspectives. From my perspective, it isn't underslotted at all because a scenario does not exist in which I cannot use Aim first. From my perspective, Aim might as well have a 67% to hit bonus attached to it.Originally Posted by Silas
No, I use Aim all the time.
Let me put it this way, what are you doing with those two slots which could otherwise go in Benumb that's more important than ensuring one of your two best debuffs lands? And why couldn't those slots be taken from a less important power?
Those two slots may have gone to any number of places where I decided to take advantage of some needed set bonus. -
Quote:Well then it's just a matter of perspective. Because what you said doesn't actually mean anything.Originally Posted by Silas
No, Aim is there to be used as an additional tohit buff for when I need it, for Benumb or other powers. For my slotting, Aim is pure bonus. For your slotting, its making up for the power being underslotted.
In the end, both Benumbs are hitting. You get to neglect a power (I guess? Not sure how you use Aim then.) I get two extra slots. -
Quote:Yeah, I missed that part. But how is using Aim a silly solution? It's there, ready to be used. Are you just going to sit on it because you have accuracy slotted in Benumb? Is there some scenario where you're not allowed to use Aim?Originally Posted by Silas
Actually he says right at the start its for a +3 AV, you at 50+1 vs a 54 AV. Plus, you said your Benumb never misses in your hundreds and hundreds of hours, have all of those hours been after i19?
While Aim would help you hit, its a silly solution to a non-issue. Slot Benumb properly because a) you don't need a lot of slots to do so, b) there are plenty of other places to skimp on slots and c) its frigging Benumb. Then you don't need to rely on Aim or defense debuffs or whatever other nonsense. Plus, I've got Benumb slotted for Acc and Aim in my build. That gives me much better chances to land Benumb when it'll count.
You call using Aim a silly solution. I call slotting accuracy a silly waste of slots.