DMystic
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Quote:Originally Posted by Zyphoid
What about AS having a chance to cause fear, is that a perk?
Well now with the changed to Stalkers it's closer to being a perk, but when it was introduced in I12 that was not the case.
When Demoralize was added, Stalkers were in desperate need of a reason for teams to take them. Stalkers had 2 major problems on teams at the time, the first being that for Stalkers to get their Hidden Crit in a team situation they needed to attack before the team did. This is a problem because Stalkers are not good at taking a full team Alpha.
The Second problem is that Stalkers did not offer anything to a team, because the damage output they dealt was easily surpassed by Brutes and all the other AT's offered more than just damage which was the only thing a Stalker could do.
This led to Demoralize an unresistable 7.5% To-Hit debuff helped a Stalker survive an Alpha and the chance for a mag 5 fear offered a decent agro control option to the team while they set up their things(Brute agro,Dom Control, Cor (de)buffs.
So back then it was to give Stalkers something to help the team. Now that they can dish out the damage they've always been supposed to it's closer to a perk, but Demoralize helps keep a Hidden AS as a desirable option. -
The Powers system in 4E doesn't really bother me, though I think some powers are restricted inappropriately.
Now I'm not sure what this block a team mate attack is as I haven't really played any fighters. Other than Daily powers all of your abilities are available to you for every fight. At Wills are always available, Encounters are used once an Encounter( 5 mins game time) and reset after a short rest. So I'm not seeing huge restrictions on what you can use that would cause the kind of outrage I'm seeing here.
The idea behind the powers is to give the classes something to do besides I attack it.
In 3.0/3.5 if you were a fighter you made a full attack, that was it. Granted Fighters were very good at attacking but overall they didn't have any mechanically interesting ways to attack. Then Tome of Battle came out and everyone was like "YES MELEE CASTERS ARE AWESOME!!!!11!!!!!" Toem of battle introduced several Melee focused characters with a full contingent of spell like effects(and in some cases out right spells) similar to the crazy stuff you would see in over the top Martial Arts movies (Kung Fu Hustle,The One,Shaolin Soccer) and various video games (Devil May Cry, Ninja Gaiden, Street Fighter,Mortal Kombat). It hit a sweet spot of concept/balance/attainability that wasn't realistically achievable using all the other splat books in 3.5 except using the gestalt Character variant, and even then a Gestalt was stretching what ToB could do easily.
4E tried to build off of Tome of Battle and does a decent job of giving every class interesting things to do, but that came at the cost of gutting multiclass options. With the Splat books that took time to come out I'd say through the power system and additional classes almost any concept can be made now. -
Quote:Originally Posted by UberGuy
I actually forgot it says "PACIFIED". I was talking about the fact that there's a power icon in your status tray that tells you what the effect does (in short form) when you hover over it.
Honestly while that's good and all it's easily overlooked and not noticed amongst the plethora of stuff that goes on there during an iTrial.
And I have to agree with Night Watcher above yeah we're a bit off topic but that comes from the iTrials themselves not really creating a sense of being more powerful and in specific cases making us feel weaker without adequately explaining that weakness.
Which ties in with Incarnates not feeling very special and oh look there's a level above Incarnate that's even more powerful.
So here we are at SSJ 1 fighting SSJ 3s and learning about SSJ 4s
Now just picture a narrator recaping the events of the previous trials at the start of the new ones. -
Quote:Originally Posted by UberGuy
It's pretty amazingly obvious that the league is supposed to care how many Telepathists are in play - there's a status bar showing you it on the objective status window. Also, there's a debuff icon with a power name that matches what the windows say the Telepathists are doing. (Pacification.) If people choose to blindly ignore that the objective window might be telling them something important, that's not something I'm willing to lay at the Devs' feet. Ignoring it in an informed way is one thing - that can be a viable strategy. Ignoring it without understanding what it may do is fairly dumb, IMO.
I consider that separate from the rock throwing thing, though.
No doubt it's obvious that the league is supposed to care about Telepathists, however my experiences with TPN have never told me why I'm supposed to care about the Telepathists other than for Public Opinion.
Yes I see PACIFICATION there in Red letters. however that doesn't inform me what PACIFICATION is doing to me. Same thing with Marked For Death or TARGETTED(or whatever it is the in UG) Ok I see the condition, but that doesn't really help me understand what it's doing, what's about to happen or how to deal with it. I learned after the fact on MARKED FOR DEATH(which oddly PLACATE can't fix) your supposed to break LOS.
I've always felt the Trials after Keyes are very poor about visibly indicating the unique effects that get thrown about. -
Quote:Originally Posted by Dz131
Marital Arts
Agreed but only cause of the Alt animation for Assassins Strike -
well /ice only has CE with that juggling problem and quite frankly as a Stalker(especially now) you can very easily skip the power and not hurt your survivability.
Alternatively you can try /EA, I think Disrupt also has that toggle problem but again the power is easily skipable without being harmful. -
Quote:Originally Posted by UberGuy
I'm sure a lot of leagues do just fine, because a lot of leagues do have a lot of buffs just by accident of having 24 people on hand. A couple of Cold Domination characters or a lot of control can make the debuffs not mean much. It's not guaranteed, though. That's why it bugs me when people say the debuffs don't do anything - that suggests than any old league can ignore them and be fine, and that's just not the case.
Which shows how poorly designed the trial actually is. If you have this major mechanic that's the difference between success and failure and the people on the trial can't readily identify it than that mechanic isn't well thought out. -
Quote:Originally Posted by Zyphoid
I said that. :/
Whoops sorry, overlooked it.
I remember those days too, I had a DM/SR that only used the passives.
Although I think with Io's and especially with Incarnate we're a lot more powerful than we were back then. -
Which again technically wasn't a Scrapper (the AT) nerf.
it was a nerf to a powerset, not an AT. Granted that powerset was only available on the Scrapper AT but you can't call a change to a single powerset a nerf to an entire AT. Unless of course that's the only set available to said AT like with Peacebringers and Warshades. -
Than try out /nin or /ice as Nin is currently a Stalker Exclusive set, and /Ice is only available to Tankers and Stalkers
Either of those will give you a unique experience that can't be replicated.Both are also really good sets. -
Quote:There you go then, Scrappers out damage Brutes, Brutes survive better than Scrappers.Originally Posted by DarkSideLeague
If you factor in Criticals then Scrappers remain ahead at all times.
Hooray the melee AT's actually line up the way they were supposed to
Survivability -> Damage
Tanker, Brute, Scrapper, Stalker -
Quote:Originally Posted by Zyphoid
This is an honest question, but didn't the brute resistance cap get lowered when the fury changes were made?
I don't think the Resistance caps were changed then. however the Brute Damage Cap most definitely was. IIRC the cap was changed so that a Brute at Capped Damage would be doing noticeably less damage than a Capped Scrapper.
Of course that doesn't change the inbetween where I think Brutes can more readily match/surpass Scrapper damage. -
ELM,Spines,Dual Blades,Street Justice, and when it comes out in April Staff Fighting.
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Quote:Originally Posted by MisterD
Also..does anyone else seriously NOT think KM stalkers being able to perma build up isnt broken? Really? I would ask if the devs considered this..but..
Considering all the other things that can be made perma I think they're ok with this. -
Street Justice and Kinetic Melee are probably you're best bets.
Kinetic Melee since it does energy damage doesn't get resisted as often as a lot of other sets. It also has Burst which will Crit 100% of the time from Hidden/Placate. Additionally Concentrated Strikes crit will recharge Build Up this gives Kin some interesting advantages with Hide/Placate/ATO.
Street Justice is also a good set to use because of the AoE damage, and the combo system gives an interesting gameplay experience with the Assassin's Strike changes. Since AS is 2 combo points and the unhidden animation is short it will be easy to earn combo points, which will go nicely with a Crushing Uppercut Crit from Placate/ATO.
As for Secondaries Willpower/Super Reflexes/Ninjutsu are all good picks without too many effects interfering with your costume. -
Quote:Originally Posted by UberGuy
Perhaps it should occur to you that it very much matters, or no one would be talking about it. Given the entirety of how it was presented is fundamental to why the "vegetarian" analogy did not make sense. If the steak eaters were being told that a vegetarian-only menu was being assembled, then they wouldn't have been asking for quality meat as part of it. They were never told that, and now we have a statement after the fact, saying "oh, yeah, that was the point all along."
And again I raise the point that creating content that's specifically easy for the sake of soloists and "small teams" (easier in certain ways than the rest of the 40+ game [35+ in CoV content]), is in stark contrast to the way Incarnate Content has been tied up until now with over-the-top challenges found in iTrials. Saying DA was "non-trial" as opposed to "solo-centric" was compatible with that presentation, because "non-trial" does not imply anything about being easier than other non-trial content, while saying "yeah, we avoided AVs for the sake of soloists" very much does.
Perhaps you might see how I would consider this a significant failure of communication of intent.
Ok, yeah I see where you're coming from now. I'm sure once I actually get to run the new stuff I'll have a clearer perspective on the whole topic. -
Quote:Except thatOriginally Posted by UberGuy
Even in beta, DA was never touted as content just for "vegetarians". DA was never "solo" content.
Bolded the part that runs counter to your statement Uberguy.Quote:Originally Posted by Dr AeonHey guys!
We have been reading peoples feedback regarding the EBs in Dark Astoria. Right now, were planning on leaving them the same. The goal of Dark Astoria was to provide challenging content for solo players and small teams; upgrading these EBs to be AVs that scale down, at this point in development, has the risk of causing a number issues that could hamper this experience, which is something we want to avoid. However, we are taking the feedback into consideration for future arcs, so please continue to give us your opinions about this. Thanks!
Dr. Aeon
Whatever it was called in beta or after doesn't really matter as Aeon said the design goal was in fact solo/small team. -
Quote:Originally Posted by UberGuy
I now question the validity of everything that has been used to defend all the exceptional challenge mechanics included in the iTrials. If Dark Astoria is aimed at being gentle on soloists, how is exceptional difficulty (by CoH standards) justified on iTrials?
IMO it's never been justified. That's largely why I dislike the iTrials.
The only reason I see is because the iTrials are designed to be tackled by multiple teams. -
Quote:Originally Posted by Caulderone
One thing to consider that I haven't seen noted here is default AV = purple triangles, even when stepped down to EBs.
Purple triangles are not equally an issue across classes. They are only really annoying for some of two classes (cont,dom).
I don't have a wagon in this race, one way or the other, but it may have been a design decision to avoid causing those 2 classes Purple Triangle Blues.
I had mentioned the AV->EB difference earlier, but I didn't specify the PToD.
The Triangles also have an effect on Blaster sets as some use control for mitigation. -
Fair point, however I think an SO only build(though I doubt there are many of those still around) would have a much harder time and DA has to be built with those in mind.
And Yes I know SO builds can solo EBs, I'm just trying to find a mechanical reason why DA uses EBs instead of Scaled AVs.
I also just remembered an old bug from some of the RWZ arcs where Sefu would spawn as a full AV instead of scaling down. Whiel that bug was fixed maybe the Devs wanted to avoid the potential for such a thing to occur again in the DA content. -
Quote:I said that it's a part of the design goals, plural not singular.Originally Posted by UberGuy
But that is not its design goal. Its design goal is to create a path which is not iTrials. That's a path you can solo. EBs are apparently assumed to be soloable. AVs that can be turned into EBs are therefore soloable. That remains a path you can solo. There is no issue here.
You're ignoring the fact that AVs that are turned into EBs are different from normal EBs.
A scaled down Back Alley Brawler has the same difficulty as a Minotaur right? -
Quote:Originally Posted by gec72
Honest question - are these the normal AVs scaled down, or are these versions specifically built as EBs? Not any new NPCs, but old ones like Reichsman and Requiem. I'm wondering about the trickiness with purple triangles for downgraded AVs. In my fight against those two on my Ice/Time troller - who barely had Alpha slotted, let alone anything else - I was able to lock Reichsman down. I was pretty thankful for this, especially after I'd run out of purples.
(ah, I see now that J_B has mentioned Reichsman, too)
haven't run the arcs yet, but from what I'm reading here it would seem that these are in fact EB versions.
Now earlier someone mentioned enemy scale
an EB is 5x harder than a boss, and an Av is 10X harder than an EB, or whatever numbers were used. What wasn't accounted for is the rank a Scaled AV. lets say that a Scaled Av is 5x harder than an EB.
there are some builds that have problems with regular EB's. There are some builds solo AV's. There are quite a few stat differences between a normal EB and a scaled AV. Since part of DA's design goals was to create a solo path for Incarnating your character it makes sense to use normal EB's in the content simply because of the difficulty difference between a Normal EB and a scaled AV. -
Quote:I thought the unlockable Arbiter contact was interesting. Granted his missions don't have any special set pieces or anything but I like his "No One Gets It" arcOriginally Posted by PleaseRecycle
.
At least with the slot machine you're somewhat motivated by the fact that it's kind of a novelty contact and the badge it requires is also required for one of the accolades. The Nerva contacts... I pity anyone who goes to the trouble of unlocking them expecting something neat as a reward. -
Quote:I've never seen that happen with the actual Fear effect.Originally Posted by Auroxis
Fear can cause mobs to run away.
I know there's a second effect called Frightened that causes running but that effect is limited to certain damage patches(Caltrops) and similar effects. -
I'd like a difficulty setting that has every group be a LT spawn.
I always love it when that occurs randomly in some missions and wish I could set the game to spawns mobs that way.