Dechs Kaison

Situation: Assume the only defense bonus I have is 25% ranged (I know this doesn't really happen). A ranged psionic attack is used against me.

What I think happens: The game engine notes that the attack has "psionic" and "ranged" types. It then compares my psionic defense (0%) to my ranged defense (25%) and decides to make the calculation to hit with the 25% defense modifier.

I am by no means a guru on game mechanics, so is that how it works?

TO. IT'S TO. NOT TOO.

I'm sorry, it bothered me that much to read it.

Ok, I have another question that I would like answered because something must have changed in my time away from CoX.

I saw some screenshots of a corruptor with a pets window! It looks like he/she could see the pet health bars and buffs, even target them by clicking the names like they were teammates. Is that what I'm seeing? Does this really exist?

I'm assuming all AT's can bring up this window (particularly controllers)?

When did they add this?

Thank you very much!

Hey, I just realized there's this player note function, and I have a few questions. (Came back to CoX after a year and some change.)

When you assign a player note, is it global to the account or isolated to that character?

Does the note show up in character info? Is there an easy way to tell if I already have a note for a person?

Just a curiosity question: When was this awesome function added?

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My Bots/FF has been sitting at level 25 for a couple of weeks now. I know the Assault Bot is only half a level away, but I'm used to Thugs/Poison, where if any target lasts more than 10 seconds you know it's an EB.

By comparison the time it takes my Bots to kill anything is just mind numbing.

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When you get the assault bot, the speed at which you kill things quadruples, and when you get the final upgrade, it multiplies that by ten.

So you'll be able to kill a minion or two per minute!

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I quit playing my Bots/FF at 38. Strong to the point of being boring, and no exciting powers to look forward to.

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Well, I haven't hit 50 redside yet, so this is going to have to be the one to do it because he's closest.

Next in line is a 22 MM, a 16 MM, two 8 MMs and an 8 Dom.

What can I say? I like MM's... I have one of every (primary) flavor, and I won't duplicate a secondary.

Bot/FF
Necro/Pain
Thug/Poison
Ninja/Dark
Merc/Traps
Demon/Thermal (wishful thinking)

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How about not. This is a TA discussion, so take your Poison eslewhere.

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I hit you with Weaken. You are now 74.5% less Special.

Poison foevah!

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Poison is a single-target set. So, you make one guy less special, the rest of us come at you and rip apart your minions faster than you can spam Alkaloid.

TA may have issues, but Poison is poop.

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Except you're a MM... so the boss is less special and all the minions and LTs are dead before they take 2 steps.

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I'm just going to step in here and steamroll all of you with my bot/ff that you can't hit to give -special.

BOTFFFTW

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You know, you're right. I apologize for coming off as rude as I did.

What I should have said was you deprive your grave knight one of his (better) melee attacks if you don't enchant it, which you can't really afford to do. Even without enchanting, he retains one fairly rapid ranged attack, so it's not a guarantee that he will run to melee. Unfortunately, you cannot let the AI take care of itself either. You won't see top performance from your henchmen unless you make use of all the commands available.

A piece of advice that might be helpful: Bind an easy key to hit as your goto command; better yet, bind shift+lbutton as a goto. Then all you have to do is shift click and the pets go to the spot you picked. You'll never see the swirly.

I've just recently started playing with necro, and I've found that I need a different strategy than normal. Usually, I have every tier of henchmen do the same thing, but I've had to adapt to the zombies' fragility. I changed the usual binds so that I never actually command the zombies to do anything. They remain in defensive follow regardless of any attack, goto, or stance commands. While I command the heavy hitters, I maintain my meatshield that vomits on anything that wanders close enough to me.

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Apology accepted. You make good points that I shouldn't take lightly. In a thread where few folks seem empathetic, it's easy to become oversensitive.

Keybinds are inclusive, not exclusive, right? If you keybind to leave the zombies out of your orders, don't you basically have to set up two sets of keybinds--one set for the grave knights, and one for the lich? As for the Shft + Lclick Goto, is that just a Grave Knight Goto?

Also, once you're attacked, doesn't defensive stance cause the zombies to start running around on their own doing stuff without your direction?

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You can do a pretty complicated bind. /bind shift+lbutton "petcom_pow grave knight goto$$petcom_pow lich goto" will command both pets at the same time I think. I haven't actually hit level 26 with my necro yet.

And yes, the defensive stance sends the zombies in as soon as the knights start taking hits. Mostly, the delay is all it takes so that the zombies don't get attention, but I've rigged a set of macros that puts them in passive then defensive to reel them back if I feel I need to.

Do you have 2 billion influence to dump into purpling out your build?

If not, consider rolling thugs/poison.

A little clarification before I start this thread: I'm not bragging about my mad skills, because let's face it, bot/ff requires none. I'm not bragging about my uberslotted build, because let's face it, bot/ff requires nothing of the sort. I have simply come to the realization that bot/ff is stupid powerful all on its own.

Ok, so it may not be able to solo an AV without a super expensive build, but just hear me out. I don't have my difficulty on five so I only fight EB's solo. When you can walk away from your computer in the middle of a fight with an elite boss, your character is stupid powerful. When you can aggro multiple bosses and walk away from your computer, your character is stupid powerful.

I found this out during the Hammer of the World arc (possible spoilers) from Scirocco. It pits you against quite a few heroes; in my case, they are only elite bosses.

Foreshadow? I don't remember the fight. I wasn't there. My cats were trying to kill each other and I had to separate them. I came back expecting to see myself faceplanted, but instead found an elite boss at my feet. Stupid powerful.

How about that room with Fathim the Kind and the four arch-mages? Pretty crazy stuff if you ask me since this was my first time to the shadow shard. I finally make my way to that final room and guess what? Game seven is about to start and I want to see my team take the Stanley Cup. Do I log out and come back to the shadow shard later, to jump astronomical distances praying that my bots keep up? I could also go AFK and leave the computer on for what could be two or more hours. I didn't like either option.

So I quickly aggro'd the archmages of agony and ruin and walked away. I came back between periods to aggro the other two. Pens win the cup, so I come back. Turns out that Fathim guy will help you if you get his attention. I wish I'd have known that, he has some nice buffs! Either way, I did little more than one force bolt to each of four bosses and still came out on top. Stupid powerful.

Bot/FF doesn't really have the tools to solo AV's. You really need more -regen. I say more because the assault bot does have some, but very little.

I'd imagine it's possible to do with some uberslotting, but I'm a 43 bot/ff (only common IO'd) and I don't think I could take down an AV. I know I could survive because my bots are defense capped and then some (+prot bot heals and repair), but I can't put out enough damage to account for the AV regen. I'm thinking about picking up assault from the leadership pool, but I just don't know if it's worth it.

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Or you could use commands to move your henchmen into melee range like the other competent MM players. There is a reason we have advanced controls for pets and controllers don't. The MM was not designed to be an AT that just sits back and yells "Attack!" all day long (unless you're Bot/FF, even then you need goto occasionally).

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Obnoxious much?

Battlefields are hectic places. In the middle of a free-for-all reactively clicking and mousing with the GoTo swirly sometimes isn't ideal, nor competent. A proactive attack plan that minimizes reactive mousing-around strategies is what competence dictates. You can now go on to tell me how you do it all the time and it works like gangbusters, but the neat thing about people going out of their way to be rude is that you can assume a certain level of equivocation on their part, since you know there's a lack of good will anyway.

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You know, you're right. I apologize for coming off as rude as I did.

What I should have said was you deprive your grave knight one of his (better) melee attacks if you don't enchant it, which you can't really afford to do. Even without enchanting, he retains one fairly rapid ranged attack, so it's not a guarantee that he will run to melee. Unfortunately, you cannot let the AI take care of itself either. You won't see top performance from your henchmen unless you make use of all the commands available.

A piece of advice that might be helpful: Bind an easy key to hit as your goto command; better yet, bind shift+lbutton as a goto. Then all you have to do is shift click and the pets go to the spot you picked. You'll never see the swirly.

I've just recently started playing with necro, and I've found that I need a different strategy than normal. Usually, I have every tier of henchmen do the same thing, but I've had to adapt to the zombies' fragility. I changed the usual binds so that I never actually command the zombies to do anything. They remain in defensive follow regardless of any attack, goto, or stance commands. While I command the heavy hitters, I maintain my meatshield that vomits on anything that wanders close enough to me.

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My friend and I had a long discussion about influence. Here's how I undersand it based on our conversation.

Influence is not money. It's how well known you are and how willing people are to give you things... for free.

Imagine you're actually a superhero and you live in a world where people could help you fight crime by giving you things. You don't walk into a store to BUY gadget DOs. They actually give them to you. For instance, Bill owns the shop and last week you saved his friend from Hellions. He has a business to run and can't give you too much for free. He also has thousands of other heroes coming and going. But you've done him a service, and he's read about you in the newspaper, so you're worth a few free gadgets.

Word of mouth travels fast in CoH, which is why passing NPCs always talk about your exploits. It takes no time at all before people know you got some free stuff. They know you're awesome, but you've already been given things, so you don't need more stuff right now. At least, until you save that shopkeeper's uncle next week. A typical conversation when you're low on influence may sound like "Listen man, I know you're Superman, but I have a family to feed. I gave you all I can spare, but I'm hanging on to some things for Ultradude who destroyed that giant monster yesterday." After you do a big deed, people want to help out.

Why do you get no influence from fighting grays? Because, honestly, the city expects more of you. If you're Superman, they want you to be saving the world from metorites and cosmic death rays, not muggers on the street. There are thousands of heroes in the city who can do that. Get back to work. The exception here is that if you're exemped, you DO get influence. The reasoning here is that you're helping another individual (exemped to a person) or a group of people (task force) using your knowledge and expertise. Superman teaches a new hero how to save the world. There's influence to be had there.

You go to the market. People are still trading things for "free" there. You meet another superhero who invented an awesome invention, and is willing to give it to you. It's SO incredibly awesome and powerful that the city doesn't feel the need to help you out for quite some time, because you're ahead of the game and there are other heroes they need to tend to. As for the inventor who created the awesome gadget, the city says "Wow, that guy totally invented something that helped out SUPERMAN!" and now they're willing to help YOU out.

You find a lowbie friend, and vouch for him. Your influence is now his. Word spreads around town that Superman is supporting and promoting Sidekick Lad. Anyone who wanted to help out Superman should focus their efforts on the new, upcoming hero that Superman is endorsing instead.

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This.

The explanation here is just about perfect.

Although, some people are going to look at this and say "See? No matter what kooky system the devs think up, the deluded playerbase will justify it to themselves."

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I don't particularly like the change (for one thing, I have to either summon the Bruiser after I give everyone else the first Upgrade, or move him out of its radius) but it's really neither a nerf nor a buff.

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Well, you're entitled to your opinion. Seems awful to me, but like I said, an FF MM has to bubble-bubble individually anyway, so bubble-bubble-enchant was just part of the rhythym.

What you mentioned about the bruiser, about not wanting to upgrade him--been thinking along the same lines with the grave knight. Not sure I want him standing back throwing dark at mobs instead of pummeling them on the front line.

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Or you could use commands to move your henchmen into melee range like the other competent MM players. There is a reason we have advanced controls for pets and controllers don't. The MM was not designed to be an AT that just sits back and yells "Attack!" all day long (unless you're Bot/FF, even then you need goto occasionally).

Biggest thing: Cosmic balance/absorption work in forms. You can now tank in squid form and be a damage monkey in dwarf.

All I can say for sure is the bots. I run with a Bots/FF and I have my protectors slotted like this: 1ACC/2DMG/1HEAL/2DEF.

It works out to be decent damage, the heal keeps my bots alive, but the defense buff is somewhere over 10%. That's 20% for my assault bot and each of the tier 1s. Couple that with dispersion bubble and maneuvers, and all my bots are so close to the soft cap it's unreal. I don't even need to use the ST bubbles unless I'm fighting +3's.

I'd just like to take this chance to thank you again for the extremely helpful editing and general advice on how to keep the audience interested. The feedback I received (twice) allowed me to produce an arc that I am quite proud of.

As soon as issue 15 hits, I will also have another arc for you to review. It's the villainous sequel to the first one, but I need the feature that is going to be added that allows a glowie to be a triggered objective.

I encourage anyone else to take Airhead's offer and submit your arcs. I'm sure you will find the advice just as helpful as I did.

I endorse this topic, as I have yet to find information regarding recent changes.

Sorry to nitpick, but I like to throw my two cents in whenever I see "noob" used incorrectly.

You, sir, have asked a newb question. There is nothing wrong with not knowing something and asking about it.

A noob says "nuh UH, thtz not how it wurkz. U play this how long? WTF dubm"

Hey, someone liked this! You might too! Give it a try!

/shamelessbump

Madam_Enigma,

Sorry, I wasn't saying it put them in aggressive stance. It wasn't even a reply to your post. I haven't gotten used to using tags to say QR and whatnot yet. I just meant to try to explain why "Attack" + "Defensive" =/= "Bodyguard."

It would be immensely powerful.

Bodyguard mode would be too powerful if you could focus fire while still maintaining the damage mitigation. This is why "Attack my Target" while in "Defensive" mode, achievable through advanced controls, does not engage bodyguard mode.

Thanks everyone. You've at least told me that this is not a bad combination. I'm looking forward to the death, decay, and decimation that my character will be capable of.

But I have two more questions for now.

Does the -heal penalty stop regeneration too?

Until I get grave knights and lich, am I unable to solo? The zombies pump out a lot of damage, but as soon as I fight a boss critter I can't kill him fast enough.

The high end cost on the enchant undead is because you now enchant all your undead with one use of the power. This is great for the initial set up, but as you pointed out, it SUCKS when you have to replace just one.

There's been several threads about enemies running away, so I think that's a recent AI change. Basically, mobs are trying to move to "ranged" range, and sometimes just keep running. Not sure if it's a bug. I've also heard they start to run after so many times of not hitting in a row, but I'm not sure if this is true.

I have a Bot/FF, and he's still pretty much invincible. I don't think they've nerfed any of the secondaries.

I just started a necro/, and I notice that the zombies are very fragile when compared to my bots at that level. I don't know if this has always been the case or not.