DrMike2000

Nothing much to report yet, I'm afraid.

I had a brief foretaste of what's in for me running on a 8 person team. I was 19 at the time, the rest of the team were around 25, and we were fighting Lost.
I got slept frequently, but then again my Defences are in the mid 20's at the moment.

I'll let you know once I hit some higher numbers how it works.

I used to teleport every spawn straight on to the ground below me form the air. The knockback tends to just push them against the ground, and a big pile of stunned enemies land at the temas feet.

I rarely received any complaints about this, only on the most steamroller-y teams

One of my first characters was gimped for concept.

Anemone was a superstrong, resilient teleptahic mermaid, basically Aquaman powers. I made her a sa Mind Control/Kinetics Controller to get the telepathic powers, with Air Sup and Jump Kick for superstrength and no Levitate.

I knew Levitate was a great power on paper, but it was impossible to justify concept wise. I'm probably not the only Mind Controller to make this decision, since the powerset is 7 telepathic/2 telekinetic powers.

I've also ran a human-only Scrapper with no travel power way before Ninja Run. I resisted even taking Combat jumping until the 30s.

I've made a few concessions to effectiveness too - I've reluctantly taken Fire Sword Circle on characters who have no right to be carrying or creating a sword.

Some more custom animations would fix this dilemmma, hint hint!

That sounds like a great idea to me.
I havent played a Dark Armour stalker but I cna imagine how irritating it would be with the way these powers work at the moment.

It could be done. Whether it would require some extra code or just a change to the powers spreadsheet to work exactly like that is speculation.

So it does! Thanks for pointing that out, Whisper. So spell it out for me since I've never seen the power in action:

Noxious Gas has NO hold component?
Its just a AoE -Dam/-Res/-Def/-To Hit debuff then? Not that that's a bad thing

And can you give any specific examples of what Weaken does? Sort of like people do when they're talking about how Confuse rocks when used on FF Generators and Sorcerors and so on.

eg use it on a Rikti Guardian and their AM and Force Fields are less effective?
use it on Silver Mantis and her Build Up is less effective?

auto power self buffs... does that count innate Defence bonuses? or even innate Resistance?

Dark Miasma provides a very nice -Res, -movement in Tar Patch, lifting it from a purely defensive debuffer set to a much more well-rounded one.
Rad Emission provides a -Def debuff (ie makes you hit more easily), which Dark doesn't, other than that they cover similar bases, with Dark being safer but a bit slower. You can compensate for the lack of -Def with slotting and Tactics.

Personally, I find Poison's debuffs to be quite underwhelming, and deliberately left it off my list. It has some interesting special debuffs like reducing enemy mez durations, but nothing great to keep the damage off you or your team.

Its an absolutley wicked set. +3.125% vs Ranged and AoE and anti-KB for three pieces, and anyone can use it because it goes into a number of pool powers.

That anti-KB piece is the one I spend all my hard earned merits on usually.

Good luck with your sale, Mr Kinetic!

I'd go for Radiation Emission on Corrupters, or Dark Miasma or Storm secondary on Corrupters or Defenders.

They all pack some really good debuffs.

Which debuffs are hideously powerful, though?

I'd buy that statement if Weaken did more -To Hit and -Dam than Darkest Night, but it doesn't. It does the same values, only to a single target instead of a whole spawn.

If I Weaken a boss, even with it fully slotted, I don't exactly feel safe going AFK in front of him.

I havent played all the way through, so is it all down to Noxious Gas, and the increasing usefulness of the -special in Weaken as I hit the higher content?

Excellent suggestion. The animation is there already, the system for alternate animations is already made, why not stick the brawl animation in there?

Even if you don't want an all punches set its got its uses - you could use the punching Thunder Kick and original roundhouse Storm Kick for example.

I think its a really good idea. The animation already exists, as does the system for specifying alternate animations, so why not? I'll say so in your thread.

I guess for now you can swap Thunder Kick for Boxing if you're planning to take Tough for whatever reason. Or even if you don't want Tough, but have a pool to spare?

And I totally disagree with the preference for a street-fighting set, I like the alternate animation system because it decouples game mechanics from cosmetics. Punching and Kicking look different but have the same ingame effects, hence no dev time is lost balancing a new set in order to allow people to punch.

Yeah, my mistake. Weaken has the -special, not Envenom.


How exectly does Noxious Gas work?

If I'm reading Red Tomax right, it puts a pulsing aura on a pet of your choice for 40 seconds, and anyone within 15ft of that pet gets the -Def, -To Hit, -Dam -Res applied. These debuffs last 20s after leaving the aura, right?

There's also a massive Mag 1000 hold for 4s. Is that triggered once, or does it pulse with the aura? If the pet is holding everything in its 15ft aura for the next 40 seconds then thats pretty impressive.


"CM." - Clear Mind? You mean I get Antidote as a Clear Mind clone?

The subject of Poison came up again in this awesome thread:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=210745

and I thought I should ask here rather than derail Guy's discussion.

What's so great about Poison?

I've got a Ninja/Posion MM at 31 now, so I'm using the entire set barring Noxious Gas (and that sleep-inducing Posion Trap that everyone says not to take...) and I'm sort of less than impressed, same as I was when I looked at the set on paper. When I've asked this before the standard reply is that its the king of ST debuffs, but Im not seeing it.

The debuffs (Weaken and Envenom) are not only single target focussed but often weaker
than what other sets provide for an entire spawn on a per-spawn basis.

Weaken: -11.25% to Hit, -22.5% Damage
Darkest Night: -11.25% To Hit, -22.5% Damage in a 25ft radius
+ Fearsome Stare: -11.25% To Hit
Hurricane: -30% To Hit
Force Field Generator: 10% Defence at all times, better than -11.25% To Hit on +1s and +2s, and Mez protection

Envenom: -30% Res, -22.5% Def
Tar Patch: -30% Res perma on a group with slotting
Freezing Rain: -30% Res, -30% Def plus other effects (Knockdown, -Recharge)
Acid Mortar: -20% Res, -20% Def, draws aggro

Now, I get that Poison has two fairly special features:
-the -special in Envenom that reduces enemy healing and mez duration
-the mag 1000 hold in Noxious Gas, and that this makes it a very powerful set against AVs.

But it seems to pay very heavily for this specialisation, with no real effective per-spawn damage mitigation for the majorioty of PvE gameplay. Noxious Gas is a hefty set of debuffs that stack with the ST powers, but on a long enough timer to exclude it from bread and butter tactics.

Am I right in this assessment, or missing something? What do more experienced Posion users think?

Usually, +Dam and -Res go together really nicely, since they multiply rather than add.

e.g. -50% Res and +50% damage means you do 125% more damage rather than just 100% more.
(1.5*1.5 = 2.25 = 100% + 125%)

I had a quick look on Red Tomax to see how much Aim does for Corruptors, and its only +42% damage? Seems a bit low, is that right? (Blasters get +65%, Defenders get +50%)

You're already packing +100% damage from enhancements on any attack worth using, so maybe Aim isnt so hot in the damage department here.

That said, it does give you a bit +to Hit bonus, very useful when you need it.

Good on you!

Its always good to see people stretching what the game can do.

I'm surprised that Poison was your secondary of choice, since it seems to be one of the weaker secondaries in my limited experience with Masterminds.

A damage proc adds 14 damage (20% of 71 damage) at level 50 for all archetypes.

Short Circuit does 55 damage for a Blaster, so a single SO would add 55/3 = 18 damage.

For a Defender the damage SO adds 32/3= 11 damage.

Corrupters do a base of 37/3= 12 damage, but the damage from a damage SO will Scourge, whereas a proc won't. Say Scourge adds 25% extra damage, that 12 become 15. Its very close.

So its better to slot a Blaster with a damage SO, but a Defender will do better with the Eradication proc.
Corrupters, do what thou wilt.

I'd try:

Performance Shifter: End Mod/Rech
Efficiacy Adapter: End Mod/Rech/Acc
End Mod/Rech
End Mod
Obliteration: Acc/Dam/Rech
Dam/Rech

For about +34% Acc, +100% Rech, +100% End Mod and +42% Damage using level 30 IOs, a bit higher for higher level ones.
Change the End Mod for an Obliteration Damage if you want to focus on damage above End Mod.

Remember youve got a base Acc of 1.3, so even with the slotting above you're at an accuracy of 1.7 already. You could probably get by with a half-So's worth even, and change that Acc/Dam/Rech into a Dam/Rech from another set in order to up your damage a little bit more.

Depends on your other powers too, for a Kin/Elec Defender or Corrupter +Damage is less important than on a Blaster.

What's the Pastron Robot?

Durrr!

I thought business (generic IO crafting) was a bit slow the past couple of days. Now it makes sense!

I'll start a diary here once I hit the relevant levels. Im 14 at the moment, so the experiment hasn't really kicked in.

My original plan for the 20 powers by level 38 was:
3 for Fitness
3 for Fighting
7 from Martial Arts - skipping Crippling Axe Kick and Cobra Strike
7 from SR, skipping Elude since I'll be softcapping and skipping.... hmmm? That's where I put Practiced Brawler on the choipping block.

No travel power beyond Ninja Run and Raptor Packs.

I've since figured out I can probably skip Fighting and still get close enough to soft-capping. My current plan is to take Combat Jumping for Immobilise and KB protection (from BotZ) and some extra Def instead of Weave, keep Tough around for the actual Resists and the Steadfast IO, and still skip PB.
I don't strictly need to, but, its become one of those things, once the idea sticks I have to see how it plays out.

I think later on I dont even need the Steadfast IO to cap, so there's plenty of room to restructure and include PB if it gets too rough.

And yeah, AoE mezzes are an odd one. I dont get any AoE defence from SR until level 35 with Evasion, but get capped Defence while hidden.

[Edit: I could also drop Thunder Kick and actually slot the Fighting pool attack and use that instead. If I was being practical I could, I really like TK's animation]

I've got to say no to changing minion AI.

I like the AI as it is, even if its a bit dumb. When the game revolves around mowing down large groups of minions, its frustrating enough when they hit and run or display otherwise intelligent behaviour.

More advanced AI for bosses or AVs would be nice, even more in the way of special units liek Tsoo Sorcerors or Paragon Protectors who require some special attention, but I'd leave the majority of grunts as they are.

It would be very cool to see a few more player powers used by the higher tier enemies - Wormhole and Trip Mines (after running round a corner) are two that spring to mind.

Fire_Minded's right.

To try and quantify any statements about "the best" - CoH is a mature game and powersets are pretty well balanced against each other by now.

Even the buff/debuff Defender primaries are balanced, and they are easily the most diverse group of sets in the game.

I'll stick my neck out and say the biggest outliers for Defenders sets (primary and secondary) are Sonic Blast, which is maybe 20% better than average at most, and Trick Arrows, which is maybe 20% weaker than average at worst estimate.

Different sets do different things (eg Force Fields is out and out best at protecting a team, Cold is really good vs Avs) but overall they're very well balanced by now.

You'd be hard put to really notice this level of performance difference in game. If you choose something less than optimal you're still going to have a good time, rather than spend 50 levels kicking yourself for choosing that powerset.

I think there was an Australian TV show about programmers in the ealry 2000's. It revolved around a smart trendy software development start-up in Sydney? I can't remember the details.

Dramas would happen like they had a deadline, they lost all their code, didn't have any backups and had to stay up all night and rewrite it...

Needless to say, it was crap, and sank into obscurity.

I would recommend Gravity - my first solo Controller and fiorst 50 was a Grav/Emp. Even with a relatively bad soloing secondary I did well thanks to the great single target attack chain.

For the first 20 levels Propel is a godsend - it has better damage-pre-endurance than any other Controller attack and also benefits your end recovery by having a long animation time.

From there, its a short hop to 26 when you finally get a good AoE control, so I'd say Gravity's problem time is really 20-27 compared to other controllers.

I'd shy away from Earth and Ice - they're low damage sets.

And picking a secondary with some -Def (eg Rad or Storm) will allow you to leverage Sand of Mu vet power, which does way more damage than any Controller attack.

With regards to what's tanking and what isn't, Fire spelled out what he was talking about in his original post reallly clearly:

"How many of you can step up and Alpha a team without a Tanker leading the way?"

Holding aggro is often a bit irrelevant on a Defender because of the other things we're bringing to the table.
On my FF/Sonic with the godly defences I would often be initiating fights and have teammates complain that they wanted the tank to tank because they would hold aggro. I even had one teammate recommend I get Provoke if I wanted to do that.

I had to repeatedly point out that everyone else was also sitting at capped Defences, and holding aggro wasn't really that important.

The same would apply to a Dark Defender for sure, herdicaning Stromies, Cold Defenders and many others. Shifting mindsets out in the field can be hard