Draggynn

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So comparing Sleet to Freezing Rain in Mids' they seem to be exact clones.. are they?

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Freezing Rain is technically more powerful than sleet, but because of class modifiers they can look the same. On a defender Freezing Rain provides a 30% defense debuff, a 35% res debuff, and a 50% recharge debuff. Sleet on the other hand provides a 30% defense debuff (same) 30% res debuff (5% less) and a 40% recharge debuff (-10%).

The defender sleet numbers are the same as the controller freezing rain numbers which is why they appear to be clones. If controllers had access to sleet, though, it would be less powerful than controller freezing rain.

Although having said that...looking at RedTomax, i have a new theory. Corruptor and defender sleet appear to be the same. So whereas there is a defender and controller/corruptor version of freezing rain, there appears to be only one version of sleet that everyone uses. This one version of sleet appears to be the same as corruptor/controller freezing rain. So I would say that they are the same, except that there is no defender version of sleet. So if you are a defender FR is better.

I've never found myself feeling like a one trick pony. Storm and psy each have diverse enough powers that I find there's plenty of variation to be had. I tend to open with psionic tornado followed immediately by freezing rain for as much alpha mitigation as I can muster (not to mention that floors recharge on just about everything except AVs). This means that the -recharge for snow storm is excessive and won't have any effect. Some might see this as a negative, but personally i like being able to floor recharge without needing to keep on an expensive toggle and worrying about whether the team will kill the anchor or not. I tend to use snow storm only when I'm on a large team that is slow moving. Otherwise, I don't need to worry about it.

scramble thoughts can be stacked with thunderclap to disorient bosses (although i find you're usually better off just charging in with hurricane).

There aren't a lot of amazing synergies with storm/psi, but psi has a very solid single target attack chain, as well as the potential for aoe damage. /psy does not have an aim, but all you really loose is the damage boost since freezing rain means you'll be able to hit everything anyway.

I've been playing Storm/Psy for over 5 years now (to the exclusion of just about everything else) and have no regrets. I solo on unyielding and rarely have any trouble, but can bring a lot to a team as well. I think storm/anything, is a good choice though.

oooh....excellent thread!

How are (were) Clarissa and Eve Van Dorn related?

Garent's build has a lot of improvements that I would recommned, so rather than reiterating that, I will simply attempt to provide some commentary on modifications.

Unless you are going for a high defense build, steamy mist is almost always better slotted for resistance than defense. 5% defense vs. 20% resistance to fire/cold/energy. If you are going for a high defense build (combined with the -accuracy from for dark blast) you will want to find a way to stick the steadfast protection +3% defense in there somewhere, and probably zephyrs in your travel power.

I find accuracy in Freezing Rain is usually a waste because there are so many ticks of freezing rain, that the strike breaker is going to let it hit eventually, and then the defense debuff is large enough that the accuracy is wasted. If you end up taking snow storm, the -recharge proc is wasted in FR as snow storm +freezing rain will floor recharge on most enemies (AVs excluded).

The two flight speed IOs in swift seem wasted, especially since you don't appear to be using hover while fighting. Also if you can afford it, slot swift with microfilaments since they will enhance both flight and run speed.

Storm is an end hog, so you will want another endurance mod in stamina.

In tornado I would remove the chance for recharge slow for the same reasons as above, and would consider replacing it or the ff rech/end with a debuff/end.

Since Forcefeedback in Tornado will only trigger when you summon tornado, it may be a waste of a slot, especially since many people use tornado as a situational power. I also like slotting tornado for mez.

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Not to be a killjoy but, I loath any aspect of the game that will require me to click the "no I do not want to fight your twinked out pvp toon" button 50+ times a day, much less listen to the "but wai?" and 13 year old trash talk tells when I do click that button.
Othwerwise I am truely loving this expansion idea.

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Seeing as we have no information I think it's a little early, but seeing how much the player base tends to love pvp, i don't think this is a concern. My guess is that if a villain is able to enter Paragon City it will only be as a reformed goody goody like the rest of the heroes. I expect open zone pvp would be HUGELY unpopular and will therefore not get implemented, especially since many people came to CoH because it had no pvp. Zone PvP is very high on the list of things I hate about the game that will not be named.

Website is working now:
http://www.cityofheroes.com/goingrogue/

To be honest, I don't know if my heroes would go rogue just for badges....Also not thrilled about having MMs in City of Heroes. Praetoria sounds exciting....the ability to switch sides...not so much.

Lightning Storm will chance to proc on each enemy damaged. So not just on each bolt, but each target. So if you hit 5 guys (the cap) LS will have 5 chances to proc. However things that would normally grant an effect to you (like build up) will grant the effect to LS, so they usually aren't a good choice.

I haven't tested recently, but I don't think Tornado is broken. It will work like a toggle power and check for the proc once every 10 seconds.

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I stand corrected. Thank you for the update.

I am trying to figure out how that works for 4 procs as an experiment. I understand the first portion is .2 x .2 x .2 x .2 = .16 for all 4, but I'm not sure I understand the second portion of the equation for 3 and up (.2 x .2 x .2 x .16 does not seem right at a glance).

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Assuming all the procs you are using have a 20% chance to proc, the chance that three will proc, is (.2*.2*.2)*.8*4=2.56%

The first part of that is easy, the chance that three of the procs will go off = .2*.2*.2 But because we only want three of those procs to go off, we need the fourth proc not to go off (that's the .8 (1-.2). Now there are 4 different procs that you could choose to be the proc not to go off, so that's the final 4. For a total chance that 3 procs will go off of 2.56% This is quite a bit higher than the .8% change that you would have with only 3 procs.

Now the chance that you will have two procs go off get's a bit more complicated. we still have then (.2*.2*.8*.8) that we had before which is the chance that 2 procs will go off and 2 procs won't, but now we need to take into account all the possibilities for how we could choose 2 procs. Well, we have 4 options for the first proc, and that leaves 3 options for the second proc. However, we have counted proc A and then proc B as well as proc B and then proc A so we need to divide by 2 (4*3)/2 =6 So the chance that 2 procs will go off is (.2*.2*.8*.8)*6 = 15.36%

The chance for just one proc to go off is *.2*.8*.8*.8)*4=40.96%
So with 4 procs the chance that at least one will proc on any given attack is 59.04% (Assuming i multiplied and added correctly).

So, in general if you have X procs with Y chance of procing. And you want to know what the chance of Z (<=X) of those procs going off is. Your answer is:
Y^Z*(1-Y)^(X-Z)*[X*(X-1)*...*(X-(Z-1))/Z!]

the operation in the brackets is the nCr command, and can be performed in google with the word choose. (X choose Z)

Obviously this becomes more complicated when the procs all have different chances of going off. In that case, you pretty much have it do it Uber's long way.

Hope that helps. Also I'm not awake yet, there may be an error somewhere in all that.

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I miss this proc working on my Thug MMs Bruiser :/

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Yeah, even if it's "fixed" that won't help there. I feel your pain.

Hmm, very interesting. Just got through testing on Test, and it does indeed appear the the supression has been removed. I was suprised though since the proc has the potential to become overpowered, so I also tested the proc rate. KB'd 304 enemies and got 20 procs. While certainly not enough to be conclusive, it makes me wonder if they lowered the proc rate when they removed the suppression. Could just be the RNG hating me....it gave me a bunch of purples a couple weeks ago, so it had to get it's revenge somehow

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If that is how it was, it has been changed. This may have been done when they fixed the 100% chance to the correct 10% chance. Just now I hearded up a bunch of bosses and was lucky enough to have it go off 4 times in a row. This was over a time frame of about 21 seconds from the first time it fired to the last time it fired.


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Hmm, this was actually a change implemented when they fixed the 100% firing rate because the proc was still too powerful in aoes. Perma +100% recharge for a single slot could be a little problematic...don't you think? Will have to go test this I guess. But if it is in fact possible for it to be made perma, i would guess that's probably a mistake and the suppression will be coming back....although I'm skeptical as to whether the suppression has actually been removed. It sounds like you were doing this right, but just so we're clear, you have to monitor your actual recharge, because under what may be the old system, you would get a proc fired message, you just wouldn't see any boost to your recharge.

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Procs do stack in everything.

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That's not quite true, some procs do not stack. The Achille's Heel -res proc will not stack from the same caster. As opposed to something like Devastation: chance to hold which will stack from the same caster. A second Achille's Heel procing will simply reset the debuff timer.

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It will only fire 1 time. Even if it procs on 5 out of the 10 mobs it will still only give you 5 seconds of +100% recharge.

Now if you manage to get it to proc within that 5 second window, my understanding is that the timer just starts over and you have 5 more seconds from that point.

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I don't think it has changed. So I will explain how it used to work. And if someone knows this has changed chime in.

At the end of the 5 second proc, a 10 second suppression is enabled. The suppression will not keep the proc from firing, but will prevent the recharge bonus from affecting you. At the end of that 10 second period, if the proc fired during that suppression and its 5 second buff has not elapsed, you will get the remainder of that 5 second buff. At the end of that buff, even if it's only the remaining 2 seconds, the 10 second suppression will activate again.

If you only attack every 15 seconds, then the suppression will have no impact with you. The problem occurs if you cycle your attack often enough that the proc regularly fires during the suppression period as you get less than your 5 second buff. However, I know people that slot many of the procs and find the benefit to be substantial.

I hope that helps

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So I'm watching the AI of my helper EB in a MA mish and he gets stuck standing around just like helpers in any old bank mayhem before i14.


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Is it a melee helper? Because I believe there is a problem with the range of melee powers, and what the AI thinks the range of the melee power is that can cause allies to just stand around.

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It felt very weird - I wanted to see Deathcaps and Herders and the crystal shard guys, but all there was was a bunch of easy-to-kill rocks. Any advice?

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The level 50 Devouring Earth are from the missions in Portal Corps which are indeed only Granite and boulders. To get the other enemies you need to force the mission to spawn in a lower range. Depending on your mission there are a number of ways to force a lower level range spawn. Perahps the one that will work best for you is to create a custom group with one of the lower level DE. Call the custom group Devouring Earth. Now set up a spawn in your mission to "fight a boss" make the boss the DE from your just custrom group DE and making the surrounding spawn normal DE. This will force your mission into the level range where the DEs that you want can spawn. That's the best i can come up wtih.

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I Say this because I'm conserned about my Earth Pet and my Dark servent Pet.

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Your Dark Servant Pet will recharge more often. YOU will have YOUR power to summon your Dark Servant Pet recharge more often. That is the way it has always been and it is always the way it has been intended for it to be. If you are a Mastermind, Recharge is quite helpful since MM Dark Servant takes longer to recharge than the Corruptor or Defender version, but even they will be able to have their Dark Servant up more often.

Your Earth Pet will also recharge more often, but since it is an effectively infinite duration anyway, that doesn't matter unless you exit a mission and reenter it really quickly, or if your Stoney gets killed before it recharges. In that case, if you slot Recharge in the power, it will be ready faster, and thus be more useful to you.

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Actually what holds true for Stoney also holds true for defender and corrupter DS since it has a 240 second duration and a 240 second recharge. So...technically there will be 3 seconds without DS from the cast time, but DS is basically perma out of the box (at least according to red tomax) so there is no reason to slot recharge in DS (masterminds excluded) or stoney unless they're dying a lot.

I think it would be good if the feedback was anonymous, but a pseudonym system was set up so that you could still respond to the person leaving the comment so that if you get a "Too hard!" comment, you can ask what about it was too hard.

I'm also concerned that fear of retaliation may be keeping people from leaving constructive feedback. I've gotten a couple 2 stars on my arc, and wish I knew what the people didn't like about it, but they didn't leave any comments. Now maybe they were just retaliating for things I'd said about their arcs....but the 2 stars leads me to believe that it wasn't just vengeance. But if i'm giving under 4 stars now, I often won't leave feedback for fear of retaliation.

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Ok so with out reading threw this hole thead. I got some things but I still have a few questions. I've never used Pet IOs. Now if they have taken out the recharge function of the IO set do they plan on replacing it with another?

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Probably not. The recharge hasn't been "taken out" so to speak. The recharge will still affect the recharge of the summon pet power. What it will not do is increase the rate of attack of said summoned pet.

$name is what you're looking for, not sure if $player will work.

Here are some others:
$origin
$archetype
$level
$supergroup ("No Supergroup" if the player doesn't have an SG)
$himher (for these capitalize the first letter $Himher if you want an uppercase Him Her)
$heshe
$hisher
$sirmam

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MA'dlibs?

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I like it! See, clearly I lack the creativity for this challenge.

So perhaps this is a little premature as people are still busy writing their own arcs and enjoying the MA, but an idea came to me as I was working on getting my virtual badges. Since this arc was just for me I just selected a random assortment of objects. A contact: Cimeroran, map: burning forst, an enemy group: familiy, some hostages: 5th column, some destructible objects: bookcases, and some glowies: rikti computers.

While running the mission I thought to myself, "Well, this mission makes absolutly no sense." And then I started wondering if I just lacked the creativity to make the map make sense.....So....the game...or training excercise:

1) Create a seemingly random, nonsensical, boring, whatever, mission or arc. Leave all of the dialogue blank. Post the arc somewhere that people can download it.
2) The challenge, create the best arc you can by only adding text, names, bios, etc, but otherwise keep the arc exactly the same.
3)After collecting a certian number of entries have people play and rank.

Does this sound like an interesting challenge to anyone else, or are you just thinking....."What??? You're saying I'd have to play the same misison 15 times to appreciate this game....what a dumb idea!" I think of it sort of like inverse Mad-Libs....which is another Idea...mad-lib style arcs.

Arc Name: The Countess's Court
Arc ID:1340
Faction: Crey, Freakshow, Family
Creator Global/Forum Name: @Draggynn
Difficulty Level: medium (2 AVs/EBs but there are allies to help you if you want them, though they are not required)
Synopsis: This arc contains spoilers and assumes completion of "The Evil Countess Crey" Arc. As Countess Crey's trial rapidly approaches, you are asked to assist in the investigation. Things may not be as clear as you think. (Ties in very tightly to CoH cannon).
Estimated Time to Play: 60-75 minutes
Link to More Details or Feedback: Please PM me with feedback.

I'm looking forward to playing everyone else's arcs in this list soon. It will make it easier than selecting a random arc and praying.

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The nerf/buff ratio varies on who you're talking to, and what toons that person has, obviously. But to call this change a flat-out buff or flat-out debuff is flat-out wrong.

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Well, this depends on how you look at the change. As an across the board change to all powers, sure, it's a mixed bag. However, the change was implemented on a per power basis. Granted, for consistency they should probably effect all powers, but they didn't need to. They have the ability to exempt powers should they so choose. Knowing this, I tend to look at the changes on the basis of each individual power....is this fair?....perhaps not. But when I look at the changes this is clearly a nerf to pets with only one attack. There are also pets that happened to be buffed, sure, but for me these are two seperate issues.

Now could the developers reasonably effect some pets and not others....perhaps not, but knowing that they can, causes me to view this change as a set of nerfs and a set of buffs.

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Be honest, how often do you come across an NPC that summons a pet?

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A lot of the fear stems from the fact that MMs appear to be fairly popular as MA enemies, and this will put the -recharge powers at a disadvantage in those encounters.

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In any case, I think a very good case could be made for either reducing the endurance cost or adding mobility. But I'm not sure that the current tone of the discussion is likely to render the devs particularly receptive to making those types of changes.

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I agree that discussion of revisions to powers is unlikely to happen at this point. But on the extremely unlikely chance they are, I just wanted to chime and say that i would be 100% behind a reduction to LS's endurance cost.

However, I feel very strongly that making LS mobile is NOT the solution. Although I appreciate LS's damage potential, I more often rely on LS as a positioning tool to keep mobs trapped in a corner, to prevent them from coming through a doorway, or to keep them away from me or a teammate with its knockback. If LS became mobile the advantages of using LS for positioning are lost as one could not rely on LS to obey a "stay" command. I put that lightning storm there for a reason, I don't want it running all over the map.

Furthermore, Storm already has enough chaos inducing powers. I do not want another mobile knockbacker to make teams appreciate storm even more. I already have that in tornado.

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Not an outright lie. The person who wrote the patch note wasn't aware of all the things this was intended to fix. That's one of the main reasons I'm having this discussion: Full disclosure.

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The open discussion is greatly appreciated.

Will this change be carried over to Defender LS as well, then? (I assume the answer is yes, unless the overpowered nature is primarily a concern on controllers)

At the moment I'm still having trouble understanding the chain of events that lead to the feeling that this change was necessary. And some of what I think I understand may be completely wrong. But as I understand it at the moment:

This change was primarily to prevent LS, VS, and Turrets from firing faster than intended (although obviously the change has lots of other benefits as well). As someone else has commented VS and Turrets I don't think have ever been considered especially overpowered, and the advice is most often to skip them. So I assume as well, that the focus was on Lightning Storm?

But I know at least LS, and so I assume the other powers were capable of getting massive recharge bonuses before Recharge Intensive Pet sets, and LS, at least to the best of my knowledge, never accepted any Pet sets. So I guess I'm confused as to how the Recharge Intensive Pet Sets instigated this change to LS. Was it looking at other powers getting massive recharge, that alerted you to the fact that there were some that already were? Because RIP sets certainly didn't create the problem from where I'm sitting. So, at least for LS, if it wasn't a problem before RIP, it wasn't going to be a problem after RIP.

I'm just trying to get a better grasp on the thought process that lead up to this decision. I know there isn't a simple answer, as this was not a single threaded decision process.