Elijah_Perkins

"HeroStats does not work in the Mac envrionment, as it uses Windows .Net programming."

Hmm, I wonder if it might be possible to get HeroStats working with Mono? Mono is an open-source re-implementation of the .Net runtime for Unix-like platforms (including OS X). The main development is being managed by Novell. I think the .Net API's might be somewhat limited right now for Mono, though, so not reallly sure if you could get HeroStats working, but might be worth a check?

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'said it before and I'll say it again.

The WoW servers are that way: ---------->

Don't let the door hit you in the [censored].

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That seems like an entirely un-helpful attitude. This is a thread *specifically* for the discussion of these features. People are entitled to hold their opinions about whether or not they, as paying subscribers to the game, feel it's reasonable for NCSoft to charge players to transfer characters or rename them.

Different people will have different opinions about it. I think for a simple rename (seriously, how hard could it *possibly* be to develop the code to rename a character? The hardest part about it would be doing things like updating other players' friends/ignore lists - and they have had character renaming since the game launched - just only GM's could use it previously).

Personally, I think re-names ought to be free (though limited so players aren't constantly changing their names). Transfers is a bit more complicated (though it still shouldn't be the hardest thing in the world to develop the automated system to do that). As I previously mentioned, I would be comfortable with a $2.99 price. Other's might be comfortable with another price.

I also personally feel that comparing CoX to other MMOS is a bit silly, since they all charge outrageous fees for *copying digital data*. Sure CoX might be the cheapest, but I feel that at the prices charged, it's pretty much a scam for all MMOs.

It's like the telephone company charging $2-3 for a ringtone that is a 20 second clip from a 3.5 minute song you can buy for $1. Sure, they have the legal right to do it, but I as a consumer will not pay that price. Other consumers will. It's up to the company to decide whether the price they are charging is generating optimal revenue. Me telling them what I am willing to pay is actually pretty valuable info for them.

I dunno. $10 per rename or transfer sounds a tad on the expensive side to me. Don't get me wrong, I don't have a problem with NCSoft making some money. But the marginal cost of using an automated rename or transfer system is incredibly close to 0. It's true the system itself cost them some money to develop, but it can't have been much.

I think a price somewhere in the $2.99 range might have been a bit more reasonable. Especially since the game itself only costs 14/mo.

Just a few comments about a few of the powers, and some different points of view on some of the powers.

To start, I should say I am not a /Devices blaster, so that has the most significant impact on my PoV. I took /Fire, though the same comments I'm about to make would probably apply to all AR/Non-Dev blasters.

I *think* that, if you are going the /Devices route, you probably almost need to treat Assault Rifle as a secondary set, with /Devices being your main set (unless teamed).

But, for me, I decided to go the Killer-Cone build that the OP mentioned.

For me, I've decided that M30 is a worthwhile power to have. I also have buckshot. What having both powers, both slotted, means to me, is that I have an option of what attack chain to use.

I typically use Buildup + Flamethrower + Buckshort OR M30 + Full Auto. As long as I hit every enemy, it's almost guaranteed to kill all the minions and leuitentants, leaving bosses with 1/2 to 2/3 of their health remaining.

So, how do I choose whether to use Buckshot or M30? If the enemies are in a pretty tight line or triangle, that is not too deap, I will use buckshot. Or if I know that the minions on the edges will die anyway and I want to do more damage to lts/bosses near the center of my focus. Thing about Buckshot is, it's *extremely* narrow (at it's widest point, it's maybe like 10 feet wide), and somewhat short. So while it does more damage than M30 per-enemy, it's easier to hit more enemies with M30. Plus, it feels like M30 has a greater chance to knockback an enemy, but I'm not sure about that.

Anyhow, I can certainly see why a Devices blaster might skip one or both of M30 or Buckshot. If you are going the killer cone route, you're trying to maximize your AoE blast damage from the primary, and that little bit of extra damage does help a bit. Plus, they are both fairly quickly recharging ranged attacks (buckshot recharges faster, M30 has greater range). They both can be nice 'filler' while you are waiting for other attacks to recharge.

The Guide mentions that the OP thinks recharge on Full Auto is too long. While I certainly wouldn't be against a shorter recharge, the truth is that with 2 recharge SO's slotted in, it's available about every 36 seconds, and usually recharges at the same time as buildup, which seems just about perfect to me.

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horde (hôrd, hrd) n. 1. A large group or crowd; a swarm: a horde of mosquitoes. 2. a. A nomadic ****** tribe. b. A nomadic tribe or group.

I think the word y'all are looking for is hoard.

hoard (hôrd, hōrd) n. A hidden fund or supply stored for future use; a cache. v., hoard·ed, hoard·ing, hoards. v.intr.
To gather or accumulate a hoard. v.tr. To accumulate a hoard of. To keep hidden or private.

This has been your friendly neighborhood English professor...

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Thank you SOOO much Boresight. Heheh. Ok, yes, so I spelled the word incorrectly, my bad.

After playing almost 2 years, I think the most common mistake that I see players make, even high level players, is NOT USING their Inspirations.

Why should anyone ever be defeated with a tray full of inspirations? Ok, I realize, sometimes everything goes South too fast for you to react, but the general behavior I have seen among the player populace is not to use inspirations frequently enough. In some of those cases where things go south too fast to react, it just means that you should have used some inspirs preventatively, like purple or orange inspirs to increase defense/resistance so that you would *have time* to react.

It seems to me, most players have a 'hoarding' mentality when it comes to inspirs. That they are something special to give you an edge in an AV fight or something, and never be used at other times.

This is *JUST PLAIN WRONG*. Sure, you probably don't need to use inspirs every fights, but think about this. In most missions, and while hunting outdoors, inspirs drop like candy at a parade. While it's true that I've been in a *few* missions where I received no inspirations, most missions allow me to use all my inspirs, and completely refill my tray before the end of the mission.

The truth is, many people miss out on a lot of free inspirs because their inspir tray is FULL. If your tray is full, you will receive not Inspir drops. So, my rule of thumb is, always leave at least one inspir slot empty. If I've got a full tray, IT's TIME TO USE SOME INSPIRS.

If you're a balster or Defender, and have a nuke that's up once every 4-6 fights, might as well use inspirs every time you nuke, no? I mean, most people use Aim + build up (or Power Build Up if they are a high level Defender) to make the most of their nukes. Why not add a damage inspir or two, if you have them anyhow? Or maybe some purple and orange inspirs to help you survive whatever reprisal you might face if anything is left alive from your nuke?

Having a hard time hitting stuff? Hit a yellow inspir or two.

Inspirations: they're cheap and plentiful. Don't hoard them, you're only hampering yourself. Love em, Use em.

Addendum: I wanted to clarify something. There's nothing wrong with saving some inspirs for an AV fight if you know it's coming. They can certainly help give an edge in a particularly tough fight. But, if you know that you are going to be slogging through 30-50 groups of enemies before you get to that AV, there's no harm in using some of the inspirs.

If you want, of course it's ok to hold back a small number of inspirs that you think you'll want for the AV fight (in case no additional inspirs drop), but to go through the entire mission without using any inspirs is truly a waste. That is the mentality I'm trying to address here.

A lot of people could avoid defeats, and defeat enemies faster, if they just used inspirs a little more liberally.

[Editted to make Boresight happy *grin*]

I have a couple questions from a ForceField Defender POV:

ForceBubble: I thought, in PvP, ForceBubble was supposed to have a chance to drop toggles? Was this never the case, or has this been changed?

Just generally: I'd like to ask the devs to reconsider ForceFields toggle-drops. If you look at the ForceField set as a whole, a good many of our powers are based on kb/detoggle for PvP. Knockback ain't really that usefull - effectively it is a 'slow' type power - between knockbacks, players have a chance to use 1-2 powers before you can kb them again. A lot of players have kb protection anyhow, so knockback, in and of itself, is pretty useless in my experience.

Now, most of our powers have almost no chance to detoggle an enemy.

That leaves forcefielders, in PvP, apparently with buffs and Detention Field. Well, Detention Field is what it is - on the one hand, you take an enemy out of the fight for a brief period. On the other hand, they are free to heal up, all their powers recharge, etc, so they emerge from it ready to kick [censored]. Arguably it helps the enemy more than it hurts them, but it also allows you to divide-and-conquer enemy teams, so I suppose it's good for what it's good for.

But, as to our buffs - well, absent any other factors, they are mostly pretty useful, between increased Defense, and some minor amount of AE status protection (I won't denegrate that - the status protection from Dispersion is certainly useful). But, there are a *lot* of ToHit buff powers (aim, buildup, tactics, etc) and Defense Debuff powers, so these really aren't good enough, all by themselves, to justify having the rest of our powers nearly useless in PvP.

As for attacks - well, really, I try, but can't get any damage hardly, so I don't primarily see my role in PvP (or PvE for that matter) as doing damage (I try to help as I can).

So, since I can't effectively attack, and my Defense buffs are frequently negated, I feel that ForceField needs something additional - for awhile now, the detoggle has been part of that, and I was satisfied with that role. Now, I'm not gonna hardly ever be able to detoggle any sufficiently useful number of toggles.

Please consider this, and consider bumping up the numbers for the ForceField set. I really believe ForceField should be better at detoggling than almost any other AT/powerset, because we don't bring a lot to our teams in PvP to begin with.

I do realize that detoggling was way too pervasive in I6. But I'm asking you to consider ForceField, specifically, in light of what the set brings to PvP, and consider adjusting the numbers up a bit higher (maybe not to the I6 levels, but to a more useful level, so that FF powers fairly frequently knocks off toggles).

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Indeed I am... it'll take a bit to wrap my head around this...

That said, from what I can tell the basic formula was changed from (CoreAcc is 50%):

(CoreAcc * conmult * levelmult) - DEF

to

(CoreAcc - DEF) * conmult * levelmult

It does raise some questions to me, like where to buffs/debuffs and +Acc now fit into the equation?

Your thoughts?

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Responses:
Is that strictly for +defense powers, or will -accuracy powers be included in this also?
Yes, To Hit Debuffs will be more effect in PvE as well.

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That's from _Castle_'s post.

Basically, it sounds like what they've done is given higher level enemies an *accuracy* bonus instead of a ToHit bonus (which they used to have). And the way the formulas work, ToHit has a much higher effect than Accuracy, but is directly opposed by Defense [edited: screwed up before and said Accuracy] (and I think also opposed by ToHit Debuffs, but I'm not entirely positive).

I think I've seen the formula posted somewhere and it's like this:

Final ToHit = ( .5 + ToHit Bonus - ToHit Debuff - Defense) * (1 + Accuracy)

Where each of the variables are percentage values that scale from 0.0 to 1.0.

To give some examples:

Let's assume a higher level enemy used to have an inherent 30% ToHit, and no ToHit Debuffs on them. Then, let's assume that you have bubbles from a FF Def that Grants 40% Defense (I think that is about the right number).

Old formula:
ToHit = (.5 + .3 - .4) * (1) == .4 (which is still a pretty high hit chance)

New Formula:
ToHit = (.5 + 0 - .4 ) * (1 + .3) == (.1) * (1.3) == .13 (much better)

And a lower level enemy, let's say the bonus to that enemy is 15%, and the defense is still .4:

Old ToHit = (.5 + .15 - .4) * 1 == .25 (starting to be a useful level of defense simply because of less bonus)

New ToHit = (.5 - .4) * (1+.15) == .1 * 1.15 == .12 (rounded - much better).

And it works out the same against even level minions, because they didn't get a bonus before, and don't get a bonus now either, so the FF with .4 Defense bonus reduces the minion down to .1 (and with a little extra defense from another power, we can floor the enemy to .05).

I would like to point out that I don't know the exact formula, or exact values, but according to _Castle_'s post, this seems to be the general idea.

Note however, that according to Statesman, this scaling feature only works for enemies up to +5 levels, after which the engine goes back to calculating the enemy bonus as ToHit instead of Accuracy, so suddenly the enemy is going to start pounding you at +6 levels.

This means a +5 level AV might have an effective to hit against you of say .35, but a +6 level AV might have a ToHit of .95. (I think caps are only applied after all other calculations, and I suspect a +6 AV would have a starting ToHit bonus of like .9 on top of the .5 basic ToHit that everything has).