Felicty_Flame

Scrappers will definitely appreciate the +DEF from Maneuvers. The only exception would be lvl 40+ SR scrappers, or Inv scrappers that have slotted Tough Hide and Weave in addition to Invicibility. In short, almost everyone except Invuln tankers needs +DEF. Until the mobs are at 5%, every bit of +DEF is good. And 10% vs. 5% means you get hit twice as often.

Assault may not be useful to blasters, but it is to most other AT's, and you don't slot it.

Tactics is mainly good for +3 mobs or higher.

I didn't take Leadership with my Rad/Rad (now at lvl 29.) I will probably take it in the 30's though, and go with an Epic pool at lvl 41.

I do find that my ability to do damage adds substantially to my contribution to a group. A rad/rad with 3-4 6-slotted damage powers can do very respectable damage on its own or in groups, more so than other defender combos. How much I use the damage powers when in groups depends on the circumstances and group composition though. If there's already lots of damage dealers, I tend to just throw AM, RI, EF, LR and heal. If the group is support heavy, I do blast away though.

I've found that people are literally amazed at how much this toon adds to a group. I did the Bastion TF with her the other day, me at lvl 27 and 3 other toons (after 1 dropped out) at lvl 28. I had to break for dinner in the last mission, and they found they couldn't take out the AV without me there. With 1 blaster, 1 controller, and 1 other defender, they just couldn't damage him fast enough. Yet when I came back, we took it down easily. Quite a concept: a defender needed in a group for damage dealing!

- felicity

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I've posted on a lot of rad/rad posts in the last month, so my build is out there and my opinions too. All in all I like this guide. Good info, and good rebuttles and everything. I will add some of my thoughts.

I personally like teleport as the first travel power. I know it eats huge end before stamina, but I got by. I just liked using Recall Friend, and still use it quite a bit. I just don't like Combat Jumping running as a toggle and I guess SJ doesn't fit my personal stereotype of a defender. I did take SS later and now have Stealth as well. But TP really helps when running around in the Shadow Shard.

I did do a respec in the late 20s, so I had 2 builds. The first I used NB and XB for attacks. Now I have NB, CB, and Irradiate. I don't use Irradiate that much because it uses quite a bit of end. I mainly RI and EF a group and then just start single target blasting until I kill off my anchor. never have tried the AOE side, but I am planning on getting Neutron Bomb after I get Phase Shift.

I don't know yet if I'm going to respec to get the epic power pools or not. Nothing in it is really just sticking out to me. Right now I am fine and have even helped duo AVs with a blaster friend.

If you want to see where my defender is at now, just click the link in my profile and you can see what powers she has and the slotting.

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Thanks for posting your build.

Do you feel the need to keep Acc enhancers in NB and CB when you've got 3 Def debuffs in RI? I also notice you don't have AIM, so maybe that's why the ACC enhancers.

Otherwise your build is great. I can definitely see the logic of going 6-slot hasten, with 3 rch/3 endrec in AM, rather than what seems to be standard, 5-slot hasten, with 4 rch/2 End in AM. You get more End rec. the way you built it.

- felicity

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AOE's are a must have in this powerset, no doubt. But I can't agree with taking only Irradiate, and skipping Neutron Bomb. With perma-hasten, perma-AM, your recharge time on Irradiate is almost EXACTLY 10 seconds. The slightest hesitation or lag and the second Irradiate doesn't make the AIM sequence. More importantly, with Neutron in the mix the mobs are dead in 3 seconds, not 10. It's damage mitigation, and faster levelling. Also stacking the two will let you take out higher level mobs, quicker, even if you're fine against even cons with just Irradiate.

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I should clarify that I meant Irradiate, Neutron Bomb, Irradiate again - all within the space of 1 aim. That is a LOT of damage. (NB is an annoying abbreviation, I'll just call it "Bomb")

RI + EF + Aim + Irradiate + Bomb + Irradiate = radiation death peddler. If you care to, back up and finish with a good Electron Haze if the three attacks weren't enough damage for you.

And try chaining NB + Brawl. I'm not kidding. Brawl's animation is fast enough to fit into NB's recharge time. Go ahead. Try it. :-) Brawl does crap damage because nobody slots it, but... it's 14 extra damage nonetheless. ;-)

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Ah, I see. Well, that's the exact alpha strike sequence that I think works best. Uh, not the one with brawl, but the AOE one...

- felicity

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Edit: I would further add, if you want to get into the fine nuances, that NB alone has overall better DPS than CB alone. The problem is that your calculation is DPS based on activation time alone. It assumes you can buff your recharge rate to where it is equal to or less than the activation time. That's true with NB, but not with CB. You can get 5 NB's in for every one CB, assuming perma-hasten plus perma-AM. Of course, cycling the two WILL produce better DPS than either alone. But I'm not sure I'm agreeing with NB even being second best of 4. It's actually first best of 4 in raw DPS.

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If you look at my post, I specifically mention adding the attacks to "an attack chain"

With Hasten and AM, it is easy to build an attack chain where you never have to wait for anything to recharge. The more you use NB in that chain the lower it will be.

And yes, I compare the single-targets to the AoE's. You know why? Because I have rarely if ever needed to kill just 1 guy. And if I did? I just sniped him, because I can EASILY 2-shot an orange minion with EF and a snipe followed by a CB.

As for single-target attacks, why would you possibly try to make a single-target damager out of the best AoE set a Defender gets? (we have 3 AoE attacks in Rad, 2 radial and a good damage cone) You want single-target damage, Rad/Psi is probably a better choice.

Again my numbers were Per seconds activation. I was presenting them as how much damage they bring to an attack chain, when you can post your attacks in an order that you always have one recharged to fire off. It's easily doable.

Over time (damage / rech + activation)

Irradiate's 27.8 / (1.1 + 10) = 2.50
NB's 25 / (1.7 + 8) = 2.57

With 1 recharge in Irradiate,
Irradiate's 27.8 / (1.1 + 8.5) = 2.89

I put 1 rech in Irradiate but not NeutBomb because I open the fight with RI + EF + Aim + Irradiate (to debuff defense for max accuracy), then NB, and with the recharger, I can Irradiate again before Aim wears off.

At this point, that group are dead anyway, and my DPS calculations are moot because I'm already heading toward the next fight. :-D

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Appreciate the clarification.

I don't advocate building a rad/rad as single target only. I did this initially with my toon because I wanted to compare him to my Ice Blaster for single target damage efficiency. At lvl 24, I respecced out of XB and took Irradiate.

For a pure single target attack chain, it appears that the optimum sequence is CB, NB, NB, NB CB, etc. Unless your activation numbers are correct for XB and the Warcry site's are wrong, then adding XB in, not NB, will reduce your DPS (slightly). Since you have to take NB, XB is truly pointless, especially after Hasten is involved.

AOE's are a must have in this powerset, no doubt. But I can't agree with taking only Irradiate, and skipping Neutron Bomb. With perma-hasten, perma-AM, your recharge time on Irradiate is almost EXACTLY 10 seconds. The slightest hesitation or lag and the second Irradiate doesn't make the AIM sequence. More importantly, with Neutron in the mix the mobs are dead in 3 seconds, not 10. It's damage mitigation, and faster levelling. Also stacking the two will let you take out higher level mobs, quicker, even if you're fine against even cons with just Irradiate.

As to rad/psi being better for single target, I don't know since I haven't done a strict numbers comparison. I do know that Psi is considered a very late blooming set though, so I presume that observation pertains to higher levels.

- felicity

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Brawl Indexes:
Neutrino Bolt - 1.6667 Energy
X-Ray Beam - 2.7778 Energy
Irradiate - 0.2778 Energy * 10
Electron Haze - 3.7500 Energy
Proton Volley - 1.9444 Energy * 4
Cosmic Burst - 5.8889 Energy
Neutrino Bomb - 2.5000 Energy


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One final point regarding these numbers. This time, it relates to the comparison between Neutron Bomb and Irradiate. The numbers are highly misleading as they imply that Irradiate does grossly more damage over time than Neutron Bomb. Once again, we have the problem of measuring damage over time based upon only activation, when the powers have significant recharge time limitations even with perma-hasten and perma-AM.

Irradiate has a recharge of 20 seconds. Neutron is 16 seconds.

So what is the impact of Neutron's longer activation time? Well Warcry has the activation times of the 2 powers as follows:

Irradiate: 1.1s
Neutron Bomb: 1.7s

Those times are different from those posted by Dodger. If they are out of date, fine. It actually doesn't change the conclusion much.

Because the 2 powers recharge slowly, you have to measure the opportunity cost of a longer activation based on damage lost from another attack that presumably would have been made during the extra activation time. In the case of this comparison, there is a difference of .6 seconds. But let's agree with the above numbers, and say it is a full 1 second.

Your downtime with AOE's will generally be used with single target attacks. Assuming you have CB and NB, it's going to take the place of the fast recharging NB by user choice (because its damage per activation/second is less than CB.)

Hence, you DO NOT divide the total damage number by the activation time as done above. That method is only correct where recharge times are a non-factor. Rather, you must SUBTRACT the damage lost by foregoing another attack.

Let's take a scenario where you have 4 targets and compare Neutron Bomb with Irradiate.

From Dodger's brawl index numbers, Irradiate is 27.8 per target; Neutron Bomb is 25. 27.8x4 targets =111.2 for Irradiate, and 25x4=100 for Neutron Bomb. Now, from the Neutron Bomb number, we subtract the equivalent of one NB attack on a single target, which comes to 100-16.7=82.3. That's the damage lost due to Neutron's longer activation compared to Irradiate.

But in measuring damage over time, we still have to normalize these numbers for the differeing recharge times of the 2 attacks. With hasten and perma-AM, Neutron comes in at about 8 seconds recharge, and Irradiate about 10. Hence, we will multply the Irradiate damage number by .8 to make it apples to apples. 111.2 x .8 = 88.96 damage for Irradiate, vs. the aforementioned 82.3 for Neutron Bomb. These numbers assume that Dodger's activation times are accurate. If the Warcry numbers are accurate, then you'll find that Neutron Bomb is actually slightly higher in overall damage.

One final point: do we know what the blast radius for these 2 powers is? Because these numbers are close enough that the power with the superior radius is probably, in most cases, the more damaging power.

Both powers should be taken and cycled, no doubt, but don't be misled into thinking that the 2 are far apart in overall damage output, because they aren't.

- felicity

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You're right, I was thinking of recharge, not activation when I wrote that. Sorry, lack of sleep (real-life duties, not game-playing, though.)

I just checked in-game, and with equal slotting, I'm getting a ratio of 3.5:1 for CB damage to NB.

And the activation really doesn't feel like it's more than twice as long... I could be wrong though, or maybe my clicking on NB isn't perfectly efficient -- but I doubt that I can fire off 2 NBs instead of 1 CB...

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Thanks for checking. At 3.5:1, it sounds like CB is definitely worth throwing into the sequence with NB. I'll be taking it at lvl 30.

2s and 1s are the stated activation times for CB and NB, respectively. Your perception of it not being 2:1 could be accurate in practice though, due to lag.

- felicity

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Still, there's 2 points I can see in favor of taking CB. First is the aforementioned disorient. It's a question of how often it works, especially against bosses. Second is the issue of server lag. Server lag will slow down a constant NB sequence more so than one with longer recharge attacks worked in. And finally there's the issue of what the actual damage ratio between the two is. If you can do me a favor, check it next time you log. I don't need the exact numbers, just the rough ratio between the two. I am thinking about whether to take CB at lvl 30 or not.

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I'm getting a little fed up with your misinformation about NB's damage potential, which is lackluster at best, even over time.

Spamming NB is nowhere NEAR the damage potential you keep suggesting. ALL other attacks in Rad (except Proton Volley because it's a snipe with a long activation time, which is still more useful for its long range and +Acc) add more DPS in an attack chain.

Brawl Indexes:
Neutrino Bolt - 1.6667 Energy
X-Ray Beam - 2.7778 Energy
Irradiate - 0.2778 Energy * 10
Electron Haze - 3.7500 Energy
Proton Volley - 1.9444 Energy * 4
Cosmic Burst - 5.8889 Energy
Neutrino Bomb - 2.5000 Energy

Damage Per Seconds of Activation: (assuming damage is Brawl Index * 10 for easy calculation)
Neutrino Bolt: 16.7 (16.7dam /1s activation)
XRay Beam: 18.5 (27.8dam /1.5s activation)
Irradiate: 27.8 AoE (27.8dam /1s activation)
Electron Haze: 12.5 Cone (37.5dam /3s activation)
Proton Volley: 12.9 = (77.6dam /6s activation)
Cosmic Burst: 28 (58.9dam /2.1s activation)
Neutrino Bomb: 12.5 AoE (25dam /2s activation)

(The EH and Neutron Bomb are lower, but if you hit only 2 guys with them, they still outdamage NB)

NB, WHILE FAST AND CHEAP, is the SECOND LOWEST DPS you can add to your attack chain with Rad Blast.

There's the math.

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First off, XB has a 1.7s activation, so your math is wrong. NB alone has slightly superior DPS. Since you have to take NB, there is essentially no point in wasting a power slot on XB, except at lower levels. It's a power you either don't take or spec out.

CB was a power I did not have, which is why I inquired about the damage. I have not made the comparison between the two, except by a mutually agreed speculation between myself and the OP. What I SAID was that CB would have to do at least 2x the damage of NB to make it worthwhile, which is exacly correct. Note I asked the OP to check the numbers in game, which he did do. I am pleased that CB's damage numbers are higher than I had guessed, and will be taking the power at lvl 30.

Your "second worst" comment is misleading at best. NB is "second worst" out of 3 single target powers! Actually, it is 2nd "best" out of 4, if you take into account Proton Volley, but I'll leave that alone since PV has utility as pull power. However, even that isn't the total picture. It turns out that CB is the best overall DPS (IF you measure it only in terms of damage per activation second), but its recharge time is 10 seconds. With perma-hasten and perma-AM, you're only going to get that to 5 seconds. That's 4 seconds of downtime between CB's where you can throw 4 NB's. So NB is a must slot, and must use, power for a rad/rad.

Comparing single target attacks to AOE's is pure silliness. It's an apples to oranges comparison. The AOE's will always do more damage when there are 3 or more targets, and usually do more with 2 or more targets. That's true regardless of powerset. The AOE's of course recharge much slower and use more End as a tradeoff. But the comparison is pointless. I've never suggested that you take NB and don't take any AOE's. Your argument consists of a series of straw men. You let me know when you can find the specific "misinformation" I've posted and I'll happily own up to it.

Edit: I would further add, if you want to get into the fine nuances, that NB alone has overall better DPS than CB alone. The problem is that your calculation is DPS based on activation time alone. It assumes you can buff your recharge rate to where it is equal to or less than the activation time. That's true with NB, but not with CB. You can get 5 NB's in for every one CB, assuming perma-hasten plus perma-AM. Of course, cycling the two WILL produce better DPS than either alone. But I'm not sure I'm agreeing with NB even being second best of 4. It's actually first best of 4 in raw DPS.

- felicity

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Thanks for the kind words as well, and also to everyone else. I don't have the numbers off the top of my head (and I somehow can't find the Brawl Index -- a good reference, by the way), but I'm fairly certain that CB does more than twice the damage of NB. And as also pointed out by the previous poster, there's the Disorient as well.

Even beyond these reasons, though; even if we assume no disorient and even if we assume CB does just exactly twice NB's damage -- I would argue that it would still help your attack chain achieve a significantly higher DPS.

For simplicity's sake, let's assume NB does 100 damage and CB does 200. Your math, in this sense, is correct: NB does 100 with a 1 second activation time. Do this for 8 seconds, let's say, and you do 800 damage. CB does 200, at 2.1 sec activation, it will do 800 in 8.4 seconds. Therefore, better to just stick with NB. However, in an actual attack chain, facing a bad guy with 800 hit points, using NB alone would take 8 seconds. What happens if we toss in CB? Try this chain (each line takes 1 second to do):

CB -- 200
NB -- 100
NB -- 100
NB -- 100
CB -- 200
NB -- 100.

Bad guy is arrested in 6 seconds, instead of 8. Toss X-ray in there and you achieve an even higher DPS. I chose to forego X-ray despite this loss to DPS because I felt my hero would be better served with another power. But not CB, even if it were just double the damage of NB (and it's more, plus the disorient).

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I still come up with 8 seconds on that sequence you outlined. That is because CB has a 2.1 second activation time. If you count from the top, you'll see it comes to 8 seconds (forgetting about the .1's.) I think you may be confusing recharge time with activation time. If superior recharge time were the only factor in favor of NB, it would always improve your DPS to cycle in the higher damage power. But since XB and CB are 2-second activation powers, they will always take the place of 2 NB's as an opportunity cost. Unless they are doing 2x or more the damage, your DPS is lessened, though your DPE may still be better. I know for sure with XB your DPS is less once you have perma-hasten, but XB still has better DPE than NB. Once stamina and AM are perma though, I found that End was not much of an issue. Hence, I got rid of XB.

Still, there's 2 points I can see in favor of taking CB. First is the aforementioned disorient. It's a question of how often it works, especially against bosses. Second is the issue of server lag. Server lag will slow down a constant NB sequence more so than one with longer recharge attacks worked in. And finally there's the issue of what the actual damage ratio between the two is. If you can do me a favor, check it next time you log. I don't need the exact numbers, just the rough ratio between the two. I am thinking about whether to take CB at lvl 30 or not.

- felicity

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Thanks for the kind words as well. Once you get Cosmic at 28, I'm pretty sure that will soften the blow of your having to get rid of either X-ray or Proton or both. I'm confident you will agree that Cosmic is far superior to either. Good luck, and happy hunting.

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Good guide. My lvl 29 rad/rad is fairly similar to yours, with one exception. I have only NB as a single target attack. I had XB and respecced at lvl 25 to get rid of it. But I 6-slotted it, along with NB, early. I don't think you should take XB at all to help you with the early game unless you intend to slot it. And it is useful until you get perma-hasten, at which point you don't need it anymore. I do miss those beams coming out of my eyes though.

CB's activiation time is 2.1 seconds vs. 1 sec for NB. So each CB you throw takes the place of 2 NB's. How much damage does the CB do compared to the NB, assuming equivalent buffs? It would have to be considerably more than 2x the damage per shot, or I'm not sure it's worth using the power and the slots for it.

- felicity

I haven't read every page in this thread yet, so I apologize if some points were made before. I am a bit perplexed about these concerns over Elec's secondary effect. Am I missing something, or do any of the other blaster primaries have really earth shattering secondary effects?

My main is Ice/Dev. Let's see. My single target nukes, and Frost Breath (cone AOE), will slow a target by about 50% for, oh, about 2 seconds. Ice Storm does a bit more, but at a high end cost and with fairly modest damage. I do get one very good single target hold (freeze ray), and another that plain sucks because of a long activation time. Otherwise, it's straight damage, and very good damage I might add.

But that's the point really, isn't it? Are any of you claiming that Elec damages significantly less than the others? I team with an Elec/Elec frequently with my scrapper, and it certainly doesn't appear that way to me.

What about the other secondary effects? I think fire has a relatively minor ACC debuff. Elec gets knockback, which admittedly is quite handy while soloing, but sucks when grouping with melee types. AR, I can't recall what that even gets.

Now I understand that Statesman has made some inconsistent remarks about Elec and AV's, but let's be practical here. SHOULD you really be able to drain AV's?! A blaster's function with an AV is to bring the AV's health bar down to zero as quickly as possible. What do you think my slowing effect does to AV? You guessed it: nada. And the Freeze Ray: maybe on the 4th shot I get a 3 second hold, and occasionally on subsequent shots. Am I bitter about this? Heck no. If I want to incapacitate an AV, I'll bring along a controller. Achieving any effect against the most powerful mobs in the game should only be doable by those AT's who specialize in doing it. It seems to me that making an AV into a pussycat would require a controller, or several elec blasters. Sounds fair. These complaints are analogous to controller saying, "gee, I can keep that AV held about 50% of the time, but it takes me like an HOUR to kill it!" Who are elec blasters that they should get that kind of damage mitigation that other blasters do not have? Blasters have damage. That's your primary function.

It seems to me that the End drain provides a modest amount of damage mitigation in everyday use, just as does slowing and small ACC debuffs. What's the issue?

I know conventional wisdom is that Elec blasters are gimp, but I just don't see it, because I think their damage is on par with the rest, and the damage is what really matters for blasters.

- felicity

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3) None of Solo_4114 suggestions said anything about "powers". He did mention the use of inspirations, which I notice *you* seem to pop like steroids. Why do you do that? Is the game too tough for you do "unenhanced"?


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Wrong. Here is the direct quote from solo's post:

"3.) Try fighting "with one hand tied behind your back." In other words, take on challenges where you refuse to use certain powers or inspirations, or unslot your attacks (or just don't upgrade them)."

He said, don't use certain powers, or don't slot the powers. Here's another idea, why not purposefully die to put yourself into debt. That way you will level really slow, and never get the good powers.

- felicity

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Ok two can play this game. In my experience in game, the people who aren't enjoying the new difficulty are more numerous than the whiners who are. You can make up all the aribtrary BS you want but the changes were not indended and will be fixed. This is a FIX and not a NERF. You do understand the difference right?

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LOL I just have to laugh at this. The devs put literally dozens of individual elements into issue 2 that all seem to increase difficulty, some in very small ways, others in bigger ways. Errors/bugs are by nature random. They could go one way or the other. Believing that ALL the increased difficulty was inadvertent is tantamount to believing the cashier who has shortchanged you the last 20 times you purchased goods and never made an error the other way, when he says each and every time it was just a mistake.

Sure, some of this is bugs. I believe the devs about the +1 mission bug (I think). But no way was all of this increased difficulty inadvertant. Some of it was experimentation. Recall that the devs thought the game too easy pre-Udate (at least post level 25). Consider also that toon powers overall were given a boost (about 40 were improved vs. 3-4 nerfed). And they dramatically increased door mission XP. Maybe they thought they had to toughen up some mobs to maintain at least a constant difficulty level?

Does anyone seriously believe that the devs added all these powers to minions of various mob groups and each separate occurrence was an "oops." And "oops, I did it again." Each a separate and specific error of *commission*. LOL

- felicity

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Please, just give us a slider now, so those who want to employ tactics in a battle and those who want who want a simple push buttons/guarentee outcome experience can go their separate ways.


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oh come on FF, you can do better than that!

Thats akin to someone saying ..please give me a slider now so I can powerlevel faster and the low level controllers can stop complaining that they cant solo their door missions..

Not really a fair statement now is it.

I can tell you have a real lust for this slider-thing, but dont let it make you start talkin smack.

As for whether the devs are leaning this way or what way. Who knows. But as outrageous as it may be, the increased diff was a bug. Supposedly. So if we take Statesman at his word, then this isnt what his vision of the game was supposed to be.

Cripes, how did some of you guys EVER play this game prior to i2?

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My tone to some extent is a product of frustration. I started playing this game about 2.5 months ago. I had limited MMO experience prior to COH, so for a while it was fun and challenging. About a month ago, I started "clicking" with how to build and play my toons, and so did my regular teammates. The game (post-lvl 22 for sure) has gotten rather routine since then, and I'm seeing a lot of discontent in my group over that. Door missions are basically a joke. 6-8 white con minions and 2 yellow lts in a typical group, maybe an orange boss if we're lucky. It's nothing for 4 toons who play well together. We don't have to be careful at all.

Then I see Issue 2 come out and things are for the most part more fun, but people are complaining in droves. To some extent, I can understand it with respect to the lower levels. I have a level 15 Fire Controller who is having a tough time soloing certain missions right now. But the level and frequency of complaints seems to reach every level, every AT, every aspect of the game. It seems every time someone has a tough encounter in a door mission they want to come and ask that a particular mob power be nerfed or removed. It really isn't any one poster. It's the cumulative effect. I believe it is giving the developers the impression that the majority want this game easy, and it does not bode well for those of us who want a game that challenges our intellect and tactical ability.

The slider concept is not just something I have a fetish for. Every comp game, no matter what genre, needs a concept of difficulty that is configurable by the player. It is absolutely essential that no dev team think that one size fits all. Their original concept was that street sweeping would provide the needed flexibility, but they failed to consider that many people find street sweeping repetitive, so if they do not like the door mission difficulty (too low or too high), they are stuck between a rock and hardplace. The fact that many MMO's do not have difficulty sliders should not be a deterrent here. This is an age of better and better comp games. If making this game better for everyone means borrowing a concept from FPS games, then so be it.

I just want to continue to enjoy this game for a good while. It was really fun for a while, and it still is some of the time. But with every passing gripe I hear on these boards about how someone got killed in a mission, I feel it slipping away...

- felicity

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From Felicity_Flame:
Please, just give us a slider now, so those who want to employ tactics in a battle and those who want who want a simple push buttons/guarentee outcome experience can go their separate ways.

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While this is a great idea, where are the Devs supposed to get this "slider"?

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The same place they get everything else. They code it. They're doing it right now. It's just a question of how long it takes.

- felicity

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Ok, let's everyone take a nice deep breath and settle down, shall we?

It's pretty clear that opinions on both sides of the issue are strong. However, the current tone of the discussion is going to get what could be an otherwise constructive thread closed VERY quickly.

If you like reduced difficulty, great. If you like increased difficulty, huzzah. How about this.

To make the decreased difficulty version of the game more enjoyable for those who want a challenge, why not post some constructive suggestions on what folks can do to make it more challenging.

Here's a few:

1.) If missions are too easy, ask a player to team with you, enter the mission, and ask them to leave. The mission will spawn extra/tougher mobs.

2.) Try hunting higher than you usually do (reds & purples) or in zones where you're low level. IE: if you're 14-15, head over to IP and take on level 20 Family minions/LTs.

3.) Try fighting "with one hand tied behind your back." In other words, take on challenges where you refuse to use certain powers or inspirations, or unslot your attacks (or just don't upgrade them).

But please, let's move away from personal attacks on BOTH sides of the issue, and get back to constructive debate before this thread gets closed or people start getting banned.

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And if you prefer decreased difficulty:

1. Try avoiding mob types that are particularly difficult for your toon.

2. Try street sweeping for green-blues.

3. If the mission is too tough, get a higher lvl toon to go in with you, which will increase the number of mobs, but not their levels.

The shoe fits equally well on either foot.

Seriously, I don't get why the people that want a challenge have to make all the concessions like purposefully GIMPING themselves in a fight, not using the powers that they spent so much time leveling to achieve. It's the worst idea I ever heard. Now a compromize between the two sides of this debate would be good, but I don't think that is what we're in the process of seeing.

Taking the pulse of what I see on these boards, as well as dev comments and patch notes, I believe that those complaining about the Update 2 difficulty are winning this debate, and that, through a series of interim patches over the next two weeks, every piece of code that even slightly increased difficulty in any situation will be removed. I also think that after this reaction the devs will rethink their plan to increase the post level 25 difficulty, which would no doubt garner many more complaints.

Please, just give us a slider now, so those who want to employ tactics in a battle and those who want who want a simple push buttons/guarentee outcome experience can go their separate ways.

- felicity

Agreed. What many people who are complaining about the post-Update difficulty have missed is 1) over 50 powers were upgraded while only 3-4 were nerfed, and 2) respecing characters makes them much more effective. These two factors pretty much outweigh most of the increased difficulty we are seeing, to varying degrees for different toons. If the difficulty is returned to pre-Update, the game will actually be much easier than it was, at least for many people. They are going to have introduce some kind of difficulty slider, or come up with their solution to post level-25 difficulty soon, or the people who prefer some challenge in the game will quickly grow bored. My team finished respec last night, then did a door mission to test our new builds. It was mostly +1 mobs, and we could have done it on our sleep. It was a joke. And that's with +1's. Had it been even cons, it would have been even more ridiculous.

My fear is that all these complaints about the difficult post Update 2 are going to make the developers very hesitant to do anything to increase the difficulty of any aspect of the game, even where it is clearly needed.

For the moment at least, I really wish they would only "fix" this mission bug for pre-lvl 20, and leave it as is for the mid to high levels.

- felicity

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Who in the heck is Babbage?

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The first BIG gaming moment in your CoH career.

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My first big moment was taking down Dr. Vahzilok (sp?)

I've never heard of Babbage before this.

WHo is he and what story arc is he associated with?

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Sheesh, no one answered his question. Babbage is a big clockwork monster, like a souped up Assemblar Prince. You always get him by completing the Synapse TF, which is 100% clockwork. He will appear outside a door mission, an ambush. Unfortunately, because you encounter him in the street, people can and do KS, which is what happened the one time we encountered him. IMO, he is easy for groups of 3 or more.

Now he apparently randomly spawns in Boomtown, though no one seems to know exactly where, and he isn't spawning for the moment. I guess people want to find him to get a badge.

- felicity

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It's their call and their game, but if I were on the dev team, I would look at the climate of feedback and discussion among players right now, and consider it the number 2 priority, after fixing the problems with Issue 2.


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Who's to say that its NOT their priority right now, though? Something as important as difficulty sliders, which have a larger chance of unbalancing or screwing up the game needs to be well thought out and thouroghly tested. Just because it may take a few months to work it out doesen't mean its not a priority. It's just using common sense.

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I didn't say it WASN'T a high priority, I just don't KNOW that it is. When I have the developer's ear, I am going to express my opinion. If you have a contrary opinion (i.e. that is should be of low or medium priority), express it. But what you're really suggesting is that I don't express mine. Sorry, but the developers should know how important any given change is to their customers. And personally, if I were to consider any of 20 different proposed changes to this game, I'd rank the slider right at the very top.

Carefully considered and tested? Yes it must be. But how they prioritize it vis-a-vis other changes WILL materially affect when it actually rolls out. If they were to begin working on this after they fix the Update 2 bugs, and do NOTHING else but this until it is done, meaning we have it in say 2-4 weeks, I would consider that a coup. Statemen's words suggested (not stated) to me that we are looking at a considerably longer timeframe then that. That to me is somewhat disappointing, though I will reserve final judgment until I know for sure.

- felicity

I stand behind my statement that a difficulty slider appears to be non-controversial, at least compared to any other change I've seen proposed. Right now the biggest controversy is among those who want different levels of difficulty in the game, and this concept will go a long way toward solving it. The devs are clearly trying to strike a balance between both interests now, and in issue 2 they did it with trial and some error (no, I do NOT believe that ALL the increased difficulty was a bug). The simplist solution is to allow configurability for the difficulty of door missions. You already have that to some degree with street sweeping, where you can choose your zone, area and mob type. It needs to happen with missions. Whether it is with a slider, or by giving the various missions options difficulty lables, I don't care. But something needs to be done to give players more control over difficulty. And yes, TF's and Trials are milestones that should remain fixed in terms of difficulty. We're talking standard door missions here.

I agree it should not be hurried out before it's done. What I do think is that the devs should consider this a priority, because the major discontent in this game right now, as underscored by the release of Issue 2, is among the players who think the game is either too hard/too easy.

Lastly, Statesmen's original remark was that he'd like to see it for Issue 3, but couldn't say definitively if it would make Issue 3 because of the complications involved. I rightly gleaned from his remark that the probability of seeing it SOONER than Issue 3 was marginal at best. If he thinks its a "maybe" for Issue 3, that certainly means it is nowhere near imminent. It's their call and their game, but if I were on the dev team, I would look at the climate of feedback and discussion among players right now, and consider it the number 2 priority, after fixing the problems with Issue 2.

- felicity

So in other words, you're saying we definitely won't see the difficulty slider BEFORE issue 3? You might consider that a priority. Think of it this way: of all the changes you've considering making to the game, this one change is TOTALLY non-controversial. EVERYONE wants it. I haven't heard a single dissenting voice. It really solves a lot of the problems with different people preferring different levels of challenge.

Also, the +1 lvl mobs in missions. I am seeing this about 66% of the time. It thinks it's appropriate for post lvl-20, and I doubt many would disagree with that, though some might. Is there a way to change it for lower levels but leave it as is for higher levels?

- felicity

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My thought was that it would keep track for each individual Mob, that way firing solo shots at a single mob will only lower its defense not the defense of the rest of the group. If a blaster only single targets with sniper so as not to aggro the rest, then he is significantly slowed from the quick AoE masses of xp, which is on of the main goals of this change anyway

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I like this idea a lot. Make it 50% dmg resistance for the first strike, 25% for the second, none for the third and beyond (unless the mob otherwise has innate dmg resistance). Do it per mob, not per group. It guarentees that no one can AOE a group to death before the group gets to attack it (unless it greens and greys). It also improves solo abilities of support classes in a relative sense. If I as I controller (for example) have an AOE disorient like Flashfire that does minimal DoT but is a great crowd controller, that as an opening attack will take care of the first strike resistance. So it's going to affect the damage dealers the most. It'll mean they have to have support to take on the largest and toughest groups.

You'd need to increase per mob XP though for this to be appropriate, otherwise it's just a blanket increase in overall game difficulty. Just like the devs would add XP if they were to add addditional HP, you'd have to do it with this concept as well.

Also, I would only implement this with mobs higher than X level. You might implement it in a phased manner. Example, at level 22, mobs have 10%/5% resistance for first/second strike. At level 23, its 15%/7.5%. At level 30, its 50%/25% where it's capped.

- felicity

Yes, the number for Cloaking Device is too low, if the other numbers are correct. My Ice/Dev blaster has static End, meaning no loss and no recovery, bar stays as is, with the following toggles on:

Targetting Drone: .36
Sprint: .34
Acrobatics: .32
Cloaking Device: .30 (?)
CJ: .08

The total of of those numbers is 1.40. If normal End recovery is 1.67, then I should be recovering End slowly, but I'm not. That means one of those numbers is too low. I suspect it is CD, because getting CD is what started to cause major End problems for this character in spite of some End recovery buffs I get from teammates. CD feels like a big End sucker.

- felicity