Firebomb

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The same goes for any of the other 'aura toggle' powers in the game. Hurricane just happens to be the one people are focusing on currently... next it could be Icicles.

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Heh, that'd be funny.

I've been asking various developers basic questions about icicles for a while, and not a single one has got back to me yet.

Wow. You're still trying to insult me.

Despite the fact that YOU presented your argument in the style of 'barrage versus every other level 1 tanker secondary' and then revised it after my post to 'but barrage sucks compared to my big hits, despite the fact that this was not, in fact, my original point'.

'Sophistry'. 'Ignorant'.

I give up. I am not talking to you any more because you seem to feel the need to lash out at me despite the fact that a) I'm not the only one disagreeing with you, b) I have left this thread a while ago, and c) you yourself yielded the point earlier.

You tried to shrug off criticism with a 'i give up' and a smiley and then attack me days later. You are a piece of work.

Let me get this straight.

You're saying that the simple truth that you can do more damage with barrage over time than three other level one tanker powers is irrelevant?

That I'm 'ignorant' for pointing out these little things like 'facts' and 'numbers' that disagree with your point of view?

You will make an excellent politician some day. If you can't handle anyone disagreeing with you, much less proving you wrong, why do you post?

What I always like in posts like this is that people only look at the brawl index, and not factors like power recharge/activation time, or endurance cost.

So I'm going to do something I rarely do, and back up my words with a factual avalanche. Presented below is a table of every tanker melee first power's brawl index, activation + recharge time, and endurance spent.

Ratios are presented in 'brawl index' damage points per second, and 'brawl index' damage points per endurance point cost.

barrage: 1.8888 bi
barrage: 3.33 seconds (activate + recharge)
barrage: 3.536 end

damage/time ratio: .56
damage/end ratio: .53

bash: 2.7778 bi
bash: 5.37 seconds (activate + recharge)
bash: 5.2 end

damage/time ratio: .51
damage/end ratio: .53

frozen fist: 2.3334 bi
frozen fist: 4.33 seconds (activate + recharge)
frozen fist: 4.368 end

damage/time ratio: .54
damage/end ratio: .53

gash: 2.7778 bi
gash: 5.83 seconds (activate + recharge)
gash: 5.2 end

damage/time ratio: .48
damage/end ratio: .53

scorch: 3.1667 bi
scorch: 4.67 seconds (activate + recharge)
scorch: 4.368 end

damage/time ratio: .67
damage/end ratio: .72

jab: 1.8889 bi
jab: 3.07 seconds (activate + recharge)
jab: 3.536 end

damage/time ratio: .61
damage/end: .53

stone fist: 2.7778 bi
stone fist: 4.57 seconds (activate + recharge)
stone fist: 5.2 end

damage/time ratio: .60
damage/end: .53

As you can see here barrage is clearly not the worst 'first tier' tanker secondary. In fact it's not bad at all - it just SEEMS like it if you only count the damage numbers, and don't tally in overall damage over time.

It sits in the middle of the range of the seven level 1 tanker secondary powers, and doesn't do solely smash or lethal damage like mace or battle axe. If ANY first level tanker secondary needs a buff, it's Gash - not barrage.

* of course this assumes the values i pulled from my planner are correct. if not, i'll fix that later and eat my words if I must. but regardless.

I don't think regen is gimpy as a stalker set.

However, I find it amazingly stupid that I can kill myself with two uses of energy transfer while I'm in a MoG. And that using MoG drops me out of hide.

Do any other stalker secondaries actively work to negate the AT signature power?

It seems like some of the power sets weren't properly thought out, but that's just me.

The one thing I did never understand about MoG is why it works the way it does. Why lose 3/4 of your health and get like 75% (or whatever) resistances in the first place? Does MoG really need TWO crashes these days?

And I have yet to see anybody in charge explain why MoG needs two crashes when the other 'ultimate' melee powers don't. It's not like when unstoppable crashes you lose ALL RESISTANCE for 10 seconds. Or all your +Def when eluding falls apart. Meh.

I love the power on my scrapper for emergencies, but it just doesn't seem to cut the mustard for my stalker unfortunately - what with every enemy group seemingly having tactics ( and that's just in PvE! )

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Concealment: Stealth and Cloak of Darkness are Mutually Exclusive.

I think you'll all be pleased with Dark/Dark for Stalkers.

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So the question is: will oppressive gloom cancel your hide like Moment of Glory does?

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Exemplar/Malefactor to someone doing the mission and you will get the badge when they do.

We do not want to make the missions in the PvP zones go all the way to 50, because then a character could literally spend all his time in that zone, never needing to leave except to visit stores, and that is gameplay we dont want to encourage.

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That's sensible.

One question though - if there's no way to do their jobs (say, you're outleveling them before you ever enter a zone), is there any way to stop the zone contacts from automatically being plugged into your contact bar?

I'm weird in that I try to at least fill all those contact bars out on mine and it's only frustrating to see that as soon as I enter a zone I'm saddled with a contact I'll NEVER be able to progress with.

Or barring that, can a way to REMOVE contacts you'll never get to progress on be concocted?

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Sheesh, some people. You'd think the world was ending because some didn't give you ten dollars for nothing.

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Then the world IS coming to an end, as nobody has given me a $10 for nothing.

THE END IS NIGH!

Though admittedly, I'd settle for.... TWO DOLLARS ...

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3) Spec Ops are limited to 1 per spawn point for generic spawns. There may be specific encounter groups designed with more than one, however.

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You mean like those roving ballista in st martial with like 5 or 6 spec-ops hanging out with 'em?

or am i just running into several different whambushes with him that are left over?

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Ballista's toggle dropping should switch to ONLY be from Force Bolt and nothing else. I hate when people whine "Keep PvP out of PvE" on something like this. Take a challenge for once and move on.

Having TD from multiple attacks hurts. If it was only Force Bolt, it'd be more tolerable challenge but not too easy

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So you're complaing about people complaining about this, and complaining about it yourself in the SAME PARAGRAPH?

Interesting.

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I can confirm the following 2 COV ONLY badges. They are only COV because you cant find these villains in any zone other than Cap Au Diable (aka CAD).

The first is a hunt badge. Its for killing those little electric guys that hang out around the transformers in CAD. They are called "Cap Au Diable Demons". I lost count, mainly because I hunted them for 2 days straight, but I suspect its a bunch... my best guess is 200. Anyways, defeating them earns you the Electrician Badge !!!! Pretty sweet badge.
The text for it reads: The Cap Au Diable Demons have learned not to mess with you.

Upon earning the Electrician badge for hunting those demons I also was awarded the Gremlin Gladiator Badge. So the Gremlin gladiator is linked to the CAD Demon hunt badge!!!
The badge description reads: This living spark is a capricious sort.

You are welcome

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Probably a dumb question, but if you can get the mongoose badge from gladiator fights with villains that have snakes, couldn't you conceivably get the electrician badge the same way?

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The PVP Robot bug is still there though. I tested it earlier. Lasers fire, the victim does the animation of being hit but NO Damage. I can not PVP. This is a PVP game and I cant PVP. There are rewards for PVP I can not recieve. Part of the game is essentially shout off from me. We need this fix REALLY soon.


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Funny, this is how my ice tank felt with issue four, when the arena was a no-go zone. An entire issue of 'content' unavailable to me since anyone with any sort of buff OR debuff would just make a joke of her. And it took until issue SIX for some sort of half-attempt at fixing this was put into place.

I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you.

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Look at it this way guys..

Ice Primary can slow the mobs, drain their end, and slow their recharge(a little, but it helps)

The secondary just adds flavor. Go with Ice seconds, and you get some controll. Go with fire, and you got some serious offense. Go with mace, and you get some disorient and SMASH. Axe, you get knockback, plus an occasional disorient. SS, you get some knock back, PLUS, disorient. Im not to sure about stone, but i hope you understand what im describing.

Now.. when i see people saying that the secondaries arent worth slotting.. SHOW ME THE DEMO. I wanna see your proof that they arent worth the slots. They have more than proved their worth to me.

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The thing Ice is really best at is holding the hate - I rarely, if ever lose aggro on a spawn once I get to work on it.

The things Ice can do for a team primarily come from chilling embrace. With the -recharge -slow and -damage, you can considerably reduce the villains' output... and this power angers them like nobody's business.

Icicles does a bit of damage - lethal only so it's pretty weak compared to say mudpots or blazing aura, despite costing a ludicrous amount of endurance - but this also acts to reinforce aggro control.

Energy Absorption is a handy tool that offers a pathetic amount of defense, but is mainly useful as an endurance recovery tool - though if slotted right you can drain a LOT of your opponents' endurance, make even more hate, and I THINK (not for sure) that it offers some slow; I'd have to log in to verify that last point.

With two drains you can usually empty out the opposition and leave them brawling if you slot it for endurance drain (I have 3 drain SOs in mine), unless you use some other sort of method to control the bad guys; my ice patch seems to keep the bad guys from using attacks a lot, so they sometimes recover enough to keep attacking even after two drains.

The rest of the set is mostly for the tanker's sole benefit (in that they keep the tanker alive in theory).

The rest depends on one's secondary of course.

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That's an old feature, actually. It was around first when the "hit running foes" code got put in.


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Oh, I know, but even though they fixed it it's back. It's kind of like how some tanker powers suddenly reverted to knockBACK instead of knockDOWN for awhile in issue 4 or 5 somewhere. Makes me think something's wrong with their development process somewhere.

Like they're randomly using crap old code when working on new stuff... or something?

Maybe they can err and inadvertently slip the 'instant healing is a toggle' 'bug' back in for issue 7...

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thanks castle for clearing that up.

could you maybe talk to the others about putting things (like this) in the patch notes? there have become ... well, a lot, of undocumented power changes. sometimes it just looks like they're trying to slip one by us.

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Yes, while you're at it can you put the new 'feature' of Headsplitter where it simply fires off without either hitting OR missing people that are running away, sideways, or in any direction that isn't right towards you?

I love that new feature.

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The benefit is you get out there and start accruing Prestige at a higher rate than newer guilds because you already have a strong membership.

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Yeah. And this is a good thing. The 'main' super group me and my friends run around in on infinity has about forty characters, but it's really just four of us and a crapton of our alts - so it's a nice head start on base making, since at most only four of us are stomping Evil at a given time.

Seems perfectly fair to me. We get a short term boost while groups filled with large numbers of individual players will quickly overcome the prestige we've got by a long shot.

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Yep - this is the AI change to "fix" herding...

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So since you've 'fixed' herding, I suppose you can remove the utter gutting inflicted on certain tanker sets?

But oh, they weren't really reduced for PvE were they? Disregard.

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This is a BUG.

New Supergroups are only supposed to get the 20,000 Prestige for having 1 member.

Supergroups who took advantage of the bug (either on purpose or accidentally) will have the 36,000,000 Prestige removed. You can't spend any of it until CoV goes live anyway.

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What about the fact that some SGs don't seem to have received the Prestige award per member up to 15? Example, my SG, "Avatars of Justice", on the Justice server did not receive this bonus.

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Mmm. My super group which has a whole TWO people in it didn't seem to get anything. D'oh.

List your Infinity SG here - along with a description, website, and contact info.

Dash Apostrophe is the founder and leader of his very own super group for no readily apparent reason: the Scapegoats!

Why did I build a super group if nobody is in it, you ask? Well, the Idea is that people will want to have the Scapegoats in a coalition, so they can hang out in the bar super base he's going to put together once he has the ability to do so; the contractor said something about 'early November' as an opening date.

You know, kind of like Guy Gardner's bar back in the day, save for the fact that Dash doesn't have a bowl cut.

And yes, I'm primarily an army of one (what can I say, Dash is hard core). However, if you want to hang out with the obnoxious blowhard (I've been told that when I log on with him I am a a showboating loudmouth), or take the blame for anything from wrecking Hamidon raids to team wipes to upcoming nerfs, give me a holler.

Just remember: It's Our Fault.

Yammer at me on global as @firebomb, or don't come to the non-existant website. I may throw something together since I apparently bought the banality.com web site for 10 years or somesuch, if you're actually interested keep tabs there for more info.

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Um...yeah...where's the love to Ice Armor? They need love as much as SR.

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Ice tankers don't count - you haven't figured that one out yet? They're expected to tank for a team of 8 with a random buff here or there and 25% defense after their enhancements get homogenized. Jeez.

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Damage - Oh hey everyone used these in differing ways so we broke them. 3 for everybody! Hope you didnt rely on Targetting Drone to allow for six slotting or hasten so you could not use recharge or stamina so you could avoid using end reduction, because now you're forced to slot like everybody else.

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You know what? I used to slot my blaster like this. 3 damage / 1 acc / 1 end / 1 recharge. And guess what? He died ALL THE TIME.

Because by the time he was full up on the SO enhancements, every single gang had at least one mezzer in it. If i can't one-shot the primary threat he mezzes me and i'm rendered an easy target that just gets annihilated by his buddies.

But I imagine Jack won't be fixing that. He's too busy telling us how HE thinks we should slot our powers to stop those freakshow from sleeping you every six seconds, or whatever.

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With Enhancement Diversification comes a benefit for ALL City of Heroes powers.

Every power, across the board, is getting a 13.33% reduction in its Endurance cost.

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So tell me. Which changes are floating around on your magical internal test environment that negate the benefit of this? Since you balance and have us test things against alterations that haven't even been coded yet, what's the catch here?

Figured I'd ask, though the duplicitous nature of all the testing we've done since issue 3 makes me assume you won't answer truthfully anyway...

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Hey, while your at it

Can all attack Powers get a 13.33% increase in Damage?

Oh, and how about a all Defence Powers get a 13.33% increase in Defence?

How about we just increase everything by 13.33%!

and maybe later Monkeys will fly out of my....well you know what I mean

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Well you see, that would be BALANCED, and BALANCE is only strived for when it suits their given motivation on any given day.

Yep. Anything you can run to be at least minimally useful / functional in the issue 5 team environment is going away. Hence my suggestion that we may as well do away with existing powers and archtypes now, and go with what Statesman wants.

Just replace all powers with 'attack', 'defense' and 'travel'. Initially you can have color and effect changing options but eventually Statesman will say that he doesn't like the player having options in this, so they will be replaced.

Which is perfect, because that'll produce the perfect world for PVP equality. Which is what Statesman apparently wants - ironically the opposite of what he said himself in the past. Welcome to City of Suck, Statesman style.

But why stop there? Get rid of costume options while you're at it, that'll truly make this like a quake MMO - just with worse graphics. Of course then to attain true 'balance' you'll have to apply mounting debuffs to players with actual skill so they can't outplay those who suck at PVP.

Or Jack could explain why he's been lying about this for the last six months while we tested out only part of this ridiculous vision of mediocrity on the test server. Or to be relevant to this thread, he could just explain WHY HE HATES ICE TANKERS SO MUCH.

Anyone with half a brain can see this won't even let them function solo, much less on a team, and definitely not as an actual tanker.

The ironic here is that we were joking in the Regen Lounge that the only thing they haven't wrecked yet was hasten/stamina and quick recovery - whooops.