Freem

Grats!

I want someone with Lingering Radiation and Fallout.

"I strike you down even in death! REVENGE IS MINE!!!"

I don't care much for rez powers. I can make myself an awaken easily enough.

Until Going Rogue where side-switching will be enabled, you will only find controllers and defenders on the blue (hero) side, and dominators on the red (villain) side.

Let's talk about the blue side first:

Many people coming from other MMOs think of the defender as the "healer", but the actual "support" class blue-side is the controller. Unlike in other MMOs where "crowd control" is limited to stunning on guy, rooting another and sleeping the third, in City of Heroes we generally fight up to 10-20 mobs at once, and crowd control powers are literally "AoE" in scope. The controller has an entire primary devoted to crowd controlling the massive number of mobs, and a secondary with buffing, debuffing and healing powers.

However, unlike other MMOs where the "support class" is rather hapless without a team, controllers are powerful in their own right and by picking different combinations of primary and secondary, can produce very good damage and soloing ability. (see below for more on the secondary) For example, Fire/Kin is famous for farming mobs, Ill/Rad is famous for soloing AVs (and just about anything).

The defender is more of a hybrid support/offense class, with a buffing/debuffing/healing primary, and a secondary that deals damage. However, they are kings of (de)buffing. Their primary set is stronger than the controller's secondary, and their offensive blasts are linked to various secondary effects that are stronger than any other AT. For example, defender radiation blast debuffs mob defense, and debuffs more than the radiation blast blasters have.

So there is a difference between the two blueside classes. The controller controls and (de)buffs to achieve safety, and deals double damage on the mobs that are controlled (called "Containment). The defender achieves safety by primarily (de)buffs, and deals damage. This is not set in stone because there are controller sets that have a more "blastery" flavour (e.g. Mind, Gravity control), and defender sets that have a more "controllery" flavour (e.g. Storm summoning, Dark Miasma, Trick Arrow).

Red side now:

Dominators perform crowd control and deal damage. Their crowd control at baseline is weaker than a controllers, being of shorter duration, until they reach the state call "Domination", which is when their control exceeds a controller's. This happens when their "Domination bar" builds up through attacking, at which point they can fire off a button that lets them enter Domination. It is possible to build a Dominator such that they are permanently in Domination, a state call "perma-dom".

Assault sets are a mixture of melee, ranged, single target and AoE damage. Different assault sets have different focus although most of them favour going into melee. The melee damage is higher to reward the dominator (low hitpoints and squishy) for going into melee range. The only exception I can think of to this is fire assault.

If you like support classes redside you might look into the Mastermind, with pet control and (de)buffs.

That's a model reaction from an arc author.
All reviews are subjective. Different people appreciate different things.

All I read is: "I pick/set up my solo content so my IO'd AoE toon can solo with max efficiency. Having a defender along slows it down."

I hardly count missions as "team content". That's why there's the new difficulty slider? So people can SOLO their missions at whatever type of spawn they choose. Including turning AVs into EBs, and bosses into Lts. And all without having to pester people to pad so they can solo to their hearts content nice large mobs. No big deal, and not noteworthy news.

I don't know what people think of when the word "teaming" comes up. Team content. For me, I think of a TF, or a trial.

And I've yet seen IOs give the type of bonuses and debuffs that can turn an AoE toon into an AV/GM speed-mowing machine that renders the rest of his teammates and defenders efficiency reducing baggage. The demise of teammates is greatly exaggerated.

Arc #255143: What Rough Beast

You can try this build. It is team-oriented but capable of soloing.



Up to level 20, you will mainly heal and single target control. You need to figure out what to hold selectively in teams.

(NB Can slot gravity distortion 1acc 2hold 2rech until you get the last slot in, because single target holds have good enough acc already. I'm too lazy to remake)

In the 20s we slot up your AOE cc powers. Put up fortitude on as many people as possible and use your AOE ccs to cut down on damage. You should need to do less and less healing.

In the 30s we round off your controller by putting more slots in your AoE ccs and buffs.

By 41, you are ready to pick up epics and/or fill in on the leadership pool.

You can move the slots around and slot for more damage if you want to be more offense oriented.

My friend got me into CoX and she (on a male tanker) exempted down and was showing my (female spines/SR) scrapper around. We picked up a 3rd person and was doing missions. At the end of the mission my teammates mysteriously just "disappeared" and I ran around lost, completely disoriented, and trying to find the exit again.

My teammates told me that I could just click "exit" on the navigation bar, and AHA! There it was. I didn't know that, I said.

This results in huge hilarity where the 3rd party pointed out that getting lost and having no sense of direction was a girl thing, and my "male" friend would have to take care I don't get lost.

If you want to pretend to be a Dark/Elec controller, pick elec epic.

Short Circuit + Power sink = AoE hold (and gives endurance)
Electric Fence = ST immob (and gives you a third attack)
Shocking bolt = 3rd hold...and it's better Putrefying Gaze, don't even get me started.

Thunderstrike is kind of pukey but nice for knocking mobs back onto your tar patch...some kind of kb control power

Doesn't that look like a controller?

If you don't mind being slow and passive-aggressive You can pick the Leviathan epic, immob the EB around a corner and let carrion creepers, water spout and your pets DoT it down.

[QUOTE=Oedipus_Tex;2327251]
- rarely drew aggro
[QUOTE]

Arctic Air draws a lot of aggro, at least in my experience...

Lots of responses overnight. My first calculation was just a kind of demonstration. I'm hoping to do the calculations properly (when I have time).

I did some testing on screech-howl-scream-shriek-shout in game. I find that with only rech red SO, I could not get it to recharge in time, but even with one siphon speed (+20%), everything ran smoothly.

The other issue was chain breaking, which was when your target dies so the debuff doesn't carry on. This is actually a big issue...so I suspect actual DPS over a mission time will depend a lot of actual play situation.

PHIRE:
The purpose of doing these calculations is do provide a kind of "best case" scenario. It's mostly a for fun thing...because sonics DPS is interesting in that it is not a straightforward addding up.

Practically, I only consider there to be a meaningful difference in DPS if there is a difference in the first significant figure anyway. And I only consider the calculations to be meaningful against what it's calculated for (one big target).

Garent:
The idea of debuff per second is interesting. The choice of debuff per second when teamed a good way on selecting the attack chain. However this means we would have to multiple the debuff of Howl by the number of targets it hits, in a team situation. I.e. Howl will become top priority as long as it hits 4 or more targets. I think this pretty much settles debuffing attacks in a team situation.

So using the debuff order, I think it would be more along the line of
1) Howl on the entire mob
2) Screech on the boss
3) As follows in your description, except always use Howl when it is up, until there you are unable to catch more than 3 mobs in your cone.

Frosticus: you raise very good points on what to take into account.
1) I will switch to Arcanatime.

2) I will change calculations on scream

3) Intention:
The main intention is to see what to do to gain the highest DPS solo. But to do that I want to settle the question of an optimal single target attack chain first.

=>a) Pure sonics chain against single target for a character with no recharge except SOs.
=>b) Pure sonics chain against single target with SO recharge and some recharge buff
=>c) Sonics + epic attack chain against single target, with high recharge
=>d) Consideration of chain breaking

It shouldn't be hard to include multi-target considerations if we have the single target down. It's just a matter of adding damage from Howl on undebuffed targets linearly.

I have done some attack chain calculations. Please correct me if I made a mistake in the calculations.

Assumptions:
1) Stacking all on one enemy (consider a high con, or boss)
2) 0.5s "button press reaction time", because I don't expect a player to seamlessly chain attacks non-stop like a computer.
3) Time spent using primary powers not taken into account. This can make a huge difference in more click intensive primaries.

Chain 1: Shriek-0.5s-Scream-0.5s-Shriek-0.5s-Shout-0.5s (total time 8.34s)
A# stands for the attack number in the chain
Stacks on:
A1: A2, A3
A2: A3, A4
A3: A4, A5
A5: A1, A2, A3, A4, A5

Giving (in the form of damage scalar * chained-buff)
A1: 0.84 * 1.6
A2: 1.32 * 1.4
A3: 0.84 * 1.6
A4: 2.12 * 1.6

Total scalar damage = 7.928
scalar damage per second = 0.95 (2sf)

+Recharge needed:
Shriek: 12%, Scream: 0%, Shout: 76%

Suggested slotting would be to give Shriek 1 SO, and Shout 2 SOs or recharge reduction.
This would give Shout 66% recharge, so we would actually end up having to wait 0.85s before using Shout instead of 0.5s. This does not change the stacking, only increase the chain time slightly, giving scalar damage per second = 0.91 (2sf)

Conclusion:
If you can get +10% recharge from other sources, you get 0.95/s
Otherwise, you get 0.91/s.

Chain 1: Shriek-0.5s-Howl-0.5s-Scream-0.5s-Shriek-0.5s-Shout-0.5s (total time 11.17s)

Reason for this is I want Howl's debuff to stick on the higher damage attacks.
Again,

Stacks on:
A1: A2 (, A3 exactly at 5s)
A2: A3, A4, A5
A3: A4, A5
A4: A5, A1, A2, A3, A4

Repeating the process in the previous part (I'll skip the working)
Fast shooter (A1 stacks on A3): 0.87/s
Slow shooter (A1 does not stack on A3): 0.85/s

+Recharge needed:
Shriek: 0%
Scream: 0%
Shout: 18%
Howl: 13%

This attack chain needs only 1SO in Shout and Howl.

Conclusion:
Practically, I think the slow shooter is the case. So you will get 0.85/s by incorporating Howl into your attack chain. So, if you are fighting a single enemy, it lowers your DPS to use Howl.

The next question is: how many enemies does it take to make using Howl worthwhile?
Adding enemies that are not debuffed with -res but taking damage from Howl,
2 enemies total, attacking 1: 0.92/s
3 enemies total, attacking 1: 1.00/s

So, it is worthwhile to use Howl when faced with 3 or more enemies, about the same when fighting 2 enemies, and not worth it when fighting 1 enemy only.

It's also worthwhile to use the second attack chain when one does not have enough slots in one's attacks because the second attack chain only needs 1SO rech red in Shout and Howl.

For soloing, I'd suggest starting off with Howl in the attack chain, until the number of enemies drop to 2, then finishing off the last 2 mobs with single target attacks. If your mission settings are such that you do not get 3 or more mobs per spawn, then stick to the single target chain. When fighting single AVs and bosses, also stick to the single target attack chain.

Practically,
1) This tends to be limited by how much you can stack those debuffs on a single enemy before it is defeated. So this is more applicable for big targets. How much this applies to spawns of differing cons, needs further calculation and maybe even some coding.

2) In the other thread there are suggestions to use epic attacks such as electric fence or dominate. This would add an extra attack. The idea of electric fence is quite interesting because it does its damage in ticks, which I think means the damage dealt in each tick time differs depending on the debuff state of the subject?

I always believed it arises from having their country stuffed into the lower left/right corner of world maps, or even chopped into half.

I'd rather have gun drone too... make that the blaster version of gun drone.
I wish defender epics have a defense-based shield though. And a web envelope. Ahhh well, nothing's perfect...

Thank you. Useful information.

One part I am not certain about. Please correct me if my calculations are wrong. From the pure sonics attack chain you posted:

Screech, Howl, Shriek, Scream, Shriek, Shout
(From Mids, activation time)
1.5 + 2.33 + 1 + 1.67 + 1 + 2.67 = 10.17s

So in order for Screech to recharge in time we need its recharge down to (2.33 + 1 + 1.67 + 1 + 2.67) = 8.67s we need (20/8.67 -1) +1.30 recharge?

So even with 3 SO recharge in Screech this chain would only work if Hasten is up, or did you factor in AM since this is for rad/sonic?

If we cannot get Screech down to this recharge, what about
Screech, Howl, Shriek, Scream, Shriek, Shout
Howl, Shriek, Scream, Shriek, Shout
Screech again...

This would require Howl (Shout) to recharge in 6.34s (6s), which would only require only 2SO recharge to repeat indefinitely.

But in this case, it this really the best attack chain?