Frosticus
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Posts
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Joined
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Quote:It's not quite that simple. The highest recharge I could squeeze out of this toon was 155% (before slotting and hasten) using pvp IO's. You need 135% global for perma PA in addition to 95% slotting and hasten. Which means it is pretty clear you need to focus heavily on recharge.Originally Posted by Silencer7
Getting ill/cold to perma pa is basically just a matter of slapping lotgs everywhere you can. Cold doesn't give you much in the way of opportunities for set bonuses.
You'll find it difficult to achieve without 5 sets of purples, and 5 lotg as a starting base.
Cold gives you decent opportunity for recharge sets. If you had the slots to dedicate it could generate (I'm not counting slow sets as they suck).
each shield 12.5%, FW 5-7.5%, Arc Fog 12.5%, Sleet 6.25-10%, HL 5%
= 53.75 to 60%
That's not a bad return for 6 powers, nor is it a bad return per slot used (though you can push it higher with non-cold powers)
Definitely agree. Waiting until lvl 35 to move out of the role of "buffbot" is a long and not particularly exciting road. The payoff is worth it as cold is a fantastic set for every AT that has it, but it is a long road.Quote:I think the reason cold isn't more popular has a lot to do with how the set is structured. Until you get to the late 20s there isn't much at all to get excited about; stark contrast to rad, which gets it's strongest buffs much earlier. That and the fact that /cold is relatively new. -
Quote:I'm not sure why you are stuck in this mind set, but I already dispelled this belief in a previous thread. The "fate" as you call it depends on the "taunt" mechanic. That "fate" is shared by almost everyone during higher level content that relies on tanks/brutes keeping the big baddies off of their squishy selves.Originally Posted by Oedipus_Tex
It's actually a bit trickier than just slotting LotGs. Takes a lot of effort really. Although again the fate of such a character depends in very large part on the intelligence of AVs. The ability of Illusion to solo AVs appears to be more accidental than intentional. Given recent trends (Psychic Shockwave, Shield Charge, Blessing of the Zephyr) it wouldn't be totally shocking if this gambit is closed. Which is not to take away from anyone who actually manages to do it, since it's not easy. It's just that if AV intelligence ever gets looked at this is surely one of the first holes that will be patched.
I don't see Castle nerfing taunt do you? Or are you suggesting that PA specifically should be nerfed? That's fine if you believe that, but just say it. Keep in mind that they already went and set it so that the pets are vulnerable in situations where invincible taunting pets might pose a problem from a game balance perspective.
edit: that isn't to say I'm opposed to them making mobs more intelligent, but for them to counter taunt they would need to add things like healer agro that can be found in other games. I just don't see that happening in this game.
Quote:Originally Posted by Frosticus
The only way this will ever become an issue is if it becomes an issue for tanks as well, or Castle decides to specifically nerf PA and the decoy. They attack PA and continue to attack PA despite you doing a lot more individual damage than each one because each of their attacks has this:
+27s Taunt (mag 4)
Additionally the decoy that Phantasm spawns attacks also do:
+13.5s Taunt (mag 4)
You won't strip agro off of them. You can and will pull agro on excess mobs though as they aren't particularly good at keeping the attention of more than a few.
As a comparison point tanker attacks do:
+13.5s Taunt (mag 4)
Tanker agro aura:
+13.5s to +16.875s Taunt (mag 4) *willpower aura is the exception at 1.25s.
And tanker taunt does:
41s Taunt (mag 4)
I don't know much about taunt mechanics, but I have a sneaking suspicion that PA can out taunt (as in pull agro off of the tanker or make it so the tank can't pull the agro off of PA) everything but actual taunt. Like I said though, I'm not sure on that front and haven't tested it.
Further to that Illusion provides a couple ways to lower your personal threat modifier, which decreases the chances of mobs taking a liking to the idea of you being a corpse. -
Quote:Rad has legacy going for it whereas Cold is pretty much brand new to trollers. I was pretty surprised when I started researching this toon that no one else seemed to be using it. I've seen only one other lvl 50 (freedom) and it was a pvp spec. Surprising considering it has some of the highest synergy to be found in the game. Does extremely high damage by any AT's standards and can pretty well take on any content and emerge victorious.Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison
It was simply ignorance. I was assuming the popularity of ill/rads was largely due to the accelerate metabolism's recharge boost allowing perma-PA.
I just wasn't thinking about how minor the recharge boost really is. It only takes a few set bonuses to compensate after that.
It does mature fairly slow and take a truck load of cash though.
I don't want to take anything away from ill/rad as it is an extremely powerful combination and very user friendly, but I haven't found many situations where ill/cold won't do the same job, but nearly twice as fast. -
Decided to give my troller a bit of a workout, so did Maria Jenkins arc set to:
+0/x8 bosses on, with AV's.
To make it more challenging I selected:
Zero deaths, no temporary powers, no inspirations.
The only click accolade I have is geas, but I already have Perma PA, so no need to use it at any point.
The arc consists of 13 AV's (that you have to kill), and 4 defeat alls. So set to x8 it makes it important to not just be a specialist at the expense of other strengths.
I got a whack of screens from it, but I'll just post a couple highlights.
quite a mess she left behind
Pretty typical for this toon to pull well over agro cap as each pet can have 16 and so can I.
the hunter becomes the hunted
psst. behind you.
setting it up
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Nophase period took a bit away from hibernate, but it is still a really good power. One that a well built ice tank shouldn't have to use very often though.
Taunt the mob right before you enter it and/or slot a taunt or two in chilling embrace and they will continue to stay on you while you hiber. Even against +3's a two slotted chilling will hold them on you for 16 seconds, which is more than enough time to get back up to full without endangering any teammates.
The best thing about ice imo is that it is immune to slows/-rech. -
Quote:There isn't much you can't survive with bodyguard, taunting foes to only hit you, triage beacon, demon heals, and high defense.Originally Posted by Berzerker_NA
Yeah, I really can't see taking traps without Medicine. Triage beacon helps, but it won't keep you alive under serious fire, and the Ember Demons healing powers are, at best, only a good backup to being able to heal your own pets.
Of course, I think in terms of Murphy's Law. I like to build around the extreme situations where a team wipe is imminent, and ask myself how I can avoid it.
I guess if you plan to take on multiple AV/GM's at the same time or +4/8 (difficult enemy types) the aidself might be somewhat useful. -
Quote:Click on your powers button that is attached to your power slot tray. When that opens up and lists all the powers available to your toon navigate to the top corner and click the "combat attributes". That will open a window that lists all of your real time stats. Right click on any that you want to monitor and it will put them in a small window that you can drag to wherever you want.Originally Posted by Ukaserex
In the middle left of each of your screen shots, there is a list of percentages. Let me reveal my ignorance - I know that IO's can provide those increases - but how do I get that list to display?
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The highest rech build I've been able to come up with had 155% global (not including hasten or slotting) and it was a controller.
fyi if you had 5 purps, 5 lotg, 5 basiliks/pvp heals, 5 6.25's and 5 5's you'd be at
176.25% -
Quote:If you say so.Originally Posted by DrMike2000
And yeah, I'm pretty sure about the 20% deviancy thing.
Since I was primarily responsible for bringing SC to Castle's attention in the Shield thread I've decided I won't be doing anything like that anymore considering he has ignored my similar appeals for buffs where they are numerically warranted. I'm just going to stick to quantifiable bugs that can be easily demonstrated, that if fixed, result in performance improvements to sets.
But ya, regarding that 20% deviation? if you say so, but you could safely add a zero to it. -
Just want to preface this by saying I'm not disagreeing with the essence of what you are saying.
Quote:It hasn't driven players away yet. Or if it has it hasn't had a significantly quantifiable impact on the game.Originally Posted by DrMike2000
Thats an unbalanced game at its worse, and it would drive players away.
In this scenario, why even bother developing the graphics and animations for TA/A, if its going to be an unpleasant experience for anyone who plays it?
Are you sure about this statement? It certainly sounds nice and if you never stray from scrappers it may even hold true provided you ignore shield defense for the time being. If you look at any other AT though the last part of your statement can be frequently seen and that is being conservative with the numbers.Quote:Luckily, the devs have taken time to balance the powersets so they're within 20% or so effectiveness of each other. There are a few underperformers or overperformers by some metrics, but nothing thats twice or half as effective as other sets. -
I tend to feel both ways about this issue. On one side I think balance for the sake of balance, which is many of the changes put through, serve to do nothing but aggravate people. This is because even while many of the changes are positive in nature they are pretty small and don't really impact you emotionally. At the same time the small downward shifts are subjectively larger than they actually are and just cause people to be upset.
ie. Energy Melee changes - numerically the set wasn't actually changed that much, but the changes to the set were (imo) made for the sake of change. The result is that many existing EM players absolutely hate the set now (me included). IMO the time spent changing EM (even if it was only 5 minutes) would have been better spent literally doing anything else; even if that includes just going to the can.
The other end of the scale is of course the larger balance changes both positive and negative. These imo do need to occur. Things like the entire revamp to dominators. Even though it was done in a way that I wouldn't have because creativity isn't the strong point of the person doing the changes. It did need to occur. Stuff like ED/GDN/Purple patch, all that stuff needed to happen in one way or another.
At the end of the day a lot of the changes really come across like "make work projects" to me, which is upsetting because there is soooooo much work that actually needs to happen in terms of balancing. But what can you do really? we all know from our own jobs that knocking off the low hanging fruit from our to-do list and even manufacturing low hanging fruit is a lot easier than tackling the overarching issues. And at the end of the day/reporting period if you can show your boss that you were at least doing something then they will often overlook the fact that you didn't tackle anything of substance.
The way I see it you can approach it two ways. Balance qualitatively or balance quantitatively. You can find examples of good developers doing one or the other. You can find examples of great developers doing both. Castle seems only able to focus on quantitative measures. That is fine, but you have to be really good at it when systems are as transparent as they are here. If you actually examine the powers database there are so many errors it will make your head spin. -
Quote:No idea, I'm just going by what the lady in the video said during one of the demonstrations.Originally Posted by Decorum
Haven't we had a few ex-GameStop employees mention somewhere that if the date is 1 or 2 that it means they don't have an actual date and are just using that as a place holder?
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I'm still waiting for Master of Master of x challenges where if you die on the TF your character is deleted. That would be a really good badge for the devs to put in.
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Quote:Not trying to sound the doom alarm at all here as again I can only speak for myself.Originally Posted by MrHassenpheffer
This to the 234th power.
A-lot of people think and feel this way. Count me in.
If DCUO hits their launch date of Nov 2 that pretty much means in no uncertain terms that CoX needs to have i19 drop right before it or I'll have little reason not to expand my horizons. They'll also want i20 to drop 2-3 months after DCUO goes live to pick up any people that just aren't feeling it, but got a taste of superheroes and want more.
Their hard work hasn't even begun yet imo.
That means that if they have pushed GR back to Sept they will need to push out a whole additional issue in less than 2 months...Of course if GR is utterly amazing then they can continue with the trickle rate of releases. But from what we've heard it is mostly going to be the low levels and a tiny piece of the new end game system. Suffice to say, I'm confident that amount of content will be devoured in a very short time period.
Again, not a doom call, just saying what is necessary to retain a customer like me at this stage of the game. For me they already played the loyalty card over the last year and a bit. They need to deliver, which they have said they are going to. So I'll gladly give them a shot. -
Quote:It is. But energize helps considerably with endurance needs prior to that. It's just too bad the devs didn't change the order of brute ELA like they did for tanks/scraps. Their quoted reason for changing it and then deciding not to apply that same logic to brutes/stalkers borders on idiotic. ELA is pretty solid once you get it all going though.Originally Posted by Hazygreys
Just remember it's a long way to power sink
I will toss another vote for stone/ela, I like mine quite a bit. Stone is crazy when you don't have to worry about endurance at all and go full out with recharge focus. -
Weird, I posted an image from Don't Say a Word, where the tag phrase from the movie was "I'll never tell" and it gets deleted. Interesting.
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Quote:They stealth edited out July some time ago to now say "summer". My guess is in the last 1-2 weeks of summer, so September xx (as in double digits).Originally Posted by gameboy1234
"In July," I think, which could be at the end of July. So two to six weeks.
While technically still summer, it is a pet peeve of mine because it is soooooooo much better from a company standpoint to build good will and leverage marketing to say "fall" and then launch it a bit early. They did the exact same thing with i17. It makes you look like a hero instead of a drag-a**. Which given the frequency and extent of updates we've been getting they could use all the good will they can muster.
I know I'm betting the farm on GR for my account because we've been told it is going to be so great and innovative and we just need to keep holding in there while things fester elsewhere in the game. I'm hopeful they deliver because I want to maintain an interest in this game and for it to do well. -
Did he have some secret way to make the radius on fireball larger? I ask because it is the same size as fissure.
I'm confused by his thought process. He's concerned about being mezzed, but not taking psi mastery and ignoring that fissure does a bang up job of mezzing spawns all on its own. Fireball is the worst for not getting mezzed. And the discussion was about farming so you are obviously going to be standing in melee range to take advantage of hotfeet and all the good kin powers. -
Quote:Not much in the traps set drops your stealth and by not much I mean webnade only. Stealth (ideally invis level) makes playing traps almost unfair it is so easy.Originally Posted by Tangler
I'm not exactly sure what you're getting at here. If the stealth is just to allow you better positioning of your drones, then wouldn't just throwing in a range IO also work?
edit: if and when controllers finally get traps then illusion/traps will be silly as the invis powers found in illusion don't suppress when you attack or get attacked and you can lower your threat modifier. Meaning you'll have plenty of things that foes find more interesting than yourself even with you pew pew'ing away. -
If the other AT's are superheroes then controllers (and MM's) are Gods.
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Quote:Was that someone stuck in time like 6 issues ago?Originally Posted by Fury Flechette
Posting this because someone PMed me and said they couldn't understand why I advocate fire/kin/stone versus fire/kin/fire for farming.
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Traps for trollers.
Ill for doms
Cold for MM's.
Ninjitsu for Scraps.
Fire Melee for Stalkers.
Thermal and Fire for defs.
The rest of the sets I'm personally not to concerned about at this point, but I support those that may want them.
The first three on the list I'm more interested in than any of the new powersets (including the two that have already been early released). -
Quote:To be fair, the newspaper/scanner brought "thousands" of new missions...but hopefully they are talking about unique missions like the two new arcs that each side received.Originally Posted by Grey Pilgrim
Still, it was nice seeing the line "hundreds of new missions with this expansion." For the rest she used marketing speak and generalized how many new mapsets we'd be getting, but hundreds of new missions sounds good to me.
Still, it would be nice to be getting a bit more detail about what this expansion is going to be like. We keep getting the general big picture thing, which was nice last fall, but not anymore.
I think they've pretty much bled a lot of people dry with the trickle of information and the trickle of content since they originally announced it.
I can only speak for myself, but they have created a situation where so much is resting on this expansion and so many problems are just festering while we keep hearing "wait for GR". At this point my expectations are extremely high and I already know they aren't going to be met. Not much else I can say really, both parties are to blame. Me for ignoring logic and continually placing higher and higher requirements on GR and them for the drought leading up to it over the last year.
I hope there aren't a lot of players in my position. -
Illusion and farming in the same sentence doesn't fit. Even if you said "multi-billion" build it still wouldn't fit and will always be disappointing for such an activity.
Illusion is good at a lot of things, but farming? not so much.
