Frostweaver

Great, so with the new patch, not only will ambushes stand stupidly 20 feet away without attacking, but now they will shoot at you too and never get any closer.

brilliant. just fecking brilliant. way to fix an 'exploit'.

Just for giggles, I decided to check out what SR would be with nothing but IO's on a tanker...

active+passive=26% per location. with 3 so's= 39% per location

39%???

yep

oh, and tack on weave for another umm... 7.5%

46.5%. to all locations. softcapped from nothing but SO's

oh, and of course .45% defense x3 powers per point below 60% health. that's 13.5% resistance per 10 points below 60%. that means that at 25% health (with tanker hit points, of course) yopu would have ummm... 46.5% defense to everything and nearly 50% resistance to everything that gets through.


one one power pool, with nothing but single-origin enhancements. By level 28.

Go ahead, try and tell me SR isn't overpowered


contrast it to say...electric armor on a tanker:

35% resistance, or 52.5% resistance for a tanker.
with tough, 75% resistance to s/l.

And that's it. nothing else save some end drain that doesn't work all the great as mitigation. craptastic numbers against non s/l/e attacks.


but on the plus side, at least you can slot a 20% chance to heal 5% damage in your lightning field, right?

I think a lot of /ea's 'problems' stem from the simple fact that it is compared to SR, and SR is severely overpowered.

Honestly, being able to softcap on a scrapper or brute with almost no effort pretty much showcases the fact that it has tanker-level defenses on scrapper-level ATs. SR is easier to softcap than ice armor, a Tanker set.

The problem is of course that defense is all or nothing. you either take a full hit or none at all. One of the reasons I like /ea is because instead of being all or nothing, it has decent defense, a little bit of resistance, and now a bit of healing as well. That allows the set to be good without breaking into tanker numbers.

electric armor, however, is exactly where a 'pure' resistance set should be on a brute or scrapper. And it shows pretty much exactly where SR should be if it were not dramatically overpowered... SR is a one-trick pony, and while that's a darned good trick, it should not, alone, allow a scrapper or brute to attain tanker-level survival.

the only OTHER set that allows a brute to attain tanker-level survival is granite, and it comes with significant drawbacks... and in truth, for a brute, the drawbacks are not quite enough to counterbalance that strong of a defensive set.

The problem is, that the devs know how binary a pure defensive set is... and to preserve the 'feel' of the set, they have made an error mandated by the game design itself. because of how binary defense is, the only way to have made SR have an appropriate level of survivability would be one of several things:

)Lower the amount of damage incoming by some method (in ice's case, CE does that) but that would have changed the feel of the set.
)Opt to give SR some residual resistance effect and increase the defenses beyond a reasonable level (The choice that the devs made)
)give SR a residual HP recovery power and kept the defenses at a reasonable level (The choice I think the devs should have made)

So, of course, now you have a set that is unbalanced for the sole reason that the devs knuckled under to 'concept' instead of balance... and now that the cat's out of the bag, the only way to 'fix' the set would be percieved as a massive nerf by the community, and not without reason. I think that they have decided that, in the end, SR is not a popular enough set that allowing it to remain in it's unbalanced state is particularly game-breaking, but the people who hang out on the boards (a minority of players, admittedly) know the truth... SR is entirely outperforming what a secondary should do for a brute.

Unfortunately, this perception has made a lot of people believe that SR is the 'baseline' for brutes. They think that Willpower meets this baseline because of damage-over-time numbers favor it (They absolutely do, willpower has a survivability metric for damage-over-time on par with pre-nerf regen) and that raw survivability favors it as well (It certainly does not, burst-damage wise, Willpower is absolutely bottom of the barrel compared to EVERY other set.) but willpower fortunately has a survivability metric right in the tolerance range where brutes like it... high survivability against up to 16 opponents of lut-class or lower, where brute damage is maximised and levelling speed is at it's peak.

Willpower has a weakness, which is low numbers of heavy-duty enemies. It is extraordinarily difficult for willpower to fight against a single heavy-attack foe, such as a lot of AV's with massive first-strike capability and consistently high-damage foes. This is a weakness shared by invulnerability and dark armor, and is pretty much considered par for the course for brutes... They are not tankers, and in a lot of cases brutes trying to 'play like a tanker' are ridiculed.

But SR is a deal-breaker. It has just as much strength against a single high-level foe as it does against hordes of minions. On brutes, this means that the classic hole of 'big nasty AV's' and giant monsters is no such thing... and due to the newest version of level scaling and Arcanaville's tireless efforts (Not to disparage her) SR has nearly the same amount of survivability against a +4 archvillain as it has against 16 +0 luts.


The biggest problem is, how to bring SR 'in line' as far as survivability with other scrapper and brute sets. The thing is, every effort to bring SR in line has wound up impacting other defense-heavy sets, such as inv and /ea, for more significantly than SR. and since the Devs have mandated 'no massive powerset changes' anymore, that means that SR is probably going to stay in it's current, broken state and continue to draw false comparisons against other, more balanced sets for the forseeable future.

But what this does NOT mean is that other sets that rely on defense are going to be unbalanced as badly as SR is. I am reasonably certain that /ea, /inv, and /ice are fairly close to where the Devs want defense set survival metrics to be. Apparently /ea was below that goal, and since it was virgin territory, precisely enough positive reinforcement was applied to bring it into line... I am pretty sure that the 'future adjustments' they were talking about were intended to brace the community for future nerfs should /ea prove too powerful, rather than leading people to expect future buffs.

I expect on the next round of proliferations, scrappers will get ea and tankers will get electric.

Followed, almost immediately, by a massive buff to electric aura once the bluesiders realize just how massive some of it's problems are :P

You can do it, but if you do, warn any teams you may play with...it's an intentional self-gimp for concept reasons, and while some teams might not care, especially if you have a good secondary, other teams may feel you are misrepresenting yourself as a mastermind if they don't know in advance that you plan to use less than half of your (considerable) strength.

Actually even with tanker numbers wasn't easy or early to cap. It wasn't the power potentials themselves that were the problem, it was the lack of slots before about level 35.

I wasn't able to softcap Frostweaver with any regularity until about level 40 (admittedly this was well prior to IO sets) even with the tanker numbers. of course, it was easy enough with a team (where tankers always have excelled).

Honestly, I remember the 'early grind' for frostweaver quite well, and I also remember the early grind for Darkness bound... and I would still choose /ea over ice for brutes for levelling purposes. Especially if ice were 'adapted' for brutes by losing CE's huge slow component, and some of it's damage reduction.

I would certainly PLAY an ice brute, but it would be a labor of love, not because I felt ice were in any way superior to other brute sets.

Important do not:

Do NOT send a tell to someone that has 'no blind invites' and then immediately follow it up with a team invite without waiting for their replies.

If they are playing a blaster, they probably have a very good reason for saying 'no blind invites' because that pop-up in thne middle of the screen CAN and HAS gotten them killed. It has gotten me killed, since I play so much on the edge that even a moment of distraction can spell the difference between victory and faceplant.

How about a 'pure human' set, guaranteed to piss off anyone who dares team with you?

tier 1- 3 thug pets including pyro
tier 2- 3 merc pets including medic
tier 2.5- gang war
tier 3- 3 ninja pets

special attack- 'shut down all graphic cards in location'

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Positron, I am a little concerned about the possible rate griefing involved with being able to rate an arc that hasn't been played. Especially when there are badges involved in rating unrated arcs or ones that don't have many ratings. A lot of people will probably get their badges simply by going down the line of unrated arcs, slapping a 1 star rating on them, and getting their badge in the process. I've seen rating systems on web-published content experience things like that, and that's WITHOUT the enticing badge. Please reconsider allowing someone to rate an unfinished arc.

*EDIT* Been here since CoH beta, and this is the first time I've posted after a redname.

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I'm willing to listen to ideas on how truly horrible content can get rated without having to endure all of it.

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Include a spellchecker

It works, but it is very specialized.
personally I chose to slot for more of a solo-friendly build. This one works, but it's soloability is not nearly as high as I would like.

I'd like to see an updated I13 version, though.

Robots/Pain domination. Set your auras on auto, your bots on aggressive, your teammates on follow, and come back when you hear the 'mission completion' music. Your team will love you.

I just wanna know how you got wegame to play sounds :P

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I think you're a little delusional if you think in any way the devs "encourage" people to farm. The devs want people to play the game. They want people to enjoy the content. That's it. They've stated several times that they'd like people to play a variety of content. If they encouraged people to play the same missions over and over again, they wouldn't have put in the mechanism for diminishing returns when running task forces. They also wouldn't have put in the code where spawns are calculated for team size as you approach them, necessitating the need for mapping the mission out before fillers leave.


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I think you are delusional if you honestly believe that play experience is as important to NCsoft as subscription fees. Sure individual devs may smile or frown upon farming in general, But the stockholders and pr reps only care that people Keep Paying for memberships Powerlevelling actually decreases memberships (Because people get pl'd, play for a while, and then quit) but 'hard core' farmers are here for the duration.... thus, PLing is definitely frowned upon, but farming, per se, is a neutral subject... and occasionally even encouraged.

see 'rikti war zone', 'storm palace' and 'cimerora wall' for examples of situations that have been specifically set up to encourage level 50 grinding/farming.

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Post Deleted by Moderator_08

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Do you REALLY think that the devs have no clue about farming? It's a well known legitimate way of playing high-level characters. It is somewhat frowned upon, at least as far as PLing is concerned, but 'normal' farming such as wall farming and NON pl farming is strongly, if not actively, encouraged.

Do you REALLY think that the devs expect you to be able to assemble a full set of purples (or the wherewithal to afford them) just running normal content? 'farming' is simply an efficient way of grinding, and one that requires specialized builds and/or archetypes.

Wall farming-
Herding the wall in cimerora. Wall spawns have 10 enemy cimerorans in them. One healer, one firebomb-chucker, 2 luts with shout of command, and 6 grunts.
The wall spawns are unusual in that Cimeroran AI is unique. With the exception of luts which use typical 'melee-preferred' ai, the cimerorans use what appears to be a specialty AI that does NOT appear to have a 'hang back and use ranged occasionaly' quirk to 'make things interesting' like most other 'melee preferred mobs' possess.

What this means is that the ai is highly predictable. a /devices blaster throwing caltrops between herself and the spawn can virtually guarantee that the entire spawn save for the 'fireball chucker' is going to run across them, and they do not seem to have a 'differing path' AI either... they run directly towards you and very seldom attempt to negotiate different paths unless you are in an unusual position which forces them to take a different path to avoid bounding-box issues.(such as standing at the very edge of the wall... many of them will 'fall off' and take a different path to reach you)

But, cimerorans possess two tools which makes their ai strategy make total sense. the first, 'shout of command' allows all cimerorans inside of a certain radius of the lieutenants to gain rather effective (Mag 4 I believe) protection against status effects such as holds, sleeps, immobs, disorients, and confuse. This makes the 'herd 'em and confuse 'em' strategy less effective. It also provides a defense component, and it stacks with multiple luts. As far as I know this shout of command is either melee defense or s/l defense, as it does not seem to affect defense to things such as aoe's and fire/dark damage, but it may be 'all defense' so i will admit my unfamiliarity in the matter.. One would have to ask a bane spider or blaster to determine the exact effects of shout of command or look it up in city of data.

The second complicating factor is the fact that all cimeroran melee attacks contain a hefty -defense component, and when fighting ten at a time, that defense modification can play a serious role in the survivability of melee sets. It is one of the factors which make traditionally 'overperforming' sets, such as willpower, regen, and defense-capped non-native-defense builds such as defense-capped fire/kins far less effective.

In essence this gives two alternate spawn strategies. The first strategy is to ignore aggro limits (allowing aggro-capped enemies to engage you after you have defeated the ones that follow you immediately) by aggroing two spawns at the same time. This is especially effective for sets that contain defense that scales based on the number of mobs present AND resist defense debuffing (ice armor, invulnerability) as well as sets that simply have high enough defense and defense debuff protection to safely engage large groups of defense debuffers at once (Energy aura, super reflexes) also sets which have debuff/mez dynamics that are not overtly influenced strongly by shout of command (radiation, bubbles/storm repel, slows)

In general, the first strategy allows sets which are not as strong on 'traditional' farms to gain ascendance, such as ice armor, super reflexes, invulnerability, and energy aura, due to their ability to virtually guarantee a 'herd' that clumps around them for their melee aoe's and defense saturation (or lack of vulnerability to debuffing) This also brings to ascendance 'attack' sets which are not as strong in traditional mitigation, such as knockback, and strengthens sets which provide more raw damage output or mitigation forms to which the cimerorans are vulnerable (fire melee, dark melee, and electric melee are obvious candidates).

Obviously tankers, scrappers, brutes, and stalkers prefer the first form of farming, and while tankers tend to herd two spawns together, brutes, scrappers, and stalkers tend to prefer to the second due to lower overall mitigation and higher damage for their aoe cones... why waste time herding 2 spawns together, defeat 1 spawn and allow aggro-capped enemies to trickle into range over time, when you can just as quickly defeat two spawns in a row with a greater margin of safety and potentially better damage output? (in the case of brutes, moving to succeeeding spawns at nearly full fury)

the alternative is sets which possess strong abilities to damage 'lines' of enemies, generally those that possess heavy cone damage for catching the initial spawn before it has a chance to move, and generally involves quickly taking out a single spawn of enemies at a time so quickly that they have very little opportunity to respond... and the responses that they DO have are often limited to the much weaker and non-defense-debuffing ranged attacks.

Slows are valuable for the second type of farming due to their ability to 'clump' the enemies together, and cones do double duty as a traditional aoe AND an ability to quickly thin the ranks while the spawn is in it's original 'line' configuration. And because of the fact that each spawn is EXACTLY ten minions and luts, which is the aoe cap for ranged cone attacks, this makes cone sets such as assault rifle and to a lesser extent archery, fire, and cold, extremely valuable, since cones tend to have slightly higher damage and faster recharges than similar 17-capped aoe's.

Once again, there are several advantages to make up for the fact that cimerorans are harder for 'traditional' farmers-
self-clumping AI
no fills required
10 minions and luts every single time
quick ability to move between fights without losing fury
no 'mission resetting'
full experience/drops/cash rewards

The 'best' farmers I have found for cimeroran wall spawns are actually a surprising pair of sets:

ice tankers with a strong damage primary, due to slows(which cims have no protection against), resistance to defense debuffs, and aoe in the secondary which adds exceptional aoe damage over time. ice/fire is my preferred farmer. Ice/fire is my preferred farmer for type 1 wall farming.

'post upgrade' ea brutes with a strong damage primary, such as ea/fire, and ea/electric, due to the aoe potential and having their heal scaled by the number of mobs present, as well as a strong resistance to defense debuffs. EA/electric is recommended because of the 'non traditional' mitigation of electrical attack endurance drain and endurance drain in their secondary, which, after a few moments, allows you to maintain enemy endurance below the threshold neccessary for the cimerorans to use their most damaging sword attacks.... right about the time your healing drops off due to mob numbers depleting, your fury has been capped for far greater damage and most mobs are wheezing.

sr brutes post-softcap, due to their scaling resistance and strong resistance to defense debuffs, such as sr/fire and sr/electric. Their secondary mitigation of scaling resistance kicks in extremely strongly due to the low-burst, high-dps nature of fighting against a 10 enemy spawn. They might wind up the fight at 10% health, but they almost always will win, and the number of inspiration drops assures that they are immediately ready to fight the next group in moments.

sr/nin/ea stalkers with a strongly aoe damaging primary, such as electric or spines. the top performers are electric/ea (for the same reason as ea/electric brutes, above) ninja blade/ea (due to extreme saturation of lethal defense) ninja blade/ninjutsu (due to strong saturation of melee defense as well as slows and an aoe placate power that allows them to take a breather if things start to turn sour) and sr, although sr will most likely require a stronger set of IO slotting. This is primarily due to stalker's lower hit points.. often scaling resistance buffs are not enough to save a stalker when things start going south, although this can certainly be compensated for by ninja blade's saturated melee defense. spines stalkers also due well due to the inherent mitigation of spines -recharge, of all three sets. having TIME to click aid self or pop a green can often make the difference between success and faceplanting.


Scrappers that excel against cim spawns are katana/broadsword/super reflexes, due to saturated melee defense, strong defense debuff resistance, and strong scaling resistance. scrappers greater hit points as well as access to both a melee-defense enhancing primary and a strong defense secondary make cimerorans very little threat. Unfortunately, katana/broadsword fare less favorably with secondaries that do NOT have defense debuff resistance, although this can certainly be compensated for by proper IO slotting.

So in order (based on my experience and the experiences of others) I would set the viability of sets for farming the wall in cimerora in the following order: (based on expense of io slotting options, survivability, and speed of dishing out damage)

Ice/fire tanker
invuln/fire tanker
fire/sr brute
electric/ea brute
ninja blade/ninjutsu stalker
ninja blade/ea stalker
ninja blade/sr stalker
spines/ninjiitsu stalker
spines/sr scrapper
katana/sr scrapper

so the top of each category for 'type 1' wall farming would be:
tanker- Ice/fire
Brute- fire/sr
scrapper- spines/sr
stalker- ninjutsu/ninja blade stalker


Type 2 wall farming involves overwhelming a single spawn with damage far too quickly for them to respond effectively. Ironically, the unmitigated best farmer for type two wall farming is assault rifle, due to the preponderance of cones for catching all ten members of a spawn at once. This is one of the few situations where the traps and devices secondary actually strongly complements the assault rifle primary, due to caltrops and trip mines, although as usual it's not the strongest complementary pair.

Blasters:
AR/ice is a strong contender for taking out single wall spawns, due to it's cone nature, shiver being an unresisted debuff, and ice patch allowing a high amount of clumping if the aoe string is not enough. AR/Mental is also a strong contender, since, with the assault rifle changes, there is now a rather large hole in ar's cone attack chain without extensive recharge slotting, which psi scream fills rather nicely. Both of these sets have an advantage in the form of buildup, since, barring lots of misses, the cone attack chain alone is enough to kill everything including luts.. although a few misses on a lut or two might leave one standing, which gives ice the edge. AR/devices is actually strong in this case as well, since cloaking device allows cones to be lined up well and, while you will not likely kill the luts when you trash the spawn, caltrops and a trip mine or two during the 'setup' phase can easily make these enemies fall before your onslaught as well. but this costs time, and while ar/devices is more able to survive a bad set of rolls, it also has longer setup time which costs it overall speed.

sonic blast is also a good candidate for farming. Siren's song can be deployed prior to any shouts of command being activated, and thus will have full effect. Sonic shockve loses utility as a mitigation power, but can easily be slotted for damage instead, which, couple with sonic's resistance debuffs, can actually enable speedy defeat of a wall spawn. when coupled with something like mental manipulation for it's extra cone, you can quickly destroy a spawn. The siren/drain psyche/nuke combo is not terrifically useful, however, due to the spread-out line nature of the spawn (Yes, I did my research)
fire and ice, with a slowing/damaging rain, will also go a long way towards defeating a spawn easily, as will archery.

Archery, like fire and ice, only has a single cone, but that cone is a GOODY. while it is not as good as ar or even sonic, archery as a wall farmer is unlikely to let you down in any significant fashion, especially when coupled with the traditional farmer secondary, mental manipulation.

Energy blast is just as bad of a wall farmer as it is a traditional farmer.. sorry.

psi blast also is a ticket to phail as a wall farmer. cims don't have enough lethal/smashing resistance to bring psi's damage type into play strongly, and it is far too strongly st-oriented to make a good wall farmer.

Electric blast also suffers under the same disability, qand allowing that many cims into melee range to use elec/elec's end drain to affect them and maximize your aoe damage meaningfully is a sure ticket to the hospital, especially since ball lightning's aoe is too small to affect the majority of the cim's 'default' position.

For blasters, I would arrange the utility of farming as follows:
ar/ice
ar/mind
archery/mind
ar/devices
fire/mind
cold/mind
AR/energy

Corrupters:
Once again, assault rifle takes the lead due to cone positioning. However, it has a twist.. corrupters do considerably less damage than blasters, and so the cims ARE going to have 'move time' before they are subdued. This makes the secondaries of dark, storm, and traps the obvious secondaries of choice for clumping them together and keeping them out of melee, due to their 'patch slows'. Cold would be a contender, but has little ability to clump mobs due to the wide-open stretch of the majority of the wall... it IS possible, however, to corner pull on the guardhouse and front gate, so cold needs to be at least mentioned for snow storm pulling. fire and ice primaries are actually closer to ar performance for corrupters than blasters due to aim's damage buff, and the negative effects of accidentally knocking enemies out of tar patch and freezing rain's resistance debuffs. However, freezing rain's debuff persists even after the enemies have left freezing rain, and in many cases storm can actually stack two of them, making ar/storm, in my opinion, the strongest corrupter wall soloer.

So in general, I would rate corrupters for type 2 wall farming as follows:

AR/storm
Fire/dark
fire/storm
ar/dark
ice/dark
sonic/storm
sonic/dark
ar/fire/cold/sonic/ice
ar/fire/cold/sonic/traps

Unfortunately, due to the way spawns tend to be spread out, kinetics tends to be far less effective than it would be on traditional farms.

So for type 2 cimerora wall spawn farming I would rate them as follows:
AR/Ice blaster
AR/Storm corrupters
Obviously, you can see the similarities to the way the two combinations would play.

Dominators and controllers-
Of dominators, I would lean heavily towards earth/thorns, due to it's aoe, defense debuffs, and reliance on slows which affect cims regardless of shout of command. The same holds true of controllers... for dominator secondaries, the traditional thorns/fire tends to offer the most of what you need, although my lack of experience with high-level dominator farming requires that I point out that my opinions on any sets OTHER than earth/thorns and fire/fire is limited, at best, and mostly gleaned from watching the other sets working on ITF's. Controllers other than earth also tend to have similar downfalls as dominators due to shout of command.

Other sets, defenders, masterminds, and epics tend to perform more-or-less as they would on a traditional farm, as long as you pay particular attention to the special foibles of cimerorans. They are not top-tier farmers, but specialty builds CAN make them quite acceptable.

-edited to break up text.

I think you should add a section on 'wall farming' and 'rwz farming' since both are highly efficient, effective, farming methods which requires no fills or annoying tells. It is not, however, as useful for powerlevelling.

It DOES however, require an entirely different set of builds to be effective.

So like... when are we going to have a 'fix electric armor summarized' thread?

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I have one for you.

Captain Gorgeous

He's so pretty no one notices him swinging a club.

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Needs more sparkles.

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good point. was just a costume I whipped out for Hyperga...err...hyperspace, my warshade.

He's so fashion-conscious I knew it would be perfect for a pretty brute.

I have one for you.

Captain Gorgeous

He's so pretty no one notices him swinging a club.

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Robotech and Teknoman were my starting pair, yeah.

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Hah! but do you remember Electra-Woman and Dynagirl?

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If you were young enough that Armada was your 'kid' series, I get to officially tell you to get the hell off my lawn now.

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Bah, I am young enough that I remember coming home from Junior high school to watch the 'robotech' series hosted by Captain Chesapeake. It proved to me that people could DIE in cartoons, and it was COOL, even if the stories were rewritten for 'Stupid Americans'.

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Peter Cullen has voiced Optimus Prime in both Transformers movies, so you can understand my confusion when you're referring to Don LaFontaine.

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I am very old.

I was talking about the original 'Transformers' Saturday Morning Cartoon.

and Peter Cullen does a voice very like Don's

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It should be directed by the great Uwe Boll. Then this movie would really be strong and pretty!

I kid Frostweaver, I kid! =-D

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I don't know, what i have seen of the plot so far pretty strongly resembles an Uwe Boll flick.

Get Dolph Lundgren to be the lead, and Michael Madsen as his 'sidekick' gravity/energy dominator, Jessica Alba as the token female as his 'sister' (Despite 30 years of age difference and completely different appearance) the electric/traps corrupter, Tim curry as a mercs/poison mastermind (Since Tim Curry is always a mastermind), and Cathy Bates as Ghost widow and you'd have all the hallmarks of a great Boll Film.

I take that back, Tim Curry and Cathy Bates wouldn't appear in a Boll film, and would bring too much quality even if they were totally unsuited to the roles they were given.

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This thread should be made into a movie

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The strong and pretty would be unhandleable to anything except the movie-voice-guy. We'd hear a preview, and then the film would self-destruct.

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I thought that dude was dead. The 'Optimus prime' voice guy.

already got a screenshot