GavinRuneblade

When was dark ported over?

Also to the OP: I have found that in general I like resist sets on brutes over scrappers because of the hit point difference. And look to your patron (soul) or epic pool for some single-target damage to help you out. I am really grateful for the help from gloom on my elec/elec.

Last, really, be prepared to be hella frustrated vs the ppd peacebringers and rikti. They have annoyingly high energy resist. Gah. They generall can't hurt you, but fighting the bosses for each is not all that fun. Minions and lieuts shouldn't be an issue, but the bosses due to the combination of your low st damage and their resist is not good.

Was not as bad as my fire/fire going after my clone when we both had capped fire resists and healing flames on fast recharge (Thank god for temp powers), but it's still not fun. On the other hand, there are lots of places where elect's AoE shines.

The other weakness is that until you get some set bonuses or take tough you might feel weak against s/l damage spikes. I found freak tanks and a few other really hard-hitting smashing/lethal bosses were able to 2-shot me reliably until I got just a little bit extra layered on (toughness/weave and/or about 15% s/l def should do for you). That was enough to tip it so that energize was up, or I could knock them down, or pop an orange or something. Kind of funny how such a small change made such a big difference, but it really did. Against gunners etc I had no trouble it was just the spike damage.

And there are some little perks. Like you don't need sprint you get a faster run built in so you feel fast all the time. Overall, I like /elec. I think that fire is better right now, but I like /elec. being able to resist sappers and mu is very nice.

If the "pick" option is worth 150-250 million, you only need 75-125 million per roll because you get two rolls per pick.

Initial evidence suggests people are getting about that much per roll.

So far I've been about average. My rolls purely for sale have gone badly at 80-ish million, 70-ish million aaaaannnd 15 million. That one on Friday really sucked. Wow. Two I deleted because they needed 2 million+ in salvage but crafted were only selling for 500k with 20+ listed, one with average price of 4 mill, and two with average price of 5 mil. Sadness. Though probably a good opportunity for a flipper hehe. I should probably pay attention to these things.

But I also had two rolls where I got stuff like Eradicate quad and basilisk quad on the same roll (woohoo) along with several other items I needed for my builds that if I sold the total profit would have pushed my average on all 5 rolls I've done into the "about 100 million per roll" range.

List it for 221 it will sell faster. Lots of people are so lazy they type one number over and over. so you see bids for 1111111 instead of 1 million. If you bid 1111112 you'll buy and they lose. if you sell for 1111110 you'll sell and they will lose.

So list yours for 221.

The trick is that once the display is correct, then the rest of the world starts saying, huh why is this one $50 but the exact same one on the next aisle is $30? That's how the sets allowed for caltrops etc got fixed. Eventually enough people will point it out. I have a long-term perspective I guess =)

They invented two entirely new statistics, resilience and, I forget the other one that have no effect at all in PvE and slapped them on all PvP gear, but not on any PvE loot. They are now called "crit rating" and "resilience rating" one allows crits the other negates them. After a couple patches they allowed crit rating to apply to PvE content as well, but the impact was far below the importance in PvP. When I could attack with a 40% chance to crit and you were literally incapabble of critting me, if we both had the same armor value and same damage and use the same attacks, I would kill you and still have 80% of my health left 10 out of 10 tries, and you'd have no idea why your attacks were doing half the damage mine were. Add onto it that because of this whole builds had to change, where people packed on +HP items instead of +damage because monsters have at a base many times the HP of players (like if all CoH powers were scaled to kill bosses not minions and then we turned them on each other) so all attacks are already overpowered, and then the insta cast powers are used over the slow hard hitting ones, etc, certain debuffs do nothing, others are crippling... It is similar enough that people think they know how it works but different enough that they constantly lose and can't figure out why. Very weird actually. I admit CoH is more different, but in WoW it was quite a difference between PvP and PvE too. The real difference is where you nailed it, in City our buffers/debuffers are screwed. THAT is a major problem. I'm with you 100%



Oh I agree that there are significant problems especially from a team perspective. And I agree that those problems will be a major hindrance. And I agree that it is only a bandaid. But in my opinion, you need to stop the bleeding before the wound can heal. I agree that it cannot fix anything alone. But I think it can be a very helpful first step.

Rather than going point by point, let me try to step back and talk more broadly. Rebalancing the mechanics is the goal, yes. But to the new player the zones and the arena are just as much a part of the problem as the bad mechanics are. The difference is that creating a newb friendly instanced pvp environment is (or should be) easier than rebalancing everything. Giving new players a positive first experience, win or lose, rather than a gang r$ping at the hands of a group of veterans in a zone, or the pure frustration that is trying to teach yourself how to join an arena match, is gong to get people to come back. Yes I agree the bad mechanics will chase them away after a while. But it gives us a window to recruit them. And each new recruit adds a voice to get the real change implemented.

If they fixed the mechanics first we'd still have the problem that the zones and the arenas chase away new players so the PvP base would not grow. If they create a newb friendly experience the base will grow. if they fix the mechanics the new recruits will stay. Neither alone is enough, but one is easier and has more effect on new players.

I hear you on the camel's back thing, but I am giving them credit, perhaps deserved perhaps not, for not claiming the new environment would be a fix. If they called it a fix, oh yea you are right that's bad. But if they just said, here rebalncing is taking time (whether or not this is true let's let them say it), we hear you, but in the mean time here is something new for you to experience. That's called throwing a bone. and I am giving the pvp community the benefit of the ability to see it as such. But you're right, if it was presented as a fix and not as a step only, that would be bad.

But isn't it more a function of the lower damage cap than the fury change specifically in your case? Or did the lower sustained fury hit you also? I know the pylon doesn't attack fast enough to really give you a lot of fury.

Have you tried pulling some additional enemies to help you get your fury higher while fighting the pylon?

Just throwing this out. Streakbreaker kicks in after X missed attacks against the same target. So if the enemy are all attacking a roughly the same speed, and you're near capped so they are all missing virtually all the time. they will all hit streakbreaker at the same moment because they will all launch their "Attack #7" at roughly the same time. This is why it sucks when it kicks in.

It helps to move around so some of them pause their attacks. And you'll kill some. And 1 in 20 at a minimum will hit. So you can spread it out. But if you're soloing against big groups, this is why streakbreaker hits you very hard.

Just thought I'd toss that out since a lot of people think it is just perception and not a function of the mechanics.

Also Base Enhancements. I live on those for my early levels =)

As Fulmens pointed out, you don't have to run the same missions. And I will add to his suggestions the option of using characters of different levels and use a hero this week a villain next, etc. There are a huge array of options. You do NOT have to do the same missions over and over. Even if you only have 1 character, because even then you can do what Fulmens suggested.

In general, I've found that if they can have fun the first time out, even if it is confusing and they lose or don't contribute as much, they will come back.

To borrow WoW. in PvE and PvP significantly different mechanics apply, complete with gear bonuses that don't do anything for PvE being necessary for PvP (May have changed since I stopped playing but was true for a long time). New players got slaughtered because they had no crit protection because it wasn't relevant for PvE and you could only get gear with it by doing PvP. It was literally impossible to be prepared for PvP until after you played. Still, the fact that you always were put on a team with other people, and there were team goals instead of individual goals, meant that you could have fun running around and stomping on people. You didn't get gang r@#ed over and over without a fair chance to do it back thanks to your teammates. And, after a few rounds, even if your team lost, you had enough rewards to start gearing up.

There is NOTHING in the current i13 PvP mechanics that would prevent this. IF they implemented a PvP minigame with mandatory teams, a short timer and reasonable rewards, people would have fun. Sure my /SR would be squishy, but I'd be with three or four or ten people, some of whom would know what they're doing. And when you're in a team, you can ask questions. You can try things out. You can laugh at the newb on the other team who is learning the hard way the same as you. And you are guaranteed to have people help you through the hard bit.

Yes, fixing the mechanics is ideal. But fixing the experience is more important.




The existing player base is irrelevant to discussions of increasing popularity. If 100% of the existing player base loved it and thought it was perfect but no on new joined, you have failed to increase the player base. If 100% of the existing players leave and double their number start you have succeeded in increasing the player base. Now, again, ideally you want both the existing players to stay and new people to join. But if we are discussing increasing the population, acceptance by the current players only matters if more current leave than new join.

Those of us who PvP, even casually like myself, are sticking it out with the current mechanics. Adding a new opportunity and environment will not cause anyone* to quit. Worst case scenario they will keep doing what they're doing right now.

*obviously there will be at least one example of nerdrage who insists that this is the last straw and they're quitting forever. Again. Until next week when they come back.

Screw purples. I wouldn't slot for toxic resist if it was free.

I didn't realize there was a debate. Seems pretty unanimous that it's a bad idea. Assuming 200 million for each 2 recipes (accomplish either via luck of the gambler, miracle, or numina, your call), you can get the money to buy anything listed on the market in 20 merits or less. There are no purples that sell for 2 billion so at this point we're only talking about one or two specific PvP procs, where people tend to recommend going for inf to buy rather than hording merits, unless you think availability is more of an issue than cost. There are debates about rolling vs picking, but on the high ticket issue I have seen 100% agreement in every thread I've read. Though I have skipped a few.

I mean the most expensive purples are 600 million if you but it NAO, and that's only 6 merits worth of inf. not the 20 it takes to buy via merits. where is a post with anyone saying spend 20 merits instead of 6 merits?

That's actually not required but it would really help a lot. What is required is to make the arenas intuitive, have a functional queue that supports pug team arena matches, and to hide the PVP zones until after people have a certain level of familiarity with the system.

If CoX had a fun pvp minigame even with the weird mechanics of i13, people would still play. The zones and the current arena will NEVER allow a stable much less growing PvP player base because both of them by their inherent nature discourage the ignorant. Even if CoX had a PvP system that was so elegant and bug free that it made all of us weep with joy, I posit that the nature of zones and the current state of the arena mean that it would be a complete failure.

By contrast, a fun minigame with borked pvp mechanics could be a huge success.

Of course both would be ideal.

No not even close. The zones are a complete waste of time for recruiting new PvPrs. What he is talking about is more like Team Fortress, Quake, or other games. Nearly all MMOs with PvP include them. By far the most common is capture the flag.

the concept is that people register/sign up similar to the arenas. but there is a specific goal, specific points, and in general you get cool rewards. Here's how Runescape does it. You get tickets you can redeem for costumes. WoW has the battlegrounds. Everyone gets zoned in at once, there are specifically fixed team sizes so the matches are fair, and there is a specific start and end point.

By contrast, CoX zones are where new players wander in alone, fight some NPCs, and get ganked by a mob of 3+ veterans who proceed to mock them. Then the new player wanders back out and never goes back. There is no fair team, no specific starting point, no time limit, no purpose and in general no fun.

does the buggy double AS damage from placating while hidden stack in the one number or show up as a second number?

Well on the positive side, as long as you keep /bugging them they will get fixed eventually. and then the builds will perform as indicated!