Geldon

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*Also; No, the females won't get the "Wizard Beard"

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Misogyny most foul!

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Trade you for the shoulder pandas?

I think the expression is, "Ready or not, here it comes."

Still, good list to have. I imagine most of these will be fixed a week or two into live because this list exists.

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Thanks for continuing to post. I know I would have given up a long time ago.

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And I would have banned half the board.

Significant portions of this post were removed for conduct violating the Message Forum Rules and Guidelines -Mod08

I pretty much settled with the same conclusion a lot of people did already: this isn't so much a Jack vrs Pooman thread because it's about cycling all the powers for single target defeat times. That Earth carried a heavy DEF debuff doubtless influenced the test more, because these are purple bosses. Even if Jack did a little better damage, Jack's time would be worse because of that.

The overall defeat times on this test are also somewhat unrealistic due to attack chain optimization being largely minimalized, and also that no primary power set exists in a vacuum without a secondary effect, power pools, invention enhancements, ect. It's a good general reference, though.

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Jack being kb'd for 5 seconds wouldn't magically subtract 15-20 seconds from the kill speed so that it is faster than earth by the amount it is supposed to be .



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This whole Jack Frost versus Pooman can of worms is much bigger than these videos, which involve cycling a lot more than just pet on pet. For example, Stalagmites and Volcanic Gasses is involved - they don't seem like much damage, but it's something Ice didn't have in a single target attack. Earth had a -DEF effect, that's major, especially considering these are purple bosses we're fighting. Arctic Air is an AOE centric contributor, and these were single target tests. I'd wait on Castle's reply.

Maybe it's the possibility of slotting contagious confusion on Arctic Air.

Nah, we know Jack is bugged in that he's not using his attacks right. My point was only that a melee focus can be advantageous because he's not trying to fight at range or use ranged attacked and so that'd be better damage than a lot of pets. There's a lot of fights in which the poo-beast will stand off and chuck boulders for awhile, not to mention when the Fly Trap gets in a root loop, but Jack doesn't allow himself that option.

And that's just my opinion. I would prefer a melee-centric pet to one that gets stuck at range. Feel free to disagree, but don't tell me I'm misunderstanding the problem. I've used up my lifetime allocation of tolerating people telling me I'm misunderstanding something on this forum.

I'd like to say this video disproved Jack has a damage edge, but actually the tester decided to let jack get creamed to make a point and, in doing so, sabotaged it. An unbiased test does not operate out of the norm in order to make a power perform worse hoping the developers will buff it.

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Re: Frosty
Even with only two attacks cycling, I don't buy that Frosty is at a universal disadvantage. Throw a Boost Speed on him and those two attacks is all he'd have time for anyway. By only cycling his melee (most powerful attacks) Frosty is currently a Kineticist's perfect pet.

I'm not saying that's ideal, I can see how in the other secondaries throwing Speed Boost is not an option. In the long run, what we need is some way to customize our own pet's behavior. However, I doubt the developers will work any faster or slower on it based on anything you or I say.

The test is still a bit fudged because Frosty went flying. But, really, given the unpredictability of any pet's behavior, I suppose several seconds of deviation should be expected. So I suppose, considering all the tests were fudged, I can forgive that.

Re: Life, the universe, and everything City of Heroes related.
There's a lot more being overlooked than the pet behavior, really. There's a lot of attack chain optimization that could have been done here you won't see - throw in a few recharges or IO benefits in the right places, recall friend the pet to where you want it to be, and the scores completely change.

City of Heroes has a certain level of unpredictable and customization that invalidates the whole endeavor of trying to establish "Pre-32" and "Post-32" damage on a basic level. The videos are still very valuable to see how the different sets play out, at least. If there was a video like that for every power set, there'd be a whole lot of time saved on alts.

Ah, to heck with it, I just rolled Kinetics. Desire to be offensively and defensively exceptional: satisfied. I guess I can pretend to be original because I avoided Fire as a primary. There's also my favorite line of reasoning: sure, there's a lot of /Kin out there, but I play mine better than most.

I can thank this thread for guiding me to give Gravity a try as my primary. It's mostly for wormhole, but it's been my experience that those bosses left after everything else fell are the biggest problem. I'm probably going to go without Propel and take Air Superiority instead. (Though, with a little tweaking, there may be no room in the chain for it.)

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However, on a minion, one shot of Blind-SW will often finish off a minion BECAUSE HE DIES BEFORE THE SPECTRAL DAMAGE HEALS BACK. The net effect is that Illusion actually does a lot more damage than this test would suggest, but only if he is able to kill off the foe quickly enough to avoid the heal back. An Illusion controller will therefore kill off minions quickly, probably more quickly than other controllers, but will take longer on higher HP foes.

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This and one more thing: the spectral portion of the attack isn't doubled by containment. So what you end up with is twice that spectral portion of damage doesn't really apply. Pretty much the only function of the spectral damage is to push a final blow.

You know, I'm thinking to myself this whole concept of a "Wartroller" is perhaps a bit delusional. Yes, you can tweak a Controller to do decent damage, especially with a supporting secondary set (e.g. Kinetics). But, dude, if you want to Blast then roll a Blaster. Wartrolling is a trap.

Of course, this is a trap I've found myself in, and am still well ensnared in. When I roll Blaster, you know I'm trying to be a Controller. ;P The appeal of having a character who is awesome at offense and defense while not being as one-dimensional as a Scrapper is strong. If only Masterminds could roll blue side.

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Not really. Jack's love of melee gets him killed. He's just not built to handle melee. Ice performed so badly the first time I tested it with Jack, with Jack getting killed almost instantly, that I actually gave the set a Mulligan.

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Controllers are the pinnacle of active defense: any boss that's capable of killing your pets should be perma-held.

Taking a look at the video, what happened was you whiffed your hold and that was just enough for the boss to get lose and toast Jack - that shouldn't happen twice in a row if the dice are being fair and your hold is slotted with enough accuracy and hold duration. I'm guessing that, for the purposes of this test, it was heavily damage slotted. [Checking the builds video, it was ACC, ACC, DAM, DAM, DAM SOs.]

Besides, just about every secondary set has something to give an additional edge to a party member or pet. That particular character could have bubbled Jack and he'd be almost as hard to hit as a SR Scrapper. My preferred set, /Storm, could apply something like Hurricane to keep the boss from having a good chance at hitting my pet.

Not to pick a fight with you - I'm actually quite grateful that you pointed out my Illusion experiences with bosses were atypical. It's just I think I have a valid point here that Jack's love of melee shouldn't imperil him when a Controller is on the job. Keep Jack alive and that melee edge should manifest. Your Ice test was invalidated the minute he got knocked back, much less defeated before the final blows were landed. (But then, you probably don't have a real high opinion of Ice, or else you wouldn't have named that troller Gimpette )

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Something is wrong with Jack ( I don't have a high lvl ice troller to test myself) he isn't cycling his ranged attacks in melee (pooman does) and once his ice sword is out he never puts it away, so no freezing touch (just like pooman used to do once he pulled out the mallet) so he only uses freezing touch once and each ranged attack once and then the sword comes out and he never uses anything else again.

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Sounds like something right with Jack to me. By not wanting to cycle his ranged attack and keeping his sword out, he's not tempted to stay at range where he only does a fraction of as much damage. This was probably done deliberately by the developers to encourage melee behavior in Jack.

The lack of freezing touch is a little bit of a bummer, but hey, how often does a full-fledge controller really the pet throwing an occasional hold? I can tie up several spawns all by my lonesome.

That said, it is a little odd Earth is outperforming Ice in the tests. It must be Volcanic Gasses or Stalagmite being used or something. Jack's love of melee should be providing an edge.

[Ah, I see why. At one point during the test, the Boss kicked Jack away (about 3:10 - 3:15).]

Good to see a lot of these challenges are proving insurmountable. Soloing Archvillains tends to attract the attention of the nerf hammer.

Granted, there's a big difference between a Faultline arc AV like Nocturne and a Praetorian arc AV like Infernal. Which is good, because I solo the Faultline storyline arc AVs all the time with all sorts of characters.

Mind did a lot better than I thought it would, especially considering it was up against pets summoned at point blank. I wonder if Grav/ would perform better considering Propel's animation. I could probably do better with a Hastened Dominate, Mesmerize, Levitate chain (I see Hasten was in use in the video).

No wonder I'm so jaded against troller damage. I played Illusion as my main, and it was not infrequent for PA to be down when it was time to take down a boss. A minute and a half to defeat one mob would jade anyone.

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For all of these tests, I would have started with the primary pets summoned. Just my opinion, but I think it more accurately represents the "normal" mode of pay for a controller that has a pet summon.

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Seconded. This is also to reflect the time it takes the pet to engage from range, where many would prefer to stay. To get the Fly Trap to do that much damage, you'd typically have to teleport it to melee.

It's okay to summon the phantom army during battle in melee range, as that is within "normal" play.

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The kind of changes I would likely want to make would cause a lot more alienation amongst the playerbase.

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Which is why I gather that they're not doing that.

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Maybe. None of us have a bug under the developer's break room table understanding what their true motivations are.

To a great extent, Architect strikes me as a step in the direction of trying to make the game self-sustaining. It may be that they anticipate there won't be a lot of developers generating content for City of Heroes soon so, before they move on, they're adding the capacity for players to generate content themselves. It might well be that the game is being put out to pasture, and they decided this would be a very ambitious way to go about it.

My preference - sweeping changes to integrate a number of existing elements better - would have treated City of Heroes as an ongoing project. I don't like how the broke stays broken: the cathedral of pain, PvP, an end game. However, if the game is simply being put out to pasture with self-sustaining features, at least the current players won't feel alienated.

Personally, I'm curious how they're going to present all this player-made content without it seeming overwhelming or greatly diluting of the existing content.

I guess we'll find out in a month or two. In the meanwhile, I suspect this whole Issue 14 thing is a waste of time they should be using to convert the existing assets into a masterwork of dynamic flow that would simultaneously bring together the separate parts of PvP, super group bases, and other assets that are currently languishing.

It's a difference of philosophy, really. Personally, I think of MMORPGs in terms of being enclosed systems which direct players towards more comprehensively enjoyable gameplay. This Architect concept is thinking of City of Heroes in terms of being a launchpad for player-made content. I don't think it will end well. There'll be a few fun missions made by the few players with the time and patience to see them through, but ultimately it's going to stretch out the system in artificial tangents that will hurt more than help. Like over-expansion, but without as much organization behind its conception.

But, again, I really don't have any idea how this thing is being bolted together. Maybe there's a really slick implementation that prevents my worries of overexpansion from manifesting. One really nice thing about the Architect concept is that it's quite unique in the MMORPG genre. The kind of changes I would likely want to make would cause a lot more alienation amongst the playerbase.

Feel free to write your own if you want to write one written with every single barely conceivable synergy in the game. I'll even link it off my Blog if you want. However, mine was written with generalization and ease of finding a comfortable playing character in mind.

In fact, I might go back and perform a rewrite that rips out a lot of these little details. I think this guide is too detailed for what I was trying to achieve: a simple reference to avoid bad power set synergy.

[Ah, in retrospect I probably brought this elitist "Who's More Veteran" bullsnot on myself by writing a Guide that talks about potency. Methinks I'll just roll up Assault/Devices and enjoy it. :P ]

Ah, good additions, I'll go ahead and roll those synergies in there. Some of those latter ones I find a bit too common to be really remarkable synergies. (Roll Fire with More damage to do More Damage or More Safety for More Safety? Well yeah, duh.) However, I agree with most of them.

I'll go with you about as far as "use Power Boost to Boost Power" and "use Range Boost to boost Cone Range" because the implication are not immediately evident, but at that point I'll have to break off and say you're getting a little too anal.

If you were paying attention to my regged date, you'll see I've played this game even longer than you have, so the truth of the matter is I just didn't bother considering every single possible synergy so much as provide a general recommendation guide.

Frankly, if I did that, I think it'd take a lot of fun out of the game.

I actually edited in the control effects on the blaster sets before you mentioned them.

Ah, now along the lines of Blasters should not avoid melee range, and toebombing being useful, what we have is a differing matter of opinion. Yes, melee range can be effective, but it's not safe unless you're in a special situation (being screened by a team or have adequate control in play). Yes, toe bombing does good damage, but it's really an unnecessary risk considering what else you could be doing with that 4/8 seconds. Consider who this guide is likely going to benefit, and you can see why I'm not going to quibble over these differences.

Also, I didn't say Defenders were incapable of soloing, only that you'd need to be patient unless you have a way to boost your damage or weaken the enemy's resistance.

Aside from that, good catches. I'm surprised it was Gravity's Immob that doesn't prevent knockback, but I knew one of them didn't. Gravity Distortion field does, so I'll be leaving that in, just clarifying it wasn't an immob.

I, too, consider "several factors" besides positioning when matching power sets, and it should be clear from the current state of the guide that position isn't everything. However, it's nonetheless a great point to start, and that's why I made it the basis of the fusion guide: trying to be two places in once will thwart you more than anything else. That's probably enough detail - I sure wasn't going to get into establishing synergy through building 'combos' because I'd never be done.

Props for important omission corrections:

http://dsob.wordpress.com/2009/02/14...-fusion-guide/

Ah, I see this isn't a problem unique to my system. (Granted, I could probably figure that by City of Heroes being the only game I'm currently playing that crashes like this.)

I'm pretty sure it's related because, indeed, I'm running Vista on newer hardware, and the error message says the driver has stopped.

I'll try these fixes out. I must really like this game to install an untested hotfix.

It's too early for me to say much about the hollows revision until we learn more about what it'll entail.

I thought these improvements looked pretty good, but something immediately sprang to mind when reading them:

"Why hasn't the store purchase GUI been revamped to make it easy to find specific enhancements?"

Sure, it's easy enough if you've been playing this game for a long time. (Well, actually, that's a bit of a lie - even as a 24 mo vet I have trouble skimming the store list for something unusuaul like a run speed enhancement.) Think of how many newbies are alienated by that. That's money right out of the pocket.

A good quick fix would be a check box that greys/filters out everything that isn't appropriate: not usable by your origin, not slotable in your power sets, of appropriate level only (e.g if you're 22 only show 20-25th level). However, a completely revamped store interface that simply allows the player to choose what's being enhanced would probably be optimal. Perhaps even integrate it directly with the powers screen.

Another thought is to perhaps have the Level-Up boost come at 5 bubs (half a level) instead of 10 bubs. Get players excited with a bit of a "half way there" bonus. Change this to every quarter level at 40+.

Good to see a little data to back up what the elite forumites claim to already know. Though they may be a little overproud to admit it, I think everybody should have learned something from this, such as the interplay of specific files.

I've always said it (or nearly anything else) could be done, but it's a matter of manhours, and this is confirmed here. However, to bring something new to the table, I'll point out that Cryptic is developing the technology, and it's hard to say what the future may hold for City of Heroes. Whether that kind of technology is being shared with the division NcSoft owns is hard to say.

Kind of related, I was thinking it'd be nice to have a long bandana back there too. You can kinda do it now by combining a single color scarf cloak with a headband hair, but it's just a bit off.

This sounds like a job for free server transfer tokens.