Grey Pilgrim

Kick Ryxx for me. He said you were a Scrapper. Either that, or he needs to take one of my writing classes to write more clearly.

Heh, so you're a Scrapper and wrote Tanker? That's a big typo! I can understand getting the primary and secondary backwards, but that... yeah.

Silly Sarrate, Fiery Melee for Tankers gets Combustion instead of Cremate. I personally prefer having more AOE goodness, but Cremate does look nice for Scrappers and Brutes. I'd take it over Fire Breath any day.

I'd be curious to know what a good chain is for Fiery Melee as well, though I'm usually on a team with Grey Pilgrim now, or soloing against a lot of mobs where I concentrate on AOE more than ST anyway.

*looks around suspiciously*

Didn't we already do this? Or are we stuck in one of those weird Star Trek time vortex thingies? Where's Data when you need him? Or a good wizard?

You can get somewhat close to jousting by activating an attack while mid leap with super speed if you don't want to stay in melee long.

Even better, combine Hurdle with Combat Jumping, and you can leap in and out of melee at will. Mobs can still peg you, but ranged attacks are usually weaker. This works nicely on a few of my Blasters.

Oh, for crying out loud. Just pick a time and some of us will make it, some of us won't. Can't pick a day by committee, it just doesn't work.

I'll suck it up if you choose Friday. Just want to know if I should plan on tomorrow night or not, heh.

I could do Tuesday at 7 PM Central/8 PM Eastern, but no later.

Yeah, my Earth/Storm Controller can debuff or mitigate damage like crazy, but I would not call him a tank. He can't handle much incoming damage that hits him, and can only do so much for his team if the debuffs aren't enough.

I'll shout out again for Kheldians being able to tank (along with Brutes and Scrappers). I do wish the Dwarf Taunt was autohit, since tanking an AV like Nosferatu is just a pain... I had a hard enough time hitting him with my normal attacks, let alone taunt, and he would peel off and take a swing at a squishy far too often.

Still, my PB in Dwarf form was able to take aggro from Tanks that were on the team last night. This was partially because I came in first and used my Taunt power... hitting the mob first goes a long way toward maintaining aggro.

The time is perfect for me. 7 PM Central (8 PM Eastern) is after supper for me and makes sure I won't be playing too late. I could roll with a half hour later, or an hour at the most, but 7 PM Central/8 PM Eastern is quite good for me.

Saturday is also best for me, like I said last night. Can't play on Fridays at all.

A better way of phrasing it is to not use it like Nova or the other traditional nukes. It's like RoA and Full Auto, in that you will want to use it in conjunction with other powers to drop mobs quickly. The faster recharge offsets their not doing as much damage as Nova, et al.

If any tweaking is done, it will be more minor than anything, as it is still going to be set up like RoA and Full Auto.

Could join in with a Blaster, but I see this TF is ATist.

Bit of a personal question, but I think it would help Techbot as well.

How useful is Starless Step for a Dual Form Kheldian, let alone a Triform? I suppose you could gank an annoying lieutenant or minion into your inky aspect aura or something, but it seems like it would be better to jump in suddenly. Either stelath into the mob with Inky Aspect or past the mob with Gravitic Emanation while you're leaping in. And so on (works for blasting with Nova, too).

Basically, I'm asking because I want to fit another power in, and maybe slide some others up earlier, and dropping Starless Step would help there.

*added*

Techbot, bonuses do carry over to the forms. It's just toggle powers and passives in human that do not carry to the forms. So Hasten is nice for the forms, but Stamina is only going to help you in the form.

Pffft, you've never run with all Tanker teams, then. The healing Nictus might be a little tricky, but other than that, things would go plenty fast.

Though you probably just posted that to get me to respond like that. Hmmmm.

Your optimum is what your build can handle. Different powersets and builds will have varying results.

I think I have my AR/EM at +1 level and considered as 3-4 heroes. I could probably dial it up a little more, but it's a decent challenge against most mobs (and some nasty groups like Malta can make it a real challenge, depending on how the hit rolls go against my defense) that is still fun. I like to balance between the two, as too easy isn't fun, but neither is constant, high difficulty.

I think that works well for me as it gives me a fair amount of mobs, but they aren't too high level. I'd probably lower how many heroes I was considered if I raised their level, but it wouldn't be as fun to have fewer targets, heh. I tend to fiddle with it until it feels right for the Blaster or character I am on.

Dang, if I sat like that for even five seconds (if I could contort that much), I think I'd permanently throw my back out. I played defensive and offensive line during my short stint with high school football, so that is a good indication of why I couldn't handle it, heh.

Air Superiority can be nice, but Elec/Elec has so many good Melee attacks, end drains, and holds that I think it isn't really needed. It might be nice until you can stack your holds on a boss, though. I was able to solo my way without it through most of the Croatoa content and the nasty bosses there, so running without it is okay.

So, it sounds like people know what happens when they push the Hail of Bullets button, but the problem comes more from not planning for what happens afterward well enough.

If you're on a team, try not to take all that aggro yourself (let someone else grab the alpha). That should be a standard tactic with every nuke anyway. If you're solo, plan ahead accordingly: use other powers to up your defense and get some mitigation during the animation. This is why I generally use M80 before Full Auto on my AR Blaster: I have less return fire during the longish animation (and this worked well BEFORE, when Full Auto had an animation longer than Hail of Bullets!).

For each damage tick to have a hit chance (if that is how HoB works) might not be the best setup, and the damage range can be less extreme, but the devs are never going to put something in place that lets us run around with our head cut off. To do anything well usually requires knowing how things work, and then planning/acting accordingly.

In short, HoB probably needs some love, but not as much as some of the doomcryers imply.

Ryxx, I can see why you do it, and I know why some of the number crunchers do it. They enjoy it. Whereas I like planning out my build and working to get it, but not to an absolute min/max extent. It's just personal preference.

I was more noting that I can find it humorous how much people sweat over the min/max stuff when they don't really need to. And that really is only a bad thing when they try to make other people sweat it as well. Let them find their own thing to enjoy, I would say.

The bar to success in CoX isn't set TOO high, so it's nice that it allows so many different playstyles and approaches. It's one of the game's many strengths. So don't feel like I was shooting down what you find fun, I just find the "min/max to the EXTREME!" crowd somewhat amusing. I don't think you're one of them, either. There's a difference between getting to the screaming edge with a build, and thinking that everyone else must be built the same say.

I saw an article on Gamespy once, detailing their experience with some new WoW content. Someone on their raid team checked out their gear and noted they didn't have the best stuff, implying they weren't going to pull their weight. That's the kind of attitude I loath, and I don't really think anyone I play with regularly here on Victory is like that. Most of us play quite well, but we're still fairly relaxed about it all. Which is the way to go, in my book!

I know most of them just have fun doing it, but I am sometimes amazed at the need to find "the best attack chain" on the Scrapper forums. I guess you can feel l33t about the DPS you can put out, but I get a lot more mileage out of just having fun and not locked into some uber attack chain.

There is some thought needed to when to apply what attack and what debuff in CoX, but thankfully there is no need to completely min/max. That's one of the things I like about the game, so I always feel a little bemused when people strive to do that with their characters.

To each their own, of course.

*sighs*

Every time someone says Dual Pistols should be/have been a Scrapper set, a little puppy dies. Been discussed to death, shot down by the devs, stop bringing it up already! Think of the puppies! Think of the trauma to my brain!

Also, Dual Pistols is NOT the Gun Kata from Equilibrium. They just went for fancy moves with the pistols, Equilibrium being just one of many movies that did that. If you want defense, get it from Weave, IOs, etc. It makes sense for a Blaster to do it, I do it with all of mine. But don't expect a nuke to do it. It just doesn't match how those blast nukes work.

Seriously, argue for a rational improvement to Hail of Bullets to at least get your foot in the door with an improvement to the set. You might get Castle to agree to it if you made him really, really drunk, but then he'd sober up eventually (and I wouldn't put my money on it while he was drunk, either).