Hart

100m? Wow.. that guy got totally robbed!

I'd pay 200m for the same on Virtue redside after the i16 nerf if someone's interested.

Howdy!

So, when CoV launched, I drug my Guild Wars PVP crew over to redside in anticipation of base raids. At one point we were competing for 1st on server Redside by differentiating ourselves as 'the pvp guild' on our server. After Items of Power / Base Raids were taken away, my guild basically fell apart. The stated goals I'd used to recruit new members were impossible to achieve and the points I'd used to differentiate my VG were meaningless. The whole thing left a real bitter taste in my mouth as regards PVP for what I think are valid reasons, which is why I'm laying this all out up front.

That being said, I expect that Going Rogue is going to include major revamps to the PVP system. More to the point, I think it's going to -have- to include major revamps for the better or fail as a product. The first thing that comes to mind as an expansion-level PVP change is reimplementing base raiding, so I'm planning to get my toes wet with whatever the current version of PVP is so I can at least be somewhat knowledgeable when it starts to actually matter as a part of the game as a whole.

What I'm looking for is a sort of no-brainer team spec that I can use to get a group of people up to speed without spending billions on PVP IO builds. I'm not expecting to wipe the floor with everyone in RV, but I'd like to be able to survive long enough to understand why I lost and adjust my strategy. I'd also like something that's not reliant on the current metagame - if there's a tried-and-true strategy for not loosing I'd take that over a strategy that wins really hard right at the moment. I need to learn how to win 50% of the time against the best teams, not how to win 100% of the time against the worst teams.

Anyone feel like throwing me a bone?

~Hart

Buuuunch of quick thoughts from someone with a 50 Rad/Kin that's been respecced half a dozen times.

Why no Accuracy in Transfusion? Even with Rad/ primary, sometimes you'll want to heal from something you haven't blasted yet and don't have time to blast before healing.

I'd go 2 recharge instead of recharge/end in siphon speed - with it's recharge, you can't cast it often enough for the end redux to help much.

I'd also use one or two recharge in aim instead of a full 3 - diminishing returns on a skill that's not that great to begin with. Extra true if you're mainly using it as a lead up to a nuke, which has much more recharge time. I kept it, but only for taking down Mako during Elude - Aim + Irradiate helps quite a bit.

Health probably doesn't need a 2nd or 3rd healing. /kin corrupters don't get much out of in-combat regen, so you're basically reducing downtime, which Rest is much better at for free. A 3rd recharge in Transfusion would be more effective at saving your life in combat.

I've never noticed Speed Boost needing an end reduction. I have mine slotted with 2 50 IO end mods. I've seen people try to get by with 1 end mod, but this is quite obvious to recipients with lots of toggles or end-heavy powers.

I might go 2 recharge 2 damage instead of 3 damage 1 recharge on cosmic burst, to minimize the effect of ED and increase the likelihood of disorienting a boss.

Also, I'd drop Focused Accuracy outright. If you're already running Tactics and slotting accuracy with a primary set that debuffs defense, -and- taking aim, it's not nearly worth it's extreme endurance cost.

Personally, I dropped Atomic Blast because I got sick of loosing all my leadership toggles - but if I had kept it, I probably would've slotted 2 dmg 2 rch 1 acc. Maybe take it at 47 and Vengance at 49?

Thunderstrike is generally nice. 6 pieces gets you a nice boost to ranged defense.

If you've got any defense powers, Red Fortune is fairly affordable if you look for deals on lower-level recipes. I put this in Maneuvers, but it can also go in the Black Scorpion patron shield. It adds some extra defense and 5% recharge.

Generally, I'd look for sets with individual pieces under or around a million infamy that give recharge, recovery, or accuracy bonuses. Rad/ has great defense debuffs that help your attacks hit, but you have to land something first.

When you get a little money to play with, I'd recommend 5 Positron's Blast in Nuclear Bomb and Neutron Blast, 5 Obliteration in Irradiate, and the Achilles Heel proc in each AOE. Playing an Earth/Fire dom with Achilles Heel in Quicksand and Stone Cages really gave me a new perspective on it, and adding it to my Rad/Kin AoEs has resulted in much maniacal cackling.

Hmm.

So, if I've got half a dozen 50s, I could farm these just by trading kills with someone in RV, relogging as a different character, and repeating? I figure it'd take 5 minutes just to cycle through all 6 of em, thanks to 30s logout and zone loading time.

I'll be going Energy/TA, so I can knock stuff out of my own Oil Slick and complain to the group leader that I'm doing it on purpose.

Seriously though, I'll probably go Archery/Cold or Archery/Kin unless someone tells me Arch/TA has better -res debuffing. As far as I'm concerned, Lethal sets need all the help they can get when it comes to resists.

There aren't many guides because it's not a very good set. Since ED got rid of 6-slotted Short Circuit endurance crashing bosses and the pet nerf got rid of a swarm of zappy pets following you to make up for the lack of a big damage power, it doesn't have anything going for it.

The distinguishing features are unreliable end drain (30-40% for most powers), a summonable pet that's basically walking random damage, and no missing third attack - nothing equivalent to Blaze or Bitter Ice Blast. Every other set has an advantage over it in damage and secondary effects unless you're fighting things that are vulnerable to energy damage.

Long story short, Elec is an RP or concept set. If you get a -lot- of elec characters together, you can piece together enough end drain to keep packs from fighting back, but unless you're part of an Elec superteam this is more trouble than it's worth.

It's been my experience that people mainly seek out /Empathy for Recovery Aura for the same reason that people like /Kinetics - unlimited blue bar is extremely powerful. Not having to be reined in by the blue bar makes the game more dynamic and fun.

If someone is specifically looking for a healer, it's probably a toss-up. If they're looking for a blue bar buffer, then Empathy has the upper hand.

Ice/ is a nice set. You get the basic tools all controllers get - single and AOE immobilize, single and AOE hold. You get a pet - not a good pet, but it's free damage.

Unfortunately, most of the distinctive Ice/ powers are skippable. You get an AOE sleep, which your teammates will break with AOE damage. You get a cone slow, which pales in effectiveness compared to your powers that hold stuff. You get Arctic Air, a PBAOE aura that serves to convince you go move into melee range where you can be killed and sucks the juice out of your blue bar so you can't do anything about being killed. That one gets more useful much later in the game.

On the other side of the coin you get Ice Slick, which is an awesome power that should be taken and slotted with 3 recharge enhancers right away. It's probably the best power in the set, and definitely fun to use. Unfortunately it's the same as Earthquake in Earth Control, plus a movement slow that Earth Control can get in Quicksand.

The main difference is that just about everything in Ice/ slows enemy recharge, which can be a good thing, but has minimal effect. This can stack to a degree with Siphon Speed from Kinetics, but that's about the end of the synchronicity between the sets. Kinetics is good at boosting damage and recharge speeds; Ice isn't good at doing damage and only has one or two powers you'll care about recharging.

That being said, /kin gets Speed Boost, which is basically the most desired buff in the game. You'll end up spending a lot of time keeping Speed Boost and Fulcrum Shift up, Siphoning Speed to increase the rate your powers recharge at, and using Transfusion and Transference to make the blue and green bars go up. Having a fire-and-forget control option like Ice Slick can let you focus more on your secondary, if that's what you're interested in.

As far as PVP goes.. well, first off, it's a bad joke in CoX. The 'gear' disparity (enhancements here rather than armor and weapons) is even worse than WoW, and the skill factor is nowhere close to a real PVP game like Guild Wars or Shadowbane. Second, Controllers aren't noted for being particularly challenging opponents in PVP until you get to the upper echelon of skill and gear. Third, of all the possible controller power combinations to PVP with, I expect that Ice/Kin ranks pretty low on the totem pole. Almost all of your powers can be avoided by -not standing places-. Ice Slick is one of the better powers, and can be almost totally negated with a single IO enhancement - think 'kinda expensive gear every serious PVPer has'.

I'd go Corrupter over Defender for:

Scourge instead of Vigilance
Better damage from AR thanks to higher damage modifiers
Nearly the same performance from Storm - slightly lower buffs, slightly higher damage.

I'd think they're more likely to stay around for a few more months because their new, higher level character is more entertaining to play.

The strategic and tactical decisions you make between level one and ten are negligible. Your choices are essentially limited to 'which attack is available' and pattern recognition - are there enough targets to use an AOE, have the green bars gone down enough to warrant a heal, do all my teammates have my buff, do all my enemies have my debuff.

This game's boring when you've got half a dozen powers. That's fine for your first toon, since you're still learning how to play the game. Try making a toon, then leveling them from 1 to 10 in Mercy Island, doing missions and street sweeping. Then do that 4 more times with different ATs or power combinations. In a row.

What people overlook is that what I just described -is- the new player experience.

For all the stop and smell the roses comments, CoX pre-20 is a tedious grindfest with the same enemy groups in the same buildings and a smattering of story. The game doesn't become fun in the sense usually applied to games until you pick up a travel power, and doesn't present interesting strategic or tactical decisions until the mid to late 20s depending on AT.

Now, once it gets there it presents more detailed and specific customization options than anything else in the genre, which is largely why people love it. It's easy to put on the rose colored glasses and reminisce about the time you spent leveling up and all the memories you have, but I suspect that what's really got veterans up in arms is the sense that these new whipper snappers didn't 'earn' their 50s with a hundred hours of tedium.

People have been powerleveled by friends since werewolves in dumpsters was the thing to do, and the game's still going strong. If anything, we got a generation of gamers over the boredom of the early levels and gave them a better way to enjoy the game and understand why we enjoy it.

I'd say:

Villains: 8 Corrupters
Heroes: 6 Defenders, 1 Blaster, 1 Scrapper (or 8 defenders, but it'll take longer..)
Combined: 8 Corrupters

If you're running MoRSF, swap in 1 permadom for one of the corrupters or defenders. They'll have to be able to permanently hold a 54 Statesman - for MoRSF even a /stone tank buffed by 7 corrupters is a liability because 2 hits can result in a kill.

Why? Well, assuming a moderate amount of player skill, minions and lieuts are trivial easy and bosses are an annoyance only in large numbers. The only question is how you're going to take down the AVs, and the KISS answer is massive debuffs combined with extreme firepower.

My dream team is 2 /colds, 2 /thermals, 2 /kins, 1 /rad and 1 /sonic. Primary doesn't matter in the least.

Just a bit of general advice since I'm coming at this from a AR Corrupter PoV -

Burst gets Thunderstrike, or possibly AH -resist proc if you don't care for defense.
Slug gets either Thunderstrike for defense or Kinetic Crash.
The AoEs get Positrons. This caps 6.25% recharges and 2.5% recoveries if you take all 5.
Full Auto gets an extra recharge IO until you break 70% or so from sets.
Beanbag gets either Thunderstrike or Absolute Amazement - Stupefy's KB proc makes it more trouble than it's worth and Rope a Dope has poor set bonuses.

I'm not sure if this holds true for Blasters, but Corrupters are better off slotting Ragnarok in Ignite than Full Auto if we can afford it. Ignite is the single most damaging power in the entire set by a wide margin, especailly with Scourge.

This is totally the wrong forum for this, but my experience has been that for villain side, you grab 8 corrupters and defeat him by buffing up and ignoring him until all the 5th column ambushes are finished.

So after a couple weeks of relentless grinding for AE tickets and lamenting abysmal luck with gold rolls, I finally got a Miracle +Recovery last night. I was thrilled, and immediately crafted and slotted it for 17.5% recovery (set bonus).

..then I saw the i16 patch notes, announcing that the AE will be gutted Soon(tm).

So now I'm fighting a battle in the center of the mind against my superpowered ebil side. I want to play with the extra recovery and never worry about running out of end. My ebil half wants to respec the enhancement back out and sell it for 300m before the economy crashes.

Must.. resist.. urge.. to.. speculate! I can feel the dork side gripping my wallet. I keep finding this monocle in my waistcoat even though I'm sure I threw it away, and my hair is forming into the shape of a tophat. Also, when did I start wearing a waistcoat?