Helmkat

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Siren's Call villain hospitals are no longer open air,

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Does not stop heroes on Guardian. They Drop onto the cargo crates just outside the Villain Hospital. They wipe out the spiders there and set up camp. They then set one of their number right outside the door of the Hospital. A couple lvl 40+ ice tanks can be awfully hard to dig out.

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Its scary when I can say 'that large room usually at the end of a warehouse map' or 'that room in a council base with all the water pools' or 'the two lab style rooms which are known as the rooms of doom, because they usually get teams killed' and people instantly know what I'm talking about.


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Coh has need to double or triple its tilesets (and not just new colors ala cov) since, well -forever-!

I would love to see all AV encounters remade over in the way the Doc Vahz was. There is a couple preatorian missons that take place on a space station but you have no external views! it would be so cool if some of the corridors were transparent tubes that would be weighless. Imagine a fight against Anti-matter where a knockback would send people literally flying across the room!

oh and if a dev is reading this I am still waiting for my pony!!!

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* This means that you can no longer “escape debt” by being defeated by a PC after taking massive damage from NPCs, nor will you be penalized with a massive amount of debt if you are defeated by an NPC after taking a huge amount of damage from a PC.


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Hmm, lets see. last week a Stalker TPed me into a group of five or six spiders and together they smacked me down in about 3 seconds.

So if the player beat me before I got no debt but now I do?

/e sarcasm

Gee thanks Developers!

woot!

/e sarcam off

Very bad idea.

Oh well pvp was just a fun diversion for awhile. Since it is -way- to easy to get pve damage in a pvp zone I will just stay away till the Dev team wakes up.

I've spent some time rolling around AP in my tricked out rides. Spines/EA, Ice/Kin, Ice/Dev. First all in all a fun time with the usual amount of ganking-griefing. Now about the zone itself.

-Pillboxes: Ouch! get to close and you are a swiss cheese sandwich! Pill boxes are no different then Stalkers, getting nearly killed in three seconds is not fun. Since quite a few battles were being waged around the pill boxes it was way to easy to use TP foe and let the pillbox do the heavy lifting.

-Low health: More of an irritant then an obstacle. Most of my builds had Hasten so when I got defeated I was back in play as soon as the rest animation was over. If you really want a time out, let people rez full and let them go through a umm "Temporal realignment syncronization" and after a countdown then let them into the zone.

Balanced zones: To many unbalanced fights one way or the other. Create a system of zone entery that promotes hero/villian balance.

While on my villian Manticores name popped up but having read the recent "So godly tough they are not fun" threads I didn't even bother.

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I think that AoE defense toggles/passives should be folded into the ranged defense toggles/passives. That would free up a couple of power slots so that the devs can put something better in their places (like damage mitigation toggles/passives, maybe).


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I really like this idea. With the current SR powerset, you have little choice in order to be effective - you must take all of the SR selections. A change like this would open up /SR builds for more creativity.


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I agree and would love to see a "reflective damage aura" (takes an amount of the incoming damage and sends it back to the source, like you are so fast the bullets etc. richocet back)) in place of the toggle and make lucky a passive with that gives an increased chance to crit.

However I don't think the Devs are hip to this as it has been suggested numerous times to no avial.

A very nice guide, tyvm.

Question though. I did a respec on test awhile back and I three slotted hurdle and CJ for jump (So's) in hopes of maybe doing away with SJ but I found the horizontal to be on the edge of acceptable but the vertical was considerably shorter then unslotted SJ (I used the tall statue in PI by Crimson as the measure).

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NERF FOCUSED ACCURACY NOW !!!!


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Ahem.

lets give the Stalker standard answers right back at them.

-Get on a team
-get tactics
-eat yellow pills

Oh and get 10 more levels and max out you "States-O's"

Your examples would be like a level 20 villan entering Sirens Call and complaining that all the lvl 30 heroes with their SO's were destroying them.

D'uh.

Not a valid comparison.

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QFT.

I am a strong believer that NO POWER in PVP should be auto-hit. Especially one that basically doesn't allow someone to attack you but allows you to still attack them.


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Exactly, I knew placate was powerful but I had no idea how powerful it was till this change. The whole Stalker AT is just full of so many multipurpose gank gimmics that it must have been designed by some pvp mad developer...

PVP mad developer: "Hmm lets see, I would like Stackable concealment and went I attack while concealed I want critcal damage, oh and I want an attack that can wipe something out in one hit while concealed! what else? hmm... Oh I want a power that forces my target to break target lock on me and increases my concealment! and boy it would be nice if I could have Energy melee for the stuns, damage and toggle drops too but anyway I also will need mez protection and some kick butt defensive powers..."

Statesman: " Wait, wait! stop! what this next thing about Tanker level hit points!"

PVP mad Developer: "Well ok I can see your point I guess, lets lower the hit points a bit."

Statesman: "Ok now you are balanced"

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EDIT: Additionally, this change was mostly aimed at the Bloody Bay and Siren's Call levels where Stalkers are so far above any other AT in Kill Count vs Death Count that it isn't even funny.

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Long have I waited to hear these words. My unanswered question regarding "datamining" of the pvp zones comes into the light. Still I take no satisfaction in this revelation because right now as we speak there is a gank fest going on in COX and all the Developers could see to do is alter placate.

I wait in stunned silence waiting for further illumination on how you are going to fix this...

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Actually, I have such a predjudice against abusive Stalkers, I take it out on all Stalkers. Which, is not polite. I will be playing my Ice/Ice Blaster or my Controllers in Siren's Call, and even if I am one shot away from defeating a Villain, if I see a Stalker suddenly appear somewhere on the playing field, I go right for them and leave the other to get away if they can


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Stalkers are definately public enemy number one to many players and rightly so imho. You cannot ignore them, if you see one you have to put them at the top of your kill list or you will mostly likley become just another notch on their belt.

Also Buffy let me say that I take "no talking" to its ultimate state in that I turn off all chats of the opposing side (be they heroes or villians), for me my enjoyment of PVP rose greatly. I don't talk to them and I can't hear what they have to say. Someone has to be a superlative for me to turn on a chat and compliment them.

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2. We'll be putting in a check that prevents "one shotting"; if anything occurs within a fraction of second that brings a player from 100% Hit Points down to 0, we instead give the player 1% Hit Points.



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I just can't say how much I will enjoy that extra nanosecond of life as my Defender/Blaster/Controller wobbles around after being stunned by a Stalker EM attack. Yes indeed, time to stop and smell the roses.

States just a minor, tinsy winsy heads up. 1% solves nothing. I won't both to go through the laundry list of solutions that have been offered in other forums.

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I'd really like to see this resolved because I love the stalker concept and this just breaks it horribly, IMHO.

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Really? to me it makes perfect sense. They are still hunting you even though you are "hidden". Personally I have used this to great effect. Several battles I struck from hide, ran around a bit till hide came back and struck again, I could care less they were following me, I only cared that I got a crit from hide.

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This is a known bug. According to QA, it's related to having the shivan shard temp power (there might be other things that cause it, too, but this is what they've been able to reproduce).


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Hi ALexa, ty for the information. Please note however the villan in question never had the power or even attempted the mission. However one of my heroes did have the power...

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This is because the Black Line Coptor piolets are lazzy slackers and refuse door to door service in BB.

This happened to me every single time I zone into BB. I can not remeber the last time I zoned in and was in my own base.


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Dude you are supposed to slip him a five...

Next time it happens I will actually /bug it.

Yesterday I was running the missions in Bloody bay and three times I ran into a disturbing problem...

When zoning in from COV I ended up someplace other then the villan base.

One time I ended up in the forest to the east of the base and twice I zoned in directly to the city, once with a hero no more then 20 feet from me!

Luckily I go in with shields up and managed to run, choose a mission and enter the mission door before he could touch me.

Is this a known bug?

/e bow

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There are no such things as good PvP moments. PvP is a blight, a haven for immaturity and one-upmanship and the self-proclaimed "1337".

The original post illustrates exactly the kind of crap that makes PvP such an unmitigatedly joyful experience for all involved. Most of the rest just reinforce it; the highlights seem to consist of pounding people into the ground who are not able to actually contend with the person doing the pounding.

That really, truly, deeply impresses me with your superiority... yes it does.


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In Gir's voice

"Someone needs a huuug!"

I was on my MA/SR in Sirens, I notice three Brutes in the water. One of them had been gunning for me all night without success. Two of the Brutes are full health the other about 50%, I'm like "why not" and rush in, well I got a nice build-up crit with Crane and another kick later the 50% brute is down. His buddies are not happy. Umm lets just say I was on a roll and they did'nt last long either...

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This may have been stated by others (and possibly better), but am I the only one that think it's screwy that controller secondaries can in some way function better than defender primaries? Isn't this unfair to the Defender AT? Is it untrue to say that, across the board , blasters primaries are stronger than defender secondaries, tanker primaries are stronger than scrapper secondaries, scrapper primaries are stronger than tanker secondaries, and controller primaries are just plain unique and incomparable. Yet somehow, a controller taking a defender secondary can use certain powers to better effect. Not only that, but their primaries allow them to use certain powers to better effect as well! (i.e. tornado, freezing rain, etc).

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This is the heart of the issue to me. If a power resides in an AT's primary it should be clearly better then the same power sitting in anothers secondary. This whole thread has been the eye opener for me. Defenders have complained about this issue since the game began and now we realize the problem is -by design-.

Not right Devs, sorry because if it is ok to do this then perhaps you should look over say the "Invulnerable" set because I'm sure an argument can be made for certain powers being more "scrapper like" and thus deserving of a buff or two.

Why is control the exclusive domain of controllers? If a controller had cobra strike would the stun be longer? what would be the argument there? perhaps that Scrappers do more damage with it and a chance to crit? (lol).

Very weak.

While I am glad many of these items are fixed I must also say that I am not happy to see all the "Well thats a controller power so its working as intended " remarks.

I mean come on, you say "defenders do slightly more damage with power X" but honestly with containment thats not true.

If a power resides in the Defender primary if should be better in all respects to the duplicate power sitting in a Controller secondary.

For a power named "Black hole" it certainly does not do anything like I would think.

It would be cool if it operated kind of like a "reverse" freezing rain.

Imagine you target it like freezing rain, then when you click, it starts dragging foes in its range toward its center damaging the foes as it pulls them in, add - range and -recharge for the duration of the effect.

Center on your tank for added Tanker joy

that might be fun!

would be interesting pvp as well...

The current power for me is a panic button that confuses the hell out of everyone when I use it.

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almost exactly what I am trying to say, Stalkers without AS is as effective as a blaster trying to tank. The AT is balanced and a nerf would in fact Break the AT



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Very bad analogy. A Stalker without AS would be like a blaster without a snipe. Since day one of this game many people have pigeonholed a number of AT's i.e. "A tank without taunt is not a tank", "Defenders are Healers" we all know this is not true and to say a Stalker without AS is "broken" is not true either.

Back to the point of this thread, I have said it before and I will saw it again, not one Stalker power needs to be touched to balance them out in pvp. The only thing that needs to change is the Hide+Stealth combo.

Turn it off and suddenly everything changes.

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And yes, like everything else most of the people would like to see the easy fix.


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You call it easy, I call it elegant. Shut off the Hide+Stealth combo. Now players can see Stalkers without having to resort to multiple levels of perception.

Stalkers keep all their inherent tools, People still need perception to see Stalkers. End of story.

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Three, everyone needs to remember the absolute cap on Stealth is lower than the absolute cap on Perception if the players are even level. This means that a TEAM using non-Temp powers but with a good overlap of other powers will be able to see a Stalker before that Stalker gets into Melee Range. Additionally, while Tactics is a Toggle power which can be left on indefinitely for a +Perception boost, Grant Invisibility is a click buff which has a finite duration. So, a group of Stalkers + Support needs to stop and rebuff every few minutes to remain at the Stealth Cap, while a group using overlapped Tactics can remain on the move constantly.


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This is good and well but the problem is that real PVP stalkers are using stealth and hide, which masks them to such a high degree that to survive the average hero needs two powers of perception and that is just unreasonable in my eyes.

Everyone talks as if the power tactics was just an automatically chosen power. I have over 20 heroes, none have it. Some builds will never have perception beyond the IR goggles and yellow pills. These players are "Fish in a barrel" for Stalkers with stealth/hide, all those players will ever see is the one second of animation as the stalker hits, the words ASSASSIN STRIKE and the prompt to go to the hospital. The average player needs to be given an average chance of seeing the Stalker and getting a chance to actually take advantage of the supposed disadvantage if the AS being interruptable.

The other night I was in Siren's with my SR and the only reason I take my SR in there is becuase I can actually SEE stalkers if I have goggles on, I hunt them and as I stalk them I see what they do and how they do it, They hunt a great many squishies and the majority of the time the target is dead on one hit. Game over, go to the hospital, say "Hi" to nurse Betty, pay your co-pay. Additionally Stalkers comprise a the majority of the villian pvp population. It does not take a whole lot of thought to figure out why, I mean I laugh to myself as I toggle around the zone, Stalker, Stalker, Stalker, Brute, Stalker, Stalker, Mastermind, Stalker, Brute etc. etc.

Just turn off the stealth+hide combo, let Stalkers keep everything else, Let the Stalkers rely on their own innate powers and not on a broken power pool interaction.

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It highlights the issue, in the same way that assassinate drew an underline under the whole "Hey, 1-shotting sucks" issue.

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IMHO the Stealth/Hide combo + AS= the problem. Sure each is a seperate issue with its own problems but when you combine near perfect camo and a one shot? wow look out!

By removing this one powerpool interaction you now force Stalkers into open more often and their foes actually have a chance to defend themselves, which in my eyes is the biggest issue. Give the average player a chance to DO SOMETHING and that is also a large part of this, the average player should not have to take multiple layers of perception just to survive a pvp zone but that is the way it is right now. Two layers or you are meat on the pavement.

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Well, not precisely. What happens is it's an ever-escalating process, where even people who have +Perception in their normal power sets have to soak the Leadership pool *and* possibly buy goggles just to keep up. This happens on both the hero _and_ villain sides, except the villains don't really get the option of goggles.

The side effect I'm more concerned about is that this basically makes power pool stealth almost a waste for everyone. Since so many people are rigged to spot stalkers with stacked stealth, a hapless controller with power pool stealth might as well be naked and dancing on a hilltop for all the concealment value they get for their endurance.

Causing both types of powers - +Stealth and +Perception - to overlap instead of stack, and perhaps rebalancing their base values a little, means everyone gets some bonus from their purchase.

Stacking +Stealth and +Perception is the exact same problem that happened with +Resistance and Tough in the pre-I5 days, where it's balanced when you're not stacking things, but, say, a firetank gets it and suddenly it's "Ooh, resistance cap". It's difficult to balance the base values of powers when people are going to stack them - how do you make them not uber while still making them worthwhile for people to have just one? If you nerf the base, then people _have_ to stack... So take out the ability to stack them in PvP, period.

I admit there are some flaws to the idea, but hey, it's an internet forum. Random brain flatulence is the order of the day.


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What is occuring in the PVP zones is something akin to what has happened from a military standpoint in the Radar vs Aircraft scenario. What I mean is that in the struggle of the defender vs the raider there is a constant game of one upsmanship. The defender wants to detect the attacker at maximum range to bring their guns/missles/interceptors to bear, the attacker wants to avoid detection to deliver his munitions to the target. This escalation goes on forever. What is different in COH/V is that the developers can sit down and determine just how far they want this war to go.

In my opinion the Stalker tech of Hide/Stealth cracks the current balance of defender vs attacker. All stalkers have hide, its a defining ability, so right off the start every Stalker has an advantage over every player without perception powers and that is a great many players. Now add that Stalkers have ECM in the form of Placate, a laser guided bunker buster in the form of Build-up+AS+Crit from hide AND can add radar absorbant paint in the form of Stealth.

wow that analogy scares me.

Yah, peel off the paint (Stealth) and lets see what Stalkers can do with the rest of their innate tools.

Its a no brainer.