Hopeling

Texas Justice is correct. The error message is terribly unhelpful in this regard.

You'll also need to unlock your alpha slot before Captain Nolan will talk to you, if I recall.

I think Nihilii was referring to how the tohit calculation used to only clamp values at the end, rather than once before applying accuracy and again after. This meant that if you floored the enemy hit chance, it would be exactly 5% no matter how much accuracy they had. In the updated system, an enemy with, say, +50% accuracy will have a 5*1.5 = 7.5% hit chance at worst. A +4 (1.4) boss-rank (1.3) Malta Gunslinger (2.0 accuracy on most attacks) will always have at least a 5*1.4*1.3*2.0 = 18.2% chance to hit, even if you pop a tray full of purples and get 200% defense.

No, but it is possible to have every attack at 95%+ damage with 95%+ recharge and high acc and endredux and with a DoT worth ~50 damage per hit.

Moreover, wasn't enemy health reduced when ED went live, so that a 198% attack now would actually be proportionally stronger than it was then? Or is my memory playing tricks on me? I can't find any mention of it on paragonwiki, so it might be the latter. Hm.

The Cottage Rule gets its name from the first time a dev explained it: the power Build Up should not be changed from a damage buff to a power that builds a small cottage, because although both could properly be called "Build Up", the mechanic is entirely different. This was of course a silly example, but it's pretty analogous to changing a long-duration defense buff to an absorption shield. Yes, they're both defensive powers, and they both make thematic sense for a force field, but the mechanic is entirely different.

On the other hand, the Cottage Rule is often misinterpreted as "we will never make changes like this", but the original explanation contained no such statement. It was more along the lines of "we will avoid making such changes, if at all possible". It's a last resort, but not completely off-limits. We've seen several "violations" of the cottage rule, after all, even relatively recently, like during the Energy Aura revamp in i21, when Energy Drain was changed from a heal to a defense buff.

In short, if fixing Force Field is on the development agenda, and it absolutely cannot be fixed except by ditching some defense powers for absorb powers, it will happen, but if less drastic changes will suffice, they will be used instead.

Yes, although it's worth pointing out that that post is from more than a month ago. I do not know if Melee has been fixed since then.

Combat Attributes shows the "real" cost reduction to your powers - 10% endredux means your powers cost 1/(1+.1) = ~.909 as much, or .0909 less than normal, which is 9.09%. Or if you had a 100% endredux buff, Combat Attributes would say -50%. Unfortunately this is a near-useless number to display, since many of your powers are probably slotted with endredux already, so they will get a different amount of discount than what Combat Attributes says.

I cannot say for certain, but since Support Radial's only other advantage over Core is a larger radius, it seems probably intended that Core gives a smaller buff (6% vs 8%) to players in exchange for the larger buff (12% vs 8%) to pets. The detailed info should be clearer about it, though.

Well, the reward merit calculation favors TFs by default, for this reason among others.

Does it still have the daily diminishing returns? Or can you chain-run it for full rewards?

Well, I haven't taken a /EA through trials yet, but I have found that psi damage is pretty much a non-issue with /Inv, which is about as defenseless against Psi. Inspirations, Destiny, and the occasional knockdown is plenty.

He's correct, all Hybrid powers affect pets. http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...&postcount=142

It's not necessarily the animations so much as the recharge times, I'd guess. Only one power in the chain you named has a recharge under 10 seconds. Doublehit disproportionately favors slower powers, since both the proc rate AND the proc damage are proportional to recharge time.

TW is rather abnormal in having very few fast-recharging attacks, but sets like, say, most blast sets, or Katana, or quite a few others that make extensive use of attacks with <10s recharge may not see nearly the same returns from Radial.

Presumably, it's just another power effect, like healing or +maxhp. So one power might grant a 500-point shield when applied (analogous to a direct heal), another would grant several "ticks" of shield (analogous to an HoT), and another might be an absorb shield tied to an attack (analogous to Siphon Life).
Yep, +maxhp would be analogous to a temporary Constitution buff in D&D. (nerd points +10)

But yeah, similar concepts have been used in a LOT of games, and it's pretty intuitive in actual play. It's ablative shielding, and acts kind of like pre-emptive healing (preventing damage before it is dealt, rather than restoring it afterward).

No tanker combo will run into the damage cap harder than SD/SS. Even if your build doesn't double-stack Rage, you're looking at no more than 100% head room for damage buffs, to be shared among Build Up, Hybrid, and red insps, before even considering any team buffs. So, I'd say Radial.

Unfortunately, Gauntlet seems to be screwing with the doublehit proc like it did PPM procs, but hopefully that will get fixed soon enough.

If the last time around is any indication? Roughly two months after the very thought of running Magisterium again causes me to cry and/or vomit uncontrollably.

Nah, more realistically, I think I will just be abstaining from Hybrid for a while with all but 1-2 characters. I like trials, really I do, but I like them in moderation. Running Magisterium forty times, plus another five for each future 50, is way past the threshold where I can enjoy it.

Yes, and this time it's available until Monday. Posted on the front page, as usual: http://na.cityofheroes.com/en/news/n...ay_is_live.php