Humanist

Glad to see that you've released this after working on it for so long. Bravo!

Don't be hatin'.

My little brother and I came up (independently from the above) with a kin/elec duo using the same general ideas a few months ago. Then we quit playing CoH until a few weeks ago due to some RL things that cropped up. Anyway, we came back a few weeks ago and we still kick butt together. It may have problems as a solo build without the Hasten, but it's still great if you can find someone to play with.

Differences between our playstyle and yours:

We can speed boost each other, which changes the equation quite a bit. Hasten is only a few seconds short of perma with stacked siphon speeds now.

We don't need to combine stealth and super speed, as we can grant invis on each other before sneaking into the middle of a group. Interesting that we both came up with that tactic independently, as it works pretty well.

We make heavy use of ID, and don't have tough yet. ID may not protect against lethal, but at melee range, it's mostly smash anyway.

We work hard to keep siphon speed stacked. It's a great power to have, and every little bit of recharge helps.

With two of us both trying to heal, the probability of both our heals missing is only 0.25%. This makes Transfusion by itself a pretty reliable form of damage mitigation, though it requires keeping both eyes open at all times.

As I said, I just stumbled across this guide and find it so interesting that we came to so many of the same conclusions. I, too, looked at electric mastery for a time, but realized about level 16 that we'd prefer to have Total Focus for boss-killing.

Your thoughts on Thunderous Blast have given us a lot to think about as well. Thanks a lot fot this excellent guide that is still a very valid way of playinga kin.

I'll chime in here a bit.

I'm all for the reduced damage and increased recharge. I personally would have liked to see it balanced more by giving it an endurance cost commiserate with the amount of damage it did, but overall lower damage is fine as well.

Scattering mobs is not fine, however. A mob scatter may make sense from a logical perspective, but it most certainl,.y does not make sense from a gameplay perspective. They run from fire on the ground, but not from Burning Aura? Huh? Not to mention the many other damage powers that should, by rights, cause enemies to flee.

My wife and I made a fun fire/fire tank, fire/fire blaster duo. Now, I've got quite a bit more experience at this game than she does. I can adapt quickly to power changes. She can't. I have lots of other fun chars to play besides my fire tank. She doesn't have much she enjoys other than her blaster.

Now, I don't know. She's really looking forward to the archery sets. Perhaps they'll keep her interested. Perhaps not. She doesn't post on the boards. She doesn't care about the intimate details of what's in testing right now. She'll be very frustrated if our duo has to be remade as something else, and I know that there are thousands of players like her.

I love my Kheldian, and I'm confident that I will love my invul scrapper again after I can respec him.

Thank you Devs for issue 3.

I worked out another neat thing to do with binds.

So, let's say your an invuln with both hasten and dull pain. Let's say you hate the limitation of haveing only one of them being autoexecuted. You want both on in combat without having to think about firing either of them off.

Fear not! a pair of bind files can accomplish this. Behold, the contents of AshDullPain.txt and AshHasten.txt.

AshDullPain.txt
1 "powexec_name Smite$$powexec_auto Dull Pain$$bind_load_file C:\Coh\AshHasten.txt"
2 "powexec_name Shadow Punch$$powexec_auto Dull Pain$$bind_load_file C:\Coh\AshHasten.txt"
3 "powexec_name Shadow Maul$$powexec_auto Dull Pain$$bind_load_file C:\Coh\AshHasten.txt"
4 "powexec_name Boxing$$powexec_auto Dull Pain$$bind_load_file C:\Coh\AshHasten.txt"

AshHasten.txt
1 "powexec_name Smite$$powexec_auto Hasten$$bind_load_file C:\Coh\AshDullPain.txt"
2 "powexec_name Shadow Punch$$powexec_auto Hasten$$bind_load_file C:\Coh\AshDullPain.txt"
3 "powexec_name Shadow Maul$$powexec_auto Hasten$$bind_load_file C:\Coh\AshDullPain.txt"
4 "powexec_name Boxing$$powexec_auto Hasten$$bind_load_file C:\Coh\AshDullPain.txt"

What do these binds do? Well, whenever I use one of my 4 major attack powers, it sets up either Hasten or DP to be autocast after it finishes that attack power. The one set up on autoexec changes every time I fire off an attack power, so I never have to worry in the heat of combat about firing either of these off. So once I break my habit of pounding the attack keys, this will be an entirely hassle-free way to have both of my powers autoexecute.

These can be modified to use any attack power, either by name or by tray slot (using powexec_tray (slot #) (tray #).

You can also use multiple bind files to do even more if you're, say, an SR scrapper with PB, Hasten, and Elude. It works with any character that attacks regularly and has multiple click powers that are desired to be fired as soon as they're ready.