Ineffable_Bob

Excellent original post, and most of the rest of the thread has good information as well. One thing I'd like to throw my 2 cents in on:

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directive 1 - NO BLIND INVITES. Ask, always ask. It won't kill you. No conjunctions, no leet speak, no canned macros. FORM A COMPLETE SENTENCE. Do not ask people who are not flagged lft.

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This is absolutely correct except the last bit. In some situations, you may want to ask folks that aren't flagged. Many a time I've asked someone flagged as 'Not Looking' if they'd like to help with an AV or a Giant Monster, and they've been happy to help. Use this sparingly - don't go sending off tells to random non-LFT people every time you start a group - but it's a valid option in some situations.

I most definitely agree that leading can be a lot of work, but it's very rewarding. Usually that reward is just the satisfaction of a job well done at the end of the mission, but sometimes you get a little bonus. Earlier this week I was on a 5-villain team doing an outdoor Longbow mission, and my Internet dropped for a minute. I got back online and found the team in disarray, everyone running around aimlessly and nearly dead from over-aggroing mobs. Got everyone organized, recovered, and we went back to methodically pounding heros into the ground. After a few minutes, one of the dominators says, "Without your leadership we're lost...glad you came back." Stuff like that makes the effort worth it.

Damn, _Castle_, we love you and all, but doesn't anyone else over there work any more?

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In CoH Beta, players were able to push NPCs rather than the other way around. Quite reliably, players would then herd the NPCs all into a small area, causing AI issues and horrible server lag.

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Does that maybe say something about how little players like having NPCs roaming around free in their missions?

Good suggestions on ordering things. I highly recommend this site for more information on the details of each contact. Most of the story arcs and other missions have enough detail that you'll be able to tell which missions the contact is offering each time you talk to them.

This does sound interesting enough to try - I've been meaning to roll a Dominator, maybe I'll give it a shot. But I'm definitely modifying the randomness enough to force a travel power choice at 14. Probably force a travel pool choice at 12 if I didn't get it randomly before that, and then whatever travel power is available at 14. I spend enough time using Sprint with all my alts up through L13.

A very well-written guide! Having just started a SS/Fire brute (L14 now) myself, I find that I agree with most of what you've written.

Obviously I can't comment too much on the higher level powers. I do have a few alternative opinions on things I did differently:

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I am tempted to grab Hover and 3 slot it, which to me is much better than Combat Jumping for combat.

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I think you'll find that if you take Hurdle instead of Swift, you'll be much happier with Combat Jumping. In fact, I took Hurdle at 6 and Combat Jumping at 8, and used that as a mini-travel power until 14. In the low-ceiling missions, I just turn Sprint on and off as needed to move along faster.

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It only deals minor damage, but the quick recharge of Jab is what makes it the second most vital part of your chain when it comes to building that Fuy bar up.

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I took Punch instead of Jab, and Boxing at 10. I have a chain of Boxing-Brawl-Punch-Boxing-Brawl-Haymaker- Boxing-Brawl-Punch-Boxing-Brawl, at which point I have to wait a moment for recharge. That will take down between 1.5 and 4 even-con minions at L14, depending on how much I miss and whether I had any Fury at the beginning, and I end up with a little over half a Fury bar. I use the wait time to either hit Healing Flames or beat up someone with Knockout Blow - it one-shots even or +1 minions after the Fury buildup from the chain. I find that the knockdown of Punch, plus the higher damage, is much more helpful than Jab.

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Until you get Stamina and SO's to cut down the endurance cost of this toggle [Blazing Aura] try only turning it on when your Fury bar is half-full. Get it asap!

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Rather than doing this, I chose to put Blazing Aura off completely until after I have Stamina. The End usage is just too much until SOs, and I find that I can plow through minions fine with the SS attacks. At higher levels with better defenses, BA will be great since I can herd up a few groups and kill 'em all at once - but in the early game it's just not worth the End.

Again, great guide, and I hope my comments give people some insight into alternative build options.

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I think if you read my combat guide, you might appreciate more the value of positioning and movement, and might see why it might be GOOD to have to 'chase enemies all over the map'. With good communication between teammates, then annoyances should not be a problem. You can find strategies that work, like the strategy with my scrapper friend that keeps him alive longer, and still lets him do just as much damage as he would normally do in combat. Also, it is a poor FF defender that would continuously Detain enemies that you are attacking. A good FF Defender KNOWS where to put those fields. Please don't let a few (or even many) bad FFers turn you off from this great set.

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I already said that there are times when the knockback and detain powers are useful. But those times are few and far between.

I can't think of any team I've ever been on post-I5/ED where I'd rather have a FF defender than any other defender type, because those other types can not only mitigate the damage, but they can do it in a way that doesn't annoy me. Even Storm defenders, the kings of knockback, do less of it than a FF defender using the repel powers.

Well written. I'm glad you enjoy the FF set. Personally, I stopped playing my FFer at 35 and have no intention of ever taking the set again. Detention Field, Repulsion Bomb, Repulsion Field, and Force Bubble are occasionally useful, as you've indicated, but most of the time all they do is annoy your teammates. It's sad, but since Issue5/ED, I actually prefer to team with any other type of defender over a FFer, because the granted defense is now poor and the other powers are more annoying than helpful. Even Trick Arrow is better - the powers suck, but at least they don't prevent me from hitting stuff or make me chase mobs all over the map.

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With 2 SO's slotted, that puts my accuracy at 75x1.66 = 124.5
With an accuracy cap of 95%, I should always be at that vs even con minons- which the streakbreaker chart says I should have a maximum of 1 miss in a row, yet I can easily demonstrate otherwise. Why?

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1. Your assumption of being at the accuracy cap is only true if you're fighting certain mob types. If you fight enemies with debuffs, defense powers, high enough level, etc. then you may no longer be capped.

2. The correct question is not "Why haven't they responded", it's "Why haven't you provided the proof?" Since you say you can easily demonstrate otherwise, do it. Show us a demorecord, Fraps, HeroStats log - something that bears out what you're saying. Make sure you note the exact time, server, and toon name so the Devs can look it up on their side too.

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It's interesting to understand how this stuff works...<snip example>....Now I'm thinking that if I can judge the net accuracy of my attacks (experience required I guess) and I get a miss streak I will pick an attack that I really really want to hit rather than the one that just happens to be next in the chain.

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This is an excellent point, and is exactly what I do. This is why I love to see the actual numbers and other details given out by the Devs. It lets us adjust our game to what is really going on in the game internals.

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The table provided says that the streakbreaker count for accuracy 5-10% is 100, and Wierdbeard (I think) said that the count used the worst accuracy for the streak. Does this, then, mean that if *at any point*, I make an attack attempt against such a hard to hit target, then my streakbreaker value may stay at 100 for up to the next 100 attacks, assuming I miss?

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Yep, that's the case. Both of your examples look like they describe this scenario.

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I'm sorry if this has already been mentioned, but how does this apply to Defense-based characters? If a character normally has a .9 percent to hit chance, and is attacking someone with a .6 defense percentage, does the streak breaker still only allow them one miss in a row? Or does the defense directly affect the atacker's to hit number, in turn increasing the amount of misses allowed before a streakbreaker trigger? If it's the first option, then that's definitely a problem for all defense-based builds.

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It's based on the final to-hit, not the attacker's accuracy - your second option. This also means that simply slotting lots of accuracy in your attacks won't help you as far as streak-breaking is concerned - you also have to take into account the defense of your target.

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Notably, the description is quite ambiguous about what happens with multiple attack powers that have varying chances to hit.

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I started a thread in the AT/Powers forum that has some examples, hopefully it is more clear. Plus it's in a forum that makes more sense than this one for a topic that affects all ATs.

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Let's say we have an attack with a massive to-hit penalty that has a .75 chance to hit, followed by two attacks that are at the to-hit cap. Can all three attacks miss?

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Yes. That .75 attack falls into the "3 misses allowed" category. The two following attacks are allowed to miss, no matter what their to-hit is, because there was a .75 attack in the chain. That assumes that all three fail to-hit rolls, of course - things reset as soon as one attack hits.

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Okay now based off that chart
How can I make a NEW character, run up to PRISONERS in breakout and miss 10 times in a row?

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To expand on that, why are we seeing streaks at all on characters with accuracy SOs slotted in powers with the base 75% accuracy (in other words, not powers with accuracy penalties)? Regardless of whether accuracy SOs are additive (75% + 33% = 108%) or multiplicative (75% * 1.33 = 100%), there should never be more than a single miss versus even level enemies, yet I don't think there's a single person who plays these games who can say they've never missed twice in a row under those conditions.

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I don't buy the 10-misses-in-breakout example. Proof is needed. Nor do I expect that you are really seeing streaks if your character slotted with SOs is using only the slotted attacks on only mobs that don't lower your to-hit chance through defense or debuff. Either you used an attack with a lower to-hit chance in there somewhere, or you attacked a mob that had some defense and thus the allowed miss streak was longer.

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Another question that needs to be addressed is that of odd streaks, powers missing not on every attack, but instead missing attacks at a much higher than normal ratio for several minutes, or entire missions, then returning to a "normal" hit scenario.

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I begin to see why the Devs don't like posting numbers and explanations. He already answered this. If even one attack misses with a low chance to-hit, you've got a possible streak going. Say you're in a Rikti mission and you miss a drone - those guys have high defense, so it's very possible that even with SOs your to-hit chance is low. Now the streak breaker isn't going to kick in if a good number of your next to-hit rolls come up as misses (exactly how many depends on the drone's defense, but it could be up to 99), even if you're no longer attacking drones. The entire mission could be like this, if you have drones showing up regularly in spawns.

Drones are just one example. There's plenty of mobs with high defense, either from powers they have, from debuffs, or simply because they're higher level and higher class (meaning Lt/Boss/AV).

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Then how is it possible to miss 3 or 4 attacks in a row while using Aim and Buildup?

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Aim and Buildup only affect the attacks you make after using them. If you missed with an attack before using Aim/Buildup, that miss is part of the miss streak tracker. Say it fell in the range where 5 misses are allowed. You can then miss the next 4 attacks no matter what their accuracy is - so the result you see is miss-Aim-BU-miss-miss-miss-miss. That's fine as far as the streak breaker is concerned. It's still an unlikely scenario, but it's working as designed.

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Streak Breaker (I just talked to Poz about it
If you miss three times in a row, then your next attack will always hit.

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That's only true if you're fighting even-con minions (or maybe any even-con). I know for a fact it's false for +2s, since I missed four times in a row (Char, Fire Blast, Blaze, Freezing Touch) with my Fire/Ice blaster on a +2 Sapper recently. I remember it well because of the hospital trip involved.

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You might be interested in flashblock, I know it has saved me from clawing my eyes out at bad flash ads more times than I can count.

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Yep, or adblock is an add-on for Firefox that lets you block images, shockwave files, etc. on a case-by-case basis. A little more feature-rich than Flashblock, I expect. I haven't seen the bouncing Positron since the first day he showed up, and I'm glad.

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Let's say that I lose 10% Accuracy per level difference, I should be at 110% when fighting +2 minions. Do Carnies have a 30% Defense? Is this working as intended?

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They might - as a Dark scrapper, you use Negative Energy on all your attacks. If Carnies have defense to negative energy, then that would explain what you're seeing. I have no idea if they really are supposed to have such a defense or not - just saying it would account for the data if they did.

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So shall I copy and paste my log findings into here? Bleh, I'll just type them and then if anyone wants me to email the actual HeroStats logs I will. My only regret is that HeroStats doesn't correctly record Shadow Mauls accuracy. It does record activations and number of misses so I have to look into it's log to manually do the calculation by hand. I will put those numbers here. Because some of the numbers may look quarky, I'll pos number of uses. Some days I didn't use a certain attack for some reason very much.

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Don't ever use Shadow Maul as an accuracy example. For one thing, it's a cone, and cone attacks are bugged. For another, the Shadow Maul chat messages don't give enough information to properly calculate accuracy. Simple division of activations and misses is not at all accurate - that's why I stopped HeroStats from displaying accuracy for Shadow Maul.

None of this invalidates your other data, of course - just don't rely on any numbers from Shadow Maul.

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Memo to: Statesman, Loki

Date: November 21, 2005
Re: Castle

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When is this guy getting promoted? Attentive to the customer, brutally honest, sense of humor. Get on it!

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Agreed. Ideally, give him some people to train in how to do this communication. Then he gets to keep doing his job and we get good customer communication.

Cool idea. I'd recommend using links extensively for some things, though, if you can get permission. It would be pretty silly to reproduce all the work on badges done over at Vidiotmaps, for example. A link would make more sense.

We can only hope. Same problem on Warshades.

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You're wasting your time. Reason, fairness, and other silly things like that are foreign concepts to developers. Remember, such foes are the equivalents their characters, and they're not going to gimp their characters vs. the Enemy (players).

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I trust you'll be happy to learn that I changed Ballista based on feedback in this thread.

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He didn't say how Ballista was changed. For all we know, he now drops toggles twice as often. Or toggle dropping was removed but his damage increased 10X so he'll one-shot you even with toggles.

Geko sighting! It's gonna get crazy in here...