JakHammer

There is one Unique in the Panacea set, and that can only be slotted ONE time, the ++Proc. But the other 5 pieces of the set are not restricted.

There are other sets that also give the 7.5% Recharge bonus and the Rule of Five would apply to the aggrenate number of 7.5% bonuses with the same name that you have in a build. Basilisk Gaze which has 7.5% at 4 slots comes to mind, and there is a Taunt set that has the 7.5% Recharge at 6 slots. There are some others. And, as mentioned, the 7.5 % LotG bonus is counted seperatly.

Jak

If memory servers VS also gives a very large Defiance boost for however many seconds.

+20.5% Dmg(All Types) for 10.6s, if Red Tomax is correct.

My SG leader uses it as a mini BU on his Elect/elect.

It can be cast around corners and used as a pulling power, too. Since it only shoots one target, sometimes it will pull a spawn apart, one by one, or so my SG leader has said in build discussions about elec/elec.

Finally, what else in Electric Blast are you gonna take. You are kinda stuck with Sparky. If you skip VS, and are a Snipe hater too, you are down to just 7 powers in main, one of which is a crashing nuke.

I love the look of my Elect/elect, and am sentimental about that alt as it was my first to 50 , but it is a very frustrating combo to perfect, compared to so many others. It wants to blap but sure has survival issues, or so it did for me. Good luck.

Jak

I know my estimate of what ATO prices would do is completely wrong. I know I grossly underestimated the number of packs that would be bought. I am guessing I missed by a full order of magnitude or even by a factor of 20 or more. I am well underwater on all my speculations, so far, and no longer expect any cheese, but only hope to get out of the trap, by breaking even, maybe.

As to continued sales, I suspect a LOT of people, employed people, who do not want to grind out merits on TF's, and don't want to spend precious game time marketing, or who are just lazy in their leisure time, will be buying packs just for the FLOOD of merits, and selling the rest of the goodies they don't need. I think the Merits are the single most versitile thing in the packs, conviently packaged in 25 unit bundles you can claim on any toon. I saved up for the pack release and opened 120 packs. I got almost 6,000 merits. I won't have to buy a Numi, Miracle, or LotG 7.5 for a loooong time. If I was not sick and still able to work and had income, I might do exactly that and just buy packs whenever I was short on time.

If casual pack sales are being driven by that metric, then ATO prices will stay depressed for a considerable time. Probably until the next round of packs with different goodies, or at least that's my guess. Of course my guesses are not very good lately.

Jak

Knight, you can't double all. The Catalyzed and un-Catalyzed versions of all ATO's mutually exclude each other. One of each enhancer, 6 total, is it.

The purple and non-purple versions don't play together either, so if you have oh say 5 MotT slotted in one power, and catalyze one enhancement, you now have 4 and 1 and would lose the 4th Toxic/Psi resist set bonus.

The character bound Catalyzed versions can only be slotted on a lvl 50. Their set bonuses are named exacly the same as regular Purple sets, so in particular, if you already had 5 regular purples for the 5 X 10% Ultimate Recharge Bonus, the ATO Purple 10% Ultimate Recharge Bonus would hit the Rule of 5 and not count. It is possible you might want to leave it un-Catalyzed if absolute Max Rechrge is your goal. My tank could not fit in a 5th Purple and is very happy the Purple MotT set filled that recharge need.

Tricky things, these new enhancers. Sure hope the Gauntlet bug is a bug and not WAI. The Brute Proc just got a bug fix, so here's hopin. (And sorry for all those who had their Fury proc in an AoE.)

Jak

I don't recall ever reading anyone's post that actually had a high level Degenerative and used it. I have never used one either.

I am pretty sure, in the original discussion when Interface first came out, that Degenerative was deemed the worst of all Interfaces.

Looking at Paragon WIKI, and assuming two lucky hits that both Proc, stacking -3.5% of max HP twice (max stack is 4) would only reduce a 430.8 HP Level 50 Minion by 30.1 points. At Tier 3 that would require forgoing Any Toxic Dot for a 75% chance to Proc. To get any chance of the Toxic you have to drop to 50% or less -HP chance. 75% is the max chance for a -HP proc even at T4. I use two hits, as PleaseRecycle did, because two good AoE's will often take down all the minions anyway, without any interface. The effect vs AV's is a fixed -150 HP points per stack, according to Paragon WIKI. I feel the Earth quiver as Reichsman trembles. Even a generic AV will have 28,000 plus HP at Lvl 50. I suppose, in an extended fight vs an Elite Boss, if you could maintain a 4 stack for -750 HP approx. (-14% off 5354.5 HP), that would be useful, as reduced Max HP does also reduce Regeneration somewhat.

Just as with the Flat HP bonus in Rebirth Core vs the amazing Regen Bonus in Rebirth Radial, I think the Regen debuff in Diamagnetic was considered much more valuable vs hard targets. If you really don't want to do the obvious and take the Reactive, thus avoiding stacking conflicts on teams and that cookie cutter feeling, couldn't you consider your Interface Spine Toxin to be an agent that neutralized healing and also reduced an opponents ability to see, to think, or interfered with his coordination, any of which would justify a -To Hit?

Anyway, hope we hear from somebody who has actually used Degenerative, good or bad.

Jak

Yep, it is bugged due to interaction with the Gauntlet in all tanker attacks. Other players, over on the Tanker forum, have explained it quite well.

Since I already had it in Fire Sword Circle, to test it in an AoE, where I find it just about totally reliable for a double stack vs any group of 2 or more, I am just going to leave it there for now, pending the next respec after enhancement converters come out.

I hope this Gauntlet thing is a bug, and does get fixed.

I also read that it does proc every time in Burn, even if no targets are present to be hit, lol. Pets are strange.

Jak

Yep, under the current model Catalysts are .... well I just can't come up with a sufficiently pejorative word that would pass muster with the filters.

This implementation policy seems unbelievalby player hostile. We can only hope that it will be changed, or that Catalysts will turn out to have some other, repeatable, benefit in the near future.

Jak

Well perhaps, since the Proc is getting treated as being in an AoE all the time anyway, putting it in an AoE to allow multiple chances to hit is the best move at present.

But the Gauntlet bug, if that is what it is and not a Dev intended limiter, really bites. I had SO wanted this Proc to be reliably three stacked in the proper build.

Jak

Some will never take a snipe. I never take a Crashing Nuke, and have been very pleased with the results of that decision.

The option, suggested above by M K, to have a crashing or non-crashing T9 (but with not quite so much steriod infusion ) fits my Idea, that I never got around to starting a Thread about, that every power set, for every AT should have 12 powers with three mutually exclusive choices, at various Tiers. That would add some new vitality and uniqueness to what has become a world of cookie cutter builds.

Anyway, in lieu of choice, I would favor non-crashing all around, and take whatever recharge increase or power nerf they imposed gladly.

Jak

It's funny, I recently started playing my first decent 50 again, a Blaster, and actuall woke up this morning thinking "You know, when I was first working on learning the game and building Zev, there were threads all over the Blaster forum about how bad Snipes were and what to do to fix them, I ought to start a thread to see if anything has changed in two years."

It would appear that nothing has.

Snipes are still a last pick power, probably because you need to stick a 5 slot Sting of the Manticore in them for 7.5% recharge. The animations and the interrupt times are still a bit too long, the damage and range are still a bit too low. I realize that this is to try to give game balance and work within the necessarily constricted game scale, but overall Snipes just never feel Super Powered and are decidely Un-Heroic.

Actually owning an older 1/2 MOA Sniper grade hunting rifle (MOA = Minute of Angle so 5 shots - 100 yards - Maximum of 1/2 inch center of any bullet to center of any bullet - modern real sniper practice uses 1/4 inch MOA or even better) I have always found even calling these powers Snipes a joke. To put that level of accuracy in perspective, it means that at 100 yards, if for some reason it was necessary, I could reliably shot you in either eye or either ear, depending on where you happened to be facing. There are multiple modern confirmed military sniper kills at over 2000 yards. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longest...d_sniper_kills

Of course we, as Heroes, are not dedicated to actually killing people, being more concerned with defeating and apprehending them, so they can escape or be released, to kill again and again (Darrin Wade? - but that's another story.)

When a real sniper rifle is pressed into fire fight use (stuff happens,) the precise bullet placement that makes the damage bonus justified is not relevant, and the long range sighting device may actually be a penalty, but they darn sure don't get "interrupted".

The fix I would propose is that inside some minimum range (90 feet?) a Snipe power becomes just another T2 un-interruptible blast with normal Accuracy for that power set. Yes, that would mean that on some indoor maps it would be impossible to actually fire a full power Snipe. Address that issue by coding Snipe powers to treat activation on an unaware target as always being a Max range activation. Spruce up the actual Long Range Un-suppressed Damage so as defeat most Lt.'s with one shot (depending on their resistance to your particular snipe's damage type,) and increase base snipe range to about 200 feet and that's it.

Frankly any improvement in snipe powers will be just dandy as I find using them for a set mule is almost always a good build decision.

But I fear we will see Incarnate slot 10 before anything is done to fix snipes.

Jak

It may be that VK just needs to know to look for them under the Universal Travel Powers catagory, where they live along with the other oddball travel power goody Winter's Gift.

Yep, Purple drops, they are streaky. I dropped 9 in one week about 6 months ago. Then maybe 4 since, and none since December. Then 3 on one farm run last night, followed immediately by the same toon running on a different farm and getting total zilch.

My perceived reality:

1) Try to have more than 1 farmer and more than one farm per farmer. When I go back to a toon that has been idle a long time (at least a week off,) I seem to be luckier the first few runs. The three Purples last night were on a toon idle about 10 days on a farm idle much longer. The drech run that followed was on the farm he ran from those same 10 days ago.

2) Don't run the same farm over and over. I really seem to see a decline in ALL drop goodness when I do this (runs get to be all generic and yellow recipies and no rare salvage), and another NCSoft product has a stated anti-farming policy of giving declining returns for repeating the same missions, or sweeping the same zones too often, on any given Alt., anywhere. CoX has never, to the best of my knowledge, done that openly on anything but TF's and trials, but that does not mean it is not happening.

3) Play your 50's a lot. I mean a whole lot. All my personal friends whose reports I can trust, that have few if any Purple drops, have alt-itis bad, and don't play their 50's nearly as much as they think they do. Try playing your level 50's and only your level 50's for one week, every day, 4-8 hours a day, like I do sometimes, and your Purple droughts Will be shortened.

The above stratigies may or may not be actually doing me any good but it feels like it works .

Personally I think there ought to be a streak breaker that forces a purple drop of some sort for any toon with 10-15,000 qualified defeats, and resets on any purple drop.

Jak

I deleted my low level SR tank pending the perfecting of knowledge about the new +res proc.

But I am Guessing it will be found to be invaluable to an SR Tank if it stacks with the scaling resists. Since scaling resists kick in at % levels of Max health, if I understand them correctly, building for absolute max health may be a number two build goal, after Defense capping, so as to have as big a hit point buffer as possible when the scaling resists become meaningful.

However, I seem to recall something being posted about the scaling resists being ported wrong or not working correctly on Tank SR, has that been resolved, if it was ever an issue?

Jak

I agree that a power that did not suppress Offense would be preferable to the Defense boosting / panic button aspect of Afterburner. Still, I really like that it will mule a LotG 7.5.

You can slot it up to about 17-18% Defense with 2 L50's and a defense enhanceing Alpha. But that is actually too low for a real panic button in the world of Defense Shredding attacks we face now. It ought to be more like 30% max D, and provide some Defense Debuff Resistance, in my opinion.

But overall, I am still happy to include it in my build. When you get older time becomes ever more precious, and this is a huge timesaver.

Jak

This is just a guess.

If you let your sub lapse and go Premium (the middle ground between totally free never spent a thing and Active Subscriber-VIP) then your access to various game features will be restricted based on the number of Paragon Reward Tokens you have slotted in the Paragin Rewards Tree.

Any access to Invention IO's is one of the things that may STOP. To have free lifetime access to the Invention system you must have a completed Tier 7 in the Paragon Rewards Program. If your access to invention origin enhancers ends then those that are boosted won't work either. Returning players have found this a rude shock indeed if they were not long term vets. Tier 7 is a long way up the tree.

Good news is the point cost to buy a 1 month license to for access to the IO system is about 2 bucks or less depending on how you buy points.

However your question raises the issue of whether the new Boosters are considered a part of the overall IO system or are treated seperately. I would GUESS that they will function anytime you have IO access but you should probably email Customer Service for a definitive answer.

Jak

I left out one fact, I also have one 5% Movement Speed set bonus from a Performance Shifter set.

I want to thank the Devs for this power. It was a real 'Super Moment' when everything was slotted up and I just went flying for fun.

As for slotting up more important things:

Exploiting the 2 base slots in Fly and Afterburner by adding just more 2 slots for a pair of BotZ doubles and gaining 2.5% ranged defense, and 4 points of Knockback protection seemed so efficient as to be a no brainer. Saves a wasted slot in a resistance or defense power too, as you are not using Karma or Steadfast KB protection.

Adding one more slot to mule a 7.5% LotG in Afterburner, and replace the lost recharge bonus from swapping a Decimation out for a Thunderstrike was also as cheap a solution for the lost recharge as I could find.

These changes all go toward taking a Blaster that is already S/L Soft capped and perma-hasted and adding small purple Ranged def levels without compromising existing advantages. Plus getting what feels like double the travel power speed.

After accomplishing the build goals, and already flying about 84mph it was just an experiment to add a few enhancement boosters to see what would happen. The fact that at 87.95 mph I'll be 15-17% faster than a minimally enhanced 75-76 mph Afterburner toon for the rest of my life, and get to spend more time in missions and complete missions faster as well, is just a little splash of gravy on my CoH meat and potatos.

But personal preferences in build style are what keep the boards so lively, Klaw, and I am sure your slots went to something you value as much or more than what I used mine for.

Jak

I thought I would report the actual in-game value I got today after respecing my first Alt to Afterburner.

I am using the Agility Radial Paragon Alpha (which has a 33% movement speed bonus, 22% of which ignores ED.) A BotZ Knockback and Lvl 50 BotZ Fly Speed in Fly, and Lvl 50 Botz Fly Speed and BotZ Fly / Endurance Reduction in Afterburner (which also carries a new 5th LotG 7.5%), I am getting 87.95 MPH reported by combat monitor.

87.95 MPH was not quite the speed before I used some of the huge number of Enhancement Boosters I got out of the Super Packs. Before Boosters it was about 86.7 (I failed to write it down - duh). Applying 5 boosters to the Fly/Endurance in Afterburner got 87.95. To confirm the hard cap (at least for me ) I added 5 more boosters to the Fly Speed in Afterburner - no change. Then I +5'ed the Fly Speed in Fly, also no change. I don't think the extra's will be wasted, as they should kick in when exemplared below Alpha Slot goodness. Finally, I also applied a +5 boost to the generic Lvl 50 Fly IO in Swift, seeing no effect on Fly Speed but a nice increase in Hover.

Final enhancement percentages with the Alpha slot and Boosted IO slots is 86% + Fly Speed in Fly, and 115% + Fly Speed in Afterburner.

I tried to search up if there is a Fly Speed hard cap that has been stated, having no luck in the forums, and found two conflicting and lower numbers in the WIKI.

http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Flight_Powers
http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Limits

The Flight Powers article does mention Max Speed of 87.9 achieved with a 6 sloted Afterburner, all +5 boosted Lvl 50 Fly IO's experiment, but suggests that is not an actual cap but rather all that can be achieved within ED limits. The sequence above using the ED ignoring Agility Radial bonus would seem to indicate that there is in fact a hard cap, as adding +5 Boosters to the Fly Speed IO in Afterburner had no effect on the 87.95 Speed after it was first achieved with the +5 boosters to the Fly/Endurance BotZ.

Jak

Since the Boosters are not free I find when doing a generic IO 2 slot with Lvl 50's I find that +5 and +3 on the second is actually most efficient to hit ED max benefit suppression. The last two boosters to +5 both are pretty much wasted. When boosting in a set for a single aspect like Endurance Reduction or Defense the same thing may apply, depending on the exact structure of the set. It takes very little time to add and remove boosters one at a time in Mids to look for this sort of thing.

As for purple damage sets, +5 to the 4 enhancers with dual and triple aspects totally wastes some damage, but the other internals benefit greatly, especially Endurance Reduction (which really is inferior in purples) and Recharge. And if you do the 5 slot with the proc and no single damage, that rocks.

Another set I find that does great with a +5 across all 5 is a 5 slot Crushing Impact. On a power like Greater Fire Sword which has an inherent Accy bonus but is a terrible endurance hog, I dropped the Accy/Dam to 5 slot and was able to get both 84.51% Endurance discount and Recharge bonuses with 101.86 Damage, where the +5 Hecatomb in Incinerate has only 41.41% Endurance reduction and just slightly better Recharge at 97.39%. Really helped my endurance useage in my ST attack chain. I suspect other sets with all doubles and triples like Thunderstrike will do similar things.

Jak

At present my understanding of the proc is:

1) each trigger lasts 20 seconds.
2) it is part of a new class of procs. Their trigger chance is gated by X per minute, interacting with the base recharge of the actual power the proc is slotted in, which affects the chance to trigger.
3) If slotted in a power where the base chance is longer than or equal to the X times limit divided into 60 seconds the chance to proc is 100% if you hit ( on Might of the Tanker that is 60 / 5 = 12)
4) So if you put the +Res in a power with a base recharge time of 12 it will always trigger (if the power hits.) If you can enhance that power to to get hits every 6.5 seconds or so, you could maintain a 3 stack.

On a practical note, I put it in Fire Sword Circle (20 second base recharge) looking for multiple triggers per activation (oops), with an enhanced recharge of about 8 seconds. Since the Proc can only trigger once per activation, it keeps a double stack all the time, with about 1 sec of triple stack. Can't really improve the recharge time of FSC any further so I'll have to move it to Greater Fire Sword (base 12 sec) and see if that works for a triple stack.

Or I could just put it back in Scorch like I had it in Beta. That hits so often and is used at all times for brusing and AoE filler, that a triple stack usually occurs no problem.

Or I may be daed wrong. This new proc metric is pretty confusing to me.

Jak

I started a thread a few days ago in the Tanker forums asking about this so everything I just tried to say is better explained by others there.

If you only had a Complete SET of level 1-sies, then we could talk ...

I think we can consider a max of 1 trigger per activation as confirmed.

I put the Purple Proc in my Fire Sword Circle just now, and it never triggered more than once versus +1 X8 spawns. Even more hilarious, it sometimes missed completely on a fresh spawn, so I think, when in an AoE, it must only check the first X targets where X is a small integer. Having a 33% chance to fire vs 10 targets and missing them all, often enough to notice? I think not.

With an 8.5 second recharge I was able to maintain a double stack easily but never saw a triple. So probably going leave a 5 slot MotT in FSC and move a slot to Scorch for the Proc.

I know from BETA that a Purple proc in Scorch triple stacks easily.

Jak

According to the WIKI we are All using the wrong 'official' terminology.

The WIKI suggests ------- ATE (do they taste good or just Bite?)
------------------------------ or AE (that one would cause No Confusion, right?)

http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Archetype_Enhancements

Still I do agree having a single common referent for these enhancements will avoid confusion, and any use of IO in that referent really is misleading.

Jak

Blue, the purpled version of the ATOs that give 10% recharge have the same bonus name as the regular Purple set recharge bonus name and will hit the Rule of 5 limit.

Leave the ATO orange or sub it for a regular Purple. Subbing for a regular Purple to get the 5th 10% might be a better build choice anyway. I hate putting a Hecatomb in Brawl for instance .

Can Might of the Tanker trigger multiple times on a single activation of an AoE power?

If yes would that possibly use up all the availble triggers for a particular 'minute'? Could this cause an instant max stack of three but limit it to 20 sec. per minute?

If it can only trigger once per activation would the multiple targets in a typical AoE attack greatly increase the chance of at least one trigger?

Trying to figure out the best possible power to slot this Proc into, with the goal of being certain to have a triple stack at all times. I have a pretty fast cycling AoE that could be slipped into a ST chain if needed.

Or is the Bruising Tier one just always best? It can easily be inserted into an AoE chain.

Jak

To elaborate on the OP's 2nd question.

They are not construsted IO's and will not accept IO boosters, a possible factor in extreme builds.

Also, the baseline ATO's and the Catalyzed Purple of the same ATO, do not mix for set bonus purposes. Three of each type in the same power would mean two seperate sets of bonus 1 and 2. This may be an exploitable advantage in certain sets, but if you want set bonuses beyond the first two then all four, five, or six ATOs need to be one or the other.

Jak