Jealous_deva

I agree about the recharge issues, could you do a pass on that as well?

Compare say:

glue arrow to lingering radiation.
disruption arrow to tar patch or freezing rain

For some reason, perhaps due to stacking issues, these seem to be based on having significant downtime even with hasten + 6 recharges, and frankly no one can do anywhere close to that anymore.

IMHO all of the debuffs of trick arrow aside from EMP arrow should be up 10 or 20 seconds after the effect is over when slotted with 3 recharges, just as tar patch and freezing rain are.


So:

Glue arrow (recharge is about 1.5x as long as it really should be)

Disruption arrow (recharge is about 1.5x as long as it really should be)

Oil slick arrow (I could understand if this one has a fairly large delay but I think it should be up about half the time with 3 recharges perhaps? So again 1.5x the recharge as it should be?)

Any word on endurance changes? Snap shot and ranged shot seem a bit off (not sure which one, but when cycling them I run dry on my blaster faster than other sets).

I agree with the above, perhaps mixed damage types would be key here where appropriate?

For example, say 20% of an attack could be changed to a "secondary" type for those resisted types.

My suggestions:

Assault rifle: secondary damage smashing, getting hit by a bullet imparts a lot of force, breaking ribs even through kevlar armor

Archery: secondary damage smashing, see assault rifle

Electrical blast: Secondary damage fire, electricity burns

Sonics: I think these are lethal now? If so this makes no sense, it should be split 50/50 smashing energy.

Psi: Psionic tornado: Smashing, Mental blast and will domination: Negative energy. Psychic scream: half smashing, half energy as per sonics

Radiation: Negative energy. Positrons and whatnot

Broadsword: Smashing, you're hitting someone rather hard

Axe: Smashing, see above

Claws: Energy, just look at focus or shockwave's animations

Martial arts: Psionic, to represent Ki of course

Katana: Smashing or psionic "Ki" damage

Mace: Lethal (it has spikes on it)

Super strength: Energy for the sonic factor and the animations

Stone melee: I'm at a loss, maybe energy for the punchy ones and lethal for the mallety ones?

You know, this is sort of off topic for this thread, but now there *are* fire defense sets and ice defense sets.

Perhaps Thermal resonance and cold domination should be added for controllers for the sake of flavor?

I think grav/kinetics, grav/force field, and grav/sonics already go together well (rather obvious how these could be connected, as well as mind/kinetics (telekinesis), mind/emp (empathy).

Earth/storm makes perfect sense together as well.

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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.

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It's somewhat akin to the following:

A Scrapper using a Defense power that does damage would deal more damage than a Tanker using that power in his Primary.

A Tanker using an attack that raises his Defense would get more bonus than a Scrapper. (Unfortunately, the only attack for which this applies is Parry, and weapon Tankers don't get it)

A Defender using a Secondary that debuffs an enemy should get a greater (or longer duration) debuff. (Sonic Attack is probably the only real example of this, although Rad's -Def debuff would theoretically apply. Plus, Electric was intentionally changed to drain more End for Defenders)


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Well, these examples are all pretty much true (Scrapper damage auras do more dmg than tanker ones, defender secondaries are better at debuffing, blaster secondary melee attacks do more damage overall than scrapper ones, etc.

I think really, what the problem not that controllers are better with defender control powers. It's twofold:

1. There's not enough difference between the debuffs, buffs and heals between the two classes to make much difference.

Take say damage resist debuffs. If one enervating field adds on average 33% damage, and one adds 25%, that's a total of 133 vs 125 damage done on a base 100 points of damage. Its not a difference of 25%, it's only really a difference of about 10% in effectiveness changed. Same for say siphon power or fulcrum shift.

Now I'm a controller mainly, so I don't think they should be skewered in their secondaries, but I will say I wouldn't particularly mind going from a base of 75% debuffs and heals to a base of 65%. It just isn't going to affect my life that much, accounting for the fact that my controls from storm are indeed better.

But I think that 10% or so is all that should be adjusted on the controller end at most, because I know most people aren't storm and any more would be really unfair to emp, kin or rad controllers for example.

But, also, given that ed cut defender buff effectiveness by essentially 50% across the board for enhancable buffs, heals and debuffs, perhaps there's enough room for say a 10% increase to defender buffs and debuffs as well? Say for all non-damage, non damage resist buffs, debuffs, and heals they're a base 10% better than now. That would put the maximum attainable buff still well below what was possible pre-ed, but if both the above were done defenders would be almost twice as good at buffing and debuffing non-damage things as compared to controllers while still not competing with blasters at damage.

Blasters and scrappers were given a similar boost to damage when ED was implemented (either directly or indirectly), why not help defenders a bit too?

2. Defender secondaries' secondary effects need to be looked at. I'd like to see the debuff/end drain/etc effects increased to more noticable levels (even if we have to lose debuff enhancability of those powers to keep it from being abusable). I'd like to see archery give some sort of defense debuff or similar thing to make it more comparable to the other sets. Right now the effects are trivial, if I'm hitting a target chaining both of the single target dark blasts and night falls I'd like to really notice that he isn't hitting much. If I'm throwing mental blast, tk blast, and will domination on someone he should noticably be not attacking very much. If I hit someone with 4 or 5 electric attacks he should pretty much be end drained.

I'm talking like something in the range of say a 20% unenhancable stackable debuff for single target attacks, and 10% for area affect attacks, or something of the like, variable by attack power of course, with a long duration. I should reasonably be able to get a boss near the to-hit floor by dumping 5 or 6 single target dark attacks on him (considering this takes a good 30 seconds to do). The recharge cap should be reachable with 5 or 6 psi attacks (what, I can permasleep someone almost with will domination but I can't make him attack less?). 5 or 6 single target elec attacks should reasonably drain a boss. Energy should have high enough knockback chances that you can keep someone off their feet most of the time by focusing all 3 attacks on them.

You get the idea. This would help defenders so much, it would give them a real secondary powerset and it would justify them actually blasting a bit in groups.

One thing I'd like to point out re storm.

The MOVEMENT slow is a control.

The RECHARGE slow is certainly a DEBUFF, and is not a control in any way.

If the -recharge are not currently greater for defenders on storm powers and lingering radiation, then they certainly should be.

I could also swear the movement slow is weaker on controller freezing rain than defender freezing rain, so the slow thing seems to be applied inconsistently across the board.

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While few enemies are especially vunlerable to Mental attacks, comparatively few have defense against it, either.

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Are you insane?

Seriously this is the most completely 180 degree wrong thing I've seen a dev post in a long time.

I run an illusion storm controller in the mid 20s.

Things that have high defenses (50% res or higher) against psi that I've run into:

Arachnos bots
Council bots
Sky raider bots
Banished pantheon minions (yes, ALL of them)

So, of all the enemies I'm fighting, virtually half of them have minions or leiuts that have psi resists. Not just psi resists, but huge, gigantic psi resists.

One of the most common enemy groups I fight is composed almost entirely of minions that have 50% psi resist.

I'll put this in bold capital letters so you know it is important:

ALMOST HALF THE MISSIONS I RUN HAVE MINIONS OR LEIUTENENTS THAT RESIST PSI IN AMOUNTS OF 50% OR MORE.

PSI IS NOT A RARELY RESISTED DAMAGE TYPE. IT IS ONE OF THE MOST RESISTED DAMAGE TYPES IF NOT THE MOST RESISTED IN THE GAME

again, so you really understand it:

PSI IS NOT A RARELY RESISTED DAMAGE TYPE. IT IS ONE OF THE MOST RESISTED IF NOT THE MOST RESISTED DAMAGE TYPES IN THE GAME

once more

YOU CAN NOT THROW A CAT POST LEVEL 20 WITHOUT HITTING A PSI RESISTANT ENEMY WITH IT


Thank you.

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Tell me Heph, what is more effective for taking out a group? Fire Breath and Fireball, or Dragon's Tail?

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Spine burst, throw spines, ripper, and quills?

Combustion, breath of fire, and fire sword circle?

Compare apples to apples here, when you compare the AOE sets AR and fire are a bit ahead of spines and fire melee, but not much, and the latter two have an order of magnitude better ability to deal with return fire.

If you're going to compare non-aoe focused sets, I don't think you'll find much arguement that even claws, broadsword, and katana can pretty much wipe the floor with elec, ice, or energy in effective pre-nuke aoe damage.

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FoU-->F-->S-->Ev-->F-->S: 7.16 DPS

This setup is somewhat easier to slot for damage in FoU as well because 3 AccBuff SO’s and 3 Acc’s aren’t a requirement. One damage in FoU gives 7.25 DPS and two gives 7.34 DPS. Thus using ToHit Buffs in Follow Up and dropping Accuracies in other attacks gives a good boost. In this way it is very similar to Focused Accuracy but without the painful endurance cost (using Follow Up can actually lower DPE slightly, but not nearly on the scale of FA).


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You're shorting Follow up here. You're comparing a follow up with 3 tohit buffs to attacks with just one SO - but a follow up with that many to hits is going to be putting out an accuracy boost in excess of 2 SO's.

To get a comparable accuracy boost to an SO, you would need no to-hit buffs in follow up and could leave follow up just at 2 ACC/ 4 DMG (you could go 1/5 I guess but if you're relying on FU for acc you're goint to REALLY want it to hit on the first go round). With that slotting follow up should be pretty handily above the focused accuracy mark.

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That's two bugs (both of which were fixed and are in the pipeline). Neither are crash bugs. When you go live, there are inevitably some bugs - nothing is perfect. We need to make our judgment whether an issue holds up release or not.

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The energy absorbtion bug is a game-stopping bug if you're ice armor and depend on it to keep you alive. The issues with dark armor that have been present for months now are game stopping issues for people with dark armor characters. Something doesn't have to kick you out to the desktop to be an issue worthy of prioritization.

Lets put it this way: If there were a bug which crashed the game and kicked you out to the desktop when you picked a character with dark armor, would this be enough to stop work on an issue? When critical powers are broken in a set it's just as severe to a player as if they were kicked out to the desktop. In both cases they don't play the character and either have to play alts or leave the game.

The thing is this:

If this were a paid expansion or a new game, I'd understand pushing it out the door. Budgets run dry, and sometimes you need cash flow to continue, to hire necessary people, etc. Fine, it's not a great thing but it's understandable.

But no one is making any money on this. It's a free update. The chrismas window was missed, so you can't even say it was an issue with the update affecting christmas sales. Releasing a free update with known bugs that breaks parts of the game that were previously working when there's no financial pressure just seems insane.

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EXACTLY. Bosses weren't meant to be solo-able UNLESS a particular player used Inspirations & strategy. Hence, the Help text & tutorial indicate that a player "probably" should get other friends to take out a boss.

Some builds are clearly better than others at taking out bosses.

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If that's supposed to be the case, why is it that bosses litter door missions and the streets? Why is an enemy that's supposed to be overpowering for a single character thrown against heroes every time they take a mission?

Lets think about comic books here. The marvel universe, for example. You have the solo comics like wolverine or spiderman and the group comics like fantastic four or x-men.

There are different classes of villians in these comics. Spiderman might have to face the green goblin or venom. The green goblin and venom are tough, but spider-man usually beats them by the end of the comic. Wolverine might have to face say lady deathstryke or omega red, and he might have a serious fight on his hands, but he beats them by the end of the comic. I generally consider these villians to be in the 'boss' class.

A step up from that there are villians like the joker or sabretooth. These are villians that are still faced by solo heroes, but the hero usually is outmatched and either doesn't win decisively or needs help or some kind of special circumstances to finally beat the enemy. I generally think of these as elite bosses.

Then you have villians like Magneto and Doctor doom. These villians have lots of henchmen, and generally a group like the fantastic four or x-men is needed to fight them effectively. I think of these villians as arch-villians.

Finally you have the ubervillians. Villians like apocalypse, dark pheonix, galactus, thanos, doomsday, etc. I think of these as raid monsters, it might take 20 heroes in the comic books to actually take one down.


Now, what you're saying is that bosses are more like sabretooth or the joker, elites are like dr. doom or magneto, and archvillians are more like galactus or apocalypse.

Which is fine. But wolverine doesn't fight sabretooth in every comic. Batman doesn't fight the joker every time he walks out of the batcave. Direct encounters with these characters are usually reserved for the ends of story arcs, special anniversery issues, etc.

Now the X-men and the justice league do regularly fight enemies like sabretooth or the joker in every comic. That's fine, because people expect the x-men to be able to deal with more than wolverine or batman would be able to deal with alone.


So why are there bosses literally littering the streets in COH? Why do av type enemies pop up regularly post-40? Shouldn't these encounters be reserved for special occasions or missions directly marked as group? Why can't there be a tab for group missions and solo missions when you talk to a contact?

Or why not just have a section in the difficulty slider for solo? There could be a notch below default marked "Hero usually works alone." Picking this notch would let you not get missions with AVs, not get missions with multiple time bombs, and make any bosses in the mission even or -1.

Telekinesis 4TW. Go mind controllers.

Really though this doesn't affect the main reason stat effects are deadly, toggle dropping. Pvp the main reason to use them won't be to hold, it'll be to break toggles.

Looking over the brawl index, recharges, and end usage for single target attacks in the game, most of them seem to have a pretty clear progression as far as the ratios between these numbers, regardless of things like secondary effects and the powers in the rest of the sets.

There are a few powers, however, that seem to be out of alignment in regard to this. Most notably:

Subdue in the defender psychic blast set.
Propel and lift in the gravity controller set.

These attacks seem to have damage classes that are too low for their recharges and endurance usage despite the fact that other attacks in other sets which are nearly identical in effect have the correct damage/activation/endurance ratios (levitate vs lift for example, or subdue vs crippling axe kick).

Can these attacks be looked at and either adjusted downwards in cost or upwards in damage, or barring that some reason be given for the discrepancy?


Also, some attacks still seem to have excessively long activation times for the damage they do and/or effects they have. Mental blast in the defender psy set, swipe/barb swipe in claws and spines, slash in claws, parry in broadsword, propel in gravity control, etc. Could these attacks be looked at and perhaps be truncated as the long martial arts attacks were?

yeah sorry 1/3 the damage for subdue, my math is off lately I was comparing the listed base to what subdue was doing for me but forgot to take into account slotting. Anyway, I'm not saying subdue is the best attack ever or anything. What I am saying is that lets say you're level 25 or so, you have perma hasten and stamina so the end isn't as big of a deal, especially with the end bonus on test. You have one really great cone aoe, one long-range high-damage single target power with a recharge of about 5 secs, one long-range high-damage single target power with a sleep with a recharge of about 8 secs.

You can cycle those two and come nowhere near being in a continuous attack chain. With subdue, you have a nice little moderate damage attack with a nice effect you can throw in between blasts for about half the damage of the other two and a useful side effect. There's really no other power in the set that fills that role, Mental blast has too long of a cast time, it steps on your other powers, PL is fine as an opener but once they're shooting at you it's too much of a risk.

Assuming I want to kill a single mob from a distance, here's the general pattern: TK blast from max range, run away if everyone follows, stay if just the guy I'm looking for does. Back up and let him follow out of group aggro range. Subdue, then mental blast (will replace this with will domination when I get it). Total damage: About the same as PL with 2 seconds left, and I can continue to chain the set rather than waiting 18 seconds to fire another shot if it doesn't kill the guy.

The imm effect on subdue seems to be hitting about 75% of the time. When it doesn't hit it's just a matter of backing up a bit for the next recast, no prob. The only thing that can match me in range is the occasional burst or slug, most stuff you are out of range anyway.

But, the thing is one enemy per 18 second PL is a really crappy way to play anyway. Rather than doing all that above, I could have just ran up to the group of 3-4, thrown darkest night on the leuit, backed up to range, hit psychic scream while they're still packed up, thrown out a pet gaze at the leuit, then used subdue + tk blast to kill a minion or two, hit them up with another psychic scream, etc. How would PL help me in any of that? None, the moment some minion gets a lucky shot in I just wasted 6 seconds and 20 end.

I guess it really all comes down to playstyle... I'm not the biggest fan of stand-off sniping guys one at a time, it's a waste of my defender primary powers. For what I do, subdue is the better attack by far.

I really don't get it... Why do you all hate subdue and love psychic lance? Ok, yeah subdue is a bit pricey in end for the damage (though on test it's much better, only 10 end). But, it takes no time at all to get off a subdue. Psionic does twice the damage, drinks twice the end, and takes 5 seconds to get off. Not that psionic lance doesn't have its uses, though, I just don't see why you hate one but love the other.

Subdue will probably be a part of my attack chain permanently. It's quick enough to throw in between the two heavy single targets without interfering with them. It lets me snipe people at maximum range without fear of retaliation. What more do you need?