Jitter

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4 > Darkest Night
This power is very similar to Radiat Infection in that it is a single target massive accuracy, damage and defense debuff that spreads to the surrounding enemies like a plague. Couple this with Tar Patch, and what you have, my friends, is a field of wheat, ready to be mowed down. While you have DN up, you are still using end, so be carefull.
Recommended Slotting: 1 defense debuff, 1 accuracy debuff, 2 end redux


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Darkest Night does not debuff defense.

It debuffs damage, and accuracy.

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Regardless of the numbers being correct or not, this is a great guide.

There is more information in it than numbers, and The Laughing Man has provided information on Hero Planning; Tactics; what powers actually DO, look like; how to use binds, ...

I am no numbers guru, infact, I am hopeless at them, so I can't comment of their correctness or lack of it, but it is obvious a lot of work went into this guide. Anyone reading it shouldn't let the prospect of a few incorrect numbers put them off some great information.

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QFT. The guide is good, just don't believe the numbers.

He's not really using the numbers as justification for taking one power or another, that is clearly based on experience, so it's not that big a deal that the numbers are wrong.

But seriously, City of Data is the best thing to ever happen to this game. I wish there were an official version.

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I have been working on my AR/NRG blaster and when playing with the hero planner I noticed it listed Boost Range as having a duration of only 15 seconds while you list it at 30?

Also, what is the actual bonus from boost range, the hero planner lists it as a 75% boost to range, so just under double normal range...

I wondered if you had some actual ingame numbers for Boost Range (so i can update my planner if I need to).

Thanks,

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iakona has:
+59.6% Range Enhancement to Self for 30 seconds [Ignores Enhancements & Buffs]

See:
http://www.nofuture.org.uk/cox/

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I believe the "mob can't die during the activation" issue is well known, but was determined to be very difficult to fix given the limitations of the game engine. In other words, I think it's been looked at, and was given a "ouch, sorry, can't help ya"

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Huh... Twilight Grasp works while the target is Dying.

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Twilight Grasp is not foe-centered. And Kinetics is not the only set with a foe-centered AoE that has this problem. I suspect that all foe-centered AoE's have this problem, but I won't say that I have a complete list.

I do know that ILL>Blind (small cone "sleep" in addition to ST hold) suffers from it. It's much harder to catch because of the faster animation of Blind, and the far more subtle effect of sleep (as well as the fact that it's easily broken by an AoE'ing team mate). But it is there, I've seen it.

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It happens with Glue Arrow, and Poison Gas Arrow, certainly.

Ok, here is my strategy.

Step 1: get a kinetic who knows how to debuff.
Step 2: have the kin pop 8 sturdies, 1 breakfree, and 4 lucks
Step 3: kin goes in, spamming fulcrum and siphon power
Step 4: team waits until second siphon power, and then moves in
Step 5: kill all the normal clocks while the kin keeps the clock king debuffed
Step 6: kill the clock king at your leisure, as long as the kin doesn't get mezzed and can keep debuffing and spamming transfusion for the -regen (and the heal is nice too)

Kinetics can duo the clock king with any other AT. Trivially. Rad is great at debuffing spawns...but kinetics owns them at single target debuffing.

As long as you have enough sturdies and lucks to take the alpha (which should be about 50% debuffed before you take it anyway), you are good to go (as long as you don't get mezzed).

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A fire tank can grab an entire room pull to one spot and set up for a nice aoe nuke. On the other hand yes if the eniemies are a little low yae we can cut though them

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Good, balanced, teams cut through 8man Invince spawns faster via run-n-gun than they can if the tank is "herding" them.

8man Invince spawns are already near the aggro cap. So you can't really herd more than 1 and a half spawns. And after you have them together, the best you can do is AOE them all to death...which is what you would do if you were fighting one spawn at a time, anyway.

Herding is not instantaneous. It takes time to get aggro, get them all to come to the corner you are pulling them to, etc.

The time cost of herding does not make it worth the (at most) 30-40% more critters you kill at one time. You can just kill 3 spawns of 12ish faster than you can kill 2 pulls of 17 (when you factor in the time to pull them).

Herding is a mindset that is left over from the early days, when there was no aggro cap, and there was no AoE cap. It is still a valuable skill, and a decent tactic, if your team is not well-balanced.

But it is not efficient xp per minute.

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As far as this player knows, this is the most efficient and effective way to clean out whole rooms full of baddies. It does NOT always work perfectly. Oftentimes in caves there is not a good corner to stack the mobs on. Sometimes pillars are used to stack them up. There are variations on the same theme though. The important thing is that noone but the herder draw aggro until the beatdown ciommmences.


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If you have a good team, it is much more efficient to run-and-gun, killing the bad guys where they stand.

A good team has enough AOE/damage to kill things quickly, enough control/taunt to mitigate the alpha round of attacks from the spawn, and enough buff/debuff/heals to withstand the rest of the fight.

It's not hard to get that team composition together via inviting the proper archetypes, for the proper team mix.

Sure, if you only have 1 tank and 1 healing defender, and a bunch of minus-4-to-the-mobs lowbies, then herding may be your only option for safety. But if you build a proper team, killing as you go is measurably faster.

Use HeroStats; measure your xp per minute. You'll find I speak the truth.

I use a bind-cycle to loop through all the phrases in a list.

It does use ActivePerl (which can be freely downloaded from Activestate).

Also it is totally clunky. Nonetheless, here is the script:

<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>
#!/usr/bin/perl

# Get arguments
$inputfile = $ARGV[0] || die; shift;

open SAYINGS, $inputfile or die "Cannot open $inputfile for read :$!";

while (&lt;SAYINGS&gt {
if ( /^.*key=(.*)$/ ) { $presskey=$1; print "Found key: $presskey\n";}
if ( /^outdir=(.*)$/ ) { $outdir=$1; }
if ( /^colors=(.*)$/ ) { $colors=$1; }
if ( /STARTSAYINGS/ ) { $insayings="yes"; next }
if ( $insayings ) {
chomp;
push (@revsayings, $_);
}
}

while ( $currsay = pop @revsayings ) {
push (@sayings, $currsay);
}

$i = 1;

while ( $currsay = pop @sayings ) {
if (@sayings) { $nextnum = $i + 1 } else { $nextnum = 1 }
print "$i ";
$out = $outdir . "spotted$i.txt";
open OUTFILE, "&gt;$out" or die "Cannot open $out for write :$!";
print OUTFILE "$presskey \"say $colors$currsay\$\$bind_load_file $outdir" . "spotted$nextnum.txt\"\n";
close OUTFILE;
$i++;
}

print "Done.\n";
</pre><hr />

And here is a sample input file:
<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>
key=y
outdir=c:\coh\minion\
colors=&lt;color #c60101ff&gt;&lt;bgcolor #0e0f0fff&gt;&lt;border #000000FF&gt;
STARTSAYINGS
Satin is the fabric of *my* life, $target!
$target, you look pretty soft. But not smooth enough!
Let's give this $target a dressing down.
I'd like to flatten that $target.
Let's soften up that $target.
I'm going to pound that $target flat.
Submit to smoothness, $target!
$target, I'd like to talk to you about your relationship with Satin.
I'm going to knock the starch out of you, $target!
I think $target is a Velvet worshipper. Destroy the infidel!
$target, you profane the sanctity of smooth.
$target, have you accepted Satin as your personal savior?
I don't cotton to your behavior, $target.
Thou shalt have no other fabrics before Satin, $target!
I'd like to iron a few things out with you, $target.
Repent $target! Cast aside your asumptuous ways!
Satin is my co-pilot, $target!
Come into the fold, $target.
Please don't make me get...rough...with you, $target.
</pre><hr />

This script would be run as such:
<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>c:\bin\generate.pl c:\coh\minion\sayings.txt</pre><hr />

It then creates a series of files in the output directory. After you load the first one of the files (c:\coh\minion\spotted1.txt in this case), the desired key (Y here) is bound to a saying.

When you press Y, it will say the saying and load the next file (rebinding Y to now do the next saying and load the 3rd file). The last file loads the first one.

This setup is nice because it goes through all my sayings in order, so you can use it to tell stories, jokes, etc. I have one sayings file with around 200 Chuck Norris jokes. (Infinity just *loves* Chuck Norris at Hami Raids. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.)

And, you don't have to have anything running at the time of playing the game, it generates the files and that's it.

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Can anyone tell me if Damage/Range Hammios work for cone or AOE range?

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They work for cone, just like normal range works for cone now. They removed the concept of "cone range" enhancements a while back. Before that change, the dmg/range would increase the range at which you could activate the cone, but would not extend the effects of the cone. So you could fire off a cone at something while it was actually out of range still.

I have not tested AoE. I would not expect them to work.

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Although I agree with you, you're wrong.

In game lingo, MOB stands for Mobile OBject

Remember back in the day when the enemies were stick figures, or even bouncing squares? Those were MOBs.

That said, I never call a single enemy a mob. I call them enemies, or baddies. For me, a spawn is the term used to describe the normal amount of enemies in a single group that are generated for your character, if solo, or your team.

So, for me, stating:
"I had three spawns of baddies in that room"
would be correct.

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I concur.

A "spawn" contains some number of "MOBs" (usually lowercased) in it.

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. . .In a "much less lifechanging" category, Damage Resistance insps were suggested repeatedly on the boards before being implemented.

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If only they were implemented as a separate drop category, instead of sucking up half the defense insps.

I always pop all the resist insps immediately, because they are less useful than any other insp. (Except breakfrees on someone with status protection.)

Does anybody actually *like* the resist insps? You have to pop so many to get any benefit that you are better off with the 100% defense that 4 lucks would give you.

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This includes powers such as Twilight Grasp and many Kinetic powers (typically, powers that affect one type of target one way, and another target in another way).

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Well now! Does this mean that Power Build Up will affect Transfusion's heal?

Or even, the damage buff from fulcrum shift?

That'd be swell.

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Collecting a ton of presents also nets you the Toy Collector badge. Not sure how many, exactly, or if it matters whether you're naughty or nice.

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Was this confirmed somewhere?

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Yeah? I collected over 50 so far...

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Outdated post. Collect 100 Nice presents.

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I beg to differ.

I got the Toy Collector badge immediately after opening my 200th present, which happened to be a Naughty one. I got exactly 58 "You recieved Present." lines of chat (i.e. Nice presents)

So I don't think it is 100 Nice presents. I think it is 200 openings, naughty or nice.

Thank goodness I saved this. This is the "select.exe" from the-kgb.org.

http://www.krotus.com/select.exe

Seriously, this bind generator is fantastic. I would be lost without it.

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