City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

Katie V

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  1. Katie V
    I've teamed with a Stone/Elec tank on a regular basis, and you're right about Lightning Rod: it's a great way to jump into a group. You're wrong about Chain Induction, though: it's not a pseudo-ranged attack, it's a pseudo-AoE.

    As for single-target damage, you've got two single-target attacks, a narrow cone, and a somewhat single-target attack in Thunder Strike. As long as you slot all four for recharge, you should be able to put together a decent single-target attack chain.
  2. Katie V
    Once you hit 32 and Upgrade Robot, your real strength will be massive AoEs, rather than concentrated single-target damage. You'll be able to steamroll in the x4-x8 range, while high +level enemies will be slow to take down. In part, this is because of how Incindiary Missiles work: the attack drops one AoE burn patch per target hit, meaning the damage dealt per target increases with the number of targets, up to 8 targets.
  3. Katie V

    Fan Problem

    POST-ACTION

    Fans get loud because they're spinning fast. Fans spin fast because the computer's getting hot. Computers get hot when they're trying to do something hard, or when their cooling isn't working properly.

    How old is this computer, and is it a desktop or a laptop?
  4. Katie V
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by FitzSimmons View Post
    Diddn't read all of the responses and I'm sure page 5 is already too deep for anyone to care but the reward system will be exploited. You don't need a crystal ball to see that.
    If they're using the same reward system that the Praetorian events are using, there's not a chance it will be exploited. You can only exploit a reward system if you can figure out how it works.
  5. Katie V
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Black Scorpion View Post
    In Issue 20 we made a fix to the limitation and can now flag powers like these as not counting as hits for purposes of things like suppressing Hide or triggering the in combat slotting check and related cooldown.
    Are you also planning on applying this to various "positioning" powers used by flying enemies?
  6. Katie V
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Bonnes View Post
    Defense - I remember that I liked having more than 45% Defense, such that I could take one Defense debuff and still be capped, having the ITF in mind. Are there other considerations that I should take into account now? I've heard something about Praetorian DE, and don't things in the new TFs have extra To-Hit? How much Defense do you think I should be going for?
    There are four levels of defense that matter:

    45%: This will protect you against almost all enemies that are less than +6 to you.
    59%: This will protect you against Praetorian/level 50 DE, Battle Maiden in the Apex TF, and probably a few others.
    70%: This will protect you against summoned pets.
    145% (attainable by a Katana/SR scrapper in Elude, and probably nobody else): This will protect you against Devouring Earth buffed by a Quartz Emanator.

    Quote:
    Accuracy - is 95% for +4s still a worthy goal?
    You will be facing +4s in the Apex and Tin Mage TFs, as well as the +4 AVs in the Statesman TF. Keep in mind that a Nerve Alpha enhancement will give you a good part of the accuracy you need for these guys.

    Quote:
    Recharge - When I last visited this character I was using the BF -> AV -> PS chain. Now with merits and other shinies, I should be able to work some LotGs into my build. Is there something else I should be keeping in mind here? How about perma-Hasten?
    For the typical scrapper, it is possible to have too much recharge. You probably won't have long-recharge powers that you want up as often as possible, so any recharge in excess of what you need to run your desired attack chain is wasted.
  7. Katie V

    Portal missions

    POST-ACTION

    Found one more: Angus McQueen has "Disrupt Rikti Portal Devices" as a Portal Corp. mission.
  8. Katie V
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by AnElfCalledMack View Post
    The big problem for a Fire tanker on LR is Endurance drains. Consume isn't going to hit through the orange tower, so you have no -End resistance and no recovery tool. Nearly any support set can help out (except Sonic, Dark, Traps and TA), either with End Drain resistance or +End/+Recovery powers. But without that, you'll be running dry in seconds.
    Stand next to the green tower. That give you something to hit with Consume, gives the Kin something to use to hit you with Transfusion, and so on.
  9. Katie V
    Data chunk for the broken file.

    Code: 
    | Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Hero Designer to view the build |
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|2|
|-------------------------------------------------------------------|
  10. Katie V
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Mega_Jamie View Post
    I dunno Katie,


    thats great, and so was Moos, but it doesnt take into consideration the time taken, and then your still stuck asking others how long it may take, and then you may as well ask others how hard it is.
    "Time taken" is easy to fix: since reward merits are related to time taken, just announce the base merit count up-front. Most people should be able to realize that a nine-merit Katie is much faster than a 122-merit Dr. Q.
  11. Katie V
    What's the best way to report a bug with Mids? One, and only one, of my saved builds is reported as corrupted by 1.92, but opens fine in 1.90.
  12. Katie V
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by AmazingMOO View Post
    I recommend a color-coded difficulty system that's shown whenever you talk to a TF contact.

    Blue: Beginner Challenge (New Posi 1, New Posi 2, Synapse, First respec)
    White: Moderate Challenge (SPTF -- Numina's TF, respecs)
    Yellow: Difficult Challenge (Shard TFs. LGTF)
    Orange: Very Difficult Chllange (ITF. Dr. Khan. Barracuda)
    Red: Extreme Challenge (LRSF, STF)
    Purple: Prerequisites required (Tin Mage, Apex)
    I'd say you've got far too much granularity here. There's really only one way to rate difficulty, and that's the frequency with which teams fail to complete the TF. I'd go as follows:

    Green: Almost never failed. The TF Commander TFs, the Shard TFs, etc.
    Yellow: Occasionally failed. The ITF, the LGTF, the Dr. Khan TF.
    Red: Often failed. The STF, the LRSF, the Apex TF, the Tin Mage TF, and the Barracuda SF.
  13. Katie V
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Miyabi View Post
    Tell that to my Fire Tank who still got two-shotted through four small purple inspirations every time I hit Taunt on Recluse.
    If I'm reading Mids correctly, a Fire tank has, at best, 45% resistance to energy damage. IIRC, with the red tower up, LR has an energy attack that hits for 6000 damage before resistance.

    Additionally, with the blue tower up, LR has a base 80% to-hit. If your tank doesn't have any defense, you need six small purples to be softcapped against him -- and between the purple patch accuracy bonus and the Archvillain accuracy bonus, he still has about an 11% chance of hitting you. With only four, he's got a 67.5% chance.
  14. Katie V
    It's not fragmentation for me. I get long load times even when loading from ramdisk.
  15. Katie V
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Father Xmas View Post
    Assuming your measurement is at the wall socket, which is AC watts, you are using even less depending on the efficiency of your PSU. With an 80% efficient PSU your computer is actually only using 180 DC watts, an 85% efficient PSU then 190 DC watts. Power supplies are rated at DC watts.
    That's measuring at the wall, then factoring in the PSU's efficiency rating.
  16. Katie V
    My evaluation of the alpha boosts for a Kinetics are as follows:

    1) The damage boost from Musculature is worthless. As a Kinetics, Fulcrum Shift should have you sitting at the damage cap from the moment you enter combat to 30 seconds after the mission ends (by the same token, normal damage enhancements are also of limited value).

    2) The endurance reduction from Cardiac is worthless. You can always find a target to refill your endurance bar from using Transference; if you can't, you aren't using endurance fast enough to have problems.

    3) The accuracy boost from Nerve is nice when fighting higher-level enemies (such as the +4s found in the Apex and Tin Mage TFs), but is largely unneeded most of the time.

    4) The recharge boost from Spiritual is nice, but because you should have significant global recharge from other sources, it's not as big as you'd expect.
  17. Katie V
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Roderick View Post
    Second, even when a cascade happens, when the 45% debuff drops you to 0% def and gives enemies a 50% chance to hit, the character with 0% base is now at -45%, and enemies have capped (95%) chance to hit. Finally, if your defense cascades to -45%, you'll still have your resistances to fall back on, and you'll have taken less hits while getting that low on defense.
    Going from 0% defense to -45% defense doesn't quite double the amount of incoming damage. Going from 45% defense to 0% defense creates a twenty-fold increase in incoming damage.

    Just like how every point of defense is worth more as you get closer to the softcap, each point of debuff hurts more the closer you get to the softcap. Even being debuffed by 5% from the softcap is worse than being debuffed from 0% to -45%.
  18. Katie V
    That one's surprisingly accurate. It estimated my computer's peak power consumption at 293 watts and recommended a 350-watt PSU; my measured peak consumption is 224 watts and I'm running on a 430-watt PSU with no problems.

    Most calculators grossly overestimate power consumption, recommending either a 550-watt or 650-watt PSU for my system.
  19. Katie V
    Are you on the US servers or the European servers? The copy tool for the European servers has problems from time to time.
  20. Katie V
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by shaggy5 View Post
    Sorry, I tried to find this on the forums. I can't figure out how to search well.

    Anyway, on my Stone/Stone, do I slot for the obvious (recharge) or the more helpful (in some ways) Damage?
    My stone tank's got three alpha enhancements:

    1) Cardiac, for soloing. When you're spending five minutes pounding an EB into a pulp, endurance is something of an issue.
    2) Spiritual, for general teaming. The faster I can fire off Taunt and my AoEs, the better things go.
    3) Nerve, for high-level TFs. All the damage in the world won't help you if you can't hit.
  21. Katie V
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Syntax42 View Post
    Thanks. I forgot to mention this. I thought every Stone Tanker automatically knew that Teleport was mandatory.
    I hope you're being sarcastic here, because my stone tank didn't take Teleport until level 49. Instead, I used a variety of runspeed IOs to increase my mobility.
  22. Katie V
    The biggest difficulty I've found in soloing Giant Monsters is their habit of running all over creation -- the first GM I soloed on my bots/traps took 45 minutes, because Babbage insisted on taking the grand tour of Boomtown. I've gotten better at controlling them so they run *through* the poison gas cloud rather than away from it, but it's still annoying.
  23. Katie V
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Cyber_naut View Post
    After tuesday patch, it takes forever for the game to get past the 'loading' bar, anybody else having this issue?
    Yes. In particular, the console is reporting "Loading texture headers" as taking 40+ seconds, where it took far less in the past.
  24. Katie V
    Boot Camp isn't emulation. An Intel Mac is a fully Windows-compatible computer; Boot Camp is basically a bootloader that lets you install a copy of Windows alongside a copy of MacOS.
  25. Katie V
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Wavicle View Post
    Leaving your pets on Defensive all the time is a great way to not contribute to a team.

    Most teams I play have either so much defense, so much control, or so many debuffs that Defensive MM pets are just going to stand around not doing anything.
    I manage all right. I try to move faster than the tank, so that I'm the one the alpha misses, which is enough to get my bots going. I've also got Provoke to pick up stray aggro, or pull additional groups into the zone of destruction.

    If the tank is faster than me, I'll leave my assault bot on aggressive, my protector bots on defensive, and use the battle drones for targeted attacks.