Kelenar
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Posts
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Joined
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Quote:Cole never put out death warrants for my character, encouraged his subordinates to fight to the death for no reason other than that it builds character, or made speeches about his plan to plunge the entire world into anarchy for sheer eeeeEEEEEEEVVVVvvvvvIIIIIIIiiiiiiiillllLLLLL. Recluse is pretty much the least empathetic villain in the game.Originally Posted by Golden Girl
That's another weird thing I've noticed about the loyalists - they complain about serving Recluse and Arachnos, but they seem to be falling over themselves in their desire to serve Tyrant and his thugs
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Quote:Most excellent.Originally Posted by Dr_Darkspeed
a TV version of Good Omens, with Terry Jones involved!
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Quote:Yeah, agreed. I have a Powers Loyalist who ended up a Rogue, and really, she has no beef with Cole. She did her time under him, she pretty much ended up the Praetorian equivalent of a rock star, and then she went to the Isles to do her own thing. If she finds out Cole plans to invade Primal Earth, well, what does she care? If you forced her to pick one of the two societies to survive, she'd go for Praetoria in a heartbeat. Primal Earth is just that place she can take people's stuff more openly, and she'd rather have Cole than Recluse any day of the week.Originally Posted by Scarlet Shocker
I am coming from the perspective that it is in my character's enlightened self-interest to serve Cole and his vision. Sure, my toon need not be pleasant and nice but Cole is tougher than me, I know what side my bread is buttered and working with him is a good bet. He is the man in control (mostly - yes I take on board the view that Praetoria is also chaotic too) but I can carve a name for myself amongst Cole's greatest henchmen by serving him faithfully and well, thus accumulating power for myself. If the other Praetors can do that, then I can be so much better - after all I believe in myself.
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Man, and I'm still trying to find a single good reason I should get a smartphone.
Quote:Funnily enough, my company is looking into issuing iPads to factory floor engineers, because they need highly-portable computers they can use without being at a desk.Originally Posted by Warp_Factor
Now, there have been posters pointing out that the iPad isn't a serious work computer, and that's absolutely true. -
Well, getting into more detail... If I were trying for a 'survive anything AE can throw at me' team, it'd be something like...
1 Cold Domination
1 Forcefield
1 Empathy
1 Traps
1 Kinetics
1 Dark Miasma
1 Radiation Emission
1 ???. Maybe a Controller for good measure.
Corruptor or Defender doesn't matter much, blast sets don't matter much--I'd probably go for about a 50/50 split between Archery and Sonic. All running Tactics. Fully buffed, a team like this has effectively unlimited recovery, is well past the soft cap, has high resistance to hold, immobilize, disorient, fear, sleep, and confusion, with decent slow resistance, and has high +Perception and good +ToHit. Enemies can be hit with high levels of AoE -ToHit, -speed, -recharge, -def in the first few seconds of the fight. Against mobs that are still too dangerous to tackle head-on, they could let Seeker Drones take the fall while they set up debuffs, and they'd have Tar Patch and several AoE slows to keep things at range. Anything that wants to melee has to deal with Force Bubble.
Taking a team like this out, I'd try the following things:
1. Counter-debuffs. Things like Darkest Night and Radiation Infection are ranged, auto-hit debuffs, and they're also AoE: The Defenders would have to spread out to avoid them, which weakens the effectiveness of things like Dispersion Bubble.
2. Hard-to-resist effects. -Fly and -special, for example. Things it's very rare for players to be able to do anything about.
3. Lots of enemies, either through amubushes or powers like Gang War. Once fights get significantly past the target cap, debuffs and controls become less useful forms of mitigation.
4. Grab bag status protection. Rather than try making every enemy immune to everything, I'd just spread the immunity around so that any given debuff probably fails to bother a couple of enemies. Maybe put a few Dispersion Bubble types in there for basic mezz protection too.
5. Lots of +ToHit. Seriously, any damage dealer not packing Aim or Build Up is probably a waste.
6. Lots of ambushes. Makes debuffs offer less mitigation if the enemies have a good chance of getting the first strike.
It's a fight I'd be interested in seeing, but my money would still be on the Defenders, unless you started adding things like ambushes of 30 bosses or groups of 10 AVs or something. And even then... -
Well, just Arctic Air wouldn't be enough to be a showstopper, I think... powers like Tar Patch would keep them at range, and the Defenders could just hover anyway. (Which is why I said Spines/SR, really--slow resistance and a ranged -Fly.) Clarity, Steamy Mist, and Clear Mind also give Confuse protection, so I'm not sure Arctic Air would bother a prepared team of Defenders much even if the enemies could get into range.
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In addition to what you listed, you'd probably want good +Perception for the Stalker mobs. And as usual, I think an all Defender/Corruptor team could steamroll 95% of it, with the possible exceptions being things like ambushes of a bunch of Spines Stalker AVs with Build Up and Elude.
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Quote:My experience is that the AI that runs the Lightning Storm doesn't aggro against things outside of the power's default range, so range slotting is useless. At least, I 5-slotted Lightning Storm with Damage/Range HOs way back in like i3, hoping I'd get a pet nuke-sniper out of it, but it didn't seem to shoot any farther at all. I guess it might help it shoot runners that have already aggro'd it, though.Originally Posted by Carnifax_NA
Range of the attacks. It always pops up over your head.
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Quote:'Gear' (enhancements in CoH) matters very, very little. The baseline enhancement is SOs, and even the end-game content can be done on those. They can be slightly hard to afford on your first character, but they're pretty damn cheap in the larger scheme of things--after you have some idea of how the game works, it's almost trivial to keep slotted up with good ones. The higher-level enhancements, Invention Origins, are pretty much strictly a luxury item--they're nice to have, but nobody's going to kick you out of a team over not having them. Like I said, you can do all the end-game stuff on SOs that cost a pittance.Originally Posted by Abbadon
How is leveling? Is it looking for a item that drops 2% of the time of a creature that spawns always? Or is a 100% drop that gets you closer to the epic boss battle?
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My Dominator's Toxic Tarantula is so close to perma that the downtime is almost unnoticeable and rarely dies while soloing at x8 unless I let it run off into another spawn... but I also recently figured out that it and my Animated Stone combined only contribute a really small amount of my DPS. Maybe 15% of it in AV fights if I err really generously in their favor. On the other hand, having two pets around to soak up the aggro from uncontrolled enemies actually improves my survivability a good bit. If one of those Energy Melee Longbow Wardens dodges a hold or two in a row, they can level me in one hit... unless they decide to punch my pets instead, giving me enough time to mezz them.
Toxic Tarantula's merits: Sometimes it gets punched instead of me, looks cool, takes a relatively cheap set that gives +6.25% recharge, probably contributes some damage occasionally.
Toxic Tarantula's drawbacks: It isn't Sleet, and the slots I gave it could have theoretically been put in a different power. -
My very first character was Comrade Crush, a SS/Invuln Tanker. Directly based on the custom character I'd made in Freedom Force who could pretty much solo the entire game (High strength + high speed = running around at mach 2 throwing cars at people. Obviously that didn't quite carry over to CoH that well.) I figured out within about five levels that the combo wasn't for me. I think my next few characters, in no particular order, were a Fire/Devices Blaster (I didn't know it was super-powerful back then, and I deleted him before Smoke Grenade) and a Broadsword/Invuln Scrapper. ... these are all three combos that I wouldn't even touch today. I don't think I have a single character from my first year still around. My first 50 was a Storm/Elec Defender, but I deleted him over the pre-CoV lack of slots, so my oldest extant character is Kaelinia, my Katana/DA Scrapper I made way later.
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Quote:Toxic Tarantula and Animated Stone. Now that I think of it, they probably added a little bit more than that, just because the 290 is from a rough estimate that doesn't account for the time spent activating Hasten, Consume, Domination, and Embrace of Fire.Originally Posted by GavinRuneblade
Which pets?
Yeah, I was reading the intermission all morning while I worked on this, so when I tried to figure out what sort of AV to drop in the casino map, it seemed appropriate.Quote:Originally Posted by Symar
I see we have an MSPA fan here. -
Alright, using an AV.
Here is my friend. He is a level 51 Archvillain with 28868.6 HP, and he regens 96.23 HP/second. I took him down in 2 minutes, 12 seconds (12:13:13 to 12:15:25) with no temps or insps. Now it's time to figure out what that means.
Edit:
Using UberGuy's formula: 315 DPS.
Using my formula: 315 DPS.
So, I think I've found my answer. That seems right--I did the math on my own DPS without the pets and it was around 290. I guess they don't contribute as much as I'd thought. -
Quote:Ahh, hadn't thought of that, cool. I'm guessing for an AV with no resists, it would be...Originally Posted by UberGuy
Try using a custom AV who has no attacks in the AE. You can set their level in your mission difficulty so that you cancel out your level shift. You will have to account for their Regen, but Pylons regen too. You can account for that in calculation.
DPS * time = AV's base HP + (AV's regen rate * time)
which leads to
DPS = (AV's base HP + (AV's regen rate * time))/time
As I understand it, since the level shift behaves, well, like you're a level higher than normal, it gives bonuses to your damage, to-hit chances, and mezz durations, which seems like it would distort your DPS against a target that isn't level 51.Quote:Originally Posted by Nihilii
As for level shift, well, it's part of your DPS. I'm rather baffled as to why people act like it doesn't count, or is cheating or whatever. -
Quote:On the other hand, like Necrotech pointed out upthread, Volcanic Gasses doesn't take hold instantly. It hesitates a moment or two before casting the first hold, and each time it casts a hold, it only hits a 10-foot radius instead of the 30-foot radius most AOE holds get. If the pseudopet AI is being dumb, it can completely ignore some enemies... and in my experience, this happens. Even if it plays it smart, it still takes a few applications to get everything held. So, while other control sets get an instant hold in the entire AoE, Earth gets a hold that takes 10 seconds or so to become fully effective, but hits higher magnitudes and lasts longer.Originally Posted by Golden_Avariel
Doesn't it have a 1.0 base accuracy instead of the 0.8 that most mass holds have too?
My controllers are SO envious of the earth controllers. Theirs is not only more accurate out of the box it also holds adds drawn into the AOE afterwards and now we see it is stacking holds? LOL -
I'm wondering what my Dominator's DPS is. It's complicated a bit by the fact that a decent chunk of my damage comes from two pets, which makes it kind of pointless to even try calculating. I considered trying a Pylon, but it looks like they have 500 magnitude hold protection, and there's no way I'm breaching that, nor do I have the defense to survive against one. So, as far as I can tell, I have two options:
1. Find a friendly Forcefield/ Defender to softcap me and my pets while we fight the pylon... and I don't know any Forcefield Defenders, and it might be a little difficult to get a stranger to help me with this and not interfere by attacking it.
2. Find some other method of measuring my effective DPS. I was considering using an AV, but that would be complicated by their regen, plus my level shift, plus the fact that most of them have uneven resistance to the damage types I'm putting out.
I figured that if anybody knew, it'd be the Scrapper forum. -
Quote:Not that long at all, really. Just took Valkyrie with a no-insps no-temps run, and she took just shy of three minutes (9:19 AM on the dot to 9:21:42). Of course, then she promptly rezzed and went into MoG and I had to flee. It's also notable that I think she's a little light on the S/L resist, which helps, since my pets actually seem to contribute a decent chunk of damage. I know ARCH-A, my first experiment with all this, seemed to drop significantly faster after I resummoned them.Originally Posted by Soulwind
Heh, "so this here is my AV killer" . . . .
"Sure it takes about 3 hours to actually drop the AV, but he never moves after the first 20 seconds"
I've never tried that. I think I'll have to take one of my higher level guys and try to spec him out for nothing but hold and recharge and give it a try
Edit: I thought three minutes seemed a little fast. I just noticed from the screenshot that she spawned at 49 despite me setting the mission at +1. That probably made a good chunk of the speed--when I fought ARCH-A, he took at least five minutes, and it seemed like Ms. Liberty was longer than that too, even without Unstoppable.
That said, I'm not sure if I'd really encourage anybody to go for the super-hold route (as opposed to the super-confuse route Mind/ gets or just playing a more traditional AV-soloing AT) unless you just really like Dominators. There are a number of problems--for one, most godmodes either grant the AV lots of status resistance or give them high defense, which makes it really hard to keep them held. I'm not sure if AVs can activate them while held or not. Ms. Liberty hit her Unstoppable when I fought her, but I was occasionally getting split-second gaps in my hold where she could attack without moving from the Fossilize position. Plus, you have to survive the first 10-20 seconds of the AV being unheld (playing tag with your immob helps here, as does letting your pets take the brunt of their anger.) And a really high recharge dom build probably costs significantly more than a comparably capable high-defense Scrapper build.
But hey, I was going for absurd recharge anyway, so it's a fun side effect.
Valkyrie and Liora Kate getting close. -
Liora Kate would eat through the bars (eating anything is about the closest thing to an innate superpower she has) and promptly get blown to Kingdom Come by the explosives. She kind of lacks sound judgment like that.
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Quote:Like Necrotech_Master said, Domination doesn't affect Volcanic Gasses. But yes, an Earth/ permadom can hold an AV through PToD with enough recharge. That's why I asked in the first place, actually. My Earth/Fire permadom is currently capable of soloing AVs by permanently holding them*, and I'm getting ready to respec her a little. I want to make sure I don't screw it up too badly, and I'm trying to figure out just where to stick one spare slot I have.Originally Posted by Roderick
This gave me an odd idea, so I pulled out Mids' and slapped together a quick Earth/Earth dom build. Since it wasn't a serious build, all I worried about was getting 95% Recharge and Hold Duration in Fossilize, Seismic Smash and Volcanic Gasses, enough global recharge for perma-dom, and a Spiritual Core Paragon.
All the numbers below use the non-Domination durations, since that's how long the max strength of the Holds lasts. In practise, you'd be seeing higher numbers.
Fossilize is mag 6 for over 30sec, with a <2 sec recharge.
Seismic Smash is mag 4 for almost 25 sec, with a <5 sec recharge.
Volcanic Gasses is perma; it can be resummoned a few seconds before it despawns.
An attack chain of Fossilize - Smash - Fossilize - (filler) with(filler) being Domination, Hasten or Volcanic Gasses as they come up, or whatever filler you want (Stone Prison with Grav. Anchor proc!) should be able to keep the max level of Hold on a target.
Using the mag 12 value for Gasses, and assuming Smash stacks 4 times (for mag 16) and Fossilize stacks 15 times (for mag 90!), that's a mag 118 Hold, plus spikes for Domination's extended duration, spikes in Gasses mag, and bonuses from procs.
What's the magnitude of an AV's Hold protection when they have PToD up? I know this is enough when the triangles point down, but would it hold an AV for as long as you could keep it up?
*Footnote: But still require two purple inspirations to survive the first 20 seconds or so until they're held, so it might not count by Scrapper metrics. I can probably do without this on most AVs (ones with S/L/Energy ranged attacks) if I'm willing to immob them at range and break LoS between holds until they're nice and paralyzed. Needs more experimenting. -
Quote:Pretty much, this. Plus, if you're an RP'er, you have to interact with other people at some point, which just makes all those explanations you've built for yourself more annoying. "Oh, no, this isn't some manifestation the Well gave me, it's the essence of the first Praetorian I defeated. And that Coralax thing following me around is actually an alien from the first planet my character visited when he was exiled from Earth after being framed for murder. And my Nova form is an angel. And my crab form is a giant robot. And I know the buff pet looks like a Clockwork Oscillator, but my character built it herself out of tin cans while she was locked in jail by the Fifth Column."Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill
It's the difference between walking by some kid being whiny in a mall (Dr. whatsisface) and sitting in the middle of a full stadium hosting the World Series and trying to pretend you're actually watching the ballet.
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On my perma-dom, I've found Scorpion Shield to be a lot more useful than Consume. Like you said, Domination is a free end refill pretty commonly, and you can usually pop a single blue to get by until it comes up. I keep Consume since it is useful when I need it, but I'd put a shield first unless you have dramatic endurance problems or really want to be able to go without worrying about endurance.
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The Praetorian pet thing bugs the hell out of me. They could at least let us pick from a variety of high-level enemy groups to get pets from. Hell, every time somebody's complained about how central the Well is to Incarnates, somebody's pointed out, 'Well, the mission where you get your Incarnate power suggests the Well just enables you to empower yourself!" If the Well is outright giving us Praetorian pets, that's no longer really the case. I can't say my character summoned or built their new pet or whatever. The Well decided to give me one. Yay.
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Quote:There's a tip mission (mid-level hero, I think) where you stop the Nictus from gaining a new foothold, only for the Center to send you a message at the end thanking you for assisting him.Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill
I'm not sure what exactly to do with the Center. I don't want to get a three-way war going, and I can't see him just turning a blind eye to the Nictus "Make Earth a new Nictus homeworld" plan. It's a bit of a mess.
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Issue 20: Outrage for some, miniature American flags for others.
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Quote:Yeah, I've noticed that too. The rough estimate seems accurate, though... I used a Power Analyzer on Overdrive while she sat in it, and Volcanic Gasses alone was able to get her up to 12-15 hold mag, peaking at 17 once when the Lockdown proc went off. (I tried taking a screenshot of this for posterity, but stupidly had screenshotui=0, so I now have some nice pictures of a brownish-yellow cloud.) That's pretty crazy.Originally Posted by Derangedpolygot
I've noticed that the hold doesn't fire at 0 sec. It doesn't start working until 6 seconds in. Every time I use VG, enemies run out of the effect unless I've placed Quicksand down first.