Kenteko

Wait, all ATs don't have a fury bar? What is this nonsense?!

If I recall correctly, the original bug was that dots used to proc every time damage is done, but only from "toggle" powers that essentially reactivated attacks, rains, caltrops, damage auras, all that. I believe all of them were since normalized to the ten second toggle rule, though each of a MM's pets trigger the interface.

OMG AM IS TAKING DAMAGE! OMG AM IS AT 95% OMG WE'RE GONNA WIPE OMG HIT SIEGE HIT NS WHYARENTYOUHITTINGSIEGE PACIFYPACIFYPACIFYPACIFY NO YOU NOOBS STOP HITTING AM! OMG ACID AT 19 NOT 18. OMGOMG TWO ADDS TOO MUCH! CHOKE POINT DOORS! EVERYBODY MAMBO!

Leaders are guides for a raid, like it or not they prevent what is essentially the above from happening. They set up rules, circumstances, and basically make sure everyone's on the same page as well as smacking down those that are either flagrant jerk offs or worse. Whenever I don't lead a raid, I come into it knowing that the person with the star is the one that I need to listen to, like it or not, unless I have majority control in terms of friends (at which point I'd lead). I hold myself accountable for my actions and I countermand the leader knowing full well that he or she can kick me if they see fit.

I kick on a cutscene bomb in Lambda and only in Lambda (man, imagine all the kicks for a Mortimer SF cutscene bomb). I make it explicitly clear every single time that I will do so without remorse or hesitation. My first failed Lambda actually failed in this way. I've come to learn that Cutscene Marauder is actually different from the Marauder you fight (the ITF is the same way, if you had a long range teleport, it used to be that you could pull non Nictus Rommy and faceroll the last boss). Mind you, when/if I run with my friends, we also generally just pug a MoLambda because the entire trial is generally not that hard. Discipline and just being polite, respectful, and making it clear goes a long way in making people want to try.

Recently had a situation where someone actively jumped into the cutscene after the warning: he even made it clear that he'd heard. He ended up aggroing Marauder and almost failed the mission before the Marauder despawned and the real one popped up. He immediately starting saying about how nothing happened, he was innocent, and he totally should be left in (a vote kick was initiated, normal kick didn't work). Gone and kept badgering in tells, not understanding to my friend. Gignored, moved on.

You're welcome to believe that leaders are a figurehead and there's power to the people, but a good leader is a motivator, first and foremost. I've turned around and seen massive reversals of fortunes where myself and others stood up, took the raid by the balls, and just started making it clear what will be done and how it will be done and by gods, it got done. There's a reason people don't like to lead, and that comes down to the responsibility to control and help your raid when times are tough. Anyone with a passing knowledge of macros can recruit, leaders are few and far between.

So feel free to continue on, Xanatos, and tell us how and why leaders are some sort of figurehead. They're usually the ones that come up with the strategies, then teach those below them and share it. We kick because we care about the league, not about the showboating (if you really want to get into it, wouldn't cutscene bombing be a form of self insertion slash fanfiction), so deal with it. Call us what you want, I mostly just call us responsible.

I completely forgot about Repulse, so thank you for bringing that up as well. As for Entropic Aura, Energy Aura used to be the only brute defensive secondary without a taunt aura (it was baked into Energy Drain), so you could technically exist and play without endangering yourself in that manner. Now, Entropic Aura can presumably be slotted taunt and Energy Aura as a whole has to deal with a constant taunt presence. The taunt factor may or may not have been removed from Energy Drain, which would likewise be changing the power's intent in that manner.

I was more under the implication that it was general play on teams and the like then much else. I should've clarified, but my comments were meant more to reinforce Strato's and just mention that Scourge's benefit comes from HP targets (and my preference of storm on a troller). My bad.

As Strato said, corruptors excel in high HP combat, i.e. AVs, EBs, and GMs. If you plan on incarnating the character or task forcing alot, corruptor will arguably be the better pick outside of a genuine pure shield set, and sonic resonance and thermal even make that arguable.

Also, I'd personally suggest controller for storm over either defender or corruptor. It meshes better and you can abuse No Knockback Immobs to make Tornado do some pretty respectable damage, on top of sitting in hurricane distance without sending things flying.

And this right here is the eternal problem with the cottage rule, if you genuinely believe that old school MoG and new MoG were even remotely the same, you're just insane. Sure, they share similarities (they buff you), but the absolute intent was absolutely nothing alike. Old school troller pets were meant to be spammed, as they had a set life duration and could be summoned in multiples. Fluffy was rooted and functioned more like a timer then a persistent pet. Even Unyielding (which used to root you) could be argued as "the same" even though the design intent was radically different.

I could turn this around and say change sonic resonance shields to buff 1% resist each and give 1000% HP regen and I'd get called insane, but the shields still buff resist! No cottage rule breaking, I'm just buffing something else more! Powers have been changed to ignore the cottage rule before, even recently (Entropic Shield being the big one atm), and the changes will continue as was shown by EA. It has not even been a strict, unchangeable law just more a soft guideline that sounds good to people.

I'm not denying that there are other ways to fix Stone Armor, far from it, you could do quite a bit to make the rest of stone actually worthwhile. The problem comes back to IOs; more specifically that I've seen granites who explicitly build for speed and movement JUST to compensate for granite. Even if Rooted became a clone of Grounded (which it needs), it's perfectly possible to just run granite in all non Mineral situations because IOs can easily and absolutely be built for recharge and speed. Now, I'm not saying this is a good build or the best build, but Stone as a set overall has little, if no options, for a truly legitimate build besides "Compensate for Granite's penalties."

Quite honestly, the set overall has issues all around, but changing granite even slightly (for example, would cause an extreme shift of balance simply because Stone Armor as it stands is designed for you to either be in a literal "Minerals with maybe other toggles" mode or "Granite" mode with zero in between. Doubly so with inventions, and I do realize I'm kinda moving the goal posts a little here, if "Out of Granite" can defense cap while maintaining good resists and zero penalties, there's never, ever a reason to go into Granite. Alternatively, if Granite's the ur mode to be in, with or without IOs, then the rest of the set becomes worthless. The entire set's philosophy is very, very dated and the only true parallel, as far as literally any sets go, is Dual Pistols; and even that is not a true parallel (different ammo for different types doesn't work out all that well).

That's mostly the point people are trying to make: quite a large amount of much older sets are built around a design philosophy that we really don't follow or care about now. Force Field is virtually worthless in almost every way if you bring it up against Cold, much more so with the addition of incarnates and Clarion. This was made shockingly clear at the advent of Willpower which required a complete overhaul of Invuln's numbers, and again when Banes/Widows made Stalkers laughably worthless, soliciting a big remake/buff to the stalkers, which added the huge AoE CC to AS (which I'm kinda surprised has gone unmentioned).

The cottage rule had a place years ago when sets had a legitimate place in the world and every set brought something genuinely and honestly different. The advent of inventions created a unique situation where certain formerly different sets became much more similar or one became blatantly stronger (such as Kat/BS), while newer sets coming out completely invalidated or aped pre-existing sets (cold, willpower, elec armor, energy aura, etc). It seems that, these days, the unique design lies in the mechanic tied to the set then the actual powers themselves.

I mean, think about it: All the original defensive sets had completely unique god modes, despite a few of them sharing powers such as dull pain, or recon, or even just passives. Invuln had Unstoppable, Stone had Granite, SR had Elude, Regen had MoG (and IH), Ice had Hibernoob, Fire had RotP, and Dark had Soul Transfer. Even the pairs that were close (US and Evade, RotP and ST) had unique and noticeable differences that made them interesting and separate. Back then, we knew nothing about animation speed affecting powers, or how defenses could fully work in conjunction with each other, or little small details that are considered common knowledge today. The design philosophies for all these sets were completely and utterly different then how powers are designed now, and some of these sets (PBs, Dark Armor, FF and Stone Armor, I'm looking at you) would just never, ever be designed in this day and age.

Thus, the cottage rule needs to vanish and these old sets need to be revived and legitimately brought up to date with newer, shinier sets. It gives more respect to the veterans that have stuck through years of playing, and it brings something that the game's been lacking for a while: balance. Heck, as a compromise, why couldn't we just expand the existing power sets we have and lock out choices per level? We already know we have the tech to do so: See also VEATs and FU/BU for Widows, so why not? Instead of going "NO, BLACK HOLE MUST STAY AND BE BALANCED AS SUCH, COTTAGES DEMAND IT!" (caps optional) why not turn around and go "Yea, Black Hole's outdated as hell/terrible, we could just insert another power that shows up at its level and give the players the option to choose one or the other, with both having the same function."

Before, things were balanced around having SOs and damned if you could ever get anything as amazing as a HO without spending weeks climbing a mountain in a deadly blizzard to cheat to kill a boss because the devs didn't want it done that way. Nowadays, devs have to worry about defense caps, over buffing, damage caps, incoming damage, outgoing damage, and AT modifiers, nevermind animation times and god knows what else to really care about balancing something around an enhancement I'm almost certain half of the playerbase doesn't even know about. I mean, let's be honest here, how many people even know what a Hydra enhancement is? When LRSF, everyone started flipping out because "OMG, SHOES ARE GONNA BE THE BOMB!" Nowadays, if your build doesn't cost nine figures at minimum, you're just being a lazy slacker.

Talk about the idea, not some outdated bunk rule that was designed for a game we barely even play any more. As players and paying customers, we can say as a community that some things are simply unbalanced or outdated (Energy Aura, Invuln, Poison, and Stalkers proved this). Or we can squabble endlessly about how things should never change and things are fine the way they are, etc.

Man, I went long.

Edit:
Oh I want to add, more cottage change examples: MoG, Old school controller pets (man, I remember swarms of those buggers, good times), MoG, Fluffy, and MoG. Bonus points if you know what a SHOE is.

I was so ecstatic when he went down, hours of struggle and effort, I was so glad that I was able to do it, I was cheering and the like. I didn't even notice it...

Then he told me and I pretty much saw red. I had not seen him at all during the entirety of the Skyway fight, presumably he was sipping latte's in one of Skyway's nearby coffee shops the entire time. I didn't even see him at the end, nor did I see the rock that did the deed. After a few minutes, I pretty much started to laugh at the insanity of it all, and what exactly had happened.

Doubt I'll be inviting him along on any more of these attempts.

And this is where power creep and buffing arms race comes into play. Controllers do immense damage as it is thanks to containment, and defenders do lots of stuff as well depending on their primary. Buffing both creates a situation where corruptors and dominators, nevermind masterminds, start to become extraneous.

So what do you do then, buff those classes? Then, the previous classes become just as unnecessary (logically) or you get into the situation where the pure damage classes (blaster/scrapper) become utterly useless.

We saw something very similar to this happening early in CoH's lifespan. Because of this situation, ED and the GDN came into play and despite what people want to believe, it was good for the health of the game. The problem is becoming one of the devs not learning from their past mistakes with the sheer power some of these incarnate slots produce, and CoH is too old to handle another ED/GDN situation, primarily because none of the original content has even seen a revamp.

Honestly, unless the situation is rectified sooner rather than later, the power creep is starting to collapse the game from under itself. Worse yet, if the next batch of incarnate slots are terrible, the system as a whole will implode in the long run, as people will refuse to do it/time will be wasted creating stuff nobody uses.

I had all the level shifts and it was around 10.6 (guesstimate), so if that's the case, the accuracy is starting to play a bigger and bigger factor every time.

And here is where guesses and "experience" falls apart. For you to not be getting CCed, Cosmic Balance would have to be fueled by no less then three controllers/dominators (to effectively give you 3 hold/stun/etc protection). To your specific numbers, you have hold 2 passively, which means you run and are specced acrobatics, bringing that number up to one controller or dominator who needs to be in the group with you to make it so that one mez won't immediately CC you. Alternatively, you could have been grouping with a traps, a force field, or a sonic resonance that had their aura up, or one of the many support classes that tend to have this obsessive urge to throw their mez protect on people.

In all seriousness, this now comes down to context. Most high end groups, with a few exceptions, have repeatable, reliable AoEs simply due to their design. Carnies and Malta are among the worst, with Flash and Stun Grenades (as well as tazers) being prevalent and common. Arachnos, PPD, Rikti, and Longbow likewise have reliable control in their bosses, albeit not as extremely "oh god pain" as Malta and Carnies. Some have very little to no control, Council, Cims, Column, generally those groups that are regarded as the garbage tier (excepting Cims).

So here's where your analogy breaks down: If you're fighting things that have minimal CC, the odds of you getting CCed is zero because, well, they have no CC. If you're fighting the mid tier stuff, Arachnos/PPD/Rikti/Longbow, odds are that Wardens are chain CCing you to death or you're not pulling enough aggro on certain mobs (mentalists/mesmerists/queens) to be in remote danger of getting CCed. If you're not fighting Malta and Carnies and are somehow managing to not be chain CCed, then that means you definitely had someone with control breaking abilities on your team or you're lying.

Alternatively, the fact that this entire thing hinges on you having a controller/dominator in your group, I could very readily just state the fact that you not being CCed is because your team members are doing their job (cause, y'know, they have hard aoe control) uninhibited. Unsurprisingly, the more controllers/dominators the team has, the less all squishies in general get CCed.

So basically, I could say my (non existant) peacebringer didn't get CCed because I ran the ITF, the BSF, Khan TF, or even Apex/Tin Mage. The lack of controller on my team doesn't even remotely matter, since there's no hard CC anywhere to be seen in any of these places. Even then, if you're not taking the alpha strike, any half decent controller/tank/dominator will lock down the entire spawn, of which only one in almost any high end SF (LRSF) has consistent aoe mezzes (Longbow Warden), so yea.

Math and logic is fun, isn't it? Also, I'm calling that you ran the ITF a couple of months ago, or even the BSF/Khan TF, both of which are control light/nonexistant.

I should mention that you need ten THOUSAND percent reduction to lower mez duration to .99% of the original duration, explaining your hyperbole.

Source: http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Caps

There is a monumental diminishing return because of the PVP change thus the need for the massive cap. Sitting at 80-300 (depending on buffs/IOs) basically means that you're still sitting at 20-40% effective duration reduction, give or take some %s, due to the fact that the game rounds decimals down as well as the massive diminishing returns.

As a matter of fact, just looking in game I'm passively sitting at 81.10% hold resistance which translates to -19.86% duration. This is by absolutely no means even close to 50%, and diminishing returns exists for status resistances BECAUSE of PVP.

So basically, status resistance is WORSE because of the PVP change that you pointed out, effectively meaning you need substantially higher amounts of mez reduction to even equalize what you had before. This is why status resist toggles were changed to direct resists in PVP (and alot of them) and why the cap was removed.

First off, I want to clarify that I'm playing devil's advocate to some extent, but the big thing is that you're comparing an extremely high cost inf build (which you can only effectively have at level 50) and simply not realizing that while a PB grows additively, everyone else with some very few exceptions grows exponentially. Ancillary pools ARE important because by the time blasters/doms get them, your above dream build would also be complete. Oh, and other people have the option of ancillary pools, something your PB does not have.

Realize that I -want- PBs to get buffed because right now, they simply have no scalability. Any uber build would have a large amount of the above, but simply build to their strengths. Being a hybrid is not a strength, and other classes (controllers, defenders, corruptors, crabs) do it better, cheaper, and produce much bigger results. Crabs can do all of the above, produce continually massive DPS, tank, AND give amazing support to the group -all at the same time- with a build of your monetary level. So let's go through a quick but itemized list.

1) This one's misleading, Kheldian base HP is 1079. Most of your "passive" HP comes from a Dull Pain clone, Essence Boost. Basically, this means that you permanently have it up and simply use it off cooldown, while possessing roughly 400-600 HP from sets. Any blaster, stalker, or dominator with this amount of HP automatically self caps, while a scrapper/crab would pull your HP (WP/Invuln/Regen scrappers) just as easily while having better synergy. It also bears mentioning that blasters/dominators/controllers can and do have a dull pain clone, so most can spec to HP cap almost immediately out of the gate. You do have a point that you get 500 more HP then blasters/doms, but the difference widens even more here.

2) I'm not even sure how this is a perk. Every single person has access to phase from an extremely beneficial pool for virtually everyone. 3 places to slot LotGs makes phase an extremely good filler power, on top of the fact that anyone who builds for it will walk away with phase. It's also a temp power that's pennies on the market, so I think you're kinda reaching here.

3) Reform Essence is nice, as any Reconstruction clone is gonna be. I'm not even going to bother comparing it to a regen scrapper/ninjitsu stalker because the gaping differences between the survivability of a regen scrapper and a PB are leaps and bounds apart, so I'll use the real legitimate alternative: Aid Self. Now, I'll be the first to say that Reform Essence is better than Aid Self, they're barely comparable. However, the fact of the matter is that most multi billion inf builds will be self capped to some extent, meaning that aid self can be used with relative impunity and can (reliably) go off in the hands of someone built to maximize it. Generally, if you're under enough fire that you'll be killed while using aid self, Reform Essence would likely not save you whatsoever either. Aid self also recharges substantially faster, with the interruption/animation time being the chief drawbacks. As for using that while in Light Form, I'll get to that here in a minute.

So to summarize: Reform Essence is certainly nice, but it pales in comparison to the tools in sets where it shows (Regeneration/Ninjitsu) and it only slightly pulls ahead in favor of aid self, a pool -everyone- gets. By the way, in case you're wondering, aid self gives substantially higher HPS compared to Reform Essence, but that's neither here nor there. Oh, and it gives a HUGE amount of stun resistance.

4) T9 recharge in 3 minutes, do you mean your nova or Light Form? What the hey, I'll do both. Every single AT gets a god mode, sometimes two. All of them have the exact same cooldown (hibernate notwithstanding). If your build has Light Form recharge in three minutes, so does the blaster, dom, corruptor, etc that specs for it. The thing is that they have all of their other tools ON TOP OF the god mode. It also bears mentioning that if a Blaster goes for Force of Nature, they're getting PFF as well, so what benefit does Light Form have? It lasts one minute longer and gives status protection. Oh wait, it also crashes harder in comparison, so I guess it's a tradeoff. This isn't counting the near impenetrable hibernate (remember phase? Yea, this is a better version you can't get), PFF, or RotP options that most everyone else has compared to PBs.

Enough about that, let's look at novas. Dawn Strike is a conglomeration of Atomic Blast and Nova, with less -defense and no hold (from Atomic Blast). Course, this is all well and good except for the fact that blasters do pretty much double the PBs damage with their nova. -TO START- Against level shifted content, odds are you gib most/all of the minions, hurt some of the LTs, and momentarily inconvenience the bosses. Blasters leave craters filled with the blood and tears of enemies they just exploded, and that's not even getting into the insanity of Rain of Arrows. So let's look at defenders and corruptors. Wait, defenders get a damage buff from being alone and produce massive amounts of support, so their nukes will likely have ridiculous debuffs (see: Atomic Blast, Dreadful Wail, or Psychic Blast). Corruptors have Scourge (Blizzard go crazy), do nearly the same damage as PBs and have dramatically better support. But hey, at least you get Build Up instead of Aim! As for Doms, the two main comparisons are Fissure and Psychic Shockwave. I'm not entirely sure that's fair for the PBs at all, so I'll leave it there. In all fairness, the biggest comparison is Solar Flare, which you use once and immediately cannot use it again because most stuff just got scattered. Moving on.

5) Ah yes, Glowing Touch, the holy grail of Peacebringer versatility. I gotta be honest, this is one of my favorite PB abilities, and is a genuine perk over blasters and dominators simply because spot healing can be useful from time to time. Granted, this is 100% the one and only support a Peacebringer truly brings to a team. A single, small, heal that is eclipsed by almost every other support ability ever. The worst part is that Glowing Touch is Cauterize/Heal Other/Soothe with its range -absolutely destroyed- Glowing Touch's range sits -just above- aid other, heals for the same amount, and sucks down end like it's nobody's business. If we really want to bring support into the mix, though, you have to account for Surveillance from Blasters, unrivaled control from dominators, and corruptors/defenders/controllers merely existing.

I'd like to have Glowing Touch, personally. Shame that it's the AT defining perk.

6) I would definitely love to know what build you have that gives you insane recharge, 500+ HP, and 70%+ mez resistance that doesn't involve clarion and/or break frees, because that exact build would make every other squishy nigh unstoppable, so I'm calling hyperbolic shenanigans. If, instead, you mean you're running around in perma Light Form, I wonder why you didn't just state that in its ridiculousness, which is kinda as inane as saying Energy Aura is awesome because you can run around in Overload (Hint: It's not). So I really have no idea where this is coming from outside of hyperbole.

You'll notice that throughout this post, I mentioned many different ancillary pools and their various uses, so how could I possibly justify blasters getting Force of Nature and Rise of the Phoenix at the same time? Well, quite frankly, they all have CHOICE in the matter to build as they see fit. Many blasters/doms choose Rise of the Phoenix AND INCLUDE IT in their attack chain as opposed to PFF, Hibernate, or Force of Nature (or any of them at all). Most soft cap easily and pull enough recharge to regularly liquefy alternating spawns, nevermind their secondary which can provide a large variety of tools depending on their options. We're not even bringing into the light some of the various blaster primaries that bring great options/damage compared to Peacebringers (sonic blasters being the obvious righteous beacon).

Sure, you have all of those things as "perks" but at the end of the day, they're shamelessly bad copies of already existing abilities. Warshades get things like Dark Extraction, Orbiting Debt, Unchain Essence, Stygian Return, and Eclipse that are so effectively rare/unique, that they're almost all unique to the Warshade and their playstyle. Peacebringers singular unique ability is Photon Seekers, which Robotics and Traps both get at lower damage with a ridiculously faster cooldown and much, much better utility all around (-tohit, -damage + chance to stun vs chance to KB. Yea).

Peacebringers -need- help, they bring absolutely nothing else to the table that anyone else doesn't do better, while everyone else retains a -much larger- choice selection. If you're going to use a billioned out Peacebringer as what's "Good" then you need to start talking about the archery characters that rain of arrows every spawn while being soft capped, the doms that are permanently locking down everything and breaking PotDs, the defenders and corruptors that produce peacebringer ruining damage (depending on the secondary) while providing amazing utility and virtually everything else as well. This isn't even getting into the absolute terror that warshades/crabs/widows/melee become when blinged out.

The only real comparisons to Peacebringers are Energy Auras, Banes, and Stone Armors, simply because those sets have the same stunted growth that Peacebringers do (i.e. linear/minor growth vs quadratic/exponential growth). Absolutely every AT and combination can be viable, but some are just garbage in terms of what they bring on an equivalent comparison.