Kioshi

The new Cobra has the same end cost as Stun, recharges in half the time, still has the 1.67 cast time and does a lot of damage while stun does little. Both have the same 11.92s Stunned (mag 3) but Cobra has a 75% chance and Stun is 100%.

One disadvantage of EM to DM btw is that you have to take a bit of care with EM, both not to corpse blast or die mid animation. DM users already complain about Shadow Maul which is the only slow attack in DM but it's a cone with ST recharge/end/damage.

ET would benefit from a 75% stun chance instead of 50% because it was very good when you could stun a boss with TF, making the set so good for hard targets, now you need two attacks to have a chance to stun a boss (because who has room to pick Stun anyway?). Sometimes I miss TF's mag 4 stun more than old ET.

Two VERY different things.
You're talking about toons that can wipe tons of mobs, well those always existed. But doing both things you described was not the usual regular gameplay (missions, teams, tfs).

Because at the same time my EM and DM toons felt more effective before the newish AoE content, if I wanted to do things like you mentioned I wouldn't be stupid and try it on an EM toon - I'd change to my fire/kin (since I started playing when they were the farmers). AoE monsters always existed, that's not the point at all.

In today's game unnerfed EM just like before would do fine since its closes competitor KM has plenty of other tools like ranged attack, AoEs, mitigations, and EM could be the ST specialist (Which DM kinda is now with the Siphon Life buff - but EM could be less DPS-y and more bursty version of DM, which would be equally good in team play).

EM was popular on everything, just like DM was a great set on any AT for the boss killing role. Even on 8-people teams.

But it wasn't until the ITF that the 'crapton of mobs' made the game more and more AoE focused. Not that it's a bad thing, just that... They could've left EM alone, they changed it 2 months after the ITF and all the content later was AoE focused. Even the lowbie praetoria missions are way harder for me to solo (due to end issues and number of mobs) at say, x2 or x3 compared to blue or redside mishes.

Oh good to know.

Hey JayBoH didn't you test the immob one? I think you mentioned it. I was even considering it despite finding the chance too low... It would give at least my dm/da scrapper a chance to prevent stunned mobs from wandering somewhat (since she has a damage aura and damage auras trigger those right?) and keep the bosses in place for the punching (dunno what the immob mag is).

EA in an end hog. I think it's the costliest non-damage aura armor (I think it was in first place in a comparison on a dark armor discussion thread, losing only to some damage aura ones). So before Energy Drain you will want to slot a lot of endredux. After that life changes, but before you are probably running 4 toggles at level 20 (two shields, entropic, cloak).

That's what I've been saying There were threads titled 'OMG I got ET it's so good' (I made one when I got it on my Stalker, people on the Brute forums made these too). It felt very effective even on a team or SF (since it was restricted to villains).

Then.. the ITF was released, that was still with old ET (ET was changed about 2 months later after the ITF was released).

I use ITF as a reference because that's the first TF I felt I was not being very effective by being ST-focused, and everything that they added later favoured AoE.

So even with old EM and way before the new difficulty settings I was starting to feel they were going for AoE-centric content in the game. Not a problem but as you said, it would've dropped from FoTM fast, and imo even if the new difficulty settings weren't introduced because on teams AoE started to prevail more and more.

Huh that's weird because my non-slotted toons, even the squishies, can take quite a lot of fire and rocks at the low levels before they faceplant.

And hey I've seen Tankers with no defenses (since you mention softcap) tank the 4 STF AVs at once and then Recluse!

Now on TPN the rock can kill them in 2 shots (two because they're tankers and all)

(gotta love people who post anything to justify stupid game situations like they were the dev's acolytes)

I posted a SO build here - well it uses one -kb IO but those are cheap.

BUT - My plant/storm is 28 (have been having too much fun, vacation, parties and in spare time incarnating my lolStalker) and I didn't stick to that plan - I didn't pick the leadership toggles yet because the combo is very end heavy (and mine has a miracle unique).

It's very nice to see you can make a build with 34% s/l def on SOs (I used Ice Mastery, could've used Earth) but I don't think I'll be using the leadership toggles often till I IO her, unless I'm teaming and have buffs. An alternative could be the Medicine Pool which I'm considering for leveling mine. You'd still have 30% or so def without Maneuvers after Ice Armor or the Earth version.

U fail go to 14-18 and run Posis

The damage wasn't reduced, only the animation was almost tripled.
EM was never a borderline set, but it was FoTM on Brutes and Stalkers (and PvP Tankers) because at the time the content wasn't so focused on AoE as everything they added after (aside from the ITF, ST toons did quite well) and you couldn't solo/duo at x4, x8, etc. So it was a good set to play on harder difficulties which didn't add more mobs at the time. ET still has crazy damage and reduced end cost (since you 'pay' health to use it).

The TF mag nerf I never understood... It doesn't crit for extra 100% damage on Stalkers (unlike all the other ST attacks except special cases like Concentrated Strike and ET), it takes forever to animate and well, Stone Melee which has AoE mitigation in Fault and an AoE which is as damaging as whirling hands but has footstomp's radius get to keep their 1.5 sec cast time mag 4 hold in seismic smash. Stunning bosses was a very useful tactic for my stalker on teams (such as holding them in half the time with my SM Brute).

That's what I do too, and after 4 I'm usually level 14 - helps alleviate the toon being unslotted till 17 (or 22) and they take what 10-15 minutes each.

Ranged attacks on melee toons are always nice, see how much the Claws people praise Focus for example.

I've been struggling with my EM/Nin Stalker build to fit Fire Blast and Fire Ball (while keeping AoE capped, this last part has been hard) because I feel Dark Blast is lackluster and even then I get good mileage from it.

Apart from that... You don't need them, it's your call. Just like you may not be 100% effective on two of the AVs on MoM (as I said, I only managed to stay punching the AV in the face because the team had so much healing I didn't care about the patch), MMs for example (an entire AT) always complain they have to go without pets on some trials (like the get grenades phase in Lambda where my Stalker is great, destroy a crate in 5 seconds and run away).

Same thing on the ITF, my ST Stalker feels quite useless there with all the AoE and the 1000 mobs - only ITF I felt useful with her was on a +3 one where the bosses/EBs actually did take sometime to kill and they were also a threat even to the resist-based Brutes at that level. So I got a role killing lvl 53 bosses (since EM has two very hard hitters), but on a speed ITF, I'm corpse blasting half the time (since said hard hitters are also slow animating) and I can't even make use of AS.

So IMO there's no problem at all in not having ranged attacks if you don't feel like it. While you didn't ask about iTrials, it sounded so because you mentioned
MoM. Aside from the patches thing I don't think there's another you'll contribute less for not having ranged attacks (I haven't run UGT).

Ageless is awesome, my SS/Fire doesn't need Consume even on TFs, although his slotting is all wonky (for permahasten and farming, so 30ish% fire def so I can use only one purple insp and go to town). He isn't end sustainable but after Ageless I don't need to use blues, it looks like it's up about 5 seconds before I'd need a end refill.

Couldn't play more these days, but people are telling me to get Clarion for teh squishies. But I think I'm going rebirth because I like the big fat heal/regen to help on trials. Although I'd certainly go Ageless on many toons if I get to incarnate more of them (like my end hog plant/storm, recharge hungry corrs) because it's so damn good.

That's a great build! But since I never cared to cap AoE before on my /nin, I'm thinking it's harder than it looks if I want to keep Fireball/blast (for the AoEs in iTrialing, she's t4 in almost everything now, but STILL has stamina lol), Energy Punch and maintain good recharge. Funny because I can make an /EA or /SR Brute/Stalker build with all I want and cap everything in 5 minutes (EA on brutes/scraps is a cakewalk, even negative, since the cloak gives more def than Hide - the only hole is psi but with ranged/psi at 20-25% I end up with, it's good enough).

I agree, the characters' personalities is something that reminds me of why series like Friends and Buffy were successful - after some time, you ended up liking all of them (or almost) after some time even if in the beginning you think 'this one isn't a main character, he/she sucks' (like Friends, in the beginning I thought Joey and Phoebe were silly stereotypes, but it was not long till I started finding them interesting and as important as the others).

That may explain why older guys like it, the messages and plot are cutesy and all, and even make you feel good sometimes, but if you look at youtube short clips they're mostly focused on moments that one of the ponies do something funny that's related to their personalities. I typed 'rarity' in youtube (ya know, since rarity is a common word unlike the other ponies' names) and one of the first suggestions was 'rarity worst possible thing' - one of her funny moments on the show when she freaks out for silly stuff and she has to explain that in the third time it's about something that's actually important. This vid: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbXh7ZipUuQ

The fact that they keep mocking each other's personality treats and even mock themselves are funny to me too. And the episodes that are dedicated to one of the ponies, where in most of them some pony breaks down and freaks out because her best aspects are put to the test, or ignored, or whatever, made me like them more. The episode with the scene I linked above is the one that made me finally like Twilight Sparkle because I kinda related with her freaking out and going nuts for a not so important thing (and everyone laughing at her) because she is too self-demanding on herself, and... I'm like that

Since I started watching it 2 weeks ago and 10 days later I watched all 36 episodes so far (lol), I was watching it (and enjoying I admit) but something in my head wasn't making sense - 'wth I'm watching a show full of Ponies and I don't like cartoons', so I watched with more criticism than usual. After I resumed watching the 'lost' Dexter episodes, the only series I've been seeing regularly, I stated noticing some characters are really shallow or I'm fed up with them - a criticism I saw a lot on the interwebs but never cared because I like the series. Sounds weird but My Little Pony made me look more at the other show I like as a whole.

His model only has the 8600GT card.

If I'm not mistaken the dual card Macbook pros started in the mid-2009 models (most of the 2011 ones also have two but instead of two nvidias they have an intel HD for normal use and an ATI for gaming and the like).

And sure, Windows users have issues too, but if you see the forums half of the systems there are with outdated drivers or just aren quite old even for CoH - not the OP system's case - the game always ran smoothly on my old mac mini which had a crappy intel gma card (on winXP, there was no mac client back then so I can't say if it would be bad).

But when you see the person who makes the Mac guides and is the most understandable member here about the CoX Mac client saying 'my game is better, crashing once every two hours'... You know something is fishy about the client. Not that it's exclusive to CoX, there are plenty of games that are converted using emulation tech and aren't exactly stable on Mac - Fallout 3 and Dragon Age Mac versions have notoriously bad reputations while the WoW client doesn't, although I haven't played these games, just saw a ton of complaints about the first two.

You're correct on one point, people don't like things even with a bit of gimmick. Even on a Speed Lambda that I've always been successful, I still find it quite impressive that when that big 'MARAUDER WILL USE NOVA FIST BACK OFF' text appears, I just know 5-8 people are gonna die because they won't back off. And that's not exactly close to any other trial mechanic...

OTOH, ITF and LGTF is content basically everyone likes. But even 30-minute ITFs and 40-minute LFTGs are things you do, enjoy and don't wanna do another in 1 hour, or in my case the same day (maybe the same week even), while the iTrials... You just gotta keep doing them over and over and that gets old even if you find BAF/Lambda the most awesome thing ever (I'm citing those two because they are the ones that barely get complaints).