Kong_Fuu

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Reference for Brutes:

Mu Lightning
* Unenhanced damage @ lvl 40: 33 (Energy)
* Immobilize; -END
* Range: 40
* END: 13
* Recharge: 20 secs

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BI: 3.602

Again, the damage listed does not fit neatly into the dev's own damage scales. What's up with that? It may be a rounding issue I guess. Anyway, for an attack with a BI of 3.602, that endo use and recharge are way high.

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For MMs:

Static Discharge
-Unenhanced Damage at Level 40: 29.76 (Energy)
-Foe: -Endurance
-Range: 40 (Cone)
-Endurance: 18.98
-Recharge Rate: 32 seconds


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BI: 2.952

Well, it compares favorably to Photon Grenade and the like (BI: 1.77779), but that's still exceptionally weak for a power with a 32 second recharge and an endo cost of 19.

Strangely, the number listed doesn't seem to fit neatly into the Dev's own damage scale table, which makes me question the accuracy of the number.

So what are the changes now? The previous one really kicked your butt if you weren't an expert, but it sounds like:

1. You can take down each obelisk in turn instead of trying to take them down simultaniously. (That'd make the first part trivially easy)

2. You don't have to take down the shield on Ruladek (Aspect of Rularuu), that'd also make the second part fairly easy.

If this is correct, we might be seeing a lot of IoPs on Live, depending on how scheduled raids turn out once they're fixed.

Actaully, if you only have one hold in your primary/secondary, then getting a second in your PPP/APP is actually a big boon. It means holding (with slotting perma-holding) bosses that you were previously unable to control. My Ice Melee tanker took Char from the pools and it's been a huge help in nullifying bosses, and frankly bosses are the targets you really want held most of the time.

The BI should be relatively easy to calculate. Just find a level 40 smashing neutral enemy and pull any damage enhancements you have out of brawl and brawl the enemy. With that you'll know how much damage a level 40 character of your archetype does with an unslotted brawl. Divide the damage listed on the plaque by your tested value to get the brawl index. To verify your finding, divide the brawl index by 2.66666666667 to get the dev damage scale. If that number doesn't cleanly terminate after the hundredths place, then you've probably done something wrong.

The hardest part is finding a level 40 enemy that doesn't resist smashing damage (save for some robots that are weak to it).

Because nobody has posted it yet: At level 40 against a level 40 Bone Spider Minion, my MMs unslotted brawl does 7.04 points of damage.

That would make Static Discharge have a BI of 4.227.

Hmm, that's a bogus looking number however, it doesn't map evenly into a Dev Damage Scale. I guess the Bone spider resists smashing. It's actually hard to find something at level 40 that doesn't resist smashing. :/

I think the devs are trying to create an economy with salvage here. Unfortunatly, like all of the other economies in CoH, they didn't put enough thought into it.

Originally, Enhancements were supposed to have an economy as players traded them to get the right origin instead of buying the overpriced ones in the store (of which only half were available half of the time anyway).

Unfortunatly, they didn't work out the numbers and ended up with a situation where everybody was sitting on piles of money by the endgame and could easily twink their low level characters.

So the devs put in the inf reduction while in SG mode with I6. Now enhancements are more rare but people still don't trade them. The window (a couple of levels) in which they need them makes trading difficult, and the complete lack of any sort of in-game support for global trading (like an auction house) makes it far more effort than it's worth to try to find someone who has an SO you need and needs a SO you have. Only Hamidon enhancements have any market at all, and that's only after the raid in a giant spam of traffic on Broadcast and Request.

Now I think the devs are at it again, by making the powerups outragously expensive, they have created a niche for "salvage hunters" who will work in-game to gather salvage for you in return for something (Inf? Not likely since they'll be vetran players, Enhancements? Also not likely for the same reason. Hamidon Enhancements? Perhaps, although few people would trade a Golgi for a 15 minute buff, maybe a Lysome though)

Or maybe the devs just made these things "epic scale" like the rest of the bases and figure that only great big super active SGs deserve this kind of stuff anyway.

In my SG we're going to only install the arcane version of the enhancement station (we're a Tech SG) and tell players that they can use up all of their arcane salvage on all of the buffs they want, but the Tech salvage is for the SG.

Granted, that means only one buff every 5-10 levels or so, but isn't that the point of these things? They're designed to soak up the excess salvage in the market, not to actually give the players something useful. IMHO, they'd be more effective at soaking up salvage if they were a lot cheaper (one or two tech powers/materials for most things, maybe a hardware/software for the big buffs) since people would actually use them if they didn't cost an arm and a leg.

Yeah, it's like I said before. The numbers make all of the difference.

Given what the other numbers look like, I'd assume a ~12.5% resistance on the armors. If that's the case, I'm skipping the PPPs entirely on my MM and just loading up on some pool powers I wanted to get anyway.

I think Spectral wounds is coded something like this:

Damage (Psy) -X + DoT 1 Tick/10 Seconds (Psi) 0.2*X

The problem with the Instant Healing suggestion is that it would require some way for a toggle to attach an effect to an attack generated by a hostile. I suspect that is the piece of tech that's "hard to do".

I'm also a little curious, if you slot Golgi's in Spectral Wounds, does it increase the amount of damage healed back? Are Heal enhancements merely damage enhancements that only work on "positive" damage where damage enhancements only work on "negative" damage?

AFAIK, there's no power in the game that changes the basic nature of another attack (adding/subtracting secondary components). All you can do is modify the parameters (+100% damage, -25% lethal damage, etc...).

Otherwise we might have cool powers that some Defender click power that attaches a 50% disorient effect to every attack another player makes for 10 seconds, or a "fire fists" like power that adds a fire DoT to every attack or something.

BTW devs, this would be really cool if you ever get around to implementing some way to do it.

That's what I was complaining about. You'll just have to plop down $35 (you'll get a "month free" inside the box that costs $50 on the shelf) to avoid being put in the "have nots" category in the game. That's lame.

I'd much prefer just tacking an additional $3 on each month's fee and make _all_ expansions free. It's about the same money either way (except spread out more with the no-box-expansion route) but it avoids segmenting the playerbase. I find very little value in buying the cardboard from the store. Heck, even the disks are useless since you'll have pre-downloaded all of the content on it before it's available in stores anyway.

If it's just a matter of putting something new on the shelves (so they don't get shoved to the back), why not re-release the original box (with updated content on the CD so people don't have to download it all when they buy the game) with new art featuring whatever new stuff is in the expansion with each issue? That would keep the CoH box in the "new releases" shelf fairly regularly while keeping the playerbase from segmenting.

Heck, it's annoying enough when you're teamed with someone who can't use your base's teleporters because they don't own CoV. Imagine if you had to ask the team if they all had Box #3 before you selected a mission in one of the new zones? At least bases are mostly useless so it hasn't been a big problem yet.

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Man oh man, you guys BETTER have the portal into RV inside of Atlas City hall in plain/easy to find sight of everyone. You BETTER. Can you imagine how insanely awesome it will look to "new" players when they first enter Atlas and see throngs of level 50s and a bloody **PORTAL** right off the bat?

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I don't know, I try to avoid hanging around Atlas Park too long. The broadcast channel in that zone has been known to cause brain damage.

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Beyond that, we are looking to release another Issue building up the story towards our next retail box, due in 2007. This will include going back and revamping some of the zones from City of Heroes, using everything we've learned from making City of Villains and Issue 7, plus a bunch of other cool stuff including new powersets and an epic archetype. Of course for the retail box we will be creating all-new zones and content based on the results of the forum poll we posted last month. The retail box will be an expansion to both City of Heroes and City of Villains.

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Personally, I'm not very excited about buying another box. CoV I can kinda see because it introduced so much new stuff, but "yet another box" seems more like a blatent money grab to me. I mean the game already costs $144-$160/year to play, tacking on a $30 box (after accounting for the month of gameplay included in the box) on top of that doesn't seem very nice. Plus, it causes problems when trying to play with people who havn't bought the second (or in this case third) box. CoV wasn't too bad because the only thing people missed out on were the bases (which are kinda useless anyway), but if you have problems with pickup teams where some members can't get into certain zones because they havn't plucked down the cash for the new box, then it's a much bigger problem.

I'm not trying to DOOOM my post up here, but I think it's player unfriendly to have these extra content drops on top of the monthly fee, especially when they cause problems in-game. Crytpic is notable for not screwing their customers like Sony and some other MMO vendors, and we try to reward you for that by staying around and giving lots of good press. I'd hate to see that situation change, especially since I love the CoH/CoV universe and the players but generally avoid dealing with companies that treat their customers shabbily.

By the time you're done upgrading your last drone using your system, the bubbles will already be faded from the first bot and you'll have to reapply them anyway.

Personally, I don't find the single target bubbles to be all that necessary in most missions, at least when solo. I often don't bother until I see a tough mob in the next spawn.

Also, did you know you can slip in Insulation and Deflection while waiting for Equip to recharge? It's endo hungry to do that, but if you have Stamina you'll squeeze through with just barely enough endo by the end of full equip + 2 upgrade + all bubbles, assuming you remember to turn off the toggles before you upgrade.

Personally, the process is still a bit slower than I'd like on teams, which is why I have SuperJump (so I'm usually the first person to the mission, and with enough time that I'm well into the summon/upgrade cycle before the Fliers and SSers make it to the door). Once the team is at the door and I have them all bubbled, I usually just tell them to go and I'll finish up my upgrades and equips on the fly. The bots don't tend to last as long in teams anyway, so it's more like a constant stream of resummons, equips, and upgrades anyway.

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EDIT: stupid forum software and non-attributed quotes ...

Kong-Fu said:
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Why aren't you equipping all of your bots during the downtime from the first upgrade?

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After much practise, I find that I lose more time changing targets around fromminion to minion, than just "pick a bot, run him through the complete cycle ...lather ... rinse ... repeat".

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WHAT? You find you're having trouble choosing a second target and equipping and then switching back during the twenty eight second downtime between upgrades? That doesn't make any sense at all.

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Weekend_Avenger said:
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I have a level 40 MM, it takes me a minute and a half to be "ready enough" to start a mission. That's all Tiers spawned, and two with the second upgrade on them. If I'm still waiting I keep upgradeing if not, I roll with the rest of the team and finish upgrades on the fly.

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I consider "less than 100% prepared" to be "as good as 100% unprepared". Personal playstyle issue, perhaps.

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Oh please. If the battle drones don't have Full Auto Laser yet, they're still good enough for most battles. Sure you won't be killing mobs as fast as you do once everything is fully upgraded, but you're killing way faster than you would be sitting at the entrance watching Upgrade cycle. It's not like regular spawns are likely to kill any of your bots (unless they're CoT), you'll just be going a bit slower. I typically start fighting with only the Assault Bot and one Protector upgraded, although the second Protector is usually upgraded after the first spawn. After that, I just upgrade the drones as the power comes back up, although on small missions (newspaper missions) I'll often be nearly finished before the upgrade cycle is finally complete.

Why aren't you equipping all of your bots during the downtime from the first upgrade?

In PvP I don't even bother upgrading the battle drones. All it gives them is Full Auto Laser, which isn't terribly useful vs. players anyway. It's well worth it to upgrade the prot bots (hello stacked disorient) and the assault bot missiles are just too much fun to ignore. This means pretty much Summon->Upgrade first->Equip All->Upgrade Second->Start hunting->Upgrade third

I have one recharge redux in Equip and three in Upgrade of course. Also, this only counts in Warburg, in Sirens you don't even have Upgrade, and in BB your army is considerably smaller.

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Overall I think Bodyguard will help with MM survivability in PvP. That said, I'd still like to know what they are going to do about the time it takes a middle to high lvl MM to buff all the pets. The 5-10 minutes it takes to buff up all the pets is one of the main discouraging factors of why there are not more MM's in PvP. I think people can live with the deaths if they could return to action at full strength the way all of the other AT's can.

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The buff time is definately a major issue that MMs have with their AT. No other AT has to waste 5-10 minutes (just over 5 in my case because I slotted 3 recharges into my second tier buff) before they can get back into the game. Many groups, especially PvP groups, don't want to take on a MM because they know the MM will die first, and then be unable to rejoin and contribute for an inordinately long amount of time.

[/ QUOTE ]Well, according to the binder guide, every final upgrade has a base recharge of 60 seconds. So assuming you're trying for max speed with 3 SO recharges it should take you about 2.5 minutes to fully equip.

Not that any of this belongs in a thread about bodyguard. I just had the urge to shoot down some uninformed hyperbole.

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You'd better be willing to shoot down most of this thread then. At this point I'd have no objections, most of the useful commenters stopped pages ago.

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I picked it knowing full well it was passive - which means, as the director-of-minions, I take less aggro. Other than strong EBs, and outright AVs/GMs, I am 100% safe in PvE combat; I haven't faceplanted there due to ANYthing except simple stupidity on my own part (IOW, not running away when I should have, and/or simply not paying attention to where I was at the time).

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This has been bugging me for a bit. /FF is NOT very good at avoiding aggro, at least not if you're using the other half of the set. If you only use the Buffs in /FF, then it's not surprising that you're finding it lackluster and boring. /FF is a Buff/Crowd Control set. If you use the crowd control powers, you'll likely take more aggro, but you'll also offer considerably better protection to you and your minions. Keeping enemies disoriented and out of melee range can go a long way to improve your survivability.

What's more, very very few sets in the game have Repel protection, which means that once you have Force Bubble you'll be nearly immune to Melee attacks (with caveats naturally), which can greatly improve your survivablility. Remember that most Blasters in PvP are only _really_ dangerous if they get into melee range to finish you off with Total Focus or Thunder Strike. Scrappers and tanks are pretty much useless from range. Defenders have weak attacks anyway and most controller pet (saved those damnamble Ill trollers and Grav Trollers) are much better in melee. Granted, a Controller will most likely break though your dispersion bubble and drop your toggles, but nobody said that anybody should be a god in PvP.

One of the things I thought when he talked about that was "you know, Recon and especially Healing Flames just kinda suck". I have a fire tank and Healing Flames comes up just too slow to be really useful. I spend a lot of time in battle thinking "cmon, I put three recharges in you, recharge faster!"

Of course I'm also one of those guys who stuck 2 recharges in Aid Self. When I'm taking enough damage that I need healing, I tend to need more healing than HF can provide. Aid Self has a much higher threshold and is more generally useful in that situation.

IMHO, I wouldn't mind if HF and Recon were dropped to 40 second recharges and Aid Self was bumped to a 30 second recharge. That would also put them much more in line with the amount of healing they provide, and the fact that Aid Self is a pool power (although that should be taken up by the fact that Aid Self is interruptable).

OMG! Castle is using a lot of vowels today, that means Aid Self is going to be nerfed two weeks after I7 is released.

DOOOOOOOM!

That would suck a bit in team situations. Normally if the FF defender gets slept (or just stunned through stacking stuns), most of his protection stays up. If you move most of it into dispersion, you put a lot of eggs into that one basket. Toggles aren't exactly a piece of cake to keep up all of the time when you have weak/no status protection. Granted, FF isn't as bad off as Rad or Dark in that regard, but I'm still not sure I'd want a single stun to be as doomtastic as it is for Dark and Rad users.

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Well the only possible solution to this issue is to have the henchmen affected to have their dmg resistance be taken into account after the dmg split by BG is taken. To hit checks dont make sense since they are volunteering to take the dmg for their master.

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Actually, I would find this an acceptable change, even if it does continue to bypass my bubble protection. It may make no sense to have damage I dump onto my pets make a seperate check to see if it hits, but the pets should definately get to use their own resistances.

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The devs can't do that because it would be massively unfair to Ninja/ MMs.

Man, I guess people were right about all internet discussions eventually turning into mindless flamefests.

Seriously folks, I'd reply to everything people have gotten wrong in this thread, but it would take all day and double the length of the thread.

Fact: With bodyguard up, MMs are going to be very difficult to kill directly. You have to pump in 4 times as much damage, which is way more than most ATs can burst. I'm still dubious about that EM stalker study too.

Fact: Force Field is a Buff/Control set. Lots of people ignore the control powers (Detention Field, Force Bolt, Repulsion Bomb, Repulsion Field, Force Bubble) to their own peril. If someone says "FF only offers buffs and it totally sux in PvP", you can ignore them because they're an idiot.

Fact: PvP will not be safe and easy for MMs. TP foe, Build Up + 8 Rages + Assassin Strike + Energy Transfer + Total Focus + etc..., Detention field, Black Hole, etc... It's all bad news. If you can't handle this, don't PvP. If you absolutely can't stand dying, then don't PvP. Don't come crying on the boards because you've died more in PvP (in your first time in the zone) than you have in the past 10 levels. PvP is something that requires skill, planning, and most of all, practice. The guys who keep kicking your butt are the ones that PvP all of the time, and have for nearly a year now. Just think how good you'll feel when you start beating them reguarly (they beat each other regularly). MMs have a lot of tricks they can pull out in PvP, and with Bodyguard a lot more of them will be viable.

Fact: PFF got nerfed. I know. It doesn't really affect me much, but I know it hurts a lot of you. I'm sorry, but it really was abusive. Even if we didn't get Bodyguard, it was going to be nerfed anyway.

Fact: No matter how much you whine, the devs aren't going to put back the feature you were exploiting. Just ask /Devices blasters that cried for _months_ over the Smoke Grenade fix. If you find something that makes one set considerably better than anything else, don't be surprised when it's changed later, and don't think that temper tantrums on the forums are going to help.

I think this is going to be my last post in this thread. I've already made my points, and I see no value in the arguments currently running.

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Defenders aren't strapped to 6+ lead weights with the combined IQ of the current issue number, they don't need to stand around and command their "teammates" that are too stupid to not run right in front of a boss that's going to oneshot them.

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You've never been a defender on a pickup team I see.

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"Two shots instead of one? You've just doubled my life expectancy! I HATE YOU!"

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Just doing some quick tests on this with our VG... based on the total damage, BU + AS + ET from an EM stalker will wipe out Henchman and the MM in 2 shots with bodyguard. That attack chain is so short, you're not going to have time for anything.

We'll be looking at AoE damage next.

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Oof. That's a lot of damage. Since a level 38 (warburg) MM has 698.75 hp, that means the combo does over 2795 damage.

For comparision, that will also two-shot:
1. SR scrappers
2. Ice Tanks running unless they have fully slotted Tough and Dull Pain running (and then it just leaves them with a sliver).
3. Dark Melee scrappers running their resistance toggles
4. Invuln Scrappers unless slotted with Dull Pain and running Unstoppable
5. Regen scrappers
6. Fire Tanks, even if they have Tough and their toggles slotted up, although they can survive if they have both +HP accolades
7. Any squishy
8. Any Brute except possibly Stone and Invuln with Dull Pain and Granite/Unstoppable

In other words a character able to dish out that much damage can basically kill almost anyone he wants. I'm not sure why this makes Bodyguard bad.