Kosmos

Fortitude is L20 for Controllers, 12 is for Defenders (Primary pool #6).

Ill/Emp is a good team build, you wouldn't need to PL that high, but at 18 you get Phantom Army and 20 Fortitude, then SOs at 22. So that's a huge swing from in effectiveness from 17 to 22.

An alternative might be Plant/Emp, which gets it's core control power at L6. You could go with Strangler/Healing Aura at 1, Roots at 2 (or Heal Other), Super Speed at 4 (to get to missions safely but more importantly get you stealth to let you line up Seeds) and Seeds of Confusion at 6 and be useful on a team with your Blaster friends in almost no time. Just stay away from Nemesis, who resist Confuse.

Yeah, I'm 99.999% sure it's a live issue and a bug, but I hadn't logged it as such myself as I haven't tested it on live to confirm the behavior is the same in both places. I really don't want to slot the Tanker ATO on live as it stands right now.

His Bifurcate power recharges while he's mezzed and and if he breaks out he'll use it as his first action. He also gets the +Regen buffs from his clones while mezzed unless he's Confused. So most hard mez needs to be kept on him at all times to be really effective. It can, of course, delay his use of the power even if there are gaps, but that will be the extent of it. If it's not complete coverage it ends up just being a sort of Slow effect. And that's probably not worth the effort with the exception of delaying that 1st clone.

Dark Blast is pretty weak against single targets all right. Gloom is the only really good damage ST attack. It does about 60% more damage per second of activation than Dark Blast, about 90% more than Life Drain and roughly 185% more than Tenebrous Tentacles and Night Fall. So using it as much as possible ups your DPS considerably. That's probably why Uber's high recharge build had so much more success than you, with the extra -Reg from having HT up more being just an added bonus. The key to any Dark Blast Def (or Corr) getting decent sustained ST DPS is going to be reducing the recharge on Gloom as much as possible and avoiding using the AoEs as fillers if you can.

Despite some unhelpful comments to the contrary, Trapdoor really can be a pain for some builds. Especially now that the lava is gone. The problem is that you really need sustainable mez for the tactic I call "Bind-and-Grind", burst ST damage and either range or mobility for "Clone Wars", or sustained ST damage for "Steamroller". It doesn't sound as if your build can provide any of those.

Just write off Trapdoor as your nemesis and move on to something your build is good at. Even the ease (though not rapidity) with which you'll be able to beat the Minotaur should restore some confidence in the build.

He has normal EB mez protection. No more, no less. You need to stack 7 Mag or more to mez him.

Fear won't slow the recharge on his Bifurcate power nor will it stop him from using it when it is recharged, though it may delay its use briefly (up to 5s I believe) until he has a chance to act.

Howling Twilight does the equivalent of 58 DPS for 30s to Trapdoor while he has at least one clone out and 11.6 if he has none (assuming there's no other -Reg). If he has 1+ clones roughly half the time that's equivalent of a tidy little 35 DPS 30s DoT. If you're chasing the clones the key is actually defeating them quickly (as that both reduces the Regen he receives from them and gets you back to damaging him) but immobilizing Trapdoor and knocking off that much Regen adds a significant margin for error. Probably as much as adding a Hardsuit pet does.

I think for her, it might have been chasing the clones (or spending time on non-damaging actions in general), that did her in.

Either way you approach Trapdoor (you're down to just two choices solo without the lava or the ability to mezz him), I think you're right on the importance of HT for a Dark Def. You either need to leverage it for a quick win or use it to provide the margin you need to spend the time hunting down the clones.

I am surprised that your offense plus -Regen and -Res along with a Hardsuit didn't top the roughly 160 DPS equivalence need to defeat Trapdoor. Did you stick to him, or chase his clones?

In the general case, if you can't locate and take out a clone in less than about 15s on average then chasing the clones is likely a waste of effort. As for ignoring the clones and concentrating on Trapdoor... if you can't beat him in less than about 60s then it's too late and you'll start losing ground when he summons the 3rd clone (at that point his Regen rate goes up to 186 DPS and if you had that much DPS he'd be beaten already).

That's the general case though, for a Dark Def beating him in the first 30s or so is the way to go, since HT eliminates 1 clone's worth of Regen for 30s, meaning chasing that first clone accomplishes very little. Let's see, that leaves you needing 4016 damage (assuming he's L50) in about 26s (it'll take about 7s to cast Tar Patch then Howling Twilight). That's 154.5 DPS, with Tar Patch's -30% Res a raw 118.8. Then add his Regen at 11.6 (ignoring fluffy's -Reg from a random Twilight's Grasp). That's a DPS of 131 or so needed to beat him before the double whammy of a 2nd clone appearing and HT wearing off at around the 33s mark. I would have thought a Hardsuit and red pills would be enough for that (I'd would have estimated at least 150 for that combo). Sorry it didn't work out.

That should be plenty. I think even a Hardsuit would probably be enough, so an HVAS (which is an EB itself) should murder him when coupled with your -Regen (and it has some -Regen of its own) and -Res. You might want to circle around the other side and use Torrent (if you have it) to play ping pong with the HVAS and keep Trapdoor in the Tar Patch, but I can't think of any other possible drawbacks from using an HVAS (other than having used it, that is).

[Edit:] Remember to summon the HVAS early to get full use out of it. I might up the diff, stealth to the end, and run the mission backwards using an HVAS.

A Dark Def should have plenty of -Regen without an Envenomed Dagger. Sounds like you just need more DPS. A Shivan, Warwolf or Hard Suit from a Backup Radio would probably do the trick. Of course, an Envenomed Dagger is a lot cheaper than a Backup Radio and takes much less time and effort to get than the other two so it's probably worth a try.

"[E]ver so slightly"? I'd call the color differences "quite a bit", "a lot" or even "dramatically" different.

It depends upon your graphics setting, of course. At lower graphics settings the difference is often minor but at higher settings it's immediately obvious. To the point where I have one Steampunk costume (that won a year's sub in a costume contest) that I feel can only be played on the middle or lower graphics settings as on higher settings my bright red boots become a very unattractive washed out shade of pink.

I'd heard that, but wasn't sure if it was a nerf or if - as in Who Will Die Ep. 1 - the lava is bugged and sometimes just doesn't do anything.

Since there are so few people asking for help with Trapdoor these days I didn't bother to test it.

I just try to keep in mind that a new mechanic is always a possibility. And more so, that I may just not understand the existing mechanics well enough to properly interpret what CoD is telling me.

CoD lists the P Shifter as having a target and entities effected listing of "Caster", with the effect itself being flagged to only apply to "Friends". I naturally read that to mean it will only work on "friends". However, it could be that the P Shifter proc grants a power to its target and then when the target uses that power to see if it procs it is always its own "friend", and therefore the "friend" designation listed in CoD may be meaningless. Or any of variety of other possibilities. I wouldn't expect it to work in any way that makes the "if friend" tag meaningless, but I also wouldn't be the least surprised if it did.

In any case, it's always best to just go out and test this sort of stuff, because it's been proven repeatedly that the CoH game engine holds reason in contempt.

There were some cases in the past however where the devs did something tricky and CoD's code failed to "keep it's eye on the ball" as it were, leading to the listings there being incomplete.

I can't think of any cases like that as of now, and it even seems to have the Titan Weapon's stuff complete and correct, but since it is automated I always keep in mind that some odd edge case may not have been covered correctly.

I think these listings are pretty straight-forward however, and so have serious doubts about Triage Beacon granting heal proc buffs to its targets as of now (they say their target is the caster and the effect is tagged as "self"). I think I'll transfer my Thugs/Traps to Beta and plug one of each in and see.

My impression was that it was considerably further than 200 yards as well, which is why I didn't try testing the buff expiration theory. I felt I needed to be off in a featureless corner of a zone such as Talos or PI or the Shard to feel certain no one else was in range.

I think Codewalker's explanation accounts for most of the "mystery" interrupts I've had, with unseen Ouro users probably accounting for the rest.

That's a good explanation, and it works for Rage too.

In general Blasters can only take that kind of melee aggro by using inspirations, buffs or with specific IO-based builds at high level. If you're interested I do have a Mids build I did for an SG mate's En/En/Cold Blaster that had soft-capped S/L Def and around 350% Regen.

I think the bigger issue with the strategy is that Blaster Nova-class powers are simply not very good any more. The target cap was a real killer for those powers, then subsequent changes (IOs in particular) upped the pace of play in the game making the -Recovery period a real annoyance. Any strategy that is built around featuring a mediocre power is likely to be less than sterling. On top of that, with Nova, you have the issue mentioned regarding how your teammates will view your scattering mobs all over the place.

What in the world does this have to do with anything I wrote? I couldn't care less about why the post was deleted. Or the post at all, for that matter. I didn't even bother to click the link. I just took TJ's assessment as accurate that it was considered an exploit fix.

What I do care about, and what I was complaining about, is that their Patch Notes are woefully incomplete. And that much of that short-coming appears to be due to their policies regarding exploits.


Here... I'll spell it out:

(1) They have a bug that someone decides could be exploited.
(2) They log that as an exploitable bug.
(3) Therefore it doesn't go in the "Known Issues" because they don't advertise exploits. (Of course... very, very little actually does make it into the "Known Issues".)
(4) Time passes. Sometimes years.
(5) Someone fixes the bug. The bug fix doesn't go into the Patch Notes on the Training Room because it is a fix for an exploit and they still don't want to advertise it.
(6) The patch including the fix then goes live with a copy of the TR Patch Notes (often verbatim) that still includes no mention of the change.

Based upon previous dev statements (6) isn't supposed to happen. But because the devs' Patch Note process is so iffy, it happens far more often than not. Unfortunately, whatever methodology the devs have in place for tracking changes to produce patch notes seems to be terribly inadequate. And the exploit policies seem to hit it right where it's the weakest.


As a result of the lack of a Patch Note for this change my teammate ended up reporting the incident as a bug, and apparently at least one other person actually did a petition on it (my friend didn't bother with a petition, as it only takes 15 min or so to get this badge). This sort of failing in the Patch Notes not only results in wasted customer service resources, but can also hurt customer relations when things that appeared to be working as intended for years are abruptly changed with no comment whatsoever.

Oh, the devs' Known Issues/Patch Notes practices are just a pet peeve of mine.

They have a very broad definition of "exploit" and a very strict policy of not advertising them. This combination leads to many cases where players see things working a certain way for years, then being changed without a word from the devs. Supposedly - at least according to some red names posts in the past - the Patch Notes should include notice when exploit bugs are fixed, but in practice that seems to rarely happen.