Laevateinn

Mentor
  • Posts

    1142
  • Joined

  1. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Werner View Post
    I figured I could level up the "worst possible combination", and still have a blast doing it, because all Scrappers are awesome.
    I don't think there's a "worst possible combination". "Least best" may be closer to the truth
  2. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha View Post
    Grind moar phail plz? Some of us don't have the time or the ability to play all day (I used to, as well....thank you god-damn Uni internet...) that is required for grinding. And, in fact, some of us simply don't find it *fun*. New content should be as fun for as many people as possible, and not force a playstyle down your throat that you dont want to adhere to. Again, because it is not fun.
    I think it's a good thing for this game to offer long term (i.e. achievable in months, years) goals. Not all goals should be like that, probably not even most goals. But some of them should be, and I think that currently the game does not provide enough. The new endgame is Paragon Studio's big chance to fix this once and for all.

    I'm strongly opposed to the idea that grinding should be the only way to get there, though. There should be ways of progression that don't involve spending long hours doing menial work. The market is a pretty good example, since it offers rewards that are not strictly tied to how much time you spend in-game. If they can duplicate the success of IOs and the market systems, I'll be happy, and I'm pretty sure they will.
  3. I have a more reserved perspective. Yes, the CoH community is better than every other MMO community I've seen, but considering most MMO "communities" are pretty bad to begin with, that doesn't say much. Rather than resting on our laurels, let's try to make it better by not participating in childish drama or the antics of the occasional idiot who crops up.
  4. Quote:
    Originally Posted by EricHough View Post
    Actually, compared to many third tier single target attacks blazing arrow has a very fast activation - 1.83 seconds compared to 2s (power blast), 2.07s (cosmic burst) and 2.67s (shout). Only blaze, bitter ice blast and TK blast beat it - and tk blast is somewhat underpowered.
    Good point. I think my perception is warped from playing Fire and Ice and Sonic (and I skipped Shout on my Sonic blast character ).
  5. Laevateinn

    WP/SS IO sets

    On my Brute I put it in Punch, so that the proc would fire more often.
  6. Agree with the above assessments. If you want some real-world testimony, my Fire/SD/Blaze using Scorch > Incin > Scorch > Cremate could solo pylons without Aid Self; I don't think I was ever in danger of dying, unless the pylon got lucky and hit me 3 times in a row.

    You do have to chose between GFS and Phalanx. Dropping Phalanx is really not a good idea, since it's equal to three 3.75 def bonuses and you will pay through the nose in slot efficiency to softcap without it.
  7. Rikti. For transdimensional alien invaders, they don't pack much of a punch, particularly compared to other 40-50 groups like Malta, Vanguard Sword and Nemesis. They carry few buffs, no debuffs, no ToHitBuffs, no troublesome powers that turn the tide of a fight (Vengeance, Sapper guns) and all that makes them a threat is that they're very mez heavy.

    I'd keep the current Rikti faction the same for levels 30-40; at this point you are going up against the frontline troops that are a threat to human militaries but not too dangerous to powerful supers. From 40-50 you should face elite troops intended to specifically fight super-powered beings. The Rikti would deploy powersuited troops exclusively (Chief Soldiers, all the Mentalists, Headmen Gunmen) and boss versions of Rikti Magi, Rikti Priests and Heavy Assault Suits. Heavy Assault Suits should get a swarm missile attack and AI that keeps them at range where they can use their superior firepower. Rikti Priests should get some Empathy buffs instead of being another Dominate/Mental Blast spammer and I'd like to see some unit types that were only hinted at be fleshed-out and implemented as minions (e.g. Psi-Scouts). No, this will never happen and if it did the whining would be deafening but it's fun to think about.
  8. Quote:
    Originally Posted by dave_p View Post
    Also, Shield Charge (& Lightning Rod, the 1-2 combo that makes SD/Elec so popular) uses scrapper values (...)
    Minor correction. All versions of shield charge used to use the Brute version, then awhile ago they were changed to properly reflect each AT's melee modifiers. Tanker Shield Charge ended up getting a slight boost in the process.

    I prefer Shield Charge over a small-radius damage aura and a Build Up clone. The huge radius, knockdown, short animation time, and burst damage make it better in practice than a simplistic comparison of damage numbers would imply, and anecdotal claims of "my X can outdamage every Y out there!" don't impress me. That said, on an SO-only build it's not an every-spawn power and it comes late in a set that is rather lackluster without it.
  9. Congratulations!

    I had the impression that you couldn't tank STF Recluse with PA because the PAs needed to land hits in order to taunt him, and with the yellow tower up they can't hit him. Did you guys cage the yellow tower? Or could the PA hold aggro without being able to hit Recluse.
  10. Offhand, I don't think Archery has exceptionally good animation times, but I found it very light and responsive, too. Blazing Arrow and RoA have long animations, but then they're the big ST and AoE hitters.

    I was always a pyro so it's no surprise my first Blaster was Fire/Fire.
  11. It seems better to take BU before Whirling Sword (which is what I did on my BS/SD). Slice already gives you respectable AoE (with some positioning on your part) and you cannot take on groups large enough to make the extra AoE really significant. BU also helps you hit while debuffed by all the CoT ghosts you'll face and helps to quickly kill nasty stuff e.g. Council Marksmen, Madness Mages, Earth Thorn Casters, Arachnos Tarantulas and other such things that are a pain if left alive very long. I would take Whirling Sword at 38 instead, right after Shield Charge so you can use both in tandem.

    Definitely keep Parry, it's a nice filler attack and softcapped lethal keeps away a lot of nasty stuff.

    I'm not sure if I would bother with IOs beyond frankenslotting and the usual budget SD stuff. Try to get a Steadfast +3 def from AE bronze rolls, 1 full set of Red Fortune and 1 full set of Multistrike. Together with Weave and your toggles this puts you at a hair below 32.5% defense to all, so you can eat 1 small purple inspiration and instantly become softcapped. On my BS/SD using only SOs, I found it very hard to run Tough/Weave as well as attack, but you may do better with frankenslotted attacks.

    Consider crafting an Etheral Shift as a poor man's Hibernate (it's very cheap). All my characters have one to prevent embarassing deaths. Good luck.
  12. Atomic Blast has Mag 3 hold and some gigantic amount of -Def.

    Dreadful Wail has mag 3 stun and -Res (notable since Sonic Blast is somewhat light on AoE).

    Psychic Wail has Mag 3 stun and some gigantic amount of slow.

    Blizzard does the same damage as the Blaster version, has KD, slow, -ToHit (no kidding - look it up yourself), can be used without line of sight and potentially ends up killing more than 16 targets due to it being a rain.

    Full Auto and Rain of Arrows do nothing special, but are usable as normal AoE attacks.

    Darkstar has -60% ToHit or something ridiculous like that. It would completely floor (and then some) the hit chance of anything not an AV/GM class. It's debatable if it would be worth dropping the Dark toggles for that in a tight spot, but still worth mentioning as a last-ditch panic button if you're about to die.

    They're not needed, but most of them are situationally useful if you are not heavily dependant on toggles (e.g. Rad) and worth considering if you have some means of restoring endurance (Heat Loss, Transference, Powersink). And nothing says fun like going up in a big boom.
  13. I'm aggressively stockpiling resources of all sorts (influence, merits, various rare and valuable IOs) while waiting for further news. I'll refine my plans once news regarding the new endgame system is released.

    I don't have any plans to make new characters once GR is released, but when the time comes I'll probably cave in and make a Dual Pistols something. I even have a cute gunslinger costume picked out.
  14. Common wisdom usually suggests Scrappers blueside and Brutes redside, but all ATs have combinations that solo well. (And there's always setting enemies to spawn at -1 your level, if you're OK with that.)
  15. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Shred_Monkey View Post
    Some people may feel that they'll never have the best IO's in this game... but it's not because it's impossible. It's because, there's something they're not doing. If they choose not to do it, good for them, that's their choice. But it's not impossible.
    That's hard to say. I'm sure there are people out there who, for whatever reason, can't commit to playing the market or farming, the way you can't commit to playing 2hr TFs. I do like how grinding and large time commitments aren't required in this game, though. And even if you do chose to grind, it's orders of magnitude less tedious than some other games out there. In a certain game made by the producers of the largest MMO on the market right now, the chance of the rarest rune dropping was something like 1 for every 65 million highest-level monsters killed. Compare that to only 6000+ level 50 kills for a purple.

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Negescape View Post
    There's different aspects to the min/max game that correspond with the characters role. In terms of DPS, it's obviously generating the largest end number possible. You can sacrifice some recharge to gain some damage and the end result may be that you gained 0.5% dps out of that act. Do this across the board and you've netted yourself a 5% gain in damage because you've completely optimized your slotting. The other guy that didn't take the time to figure that out and thinks that faster is better will be under performing in terms of sheer damage output.
    If you're optimizing for single-target DPS scenarios such as pylon or AV soloing and the drop in recharge does not change your attack chain or un-perma critical self buffs, then yes. On the other hand if the drop in recharge leaves a gap in your attack chain, it may not be worth it (and as a counterpoint to that, the highest-DPS BS attack chain showed that sometimes living with a gap in the chain actually produces higher DPS). There could be a situation where getting that last 5% recharge bonus produced a slightly higher gain than someone who didn't crunch the numbers and assumed hitting harder is better. If your powersets have long-recharge key powers (e.g. Shield Charge) then you could argue that some slight sacrifice in single-target DPS is worth the shorter recharge on AoE burst damage. It really would depend on the character in question, your playstyle and what sort of content you usually play against.

    This is half of what I like about the CoH minmaxing scene. I like character optimization, but at the same time there's rarely a solution that's clearly "best" (if not, it's usually a symptom of a poorly-balanced game) and how you get to that point is an entirely different story. There is tons of room for customization to personal tastes and concept. Some people believe minmaxing is just sitting down with a calculator and a spreadsheet to produce some magical set of numbers, or claim that there's no point to minmaxing in this game. Like the sheep who mindlessly criticize anything related to character optimization, they don't know what they're talking about. What you can say is that minmaxing isn't required for the game, and that's the other half of what I like about the CoH minmaxing scene.
  16. What they said. Fire/Shield is probably the hardest /Shield to play since it gets neither mitigation nor endurance management from the primary, but it's a well-balanced build with both strong single-target and AoE damage.

    Not taking Tough/Weave and Medicine cuts off a lot of your options for boosting survivability, but it's doable with careful inspiration management. I skipped medicine and although I took the Fighting pool on my Fire/Shield, I levelled without using it into the late 40's (because I would run out of endurance trying to run the extra 2 toggles) without major problems. In teams you should situationally turn off Against All Odds (it has the same strength as Tanker taunt auras and you do more damage and it carries a debuff, so it can pull enemies off the tanker and onto you) if the damage becomes more than you can handle.

    If you're looking for inexpensive ways to boost your defense you can start with 6-slotted Red Fortune in Deflection/Battle Agility, 6-slotted Multistrike in Fire Sword Circle/Shield charge, 6-slotted Gaussian's Synchronized Fire Control in Build up and a Steadfast +3 def unique in True grit. This brings you up to around 30% to melee/AoE and 32% to ranged, which is somewhat more respectable (almost equal to an SO-only SR) and will tide you over till you can consider pricier options.
  17. I notice that a lot of people who are very vocal about "playing for fun" don't care about fun (or they actually mean "only what I play is fun"). Because their definition of fun comes with more fine print than a legal document. Just look at some of their arguments: "You're not really playing the game if you min-max. You're not really having fun if you use Mids. You're not really min-maxing unless you reinvent the wheel. You're not really enjoying yourself if you play popular powersets." Well, all those rules and regulations don't sound like fun, they sound like bureaucracy. When I look at the personal attacks they make against people who dare to play differently, I get the impression they're more interested in feeling superior to their fellow players than enjoying the game.
  18. Laevateinn

    Fire/Regen

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Hazygreys View Post
    Not that it matters for the server I play on or for Hami raids in general, but I miss seeing a /regen scrapper being the taunter for hami
    Out of curiosity, is there any reason why they can't do it? I know Virtue redside is using regen Stalkers to tank Hami (though apparently with Hibernate).
  19. Quote:
    Originally Posted by The_Alt_oholic View Post
    I'd go with this ::
    Also, I have to ask:

    Are you a min/max-er if you use a mini/max build?

    -or-
    Are is the min/max-er the one that crunched the numbers to min/max the system?

    To me a player that uses a mini/max-ed build is mini/max-ing, and the person that figured it out originally is the mini/max-er.
    The vocal ones tend to be mini/max-ing. That is to say that they are trying to find a mini/max-ed build rather than taking time to crack the system themselves.
    The point of min-maxing is to minimize disadvantages and maximize advantages, by definition. I don't think anyone, except perhaps you, cares how the result is achieved. You seem to be implying that there's some sort of special pride, a sort of e-honor perhaps, gained by not using any information or knowledge gleaned from others' work, something like saying that poetry only counts if you invent the alphabet it's written with. Well, guess what - we don't care about your e-honor. We don't care about arbitrary definitions of "gameplay" and "fun" that are used to condemn people who don't play that way. We're here to have FUN.
  20. I can see rare salvage being worth it if the character with tickets is at an odd level. A lot of recipes, even if they're normally desirable ones, sell for a lot less if they're not at maximum level.
  21. Quote:
    Originally Posted by MeanNVicious View Post
    You have to realize anyone who "plays" the market will be devastated by this idea. It will simply destroy most if not all of the high end "niches" and their profits will simply disappear. Of course anyone in that position is gonna post a significantly scathing "anti idea" against the OP's good idea.
    Considering you recently tried to sell a Glad armor unique for 3-4 billion, I can see why you're so desperate to defend the OP's idea.

    Have a lot of PvPIOs you need stripped?
  22. Quote:
    Originally Posted by New Dawn View Post
    Scrapper boards tend to assume people can afford Gladiator sets etc compared to the other sections. In the other sections people await to not know but instead have some idea what the person requiring build advice can or will afford and is aiming for. Less of who can come up with an ultimate build and more of, concept/functuality up to a price bound builds.
    Can you link to a few examples? Because I'm not sure where you're getting this impression. I give out plenty of advice on budget builds myself. You also need to consider that scrapper forumites may simply be wealthier.
  23. Laevateinn

    Niches

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by DumpleBerry View Post
    But it's boring me. And the worst of it is...I could flip junk salvage and make double. I enjoy the thought of being paid for the service of convenience I provide...but making money off of the impatient, lazy, and stupid just feels wrong somehow. :/
    Flipping is also a defense against market manipulation and the sort of dramatic price spikes that inevitably happen whenever supply hits 0. By keeping goods in stock you prevent a supply crisis and the higher cost of your flipped goods raises the cost (and therefore, risk) it takes to buy out all the supply and relist at a higher price.
  24. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Zamuel View Post
    While part of ED was to weaken the players, it also had the goal of encouraging different builds. From a few threads here and there I have to wonder if they actually succeeded in getting players to use differing builds. It seems like certain IOs have a tendency to be shunned in favor of doing things the "right" way. Wondering what everyone else's opinion on this is.
    They have. The proof lies in the fact that no two IO builds are exactly the same, even with the same powersets and identical build goals. In CoH, there is no such thing as a "cookie-cutter build".

    There are a lot of pretty bad IO sets out there (notably, a lot of the older ones), but there's more to build diversity than just which sets are popular and which bonuses are good. You need to consider how it can be frankenslotted, how it can be used in a set mule, what level range it has, the distribution of enhancement values, how easily it runs afoul of the rule of 5 (e.g. melee characters tend to get access to a ton of 5% rech bonuses, which has implications for otherwise excellent sets like Obliteration) and about a billion other things.
  25. Quote:
    Originally Posted by PrincessDarkstar View Post
    But there is something in me that likes reading through set bonus lists to see what kind of build someone has gone for, so I would give someone credit for building for defence if that was a good idea for their toon, whereas having a set bonus list as long as your arm but without focus I would know isn't min/max'ed.
    You can't tell from the set bonus list how a character will perform. To do that you would also need to know the exact slotting and also the purpose the character was made for. Even if a character has all the right bonuses, the build may have sacrificed too much in terms of actual enhancement values, slot cost and set mules. And knowing the focus of the build sheds light on why it may be built a certain way. Farming /SD builds, for example, don't need to softcal all positions since they will cherry-pick enemies that do not debuff defense or have ToHitBuffs and they can constantly pop inspirations. So they can go for maximum recharge and skimp on defense a bit. As characters built to do only one thing and do it well, I would certainly consider such a build well-minmaxed.