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Posts
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Joined
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Yes you will.
Quote:You fulfill a roll better than the Scrapper does, DPS.
The highest damage character in the game is a melee (SS/FA brute). Top-tier melee characters reliably match the damage output of top-tier blasters while having vastly higher survivability, the ability to herd and support the team by controlling aggro. Blasters, even designed in the subpar, cripplingly overspecialized way you mention, do not have significantly higher damage than the best balanced builds of other ATs. If anyone is on Virtue and would like to see the facts for themselves, send me a message at @Laevateinn and I'll demonstrate them for you. -
Hear hear! And I quite like the insta-death gimmicks and timed objectives - they reward situational awareness, quick reflexes and and a knowledgeable and well-prepared player. Still wish they'd kept the Keyes pulse at 50% which was more reasonable, now it doesn't even do enough damage to outdamage base regen rate.
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Pyronic has the fastest animation (fireball animation) and the Core branch on average does more damage than other cores.
Radial Void has -50% dmg which adds a lot of survivability.
Ion is best for very scattered enemies and unusually large groups.
It's true that Cryonic and Vorpal are lackluster by comparison, though.
Because it's not the only top-tier build. Fire/kin, fire/dark, rad/sonic, fire/SD, etc etc. Players are spoiled for choice when it comes to FotM minmax builds these days now that a lot of sub-par ATs/powersets have been fixed, and we recently got two new top-tier sets (TW and time manip). -
Drop snowstorm for frostwork (it's actually quite good in the softcap era, and gives rare toxic res). Sleet should be slotted for rech, not procs - it is your main offensive multiplier and with good recharge slotting you can shave another 4-5 seconds off the recharge. Replace your spectral terror slotting with Glimpse of the Abyss, which has better bonuses overall. I don't see anything else that can be done without significantly changing the slotting, using incarnate powers or increasing the budget.
Long-term, getting an apoc and ragnarok will allow you to remove the 4 slots from spectral terror entirely - it needs no slotting at all beyond the default slot. You can then get a purple damage proc in Blind and another damage proc in either SW or ice blast.
It is tricky to hit 45 defense on Ill/Cold, since on this combo you take most of the primary and secondary (so you have very little room for fighting pool, unlike Rads and kins). That's a goal reserved only for the most capable builds. -
OK, I took a look, the damage was unexpectedly good and the build looks promising. I still have concerns over the lack of massive layered defences that I'm used to (def/res/control/debuff/heal). But this looks like a powerset worth checking out. Thanks for sharing.
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Probably not, but they should be extremely wary of making non-trial content rewarding enough that that it eclipses trials. (And trials should remain the major way of obtaining components.) One problem this game's reward system has always had is that solo farming always produces better rewards than teaming. This changed, for awhile when trials came out, and now with the solo incarnate path it's in danger of slipping the other way again.
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Quote:This has me interested. Can I come and watch you play? Do you mind sharing your build?Oil slick does tons of damage, so they are going to be doing a lot of damage.
With acid and disruption, they are going to be contributing much more to the team's damage in an average setting than any damage AT would be doing. This is because everyone will be able to take advantage of the -res.
I think you are misguided if you believe a traditional damage AT would be contributing more end-game. Simply by fighting the AV and spamming acid and disruption when they are up and otherwise attacking normally, no normal damage AT (brute, scrapper, blaster, stalker, etc.) is going to be able to hope to contribute more overall team damage than they are.
They will have acid + probably double stacked disuption on that AV for -60 resistance meaning the entire team will be doing 60% more damage to the AV. How in the hell is the scrapper going to contribute more damage than (the entire league x .6) in an iTrial to that AV?
As Trickshooter said, they are weak early game but blossom fine end-game. I think that you are basically just mouthing off and have no real experience with an end-game IO'd out TA/ character. Mine can solo +4/x8 and can be used to powerlevel people (!!) if I cared too, and is at the same time very powerful against AV-type enemies that you encounter end game. (And before you mention a sonic/ blaster, just recall that a TA/ character has access to sonic blast too with far better values if they care to.)
I played my character because it was the most gimp levelling up by the way and they definitely have problems there. End game, however, I fail to see how they have any problems. You have the solo-spawn-killing ability of a brute plus the ability to debuff hard targets and benefit the team. Yes, there are de/buff sets that are better than TA, but TA is fairly middle of the road and balanced if you accept them for the balance of control/debuff/damage that they are.
+4/x8 against easy enemy groups (CoT, Council etc.) is routine for an endgame defender. How do you fare against hard enemy groups e.g. Malta, Rularuu, IDF and Arachnos? Can you solo the Lambda warehouse?
The reason I ask is, trying to design builds in Mids, I found TA impossible to build to the same standard as powerhouse buffdebuff primaries (Rad, Time, Dark, Cold etc etc.) No no def/res/recovery from the powerset so everything needs to be supplied through IOs, which puts very heavy demands on the design. No massive debuff that floors tohit so it has 1 less layer of protection, no heal to recover when the hits start coming through... And just looking at numbers, it didn't seem to control or debuff all that much more than other powersets (-40% res, I think. That's vs. -30% for rad and time and 30%-60% for cold, storm etc.). But I'll certainly change my mind if the facts in game show otherwise. if I've somehow missed a top-tier powerset, I want to know. -
There's a simple solution, which is to remove level shifts from the key AVs in UG, MoM and TPN. You cannot force people to play the trials in a certain order, so you may as well forget it. Alternately, make it easy for league leaders to see how much level shift a character has outside of trials, so that they can reject insufficiently level shifted characters more conveniently.
That said, BAF and Lambda (and now Keyes as well) have always given rewards disproportionate to their difficulty. Just don't expect to hear it from most of the playerbase, who only think about easy rewards. These two trials should not give components or emps for characters who have unlocked destiny/lore, and the damage pulse on Keyes should be restored to 50% maxhp, regardless of what other changes are made. -
Roles are things that players make up and decide they want to fill, not things that are set in game mechanics. The role of a Tanker is whatever the player decides it to be.
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If you ask me, go play Lambda, solo the warehouse and see which build uses more insps and/or dies more often; that'll give you an answer grounded in fact, not forum theorycrafting.
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Illusion gives you much more options to protect the team than just heals and def, and being the only aggroless controller primary makes up for Empathy's inability to build for defense. It also has the advantage of being very easy to play, unlike emp which requires quick reflexes and an attentive eye, so your effectiveness does not deteriorate so much under high-pressure situations. Buildwise, since both sets need high recharge and illusion does fine without defense, you're free to focus only on recharge (My ill/emp could fort 7 people at once... yes, that's the entire team except me) and don't have to deal with many of the challenges that come with designing mixed rech/def builds.
That said, the combo on its own is not particularly strong. Emp as a surgical buff set doesn't contribute as much in leagues of 16-24 players, and has the problem that it does almost nothing to increase team offensive power. Be prepared for a long slog if you get on a low-damage team, and an overwhelming sense of helplessness when you need to kill the Avatar with 30 seconds left on the clock.
The best illusion builds are probably (in no particular order):
Ill/Rad - Illusion to tank the AVs, debuffs for everything else; easy perma-PA, plenty of panic buttons and fringe benefits e.g. immunity to end drain
Ill/Cold - Illusion makes up for Cold's lack of mitigation, both sets depend heavily on recharge; one of the best hard target killers
Ill/Time - Illusion to tank the AVs, softcapped defense and debuffs for everything else; Time's controls bolster illusion which doesn't get much of them; easy perma-PA -
Quote:With all due respect, I have a very low estimate of the intelligence of the average trial-goer. When I type in league chat "team 1 grenades, team 2 acids" I fully expect both teams to go into the lab, leaving me, 2 fire imps and a Vanguard MVAS to solo the warehouse. Meanwhile 2 masterminds will be cowering under the corpse of the security bot watching a constant stream of heroes trickle by on their way back from the hospital while my channel fills up with genius utterances such as "WTF I hate this ****", "where are all of you?" and "dammit we need more heals". That's why I design builds not to rely on teammates and recommend that others do the same. But seriously, if what you said happened, I would just go back to the choke and reinforce it. Teammates may be stupid but you don't have to follow suit.Even if all this is true, which it very well could be, you are overestimating the intelligence of the average trial-goer. Choke points make things easy to explain and understand: Flock to these spots and kill stuff.
You might be able to solo a door on your trapper, but surprise! The guy who thinks the word "you" only has one letter in it and his SG buddy who was lf trialz followed you over to that door and now they is helpin.
Seriously though, this is something I've encountered several times- One person goes to lock down a certain door on their own because they think they're being helpful, and then others follow them and take damage away from where it should be concentrated for overall effectiveness. -
scrapper SR can actually muster enough defense to softcap vs. trial enemies (59 def to all positions). Previously there wasn't much advantage to picking SR over shield, since shield could softcap and get much better tools. Now there is.
SR is not an outlier, but it's a solid middle-of-the-road powerset. -
Quote:Door soloing can enhance the effectiveness of the choke. If you solo the NE or SW door, the choke on the north and south lane respectively only has to watch for enemies from one direction, which makes them a lot more effective. Also, pets, location aoes and PBAoEs also hit escapees while they're emerging from the doors, so characters heavy on these are more effective at the door than out in the open.I'm with O_T. Are you sure you really want to sit at the doors? Having the teams spread out on the paths is practically foolproof. Yeah you can't maximize the effectiveness of a power like burn, but you also don't get those agonizing minute long periods where nothing is deciding to come out of your doors for some reason. My vote is plant/storm controller and don't even bother with the doors.
That said, you're right that even chokepoints is pretty foolproof - I solo doors these days just because I can do it. -
From Mind, the most skippable power is telekinesis - it's end heavy and rather terrain-dependent (and insultingly doesn't hit enough targets to stop x8 spawns). The next most skippable is levitate, since it has rather bad DPA and you won't need the boss juggling so much with both mez and the quick 1-2 punch of Timestop + hold.
Time is a bit more tricky. You may consider skipping TJ, which is a big chunk of the set's mitigation, but otherwise not very useful to a pure ranged build. Alternately you can consider skipping distortion field, which has a negligible chance to hold and does not neuter spawns as decisively as -tohit does, but it's a decent proc machine and helps keep things in one place, which Mind does not do well.
Definitely go for defense. There are plenty of situations where controls don't work or are ineffective, and while many will cry "not necessary!", the fact remains that softcapped defense significantly increases performance. Arguments against building for defense are usually based on faulty reasoning that assumes defense builds sacrifice control/support power (they don't, and properly done, they control/debuff better than non-defense builds since you don't have to worry about aggro that much), or based on purist appeals to authority that say that controllers were "intended" for support and should not be designed any other way. That said, fighting pool isn't necessary since time gets high defense through farsight, so you can softcap without the fighting pool. CJ + Maneuvers will take you halfway there, IOs can do the rest. -
Just to add some anecdotal evidence to the numbercrunching...
Most of my squishies are range defense capped, and I solo pylons routinely with them. Pylons attacks are aoe typed. The thing is, even though they only have about 25 aoe defense, between debuffs and ~60% resistance the pylon scarcely does enough damage to overcome their natural regen. The chance of dying is literally nil as long as I'm not AFK. On the other hand my fire/kin with 0 resist and 45 S/L/E, though she can solo pylons without lore pets, still has a very small chance of dying from the pylon landing 3 hits in a row. She's also the flimsiest of all my support squishies. -
I don't really get that build. It has a lot of things I don't understand, like tough without weave (either take both or none, tough alone isn't worth it with no APP shield to stack with). Slotting for slow on lingering rad isn't really useful since only the movement slow is affected, not the -rech. I have my doubts about pure S/L builds now that there's so much exotic damage flying around. Scorp APP doesn't suffer as much since it gets good E defense as well but it really sucks at killing things due to horrible DPA on the blasts.
If you asked me to build a generalist Ill/Rad I would probably do it something like this: perma-PA, fireblast/ball, 45 ranged def, 60 S/L res, roughly .8 EPS more recovery than your build above and all key powers from both sets properly slotted.
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Done and done. See my PM for my ill/time build. This is a tentative Plant/Time/Ice build for a nature-themed character I'm planning, using time manip to portray wind manipulation. Features:
- >=45 S/L/E/N def
- perma chronoshift
- capped hitchance against +3 enemies
- vast damage and control power
It also has a solid base of nearly 30 def to all to stack with team buffs/maneuvers. You ought to be able to cripple 4 spawns at once with this by using seeds on one, vines another, debuff a third into the floor and shred a fourth with overwhelming damage, by the end of which seeds has recharged for a fifth. Alpha is agility radial boost (nerve is just to simulate the defense), interface will be cognitive radial. The panacea proc in health does nothing, I use it just to show off. You can remove it to regain 1 slot.
The only issue is whether end will be sustainable, which is something I'll only be able to decide after I play it in game.
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Quote:It's true that -Res usually ends up increasing offense more than raw damage, but in this case the magnitude of -Res is so tiny that the DoT actually is better. Numbercrunching from the scrapper forum showed that on single targets, reactive core only pulls ahead if you do something like >400 DPS (modern top-tier builds do around 250-300 DPS), and falls hopelessly behind when you factor in AoE. Each chance to proc reactive flawless radial is an average of something like 50 fire damage. That's pretty ridiculous when you consider that fully slotted blaster fireball only does like 150 damage.I chose Reactive for my brute mostly because I am a big believer of -Res at the higher levels. Bosses, EBs, AVs, and GMs have ludicrous levels of resistance, and anything that lowers it is a big win in the combat engine numbers game (I remember a rather enlightening player guide from back in the day with a provocative title like, "What 24 Radiation Defenders Can Do That 1000 Blaster Can't", which all centered on the benefits of stacked resistance debuffing over straight damage output/buffs). The fact that Reactive had a fire DOT effect wasn't even a consideration, mostly because I didn't really know about it; I saw the -Res primary effect and stopped reading the power's description any further. I was sold. But I too am someone who likes to build toons based on concept, and I have been going with the fire-based Incarnate powers with the concept that my character is lobbing fire grenades and molotov cocktails and other guerilla warfare type stuff at the enemy.
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I'm pretty happy to see this. It rewards versatile, well-rounded heroes who develop high capability in many fields, in this case having both good single-target and AoE damage. By all means, keep punishing those who subscribe to the outdated mentality of being good in only one thing and outsourcing everything else to their teammates under the guise of "teamwork". I had a great laugh when Lambda came out and the people who scoffed at defense builds were splattered all over the warehouse floor while I soloed crates on my defender, this might be the next best thing so far.
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I'm all for a ranged/defense powerset. People just assume without evidence that it'll be overpowered without really looking at how little safety range provides in this game. The idea that ranged characters have to be squishy sidekicks dependent on melees to babysit them is yet another of those great, stupid MMO/wargaming tropes that have found its way into CoH.
In the meantime, look into taking something like time manip or traps (only as long as you can stay under the FF generator) - they can be pretty tough once they get to midlevel or so. -
Not sure why these things are so hard to figure out either. When a suspicious purple patch appears beneath your character and a string of damage numbers starts ticking away, that's a pretty obvious message to move out of the patch. On my first Keyes I knew without being told not to stand in the giant glowing circle that looks like a targetting recticle, on my first TPN it was clear that the crosshairs appearing over my character's head was a good sign to run and hide. And when I can't figure things out, it's easy enough to look up a guide or watch another player who's on the ball and imitate them. The cynic in me says this is why teamwork and tactics look better on paper than in practice: most people have neither the situational awareness nor the intelligence to execute any tactics at all.
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Coming on the heels of HEATS, Stalkers and EA, another sub-par set nailed, in the face of fervent protests that it's "just fine". Go devs! This gives me hope that Mind and Ice will get looked at.
I'm not too worried that the changes won't be enough. I expect that if Grav is still an underperformer, it'll get buffed again, like they did with EA. It's just great to know the dev team is looking at control sets. -
Quote:For alpha, you should consider the ED-bypassing part seperately, e.g. Spritual core paragon is 45% rech with 2/3 ED bypass. So you may consider it a 15% enhancement and 30% global rech.Well, the Spiritial Incarnate is not going to import within the build ... but I have chosed the Spiritial Core at 45% global recharge. Phantom Army recharges dully at 56.33 seconds.
That said, the mids' display is accurate as far as I can tell from testing in-game. -
That build is OK, but your scorp shield is strangely slotted (mistake?). Replace the end/rech piece with a straight def. You don't really have 32.5 S/L/E def (the minimum amount of defense I consider worthwhile to build for) since half the def from supe invis suppresses when attacking.
I'd slot hover less intensely and Maneuvers more heavily. Not only does it give more defense, it benefits your teammates too. Try to take it earlier. Group invis, recall and mutation are all candidates to move to the Lv50 power choice instead.
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