Little_Whorn

On unlimited budget builds, I'm still not noticing a way to build decent (I guess that's relative) AoE damage. DD and OD seem to be the only low rech AoE damage available. Am I missing something? If human forms are meant to be usually low AoE, high ST, that would be fine. I just want to have a better idea of what to expect with heavy investment. Thanks in advance.

I have an archery/energy blaster built for max range, and I have to say, I'm pretty unimpressed with the "survivability" range gives me. I admit that I haven't tested accurately yet, but it always seems like the enemies have extreme range on their attacks and manage to hit me from afar anyway. I remember getting to the max range on RoA which is something like 120 without boost range, using it on a malta spawn in PI, only for the gunslinger to turn around and blast me from where he stood. I was really surprised. I'm not sure how much further I can get away from mobs normally. The snipe has ridiculous range but the game's draw distance mandates a spotter at that range.

Just my 2 cents.

Force Field. My third 50 was an earth/ff troller. With the addition of Time Manipulation, there are now at least three other sets (time, traps, cold) that are capable of significantly buffing a team's defense. All of these other sets are versatile and multi-faceted, able to debuff and buff a variety of stats. Force Field boasts radial knockback and caging. Fail. Never again.

From a visual perspective, I'm fine with beast mastery. I do agree though that the dire wolf is a design cop-out and that a bear would have been awesome. From a numbers standpoint however, I'm not too optimistic about beast mastery. Something about mainly low damage single-target lethal attacks with most defensive powers on long timers unaffected by recharge. Pets aren't too smart with powers on long timers. They'd just as soon fire 'em off at the last lone minion than use them intelligently. Case in point: Mercenaries.

Also, not thrilled about sacrificing AoE capabilities in the second upgrade for little damage buffs that are up less than 50% of the time. Especially considering the low base damage on most of the pet attacks.

MIDS to the rescue! 14% defense and 14% resistance debuff, both for 20s. Definitely softens targets, but I don't know about mini-rad status.

Yea, CC is one confusing beast. But the sheer number of procs it regularly fires off is simply staggering. Add Reactive to the mix and CC becomes truly devastating and single-handedly wipes out x8 spawns.

Just thought I'd take some time to clarify exactly how Creepers works so people can be sure of how their procs and slotting affects the power. First, there are several different entities spawned when creepers is summoned:

1. The AoE slow patch aka "bramble". 20' radius. Follows you like an invisible pseudopet, aggroing enemies, etc. This one can take the impeded swiftness proc which has a chance of firing first when the slow patch is summoned and then once every 10s for each enemy affected, similar to putting the proc in tar patch.

2. The immobilizing, damaging AoE patch bursts AKA "creeper patches". These are summoned by the AoE slow patch pseudopet (described in No. 1) on every defeated enemy in an 8' radius with a 5 target cap. These AoE patches are typed AoE damage and immobilize and are summoned under every defeated foe once every 10s. These patches take the trap of the hunter proc (immobilize), positron's blast proc (AoE damage), and the javelin volley proc (AoE damage). Each of these procs then have a chance to fire every 10s for each enemy affected within 8' of the defeated foe the patch is springing forth from. If that makes sense. Needless to say, the high number of procs available for these bursts is awesome and I've jumped into a spawn, killed a few minions/lts, and watched lucky creeper patch bursts do massive damage to the remaining bosses.

3. The ranged damage, slowing vine thorn attacks aka "vine thorns". For each live or dead enemy under the bramble patch, there is a 50% chance of spawning a vine every 10s. As you know, these vines fling thorns at enemies with a range of 60'. These vine thorns are typed ranged and carry a slow effect. As a result, the impeded swiftness proc works on them, giving every vine's thorn attack a 20% chance to proc damage. This is very valuable since the vine's fling thorns every 4s and each vines' vine attack has the chance to proc. Unfortunately, we can't slot ranged damage procs into Carrion Creepers or else we'd have another proc that would work here.

4. The melee, knockdown, slowing attacks by each vine aka "vine smash". Each vine has a 10' melee attack in addition to their ranged vine thorns attack. This melee attack does .6 KB (i.e. KD), slows, and does typed melee damage. Because we can't slot melee attack procs into Carrion Creepers, the valuable procs here are the impeded swiftness and explosive strike procs. Both have a chance to fire on each vines' melee attack.

So that's it. That's the complexity that is Carrion Creepers. So all in all, the impeded swiftness proc is the most helpful, followed by posi, jav, and TotH. The least effective (but still very effective to be sure) is the explosive strike. Another thing to note is that vine smash, vine thorns, bramble, and creeper patches all require a tohit check with a base accuracy of 1, so slotting at least some ACC is recommended, although outside tohit buffs such as tactics help with the vine thorns/smash accuracies (but not creeper patches...I think). And no, there is no stacking of Carrion Creepers. Resummoning kills all of the effects of your existing Carrion Creepers and replaces them with the new ones.

For those who may be curious about my personal slotting preferences, I built for high global recharge on my plant/psi, which means I don't slot any recharge in it because it is already perma for me. And since I sit in melee at all times, I don't have any problems with Carrion Creepers only affecting the fringe of a spawn. It almost always follows me quickly into the mass. But I still need Acc so I slot with one Acc IO, and the rest with the 5 procs I listed above. I find that slotting for straight damage is a waste (imo) because even the explosive strike proc, which is 20% chance to do 71 dmg, procs often enough to far outweigh the extremely piddly straight damage of the attacks/patches. I'd rather have a proc available on every vine smash than use damage IOs/HOs to increase each damaging attack by around 10-20 damage. I've tried using 2 acc/dam HOs and eliminating explosive strike, and I felt that the damage decreased slightly, although I admit I didn't go through the combat log to check because Carrion Creepers does havoc to the combat log. I may try slotting two HOs again just to be sure.

Anyway, sorry for the lengthy post. Blame Carrion Creepers. Hope this helps for any who were unsure about how this power works exactly.

Have the devs ever addressed this possibility? What with all of the proliferation and new sets, I'm hoping they've said something about bringing traps to trollers. Ill/traps would be a barrel of fun.

I've never tried it myself, but I asked once and was told that the FF proc works with any of the ammunition. So supposedly, slot it in HoB and use any ammo and it will still have a chance to go off.

Of course, this is just hearsay.

+4/x8 arachnos and carnies? Mental scramble and mask of vitiation eats Invulns without judicious inspiration consumption.

My 2 cents: Dark in a heartbeat. Here's why:
1. Dark's soul drain is MUCH better than Soul's soul drain. Dark recharges in half the time, can hit more targets, has a wider radius, etc. Given Scourge, this is reason enough to go dark. More damage = good.
2. Power synergies... dark pit + Opp gloom = stun fun. Dark consumption to help with endurance since you have no other endurance recovery powers. Soul transfer just cause.

There are only two reasons imo to go Soul over Dark: Power boost and soul storm. Soul storm could stack with Pet gaze for cool-looking effective single target holds. Although dark debuffs so well that I doubt having a single target hold will make that much of difference. Power boost really helps dark's debuffing however as it affects all of the tohit debuffing that dark miasma does.

So the question becomes, do you want to do more damage, stun, and resurrect at will? Go Dark. Do you want to quickly hold bosses and beef up your tohit debuffing? Go soul.

Personally, I'd go dark. Soul drain and scourge play nicely.

Yep, beast running on a crab is by far my favorite method of travel. Try it on the huge model with the height turned down to minimum. The crab legs remain big and in comparison, look bigger than you are! It makes beast running look even cooler.

I find that provoke only becomes critical when fighting very tough targets such as AVs or GMs. Depending on the secondary, usually normal use of powers is usually enough to draw aggro for the alpha and beta attacks so long as the MM leads; beyond that there isn't as much need for provoke. But with AVs/GMs, they hang on for a while and so I find provoke that much more useful, especially to keep the pets from falling prey to AoE attacks.

Also, provoke only hits 5 targets max which limits its usefulness in large enough spawns. No such problems against AVs, etc.

Theft of Essence works so well in Dark Regen that I think the devs came up with it for just that purpose lol

lol I love how my question has gone from meaningful and valid to ridiculous and back.

As I'm trying to connect a bit more with the CoH community recently, I was simply wondering what other CoHers thought when they read or heard 54x8 or +4x8. Just simple curiosity.

At the very least, I guess we can all agree that when someone says that they solo +4x8, more information is needed to assess whether that accomplishment meets our own individual standards for what +4x8 means. In other words, the only definitive rule is that we need context to judge someone's +4x8 accomplishment.

On another note, I personally pride myself on my main's +4x8 exploits with alpha/interface only. I almost thought that no enemy could stop me. Until I met Rularuu. Game over without massive insp use. They are just brutal.

What do you all (forum peeps) mean when you say that your ____(insert awesomo build) can solo +4x8? It seems like a lot of people just throw that out without qualifying the statement at all. For example, when you say that your SS/FA/Soul brute solos +4x8, which mobs do you mean? Because soloing AE or Council baddies is VERY different than soloing DE, Longbow, PPD, Rularuu, Arachnos, Carnies, or Vanguard in my experience. When you assert your toon can solo +4x8, do you mean relatively quickly or slowly? Do you assume a minimum speed before you assert +4x8 status or is finishing a spawn in 30min the same as 30sec? Do you assume temp or incarnate powers were used?

I guess what I'm asking is what everyone personally means when they state that their tri-form WS, SS/Fire brute, etc. can solo +4x8 spawns. The reason I'm asking is to better understand the high-end capabilities of different ATs, powersets, and builds. I continually find myself surprised when I hear of someone soloing +4x8 spawns or GMs on an unexpectedly strong build only to find out that the Lore pets largely killed the GM or that the +4x8 spawn was (relatively) wimpy warriors, council, or something like that.

Of course, this post is not meant to condescend to anyone's accomplishments. I simply want to understand others' perceptions better.

With so many single target attacks accepting mako's and t-strikes, you could softcap yourself to ranged. That would largely eliminate alphas, since nearby enemies would be mezzed by seeds and the rest would be far enough away that the AI would use ranged attacks first.

But... You do seem to want to spend most of your time in melee so it's questionable whether ranged def would justify the lower global rech you would have. hmm. I dunno. If it was me, i'd go heavy on the recharge and use proper positioning to mezz as many enemies as possible. If any weren't mezzed, you could use your fast recharging big hitters to take them out asap. Seems like this might work, although multiple spawns or spawns that are spread apart might be pretty tough.

Here's hoping it's not a weapon set. I've had enough redraw nightmares already.

The thematic concept would make sense and technically, domination would make it viable. But holy hell does Invoke Panic suck. 22 end, 60s rech, 10s mag 2 fear with less than dismal accuracy? That is a butt ugly power on the level of time bomb.