Little_Whorn
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Posts
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Joined
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I'd help out some, but there's no hyperlink on your post for the build to open in Mids and no build chunk either. Not much I can help with without either of those.
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Yup, that looks much more focused. Recharge is significantly better; you've got near-perma hasten and easily perma-dom. So long as you liberally use seeds, sleet, and creepers, any team should love having you.
Regarding Creeper slotting, you have the rech down to 96s and it lasts 2m, so you have some play room. Ask yourself, do you plan on exempting much? If not, you could stand to replace one or more of your dam/rech IOs with more procs, such as the Javelin Volley one or the Trap of the Hunter one. You'll still have perma creepers, but you'll have more procs. In my opinion, more procs is better than more damage because of the low base damage on the creeper attacks and the high chances for procs to fire. Those two procs I mentioned are especially lethal (no pun intended) because they have a chance to fire for every enemy hit by the creeper patches. And considering that the creeper patches fire in an 8ft AoE every 10s under every defeated enemy, well... you can do the math. Suffice to say, I've seen my creeper patch do over 200 damage in a single spike, usually on multiple enemies. What's really effective and cool to watch is stomping all over the minions with your attacks and the creeper vines until there is only bosses left and then watching the creeper patches explode out of the minion's bodies, taking down the bosses with the procs.
Also, I'd reconsider Hoarfrost, maybe even over Hibernate. Not only is the self heal welcome, but the +hp synergizes really well with drain psyche. Hit 7 or 8 enemies with drain psyche and hoarfrost up and you're regenerating 130hp/sec.
Lastly, don't rule out taking on +4s, especially against tightly packed enemies. Unlike brutes, scrappers, and the like, your personal defenses mean much less when every enemy, bosses included, is confused and immobilized. And with domination active, hardly anybody resists the power of the seeds. Well, except for AVs of course. Good luck with that. -
Here's a couple of tips:
1. Focus your set bonuses on recharge first and then defense, preferably S/L to combine with Frozen Armor. I'd largely ignore other bonuses (except acc to a lesser extent).
2. Spend the cash to get Coercive Persuasion for Seeds. The bonuses are helpful and the proc is gold in that power.
3. If you're concerned about accuracy, kismet unique goes a long way.
4. Drain Psyche isn't autohit. You need strong accuracy to maximize its efficiency. Drop the end mod. Even hitting 3-5 enemies will give you more end than you know what to do with.
5. You probably don't need entangle. The damage isn't amazing (at least not in relation to your other ST attacks) and the immob is unnecessary when you have roots.
6. You have a lot of powers like the flight and concealment pool powers that seem to either be for concept or just placeholders for LOTGs. Rather than use your LOTGs on powers you won't be using in combat, maybe consider dropping those powers in favor of combat-useful powers such as maneuvers or weave. If you're building for defense, it's preferable to have useful powers rather than useless ones (to put the LOTGs in). Of course, ignore this if you have these for concept reasons.
7. Don't bother slotting resist IOs into Frozen Armor. Cold (and somewhat fire) just aren't common enough to worry about.
8. Either pick 4 or 12 points of KB. 4 will block the vast majority and 12 will block everything. I'd go for 4 points or just 1 -KB IO.
9. Sleet is underslotted for recharge and endurance. It's a heavy end use power and you want it up as much as possible. Don't bother slotting for defense debuff because it doesn't matter much at high levels. And don't bother slotting for Accuracy at all. Sleet has such a high inherent accuracy and so many chances to hit that it's useful to just consider it autohit.
10. You don't have much recharge in Carrion Creepers. It's not even perma at lvl 50, much less if you exempt at all. Either rework your build for more recharge or slot some recharge in the power (or do both!). -
I always thought that Guild Wars did the PvE/PvP balancing right. After enough PvE players complained of skill changes based upon PvP considerations, the devs changed the system to allow skills to have PvP stats separate from their PvE stats. If you decided to go to PvP, then the PvP stats would govern. If PvE, then PvE stats. That way, they could balance skills independently, retaining the same skill, but tailoring its effectiveness based upon PvP or PvE. In the OP's case, the devs could have just implemented the phase period for Hibernate when used in PvP zones while leaving Hibernate alone without the phase period when used in PvE zones. Wish CoH would have implemented something like that. It would have allowed the devs to nerf/buff powersets for being over/under-powered in PvP without touching their functionality in PvE.
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Lockdown Artist, my Plant/Psi Dom. I created her to explore domination for the first time, and she's become my hands-down main. I race SS/FA brutes in fire farms and then turn around and solo 54 AVs without Lore pets. But I think the best thing about her is her ability to not even blink when faced with traditionally difficult enemies such as Longbow, DE/Nemesis, and Malta. It's amusing how little my personal defenses matter when every spawn is unable to attack me or the team.
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Have the devs ever addressed this possibility? I would love an ill/traps. What's everyone's thoughts on the likelihood of this set ever being proliferated to controllers?
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I've never made a plant/fire dom before, so take my opinion with a grain of salt. Also, my plant/psi dom is heavily IO'd, so YMMV without IO's, BUT i can vouch for plant/psi. I've solo'd 54 AVs (drain psyche ftw) on her without lore pets, but still have enough AoE to farm x8 at a decent speed. Drain psyche contributes heavily to the survivability, but the dom still remains slightly squishy due to the low hp cap. /fire will most likely deal much higher damage, but it's up to you as to whether that increase is worth the survivability decrease and the lack of a -regen power.
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No one's mentioned hover crab? OK then. Hover-crab! Go leviathan and become the ultimate vomit spewing, shark flinging ranged hover blaster. Oh, and don't forget to pick up hover. Otherwise, you'd just be a crab. It's a good option too if you want all the fun of blasting with none of the repeated hospital trips. Note of caution though: definite late-bloomer as far as the damage-slinging goes.
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How about beam/storm?
My reasoning is that beam is quite clicky; it requires a lot of attention to constantly fire to spread disintigration. Storm isnt too clicky to be effective. Just skirt the outside of spawns with hurricane and open with freezing rain (and tornado and lightning storm if up). That way you minimize redraw and can focus on beam attacks. It also works to keep enemies away from melee which synergizes with beam rifles ranged tendency given its cone.
Of course, if you want even more focus on beam attacks and again want to minimize redraw, can't go wrong with beam/sonic or /cold or /thermal to a lesser extent (more clicky). -
I'm familiar with database editing in Mids. Is there some way to edit conditioning in the Mids database to reflect Conditioning accurately?
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I really have to respectfully disagree with T Immortalus. /Time, on paper (my highest /time MM is only 24 so far), seems to have many tools for being an effective thugs/bots Tankermind. Allow me to list them out.
1. Softcapped pets and MM. Farsight, which I argue to be easily the best power in /time, provides when powerboosted 20-21% defense to all. Let that sink in. That's 5 more than FFG. It's much less than powerboosted FF shields, but softcap is softcap. Extra def does very little (except for incarnate, but def is dime a dozen in those trials). In fact, the only purpose for def beyond the soft cap is for def debuffs or high acc mobs, both of which would largely ignore the defense provided by FF, time, or traps.
2. Effective AoE backup healing. This is something traps and FF really can't match. Triage beacon does regen which is far less useful for low hp pets, and FF can't heal at all. The only source of reliable healing is the medicine pool, which 1) is available to everyone and 2) is hardly comparable to temporal mending/selection and chrono shift. Unaccelerated, temporal mending, which can be powerboosted need I remind you, provides FAR more net healing per cast than any other healing aura, despite its longer rech duration. For particularly flimsy and suicidal pets such as the arsonist or the prot bots, temporal selection makes temporal mending heal WAY WAY more than any other healing aura.
3. The debuffs are at the very least comparable to any other debuff set. I won't bore you with the minute details, but if you care, familiarize yourself with the debuff #s on the MM secondaries. Considering how /time doesn't particularly focus on one debuff such as dark but instead debuffs across the board like traps, the numbers are still significant enough to be effective. 15% to-hit debuff. 100+ slow and rech debuff. 15% dmg debuff. 22-27% def/res debuff. 150% regen debuff. Compared to the heavy favorite traps, the debuffs aren't as strong. But then the traps debuffs aren't as mobile or widespread (time debuffs at 25' ft). It's a tradeoff, but /time is certainly no slouch, especially considering the fact that the tohit debuff can be powerboosted, unlike traps.
So in the endgame, we have a thugs or bots MM who carries relatively effective AoE debuffs, has softcapped pets, has softcapped MM (with powerboosted farsight), and has actually very effective AoE healing capabilities. In fact, the only weaknesses I can find is the lack of mez protection and the weak regen debuffing. Clarion can fix the first weakness and the Assault Bot's regen debuffing will cover the other weakness. Sounds like a tankermind who's at least as strong as FF (in my opinion, much stronger) and traps.
Don't believe me? Here's two mids builds, one for thugs and one for bots. Both have inefficient slotting (terrible imo lol) and are incomplete, but both are still softcapped to S/L/E/R/AoE. And I don't buy the argument that the devs will "nerf" powerboosting farsight. Plenty of powers become ridiculous when powerboosted, why would they single out farsight?
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Quote:ROFL. Greatest. Explanation. Ever. Think I'm gonna go roll a new Sonic/Sonic defender whose greatness nobody will ever touch. No, nobody will be able to even look at my defender.Originally Posted by all_hell
Super Nigel: You see, most blokes, you know, will be playing at damage cap. You're at cap here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you're at damage cap on your brute, on your blaster. Where can you go from there? Where?
Marty DiSpider: I don't know.
Super Nigel: Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do?
Marty DiBergi: Put it up to eleven?
Super Nigel: Eleven. Exactly. You get -res. Then your team goes to eleven. -
Quote:Yup, you got it. It's, to my knowledge, the only regen debuff power that is enhanceable.Originally Posted by ketch
That amount is enhanceable. My plant/psi has hers around 900% though it seems you could push it as high as 1500% with Spiritual Core in your Alpha slot.
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Thanks for the info!
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MIDS says empty clips, bullet rain, and hail of bullets takes KB sets, specifically the FF +rech IO. How does this work with swap ammo? Do I only get the chance for +rech with standard ammo equipped, or can i have any ammo equipped?
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plant/psy dom example. Every mob, bosses included, is locked down with seeds and roots (and if immune to conf, vines). All of a sudden, it no longer matters the team's defense, hp, or resist levels when the enemies no longer attack. Oh and hard targets such as AVs? perma 1200% regen debuff and 30% resist debuff courtesy of drain psyche and sleet. Yea, doms are useful in the endgame imo.
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Hasten. Hasten. Hasten. Has ANYONE managed to make a costume that actually looks better with the little yellow pom poms? For me, its always, "yay! I made a dark and brooding badass of a villain and now im ready to kick--oh yea, forgot to activate hasten. Now my badass of a villain looks like a cheerleader." And its not like i can refuse to take it. Its just too useful on the vast majority of builds.
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Great discussion everyone!
I think my dissatisfaction with homogenization stems not from everyone becoming powerful, but instead the lessening of weaknesses that ATs initially were designed to have. A blaster could be super powerful at damage and I wouldn't mind because I know that the blaster's outrageous damage is balanced with less survivability in the face of incoming damage. It's the elimination of these inherent weaknesses using methods such as boosting defense to SR levels (looking at blasters with S/L/R capped). I can appreciate players who use skill (jousting, etc) to survive on blasters because such means are within the scope and boundaries inherent in the AT design. But allowing blasters to shore up and indeed circumvent their weaknesses simply by buying magical items that give them the same defensive prowess as other traditionally sturdier ATs is ridiculous in my opinion.
At that point, homogenization rears its ugly head because it's not that the game is too easy, its that no one has any interesting and unique weaknesses to contrast with their unique strengths. Dealing with an AT's weaknesses is just as fun as maximizing the AT's strength. Consider only the differences in strength and you're only enjoying half the AT. That's what inspirations were designed to do. Enhance strengths or eliminate weaknesses. But those are designed to be temporary. IOs are like permanent inspirations.
Another point unrelated to homogenization is that all of these critical points do not mean that I think this game is completely homogenized and terrible. It's just the trend that I'm speaking of. -
Anyone know if the energy torrent power for MM takes KB sets, specifically force feedback? I know the scrapper and blaster energy torrents take them, but MIDS is saying the MM version doesn't take KB sets.
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Quote:True. It depends largely on keeping that little suicide bomber alive. However, the bruiser point is wrong. Bruiser Hand clap was changed to knockdown several issues ago. It's no longer an AoE problem. The only power he uses that has KB is hurl.Originally Posted by kalashnikow
sorry, couldn't resist.
all that calculation look nice until arsonist dies while trying to slap some stuff in melee. or grabbing agro and being insta gibbed.
there is nothing so annoying as resummon the arsonist over and over and over and over again.
(just not to forget hand clap from bruiser killing whole AoE herding, which further reduce AoE efficiency.) -
Just to set the record straight on the burn patches, the assault bot's burn patches are actually not much stronger than the arsonist's burn patches and in some ways, noticeably weaker. Before the changes to burn nerfed the Assbot's burn patches, the scales considerably tipped in the bots' favor, but now, the arsonist in some ways matches and exceeds the Assbot's burn patches. Here's a comparison.
Assbot's burn patches
16s rech
20ft radius
114 damage over 20s with 68% or 77.56 damage being delivered in 10.81s.
Causes no fear
Assbot is boss pet.
Arsonist burn patches
16s rech
15ft radius
107 damage over 10s with ~68% or 72.5 damage being delivered in 5.25s.
Causes fear
Arsonist is minion pet.
Provided my math is right, this means that the arsonist's burn patches deliver almost the same amount of damage in about half the time. Granted, the assbot has the boss level con on its side, the larger radius, and the fear removed. However, damage delivered up front is almost always more valuable than damage over a longer period of time, especially in teams. Immobilize effects will also be more likely in teams, canceling out the fear effect. However, the main fact that puts thugs over bots for me when considering burn patches is the fact that one of the thug's minions is arguably providing a better (or at least comparable) burn patches than the bot's boss pet, whose burn patches are widely considered the powerset's most powerful attack. By giving a mere minion the same damage burn patches that the Assbot gets (in turn freeing up the Thugs' boss Bruiser to concentrate on single target damage), the thugs powerset becomes a real force to reckon with compared to the bots.
I hope this illuminates the actual differences between the two burn patches rather than relying on vague impressions. I for one, was really sad when the great burn "buff" was applied to the Assault bot. I can't remember exactly, but I think the burn patches used to do 284 damage over 20s, but with the fear component. I don't remember the exact number, but I remember doing the same calculations then and found that the assault bot's burn patches did significantly more damage per second than the thugs (unlike now where the arsonist now does twice as much dps) and WAY more damage over the burn patch's lifetime. -
Quote:Interesting point. I was under the impression that overly easy games are a bad from a design standpoint because it tends to cause the replay value to suffer, but perhaps I'm wrong. It's hard to argue with your point that most people do indeed like easy games. I never thought of CoH as an easy game, but maybe this is where that "I'm a superhero, and it's endless fun being overpowered" viewpoint comes into play. hmmOriginally Posted by Nihilii
not only people like easy games, but most people like easy games.
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In response to those who disagree that CoH is completely homogenized, i have to agree. But i think thats missing the point. The point is that the game's trend seems to be toward homogenization and it is this trend that dismays me. Certainly, a blaster is still not a tank, but its hard to dispute that invention origins and incarnate content haven't served to narrow the gap, especially in relation to before those things existed. The classes may not be completely homogenized, but they're definitely a lot less distinct than before, which is the troubling trend if you value CoH's original mission to create unique play experiences for each AT.
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WARNING: LONG POST ALERT! DRINK CAFFEINE BEFORE READING!
Quote:I very much agree with this analysis. It doesn't take much to extend the logic to analyze CoH's game design progression either. The game started with 5 archetypes, all of which were designed to specialize in a particular function/role. The devs even classified them as such. Blasters were low survivability/high ranged (and some melee) damage. Scrappers high melee/medium survivability with little ranged and not much AoE. And so on and so forth. In theory (because skill imbalances plague every game design system), each AT's limitations prevented it from steamrolling the content while solo. Sure, everyone could solo and the scrapper would be a little better, but each class would be hampered by their designed limitations. Tanks, controllers, and defenders couldn't deal enough damage to steamroll, blasters couldn't survive well enough alone to steamroll, and scrappers were in the middle. And no one could override their limitations because character enhancements were limited to enhancing powers rather than global enhancements (looking at you IOs).Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Its specifically because X cannot get the abilities of Y and Y cannot get the abilities of X that makes the different archetypes and powersets in CoH replay opportunities. In CO, you can just cherry pick whatever you want from where ever you want. And if you actually make a cherry picked build that has every feature you want, why would you ever play something different, something other than everything you want?
And some people like that, and others don't. Personally, I think it hurts the game a lot in terms of accelerating burnout. I can't prove it of course, but that's the conclusion I've drawn from their experiment in removing archetypal boundaries. And it is the boundaries that matter, not specifically the archetypes. The fact that choosing X means you don't get Y in CoH is something many find annoying, but for many of them that is because they haven't seen what happens when that's not true.
In any case, the only way I could see this working, for the people who don't already love CO's open style of building, is to do something you don't mention but is critical: you say what you would let people get, but you don't mention what limitations people would have. More specifically, what *different* limitations different characters would have. If everyone has the same options, and the same limitations, you're basically back to CO's model.
Consider what the devs have opened for us now. New ATs such as the SoA allow high damage or control without sacrificing survivability or team force multiplicative abilities. IOs allow everyone access to significant amounts of +dam, +rech, +regen/hp, and +def. Now, given enough time (farm or play enough and you WILL find good IOs) and the willingness to indulge in the IO system, any character can transcend the originally designed limitations to steamroll content. The same can be said for the Incarnate system. Tired of working around your inherent mez protection limitation, Mr. Warshade? Clarion for you! Oh and yes, it's perma! Tired of dealing weak damage because your a tank? Have a nuke on a 2 minute charge! It doesn't take a game developer to realize that by allowing X to get the abilities of Y and vice-versa, the differences between the ATs melt away. It's only a logical extension then that burnout is heightened because playing one AT means experiencing the rest. It's the same thing that happened with runewords in Diablo 2.
To address some of the responses to the OP's concerns, I'm sorry but exempting down is not a legitimate answer. The same goes for intentionally gimping our toons, playing hardcore, or foregoing IOs and/or incarnate powers. While I don't debate that many of you may enjoy the challenges that such behavior creates, it's just not reasonable as a game designer to expect players to forgo content or powers (and exempting is a form of forgoing content) in order to create challenge. It would be no more reasonable to expect burnt out players to stab themselves in the hand before handling their mouse, simply because steamrolling would be more difficult as a result. No, one of the major challenges in game design is difficulty and if the game is easy enough to allow anyone to solo anything, that's a good sign that the game's difficulty needs to be re-examined. Increasing CoH's difficulty amongst all monsters would solve the tank-mage issue somewhat, but it's important to remember that such a solution doesn't address the homogenized and as a result uninteresting class distinctions, nor does it solve the problem if the devs go and make everyone overpowered again.
Another poor response has been along the lines of "this is a superhero game, we're supposed to be overpowered." Fail. This is a competitive (either pvm or pvp) MMO. If there is no challenge from either other players or the game's monsters, then the game gets really old, really fast. It doesn't matter what theme the game is. Playing overpowered, whether by poor design or by cheats, is fun for a little while, but almost ALWAYS gets boring after a while. Yes, this can be mitigated somewhat by varying the presentation. For example, having new powersets with new flashy animations or different attack/support mechanics prolongs the boredom. But if these powersets steamroll too, boredom quickly follows. Don't believe me? Play a single player game with cheats, or challenge your 5 year old cousin to armwrestling. Tell me repeated playthroughs of either doesn't get old fast. You could LOVE armwrestling, and it would still get old quick. Still don't believe me? Here's a relevant analogy. Read through your old superhero comics and imagine what it would be like if all of the conflicts, achilles' heels, and supervillains were removed. Every superhero was invincible in every issue and crushed the competition. Worst. Comic book. Ever.
To address those who grew up with old MMOs, who now hate having to team with particular classes in order to survive, and who love CoH's new (not really) homogenization, I can't argue with you there. If you just want everyone to kick *** equally and with overpowered force, I can't tell you that you're not having fun. Certainly your enjoyment style can be reinforced via game design that is focused around the content (quests, settings, loot). Consider the Diablo series for an example of a game that is focused around varied and extensive content to offset the fact that every class's true end goal is to just deal damage and more damage in whatever form. However, this mentality just DOESN'T work for CoH as it stands now. There is just not enough varied content in CoH to justify the homogenization of every class. Anyone who has played the hated MMO, WoW, can tell you that. Much of CoH's experience comes from the actual fighting and team interaction which, when everyone is a tank-mage of sorts, gets boring.
Lastly, any suggestions that the OP just quit or find a new game until s(he) learns to love this one unconditionally are just stupid. Reminds me of that old South Park episode. "We don't take kindly to YOUR kind around here."
I love this game, don't get me wrong. I still play it enough to warrant a subscription. But the homogenization and relatively overpowered tank-mages ARE a problem and are fundamentally weakening CoH's replay experience and lasting value. -
Quote:Sailboat, this sounds FANTASTIC. I would love to roll hardcore, that sounds perfect. Thanks for the infoOriginally Posted by Sailboat
Here's another thought to add to the suggestions to play lowbies, or new server, or SO-only. Some of us play some of our characters "hardcore," where any defeat (or in my SG's specific in our case, any defeat after attaining level 10) means the character "dies" and is deleted or retired. ANY defeat, even if it's not your fault (log in amid a zombie invasion, giant monster trained onto you at PI, you accidentally hit self destruct, etc.).
This does not lend itself to rapid leveling -- we generally play +0 or +1 normal door missions -- and it definitely doesn't encourage highly-polished builds with expensive IOs.
What it does bring to our gaming experience is a renewed interests in our teammates and our teamwork, a welcome re-emphasis on defense and survival powers from the AOE-offense-heavy standard game, a sense of accomplishment, the occasional burst of stark terror, and, of course, the all-too-frequent opportunity to make new alts. :P
It's certainly not for everybody. But if your interest is piqued, check out the Iron Eagles channel (Justice server) or see our thread in Player Events.