LostHalo

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I worked this math out while running a Spine/Dark. Two auras and Spine Burst. Kins are your friens.

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To be fair, with a number of procs, everything is dead in the first 10 seconds anyway.

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Also; if you get hit with -recharge, does it lower the damage tick rate ? If not, that's another advantage for the aura.

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If I'm not wrong it quickens (EDIT) down the recharge rate of the toggle power, that is, how long it takes to activate again it if it gets detoggled.

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Correct, although in the opposite direction to what you're saying. I think. Your wording is a little obtuse.

The recharge on the actual toggle, when your global recharge is debuffed, is made longer. The damage ticks themselves will always go off every two seconds.

<QR>

I maintain SB all the time. It's lovely what some simple number pad binds can do for you.

That said, I'm also vindictive as hell and because I'm quite adept at maintaining the buffs, I'm also quite skilled at not maintaining your buffs if you happen to annoy me. I don't go so far as to give people a rocket boost to their death but I wouldn't say I'd be above it if pushed.

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That all said, "SB PLZ" is a myth. I still have yet to ever see it except in sarcasm.

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Are you getting tired of the game nerfs? If so, plaese speak your mind here.

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I made my namesake DM/Regen at release. I'm still playing. Maybe it has something to do with the possibility I'm a little more reasonable and willing to look at things from perhaps beyond my limited perspective to see where things stand.

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That said, I really do wish "risk vs. reward" would truly be renamed "time vs. reward".

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If ya'll want to really add something to the debate, then go to player questions, where I put this after I put it here, not thinking correctly. Sorry for the inconvience. Please don't put stuff like popcorn either, put real advice, thanks.

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In case you don't know, "popcorn" refers to the fact you posted a topic that has a very reliable history of generating flame wars/pointless circular debates. You seem to expect this by your 'rules of debate' which is curious.

If you really don't get why your question is such, think about different fruits and try to categorize them in the order of the 'best'. And not by personal preference but by their merits.

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After that, this has been done a half... well... several dozen times and if you go back a few pages, I'm sure you can find the exact same situation.

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And some form of support is needed for tanking Romi in general. I couldn't see a non-supported Tanker of any type (unless really purpled out and even then probably not because of how far he can floor your defense). And I include the traditional "holding" method as support here.

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Barring hideous bad luck, my Stone can handle Tower-Recluse. You seem to be raising some sort of challenge against a safer target.

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yeah, I made an ice/mm for the exact same reason, but I've been sick of the grind since i13 and never got her past lvl 7

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Know of two, personally.

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This is an impossible question. EVERYONE has played EVERYTHING.

The moment you suggest something, someone will pipe up and go on about how it's their:

a) First 50
b) Favorite Toon
c) Most Powerful Character™
d) Most Hated Character That Is Still 50
e) Most Hated Character That They Refuse to Delete/Grind
f) A Powerful Toon They Wish To, but Haven't Leveled
g) Friend's/Acquaintance's/Teammate's/SGMate's (a), (b), (c), (d), (e), and/or (f)

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If you really want toons that people don't play often, I think you'll have to venture over towards Stalkertown or to "London", depending on your preferences. Even then...

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my first 50 took me 563 hours

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200 or so for mine. Granted, that was the first time I ever built a toon with a team in mind (Ice/SS, En/En Blaster, and FF/Elec Defender--hello holy trinity) that actually played with the team regularly.

Heh, my namesake DM/Regen has yet to reach 50 but I'm guessing it's sitting around 5-600 hours. I did a lot of goofing around on that toon, particularly when I hit the (then) cap of 40 and got bored of herding an entire map with IH going, Soul Draining 100+ targets then killing them all with a single Shadow Maul.

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Teleport: Travel as a click power. Monstrously annoying to use for most people. Faster than anything over long distances. Less direct combat use in it's prereq (though if you're going to show up first, might as well Recall Slower Friend.)

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Just sort of an aside:

Nuts to the mundanes. My Boost Range+Range-enhanced Teleporting Blaster has Recall Friend and AtT--I refuse to port your lazy butt across the Shadow Shard ever again if you have yet to move by the time I get there. LEARN THE PATHS. If my travel power-less Stone Tank can get across the Shard faster than you, you're not trying hard enough (granted, the meaning of "travel power-less" is up for grabs with all the bonuses that toon is sporting).
Also applies to non-Shard cases.

</rant>

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My Fire/Kin skipped Flares and took Siphon Power at 4; while you're levelling up it helps despite being completely redundant after level 38.

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Should be noted that SP is not redundant against strong single targets...of which CoV is not lacking, particularly after 38.

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And anyone who thinks Shield Charge is a problem, I'll refer them to the Tier 9 in Electric Melee.

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Which does make it a problem. Two powerful AoE TeleNukes that don't notify? Uh...

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Some ideas for MM primaries.

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Not proliferation.

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Sonic would be a cool secondary for MM.

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Proliferation.

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I would also like to see shield defense there too. Might be less useful until later, but an aura when you want aggro, and some additional defense for your minions would make for an interesting toon IMO.

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Not proliferation, directly.

Something like this would require some very specific reworking of powers but I could actually see it functioning--some sort of 'Commander' secondary focusing on motivation buffs, kind of like the VEATs in a way. 'Functioning' in the sense of being more 'logical' than "Peek-a-Boo!" Shield Stalkers. Granted, maybe the 'Hide' for SD on Stalkers would take a page from MGS and make the Stalker hide under a cardboard box or barrel or something.

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Can the system only handle one set of filters at a time? It seems it would make sense, if say, "Name" dialog boxes were filtered in the same manner creating a character name was filtered...and subsequently, text boxes were filtered to be equal with say, the forums.

You're of course going to run into tasteless people but are you seriously so concerned about less than 10% of the probable usage base that the other 90% has to suffer? Unfortunately, as society, that seems to be the case.

Spiffy. A step closer to something I've been highly anticipating.

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Thaddeus?

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I think this reference is quite amusing. Similar to "In Rod We Trust" and the like.

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Actually, it means you can SKIP taking the first or second power in the Travel Power Pools and, at level 6, pick the travel power immediately. No pre-requisites.

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City Traveler should be a giant set of letters made of bacon spelling out "WIN".

That said, December will be full of awesome for CoX this year. I think MA should tide me over, though.

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Maybe give people currently subscribed to CoH1 a 50% discount on CoH2, and then give anyone that buys CoH2 a FREE code for CoH1 as well. I think that would work.

For the new player, they get two games for the price of 1, for the vet, they get 50 more levels for just $25! That's just the cost of a month and a half subscription!

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"And a brand! New! CAR!"

Honestly, I read your post in the voice of Bob Barker from The Price is Right.

http://cityofheroes.wikia.com/wiki/W...ation#War_Mace

Directly: Illusionist Badge (yeah, that Illusionist Badge).

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^^ This content is what people will be speeding through. Of course, it'll also get nerfed first wave of merit "adjusting." The STF and RSF will be slightly slower, I think, once Vengeance stacking gets "fixed." If anything it'll just require you to pack purples and oranges.

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Not to totally derail the thread but Vengeance-stacking has never been a viable tactic against the Patrons. It simply just does not last long enough and isn't worth the effort for a speed run. There are easier, faster, and overall better ways of doing things than Vengeance spam.

I write them but prefer to not actually share them and just regurgitate their content whenever questions are asked.

Provides me an opportunity to continually keep things updated with the game without having to go through the tiresome forum process and simultaneously allows me to avoid annoyance with people that choose to ask a question answered in the first paragraph of a guide that had they spent a modicum of time reading, the answer would have been garnered.

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What team build is required to beat STF?

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Virtually anything will work. Just depends on the wetware of each character.

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First and second time, we were stopped by Mako's defense. (Second time we brought a sonic defender who either wasn't doing her job or it just wasn't enough).

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Sonic, except for Liquefy, deals -Resistance, not -Defense.

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Last night we finally had a great (so I thought) team going. Dark Defender, plant / thermal troller, empath, storm defenders, fire tank, two scrappers and a blaster. All 50s.

A little light on damage, but we've got the right (again, so I thought) set of debuffs and buffs to compensate.

So we start, and once again reach the inner circle. We kill Mako this time, no problem. Same with Scorpion. Their health just melts like any other AV. Next we pull Ghost Widow.

Ultimately we couldn't figure out how her heal worked. After first 20 minutes fighting her we figured out she was healing (as opposed to just insanely high regen). A quick search of the boards today seems to indicate that she heals off of targets within a cone, so standing behind her circumvents the problem. We had never heard of such a power, so it was assumed that it was a PBAEO target drain.

We spent an hour trying different tactics, even bringing her to the boat to have the turrets chip in, and her health bar didn't move, so once again, we gave up.

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Your Empath was worthless (and as my typical plug: Not a surprise). Fortitude, properly maintained, should have meant the Tank prevented the majority of her attempts at healing.

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I'm thinking Kheldians are the key, just based on both their inherent powers and the inherent defense / recharge debuffs attached to their powers. Of course, Kheldians are extremely hard to come by.

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Purple patch reduces debuffs to roughly half their normal power, then after that, AVs have native resistance to them by 87%, at least at level 54.

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Maybe trading our empathy defender for another blaster would have been enough damage?

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Not necessarily but your team seems to have had a particularly worthless Empathy if you had any problems at all.

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< rant>
But why should it have to take a fifth attempt to be successful at Statesman? Why should I have to give up before starting because I can't find the exactly correct combination of power pools needed to take down those Villains?

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Because you're not seeking in the correct manner. Because "Competence" is not a measure you can easily survey through the team search browser (or /yell), you need to stack your hand. Find the +Def, find the +Resist, find the -Resist, etc., and gather it in excess.

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Does it make sense to anyone else that an entire team of the most powerful hero players in the game is needed to take down any one <i>henchman</i>? Or that sometimes an entire team isn't enough?

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Not to be insulting but obviously your team was not the "most powerful hero players in the game". My SG, comprised of 4 members, regularly grabs anyone available and takes on all 4 Patrons, at once, without a care in the world. Does that make us the "most powerful", I don't know or care, but the task is not that difficult.

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Why is the entire inner circle standing in a line as they are? You aren't supposed to fight all of them at once. I'd like to see the team that could.

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See: My Signature.

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But they line them up all dramatic like, like it supposed to be an even match between all four of them.

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I'm personally annoyed that the Patron's respective lackeys are eliminated so early on and they don't accompany their bosses during this fight.

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Strictly from a design standpoint, why is this mission so hard? Yes, it's supposed to be the climax of the game, the mission where you finally stop Recluse, but is the difficulty curve like running headlong into a brick wall to anyone else?

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Not really.

And additionally, in a similar vein to your opinion, should the (non-LGTF) Hamidon be easily taken down by 3 players?

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It's a common MMO mindset that the upper-level content should be nearly impossible because it creates lasting challenge for players. Maybe I'm alone on this one, but I'd enjoy running Statesman frequently if it were just easier. For me, any dramatic tension that might have come from stopping Recluse was killed the first time I fought Mako and had to give up. There's no consequence, the world keeps spinning regardless of my failure, so why bother? Granted, I've wanted to retry for the badge, the accomplishment and to see Recluse in battle, but when I do beat it my reaction isn't going to be "We saved the world!". Rather, I'm going to think "hooray, our numbers were finally better than theirs."

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Snarky remark incoming: I think our group is somewhere past 200 runs. Aeon's cutscenes serve as little more than a chance for me to browse the Internet or get a sandwich.

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So, do we just need the "right" team build? Do we just need to understand our opponents better? If so, why couldn't we have been told this before we started? Couldn't Statesman say, "you need to have 8 players, including a radiation defense pool, to start", or even better, "go to the library before you start and access read through our database on the inner circle"?

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The text warns of the difficulty of the TF. I'm not up to lowering the bar when it, in my opinion and experience, is not that high to begin with.

Seriously?

Should I write a guide about how to play Radiation/Radiation Brutes? How about Time/Dark Miasma Controllers?

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I find the name Pain Domination very awesome.
Control over pain to help self and allies and hopefully debuff the snot out of others. Sounds very sweet.
Shields... very awesome.
AND BADGES WOO HOO!

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I agree that Pain Domination is an awesome name, but I thought we Dominators were getting a new set. Sadly, I have to vote to change the name to avoid confusion (unless Dominators can get Pistol Corruption just to annot the Corrupters ).

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Yeah... I do agree with this. There's so many other means to describe Domination without using the word "Domination."

Sore Supremacy or maybe Aching Ascendancy? eh ... minor grumble but only because I'm a Dominator.

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I'm kind of disappointed that they didn't go with Enmity. I suppose it's not thematically perfect but it's a pretty good analog for "Villain Empathy".

Mission Editor news has... Hmm... We need another Ostrakon (bah) picture to truly demonstrate how awesome it appears, especially considering that the claim given is that it's not a pointless "MadLibs"-esque designer where you have little-to-no-say in creation but not a tool that borders on the insane like, oh say, the Unreal 3 Editor (bleagh).

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Nothing wrong at all with teleporting to the hilltops on my stoner and using the hilltops to bypass the lag-ambushes and pouncing down on the Generals. Tends to speed things up quite a bit.

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I was making reference to having an enslaved Kinetics and abusing IR.

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Once the first two Generals are downed, I send my stoner to the hills, circle around and note where the other 2 Generals are at. I then quite literally drop-teleport myself down onto the first of the two Generals and proceed to pummel him into the dirt, then return to the hills and repeat the process for the 4th General

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Running around the hills and Teleporting is for the chump Stone Armor toons.

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The Shadows VG (Pinnacle) completed this TF in 57 minutes. I am sure others must have completed it in less time. Please post any advice or hints.

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26:29.
Toons in order:
1) Night Widow (Ninja 1)
2) Earth/Sonic Controller (myself, also serves as a make-shift AV Tank)
3) Crab Spider (Sub-Ninja 3)
4) Kinetics/Archery Defender
5) Spines/Dark Scrapper (Ninja 2)
6) BS/Invuln Scrapper
7) Fortunata, I believe
8) Fortunata, also, I believe

One of the biggest helps with this is having multiple independent toons performing tasks. In the screenshot, Celarn and Alpha Widow performed main ninja duties while the bulk of the team hung together (for the most part) and took on the difficult targets (the 3-hall junction on the first mission with 3 17-mob spawns and 3 Sybils in the area putting around 60 total enemies in aggro range). After that, having your support toons highly capable of damage is a tremendous help. While my own toon has laughably low damage, I multiply team damage and could "tank" the AVs (not that it's really necessary with 4 VEATs and /Sonic buffs) through Pooman. Then of course, having an ST damage source like a Broadsword Scrapper is extremely useful.

For the first mission, our ninjas took the side-path Sybils while the main group took care of the direct-path Sybils. After that, we went straight up the hill and as an Earth/Sonic, I just simply stopped the ambushes from doing anything while we waited for Sister Psyche Beta to finish animating. Sonic buffs had to be reapplied mid-battle.
For the second mission, our ninjas dived ahead (after buffing the team, I stayed with Celarn to give him Disruption for his auras of death) and the majority of the main team stayed together, killing nothing but the crystals. No Sonic rebuffs.
On the third, we lucked out and got the General+Monsters spawn on the bridge. After decimating them, we bumrushed the remaining generals, the phalanx, and pulled both AVs down. Sonic buffs had to be reapplied at some point against the Phalanx.
On the final mission, after buffs, we charged straight for Romulus and his size-omgwtfbbqpwnzorgasmoflawsomorization font text, killed him 4 times, then split up to destroy minions/lts (bosses are ignored for the most part to increase speed) in the courtyard, on the towers and wherever. Sonic Buffs had to be reapplied after Romulus but I didn't get to it since everybody took off in seperate directions (stuck with Celarn's aura of death again, of course).

About the Sonic buffs...they're on a 4 minute recycle and unlike most Controllers, I actually make an attempt to maintain them full-time. I don't recall mission times, but I do have a small memory of what the buffing seemed to require.

Anyway...

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Transfusion keeps the big baddies from regenerating health for a bit – a great debuff.

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FALSE!
The AVs resist regeneration debuffs by a significant amount, I don't remember Romulus's level during the ITF but in making the probably incorrect assumption that he is level 50, he still has a minimum of 85% resistance to things like regeneration debuffs. That means the -50% Transfusion debuff is only -7.5%. Level 50 AVs have a little less than 28k hp and at their regen modifier, 28,000hp/300s = ~93 hp/s regen. -7.5% regen means you're dealing 7 damage/second. My Controller can do better than that just by spamming Fossilize. Even then, if you were able to completely halt the AV's regen...the Kinetics would be much better off keeping everybody's damage much higher through SpeedBoost/SiphonPower/FulcrumShift (not counting their own possible damage output). Because, in one example, if the entire team averages an output 400 dps (very...very...very low dps if your team is trying for a "speed" run), a single Siphon Power buff is going to affect damage a hell of a lot more than adding on a piddly -7.5% regeneration to the target.