LunarKnight

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2. The spawning at 1 hp thing is almost completely negated if you have a self-heal.

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I wonder how long before Defenders start staying behind at the base, patching up the wounded so they can get back to the war ASAP. I know a few people who might really like this idea...

Does anyone know if they provide a To-Hit bonus when you summon them? I know when I play my Nin/Nin Stalker, Arachnos troops will tear through my DEF like paper if I don't take the Seer out first. I'm curious to see if the pet would grant a similar advantage.

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Do note today's change in pets accepting recharge. This change alone is huge IMO. It makes the sets much more useful to me in PvE, which is what I care about.

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yeah this changes a lot for me. However, I honestly am still underwhelmed by GW dominator pet.....conceptually it works as I am a mind/psi dominator and the seer is psi damage as well, however in PvE my weaknesses are hers...

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Just curious what's so terrible about the Seer? I was planning on picking her up for my Fire/Thorns Dom, but I was curious what was wrong? Any experiences you'd like to share?

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FYI: Melee AT Patron Power Pool Ranged attacks which cause damage will be changed to using the Melee damage scale.

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Follow Up:
Stalker Snipe PPPs are back to being Ranged damage. The changes I'd made to keep them balanced got nixed.

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Someone want to do the math on this? How will the Snipe's damage compare to the normal ranged attack after this change? This just seems like a bad idea all around IMO...

For the record, _Castle_, I really HATE that you guys do this. I don't understand why you make exceptions where ranged powers use the melee modifier. Rather than confuse the issue by giving melee AT's a horribly low ranged modifier that they don't actually use, why not simply boost their ranged modifier up to make these attacks worth taking. All of this "special case" damage modifier stuff just leads to endless confusion among the players, and I can't imagine it makes things any easier for you guys either.

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Because the ranged damage modifier is a fixed number across the whole AT - if they increased that then all ranged attacks that use the modifier would be boosted too, not just the lacklustre PPP attacks (i.e. it would make Spines Stalkers ridiculously overpowered).


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Spines Stalkers already use the melee multiplier for their ranged attack. Impale and the rest run off the 0.9, not the 0.5. After this change there will not be a single Stalker/Brute/Scrapper/Tanker attack that uses the ranged multiplier.

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a few have 1 or 2 ranged attacks in their primary

though they could just weaken those accordingly, if they upped the range modifier...

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Ranged attacks in the primary (Hurl, Shockwave, etc) already run off the melee multiplier, despite being ranged attacks. With this change, no melee AT will have an attack that runs off the ranged multiplier, no matter how much range the attack has

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Now they'll use the melee multiplier (1.0), so a medium ranged attack for a non ranged class will do 1.0x the damage of a melee medium damage attack.

In essence, damage from ranged patron power pool has so far been halved. This will no longer be the case.

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Not quite. So far they've been 2/3rds as powerful as they're going to be. They're getting a 50% damage boost, not 100%.

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FYI: Melee AT Patron Power Pool Ranged attacks which cause damage will be changed to using the Melee damage scale.

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Can someone translate this dev speak for me? What does this mean? Why would range attacks be considered melee damage?

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There are two damage multipliers that determine "base stats" one for ranged attacks and one for melee. For reference:

Melee/Ranged
Scrapper: 1.125/0.5
Tanker: 0.8/0.5
Stalker: 0.9/0.6
Brute: 0.75/0.5

All APP attacks for Scrapper/Tankers use the melee modifier, even when it's a ranged attack (Scrappers use 1.125 instead of 0.5 for instance). The Brute/Stalker APPs are currently running of the ranged multiplier (0.5/0.6 respectfully). They're changing them to run off the melee multiplier (0.75/0.9 respectfully). In otherwords:

The base damage of all ranged Brute/Stalker APP attacks are going to get a 50% boost!

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They need to fix this bug. The bug should have been fixed before they ever introduced a villain with powers that look just like it. That they haven't done so is rather sloppy on their part.

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Not that I disagree that it should be fixed, but the reason it hasn't been fixed is probably that they simply have no idea what causes it. I know I have no idea personally. I used to randomly have it happen every mission, then it went away, then it randomly happened an average of 1:5 missions. I got a new machine and it stopped completely. Then I had a mission that did it again, but haven't seen it since. My guess is the devs are pretty clueless as to what causes it.

And that's EXACTLY why everyone needs to /bug it every single time they see it, as soon as they see it. I know it can be hard to think about /bug when you're being slaughtered by invisible foes, but it's really the only way the devs are going to get the data to fix it. Otherwise it's almost impossible to fix a bug you can't even reproduce (and if you try, there's no way to know whether or not you actually fixed it).

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funny, my bots have no problem "Seeing" night widows.

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If I were you I wouldn't rely too heavily on this. It screams "bug" to me, and I won't at all be surprised if it stops working that way someday.

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I'd giggle and cheer for days if they did. Perhaps then mobs would stop chasing down my Stalker despite the fact he's clearly "Hidden". NPC characters don't need perception to "see" you once they've "seen" you. A pain for every single AT except MM's IMO.

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So, if a Melee attack rated at 'High' does 100 damage, a 'High damage Ranged attack could be expected to do 66 damage before slotting.

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This is confusing. Why not just say the ranged attack does 'moderate damage?'

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What, you took seriously them wanting people to not be confused once they picked their permanent, non-respecable Patron Pool?

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No less confused than when they pick their permanent, non-respecable Primary or Secondary set

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Specifically:

Melee AT's have a considerable lower Ranged Damage modifier than Melee Damage modifier. For Stalkers and Brutes, the Range modifier is 2/3 the melee modifier.

So, if a Melee attack rated at 'High' does 100 damage, a 'High damage Ranged attack could be expected to do 66 damage before slotting.

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Out of curiosity, how do the Stalker and Brute range modifiers compare to the Scrapper and Tank ones?

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I think they're exactly the same IIRC. I think all 4 melee ATs have a ranged modifier of 0.5 (1.0 being the Blaster ranged modifier for reference). The real issue is that these modifiers aren't really followed very well. I believe all Scrapper/Tanker ranged attacks (Shockwave, Hurl, all the APP powers) run off the melee modifier. Scrapper/Tankers have ranged modifiers of 0.5, but they don't actually have any attacks that are hindered by it.

EDIT: Scrapper/Tanker/Brutes have a ranged modifier of 0.5. Stalkers have a ranged modifier of 0.6. Sorry if that confused anyone.

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Made 44 on my brute. Took Ball Lightning.

Says: Targetted AoE, Moderate damage (Energy/DoT).

Recharge is around 20 seconds I think.

Unenhanced Damage at level 44: 8 initial damage, plus 4 ticks of 5 damage, total damage: 28.

With 3 SOs that would be around 56 damage.

My jab (minor damage attack), with three damage SOs in it does 55 damage.



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Part of this comes from the AoE part of it. AoEs are balanced assuming you hit an average of 2.5 targets with the attack. So in the dev's balance equations, the total unslotted damage is actually 28 x 2.5 = 70.

There's also some really goofy stuff with ranged/melee powers in the Scrapper/Tank sets. Hurl, for instance, still runs off the Tanker melee damage scale, even though we classify it as ranged. I think I remember the ranged APP powers for Tanker/Scrappers do the same thing. From what it sounds like, Brute/Stalker PPP powers run off the ranged damage scale.

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Because, as the original poster stated, it’s a fine, fine line between hero and villain. In fact, heroes, that Hellion you just upper-cutted 30 feet into the cool blue sky had a long time girlfriend and newborn baby-boy. Yeah, he’d made some bad choices, but he’s had a hard life (and he’s only 19!). He had a name too, but now he’s tomato-sauce on 35th and Main. Poor kid. See - that much personal knowledge makes it kinda hard to serve conscience-free headsplitters daily.

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This is a large problem with our current society. In our search for answers to why bad things happen, we've created a system where no one is personally responsible for their actions. Rather than face the consequences of our decisions, we choose to scapegoat and blame others for our choices. I don't care how hard his life has been, that Hellion chose to mug that woman. His choice brings consequences, and in Paragon City, those consequences often come in the form of a 30 ft uppercut from a sword wielding vigilantee. His choice, his consequence. I don't have a problem with that personally.

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Nor do they change the rating of the game by allowing players to kill helpless civilians.

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Then why don't they disappear nice and clean, like when mobs get hit by a police drone? That would be much better than having a bunch of invincible civilians running around.

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Can't subject the citizens of Paragon City to the (still in Beta Test) powers of the Police Drones.

However, it's been determined that Heroes and villains suffer no ill effects so it's okay to use them on those folks...

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I wouldn't want to get too far into the "logic" that goes into determining the ESRB rating personally.

Generally your hunt missions don't have you going out and arresting people on the streets randomly. Usually the story context is that you're "questioning" them to learn the details of a bigger plot. Right or wrong, gathering information by intimidation is a pretty standard practice of superheroes and vigilanties in general. The game doesn't do the best job of showing this once you actually get the information, but that is the concept.

I question the "assaulting villains on the street" concept myself. I think a large part of it has to do with the magnitude of threats that many of these groups present. Remember, this is a society with villainous groups who actively practice coordinated violence, murder and social uphieval. These groups work towards the total distruction of the city/world. In the instance where they succeed, large sections of the city are made unliviable and, I imagine, large sections of the population are killed. Look at Dark Astoria (BP), Eden (DE), Boomtown (Rikti), or more recently Siren's Call (Arachnos) for examples of what happens when these groups aren't stopped.

And I think that's the difference. The people on the street dressed in CoT ceremonial robes or Council combat armor clearly associate themselves with an organization that actively practices mass destruction and murder. I imagine, if nothing else, these people can be charged with conspiracy. Simply put, if the Boy Scouts of America, as an organization, started leveling multiple city blocks to promote their ideals, you'd NEVER see me in uniform again. I'd fully expect to be arrested on the spot.

That said, there are a few groups I question currently. Hellions and Skulls are generally up to no good, but occassionally seem innocent enough (Perez is bad for this). I'm not fond of hunting Lost; generally speaking, stabbing bums isn't particularly heroic. I think the worst offender is Crey. Not only are these part of a sanctioned organization, but 90% of the time they're really doing nothing wrong, heck, alf the time their being treated by medics. Most Crey hunting missions refer to them "harrassing the population in Bricks" or something like that. I'd like to see them doing things like that, bullying people for money, dumping toxic waste, and other "questionable" activities.

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Obviously side quests (re-capture the Villain, etc. ) will increase your time limit.

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I can't help but visualize the Safeguard Mission side quests as the "old lady's cat is stuck in a tree" sequence from the first scene in The Incredibles.

"Hmm. Nemesis forces are attacking City Hall, but... yeah, I've still got time."

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Indeed. When I first read States's comment, the first thing that came to mind is "Spidey Patrol". Spiderman spends a lot of time in the comics just swinging around New York handling every little crisis he comes across. Stopping muggings (or chasing down purse snatchers), saving people from burning buildings, stopping getaway cars, etc. I think we'll see something like that.

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The monitors of Recluse and his speech are my favorite part

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Yeah, those are an awesome addition. The whole approach to the base of the tower is very well put together.

Also, that red light effect they put in a couple places (most noticably on top of the spire...) is exceptionally cool. There's some tanks in the hospital area that use it to. Everything seen through the red light gets a red/black skinning that just looks awesome I was originally disappointed with the height of the spire. The depth of field effects make it hard to tell how tall it is. Climbing the thing with Super Jump corrected that problem pretty quick. Using a waypoint, we figured out the tower is roughly half a mile tall.

My only complaint is that there doesn't seem to be any "bleedover" level wise. For most of CoV I usually have the option of moving on to a new zone or sticking around the current one to finish a few more contacts. Nerva/St Martial seem to cut off pretty harshly at 40, providing no content for 40+. Meanwhile, Grandville doesn't let you even run paper missions until 40. It would be better if St. Martial gave us stuff to do through at least 42, or better yet, if Grandville let us start working there around 38.

I'd say the best thing they could do with IH is make it like the Peacebringer Quantum Flight. Put it back as a toggle, just as it was before, but after a certain amount of time, start ramping up the END cost until the player is forced to shut it off. It could be used more often, but the END drain would make it far harder to abuse.

I didn't mean for that post to come off quite as bitter as it did, I just tire of the binary concept most people have with Regen. The immortality line just doesn't work for me, because there are ways around that. I just hate that so many people base the set purely on what you can do if you just stand there and swing.

I also didn't mean to make it sound like I think Regen needs to be nerfed further (though I said as much, didn't I...?). I think it's right about where I described. If I try to dive in and stand and kill, I tend to go down faster than my counterparts. When my health drops too low, however, I can get away to reduce the incoming damage, which puts me back in the fight almost immediately. All in all I think it works about right.

I just disagree with the immortality line. I agree it exists, I just disagree it makes Regen as binary as many would claim. I know far too many Regenners who use the immortality line as their cutoff point, and refuse to find ways to push past it, which frustrates me to no end.

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Yeah, Since Issue 2, Scrapper's main problem is GETTING dev attention.

Don't worry regen scrappers.

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Are you kidding? Some poor regen scrapper accidentaly taunted the devs, and the entire secondary hasn't been able to lose dev agro for the last handful of issues.

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The problem with Regen as a secondary is that the manner in which it was implemented inherently doesn't scale; ignoring the deaths from taking a ton of damage in a single alpha strike, healing quickly as a defense breaks down to two categories: if you regen faster than you're taking damage, you look godlike, and if you take damage faster than you regen, you're dead if you can't drop opponents quick enough to move into the other category. Everything the devs have done to the powerset has just run the breakpoint back and forth, and there's a very fine line between survival and faceplanting (and it's far too easy to go quickly from 'fine' to 'debt' if you judge things wrong).

If you took Instant Healing and changed it so that it made each hit act like illusory damage -- i.e., for each hit you take, a second or two after the hit you 'instantly healed' part of the damage, then what you'd have would be a defense that would scale the same way that Resistance and Defense did, and could be balanced against them -- 40% Resistance, 40% Defense, and 40% Instant Healing would all, over time, protect a character from 40% of the incoming damage. Unfortunately, doing a rework this fundamental to a powerset seems to be more than what the devs are willing to do, since it would entail rebalancing the other powers in the set as well.

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This is only because of the way most people have learned to play Regen. They jump in dumbly and if the enemy DPS isn't over their Regen rate they survive and if it is, they die. That's a silly, self defeating way to play Regen. Diving in, taking some damage, diving out and letting your Regen heal you, then diving in for more increases the "defense" Regen provides.

When the infamous Regen video was released (which admittedly had far greater problems), there was this huge outcry of people who criticized States for keeping away and letting his Regen heal him to finish off the mobs he did. I never understood this for a moment. Are we so dumb and spoiled that we expect to stand and press attack over and over until we win? It just seems silly to me that people keep talking about the binary nature of Regen. As far as I'm concerned, the "stand and kill" portion of Regen should be noticably lower than other sets. The kill and come back for more portion should be unrivaled by any other set in the game.

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I really think that was a bad design idea. Wouldn't it have been better to make the Patron powers blue? Or are all villain players who use electricty supposed to be Mu?

[/ QUOTE ] Well, there is that one story arc where you find that book that proves there's some absurdly huge percentage of the world's population that's in some way descended from the Mu. So it wouldn't be that much of a strech I suppose.

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***Spoilers***

In that same arc you are cursed by a CoT mage so that "your fate is tied to the fate of the Mu". My Tech/Bots/Trap Mastermind is taking this and running with it. After being cursed he began research on incorporating the Mu magic into his machines. He's now going to Siricco with plans to develop a new line of "MuBots" using his own body as a prototype.

This is why I do my best to weave my characters heavily into the story of Paragon City. The Lunar Knight that exists in Paragon City is a VERY different character than the one that resides in my head. While the basic framework may have a similar tone, I can assure you, the hero in my head was never raised in the MAGI schools and certainly never had the word "Kheldian" associated with him. This makes it very easy to draw the line between the character I own and the character owned by NCSoft.

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I think the fact that you want to dismiss his tests to be extremely nieve.

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I had no intention to dismiss it as such, it was merely the way it was presented. A lot of people put their pets in Defensive and expect them to attack exactly what they want and go where they're told. It sounded like you expected them to initiate combat in Defensive mode and were disappointed with the results.

I've tossed my pets in Defensive and they don't attack. If something attacks me, however, they're usually pretty good about retaliating, especially against a single assailent. I appologize if I sounded dismissive, it simply sounded like you tried to engage in combat in Defensive mode, and were disappointed that the pets were as aggressive as when you put them in... well Aggressive mode. I'd love to hear about how the pets are reacting to a direct assault on you in Defensive mode and again, sorry if I sounded like I was dismissing your post.

Yup, exactly.

Defensive works like this: Your pets will not attack mobs unless attacked first. If a foe attacks them, they retaliate. If a foe attacks YOU, all of your pets aggro on that foe and attack. If you're under fire, Bodyguard will help keep you alive while your pets neutralize the threat. If you're not under fire, YOU DON'T NEED BODYGUARD.