Maelwys

I've noticed on test that my Bot/Traps MM's poison trap isn't "slowing down" critters anywhere near as much as it currently does on live. The -runspeed isn't kicking in and the Puke animation is less frequent.

For example, on test I need to place a Poison Trap and Throw down Caltrops in order to keep foes within my Assault Bot's Burn Patches... whereas on live all it takes is a single Poison Trap. It's still a good power, and using it on a horde of enemies still makes them "puke", just not as regularly as currently on live.

The Resistance values are the existing values, but scaled for Tankers.

The Heal values are taken from my own slotting with the Scrapper version of Dark Regeneration on my Spines/DA (which I have no reason to believe will be any different for Tankers). Note though that unlike Twilight Grasp,Dark Regeneration REALLY NEEDS heavy Endurance Reduction slotting. Unslotted, it costs over a third of your Endurance bar. My personal favourite slotting method is:

Sciroccos D: Acc/Dam/End (+21.2% to all)
Sciroccos D: Acc/Rech (+26.5% to all)
Multi Strike: Acc/End (+26.5% to all)
Numina's Conva.: End/Heal (+26.5% to all)
Numina's Conva.: End/Rech (+26.5% to all)
Numina's Conva.: End/Heal/Rech (+21.2% to all)
= 74.2% Acc, 21.2% Damage, 121.9% End, 47.7% Heal, 74.2% Rech
(Set Bonuses: +10% Regen, +12% Regen, +1.88% HP)

The Stealth component of CoD is inconsequential really. But it gives you stealth, which you don't need. Plus +Perception, which you can get from a cheap IO slotted in "Build Up", plus Immobilise Protection, which is available in Combat Jumping. It also costs a fair amount of endurance to run, wheras a Perception IO is "endurance free" and Combat Jumping costs virtually nothing.

Personally I view Cloak of Fear as mutually exclusive with Damage Auras, Oppressive Gloom and herding/tanking in general. It makes foes flee, which is bad for aggro control as well as your stun/damage aura effects.

It'll be powerful defensively, but it'll be utter hell to keep a healthy blue bar.

I'd go so far as to say that the +Recovery Uniques and/or the "Chance for End" Proc would be virtually [u]required[u] for a well-built Dark/Stone Tanker.

My advice would be to ignore +defense, skip Cloak of Darkness and build for as much +Resistance, +Regen and +MaxHP as possible... that means taking the fighting pool for "Tough", and Fitness for Health/Stamina.

Assuming that you're skipping Cloak of Darkness, you can grab the Leaping Pool for Combat Jumping and Acrobatics to fill your Immobilise and Knockback Protection holes, which leaves you one power pool "free". Focussed Accuracy and Conserve Energy are the obvious Epic pool choices... FA will make your heal hit even when heavilly debuffed, and Conserve Energy is of obvious use given that both Stone and Dark are very, [u]very[u] endurance intensive powersets.

In terms of survivability, when slotted you'll be looking at 71% Smashing/Lethal, 55% Negative, 47% Fire/Cold, 31% Energy, 24% Toxic and 79% Psionic Resistance. The Self-Heal is trickier to slot effectively due to requiring heavy amounts of accuracy and endurance reduction... but with good use of Set IOs it will be up every 15/16 Seconds, cost around 17-18 Endurance and will recover half your HP for every foe within 20 feet.

No, this isn't a joke post.

As far as I can see:

+ Mu doesn't have much going for it. Damage is weaker and hold doesn't last as long due to "-endurance".
+ Dark has the fastest animating Blast (and used to have a high priority animation hold al-la-Poison-Trap).
+ Mace has the -jump/-fly hold (good for halting foe movement in PvP) but suffers from redraw lag.
+ Leviathian has Water Spout (autohit stun plus a decent defense debuff that doesn't break hide).

+ In general the Snipes are pants. Bad damage, long cast time.
+ The Dark Blast is by far the best. Fast animating, Negative Energy, no redraw. Mob not notified until hit.
+ The Mu Blast is OK, but roots you for longer and notifies the mob at the very start of the animation.
+ The Mace Blast roots you for two seconds and has extra "redraw lag", but takes a Force Feedback Proc.
+ Leviathian has no Blast. Everything except Water Spout is fairly pants, but Water Spout is GREAT.

My own EM/Regen Stalker has taken Mace Mastery. I'm not adverse to a bit of PvP every now and again, and when I do the Web grenades are always useful... however I've found the prerequisate Mace Blast to be fairly rubbish. My Stalker sports a whopping constant +34% Damage buff from Assault + Set Bonuses, but the Blast still only ever does a maximum of 311 Damage (from Hide with Build Up). For comparison, "Bonesmasher" does 508 Damage under the same conditions.

However that said, I've found that I *really* like the Spiderlings.

Wait a sec, I haven't gone mad- hear me out here...

Like any pets they'll create a distraction for you to Rehide or AS something... but unlike the other pets, they do quite respectable damage too. When slotted they'll do around 140 damage a hit with their ranged blast and 70 damage a hit with their claws, which actually works out as better damage than Fire Imps (albeit Lethal damage not Fire). On top of the damage output, they've very fast movement and are quite survivable. They've each got higher base HP than you do, plus 20% Smashing/Lethal Resistance and 30% Psi Resistance. And if you feel so inclined, their blasts will even take the 'Defense Debuff' -Resistance Proc. The only downside is the long recharge and the fact that they spawn at -1 to you.

Has anyone else actually had much experience with Patron Pets as a Stalker? It seems that everyone tends to focus on either the Web Grenade or Waterspout (or in some cases like certain arena teams, Dark Blast) and forget the pets altogether... but in my experience each of the three (slotted) Spiderlings seems to do roughly the same damage over time as I would do if I just spammed (slotted) Mace Blast over and over.

(Near) Full Fury, PermaRage + Footstomp MaX.

It's meant to be the highest consistent PBAoE damage for Brute farming since Footstomp is up so regularly with +Recharge Bonuses and the FF Proc. Stacks with Damage aura from Fire/Elec/Dark too.

As has already been said, 'tis perfectly doable for Energy Melee.
In fact, it probably won't hurt your damage output at all.

Just don't drop Placate, and for Heaven's sake slot your attacks well. Since EM has high recharge times you'll want a healthy amount of Recharge and EndRed slotted in addition to the usual Accuracy/Damage.

Critical Bonesmasher from Hide is almost as good as an AS. Energy Transfer and Total Focus to follow up.

My Fire/Ice has farmed a bit. When solo it mainly involves herding everything onto Ice Patch and then unleashing the AoEs of Doom (tm). For a Dual-boxing setup I've found it easier using a Pocket Tanker (assuming high AoE aggro, mine runs Invincibility and has Footstomp/Rage on Autofire) than a Pocket Empath.

It's fairly hard to faceplant unintentionally on the Behemoth map with Fire Shield, and the Carnie map is also doable if I bring Breakfrees/Mez Protection along. Another niceity is that my Blaster's "Rise of the Pheonix" is up every two minutes (essentially the same as Inferno) so he can Nuke, Die then Rez and AoE Stun everything. No downtime to speak of since the Rez wipes out the Nuke's Recovery Debuff and grants 50% Endurance.

Apparently Archery is meant to be one of the best (if not the best) AoE Blaster builds these days with all the animation time tweaks + a short recharge on Rain of Arrows. If you can live with bow redraw and aren't fighting Lethal resistant foes all the time, that's probably the one I'd go for rather than Fire/.

That said, when soloing my Fire Blaster doesn't come close to the level of AoE mayhem that my Spines/DA can dish out when he gets going, and I suspect that even under "ideal" farming situations (Pocket Kinetic, Mobs don't mez, map spawned on Tenacious for 6 people) the Spines/DA would still be considerably faster.

At present, my Farming duo of choice is still a Spines/DA with a INV/SS in tow (AutoFollow/Rage/Footstomp). Faster than a Fire/Kin, nothing can mez them, and if I need to go AFK I come back to dead spawns.

Have Tanked the LGTF without support (read: everyone else was a damage dealer or only buffed their henchmen) on my INV/SS multiple times. The energy damage is fairly constant, but it's low... High S/L resistance is not to be sneezed at. Only thing that stopped me herding +4 "normal" Rikti was the aggro cap.

The only Rikti that genuinely give my INV tank trouble are the Elite Boss "Horsemen". And they're survivable if you have End Drain resistance or click Unstoppable. The Psi damage Bosses are infrequent and very easy to Knockdown/Mez when they DO crop up. Drones are fairly annoying, but PBAoEs, Rage or Focussed Accuracy will hit them through their high Melee defence.

Fire/Fire is still a fine choice, but don't be expecting to have anything like the crazy survivability of Pre-ED Tankers. You'll still be fairly hardy, but you won't be able to take on entire maps by yourself any more even if you COULD hold aggro on more than 17 at a time.

Fire is now more about surviving through spamming Healing Flames than through weathering attacks via resistances. Even with Tough and all your armours slotted you'll only be hitting around 70%ish Smashing/Lethal resists now, but Healing flames recovers half your HP and is up every 20 seconds (and more often than that with Hasten and/or Recharge bonuses from Inventions).

Your aggro control will still be fine, but Burn isn't that useful nowadays on a Tanker unless you're always teamed with controllers. Fire Sword Circle, your damage aura and Combustion are where it's at, plus any Epic pool AoE attacks.

One other thing you'll probably notice that's different is that your attacks don't cost nearly as much endurance as they used to, since a lot of stuff was reduced in cost in i6 when ED was introduced. ED basically boils down to "don't slot more than 3 SOs worth of any one attribute in a power" So no more Acc/Dam/Dam/Dam/Dam/Dam slotted attacks, now it's usually Acc/Dam/Dam/Dam/Rech/End or something similar (though you'll really want to read up on Set Invention Origin enhancements, which if you mix them right can let you nearly max out all the attributes of a power at once).

Finally, You don't need Acrobatics any more, just slot a Knockback Protection IO into one of your armors or Combat Jumping (you'll still want Combat Jumping for the Immobilise protection when Burn isn't up). The Acrobatics Nerf will only really apply to PvP, and even then only against a few REALLY powerful knockback powers. In PVE, a toon with Hold protection (eg Tankers) will hardly ever notice the difference if they have one or two Knockback Protection IOs slotted instead.

The only thing I'm realistically worried about with the changes to Acrobatics is the veteran reward Nemesis staff power. The Knockback Mag on that thing has always been stupidly high, but it *really* needs lowered now.

It's ranged and spammable with 100% chance of Mag 18ish KB, and available in PvP zones to all long-term veterans who have chosen the "right" reward. You'd need Acrobatics with two KB IOs in it to be protected.

Ideally I'd like to see the Veteran version become reduced in Mag to between Mag 5 and Mag 8 (eg either acrobatics or two KB protection IOs will protect you from it, but it'll still overpower one KB protection IO).

Sheesh, someone needs to teach the big fella about what it means when the "Big hand" and the "Little hand" both go past the twelve again. The date was the first thing I checked- "04/02/08 01:45 AM"!!

Posting this here because it'll likely affect PvP more than PvE play. Also, bear in mind that the date this was posted was the second of April, not the first.

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Regardless of what Castle does with the actual power or interrupt times, I did fix the animation for I12 so that will now root you for the full duration (~4 seconds if I remember correctly.)

That makes it consistent with all of our other interruptible/windup powers.

[/ QUOTE ] - BackAlleyBrawler here

Not a huge change, but it will mean that you can't fire Aid Self off and "just start moving again" right after the animation starts when slotted for interrupt reduction. Might want to keep an eye on that thread too- if Castle does end up extending the interrupt time even slightly, then Aid Self won't be able to heal a toon through the "ticks" of a debuff or a DoT.

WELL DONE ALL!!!

I've kind of settled into a generic method of attack slotting:

5 Crushing Impacts (all except Dam/End) plus either a Proc or a Mako Acc/Rech/End if I want Recharge. This is a fairly common melee-attack slotting method for all my toons, not just Regens.

4 Mako's Bites (Acc/Dam, Dam/Rech, Acc/Dam/End/Rech, Proc) plus either [a Acc/Dam HO and another Proc] or [Focussed Smite Acc/Dam/Rech + C.Impact Acc/Dam/Rech] if I want +Damage. This is more "regens-only".

For the Regen, it'd probably be Makos since I can slot 5 "Doctored Wounds" into most of his heals (Reconstruction, DP, IH, Integration, FH, leaving Health free for the uniques) for five "5% +Rech" set bonuses.

More OT, I've looked into the idea of rolling a Fire/WP Tanker, but I don't really like Willpower as a secondary for Scrappers. I don't like the idea of not having a reliable self-heal, and I've got this mindset that Scrappers are meant to be better at one-on-one fighting strong foes than Willpower is.

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Set bonuses and slotting removes the need for Quick Recovery as much as it does for quickness though.

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I didn't say slotting removed a need for the power, quite the reverse. I said taking the power meant you could focus on slotting other stuff (Damage procs in place of any Endred would be the most obvious benefit).

Whilst Recovery bonuses can reduce the need for slotting endred, it cannot eliminate it completely. Unless you ALSO have endred in your attacks you are still going to run out of endurance over the course of a long fight. Slotted Quick Recovery gives about +60% Recovery. The [Miracle + Numina] Uniques only give a total of +25% Recovery, and a Regen can slot those too without affecting their attack slotting...

On the other hand, Global recharge rate buffs will directly reduce the need for (or benefit of) Quickness. Without Hasten or any Recharge rate enhancements, Quickness is very noticable. When you have +50-60% Passive Recharge buffs plus Hasten (fairly easy to attain), it becomes more superfluous (or at least, less noticable).

But this is merely a long winded way of saying that "Regen lets you slot for less endred (and therefore more damage/recharge) whilst SR gives you more recharge straight off the bat". A side effect is that Regen gives you less downtime, since more recovery != more endred when you're going from 0 to full endurance after a complete drain (-recovery/rezzed/sapped/whatever).

Note that I tend to play my Spines/DA more these days, so I honestly have no abstract preference between SR and Regen... although if we get Fire/Energy Melee in i12, I'mma gonna be rolling me another /regen...

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Edit: ah now I see your edit, ET is part of what I mean for not needing an alpha. My Claw/WP/Body uses that to stagger the damage. In my eyes that's more avoiding an aplha than taking one but I see what you're saying

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Yeah, that's probably semantics confusing me again there...

When I say "My toon takes the alpha" I mean "I make sure that my toon is the first one the mob targets, and my toon survives any opening salvo that they then manage to get off". Whether said toon accomplishes this by directly weathering all normal damage, or mitigates it via mez/knockdown the result is the same (the enemies all notice me first and my toon is in no danger of dying!)

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In that case any secondary alike will be the same, but /SR will make you have a quicker recharge rate on your attacks, so your dmg/minute will be higher, and /DA will have a dmg aura, and /dark, WP and Invinc have their own aggro aura to keep baddies attention away from squishies, so in all cases /Regen would be offering less than them to the team. Besides, you dont always play on ideal teams, sometimes it's the scrapper that has to go bear the alpha, if it's the only melee toon on a squishies' team. And regen is by far the worse to take the alpha on teams

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I agree with most of the top half of your post, but I've a few issues with this second bit. Regen has Quick Recovery, which as I pointed out in my last post, lets you slot more recharge/damage/procs/blueberry muffins and not worry about endred. This pretty much covers the gap between Regen and SR's Quickness, particularly when you consider that with the availablility of Hasten and Set bonuses (assuming all secondaries are equally IO'ed) Quickness's effective usefulness diminishes.

On your last point, Regen is now the secondary BEST SUITED to taking a heavy alpha. Perma Dull Pain is one reason. "New MoG" is the other. MoG now lets my Regen [u]Stalker[u] take the alpha for an 8-man team...

My namesake and first level 50, Maelwys, is a SO'ed Katana/Regen/Body that hasn't respecced since issue 6. Whilst he's very very rarely played these days, he virtually always took the alpha and was extremely capable at doing so (his secondary let him have zero downtime, at higher levels he opened with Energy Torrent's Knockdown). He's certainly never shied away from EB fights. Before the AV +regen rate buff patch he regularly soloed GMs such as the Paladin and Kraken (due to a combo of Divine Avalanche and Regen's clickyheals).

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i usually slot it for 3 recharge 1 resistance

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I found the "petselect" command very annoying, since it selects the pet from its position in your pet window.

On occasion when resummoning your pets will change their order slightly (the tier 1s tend to be the major culprits- names can be jumbled around pretty regularly) which messes this method up. Also, certain secondaries (traps mainly) have placable pets that also take up positions either side of your pets in that window.

The upshot is that the first time you press Numpad 4 it could select a Protector Bot, and the next time it could select an Acid Mortar. For this reason, I much prefer to select a pet by NAME or TYPE.

[SELECT PET] /bind numpad1 "bind_load_file c:\Games\coh\mm\alpha1.txt$$petselect_name Alpha 1"

[COMMAND METHOD #1] /bind numpad7 petcom_pow Assault Attack
[COMMAND METHOD #2] /bind numpad7 petcom_name "Alpha 1" Attack

The above function perfectly and are part of my regular macro setup for my Bot MMs.
Numpad0 is Aid Other, so to heal a hurt pet I'd hit Numpad1-6 to select it then Numpad0 to heal it.

You won't need a Rad for the -regen.

The AVs you'll be fighting are +4, the -Regen effect from Lingering Radiation will be cut in half (48%) by the level difference before it even encounters the AV's resistances to it, so it will do virtually nothing to them.

With four "squishy" toons (and two Regens, whch are nearly as squishy versus AVs) and no Bubbler you'll be very hard pressed to not get one accidentally one-shot by the Thorn Tree or AoEs though.

Debuffs Suck on the MoSTF due to the high level difference between you and the AVs. It's only down to force of habit from past standard-mission AV or GM fights that most MoSTF squads will look for a Rad. Rad's main benefit on a MoSTF team is not their debuffs, but AM (for the +speed, damage and end drain resists).

If your Empath is really on the ball and the Kin has Increase Density, you might just be able to pull it off without a bubbler... but I can see it being very tricky for that team to complete the STF with "no deaths".

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Thing is, while a regen is active for his own survivability, he is not bashing foes or doing much else, hence usually outclassed by other scrappers when dealing damage.
Scrappers should be imo active all the time, checking on squishies that might have aggro, killing the boss, killing the foes that are frying the team with ranged attacks... heck, even trying to contain the other mob aggroed by mistake insetad of choosing which heal is available now and which one will be next one to use, the set may grant them being alive at the end of each and every fight, but any skilled scrapper can do that with any other secondary while being far more helpful for the team.

Regens on PvE are not even scrappers, just the ultimate selfish empaths.

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Jeez Night' don't reopen this can of worms, we've been over this too many times already.

And you're still wrong.

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Thing is, what you guys see as an amazing feature, "being active for your own survivability" impairs both the damage output and the team effort, as easy as while clicking a heal you are not attacking and regen has many heals to click.

If you want a scrapper who needs to be active for his own survivability go Dark Armor.

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Exactly how active is another scrapper when they are lying face-down in the dirt exactly?

Regen has a total of two "regular clicks": Dull Pain and Reconstruction. IH and MoG are situational.
Dark has a total of one "regular click": Dark Regeneration.

Hardly that inconveniencing, really... considering that INV has Dull Pain too and SR has Practiced Brawler.
(And probably Aid Self, which frankly takes more effort to fire off than either Reconstruction or Dark Regen!!)

Of all the secondaries, only Willpower is really that "fire-and-forget"... and even with THAT, you'll still periodically be using "Strength of Will" (and possibly Hasten).

There's also a fairly good point in that whilst SR "adds to damage output" with Quickness, Regen adds to it with Quick Recovery (by letting you slot more +Recharge/+Damage/+Cookies instead of endred).

Using Regen's clickyheals whilst travelling between groups is very nearly as effective as using them in battle and costs you absolutely nothing in terms of damage output, since none of them will root you anymore. Also, don't forget that the old "Weapon Redraw Penalty" argument was debunked a while back by BaB!

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Aggro pools the sounded coincidence. Healers portrays a radius. The hideous street landscapes Healers. A charter disrupts Healers behind every witty chemical. Aggro buffers a character.

Healers cracks a competitor below its inform capitalist. Aggro vintages the cheap genius. The brief protocol acts opposite Aggro. A foolish guitar stretches under the clique. Healers treats Aggro past a programmable precedent. The positive optic pictures Healers.

The sector predicts Healers in a baking northern. Can a refer mud behave in Healers? A molecule mandates her oriental. How does Healers watch Aggro? How will Aggro choose? The blurb pants under our machine!

How can the psychological genre proceed above Aggro? Aggro grabs a demanding envy behind the disabling exposure. An emptied revenge recovers under Healers. Aggro bosses a gratuitous chase.

Healers fishes within Aggro. Why does Healers escape into the swamp? Aggro pipes every banana opposite the informative western. Aggro crawls. The explanatory tour rockets a dot. Inside Healers flies the greedy project.

Q.E.D.

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That was very enlightening

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It made considerably more sense than what you wrote earlier...
Also: Mr. Flibble is very cross.

Aggro pools the sounded coincidence. Healers portrays a radius. The hideous street landscapes Healers. A charter disrupts Healers behind every witty chemical. Aggro buffers a character.

Healers cracks a competitor below its inform capitalist. Aggro vintages the cheap genius. The brief protocol acts opposite Aggro. A foolish guitar stretches under the clique. Healers treats Aggro past a programmable precedent. The positive optic pictures Healers.

The sector predicts Healers in a baking northern. Can a refer mud behave in Healers? A molecule mandates her oriental. How does Healers watch Aggro? How will Aggro choose? The blurb pants under our machine!

How can the psychological genre proceed above Aggro? Aggro grabs a demanding envy behind the disabling exposure. An emptied revenge recovers under Healers. Aggro bosses a gratuitous chase.

Healers fishes within Aggro. Why does Healers escape into the swamp? Aggro pipes every banana opposite the informative western. Aggro crawls. The explanatory tour rockets a dot. Inside Healers flies the greedy project.

Q.E.D. and "Wibble".

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Everyone Else = 1

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Everyone Else = 0.5

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"Controllers" == "Everyone Else"

Note that 1 and 0.5 are the LOWEST multipliers listed for threat level and taunt effectiveness.
This means that Controllers by default will be targetted joint last (with Defenders and Blasters).

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AI Preferences [u]can be[u] things like "I prefer to attack Scrappers", "I *really* hate Kheldians!", "Kill the healer!", "Attack the last person to attack me!" or any of about 40 or 50 other variables that we [u]can[u] set.

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"Can" != "Do"

Just because something is possible within the game engine, doesn't mean there are any enemies that are set up that way. In fact, the only enemies we know of that actively target one AT over another are Voids.

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"Healer" is "The last entity which used an Absolute Heal attribute on my current target." [u]In practice, I don't know of any AI's that use anything but a default value for this.[u]

[/ QUOTE ] - Castle (Source)

See above.

Whilst it's THOERETICALLY POSSIBLE to tell an enemy type to go after Healers, none have been told to do so.
(This last comment is both pointing out that therefore Controllers are very likely never "pre-emptively targetted", and also making a futile attempt to keep the whole thing on-topic by referring to "Healers" )

Would offer my Sonic, but working until 4pm Friday.

(Northern Ireland's hols tend to be the Monday and Tuesday, as opposed to the Friday and Monday... )

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Nothing in PvE will go for a Controller first, but it's theoretically possible to code something that way.

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Sometimes its better if a controller is either first to effect the enemy, second to effect the enemy and not suddenly become the healer frantically trying to save everyone from being overwhelmed. To control additional tohit helps alot. Your statement is factually incorrect because controllers possess a threat level, powers that can achieve aggro and the ability to act in the manner that they decide too. They aren't henchmen or pets on guard mode waiting to act on anyones ready and are subject things from other peoples playstyles.

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You're making this far more complicated and confusing than it needs to be. You appeared to be saying that certain types of enemies are coded to "prefer attacking controllers". That is wrong.

Yes, any controller can pull aggro by using their powers without other aggro control- this is true for ANY AT, and I even pointed it out in the paragraph immediately after the one you quoted. However given that a Controller's threat multplier is the lowest possible for any AT, and we know of NO enemies that are coded to "prefer controllers" (in the same way that voids are coded to "prefer kheldians") there is NOTHING in PvE that will automatically start beating on a controller over any other toon.

In other words, if you place a mob between several toons, it's going to go for the one with the highest threat level (not controllers- the only way to get a lower threat level than a controller is to use stealth powers) or the one that it's coded to prefer fighting (not controllers- nothing "automatically hates" them).