MaxLongstreet
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Posts
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Joined
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AS to buffing TA, yes. Those who haven't should read the thread on that on the archetypes forum.
That being said, Glue is one of the best powers in the set, perhaps third best behind oil slick and EMP. Those who don't use Glue Arrow probably underestimate its value. The -20% recharge is the stated value, but in practice, it tends to be greater than that. Often MOBs move this way and that trying to get out of the patch rather than attacking even when their attack is recharged. This is particularly true if one circles the patch to have MOBs switch directions to try to leave. It may not give contain, and thus may not be worth it ultimately, but it sure seems a heck of a lot better than Flash Arrow to me. -
Quote:Glue Arrow would be an enormous gift to Blasters, IMO. To not have to worry about melee combat from entire spawns doesn't seem appropriate to me - glue arrow + aoe's would be rather easy in many situations.Originally Posted by Adeon Hawkwood
You'll note I didn't suggest actually porting it over directly. I was suggesting making a new set based on Trick Arrow. Obviously porting the entire set over would be broken (for the same reason porting entire melee sets over would be broken) but there are some skills that could reasonably be ported over (Entangling Arrow, Glue Arrow, Ice Arrow, maybe Poison Gas Arrow) to form the skeleton of a set. -
As gimped as Trick Arrow is as a Corruptor secondary, you still can't have a blaster set with that many controls - it's game breaking. The challenging thing about blaster secondaries is that if they give the player more 'fun' in terms of non-damage powers, they can easily break the set by giving serious controls/buffs/debuffs to a dps heavy class.
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Is this were my character, I wouldn't be taking anything other than GDF. AoE holds are a main reason to be playing a controller, for Pete's sake. You get EMP arrow at 38, but that has a long recharge; I would want AoE holds to be available as much as humanly possible. I would be taking and 6 slotting ASAP.
Look at it this way: at 35, you'll get Oil Slick, which does boatloads of damage. GDF + oil slick = pure risk free win. -
I'm going to go with Superspeed in Grandville as my personal nightmare.
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Quote:I don't play a TA/A. As noted, I play a A/TA Corruptor which is far worse in comparison, since the TA powers are significantly weaker for a Corruptor, and with debuffs the Corruptor doesn't do more damage. With RoA for instance, it appears the damage is at Defender levels, which means actually significantly less damage given buffs and debuffs. It's not that I can't level it; it's just slow going since it is arguably the least powerful power set/class in the game. Disagree? Probably not based on experience, since it appears that no one else actually plays a A/TA Corruptor up to high levels.Originally Posted by Adeon Hawkwood
Wow... what a useful and insightful post.
Personally I didn't have any real trouble leveling my TA/A. Since it is a debuffed focused set it actually solos reasonably well although the lack of alpha mitigation does make it harder to increase spawn sizes safely (not impossible but you have to be a bit careful). I never had any problems with finding groups om Virtue but you might have trouble if you play on Freedom. -
Quote:Excellent question - I have used the following strategy from time to time to get a big bump in xp on my archery/ta toon when the door mission grind seemed a bit slow:Originally Posted by Sionwyn
Sorry for a little thread jacking here...
How was the TA/Arch to level? I've often wanted to make one but have never read any really good pieces of information on the leveling process.
Cheers,
1) sidekick to my friend with his level 50 robots/traps MM.
2) enter a '+1, times 8 enemies' mission with him.
3) while he cruises through 16x enemies, I guard the door and watch my xp bubbles fill up. -
Heck, if you love it, then I would play it. It's not an elite set; it's challenging to play and other debuff sets like Dark are more powerful than TA. But it is fun. Damage will pick up some with Oil Slick and RoA. Assault is also a good pickup if you want some more oomph.
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I'm curious as to which primaries and secondaries people like to play the most. So let me ask: what's your favorite primary/secondary? Alternatively, what is your least favorite?
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Quote:Actually the mobs mumble: "Trick Arrow?!? lol n00b!"Originally Posted by hewhorocks
I think they have managed to capture the comic book feel of Trick Arrow though. I can hear mobs mumble to themselves : "Its only Green Arrow / Hawkeye we dont have to worry. Its not someone impressive like Batman/ Captain America"
((I tried to go with less epic Icons though Superman/Thor would have been equally valid))
Yes, they have captured the look and feel of Trick Arrow very well - it's just not as good as other sets, playwise. I think it's actually a tribute to the look and feel of the set and what a good idea the set is that so many people are clamoring for it to get some love - if it was an underpowered set that wasn't original and looked bad, no one would play it and no one would care much. -
Archery is a nice set, but I've heard that with Archery the damage difference between Corruptor and Defender builds only gives a small bonus to the Corruptor, meaning that Defender archers are better, since they get a more powerful Secondary. I'd be interested to know the math on this - for instance, I've heard that Corruptor RoA damage suffers from this, but I don't know the comparative stats.
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As a lot of folks will tell you, Archery is a fun fit for Traps - both are 'natural' power sets that have a 'gadget' look instead of a 'superpower' look. I think Archery is a very good looking, smoothly animated set. The built in 15% accuracy bonus makes the set pretty reliable - you can get close to a 95% hit rate with only one high level accuracy enhancement. The set damage is probably about average, as far as I can tell, but it does have the bonus of being relatively low endurance - you can take assault for plus 15% damage without too bad of an endurance hit. Rain of Arrows is an excellent high level attack in that it's available far more often than any other nuke. Stunning Shot gives a solid way to negate a foe at high levels.
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Dark is very tanky against a lot of things, but as noted mezzes can be a big problem. Sometimes you can get through it because the mezzes have to hit you, and they'll miss a ton, but when that first one gets through and wipes your toggles you can be toast.
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One of the interesting paradoxes of power selection in CoX is that you often have a limited number of power selections, so you're often faced with a choice of getting Stamina or X. Unfortunately, 'X' often means toggles, which, as others have pointed out on this thread, it's hard to efficiently run without Stamina. So you can get Leadership or Fighting and not be able to afford the Stamina cost, or get Stamina and not really need it, since you don't have the power slots for those toggles.
Since I currently play a Stamina Corruptor without healing, I'd probably take Medicine if Stamina wasn't available. -
Any set where you just hit one sequence of buttons over and over is a set i'll get bored with fast - Tanks, Scrappers, Stalkers, Blasters tend not to be my cup of tea. I didn't try Corruptors for a long time because Blasters bored me, but now that I did I find them a hundred times more interesting with their secondaries.
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Quote:The best set to compare it to is really Dark, IMO, since like TA, it's basically a debuff set. I'm currently playing a /Dark Corruptor as well as a /TA Corruptor, and it's like night and day - /Dark seems like "easy mode". By the numbers, the Dark powers tend to be about twice as good as equivalent TA powers. Compare Darkest Night with Poison Gas Arrow (I'm looking at those wonderful Corruptor numbers for PGA), or Tar Patch with Disruption Arrow, for instance. TA has a much better second to last power in Oil Slick, but Dark makes up for it ten times over with things TA has no answer for - great mitigation through Fearsome Stare and Shadow Fall, and healing through Twilight Grasp. Basically, in Dark M. every power but Black Hole is at least good, compared to about 2 or 3 of the same quality for TA before Oil Slick.Originally Posted by hewhorocks
I think the concern is that Controllers get added utility from the debuffs, but I in general agree. I think even accounting for concepts (which sometimes preclude bows) there are a lot fewer Trick Archery toons than most other buff/debuff sets.
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It's an old story, one common to most MMO's. It boils down to this: buffs and debuffs and control are less obvious to the casual player. Anyone knows when they are healed; only players who are actually paying attention notice the buffs and debuffs that are just as powerful.
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Quote:I gotcha - so Acid Arrow was intentionally supposed to suck for Corruptors. With less than half the resist modifier that Defenders get, it looks like TA/A Defenders actually do more damage than Corruptors with the same power set. But the Corruptor makes up with it by having much worse controls.Originally Posted by Rush_Bolt
15% -RES is the correct Corr value.
The bug was that it was using MM END Cost values instead. This, AFAIK, has been fixed.
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To anyone who took offense at me poking a little fun at TA (coming back with the old 'learn2play' is a tad predictable and not much of argument), let me point out that my experience of TA is as a Corruptor, not a Defender or Controller. Any of you saying TA is just fine playing an A/TA Corruptor at high levels? Didn't think so.
EDIT: One particular issue I've noticed as a Corruptor is that Acid Arrow still seems to use Mastermind stats, meaning only 15% off resist - wasn't this a bug that was supposed to be fixed a long time ago? -
Quote:Deadweight, huh? Hmm...I like that! I've been meaning to rename my character; I'll have to see if that's available on Triumph. I'm also looking at 'Aggro Magnet' and 'Doctor Useless'.Originally Posted by hewhorocks
I love my TA Defender but as a concept. Everyonce in a while I remember her come back and run a mission or tow then then say, oh yeah thats why I dont play her. Purpled up she's marginally effective and my friends nicknamed her "Deadweight."
EDIT: I'm also considering 'Zero Shot', which I think works on a couple different levels. -
Quote:Exactly. I returned to the game after a long layoff and have been playing a A/TA Corruptor, and while I enjoy the look and feel of the powers, and find the class fun, I'm amazed at how underpowered TA is. Essentially, this character is several times weaker than the weakest character I ever played, and I played a lot of them. Missions at +1 level, 1x villains are actually a challenge. (In comparison, when I team with my friend who runs a Mastermind, we run the missions at +1 level, 8x villains and they're a breeze, and would be for him even if I just went afk at the start area for the whole mission. My MM friend views my TA Corruptor as one of his weaker pets).Originally Posted by Radubadu
I have yet to see a post that says "TA/ is fine as is". Even the people that enjoy it say that they do so in spite of it's flaws.
Part of it, I think is that I'm playing a Corruptor, which seems especially poor with TA. I've read countless posts about Acid Arrow being a set defining power, and when I got it at 20 I can't tell you how underwhelmed I was, perhaps because the effects aren't too strong for corruptors. Sometimes I don't bother to use it and I kill just as fast without it. Part of this may be the class penalty, but spending an action just to get a 15% damage boost on subsequent attacks doesn't seem all that fantastic to me, even with the defense debuff as well. I mean, it's not terrible, but a dominant set power? No.
Don't get me wrong - I'm having fun: it's an enjoyable challenge doing things like circling a group of enemies so they keep turning around to run back through glue arrow while slowly whittling them away, or using explosive arrow to knock them back into the glue patch just when they're getting close, or a hundred other dumb tactics designed to compensate for the weakness of the set, but is it any good, in comparison to other power sets? No, it's pretty terrible right now.
What it really needs is a power which allows serious ranged mitigation, through a powerful accuracy, damage, or recharge debuff. Barring that, if they aren't going to put any time into new powers, which seems likely, it just needs a serious power boost of all its powers across the board, whether it's reducing recharge times, endurance costs, or boosting debuff effects (probably the best option).
Or, they could continue to do nothing, using the old catch 22 that since TA sucks, few people play it, and if few people play it, it's not much of a priority, right?