Melancton

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Are the devs aware of this issue yet? I don't want to bug Castle with an email about it if he already knows of this issue.

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I sent Castle a PM and he replied that they are on top of it and looking for a fix.

(Probably one of hundreds of PMs he got, but he still replied. )

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Although I am tempted to send him a message saying "Comeon baby light my fire...." tee hee.

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Somebody had to say it!

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So what's the most disturbingly bad example of a controller that you've seen in-game?

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Since more often than not I am playing a Controller myself, I have not seen very many situations in which an utter lack of controls, etc., stood out to me--- I was usually too busy doing my own work to notice exactly why we got wiped due to another Controller.

But what I HAVE seen lately is a trend of Controllers not using most of a powerset: a /FF who does not run ANY bubbles at all, much less bubble each of the team; they only got it for the Personal Force Field, apparently. A /Kin who skipped SB, etc., and snaps back that they are "not a buffbot!" and you can forget about Transference or melee heals, too. And probably everyone has run into the /Emp who just "rocks the aura" and never does anything else. (Usually at Wentworth's )

I have also seen Controllers that run their favorite powers even when it aggroes multiple groups or messes up pulls, etc. Come on, folks, let them at least GET TO THE TANK before you AoE Immob them!

A Controller should keep the overall team mechanics in mind and adjust tactics accordingly. I once turned off Hot Feet on my Fire/Rad when I realized that the Tank could not keep aggro with it on. I am not conversant enough in Tank builds to discern why, but for that team, I just concentrated on my 3 debuffs and Choking Cloud, and spot held Bosses. Flashfire was not working so well (I inferred the mobs were Stun Resistant) and I stopped summoning the Imps. With Hot Feet on and the Imps doing their ADD thing, I was a sitting duck for aggro and got zonked, and then other teammates started getting picked off by the debuff-free and hold-free baddies. By concentrating on debuffs and spot holds, the team steadily dispatched the debuffed foes, and often the mobs were held as a group with Cinders, Choking Cloud, EM Pulse or a combo thereof. Progress was smooth and nobody died. I was not the Damage Star I often am, but it all worked better.

Likewise, my Ice Controllers prefer not to have AoE Immobs tossed on top of Ice Slick, but on a team with 3 or 4 Controllers, the best tactic probably IS to spam AoE Immobs for damage. Whatever works the best is the way to go.

I read many, many guides back in the day, and lurked the Forums for almost a year before I even registered. I asked questions and took note of good play. It took about 8 months before my Ice/FF Controller made 50... and that was bubbling every teammate every four minutes with both bubbles, and running my big bubble as well, on every team. It was fun and I am still here.

The MA newbs will learn how to play, and thus enjoy the varied richness most of us do, or get bored and drop out in frustration, I think.

I would concur that every AT can solo, having played mostly Controllers and Blasters. Problem is, those ATs are very squishy, and some of the powersets do more damage than others, so for overall speed of damage that you inflict and durability as far as damage you can take, Scrappers have the best Happy Medium.

Within ATs, you will find an Ice/Ice Blaster to be much easier to solo, due to faster recharges on the blasts and a number of holds and slows that you can use as well. But an Ice Controller will do very little damage, though you will have more safety in the form of holds, slows, immobilizers and Ice Slick.

I have a lowbie Ice/Rad Controller and a lowbie Storm/Ice Defender, and I am able to carefully solo them. But I have my Veteran Wiles, honed after 4 years in the game, and my Veteran Reward Attacks: Sands of Mu and the Nemesis Staff. Without the extra Veteran attacks (which become available to all your characters after certain periods of paid time playing the game), then soloing would be agonizingly slow.

Solution: get on teams or start your own when playing those ATs. It is overall a fun experience.

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Since Eochai is a bit weaker than Jack, he would've done less damage.

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But don't count ol' Punkinhead out. The last time I was in the area and saw them fighting, Jack suddenly went down like the proverbial jigsaw puzzle with a couple of pieces gone!

I agree that the spawn should be on a timer, and their "combat" should not do any real damage, to avoid situations exactly like the OP's.

I must also add that Croatoa is just a really cool zone, with some great stuff in it.

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Were you a Kheldian, by any chance?

I had heard a while ago that there was a bug that would allow you to slot up the form powers before you should, and adding slots early to those powers would cause the respec to fail.

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The first /respec fail was an Ice/Rad Controller, and the second was a Storm/Ice Defender. I had heard that Kheldians sometimes had issues, but these guys were your standard, ordinary, run-of-the-mill superhumans.

For the second time in a week, I attempted a /respec on a hero, only to get to the end and receive the cryptic message "Respec Failed." And indeed, it had. Nothing had happened.

Is this just a run of bad luck on my part, or is it cropping up lately?

When I corresponded with Customer Support, they replied that zoning or logging typically fixed the problem. Indeed, I attempted the failed /respecs after playing for over an hour, maybe two, so the issue could be a memory leak in that part of the program that governs /respec. Whether this is something that just happens, or if it is more prevalent since i15, they did not say.

Fortunately, both these guys were lvl 17 and 18, and I sold all their DO enhances anyway once the /respec worked, and there were not a lot of slots or powers to reconfigure. But MAN would it have been a pain had it been a lvl 50 I was working on.

So for the time being, I would suggest logging to the desktop and logging back in before attempting a /respec, just in case this is something not restricted to my rig. And if anyone else is having wonky times with /respec, please chime in.

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What about the Jack Frost?

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Jack is a fine pet. He generally throws a snowball from range, then runs into melee. He cycles his Freezing Touch pretty well . . . he also has Chilling Embrace, slowing the foes. He does die a lot faster than Rocky.

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He cycles attacks better than he once did. He is a good, solid pet, and much more useful than Back in the Day, and I really like him. But he was the first pet I ever got, and my observation then still holds true:

"Jack Frost: Heart of a Lion, brain of a Duck."

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Personally, I'm still chuckling over how meow farms were fixed.

The devs are vets!

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*Tips hat for making the obvious joke*

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But Lightning Field can work well as part of an end-drain strategy. Basically, once you have a spawn drained dry with Short Circuit + Power Sink, having Lightning Field will allow you to keep them at zero if you remain standing in melee range - since, y'know, it takes a little bit of end each time it ticks.

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That is exactly what I was wondering about.

Back in 2005, Lightning Field simply was another way on my lowbie to aggro every baddie nearby, and did not seem to be worth the End for the damage it did in any event.

But you have put your finger on exactly what I was thinking; thanks!

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This "twitching" you mention as being some kind of safety bumper is misinformed. It's merely the animation that plays when a foe has not done any animations and was hit with an electrical attack. For reference, get shot at by a Clockwork, but don't input any movement/power commands. You will start twitching.

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You may very well be right on that. I know that certain Electrical attacks mention incapacitating the foe by "leaving them writing in agony," and it looks like that is what happens with Ball Lightning. However, it is sometimes the case that the animations do not jive with what is actually going on, and I could not say that I know for sure that the twitching signifies anything. All I know is that if I jump into melee range and hit Short Circuit, I get all kinds of incoming on myself, but following the sequence of Ball Lightning, Power Sink and Short Circuit typically results in little to none. I usually chalk up any attack I do receive to missing with Ball Lightning, but I will try and watch this closely. Maybe I am just lucky, in addition to dashingly handsome!

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With that said, leading off with Ball Lightning (and finishing with it as well) is a good tactic regardless due to the -recovery. -Endurance means almost nothing without -recovery to keep their endurance down.

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I was thinking it was Short Circuit that did the -Recovery, but the more the merrier if Ball Lighting is the one. Your point is very well taken-- even if you drain the buggers to zero, if they quickly recover enough to launch an attack, your noggin will get dented in short order.

I might add that hitting Aim before launching Ball Lightning is helpful, since missing folks when you will be at close range is likewise hazardous.

BTW Laxx, have you ever run Lightning Field on your Elec/Elec and found it to be worth it? I have not, as I said, at lower levels, but may give it a spin in my 40s if it is effective.

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While Power Sink is a point-blank AoE, so is Short Circuit from the Elec Primary. Using Short Circuit + Power Sink means that the blaster needs to duck into melee range, but I think it's worth it because endurance drain on an Elec/Elec is excellent mitigation.

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What I learned the hard way was that Short Circuit is a mediocre endurance drain all by itself. Draining End as a tactic requires that you get the baddies to Zero Endurance, or they will still have enough End to put some serious hurt on you.

So kids, don't try End Drain Tactics until you have Power Sink, pure and simple. I never had enough oomph in Short Circuit, no matter how I slotted it, to drain baddies to zero, but with Power Sink, I usually do. My preferred sequence is to Ball Lightning a group (get them twitching for a few seconds, a smidge of End Drain), run into melee range and trigger Power Sink (massive End Drain) and then Short Circuit (enough End Drain to take everyone to Zero.) By that time, Ball Lightning is back up, and I re-apply it. I found that Short Circuit takes too long to fire to be the lead-off power; Power Sink is faster and gives Short Circuit some time to fire off, often while everyone is still twitching.

You also have to know your enemy groups. The Warriors are sheer murder in melee, for example, and if you miss draining someone to zero, they will put a world of hurt on your squishy self. If you miss several, you are headed to your reserved bed at the Hospital.

What Elec/Elec really lacks is another ranged power that does substantial damage, preferably another AoE like Ball Lightning, that is readily available, but all there is left like that is the nuke. Thunderous Blast is a great nuke, especially since it works from range, but it is often not quite powerful enough to finish everyone off (although watching a group writhe and drop to the ground in unision is fantastic fun Try it on a group in Perez Park that you know will be wiped and enjoy the show!), so you may want to apply Ball Lightning first before TB. Or after TB, you may want to pop a blue, run in and Power Sink the survivors (refilling your blue bar) and giving them Short Circuit/Ball Lightning to finish them.

All of this is well and good once you have all of the powers mentioned. In the lower levels, I found that I had to be very careful about the aggro, pick my moments to zip in and engage ONE TARGET with my melee attacks and zip out. Elec/Elec just does not have enough ranged options to take out groups in the lower levels. Lightning Field would seem to require taking up residence in melee to be truly effective, and while I might try it out in my 40s now, since I am in there Power Sinking and all that, it did not seem to provide enough damage to offset the constant end drain on me nor the added aggro, so I gave up on it back in the day.

I am at 45 with my Elec/Elec, and I played Elec/Fire to 50, so I enjoy Elec a great deal, but it does take some finesse.

There is also the consideration that some powers are very handy in the early levels, but not so much in the higher levels. I used Chillblain as a damage power in the early going for my Ice/Rad Controller, but I needed to fit something in that works better for me now, so the freespec was very handy.

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Destructible objects in MA missions are conning friendly until aggroed. It's an MA bug, not an OSA bug.

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The question then is how to aggro your Oil Slick... which sounds like the setup for any number of bad punch lines.

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I am curious about the poster that said the mobs managed to light their Slick with a rain? The mobs I was fighting failed to light my Slick with their AoEs, but that might've just been the Oil Slick being fickle like it always has been.

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Yeah, it was the EB I was fighting. I think the key is that the Oil Slick has a blue reticule, meaning that it is an ALLY now, and when our "ally" targets a baddie, the attack on Oil Slick goes to the baddie via Assist.

But by the same token, Oil Slick is now a "good guy" that still gets hit by enemy rains and such. Since Rain of Fire is pretty obvious, and puts out many, many little attacks, that was the culprit to my thinking. Oil Slick may be very hard to hit and ignite with say, Energy Torrent, but that only takes one shot as it were. RoF with its many attacks finally did the trick, I guess.

BTW Castle PM'd and said they are aware of this and working on a fix.

The only time Origin has been a concern to me was that my first TA/Arch was Natural, since it was his training and dedication that made him such an amazing archer. Unfortunately, that meant he did not have the Technology temp power to light his Oil Slick later on.

So my second TA/Arch is Technology, due to the sophisticated Arrows and Bow he uses. Either Natural or Technology fits, and having that Taser for the Oil Slick is VERY handy.

The last several times I have defeated Heracles to get the Wedding Band from Stephanie Peebles, it did not award. I would petition customer service ("Steph Stiffed Me!" ) and it would be awarded.

Now it appears that if you are over level 25 when the time comes to award it to you, you will not get it, and you cannot petition for it, ie, No Soup For You.

I do not think that every one of the last 5 or so guys that earned it and were not awarded it were over 25 at the time, although as I recall, some certainly were.

I guess what concerns me is that I am getting the feeling that whomping Heracles at over lvl 25 is now being viewed as some sort of "Exploit," and thus one should not get the Wedding Band. If that is the case, I have not seen it set forth explicitly as such, but that is the sense that I am getting.

Now, one can argue that you should NOT get rewarded with the Band if you did not have the "risk" of fighting Heracles at under lvl 26... but is that the "vision" here? (And I ask that as a serious inquiry, not a bash on the Devs.) I have had high levels blitz a cape mission for me... should I not get the cape if I did not have the risk? I have gone back into the sewers in my 40s to get enough Lost bosses to get my Finder badge completed to get into the Freedom Phalanx Reserve and get the accolade... should I not be rewarded for pounding those lvl 5-9s so handily?

The mind boggles at the possibilities.

I don't know if any of this is the case. I think there is an argument to be made about not handing out rewards without risk in general, and arguably, it could apply to the Wedding Band. But is that what is at work here?

I am not looking for a flamefest, but rather want to discuss what the Devs may be about with this announcement. What do you think is going on?

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Someone posted in another thread that they think the problem is that the Oil Slick is targeting a foe and when you target the Oil Slick to hit it, it's acting like assisted targeting through a teammate and you're really attacking the target that the Oil Slick is targeting.

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Wow. That would make perfect sense to describe what I saw happening.

wwwwwwwwwaaaaaaaaaassssswwwwwwwwwwAt least they fixed the Page Break in Bios Bug. And more arise.

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I cannot drop an oil slick in an MA mission and light it at all. Not because it fails to light, but because I can no longer target it with -anything-. Blue reticle and everything, 100% of the time.

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This. I bugged it in-game, and hoped that it was a just a bug for that mission, but apparently not.

The maddening thing about it is that an attack against the blue reticle WILL STILL FIRE, but you miss 100% of the time. I tried multiple times with the Temp Taser, Blazing Arrow and the Nem Staff, and although it was a blue reticle, the attacks always fired... and always missed.

I would have been in deep trouble if the EB at the end of the mission had not accidently ignited the slick themselves with Rain of Fire.

This is a bad, bad bug to crop up for a TA. Hopefully, it is just restricted to MA missions-- I did not have a chance to test it in a regular mission.

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<QR> I thought you could copy/paste out of and into the bio box?

Copy the existing text out to Wordpad... edit.. paste it back in...

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Alas, this did not work. Once you had opened up the ID window, WallOfText in your bio, even if you pasted a properly formatted copy in.

But now it is fixed. wwwwwwwwwaaaassssssswwwwwOne bug down, still a few to go.

Blackavaar, I have had to petition customer support for the last 5 or so times I got the Wedding Band. I would go see Steph and she would not give it to me. I suppose that I may have outleveled her on some of those heroes, but as I recall, she just would not cough it up, period, regardless of level.

It did not stop there! She also would stiff me on the Warwolf Whistle later on! I have had to petition THAT each of the last several times as well.

"Working as Intended" if you outleveled the mission is just can't be right.

What is next, no Spelunker badge unless you Exemp? No cape unless you are level 20?

Surely there is an explanation for this that does not mean what it apparently means. Perhaps they simply mean you have to petition if you have outleveled. Yeah, that's it.

Seriously, they surely cannot mean No Soup For You. Can they?

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The Surgeons are cycling their AoE heals before being aggroed,

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...and the other Romans are shouting, "QUIT ROCKING THE @#$@# AURA!!11"

See? CoH gets more realistic all the time!

QR

I always pay close attention to threads like this one, since there is always some sort of finesse needed on a TF or SF. I always appreciate the experiences of others in finding that finesse.

But I have not yet seen the post where someone comes in and disdainfully announces that they easily did it in record time with a four man team while they were affected with Vahzilok disease, and what a bunch of weenies the OP's team were. There ALWAYS seems to be one of those posts by now. They seem to be late!

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I just look forward to the new refuse to throw with Propel every issue.

They always add such fun stuff!

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While that is true, I miss seeing the good old Forklift To The Kisser FTW as much as I used to. Oh Well.

I updated earlier and had no problem getting on. But now I am getting the general "Maybe you have a firewall or network problem, or maybe the main whooziwhatzis is down."

A few minutes later, it said I was already logged in and disconnected.

I finally got in a few after that. Yaaaay.


On the bright side, now there is a Nifty Paragon Studios logo on the splash screen!

On Saturday, I tried a freespec twice--- got done and got the message "Respec Failed." Nothing had happened. Tried again, same result.

Petitioned, it got kicked upstairs, still waiting on a reply.

Edit:

And here it is:

Hello,

It's an infrequent message that can happen for any number of reasons, but "Respec Failed" isn't as bad as it sounds. You should still have a respec token, and should be able to use it after your character moves to a new zone, or if you log off and log back in.

Let us know if you have any further difficulties.

Best,
GM Lloyd
City of Heroes Support Team