Minotaur

[ QUOTE ]
heres an interesting question.. instead of complaining about ED, and getting nothing done, why not accept that ED is in the past, and will likely NEVER be removed as a whole. instead of using your time, effort, and resoruces to complain about what has happened to you, and why your min/max toons have seen this GIANT hit in recent days, why not Look to the future, and tell the devs what you would like to see them add...

[/ QUOTE ]

Some of this is fair comment, in that constructive criticism is the best way forward, but I just can't see that there is a constructive way forward here. The devs have decided that min/max builds are overpowered, so what did many of the people who didn't feel challenged do ? They built sub-optimal toons and had fun with them.

The min/maxers will survive and adapt, it's the casual players that make concept builds (akin to the sub optimal ones the min maxers built) that these changes have nerfed out of existence.

I have some of both type of toons, and am finding that it's not possible now to make wacky concept designs that were 10-15% worse than the power build and still have them playable like they were before. This to me is a big downside, and I've retired a 41 and a 50 because of it. (Check my old posts if you want to see the details, I'm not going to repost)

I just find that I5/I6 has sucked an awful lot of fun and diversity out of the game, just one example, my 50 stone/axe tank who I've adapted to the changing circumstances:

is just as good in a fight as he was before, if not better as I've had to be more creative to get something that works.

BUT

has his entire team waiting for him as he can't sensibly more than 3 slot swift as he did before (yes I could turn granite armor off, but it has a long recharge and I can't afford to slot it for recharge)

can't exemplar (which I used to do a lot with friends) as the build doesn't work between about levels 6 and 49 due to having to take some key defences and taunt (as it doesn't require much slotting) in the 40s

doesn't have the option of playing without granite armor as the lower defences are just too weak now, and needing weave (defence nerfs) and a ridiculous number of attacks (ED nerfing hasten combined with the granite armor -recharge) means I don't have the power slots available to buy them anyway

I basically find myself playing pretty much exclusively CoV now as so many of my CoH toons are shadows of their former selves, and I still haven't done some of the 25+ respecs ED made me need to do. (10-15 toons, but needed to do some of them several times to get them right on test). CoV seems to work fine with ED, although it seems there's a much greater imbalance between the ATs (my SG has 15 toons above 27, all but one dom are MMs and corruptors, this could have something to do with the fact that none of us PvP).

Mr Minotaur 50 stone/axe tank Freedom
TheoPWildebeest 41 nrg/nrg blaster Freedom (retd)
Toxic Texan 50 DM/regen scrapper Infinity (retd)
Black Hole Sun 40 dark/thermal Corruptor Protector
Napalm Natasha 39 Fire/dark Corruptor Protector
and 70+ others

[ QUOTE ]
If ED affected everything than the other movement speeds should be slower as well, not just hover. Is that the case?

[/ QUOTE ]

Sort of, except that people didn't always bother to slot the other movement types as heavily as flight as they thought they were fast enough, so didn't really notice.

As Monument says, my main is a stone tank who used to heavily slot swift so he could move at acceptable speed in granite armor (which slows you and doesn't stack with any other movement enhancing powers including sprint for the uninitiated). This does need a look post ED as I now feel desperately slow. Possibly so as not to unbalance other peoples' movement, allow stone tanks to stack sprint with granite armor now rather than adjusting swift.

Mr Minotaur 50 stone/axe tank Freedom
and 70+ others including 2 other 50s and a CoV 40

Livin la vida Yoda - Weird Al Yankovic
Bad touch - Bloodhound gang
Wishing Well - Free
There she goes again - The La's
This town ain't big enough for the both of us - Sparks with Faith no more
Searching - Lynyrd Skynyrd
Ever fallen in love - Buzzcocks
A day late a dollar short - Hanoi Rocks
This is how it feels - Inspiral carpets
Girl from Mars - Ash

Mr Minotaur in the UK

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
AND now...we're changing the way Archvillains spawn. A ton of forum goers disliked adding so many AV's into missions a while back...so we've come up with a solution. If the team size and mission difficulty are ABOVE a certain level, an Archvillain spawns. Below that, players will face only an Elite Boss. If the mission is set on the first two levels of difficulty, it takes 4 heroes or more to spawn an Arch Villain. On the third level, 3 heroes or more. On the fourth level, 2 heroes. On the highest (Invincible), a solo hero will spawn an AV. Note this works in BOTH City of Heroes and Villains.

[/ QUOTE ]
This is long overdue. Thank you!

[/ QUOTE ]

Seconded, I applaud this change, and although there are plenty of EBs I wouldn't want to solo, finding one other person is a lot easier than finding a whole team.

A question for the devs though:

If you kill the Elite Boss version of a Praetorian, does it count for the dimensional warder badge (and hence the Portal Jockey accolade) ?

I was also wondering whether if you played on heroic/villainous and a boss was downgraded to a lieut, then it still counted for eg. tankbuster (freak tanks) or finder (lost bosses) and whether the code matches the phrasing of the badges or if it should have been a boss (and is a boss monster type) it counts as one.

Mr Minotaur 50 stone/axe tank Freedom
Black Hole Sun 40 dark/thermal corrupter Protector
and 70+ others including 2 more 50s

I'm surprised not too many people are saying anything about the illusion wardens. They (and the succubi) have caused more deaths with terrorise (to which not many things provide any defence) than anything else I've come across. Summoning an untargetable pet (spectral terror) who spams out stuff to which a party of 8 has no defence between them and watching either the brute stop fighting and the squishies getting massacred, or the healer getting terrored shortly followed by the brute getting toggle dropped and/or drained then toasted. We know now to concentrate the dominators on the illusion warden, but when there are two of them people often die.

Also, some of the standard longbow bases are very poorly designed, we had issues where the AI wasn't good enough to navigate the ambushes to the end of the map. The result of this was meeting 3 ambushes (6 wardens and 9 nullifiers amongst others) together as they'd all got stuck at the same place near the entrance. That was 2 team wipes, but it was that or log and redo the whole thing as there was no other way out of there.

Black Hole Sun 40 dark/thermal corrupter Protector
and 70+ others including 3 50s

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I call upon the community to please discuss the ramifications of this proposal:

The most damage a player may take in a one-second period is 80% of their full hp.

Ergo:

If you have 1000 hp when full, and fall from the fly ceiling (or are assassin struck, or are 'ported atop a pile of trip mines), the most damage you can take is 800 hp. If you have 600/1000 hp left when you hit the ground, you are defeated.

Even if you are a level 2 fresh from the Tutorial with 200 hp, you can't be damaged for more than 160 hp in one second.

Hence, if at full you have 1000 hp and are hit for 1000 hp, the followup attack must land one second later to defeat you.

My thoughts:

This gives a Stalker a fairly good chance of pulling of an Assassination, but a one-second window is a real chance for a good player to react and possibly escape. Of course, this also applies to Blaster alphas and the like. Police Drones may need to be excepted from this rule, but this also solves the problem of being one-shotted by AVs, Giant Monsters, and the like.

Of course, players will drive healers crazy bugging them to keep their hp above 80%...

This rule would not apply to npcs of any kind. They can be one-shotted.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is a huge exploit. This would essentially allow for any AT to jump into a huge mob with no risk of taking all that aggro and having the mob kill them instantly. With a good EMP (or more) around in this scenario, it would be near impossible for anyone to die. Blasters would very easily be able to jump into mobs and use their nova with little or no risk of being defeated.

[/ QUOTE ]

It is true that this idea would make healing a bit more powerful. Of course the numbers can be tweaked and tested to make the balance right.

Perhaps 20% is too great a portion of hp to be left with. We could start with 5% and work from there. Still, I think one second to flee or heal is a 'cruel but fair' window. BUth that number is tweakable, too. We could start with .3 seconds and test/tweak from there.

The overall Idea is this:

1) It is still possible to one-shot a damaged foe.
2) There is a definite reliable 'react window' that is small enough to kill a flat-footed defender, yet large enough for a quick-reacting defender.
3) An attacker can still easily time a deadly 2-shot, but it takes timing and planning, rather than spamming attacks.

Any other comments or constructive suggestions?

[/ QUOTE ]

Having played a stalker in the beta PvP events (and up to 28 in beta), this change would kill the stalker AT for PvP (and it's not great in PvE). The stalker's other attacks and defences are so poor that if the AS doesn't one shot kill, the stalker will die. On the couple of occasions I failed to kill my target with the AS, I didn't get to land another attack. There is an appreciable gap between the assassin strike going in and the next attack being executed in which a decent player can run away and/or incapacitate the stalker.

Shosuro Tatami 28 ninj/ninj stalker beta (the real version 16 on protector)
and 70+ others including 3 50s

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
This morning, I had PMs in my box saying the Accuracy of Dark Melee, Energy Melee and Claws seem to be wrong. I've gotten similar PMs about Ninja Blade as well.

We've tons of data here which all support that accuracy is working as intended and players still have a base 75% to hit even level critters.

[/ QUOTE ]
Castle, has the to-hit chance vs. yellow and higher-con minions changed?

[/ QUOTE ]

This is not just a stalker problem, and I believe the main problem is the streaks, not the overall average. For example take a low level toon with a TO accuracy facing +1s. To hit prob must be about 70-72%. To miss 6 times in a row is going to be about 1 in 1400. To have this happening 5 or 6 times a mission on a regular basis when I'm probably only swinging 1000 times or less implies something is wrong.

The worst case I had recently was a lvl 13 malicious mission where I met a +1 lost lieut and minion, missed 11/12, ran, reentered, popped an accuracy and then missed 5/5 and ran again. Came back in and then ran through the next 4 mobs basically not missing at all. Finished up with the boss, who spam slept me. Every third attack was the sleep, and he hit with the sleep, but missed with the intervening attacks for 8 cycles or so till I got bored, popped a break free and finished him. I also notice that I will go through phases regularly where I'll cycle my attacks, and they'll all miss except for brawl which will hit every time.

After this mission I logged a low level dominator on, and the first 7 times I used his AoE immobilise it missed all targets every time.

Also in non combat situations I'm very unimpressed with the random number generator, the number of low level missions where I'll find 7 TOs, 4 or 5 of which are the same type (usually range, def or dam res) is statistically far too high. Combining enhancements, I can recall levelling up doing a series of 75% or 80% chances, and getting 19 straight successes followed by 4 straight failures.

These observations may seem isolated but are a few examples of many that indicate to me that the random number generator is maybe not as good as it should be.

Overall I feel accuracy averages out about right versus even cons, but have noticed some crazy strings of misses against +1s and would like to see some checking done as to whether something is not quite right there.

And yes I did enough degree level mathematics to have some comprehension of how a random number generator should work.

Captain Blackheart 13 sonic/dark corrupter protector
Sultan of Scorch 7 plant/fire dominator Protector
and 60+ heroes including 3 50s

Thisisnothappeningthisisnothappeningthisisnothappe ning

punctuated more or less like that, Arachnos computer tech as you take him to his computer to get some codes.

X will be so jealous, she's only dating the drummer.

Hellion Girlfriend

On a related question, why when you complete a story arc in SG mode do you get neither prestige nor inf post level 25 when you finally call your contact. I now exit SG mode, collect my SO/ inf and then go back in. (Apologies if this has recently been fixed) I would suggest having foiled/completed a major diabolical scheme there should be a mega prestige bonus.

Mr Minotaur 50 stone/axe tank Freedom

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
SpiritWraith, can a Stone tank hit DR cap solo with his powers as they are now including the Fighting Pool but not counting Granite Armor?


[/ QUOTE ]

Not a numbers guy here, so honestly not sure. You'd be going stone skin, rock armor, tough, and sufficiently slotted maybe, but honestly I doubt it. The analysis I have seen done so far is that Pre Granite, Stone is worse off than Invulnerability, but post Granite their "glory" remains.

Don't know what to say abou the how often will you die question. I'd probably say less often, because it is easier to slowly grind down bosses, but the xp over time is so much less as a tanker that the Scrapper is far and away the better deal (but then, it is the "solo" AT).

In a team, I find that my stone tank pre Granite dies a lot MORE often than my scrappers, mainly because of rooted. When a stone tank gets into a fight, getting out is tricky, especially since teleport isn't very user friendly indoors, assuming you took teleport at all).

Post Granite of course, you are a the aggro magnet wall, and I have taunt, provoke, and pots to maximize my aggro drawing abilities. With the new cap, I'm just not sure what my best model is for drawing aggro.

Solo though, while I can handle invinicible, as a Stone/Ice, it takes forever to arrest bosses. I can live with that, since my character really is designed for a duo with a Kheldian. Blasters of course love me now too, but my uber defensiveness has a price, and the main price is a huge degradation in solo capability.

[/ QUOTE ]

Not even close as I recall the numbers are as follows:

Rock armor bas 16% def + 3 even SOs = c. 26% def
Stone skin base 12.5% res + 3 even SOs = c. 20% res
Tough base 15% res + 3 even SOs = c 24% res

You can add weave to the def, but you're looking at c. 44% res and some defence. Just doesn't compare to granite, ED has really removed the option to play a stone tank without granite (unless you have something like ice patch, and even then it's very marginal), as one of my disillusioned friends has discovered and more or less retired his 38 stone/ice.

My real beef is that granite gimps my move, and now I can't offset it sensibly with more than 3 slot swift.

Mr Minotaur 50 stone/axe tank Freedom
and 60+ others including 2 other 50s

[ QUOTE ]
*sigh*

Let's see if I can lay this thing to rest.

At I5 - and now again with ED - some claim that the game is "dying" and that thousands of players are leaving. This isn't true. We're actually gaining customers. Not hundreds of thousands, but we're gaining nevertheless.

Then all of a sudden I read Armsman's post where he talks about our original launch subscription numbers - which isn't really the point. My entire response on this thread has been focused to I5 and ED reaction - so the more pertinent number to look at would be what our numbers were just previous to I5...not our numbers just after launch. Never did I make a claim that we have more subscribers now than we did last year. My point continues to be: ED and I5 haven't created a ghost town out of City of Heroes.



[/ QUOTE ]

Paragon City is a ghost town because almost everybody's playing villains (hell I would be if my retail box had arrived). Apart from the novelty factor, I think ED has something to do with this. The CoV ATs were clearly designed with ED in mind and more or less work with it. CoH was not and while some toons are fine with it, others are crippled by it. My En/En blaster is no fun to play after ED, but my FF def now makes do without hasten (which he never had) or stamina (which he did) due to the global end reduction and has a load of other more interesting powers.

It is certainly much more difficult to get a full team now than it was before ED, but I think the fact that roughly the same number of players are spread through 2 sets of zones due to CoV accounts for most of this.

I hope there is no intention to do anything this radical again, I'm still in the process of doing 20+ respecs across test (where I need to test what I'm doing as I'm not sure if it will work) and live, and it's extremely tedious.

Mr Minotaur 50 stone/axe tank Freedom
and 60+ others

Is this a bug ?

When you complete an arc and check back with the contact, you get a nice XP bonus and an SO. If you are in SG mode, you get neither influence nor prestige, surely you should get one of them. Having noticed this I'm popping out of SG mode before talking to the contact to pocket the cash then going back in to SG mode. (this was CoH not CoV if it matters and it was the Steven Sheridan 35-40 rikti arc)

I would have thought completing an arc should be worth a lot of prestige as it is the voiding of a threat to the city (or the completion of a diabolical scheme).

Ms Blizzard 39 ice/storm controller Freedom
and 50+ others including 3 50s

I'm level 10 fire/stone and have just come fresh from soloing the 2 elite bosses in the Billy Heck PO arc. Yes you need 2 defence insps to do it (or at least it helps a lot), but I'm finding my brute very soloable. I'm not even using fury to the max, often struggling to get it going to any decent extent.

Duoing with a buffing corrupter is even better.

Dread Minotaur, Protector

[ QUOTE ]
Archery has the highest Accuracy in the game. All powers have an accuracy of 1.16. Ranged shot, the sniper attack, has an accuracy of 1.39.

So that like getting 1 free ACC DO in all Archery powers. Against a target with no defense, thats a 87% chance ToHit.

In comparison, most powers in the game have an accuracy of 1. Most sniper attacks have an accuracy of 1.2. Assault Rifle has an ACC of 1.05 (1.25 for thier sniper attack).

[/ QUOTE ]

All this means is that you will hit the thing that's already dead because the rest of the team has killed it during your animation.

Celtic Twang TA/A def Freedom

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
before this turns ugly... ok it may allready be so.. may i point out some of the obvious?

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, I think we passed 'ugly' about 30 pages ago and are now somewhere between 'puerile' and 'earbleedingly moronic'.

[/ QUOTE ]

seconded, so I'll try to give my considered feedback on I5, I have 3 lvl 50s and about 50 or 60 toons playing all ATs seriously except kheldians. I also don't give or accept PLs.

Tanks:
Invul: definitely nerfed, maybe slightly overnerfed, possibly needing a respec, but survivable and if you weren't herding a large proportion of the map at one go, you can still do your job fine, although your health bar will move now and you may need some healing in a team scenario.
Ice: harder to play than before (which wasn't great in I4), in need of a little love.
Fire: Needed a serious nerf, whether it needed the one it got is arguable, reduction in burn damage would have done. The set was poorly designed in that in its original form you could exist with little more than burn for offence, and the burn/ice patch build became very popular as one of the herding builds of choice. The excessive fear in burn made fire/ice underpowered, as ice does little damage, and fire tanks are supposed to be offensive in nature.
Stone: Forced towards the granite armor route by I5, it used to be possible to play one without taking GA, now I'm not sure how possible that is in the late game with the nerfs to the lower armors. Granite armored tanks largely unaffected.

Controllers

Illusion: Depends on your secondary, my ill/kin loves I5, the loss of one phantasm was more than compensated by containment, particularly on the epic AoE damage. Went from 40-50 in a very short time. However a couple of friends who are ill/rad have said that I5 makes their gameplay very stereotyped and boring.
Fire: Fire/rad still survives and is good, but not godly as it was before with the reduction in imps. Emp, FF and Kin also seem to work well.
Mind: only have experience up to level 20 or so, but found these very soloable so far (/TA and /Kin).
Ice: Mine is ice/storm and was a concept toon which meant doing essentially no damage other than by my pets, toon impossible to play in that way now. Still effective in groups after respec, but can't solo, most damaging thing she can do does 20, so double that still not much use.
Grav: little personal experience but the one I regularly team with does fine.
Earth: only played lowbies, but they're fine.

Scrappers:

Not quite as tough as they were, but the only major issue I had was with regen. My 50 DM/regen was a concept toon, designed to get to 50 without hasten or stamina and run his defence purely on toggles, to let me concentrate on what I was attacking. Well I4 threw half the concept out the window and I had to respec in hasten and stamina. I5 has now killed the rest and I will probably never play him again unless I want to accumulate some cash.

Blasters:

Need to think a bit more about when to throw in AoEs, but no particular issues.

Defenders:

FF: Reports of demise exaggerated. Mine survives fine in groups, but the set needs work. Essentially you can be an adequate solo defender or a good team defender but not both. You need to pick different powers (mine is team orientated, and has no FF powers other than the two 'ally' bubbles and the dispersion bubble), whereas a solo defender will want the repels which in a team scenario do nothing apart from making the team's tank want to kill you. Sonic now overshadows this because the non bubble powers are simply more useful.
Dark: I think it was telling that on the Fearsome stare thread, almost everybody agreed it needed nerfing. I agree with this, tar patch, fearsome stare and blast away, rinse/repeat (mine duos with a blaster) was ridiculously easy. With the lack of intelligence in the pets, reducing to one dark servant is a problem.
Emp/kin/rad not much changed.
Storm: not enough experience to comment, but having used it as a controller secondary, still seems to work.

Mr Minotaur 50 stone/axe tank Freedom
Psycho Clown 50 Ill/kin cont Freedom
Toxic Texan 50 DM/regen scrapper Infinity (retired)
Ms Blizzard 37 Ice/Storm cont Freedom
RollingDoughnut 37 FF/dark def Freedom
several blasters up to 41, and 50+ others

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Conversely, saying something like "1 controller can't provide 100% of the needed control for an 8-person team" is unreasonable to me. The limits on controller AoE holds, and all area-based powers in general, were meant to achieve a result were a team with 2 controllers wouldn't have one of them being basically redundant or a team with 2 tankers and one of them being basically redundant. This is an adjustment that I think we as players are just going to have to "suck up" and live with. After all, who likes joining a team and then realizing that your real and pertinent contribution to the team is mission-padding and you could be AFK at the door and the team really wouldn't be impacted much?


[/ QUOTE ]

I don't see it that way at all. In fact, I look to be redundant whenever possible.

On a Pentad Team + You, you had better be redundant, regardless of what AT you play.



[/ QUOTE ]

Rubbish, I play on a pentad +1 on a regular basis. We have two defenders, one sonic and one bubble, so we don't tread on each other's toes. In a previous incarnation, we had two controllers instead, one grav/kin and one ill/rad. The rad did the debuffs, the kin did the buffs, the grav guy spammed AoE holds, the ill guy used his pets, and some other holds to keep bosses locked down.

We have been playing together since level 1 and are now level 36, and the team is definitely significantly weaker if any of us is missing.

A second member of many of the ATs is not essential in normal missions, but will seriously speed things up in many cases. We don't do normal missions if we can avoid it, we do TFs and trials against +4s and +5s, and for that sort of difficulty, with the reduced durations of holds and the level effects on our damage and the monsters', trust me a second defender or controller is very handy.

RollingDoughnut 36 FF/dark def Freedom
and 50+ others including 3 50s

[ QUOTE ]
I know there are a lot of upset tankers out there right now, and I'm not sure if it's the right time to mention it given how unhappy you are over I5, but I was wondering if anyone had noticed that Phase Shift is totally useless now? So much time and effort is being spent on the current state of tankers that it's hardly been mentioned.

[/ QUOTE ]

Good point, I have 2 toons with PS and haven't used it since I5. I've seen it used once by another toon in that time (when a big ambush turned up after a good 5-6 minutes while we were fighting another mob, I didn't have PS and died, but bought time for the other guy to get through his animation).

As an aside, one thing I used to do with some of my squishies, was to PS if expecting an ambush. I could see how many turned up, and if it was too many to deal with I'd lead them to an unattended police drone somewhere to whittle down the numbers. Now I can't do that (many ambushes take much longer than 30 secs to turn up). Result, I fly up out of range and hope to spot the ambush, and if it's too many to deal with I run. So a load of innocent lowbies will get killed, but there's no way my blaster can deal with 2 lieutenants and 6 minions as a solo ambush (no idea why I got this many, but one lieut and 5 minions is pretty regular even on heroic). If mobs who can't normally see through invisibility but now miraculously can because they're in an ambush lost that ability in compensation for the PS nerf, I wouldn't need to do this.

Mr Minotaur 50 stone/axe tank Freedom
Psycho Clown 50 Ill/kin cont Freedom
Toxic Texan 50 DM/regen scrapper Infinity
and 50+ others

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

The invul/SS seems to have few problems soloing and duoing on unyield/invinc or tanking for a group of 6 of us. I'm told there can sometimes be problems with medium sized (6-8 ?)non S/L mobs where invincibility doesn't provide enough of a defence bonus to avoid the extra damage that comes through the reduced damage resistance.


[/ QUOTE ]

Ok now you seem to be a bit off here. I don't have a 50 tank but I have a 39 Inv/SS, 32 Fire/Fire, 27 Stone/Stone and a lower level group that does include Ice/EM and others.

But what I think you got wrong is what is causing issues for Inv, or rather what is the issue with Inv. It is possible your pal does not slot Invincibility enough and then yes he will have real issues with non-S/L groups even after he's closed with them. But if he slots it that is not an issue. 107 + defense to melee is usually more then enough and that is what Invincibility will give with 14 foes about. However closing to melee can be a serious issue as it give 0 defense while closing. That is when he is most vulnerable. That is also when his team need to support him. Problem is many can't. Not much a scrapper can do to help while you close, beside smoke grenade, and that isn't much, not much a blaster can do while you close. Some controllers can help and some defenders can. Others can't. Not much a Rad can do as you close unless he wants the aggro and well that's the point of letting you go in and grab aggro first. Dark can do some to some damage types but not tons. Storm again can do some to some damage type but not if he wants to stay back at all. There are things Emps can do. Obviously FF and Sonic can give you the edge you need while closing. Though there is an issue with different types of defense not stacking. Anyone once he closes he hardly needs help but getting there is the trick and for that many teammates can do little to help. Seems the reverse of wanting teammate help actually. Once in melee Inv is safe from most damage types (psi not withstanding). Actually reading the defense issue I get the feeling that once in melee FF bubbles are only helping in certain situations the rest of the time they add nothing to your defense. To need his teammates to help an Inv needs better resists and less defense from Invincibility as is things will only encourage Inv to find ways around it, such as stealth and TP and then not need his teammates at all.

[/ QUOTE ]

You're missing the point I'm making, but making a valid one of your own about the closing. Some invul tanks have complained to me that they have no issues with groups of 14, but that with fully slotted invincibility, 6 foes rather than 14 and only thirtysomething percent resistances to non S/L can cause them a problem.

I also don't think I agree with your numbers on the defence, as I can't see how to get anywhere close to that high a defence out of invul. My understanding was (even level SOs):

6 slot invinc = 1.5% x 14 (foes) x (6x0.2 + 1) = +46.2 def
Unyielding = -5% def
Tough hide = 5% x (6x0.2 + 1) = +11% def
Total +52.2% def

which calculates as 6% + 3.3% per opponent. So against 6 opponents we're talking around +26% defence and 38% damage resistance, and particularly against non S/L opponents, some of which debuff one or both of these figures, this is insufficient. Council with their rad and sonic attackers plus negative energy vamps to make you miss, some of which will stay at range being an example.

Mr Minotaur

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I don't know who "we" is, but it definitely isn't all players. My Inv has invincibility unslotted and only uses it against large groups, he doesn't even have dull pain, and has RPD and RE slotted up along with TI and Unyielding.

He has no problem soloing on Invincible (except for the expected snails pace in dealing damage) or tanking for large groups.

[/ QUOTE ]

If I read this correctly, then you are by far a liar. You get nothing done. Nice try. Next time, come up with a more convincing statement if you want to counter someone's opinion.

- Captain Amazing

[/ QUOTE ]Neither you nor I know for a fact if what he has done is feasible whatsoever, so why must you shut him out completely as if your way is the only possible way to get the job done? For all we know, he could have a completely different playstyle which allows him to accomplish this feat.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well I have 3 lvl 50 tanks, 2 inv and 1 fire i will say this unless he is only fighting -2 and -3 bad guys there is no way that tank would live long under almost any form of play i can think of and im not sure he would live long fighting the -cons unless one on one and that dont happen much after lvl 6 so....

[/ QUOTE ]

This is so over the top as to be laughable, you have 3 level 50 tanks but clearly haven't a clue how to play any of them (other than possibly on a Dreck farm). My 50 tank is a stone/axe so has been largely unaffected by the nerfs, but among toons I team up with on a regular basis are a fire/fire tank and an invul/SS (levels 36/46).

The invul/SS seems to have few problems soloing and duoing on unyield/invinc or tanking for a group of 6 of us. I'm told there can sometimes be problems with medium sized (6-8 ?)non S/L mobs where invincibility doesn't provide enough of a defence bonus to avoid the extra damage that comes through the reduced damage resistance.

The fire/fire plays in a group of 6 of us where we always play the same toons together one evening a week, there were 2 conts, 1 def, 1 blaster and one scrapper (invul) in the rest of group. We were a mission or two into the Numina TF when I5 hit at level 35 against mainly level 39/40 bad guys. We completed it, yes there were a few deaths, but with the right support the 'squishy' fire tank could hold aggro for the team and survive. Doing invincible 6 man missions against +3/4 bad guys (which is our normal fodder) he holds up well, but we have plenty of support in the way of buffs/debuffs. The invul scrapper is finding himself quite a bit more fragile, but is adapting his playstyle to this and not taking quite as much aggro as he did before.

Mr Minotaur 50 stone/axe tank Freedom
Psycho Clown 50 ill/kin cont Freedom
Toxic Texan 50 DM/regen scrapper Infinity
and 50+ others

[ QUOTE ]
I just had to comment on this Burn-related argument.
[ QUOTE ]
Burn was ridiculously overpowered in my opinion and was desperately in need of a hardcore nerfing.

[/ QUOTE ]
You obviously haven't played a fire tank in a while Katahn, or else you wouldn't be making such statements. Was burn overpowered "once upon a time"? Yes. Was it overpowered in I4? No. At the most it needed a slight trim, and it wasn't any more "overpowered" than a dozen of other powers for various powersets. In I5 burn is almost as useless as temperature protection - I don't want to burden any controllers by asking them to time their holds with my burn patches, and without holds only thing burn good for is making pretty fire.
The only thing that made fire tanks different, their offensive capabilities, have been taken away from us.

[/ QUOTE ]

The problem as with many of the I5 issues was a combination of powers. Too many fire tanks used burn as their only offence, ice patch as their only non forced pick from their secondary, went on Dreck farms, herded half the map into a box, ice patch/burn thankyou and goodnight, next half map please. Lots of reward, not that much risk as you found out how many you could survive herding. Even worse when the 50 herds 46s for the benefit of the 42s in attendance, make that no risk.

The fire tanks I play with most of the time rarely use burn, in fact the one I mainly play with has respeced it out. He is still a very effective tank. He has the advantage that he is fire/fire not fire/ice so still churns out the damage.

I believe fire/ice tanks are now well underpowered due to the nerfs and should probably be allowed to pick a new secondary power pool as their entire reason for choosing that combo has been nerfed out of existence.

Burn can still be effective with the right party/duo (an ice/kin would work well in a duo as it has ice slick, mass hold, mass immob, fulcrum shift, cone slow, speed boost and increase density), but demands a bit more thought now.

I'm much more concerned with the controller nerfs, as I feel they've unbalanced the controller primaries even more. My ill/kin has just gone from 40-50 very quickly, doing a lot of it solo on invincible, and the rest on 8 man teams killing AVs. I feel he was made far more powerful by I5, I lost one phantasm, and gained double damage to my attacks which worked better for me, particularly once I got the epic AoE.

My ice/storm however was underpowered before I5, and now might be able to solo -2s, but it would be too painfully slow to try. She has been reduced to a group only toon, and to contribute needs the right group to team with. I made the toon to incapacitate things and have my pets kill them, I have three damaging powers, block of ice, gale and brawl so containment doesn't help me much, having three jack frosts did. Yes I can respec the toon and make it effective, but I don't see why I should have to play a style of toon I didn't want to play, when the original was in no way overpowered and got caught in the collateral damage of the nerf to curtail the 'I'm a fire/rad and me and my army of imps can solo +2 AVs' problem.

Psycho Clown 50 ill/kin/psi controller Freedom
Ms Blizzard 35 ice/storm controller Freedom
Mr Minotaur 50 stone/axe tank Freedom
Toxic Texan 50 DM/regen scrapper Infinity
and 50+ others

I think the half debt in missions (in my opinion as does most of I5) attempts to do something (give an advantage to doing the content) but fails miserably.

I've just come off doing the Numina TF with a group of 35s. 6 of us took on the 39s and 40s and we won. Were there deaths, yes a few in the missions, but the most deaths came from trying to get to the last mission at the back end of Eden, in the woods with marauding bands of 39s/40s. Are we doing what the designers intended, sure we're doing content, we're on a TF, do we get the debt reduction - no chance. A fix to the AI that meant the mob weren't still aggrod on you when you went to hospital in FF and came back wouldn't go amiss either.

RollingDoughnut 35 FF/dark def Freedom
and 50+ others including a couple of 50s

[ QUOTE ]
Good guide! I wasn't as happy with Rexpendable's guide as other people were. He has it set in his mind there's only one way a stone tank should be built, and bases his guide upon that way. For example... he assumes you have Hasten. I don't because I haven't needed it yet. My toggles recycle plenty fast for me, and my defenses, along with rooted, lets me get by without Earth's Embrace (which I'm picking up at a later point). My own stone tank, Agatha Stone (I really love that character, she's probably turned into my favorite, and is one of the few I actually roleplay) is only up to level 27 at the moment,

[/ QUOTE ]

The key to needing hasten is that if you run granite and want to be able to kill anything, you must have hasten. The recharge debuff is crippling, I have 7 attacks and still run out of ready ones. Not having got to that level, you don't see it.

A point not really made in the guide is that if you're meeting psionic AVs, they often have minions that do other sorts of damage with them, hence if you want to stop psionic clocks punching you or seneschals burning you, you need to run minerals with the relevant lower level armor(s).

The guide also doesn't address end issues. I actually run granite with 3 res/3 end in it as well as having rooted and mud pots slotted for end reduction (and many of my attacks). My reason for doing this is that against awkward things I use focussed accuracy, and the combination of FA and GA chews through end really quick.

I also slot earth's embrace 1 heal/2 dam res/3 recharge

GA is supposed to have some toxic res in it, but I'm not sure how much, as when I use EE, the toxic damage reduces markedly.

Mud pots is the only power I'm not sure how to slot. I lean towards 2 end redux, 1 taunt, 1 slow, 2 damage. While it may not do much damage per click, overall it may well deal more damage than all your other attacks (particularly in teams) due to it hitting lots of targets all the time, so slotting it for damage is not a bad idea.

Mr Minotaur 50 stone/axe tank Freedom

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
So they aren't having to go back over 18 months of CoH. They only have to go over 12 months. I also cannot understand why it would take so long to go through the databases. Databases are made for data storage and recovery. They are MADE for queries like this. It's the whole reason to USE a database.

[/ QUOTE ]

What if the information they are sorting through isn't even in a database? And if it is in a database how many entries do you think are in the database? It seems not so much as a problem about actually finding the items in question but how many compute cycles it will take to find them.

[/ QUOTE ]

Correct, but nobody's asked the important question yet. When they realised how long it took to datamine the first time, why the (expletive deleted) didn't they see this coming, and start writing out completed TFs somewhere as they happened, so no great datamining would be required.

Also as for the TF souvenirs, there should be little problem in awarding anybody who has the badge for a TF the souvenir to go with it. This won't sort the ones without badges at the time they were done (RIP Calvin Scott), but as an ongoing solution even if you had to wait for a program to run every so often to get your souvenir it would be better than nothing.

Mr Minotaur 50 stone/axe tank Freedom
and 50+ others

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Since the number of monkeys has been reduced on test, will there be epic defeat badges?

So, those that have the 10K for Zookeeper would have 2 badges (1K and 10K)


[/ QUOTE ]

There was talk of adding one... but it would be beyond reason for anyone to attain the 10,000 Monkey badge at this point. The reason the badge was lowered in the first place was to compensate for the increased difficulty in getting to 10,000.

If we made a 10,000 badge now, we'd have the same problem all over again.

[/ QUOTE ]

Nope, only dedicated badge hunters would care about the higher one if the lower one was the one required for the accolade. It's still more attainable than the heal 1 billion and the illusionist decoys.

Can you offer a second chance to get isolator please, some of us went thru the tutorial pre badges.

Please datamine all the other TFs, particularly Calvin Scott which can't be redone.

Also some of us are proud of getting to 50 with only one debt badge, it goes against the grain to have to take a dive to get more badges. How about alternate badges awarded at 50 for getting there without acquiring the debt badges.

I would echo the call for an official badge page, describing exactly what is required to do ie kill skulls bosses, kill BP spirit masks but not in 40+ portal missions etc.

Mr Minotaur 50 stone/axe tank Freedom

My questions:

1: I think the Hess TF is fun, but the giant robot surely is a possibility for another epic level 50 mission. How about an alternate council world where you have to fight the thing possibly as an alternative to Hamidon.

2: Why is faultline the trial zone without a trial ? (and without anyone else ever there)

3: Are there any plans to introduce more 'short term' TFs like Calvin Scott that change from issue to issue.

4: Are there any plans to do halloween the same as last year so that those of us whose mains missed the badges can catch up and acquire them, and are there any plans for other short term events of this type. (Also how about a chance for people who did the tutorial pre badges to catch up on isolator)

Mr Minotaur 50 stone/axe tank Freedom