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Posts
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Joined
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Is Geyser the T9? Because if so, every time I use it I'm going to be yelling "Power Geyser!" in my head (Terry Bogard, Fatal Fury/King of Fighters for those who don't get the reference).
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I appreciate the intentions, but this is way too "wall of text" for people to read. Possibly separate a few of the sections into paragraphs, or have some bullet point summaries of the key steps.
EDIT - Seems I was completely wrong about the portals being involved for Black Swan, the effect is just timed and my last league was suspiciously co-ordinated.
I'm also not sure about the PBAoE on Black Swan doing the level shift draining, it seems she has two different ways to do this. One seems to be -1 to everyone per portal still up, and another seems to be a cone (or possibly targeted aoe) which nullifies Incarnate powers (and any level shifts they grant) on people who get hit by it. I will have to pay more attention next time, but I could have sworn I got hit by her big PBAoE DoT without losing any level shifts. -
I haven't actually had a chance to log in yet since the patch went live, so I don't know how broken the temp power tray thing is, but in all honesty, the way the game handled temp powers up until this point was terrible, it desperately needed a revamp. It may not have gotten there yet, but any step in that direction is a good start IMHO.
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I'm not complaining or anything, I'm just going to say it'll take more than a free inspiration to get me (and probably many others) to stop playing that evil game for any significant amount of time today.
My own opinion is that "free" is too expensive for a single inspiration, but I think I've already made my stance on consumables clear elsewhere. -
My own opinion on KB/KD (and for the record, I am strictly talking about my own KB powers on my own characters, I don't judge or force my opinions on others):
- KD is awesome in every possible form. The occasional quirk of enemies having KB vulnerability is tolerable, for the effectiveness on the 95% of foes that don't.
- KB with 100% chance (eg. Force Bolt, Gale) is a strong mechanic, if you know how to use it.
- KB with <100% chance in a ST power is ok. I'm not a fan, and would prefer if it was KD or even 100% KB, so I can plan around it, but it's not all that much of a hassle to compensate for it.
- KB with <100% chance in AoE is the devil. Generally I will only use these on teams when I know there's -KB being thrown around, either from my own other powers or from teammates. Knocking back some mobs but not others (not to mention misses) is frustrating to me.
- More exotic cases like Tornado or Bonfire are judged on a case-by-case basis.
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My only real concern with Freebie Friday is if it may eventually contain things like costume pieces or the like (say, on a special occasion/date maybe). Stuff in the "buy it once for all your characters, forever" category. That would seem to be rewarding the cheapskates over the loyal customers, which seems a bit backwards to me.
But anyway, free stuff is free stuff, can't complain about it. -
Was nice for a while getting them prime-time in Australia but I guess whatever's best for the majority will always win.
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My opinion, for what it's worth:
Quote:I'm ok with this, I never liked the disparity in the first place. Regardless of whether this means specific cases may be better or worse, I think this one should be done.1) All IO procs will have their flat percentage chance to trigger updated to use Procs Per Minute.
Quote:2) Proc chance will cap at 90%. This means that there is always a small chance for the proc to not trigger even if slotted into a power that would previously guarantee a proc.
Quote:3) Procs Per Minute will use modified recharge instead of base recharge. The reason for this is that the whole idea of Procs Per Minute goes right out the window when we keep the base recharge even though that value can be dramatically altered.
4) To compensate for this, the Procs Per Minute on all enhancements will be increased. -
aka Which power sets, in your opinion, should be next in line for updates/revamps (ala i22 Gravity)? I'm interested in hearing what people have to say and why. For the purposes of this discussion, we're not considering epic ATs. Even if, say, PBs are in dire need of help, this is more a discussion about parity of options within each AT, and PBs only have the one option.
So it's probably easiest to separate via category. My own opinions:
Ranged sets (Blaster/Corruptor primary, Defender secondary):
The one I see brought up most often is Electrical Blast, since it sacrifices some damage for a secondary effect that is difficult to leverage and arguably not all that effective even when you can.
Melee sets (Scrapper/Brute/Stalker primary, Tanker secondary):
Energy Melee seems pretty high on a lot of lists, although I'm not experienced enough with the set personally to say why. My own choice would probably be Dual Blades, primarily because its gimmick of attack chains is actually better off ignored at the highest levels of performance, and chaining your highest DPS attacks will always be better than playing "properly". I'm not sure if it's underpowered as a result, but it doesn't seem like that's WAI.
Control sets (Controller/Dominator primary):
Ice Control is begging for a niche pretty badly. It's got a fairly random grab-bag of tools that don't quite fit together, and although you can manage decently with what you're given, it never really seems like there's any reason beyond concept to recommend it over the other choices available.
Buff/debuff sets (Defender primary, Controller/Corruptor/Mastermind secondary):
In end game content I can't see much to recommend Force Field. Its primary goal seems to be leveraging defense and KB to mitigate incoming damage, but in incarnate trials there are so many things which simply ignore all of that and autohit anyway.
Defensive sets (Tanker primary, Scrapper/Brute/Stalker secondary):
Probably Stone Armor? I honestly don't think there are any true underdogs in this category, but Stone Armor (especially Granite form) is a bit of a relic of a byegone era. It gets results, but it makes sacrifices that none of the other sets are subjected to.
Summon sets (Mastermind primary):
Opinion seems fairly divided between Mercenaries and Ninjas. Personally I think Mercenaries are awful even in ideal circumstances, whereas Ninjas are actually (for the most part) ok if they get a chance to do their thing. Primarily I think it's because Spec Ops don't hold up their end of the deal, they do insignificant damage but don't really control/debuff well enough to make up for it.
Manipulation sets (Blaster secondary):
No idea, I have less experience with blasters than any other AT, and zero experience with them in endgame activities.
Assault sets (Dominator secondary):
Not really sure about these either, to be honest. The only AT I have less experience with is Blasters.
So yeah, I'm interested in opinions here. Let's hear yours. -
My only real problem with the Sutter TF is that I believe the devs kind of overshot the mark in terms of difficulty. Compare to everything else available at that level, including the Mortimer Kal SF, and Sutter is several orders of magnitude more difficult, as though they were designing it as an incarnate-level TF and then changed their minds halfway through.
I'm not opposed to difficult content, in the right time and place, but Sutter is a bit of an outlier, and that bothers me. -
Maybe that explains why her face looks so messed up. /rimshot
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Why I don't play AE arcs - same reason I don't read fanfiction. I don't care, and most of it is garbage.
Why I don't write AE arcs - I don't care, and most of what I write is garbage. -
I for one VERY much appreciate free respecs, since I like to keep all my characters up to date with all the new stuff coming out. Things like ATOs (some of which are not exactly optional if you're inclined towards performance) and revamped powersets all necessitate respecs, so it's nice to get a hand in staying on top of it all.
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I don't know whether it's intended to be resisted or not, but I know that Bruising is definitely supposed to be max of one application, regardless of how many tankers there are. Assuming that part is working correctly, I don't really see it as being a major balance issue. Even if it's bigger than Rad debuffs on a 1:1 basis it will never get any stronger, whereas Rad users should theoretically stack all the way to the -res floor, whatever that is.
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I can't honestly say I'd kill to have Sister Solaris' outfit for my main, but I would definitely consider causing greivous bodily harm.
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Whether I take the personal attacks or not has as much to do with my secondary and set bonus hunting as anything else. For instance, I actually took all three on my Ninja/Traps MM, because otherwise once I've got all relevant traps on cooldown I'd just be sitting around waiting for stuff to recharge. Plus it's nice to help mop up the remnants of a spawn.
As a counter example, Thugs/Poison has so much going on that I never have downtime, there's always something else to debuff (or Alkaloid on the Arsonist) so I didn't end up taking any attacks.
And as for the "inefficient use of endurance" comment above, I tend to believe that the only inefficient use of endurance is to not use it at all. Something > nothing, regardless of what the something is. They're not going to make a blaster envious of your phat numbers but it beats standing around and waiting for something to happen. -
Those three travel sets are indeed new to the market, and probably all we're going to be getting this week. You may now commence the gnashing of teeth.
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To be clear, I am aware there are ways of getting it, and I applaud the people who persevere with their villains and achieve it. My point is mostly that considering the current population redside (and the current population of the game as a whole, to be brutally honest) the invasion mechanics are a little outdated IMHO. I don't believe the onus should forever be on the players to compensate for outdated mechanics when there are options for the developers to fix it that are entirely plausible.
Now to be fair, I don't know how much work would go into implementing any of the suggestions I posted above, and it's possible something I would think would be a relatively quick job would actually require significant time investment. But that being said, I definitely think it's worth devoting some attention to why redside is deserted and what can be done about it. -
A little preface, I play more or less exclusively on Justice. Judging by the server loads I've seen at various times of logging in, I would classify it as a medium population server, possibly upper medium. I have no knowledge of how things operate on other servers.
That being said, Justice redside is pretty much dead. You might get a WST going if you ask nicely enough in the global channels for a long enough time, but pretty much all pure villains are going to be solo or very small teams (or later on, maybe co-op) for the rest of their careers. This in itself is not really a problem, CoH is very solo friendly and it's still possible to make reasonable progress.
My problem arises when you consider zone events. GMs aren't so bad (sans perhaps Caleb, for unrelated reasons) since you can usually take them down with a sufficiently powerful small group, but things like zombie apocalypses or rikti invasions are genuinely depressing to behold. Considering the short notice and duration, it's rare for people to drop what they're doing and log over to a villain, no matter how nicely you might ask. I'm not sure of the mechanics but I know you need at least a full team in a single spot before you start seeing the elite boss spawns, meaning the badges are more or less permanently out of reach for the pure villain.
Again, this might not be a problem, if it weren't for the Elusive Mind accolade. Considering that incarnate trials are becoming more demanding on performance, and that all accolades are available regardless of AT or powersets, they more or less get rolled into the baseline performance. There is no advantage to not having the accolade, no power you can pick up instead of it, you either have it or you don't, and if you don't you are worse off.
So currently, pretty much the only way to get this accolade is to switch to Rogue and wait patiently for an invasion to hit a convenient blueside zone at a relatively high population time (easier said than done when you're living in Australia, but that's another matter). I don't believe this is a satisfactory solution, considering the current relative ease of getting alignment merits and being forced to forfeit any of them when switching.
So I was hoping to come up with a few suggestions, and if this thread doesn't get any redname attention I would appreciate it if someone who was attending the upcoming player summit could at least bring up the concerns with the devs. A few ideas off the top of my head, any of which would fix it (only regarding Elusive Mind, zombie invasions are a lesser concern):- Most obvious, change the requirements for the accolade, maybe some different Rikti related badges that don't require drop-of-the-hat large teams of villains (LGTF badge would be a good start). There is precedent for this - Born in Battle redside was changed to remove PvP requirements, so it can be done. People who already earned the accolade but don't meet the new requirements would still retain it.
- Make the Rikti EBs in RWZ count towards the badge. This would mean the entire accolade can be achieved through a solo grind, albeit a relatively slow and painful one.
- Make the system consider your difficulty settings for purposes of Rikti invasions, so someone set for x8 would count as 8 for the purposes of invasions. This would still leave "lesser" villains out in the cold, and I'm not even sure it's enough to get the EBs to spawn in the first place, so it's not ideal, but it would be a start.
- I hesitate to suggest this, but perhaps sell all accolade powers on the Paragon Market? Not the badges themselves, just the powers. Not sure if that's even possible, but I'm trying to look at every alternative.
tl;dr version - Elusive Mind accolade (and zombie invasion badges) are close to impossible to earn for pure villains, at least on my server. I hope to rectify this situation. -
I ran into this on the 2XP weekend as well, actually. Near as I could tell, he was spawning instead of Void Hunters. We also didn't have a 50 on the team and were running at lv49, not sure if that had any bearing on the situation.
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So we're getting the Liger pet after all?
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I was in a bit of an unusual situation for WWD7, since my main character had run the villain-side arcs for 1-6 but was currently on hero-side (specifically, Vigilante) for badging purposes and I didn't feel like waiting until I'd switched back. For the most part it seemed to treat me as a hero, except that inside the ship on mission 3 all the NPCs gave me the "you're a villain, I hate you" version of their text, and I also had the villain version of the epilogue, and got attacked by Manticore.
It seemed pretty haphazard, but at the same time I felt my own character never really fit into the previous chapters anyway, being a career Rogue (when not badging, obviously) and not really being motivated by any applicable desires from either side of the arc.
Overall the ending seemed kind of rough and rushed, but at the same time I'm not sure how much of that was due to my odd alignment issues so I won't hold it against the writers. -
Quote:I suppose I should make it clear, when I was writing that, I was mostly thinking about incarnate trials, since we just came out of a 2XP weekend with a lot of fresh 50s. On my server at least, the results were somewhat less than impressive even on the easier trials. I'm not complaining about people wanting to get incarnate powers for their new 50s or whatever, I'm just saying that a lot of people underestimated just how much was needed to contribute.The thing is though, the performance threshold you're talking about is actually pretty low in this game. I can't speak to iTrials as I don't run them, but for the vast majority of encounters in this game being min-maxed with all the "right" power choices isn't really necessary. As long as someone's build isn't truly gimped (using only TO's at 50 for example) it really won't make much difference.
One person bringing an under-performing character to a team of +3s is probably not going to make a noticable drop in overall performance, but the more of them you get, the more obvious things become. My point with regards to the original topic is that having tier 3 Destiny/Lore and not using them certainly isn't helping these situations.