Moonlighter

What they *need* to fix:

~ Fix the End cost of Storm Kick. It's still almost 1 end too high and since it's our best DPA attack builds that use it a lot might throw it 12-15 times a minutes. I would love to have somewhere between 10-15 endurance per minute thrown back into my build.

What I'd like to see:

~ Since we lack AoE and do smashing damage I'd like a little to see some more beef in our single target damage. We need a 70-75 DPA attack to pair with Storm Kick.

~ Make Crippling Axe Kick do -Recharge like the description says. It would be a nice mitigation tool against foes that can't be stunned like AVs and EBs.

~ Make Cobra Strike useful. Since it's one of our few hand strikes it would be nice if it pumped out around 70-75 DPA to give us some single target beef. You could also bump the stun duration.

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Wasn't until level 41 when you could get permalude up and runnin that the set was worth anything at all!


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Ah, the permalude crash dance.

When they nuked permalude I wasn't mad because I lost defense, I was mad because that was my travel power.

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You really only take a hard end hit when you use the dmg aura, cloak of fear and/or when you used dark reg poorly. Dump the dmg aura, use OG instead of CoF and only fire off dark regen when you're almost dead (and properly slot it with IO's) and the end use isn't very bad at all.


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The damage aura is a big reason to use the set though. I like Cloak of Fear but once you really pimp out with IOs it can absolutely be discarded.

I personally don't like OG. When I finally got it on my MA/Dark it really didn't seem to increase my survivability as much as I though it might and I really hated the BIG RED EGG.

YMMV

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Having played all the secondaries, however, I do think DA could use some tweaks. One, I'd rework CoF, it costs WAY too much end for what it does, either reduce the end cost or improve/change the effects of the power. And I think the tier nine could use improvement, like making it usable while still alive - when used alive it would deliver a low mag stun and drain end from targets and return it to user.


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I absolutely agree that the Endurance cost and Acc penalty on Cloak of Fear are too big. (I would suggest a hefty end reduction.) However I'd like to point out that the big win on Cloak of Fear isn't the fear, it's the hefty ToHit debuff.

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And for the love of god, please don't make CoD turn the user completely invisible, or at least make it user's choice somehow.


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This.

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Dark Armor sacrifices your blue bar on the altar of survivability. But it gives you the survivability.


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This is my biggest problem with the set. The set has the potential to be a monster when coupled with Katana or BS, but I can't bring it to it's survival limits and have the endurance usage needed for long fights like AVs and such.

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Well, I'm testing this on a 50 -- with defense, resists, regen, and extra HP from IO sets.

My defender would simply die, even with 3 white minions rather than 5.

Put another way: Melee mobs should not have ranged attacks that do damage like Nemesis snipers.

Damage over time doesn't matter, here; we're talking about an alpha strike. No other melee mob on the game does ranged damage like this on an alpha.

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<nod>

Upon further testing with alternate characters I agree the damage is too high.

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I'm asking for something rather reasonable, I think -- for custom mobs to be approximately equivalent to normal enemy groups of the same level.


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I guess I threw out that assumption long ago. If I go against custom groups I presume they are more effective than most normal groups unless the author is specifically gimping them for a farm. I certainly wouldn't go against custom groups in the teens with *increased* difficulty. I guess my point is I would find the point much more compelling if you were running on Heroic.

Plus, I don't know that 5 sledge hammer melee mobs in the low levels wouldn't put me into the red if they all hit. And I believe getting hit by the melee of 5 Warrior minions would be as bad.

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We know that MA mobs are somewhat more powerful, but it's not sensible for them to be overwhelmingly more powerful, especially when their ranged damage exceeds that of their primary, melee powers.


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I believe the idea is that the ranged powers have a long recharge so they need to hit harder to be non-trivial against fliers. So an individual attack might hit hard, I didn't seem to me like they had higher damage over time.

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The new ranged attacks for custom melee sets seem more than a bit overpowered. I'd expect to see them in line with normal ranged attacks on primarily-melee mobs, but these seem to be considerably more vicious.

I was testing one of my missions, which is designed for "soloable by a defender", which means all minions standard/standard. I was more than a little surprised to find that opening with Fire Cages meant that I was almost instantly brought down to red health. This was on Tenacious, all white-con minions (four or five of them, I think).

That seems a bit much -- I have not yet tested on my other toons, but I suspect my defenders will be pwnzed.

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Some counter points:

~ You had it on Tenacious, and sometimes having 5 enemies is worse than 3 +1s. Personally I wouldn't up my difficulty against custom mobs in MA, especially a defender in the teens. Go to Heroic. Going against custom groups on Tenacious in the teens is not a good idea.

~ Many defenders would immediately heal.

~ Don't open up with an AoE on 5 mobs when you are in range of all of them? Snipe the closest one at the edge of your range so their retaliation is staged.

I am getting very different results on my iMac 24". (Until the recently announced iMacs it was top of the line) Running at full resolution with the graphics settings turned down the game lags badly in certain areas. The Vanguard base is like a slide show, and a lot of the Rikti tunnels give me problems. In addition it randomly crashes.

If I turn down the settings low enough to get smooth turning characters just out of range lose all their detail; Tsoo Sorcerers have no hats at range, etc.

If I reboot into Windows on the same machine (via Boot Camp) I get *much* better performance. The Vanguard base is fine on much higher settings, I don't get the crashes, and everything is generally smoother.

It's really annoying to reboot into Windows everytime I want to play CoH but the performance hit is very noticeable and annoying, never mind the crashes. I am actually kind of annoyed that the latest issue didn't have Mac performance changes.

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You need 116.5% recharge, which means that with Hasten you need 46.5% global. I have no idea what you've done with your SL if you have problem running that chain.

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Currently SL has 42.4 Recharge slotted, I have 25% global at this point, and Hasten provides 70.

I expect to get another 32.5 global when the build is done, but if I dropped all slotted recharge from SL I would lose a total of 10% recharge from what I have now and I think there would be gaps. I was just curious what set up would allow that chain with *no* slotted recharge in SL.

The bigger problem is MG actually. With Hasten and 25% global and 68.8 slotted recharge it doesn't come up fast enough currently but when the build is done I hope to have that gap closed.

(My build isn't done yet; I haven't obtained all my LotG +Recharge. I have been focusing on capping defense first.)

Not that the build isn't performing currently; With no adds I am down to 17 minutes on a pylon and my first experimentation with adds I got down to 15 minutes, but it was that high because my DC and SD kill the adds too fast and my build was incomplete at that point. Err rather even less complete than it is now.

(Yes my previous post is incorrect, when I said I had ~70% recharge in SL I was confusing the SL and MG slotting. My bad.)

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I just went 3 heal/end HOs and 3 Dam/Acc HOs. That comes out like this:

95% dam
95% acc
95% heal
95% end

I can still run the smite-sl-smite-MG chain with no recharge in SL due to global bonuses and hasten.

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How much global recharge do you have?

I have enough that Hasten is 10 seconds off perma and I am not even close; I end up with a large gap before the second MG ~ maybe .7 seconds?

Mine is Smite->SL->Smite->MG->Smite->SL->Smite->Shadow Punch->MG

Even there SL barely comes up in time and I have ~70% recharge in it.

If you have a character with a large body type and you turn on a power that causes a shield to be drawn the character will use the regular male model animations for jumping (legs are together with one foot higher), combat stance (legs are closer together) and running (figure is slightly more upright) instead of the large model animations.

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Just a quick follow up:

We have no plans of getting rid of freespecs. Each Issue that brings with it major power changes (which is pretty much every single one, eh?) will bring a freespec with it.

We have no plans of getting rid of the respec trials.

We have no plans of getting rid of the dropped Respec Recipes.

We have no plans of getting rid of the Veteran Respecs that your account earns.

This is simply another way to get a Respec onto your character.

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Given this comment, I like it.

My biggest problem with this service is I dread the day when powers change and its borderline whether to give out a freespec and some marketing weasel uses lost revenue as a reason to pass on the freespec. If Positron is saying this isn't going to happen then I am all for this.

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Castle, is there any way that you can allow people to choose to have the "hover" effect or not in Teleport and Team Teleport in Options?

Please please please. This is REALLY important to me. In PvP, I don't like the hover effect but in pve I do. Is this too complicated to make it as an Option?

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I don't understand why they don't simply make the Hover effect end as soon as the player pressed a movement key.

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No, but with Lingering Radiation you don't need to be herded anyway since you aren't going anywhere fast. It doesn't matter if you can attack or not if you can't hit anything anyway. And those melee characters who aren't Willpower, Invulnerability or Energy Armor can all get ranged attacks after level 40 so they can, in fact, attack. Some of them can get ranged attacks before that, and there's also Vet rewards and a whole horde of temp power that are ranged attacks. It's likely someone who's prepared can do more while TKed than a Villain can while under RI. Those To Hit Buffs? Not many on Villain side, which has long been talked about. The accolade? Broken on Villain side; it isn't accessible if you exemp down.

And you know what? *Everyone* can get out of Repel using Breakfrees. The consensus here is that 4 is too many to have to use (and I agree with this) but that 2 would be quite fair.

Do I actually want RI to be nerfed? Maybe but that's not why I brought it up here. The point is there are other toggle effects that are just as debilitating, if not more so, than TK. *Especially* if Breakfrees get the recommended buff vs Repel effects.

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You have some good points. I still have a slight preference for the non-Bf version, but only because melee has a problem competing in PvP right now. I could live with it either way, and it's irrelevant since Castle changed it anyway.

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I don't mean to sound unreasonable, but I tend to agree with EvilGeko. I have a preference to just have it not work. Right now melee is a joke in PvP, and allowing a toggled effect that completely shuts them down is too harsh against characters that already lose most of their DPS to jousting. The cost of 2 BFs is... high when people are trying to deal with Controllers and perma-Doms.

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Toggled Radiation Infection completely shuts down nearly all my Villains unless I pop multiple Insights. Can we make that not affect players too?

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I don't know what you play, but Toggled Rad doesn't herd you into a corner and prevent you from moving without being able to attack back so no, it's not the same thing. Plus, there are tons of ToHitBuffs in the game to help counter it, including an accolade. There is, um, no Repel resistance outside specific secondaries.

I don't mean to sound unreasonable, but I tend to agree with EvilGeko. I have a preference to just have it not work. Right now melee is a joke in PvP, and allowing a toggled effect that completely shuts them down is too harsh against characters that already lose most of their DPS to jousting. The cost of 2 BFs is... high when people are trying to deal with Controllers and perma-Doms.

Am I the only one who still gets annoyed at the long ago changes to the jumping code?

At release, any jump would essentially provide upwards thrust until you let go of the space bar or the jump timer ran out. This meant that if you jumped against a ceiling it would kind of hang there for a time before you descended. They changed it so you "bounce" when you hit an upward obstacle.

Although jumping into the ceiling was a little weird, the old code basically prevented you from getting hung up on obstacles. If you hit a fence when you tried to jump you wouldn't just bounce back to the ground. Your upward movement would end but not your thrust - you could strafe and continue the jump. Now when I am tired I invariably try to jump over some obstacle and get annoyingly hung up on it.

I find it amazing that the change still bugs me so many months later.

Here's what I found in the past in arena bouts, base raids, and PvP in zones. It is unclear whether the new issue will solve these problems. So things, like the Hurricane nerf, the Defense scaling, and the revamping method of determining accuracy may change things, though I doubt it will change the basic nature of the screws that melee characters have to deal with. Harsh realities of PvP as a melee character:

- If you have no way of reaching or dealing with a Hovering ranged blaster/ranged character, don't bother even entering a PvP zone. Superspeed characters I am looking at you.

- If you do not have repel protection you will spend a lot of time trapped in a corner. You can teleport out of repel lock, but if you try to avoid it you will be teleported *into* the corner and trapped there. This includes "click" based repels that do not have to hit you.

- If you do not have some manner of ToHit Buff you will miss. A lot. Against multiple builds. Accuracy enhancements are not enough.

- You must carry lots of Break Frees. You must assume everyone else has lots of Break Frees as well. If you cannot use multiples of the same kind of mez then you will not be able to rely on them. Versatility in mez attacks is not useful in PvP. Stacking the same kind of mez *is* useful.

- You have no protection against slow. Since you have to reach your opponent, if your movement is slowed you are screwed.

- If you are relying on not being hit, don't. Other good builds *will* have the ToHit Buff to hit you.

- Most good builds are not Smashing / Lethal. If you attack with primarily S/L damage, you are at a disadvantage against a lot of defenses. If you have great S/L defense, tweaked PvP builds will not be using that attack type.

One of the ways I found to help mitigate these problems is going TP. I can use TP Other to 'port fliers into my -Fly power (Air Sup or Crippling) and I can use TP to escape repel and slow effects and situations where I am totally debuffed into uselessness.

Before this issue if I entered a base or zone as an MA scrapper and there were Stormies it wouldn't even be worth it to play. As if the Accuracy debuff were not enough, I simply could not even *launch* attacks through Hurricane, much less actually hit. If I spent time jousting through Hurricane for the chance of getting a hit off I might be able to actually launch a melee attack 10% of the time. If I was lucky. That hit would, of course, probably miss miserably.

When I asked for advice what I got was "there are some builds you can't beat" and "you have to get some ranged attacks" (I am MA yeah I want my attack chain to consist of Laser Beam Eyes and, um, well Laser Beam Eyes) and "Reroll Spines or Claws."

This, at least, should be "fixed" by the 1 second repel tick.

Oh, also have Accuracy Inspirations been reduced? I can't test them for obvious reasons, but I am not seeing the results from them that I used to.

Castle, I am not seeing any problems with even cons, but I am seeing a large drop with cons that are scaled up or down. Sometimes I will whiff against greens several times, and yellows are a pain to hit with strings of 4 or 5 misses sometimes with green DOs.

Can you confirm the current Accuracy penalties for +1s, +2s, etc? The last values we saw were around 7.5% reduction per level difference but as far as I can tell it is higher than that now.

Isn't that the mysterious "skill system" Statesman hinted at and then pulled?

Will this fix PvP as well?

Ie. Will a scrapper/tank/Brute/Stalker be able to at least launch (even though it's debuffed) an attack at a Stormie if they can overcome the knockdown? Because I wasn't able to in the arena prior to I6...

Or how about:

if (range < 5) {
range = 5;
}

It appears to be the same in PvP against melee types. If properly slotted melee types can't launch attacks against Stormies at all. It's not a knockback thing either.

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Infernal 1 shoted me 5 times in one mission alone arrg and that was not my mission. Mine is still sitting there never to be done and I was running tough.


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Again, what level was he as compared to you?

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Babbage has done the old 1 shot me


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I fought Babbage last night. He spawned +2. None of his attacks could one shot me. His big one did do ~80% of my bar though.

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Envoy of Shadows is just a lost cause for SR's because of the auto hit aura was not one shotted but he is almost a guaranteed death for sr even with perma elude running in I3 he owned me


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Sure, and Psi AVs kill Invuln. That's irrelevant to the one shot discussion though.

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I've seen plenty melee folks one shotted by an AV. My Peacebringer was oneshotted by an even con Neuron even through my shields. Many of the AVs have some sort of alpha strike that can shred even the toughest of us apart. I'd say you've been lucky if being one shotted has never been an issue.


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As an aside, what level were you as compared to the AV?

Anyway, I understand and recognize that there are anecdotal cases of AVs that can one shot a character. Getting one-shotted by an even level AV (or even a +1) is extremely rare and you can prepare for it by packing orange pills. My point stands - to me it's a non-issue.