MrLiberty

Hey I can be here this week! If they'd have free transfers again I'd port an emp or pain over so you can skip Psoma, until then 3 v 3 league >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> your plans.

For a team tank, i.e. Disruption spot, I'd go with web envelope from the mace pool over fossilize.

You still get the Assassination Crit while standing in quicksand, but your stealth radius as mentioned will drop to around 500 feet (while running stealth/hide/IO) meaning everyone will pretty much be able to see you.

Organized PvP, read Arena 8 v 8's has both feet in the grave and they've started to throw dirt on anyone who has shown any signs of life.

Zones on freedom are I guess still active, but still pretty much a joke thanks to HD and TS. I haven't been on much lately, but in the past few months the KB matches on freedom have been few and far between. Usually though you'd see at least 2-4 support players, a decent number of blasters and a few disruption/other spots being filled for the teams.

Champion has KB once or twice a week and a 3 v 3 to 5 v 5 league going on. Its true KB in that teams can be unbalanced and often times there are holes in the lineups. i.e. No support players, no regular target callers, people not on vent (though most are) etc etc. Its rough around the edges but very casual.

I think Virtue runs a KB once a week on Friday nights but as of last time I was there, there was no voice communication / very little team organization. (Nothing personal Smallz , always room for improvement)

Pinnacle has a mostly dead 4 v 4 league that I heard mostly collapsed because teams from other servers started to show up. (????)

Test PvP is pretty much at a standstill thanks to a copy tool that has been broken for 2 + months and only two formerly active teams able to participate with whatever builds/IO's they had at the time.

My issue with blasters is simply "Inconsistency"

I always see the counter to "Scrappers do more damage" being "Well My Fire/Fire, my Arch/Mental, my Fire/Elec can do....."

That's all well and good, but what happens when you get further down the list from the "Best" powersets.

How does your Elec/Dev hold up to a MA/SR/Mu? Or how about a Psi/Ice blaster stacking up next to a DM/Inv/Energy.

I actually had to think long and hard about which scrapper combo's to pick to try to represent something "low" on the scale of things. And even them I'm thinking to myself. "Well the SR with quickness can cycle dragons tail and ball lightning pretty quick plus has solid ST damage and easy to soft cap.... and the DM/Inv has a nice synergy, nice ST damage and between soul drain, shadow maul and Energy torrent some respectable AoE"

By Low I meant, not your Spines/Fire Elec/SD/Mu Fire/SD/Pyre, etc etc. Dark and MA have *I think* The lowest AoE Potential so I went with those.

Right away when I see the comparison though I think "Wow I would not want to play those blasters" where for the scrappers I immediately think "That is the weakest I could go? Let me check what sets they get again"

So while yes some sets for blasters excel at mitigation, some at AoE, Some at ST damage I think there are way too many combo's that live well in the shadows of those "Great" ones. Where for scrappers its hard to pick a combo that doesn't have a significant amount of potential to kill things fast and be safe while doing it.

What might be a simple kind of blanket fix (probably not) to everything would be to propose no more than two of any "Class" in a 3 v 3 to 5 v 5 setting.

Meaning you could run no more than 2 blasters, 2 stalkers, 2 support 2 Disruption, 2 Rads, 2 Dom's etc etc.

Blasters, stalkers, Dominators are easily covered.. they are an AT and all. Support could be emp, pain, therm, whether they are controller, defender, corruptor it doesn't matter, just limited to 2.
*Note* Having a therm, even playing him offensive most matches I can safely say its easy to switch him to a support role in 3 v 3's with basic slotting of cauterize you can pretty much keep most people alive.

Disruption can be a lot of different things, MM's in general are disruptive to targeting, but a Pain MM would still count towards your support limit. Things like Colds, TA's, Stormies, etc would count towards the limit. Some toons, i.e. Grav/TA are more your "pure" disruption, where a Sonic/TA corrupter could be Damage/Disruption and that'd be okay.

I *think* it would cut out all the "Goofy" line ups, 3 MM's 3 Support, 3 Stalkers but still allows for a good bit of variability from 3 v 3's to 5 v 5's.

Just an idea, and if anyone could think of anything that might cause a problem with the suggestion just say.

Was short on time but here is how I'd probably run it for PvE.

If you plan to use that build for PvP *and* farming its going to do pretty poorly at both of them.

I did the broken placate proc and a few others a while back, but then pretty much gave up after a while with out anything changing.

I think the best role to start yourself off in PvP is definitely a blaster.

Psy/EM Fire/EM or Sonic/EM would be the way I'd go. (Personally I enjoy my Fire/EM more in zones than I do my Psy/EM, though the Psy is a much better arena toon)

As a blaster you're forced to play defensive and mind your surroundings. And if you can learn to play defensive/evade in zones even with stupid things like HD and TS on you'll be in good shape to play other AT's.

Fire/MM is workable but boost range is just too good to pass up.

Yeah and just as a heads up to SoCo (Haven't seen you guys on test for the past few nights)
we are taking a break as well until the copy tool gets fixed. We've wanted to try/test some new lineups for going on a month or 2 now and its gotten pretty stagnant. Thanks for all the matches though and hopefully we can get around to some more when the copy tool is back up (and maybe we see another team or 3).

Definitely agree with Psyrene here, if you want the league to take a turn for the worse keep the all stalker line ups.

Reasons all stalker lineups are stupid :

If they become common you won't ever see anyone risk a 4 v 4 or 5 v 5 at the risk of shark spikes.

Sharking is for bad players who can't play blasters.

Running around for 10 minutes trying to time a double AS with no set up and no visible targets is silly.

Blind line ups... two teams bring 3 stalkers each.

Get 1 kill, hide for 10 minutes is stupid.

If the stalker team is careful/defensive trying for just 1 kill and end up failing, you're going to see a lot of 0 - 0 scores and teams getting frustrated and having to run around for another 10 minutes waiting for someone to make a mistake.

Its a 3 v 3 live league, having to always fill one of those spots with a VEAT in the blind lineup just so you don't fall into any of the above situations further limits lineup variation.

I'd really urge the captains who voted in favor of the stalker lineups to reconsider their decision. Not just because I don't want to pay 10 bucks to prove how stupid 3 stalker lineups can be, but because math in this game is hard.

Vs. a Squishy with Frozen armor. You pop 4 reds + BU Shark for 602.5 damage on the initial critical. (Not including procs or DoT's) Coordinate it between 3 stalkers sharking from the same distance (for projectile speed) at the same time and you have more than the HP cap of most AT's. If your spike doesn't work? Immediately drop into hibernate/phase, attempt again after everyone can do so safely.


Yes your timing has to be good, yes its possible to go clutch and heal through it but you do it from almost complete safety if you play stupidly defensive waiting for the time when not enough heals come in or not enough greens are popped.

*Edit* With a Squishy Res Shield its something like 1500 points of damage, so pretty much after that 1 proc will do the rest.

Think we had 3 or 4 matches tonight that ranged from 5 v 5's to 6 v 6's so decent turn out. GF's all.

I would imagine the likely culprit is the damage nerf on fireball where it used to do blaster level damage that could be effectively doubled at the damage cap with containment.

A minor change was controller kinetics getting its AT modifiers applied meaning that one FS isn't likely to cap the damage of a power that isn't slotted for damage. I.E. Fire Cages with an Immob set. Its a small change given how easy you can double stack FS, but a change none the less.

My money is on the APP AoE blast nerf though.

Poison + Blasters Psi blast for Corrupters <- most importantist

Thermal + Fire Blast for Defenders
Super Strength + EM + Ninjitsu for Scrappers
Spines + Regen For brutes
Spines + EA for tankers
Traps for controllers
Illusion for doms
Dark Blast for Blasters
Shield for stalkers
Rad, Cold, or Sonic for MM's

I tried to test these changes as well but I can't seem to get any characters to the test server.

Has anyone else had a similar issue with the copy tool, or is it just me?

Smallz hijack someones vent server for this next week.

Defenders with tactics + Phase
Blasters with phase + tactics + Res shield
Corrupters with probably just more power picks for better bonuses
Emps with again probably more power picks for better bonuses
Stalkers with tactics + Stealth + movement

Will make building things a good bit easier though you'll still have the slot crunch going on I'm sure.