Nefarious_EU

last week i been on it there has been no abuse whatsoever.. but like i've said before, i think alot of the abuse there was caused by the moderation, hence why i am boycotting sals badgehunting cause i dont agree with the moderation and im pretty sure it'll get out of hand there as well in due time.

As for using broadcast for zone events, i find people shouting during mothership raids over broadcast more spam (if im not participating) then someone asking for a team every few minutes. Same with a request for TP, find that nothing much more or less than asking for a team/teammembers. But i suppose different people, different values.

I use broadcast to poll interest, but i only repeat message once every 10 mins or so if i dont meet the team requirements yet. This ensures that there most likely are new ppl in the zone and the ones that read your first mish likely are gone in a mish or dont really pay attention anymore (not to mention once every 10 mins doesnt really count as spam imo). Saying broadcast aint for that.. well, what IS broadcast for? You want everybody to know that you got a team and are lookin for more, i think broadcast suits that purpose fine as long as you dont overdo it.

Other option ofcourse is opening search window and sending a tell to people in level range that are colored blue (meaning they are solo). It's what i do first before resorting to broadcast most of times.

EDIT: course there is also still "union badgehunters" channel for that.

Hey bud, I'm usin my dark/fire tank for most of my farming (though admittedly i dont farm much). Using him on the outdoor mother mayhem map. Great xp/inf, massive kill speed and insane survivability with the (unbuffed) 78% res to psi .

Found all-round dark is a great tanker set, good resists against everything. Even though nrg is a bit lacking, but if that's really a problem, team up with a kin with ID or a sonic/thermal. With tough you'll get close to S/L cap. And for non-farming teams in tough mishes you get your soft control auras to help keep you alive, together with imo one of the greatest heals ingame.

So yeah, needless to say im well impressed with my dark/fire . Think out of all toons it was the fastest i ever lvled. Only doing own mishes and TFs took me roughly 100 hrs.

[ QUOTE ]
Hi,

A couple of points that I would make are:

Six slot Death Shroud; this will do more damage over a mission than Smite or Shadow Maul. 2acc, 2 dmg, 1taunt, 1endred - I'd move the slots from boxing.
Drop Cloak of Fear, Oppresive gloom does the crowd control fine and costs no end CoF chews end.
Replace Siphon Life with Touch of Fear you'll get better usage. With OP taking out the minions ToF will allow you to perma fear bosses/lieuts (also reduces their Acc).
I'd get Shadow Maul in place of Cloak of Fear. In normal usage a Tank should be contributing to the damage it also makes the alt more fun to play - if you don't enjoy it you wont play it and it is a game after all.

[/ QUOTE ]

Talkin from my dark/fire tank's point of view, you indeed need more slots on deathshroud. It is too good to underslot, needs at least 2 acc, rest can be filled in with damage/end, maybe a taunt but i dont have a taunt slotted cause i use fire AoEs anyway.

Cloak of Fear is droppable (i dropped it). It all depends on your team really. Thing is, you cant effectively use CoF with deathshroud, as the ticks of damage breaks their fear. Stun on the other hand doesnt have that problem, however enemies try to walk out of your stun. If you team alot with a troller with aoe immob (and knows when to use it) you get far more out of oppressive gloom compared to cloak of fear.

Don't slot boxing, you wont use it that often i found. The extra stun chance is nice when tackling hard targets like bosses, but for the rest its not really worth it i found (compared to other powers you could slot instead).

those words dont mean anything though, look at broadsword for instance, hack is classed as high damage and disembowel as superior, yet there is hardly any difference between the 2. Disembowel is only slightly higher. Headsplitter however, classed as extreme, IS alot higher than both hack and disembowel. Also if you look at fire melee (tank version), firebreath, combustion and fire sword circle are all classed as moderate damage, yet FSC does almost double the damage combustion does.

Stone melee is praised cause even though the recharge is mediocre/slow, the animations are pretty fast and its great damage, especially ST. Not to mention with the stuns/knockdown great for keeping you alive. Mace suffers from lower damage output, slower animation and weapon redraw.

Some damage numbers to back it up (ripped from redtomax as i dont have mids on this comp):
Shatter - 2.28 vs Seismic Smash - 3.56
Jawbreaker - 1.96 vs Heavy mallet - 2.28
Pulverize - 1.64 vs stone mallet - 1.64

Of course, there are more ways to compare sets/powers than just pure damage, namely secondary effects, accuracy and end cost. Seismic smash for instance is a great power as its fast, high damage and is a hold as well, strong enough to instanthold bosses. Shatter however has high knockback and the ability to hit multiple targets. Also mace, being a weapon, has an inherent 5% extra acc to all attacks. This is done to compensate for the weapon redraw.

So here's a little info for why stone gets praised and mace isnt mentioned. Mace isnt a bad set, but it is one of the weaker sets i believe, which is a shame really.

For powerboost.. i always use this thread to check what PB does and doesnt affect, however it doesnt seem to be updated for i12, so remove knockback/repel from the list what PB DOES affect.

dont really farm, but if i do (mainly cause im bored or if i only got like a few mins ingame) its mother mayhem from maria jenkins, of course this presumes you got enough psi res not to get splattered. Its handy at scaring away all the idiots askin me to PL em.

EDIT: i do this on my dark/fire tank, not a fire/kin troller.. dont even have one of those

ill/ff
fire/ta
earth/storm
grav/rad

deleted: mind/sonic

PS: most popular troller (or any combo of sets across all ATs) must be fire/kin

50 dark/fire
35 ice/ice (which is practically semi-retired since GDN/I5)

suppose with the defender inherent and if you play mainly PvE 15-20 secs downtime is bearable. On my corr those 15-20 secs is too long so i slapped some +recov in there

afaik there is no official i12 patch for mids yet, there are some unofficial ones roaming about though.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Lame as it may be to have a buffbot in base, as said there are still ways to counter it. Same is the case with insps. Insps arent "just load up on XXX", but actual tactical choices if you are gonna do any decent PvP match. "What powers will he use on me? Which one more often than others? Can I counter it?" etc etc should all be answered when buying insps.

Also dont forget that in an arena duel, normally you fight for 10 mins. Presuming you get a kill in at least once, he wont be able to keep perma-popping insps. Or if he pops multiple ones at the same time, he wont have any left at the end of the match. A good PvPer however knows how to counter insps and will make you eat those skittles in like the first minute of the match. So in the end, it still comes down to skills and builds. It just adds another factor of skill/build to it.

Because of this, I always refuse to duel someone that says "no insps". Taking my corr as example, I rely on insps to counter my biggest weakness: lack of mez resistance. I know if I fight a troller one on one without insps, I will always lose cause I'll just get held and hammered. With insps however, I know I'll only lose to a good controller and one that is just a better player than I am. However even with insps I suppose I get hammered by most perma-doms as they go "lol BF".

If my opponent uses them or not, I dont care really, but I WILL use them to balance out my chars.

PS. think of it, if the devs thought insps were giving people unfair advantages in pvp matches, why didnt they add a "no inspirations" option to arena options together with "no travel powers" etc?

[/ QUOTE ]

The buff botting person in question also refuses to fight in the arena with insps..... dont know if the 2 are related

[/ QUOTE ]

Is it also the same kind of person that will only duel people it can beat without insps? I know a certain mind/storm troller on union that only wants to duel without insps, outside arena and youre not allowed to run. However he doesnt want to duel scrappers, tankers, stalkers, brutes or MMs.

Lame as it may be to have a buffbot in base, as said there are still ways to counter it. Same is the case with insps. Insps arent "just load up on XXX", but actual tactical choices if you are gonna do any decent PvP match. "What powers will he use on me? Which one more often than others? Can I counter it?" etc etc should all be answered when buying insps.

Also dont forget that in an arena duel, normally you fight for 10 mins. Presuming you get a kill in at least once, he wont be able to keep perma-popping insps. Or if he pops multiple ones at the same time, he wont have any left at the end of the match. A good PvPer however knows how to counter insps and will make you eat those skittles in like the first minute of the match. So in the end, it still comes down to skills and builds. It just adds another factor of skill/build to it.

Because of this, I always refuse to duel someone that says "no insps". Taking my corr as example, I rely on insps to counter my biggest weakness: lack of mez resistance. I know if I fight a troller one on one without insps, I will always lose cause I'll just get held and hammered. With insps however, I know I'll only lose to a good controller and one that is just a better player than I am. However even with insps I suppose I get hammered by most perma-doms as they go "lol BF".

If my opponent uses them or not, I dont care really, but I WILL use them to balance out my chars.

PS. think of it, if the devs thought insps were giving people unfair advantages in pvp matches, why didnt they add a "no inspirations" option to arena options together with "no travel powers" etc?

Looks as a nice build, though I suggest (unless you team alot in larger teams) to get some more +recov bonuses in there. I got roughly +28% recov on my corr (without miracle and numina uniques) and it really makes the char so so much better. Of course if youre always in larger teams the situation greatly changes and you dont burn through your end as fast (especially with the defender's inherent).

ah yes, forgot bout stormies, they of course are handy as well.. and you make a good point bout ghosters, forgot bout that. However I can vouch that (with my main being ill/ff) ill/ff is a good addition to teams. Indeed ghosting with PFF makes things dead easy and even still if it goes wrong (for instance glowies that take ages to complete) you can use decoys to take aggro away at quite an early lvl. Not to mention at later lvls powerboosted shields make every TF a breeze (requires a pro-active approach of FF though, not for the lazy buffers ).

iirc you can unlock hess by doing lars' arc in ouro though. Can say Hess is a pretty fun and short TF (takes roughly 1.5 - 2 hrs)

heh i do this often enough with my SG, most of times our toons only lvl with TFs rather than the normal content. I wouldnt wanna go in specific sets as those aint really needed. The trick I found however is to load up on aoe damage with 1 or 2 heavy single target hitters (like scrappers). But there are loads of combos available that can own TFs with ease.

Currently we're lvling some i12 toons with SG and got a regular team of 4 and then normally got 4 from a mix of SG and PuG to do TFs with, and thusfar its easy. The regular 4 we got are:

dark/fire tank - nice aoe control and damage, needs proper slotting though so you wont run out of end
bs/fire scrapper - nice overall damage, heavy single target hits and with whirling sword + burn he can dish out some aoe as well.
plant/rad troller - again nice aoe capability and good at crippling the mobs so the tank wont have much probs with em.
psi/mental blaster - AoE once more

with those 4 we already managed to do TFs where half the team dropped and us 4 were fighting +4/5s with no problems at all.

I dont wanna go into AT combos as there are too many that will work. You can go for the balanced option (1-2 of each AT), but teams that also work for instance is a tank and 7 trollers. Just make sure you got the core components:

Tank (CAN be replaced by illusionists with decoys, but the earlier TFs will be harder)
AoE debuffs (dark, rad, cold, therm, TA)
Buffs (emp, kin)
AoE damage (for instance blasters, but anything will do if you got enough debuff)
ST damage maybe for AVs and tough bosses. Less important at later TFs, but nice for the earlier ones.

I would put the focus on debuffs rather than buffs. Dont be lulled into the "needing an emp" thing either, most teams dont wanna do a TF without an emp. This is utter [censored]. (Though I suppose STF will be alot easier with an emp, but I done it without an emp as well)

Hope this is any help

oooh i wanna have a shot at this as well, send @stagefright a tell to fight either my corr or scrap.. see if your -30% res beats my +30% res to energy and my own -60% res and slows..

and here you just proven my point:
[ QUOTE ]
Aim...Soul Drain...Some reds...Sleet...Nuke...

[/ QUOTE ]

In order to deal damage you need souldrain, reds and sleet? Souldrain means you better have a good tank to keep aggro off you as you'll be standing in the mob for a while firing it off. Then you need reds and a -res debuff in order to deal damage ON TOP OF THAT? By that logic, i will own with repulsion bomb on a FF defender if i pop a load of reds first..

Yes, blizzard was nice for a while and like i said i used it. The beauty of a nuke however is that you just fire it off and you kill stuff, not prepare 10 mins before a nuke. I found out i kill mobs faster by just cycling my chain rather than spending all the time setting up a nuke. In coh as a def that means that those mins you:

a) arent buffing your teammates
b) arent debuffing your enemies
c) are too late, cause that blaster already killed em all while you were busy popping rads.

Also what you said requires to take soul drain, which i didnt have cause i picked black scorpion as patron, the slows and -jump/fly in his hold/immob synergizes perfectly with cold and of course the extra def to nrg combined with fog's nrg res is nice synergy as well. Of course this does not matter for a defender as they wont get souldrain. Nor is their role to be main damage dealer in a team. Nor will their nuke do as much damage as a corr, with it being their secondary rather than primary.

Of course heatloss is nice to get back in the fight, but thats with any nuke, not just blizzard. I would find the psy nuke better on a defender (for the stun and massive -rech) than blizzard, and lo and behold, you got heatloss as well.

So I retain my point, its a nice extra, but dont go out of your way to get it, cold/ice is tight enough as it is imo.

iirc the proc had a too high chance to trigger

Well, this is coming from my experience on an ice/cold corr rather than cold/ice def. But i'll try to adapt my mindset to the defending properties rather than offensive properties

The only power in cold/ i'd skip is glacial shield, on CoV i found it had very little use compared to ice shield. If you're really tight on powers, you can drop ice shield as well. You will want the other powers though. The buffs on cold are nice, but not nearly as nice as the sweet debuffs you dish out. With all the debuffs you barely need the shields anymore cause they wont be attacking you anymore in the first place . Frostwork however, i would deffo pick, as putting someone at instant hp cap is just ace.

As for ice blast, i dont agree with the previous post. Why would you want frost breath? I found it to be the most underwhelming power ever when i tried it on my corr for extra slows. Ice has one of the (if not THE) fastest single target attack chains there is, with decent damage output to boot. I found it handier to cycle fast through all your ST moves "simulating" AoE by cycling targets, than to pick some mediocre ice aoes.

Powers I would deffo pick from ice are ice bolt, ice blast, freeze ray and bitter ice blast. You can pick ice storm slotted for slow to hamper your enemies even more. Dont slot it for dmg, especially being a defender secondary the damage will be utter poo (even with sleet). The combo sleet/ice storm/blizzard IS indeed nice, but it takes a while to set up and as a defender i suppose it isnt really your role to nuke.

Therefore I dunno if you want blizzard or not, if you got a spare slot, sure take it, if not, dont go out of your way to get it. Its a defender nuke, dont confuse it with the dmg from the blaster version, even with sleet! I had it on my corr, but specced it out in the end as it wasnt really worth it imo, took too long to set up with sleet and ice storm. Without sleet/ice storm the dmg would just be pitiful.

Get hasten and stamina, you need those. Cold/ice is endheavy, very endheavy and even post-32 heatloss will be down more often than up, so dont rely on that. You need hasten to cycle through the slow charging powers that are benumb and heatloss. I agree with the above, that you prolly want stamina before arctic fog. Dont skip fog though, fog will keep you alive alot! Even if it was just for the slow res.

Normally I'd say get benumb ASAP as its one of the best powers in your set and THE thing to use on all those nasty AVs. However the recharge is very slooooowwwww and without SOs and slots i dunno how much its worth to get it. You'll be well gutted if it misses and you wait hours for it to rech again.

Speaking bout missing, i suggest getting aim before benumb, dont leave aim till late, and really dont skip it! A good combo vs hard targets like AVs is sleet-aim-infrig-benumb. This way you debuff his def first with sleet, aim, debuff def even further, and while aim is active you can smack benumb on someone thats already had his def debuffed, greatly increasing the chance it'll hit. You really want to make sure benumb hits.

So to conclude, i'd say:

Cold skippable:
first glacial shield, then if needed ice shield.

Ice skippable:
all except ice bolt, blast, BIB, freeze ray and aim

Pools to get:
hasten, stamina

Hope that was any help

I reckon cold/ice defenders could work very well in PvP if you understand the sets, their strengths, their weaknesses. This is key for any build in PvP really, you need to know what your powers do and what possible weaknesses you got to make sure other players wont abuse those.

I play ice/cold corr often in PvP and its pretty nice. The slows from cold can put a real dent in your opponent, making them a sitting duck for you or your teammates to finish off. The shields on cold are a bit so-so, they are a nice extra but it generally wont keep your teammates alive unless theyre stacked with other +def. This because almost every toon has some sorta acc boosting power (most signifcantly buildup and aim). Frostwork however is ace in PvP (imo) as it instantly puts someone at the hp cap.

For the rest I agree with what already has been said.

The range of psi is a bit less usefell compared to the short range of cold/ though, you still need to close in to smack debuffs on em, thats the only danger for a cold corr or def. Once theyre debuffed you can abuse the range of psi, but same can be said for most other attack secondaries.

Think if i had to choose, i'd pick psi. Got an ice/cold corr I pvp with so got a fair bit of experience in that. Still the extra range on psi, more unresisted value and the heavy -rech make it better for pvp than ice imo. Even with the epics, there's still warburg if thats your thing

Yea, ice melee is very low on damage output. It's the safest melee set, in that the slows stacking can really hamper your enemy alot and ice patch is just a great power to have, together with a decent hold in block of ice. So yeah, EBs will probably be possible to take down but it will take a loooooooooooong time. If i remember right ice melee is the lowest dmg output set on tankers.

yeah i know, but forcebolt is so easy to spam with its 1 sec recharge time. Well, 4 secs base, but with hasten, +rech yada yada its down to 1.