Nihilii
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Posts
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Joined
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A video. No plain text announcement.
"Fix everything issue"... Right. Fix your stupid marketing, Paragon Studios. Not everyone is fluent in english, not everyone wants to hear you blabble for minutes when only seconds would be needed to convey the actual information. -
Quote:Hmm, that is a good point. Might be time to give the ol' Elec/SD scrapper a tune up...
If the Gaussian proc change makes it live as-is, this is a huge, HUGE boost to pulse-damage toons of all sorts. -
To say you don't want to farm and run a bazillion DFBs and ITFs in a row strikes me as a peculiar way to see things.
Also, yes, I miss the old missions. While the new content tends to be more dynamic and fun on a first playthrough, it's plagued with tutorial-style talk to X or do Y to learn Z missions which really hurts the replayability.
Quote:That's definitely true. Still, people tend to pick up the pace if you go forward - which often requires to play dumb and enter missions while people ask to wait, and start fighting when people say AFK, and so on.Statistically speaking, in my experience pick up task forces tend to be far more efficient *and* far more enjoyable than pick up normal teaming specifically for the first two reasons. I haven't joined a pick up team in over a year that did not stop every mission for approximately as long as the mission itself takes. I can *solo* faster than most of the pickup teams I've been on. Which is ok, if I'm just relaxing and I'll literally read a book while the team goes and figures itself out. If I'm actually in play-the-game mode, I will join teams, and the first time they decide to pick their noses for ten minutes whoops, grandma died again, I have to log.
I've been grumbled at many, many times, although more often than not indirectly, but I can count the number of kicks I got over the years on my two hands, and I'm not even sure any of them were related to that particular attitude. Likely, the extra XP smoothes out much of the potential grouchiness caused by "that overeager kid who just won't listen"; and I suspect most people, the silent ones, don't particulary care for going slowly but don't want to take point either. -
\o/
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Quote:I would argue any primary balanced around low damage selfbuffing / high base damage has good synergy with Shield due to AaO. In extreme situations you may be looking at as much as a ~+40% damage increase over the non-Shield version.
I don't think there's any huge Fire/Shield synergy
...Ok, realistically it is a bit lower than that due to AaO fodder not always capping, BU, procs and eventually incarnate slots.
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I can't believe someone with as many posts as you would could start a thread like this genuinely believing what happened wouldn't happen.
Honestly, what did you expect starting such a controversial topic? That people would go "oh, ok, thank you for this important announcement Aett Thorn, good thing you're here to tell us what to think because you're such a greater mind than us all and oh gosh how would we ever survive without you" and move on? There is little to no value in the OP, hence it's obvious people would move on to the logical, much more interesting topic related to it, that is, tanker balance.
I'd bet dollars to peanuts if you didn't create this topic, nothing would have happened. If you truly intended to play backseat community manager, you can look at this as a lesson to what good it does. -
Most of you guys are getting way too hung up on the specific example and missing the OP's point.
I tend to alt or even stop playing the game for a bit when I hit the wall. Sometimes I'll go so far as to delete the character. -
Quote:There is no sense whatsoever to this particular retort. If different powerset dual builds would be implemented, it wouldn't change the ratio of farm xp to normal XP one bit. The only argument you could make is actually against your position, that is, being able to essentially level two different characters in one go can make farming less important and hence less attractive.
Because power-leveling through AE farming is not something that the game mechanics should actively encourage. I'm playing the game via the soloable story arcs, meaning I'm working pretty long and hard to get to level 50, and I'd be insulted if something like that was instituted and people like me were told "well go farm if you don't want to get left behind." -
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If I want to switch between two different playstyles, I log out and log in another alt.
I can understand the argument from people who like having all T4 incarnates and don't enjoy the grind to get there, though. I'm not against the suggestion, it's just not my thing personally. -
If I have a non-interruptible ally heal I'm not using on someone holding the aggro and as a result that person dies, I generally consider it a personal failure. I feel it's best to try to use powers optimally given the current situation rather than sticking to a particular role set in stone.
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Both can softcap with the same relative ease, although Ice leaves Cold, Fire and Psi open. Cold is plugged (to an extent) with resistances.
Ice gets a DP clone, slow immunity, infinite endurance, a slow aura and a fantastic T9 boosting your regen and resistance to godhood.
Nin gets a heal and some toys.
IMHO, if you don't mind the fire and psi hole and if concept isn't an issue, it's Ice all the way, compared not only to Nin but to every other stalker secondary. -
That is a pretty cool find, and nicely documented. Hilarious SOA video, too. Thanks!
I don't think I'll actually use it, but it's always fun to learn new things like this about the game. I never got beyond the much more cumbersome "bunnyhop and pray" method. -
Pros:
- looks cool
- terrific cone in Sweeping Strike (strong even by ST attack standards)
- looks cool
- plenty of AoE output, provided you can keep your enemies up close
- looks cool
Cons:
- redraw
- somewhat weak before level 26 (Sweeping Strike)
- secondary effects almost insignificant
- combo system fairly punishing and even downright broken at high levels of recharge
- redraw
As a tanker you'll definitely want to use Nimble Slash, which isn't too good of an attack unfortunately. Sweeping Strike is awesome. Ablating Strike is great. Blinding Feint is your "Build Up" type power, except it's an attack, and you'll want to slot it as such. Typhoon's Edge is your standard PBAoE. One Thousand Cuts is a relatively powerful cone, but comes with a long animation.
Vengeful Slice is a fairly poor attack, but it's part of the Attack Vitals combo which more than makes up for it. You definitely want VS while leveling, might respec out of it later if you have a lot of recharge going or don't particulary care for a complete ST attack chain.
I'd skip Power Slice; some may advice it for the TE>PS>OTC combo, but I find by the time you get OTC you will be animation locked even on SOs, and I prefer to insert a Sweeping Strike in there than Power Slice. YMMV. -
Brutes are nowhere close to 75% Tanker durability in most normal situations. Thankfully so, otherwise there'd be little point to play a Tanker. Damage is a lot more valuable than survivability generally speaking, so you need to have a much bigger survivability increase for any given damage decrease.
...I know at least one person is going to dispute that first sentence, and I have nothing better to do, so, numbers!
(at level 50)
Brute base HP: 1499.3
Tanker base HP: 1874.1
Increase from brute to tanker base HP = (1874.1/1499.3) - 1 = 0.25 = 25%
So that's a 25% difference from HP alone. Even the more theorically inclined would have to agree you need to multiply that to your standard base defense or resistance from powers difference between brutes and tankers, which is another 25%; all in all, a 56.25% increase from brute to tanker (or brutes having 64% tanker survivability, depending which way you want to look at it).
Such an answer would still ignore the greater returns you get from resistance as you get closer to the hard cap, and defense as you get closer to the soft cap. MaxHP is also doubly useful as it not only increases the amount of damage needed to defeat you, but improves your regeneration by a corresponding amount. -
Tankers have had their HP cap buffed a while back.
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Quote:Hear, hear.
But yeah, in general I'd say Tankers are underrated on the forums. Their damage is better than (seemingly) most people think, and their survivability is insane. Perhaps a higher buff ceiling for Tankers is warranted for the sake of high-end-team play, but as self-contained entities Tankers really aren't bad even compared with Brutes.
If it wasn't for defense being such a predominant form of mitigation while also being functionally the same on every AT, I'm not sure I would ever play a brute over a tanker nowadays.
While the base damage difference is only 6%, being base it also affects damage buffs; and Bruising might be ST, but I find it to be almost equivalent to a straight 20% damage increase, simply because in a typical encounter (that is, for me personally), what is left alive after the dust settles down is the one or two bosses per group, not minions or lieutenants - at which point, more ST damage is exactly what the doctor ordered.
Then there's that fantastic survivability allowing for much smaller focus on building for that or active mitigation, translating to even more damage. I can agree scrappers and brutes tend to outdamage tankers at the high end, but while leveling I find my tankers crank it up to x8 as soon as DOs whereas my scrappers/brutes will want to wait for SOs or abuse insps to the point even I, self-proclaimed pill junkie, doesn't find it enjoyable anymore.
The one pet peeve I have is that tier1s are not created equal, and for certain sets being "forced" into a subpar attack is a bummer. If any tanker buff was on the table, I'd rather it'd be that every ST tanker attack applied Bruising. It wouldn't stack so it wouldn't change much save for allowing the tanker to use his attacks as he wishes rather than having to initiate with and include the tier1 every 10 seconds for optimal damage output.
Small performance buff, huge QoL improvement, and it would smooth the gap between Bill the minmaxer who understands the system and applies Bruising optimally and Joe the average guy who doesn't even know what Bruising is, uses his attacks as he feels like and perhaps even removed the tier1 out of his rotation once he got better moves, -res not being exactly something obvious to see unless you delve into the numbers. -
As anyone who was playing before the ELA revamp knows, or anyone who even bothered to *test* it, Aid Self is fine without defense; although more of it obviously makes the power easier to use and results in less wasted end.
Between this and other posts he made on the beta boards, I am now convinced Starsman came back to this game only to troll the forums...
It's working, but I'll be damned if I'm fooled one more time. -
I find the difficulty pretty adequate while not using incarnate powers or picking the best possible combos. Heck, even when I still used incarnates I found challenges just fine without even touching the AE (which allows for near infinite levels of difficulty), as I don't do big teams much and when I do, I don't care for "hug the tank" or "stack buffs/debuffs" playstyles, generally opting to divide and conquer instead. Twice the aggro, twice the fun.
Steamrolling as the basic playstyle has been my experience with the game since about 2006, which is why I always have trouble to relate with those topics. The introduction of the RSF was the only time the game offered something truly hard for a bit, IMHO - until the endless amount of complaining from most people led to nerfs after nerfs.
Nowadays, seeking a challenge isn't that hard. With AE missions that can get all the way to groups of extreme/extreme AVs, and all the leeway between that and conventional mission difficulty, even the most powerful builds can get slapped silly.
One potential issue is if you're also expecting appropriate rewards for that level of challenge, but the above RSF example shows this can't be solved; if you make rewards appealing for super hard stuff, most of the playerbase will want to be able to beat it, won't, and will become frustrated.
What is fun to me is I have friends who complain about the lack of difficulty, too; and yet when I bring them into situations where the difficulty is high enough we die a few times or struggle a bit to get through, they start to get discouraged, sometimes really fast.
So do people truly like difficulty or do they only believe they do? I lean towards the latter, and seeing the overwhelming majority of folks in PuGs who won't dare stepping inside a mission without eight players or queuing for a trial, even a sewers one, without preforming their league makes it easy to believe most people don't want a challenge.
Quote:Yet, the use of inspirations was heavily discouraged. Which always struck me as an odd idea, because being temporary both in duration and in availability it adds a layer of complexity through proper management to the whole thing.We used to find the RWZ challenge challenging. Then it was AVs. Then, well, nothing really.
The argument was often made it turned things too easy; yet people have no problem using their incarnate powers all over the place, save for, ironically, Lore, which shares the temporary nature of insps.
I'm all for more difficulty options but I question whether it's needed, and whether the suggested fixes wouldn't break something for other players; for example, making level shifts essentially irrelevant (or even a slight nerf due to the hp/damage scaling) in DA missions would put a damper on the average Joe's feeling of power after "working hard" for his incarnate loot. -
Quote:Do note Shout has a 10s duration on its -res. Shriek is 5s and Scream 7s. Shout still has the worst animation time to -res duration ratio, but not by as much as you might believe at a quick glance.Originally Posted by Primantiss
I really only use it to finish off targets after I know I've stacked up a nice juicy dose of -Resists on them.
I believe it actually hurts your DPS to work it into your chain, as the animation time limits the amount of -Res stacks you can achieve on a single target. I fill my gaps with Howl, as mentioned above.
Shout gets a bad reputation for its long animation but in my calculations I don't see Shriek->Scream outperforming the "standard" chain, outside of specific situations, and in my testing I have never been in those situations.
(Of course, I'm not necessarily a good example. A /sonic doing itrials, for example, would likely hit the recharge cap often and in that situation not only the Sh->Sc chain would be better but it would also allow for more mobility to avoid eventual AoE patches of death).
The amount of recharge required for Sh->Sc to be above Sh->Sc->Sh->Shout at all is prohibitive, solo - it will vary from build to build, but for example, with 220% damage, a purple proc in Shriek and one normal damage proc in all 3 attacks it's about 460%. Using the Shout chain, which requires so little recharge basic IO slotting will get you there, a build can be instead focused on getting global damage bonuses putting it back at the first place, or pursuing other unrelated goals; although obviously recharge directly helps damage with some primaries, but even then I'd just get recharge for the primary and not try to shoot for Sh->Sc. -
I want to like regen, I truly do, but it does feel at times I'm spending more time to stay alive than to kill my enemies.
I'm still of the opinion toggle IH and a much faster activating MoG wouldn't make the set OP in any way. The aforementioned time spent using clickies coupled with the complete lack of defense and DDR give more than enough room for improvements.
Loving the recent rez changes, though - and I'm not being snarky. Death happens, and walking back from the hospital is a chore.
So, to answer the question how does it hold up in practice these days, I just don't think it does, compared to most other secondaries. Thankfully, in this game it still means you can make it incredibly sturdy and succeed at almost every task. -
I certainly wouldn't mind.
I bet you're going to see people arguing they do precise taunting and aggroing more than one enemy would wreck their masterfully crafted playstyle they spent years perfecting in the tibetan mountains or somesuch.
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Looked through the thread and didn't find it, does anyone know what is the sound for the Energy Cloak (Energy Aura) loop sound?
Alternatively, what do people use to view .pigg files in Win7 64 bits? I tried PiggViewer, but it's giving me a "missing MFC71.dll" error on startup. -
Here is what I'm planning so far:
Code:I went brute for the extra HP and aggro management, but also mostly because I just discovered the Brute ATO and it is fun to shoot that Fury bar right back to where it used to be before the nerf.| Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Hero Designer to view the build | |-------------------------------------------------------------------| |MxDz;1517;715;1430;HEX;| |78DA7594CB4F534114C667EEBD0529055A0B940A85168196166AABB8F049441E01A| |9A1121F71D3DCD8119AD4D2B42591A57B37EAC2852E7CEE149FFF80FF8FA01B1FF1| |917A3ADF293469BCE9CD6FEE37E7CC9C73BFE94DDD9E756D2FDC9916B2FD7CDE2E9| |73333A5CD8A6ABD6857364B76DE1474B5D2EDD37226A5F24AC56737ED7C66266F67| |55D90F7D56DD5485B28ACF1554696D2B738E723D8B85755552854ABC3E70AD6C6CE| |4E3CBCA2EE60A6B4EFDB05A542ADB55D7B3AA545ECF153BF4F37C6E6DBD4281FEB9| |62EE467DE1945DAEA8D2168AECA3BAA2747F13F5AB6A8A15C2B025C269E625707C1| |57C550B933AD6123D34485AA277DED4EC5B02437F693A6089E8053C7FAFA788AA43| |C60CAD19516618B422CC71B0E513D16B896DCA32B19F61F27E83DD4C37F883661DB| |CBE63C7D07BB77C065DBB60675EE8D8CE5BA0BB00FEACF923A5CE6D7D897A0F3C61| |3E059DCF98CF41D70BF00D65B52157B485B0DE6B423BEA15ED3EA9F7EEA503D001C| |DECE01E26B88709EEE1483FD67C4B515D9CDF7514DA2F7AF2A03FCBC3FE8CB13F63| |EC4F98FD896651C73B8297DF9B97F71CE13D4778CF61AAAB0731B22786BC5EA687E| |67C3CE73B4EB04CD1C7FC4DF0F3FBF69F815F874E334F80032799A7C0C169F4F29E| |B2FAF569A81AFD7731177D004EDC03BDB47700EB1B81473807E38FC149AEE10F618| |86B18628F83EC7D90BD0FB2E721F63CC49E7FA8BD2A3EC3C341D475788019600E82| |2343E0478A1EC57E72749192C354CB02E82473225C6FE43FF54AEA29861811ABD22| |54C52E2EC507C8A4F418299042D8A49704C825D4CB28B497671C749FF2E3E317212| |1D7ED9D71CF20AE2DC97C18369E612AAEF0EA1C3EEB338ADBB8DEB45B0DED77DCD9| |0416863F7E156F2213B6DED7D45E857EB30DAA4249A94649372AC49996A52E66B8A| |4CD594EA72D3EC8AB5F7BD11522B6D6EFA8A40A9A69D3A528FAF368CAF358CAF378| |CD35E6A8FC7FF002D81ED13| |-------------------------------------------------------------------|
I like to leverage Overload and Energy Drain together, so the greater Brute HP cap and base should come in handy along with a Spiritual-boosted Rebirth +regen to deliver good regen numbers.
I share many of your build design goals and choices, BF>AS>SS>AS as a ST chain, some AoEs on the side, assuming at most one in range for drains. I skimped on the resistances and incarnate defense though, I feel I can be happy with merely S/L/E icapped as I like to abuse insps along with the option to pop Overload whenever the going gets tough.
Endurance consumption should be sustainable, using Energize as a perma CP with the additional bonus of healing and some regen rather than the other way around, with a 2.96 drain per second using the ST chain and a 2.37 recovery before procs (+) or Hasten (-) are considered. The occasional ED should be more than enough to plug that gap.
Focused Accuracy and Tactics are there because I hate missing regardless of the circumstances, planning to turn these on and off as needed (likely off all the time when soloing AVs!). I also picked Vengeful Slice so I can run BF>AS>VS>SS if I exemplar or get severely recharge debuffed, and Power Slice is slotted for exemplar reasons as well.
Planning to get those small flying drones for Lore (mostly because they are subtle-looking) and the doublehit Hybrid - seeing as I'm a brute, I assume the damage buffing one would be worse. -
I haven't got anything to say, but I want to thank you. I'm making a similar build as a brute and seeing yours got me thinking of several improvements I could make to mine.
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You used to get around 200-300 millions influence if you played from level 1 to 50 normally, without farming anything, selling your common stuff (enhancements, standard IOs) to the vendor and listing your remaining drops for 1 influence on the market. With the introduction of hero merits and signature story arcs and enhancement converters smoothing out the worth of rare IOs, I'd wager that total would be higher now.