Nihilii

I started thinking "it shouldn't matter as the proportions remain the same", but now I'm not sure.

Do we know how many times each of these procs stack? The -res I've heard the number four stacks thrown around by many sources so I think it's reliable, but for the fire dot I'm not quite sure how it works. Is there a limit of four dots active on the same target in a time period of ten seconds, for example? I'm not quite sure how to test this reliably.

My point being, if one of the procs can have more stacks than the other, then it's possible a faster animating attack chain could have more use of one rather than the other as it'd hit the cap on the lower capping one easily.

Given the current limitations of the LFG tool, I've found the best use for it is to team up with a few friends and then queue. Our league gets filled with people that are often more casual than the crowd hanging out in preset teams, so it's more challenging and fun for us, and (I hope) rewarding for the other folks in that they get to complete a trial without as much trouble as on a complete PUG queue. Another plus is that there is no lag at the minimum team size.

I agree that as it is, it's really not suited for real pickup groups. The tool needs work to serve its intended purpose.

It probably varies a bit based on your current DPS and the amount of -res you already have in your attack chain (as the fire damage is essentially adding a fixed amount of damage, whereas the -res multiplies the damage you already have).

IMHO
High DPS = -res
Low DPS = fire

The question is at which point does it break even. My gut feeling says 200ish.

I got my T3 Warworks. I kind of forgot how low boss regen is compared to ours... Rebirth by itself isn't anywhere near enough to let Vicky survive against a pylon, sure enough she died in 30 seconds.

Of course, pylons have an AOE attack flagged as ranged, which isn't all that common against most AVs.

With the remaining ACU, I got a ~50 pylon DPS increase, going from 200 to 250.

In comparison, with T3 Clockworks, I went from 200 to 340. Seems fairly nice already.

I agree that Mo is best - no time spent pulling, more astral merits, what's not to like - and pulling to the doorway by the helipad is better than courts (easier pulls on top of sharing xp and easier management as you mention), just made this post to specifically address the way people pull to courts, for teams that prefer doing so. I definitely am not suggesting pulling to courts is the way to go.

I can't see -10% res breaking an encounter by itself.

It might actually fix some encounters. I consider foes with 100% S/L res and less than 100% res to everything else to be broken, S/L damage is being singled out for thematical reasons even though it's on par in damage with other types of damage before resistances are considered.

[Specifically, HOW to pull to the courts. I recognize this isn't anywhere near the most efficient place to pull to, but for better or worse many PUGs insist on pulling to the courts.]

This might be a bit preaching to the choir, as most people browsing the forums are experienced, but then again I see plenty of names from the forums in trials... And I sometimes see those names doing pulls wrong.

Now I'm not claiming there is one true way, but when I see tankers with taunt taking 3 minutes to pull Siege to the courts whereas I only take 2 without, I think there's a problem.

Most people seem to taunt the AV once and then, are vaguely running around while waiting for them to catch up. The problem with that is Siege and Nightstar have very long range. If you just stand still 60 feet from them, even if you Taunt, most likely they will stop, shoot you, move a bit forward, stop, shoot you, and so on.

Instead, you can break line of sight by hiding behind a wall. That way the AV goes straight to your position .

For Nightstar, this is fairly straightforward - you can hug the wall of the building near the helipad. It's about 40 feet away from the courts, so once she gets there, she's almost where you want her to be.

Nightstar also seems to fly, and she moves much, much faster when she flies than while on the ground. I don't have Fly myself and only pulled her once like that by accident (maybe by jumping high with GvE pack activated, I'm not sure), she zipped from her spawn point to the courts in about ten seconds.

For Siege, personally I hide behind the wall of his own building first, then the helipad one again. It's not a straight line to the courts, but it at least goes faster than standing in range.

Fighting the reinforcements also aggroes the AV, so if whoever is pulling dies and there's nobody else around, you can make sure the AV doesn't head back to its spawn point by hitting reinforcements.

Once you're at the courts, their range doesn't magically shrink either. You don't want to sit right where you want them to be, but farther away (i.e. if you want them middle of the court and they're at one side, you should probably be at least at the other side of the court). Keep in mind in PUGs people will start throwing slows on the AVs regardless of what you tell them, so at some point it's best to call it good enough and attack. Spending a full minute to get an AV to move a few feet isn't worth it when the actual time saved later on will be maybe half of that time.

There might be better ways to do this. I suppose ideally with Taunt you should be able to ignore LoS completely and stand at long enough range to pull them in a straight line to their killing point. Feel free to correct me and post better tactics if you have some.

What's important is there is really no reason to spend two minutes pulling Nightstar or three minutes pulling Siege, yet I see that happening on 2 BAFs out of 3.

Lots of fantastic looking costume in there, very impressive. Cheeze Head's in particular looks so good it almost seems photoshopped rather than out of the game, heh.

No, I don't think the people holding aggro I've played with do that. I play on preset PUG teams, and they tend to hug the AV without thinking twice. I just position myself at the edge and I avoid being sequestered, not in theory but from actual experience.

I'm not advocating staying in melee after the second warning, just strictly speaking about the range of sequestration itself.

FU > Slash > Lunge > Strike > Swipe is a good chain. I'm not sure it's the best chain.

I've had a scrapper build with Hover and Confront to safely tank LR in the STF. Usually playing 2 accounts for that, so I could put her up and autoConfront, and fight the towers with the second account.

Confront (just like Taunt) can also be useful in BAF if your team wants to pull the AVs. Siege and Nightstar have very long range, so unless you break LoS or use Taunt/Confront you're going to have to run very, very far away to get them to run up to you.

... That said, I'm not even completely sure it works in that second scenario, I just assume it does.

My reasoning regarding buff vs DPS is the same as Flower, with a 1/3 uptime I'm not big on the buff side so I go with the DPS lieut.

I first tried Seers for the ranged psi damage against highly resistant mobs - Statesman in LRSF, Hero 1 in LGTF, Minotaurs and Cyclops in the ITF, or even Longbow Wardens popping Unstoppable in regular missions. It didn't turn out as well as I expected. The Diviner runs into melee and dies quickly. The Seer only has one psi attack out of three - her Dominate doesn't do damage, and Levitate is smashing. Still useful for the intended purpose, but not so great by itself.

I'm now using Clockworks. Both stay at range and they have some AoEs. Damage seems decent, but not really impressive or reliable enough compared to my own damage, so I don't know.

(Edit: just noticed a fairly annoying problem with the Clockwork boss. His chain power is considered as a different source of damage, you don't get credit/rewards for the damage it does.)

I'll probably try the warworks next. With boss HP, the Victoria should be able to survive much better than the Diviner lieutenant, hopefully (I have Rebirth, so the extra HP is significant as it means the pet will regen that much faster).

The problem is that every other powerset can do the same, and then more.

It's silly how many arguments in these forums are derailed like

Player A : "2 is lower than 3."
Player B : "That doesn't matter at all, because 2 has a beautiful and unique shape completely different from 3! You should appreciate this beautiful shape and not worry about 3 being higher than 2!"

... which is of course missing the point, because if player A wouldn't care about flavor, he'd be using the best option already.

Like I said above, which a very passive aggressive someone tried to ignore simply by writing off my argument as a mere dismissal of his own, 1 well timed blue inspiration, 2-3 lucks and maybe a green is time, resources and attention spent. Ethereal temp power is completely crazy by my standards as it's a full 30 seconds spent out of the fight.

I can understand the point of view of people who don't care about performance and enjoys toying with the crash, but just because the crash is fun to some doesn't make it balanced. Unfortunately for me, fortunately for you guys, it probably means we won't ever see changes to the power.

I'd certainly be interested in seeing dev stats of the % of WP/Shield users who take SoW and OttC compared to the number of Invul/Elec users who take Unstop and Surge, compared against the # of uses of these powers over time. My guess is the number is about the same in the first case, and much higher for WP/Shield than Invul/Elec in the second one.

For me what usually happens is I spend 2-4 seconds popping purples before crash and/or stepping back and/or popping a blue and/or popping DP and ~20 seconds toggling back up (Invincibility, Unyielding, Temp Invul, Tough, Weave, Maneuvers, Tactics - total time for these toggles is about 17 or 18 seconds if Mids numbers, adjusted for server ticks, are correct, and without looking at it deeply I feel that it fits with my experience in game). So all in all, a good 23 seconds to handle a crash.

Let's say I'm really bad at the game, and that a good player (by some tactic that I admit I don't fully understand) doesn't even waste a millisecond preparing/recovering from the crash itself and doesn't lag. With a build similar as mine, he's still going to have to deal with a 17 second downtime to toggle up. No amount of skill will compress that time period, it's the activation time of the toggles added up.

I don't really care if my team can manage or not without me while I'm recovering - most likely they can, and most likely by taking steps reducing their damage output compared to if I was up and holding aggro. Sometimes I do hold aggro while retoggling anyway. I don't even care if I have a team at all. The point is, no matter what situation I'm in, I'm out of the fight for 23 seconds. The point is, no matter how good I would be at the game, I would be out of the fight for 17 seconds. For a 3 minute power, that's significant downtime, especially considering there are more and more options that will give the same return - not necessarily in terms of pure numeric values, but in staying alive without more effort ; and those options won't have a hefty crash that ends up in forced downtime even in the best case scenario.

The crash is 100% endurance. My brute has 124 endurance right now and always does a full crash to 0 even if I'm full.

I don't think anybody complained about deaths due to the crash in this topic, unless I misread. The problem is the resources involved to deal with the crash ; insps, time, attention.

In a +4/x8 mission, ST damage is critical to me. At level 54, minions have roughly 500hp, lieutenants 1000hp and bosses 2500hp. If I just AoE, bosses will survive with more than half of their HP, and then what? Use more time on the bosses as I just did on the rest of the group? No, I'll pass. I find a good balance of ST and AoE damage to work better, at least for me.

I haven't tried Barrier on a Crab, that's a fair point. Regardless of pets living or not, lacking AoE mezzes to manipulate their AI or MM controls to directly control them means I can't rely on them doing their damage on what matters (the bosses) as long as lieutenants and minions are alive, nor can I get them to focus on one boss rather than, i.e., chase the other one who's running away and do nothing while trying to melee (spiderlings I'm looking at you). Compared to one standing still target, big difference.

I found my Crab ST DPS to be lackluster. Sure, in I19 I could hit over 300 DPS on a rikti pylon - with pets out.

In a solo +4/x8 mission, what happens is my pets get wiped out in seconds and I'm left doing about ~130 DPS if not less than that, which is about average tanker damage.

Rikti pylons always were a terrible benchmark for anything that isn't a melee class* lacking abilities like regen debuffs, pets, location based debuffs ; the way the encounter works means you're simply going to get values that often won't compare to actual results in the real game, it's a lot of "if such and such" happens.

*and even for these ATs, there can be discrepancies. For example, having 10 targets all the time, not most of the time, all the time in AAO range? Not happening.

I think it's based on APM exclusively.

Ok, maybe not. The idea of 24 CoH players frantically hitting their keyboard keys like those Starcraft 2 pro players makes me smile.

(Let's try to post something actually relevant now.)

There's another thread on the same topic in the "For Fun!" section, over here. It might be better to gather all the information in one place.

Dark Armor has always looked like a mess to me, graphically. It's a big black blur of particles that evokes nothing.

Then a few days ago, I saw that guy named Living Sand (link to picture), a spines/DA scrapper. The screenshot doesn't do it justice, ingame it really looks like he's some kind of sand monster. That's a pretty awesome use of power customisation, turning a poor looking set (IMHO) into a whole new, good-looking concept.

So it got me to wonder, have you seen any really cool and inventive uses of power customisation out there? Any screenshots to share?

I'm mostly getting Uncommons on my DB/inv brute (not level shifted yet), with the occasional Rare or Common. I got Commons 3 times out of 3 when I crashed midway into the trial.

On one trial with my fire/cold controller, I got a Rare.

A friend of mine purposefully leeched 2 or 3 trials (I'm not sure, I know it is at least 2) and got 10 threads each time.

As far as I know, you have it right. Damage debuffs and self resistance work independently and stack together very well.

I like these suggestions. Here's hoping they make it so.