Nocturnal_Pulse

Wanted to share this thread I started about finding a Dom secondary for PvP, specifically looking at Thorns. Some pretty good discussion and numbers were put forth, and it surprises me that Thorns doesn't get more credit as a PvP set.

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat....=0#Post13640832

This is good stuff here, the discussion has gotten quite robust. The redraw sounds like a bit of a pain, but when you think about it, you only put the thorns away to CC people, thus they're a bit tied up while you drop like a rock during the redraw/cast time of your next attack. All the evidence seems to point to Thorns being equally as viable as Elec, so I'm going to go with it.

I'm still open-minded to other ideas, it's just that nobody has put forth a reason aside from long animation times and redraw on Thorns. Elec's biggest attack has a significantly longer aniimation time and it's melee. How useful are the other parts of Elec? I just want to make sure I'm not building a one-trick pony.

Not meaning to repeat myself or anything, but if I can get similar results to Thunderstrike, from 80 feet away, for 7 less endurance, with some time to move in the middle of the cast time, and can do it over and over again, not to mention reduce their resists by 20% some of the time, why is Thunderstrike better? Having a knockdown and a mez seems redundant in PvP for a Mind Dominator, as my primary will take care of those on demand, from range, and then they will be immune for a bit. I'm just not feeling the idea of intentionally going into melee range as a squishy, seems counter-intuitive, and it seems to me that there's a better option available.

Doesn't Electric have the same problem? The biggest source of damage in the set has a 3.3 second cast time, and in melee range no less. It only has 2 ranged attacks. Thorns has Impale which is a 2.43 cast time but from 80 feet, and can then follow up with Thorny Darts at 1.33 cast time, adds up to about the same damage but from 80 feet away, .46 seconds more cast but you can move between them, and they are back up extremely fast. Also about 7 less endurance use total. This isn't counting procs either. How bad is the redraw on Thorns?

Doms look like fun and I want to try one out, I would like a build that's good in both PvP and PvE, though PvP gets preference if there has to be a tradeoff. Decided on Mind for primary. I'm just wondering why I don't see many builds clamoring for /Thorns for PvP, because on paper it looks like an incredible set for it. It has 4 very hard hitting medium and long range attacks, no need to even go into melee, unlike /Elec for example. It has relatively long activation times but due to the way PvP works now, it increases the damage in proportion to that. It has a useful secondary effect in -defense, which also helps by being able to put some good procs into it. It also has Aim.

/Elec seems to be the most popular secondary for PvP. It stacks up well but seems to have you depending on going into melee to do serious damage via Thunderstrike. It's arguable that Mind provides a good ranged damage chain on its own but with secondaries getting buffed next issue, I think I'd rather have some more ranged damage in my secondary.

On the other hand, I know that things on paper don't always translate to working in practice. What would you recommend for me? Keep in mind I'm not a big fan of being a 1-trick pony and relying on one skill for mega damage, especially when I can throw 2 things at the same time as a /thorns that do just slightly less damage in the same amount of time and from range, and recharge 3x as fast. Is /Elec overrated, and is /Thorns good in PvP especially after next Issue? Express your opinion.

Can they? I'm thinking of rolling up a Corruptor for PvP, and was curious on what build to go with. I've heard that Rad blast is great when you put a bunch of procs in it, but was wondering how it would stack up to the damage of Fire or Sonic (the other two contenders for my build). If the procs don't Scourge, I'd imagine this would affect its killing ability.

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pvp isnt what made WoW successful, and those who say mmorpg's should all have pvp i notice rather conveniently refuse to play a game like eve online

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Hmm, sorry but I just have to say something. If you're implying that Eve is the definition of "hardcore sandbox pvp", that is simply incorrect. In a game where your skills are directly measured by the amount of time you've been subscribed, even offline most of the time, good luck trying to get into PvP if you're a newcomer vs people who have been playing for years, and I'm not talking about skill as a player either. Eve's PvP is a joke for this reason. And as far as WoW goes, yes PvP is not its main attraction, but it has always been a secondary draw for the game; if their PvP was simply absolute garbage like it is in this game, I bet they would lose a noticeable amount of subscribers. That's not to say that WoW's PvP is good, because it isn't, but most of the people playing it aren't aware of that and think it's the best PvP ever simply because it's their first MMO and they haven't tasted PvP from any real hardcore games like Shadowbane and such.

Sorry but this just isn't true when you research the numbers. In PvP, for Sonic at least, Defenders and Corruptors do the exact same damage, but Defenders still debuff 5% more resists per attack. Corruptors do get Scourge, so it roughly evens out I suppose, but then Defenders still have way better Radiation debuffs. Defender Enervating Field debuffs resists by 40%, Corruptors do 22.5%. Defender Radiation Infection debuffs to-hit/defense by 31.25%, Corruptors do 25%. So on and so forth. And then Defenders have a great Epic pool to go along with it as well, so yeah IMO in PvP a Rad/Sonic Def >>> Sonic/Rad Corruptor.

I just noticed that Dual Blades has an option for a Falcata, the short blade that curves towards the edge. This would be perfect for an early era Celtic type warrior, if you decide to go with that. You sound like you would personally prefer Dual Blades, so I would probably go with that and let the minor historical conflicts be damned, if that's what would make you happy with the character.

Both are very effective, it depends on what you want really. Broadsword has a lot of CRUNCH to it, slow attacks with huge orange numbers flying up and such, haven't tried Dual Blades but from others I've teamed with before who had it, it seems more finesse and stylish, very nice animations.

Very cool guide, I was planning on making a Plant/Storm troller as a "Druid" theme so it's good to know where to specialize, and that it will have good synergy.

Hmm, so it seems this depends on the context of what you're doing to farm. I'm new to this stuff; is it usually faster to just get on an AE team doing Boss missions or go solo stuff, and in what area? Seems like Dark would be better for soloing in difficult areas but would be less useful on a Boss AE team for example, because then you have a tank taking the hits and you just need to dish out maximum damage. I'm leaning more towards Fire right now because of this.

If you want to go strictly historical, I would recommend BS/SD. Dual wielding blades in real world historical warfare was, generally speaking, a bad idea. The shield is just that important. However, if you are set on Dual Blades then the Gladiator, Swashbuckler and possibly Samurai would work well, also possibly a Norse berserker (who historically wore shields for the most part, but they're crazy enough that some of them no doubt went without). The Samurai for the most part just used their katana, with the shorter wakizashi being a tool for Seppuku, but Musashi Miyamoto became famous for his dual wielding technique and he was quite successful with it indeed.

As far as shields go, the Swashbuckler would fit perfectly well with a buckler, it was used in duels well into the Renaissance. If you have the Valkyrie set, its blade has a basket hilt that fits the look, though its blade is a bit short for a sabre.

The Knight should be sword/shield, no doubt about it. A kite shield with some sort of bright heraldry on it would look fitting.

The Samurai didn't use shields, Katana would be ideal but Dual Blades would work for a deviant Samurai, as described above.

Use a bronze khopesh and shield for the Egyptian.

As far as Endurance problems go, I heard on another thread that slotting the Endurance proc into Dark Regeneration helps greatly with that. Fire still wins because of Consume, but still. It really seems like Dark gets vastly superior potential survivability with an extra defense power and a heal that can bring you from almost nothing to full off of a small number of things around you, AND has a lower recharge time than Fire's heal. I want to try and softcap this guy, or at least try and get a good amount of defense on him, so Dark seems more conducive to that, however I want to know how much damage I'd be giving up by passing over Fire.

My goal is to be able to solo spawns of all Bosses in AE for example, without going squish. Can Fire stand up to that kind of punishment? Also if anyone could post some good builds for either of these on a moderate budget, it would be appreciated.

To make a long story short, I would like a character that can make me money quickly via farming, and is fun to play. I have a Fire/Kin I'm working on but he just doesn't do it for me, I like doing damage a bit more directly.

In any case, I've boiled it down to Spines, and then Dark or Fire. I've seen good cases made for both but I'd like to see a discussion specifically comparing their merits as related to each other. Which has more potential when IO'd on a cost-efficient budget?

Seems like they both have similar resists. Dark gets 3.75% more base defense. Dark gets a much better heal. It also gets a choice of a couple of minor control auras (Cloak of Fear catches my eye mainly for the tohit debuff, both controls don't seem that great to me because they can only affect minions). Fire seems like it gets more damage from a slightly higher damage aura, and then Fiery Embrace. It also gets Burn which I have heard mixed opinions on. Seems a bit more squishy overall but faster kills. Is it really that much more damage compared to Dark?

Broadsword/Regen. I love the animations and sound of Broadsword, nothing like laying down a big *CRRUUUUNCH* on the enemies as they fall over, and I like seeing big numbers. Parry also synergizes with Regen, adding some defense (against melee anyways) to a set that lacks it completely. Can't count how many times Parry has saved my [censored]. Having extra endurance recovery from Regen also means non-stop killing, on an endurance-heavy set.

And then there's Regen, which enables me to master the HP-Rollercoaster Technique. I also become nigh-indestructible with a few buffs, to defense especially. If we make a bad pull in the group I just pop a couple of purples along with my own clickies and I can stand up to almost anything, I can even wade in and start AOE'ing them to grab some aggro and keep it off the rest of the group. BS/Regen is pure badassery in a can.

I have a vampire concept character myself, he is a Broadsword/Regen Scrapper. I think it fits pretty well personally. He has a red, armored look using mostly Valkyrie pieces plus the Occult high collared cloak. Yeah, Regen has that glowie aura toggle, but at 30 I gave him green fiery eyes, looks like eerie spectral flames coming out of him and then the Regen glowie just reinforces the look. Incidentally, green is also a complimentary color to red.

Just off the top of my head, some power sets that come to mind are:

Dark Anything
Regen
Willpower
Super Strength
Any of the swords
Claws maybe
Super Reflexes
Invulnerability
Storm

There's really a LOT of things you could do with it depending on what "type" of Vampire you can envision him as. Heck, pretty much anything aside from maybe stuff like Radiation and Assault Rifle would fit. After trying out a Dark Melee Scrapper I'm especially fond of its attack animations for a Vampire type character.

From the perspective of someone who has PvP'd across many MMOs much more PvP-focused than this one, PvP in this game was broken before and it is broken now. They just exchanged one set of problems for different ones. Last time I subbed to this game was about a year ago, I remember going on the forums asking for a good melee build for PvP and the general response was "LoLmelee". With movement and slows in the state that it was before it was just overkill, go ranged or go home. So they nerfed slows to oblivion along with a lot of movement in general, and melee dominates now.

I'm not really sure they can ever balance PvP in this game because it is inherently broken, because it wasn't a part of the equation right from the beginning. I wasn't around in this game's first days but from what I understand, there was no PvP at all until CoV was released. None. Zero. There is the root of the problem right there. The devs simply don't give a damn about PvP, it's not what they're passionate about, and they obviously don't have much experience with it. I'm really not sure what they could do at this point to fix it and I'll leave that up to people more knowledgeable about this particular game than I.

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What would the tier 9 in a dual pistols be? Dont get me wrong, Im gonna make me one the day it comes out (hopefully in beta). But I am just wondering what kind of "nova" you can get with dual pistols. It doesnt have to be "real", lord knows RoA isn't.

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Whirlwind of Bullets!

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Tetragrammaton Waltze

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slmgp...eature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRFqA...eature=related

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Heh yeah something like that. Equilibrium is such an awesome movie.

Cool concept, but as has been said, what you are after already exists in the game, you just have to go get it. It's the nature of MMOs; you have goals to work towards. It is unrealistic to ask the devs to bend over backwards and make something just especially for you, basically it's not going to happen, you have to work with what you have. It's a cool concept, but you are asking for something that will never be as the game currently stands (standard archetype that is a ranged tank from level 1).

The way I see it, your options are:

1. Make a Tanker and level him up to 41 to pick up your Epic powers. Leveling is faster than ever before thanks to the AE, just get in a good group and it won't take an unreasonable amount of time to get there. I noticed your post in the Defender forums and you said you solo exclusively (if I remember correctly). Again, this goes back to being realistic about what to expect out of a MMO. In this particular one, leveling goes 10x faster in a group, generally speaking.

2. Get a character to 50 and roll a Peacebringer. You say the "concept is already decided for you" but that is not necessarily true. You can be a Peacebringer in game terms only and write your story however you see fit.

3. Wait until Champions Online comes out September 1st. You'll be able to do exactly the character you want in this game because there are no archetypes, you can pick any powers you want from a long list in any combination. In particular there was a very nice video on the Power Armor framework released recently, just do a search for it. I won't post a link because I don't want to ruffle any feathers here by showing off a game that will clearly compete with this one for subscribers.

I believe Blasters also get some resistance powers in their Epic pools, so that's a 4th option I guess, they'll still be squishy though.

I'm looking to make a Defender for PvP for a mix of zones (including teaming in them sometimes) and 1v1, and have decided to take sonic blast on them because the set simply has everything I could ask for in it as a Defender. For primaries I'm torn between Rad or Cold.

Rad has AM which gives a little bit of everything plus mez protection which is especially nice. It can also heal itself which is a nice bonus. It has some nice debuffs as well, but two of them are toggles which can be dropped when you get mezzed. On the other hand this means that they have low recharges so if I have a few fights close together or there is a multi-person fight going on they will be available for the next victim.

Cold doesn't rely on toggles for the most part, but it doesn't have a heal either, or any mez protection. It does have a bit of stealth and some resistances, and the debuffs are really sick. It seems to be more recommended than Rad overall for PvP nowadays from what I've seen in other threads.

Hmm yeah you're right, even non-travel speed buffs get suppression now, just tried it out on my fire/kin in Sirens. Well, that kind of rained on my parade, since that was my whole idea for this guy. Just tried to help some other heroes catch this guy who was running with a Siphon Speed, he didn't seem to slow down (he'd been hit before) and I got suppression so I actually lost ground on him, because that makes a lot of sense right? Back to the drawing board.

Had this idea for a fun PvP character the other day. It seems like travel suppression is a big deal, so I figured, wouldn't it be fun to make a toon that effectively has an unsuppressable Superjump? In addition to being ultra-speedy, Kinetics also has some great Endurance drain stuff, so I figured it would have good synergy with Electric blast in an effort to completely drain an opponent and leave them helpless. This seems to be a popular strategy on redside with their elec/therm corruptors, so it seems quite viable.

I just want to hear some feedback on what to expect while playing it. It doesn't have to be the greatest 1 on 1 PvP build ever, as long as it's viable and I won't just be getting farmed. Would this be a good combo if well-played? And should I pick up travel powers on it? Will they add to my speed or maneuverability further even during suppression or are they just going to hog up my slots? I have mostly Zone PvP in mind, though I wouldn't mind venturing into the Arena at some point as well.