NotDoc

Originally posted by Statesman:
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Turn that frown upside-down, little fella.

Glad to hear you're looking into it. But...

You seem to understand that minions/Lts become easy, trivial, and boring at high levels. A boss buff doesn't change that at all. As of Issue 3, most of our fights are easy, trivial, and boring and 5% (in which a Boss appears) are anywhere from hard to impossible.

I understand fully that you want to make the game challenging to encourage grouping, but singling out *just* Bosses is a bad idea.

I'd have to agree with all of your zone ratings.

Rikti Crash Site and Shadow Shard, in addition to their other problems, give my computer a heart attack. I'm fine everywhere else but these zones drop me to 3 fps when I'm the only one there. Yuck! Probably has to do with too many mobs spawning on the map and nobody doing anything about them.

Faultline is just so much of a pain in the butt for travel, it should be made a 30s or 40s zone and filled with high level Council/Malta/Nem.

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If a player sees a boss of his level, he should probably get help...

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I disagree with that thinking for a few reasons.

First, bosses are so common in solo missions. If I started soloing missions, I guarantee I'd find a must-defeat boss by the third one. This debate has been raging since pre-release, but many of us play CoH because we're not forced to group. Needing a group to defeat an AV I can see, but not a solitary boss.

Second, many of us can still easily defeat the new bosses. Those who could beat the old bosses can beat the new ones. Those who could barely beat the old bosses have no hope against the new ones. These changes don't hurt my high-level Tanker or my Scrapper but they make Defenders and Controllers even more unappealing than before.

Third (and I think most important): huge disparity between min/Lt and boss difficulty. Is it your intent that missions be pathetic, easy walkthroughs followed by one hellish/impossible fight at the end? 29 minutes of boredom, 1 minute of excitement followed by debt?

I'm against the boss-only changes. Heck, I liked the changes to ALL 25+ villains better than this. At least the challenge was evenly distributed between min/Lt/boss during that period.

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Another thing, which perhaps can be answered by people who have it on live, when you teleport with granite do you hover two seconds or drop like when rooted?

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No hovering! It's awesome to teleport in and immediately do a ground-only move like Fault or Tremor. Talk about a surprise attack!

This feature makes for fun gameplay between TP and Granite, so I really hope they don't change it.

Lot of interesting responses from my fellow Poo men.

* Rooted with END Recovery: I had it for a while. It was one of the reasons I made my Stoner in the first place and it was awesome to have less END troubles at the cost of being stuck to the ground. 6-slotted it was truly great. When they ner-- I mean 'bug fixed' Rooted and changed it from END to health recovery, it met with tons of resistance from the small Stone community on the boards, and for good reason. The overwhelming cry was 'but I didn't NEED more health!' and it still holds true.

Anyway, geko posted plenty on the change at the time and said that no toggle will EVER give you more END than it uses, so we can forget about them doing that to Rooted.

* Stay immobile, but make Rooted better?: Yes, I would love that! I agree with anyone who said it's appropriate for the set to stick yourself to the ground. It requires tactics which is always fun. Rooted really does need to be better to stay balanced with a fully mobile Unyielding, though. To those who think Unyielding Stance got nerfed because it has a -def debuff (of unknown magnitude), all I have to say is it stacks with TI now. That means fully mobile, with full status protection and 88% res vs. lethal and smash at level 12. Compared to that, standing in place to get Fast Healing type +regen is a joke. IMHO.

* Stacking armors: I'd rather they make Crystal, Brim, and Mineral enormously resistant (at the expense of lethal/smash armor) than make them stack. That would certainly retain the flavor of the set. At the moment, their base def/res is simply too low to make them (a) worth using when any lethal/smash is being done and (b) worth 6-slotting--which would cost 15 slots for situational armors. Crystal/Brim/Min should be able to reach the cap (either def or res) with 2 SOs and should NOT stack. That would make them worth using against a fire boss, even if the minions are all lethal, for example.

Again, just my suggestion. Other people have good ideas, too. I concur that just letting the armors as they are stack is a bad idea.

Thanks!

...And here I was hoping to drop a ring of feces on the ground before running into every fight.

I'm not trying to give you an inferiority complex about your set. It's my set too. I have quite a bit of experience with both Rooted and U.S. at the low, mid, and high end of the game, and Rooted's healing factor is simply not important. Even with 6 Healing SO's, it's not a defense.

Why do you want to stand still while an Invuln person tanks better than you and has combat mobility? *boggle*

I wouldn't mind having a self-Immob status resist power if it gave a worthwhile bonus for the tradeoff. The fact is, though, that Rooted was inferior to US to begin with.

US: +res all but psi, status protection
Rooted: double healing rate, status protection

That "double healing rate" thing might sound impressive, but it's really not. You can actually tank stuff with only US on; try tanking anything with only Rooted on and your health bar shrinks to nil.

If these changes go through without a mobile Rooted, here's what you will have until 32:

Inv Tank
- TI and Unyielding stacked for huge +res lethal/smash
- Unyielding for +res to energy and elements
- Mobility during combat

Stone Tank
- Rock Armor for some +def lethal/smash (inferior to +res)
- No stacking armors until Issue 4
- Has to stand still for the whole fight

Again, if a Rooted Stoner had some advantage over a mobile Invuln tank, I wouldn't care about the self-Immob. They don't, though.

Let me out of my poo cage!

The change to Unyielding is a great idea, but someone forgot about the Stone tankers. Rooted is our only status protection until level 32, and it apparently isn't getting changed to a mobile power. Are we to be stuck to the ground until 32 while the Inv and Fire and Ice tankers roam free?

I'm not begrudging the Inv people their improvements, but Rooted needs a change too for balance! It's not even as though it provides +res like Unyielding. Its side effect (improved health regen) is not combat effective.

Please, Statesman... let the poo men move around! Stone is already the inferior stepchild of Invuln because +def is flat out less effective than +res. Don't make us stand still for 32 levels!

Thanks.

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7. We are not looking at Flight...

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Right. Gotta keep with that comic book feel. I mean, every member of the X-Men, JLA, and Avengers has Super Speed and glowing orange feet, right?

It was fun.

How about quickly programming new icons for the Treat inspirations that look like candy? Mystical, bewitched candy?

My only other suggestion is to increase the number/level of the Trick mobs. They weren't much of a challenge. A couple of whites isn't going to scare anyone!

-The Trick-or-Treating Discombobulator

Do any of these skills craft temp powers?

Thanks States.

Scouting heroes take heed! I was able to teleport one of the fallen eyeball aliens to the Halloworkshop for a quick lab analysis. These ocular invaders have a visual range covering the entire X-axis electromagnetic spectrum and diverging well into the Y-axis spectrum! In other words, they can see through invisibility, so be careful.

Now, get out there and feed these so-called Rularuu a sack full of fist candy!

Hope you plan on upping the xp for white cons if you're going to up the difficulty, my man. Fighting the +4 mobs you describe still takes forever to level in the 30+ game.

I really like that you're trying to get Tankers to actually attack instead of just shouting at enemies. This is what most tankers (especially those not used to being MMOG meat shields) want! Hurray!

However, to make Tankers needed (or even desired) at higher levels, this might not be enough aggro-grabbing. I think that the Taunt power should be immediately upgraded to do what Provoke does now, but better. The Manipulation Power Pool set is already garbage aside from Provoke, so reworking it should already be on the table.

((Note to Provokers who hate this idea: I'm among you (level 31) and would be willing to Respec just to take the new-and-improved Taunt.))

Please keep in mind that AOE attacks don't rule as much from late-30's to endgame. Before that, yes. After that, an AOE alpha strike pretty much means a dead blaster.

Thanks for re-posting this. Without hard numbers, it's very hard to tell which Ice and Storm powers will be more effective than the others (since there's a lot of overlap).

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Do you have Devices and therefore
Targeting Drone? If yes, slot six damage enhancements.

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How do you recommend slotting Targeting Drone? Just leave it with 1 slot, moderate 3 slot, or all-out 5 slot? Thanks, gun guru, great thread!