Panzerwaffen

Well, let's compare Blaster vs. Scrapper then.

Fire Melee Scrapper DPA @50, unenhanced.

Scorch: 63
Fire Sword: 72
Cremate: 85
Breath of Fire: 37 (10 target max)
Fire Sword Circle: 41 (10 target max)
Incinerate: 94
Greater Fire Sword: 73

Fire/Electric Blaster DPA @50, unenhanced.

Flares: 63
Fire Blast: 51 (Ouch!)
Fire Ball: 75 (16 target max)
Fire Breath: 41 (10 target max)
Blaze: 170 ()
Charged Brawl: 131
Havoc Punch: 96
Shocking Grasp: 100

So, let's see.. Blaster has 4 single target attacks with more DPA than the single highest DPA attack the scrapper has. Blaze alone does twice as much damage as all but the highest DPA scrapper attack, Incinerate. Fireball has as much DPA by itself as both scrapper AOE attacks combined AND hits 60% more targets.

And on top of that, the Blaster has a damage buff from defiance, which adds a good 10%-20% to all those numbers, along with both Aim & Build-Up.

Yep, that is clearly falling 'behind' scrapper damage.

Yes, Arachnos, Malta and Carnies are extremely rare enemy groups at high levels.

Well, in all fairness, I suppose they are rare for those players than pick & choose the easiest possible content and avoid anything that might be a challenge.

Well, I guess when you can't really counter someone's arguments, it's easiest to just ignore them..

Which is exactly where Turbo's whole argument collapses. There is no such thing as 100% mitigation. In over two years of playing, and running everything from basic PuGs to Master TF runs to all-AT superteams to teams where every player was fully IO'd out with billion+ builds, I have almost never seen a team that doesn't benefit significantly from FF. The only exception I have ever seen is teams where everyone is already defense capped such as an all-VEAT team with stacked Maneuvers & Mind Link. I'm sure Turbo will see that as proof that FF is the 'worst' set again, but I can count the number of entirely softcapped teams I've seen in two years (without a bubbler being on the team) on one hand, and every one was an all-VEAT group.

I've run all-controller teams and even with all that control and mitigation, people still faceplanted with regularity. Of course, we were running on maximum difficulty at all times and often up against +5 enemies. A bubbler would have added significantly to the survivability of even a team like that.

And going to such great lengths to 'prove' that FF is subpar because having more than one of them on a team is redundant just demonstrates how obsessive she is about bashing FF. A spreadsheet? Seriously?

Saying more than one FF is redundant is sort of a "Well, duh." argument, which everyone already knows. It really only showcases the strength of the FF set. That one FF Defender can provide more survivability than ANYTHING ELSE IN THE ENTIRE GAME.

Would I be glad to see some buffs to FF? Sure. However, at this point, and keeping the cottage rule in mind, I'm not sure exactly what can be done to add offensive power to the set. And I would hate to see adding something like -res , -regen or +dmg to the set be balanced by a lowering of defense values. As it is, -res and -regen are so common, I'm not sure I even see a need for those to begin with.

The beauty of FF is that it allows a team to go all-offense, with almost no worry about mitigation at all. That's where I really don't see the huge need to add offensive buffs/debuffs to FF. FF provides offense already through other players. With the bubbler along, that Empath doesn't need to heal much at all. He can concentrate on buffing and blasting. That Rad doesn't need to waste time toggling on Radiation Infection. That Blaster doesn't need to worry about waiting for agro control before firing off everything she has. That Tank doesn't need to worry about controlling every bit of stray agro to keep the squishies safe. And that Scrapper doesn't need to..Well, that Scrapper is going to whatever crazy stuff he wants anyway, whether FF is along or not.

What FF does is allow the team to turn the knob up to 11 and have fun. Which in the end, is the most important point that seems to elude Turbo's grasp.

And finally, I also want to point out that I am far from an FF 'cultist' as Turbo seems to want to imply that all FF proponents must be. Across two accounts and something like 60 characters, I have one playable FF Defender. It generally only gets brought out for things like MoSTF runs or mothership raids, and usually upon request. It's not my main, I don't have any emotional investment in my support of FF.

Must be that 'new math' again...

Oil Slick Arrow that has a 3 minute recharge?

Trip Mine that almost never gets used in fast moving teams?

Time Bomb???? The power that is universally panned as one of the most useless powers in the entire game?

Keep grasping at those straws, Turbo.

And if that's not a case of the pot calling the kettle black, I don't know what is.

Yep. Excels is right. FF is the king of defense. Cold doesn't come close.

Let's take a look at those numbers...

Must be that 'new' math at work here.. They didn't teach that back when I went to school.

Ice Shield/Glacial Shield: 23.4% defense.
Arctic Fog: 7.8% defense.
Maneuvers: 5.5% defense.

23.4 + 7.8 + 5.5 = 36.7% defense. What happened to 40%?

You've been around plenty long enough to know that the closer you get to 45%, the more important each % of defense gets. Case in point, my fire/shield scrapper dropped about 2% under the cap to ranged & AOE with the BotZ nerf. Spawns that I used to be able to walk away from, make a sandwich & come back to find him still standing there doing fine, will faceplant him easily if I'm not paying close attention now. The difference between 36.7% and 45% is a HUGE amount of incoming damage. On top of that, FF provides Toxic resist, Psi defense, end drain protection & status protection, all holes in Cold's mitigation.

Simple. Same as before, you've exaggerated the numbers in an attempt to make Cold look better when compared to FF.

Explain this to me. No one shows up in Cold threads to bash the set and sing the praises of FF. Why do you feel the obsessive need to show up in every thread that mentions FF and do the same? It's almost like you feel threatened by FF or somehow insecure about Cold and have to constantly reassure yourself about it. It's quite silly.

Cold is a great set. I don't play it myself, but I'm more than happy to have one along (except for those ugly shields) on any team I'm on. I'm sure everyone here feels the same way too. No one is going out of their way to knock Cold, so don't you think it's past time to get over your little obsession with trying to 'prove' Cold is better? Seriously, playing 'my set is better than your set' is juvenile.

Yet, I find myself being asked over & over again to bring my FF'er out for end-game content like MoSTF, CoP, Rikti raids, etc. I'm asked much less to bring my Rad, because -regen and -res are pretty common. On top of that, Rad & Kin add very little to damage mitigation. Some -dam, some -to hit in RI (which is hard to leverage due to the slow animation, and anchors getting killed off), and some AOE healing. Those are both clearly offensive sets, not defensive. They are not even remotely in the same category as defensive buffing sets like FF, Sonic, Cold or Thermal.

Yes, you would. None of those sets will stop GW's mag 100 hold from hitting the team like FF. None of those sets will keep the healing nictus from healing off everyone on the ITF like FF will. None of those sets will softcap the entire team when running through the vine room on a MoSTF. None of those sets (except Sonic) will neutralize one of the STF towers to stop it from buffing Recluse.

Everything becomes devalued once you add enough buffs/debuffs, including entire AT's such as tankers. I have yet to see any team that can't benefit from the defense a FF can bring to the table, except for all-VEAT teams. Are there circumstances where teams might benefit more from other sets? Sure. Just as there are circumstances where teams would benefit most from more defense. Just because those situations exist, doesn't devalue an individual powerset, in any way, shape or form.

Not going to happen. What I do fully expect to see though, is some type of overall nerf to defense usefulness in general.

What you saw was probably just the graphics associated with the cage effect, which show when the power is used, even if the effect is resisted. I've got Detention Field slotted up with HO's on my FF Defender, and I know for a fact it won't work on the Nictus. If you look at the combat attributes of the Nictus using Surveillance or the Power Analyzer temp power, you'll see they have some crazy status effect resistance. I don't even think a perma-dom could overcome their protection with stacked status effects, except for sleep which they only have a normal mag 4 protection against.

Detention Field won't work on the Nictus. They have much more status protection than a normal AV. As far as I know, the only status effect that they are susceptible to is Sleep.

No, it's not. Apples & oranges...

Two can play at this game!

Why not remove any travel times from the game completely? We should all just be able to stand in one place and click to instantly enter the mission instance. And there should be a market interface there, and vendors for anything a player might want to buy, and crafting tables too!

Well, there certainly is a benefit to moving quickly through missions, so therefore I would say there is, in fact, a penalty to moving slowly through missions as well. The faster a player can move through content, the greater their rate of reward gain, whether it be XP, inf, merits, drops, whatever.

I even disagree with the 'lower end' argument. Since you mentioned frankenslotting, let's look at that.

Pre-ED a player could slot a power with 6 SO's. Assuming an attack power slotted with 6 +3 SO's, that'd be a total enhancement value of about 230% in that one power.

Frankenslotting with set IO's would give the same player a total enhancement value for that 6 slotted power of anywhere from 260% to over 350% depending on mixture of double, triple & quad aspect IO's used.

Granted, the pre-ED player with 1 ACC, 5 DMG is going to hit harder. He's also going to miss more, use more endurance per attack, and attack much slower. Overall, less effective.

In any event, I'm not sure comparing pre-ED and post-ED performance levels really has much relevance to the current concern of power creep that I mentioned. The game has changed. Game mechanics are different. We have new powersets, new AT's, new devs. The overall design 'philosophy' seems to be much different than what it was originally.

I'm certainly not suggesting that this change is going to "unbalance the game" as one poster mentioned, or anything of the sort. Heck, I'm not even opposed to the change. I'm looking forward to seeing what I can do with my characters with the build flexibility this is going to allow. I'm just concerned about the direction we seem to be moving in. Inherent fitness is not going to be any kind of tipping point for game balance, but I think it does move us further along that road.

At what point does the game become 'too easy'? I think that's a legitimate question to ask, when we have players that can solo Giant Monsters, solo AV's, or solo entire TF's that are designed around a team of 8 players. Heck, a player recently completed the RSF solo, which is arguably just about the hardest end-game content we have.

I recently convinced my sister, who is a vet of several other MMO's including the big one, to come over and check out CoH. I was explaining to her some of the differences about CoH's game mechanics and how the right buffs & debuffs could turn a team into a steamroller, how powerful individual characters could be, and how much fun I thought our game was. Her response? "Well that sounds dumb. What's the point in playing a multiplayer game that is that easy?" She played for a couple weeks, got bored and left. To some extent, I can see her point...

1: The principles still pretty much remain the same, so the age of the guide isn't as important as you might think.

2: The last 4 guides in that thread were posted in the last 6 months, one within the last 30 days.

Heck, just a few threads down on the very first page of this forum is a thread titled Tips and Trick from a newby.

The information is right there if you want to use it. You have to put forth the effort to do so. We'll point you in the right direction, but no one is going to hold your hand along the way and tell you "Do this. OK, now do this. Then do this too."

Yes.

Great. 70% recharge. Awesome. I have a number of characters now who run global recharge rates of close to 180%. That's 2.5 times better than pre-ED perma-hasten.

Miracle + Numina + Regen Tissue unique + Perf Shifter % for end.

Health is about 75% regen fully slotted now. So, what would you get pre-ED? 100%? 150%? My fire/shield scrapper runs close to 400% regen with IO's.

Stamina is about 50% recovery. What'd that max out pre-ED? Think it can match current recovery rates with all the +recovery from sets? Nope.

Neither of which have anything to do with the actual power of the characters themselves.

Buy low. Sell high.

In all seriousness, the very first thread in this forum section is Market Guides & FAQs.

Have you looked at that?

This is the best way to handle these types of players. Add some player notes for them, one star them, and move on. That kind of behavior will only end up hurting them in the long run, especially on smaller servers where they can't blend into the crowd as easily.

I know I have personally taken great satisfaction in seeing known problem players get booted when they show up for TF teams, due to player notes.