Panzerwaffen

Your claim that the slower players don't get 'decent' merit rewards is false to begin with. The Positron & Synapse TF's didn't change at all with the introduction of merits, yet suddenly their rewards were essentially tripled. That benefited the average player just as much as it did the efficient player. It seems to me that your claim that your rewards aren't 'decent' is based on nothing more than your seeing a certain subset of other players gaining them at a faster rate than you are, and not being happy about that.

Since the game is not, in fact, a competition, why do you seem to feel you 'need' to do anything based on what other players do?

My experience is exactly the opposite of yours on the ITF. Every team I've been on that runs ITF, pretty much just steamrolls everything in its path. There isn't really anything on that TF that can be stealth/TP'd and avoided.

Mission 1: Team has to free all 10 Sybils, then get Sister Solaris to the altar.
Mission 2: Team has to destroy the 10 Shadow Cysts.
Mission 3: Team has to defeat the generals, the computer, Romulus and Requiem.
Mission 4: Team has to defeat Romulus and 300 Cimeroran Traitors.

Stealth and TP aren't going to allow the team to avoid any of those objectives.

Too many folks in this thread are assuming that fast & efficient teams are somehow 'cheating' and skipping most of the content during TF/SF runs. It is much less of that, and much more of them simply being players leveraging their strengths such as regularly playing together & lots of experience running TF's, combined with an excellent understanding of game mechanics, team composition and builds.

Empathy/Dual Pistol Defender.

Might be more helpful if the OP hadn't crossposted this in 3 other places in the span of a few minutes.

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=218363

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=218362

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=218360

I'm not Talen, but I'll answer this anyway: Dual Pistols/Devices.

You seem bound and determined to reach a preconceived conclusion no matter what anyone says here, so I'm not going to waste my time any further after this. I pointed that out as an example of ONE thing an AR/Dev can bring to a team (along with the AOE damage of AR) that makes them valuable team members. You decided to interpret that as saying I think your only purpose is to port people around and ghost missions.

Sounds to me like all your issues are really with Devices not Assault Rifle. This thread would have been a lot more productive if you had stuck to that one topic instead of jumping all over the place and making hyperbolic statements like "it would really be nice if AR when coupled with Device could be a viable spec."

This. I've seen plenty of AR/Dev players on TF runs with Recall Friend for ghosting missions.

You are correct, but I intentionally left out mention of those powers. The snipe is pretty irrelevant, as a lot of players skip it, and it's not exactly going to get used much on a fast moving team. Slug has only a 25% chance of KB and it's only a single target attack. Not exactly the type of thing to annoy your team mates.

The only potential offenders are Buckshot and M30, both of which have a 50% chance of KB. Of course, that KB is kind of irrelevant too, as after Full-Auto and Flamethrower, most enemies are either dead or about to be from the Flamethrower DoT.

I've been playing AR/EM since the first day I started playing City of Heroes. Trust me, there is absolutely nothing at all wrong with AR. It's an AOE powerhouse. DP pales in comparison to AR for sustainable AOE damage. In fact, Assault Rifle is probably the #2 AOE damage blaster primary. It's only an issue when paired with Devices, and DP suffers even more if a player takes Devices as a secondary.

Knockback is always a widely exaggerated problem, and AR has very little of it. Neither Flamethrower or Full-Auto has any, only Buckshot and M30 Grenade have a chance of KB, and there's no reason to take both those attacks once you have Flame and Full-Auto.

As far as your issue with teams, that is more of a perception problem on your part. I've never seen any type of bias at all on teams against AR/Dev. I've never turned down an AR/Dev when recruiting for a taskforce, and I personally wouldn't touch Devices with a ten foot pole on any of my own characters.

My main is an AR/EM blaster. Wouldn't be any fun without the mouse button for epic Full-Auto cam spins!

I'm so glad I have dozens of those +stealth IO's that I bought for 500K...

This is my position as well. I don't use level 50 recipes. Every character that gets IO sets, is built to exemp down for TF's, usually with level 33 or 38 sets. I gain nothing from random rolls at 50. I have a couple thousand merits sitting on level 50's that only get used every once in a while to buy a specific recipe like Numina, Miracle or LotG.

If we could select the levels for random rolls, I'd blow all those merits tomorrow.

Correct. I rarely use them for anything except an AV/GM, or occasionally for a toggle pull on a mob. Flashfire and Fire Cages for initial control, then Choking Cloud keeps everything locked down. With CC running, Char will insta-hold bosses. Then I use Fissure on the mob and Seismic Smash on any bosses.

I've never tried Psi Mastery. My fire/rad has Stone Mastery. However, looking at WoC, I'd say it's not worth it. Radius is only 8' compared to 15' in Choking Cloud. Plus, in my experience, CC provides nearly 100% control after the first few seconds, so the additional control from WoC would be completely unnecessary.

lazy (lā′zē)
adjective

1. not eager or willing to work or exert oneself; indolent; slothful

Why not try putting forth a little effort and clicking the Search button, before starting yet another thread about fire/kin builds? It's not like there aren't approximately 9000 other threads on this same exact topic already out there.

Heck, there are 3 fire/kin threads on the very first page of this section. Was it too hard to scroll down and click on one of those threads?

I used both Ring of Fire and Char while leveling up for damage, then respec'd out of RoF after Fire Imps.

As far as Hot Feet and Choking Cloud are concerned, if you frankenslot them both for max end reduction, you should be able to run both. You'll need to watch your blue bar carefully, especially when AM is not up, and trying to use rad toggles at the same time will drop your end rapidly. Your goal should be to get perma AM, which is not that difficult to do with Fire/Rad. Having the constant recovery buff from AM goes a long way towards solving your endurance concerns. Although, even with perma AM, trying to run Hot Feet, Choking Cloud, Enervating Field and Rad Infection at the same time, while simultaneously throwing out Fire Cages and other attacks, WILL bottom your endurance no matter what you do.

Why would DA need the weak heal from Siphon Life, when it already has the strongest heal in the game with Dark Regeneration? DR can heal from 1 to full health every 10-15 seconds, depending on slotting and global recharge.

There are other ways to deal with DA's endurance usage through the use of IO's. Slotting for extra endurance and extra recovery help quite a bit. Slotting the Theft of Essence proc in Dark Regen pretty much takes care of DA's single largest endurance drain by itself.

And choices have consequences.

Mids' Hero Designer

Right. The devs bear no responsibility at all for implementing a system without adequate safeguards or oversight to minimize the potential for abuse.

*sigh*

Before this thread devolves further, can we stop with the tired, worn-out & absurd attempts to make some kind of moral comparison between real life actions and anything that happens in a videogame?

The us vs. them mentality doesn't add anything to this discussion.

I agree. If the GM staff was more proactive and aggressive about this, it probably wouldn't be nearly as rampant as it has been since day one.

Gamers will be gamers. Effort spent trying to alter human nature is ultimately wasted. Better to expend that effort on a system that prevents "abuse" in the first place.

I don't think the damage can ever be undone. It's already occurred and fundamentally altered the current state of the game.