Paragon_Girl

I hope you all have a great time and get to play plenty of COH before the servers go down. However, just to let those of you attending the player meet know that its the Artsfest weekend in Birmingham this weekend. So if find yourself with some spare time on Friday evening (or any other time over the weekend) check out the Artsfest website for what is on.

The Mandala at 8.30pm or 9.30pm on the Friday sounds like it should be good. The city centre venues are not far from where you are meeting.

IMO a vastly under rated set.

With new powersets coming out that have higher lvls of psi resist, eg WP, its not quite as good in pvp as it was. But against say an inv. tank built for max s/l resist or a stone tank in granite you can be doing good damage while scrappers that do mainly smashing damage may be getting annoyed at how little damage they do.

See this thread for some idea how good an ill/rad is in pve against AVs & GMs. http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showf...art=3&vc=1
It shows that ill can put out good damage with good control.

In pvp the empath has lots to offer with fort, Cm, AB & the auras.

Personally I have no problems soloing EBs with an ill/emapth and its a lot easier than compared to some ATs such as stalkers.

Paragon Girl

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Now first, stop talking about the 50% softcap.. thats only even lvl minions , wich i hardly .. ok wich i never see with my tanker

Actualy i got wondering, is Ice really that weak? Take SS/Mace/Axe as issue, against high SL resist you can better start trowing napkins because it does more damage. (I SO SERIOUS HATE COUNCIL... thank you).

As for damage, inv already lacks massive there, as its the only set not having a damage aura. Many /sets do less with Inv due lack of that aura (refer to high SL mobs). Same kinda goes for axe/mace, as they only have 1 stupid tiny AoE power and the rest is quite ST (lining up perfect to get a 5% cone working...).

If you take granite with ice melee, it will be the weakest wacking around, but he is able to break the final issue.. psionic damage using ice patch. So perhaps way more situational, but if i ever would make a /ice (that would definiatly be fire/ice) i will and keep ice patch. So perhaps a ice/ice wont need IP that much, a fire would greatly benefit, inv is pretty situational. Like how often can you cap out your defence on a inv tanker?

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I think I was the first person, looking at times of post, out of both the US and european threads to raise the issue of resistance. I do think it allows ice to catch up with s/l melee sets in a number of cases and as I pointed out it can even out damage them. However, it would take a lot of leg work to find out the true impact of resistance to damage figures. What is evident though is that there some players using ice melee who report that the damage they do is rather under whelming and they would like it to be reviewed in the hope that changes can be made to make it more enjoyable to play. This may mean increasing recharge times & energy costs of ice melee powers in order to counteract the benefits of any higher damage.

The thread in the US has several players asking for a bit more ST damage potential in their attack chain. Is that what players in europe want? This thread gives players in europe a chance to enter into discussion about any changes they want or don't want to ice melee.

I agree with you sinergy_x that fire/ice make a good combo and personally I have no difficultly with ice melee in that combination. Personally having both a fire/ice & inv/ice at lvl 50 I choose between which tank to use given the team composition and missions to be completed. I don't mind that the inv/ice has low damage as I only use him in teams whenever possible & concentrate on holding aggro rather than damage output. If I want damage output I go fire/ice.

Hopefully my posts to date have stimulated this thread and encouraged people to think though the issues around ice melee so that the developers can better understand players views if they review ice melee.

However, to date there has not been an overwhelming response to this thread. Is that because most people are happy with ice melee or that so many people believe it to be low damage they select an EM for big ST damage and accept how ice melee currently is?

Paragon Girl

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An additional consideration here is that Ice Patch is not directly comparable to Weave. Not because of the oft nebulous comparison of Damage Mitigation, but because on top of said Damage Mitigation Ice Patch also effectively holds the mobs it affects.

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Personally, I would have to say yes and no. Yes you are totally correct in that IP can reduce damage to team mates via the methods you outline below, when compared to using weave. No, in that if having weave instead keeps you alive (when you would be defeated with having IP instead of weave) then the team is likely to face less damage with you alive than dead and having laid ice patch.

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This means that other people in the team a) don't have to worry about AoE/Cone damage from the mobs and b) don't have to worry about the mobs running off (and subsequently returning out of taunt to wreak havoc).

Solo they may be comparable, but in a team you have to look at the additional benefits that IP provides to the team as a whole, rather than just for you.

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But does this mean that the control that ice melee brings to a team equals or even outweighs the reduction in damage compared to some other sets? Should ice melee be given a boost, if it should what should it be, and if not why not?

Could an inv/fire actually provide more damage mitigation to a team than a inv/ice? The inv/fire could stay alive by using the fighting pool, and so suck up more aggro than the dead inv/ice using IP instead of weave. The inv/fire could grab more aggro by using more aoe attacks than the inv/ice. The inv/fire could reduce damage to the team by defeating foes quicker.

Paragon Girl

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Unless Photon Grenade has been improved greatly recently I would skip it.
Your protector bots have a better version of it anyway.

I wouldn't bother with acrobatics either, your bots should be getting all the agro.

Also, you might want to get stamina if you are going to use the personal attacks.
They do use a lot of endurance.
Plus with Assault, Tactics and Dispersion Bubble running you would have trouble.
(these will all need to be heavily slotted for end-reduction if you want to go stamina-less in any case)

Repulsion Bomb is not a good power for a bots mm.. might want to skip that one.
To get the best out of them you need to group enemies in a bunch as much as possible.

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I agree with these comments. I have a ninja/FF MM and I never had any really issue with KB, so i wouldn't take acro. Using the leaping pool is good though as cj defense stacks with that of dispersion bubble.

I never needed stamina until I was in my 40s when it became much more useful for running all the bubbles, leadership pool & armour. Its also particularly useful if you want to pvp with running the above & spamming your immob & hold powers. Consider PFF if you want to pvp, a good blaster will get though, but its fun seeing melee toons trying to whittle your health down. Its not a must have power, but fun if you have the room, and can be used to take the alpha from AVs in large teams.

You can free slots by dropping acro, repulsion bomb, and your personal attack powers, you will be able to lvl quickly enough by just using your bots for damage.

You will not have trouble lvling with the build you have put up either if you want to give it a try & respec later out of any of the powers you decide to drop.

Paragon Girl

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The point of IP is taking certain enemies out of a fight- could perhaps include bosses, annoying enemies, or higher level enemies. It's not just safety for the tank against those enemies, it's safety for the whole team from those, it's like a mez, the tank no longer needs to attend to those enemies as much when getting aggro. He can then "Tank" over the aggro cap by distracting some enemies with IP, then keeping the rest taunted.

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Agreed IP is a form of damage mitigation. However, some other sets present as having as equally good damage mitigation as ice melee, if not better, and do more damage, eg stone has fault, tremor and seismic smash among other methods of helping to reduce damage to the tank & team mates. Therefore, assisting with allowing tanking over the aggro cap. Indeed some of these now seem to affect more enemies than IP is reported to. As such I think there is a case for reviewing the damage done by ice melee.

Personally I don't play over the aggro cap. If there are 2 spawns near to each other I will taunt 1 spawn and pull it away from the other to avoiding going over the aggro cap. I find this to be a better method to manage aggro than relying on ice patch to manage any numbers over the aggro cap. However, I agree IP can help here, but I would hope you would also agree that some other tank secondaries have powers that can help mangae this.

The issue of whever /ice melee tanks should be dropping IP if they have to in order to fit in weave matters for the issues you have raised, namely damage mitigation. An undefeated tank holds more aggro than a defeated 1.

So if the figures above show that an ice tank is more likely to survive with weave than with ice patch and they only have room for 1 then is it better to drop IP and take weave? If the tank is defeated when using ice patch damage transfers to the rest of the team, possibly resulting in more deaths in the team. However, if the tank would have survived with weave instead of IP then he can hold aggro from the team.

As such I agree IP & tough & weave altogether will help a tank survive. However, I suspect there are many tanks with IP & not weave, should they be taking both where possible, but where this is not should they be taking weave instead of IP? Does IP give the illusion of helping tanks survive more than it really does in the later game. I know there will be occasions when it will help more than weave, eg against 5 psi using carnies who can be knocked down on ice patch, but in most large teams should tanks be swapping out of IP for weave (or going for both when they can)?

At the moment my own limited testing on the test server is suggesting I am not really missing IP that much. For example, herding up & managing a half a map of carnies on solo. But defeating them does take its time, which is where the more damaging sets have an advantage. /fire can go to the fighting pool for added damage mitigation, but I can't go to pool powers to get good ST damage like greater fire sword.

Paragon Girl

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But Ice melee can do IP AND Weave!

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I agree but that takes extra power slots and heroes that use other secondaries can also use those extra power choices to select powers which mitigate damage.

Take an inv/ice & inv/SS. Say both have taken the fighting pool. Inv/ice then takes IP. Inv/SS takes hand clap which works on up ten, more than the number that it is being currently reported are affected by ice patch.

Or you could say Inv/ice takes IP, while inv/SS takes resist physical damage, nearly capping damage to s/l damage as well as slotting to provide defense & resist to psi.

As such while ice melee can add to its survivial with ice patch on top of fighting pool so other melee toons can also add to their damage mitigation. Also they then usually have better damage mitigation via defeating enemies quicker as well.

However, my question still remains, is ice melee that good that IP provides more mitigation than using the fighting pool when fighting large numbers of foes. If I take weave and cap out my defense at about 48% is it worth taking IP still as it will only reduce incoming damage from the foes slipping on the ice by about 5% (the difference between their chance to hit and my defense). As such are /ice melee toons better off taking weave & dropping IP as then it adds so little damage mitigation?

So although, "Ice melee can do IP AND Weave!" is there any point to IP or should you just go fighting pool & drop weave?

Paragon Girl

Having done some further thinking on ice melee I would welcome the comments of fellow players on some observations I have made. I will be checking the US forum thread in the hope that they also see this and make comment on it.
I don't claim my maths on this are right & any improvements & observations that fellow players can make are more than welcome.

There is no doubt in my mind that taking ice patch (IP) at lvl 20 adds alot of damage mitigation to tanker primaries, especially fire. In my opinion IP is useful to the fire primary at every lvl, owing to a combination of damage mitigation & increased damage potential to foes from the IP/burn combo.

However, I questioned the usefulness of IP on other primaries at mid to high in the game when heroes have enough power choices available to replace IP with other forms of damage mitigation. Some figures show that actually I can improve damage mitigation on some tank primaries, in common situations, by dropping IP and taking pool powers instead. By doing so I can also reduce my energy use & increase my dps.

I designed tanks with ice & inv as their primary, to work out what defense a typical tank of each primary could have.

I came up with a figure of roughly 36% def v S/L & energy/neg. energy for an ice tank and roughly 40% for an inv tank versus 10 foes.

So say I use IP as an ice tank when fighting the aggro cap of 17, and it works at mitigating the damage of 5 foes 100%. Lets say that gives a damage mitigation improvement of (50% normal chance to hit - 36% defense available from defense without using ice patch * 5 foes) 70% from total chance of foes hitting.

If I drop IP and take weave this gives a bonus of 8% to all defense. So fighting 17 foes (8 * 17) I get a reduction of 136% in the chance to hit spread over all the foes. Nearly twice the damage mitigation with using weave compared to IP.

Also without slotting IP uses 10.4 endurance every 35 seconds, compared to 5.6 to run weave over the same time. Also having to use IP uses animation time which could be used to fire an attack of otherwise.

For an inv tank the figures would work out at roughly 50 - 40 * 5 = 50% damage reduction as total percentage using IP versus 17. Using weave (to give 45% capped defense against even lvl foes) = 17 * 5 = 85%. So still an improvement in using weave compared to IP.

I recognise that these figures compared weave to IP in the best light, against S/L & energy/neg and higher numbers of foes. However, taking on higher numbers of foes is when you are more likely to be defeated and so in need of more defense. I would suggest that any reasonably built /ice tank could survive near enough any mob of 5 foes without having to use ice patch anyway.

So my observations are as follows:-

1/ Is it actually better to drop ice patch in favour of weave to survive against bigger mobs if you are an ice or inv tank?

2/ If the above is true does this mean that the previously held view that ice melee damage should be lower damage because it gives better damage mitigation false? If an inv/fire tank can mitigate more damage from large mobs by taking weave than I can by taking ice patch and do much more damage should not the damage of ice melee be boosted?

Based on the above I see no reason not to ask for the damage done by ice swords to be the same as that done by fire swords (with the changes in animation, recharge & energy use to make them equal).

As previously mentioned I would be grateful if other people could look at the maths and tell me if they agree or disaggree that taking weave gives more damage mitigation against large mobs than using ice patch, which is when tanks are more likely to be defeated, eg taking the alpha hits and shortly after.

Paragon Girl

P.S. I copied a lvl 50 inv/ice tank to test last night & respeced out of IP. I took weave and aid self & had no difficultly runing missions on inv. Also it was about 5am and the server showed only me on it (some could have been on hide) I was never defeated by the rikti invasion spawns in the zones using this build despite facing over 50 enemies per event. I was not in any danger of dying but defeating the enemy was slow and rather boring. This is I think another factor in requesting a bump to ice melee damage, to add a bit more fun factor.

If you want the build that can solo the quickest & also be in demand in teams go fire/kin, with fire/rad also being strong.

However, select a set that you will enjoy playing. I hardly ever play my fire/rad. If you want to play to lvl 50 select something you will like playing all that time.

Don't let any of the above posts put you off playing an Ill/empath, its a strong set which at higher lvls can defeat every elite boss solo and solo missions without AVs on inv. You can play both sets well and be in demand as both a controller and an empath. Its surprising how many teams I still see wanting an empath for healing, rather than looking for other powersets, eg trick arrow or force field.

Also how strong a hero is depends on the player both in knowing how to select powers, slots & enhancements as well as what to do in terms of actual game play. I have seen plenty of kins not using SB and plenty of empaths not using fort.

Paragon Girl

I have been following the ice melee thread in the US forum with interest for sometime now and like many people I would like to see changes to ice melee. Don't think from my previous posts I wouldn't like to see changes to increase the damage, as I certainly would on my inv/ice tank. I would also like to see the final power choice changed as it must be one of the most skipped (if not the most skipped) final power in any melee powerset.

However, in trying to come up with an arguement for increases to damage there are a number of issues to consider.

Firstly, the developers consider min/maxed heroes, hence ED. The damage a fire/ice tank can do is far superior to that done by an inv/ice tank. So while I certainly agree it would be far from game breaking to increase ice melee damage for tanks other than fire you have to consider just how much of an impact that extra damage will have when using a fire tank.

As I have already said it is possible for me to defeat 3 orange minions using an attack chain of 4 powers on a fire/ice tank. Including a PBAOE power may increase that to 5 minions I could defeat, making many scrappers jealous.

Also it is necessary to consider how much a certain attack power is resisted. Apart from against ice tanks and certain other powers, such as unstoppable, ice tends to be poorly resisted. So whilst the damage numbers may look small they can actually be higher in some situations than damage by scrappers. For example, a martial arts scrapper using build up & their most powerful ST attack did 55 damage to my inv tank. Looking at City of Data a tank using greater ice sword & no build up can do slightly more damage than that to me. So using this example ice melee can be seen to do more damage than a scrappers primary.


I to would welcome the comments of other players on their perception of ice melee and any changes that they feel should be made to it. If players can make a strong case on the numbers then we may get changes. The developers say that their new mantra is "give the players what they want (within reason)" so if enough players say in this thread that they want to see the ice swords do more damage then hopefully that should be taken into account, whatever the maths may say. I think a bit more ST damage in the ice melee set would not be game breaking & would do little to help fire tanks with mass herding & defeating.

Paragon Girl

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ive just made an Ivn/SS tank and im going to focus on IOs
as soon as i can but heres the problem..

i have a BS/regen scrapper (lv34) who is slotted with crushing impacts and doctored wounds and atm im about 20 secs shy of perma dull pain

i was thinking this would be equally as good with a tank but looking at other threads about inv holes i was thinking, giving him energy or PSI defence would be better

could anyone with experiece or a valid opinion share there thoughts?

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In my opinion you would be best concentrating on increasing your defense & resistance to psi using the IOs sets. You can acheive a good defense to energy damage without having to try and slot IO sets especially for it. Having said that you will still need unstoppaable for AVs that do energy damage.

On the other hand you need to really concentrate on psi to build it up to reasonable lvls as the resistance starts at zero.

Below are the approximate figures I have achieved for the defense and resistance on my inv/ice tank, although it costs well over 100 million influence to achieve it todays market.

Figures given as DEF v 1, Def v 10, Resistance
Smashing 24.1, 45.1, 88.1
Lethal 24.1, 45.1, 88.1
Fire 25.7, 46.7, 29.9
Cold 25.7, 46.7, 29.9
Energy 24.1, 45.1, 27.1
Negative 24.1, 45.1, 27.1
Toxic Not shown on planner, 31.5
Psi 15.5, 15.5, 39.3

So as you can see I can acheive a defense of 45% in regards to energy damage v 10 foes in melee range.
Hope this helps, if you want any information on sets I used feel free to ask.

Paragon Girl

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to me, the obvious thing that ice melee is missing is PBAoE damage. It has ice patch and frozen aura... but neither do any damage. Considering that ice armour has both a damage aura AND a taunt/debuff aura, it would make sense to me that ice melee has the same.

what i'd do is keep ice patch, and either change frozen aura for ice sword circle, or apply damage to frozen aura before the sleep component is applied. tbh, the idea of having a PBAoE sleep when all bar one of the tank primaries have damage auras seems pretty darned silly to me.

I'm sure that there are people who like frozen aura... but i mustn't have met any of them.

With relation to making fire/ice fotm; as it is currently with ice patch and burn, anything /fire can kill faster - especially fire/fire. so i don't see how adding a bit more oomph to /ice would hurt. No matter what happens to /ice it'd still struggle to do the same damage as fire/fire

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It's possible for me to defeat a standard mob spawn of 3 orange minions on my fire/ice tank with an attack chain of 4 powers. So really I consider that pretty good damage using ice melee in combination with a fire tank.

Currently, /fire set uses high damage to mitigate incoming damage (a defeated foe can't harm you). Ice melee on the other hand, from lvl 20 onwards, has ice patch to frequently use to mitigate damage and later on freezing touch for foes like the sappers. As such ice melee has always been seen as the less damage & more control trade of set when compared to /fire.

A sg colleague of mine had a lvl 50 fire/SS tank and then leveled a fire/ice, he finds the ice melee survives much better in comparison. I still consider that adding to much more damage to ice melee with encourage fire/ice tanks to become more FOTM as they will be seen as having both good damage & good control compared to say /fire which will be seen as just good damage.

Paragon Girl

I'm only going to comment on ice melee as I have experience with it (on 2 lvl 50 tanks), but no experience of mace.

I think the difficulty in suggesting changes to ice melee is that you have to consider the impact they will make when using each of the primary powers. As ice patch and burn work well together, against many foes in pve, fire tanks don't really need any buff to the ice melee set. However, with other primaries (especially inv. which lacks a damaging aura) selecting ice melee results in rather underwhelming damage and for them a buff to ice melee damage would be not be inappropriate.

So for me any changes would have to bring ice melee up to par for inv, ice & stone tanks but not result in fire tanks becoming overpowered and FOTM.

Paragon Girl

Good work on setting up & suceeding with the raid Lost. A big thank you to you & every1 who stuck at it for all those hours.

Paragon Girl

I have a experience of a lvl 50 inv./ice tank.

Would suggest 1 recharge & 1 end rdx in ice patch is all you need unless you have had your recharge times reduced by the enemy. Saving a slot to go elsewhere.

Also unstoppable only needs 1 damage resist to hit the cap if you continue running your other shields. I would personally remove 2 damage resist from it & put the 2 slots in frost which is 1 of the sets better attacks.

Personally I selected freezing touch (FT) rather than GIS. It is often useful in the later game for holding sappers. Whilst GIS provides the sets largest burst damage attack, trials with ice melee in the US has suggested that because of the long animation time on GIS it actually slows down the damage output on the ice melee set. It has been suggested that using boxing, frost & freezing touch provides more damage per second than including either ice sword in the attack chain.

I would suggest dropping RPD and taking weave. You are going to have good resistance to S/L damage from TI & tough. Weave will give extra defense against all attacks rather than just the s/l resist provided by RPD.

Hope this helps.

Paragon Girl

We can't base raid because of a base kick bug. Everytime we start a raid the defending SG is kicked out of their base when the attackers enter. This happens whether we are the attacking or defending SG. The defending SG members can't then enter their base until the attackers leave.

Also none of the aux turret items seem to work on our elite turrets. So as it stands they really bring very little to the defense of a base as they do so little damage.

Paragon Girl

If I can remember correctly my results from test were:-

Both items appear under the workshop tab, in tech & arcane.

Personal storage locker, cost 100000, uses 10 control & 10 power. I could place it the workshop, control & energy rooms. Did not count towards any worktable limit, but the amount I could place in each room varied.

Invention Worktable, cost 25000, did not use any control or power. I could only place it in a workshop & it counted towards table limit.

(Just to note these results were on a secure plot).

Hope this helps.

Paragon Girl

Given the major changes coming in I9 I think it highly likely that all characters will be given a free respec at some point during I9.

So it's not a bad idea to fill all your slots with characters, so that they can get this free respec, even if you do not start to lvl them for a long time. As when you do start to play them hopefully they wil have a respec from I9.

Any characters you have on live can then be copied on the test server and you can try out the respec on test. Leaving the character on live with an unused respec.

Paragon Girl

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Ok, thx all for the advice, I'll start collecting respecs for trying different builds since all of them seem interesting. Hopefully with I9 multiaspect enhcs endurance issues may be eased.-

Ta!

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I would suggest trying out all the different builds on the training server so you can save your respecs on live.

Paragon Girl

Just to say Tiscali are blocking me from CoH again!

Paragon girl

Just to say if shadow punch has been taken to increase the to hit debuffs on an enemy, as per build, I would swap it for touch of fear. If an enemy is cowering in fear it will not be attacking anyway. You could use the 4 slots to put 2 acc/2 fear in ToF.

2 uses of ToF on a boss has them feared (as long as they don't resist fear).

Paragon Girl

I have played a DM/DA to lvl 50, but not played it much since as it's not 1 of my favourite toons. They are good in large teams, and not so good as some other powersets solo.

I'm not going to offer you any sort of cookie cutter build rather just some words of observation regards a pve build.

Take dark regeneration asap (its your main heal), before dark consumption. Put at least 2 endred in dark regeneration, reasonable slotting is 2 acc, 2 end red & 2 recharge. It doesn't need any health slotting unless there are only 1 or 2 minions in range when it goes off.

Soul drain, use it whenever possible to buff your other attacks, I slot mine 2 acc & 3 recharge to have it up asap.

As DM/DA struggles with energy consider another end red in acroabatics.

Cloak of fear only has a 50% acc, so suggest more accuracy in it. Personally I have left it out of my build as it is such an energy hog.

Try to fit in Oppressive gloom, a great power against minions. Will work against lts if there are 2 DA running it at same time.

Hope these suggestions are of some help. If you want any further advice on specific DM/DA powers feel free to ask.

I have tried to log into CoH nice and early for the raid. Unfortunately, Tiscali have already started to block me from getting on at 5.30pm.

Last night I could not get on until 11.30pm. I will keep trying but if it is like last night I an not hopeful of being able to attend tonights raid.

Paragon Girl

This is the best base information site i know about.

http://www.physiotherapyexercises.co...oh/Salvage.htm

Hope it helps.

Paragon Girl

Tiscali finally decided to let me log into CoH about 8pmish. Sorry for the delay in getting to the raid and thank you to those who covered for me. I have spoken to Lost and cover should be sorted for if it happens again. Though Tiscali keep promising fixes, so I live in hope that one day it will be sorted.

Paragon Girl