Predatory

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i speek of corse of the sword gun combo i dont fit with scrappers cos a gun aint a shield of any kind and it wont work as a blaster because a sword has no controlling ability


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Fits perfectly as a (possibly fixed sets) blaster as far as I can see.

Sword for melee secondary. Handgun for ranged primary.

Don't think I've ever seen it written anywhere that blaster powers need any aspect of control in them, but it can easily be added to anything - it's not as if the existing powers have their side-effects determined by anything other than the developers whimsy!

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The problem I have with that is the constant redrawing of the sword and the gun.

If you could have them both out at the same time it would be cool but otherwise...meh...

Like the idea of the set/AT/ though.

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easy way around this, the set comes as a mixed set, if it went as an epic one this could be easily done, because it means you only get the one powerset anyway, now if you have one sword in one hand and a gun in the other, it wouldnt need to redraw.

or you could just use the shield solution and make them permanant by making a couple of toggles for them.

i think the set would sound much like a blaster though tbh, but, if they ever bring in the 'rogue' idea, i think this would make a good first level 50 rogue reward AT.

wooot after 2 minutes of reloading up, its connected now

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Virgin here, having no other problems at all with connecting to anything...currently playing neocron 2

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If your a virgin, i suspect you are having trouble connecting to something, its rarely through choice

anyway jokes aside, i hope they sort this soon :/ seems everything is really unstable lately.

Tiscali here, it was working fine a couple of hours ago so its unlikely its that, plus the internet sides working fine.

Mirrors Edge is working fine online at the minute. FFM you tried this logged off the game completly? its the first screen you get when you click the icon saying 'connecting #1' that i cant get past.

yeah seems someone ate the play doh that makes the servers again :/

give it ten minutes till someone runs to the shop to buy some more.

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Everyone already knows about Sonic/Em

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its not sonic/em

Well im currently working on a certain blaster that could very much be the best 1 v 1 duel build going, but im keeping it all hush hush at the minute, i dont want to see another SS/WP style brute fave of month come up that more or less every pvper owns nowadays and act like the ultimately awesome in pvp just because they win :/

If all goes to plan though, it would make mincemeat out of it Jess il duel you when I've leveled it up. Can see how it goes then.

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I'd say the Crusader was a rip on Boba Fett, which the Juggernaut looks nothing like.

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I was thinking the same thing, although clone armor is a lot like bobas armor anyway since its just basically remade mandalorian armor.

You have no idea how nerdy that just made me feel. I hang my head in shame.

I dont think it looks at all like the crey armor though, but a little like the space marines one. You cant really help it though when you go for a more tech style look, they nearly always end up the same.

Peacebringer, just because its so damn frustrating to play, i like the attacks in human form, but i hardly ever get chance to fire them because as soon as i get anywhere near melee range im stunned and forced into dwarf form, which isnt as good as a tank so your basically playing a rubbish tank or a rubbish blaster squid.

Its really annoying because peacebringer is one of the AT's I WANT to like but i cant because there just so flawed.

yeah i thought it would be a bit overpowered with perma capped defence

worth a shot though

Hey guys just a quick query, im thinking of making a mastermind, robots/forcefield but does personal force field still allow you to control pets when its active?

asked in game but it doesnt seem anyone knows at the minute.

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the reason they were tested in such a way, was because it was stated that they were made for zonal pvp, not singular duels.

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Um, no.

They actually made these changes for the Arenas. They have stated that they are going to consider Zonal PvP in a future issue.

On the other hand, you're probably right that they were not made with singular duels in mind, because PvP in MMOs tends to be fairly unbalanced for one-on-one combat. If I had to guess, they try to get things working for two teams of four. If it works for greater or smaller numbers it's a bonus. By the time you're down to duels, the only way to balance it is to give everyone the same powers.

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the hell? even the original notes said arenas will be looked at in later issues and it was made for zones in mind...

Ok thank you for the reply, it was just very shocking to log on and it says i was online today and i knew i wasnt.

Can never be too careful nowadays

The issue with having jokes on the loading screen is im pretty sure a lot of them would be boring after you have seen them once or twice.

would be nice to having something new to look at other than a flat image though to make it seem the loading bar isnt dead.

This is just a general query regarding my account, i logged on today to see my 2nd account on my friends list as having one of my charecters on, name up but greyed out as if they had been on recently.

I thought this might just be a bug so i checked SG for last time logged on, it said it was Today, and i know for sure i havent used her for at least two days. I have reset the SG window and it still says today.

As a precaution I changed my passworda, but out of curiosity, have i been hacked or is it just a bug?

Following the recent patch, I have discovered one new bug, but im pretty sure there will be others so if theres any new ones can people please post them here so they are known.

The new one ive discovered is when you place a tech invention table, and attempt to move it or sell certain items connected to it, the design changes from a tech table to an arcane one.

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Update, can't use saved costumes, but I can now at least use the tailor.

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as i mentioned above, you can use saved costumes, but you need to load the costume in, reset the scales, then finish, your costume will change, then you can go back in, load up again, and change the scales.

hi guys there is a solution to these problems, you need to reset your scales for body sizes etc if your changing anything about your costume, if the scales cost you anything, the costume will not change.

The scales can be modified seperately afterwards, but yes this is like two trips to the tailor and can be very costly if you dont have tokens.

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Rollback so I can start pvping again plox tbh

If you're gonna go crazy with changes at least go gradual so that they can be tested individually.

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the reason they were tested in such a way, was because it was stated that they were made for zonal pvp, not singular duels.
I think its fair that the pvp was tested in the same was as it was intended for use.

At the end of the day, pvp is always an neverending issue in any MMORPG you get constant small tweaks and you never achieve a perfect match, but these tests were intended to show the areas which need looking at before something else becomes overpowered

Its not going to work as a 'one update will fix everything' it needs to be monitored.
If the devs truely are thinking of bringing more pvp into coh then they would greatly benefit from some playtesters of there own working directly for them so they can write a report on any issues before they go test and live, then issues such as these can be resolved before there put on live.

Even though we have the test centre, all the changes on there were basically the same as live, most of the bugs and issues are still on live as well as some new ones, this is because the data isnt tested internally and humans do make mistakes. Test to live with only minor changes doesnt work.

I am backing some of the changes made, they have had a few great ideas, but also some pvp breaking ones too (see all ranged forced to melee because of status change duration comment, again why play a ranged charecter to stand two yards from someone firing?).

Its a good start, but this is the kind of thing you expect to see on a test centre not on live.

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Very nice summary of your tests, Starcrash. I'm a bit curious about some details though, so I have a few questions.

All tests:
What was the "IO level" of the combatants? Fully slotted with purple sets? Ordinary sets? Mixture of SOs and sets?
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In the interest of fairness, i asked that the combatants did not use any set bonuses but slotted with IO enhancements at level 50 (2nd builds really did help with this) fully slotted, wherever possible with two accuracy IOs per attack because beforehand i already knew about the defence issues.

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Which combatants had builds aimed at PvP? Also, were they updated for I13 PvP?
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Since it was a second build, i did ask the people involved to use mids and do what they thought was the best possible PvP build, we helped each other with our thoughts on each others builds etc and there were based on current PvP not i12 builds. I asked today and 8/11 people involved in the tests had pvped with that charecter before i13 and after to test the changes with there current build so they had a rough idea already of what worked and what didnt, 2 of the people involved had pvped pre i12 and not since, and 1 person has only been playing for two months and recently got his first 50 but wanted to be part of the tests. So generally a mixed group

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Did any combatants have and use Aid Self? I'm partly asking because I personally have found a melee character with Aid Self extremely difficult to kill (though I do not play characters with DoT powers, which would affect the usability of Aid Self for the opponent).
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The invul tanker and shield tanker had it in the tests, and they are indeed, very very difficult to kill, because of there resists they didnt need to heal more than once every 15 seconds or so unless they were heavily debuffed or low on endurence, i agree though aid self timer is 10 seconds without hasten and just slots, for a tank thats more than enough, especially if something goes wrong and you have dull pain to back it up

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How much PvP experience did the combatants have? I realize this might be difficult to answer though.
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well out of the bunch id say in all fairness me and the invul tank had the most experience, whereas mine was mainly gained after working with i13, his was pre i13 and was still struggling with the new setups and working out how to play it to full effectiveness, there were a few noob errors in the tests, but thats what happens in zones as well so i think its unfair to class the tests as null because of that.
If you want rough times of each of the players i can ask them and list if this is important, but most of the people participating were around 1 year experience. Although it did range from none to 2.5 - 3 years with the same charecter on and off.Suprisingly though this didnt really effect the outcome as much as i thought it would. It seems there isnt many people who have fully got a grasp yet on i13 pvp.

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Did you use temporary powers or inspirations during the matches?
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3 blue inspirations were allowed to every charecter partipating, bought from the arena store just to keep people going, no temporary powers allowed

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Test 4:
Did the Inv/SS tank have considerable extra defense from sets?
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back to the first point, no set bonuses were used and it was cleanly slotted by each player with just 50 IO enhancements on a 2nd build, or a respec depending on charecter

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Did the debuff toggles actually stay up during those two minutes? Usually one KO blow on a rad defender should drop them immediately. The reason I am asking is that I'm trying to understand why the Scrapper was whiffing while the tank went after the defender. If defender debuffs are still unresistable the Tanks defense should be gone.
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yes the toggles did drop with the occasional knockout blow but from pve experience the player knew these toggles were very much the key to his survivability so he had them slotted with one or two recharges i think because they did reappear extremely fast. The tanks defences did indeed drop, but not enough to counter the -to hit buff on the scrapper i think, as to this at this time though this is just a guess i was just a spectator in this match.

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Further, if I understand you correctly (please correct me if I'm wrong) but the Scrapper was debuffed from the radiation toggles placed on the Tank - did this debuff the Scrappers ToHit and contribute to the Scrapper whiffing? Or was the Scrapper running Focused Accuracy and resist the debuff that way?
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il have to double check on this but from my view, the area effect of the radiation debuffs were going around the tank, and seen as the scrapper was going for the tank, he was also covered and getting the same effects. Radiation Infection debuffs to hit, so this could be very well what happened but it was just miss miss miss.

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I assume the Scrapper did not have Provoke to keep the tank on himself?
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no he did not, he had no form of taunt which is an argueable comment there, its very much down to personal preference

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Lastly, thanks for writing up your post. It's nice to read about the battles and how they unfolded. I do not completely agree on some of your conclusions, the tank = godmode one to be specific. While tanks are fairly good now as far as I've seen, I think godmode is stretching it a bit. A 2 vs 1 I would usually not expect to win, from my own experiences in RV (where admittedly certain Flavour-of-the-Month ATs and sets are very common). This is also the reason why I have so many questions about the last test match you described.
Again though, thank you for the write-up.

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no problem thank you for reading, the tanks now gain resists to everything, but with a blasters lowered damage and a defenders increase, defenders seem to be very much closer to winning than blasters most of the time.
Agreed its not all tankers that =godmode, the ones we tested which seemed to be too strong were all resistance based charecters, also something i have noticed on mids, tankers psy resists on invul in pvp go to 71.3% in pvp zones when slotted without sets, whilst willpower goes to 67.6% granted the difference is small but why does invul get that little bit more when its already got more resists everywhere else? willpowers defences range from 20%-30% where as invul has 30% alround with one person in area for invincibility, now i know willpower has regen, but its not enough to be made equal to that is it?
this is just my personal thoughts here nothing to do with the test.
Also it does seem shields is underperforming in pvp too compared to other tanks, i played the shield tank myself and i noticed how quickly i seemed to be falling in hp compared to the others. In my Shield build i do have aid self and its helping a lot but because of shields endurence costs with the toggles too it does cost a lot of endurence pre set bonuses and definately underperforms to others. Team pvp would be interesting though with grant cover i should think.

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Also unrelated hi jess didnt use you for a tank because you werent on at the time, i did check since you beat me up pretty well the other day.

At some point though if i can get hold of the rad defender again thought i would like to see its effect on you even though your fully slotted with sets etc it did seem to put up a great fight.

After some vigorous testing of i13 pvp, I've decided rather than make a few posts with whats wrong, I might as well just stick it in one post.

1- Status change duration - this is the biggest issue ive found so far, 4 seconds for a controller hold isnt long enough, 2 seconds on a blaster is almost laughable.
The idea to level the playing field just has blasters standing toe to toe with melees now.
Why play a ranged charecter if your going to be constantly in melee range?

Solution - lengthen the status change durations but in turn lengthen the recharges of the powers in pvp zones so they cant be used over and over but still have a viablility in pvp. Controllers control, 4 seconds just isnt working, on controllers do same as above but give them more damage per hit.

2- Tanks = Godmode - this is largely due to defence making a much bigger impact that previously and diminishing returns.

Mid range defence around 20-30% which most tanks can get with ease, means you will not seem that much different to a super reflexes scrapper defencively plus you have resists to boot.
Where as high level defence builds at around 45% suffer from a lack of resists and get hit about as often and die quicker.

Solution- Make high end defence, high end defence not mid range defence = high end defence, everything is missing way too much and focussed accuracy and two accuracy IOs on every attack is bog standard now to even hit half the time.

3- Teleport made pointless - Teleport doesnt work at all now in pvp, why? every other travel power you can still use but since everything can attack so fast you have no chance to use it and its just a terrible choice now, at least with fly you can slowly hover away as you get pummelled, or super speed you can slowly jog, jumping you can still jump a bit. Teleport = nothing.

Solution - Instead of been unusable, make teleports range decreased so you can still teleport away even if not very far so at least you can attempt to get some small distance between you and your foe if desired.


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Good changes

Taunt changes are bringing more of a use of taunt to pvp now, if the status change duration was fixed it would give more of a time to escape the taunt and also lengthen the distance between a ranger and a melee.

Resists additions are a good idea, but a blaster that cant stand within two feet of a scrapper and fire off moves continually because they cant get range is just wrong.
Reduce the resists for a blaster by around 5-10% when the point of making status viable again is introduced. Also lower a tanks gain slightly, at the minute tanks can dish out a fair bit of damage and still take more than most other types, i havent tested brute but i think that will most likely be even more deadly, no change there then

The status resistance rather than protection is a good idea, but its still completly pointless because the holds you do get flash faster than anyone could even animate there next attack. Its great to see that you actually have a chance to hold a tank or a scrapper now instead of just slowing them down but its barely even a phase for them. Controllers just have no point to pvp.

Defenders are equal or better now instead of being underpowered, which i am glad to see because it means theres some technique to winning rather than who can spam attacks fastest. Kinetics did seem amazing to pvp with, althought the slows had little effect the damage debuffs worked great and transference was handy. Radiation seemed to give defenders a scrapper like defence base, combined with there boosted resists now with tough they are a formidable foe rather than someone you can shrug off. More so than blasters due to how tough they are to kill, where as blasters are just smash until they die.

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This conclusion was reached by having several duels as follows via arena - whilst i realise these changes were made for zones, they were carried out as if they were in a zone, in the perez park map and between a variety of charecters. The only inspirations we allowed in this test were 3 small blue inspirations to keep people going.

1st test - level 50 tank shield/SS VS level 50 Archery/Energy blaster vs level 50 duel blades/Super Reflexes scrapper

Result- Tank and scrapper pretty evenly matched, super reflexes was rarely hit as expected even though focussed accuracy was running and tank wasnt been hit very frequently, the controller was just on the outside, basically been ignored since it wasnt doing much to either the tank or scrapper. Scrapper eventually took the tank down after 4 minutes, mainly due to rage drop and within two minutes had killed the controller but was around 25% hp, only about 5-10% of that from the controller.

Test 2 - level 50 sonic/psy blaster vs level 50 willpower/energy tanker vs level 50 energy/kin defender

Results - Tank came in, taunted the blaster and within two seconds was in melee range, the blaster was firing attacks but missing over and over despite being two accuracy IO slotted per attack, no focussed accuracy or similar effect. The defender was on the outside, using kinetics to debuff both attacks which left the blaster and tank been unable to do much to each other and the defender dealing a good amount of damage to the blaster, at which point the blaster turned to the defender and attacked instead, the tank continued the assualy on the blaster, who was dropping hp due to the defender, the defender reached 50% hp, then healed to full hp and the blaster died, at which point he turned to the tank, missed over and over and the tank used total focus and took the defender down but had gotten to about 50% hp, and this was the most effective we managed throughout all our tests vs the tank.

Test 3 - level 50 controller Fire/Kin vs level 50 blaster Fire/Energy vs level 50 Defender Rad/Rad

Results- controllers imps went straight to work on the defender whilst the controller attacked the blaster, the defender quickly took out all 3 imps due to heal decay without losing much hp and the controller was dispatched pretty easily by the blaster and lost little hp, transference had left its mark and the blaster was running at about 25% endurence, and attacked the defender, who put all his radiation auras on the blaster, who wasnt once able to hit him as the blaster was disposed of by some really heavy hits from the radiation. It was damage you would have expected a blaster to deal. This match ended the fastest of all the duels.

Test 4- 50 Tank Invul/Super Strength vs 50 Defender Radiation/Radiation vs 50 Scrapper Broadsword/Invul

Results- Tank starts by going for the defender and the scrapper turns to the tank, hoping a joint effort could take him down. The defender uses all his toggles on the tank and the scrapper (been a typical scrapper in scrapperlock) is stuck in the radiation range as well. The defender continues to attack the tank, rendering his defence useless so he has to rely on his resists, he has a hard time hitting the defender but with rages +to hits combined with Focussed accuracy and his accuracy IOs he managed to beat down the defender in under 2 minutes, the entire time the scrapper is hitting away at nothing despite having focussed accuracy, he occasionally hit during build up but not enough to make a lasting dent in the tanks armor.
Debuffs now gone, the tank uses his heal and turns to the scrapper, this took a while and had a good amount of misses, but the tank eventually won even though both sides were struggling endurence wise. Tank finished with 75% hp although the scrapper and the tank both used dull pain, the tank had a much longer wait before using his.


There were more tests than this and if anyone would like i will post them later but ive just noticed the time and i think i better get some sleep, also somethings in this may not be very clear, if any issues crop up i will address them later.

Since issue 13 ive been having a few graphical errors too, I run a Geforce 8800GTS on windows xp and occasionally when i log into a map the screen will quickly go black and white in places like the health bars etc and then randomly get colour again.

also in PI by the portals in portal corp i get a weird shadow substitution when i run towards the stairs sometimes too, instead of the usual shadow i end up with a big diamond around me, im also on full settings and changing them doesnt stop the bug occuring, with the exception of the shadow one which goes off if you turn them off.

Protections plan is to complete the SG base she spends everyday working on and tinkering with so she can go out and beat some people up in the arena.

Ahh cool thanks a lot i never knew about that site. 50000 damage.... think we need a few more blasters

hey guys ive seen this control room computer in a few pictures, it would go perfectly with my base but i dont know how to get it, what its called or how much it costs.

From what i understand its created on a worktable but i have no idea which one and what its called.

Picture

Its the computer hanging from the ceiling in the middle.