Punchy

It makes me wonder how EA stands in this whole mess. They went and created a new powerset, correct? And then they went and gave it superior mez protection with NO DRAWBACKS. No rooting, no slow, no debuff. It doesn't seem to mesh with any notion that they don't want to give mez protection for free.

Unless this is to balance the fact that the set has no self-heal, which is very possible... which means that people who think EA should have a self-heal have to consider if they'd be willing to live with a 10% res debuff on entropy shield.

It does. Like I said, it doesn't sound like an official comment, it's just too unreasonable. Before taking it seriously, I'd like to hear a confirmation of this by a different dev, to be honest.

I mean, KO blow at 8? But, uh, what if you... I don't know, not pair up SS with INV? Is Whirling hands the balance for an EM/Inv brute? Or does this mean that secondaries are balanced with specific primaries in mind?

I understand perfectly... I just think that what you said made perfect sense. So much sense, in fact, that I find it hard to believe that his comment is 'official'.

Edit: I'm not saying I don't think Jonyu's response may be 100% correct, but I don't think his response was in any way official. Especially since if it is, he MIGHT be giving people a month of heads-up on nerfs. Is this the dev's usual pattern of behavior?

I really have my doubts as to how 'official' this answer is, though, given how odd it sounds.

Jonyu may be the brute rep, but he has given conflicting information in the past. Look up his response to the 'nullifiers vs. unstoppable' topic, given -after- and yet completely conflicting with the answer _Castle_ gave in CoV general discussion.

Well, yeah, if you're being ganged up, that's the perfect moment. They're there to save you, or to make an impossible encounter not quite so impossible. But it's not something you can rely on for every fight, mainly because it won't be available every fight, not unless you plan to fight for 3 minutes and then sit out for 4 (with hasten).

So sad but true. Even in post-30, most pve tactics for stalkers (that I've seen)is: 'i start the fight by ASing this mob in the middle of the crowd, then, when I face-plant you come and kill the rest'.

It's really refreshing when you find one that realizes that getting a whole mob angry at them is not a good choice.

Question, though: don't the spec ops EMP grenades do damage to bots?

I really hope they don't touch it, and instead buff other similar powers. Though it does seem odd that elude or Kuji-In Retsu, which seem to be almost identical in def value, don't offer a health boost. Yes, I know that you can't compare powers directly, but it's not like EA is an otherwise WEAK set, to need the extra hp buff.

But I'd prefer they add effects to the powers I mentioned than hurt overload.

No, you're pretty wrong about what I mean.

Statesman has stated, elsewhere, that defense isn't really scaling. Resistance is a flat out resistance, whatever comes in is reduced by 'x' amount. If it's huge damage from someone +3, it's reduced the same.

Defense, otoh, works differently... from the formulas to calculate to-hit, it seems that you add accuracy and subtract defense, or something similar. Considering how higher enemies have to-hit bonuses over you, a small measure of defense just won't be that effective. And once you DO get hit, you'll be killed.

Again, if you had read what I said, you'd see that statesman also mentioned that defense is being studied, to see how it can be reworked so it DOES scale.

Against +0, though, defense does work really well.

But right now, if something just has TOO much accuracy, it'll blow past your defenses. And since you have no resistance, you'll take the full brunt of the blow.

And the blaster story: vs. blasters (if they're not blappers) my brute can do pretty well, most of the time. They can NOT one-shot me with 3 attacks. I might be hurt bad, but I'm still alive, I can pop DP or eat insps. And if I get to them, I can turn the tables. From the story of the blaster, he 3-shotted the EA brute. Pure defense also has that disadvantage: when you do get hit by something big, you drop FAST.

And of course they're strategies. They're just not GOOD strategies. Cooldowns are something you should use in exceptional situations. Otherwise you're fighting 3 minutes and waiting 4. If your winning a fight has to rely on some massively powerful cooldown of yours, you have to reevaluate your strategy or your build or the enemies.

I mean, I could build a strategy which involves my keeping 4 purple insps active on me always. And head back to town to buy more, when I run out. It really is not a good tactic; it's desperation. Overload and unstoppable are the sort of thing you pop if you need to take aggro from an AV. Not because a certain LT-level minion can make everything else you have superfluous.

Might be that a AT without status protection doesn't care if the magnitude is 100 or 3. Either will hold them, except now it will hold them for longer.

Though I don't see how this is worse than other mezzing mobs, though.

Oh, I don't think EA is overpowered or underpowered, I just don't think that using uber powers should be offered as a 'solution' to problems. If you HAVE to use them, like I said, something's not balanced.

My main concern about EA is that it's defense, and not resist-based. From all the stories I hear, enemies with to-hit buffs can just negate your entire defensive sets. And blasters like to brag about how they can 3-shot an EA brute from full to dead without even dropping toggles (aim + bu give like 150% acc buff WITHOUT SLOTS).

(In the tanker forums, people tout that invul tankers should pop unstoppable ALWAYS -- that's a workaround, not a real fix to anything.)

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Of course, if you're relying on overload for regular mobs, something is wrong. Either that, or you enjoy waiting 5-12 minutes between fights.

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Either you haven't fought 40+ longbow or you've been really lucky. You're comment leaves me thinking it's the 1st possibility, because anyone who has had to fight the 40+ understands. 39 longbow...sissies. 40+ longbow...sick.

Another detail of note, Overload recharges a tad faster than what you think, especially with hasten working for you.

Come back when you know a little more about what yer saying.

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It would be nice if you read everything I said. I said that EA are probably the only ones with ANY tactic vs. 40+ longbow in groups. But still, that tactic is not a GOOD tactic. Relying on cooldowns for EVERY fight means something is very wrong.

As for the speed, I'm just working off numbers. Like all uber click powers, overload has a recharge of 1000 and a duration of 180s. With 3 recharge SOs, you drop that roughly to 50%. With recharge, you POTENTIALLY drop it further to ~360s. That's 6 minutes, no matter how you look at it.

But that 360s value is if you could run hasten non-stop. You can't. Hasten lasts 2 minutes and has a recharge of 450s. Slotted out, hastened, according to hero planner it drops to ~180s. So you have a downtime of 60s, per use (more, actually). So, supposing you pop it as soon as it's available, you will recharge 4 minutes of the 360, and the rest of the time you'll have to recharge unhastened. So the number of seconds is HIGHER than ~360s. Unless you can say that the herobuilder stats are wrong, and that the duration/refresh of said powers is something else.

I've fought a lot of longbow post-40. I did level 39 in one day by doing warburg missions at ruthless (that's 40-41). Solo, you shouldn't need your uber power, since you get only spec ops, not nullifiers.

In groups, though, yeah, probably overload is the ONLY brute tactic that's not insta-death. Doesn't make it a good tactic, since if the fight is too big to clear in 3 minutes, you better hope you have someplace to run when the crash hits and you lose all toggles. And running for someone who has all aggro isn't a good idea.
And after that you have 3ish minutes in which you might very well be hit and killed. If you're relying on overload to take the alpha strike, then you better run into spawns once every 6ish minutes. It's the best brutes have, but it's pretty far from great.

Like I said, I prefer not to group for +40 longbow missions, I can face spec ops (up to 3 in cluster) and finish my missions in 5-10 minutes. At least until they're nerfed.

This also extends to people who suggest using overload in pvp. Overload (and unstoppable for that matter) are last-ditch tactic; relying on it to fight means you have to wait outside fights AT LEAST as long as you spend with it on. If it's the ONLY way you can win a fight, then balance is off.

That doesn't really solve the problem, though, unless there's a stalker for each nullifier you encounter. I mean, killing them isn't the issue... it's getting the brute(s) to not faceplant when the nullifier uses its hold, since they're the ones with massive aggro.

An MM has little trouble with spec ops or nullifier, either, for that matter. Losing tactics and assault might be annoying,

Probably the safest choice is to have a well-slotted dom (/nrg sounds good) use their aoe holds on the group, and first take out all the problem troops (or try to). Granted, if the group is big and you're not particularly strong on firepower the dom might just end up faceplanting if the hold breaks.

Of course, if you're relying on overload for regular mobs, something is wrong. Either that, or you enjoy waiting 5-12 minutes between fights.

Spec-ops only start using EMP grenades post-40, so the encounters in St. Martial with the ballista aren't quite that dangerous. You might get a half-dozen web grenades, but you won't have your END drained 6x over.

Spec ops, for the record, drain about 3/4 of end that I've noticed, when at even con. A +1 WILL drain you to 0 in one shot.

But as an SS/INV brute I've learned to take on spawns of as many as 3 SOs (with attached troops) and survive in ruthless, popping only a couple of insps, though even that isn't always necessary.

Nullifiers' attack though, is so devastating that all tactics failed when in small groups. The only thing that worked was popping dull pain and running like hell. Yeah, if I'm in a well-balanced, very large team everything's more survivable. But in a 2-person group, the very first spawn when entering one of the more crowded rooms had 3 nullifiers and 3 spec ops (plus the rest, but those are the only ones that I worry about). Yeah, it probably was 3 spawns, but that's sort of immaterial when they're all in the same tiny room.

In a warburg mission, the very first spawn in a 2-man team (brute + stalker) had 3 nullifiers and 3 spec-ops. Probably more than one spawn, but that doesn't really matter when they're all in the same room.

I had never faced nullifiers at 40 before, so I say, 'take out the spec ops'. Wasn't I surprised at hitting them, then dying nearly instantly.

We tried twice more, before deciding that soloing longbow was a lot more profitable. There's really not much you can do in situations like that (pulling wasn't really an option). Other than trying a bigger, more balanced group... with all the potential problems that might bring (more LTs in the mix, wardens when we hit critical mass).

Well, consider that nullifiers only really show up if you ARE in a group. Spec ops are a problem solo, but they aren't quite as lethal as the nullifier's toggle-dropping, for some reason. Possibly the larger concentration of enemies in situations where nullifiers spawn.

Also, remember that there WERE longbow troops that could detoggle (Ballista and Wardens), and they lost that ability, so the devs -have- at some point considered toggle-dropping to be excessive. (besides the fact that, if it isn't proper for bosses and elite bosses to detoggle, why should LTs be doing it?)

Besides: as you might know, an issue in the tanker forums is how toggle-dropping kills tanks. So I'm not really sure what you're arguing here: that villains should suffer it because heroes have? Isn't that counterproductive?

As for all the groups you mentioned, I'm not that familiar with CoH. How exactly is each one so cheap? (If you mean that carnies can blast tankers with damage types they have no resistance or defense against, again, I don't consider that cheap.)

If you're talking about holds or attacks that can bypass ANY active resistance, then yeah, it's cheap, if not outright broken.

Ring Mistresses spank my /inv brute, but I don't think they're cheap. Plus, Psi is my chara's weakness, that's just how the game works. I don't mind arachnos, either, and they do little S/L damage, and their bosses do both toxic and psi.

Toggle dropping, the way it happens for nullifiers, is just cheap, since it can't be resisted.

You don't have to worry about it... even up to 39, they're okay. 40 onward is the problem.

It's nullifiers, for sure. Spec ops have an insanely powerful end drain that takes away something like 75% end at even con (more like 99.999% at +1) that they do all the time. I think it might be AoE, too. It does miss, though.

Then you need to look into 40+ nullifiers, because they're doing SOMETHING to drop toggles, and it's not EMP grenade. (All my endurance was still there, but my toggles weren't. And pretty soon my health wasn't either).

Longbow are terrifically hard, but because they're so cheap. Arachnos is fairly hard late-game, but they're much more interesting... almost all types of damage, effects like smoke bomb etc. etc. Not because a couple of troops have cheap insta-kill attacks.