Quixotik

By the way, RttC was being detoggled by Charged Brawl and Tesla Cage, Haymaker, Dark Blast (I think) all from Lieutenants and none mezzed my Tank at all.

I disagree only because RttC is the main tanking power in Willpower. Sometimes the devs make mistakes.

I know that, but RttC's main purpose is Defensive so let's say it is a special case power and bend the rules to take into account RttC's main function which is the main tanking power of Willpower. It doesn't damage Mobs, just mildly debuffs To-Hit, similar to Invincibility, but in reverse and no where near as good as the Defense that Invincibility can generate.

The new rules may not have been targetted to Nerf Willpower and RttC, but that is what the new rules have done. The powerset is just about useless without the main regens from Willpower. And hey, a Nerf is a Nerf is a Nerf, even if it comes in the guise of a politically correct Nerf.

Okay, then RttC needs to be fixed so it is not Off all the time. The other powers in Willpower almost never get detoggled. Neither does Integration in Regen. Right now RttC is either Bugged or purposely nerfed.

are you level 50?

This is a stupid Nerf. I went to Bloody Bay today to level up on some Bosses and my Tanker is mezzed by every stun and hold and RttC is down more than running! Literally as soon as I activate RttC, it's knocked off again.

Why not just remove RttC from Willpower if it bothers the Devs so much? Shouldn't the Tank do more damage if RttC is never working now?

[ QUOTE ]
Having watched owls in action I wouldn't trust them to target for me. I've seen them hit tree branches and knock themselves out while catching mice. I've also seen one swoop at something three times before being pounced on by a house cat that was watching (cat didn't seem to get hurt but wasn't able to keep the owl down). I have no idea what it was diving at but it never seemed to catch it.

Highly amusing but not very confidence building.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, that is the one drawback. Obstacles make no sound, but in a test enviornment the Owls never missed their targets in complete darkness. And by the way eagles and hawks frequently miss also, but you have to remember the air is a very kinetic enviornment, filled with wind and changing air densities so quite amazing birds of prey catch fish and small running prey at all.

Anyway, at least we all agree on Shrunken Heads.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

Owls and Bats find their prey in complete darkness with infailable accuracy.


[/ QUOTE ]

You need to spend a little more time watching animal planet. For one, owls rely mainly on sight to hunt, and although their night vision is much better than a human's, they still need a little bit of light to see by. Put them in a completely sealed dark room, or deep underground, and they'll be just as blind as a human. Bat's ability to echolocate does let them navigate in complete darkness, and hunt as well, but it's certainly not infallible, nor is it's ability to discern things as good as sight.

[/ QUOTE ]

No actually Owls hunt by sight and sound and can capture prey by sound alone in utter darkness.

The size of an Owl's head is to house hyper-accurate eardrums which are focused on spatial sensing of sounds. The boney structure of one ear is turned down and the other upward to further enhance spatial sensing, thus the very large head.

Furthermore the Owl's initial detection of prey is from sound. It has been shown that Owls have an ability to catagorize sounds in an area into a volume of local recurring sounds. When a mouse or other prey enters the area the Owl detects it as new and can tell if it is a prey sound.

Animal Planet is wrong I guess. I learned most of this in college biology and natural science. The part about Owls having a dictionary, so to speak, of local recurring sounds is from very recent research.

[ QUOTE ]
I get it!

The point of this thread is and Owl is a weapon! Grab it by the tail feather and beat the hell out of baddies, teach them what accuracy or targeting is all about. IT BELONGS IN THE WEAPON MASTERY! PLEASE DEVS?!?!?!

(This is just my speculation but I bet i16 power customization won't really bring much more than changing power colors, if it does then that is cool but not ready to get my hopes up)

[/ QUOTE ]

Owls and Bats find their prey in complete darkness with infailable accuracy. Much better than Targeting Drone. Shrunken Heads tell their masters everything. Etc.

The idea is to provide different animations for the power since the basic Targeting Drone is very high-tech in it's roleplay options. Now that it has been added to Weapon Mastery and probably other powersets in the future some roleplay options for TD become desireable.

Here are some ideas, I am sure there are more, but a start.

1. A Shrunken Head that orbits the character.
2. A Skull.
3. A Bat.
4. A glow like in Temporary Invunerability.
5. A Butterfly.
6. A Talisman that only appears on activation or zoning in.
7. A small Owl.

If there was no change in sound effects the animations could probably be selected at the tailor.

Anyway, for many characters the techy-ness of Targeting Drone has a negative impact on the character's roleplay. This change would make TD more RP supportive and allow TD to be added to other powersets where it might not fit so well.

Right now I would recommend an Archery/Mental Manipulation Blaster. It sounds odd, but it is very effective and the slowness of the psionic powers is offset by the snap of Archery. Very fast leveling from the start.

Another winner is Willpower/Stone Melee/Earth Mastery Tanker. Stone Melee is always fun, Willpower lets you take almost every melee power, add on Earth Control and you get the whole effect. Stone melee hits pretty hard for a tank and Fault does CC wonders in those 3-spawn pile-ons.

Other than that it should be a character with RP-ability because even though CoX is much faster leveling now it is still a long long way to 50.

I use Tough, Weave, and Power Boost on my Archery/NRG, but Manuevers is a good sub for Weave. Remember though that Boost Power doubles base Defense of your Defense powers. It opens some options.

So I'd take Manuevers earlier, trade superspeed for Power Boost.

Try this instead. Skip Combat Jumping, take 'you pick', Tough, and Weave from Fighting, then take Power Boost to double the base defense of Hover and Weave and slot the 3% Defense to all from Steadfast Protection, somewhere in Tough. You can fit all this pretty well by level 30 if you skip NRG melee attacks, but the Defense will out-perform the melee stuff so you'll like it. Then just look for IO sets with the Defense bonuses to improve further.

I think the focus is Dominators. I think Blasters are still considered overpowered (of course I feel they are underpowered usually, especially the snipes).

I remember from pre-Enhancement Diversification CoH, I'd wind up fully slotted Zapp with Aim and Build-Up and drop a Tank Swiper to 25% HPs. Now that was a sniper attack. Some players would go, "what was that?"

Excuses, excuses. I guess you can rationalize anything, but how about solutions? Like allowing players to change the Targeting Drone into something like a glow? Like you would when choosing which sword to use at the Tailor?

[ QUOTE ]
a shuriken and caltrops are WAY lower tech than something that explodes and is designed to lock someone in place...
If it was a smoke bomb, I'd agree, but the concept of web grenade really isn't ninja esq.

[/ QUOTE ]

Depends on what you think Ninjas are. Ninjas employ tricks, weapons, stealth. Web Grenade could be devised and used by a martial artist as could Caltrops and Shurikens. Targeting Drone doesn't fit the roleplay theme of the other powers in Weapon Mastery, it was just available to be plugged in. One day it should be addressed in some fashion.

[ QUOTE ]
I don't think a Web grenade really strikes me as a ninja thing.. To me that kind of thing is more technology based.

and if you want to stick with the "weapons mastery" then don't pick the targeting drone.. It's not really a weapon now is it, where as a grenade, caltrops, and shurikens are.

But I can certainly think of making a tech style scrapper (claws/whatever) whom has tech style blades (I've got a few actually) who just so happens to have a utility belt to toss a web grenade or some caltrops, while having a little personal assistant helping point out weak spots on an opponent hovering around.

What I don't have room for is "shrurikens" which are the size of my character's body..

Let's make them believable sized first. But see.. Since they don't fit my concept, my scrap won't take them..

Problem solved.

And I'd also like to point out that while your solution may seem to be the "easy" solution, the easiest is just not taking the power instead of asking for new programing to allow it to be customizable. Plus that, what would you change it with that would make sense for a martial artist?

Last time I saw ninjas being portrayed there wasn't something floating around their head anyway.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, of course, the easiest solution is do nothing, but then why have a Forum for CoX if the goal is to do nothing?

And actually, Web Grenade is the exact type of trick a ninja would employ, as are Caltrops and Shurikens. All pretty low-tech to build and quiet when employed.

What would I add as options for Targeting Drone visuals/sounds? The ones from Kuji-In Rin, or Danger Sense, or even Temporary Invulnerability. Goggles would be a good option for some characters. Some players would of course keep Targeting Drone.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Or... They could add more sets for scrappers. But I'm not about to beat a dead horse. The idea of the power is good but it is a tad off from the scheme. They could have made goggles similar to the temp power but with the effect of foc acc since thats what they were going for. As far as skipping it for cosmetic/theme reasons... That would be kinda hard to do.

[/ QUOTE ]How is it hard?

Take Caltrops/Web Grenade, Caltrops/Web Grenade/Shuriken, Exploding Shuriken.


Also, how does a gadget that hovers around you fit any less than a pair of goggles. Newsflash, both are gadgets/devices, not weapons.

[/ QUOTE ]

I posted on this in issue 12, but at the time it seemed the initial plan to remove Web Grenade from Weapon Mastery took precedence over the oddness of TD. They ended up leaving Web Grenade of course, after many protests. How many of you objected?

Just the same a martial artist or ninja type hero would not have a drone hover about their heads going ema-loop, ema-loop and shooting laserbeams everywhere, but the power's effect of To Hit Buff and Perception Resist should be available to anyone taking Weapon Mastery, a martial arts based Epic.

Easy solution is to be able to choose the appearance/sound effect of Targeting Drone in the Tailor/Costume Creator screen. Which could easily be done if anyone cares enough about roleplay in a martial arts epic.

Sorry, but Targeting Drone dosen't fit Weapon Mastery. Targeting Drone is a Devices/Gadgets/Traps power. Scrappers don't get more than a Sword or Claws and the Secondaries are also non-Devices oriented.

Weapon Mastery is a Martial Arts/Ninja trickery styled powerset. Caltrops are very ancient, so are Nets, which Web Grenade fits into after a fashion. Shuriken and Exploding Shuriken, also martial arts/Ninja styled. Into this they add Targeting Drone simply because Devices has Caltrops and Web Grenade. And here I thought CoX was an RPG!

Bottom line, if you want to restore some 'roleplaying' value to Weapon Mastery, change Targeting Drone into Uncanny Senses or like that and remove the Drone, or let us pick an Effect at the Tailor/Character Creation screen.

Double XP Weekend was in June a few times... hey it's June now!

I went Munitions. I like Freeze Ray, for looks if nothing else, but handy. Body Armor, but my Build has Tough and Weave. Weave benefits wonderfully from Boost Power. LRM Rocket is nice, but recharge is neuterous.

And I may take Surveillence again at 49, but at 49 there is so much else and the -14% res to a single target is weak, it's strength being based on an 8 player team... and... and... what if all the Blasters had Surveillence!!!???!!! oh my!!! Fake Nemesis laugh at Surveillence, then hit you with a 500HP Stun Bolt!

What MM really needed was Self Stimulant which relieves mezzes and boosts damage! Leaves you drained when it wears off.

Just don't use Torrent or use it to knock stuff into corners. Or you could fire back to the Kins to stop killing everything before your nuke can activate.

[ QUOTE ]
Whatever happend to my Psy Weapons, it was defintely top 3 in the polls. I'd love to see my Psy Weapons enter the game, we already know another Super Hero based MMORPG is doing it. I'd like to see something like a mix of Fortuna. With Psy dart being thrown from the hand, looking like 3-5 small darts.
Have a claws attack made out of Psy power, a Katana, Fist powered, all kinds of things. Could do -recharge, Smashing/Psy dmg, Holds and Stuns. This would be the ROXXXORZZ

[/ QUOTE ]

This would be good too. I think I voted for Psi-Weapons. Dual Blades got the votes for being familiar from other RPGs, but is not very super-hero-ish and despite the combos, is not that different from Katana. Psi-Weapons is very much a super-power set and could have some cool animations, as you say, where the PC forms the weapons out of psi-energy.

Unfortunately the writing is on the wall, Going Rogue: Expansion will most likely get any new powersets (well it better get 10 or more really), I-15 Anniversary: Update, not.

However, there really needs to be something new with powersets in I-15. Could be a few more crossovers. A secondary for Archery would be so easy and should have been added years ago.

I am going to call this some kind of Bug. Maybe it is a feature, but it makes no sense since Brutes, Tanks, and Scrappers are somewhat similar.

Bug is this. No matter what my Brute does, the Buff Pet is instantly killed by any mobs my Brute does not strike.

This never happens with my Tankers and rarely to my Scrappers. In fact this doesn't happen to any of my characters except the Brutes. Perhaps it is some function of Fury generation, but if so it is a Bug in the case of Buff Pets since it effectively nullifies the Buff Pet vet reward power.

Fastest is Archery, but there is zero damage mitigation from the Primary. If you went Archery/EM you would need Weave and build on Ranged defense with boosting from Power Boost.

Sonic/Psi is a good damage mix with a good soloing trick. Sleep a large group with Sirens Song, then Drain Psyche them for a massive regen buff and turn on World of Confusion.

Another favorite of mine is AR/NRG which gets the most from Boost Range (3 Cone attacks) and adding Build-Up to AR gets good damage. Has enough knockback to keep most attackers on their backs.

Soloing effectively with a Blaster requires some way of quickly AoE-ing groups of mobs. Any Blaster can solo single targets, but leveling will be tedious if that's all your Blaster can do so Ice, Energy, Sonic, need the get their extra AoE's from the secondary. Assuming you mean solo-PvE.