Rakeeb

Bah.

The real question for Electricity Manipulation is: does a Damage / Mez or Accuracy / Mez effect Endurance Drain? If it does, it's very effective in certain powers in that set.

The ideal way of pulling is to send in a MasterMind's disposable heroes (villains?) to deal with the mobs. That way they can take the hit for the team rather than a player.

As a MM player myself, I almost always send the bots somewhere a little far from the team and then have them attack from a different angle, to limit AoE splash and accidental aggro -- with Group Fly I'm really appreciative of the skies for that purpose. But that's just me.

Chill, Shane. Hope you find a decent new home. We coulda used your brain, too.

At this rate it'll be me writing story for City of Heroes.

It had better be -Jump, too. That's a pretty important and valuable part of Web Grenade.

Ignite isn't autohit. It has a higher base accuracy than Flamethrower, but it isn't autohit. Say, about 5% higher or so.

If I recall correctly, Longbow are worth 10% more XP than usual. Compare that to the Freakshow, who are substantially weaker and are worth 15% more than usual. All this, of course, pales before the Fake Nemesis bosses, who are worth a staggering 50% more than they should be. Perhaps some of these XP things need to be reworked a bit for varying challenge.

Meh. It's just Dogface being his usual self. Hardly worthy of Castle's time.

Frankly, Ballista isn't THAT huge a worry. I would expect to see you all more freaked out about Sea Witch than him. After all, she's the one with the AoE -Acc and constant interrupts around her, while all he can do is hit hard and drop a few toggles.

Never did get the Arc, but hell, he's just an Elite Boss -- he'll spend the fight on his back if I have anything to say about it.

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(*What the heck are crumpets anyway?)

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They're things that you can't eat with shark teeth. Now go on back into your cage and keep cranking it out.

Hey, if you like pie, shout it out.

EXPANSHALONE!

Come on now, we invented a new term for Chrissakes. At least use it.

Okay, thanks for the update, there was a lot of false info out there that was kinda muddling up the issue. I'll be glad to see my robots' upgrade blasts actually do more damage than their base blasts.

Yeesh. He really is masochistic lately.

Jack, don't poke your playerbase RIGHT BEFORE you go touring. It ain't healthy. Some of these kids, they're so full of crap that it's messing with their judgement. They're liable to do anything, including taking a swing at your for "ruining" their favorite game.

Keep in mind that the INITIAL cost of a base is vast, as opposed to the Maintenance cost. That's not so bad.

Eh. Herding wasn't the design of the game regardless -- the game was designed around a group tackling a single mob group, and if they get more added, a problem arises.

Still, I believe you should have been forthright with this, Jack.

Mm. Fun times.

Y'know, I don't mean to beat a dead horse, but that power has NEVER really been balanced. I mean, yeah, I'd take a massive ToHit nerf, OR a -Range power, OR a passive Repel power. That'd be fine; all useful in their own right. But all three of them? On a toggle? One that now costs less than a pair of defensive toggles?

Come on now, people. That ain't balance.

OH NOES!

Gonna have to find that Icy Wind character and stomp her into several different pieces. That or send Dr. Light after her. That'll work too.

The bow speed is considerable. Use it properly and you're all set. The biggest downside is that, unlike all other Blaster sets, there is no point-of-attack mitigation. Which bites the big one.

I swear, this time, it wasn't me!

Hang on, getting Cuppa down here...

oh, and IBTL

... Well then, Circeus, all they have to do is drop Instant Healing to a 45s timer and they'll be all set according to Statesman, right?

Okay, seriously, from what I can tell, the big issue here is consistency -- people want Ice to go into battles with a consistent amount of armor. This is because the Tank is expected to absorb the alpha strike, which is entirely reasonable on a team. Thing is, the Devs want to introduce risk into playing a Tank, which is a factor you've gotta consider: even if twice the amount of enemies hit that should miss, on Live, you're still looking at like 3 guys hitting on a single spawn, which is of course what we're supposed to fight. So that's clearly a bit much. But, on the other hand, if you can just suck up the Alpha, then the whole rest of the spawn poses no risk to you -- since you can handle their max DPS, you can easily handle their reduced and confused DPS. So that brings us to where we are now.

So: Any clue how y'all can set it up so that you can absorb Alphas and still be at risk from the rest of the spawn?

I blame Last_Archon. He got a really, really good one and I just had to top him somehow... but this shambling Cadaver was as close as I could get. Even Dr. V would be ashamed of this.

Still, it IS kinda appropriate, given the i5 nerfs. AoE did indeed get nerfed... just not like most people though it would.

ARISE AND WALK THE EARTH AGAIN!

THIS GUIDE CHANGED MY LIFE

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We're making some tweaks with Defiance in the upcoming patch.

It is not getting a major overhaul though. Just tweaking the defiance so it starts to kick in earlier. The overall buffs posted earlier are staying about the same (getting only slightly better), but you will be recieving a damage buff earlier in your health bar now.

This will be reflected in the Defiance meter as well. We've made some tweaks to that as well.

I want to stress that you actually can end up being buffed over 500% with Defiance. (500% is the max buff for Blasters) This actually does nothing except protect you from damage debuffs.

This is one of the rare instances in Issue 5 where a solo character is able to reach a cap without help (or inspirations).

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Interesting. Despite the outcry here on the boards, I've been playing and there have been a few situations where Defiance was noticable, especially to a number-cruncher like myself. In PvP, defiance is VERY noticable, which is a lot of fun as a gameplay concept -- I'm hurt but not down, everyone else better look out! Although a wounded man is typically the initial target. Ah well.

I'll have to see the revised numbers to really judge, but I'm going to have to slightly reverse my first post -- I do see a late-game use for Defiance; it's just not as staggeringly powerful as it is in the beginning.

My question to you, Manticore, is just this: City of Heroes has an ongoing storyline here. We have seen some few traces of it affecting the larger world: we've seen Faathim's attempt to contact humanity (disastrously), we've seen Sister Psyche's return and Malaise's exile. We've also seen our beloved 5th Column overrun by the partially-alien Council.

However, it took a year and change for those three points to be made. Will the story ever start to accelerate?