Sarrate

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  1. A Tanker can hold aggro off Brutes and Scrappers that don't taunt if they (Tanker) do. I've held aggro on all four STF patrons with a Shield Scrapper before as WP. The problem is:
    1. If a Brute Taunts, Game Over for the Tanker. Best one in the world can't generate enough threat. (This is what I have a major problem with.)
    2. Even with non-Taunting Brutes/Scrappers, the Tanker needs to have a solid understanding of threat mechanics and a build to back it up. They may know what they need to do, but if they can't taunt frequently enough, pump out a high enough taunt duration, or dish out enough damage, they're sunk. It's not uncommon to see Tanker builds that skimp out on offense (4 Kinetic Combat and calling it done, I'm looking at you) in favor of keeping their mitigation high.
  2. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Deus_Otiosus View Post
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by JamesTheShadow View Post
    But seriously... if im the first in the mob, and I try my best to be, i try to keep the attention of all the pack (anyway while they are dancing under my footstomp all they see is ceiling-floor-ceiling-floor) so having played many brutes with good tankers in group i can see how fury would be harder to get.
    It's one thing if you're first in the mob, that's really a Brute's top priority to not allow that to happen.

    Regardless, unless you go out of your way to literally taunt the exact same things the Brute is on, the Brute should be fine unless you're fighting a very tiny group.

    But I have played with tankers, who actually try to taunt of the brute, which is pretty unproductive for the entire team.

    When working together, a Tanker and Brute make an excellent combo.
    Think about what you're saying here, for just a moment...

    You're saying a Brute (who has less survivability than a Tanker) should not be allowing the Tanker (who has the best survivability) to get into the mob first (ie: take the alpha strike when the mobs are the most dangerous).

    Further, you're saying that a Tanker should never Taunt off a Brute - but if a Brute takes the alpha strike, they'll have up to 17 mobs attacking them. Unless the spawn is 34 mobs or more, the Brute will have more aggro than the Tanker (since he shouldn't Taunt off the Brute).

    This boils down to the Tanker wasting their survivability so the Brute can fuel Fury and only using their aggro generation to keep squishies safe (a job Brutes can't lower themselves to).


    I'm being a bit melodramatic above (and I can understand why a Brute wants to do those things), but there is a big problem there. One of my biggest pet peeves with Brutes (and Scrapper with taunt auras) is threat generation. They have the same threat mod, taunt mod (ie: duration), taunt mags (largely irrelevant), and single target Gauntlet while dealing more damage (damage is a large component of threat calculations). If a Brute wants aggro (ie: uses Taunt), there is not a damn thing a Tanker can do about it.

    I'm not saying Tankers should just sneeze and hold aggro. I don't care if they have to work for it. But being 100% incapable of holding it is completely borked.
  3. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Vel_Overload View Post
    If anything, It would be a Force Field user.
    I prefer Cold over FF. The shields are the same strength, but Cold also brings some sick debuffs to the table as well. (Cold is my all around favorite set to be teamed with.)

    Keep in mind that WP doesn't tout strong def resistance, so cascading def failure can be problematic - even if you're softcapped. Cold provides a nice buffer to prevent that from happening. The one place I don't have a preference of Cold vs Sonic is the ITF. I'm practically immortal against Cims with 90% s/l res.
  4. Thanks for leading, Gristle. Been ages since I've fought Hami (since before the change), so it felt good to finally beat down the new version of him.
  5. Resistance caps:
    Tanker / Brute: 90%
    HEAT / VEAT: 85%
    All others: 75%

    Defense hardcaps:
    Tanker / Brute: 225.05%
    HEAT / Scrapper / Stalker / (VEAT?): 200.38%
    All others: 175%

    The defense softcap, however, is usually 45% for everyone. The softcap is the point at which additional defense doesn't decrease the enemy's chance to hit anymore. For example, 45% defense against a +0 minion drops their tohit to 5%. Even if you had the Tanker cap of 225.05% def, the minion would still have a 5% chance to hit you.

    Now, against a +5% AV, 45% defense would drop their chance to hit to 11.25%. You might think, "Ahah! More defense would help!" But this isn't the case. Mobs being a higher level (up to +5) and higher rank get accuracy bonuses, which just multiply their tohit chance. That +5 AV cannot have a lower chance to hit than 11.25%. That's the 5% floor * 1.5 (level) * 1.5 (AV rank).


    So why did I say the softcap is "usually" 45%? There are situations where you'll need more defense to floor enemies. There are two big culprits:
    1. Tohit buffs - If a mob has a tohit buff, you need just as much extra defense to floor them. For example, if a mob has a +10% tohit buff, then you'd need 55% defense to be soft capped against them. Note: Mobs +6 and higher start getting tohit buffs (+6 = +5% tohit, +7 = +10% tohit, ..., +9 = +20% tohit, +10 = +40% tohit).
    2. Defense debuffs - These are much more obvious since they directly lower your total defense. The more you're debuffed, the more defense you'll need to counteract it.

    I'd suggest reading Arcanaville's Guide to Defense if you want to know the nitty gritty of how it all works. (It is quite long, though!)
  6. Quote:
    Originally Posted by New Dawn View Post
    You have to get through the entire STF, you can't get through it on one secondary and one power pool alone. Infact I don't think the tactic which your thinking of can be used in every instance versus all the AVs due to the maps (I was opposed to the changes that made this tactic achieveable at the time the change was on test btw, I don't need it and it dumbs the game down). As a scrapper its a good option as there is no point denting LR while he can't be dented, your threat has to be higher than all others but then there can be a problem with AI. It's like anything ingame, upto people what they want to do, how they want to play. Saving the World is a type of mission that the words "by any means possible" shouldn't have to be said, but with Mo's I like to think people do their own thing.

    The posts weren't connected in anyway. It's not like I have one thing in my head.
    Ahah, I misunderstood then. Sorry 'bout that.
  7. Quote:
    Originally Posted by gristlebone View Post
    catsan and sarrate are the hami taunters,if thats cool with you two?

    Your jobs are described in blueside strategy in above post.
    Gristlebone, sorry I respond earlier, but this works for me.
  8. Quote:
    Originally Posted by New Dawn View Post
    2 illusions would of been more than enough to keep AVs occupied then there are five other defenders. I am glad to hear this wasn't the team you got the badge with as I can say that it's possible for a Dark tanker to do it without any controllers or defenders.
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by New Dawn View Post
    Yeah by taking out the towers quick, you reduce the amount of time you spend with LR virtually alone, still a win win. I've gone up possibly passed 20 mins alone with LR on a scrapper for scrappers. As much as it served as a point that controllers, defenders and tankers aren't a necessity it showed the usefulness of those 3 ATs, better with than without is the general answer I would give when talking about support ATs.
    You confuse me sometimes, New Dawn. I don't think the tactic you're describing is a very useful tool to base the strength of a set. After all, you wouldn't even be using Dark Armor (or any Tanker primary) at that point... just one power from a Tanker secondary and one pool power.
  9. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Umbral View Post
    (and reign in some of its ridiculousness in PvP because it has the hardest hitting single attack in PvP that also has a guaranteed stun attached and 15% chance for an unresistable crit)
    The devs did away with the unresistible nonsense in PvP back in I13. Scrapper crits are resistible, Defender debuffs are resistible, etc.
  10. Quote:
    Originally Posted by gristlebone View Post
    well I am thinking something in the 700%regen range round 80hp/ per sec with rttc set at one foe and round 3000 hp and taunt, that with some Emp love and EOEs and we good.
    Hmm, I've never tanked Hamidon before - one of the few foes that has eluded me. I have ~3160hp and ~700% regen and ~90 hp/sec with 1 target and a well slotted Taunt, so that shouldn't be a problem.

    Outside of the LGTF, I don't have any experience with the "real" Hamidon, so any information (strategy, number of EoEs to bring, how long you're expecting it to take, etc) would be helpful.


    Btw, you said 5pm, what timezone? EST?
  11. Sarrate

    Seriously

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by A_duck View Post
    I am absolutely stunned this complaint lingers on. It was born out of some stupid thread where somebody didn't even track their numbers back around like I1, and some people still latch on to it. You can track your % chance to hit now with combat attributes, and I don't think I've ever seen anything from it with two DMs that was out of place. 10 to 1 you missed a few times with Shadow Maul and it got your goat because of the animation time.
    Actually, at one point, enemies with defense could cause all kinds of problems for multi-typed attacks. You see, right now the game uses your highest defense against a given attack. So, if your opponent had 30% melee, 20% neg energy and 10% neg smashing defense, Shadow Punch would be computed against the 30% melee def. That didn't always be the case.

    I forgot exactly when it was changed, but it used to be that those defenses stacked. So instead of going against 30% melee def, it would've been computed against 60% def (30 + 20 + 10). For comparison, a pure smashing attack would only be pitted against 40% def (30 + 10).

    Again, I forgot when that was changed, but it was a loong time ago.


    ... not saying that people trusting their feeling and not statistics hasn't been a problem, mind you.
  12. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Fleeting Whisper View Post
    What the proc actually does is grant a temporary set bonus to the target. Just like other set bonuses, it's limited to stacking 5 times.
    Just to be clear, this particular proc can stack 5 times, but procs stacking is not a universal IO feature. Achilles' Hell, for example, does not stack at all.
  13. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Umbral View Post
    Well, considering that it's not Posi that does the power rebalancing, I doubt that Posi really ever does buff anything.
    He's referring to Positron's blog post about buffing / nerfing. As you went on to state, he was grossly misinterpreting what either Positron said, or how forum goers presented Positron's viewpoint.
  14. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Windenergy21 View Post
    P.S. they need to let the CA window be larger to show more data, having a cap of 10? attributes isn't enough on some of my toons.
    It'd be really nice if we could add in extra line breaks to separate data a bit more. In the heat of combat, trying to find a particular attribute in the middle of the window can be a bit annoying. So instead of looking like this:

    Quote:
    Current Hit Points
    Current Endurance
    Regeneration Rate
    Recovery Rate
    ToHit Bonus
    Last Hit Chance
    Smashing Resistance
    Base Defense
    Smashing Defense
    Energy Defense
    It could look something like this:

    Quote:
    Current Hit Points
    Current Endurance
    Regeneration Rate
    Recovery Rate
    ---
    ToHit Bonus
    Last Hit Chance
    ---
    Smashing Resistance
    ---
    Base Defense
    Smashing Defense
    Energy Defense

    (I bring it up because monitoring more than 10 would make finding data in the middle worse.)
  15. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison View Post
    Little update on this change: Yes, it's better enhancement values overall, but I increased recharge without increasing endurance reduction. Now, if I go full bore, I consume more endurance than I recover.

    Point is, without extra buffs or inspirations, I need to be careful of my endurance bar a little more now. With outside recovery buffs or inspiration usage, I am now a better performing tank with respect to damage output.

    Lesson learned that more enhancement isn't always unilaterally better.
    That's one way to think about. On the other hand, you don't need to run full bore all the time, either. If you're aware that you can outstrip your recovery (and don't want to use insps, etc), then you don't need to open up all the way. If you want/need that some extra oomf, it's nice to have in reserve.

    Not to mention that some powers have greater DPE than others. Incinerate, for example, is the highest DPE attack you have access to. Maximizing its usage vs other attacks would save you endurance (as long as you're not wasting the dot with followup attacks, of course).
  16. Hibernation also provides 1000% regen and 400% recovery. In other words, without slots and not counting any other regen/recovery boosts [edit: other than base], Hibernation will full heal the user in ~21s and completely replenish your end in ~12s. If slotted with heals, Hibernation increases to 1950% regen, or 0 to full in ~11.7s.

    You can basically treat Hibernation as a fight reset every 2 minutes.
  17. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Reflexx View Post
    Ok that explains alot I did not know damage from other toons could break taunt aura's I always figured threat lvl 4.00 with 400% taunt will always pull over threat lvl 3.00 and damage they did was not a factor.
    next I will try it with a defender and see if I get the same thing.
    If you're not adverse to getting into the mechanics, I'd suggest reading ParagonWiki's article on Threat. Damage alone won't be besting your threat generation. Damage and taunt effects (like Shield / Against All Odds) will.

    -edit-
    Additional reading:
    ParagonWiki article on Taunt (Status Effect)
    Castle's initial post explaining threat (You should be able to read more of his posts from that thread, too.)
  18. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Umbral View Post
    It's not so much the taunt effect itself so much as the massive interaction between all of the various mechanisms that the power has (which, when you compare them to virtually any other power in the game, blow them completely out of the water).
    Pretty much this. A Shield Scrapper is one of the highest threat generating combinations in CoH.

    By the way, similar to Shield Scrappers, Brutes generate more threat than Tankers, too.

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Umbral View Post
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison View Post
    Also, a lot of it depends on who got aggro first. From what I understand, to "steal" aggro from someone else, you need to double the magical threat value that the enemy calculates.
    Considering that the primary determining factor once you account for threat multipliers (taunt duration and debuff) is damage and Scrappers get more out of AAO than anyone else, it's not uncommon for a Scrapper to steal aggro from a Tanker even if the Tanker got there first, simply because they'll outstrip the threat generation of any Tank not spamming the hell out of Taunt (to get greater threat multiplication via a much longer duration) by doing so very much damage.
    This is true, however, holding aggro off a Shield Scrapper is much easier than taking it from them. If the Tanker gets into the group first and is spamming Taunt and attacks they can hold aggro. If the Tanker gets into the group second and plays exactly the same, it's much harder for him to establish aggro since he first has to double what the Scrapper has already accumulated.

    ---

    Situations like this are one reason I consider Taunt mandatory these days for holding aggro. Threat generation can be pretty easy (vs Blasters, Defenders, Dominators, etc) or hard (Shield/Invuln Scrappers, Brutes) unless you have in depth understanding of threat mechanics - which isn't explained anywhere in game. The contrast between these situations is very jarring for people. - as evidence the OP thinking the mechanic was broken. It's why I don't think Brutes or Scrappers should have access to taunt effects that are near Tanker potency. If anything, Brute/Scrappers should be ~70% or less the duration of Tankers.

    (Tanker damage mod is ~71.11% of a Scrapper, 67.72% with 5% crit chance, 64.64% with a 10% crit chance. Compared to a Brute with 75% Fury, Tanker damage is 60.29% of theirs.)
  19. Salty, not sure if you're aware of this or not, but just in case - half of Stealth's defense suppresses. So it grants 2.5% def in combat and an additional 2.5% when in combat (5% total). Since you'll be in combat (don't ask me how +def outside of combat is useful, I don't know either) you have to cut 3.604% (2.5 * 1.4416) def from all types/positions.

    So your build, instead of being at 45.2% def to s/l will be at 41.596% instead.
  20. It's a pretty solid build. There are some tweaks that could be made (swap the Mako's Proc for a Hecatomb proc, drop the LotG:+Rech from lvl40 to lvl25 - minimal def loss for better exemplarability), but the overall bonuses look pretty nice.

    As mentioned, however, the powers you picked in the 40s are the most dubious - namely CP, PP, and Resurgence. (I think SoW is always a good pick. Being able to go to 90% s/l res is very nice.)
    • Physical Perfection - I'm betting you took this for extra survivability (ie: the regen), but I think it's a waste. It's only giving you +20%, which comes down to ~2.67 hp/sec on your build. That is a drop in the bucket, you'll never even notice not having it.
    • Conserve Power - Looks like mostly a prereq for PP, since you could get Stamina instead and be better off. (You don't have the recharge to make CP that powerful.)
    • Resurgence - Look, I like self rezzes too, but if you die with this build I'm taking your tanker card. :P

    The main suggestion I'd give you is to drop one of the three above and pick up Hasten. This will simultaneous boost your survivability (Siphon Life), end management (Dark Consumption / CP if you keep it) and damage output (faster attacks, Soul Drain).

    If it were me, I'd also drop Body Mastery for Stamina (I prefer the reliability) and probably a travel power.
  21. Sarrate

    Nerfs?

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by BrandX View Post
    How long you been gone? Impale is at 40ft and Throw Spines at 30.

    I believe they used to have a farther range, but that was A LONG time ago.
    Yeah, "back in the day" Impale had an 80ft range. I forgot when it was changed, but I'd guess in the I6-I9 time frame, if not further back.
  22. Quote:
    Originally Posted by galadiman View Post
    (ex-post-facto) Congrats guys! Now, remember the secret to a good marriage:
    She ALWAYS wins EVERY argument.
    You may not want to admit this.
    You may not find this out until YEARS later.
    You may have posed a well structured and logically cogent argument.
    However,
    the sooner you come to terms with this simple truism,
    the more harmonious and amicable your union will be.

    I keed, I keed!
    She may win every argument, but that doesn't mean she's right.


    Congrats you two! (Man, I could have sworn I posted that already..)
  23. It's not "now resisted"; criticals were always resisted in PvE. When you crit, the second part always did just as much damage as the primary hit. In other words, you hit for 200, crit for 200, total damage dealt was 400. If you were fighting a foe with 50% resistance, you'd hit for 100, crit for 100, total damage dealt was 200 (reduced by 50%).

    If it was unresistible, it would have been hit for 100, crit for 200, total damage dealt would be 300. It never worked that way in PvE, only pre-I13 PvP.
  24. Quote:
    Originally Posted by UberGuy View Post
    While everything you said is true, was there a reason for bringing it up in this context?

    We know that there's mathematically no way for the devs to make such a boost actually give the two ATs equal damage under all circumstances without actually giving the same AT damage mods, damage buff mods, etc. I still think it's significant that they chose a buff level for the new inherent that, all other buffs but enhancements aside, set their damage equal.
    The reason I brought it up was to make sure it was clear that the damage buff (even if mathematically equivalent to Corruptor damage with just SOs) still isn't the same. When I wrote it, it was mostly for things like Aim.

    Of course, I completely forgot the fact Corruptor's damage buff mod was even lower than Defenders. So despite having the base damage advantage, they have a lower buff, which blunts the majority of my point. :P

    Also, people over the years have suggested raising their damage mod, which would have had boosted performance universally, instead of in a narrow window like current Vigilance.


    But yeah, I agree, they chose an interesting stopping point for Defenders.