Scientist
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Consider getting one or two Steadfast -knockback IOs, so you can drop Acrobatics. Its not a super cheap toggle to run, and if you can afford the LotG +rch and Oblit sets in your build the Steadfast is trivial. That would let you fit in Maneuvers for more defense, or Assault for more offense, or Combustion for more AoE goodness. I actually like to lead off in spawns with Combustion, its got the biggest radius of any of your PbAoEs, so it can grab aggro on those more distant guys in the spawn.
And I second the suggestion to try to get a few key powers down to lower levels for lowbie TFs, if you ever do them. Tough on top of your armors along with Healing Flames is enough to tank for pretty much any TF below stuff like the ITF and LGTF. Maybe move either Buildup or Firey Embrace higher, by definition if you are tanking for a TF you don't have to take prime responsibility to pump out damage, there should be teammates along. Consume can probably go higher as well, with inherent Stamina going down to 2nd level now you probably don't have enough attack powers to drain your End down below 20th or 30th level. -
Quote:This was not a change to the beams, but to his AI. They are a ranged attack, which he didn't previously use in melee. As part of the AI fix that got critters to rotate through their attacks better, now causing ranged pets like bots to run merrily into melee all the time, LR now actually uses the End Drain beam in melee.Originally Posted by DarkGob
Didn't they change Recluse's energy beams so that they do massive endurance drain? I think it happened pre-I19 or pre-I18, but my first WST run of the STF the Tank discovered this the hard way.
And the flier is definitely on a 20 minute timer from when the FIRST person enters the mission. I've even seen it respawn half way across the plaza when nobody had touched it, it respawns whether its been defeated or not.
To the OP, regarding the Taunt thing, since LR is lvl 54, any +4 con critter resists all effects, mezz duration, damage, etc. to the tune of about 50%. You do too, if a -4 con critter shoots at you, its part of the "purple patch". Normal duration is 41 seconds, so it would only last 20 seconds on LR. If the tank wasn't cycling it as fast as possible and was relying on punchvoke (which would miss until the yellow tower drops) like he was fighting normal mobs, well, LR moves very fast when he decides to go play with the squishies. . . -
Quote:This actually depends on the proc. Ones that require the power to be used, like the three you mention, work as you describe. Good idea for the Heal ones to put them in the new inherent Health power from Fitness.Originally Posted by GavinRuneblade
Special case that also causes confusion:
Keep in mind that procs (like the stealth IO, Numina, and Performance Shifter) are not set bonuses they are special powers given by the IO itself and thus they will still work even as a level 50 IO as long as you have the power. You'll lose any set bonus if you go more than 3 levels below the IO, but the proc itself will still fire. On the other hand, if you slot a level 25 proc into a power you selected at level 41, it will not fire.
Procs that DON'T require the power to be used, like a LotG +rch, act like set bonuses in that the IO must be within 3 levels of your current, exemplared level, regardless of the power you put it in. -
Quote:This was a point I was going to make; many of the things people say they can do with Devices, another person has said they can accomplish with their soft capped blaster with Stealth IOs. Soft capped blasters and easy access to full invisibility aren't what powersets were designed around, certainly the early ones at least. I'm trying to remember if I ever ran across anyone with full invisibility plus Recall Friend before Khelds came out, though it was obviously doable with a few ATs or power pools.Originally Posted by plainguy
That the game went to IOs and that allowed for some really super builds which made Device much more useful then it might have been in the past. In the past during tough fights players might have waited a few moments for the placement of Trip mines and then pulled a boss or group across the mines. In the past someone might have actually said hit them with smoke so our defense are bit better. In the past they might have said too many mobs to get the glowy can you stealth over and get it.
Today its not only the Stone Tank that is defense capped its Every Tank and Every Brute, even Scrappers can get capped out now. As can Many other ATs as well.
So end result whatever little tiny nitch or benefit Device might have offered is pretty much nullified today. Today that defense capped scrapper will just run over to the glowy and click it as he evades and dodges all incoming attacks, heck I do that with my Traps AR Defender.
My highest level blaster (admittedly only 33) has Devices, and I definitely noticed a survivability advantage with it. IOs have allowed any blaster who is willing to put the effort into getting a good build duplicate most of that survivability, though, leaving it with a few special purpose tricks like Caltrops area denial.
One edge I still think Devices has, though, even in the mature end game is the ability to deal with "known" situations. A relatively small amount of content gets run fairly often these days, and more and more of it has ambushes which appear at predictable times coming from predictable directions. One example, Cyst ambushes in ITFs. A Devices blaster can start setting up trip mines before the ambush appears, and take half of it out as its on its way in, stalling the rest of it on Caltrops. Another example, I've heard of Devices blasters being recruited for the Katie TF to take out the entire witch spawns as they appear in the first mission. Another example, setting Mines up for pulling the Patron AVs in the STF, and using Caltrops to prevent Repairmen from repairing towers. Tip missions have a lot of ambushes and side switching foes as well.
So while Devices has a smaller niche as "the defensive/strategic secondary" then it used to, with some of its functions duplicated by IOs, it can arguably still play both a unique and valuable role in the content that gets run a LOT at high levels these days. -
Quote:Yeah, I think ultimately this will be the problem, assuming you manage the other parts. I was on a STF where the tank DCed on the last mission and never came back, and we were down another player as well, so we were trying various things to stay alive fighting LR and generate enough dps, like Shivans and such. As a dozen or so banes came out, all the pets started fighting them instead of LR himself, damage going in on him would drop, and he'd nail us.Originally Posted by DSorrow
He will spawn the banes when he reaches around 20% HP no matter what you have hitting him. At that point the summons can no longer be interrupted.
I tried soloing him at even level on my Illu/Cold, but couldn't do it. When the number of banes go past 10 it's impossible for PA to keep them all aggroed and they'll also stop DPSing Recluse making stuff again more difficult. More banes keep popping in and you're making slower progress on the main enemy, not pretty. On top of that, Sleet and Snow Storm aggro everything PA hasn't hit yet meaning a whole lot of banes coming your way. -
I do like Sleeps on a rad defender for a couple of reasons;
1. Your debuffs won't wake the mobs, so all you have to worry about is a boss as you are setting them up. Mainly handy in a situation without a tank, but that can include things like stealthing missions and clicking glowies with spawns around them, such as speeding through TFs.
2. More and more high level missions and TFs these days have ambushes. Sleeps are good for shutting those down till more of the team is available to handle them.
On my rad/rads I take Mass Hypnosis, psi epic, for that reason, but they predate the availability of sonic by many years. I think the /rad secondary is a bit more fun, and against most spawns puts out more damage because its more AoEs, but most teams can steamroller most spawns anyway. The pacing items on high end TFs tends to be taking down hard targets like AVs, and its unarguable that /sonic is better then /rad for that.
On the sonic, consider taking the ST stun, its not as good as Cosmic Burst for rad because it doesn't do any significant damage, but theres just times you want to stop a lt (or with a couple shots a boss) from doing whatever its doing faster then you can with damage, being a defender. Plus it takes a (relatively) cheap purple set. -
Quote:Must have been someone not familiar with the STF; the "final 4" patrons in the STF, Ghost Widow, Mako, Scirrocco and Black Scorpion always spawn at lvl 54, as does Lord Recluse. Thats one reason that TF has never been as popular as the ITF, its pretty challenging, and some teams stall out at Mako (high defense), Ghost Widow (big melee heal), or Lord Recluse (hits cheatyface hard), all obstacles that can be extra hard to overcome because everything you do to a +4 foe is half strength, damage, debuffs, etc.Originally Posted by MrHassenpheffer
They spawned at lvl 54 I was told by people on team at the time on the second run that normally they don't, I was told that they were @54 because it was the weekly.
As originally designed, the LRSF also had lvl 54 AVs, with the added challenge that (1) no redside characters are as tough as tanks, as damagy as blasters, as good at buff/debuff as defenders, etc. and (2) its quite hard to separate the 8 final AVs without special tricks like perma-dom Mind dominators. They eventually lowered the final AVs down to only level 53s, and a lot wider variety of teams can run it now. -
I wonder if she got updated at some point? It no longer seems to be possible to perma-immobilize her, I've tried that with a friends controller along a couple of times now. You can get her when the triangles are down, but otherwise you have to kite her, which can be tricky if some teammates have patch-based debuffs (tar patch, sleet, etc.), or have to melee her to hit her. It can end up dropping dps on her substantially.
I was on a team that almost stalled on her a few days ago, until we got the controllers to dismiss pets and started kiting her more. Still took about 20 minutes to drop her, since most of our debuffs were location based. -
Quote:Yes, one of the beauties of this game is being able to have several characters available, depending on what your mood is, or what the team needs. When putting together TFs, I regularly have people tell me they can bring 2 or 3 different characters depending on what I can use.Originally Posted by Chaos Creator
Why do you need to have a main character at all? I have 12(?) 50s and none of them are my main. Play whatever makes you happy when you want to play it.
On a team with an Emp and 2 Force Field defenders already? Play the Widow.
On a team with 3 scrappers, 3 blasters and a Kheldian? Play the Emp.
And so on.
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Quote:No high level blasters, but I tend to do the inverse of this with the lvl 50 tank I have; he is built for survivability, I figured the team hired me to stay alive and keep stuff of them, and there will hopefully be somebody else to provide dps, buffs/debuffs, etc. Heroside ATs in particular tend to be specialized enough that its more efficient to shuffle team members around a bit and let each do what they do best.Originally Posted by Grouchybeast
I tend to look at it the other way round. If I'm teaming on a blaster, then there are other people on the team who look after my defense, either by holding aggro themselves, or with control/buffs/debuffs. So my job is dishing out as much damage as possible as fast as possible.
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Something I did on many of my characters with the extra power picks from not needing Stamina was take Recall Friend. Obviously only useful if you team a lot, but if you already plan to take superspeed dropping a stealth IO into that or sprint coupled with Recall Friend makes a lot of TFs shorter, helps recover from team wipes, brings that teammate back from the entrance of the mission after they hit the hospital, etc. Has the additional advantages that (1) it needs no additional slotting or End to make use of, and (2) provides a place to drop a BotZ -knockback, or even a Winters Gift Slow Resist.
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Quote:On this particular point, I debated that with myself and went with Gravity Shield. Since even with Uber Recharge you can't always count on a spawn being conveniently present when you want to fire off Mire and Eclipse, its handy after finishing a fight to toggle this on so when you go running into the middle of the next spawn, you take a bit less damage in the process of becoming a Flying Gun Platform. One or two ticks of Orbiting Death seems less useful, and is more likely to get you shot or stunned or something bad while trying to buff off the bad guys.Originally Posted by JusticeisServed
My powers seem pretty well laid out, but I dunno I'm open to suggestions I suppose. Gravity Shield lacks utility for me since I'm so rarely in human form, but the alternative of orbiting death doesn't seem too good either.
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Quote:The closest I have to that kind of information, a substantial supply change, is something I found rather interesting when Alignment Merits came out. Before that, sub level 50 LotG +rch were rarely available, and sold for (ballpark) 150-200M Inf. When I saw the AM system, I immediately concluded that prices would drop on those, because in a couple of days anyone could get one by running tips, causing a confluence of reduced demand on the market and increased supply.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
This is true for liquid markets, where trades happen often enough to create at least some semblance of dynamic equilibrium. In thin markets, and a lot of high demand items create essentially very thin individual markets, all bets are off, because adding supply won't just increase the supply side of that market, it will fundamentally change that market. We don't know, for example, just how much demand for certain items never makes it to the markets due to the belief its pointless. Conversely, we don't know what will happen when people who used to make more influence for those items decide to change their activities when it becomes less profitable, creating a negative feedback in supply. Those are minor factors in liquid markets, but not in thin ones.
If you look at the level 25 ones, they are still selling very comfortably in the range of 150-200M, though they dipped as low as 120M at a few points I believe. They are now selling many per day, though, as opposed to maybe 1 a week. Other levels are selling more frequently as well, of course, but it is obvious people are specifically generating them at level 25 to sell. Which is a great idea, as you mentioned in one of your other posts, but I found it interesting how elastic demand was. What is easily a 10x, if not more, supply increase is still getting grabbed right up.
Unfortunately, its hard to disentangle the factors in this. Demand may have gone up because of people who are actually using the markets to buy them now instead of, as you said, giving up because "its pointless". It may have gone up because some other items became cheaper, giving people more cash to throw at LotGs. I know there were a lot of compelling arguments made on the market forums before AMs about which ways they would drive prices of various things, and as usual some were right and some were wrong, even from experienced marketeers. . .
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Quote:I was wondering that; is that still the case if you pick the Essence of the Incarnate shard reward instead of the SHO? I was hoping not to have to pick between the Essence of Incarnate and the Notice of the Well since I'll be lucky to get one TF a week normally.Originally Posted by R-Tech
Definitely confirmed. Was also pleasantly surprised to see that we got the bonus merits upon completion whether or not we took the merit reward at the end. 37 merits, a SHO, and a Notice of the Well in one go. Nice.
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First two characters were two rad/rad defenders, since one was going to be for a static team and the other for soloing/other teaming, which distinction quickly fell apart with the static team. Made before -resistance and -regen were significant in the game (not a lot of AVs when the game was heroside only and ended at lvl 40), they just seemed to have an interesting variety of powers. Got one to 50 and the other languished, no reason to play him till free server transfers came along and I could put him somewhere some friends had moved. Now fully IOed out and among my most often played lvl 50s.
A grav/FF controller, based on an awesome tabletop rpg character of mine who translated terribly to CoH, as its one of the least powerful characters I've played. Interesting effects, but there is so little this character can do to help a team that the rad/rad can't, sigh. . . Stalled a very long time around 10th level till Containment came into the game and it became possible to solo or duo at a non-glacial pace with controllers pre pet. Working on a PvP build for the character, maybe he'll find his niche there. -
My least favorite so far was my grav/FF controller. I have to keep him, as hes based on an awesome character from a superhero rpg I was in, but my rad/rad defender outmatches him both in useful control on teams, damage, and help with tough targets (which is where a lot of the end game is). The controller would probably work to keep a team alive in a wider variety of situations, but I'm on relatively few high level teams these days where dying is frequent unless its so full of fail I don't really want to be on the team anyway.
Throwing a Hold on a boss prevents me from using the knockback/knockup FF would provide, while not preventing the boss from getting to me until I stack a second Hold. Wormhole is a neat power, but fairly team unfriendly unless you are in just the right environment with a handy corner, which is about 1 in 10 fights. Aside from messing up melees, it messes up things like nukes, fulcrum shifts, etc. Its the only Grav AoE control power up roughly every spawn, but as far as I know its also the only every spawn Controller power that you can't safely use in LOS because you soak the whole alpha BEFORE it actually does its thing. I don't count the AoE intangible power, since as has been pointed out, it actually reduces most teams effectiveness.
Its a pity, because Grav does have some unique powers, I just almost never have a situation where its the most effective character to bring. I'm currently working on a PvP build, even though I almost never have time to PvP. . . -
Thanks for the great guide and discussions. One thing I'd add is that I like Combustion on a team Fire tank because so many high level spawns can be scattered, and like to shoot from range. The only way I can keep my fire controller pal from dropping every time he uses his Immob (which is one of his AoE damage sources) is to jump in first with Combustion. His Immob is still larger, but at least theres only a few perimeter guys shooting at him.
I also find Taunt invaluable for times when a lt or boss is off at the side of a group, mezzing my support, but I don't want to move over there because I've got the rest of the spawn all around me. Ditto if there is another fairly close spawn that starts taking an interest in the team. I recommend playing with the camera zoomed out as much as is practical to catch those problems, one of the things that stands out to me about good tanks I've teamed with is that they spot and deal with those trouble situations sometimes before the rest of the team is even aware of them.
Finally, I wanted to put in a plug for the Ghost Widow PPP for a Defensive Tank. Darkest Night is the gem there, the -tohit will stack with any defenses you have unless its an AV/GM with their special debuff resists, and the -20% damage does NOT get affected by those special resists, so its like adding another 20% resistance to your build that can actually let you exceed the normal tanker cap. Plus, it protects your teammates, since it affects any AOEs the AV uses, and lets you shut down Lord Recluses Bane spawns during the tower fight. You have to take a precursor power to get Darkest Night, but the AoE Immob isn't bad, there can be times when you want to pin a foe in place anyway, and Immobs actually work on a lot of AVs. Normally the power of toggle debuffs are balanced by only being available on characters without full time mezz protect, this is the only exception I know of (barring controllers with the right epic and extreme recharge). -
The bubble is pretty good at stopping the stuns, but the Rikti toss a lot of sleeps around as well, and if you are slept the bubble stops working, even though it stays toggled on since its defensive. Bring breakfrees. Otherwise, people love having one or two bubblers on MS raids, not only is it a handy focal point to stay under but it tends to keep the other support from getting constantly mezzed, which means they can keep debuffing, buffing, healing, etc. and everyone stays alive better.
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I did play around with that a bit on Test at one point when I was looking into soft capping a fire tank (which REALLY makes you look at some hard tradeoffs). I fought some Romans on the wall, taking various size purples and monitoring my defense. I can say that 55% vs 45% does definitely help, as even after one lucky hit the next hit still has to be lucky to cause cascade defense failure, thanks to the low % each debuff is. Remember the baddies have a fairly short window to get that next lucky attack in before the first debuff wears off.
It will be much less help against the Praetorian robot radiation attacks in the classic Tina arc, for example, because their debuff is much larger. It will be much less help against quicksand patches, since they are autohit and have large debuffs. It will accomplish nothing against DE dropping quartzes, since they can hit through Elude with that.
So judge based on what you want to give up in return. I didn't end up quite even getting to 45% on my fire tank, because it would have meant whiffing on most of my attacks from slots I would have had to sacrifice. It might be worth trying a few purples to experiment, like I did, before you respec. -
Quote:A couple of other notes on this. First, game critters can be aggroed on a character, chase them and hit them even when they can't see the character. They are not limited by perception like characters are, ask any Stalker.Originally Posted by OutaControl
It still cheeses me to no end when my invisible controller is the first to die.
Second, in addition to individual critter AI there is spawn AI. When a member of your team engages the spawn, spawn AI tries to send some critters at various teammates, instead of just the teammate that first engaged the spawn. This is both to make alphas from a spawn more survivable and to make the fights more interesting. Unfortunately, combining this with the note above, it means a critter can come after you, standing invisible around a corner, because the spawn AI made them do it and let them find you.
Finally, many ambushes (which have been more and more common in more recent missions) appear with critters pretargeted on team members. You can see this most easily on a Katie TF, first mission, where witch spawns appear and one or two bosses can come chasing down the poor defender hiding behind a wall a hundred yards away.
To the OP, congratulations, you experienced the risk in leveling mainly in the AE, a lot of missions in there are purposely filled with critters that don't mezz and are otherwise easy to beat. In the height of AE leveling, I met level 50 tankers who had never taken their mezz protect because they'd never needed it. You are now learning to play the other 95% of the game, which in addition to being more fun will also make you a highly sought after teammate.
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Quote:Actually, I suspect its for the reason Arcanaville said, the PToD mezz protect is flagged as unbuffable/undebuffable, the Cyclops mezz protect is not. Not having that flag is more typical for bosses and even Elite Bosses (natural elite bosses, downgraded AVs still have the PToDs, to the frustration of many controllers and dominators). "Natural" mezz protection doesn't seem to be debuffable with Benumb, by the way, you can see that by testing with the Power Analyzer on a Fake Nemesis boss when it has Dispersion Bubble up. Its Fear protect, which it has all the time, is not reduced in Magnitude, its Hold protection which only comes with the Disp Bubble does have its Magnitude reduced. You don't have to put Benumb on before the Disp Bubble either, as a note.Originally Posted by Syntax42
I finally got my Cold/Sonic Defender to 50 and into a build. I tested Benumb on a Cyclops in Mission Architect with a Power Analyzer to get an idea of how it works. If Benumb wasn't on the Cyclops before he activated Unstoppable, he got 70% resistance bonus from it. If I had Benumb on befor the power activation, he only got 7% resistance bonus. That explains why Benumb doesn't affect PToD; we can't put Benumb on AVs before they "activate" PToD.
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Quote:One note, I understand why you play largely solo, but decent teams are much more interesting, because you get to see more of the game, more powersets and powers, and because with luck there is some entertaining chatter. Getting both the hardware and your playstyle in order for teaming may prevent the boredom episodes; I know if I was limited to soloing, I'd probably quit the game in a couple of months.Originally Posted by SwiftOneSpeaks
I have fun (for a while, then I get bored and unsub for a while - this is my third time around), so I'm not _unsuccessful_, but I'm not really finding challenges that I overcome - it's either pretty easy or too hard.
[snip]
I play largely solo (teams are chaos for me) and haven't yet tried the Incarnate stuff - I'm trying to buff ME, not my character.
One thing I didn't see anyone mention was learning how aggro (monsters becoming aware of you and attacking) works. With your Dark/Bots MM in particular, a x3 group of any composition short of an EB or AV really shouldn't defeat you unless you are getting multiple spawns. Try pulling, getting the attention of a group with Darkest Night but letting them come to you. Ideally you hide around a corner, so the whole group has to come to shoot at you and is in the debuff. Put down Tar Patch to clump them up and slow them. You may have to tell the robots to Stay a couple of times.
Then just watch. If you are in Bodyguard mode (defensive/follow or defensive/stay) and the bad guys are in debuffs a single small +0 spawn can't kill you. See what the bad guys are firing, practice toggling between targets, practice moving around and using Brawl. Start using your Heal, practice using it next to a particular robot, just as though it was a teammate. This will let you get the hang of these things virtually risk free, for later use on other characters like your Brute or on a team. Most important, don't panic if you get mezzed, its a chance to watch whats going on. Critter AI will actually cause them to mostly stop attacking a mezzed target.
When I first started the game, I was so bad at moving and shooting I had to put an attack on autofire. Important safety tip; don't do this while running along in a zone and tabbing between targets. . . Practicing on small teams, the equivalent of you plus a few pets, helped me get the hang of it.
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Five at the moment. I mostly use lvl 50 characters (more slots) who I'm not actively playing, as the actively playing ones need to have slots free to dump their stuff when I play them. When I have higher Inf needs, such as putting a couple of builds together, I sometimes use a couple of nonplayed mid level characters to do lowball bids on some lower turnover/higher margin items, so they can just get checked a few times a month. Either way, I have to stick to items that don't fluctuate too much, as I sometimes have several days go by when I can't log in at all, and a week go by when I don't get more then 5-10 minutes a couple of times during the week.
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Quote:Right, taking, say, Assault adds damage to the AoEs you are firing, and pets are damage that doesn't cost you any animation time. Both more effective then having an AoE you never need to fire because you always have a better one recharged.Originally Posted by blueruckus
My recommendation would be to drop some of the AoE and pick up 2 more leadership powers and Call Reinforcements.
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My most recent set of CoH/CoV disks are many issues old. When going from an XP machine to an XP machine, I can save a lot of updater time by copying the latest folders, does this work going to a Windows 7 machine?