Scientist
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Quote:Though Benumb would reduce the -tohit effect of the Hurricane, helping the melees hit better. It also handles other problematic AV powers thanks to the -Heal on it, such as Ghost Widows melee heal on the STF, the Healing Nictus on the ITF, and so on. The -mezz on it reduces the magnitude of AV mezzes, such as Scirrocco's huge Hold and the Stun from Reichsman. And Cold on a Defender would let you keep -30% Res on the AV from Sleet alone, with bursts to -60% from Heat Loss. Add /Sonic and you are routinely at -100% resist, with bursts over -150%, since the sonic attacks stack -resist. All together it would be like having ANOTHER whole league of your melees with you, damage-wise, which might have been enough.Originally Posted by DreadShinobi
Of course you weren't denting the hp of the CoP AV (especially if it was the stormy, because of hurricane which would have made many of your melee significantly less effective) and even if you had a Cold instead of a Kin it really wouldn't have made a difference. The CoP AV regens 597.58 hp/sec. A single cold would have only reduced that regeneration by about 1/6th of the total.
Cold/Sonic is brutal enough on AVs that I have to be kind of careful on BAFs to rotate between the two final AVs to keep one from dropping before the other. You do need to be willing to invest in a IOed out high recharge build, though, as Benumb and Heat Loss are on long timers. If you want to do it on SOs, Rad/Sonic is much easier. -
I have heard, though have not confirmed, that when the game reshuffles leadership this way it assigns leadership to the first person zoned in. So if you have a particularly fast load time, say a solid state drive or high end hard drive, you might be getting it a lot.
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Hi all, I just ran across a F2P player in game from Greece who would like to know what payment options there might be if they don't have a credit card. Are there places to buy time cards there, or Paypal/Paysafe type options to pay for the game? They are going to look here for the response, if anyone can make suggestions. Thanks!
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Quote:Out of curiosity, from how far away will she still stick to her original target? If you Recall Friend her target several hundred yards away, will she still run across the map to trail them? Most hostage type critters lose you if you get very far away. Just wondering if that might be an alternate way to get her following someone else.Originally Posted by James_Donner
If anyone gets desi who doesn't want her I have them self destruct and hosp. The switch is random, not by proximity, so anyone can wind up with her. I like her on the lead tank if possible.
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If you have the budget, which you may since you have the Panacea unique in Health, you could pull a slot from Stealth and put it into Tough for the Gladiator's unique +3% defense. That brings you right up to the Melee soft cap.
I also wonder if you might be somewhat more durable by pulling a few slots out of Fire Shield, losing a bit of set defense, and put them into Tough to actually slot up Resistance. It tends to be easier to pop a single purple of any kind to make up the defense when needed then get a bunch of resistance in a hurry. As close as you are to the Melee soft cap, though, its hard to say which is better overall. -
Quote:Putting a shield in the hands of *anyone* requires extensive animation work, even if they don't retool the powers in the set. Think of how many blast animations use both hands. Covering them in ice or fire or rock can, to some extent, be done with auras, if all you want is a theme for a character concept. Actually porting armor sets over would require at the very least rebalancing, if not more animation work on top of it.Originally Posted by Leo_G
Now put a shield in the hands of that Defender/Corruptor...or cover them in ice or fire or rock.
So lets look at the numbers the devs consider balanced for ranged characters, ones with a wide variety of themes available, which admittedly HEATs and VEATs don't have so much of.
Blaster - high damage, limited mezz protect (Defiance T1/T2 attacks), no in-set armor (until epics).
Blast/sonic corruptor - medium damage, full mezz protection, 11.25% base resistance (Sonic Dispersion).
Sonic/blast defender - low damage, full mezz protection, 15% base resistance (Sonic Disp).
We will ignore anything else in the sonic set, so you can avoid gimmicks. You can pick any point in that survivability/damage spectrum of blaster <-> corruptor <-> defender for your hypothetical AT to lie. Where would you like it to be?
Given that the lowest damage corruptors probably overlap with the highest damage defenders, and the lowest damage blasters aren't terribly far from the highest damage corruptors, it may be a rather narrow window. -
For the Protector bot, its also worth considering (if you have the Inf, they are somewhat pricy) a couple of HO or SHO Enzymes. The Defense DeBuff part turns into 33% Defense Buff, better then you can get in any conventional IO slotting, so 2 of them caps the Protector Bot shields, plus the Probot can use the End Reduction. The reason they are pricy is because so many Defense based characters use them to save slots.
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I was going to mention the Crab, but Commando beat me to it. Even less downtime then a Fire/Traps, who has to spend *some* time dropping traps, even if its just FF generator, everything you spend animation time on as a Crab does damage except summoning the pets, and they provide still MORE dps once they are out so its well worth it. Comes with solid starting defenses and mezz protection built in, and is popular on teams because of the defense toggle.
A friend and I were curious and crunched some numbers to compare his fire/time corruptor to my crab for AoE damage, and although the fire/ corruptor damage is slightly more front loaded, the crab (with appropriate recharge) passes them around the 10-12 second mark. It took a Fire blaster to beat the Crab at the 10 second mark, and they are obviously a lot less survivable even IOed out.
Not only does a Crab have a continuous AoE attack chain of indefinite duration but also is AoE debuffing resistance of mobs for -35% (with the epic Arctic Breath on top of the Venom grenade) so all the teams AoE damage does more.
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I agree with PleaseRecyle, definitely kin/sonic of the two, "hard" targets like AVs can bog down some TFs (Reichsman, I'm looking at you!) and sonic will debuff them much more effectively. Also strongly consider superspeed/stealth IO for full invisibility and Recall Friend, as well as the Day Job accolade which lets you rez people, those kinds of things can help teams regroup quickly and keep momentum going, as well as get through stealthable missions quickly.
Its not a bad idea, though, to also make a tank or sturdy brute on the same server for those occasions when you get a blast/support heavy team but nobody to take point going through the TF. While there are certainly people out there who are willing and able to charge into x8 spawns and do fine on their dominator/blaster/controller/etc. (one team I led had a stalker doing this), in my experience finding them on PUGs is pretty rare, and people are less used to following them. A solid, knowledgeable melee can really set a good pace through TFs, adjusting for team capabilities, and keep everyone active and engaged. You tend to find those more easily for PUG TFs then good support, though, so make the support character first. -
I find Aid Other to be very handy, I have gone back and forth on Aid Self but overall I'd say its not necessary unless you want to solo AVs/GMs, which would be tough on a /FF (I was /Traps so it was very doable even while leveling on SOs). Just using green insps was enough self healing for me, especially since unless you set up keybinds to pass them to pets or are willing to do a lot of drag-and-dropping you aren't needing inspirations for much else.
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Would it be possible to mark on the map or describe where the hospital is and where the teleport ring drops you off? The last one I was on (only my second), I had a hard DC when clicking on my first lichen, and by the time I was back, couldn't figure out how to join up with the league. I died and found the teleport zone to deeper in, but didn't recognize anything or see the rest of my team. Several others who died also couldn't figure out how to get back, apparently nobody had Recall Friend, and it ended in failure as they were fighting the Hamidon when Des died. Not necessarily because I wasn't there, but the league was light on support, and I had a cold/sonic defender, so it might have helped swing things if I could have returned.
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One other option if *usually* X knockback protection is enough for you but once in awhile (say, running the Katie TF) you really want a bit more is the base enhancement station buff. It lasts 60 minutes (last I knew the text saying 15 minutes was wrong), and I think adds Mag 4? You just need a base with the right equipment and a couple of pieces of common salvage.
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Quote:I've made half a dozen characters in the new interface, and never noticed the message at the bottom, I didn't even realize choosing from the playstyle list was optional. Here I was wondering whether a Warshade was considered "ranged damage", "melee", or "pets". . .Originally Posted by Arcanaville
The next page is the playstyle page, and it includes a list of buttons for playstyle, and a message at the bottom that says "select a playstyle from the list above (optional)". UI design 201: that message should be at the top of the list, not the bottom. Being at the bottom means 40% of the people navigating won't notice it. They will gravitate to the list itself, not the text. Moreover, if their mouse cursor happens to be in the area of the list, that message disappears. Is it important that players know its optional? Yes, because choosing anything will restrict the list of options they get next. Something that the interface doesn't actually state explicitly.
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I think for a duo on 0/x1 a Brute should be fine to manage aggro. If you are experienced, you should be able to solo the size spawns a duo will generate, and remember a nrg/nrg blaster will have some mitigation as well. Whether they like it or not.
Really, if you want her to learn the game well, you don't want every single fight to consist of you run in, everything shoots at you for the whole fight, and she just blasts stuff in complete safety. She should get the occasional blaster thrill of having a bad guy come gunning for HER, and its drop them or faceplant. You might even want to deliberately allow this once in awhile, not fire off a Taunt, to avoid fights becoming spectator sports for her. -
I like the 4x Basilisk (skipping the proc), Lockdown proc, and if you have the spare slot available, the Unbreakable Constraint Hold/End enhancement. Choking Cloud has rather high End use, and extra Hold time helps with higher con mobs where the duration would be shorter. And frankly if you aren't fighting higher con mobs, its usually not that crucial to run CC given the power of the regular rad debuffs, unless you like soloing on x8. If you already have used the Unbreakable Constraint set elsewhere, like EMP, just a lvl 50 End Reduction in the 6th slot of CC.
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Quote:True, but I think I do recall something from a dev long ago about critter AI not being able to use ground targeted patches effectively, so I believe what they have is special versions that target a foe (i.e. us) rather than a spot on the ground. Thus you will only ever see things like quicksand, freezing rain and caltrops pop up centered on something they can target. I haven't specifically tested this, though.Originally Posted by UberGuy
Also, follow the link I pasted in my OP, above. It shows the KoA summoning the Caltrops directly. They are not giving the player a power that summons it. (This would be somewhat obvious in the game - no matter the level of the foes, the thing summoned would be the level of the affected player, meaning low-level critters like Tsoo could cause the summoning of level 50 Caltrops.)
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Its only 3-400M to get to a decent base size? Dang, I thought it was another factor of 10 higher. I can afford that, and can stop harassing my friends to play more with our new base on Exalted, but will send you (Fulmens) a generous tip for cluing me in and doing your good deeds.
Have you tried posting in the base builders forum? I think they also have a global, but I suspect new builders won't know about that, its probably for advanced tips from the experts. -
Quote:Khelds were designed as "the teaming AT", but the devs at the time seemed to be worried that once people got to 50 and made another character, they wouldn't want to join teams. There was at least some basis for that at the time, this was when fire controllers could summon a dozen or more imps, and many scrappers were pretty much indestructible by 50, let alone tanks. So they designed Khelds to make sure they would want to join teams.Originally Posted by Grey Pilgrim
But, we were totally going to be the teaming AT, man! Isn't that like, awesome?
I might be misquoting her on this, but I think Arcanaville referred to that old design approach as "throwing something at the wall and seeing if it sticks." It really does seem that random.
Unfortunately they didn't really contemplate whether *teams* would want *Khelds*, who are IMHO only recently considered roughly as desirable as other ATs in terms of invites. Its still a bit tough to get invites to a MO run, for example, because a Cyst in the wrong place (for example in an ambush that materializes on top of a team) can add significant risk of failure.
They learned this lesson with VEATs, and gave them powers even a selfish VEAT will take for themself AND which buff the team or debuff foes at the same time.
And Arcanaville has made a couple of posts commenting on how much the original CoH devs got flat out lucky with balance-wise, she had some insight on that from her direct communications with them over the years. Many of the most loved things about specific ATs and powersets and CoH game mechanics in general were either things the devs didn't intend, or actually intended to work the opposite of, but failed at due to lack of maths.
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Quote:I like chances to help other people learn the game, in some cases it may turn it from a frustrating experience for them into something they enjoy. CoH wins, with more subscribers, I win because I may get to play with a good player in the future. A lot of powersets are not very straightforward in terms of what they can do, so its not obvious to a newish player what they can survive and what they can't. I was puzzled on my first scrapper to be dying to Vahz, after doing just fine against them on my rad defender. I didn't know Rad Infection was better "armor" then what a scrapper has at 5th level.Originally Posted by Quantumizer
Blind invites: Don't accept them unless prepared for extra communication and/or an interesting tale to share on the boards. I like what seebs said about seeing blind invites as an opportunity to help other players learn the game. My default is always thinking that everyone else on the team knows more about playing than I do. Maybe after almost three years of paid time that's not true anymore.
Communication: I shouldn't be afraid to make suggestions or ask for help if things aren't going well.
Strategy and roles: I'll realize that on a team with an unusual makeup, it might be necessary to reconsider traditional roles, and to -- in a casual way -- find out what other people are thinking. And I won't try to tank with a scrapper without good support, especially at such a low level with such undeveloped defenses.
A nonconfrontational way to get communication going early on is by asking a few questions. If people take offense at that, you have a pretty quick warning that they will also reject your advice, and can leave.
I was on a Death from Below trial last night with a couple friends, and got a couple extra folks (as often happens with that). I was puzzled the tank wasn't running in to take alphas, but my friend the scrapper was willing to, and I ran in on my /time corruptor just after the alpha to pop the aura regen, which kept her on her feet. If I hadn't had my friend the scrapper along, I would have had to have a discussion with the PUG tank to coordinate things more, but as it was it worked out ok. You are right, though, that at low levels tanking on any decent sized team needs a bit of support of some kind, even on a tank really. Melees just aren't tough enough yet to deal with large spawns for very long, and teams don't do enough damage to vaporize them yet. -
Quote:Oh, you would be surprised how many people there are with a great deal of time to play games but very little money (I'm not going to be mean and speculate that the two situations might be related. . .Originally Posted by UberGuy
I find it hard to imagine there will be many people who exist in that particular intersection of min/maxer and low-budget player, but I can at least imagine the intersection existing. ).
On the forums for another game that went FtP awhile back and was very successful with it, there was a whole guide written about what quests you could grind in what order on multiple characters to unlock virtually all the content, without ever having to pay a dime. Providing you had hundreds and hundreds of hours to spare. . . -
While I wait for Verizon to install FIOS service at my new place, I'm using a neighbors wireless (with their permission). The computer stays connected until I open CoH, then it starts cycling through disconnects, reacquiring network address, disconnect cycles. It doesn't do this at the NCSoft launcher stage, only after I have CoH open, even before I log into CoH. I did manage to get on for about 5 minutes last night before getting booted. Its not just something with the CoH servers, when I get disconnected my internet service is also gone.
The network is WEP security encrypted, and I'm using the password, which works fine for other web stuff I'm doing such as this. I'm running XP SP 2. I went into Windows Firewall and added CoH and NCSoft Launcher to the permitted programs (they were not there before, and I'd played fine with my previous home wireless setup). No help.
Anyone have any suggestions for things to look at? -
Quote:I believe the rationale the devs gave on stealth suppression when they implemented it was that stealth powers which were part of a "Defensive" power set, like Dark Armor, would retain their defense bonus, while stealth powers which were not, such as power pool Stealth, would drop to half values when perceived.Originally Posted by Grey Pilgrim
Thanks for noting this is a bug. I assumed it was like Stealth and supposed to half suppress. I honestly do not play Warshades much (mine is stalled in the early 20s), so I would never have noticed this.
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Quote:The reason I would tend as a team leader to recruit a defender over a corruptor is that the player who rolls up a defender probably actually has some interest in supporting a team. Defender is not generally the PL-ers choice.Originally Posted by EvilRyu
So what does a defender bring to the table that the other ATs that have those same sets do then? a 20% higher buff/debuff is a bit of a wash once you consider how much more damage the others do.
They are more likely (especially in the mid levels before you can have everything slotted up) to have taken the powers, slotted the powers, and most importantly have a playstyle that may actually help keep the team alive and steamrolling. No guarantees, but I'll take the higher odds of getting a support-focused player if I'm looking for support on a team. -
Just a couple of other tips on this, first you can also put a stealth IO in a veteran sprint power (if you have one). This lets you slot Sprint for moving and the vet sprint for stealth, if say you just use Ninja Run for movement. Only one stealth IO of ANY kind per build, though, so a Run one prevents you also slotting a Teleport one, for example.
Secondly, sprint and its vet companions will also take the Jump stealth IO, which is often cheaper then the Celerity one if you are buying it. -
Warning, this is a very expensive build, but you can get a lot of the benefit for substantially less cost with some tweaks like dropping the PvP defense IO and swapping in Decimation for Apocalypse. Less defensive emphasis then noogens build, but more recharge and emphasis on the debuffs. I found it quite survivable in the Trials, with judicious use of insps.
Cold/Sonic is really quite a nice "hard target" set, I've yet to have an AV last longer then a few minutes once I've got all the debuffs rolling. In fact I sometimes have to be a bit careful to alternate my targets on the final synchronized phase of the BAF. The combination of buffing and debuffing also works well with the sometimes chaotic and spread out nature of recent end game content.
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