Scientist

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  1. Scientist

    Power Boost?

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Auroxis View Post
    Issue 20 brought us the Clarion Radial Destiny power, which can give up to a +80% special buff similarly to Power Boost. Though it cannot buff Power Boost, together with Power Boost you can reach ridiculous bursts of +Special (Vengeance giving +105% defense for example).
    So I presume Clarion Radial Destiny would also not affect Benumb?
  2. Scientist

    Memory Lane

    My most memorable moments were with my Main, a rad/rad defender named kSpace. One was probably around I3 or I4, as I was slowly working my way to 50. I was about 35th level in a fairly tough mission with a team, and we were destroying things in our path, which I was accustomed to on that character, and I had the tank send me a tell asking me how many 50s I had. I replied "None, this is my highest level character." He didn't believe me without quite a bit of persuasion, which I took more as a compliment to my playing ability and powerset then as a lack of faith in my truthfulness.

    You learned quite a bit about the game playing a debuffing defender, which foes mezzed, how to use line of sight to clump up mobs, and so on. Though not how hard Vahzilock hit, till I tried running a scrapper through them. "Boy, I thought scrappers were supposed to be really tough. . . " I recall back around 5th level in Kings Row I had to do some persuading to get a scrapper to jump into a spawn I'd debuffed, she wasn't convinced she could survive it, now I knew why.

    Same character, I was playing on a team with friends, and we'd done about 3 floors of a multifloor Crey lab map without a death. I had to go afk for about 3 minutes, and when I came back, everyone was either dead or near dead. I rushed up to the next floor and managed to turn the fight around, between debuffs, EMP and my rez. After that, if I had to go afk, the team waited. . .

    Finally, I ran into another rad defender who was planning to drop Radiation Infection because "he didn't think it did anything." I convinced him otherwise by pulling an entire spawn to me and standing in the middle of it while chatting with him.

    The first thing our group ran into that stopped us cold was the Respec trial, which was pretty darned hard when it first came out. We finally made it through so I could respec and put a bunch of Tohit Debuffs into Radiation Infection, which made most of the rest of the game easy from that point on, especially since it worked at full strength even on AVs then.

    So not a single story, but a series of them on How my Main Spoiled me for a Lot of Other Characters. Since then I've always loved characters who could really change the dynamic of a team and a fight. The only melee I really enjoy playing is a tank, because a good one can really improve how a team functions.
  3. Quote:
    Originally Posted by B_Samson View Post
    I would suggest joining some global channels. You might start by entering the following commands in your chat window:

    /chan_join "Triumph Watch 2.0"
    /chan_join "Triumph Watch 2.1"
    Last I knew, both of these channels were moderated, meaning you need to contact one of the moderators on it to get unsilenced (be allowed to use them) after joining. Figuring out how to do this if you haven't used the channel interface before isn't trivial, unfortunately.

    I do have a few tips that might help get you going, if you see someones name in gold with "Helper" over it, they have offered to help new players out. Feel free to contact them via /tell to ask them questions, if they have time they may even be willing to join you to play a bit.

    Another useful thing is the Help tab, a different color, on your channel list. You can also ask there for guidance on things like how to use the channel interface, Search function, etc.

    Feel free to tell people on teams that you are new to the game, virtually everyone I've met in CoH is friendly and will try to help out, especially on the smaller servers from what I've seen. I find the quality of the players to generally be higher on the smaller servers as well, if you are obnoxious word gets around and people stop playing with you, its easier to be a jerk in a large pool of people like on Freedom or Virtue (not that I see a lot of it even there, but a bit more).

    As someone else said, this game is not only heavily instanced, meaning most people are inside missions most of the time, but heroside especially there are a LOT of zones, so people are very scattered out across them. Its not until you get to Talos in the early 20s that you see many people running around.

    Finally, while teaming here is a lot of fun, and just about any group of characters can make a very fun and functional team, doing some soloing early on is a good way to see some of the game as well. Veterans tend to speed through the early levels very efficiently, and you may not even see some quite interesting zones like the Hollows. So don't be afraid to do a mix, just about any Archetype can solo well at low levels.
  4. Quote:
    Originally Posted by UberRod View Post
    So far it looks like Golden Girl is the only one who likes the TF.

    Actually, though it may not have come across from my post, I liked it. I'm just concerned that with a less abusive team then I was on (5 defenders) and lower level characters it would be too tough, so I'd suggest a few tweaks.
  5. Scientist

    Crab AoE Attacks

    Venom Grenade + Suppression + Bile Spray + Frost Breath, with a high enough recharge build, gives a full AoE attack chain plus 35% AoE resist debuffing. They all work at range since they are all targeted or cone, and this plays to the strength of a Crabs best base defenses. You need a heck of a End Recovery IO build to keep that chain up for long though.

    With less recharge, or if you want an AoE chain below 40th level, add in Frag Grenade (if you don't mind knockback, just use it at the end of your chain) and/or Heavy Burst.

    Only a few blaster or corruptor powersets can rival or exceed the AoE a Crab can put out, and with much less safety. Plus you boost team defense and team offense (AoE resist debuffs). I've seen blasters and scrappers turned down for teams, I've never seen a Crab turned down unless the last slot was being saved for a tank.
  6. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Tourettes View Post
    I had to remove the cone attack from my FF/Energy Defender all together. Every other attack I used would let mobs ignore me. But as soon as my Cone energy wave knockdown doo da hit mobs, I was the center of attention and would quickly get a beat down. Single attacks, and even my PBAoE didn't get the attention of the cone.
    I believe that has to do with the knockdown part of it. Doing things that prevent the AI from doing what it wants generates pretty significant aggro. Thats why the temptingly early AoE immob controllers get is sometimes called the "aggro bomb".

    My impression as well is that knockdown/knockback generates an "aggro pulse" in addition to any damage from an attack. I know its pretty hard to do a safe single pull with a knockback attack, relative to an equal damage attack which doesn't do knockback.
  7. I did the Sutter TF recently for the first time, and while we had a good time with it, I was thinking if we'd tried it with a team in the 20s, it might have been impossibly difficult. Just the groups of Warwalkers could be rough on a minimally slotted tank, let alone trying to deal with multiple AVs and air attacks and the teleporting thing. One of the lvl 50s on the team with us had to be persuaded to come along by a friend, because he had been on 2 tries of it previously that failed. Our team had 5 defenders, all of us who regularly played with each other, and we still had easily 15 deaths in the air attack mission. I was also only able to find the exit from the hospital area because I followed someone else, and had to be teleported out of the first ship because I couldn't find the exit.

    I think it could be made a bit more reasonable for newer/lower level players to run by making a few tweaks, as have been suggested in this thread.
  8. Quote:
    Originally Posted by UberGuy View Post
    One is I think that alts drive the demand for newly produced IOs, and the new progression system, aimed at people playing 50s, is necessarily reducing time spent playing new alts. Another is that having a lot of people play at 50 is simultaneously increasing the supply of level 50 goods. My market experience suggests to me that level 50 IOs (or generally max-level IOs) are the ones most frequently consumed by people IO-ing new characters.
    I suspect thats a big part of it, combined with the fact that there may have been a burst of demand just before I20ish from people who were either trying to get to 50 ASAP with alts designed for high end content or trying to IO out characters who were going to be their "main" incarnate alts.

    My suspicion is that from here out there will be a smaller number of highly optimized lvl 50s being played regularly, and fewer coming up and being IOed out, as people settle on powersets they like playing a LOT in Incarnate trials/TFs/etc.
  9. There was a dev comment long ago when people were discussing threat modifiers that debuffs actually have a pretty high modifier. Like Radiation Infection is something like 80% of Fireball. Unfortunately I don't have specific numbers or a link to it, but I remember people were surprised the modifier was that high. That plus your AoE damage may have pulled the trick.

    Plus, as a note, there is some "spawn AI" which can cause part of a spawn to go after anyone on a team if someone on a team generates aggro. Thats how that one guy in the spawn can come running around the corner to hit your invisible squishy (note that mobs don't use perception once they have aggro) who hasn't even seen the spawn yet after the scrapper runs in and triggers the spawn. I doubt this is the explanation for all three of them running at you, but its helpful to know.
  10. I can understand what you are going through, I had a friend quit several years ago as well, he had some other reasons but part of it was playing with PUGs that ruined what he considered most important, his sense of immersion in the game.

    One suggestion I have is that you (and/or some of his other friends that you know) try to pick up some other friends to play with. Your friend who is thinking of quitting may be ok with joining a team with someone you guys vouch for, so thats a way to expand his circle of acceptable teammates.

    Then, you guys make your team of friends and have the whole team join a Trial. A particular team is often assigned a particular task, so you don't have to interact that much with the rest of the "PUG" apart from following some League leader directions. If one of you leads the Trial, you can even just regard the second or third team as pets, since you will be giving all the directions.

    I agree the new Trials aren't the best places to make friends, though, in some ways they remind me of teams for Rikti raids; thrown together quickly, you do what you are there for, and everyone goes their separate ways after. The friends I made in the game tended to be from tough missions or TFs, where some of the team quit and the few that were left actually had to work out tactics and stuck it out to succeed. Fortunately it sounds like you guys do a mix of play, and as long as *some* of you try playing with strangers to add a few more friends you can build that group up.

    You could also try going to your servers forum and asking about sgs that like to play casually and chat a lot, it sounds like that may be a way to meet some compatible folks.
  11. Is there a good way to check for Gauntlet in the debuff? Does that appear anywhere in Real Numbers? If its just the regular debuff threat modifier anyone else gets, then obviously anyone else debuffing, attacking, etc. in the team can peel that aggro off pretty easily. That wouldn't surprise me, but I thought I'd check with folks here to see if anyone could confirm it or not.
  12. Out of curiosity, are these buffs disabled like most other temp powers during the Incarnate Trials? Or do they persist, since they are "click" type buffs?
  13. Quote:
    Originally Posted by VoodooGirl View Post
    [*]Sometimes teams can get mixed around upon entering - blame it on space/time continuum conundrums.
    I believe (I was once briefly a team leader, not a league leader) there is a "lock teams" button that looks like a little padlock that team leaders and league leaders can see above the league window. I've seen league leaders ask that team leaders lock their teams, and it seems to prevent this.

    One other suggestion I have is to ask before starting if anyone hasn't done the Trial before. It may save a lot of typing on your part if everyone is familiar with the Trial so you can give very brief directions (Team 1 acid, Team 2 grenades), and conversely it may save a lot of confusion or even a failed Trial if you give a lot more explanation when you have some newbies. I was on a failed BAF recently because most of the control power folks hadn't done it, and didn't know to stay in place and spam controls at the choke points, or even what the choke points were.
  14. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Lazarillo View Post
    It's tied to hitting. If you miss, obviously, there won't be a -KB, but as long as you hit, any maz that applies the -KB will apply it regardless of whether the target is mezzed or not.
    Right, you can see this pretty quickly with a Grav/FF controller, hit a boss with your first Hold, and not only is he not held, but you also can't now use Lift or Force Bolt to keep him from coming at you because he is protected from Knockup and Knockback. Grav has its -knockback switched to its Hold from most other controllers who have it in their Immob, making it kind of a pain in that case.
  15. Scientist

    Squishy Lambda

    I have yet to see a team stick together in that, but I also tend to have a tougher time finding my way through maps then many people do, so maybe there is some team chunk ahead of me.

    What I've had some success with is finding a tank or scrapper and following them, letting them run in first, and providing support and additional firepower. But then again, I tend to take superspeed to stack with a stealth IO on pretty much every support character who doesn't have some kind of stealth to stack with the IO (steamy mist, etc.), so I'm mainly worried about the actual fights at the glowies.

    Another suggestion is to get the Eye of the Magus accolade, for extra resist/defense for 2 minutes at a time. Accolades are not disabled in the trials, and with some decent recharge in your build or Hasten it is likely to be recharged for your next Lambda pass even if you are doing them back to back. That phase of Lambda is the only part of either trial where I think you really need the help as a squishy.

    Finally, as already suggested, insps are your friend. More specifically, plan to burn most of your tray on this part, but if you play strategically you don't need any before or after this, and you can always restock between Trials, or if you hit a hospital in one.
  16. I was wondering if anyone knows whether a no-damage debuff from a tank, such as Darkest Night or Quicksand, carries any Gauntlet type multiplier to the aggro generated. There was a post by a dev long ago that indicated that debuffs in general have a surprisingly high threat multiplier, such that a toggle debuff is close to something like a Fireball for aggro generated, but clearly that wouldn't be enough by itself to hold aggro against other debuffs, damage, etc.

    I'm curious from the viewpoint of whether in a scenario like Apex would hanging a toggle debuff on the AV be enough to hold their attention while using PbAoEs and Taunt to try to gather in ambush spawns, which tend to be the real threat to others on the team.
  17. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Fleeting Whisper View Post
    Also, as of I13, the status resistance cap is 10,000%, rather than the 100% it was previously. The behavior of status resistance hasn't changed, you're simply able to have more of it. (At 10,000% mez resistance, mezzes will last 0.9% of their original length.)
    Really?? I completely missed that change; I'd thought that Accelerate Metabolism capped it out at 100% anyway, so no point in slotting the Aegis proc. Hmm. . .
  18. Scientist

    Best Debuff Set?

    I have both maxed out Rad and Cold defenders, and I would say overall they are close enough that the difference is situational. The Rad is a bit better at debuffing whole spawns on a fast team, since its AoE -resist is up for every spawn no matter how fast you move, you don't have to worry about tohit checks on its main debuffs, and you don't have to spend a lot of time chasing people trying to recast shields. It also works great with a cheaper (i.e. less recharge) build, as its easier to get to perma-Hasten thanks to AM. In fact its pretty darned good on SOs, which I think is one reason for its popularity on end game TFs.

    The Cold is a bit better when you get to one or two hard targets, as it has a wider variety of debuffs it can then apply. If you pair /sonic with the cold (in the case of a defender) I'd give even more of the edge to Cold, since it can stack higher with the -damage from Cold. It has the downside of needing a more expensive build with higher recharge to keep its debuffs fairly perma. Its also got the edge with some of the newer content like the Apex TF where everyone is scattered around, and shields protect much better then debuffs. But thats a point in favor of a buff, not the "best debuff set".
  19. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Halon View Post
    It's definitely poorly worded. I wonder if it's an auto-generated description.
    That was, I believe, one of the reasons the devs resisted adding Real Powers descriptions for so long. There were others as well (nontrivial programming, Statesman didn't like it) but a big one was the confusion it would cause for a lot of people to try to interpret the rather cryptic power descriptions (try figuring out what some of the "pet summoning" powers like Transfusion do. . .).
  20. Quote:
    Originally Posted by EricHough View Post
    As you also noted cones will gain in increase in area from the cardiac alpha. Scientist didn't make it sound like much but it really is - the cone IS wider at the end, due to the extended range, and all you have to do is stand back a little farther to take advantage of that.
    I didn't mean to make the extra area sound negligible, by the way; on a 30 degree cone, a 20% range increase gives you a 44% area increase in your cone, because its the wide base part that gets bigger. Almost half again in area is pretty nice, and it only gets better with wider cones (in terms of terrain covered, its still a 44% increase in area).

    What I did was look at the cones my Crab was using, and add a few range enhancements so they'd all match, since its annoying to be half way through an AoE attack chain and have to scoot up for a shorter one, or miss the back half of the spawn. A global incarnate range boost, of course, would just make them all better.

    With a highish recharge build, you can basically just chain Venom Grenade, the two Mako cones and Suppression over and over without needing Frag Grenade or Heavy Burst. Nice AoE damage plus AoE -35% resist debuff for the team. Unfortunately its not a very exemplar friendly build, as below about 40th level you don't have anything close to an AoE attack chain any more. Now that you can have 3 builds, I'm doing one with both Frag Grenade and Heavy Burst and lower level IOs for exemplaring, and one without either but with those slots in the patron attacks and level 50 IOs. Obviously thats twice the effort and expense, though, especially if you want a Bane build for soloing, which is where I think Bane excels.
  21. Scientist

    lvl 50+

    If you want to be sure, go find a level 50 minion in Peregrine Island or Grandville, and see if it is white or blue con to you.
  22. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Krogoth View Post
    Rad is only the "Goto" set for AV debuffing because it existed before traps:
    Traps can:
    Set down 2-3 Acid mortars which stack with eachother: 53.2-79.8% resist debuffing
    Use Poison Gas Trap for: -1000% regen perma
    Stack Seeker Drones for: 53.2-106.4% damage debuffing
    and Pile on -90% recharge
    Yes, what I meant by the phrase "goto" was that I see lots of calls for rads for debuffing because they do it very well even with basic SO type builds, and people know about them, and the debuffs are quite visible. They are thus pretty much "no brainer" additions to high level teams, you don't have to count on great players or pricy builds, and they are useful as a baseline debuffer for comparison. I still have 2 rads as main characters, because I started them back in I2, and they are a lot of fun to play.

    But I agree Cold and Traps, especially either paired with Sonic blasts (none of which existed when I made my rads or for many issues thereafter) are even better debuffers, especially with high end +recharge builds. I now have a level 50 cold/sonic defender that just does disgusting things to AVs and GMs, and am working (slowly, stupid new incarnate content! ) on a fire/traps corruptor, traps was a lot of fun on a MM.

    On the subject of -regen vs. -resist, I saw some calculations quite awhile back that made a good case that -regen is overrated against AVs, its "equivalent dps" is fairly low. Unfortunately I didn't copy them. Reichsman, with his excessive boatload of hit points may also be an exception. But thats why I wanted to point out that although a SoA is not a specialist debuffer, it has the potential with the right Patron pool to be at least a pretty good one. Last ITF I was on went slowly on Rommy because our only debuffer was a SoA with Venom Grenade, but I suspect that we would have been completely stalled if it weren't for that, our tank didn't have the hang of keeping the healing nictus around a corner and it was a solid 10-15 minutes to take Rommy down the first 3 times. That 20% extra total damage from every teammate probably made the difference.
  23. Just a note, increased range in a cone attack doesn't actually widen the cone, it makes it longer. A longer cone with the same angle does have more width at the base, but you have to stand back further to make use of that width. Thats not a big problem for a Crab, since they have other cone attacks (especially with some Patron pools), but be aware of it.

    Otherwise, might be worth looking at http://tomax.cohtitan.com/data/powers/ to compare them directly. Looks like Frag Grenade has faster casting time (1.67s vs 2.67s) and slightly higher damage (factor of 1.17 vs 1.09). I agree the knockback can be annoying, though, I tend to save it for the end of my attack chain where it hopefully kills whatever it knocks back.
  24. I didn't find knockback from the bots to be a huge issue, once in awhile something gets knocked back out of a flame patch but its not usually too long before they melt regardless, and its not like your pets can't shoot at them any more since they are all ranged (in theory, sigh). Plus "hard" targets like AVs, which are the only thing that survive long enough to worry much about tactics, don't get knocked back anyway. I went with Mace Mastery, the AoE Immob is handy to keep critters from scattering around and as a good way to draw the alpha on yourself instead of the pets, and obviously Scorpion Shield makes it a lot easier to cap some defenses. It also includes energy defense, which is a pretty common attack at high levels.

    One of the advantages I see of traps over dark is much more ability to "front load" effects for a particularly unpleasant fight. You spend your animations laying traps before the foes ever show up, then all that damage (trip mines) and debuffs (poison trap, acid mortar, etc.) get concentrated when your chosen foe or foes show up. In addition to helping do things like solo hard targets, its also handy for an increasing number of end game scenarios where ambushes show up, often from predictable directions. Things like Triage and FF generator are also handy for Mothership raids, where buffing teammates and nonteammates are important relative to debuffing foes.
  25. One other thing you may want to be aware of, if you don't have high level villians you've done it on already, is that you can do ANY of the patron arcs and it unlocks all the Patron pools. Thus if you prefer one of the other arcs because of the stories, or the foes, or the badge, feel free.

    And the only defender I'm not doing this on is my rad, since I like the epic sleep and Dominate in the Psi pool too much and the rad debuffs achieve much (though not all) of the same protection.