Sgt_Liberty

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Do tell? Brawl seems to only take Melee Damage sets...

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Hint: for most scrappers, brawl is the fastest activating attack they can possibly include in their builds.

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Devious! I like it!

The only question then becomes: How many slots can you afford to put into brawl that won't be better spent elsewhere?

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Two procs and a common acc IO isn't so expensive for what would be a very nice attack, that doesn't have redraw.

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Would you fill me in? I'm not getting it...

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OK... an example of slotting Brawl as a Scrapper, using Melee Set IOs taken from ParagonWiki. First time I've even looked at these, so I could be way out here

Slot 1: Touch of Death: Chance of Negative Energy Damage
Slot 2: Pounding Slugfest: Disorient Bonus
Slot 3: Pounding Slugfest: Accuracy/Damage
Set Bonus: Pounding Slugfest: Improves your Regeneration by 8%


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I'd lean more towards something like:

Slot 1: Accuracy IO
Slot 2: Mako's Bite: Chance for Lethal Damage
Slot 3: Touch of Death: Chance for Negative Energy Damage.

If you can afford 5 slotting Brawl, then I'd do:

Slot 1: Mako's Bite: Accuracy / Damage
Slot 2: Mako's Bite: Damage / Endurance
Slot 3: Mako's Bite: Damage / Recharge
Slot 4: Mako's Bite: Chance for Lethal Damage
Slot 5: Touch of Death: Chance for Negative Energy Damage

With the set bonuses you get some Immobilization Resist (pfft), a Max HP buff, and a global Damage Buff.

That's pretty nice, but, the first configuration is probably has the best Cost/Benefit. Mako's Bite is not exactly super common, Touch of Death caps out at 40 (meaning quite difficult to get once you're outside it's drop range), and most of the Damage enhancement is enhancing the incredibly small base damage of Brawl.

Depending on the magnitude of Kinetic Combat's KB, and Pounding Slugfest's Disorient, one of those might be good to toss in too.

Honestly though, proc's work best in a fast animating/recharging attack, which means for my Martial Arts character, it might be time to say goodbye to CAK and hello to Thunder Kick again. With the global damage buffs you can get from sets like Touch of Death, Mako's Bite, and Red Fortune, that should be able to stack up some nice bonuses.

Has anyone checked to see if it's only IDENTICAL bonuses from sets that stack up to 5x, or if it's any bonus of that type (i.e. you could have 5x +0.75% AND 5x 1.25% HP bonuses simultaneously, or you could have 5 bonuses of +%HP).

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Do tell? Brawl seems to only take Melee Damage sets...

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Hint: for most scrappers, brawl is the fastest activating attack they can possibly include in their builds.

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Devious! I like it!

The only question then becomes: How many slots can you afford to put into brawl that won't be better spent elsewhere?

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I think while the options of the other scrapper secondaries are relatively straight forward, if tricky to calculate, SR is going to have to squeeze every last bit of toothpaste out of the tube to really get the same sort of benefits. And I've been testing some really ... unconventional things (example: I bet I'm one of the few people that can tell you what happens when you slot Kinetic Combat: Chance for Knockdown into Crane Kick. Answer: unfortunately, not much: small mag KD + CK's KB = CK's KB, and occasionally just a KD).

I was tempted yesterday to post my half-serious analysis of brawl yesterday, actually, but something came up and distracted me from doing it. Before you laugh: brawl has some interesting surprises in it when you look at slotting it with inventions.

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Do tell? Brawl seems to only take Melee Damage sets...

Personally, I'm leaning towards Red Fortune (Rchg, Dmg, and Ranged Def as last 3 bonuses) in 1 - 3 of my toggles, taking Tough/Weave, Tough recieving the 3% +Def (All) unique, Multi-Strike in my PBAoE (I prefer having the melee +def to the psionic), a Touch of Death, a Mako's Bite (or 2 perhaps) and a Crushing Impact (Health and Accuracy).

Which should take me forever and a half I think. No doubt I'll be creating alts that can level SOLELY for their ability to aquire and store Salvage for sets like Touch of Death (which only goes to 40, but packs a sizeable 3+ melee defense as a set bonus, in addition to sounding cool and having a proc.)

Tossing in pieces of Numina's Convalescance and Miracle, and the real problem becomes not having enough slots.

By using 2 Defense Inventions each, I might be able to scavenge 1 slot per passive. Might not be able to 3-slot my passive movement powers anymore. Though... using Jump and Run Inventions, I might be able to get similar effect for 1 less slot, and that might just be Close Enough For Government Work.

With the Red Fortunes and a Mako's Bite or two, that's pushing around a universal +10% damage buff. Nothing to sneeze at there. The Crushing Impact and the Red Fortunes come out with a decent sized Recharge buff, along with nearly 6% Ranged +Def, too.

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Glossary? I want a program!

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Working on it!

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Some of those drops are a little strange to me, as well. Some of these things I just can't see using Magic : Vahzilok are zombots, Sky Raider rely on jetpacks and robots, the average Rikti have no ability with magic as a definitional thing, Nemesis is the Steampunk Doctor Doom, and Freakshow, Goldbrickers, the Family, and Crey all show no real magical ability. Malta might kidnap a specific magical hero or villain, but they don't really show any affinity for it in their normal troops. The Council actually have no magical creatures, only things made by serums, scientific experimentation, and kheldian exposure (all science), with a mutant at the head of the line.

This can be hand-waved away by simply saying that the Rikti mugged a Circle of Thorns boss right before you beat him/her/it up, but that doesn't really fix the balance issues. As Brad pointed out in chat yesterday, most recipes are an equal balance of tech and magic, but players are going to fight enemies that either drop 50/50 or drop all magic.

Oh, and recipes seem to drop at the enemy level, as welll; Diaos1 has picked up a good half-dozen level 25 recipes while trawling Bloody Bay.

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Generic recipes seem to, but while in Siren's Call my 50 Scrapper got a 50 Blood Mandate Acc/Dmg recipe, while the "generic" style IOs dropped with my combat level (30 in SC).

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<ul type="square">[*]NPC level 4-19: Tier 1 only.[*]NPC level 20-25: Mixture of Tier 1 and Tier 2.[*]NPC level 26-34: Tier 2 only.[*]NPC level 35-39: Mixture of Tier 2 and Tier 3.[*]NPC level 40-54: Tier 3 only.[/list]
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Ah, that's good to know. Glad there's a Tier 2 only in there. Thanks.

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I just checked, you can get that salvage while exemplared. At least, you can in Siren's Call. I recieved 2 Spell Inks and a level 30 Snare Duration recipe.

Anyone going to run the TF today? I'd like to get in on that with my Scrapper.

This means that recipes can drop that you can no longer find salvage to create, and either had to find it prior to finding the recipe (ie a level 50 recipe requiring tier 2 salvage) or purchase it through Wentworths. Gotta say, some of this stuff is hard to find, at least on test.

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Thing is, fire/fire isn't a particularly uber build. It's nifty, but there are far better brute builds. Nerfing fire/fire won't do much good to prevent this kind of thing, that's Ultimus' point.

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By definition, the process of changing every build that can solo AVs(or the temp powers involved) would prevent soloing AVs, if a sufficient adjustment is made.

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Yeah, but that's a lot more work in fixes than enforcing rarity on recipes by limiting drop rates of TFs and Trials.

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Or just nerfing shivans. I'd waiger what Ultimus does can be done with many brute and scrapper combos at least. He's done it with at least one tank build and thinks he could do it with his illusion controller. It's much easier to limit a rare drop to one per TF per day (NOT to one TF a day) or nerf shivans to bosses. Maybe 10 boss summons instead of 5 EB summons or something...

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Except Castle already said they weren't planning on nerfing Shivans.

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Thing is, fire/fire isn't a particularly uber build. It's nifty, but there are far better brute builds. Nerfing fire/fire won't do much good to prevent this kind of thing, that's Ultimus' point.

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By definition, the process of changing every build that can solo AVs(or the temp powers involved) would prevent soloing AVs, if a sufficient adjustment is made.

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Yeah, but that's a lot more work in fixes than enforcing rarity on recipes by limiting drop rates of TFs and Trials.

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actually they were both necro/dark I believe. Auto hit AoE debuffs, AoE heals, and an extra pet with AoE debuffs and heals and all the pets deal less resisted damage (nightwidow owned them tho). Of course they both utilized Arachnos Heavies, but neither had a Shivan. MMs talk about soloing AVs all the time in their threads, with and without shivans, nukes, or any other temp powers.

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Heavies are even stronger then Shivans... in fact a Heavy could probably solo an Arch Villain.

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If it didn't get knocked down all the time

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That you, and others, can rapidly achieve a recipe reward intended for a dedicated team just means that the market for those rewards will drop faster, allowing the less capable player of affordably purchasing them.I humbly offer to hold your cape and hand you a spade while you farm away. Your skill and dedication are beyond me, but your supply will eventually overload the demand, at which point my 5 inf is ready willing and capable.

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His point, as he keeps restating, is that if the Developers want to maintain rarity, then they'll have to fix how often a trial, task force, etc, can reward a recipe. You might not care whether or not "rare" becomes common, because it benefits you when they show up for sale en masse, especially the rarer ones that you want, but the Developers probably do.

There are Trials and Task Forces easier and shorter than others (especially the Villain Respec) and without limitation you'll see plenty of overseas based "gold farming" websites springing up, and the attempt at a limited economy go down in a flaming wreck.

I hate to bring up SWG since it's like the MMO version of bringing up Hitler, but farming originated inflation (which is what will happen when farmers burn up the hours flooding the market with available recipes) is catastrophic to an MMO economy. Farmers become the primary supplier, so they get to charge whatever they want. Rapidly, you'll need an ever increasing supply of Influence (or real money) in order to buy what you want. It's not AT ALL like what would happen if people are forced to earn them at the same rate, a nice steady curve where people have the same number of recipes (within a given tolerance) where the name of the game will be exchange.

Limiting the number of times you can receive the reward for the same Trial/Taskforce per day is probably THE best solution, in that, it will cripple farming, and will negatively effect just about no one.

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I would love to have holds do something like this, but it still doesnt change how an SR scrapper will be missed and unaffected while a fire tank will be hit and affected. The tank has higher mag protection, but is actually weaker to a hold due to being able to be hit. The same is true for a regen scrapper. Why should a regen resist holds worse than a SR scrapper? Again, the basic item here is that a regen scrapper has a certain mag resistance that must be overcome to be affected. An SR scrapper has the same mag level, but also cant be hit, making him virtually immune to mez while the regen is merely extremely hard to affect.

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Because... THAT IS WHAT +DEF IS SUPPOSED TO DO. Ice Tanks, Stone Tanks, Energy Aura, Ninjitsu, etc etc, all have the same benefits.

A better question is, why do you think you should be able to hit someone with +Def as often as someone without +Def?

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The problem is, even the poorest AT &amp; build CAN complete a mission, solo, set on heroic or villanous. If that is the baseline, (and I recall a statement by statesman that he expected a 25% attrition rate on teams in missions), then really no set is "underperforming". Don't get me wrong, with the variety of debuffs and soft control TA has, it can be good, but when people put it side by side with kinetics, dark, etc, it clearly IS underperforming...

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Before the changes on test, my 24 TA/A COULDN'T solo on Heroic. Now I can, but needing to reapply the debuffs mid-combat is extremely tedious. At least with toggles I'd turn them on and they'd stay up.

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What makes you think Grounded will bring the drain protection up to 100%? It will still be skipped because it's redundant protection and the power slot can be used elsewhere.

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Because that's typically how powersets that give partial status resist for multiple powers work. If you take one Super Reflexes power for example, you get 22% DefDebuff resistance. You don't get 100% DefDebuff resistance unless you take all (or nearly all, I forget exactly) of the +Def powers in the whole set.

I don't care if YOU skip it, play your character any way you like. I'd like to know for sure the difference in endo drain protection with vs. without, I would bet ten bucks they did it something like 60% on the toggle / 40% on the passive.

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And I'm sure the Defense Debuff Resistance would be very useful if it actually did anything.

Lack of KB protection is what makes this set terrible. Nearly capped energy resist is nice enough, as is some drain protection. None of that does you much good when one mob can ping pong you to death all across your mission.

Super Jump is lame. Stop making us take it Devs.

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Did anyone else feel a thrill of excitement the first time you ran into DATA, took the elevator down, heard the portal tech tell you, "Portal systems are fully optimized, portal transfer is a go. Good luck, Typhoon Girl (or whatever your hero's name was)." and dashed into the portal to what waited beyond?

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Definately.

Devs you've outdone yourselves again. This zone is phenominal. Seriously.

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well i dont see the point in suppresion or the way you walk through it now, what's the point of picking a power set with repel resist now, well after they nerf TK and force bubble

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Probably just handy to have. But Suppression would remove the ability to keep people pinned without nerfing the rest of Hurricane. If the Range and Acc debuffs were still applied on the old tic timer, I really wouldn't care as much... but since they're linked, it seems to me that Hurricane gets a royal shafting.

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yeah this "fix" is something of a disaster.

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I also don't really see why fixing Force Bubble (?) is harder. It's got a hell of a lot bigger radius than Hurricane did, so even with the same tic timer it'll still be better.

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well i dont see the point in suppresion or the way you walk through it now, what's the point of picking a power set with repel resist now, well after they nerf TK and force bubble

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Probably just handy to have. But Suppression would remove the ability to keep people pinned without nerfing the rest of Hurricane. If the Range and Acc debuffs were still applied on the old tic timer, I really wouldn't care as much... but since they're linked, it seems to me that Hurricane gets a royal shafting.

I still don't understand why Repel just doesn't generate Suppression.

Changing the tic frequency reduces the effectiveness of Hurricanes DeBuff. Repel fields are probably a little too strong atm, but Storm requires it's Acc and Range debuff to function effectively.

I do NOT consider being required to take a specific Travel Power (Teleport) or bring a buffer of a single powerset (Kinetics) to be an reasonably effective way to counter it.

4 Break Frees is probably a little excessive too. That's 1/5 of the inspiration tray of a level 40+ character, and an even greater proportion of a lower leveled character.

Seriously though, what's wrong with Suppression, or improving the effectiveness of Break Frees on KB and Repel powers?

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Actually, the only thing I really wanted to change in this mess was the ability for Repel Fields to effectively trap a player against geometry in Base Raids.

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Then why not add repel resistance to break frees? Seems like a more elegant solution.

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There already is, it takes 4 small purples to walk through TK. I believe that Hurricane was the same, but probably is much less now. I wish they would have added a fast surpression timer for Repel rather than modifying the powers.

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I've been saying that since they started making threads about nerfing Hurricane.

Suppression is good enough for every status effect but Repel? [censored]?

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I can tell that youre trying to suppress memories of getting the crap beaten out of you by blasters, smoggy. I suggest that you consult a defender because, judging on your obvious lack of mental capacity, the defender could kick your butt so fast that you will forget all about the blasters and decide to move on to another MMO. Maybe Brokeback Mountain Online?

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It's a cowboy MMO about Men being Men, doing Manly things.

&lt;.&lt;
&gt;.&gt;

...

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i thought they already did, what with the buffbots in the hospital spamming CM and the like...

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That still takes at least two accounts to do, if not two people. Lame? Yes.

What Stalkers do is available to every member of the AT.

Not everyone has access to a 2nd machine, a 2nd account, and a botted empathy defender.

Using SWG in an arguement about nerfs is like using Hitler in an arguement about anything else.

Nothing the community says will prevent further nerfs if the developers feel they're warranted.

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I have a suggestion here. How about allowing the Raid teleporter to double as a mission teleporter. If you have a mission set, the Teleporter acts as a door to the mission. Thus you can just buff yourself, and use the Raid Teleporter to enter your mission directly (or whatever mission you have set if you're on a team..)

This would also make the Raid Teleporter (Which is pointlessly big) usefull for something other then the IOP Raids.

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This is a great idea. It makes a usually useless item incredibly useful. And it also makes bases the solution to one of CoH's biggest annoyances (needless travel time/zone hopping).

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/signed

Effectively the "raid" teleporter becomes a "mission" teleporter, and takes you to wherever the action is. Perfectly reasonable, and yes, makes that obscenely big bit of kit actually useful for something other than PvP.

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Except only BIG SGs can afford a raid teleporter... thereby shafting the small ones who are intended to recieve the largest proportional benefit from Empowerment Stations. Something to cut travel time down for Empowerment Station use should be available with a lowish investment.

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While I think this is probably fine, my only concern is this: Going to the base,and coming back from the base to a mission, is INCREDIBLY inconvenient in CoH.

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I just don't agree with that at all. There are base portals in all of the city zones. Heading back to the base and then to the mission is incredibly easy.

I also don't agree with all this 'give us a temp power instead' business. Not all the benefits in the game should be given when you want, where you want, at the click of a mouse button. I would PREFER something like the Empowerment Station buffs as they are now - a very big buff with a time limit, as opposed to a smaller one on demand. If nothing else, I'd rather PvP wasn't further complicated by people firing their carefully hoarded temp powers and striking from the shadows.

I do wonder, though, whether this isn't why the CoH teleporters all to go hazard zones - to cut down on travel time to the mission in areas without base portals, while the buff runs down.

Anyway, Positron is saying he'll extend the time limit if it isn't enough, so there's always the chance we'll get it for longer.

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Well the thing is... small SGs aren't likely to HAVE Teleporters, which is my point. So if you're in, say, Crey's Folley back in The Circus, or The Hive in Eden (where the Woodsman is, not Hamidon), you've got to traverse the entire hazard zone AND a significant portion of the City Zone to get to the base.

Which is why I think a Base Recall temp power would be nice (and that's really the ONLY temp power I support), because it cuts travel time in half since a small SG is unlikely to have a Teleporter to Crey's Folley, or Eden, or Dark Astoria. Making it Interuptable or something would be fine so that you can't use it as a get out of jail free card.

My concern is just that they won't fill the niche they're designed for because there's some onerous travel involved when you have to leave a mission in a Hazard zone. Unless they make a Base Entrance in the Hazard Zones accessible if you have the Beacon for that zone or something.

I'm fine with the 15 minutes timered buffs (I actually think that's a great idea, it's like Lab Equipment but better!), I'm just concerned about factoring out travel time so that it's not incredibly inconvenient to use. Because if it's incredibly inconvenient, it's not gonna see a lot of usage.