ShoeTattoo

Addressing a few efforts at RP counterarguments being made ...

Those who run Wentworth's deal with customers who have a strong collective interest in keeping the comic book equivalent of weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of the forces of evil; they'd better keep their noses clean, or they'll get found out and find themselves replaced by another firm that will. On a similar note, firms chasing profits regardless of the origins of items tends to be a self-destructive way of doing business; again, the customer base of Wentworth's isn't likely to stand for it. A lot of black market customers wouldn't like their market freely selling to heroes, either.

Crey doesn't mediate sales and transfers between virtually every hero and villain in the game. Also, Crey gets found out.

A fatal flaw in the logic offered up so far arises when trying to generalize from a specific example taking place over a short period of time to a different and far more complex situation, maintained in a stable state over the long term. Here are a few analogous examples of that kind of reasoning:

Example 1: I just drove down the street. That means I can drive around the world, or to the planet Pluto.
Example 2: I just learned how to add 2 and 2 together. I can learn quantum mechanics in the same amount of time.
Example 3: I spent my year bundling up and selling mortgages, many of which were given to families with questionable credit. I got a large bonus at the end of the year, property prices are rising, and the banking sector is raking in strong profits. What I'm doing must be good for the economy as a whole, over the long run.

Speaking of bubbles, perhaps the simplest way to burst the bubble on the silliness of an RP argument in favor of merging markets is to RP a conversation in which merged markets are explained to somebody who doesn't play COX. CG is a gamer who plays COX, and AJ is "Average Joe" (not a plumber) in what follows:

CG: So, I play this game called City of Heroes / Villains. They just finished merging the villain-side and hero-side markets for in-game items.

AJ: What's an “in-game item” and what kind of markets are you talking about?

CG: In-game items make our characters much more effective in battle. Think of things like armor, better weapons, more powerful spells, and the like. As for the markets, they are where heroes and villains buy and sell the in-game items that they find while being heroic and villainous.

AJ: So, what you're saying is that the game was recently changed so that heroes freely sell powerful items to villains, and villains to heroes. Don't heroes and villains tend to, like, not get along very well? I know its a game and all, but how could both sides be OK with that?

CG: Well, heroes don't actually mind doing that, and neither do villains.

AJ: I'm trying to picture Superman or Batman knowingly selling items to villains that make villains more powerful. That doesn't seem likely and anybody who does that doesn't seem very heroic to me. I'm also trying to picture Lex Luthor selling items that would make Superman stronger against Kryptonite, and that doesn't seem likely to me either. I'm not seeing the whole “willingly goes along with that” idea. In fact, that line of reasoning seems pretty ludicrous.

CG: Well, if that doesn't work for you, then how about I propose that every hero in the world is cast under a spell for all eternity so that they don't know what is happening. Any villain who might object also has their ability to perceive the truth altered.

AJ: If somebody is powerful enough to pull the wool over the eyes of every hero and villain in the world, why would they settle for running a market? Why wouldn't they dispose of all the weaklings who they can so easily deceive and just run the world?

CG: Well, I don't have a good reply to that. Perhaps the people who run the merged markets are really good at keeping the merger secret?

AJ: So, essentially every hero and villain in the world will remain unaware of the reality of merged markets, over the long run? Do you have any ESP-types of heroes or villains? Don't some of them have extraordinary senses? How could the kind of large-scale distribution system that would be needed be set up and run in secret? And how could it be that nobody would ever figure out that an item was originally stolen, or originally used by the in-game equivalent of Batman?

CG: You raise some good points. But, somehow they manage to keep it all secret or everybody who finds out the truth is somehow OK with merged markets. Say, how about you join me in-game sometime. They have free trial accounts ...

AJ: So, you're saying I can play a hero who willingly sells powerful items to evil types or who's too thick-headed to realize he's doing that. Yeah, that sounds really ... engaging and immersive.

I'm also against merging markets because it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever for either side to want to do things that help the other.

The RP arguments in favor of merging markets are utter BS. Arguments brought up in the past that somehow every hero in the world would never catch on that markets were merged, and then take steps to break the links, are also utter BS.

Cappy:

For quite a while, all-human warshades were routinely projected on the boards to be borderline unplayable by quite a few posters who were smug in their certitude and both loud and aggressive about proclaiming their judgments. Some would make posts suggesting that perhaps that point of view is a little extreme, that all-human warshades could, in fact, tie their own shoelaces without tripping, and a dismissive response would follow (from some, not all of course). Some were less extreme in their opinions about the playability of all-human warshades, but no less certain in their judgments.

Even after months and months of evidence coming into this forum, you still have posts that show a deficient understanding of how an all-human warshade can be made into a different kind of character than a tri-form; not lesser, just different, because heavy toggle usage makes switching forms unattractive and brings something different to a team than a tri-form does.

The key difference between an all-human and a tri-form is so simple it can even be stated in one sentence. But opinions, once formed, tend to take a long time and a *lot* of evidence to change.

/unsigned

I don't want (further) reasons to discriminate against players in-game, based on their builds. We already went through a period of time in which a small percentage of zealous team leaders would kick VEATs from teams and also be nasty jerks in other ways, based on whether or not the player had taken TT: Maneuvers. Fortunately, even though the game was less fun to play while a determined few were kicking people and being very loud about the issue in-game, the efforts at "forced conversion" to TT: Maneuvers and the nastiness that attended it weren't sustained over the long run. I'd rather we didn't go through another period of time in which players bothered other players about whether or not they had the "knockback to knockdown" IO.

On a related point, sometimes knockback is annoying, but most of the time its fun; I get a grin on my face every time a storm defender joins a team on which I'm playing.

Knight, your experiences with TA as a defender primary don't resemble my own experiences, nor does your judgment; I find TA to be a fun and effective set, both as a primary and a secondary. If you don't enjoy TA as a primary, that's one thing and saying "I don't enjoy it" covers that. To make a categorical judgment is another, and not something well supported by your own statements. Reflect for a bit about what the odds are that the strengths of TA could be highly meaningful on a controller, but amount to diddly squat on a defender or corruptor. The math on that way of thinking doesn't add up particularly well.

As for the last few posters before Knight who called TA silly names, you only succeeded in making yourselves look uninformed. Players solo emps, FF, and sonic defenders at all levels of the game; anybody who can't solo on a TA has truly earned the response "lern 2 play." Likewise, anybody who can't make a substantive contribution to a team with TA (as a primary or a secondary) is either brand new to the game or, if they're not a new player, then they should stay away from bows and arrows in real life because they'd probably point the arrow in the wrong direction and hurt themselves.

The question isn't whether or not TA "sucks", however one might define that. TA doesn't "suck" and people who say that are inviting others to draw unflattering conclusions about their playing skills and/or their willingness to be honest. The question also isn't whether TA performs like another set that some like better (for heaven's sake, play that set instead). The question is whether TA would be more fun to play, and therefore more popular, if it received some buffs. I believe it would be and everybody else seems to think it would be, as well. In fact, I don't recall seeing anybody come into this thread to argue that some kind of buff to TA would make it less fun to play.

The only concerns I see expressed about buffing the set are that buffs could potentially overpower controllers; which, once again, makes arguments that TA "sucks" as a primary rather difficult to believe.

To answer your question about endred, it doesn't affect the end drain after nuke use in any way. Endred only affects how much end it costs you to cast thunderous blast, potentially allowing you to use it when you have less total endurance left than the "base" cost of thunderous blast.

The number of situations in which endred is needed to be able to cast thunderous blast are probably few and far between. I wouldn't recommend endred slotting in it, for that reason.

Thunderous blast is a great candidate for frankenslotting, as you can get 90%+ damage and recharge slotting, some accuracy, and some end mod slotting if you frankenslot carefully.

I have a brand new ice/TA (young 20s, at present) who has "You're not going anywhere, ever!" as his battle cry.

Then he follows up on that and mobs essentially don't go anywhere, ever; even slow resistant mobs will spend their remaining seconds of life crawling and flopping after they get hit with glue arrow, shiver, and ice slick (and 2 of those are auto-hit). Having two holds early makes solo and team play easier, as well.

Ice/TA doesn't have the hard control of some combinations (ie: earth/TA), but soft controls are abundant and its a combination that offers a completely different in-game feel from most controllers.

I've gotten two necro MMs to 50 thus far: necro/storm and a necro/poison. Both were very smooth rides, overall. I've got a necro/FF at 42 and that build is close to indestructible in (non-extreme) PvE gameplay, now that both unique +5% defense IOs have been slotted into Soul Extraction. I've gotten a necro/TA to 35 (and another newer one to 22); like all TA characters, the necro/TA blends control and debuffs to steamroll stuff (and burst damage gets a very nice bump after getting to OSA). I got a necro/pain to 28 before deleting because of boredom. I have a necro/traps to 25, and I'm looking forward to the Lich and to seeker drones to help improve zombie survivability. My necro/traps is fun, and the easiest character to play. Finally, I've brought both a necro/thermal and a necro/dark to 10; neither are very interesting to me, though, and they're stalled at 10.

My experience is that there isn't a poorly performing necro MM out there, regardless of the grumbling you hear on the forums about this or that secondary. I'm not into the "reactive" healing sets, but you may be so don't let my boredom with them slow you down. Pick the concept and playstyle you'd have the most fun playing, and then go forth and have fun.

I don't have enough experience with ninjas to have well informed opinions about them.

There are a *lot* of options for somebody who wants to make a mage-type character. Play with the character creator for good costume ideas, and play with the colors for the powers to see what you can make that you like.

There's no specific "mage" powerset, though, so you'll need to pick a themed powerset of some kind, and go from there.

A few sets to check out, to get you started playing around with things in the character creator

Blaster primaries: fire, ice, electric blast (elemental damage), psy blast (damage others with your mind)
Controller primaries: earth, ice, fire, (elemental), illusion, mind (illusionist, enchanter), plant (nature)
Defender primaries: cold domination, storm summoning, trick arrow (magically imbued arrows), dark (if you'd like a dark, deathly theme, or if you'd like to recolor the set to make it brighter).
Mastermind primaries: necromancy

... and this is just off the top of my head. There are quite a few more options for making a mage-style character.

Ironically, I just finished up a cyst with a PUG team (with my TA/Ice defender) just minutes before re-visiting this thread. Somebody spotted the cyst and warned the team, the battle was more challenging than usual, but it still went seamlessly, and we continued on with the mission.

Cysts are really not that hard. They're just ... not.

If the devs have found a way to make the Rikti invasions even more enjoyable for willing participants and, at the same time, to make it less of an annoyance to those who aren't that fond of them, that would be a reason for an enthusiastic "thumbs up" from all concerned.

If the "new" Rikti invasions will ultimately be even more intrusive and in-your-face than the old ones, that ups the annoyance level for the non-participants, and that's not a good thing.

You're conflating "balance" and "predictability."

Check out Diablo 2 random boss spawns in hell difficulty, hardcore. Sometimes you faced extra strong, fanaticism, cursed physical immune Blood Lords, conviction, fire enchanted, cold enchanted Burning Souls, or fire enchanted, cursed, extra fast Dolls. Sometimes you would even have overlapping spawns with the might aura in one and the fanaticism aura on another, mixed in with a ranged boss spawn that had the cursed mod. At other times you faced boss spawns consisting of Playful Kittens Lightly Batting Balls of Twine with Extreme Poofiness. Most of the time you faced something in between.

The randomness of boss spawns in Diablo 2 gave the game far, far more replay value than it would otherwise have had. And, when playing hardcore those random boss spawn mods mattered, as your character could end up wearing grey robes in a heartbeat if you weren't careful.

Contrast that with COX. There's very little risk in any encounter and almost no random elements in spawns; everything about mobs you face is predictable, especially after you've gotten to know mob characteristics and have run the arcs a couple of times.

COX needs more random elements in missions to increase its replay value, not less.

Giving players better search tools for finding MA arcs they're likely to enjoy would be "pure win", and I hope such a change is put into the "to do" list.

Being able to specify a level range for MA arcs--just like at the markets when buying enhancements and recipes--would be very helpful, and greatly appreciated.

I love cysts the way they are. I hope they are not messed with in any way, except perhaps to (slightly) increase the number of cysts that appear in-game.

I get that newer players would find them confounding, at first. More experienced players know that taking out the cyst itself clears out a lot of mobs, and makes the encounter easier to manage.

Vive le Chaos!!! Vive le Cyst!!

New characters tend to become influence sinks, at least as players IO them out. In short, anything that substantially influences the rate of new character creation will tend to influence prices for in-game items.

Making more money sinks that drive up the hassle costs of leveling up new characters could negatively influence new character creation rates; if new money sinks are created, hopefully that will be borne in mind.

I have three related suggestions.

1. Allow players the option to decline a given contact, when they pop up. Thus, for example, if somebody doesn't want the AE contact in their list, they can press the "decline" button and that contact will no longer appear in their contacts list.
2. Turn PvP contacts into "Unlockable" contacts that appear when players reach a certain level. Allow players to decline to accept PvP contacts as being part of their list (see recommendation 1)
3. Drop the "Fed Ex" style PvP solicitation missions that players get with every alt they make.

The first two suggestions are about cleaning up contact lists further, and giving players choices about shaping their contacts list.

The second and third suggestions may require a change in thinking on the part of the devs, but hopefully they'll be open to doing it.

There's a line between promoting PvP and badgering people about it. When every alt a player makes is given more than one "Fed Ex" style PvP solicitation mission, it feels like badgering. As well, by now every player knows about PvP and the overwhelming majority decline to participate; being badgered multiple times about PvP zones with every character made may irritate players, but it isn't going to change their minds about PvP.

If you dislike running dry on endurance, then masterminds are probably your best choice.

Play a bots / traps if you'd like a particularly easy ride, with relatively little to do. Play (anything)/poison if you'd like a much more active set.

If your only difficulty with brutes was endurance, though, check out the brute guides to find one on endurance management. Pre-20 brutes can slice through missions with great alacrity once you've got endurance under control, and there is a guide on the brute forums to help you do that.

I enjoy my TA/ice, necro/TA, and ninja/TA characters. They're effective in-game both solo and on teams, regardless of the intelligent critiques (as well as the histrionics) posted about TA in this thread.

This thread also inspired me to make an ice/TA (I've never seen one either, Knight), and he's too young to know how well he'll work out yet. Looking at the possibilities, my sense is that mobs won't be moving around very much, nor will they be doing very much. With acid arrow and disruption dropping mob resistance by 30% quite regularly, nor will they be around very long. And every third spawn, or thereabouts, mobs will suffer essentially nuke-level damage when I ignite OSA.

Again, I'm definitely not opposed to a buff to the TA set. On that note, 15 seconds of -regen in EMP arrow, given its 300 second recharge, seems like a token effort to put it into the set; I have no idea what the person who set that length of time was thinking, nor why they chose that particular arrow in which to add -regen.

To Oedipus Tex:

There's nothing overly harsh about your reply. You were courteous and you focused on the issues, from my perspective. Where we may disagree is in how comparisons are best made across powersets.

It is better to compare sets on a holistic basis. Comparing powers in isolation (one power at a time or a group of powers) from others in a set tends to lead to an incomplete and misleading analysis. TA is a debuff / control / direct damage set. In exchange for providing no ally buffs and no healing, it provides a trifecta of other benefits that, taken as a package, are unique among defender primaries.

TA offers more damage than rad and dark, against which TA is routinely compared for debuffs, more control than probably any other defender primary (dark arguably comes close because of fearsome stare and its pet; still, one AOE fear power is not equivalent to TA's three AOE controls put together), and more debuffs (in numbers and in the numbers) than most defender primaries.

As an example from your post of how it can be misleading to compare individual powers across sets, instead of thinking in holistic terms, putting freezing rain on a 2 minute timer would just about eviscerate much of the appeal of storm, especially for teams. In contrast, having a more or less "every spawn" OSA that functions much like ice slick and that also does high damage would essentially turn TA into a control primary mislabeled as a defender primary, with a lot of damage added to the mix.

I believe TA would be more fun to play if it received some buffs and that there is room to boost the trifecta of debuffs / control / damage further without overpowering the set. I also believe it will be a challenge to buff it without having to subsequently nerf it, mostly because of how close TA already is to being a control primary. On a related note, the current near equivalence of TA to a control primary leaves relatively little room for recharge to be the focus of buffs.

My own experiences are that spawns melt faster with a good TA player along and the occasional problem that comes up with over-aggro from additional spawns and such things simply and quietly goes away. Rightly or wrongly, and of course I might be proven wrong when the devs do finally buff TA, I believe that -regen is the missing ingredient that would indirectly help to shine a light on the already considerable strengths of the set. Like a lot of other sets that were underappreciated for extended periods of time (ie: rad and storm), TA needs to be played more to be appreciated more; as long as TA remains a likely candidate for the "pity spot" on a variety of upper-level content, it will probably continue to be under-appreciated.

TA is a debuff, control, and direct damage set.

1. TA debuffs, and everybody who plays the set knows this.
2. TA has a single target hold (not the best ST hold, based on stats) and an AOE hold on long recharge that offers better stats than the AOE hold in most control primaries. If also offers AOE knockdown through OSA and an AOE sleep for minions through PGA (admittedly only as a 50% chance, mag 2, and short duration). It also has a single target immobilize in its tier one power.
3. TA offers direct AOE damage through OSA (when it lights, which is clearly an important implementation issue).

TA is not a controller primary, but several types of controls that you typically find in a controller primary are present. Obviously, the devs expected TA players to be using the set's controls and labeling TA a "Debuff only set" is inappropriate. In fact, TA is at or near the upper end in each of three categories (debuffs, controls, and direct damage), when compared against the mean of defender primaries.

A fair number of posters have expressed concern about the ability of TA players to take alpha on teams. I'm not convinced that every set of every AT needs to be a good alpha taker to be a good contributor on teams. Still, if the devs wanted to improve the ability of TA players to take alpha, they could put in a very short duration -to hit debuff into poison gas arrow (ie: an unenhanceable -15% for 6 seconds, which would be stackable with flash arrow). In logical terms, if poison will muck up your damage by up to 30% and put a lot of mobs to sleep, how can your aim be completely unaffected? After you get poisoned, wouldn't you need a few seconds to get your senses in full working order again? In gameplay terms, a hefty and short-term -to hit debuff would help TA players take alpha, and provide little help beyond that. That change alone would probably be of considerable help to TA players, both teamed and solo.

I'm wholly in favor of adding -regen to a TA power. It would be thematically appropriate, the utility of the TA set would improve significantly with that change (but not in a game-breaking way), and those who like TA are highly likely to welcome its addition to the set. On a related note, sets sometimes get discriminated against when teams are formed for much of the higher level content if they can't slow down AV/GM regeneration, or at least offer tasty buffs. Disruption arrow, acid arrow, and poison gas arrow would all be suitable candidates for -regen powers. Of these three arrows, disruption arrow would be the most interesting choice because adding -regen to it would present some gameplay challenges and opportunities, depending on the situation.

I put together an Ice/Thorns/Leviathan permadom build, ignoring budgetary considerations and making some effort to also put together a good deal of global accuracy and a middling amount of ranged defense.

This could be an effective soloing build and a good team support build, with excellent soft control, heaps of -defense, and reasonably good blapper-style damage. Having up to 3 pets up much of the time would also be quite helpful.

Any feedback would be appreciated. Here's the data chunk that can be copied into Mids: