SkeetSkeet

As far as travel goes, IR is a perfectly acceptable alternative. Especially now with the temp travel powers available to bridge the gap until you reach IR level.

However, you will feel the occasional twinge of longing for the leaping pool the first time you find yourself standing there immobilized for lack of combat jumping, feeling vaguely embarassed... or when you get reminded how many npc attacks have a low mag hold on them that bounces right off acrobatics.

Probably not enough to make it worth taking leaping on a kin--it wasn't for me--but something to consider.

Cold. Given a choice between the two, I would take the balance of mitigation and making things die faster offered by cold over the pure mitigation of FF.

There's definitely something to be said for layered protections. The benefits of -tohit are just that much better when you backstop it with a solid chunk of defense and some resists.

There's always fire. Bonfire definitely has its moments vs stalkers.

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i guess the people who prefare pvp.2 dont play support toons in pvp. if you do....why ?

go damage or go home.

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The death of support has been greatly exaggerated.

When I need a morale boost on dmg, like when I go back to a defender after playing a blaster or scrapper, I just start counting all the extra damage I create from teammates as "my damage."

Add in every attack that benefits from a -res, or hits when it would have missed or is accelerated by +recharge or would never have happened without +recovery or... well, you get the picture, suddenly "my damage" is pretty substantial.

Of course if you're solo it's a moot point because you're wasting all the potential of defender-as-force-multiplier.

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I Figure, I set them up, he knocks them down. Is there a Defender that's really good at that? I've done Dark/ Ice before, and that seemed pretty good in that regard. I'm thinking Storm would be pretty good too.


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When I think "controllery" it translates to me as a general sort of "render them harmless to be killed at your leisure." Nothing lays a safety blanket over a team like Dark. You can render the first spawn harmless, handle the accidental agro and still have stuff left in your bag of tricks to negate the unexpected ambush that showed up on top of that. With a side of heals, rez and -res to speed things along and clean up any droppings along the way. For my money that's as controllery as it gets from defender primaries.

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Yes.

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How much -ToHit is available to TA/A?

How much -ToHit is available to TA/Dark?

The point I'm making here is that what you might've needed or chosen to do with your TA/A has no bearing, at all, on how TA/Dark plays or whether or not a TA/Dark will find EMP Arrow useful.

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You're entitled to your opinion. Based on my own experience with both TA and /dark I happen to disagree. EMP arrow is exceedingly useful. A single fire-and-forget power that locks down everything but the boss in a spawn long enough for everything to die makes a strong case for itself.

Yes.

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If nothing can hit you, do you need everything Held?

If you can Stun everything, do you need to Hold them too?

That's why I skipped EMP on my TA/Dark.

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When I was leveling up, I used EMP almost every time it was available from 32 to 50. The base duration is double that of dark pit, fully enhanced it's long enough where anything it holds will be dead before it wears off. On the climb to 50 where most of the team members aren't IO'd juggernauts, having an extra "stop a spawn in its tracks" power can save many a team wipe.

On the other hand, at 50 where most of my pve time is spent on the lvl 50 TFs and the occasional farms, it's an afterthought. The only reason I even keep it around is for the hold set bonuses, I can't remember the last time I actually needed it.

Sacred cows--they're what's for dinner. Every defender primary can be used to full effect without stamina. This is true even with a broad selection of pool power toggles active.

The real deciding factor is how spammy you want to be with your secondary. You can dish out offense in short bursts without stamina but sustained attacking will drain you fast no matter how much end cost reduction you slot unless you've got a solid amount of +recovery.

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Maximizing the Defense Debuff means that my other powers, and those of my teammates, will hit far more often. I think that provides more benefit than most procs.

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The base debuff is enough to cap your hit rolls in almost every situation. For the most part, enhancing it further is overkill and unless you're gaining some great set bonuses out of it, wasted.

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Now base camping does suck though. I mean i see pushing them back to there base, theres alot of fun in that, but after doing it over and over again for a long period of time it gets old and is better to back up to the middle and "reset" sorta to speak. At least thats how i view it.

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The problem is that people--no matter how smart they might be--behave as though they're idiots in zone pvp. As though they are locked into a bugs vs bug-zapper dance on both ends of it.

The ones being camped rush the campers, die, rinse, repeat. They behave as though alternate exits and the rest of the zone don't exist. Bugs... to bug zapper. It takes two sides for camping to happen, if you deny them targets at the base and force them to move to find a fight then you break the camp. But this seldom happens because... bugs, bug-zapper.

On the camper side of it, it's the same thing. Sit outside the enemy base and get droned, complain in broadcast, run back from hosp, get droned again, rinse, repeat. Bugs... bug zapper. Everything about the base camp situation--drones, npcs, easy escape for targets--works against them but still they sit there because that bug zapper is so mesmerizing.

Not that I have an answer to the problem. Trying to convince a team to break the cycle is like talking to a wall. Nine times out of ten the response is dead silence in team chat because they're too busy rushing back to get droned or killed by campers.

If someone else had a power that say provided the team with some mitigation but made your blasts do half dmg, would you ask them not to use it?

KB is kind of like that from the perspective of anyone who uses aoe or melee powers. That's a fairly long list which includes most scrappers, tankers, many blasters, defenders and controllers.

When one person on a team takes a big chunk of efficiency away from the other seven... well, it's fair to ask whether it's worth having that person on the team. When you're the one, you need to be able to read the situation and understand that just because a button is on your power tray, that doesn't mean it has to be mashed every time it lights up. A little restraint goes a long way, less is more, etc etc.

I say this having played the mother of all knockback combos--a storm/energy defender--realizing that in most ordinary situations I'm not doing anyone, myself included, any favors by slowing the team down with unnecessary scatter.

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My Bane is Patronless but my Scrapper does have Jump Kick. It shocks me how many kills I land with Jump Kick.

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It's kind of puke-in-your-mouth sad that the best way to make a martial arts build for pvp is with pool powers.

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Any epic recommendations for a TA/Arch? Being able to survive better or do more damage would be nice.

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For dmg, you're back to PBU which puts a serious kick behind an attack chain.

543 hours. Wow. Just wow.

I'd have to say TA. I played all of them to 50 except rad and ff and they were all fun to level but TA is the one I go back and play the most at 50.

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With a couple good Stalkers to do very quick follow-up AS's, the squishy usually has no chance to survive

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there isn't a ton-of-killin to be had Red side like there is Blue Side.

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read the text it is all preatorian earth stuff...meaning not affecting current COX including zones. Alternate reality crap.

I am betting pretty much it is roll from level 1 all over only this time what missions you do, what path you take affects if your a hero a villian or something inbetween -

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I'm with you on that bet. A straightforwrd switch where you're just playing the other side with the same toon is very unlikely.

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All the devs really did was slow down enough that people still think they stand a chance, when in fact almost every fight now is decided by sets and numbers per side before the first attack is ever thrown.

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Numbers per side should carry a lot of weight.

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So much of the skills gained in the old pvp is wasted now and I believe the number one reason a good number of players who were good at i12 pvp don't like the new pvp.

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Skill still wins out. I13 just separated the skilled players from the ones who thought they were good but in fact were just riding the fotm gravy train.

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i cant get away. i dont know if there are ways around this

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Phase. I13 is the reason why phase became so popular. Sure, all the top players had been using it for years, but after I13 almost everybody got it. I went from having a couple toons with phase, to almost every single one having it.

I predicted it before I13 ever went live. It was pretty obvious what was going to happen. When you take away ALL possibility of skilled evasion, all that's left is to phase. Especially in zones, where getting ganked 10v1 is pretty routine.

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If it's 10 v 1, the 1 should die. Skill is evading the 10 v 1 fight to start with.

I'm actually a big fan of how DR plays out in the game. I just hate how it represents two big steps backwards to the pre-combat attributes days where trial and error is the only way to know what enhancements, buffs and debuffs do.

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potentially end up "wasted" on fast teams.

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I'd suggest the opposite, on a really fast moving team, disruption arrow is almost always useful. It's usually the very first thing I'll fire because it is guaranteed to help speed things along by increasing everyone else's dmg. There are very few instances where -res is "wasted."

Also, on a fast moving team, keeping things within the debuff radius isn't a concern. Things die too fast and there are other people handling agro management/positioning.

i14 pvp is less bad than i12.