Starfox_NA

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[Regens are normally at an advantage against toxic damage. It's our strength. In MoG it becomes a weakness, a detriment. Where a regen will usually have about 20-47% resistance to Toxic, you now have 75% (capped) but you only have 1/4 of your HP which effectively makes it even more of a debuff.

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I think it is actually much worse than this. As far as i know, MoG uses the damage-type defense bonus, and there is no damage type defense against poison. This means that a poison attack goes right through the defense portion of MoG.

In fact, back when I had MoG, I noticed that poison was the killer, not Psi. Psi is too rare, and associated with particular mobs and thus avoidable. Poison is pretty common, and the damage might be trivial but it adds up. It is the death of a thousand needles. Rikti Monkey Gas and Nemesis Sniper Gas are particularily bad.

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Please name them. What factors are there to MoG's use that would change any point I made?

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Well, we don't know. That's why we are supposed to test.

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Primarily this is because you spend too long in the buff without the ability to heal and with inadequate HP. My suggestions are meant to correct that.

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Would a solution be to reduce the duration of MoG (and presumably the no-regen time afterwards)?

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First tests

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Finally! Now you are talking!

Actually, I also like to idly speculate - but one must realize that pseclation is much weaker testing. More than one or two speculative posts before you start testing can give you a bad name.


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Lastly, please remove the grey popups for "dodged" and "deflected." With the lack of graphical optimization, that's just one more piece of unnecessary graphics floating in front of me.

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I liked the pop-up text. Defensive powers needed some indication they were indeed working. Especially on low-defense toons like my Hover/Combat Jump/Weave Fire Tank. But I realize it can be annoying in the long run, especially on a defense focused toon. The OPTION to turn it off would be nice.

However, it was pretty cool getting an almost unlimited number of dodge messages from Assassin Strikes and general attacks on my Claws/SR in Recluse's. Especially as I stood there taking over the pillbox the villains had just defeated for me.

The exit from Recluse's Victory to Atlas Park is mislabeled. It ought to be named Atlas Park, but is named Recluse's Victory.

You said earlier that endurance drain would be fixed in I7. Please, can you give us some hint as to how it is done?

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Personally i would prefer they remove the repel from the pvp version rather than mess with the pulse time. After all, if players can eaily get thoguh the repel, whats the pint of it being there? Just remove it and leave the pve repel as it used to be.

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Not a bad idea at all. Most players couldn't care less how it works in PvP, and this lets us keep it for PvE. Actually, a repel-less Hurrican would not be useless in PvE either, and might be better than one with a borked repel; it would pull less aggro and be a viable always-on power. But if the PvE version is to keep repel, the repel needs to be reliable.

CommunistPenguin wrote:

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I already asked _Castle_ about that in a PM. His reply:

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Suppression did not work. I spent 3 days working with various options to get it to the shape it is currently, and while it isn't exactly what I wanted, it is the only way I could get it to work.

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I hope the debate here can help convince Castle that this is not the way players want iot to work. Especially not PvE players. The PvP aspect of CoX simply isn't important enought to merit such a big change.

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I will go out on a limb and say this is a purely PvP problem yet it will now affect my PvE gameplay and that is unacceptable. Now I may add myself to the growing minority list of players saying "Thank god I already got my [insert AT] to level 50" list.

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This sums this thread up nicely.

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PvE repel is exactly the same strength as before. Yes, it ticks more slowly, which is a double edged sword -- it costs you less endurance to maintain, but it's not quite as good defensively.

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Are you not thinking of Repel, Whirlwind and the pother powers that have a cost for eacmob repelled? Hurricane has no such cost, and thus won't get an end cost rebate. Or am I misundestanding something?

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And what was with Manticore taking out Infernal, Mynx, Ms. Liberty, and Swan all in one shot? Are they f***ing mocking us? A TA/Archery defender can't kill a single regen scrapper...ever! much less a whole group of people with one shot.


~Gabriel

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They were all grey to him.

[Actually, I am not sure that would help]

About what could be expected. A bit surprised by the abundance of pets, some seem to be capable of buffing you. Could be good or bad depending on specs. The most interesting power here is Web Envelope - -Fly, -Jump. Devious.

All in all, I find them about as useful as their hero counterparts - which I honestly don't feel are all that useful.

Brutes must have been tricky. With such varied secondaries, and no duplication, there really wasn't all that many options available. You can't let someone have Conserve Power twice.

Stalkers: Snipe for stalkers makes perfect sense, and I am pretty sure the will do criticals. I expected one of the snipes to be a gun, tough. And will the pets refrain from attacking when you are hidden, perhaps even have their own version of hide? If not they seem pretty useless.

Corruptors seem to have powers that are all-around useful. I too could have seen some blapper powers here, but we can already get melee attacks through the pools, and one or two odd blappers attacks would have been too little to build a true blapper-corruptor anyway. Adding about as much control as Blasters get in their Epics seems reasonable.

Dominators were just as restricted as brutes because of their varies secondaries. I can see why you'd get area blasts, but the abundance of end recovery powers were confuising and a bit too similar to consume.

Mastermind sets seem a bit underwhelming, but an area immobilize is not a bad thing. Only one of the sets have a cone that is primarily about damage (Ghost Widow), all the others are primarily immobilizers. And Nioght Fall is a very nice, long-range, high-damage power. Also, you can generally take the armor as your #1 power, which helps againstthe squishiness of the Mastermind.

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Something else I'd like to see the power descriptions be very clear on... Which of the patron powers will force me to put away and re-draw my bow/assault rifle/etc.

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This one is easy - all of them. All non-bow powers puts away the bow, and so on. No reason to think these are any different.

The Kinetics/Sonic is awesome, no question about that. However, it has a couple of serous disadvantages.

* You need to be at melee range to fully benefit from Fulcum Shift

* Sonics lacks the powers to form a real attack chain. You can fill it out with melee pool attacks, but those won't debuff resistance.

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Patron Powers are truly permanent. This powerset, once chosen, is as much a part of your character as your Name, Primary Powerset, Secondary Powerset, Body Type, and Origin.

There is currently no way for us to let you re-spec out of them and into a different one. This is because it is tied to specific content for that Patron.

Because of this, hard numbers are given, in-game, about the powers and what they do before you even choose which arc you wish to partake (and will most likely be available on the website as well).

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Still, this is a VERY bad thing. Whynot have the power open up as you compete the arcs? Or just suspens beleif and allow respecs - theya re momentous events in and of themselves.

Having played a MM, I wouldn't move them up. Damage output might be good, but it is worse than a good Corruptor's.

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Great update. One question though: are you planning on covering the ancillary pools at any point?

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Not very likely - I simply don't have enough post 41 toons to try them all. The only post-41 toons I have are scrappers and controllers.

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you have much time....

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I do. Wish I didn't. Retired early because of a spinal injury.

THis is not a finished guide, I want comments on a project that may one day become part of my Powerset Selection Guide 2.0 .


I made a simple graphic to illustrate the difference between ATs, plotting them in a graph with Ranged/Melee and Attack/Defense axles. The graph can be found here.

First, did I do it right? Are the axles relevant, did I place the ATs right? My main doubt was Brutes - are they really more defensive than Stalkers? Because they can tank where Stalkers cannot, I placed them like this. The position of Dominators can also be questioned, but I figure control is all about defense, and their damage is less than that of Corruptors. Maybe move them a little more to the ranged side?

Second, it shows some interesting things we already knew.

Hero ATs are more extreme than villain ATs on the attack/defense axis. Defensive heroes are more defensive, aggressive heroes more aggressive.

Hero aggression is distrubuted between ranged/melee, villain aggression is in melee.

Nothing is as aggressive as a Blaster.

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I fully expect you to nerf hurricane which is needed. Also fix the toggle droppers. Hurricane and things like that should be made Clickies like IH was with long recharge times(to be fair).

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Any change to Hurricane that affects PvE - and this one would certainly do that - would need to be compensated by a general boost to the rest of the Storm Summonning set. It already needs help in PvE.

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As -speed movement does not really stop the enemy from attacking, it just hinders them, I disagree. It should be a debuff and Defenders should just be better at it.

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This argument is sound.

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Props to you for addressing an unpleasant issue and hopefully putting it to utterly, completely, finally to bed forever.

You've done a lot of good work and you’ve been a great addition to the Dev postings in the CoX forums.

I sincerely hope that posts which contain language like “the most disheartening developer post”, “lack of an apology”, “appalling absence of manners”, “does not excuse” etc, etc, etc, do not reduce your spirits or wear you down.

I can’t apologize for other posters, but unfortunately some people cannot let go of an issue even when the issue has been resolved to the satisfaction of the original problem. Unfortunately, there appear to exemplary, sainted people who have never, ever make even a single mistake walking among us and unfortunately those people don’t seem to realize that other more ordinary, more mortal, actually human people can actually make a slip every now and then. Unfortunately events which are subject to interpretation are often taken in the most negative light possible. And unfortunately people can be a lot more acidic on message boards then they would be in real life. Things which should just be dropped aren’t.

Please do not let these goings on bring you down or change your posting habits in any way shape or form.

You and the good work you do is sincerely appreciated.

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I am really hoping for more powersets to be available to both CoV and CoH that are now only in one game. All the Corruptor secondaries for defenders. Some of them for controllers. And the new electric brute set for tanks. A few more blast sets for defenders would be nice as well.

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I'll keep this civil. I'm formally requesting that this be looked again and changed. Basically telling any and all Storm Defenders that they would have been better off as Storm Controllers does not work. And it's too late to pull Storm from the list of Defender Primaries.

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I suppose this is why there is no Storm Summoning in CoV - it is just to hard to make it work. The developers gave up on it.

I have already thanked Castle for caring for these important issues. Thanks again!

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* Quality of Life: Currently all powers that prevent status effects last between 60 and 90 seconds, making them impractical for team buffing. Is this intended?

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Yes. Things like Clarity and Clear Mind are meant to be used on players as a cure or quick preventative measure for status effects. Maintaining the buff on a full team is not the goal of these powers.

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* Balance: Clear mind's animation (4 seconds) makes prebuffing a large team prohibitive, and using it as a release deadly. (LadyMage)

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See note above.


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In recent updates, the duration of all mez, PvP and PvE, have been reduced. Few mobs put you out of action for more than 5-10 seconds. While this is a long time in a fight, it is not really long enough to make a reactive stance on de-mezzing possible.

In order to un-mez someone, that person has to realize he has been mezzed, report it in the team channel, the un-mezzer has to see it, finish whatever he is doing, select the target, hit the button, and the power needs to activate. Assuming 1 second for each step (Clear mind takes 4 seconds, but assume 1 for the case of the argument), that is a delay of eight seconds. Eight seconds when few mezzes last more than ten?

Add to this that the people who die from being mezzed are meleists, those whose mez resistances were reduced recently. Reactive mez protection is pointless for them, as even 0.1 second of mez will drop their toggles, getting them killed. As they absolutely need enhanced mez protection on larger teams when facing (among others) Malta, these powers have to be used ahead of time.

Changes in the game have made reactive un-mezzing nonviable. Let’s accept this, realize that these powers need to be applied beforehand, and increase their durations so they are not a PITA to use. At the moment, these powers are just not worth taking, which in turn makes tanking Malta an impossible task. Yay tanks.

I will add to the choir of praise for Castle. Clearing out old mistakes seems to need it's own department at Cryptic, and I am proposing Castle as chairman!

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* PVP: Hurricane does not debuff the ranged attacks (APP, Claws/Focus) of Scrappers and Tankers as it should. (Stormbringer) It also debuffs the range of Blaster melee attacks to zero. (Soyuz)

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The current system is working as designed. We may eventually get code put in that more adequately handles Melee AT's with Ranged attacks and Ranged ATs using Melee attacks, but it is fairly low on the priority list.

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Although working as designed, the current system was (i believe, please correct me if i'm wrong) introduced as a temporary fix for a coding problem that prevented melee ATs from launching melee attacks against someone using hurricane. The band-aid the devs placed on the boo-boo was simply that hurricane would not debuff ANY attacks from melee ATs--melee or ranged. This overkill was introduced as a temporary fix and has lingered like a bad smell, unfairly penalizing hurricane users against melee ATs in pvp by denying them one of the most useful and defensive secondary effects (-range debuff) of their primary defensive power (hurricane). I repeat, this fix was to be temporary, until the devs could recode the melee attack/hurricane interaction. This issue STILL needs to be addressed.

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Do not forget that the melee attacks of blappers are negated. Actually, I think Hurricane comes out ahead through this bug, as the ranged attacks of melee ATs are generally much less dangerous than the blapper's melee attacks.

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And the people that cry DOOOOM can't seem to see that exploits *must* be blocked off, or eventually more people will be taking advantage of it.



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Respectfully disagree. I am harmed much less by an exploit than by a nerf. Impairing the fun of many for the sake of balancingthe few is not a good idea.

Well, another reason we need a free respec with #7. Since the devs never hand out free repecs between issues, all the small changes between issues have to be considered as well. And the cumulative changes between #6 and #7 are adding up.

Give us a free respec and an End reduction on Whirlwind, and I'd be happy.