Starfox_NA

My observation on Smoke in PvE is that it reports quite a lot of misses, but the mobs still run the smoke aniumation even if they are missed. Maybe the power has two parts - a PvP part that can miss and a PvE part that always hits. Even though the pvP part has no effect in PvE, it still does a to-hit check and reports misses?

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Whirlwind has always done knock up, now it is doing knockback. I did not see any patch notes on this change. I do recall some discussion about the changes being made to the way knockdown works because of ragdoll physics but understand it was suppose to be reversed. Is this an unnoted patch change or a bug?

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Yes, the change was done purposefully. No, a patch note was not generated -- my fault, sorry! I simply forgot to note the change down.

Why? There was a PVE exploit involved with it, and this fix takes care of 90% of the issue.

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When making the power much weaker for PvE in this way, wouldn't some compensation be in order? Such as a reduced End cost?

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Flight: I'll talk to geko about it. No promises. (I got spoiled by the Holiday Jet Pack, too!)

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Hehe - I guessed this would happen!

Flight is my favourite travel power, and I am actually fine with the speed. The utility in scouting and moving around is good enough. The problem is Hover.

Om my stalker, I have Air Superiority, Fly for strategic movement and the occasional aerieal attack, but my general combat movements is Hurdle + Combat Jumping. My stalker would be very dead if she had to rely on Hover to get away after a boss strike.

I have a tank, a brute and a scrapper with Hover. For a Fire/Fire tank (burnless) it works great. Being a little slower insures Blazing Aura gets the aggro. For a Energy/Dark brute, it works decently. Death Shroud is less able to hold aggro, so that utility is less. The reason I am not complaining is that I tend to team with a kinetic. But my MA/Regen scrapper is hurting, and hardly gets any play time after ED (she is lvl 46). Without Speed Boost, it is simply a pain to try to be a scrapper with Hover.

Great explaination, thanks _Castle_

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So when will you be announcing that all +DEF powers have been cut in half?
We've only reduced one power, since it was a kluge fix to the problem that is no longer necessary. Essentially, Super Reflexes power sets Defense will be the same in effectiveness at Melee, Ranged and AoE ranges. Currently, SR has a bonus vs AoE attacks that was added to help them against tougher opponents with higher Base To Hit values.

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Was this really why SR got it's area attack bonus? I thought it was because most other defense enhancing powers don't work against area attacks, and thus the base defense needs to be higher.

Finally, how does Smoke / Smoke Grenade / Blinding Arrow work with this? Are those accuracy debuffs or to-hit debuffs?

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I look forward to a detailed explanation of how this will work.

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Ditto.

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Forming a line.


The easy way to do this is to increase all defense values by 50% to 100% and then make it a separate "dodge" roll, not a to-hit subtraction. But Statesman's post suggests otherwise, as he talks about scaling, but "only" up to +5. Seems they actually went and modified defense based on relative levels.

Who cares aboput one-shotting in PvP? I want ot to end in PvE!

(And obviously only against players, one-shotting mobs is fine, when possible)

When bases were first proposed, it was assumed as a given that there would be a base vault. Someplace where you can deposit Influence, Inspirations, and Enhancements (and now salvage and components) for others to use. Like other base components, access could be restricted by rank.

This woul make sharing influence and enhancements in the group much easier and be an allaround quality-of-life improvement.

It would also increase the chash in the group, as people could drop their SOs there for others to pick up insteadof selling them at 30¤, giving away the money, and the beneficiary then bying them back for 100% of the base price. Maybe the devs do not want this to happen. But shouldn't being social be rewarded?

I definitely want it. Some real utility for a PvE group.

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As someone who's briefly played WoW too, I can tell you that the game evolution is exactly the other way around than you paint it. The most fun is to be had in the single digit levels: quests are aplenty, the difficulty is reasonable, and they don't involve much walking. Then it gradually goes downhill, and there's more and more timesink and less and less game. By the time you get your mount, most quests starts involving an hour of riding just to get there.

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This is exactly my WoW experience, and it is why I quit. Once you've played all 6 possible characters to level 30, you have done WoW. And even doing that, there is a lot of repetition. After 40, the game becomes a hopeless grind and enforced teaming.

The sad bit is that the designers of WoW THINK that the end game is the best part. That is where all their efforts are focussed, that is where there is new content.

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CoV and I6 will change some of this. There will be crafting for one.

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Yea, there will be crafting, and I'll address that sometime soon after I experience it... but its not exactly the kind of crafting from other games. However, my opinion may change after experiencing it.

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Honestly, aftert experiencing WoW, I am scared of crafting in CoX. It could easily be so bad! I am glad it has been postphoned, and that Statesman is so picky about it.

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If you're gonna PvP and whine about being killed in one hit, then go to the effort to pick up the powers needed and build your AT for PvP, if you refuse to do that, stay out of the PvP zones or keep on the move.



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Do you realize you just gave the Devs the one reason they might actually listen to in order to actually change things? It has been said from day 1 that PvP in CoH should be open to all and newb-friendly. What you are saying is "Do a PvP build or bust". Exactly what the anti-stalker crowd wants to hear, as it is the one thing that might actually get stalkers nerfed.

Which of course doesn't make it untrue. You do need a PvP build, which is very sad.

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You might be interested in flashblock, I know it has saved me from clawing my eyes out at bad flash ads more times than I can count.

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Yep, or adblock is an add-on for Firefox that lets you block images, shockwave files, etc. on a case-by-case basis. A little more feature-rich than Flashblock, I expect. I haven't seen the bouncing Positron since the first day he showed up, and I'm glad.

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I strongly distrust a feature blocker that Firefox has to stop from installing stuff in my computer...

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It was incredibly easy in beta for stalkers to farm XP really fast by picking kidnap missions from the newspaper, stealthing through to the back, killing the few guards around the NPC, then stealthing back to the entrance. I doubt you're going to get that exploit back ever.

For the fighting NPCs, this was never a problem, because they're visible for the ambushes to hit, but for kidnappings if the NPC can follow you while stealthed, it becomes a huge XP exploit.

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How is thios different from steralthing into the final room, killing boss/stealing item, hitting exit? Kidnap missions give no extra xp.

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If they can't code around the NPC AI, I'd vote that all hostages be changed into pets.

Having to keep them alive while rescuing/kidnapping them would add a layer of difficulty and realism to these missions, as well as toss out the problems with following a stealthed target.

Honestly, when hostage missions where first announced for CoH, I think this is what many people had in mind. For me, at least, it was kind of disappointing to find out I was just walking some immortal NPC to the door.

And they wouldn't all bow when you get there

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Agree with this. Returninmg hostages to the door is mostly a boring chore tyhat we can do without. Sometiomes, there are not even any attacks.

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Respec missions do seem to be directly opposed to those who need to run them (truly 'gimped' characters, like those people who didn't realize that you have a finite number of slots, and therefore, sunk the first dozen slots or so into sprint, brawl, and rest), but they need to be challenging.

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Can someone, anyone , please explain this statement? It simply doesn't parse to me.

First a long argument for why repec trials should be sunday strolls, with examples of some sunday strollers. And then a conclusion that runs totoally counter to this.

I am not attacking the poster here, I am simply wondering - why does the respec trial have to be hard? Can't we have other trials that are hard, events specifically for the people that enjoy tough challenges? And let the respec be for the sunday stroller.

Heck, make it free. Give a respec to thoe who FAIL the trial. In the hero trial, that would actually make more sense.

And yes, I have done the hero trial at level 26. It is doable. It is even fun. For a good team. The character that did it at level 26 didn't need it - she still has three stored respecs from trials, I used my free respec for ED and that was it. For her, it was easy, because she was well planned, well played, and in a good stable team. In short, the respec wasn't for her. It is for gimps. But for gimps, it is impossible.

I still can't see why this isn't obvious, to both players and devs. I guess it must be inherited from previous MoGs.

Edit: It is late, I am off-topic... Please don't respond to this. At least not here. Still, it is true. Another example that discontent doesn't die - it just simmers below the surface. Make people discontent enough and they quit. I did quit WoW. Nowhere near quitting CoH atm though. Still, things do add up.

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Stalkers are at a 100% value, while Blasters and Scrappers are at a 125% value. From your perspective, that really doesn't change things, but I wanted to be clear on what is going on.

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Is this for real? I have to go test this out. That's a pretty big change, and I knew nothing about it.

Edit: It's a big change to Scrappers and Blasters. Their Build Up used to be +100% damage.

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My guess is that Scrappers/Blasters are still at +100%, and that the base value is actually 80%.

80% * 125% = 100%

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Toggle-dropping is annoying as all crap. Keep it out of PvE, and, pleasepleaseplease, look into replacing it with something else in PvP, too!

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AMEN!

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Amen II

(We could make a series, like the Omen films...)

I updated my powerset selection guide. Because it took me a good hour just to put it up on the EU forum, I will merely leave a link here for now. I may put it up here some time in the future.

Powerset Selection Guide 2.0

This is still the pace to leave feedback:

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This is a great annoyance for my Blapper too - any chance to help out on that?

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Not likely. You have Ranged options. Many Scrapper, Stalker, Tanker and Brute builds do not have Ranged options. The exclusion to the Range debuff only applies to those AT's for that reason.

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Gee, my first direct redname reply.

The way I figure this, there really is no such thing as a melee attack in CoH/V. There are only ranged attacks with a range of 5 feet. Since two toons cannot get closer than 5' from each other (rather, the minumum distance is more than 2.5'), when range is halved, melee attacks become impossible to use.

This means that a melee toon using a ranged attack will not get a range reduction for Hurricane.

This is an explaination, not an excuse. As a fire/energy blaster, I have exactly one ranged, single-target attack I can use against someone using Hurricane (I am taking neither Flares nor Blazing Bolt).

Possible solution would be a small increase in melee attack range (like mastermind pets seem to have), or make the minimum distance between two toons just under 2.5'.

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Thunder Kick appears to have been "adjusted" from the CoH MA version. It now does less damage than air superiority, takes longer to recharge than air superiority, and its secondary effect triggers much less often than air superiority. Supposedly, this sort of inversion (a power pool attack being in all ways superior to a primary attack) shouldn't actually happen.

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When I was working with geko to get CAK to a better balance point, we noticed that Thunder Kick was doing damage based on it having a one second longer recharge time than it actually had. We corrected it at that time, despite it being a "nerf." We were pretty sure the other improvements in the set more than made up for us correcting what was essentially a bug.
Now, comparing it to Air Superiority is interesting. AS is a favorite power of mine, precisely because it is so effective. If it is true that it is 'better' than Thunder Kick, I'll talk to geko about getting TK's animation time shortened (if possible) or returning TK's damage, but increase its recharge time. In other words, I'll look into it.

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This si the kind of changes that should go into patch notes! Please! I have a build that is very centerted around the damage and recharge time of martial arts attacks, and any change can easily uspet the balance. So, I suppose, do others. At least tell us if you change these things, so we don't have to /bug it. Preferably, don't mess with timing!

This is a great annoyance for my Blapper too - any chance to help out on that?

Sure, i have some ranged damage, but my best ranged attack 8I am fire/energy) needs to be fired within the storm, and I can't melee at all in the storm.

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I personally felt that their stealth was fine. I never expected to be able to kill, hide, kill, etc. Once I shoot my AB wad then it’s good old fashion fighting time. Being able to attack, hide, attack, etc. is a Ganker, not a Stalker.

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The problem here is that you can use it in PvP - players lose track of you when you hide. It is just mobs who don't. Fixing this issue would be a big boon to Stalkers in PvE, where they need boons. Would make the inevitable PvP nerfs easier to swallow.

While positive in principle, I see some very ugly scenarios with this change.

Imagine 3 spawns close to one another. Big team, big spawns. The tanker charges in. To him, this change is actually a benefit - he cannot aggro more than the group he is attacking. Everyone else follows, and there is the usual slugfest. All well so far.

But oops, someone aggroes the next spawn. The tanker rushes to the rescue, moving into the center of the new group - and promptly loses all aggro from the first group. The group where the short-range controller, blapper, and their defender escort are all at melee range and suddenly find themsleves facing mobs who completely forgot the tanker was even there.

I wonder what happens to the "extra" mobs. Do they lose all aggro and interest in the fight, or do they just drop the main antagonist from their aggro list, changing to the next target or priority. The later would be really nasty - every mob the tanker loses aggro on automatically switches to the blaster or controller...

If the aggro limit was for the TEAM, this could work - but be too powerful. (Basically, that would mean you can never aggro more than a single spawn, ever.) But as a limit per player, it is way too low.

How about making the number AT dependant, so a tanker gets a 100% bonus (34 mobs) while scrappers, masterminds and brutes get a 50% increase (26 mobs). (Perhaps the limit is per minion, in which case masterminds need no change).

I am sure many squishies would want a decrease - imagine if only 8 mobs could be aggroed on you at a time!

The way I see my group coping with this is to herd more often but on a smaller scale. Take the above 3-spawn scenario. The tank enters the room in complete safety - no way 17 mobs can hurt him - and then brings back exactly 17 mobs, who are defeated very promptly in the corridor outside. No risk of ever exceeding the 17 mob limit. Rinse and repeat. A general charge - the heroic way to do it - becomes even less of an option.

In summary, I actually like a limit, but 17 is way too low for a tank.

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I wonder if ol' Emmert will actually be in front of the computer or if Statesman will just be an NPC. WOW that would be cool to open unlimited bottles of kick butt on the lead designer of CoH.


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I can see people going on strike over ED - but Statesman? On strike?

/em clueless

You'll have your chance - I'll be playing the one and only Statesman!

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To counter this, perhaps the damage resistance could have a short expiry timer so that it lasts just a few seconds after the defense powers shut down?


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This is in the Passives - they never shut down.