Teeto_K

So I've been putzing around with a "Nintendo Hard" MA mission, trying to find a good balance of fun and annoying, if such a thing exists. Nothing to match some of the arcs I've seen advertised around here, (Into the darkness, Arcanaville's 2 arcs, etc), but something in that vein.

The basic jist of the mission is that you rescue a non-combattant but killable ally, escort him to an object, then defend it. Along the way are several bosses that have "At 3/4 health" ambushes tied to them. There are also ambushes tied to first collecting the ally and also arriving at the destination with the ally. All told the objectives look like this:

Ally (Rescue triggers ambush)
Boss (Damage triggers ambush)
Boss (Damage triggers ambush)
Escort complete (Triggers ambush)
Defendable object

Right now, the defendable object is only generating one wave of attacking enemies. Is this normal, or is it because I've overdone it on the ambushes? There's a lot of wierd and underdocumented oddities and "features" in the architect, and was wondering if I was running into one of them.

So it begs the question: How DOES it work?

If I have it in enough AOE powers, each hitting max targets, could I theoretically "permafy" it at times? Chain it back to back with no gap in the buff? I realize that the odds are against this, but, there's no goofy suppression cooldown schenanigans preventing it, right?

I have a Fire/Stone tanker with Energy Torrent, Tremor, and Fault, and have seriously been considering running this in all 3 of them. Am I to understand that there is no downside to attempting to trigger this proc as often as possible?

67 at 50: At level 40 you have 49 slots to work with, so already I'm digging into my post-40 slots to slot up pre-40 powers, and am gonna need a few more too. Yay for underslotted epic powers!

The [] is meant to represent the slot the power starts with, to make it easier to count the ones I actually can work with, so I'm looking at 3 in each of the main shields, and with high-enough IO's, Res + Res/Endx2 should be enough to go well over ED cap on resist and get some healthy end reduction.

Speaking of fire being squishy though, I know I'm gonna miss tough, I'm used to it on my tanker and don't know how it's gonna feel without it, but I don't see a good spot to jam it into the build... except for ditching temp protection and uh, my 30 pick that I haven't chosen yet. Hmmm, maybe it's not so hard to get tough after all. Just not exactly relishing this toggle load, and POOF there goes 3 more slots (Steadfast in the base slot, Res Res/End Res/End in the allocated slots, 55 used, 12 remaining for all my post 40 powers. 57 if I do like I should and 5 slot Healing Flames with like, Heal/Rech's.)

Speaking of underslotted epic powers, is it just me, or is Body Mastery looking like it leads the pack as usual? Conserve is always nice, even if only base slotted, And Energy Torrent for Melee Archetypes is a 100% KnockDOWN, which is always glorious, and Physical Perfection is more of a good thing, which is important when your build maintains 2 damage auras and 3 armor toggles. Is any other set gonna stand out as well on 9 invested slots as that? It's not looking like it at a glance, but I'm open to suggestions.

I would use mids, but banging on the O key is a lot faster than whipping something up in mids, and I get information overload when I start looking at a fully printed out mids build with unintelligible abbreviations and slot levels listed and so on.

Since I'm not going for sets, I think this gives a simple and quick overview of how "invested in" a power is without needlessly going into detail about the slotting especially since I'm likely going to do it on a trial basis, adjusting attacks for End-Red versus recharge as needed and on the fly, and so on.

So that leaves me with:

So I play this game, on and off, for 7 years. Over and over, I play AT after AT, always leaving one in the cold. I try out controllers to start. Right up my alley. Defenders and Tankers come next, and come naturally, almost like an extension of my controller experience, if fragmented. Blasters follow in tow, and I revel in destruction. But always, one AT thwarts my attempts to play and build it.

The scrapper.

They were always so difficult to build as I leveled, always having to postpone core powers to make room for supporting dreck like Fitness and Hasten and attacks. I always wanted it all, wanted it now, and lacked the patience to wait it out. I've never done well with late-blooming powersets, and aside from precious few, scrappers seemed to fit that particular bill to a tee. However, times have changed, and with the advent of I19's inherent stamina, I think building a scrapper is finally easy enough for me to take a swing at it.

Prior to yesterday, my highest leveled scrapper ever was a level 14 Katana/Regen which I shelved in frustration and deleted years ago. But now as my newest project, "Puncturation Mark", an english teacher turned battle armored hero, develops and absolutely TEARS through the levels, questions arise, and experienced scrappers seem like the best bet for getting something resembling answers, and failing that, knives in my gut:

Some background: My "Build Goal" for most of my characters is something to the tune of "Frankenslot for Enhancement values, don't bother so much with set bonuses", so I'm not really looking for "Go for this set bonus in your IO's", and aside from 3 slot Hasten, no recharge bonuses should be really expected to be present to tighten my attack chains. I may invest more later, but I don't make great efforts to make inf in this game, and don't see that changing, so it's a waaaaaaaaaaaaays down the road.

Anyhow, on to the questions:

1) Single target attacks are essential to doing things. Barb Swipe is terrible, worse DPA than brawl if the in-game info is accurate. Do I supplement with Pool attacks, and if so, how many? Right now I'm rocking Air Superiority, Impale, and Lunge, but it is gappy and halty at my young young level of 18. I'm tempted to toss in Jump Kick, since it's been buffed to be about as good as Air-Sup DPA-wise, but is that excessive with Ripper coming up at 26? It's top-spot in DPA, coupled with what appears to be single-target attack DPE and recharge, despite it's respectable AOE-ness, seem to indicate that maybe I should just be patient, but I thought I'd ask what others do.

2) I often hear people moan about the "excessive" costs of damage auras and how skipping them can help in the lower levels. However, if my math is right, 4 seconds of Blazing Aura + Quills costs 4.08 end and the 2 ticks you get in that time deal more total damage than a single cast of lunge, which costs 5.2 end, and that's against a single target. If you're really running out of end, it seems to me like dropping attacks from the chain would be a better call than detoggling the auras. Am I batty? Is there some practical concern I'm overlooking? The fact that they're both AOE's seems to tilt things so far in their favor that I'm thinking I'm spot on and should skip all my attacks and just run the auras. Or something.

I've hashed out a half-way build on paper, and it looks something like:

They were always tradeable. However, COH's spectrum of loot pre I-9 was very narrow.

1) Hami O's
2) level 51 or better SO's (Could combine up to 53, 50's could only get to 52, to this day I get a little skinneresque brain tingle when a 51+ SO drops, probably more than seeing genuinely good invention drops.)
3) Trial Rewards (Crystal and Hydra enhancements, though these obsoleted past 46 at the latest I beleive? I've literally only done Eden and the Sewer Trial once each ever, and the sewer trial failed.)
4) Large inspirations?

Until inventions, there just wasn't much in the same tier of value as an HO. And the influence trading cap at one point was 10,000, and later 100,000, and though that was laughable it was also irrelevant due to the lack of things to spend it on. I remember pre-I9 there was a contingency of players on the forum convinced that the playerbase would not accept influence as a valid currency, and that we would see the market immediately bypass it and turn into one of bartering, simply because nobody thought influence was worth anything, and they thought no one could be convinced otherwise.

If you didn't have HO's, you were likely out in the cold for acquiring them, with the exception of generous friends. But that's not really trading.

Plenty of new kins? Hehe, I'm gonna be dusting off my shelved kins. This change may have single-handedly revitalized the set for me. 2 times to 50 being a dilligent large-team SB'er was one cast too many, and they've languished for too long. I always think "man I'd like to play kin" but then I think "man SB man, man oh man".

Now I'm looking forward to them. FORWARD!

Thanks Strato, I think I'll put together a concise and exact PM detailing the problem, and see if he's feelin generous to us chilly types.

:3

Okay it's not just me, and it's not a fluke.

When he pulls out the REGULAR ice sword, it isn't so bad, since it has a relatively short recharge of 4 seconds. But that Greater Ice Sword has a 12 second recharge, takes forever for him to stand there waiting. Such a long gap.

I mean, sure, he's dealing SOME damage, and by merely being there he takes some hits for me, but, well, if he has all these powers, and he used to use them, I'd really like him to use them again.

Who IS our Go-To/PM guy for this? Castle isn't here anymore but someone MUST have his job, I mean, powers, they keep getting made, and stuff. Anyone know?

Never mind the consequences of standing in melee range of a tight cluster of those minions for long enough to get choking cloud to tick and hit any of them. Their confuse aura means you're more likely to score a hold on your teamates or Phantasm than on them.

I've revived my interest in my Ice - Kinetic controller recently, and in so doing, have noticed something. Something I'd swear didn't used to be a problem, but then, I never soloed much on this character, so I may well be horrifically mistaken.

In Melee range, once Jack Frost selects either Ice Sword or Greater Ice Sword he will be extremely hesitant to use ANY other power. On multiple occasions in a mission I just played, he would sit with his GIS in his hands, waiting for it to recharge, stalwartly (and silently) disavowing all knowledge of his other recharged powers, slowly but surely hewing away at the health of a held boss while I sat tsk-ing and waggling my finger in admonishment.

Now, this character being my "Main", albeit quite some time in the past, I'd swear I'd remember such egregious indolence and laziness on the part of my pet. In fact, I distinctly seem to recall him having quite the opposite problem: A predilection for remaining at range, plinking away with Ice bolt alone, only unlocking the beast within when an enemy was foolish enough to meander into melee range, whereupon he would transform from a low DPS ranged plinker into an unholy terror, launching into a devastating chain of Freezing Touch, Ice Sword, and Greater Ice Sword, eviscerating everything nearby in a bloody, icy whirlwind. In fact, it was on this character that I originally took Team teleport, for Solo Use, to get my (at the time) 3 Jack Frosts into melee and unlock their fullest potential.

Something tells me that the introduction of the new "Greater" Ice sword model for that power might be playing a role in his sudden obstinacy. And if that's the case, this obstinacy is not sudden at all, since the "Greater" elemental weapon models have been around for some time.

Is it just me? Are there other Icers out there suffering at the hands of a single-track-minded pet? Any workarounds? Should we rally and try and get "Animate Stone" treatment given to jack?

As an avid user of the Sonic Resonance powerset, I just want to say that you folks having these problems all have my sympathy and support.

Back when Sonic first was released, in all it's stroby impossible to look at glory, and the forum upheaval over the effects it's graphics have on people was going on, I was put in a very uncomfortable position as a lover of the set:

Do I shelve the character?
Do I run without dispersion on and only buff on teams that all say they have no problems?

More than once I was on a TF team, had asked if anyone needed me to not play my Sonic shielder, no one said anything, then about mid way through had a player drop out due to "not feeling well" "migraines" "headaches" "needing a rest for some reason". Now I can't personally verify that their problems were caused by my powers, but it planted a seed of fear in the back of my mind. "Who am I inflicting problems upon simply by my choice of powerset?" I thought. "What right to I have to even play this character knowing what I know about it?" the voice of my conscience chided me. Despite my best precautions, it appeared I was still causing some people issues, wether due to their ignorance or due to their unwillingness to "inconvenience" me.

When the changes to Sonic's graphics finally went through, it was a weight off my shoulders. No more worrying. No more hesitating to log my character on. No more stress. I could even drive-by buff street sweepers who were in over their heads, as I am wont to do!

I don't want to deal with this again. It was enough stress and worry the first time. I've had my fill. Luckily for me, Barrier is overrated in my opinion, so I'm unlikely to have to have these worries on any of my characters. But the fact stands that I'd like my build choices to be dictated by Potency and Concept, not by "Which powers don't cause headaches".

This post is kind of a response to Local Man's post on the control set. I wanna preface my comments by saying that I understand your concerns about creating an overwhelming powerset, or one that hardly belongs in the grouping of "controller primaries" at all, and echo them to a degree, but feel that you come down too harshly on some ideas that have some potential, if perhaps with a bit of tweaking.

If I want a set that's identical to existing control sets, the opportunity is already there for me to play those sets. I think breaking free of some of the mechanical "Archetypes" of a controller set is not only acceptable, but desirable, and also LIKELY for any set produced for the AT. Looking at the fundamental ways the most recent powersets in other AT's differ from their bretheren points to this. Kinetic Melee. Dual Pistols. Dual Blades. All "break the mold" of their predecessors in various interesting ways.

That being said:

Wether it's okay to have 2 kinds of Debuff in Shadow Crawl is all dependent on how STRONG those debuffs are. AOE immobs tend to be on short recharge timers, and have massive radii, the durations have to be modified for stacking. Definitely a sticking point for the power, because of the amount of +Recharge and the magnitude of Recharge slotting that can be directed at this power, there exists the risk of creating a "One stop shop" power where all you need to do is spam it and stack it is very real if the values are too high.

Dark Burst could serve as an alpha soaking control power instead of a "High damage AOE". Really strong Debuffs but on a very short duration, "reasonable" damage, maybe a %-chance knockdown effect, and a long recharge timer. Giving you a chance to set up your other controls on tough spawns, but not giving you a "Second fireball".

Comparing Shade to Light form is a little off the mark I think. Light Form is strong recovery buffing, and high resistance to most damage types. Shade is "Moderate" resistance to the 2 "Energy" types, no resistance to any other type, no recovery buff, but with stealth, on a long recharge timer. It's a little odd, but I'd be more worried about it being too over specialized and not available often enough rather than being worried about it being too good or AT inapropriate.

Visage of Darkness doesn't claim to be Terrify. As described, t's a pure debuffing power with no damage. Even if it was a terrorize (or is meant to be?), Defenders get Fearsome Stare, a high order cone Terrorize power with high order to-hit debuffing and chance for "Overpower". The only question I raise is I'm noticing a lot of debuff in this set. While this could be the set's "focus", much like Slowing for Ice, Damage for Fire, Loose Control and Misdirection for Illusion, Location control for Earth, and so on, I would be wary of the amount of stacked debuffing available to the set, especially in the context of strong debuffing secondaries like Radiation, and Cold.

On the subject of AOE holds having a debuff, I'm fairly certain Ice Control's glacier has a strong recharge and movement debuff in it, but I'd have to double check. The set tosses out so much slow that it's difficult to say for certain from memory.

Dark Attunement being a "Power Boost" clone doesn't have to be overwhelming. Power Boost's base values for its buffs are incredibly high, this I consider a mistake that doesn't need to be repeated. Long cooldown, along with the mentioned drawbacks could keep the power from overwhelming things. The question is; is "Mez Vulnerability" an appropriate, or even doable drawback? Mez Resistance Debuff is one way to do it, making any mez that hits you last longer. But protection from mez completely cancels this out, not to mention the fact that your enhanced debuffs and controls will likely prevent you from even getting hit by a mez. Perhaps something a bit more dodgy, and dangerous, could serve as the drawback. Max Health debuff and a Regeneration Debuff and some Heal Resistance? Make you think twice about using the power, because it makes you really "ride the edge".

Mire Imps doesn't have to be overpowered. It's all in the execution and details. "2 gremlins? That's twice as many as any other set. Electric is overpowered." With proper adjustment of the offensive powers the Mire Imps have, it would be easy to reign them in.

But yeah, overall I worry about the amount of stacked -To Hit that this set could muster. Maybe I shouldn't, but that's my chief concern in a nutshell. The difference between Ice and Dark, with Ice's -Recharge, is that the enemies still all get to attack, it just takes a while after their first attack chain. Enough to-hit debuffs on the other hand, and you're out of danger completely, indefinitely.

Yeah, I only mentioned the numbers "In comparison to ED capped damage" because Blue did in his original post, and gave the impression that he wasn't sure if Aim and Build Up are "worth it" on top of an already significant boost in damage.

Didn't mean to derail things by being wordy and unclear, sorry.

As far as wether you stack them or not, I guess it depends more on the situation. Generally, I wouldn't waste the buff time of Aim on casting Build Up in a long fight. But, there are reasons that it might be a good idea:

1] You might not have 20 seconds to cycle both powers before he enrages or jumps away.
2] You might feel you need the extra to-hit buffing to reliably hit a +4 opponent.

There's a couple reasons right there, and potentially good ones, but it's something you're gonna have to play by ear, because the "right" answer is actually based more on your teamates than you. Is there a lot of To-hit buffing in the league? Is the team damaging him so fast that you don't have 20 seconds to use the buffs seperately?

These questions have answers that potentially could be different in every trial you run, so ultimately, it's up to you. Watch for your misses, and take note of how fast the pace is going. Good luck, and happy blasting.

For sustained fire, I think you'd get more out of them by alternating them rather than simul-popping them. In a case like an AV beatdown, or anything that is going to survive long enough that Build Up and AIM become part of your "chain", the up front "DIE NOW" power that having them stacked becomes far less signifigant, and the wasted buff time of animating both of them before you start firing becomes slightly more signifigant. So pop one, chain for 10 seconds, pop the other, chain for 10 seconds.

These powers are amazing. Even with "ED capped" damage, AIM consistutes (roughly) a 30% increase in your damage, and Build Up 50%. Nothing to scoff at, never mind the signifigant to-hit buffs ensuring that you hit defense users and +Level foes with reliability. Even if you have other damage buffs on you in a larger-team setting, unless you get to the cap, each activation of these powers STILL adds the same number of "damage points". I don't think there's any amount of damage buffing that would make the one shot you deal in the time you'd have "wasted" on Aim deal more damage than Aim would add to your chain for 10 seconds, especially with the kinds of attack chains a Rad/EM blaster could toss together.

Against normal spawns, they should be activated during "free" time, in between spawns, just before you engage, so you're not taking "time out of" your other activities to use them. And in these cases, stacking them and launching the Haze, the Ate and the Bomb (Finish on the bomb for ease of use) will cut down many things, leaving smouldering bosses ripe for the cooking/punching as the case may be.

It's been a long time since I used Flash Freeze, but I do clearly remember that the "Waist High Ice Prison" graphics persisted for the duration of the sleep effect.

So yes, it's broken if it's working like you describe.

Something out there exists... I wish I knew who made it or what it was called, but it's here on the forums somewhere, I often see people referencing it.

Someone should be able to produce a link. The only catch is that it's kind of old, if I recall, unless it's been updated...

First off I would like to direct you to this forum thread:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=222095

It's Police Woman's "A MA arc contact tree".

I don't know if you could get all the way to 50 off of just the arcs in this list, but it'd get you started in each level range, at least. This list has the advantage of being generated by Police Woman, alone, based on her willingness to reccomend it to others. For what that's worth to ya, at least you know another human being has played the mission and thinks it's worth showing to people.

As far as hitting the ticket cap for a map, well, each map has a limit on the number of tickets you can get from it. If you cram it too full of enemies with your difficulty setting and then proceed to solo it, it's likely you'll go over.

I'd try not to let it bother you too much. The sheer amount of money to be made from even low-tier rolling means that missing out on a few tickets here and there won't hurt you too much in the long run. Also, unless you're on some kind of farming map that uses ambushes and similar to beef up the number of enemies you fight, I doubt you'll see it happen all that often.

If you're really worried about it, invite some folks along, then at least SOMEONE gets the tickets and I'm sure people will find it novel to be invited to a non-farming AE team. Who knows, it could be the start of something!

I just wrapped up a ITF with several incarnate using characters. I counted a minimum of 4 judgements, and saw lore pets out at key points.

When the incarnate goodness was flying, it was impressive, and effective. Level +0 TF's are nothing for these characters. Buuuuuuut, there was a bit more slapdash play, and a surprising amount of dying. We had no "Tanker" character, and not a lot of defensive buffing, so it fell to my Illusionist and the Fire Controller to run "Interference". Which when put up against [Shout of Command] makes for very tough situations: I can only decieve Centurians so fast!

It was neat to see that stuff in action, and when I get my own incarnates developed, I think I'm gonna run my TF's at +2 or +3, just to keep things interesting. And for the gobs of bonus inf that running at +Level gets you.

I just PM'd Zwillinger and linked him to this thread, kinda summed up the situation and why the aggressive filtering is pretty silly and ineffectual, and that we're kinda frustrated at suddenly finding our arcs broken.

Suppose not much else to do now but wait, and hope. And gripe of course. Always with the griping.

Reports seem to indicate that using a number of the ingame characters' names doesn't work.

Also, you can talk ABOUT "copyright infringing material" in descriptions and dialogue, you just can't name characters or mission objectives after it.

I'm gonna update this post with silly generic words that shouldn't be in the copyright filter.

Currently found:

"Warlord" "Death" "Guardian" "Apocalypse"

Notably not on the list:

"Bub"

There are a dozen uses for any of these words in character/object/objective names that wouldn't step on the toes of any copyright holder. Unless you mean to tell me that "Death" is a swear word. "Crap" gets tagged by the ingame profanity filter, yet is perfectly valid as a custom group name.

More like:

"I want stealth so I can keep up with my teamates who have just skipped 10 spawns of x8/+4 IDF, and meanwhile I have to try and get past them while tanking their on-sight attacks."

Getting teams to actually stop and kill things in that part of the trial has not been a positive experience for me. The response is usually something to the effect of "No just run past".

Easily typed, harder to do.

However, that isn't to say that resistance debuffs are useless in high-resist scenarios.

In fact, in a case like the hamidon raid, they might be more valuable.

Because of the way they are resisted, X percentage points of resistance debuff always increase your damage by X percentage points.

Even against 90% resist, applying 100% -resist to bring it to 80 increases your damage by 100%. Applying 200% to bring it to 70 increases it by 200%. And so on.

Normally, you can only apply -400% resistance to something, because that's the resist floor. +400% damage, or quintuple damage.

However, something with high resists means it never REACHES that floor. It takes -4900% resist debuff to floor someone with 90% resists. And when you do, you're dealing 4900% more damage to them than you otherwise would. Even if you never reach that number, each sonic/sonic defender can toss out -100% each easily against an even-con target, and that's just using 2 of their attacks in a chain.

This creates the opportunity for resistance debuff stacking to sharply increase the output of leagues and teams in certain situations.

Fire Armor "Tank" build running Fire Shield, Plasma Shield, and Tough, Combat Jumping, Blazing aura and Acrobatics:

Without Cardiac at all:

Resist Scores:
Smashing and Lethal: 70.20%
Fire: 90.00% (Capped)
Cold: 27.60%
Energy and Negative: 46.80%

Endurance consumption: 1.49 end/second
Recovery: 3.03 end/second
Net Gain: 1.54 end/second

With Cardiac Partial Radial Revamp (Rare tier):

Resist Scores:
Smashing and Lethal: 75.38% (Above build takes 21.03% more damage)
Fire: 90.00% (Capped) (Above build is the same)
Cold: 30.75% (Above Build takes 4.54% more damage)
Energy and Negative: 50.25% (Above Build takes 6.93% more damage)

Endurance consumption: 1.15 end/second (Above build spends 29.56% more)
Recovery: 3.03 end/second (Same as above)
Net Gain: 1.88 end/second (Above build only nets 81.91% as much)

Now, the character hasn't transformed into an invulnerable juggernaut, but as you can see, he takes a signifigantly smaller chunk of physical damage, and has a fair bit more endurance to toss around. He lasts longer, stronger, and stays in the fight in situations where before he may have had to withdraw. Coupled with his heal (which is ALSO now cheaper, and grants more toxic res), the gain in survivability is small, but far from meaningless.

Now the problem is, as you can see in my above example: The further you are from the resist caps, the less valuable these added points will be. In the case of invulnerability's exotic resists, going from 20% or so to 23% or so doesn't chop off that much, proportionally speaking, of the remaining incoming damage. If you were going from 87 to 90, those 3 points would be a lot more signifigant.