Tenzhi

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If you get to play the cranky old man after a year and a half, what does that make those of us who have a year on you?

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:ulls out the acoustic guitar, hangs beads in the doorway, and sings::

~All you are is dust in the wind...

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If I thought that the developers were continually nerfing the game in order to lessen my enjoyment, I would quit immediately. It surprises me that you seem to think that is what's happening, and yet you still play.

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That's the problem with monopolies, they leave you with very little choice.

If another superhero game that offers basically decent gameplay, a whole slew of character options at your fingertips, and powers that haven't been homogenized until they seem a good deal less than superheroic pops up mayhap more people will jump ship. Were it offline and thus placed out of reach of grasping developers whose only goal in life sometimes seems to be to destroy characters and render time spent playing meaningless then so much the better. Such a game would doubtless gather an online community that would create more content than MMORPG devs have a tendency to and without the tendency to "rebalance" things into inanity ta' boot...

That's the dream, but in the meantime there's a monopoly. In the meantime we can but shake our fists and give voice (such as it is) to our many complaints, fruitless endeavor though it may be. Unless and until something better comes along, we're stuck here and they're stuck with us.

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What possible purpose does this serve? Was anyone really having a PROBLEM getting enough XP in the first place?


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Yes. Advancement seems too slow to me (it took 6-8 hours to get from 33 to 36 :P ). I'd increase it by more than x2 if I had my druthers.

Judging from advancement on Test with the x2 XP last time they had it, it makes post-30 levelling semi-tolerable at least.

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Sunchild and I have gone back and forth on the Claws for stalkers thing since i7 hit test. It's cool, I like talking it out with him. At this point, it boils down to a design issue. Scrapper claws were made for a playstyle that does not mesh well with stalkers and the stalker version of the set lost some stuff that made the scrapper version work. So it could definitely use a dev comment.

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You're probably right. I don't fully have a handle on it yet, having only gotten to 18 with that Stalker (on Live - my Test runs with him have been completely confined to that 18th level). In solo situations I haven't seen it being problematic, but in team situations it's more and more becoming a different matter as I go up in level. The animation change seems to help somewhat, but how much in the long term it will help I cannot say.

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Don't you just love this guy?

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Yeah. He's made useful posts in the past. But I guess nobody's perfect.

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I am ignored...he doesn't know what I said...yet he immediately attacks.

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Yeah, well. I guess in the end you can't expect too much from people who do the internet equivalent of sticking their fingers in their ears and going "la-la-la-la I'm not listening."

With a more on-topic note:

After giving my Claws/SR Stalker a run on Test way back near the beginning of this I7 testing phase, I shrugged and moved on to the new sets. The animations were generic, but they certainly felt quicker all around.

Then recently I happened to pop onto live to play Yet Another Ninja. It felt so sluggish and it took me a few minutes to realize that last time I played him it had been on test with the new animations. Now I want to respec out of Shockwave and into the other melee attack.

There's always room for improvement, but colour this Stalker happy with the changes made thus far.

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Err. I stated what kind of set up I had, but you clipped it:

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Yeah, I had forgotten about the headphones, but I was also curious about the soundcard which I don't recall seeing previously.

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And it is 3 toggles, at least ONE does not act like this on live the 3 powers are:

<ul type="square">[*]Dark Embrace[*]Death Shroud[*]Oppressive Gloom[/list]I can personally verify that Dark Embrace on live does not at this way. This is a NEW BUG and it extends to all three ATs that use the DA set that I could test with the recent RV Event.

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The reason I was curious is because I created a Dark/Dark Stalker (while the level 40 thing was still on test) and the toggle sounds (while continuous) were barely audible for me. A long way from "piercing" and nowhere near as loud as my Fire Aura tanker. Made the complaint seem a little strange from my end.

However, I believe I'm using a Live! 24 rather than an Audigy. Mayhap it's a good deal louder with the Audigy for whatever reason. Or perhaps teamspeak forces the sound to play on a different channel and that has something to do with the increased volume. Considering that other noises in the game are as loud or louder, it seems like battle would be an unbearable cacaphony if their volumes are similarly amplified.

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Hi Infernal I know this is the 10th time I fought you but will you please knock me on my [censored] again, thanks.

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In my experience, he doesn't need to knock you down to kill you.

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Not exactly...

Longbow still bounced me around some. It did work occasionally. You know... when I didn't move.

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I didn't have any problems getting knocked down while doing newspaper missions against the Council in Grandville (whose grenades generally cause knockback). Nor with any of the Longbow I fought in RV. If it mitigates knockdown from a constant problem to a once-in-a-while problem, that's good enough for me. Acrobatics, IMO, is too expensive for its limited usefulness.

I never came up against any PC heroes with that character that I'm aware of, but I trust reports that it doesn't work against a variety of their attacks are accurate.

Works fine in PvE and that's all that matters to me.

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Who the HELL thought that RED electricity would be a good thing to do?

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Mother nature. Red is a fairly common colour of lightning. Nowhere near as common as blue, but fairly common nonetheless.

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No other sound in game is as peircing and as loud for as long as the dark armor toggle stack.

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Interesting. What kind of sound setup do you have? When I made a Dark/Dark Stalker this morning, with all the armor toggles enabled I could barely hear it. The attacks were louder for me, and I know my Fire Tanker's auras are louder.

The only toggle I admittedly didn't activate was Cloak of Fear. Is it that much louder than the rest?

No PvE missions in this zone means this event is solely for tinkering with builds from my POV.

For those having trouble with certain sounds being too loud - have you tried simply turning off 3D Sound? I find that with it on *many* sounds are amplified to the point of clipping (sound peaks getting clipped causing an intermittent staticy popping noise).

They're actually going to add KB protection, eh? Cool. I'd gloat, but I think my main detractor set me on ignore in a fit of pique.

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2 mobs deep, can hit two at the max range, 1 close to you.

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Yup. I have a heck of a time getting it to do it, however. If I position an enemy between me and my target when I fire off Jacob's Ladder, it's very rare that it hits OR misses the guy between us. The cone needs to be more forgiving.

I really like this feature. I'm a lazy and overly cautious player, and with this feature Masterminds have now become the first characters I will up my difficulty to play. It makes things that much easier.

Of course, it makes Masterminds into what I believe is referred to as a "Tank Mage" so that is probably why. With just one minion out they have effectively gained 33% resistance to all. With two it's 50%. With three it's 60%. Four makes 66%. Five makes about 71%. And with six out they have up to 75% resistance to all (they will be taking 2/8 of the damage, or 25%).

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Of course not, they created the set like they do everything else: Stabbed keys at random while drunk, blindfolded, and "engaged" with two hookers. Were it not for the dedicated and courageous posters in this thread, nobody might ever have found out. And thank god they're continuing to remind everybody because, ya know, when you're drunk and blindfolded and getting it on with multiple hookers, you have a lot going on in your mind and something as trivial as YOUR JOB can slip under your radar.

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Given the track record so far, some might be inclined to agree that this is pretty close to an accurate representation of what goes on.

Conversely there are those who think the devs are angelic hosts incapable of making any mistakes and thus we should not point out any perceived mistakes as those must all be in our heads.

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I may be giving the devs more credit than they deserve, but isn't it pretty likely that they're aware of all these holes?

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Until they address the issue in one way or another, we can only assume that they don't. Like someone with their pants unzipped they must be told to zip up until they either zip up or point out that they like a healthy breeze around their privates.

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This just in! An important update:

This set has no knockback protection!
This set has no immobilze protection!
This set has no self heal!
This set has no +Defense, so you might be interrupted when using Aid Self!


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Yes, those are the issues at hand. And until they are addressed people will likely continue to harp on them regardless of how often other people tell them to shut up. Surely you've been around the internet long enough to grok that's how things work?

At least these are potential game balance issues. Many other complaints seem to be frivolities like "Lightning Field's graphic effect is too big" and "this armor obscures my character too much - no I haven't been paying attention to the fact that that's the way most of the armors work" and "I don't like the sound this makes" and "why is the lightning red."

Personally, I'd like to see Lightning Field moved up the list a bit, the damage lowered, and for it to inflict -recovery or have a significant chance of siphoning Endurance. But that's truly a pipe dream and has little to do with fixing perceived balance issues.

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And Birdbird, was that a typo in the "Energy is 96.7%" ? I thought resistance hard cap for Scrapper/Brutes is 75%.

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Is it? Well that kind of puts the ol' ki-bosh on needing Grounded to hit the Energy resist cap as it seems that the two toggles already exceed it.

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Generally if you are tagged with one immob and you turn on Combat Jumping, the immob is cancelled, or if you already have it on you might not even notice. Immob does indeed appear to have a mag that can stack just like Disorient or Hold, and my experience agrees with GenericVillain.

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Fair enough. Beyond not running into Immobilization very much, it probably doesn't help my perception of the matter that most of my characters with Combat Jumping get a real mez protection power shortly thereafter.

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i won't harp on this very long, but pink added combat jumping which has +res to immob in the quote you have quoted, so it blows you statement out of the water.

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As I understand it, it doesn't actually prevent Immobilization, but rather just lessens the time you are affected by it. But then, Immobilization isn't something I've run into often in the PvE game. And oddly enough most of the time it's been with my Defender who looks very strange running around in his large green bubble with tentacles around his feet.

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i guess i am done, no one seems to have actually try the build and is only looking at the paper info on this one. i guess that is fine. i guess. but this brute is a good brute. after testing, i think that....

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I was testing it, but I hit a snag with a crash bug in Port Oakes. I can't get any contacts because I can't load my newspaper mission without crashing. Hence I'm stuck at level 7 until they fix the problem (and I'm not the only one having it - there was a whole thread about it floating around here) unless I want to hang around waiting for enough teams to level me up until I can move on to Cap.

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He didn't miss the point, you are just wrong in your assumption that you can't "travel" when you have been hit with immobilization. Lightning reflexes, swift, hurdle, sprint and combat jumping = very fast movement on par with 1 slotted flight.

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Indeed that does equal fast movement, until you're immobilized. And I don't think any of it actually prevents you from being immobilized.

Of course, the assumption that you can't travel while immobilized is, in fact, wrong if you have teleport. Which is (as I recall from TopDoc's guide to movement) the fastest form of travel.

The overarching problem, methinks, hinges on the prerequisite setup of Power Pools (imagine if our Primary and secondary pools were setup with such a monkeyfied system of Prerequisites) and/or the necessity of taking certain unrelated pools over others in order to get protection. Barring ditching the prereqs, a Defense Power Pool would be grand.

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Not entirely sure I agree with you there, since in CoH the post 40 game is about as long as the pre-40 game, and generally allot tougher.

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About as long, but with 1/10 the number of players. The only powers that should be geared specifically toward that end of the game are powers that you get at that end of the game. Looks like they may have dropped the ball on that one, but that's another discussion.

Of course, if KB protection was only useful in the low end game it would be "fluff" protection as well. But it's also useful in the high level game. I'd rather my powers work agains Malta and Skulls and any number of other things the game throws at me. The fewer things it works against, the less useful it is.

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Ten, how many post-40 carnies have you fought?

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Admittedly not very many (and unless they are prevalent in Granville it's unlikely that I will face many on the way to 50). But if it's only really a problem in the post-40 game, that merely further points to the extremely limited usefulness of End Drain resistance as compared to something as common throughout the game as Knockback.

Personally, I think it would be reasonable to just add Knockback resistance to the status-resist toggle it already has and leave everything else as is. But if it comes down to having to compromise an existing ability in order to have KB resistance, then limited-use fluff like TP defense and End Drain resist are easily sacraficed IMO. Barring that I'd stomach a rooted effect or something similar.