TwoHeadedBoy

For someone who has such a great understanding of the numbers behind the game, you're sure playing dumb here. Blasters do not have any means of keeping enemies taunted. In a cave farm, this means that everything will constantly scatter outside my AOE radius after taking one application of ROA. It also means that a lot of the time, they won't even come back to me. If the mechanics are against my leveraging AOE's, obviously I'm not going to perform well. That's why full cave clearing is not a good method to use for a farming Blaster. It has nothing to do with me or my performance, it's pure game mechanics. I was still a good sport and I finished it, so I'm not really sure what you're getting at.

I'm not making excuses, I'm just offering explanations. Cag's Brute is awesome. I really was impressed, and have no intention of saying anything against him. He's proven himself to be an honest and nice person. I don't think that he intentionally weighted anything in his favor, it was just the natural inclination of the experiment being performed with the method used.

ND already posted the correct ID and I confirmed. To be fair I've clarified several times- You can recheck yourself. The claim I made was not to a science. I never hands down said "2 hours to the dot."

The method used for the map I use is to get to the heart of it upon zoning in, clear the bunched patrols and move on to the next bunch as soon as they've scattered/thinned past the point of max AOE saturation. This means I can completely bypass the disadvantage I suffered from on the full cave clear- Chasing down runners not only slows down my time in a "time spent using ST attacks" way. It also slows me down because whenever I'm not killing max targets at all times, my inspiration drops are suffering. This means going in with less +dmg and getting slower every single group.

Indeed, I understand your perspective and I'm just asking that you understand mine. While you have proven to be much faster at clearing a cave- Not disputing that- Clearing a cave is not an accurate measurement for comparing PLing speeds with such drastically different builds being used.

And New Dawn- Yeah that is indeed the correct ID. That would be awesome if you felt like recreating a Fire version, but it'd be up to Cag if he wanted it or not. If he thinks clearing a whole cave is the best and fastest farming method for him, he wouldn't need to do anything different. It's just not the best or fastest farming method for me.

I second this.

Yep, this is accurate for clearing a whole cave.

As referenced in this post:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...0&postcount=46

First of all, kudos to Cag. His Brute gave a great performance.

On Saturday we're going to do 1-50 PL time comparisons. As I was explaining to him in game it's not surprising that he was able to clear a cave much faster than me- Brutes have a taunt aura and auto-taunt in their attacks. For me as a Blaster, chasing down runners is a much bigger detriment since I have many, many more to worry about. About half my time (if not more) was spent chasing down runners and using single target attacks.

When I actually power level I fight only large waves of enemies. If I don't have enough targets to cap all my AOE's I simply move to the next spawn.

Now, Cag is welcome to use his whole clave clearing method, and that's fine with me. However, by me playing on his terms the results are heavily weighted in his favor due to the mechanics of our chosen archetypes.

Exposed as what exactly? Over the top and braggy is not the same thing as "saying things that are not true."
I wasn't asking to be insulted. That's against the forum rules yo. I would never encourage anyone to be a filthy rule breaker.

I'm not saying that you shouldn't use numbers to figure out what a build can theoretically do ahead of time, but in practice things do not always work out the way you might expect them to in this game. That's why I don't think it's fair for someone to claim superiority on a character that they have no experience playing and no way to actually back up their claims when asked to.

And there are plenty of ways to take full advantage of RoA on fast teams, either by racing the Scrappers to the next spawn or queing it up from a distance while the rest of the team is doing cleanup on a previous spawn. It's also worth noting that Psychic Shockwave actually does more base damage than Foot Stomp on the same base recharge, and Explosive Arrow is a fast cycling AOE with decent damage also. The point being that even if the cast time on ROA makes it not advantageous in all situtations, Arch/Ment still has respectable AOE outside of it.

Reppu theorizing the strong points of a character that they don't have isn't proving anything. Theoretically speaking, if I had an airplane, I bet it would get me to work faster than my car. Then again, it might not, because I don't actually have an airplane, so I don't know.

Declaring that something you do not have and have never used is better than something that has proven itself to be capable of performing up to a certain standard is in bad taste. If your way of playing the game is to sit and theorize how much better a character you don't even have is compared to someone else's, you don't get to compete with people who's characters actually exist.

plainguy's not fighting my battles. I already fought and won my battle. He doesn't even like me.

And it's already been proven that Reppu has no character to defame (I'm assusming that's what you meant to say.)

Let's review this quickly. Sometimes pictures say much more than words.




Versus

I didn't ever think it couldn't compete in some respects. I was genuinely surprised that it was able to compete AOE wise. My main gripe with Reppu was the POV that a Plant/Psi Dominator was unconditionally superior. I did not and still don't agree with that. Doomrider and I are going to be doing some more side by side tests probably next week since he said he won't be around until then.

And @Cag, shot you a PM. Also the thing that Reppu lied about started off as an insinuation. Talking up their Plant/Psi Dominator and giving the opinion that it was unconditionally superior to my Arch/Ment Blaster. After going on some math rants, I asked to see it in action in order to better compare and contrast performance.

At this point we found out that Reppu didn't even have a Plant/Psi Dominator, but actually a Plant/Dark Dominator. This disqualified Reppu from competing on the GM killing front, but I still asked to see the claims of superiority be backed up in other respects. This is when the questionable screenshot arose that lead us to believe that while the Plant/Dark Dominator did turn out to exist, it did not actually have a build that could compete with mine. Another truth came out that the Plant/Dark Dominator in fact did not have a build at all, but a TW/EA Scrapper did...?

The end result is that Reppu went from having a character who could supposedly compete and out-perform me in every respect which didn't exist. This was replaced by a character who could out-perform me in most respects that turned out to not even have a build. Finally, it ended in a completely irrelevant character having a build as if that somehow had anything to do with the conversation.

The worst part of it all is that whenever Reppu was caught in a fabrication or embellishment, he/she never once owned up to it, just made more excuses.

If I remember correctly DP's nuke has around 3x the base recharge of RoA. Basically the highlight of DP is inferior to the highlight of Archery. Archery also does more ST damage than DP. Fire/Mental does more ST than Arch/Ment but the AOE is not quite as good. Not that Fire's AOE is bad, but it doesn't have the big burst from ROA.

The point is that it's interesting to see how capable a build is, what exactly the limits of it are and how well it can accomplish difficult goals. Sure you could sit around and theoretically figure out what is and isn't possible, and it's good to have a general idea ahead of time, but actually doing it in practice you have a lot more to account for and a lot more quick thinking to do in order to actually accomplish anything.

I can understand finding it boring, sure. I think a lot of things are boring that other people like doing. You got it just right, different things are enjoyable for different people.

They seemed to have a problem with ambush farms since those were creating reward rates that you couldn't really find anywhere else in the game. I don't see anything exploitative about cave farms.

Uh, no. I'm not. I didn't do anything wrong. I posted about my character accomplishments. People didn't like my tone. That's ok though. You don't have to like my tone. The problem is that you all then proceeded to start insulting me as if I had somehow compromised the integrity of your internetz. I am still the owner of the most popular thread in this section of the forum ever since I started this. I honestly don't care about being insulted, I just think it's interesting to be accused of violating forum rules when I've had more infractions directed at me than anyone else here.

+Recharge for DP, RoA, Aim, Concentration. +Def for my 32.5% to positions goal. Agility enhances the two most important goals of my build.
I took out a Quarry on Monster Island with nothing but a few blues when DP missed twice in a row. No defeats. It took a little over 20 minutes. I've taken out Scrappy a couple of times with no insps or defeats in about 12 minutes. Getting Drain Psyche perma or close enough to perma is the real key for this, as well as building layered survivability so you don't faceplant.
I have both.
How do you figure? Incarnate powers can be swapped without changing builds. You didn't know that?
What better reason is there?
Wasting your time? That's a pretty interesting way to look at it. I guess I think you're wasting your time if you need other people to help you beat an ITF. It really offers no worthwhile rewards, the best purpose of the TF is how fun it is. I don't remember the time, it was probably close to 45 minutes of actual play, but I AFK'd and logged between missions at one point too. I wasn't in a hurry.
Reward merits? lol. You seriously think merits are the best way to get a build? I guess now that would make sense, but Astrals would be the best way in order to buy converters in bulk. I made this build before converters went live. I made most of my cash flipping purples and other expensive stuff on the BM.

They announce the AE system as a feature, certainly. The ability to custom-tailor your own content. I understand that some people don't like what others have done with the system, and you have the right to that opinion. If you don't enjoy that content, don't play it. I don't particularly enjoy low level content and this is the approach that I take.
I haven't intentionally ignored anyone. I also haven't personally insulted anyone. Some of their ideas? Sure. Absolutely. Personal insults? Nope. Disagreeing with someone's ideas is not the same as a personal attack. Once again, if anyone has been subjected to personal attacks here, it's been me.

I've apologized to a few different people, when I was wrong about something. People are welcome hate me, I would never presume to tell anyone else what they should or shouldn't think of me. I'm not going to lose any sleep over it either, so *shrug.*
Being rude is subjective. Insulting someone is not the same as being rude. I haven't been cruel and I haven't insulted anyone.
Expensive builds are expensive for a reason. If I could get the same results for less infamy, I obviously wouldn't have spent so much.

This is really not something that there's a definite and absolute response to, it's going to come down to personal opinion. That being said, my opinion is that there is nothing exploitative about AE Farming. The dev's gave us a tool that can be used to create our own content. I don't understand how it could be considered exploitative to use that tool to our best advantage. Why wouldn't we? It's not like the AE is a hack. It's a perfectly legitimate part of the game.

To answer your question though, farming speed is a good way to measure AOE damage. It stands to reason that the faster you're able to kill large groups of enemies, the better AOE damage your build does. That's why I use it as a benchmark.
While I'm sure it would exemp fine, that is not something that interests me in this game. I don't play to level 50 to go backwards, and I don't particularly enjoy much of the low level content anyways. If I ever feel the need to play through some lower content like I did a couple of times when i21 came out, I'll either make a new character for that purpose or log on something in that level range I haven't played in a while. Once again this is just a personal thing.
Sure, that would be an option. It wouldn't be nearly as amusing to me though. I like it when people get this worked up over things that I say and do.
I never insulted anyone in this thread. I might have disagreed with some people's ideas, but if anyone has been blatantly insulted here, it's been me. I've created my own little angry mob again, but I didn't break any rules.


I forgot this part:

For me, competing is fun. I like to be one-upped. I like to one-up other people. It's what keeps the game exciting for me. I do all my roleplaying strictly on the forums. When I play the game, what I'm usually doing is working on a project. I like to push the limits of what I can do with my characters. I've reshaped the opinions of more people than I can count on exactly how powerful a Blaster can be. Same with my Warshade, my other best accomplishment in this game. To me, that's what's fun.

It's also fun to post some blatant over-the-top braggy comments and see how worked up and spiteful people get about it. The best part is that I can actually back up my claims. I really like it when people start shooting venom at me for being so arrogant and overconfident, and seeing how well it contrasts when they have to admit that they can't actually compete with me. Admittedly it's just as entertaining when I get proven wrong, which also happened in this thread.

The difference between myself and others is that, while I play my character pretty well, I rarely stoop to personal insults, because I don't take it as seriously or get as worked up as other people do. The other difference is that when I'm proven wrong about something, I'm not above apologizing.

What is the next best option when it comes to building defense, going for the s/l softcap alone? If you go this route, sure, you'll have better coverage against s/l attacks. I've run s/l softcapped builds before.... But as soon as you come up against the Psi, Energy, Negative energy, etc. damage that we're seeing in a lot of the new content you'll really have no edge to survivability at all. This is why I made the switch to my current build strategy. Hitting 45% to all or even 2 positions just keeping the third at 32.5% would have meant a tremendous sacrifice in global recharge.

We were just talking about farming speed, re: AE. It's a measure of damage output, not survivability.

I know that Malta and Carnies aren't the hardest enemy groups in the game, but I do think that soloing them on 54x8 is an impressive feat for any character. I'll admit that I can't do the same with Arachnos, for instance- Even my Warshade struggles with them often. Nemesis I believe would be doable, if I remember correctly they do lots of lethal and energy damage so my resistance would be used well. Devouring Earth I honestly haven't looked at or fought in forever, but it'd be something interesting to try out for sure. I'll definitely let you know when I have time to give them a shot.

That all seems reasonable, so really what your testing seems to indicate is that although the kill speeds of the Dominator will be competitive, the rewards earned during farming will not be as high (against high end sets?) We didn't test reward rates, I actually went in with hardcapped tickets to every run so I had no reasonable way of measuring rewards earned over time for both of our characters.

Not sure I understand your point about slowing down. I don't have a regular PVE build for my SS/Fire Brute anymore, but used to have a s/l softcapped one. I always found that offense was my best defense, I think I somehow managed to foot stomp even more frantically against more challenging enemies.

And another good point about the reward curve for confuse not really being a big deal when it comes to most rewards- Though AE farming is still probably a very good way to make cash, both through charging for farms and standard ticket rolling.

lol

Also, weren't you the one that was saying it was a bad set? I just said that I don't care about it. I don't even know if it's bad or not.

What exactly have I been beat by? The fact that Dominators are able to be more competitive with me than I expected? Neither side has proved to be superior or inferior. Being beat means that another build is just as good. That's fine. I apologized for doubting the capabilities of the Dom sets mentioned. Just because a Plant/Psi Dominator is very impressive doesn't make my Blaster any less impressive. Yes, I made a poor assumption. Yes, I apologized for it. That doesn't take away from anything I've accomplished.

Reppu, you have proven nothing. I never got into a debate with you about Beast Mastery. I posted in a thread you started when the set was still in Beta, where you were trashing Warshade powers while demonstrating a complete lack of understanding when it came to how Warshade powers work. I don't care about Furryminds. I never cared about Furryminds.

You have also proven nothing in this thread. If anything, all that has been confirmed is that you and I were BOTH wrong about the Dominator's AOE competitiveness. You actually agreed with me that a Plant Dom probably couldn't keep up with my farming speeds. Doomrider has proven us both wrong.

Dz, if you seriously aren't aware of the benefits of building 32.5% defense to all positions, layered with good resistance to the three most common types, you do not deserve to be having this conversation.