Unthing

The main issue I have with CoV apart from my system performance being subpar with it is that playing a villain is not half as appealling ( espeically long term ) as playing a hero.

That in itself is probably why despite CoV having a better designed set of zones and missions CoH is more popular.

I only play CoV because I want to play a certain archetype/powerset combo.

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In the first 20 levels you can quite easily street hunt with continual defiance and use it to great effect. It's quite amazing imo.

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However post 20 and certainly post 30 it becomes far less useful.

Given that it was the dev's solution to blasters performing badly at high levels it really doesn't work.

I'm prefer a chocolate teapot as an inherent, at least it would be funny.

However there is nothing much that scissors can do the get past rock. Scissors need some inspirations that can help them in RPS otherwise it is NOT FAIR! It just isn't balanced!

Perhaps Insights might help you get the win too, do they cancel out lucks in RPS?

You like Fire swords don't you Spad. Personally I prefer Incinerate and I've heard you sing it's praises so I'm a little confused.

I wouldn't slot Combat Jumping with end reds, it's more than a bit pointless, especially as you could get another 1 defence by slotting defence, which at the levels of defence you're at will probably make a difference. You are better off slotting 1 extra end red in tough than 2 in combat jumping anyway.

It does seem a bit endurance paranoid. I assume that is because with Icicles you are at half base end recovery. I would put 3 end reds in it and maybe cut the acc to 1 and the damage down to 2. With 2 damage it will still out damage any of your secondary powers with it on DPS and DPE. Another option is to slot the 2 AoEs with 2 end reducers rather than 1 end and one red, you have hasten after all.

Will Luck inspirations help in the upcoming RPS competitions?

What about break frees for escaping paper when you're stone?

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Weave: Don't do it!

Really, weave is teh suck. Combat jumping is waaay better, it's almost got as much defence and provides immob protection and more jumpyness. And it costs less end!

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Combat Jumping is far better than Weave, it is 75% of of the defence ( for Brutes and scrappers, the same defence for squishies ) but gives the same immob protection ( yes Weave has it too! ) but with great air control and costs 25% of the endurance. It has zero activation time, unlike the cheesy Weave animation. It gives you a good in mission travel power if you also have Hurdle. It also allows you to run/climb up steep slopes, so good for those superspeeders too. It wouldn't suprised me if it also reduced or stopped the drifting of fly.

I just realised that all my characters over level 30 have combat jumping... Wow!

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ID is too headwrecking to be using as a buff anyway. Anyone shouting about a kinetics not keeping the team buffed with ID can safely be ignored.

That said its handy to slap on Mr Alpha Absorber and anyone particuarly squishy pre-fight (Dominators for example). But not having it doesn't equate to being a bad Kinetics.

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I agree with this.

As a kin defender I put ID on
a) anyone who can demezz me.
b) anyone who needs the mez protection or the anti knockback for their job.
c) anyone who says zzz in combat
d) anyone who I want to fill thair buff bar with icons.

a) and b) stay up about 50% of the time at best. d) is just silly.

It's bad enough trying to keep people speed boosted, let alone ID. Of all the powers I have in my primary it is the one I would drop first if I needed too. The main reason I have it is because I would love to have it on myself, so I feel that I can't ask other defenders for mez protection if I don't give them it too.

I've only played Sonic as a Corruptor but I think the -Res is about 13%.

Sonic is mainly single target, it has 3 single target attacks, all available by level 8, a single target disorient, 3 cones of which 1 is damage and -res, 1 is knockback and 1 is sleep and -res. It lacks a snipe ( I never rate them anyway ) and any standard AoEs.

Energy secondary is one of the better blapper sets, it has good melee attacks, lots of nice self buffs and has build up very early.

I think the Cone sleep ( Siren's Song ) should be pretty good for soloing as a blapper, as you can put the spawn to sleep and then take them down 1 by 1. Also as the energy melee attack disorient as a secondary effect, the single target disorient in the primary should be useful as it will allow you to take out bosses.

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Toxic defence doesn't exist.

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Unless you're a Paragon Protector

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Nope they just have Melee, Ranged and AoE which covers all attacks including Psi.
Toxic defence doesn't exist because Cryptic don't know how to add it without breaking the game.

Or Soul Drain on a tank herded group on enemies followed by a well placed Shadow Maul cone... Orange numbers ftw!

Or as one of my teammates demonstrated last night being able to one-shot yellow minions with the Headsplitter + build up.

And I'm not even mentioning how fun dark armour is when you get into the 30s.

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Weave give minor immobilization resist and DEFENSE to melee, range, lethal and smash

It doesnt give psi resist

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Weaves gives defence to Smash, Lethal, Fire, Cold, Energy, Negative Energy, Melee, Ranged. It doesn't gives Psi defence and I don't think it gives AoE defence. Toxic defence doesn't exist.

However single target Psi attacks count as both Ranged and Psi so you will get some defence against it. Weave only gives 3.25% defence though so it doesn't make that much difference.

The link is here

Bye D.

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I haven't taken fire breath or combustion as they seem to gobble endurance compared to the rest of the attacks for the damage that they inflict (fire breath costs 10 point something, I think, for a damage that is less than fire sword, and the cone angle on it is pretty pants). Also, fire sword circle holds the agro of the mobs just as well as combustion, and though it costs more endurance to use, it does LOADS more damage.

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An Inv/Fire without Combustion??? Are you mad? Due to it's lower recharge time Combustion does better DPS and DPE than FSC and it has a shorter animation time and a larger area effect.

You are right about Fire Breath, it is only worthwhile if you can get more than 1 target with it.

As for comparing end costs for tanks, Inv is probably the cheapest end usage of the tanks initially as Stone and Fire have expensive taunt auras, any tank without a taunt aura is completely missing the point of being a tank, a Taunt aura is more vital than the power Taunt. Ice also has a cheap taunt aura, however it has an extra toggle so it is at best the same as Inv.

If you are looking at later on though Ice gets Energy Absorption which gives practically infinite endurance and Stone gets to drop most of it's armour by using Granite.

I think out of all of them only Touch of Fear is pretty significant, I've heard numbers of around 10-20% and it has a nice long duration of around 20-30 seconds. I think the others are in the 5% range and have short durations ( 5 seconds perhaps ).

Build Up has a 90 second recharge time and a 10 second duration.

In order to get it perma you need a recharge buff of +800% as recharge time = base_time * 100/(100+recharge buff)

3 slots gives you a recharge buff of +95%
6 slots of +3 SOs gives you about a recharge buff of +116%
Hasten when it's up gives a recharge buff of +70%
Quickness gives a recharge buff of +25%
Accelerate Metabolism gives a recharge buff of +25%
Speed Boost gives a recharge buff of +50%

So the most a scrapper can get by himself is 116+70+25 = 211%, meaning that you have a 30 recharge or about 21 seconds downtime.
In order to get above 800 from there you would need 24 kinetic defenders to speed boost you. I suspect there is also a recharge cap which may wreck this plan.

However with only 3 slots Build Up gives you about 35 seconds of downtime. This is the equivalent of a 22.2% damage buff over time for all powers so it is a worthwhile power, it's like having an extra 2 thirds of an SO in all powers.

/bind F12 "targetcustomnext notmypet" however it will target enemies too.

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Weave's been [censored] for everything but tanks since I5, avoid it like plague.

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Got numbers for it? My guess is that it will stack good with other +def powers in the invul (and katana) powersets..

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IIRC it is 3.25% base def and costs about 0.3 end per second*.
Combat Jumping is 2.5 base def and costs about 0.08 end per second.

It will stack well with the other powers, that is why it is good for tanks ( 4.33% base IIRC )

* This is about the same or slighly more than the Inv toggles.

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avoid weave it give's poo defense now.

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Which is useful if trying to avoid being hit by poo.

I would suggest getting Tough Hide rather than Weave, it gives marginally better defence ( except against poo :P ) and costs nothing.

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well i actually done some more research into it. There are 8 hills surrounding hamidon which are surrounded by "super swarms" On all those 8 hills but 1 (the one with the tiny forest on it) I found those cave doors. However they arent clickable. I've mapped em all here: clicky - the cyan lines are the lines of super swarms, the red dots are the doors.


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After some hours of exploration in the Hive there's some stuff I found at least weird, I'll use THIS image to explain some of my thoughts..

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This is very strange... The lines of swarms ( with -fly ) seem to indicate we are not meant to attack Hami by the most direct route. The positions of the lines GMs seem to indicate going around the edge of the map clockwise. Also that there is less guarded route to Hami that requires going pass all 3 forests and the portal buildings is suspicious.

Someone mentioned 3 doors on the portal corp building, has anyone tried opening them simultaneously?

Has anyone successfully cleared any of the woods?

I'm up for some investigation at some point, daytime at the weekend perhaps? I have to test my Hami-O after all.

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Siphon Speed goes well with Fly, giving it decent speed for travel and making Hover really comfortable to use.

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Double stacked Siphon Speed on Hover is lovely. I made the mistake on my Hover/Fly kin build of not slotting Hover or Fly with enough flight speeds which was a pain as it was a staminaless build too so I would get stranded in slow hover mode every now and then and find it impossible to keep up with my speed boosted teammates. Also I got annoyed at having to retoggle from mezs so I got Acrobatics.

My Kin defender has had every travel power except Superspeed.

I have never relied on Siphon Speed, but one of my builds did use Inertial Reduction as the only travel power. With 1 recharge it is perma IIRC. It is a perfectly good travel power, just as good as SJ. The only time it falls down is when you need to use it and your team members are near but don't want it. For instance at the end of the Hess Task Force I activated it to make a quick getaway and I'm sure I caused the death of one of the other team members.

At the moment I use Super Jump for Acrobatics though.

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I have no interest in OR room for either Boxing or Kick, nor am I interested in having two more toggles to drain my endurance, so it's a 'no brainer' for me.

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The option I suggest is an even power choice one, RPD is IMO overkill on a fighting pool tank, 80% S/L resistance is certainly good enough and has been for me on my Inv.

1. Resist Physical Damage, Resist Elements and Resist Energies or
2. Boxing, Tough and Weave

It however is not even on slots as I'd expect with option 1 you spend 6 extra slots.
With option 2 you need to put 2 slots each in tough and weave for def and res and then I'd put 2 end reds in each of them too, which is 8 extra slots. You are still over your original endurance usage though so expect to slot attacks and some other toggles with more end reds.

It looks like it is balanced towards Rad defenders being the same in I7 ( ish ). I wonder how it affects Dark defenders or Smoke grenade from the /Devices.

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at 49 i either would get resist physical damage but i would be tempted to get rage, rage can either add to your survivability or get you killed, it has approx 30 point end drop as it comes off, if thats all you have left then your toggles will drop. Using it correctly can add to your survivability (kill or be killed) and incorrectly will get you killed (ok be killed) as timing is crucial.


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I think ( not sure about this ) that the 3rd end red in Tough and Weave might be slightly less effective than a 2nd in TI and Unyielding.

As for Rage I have it on my Ice tank and it normally doesn't cause problems other than annoyance and sometimes loss of aggro. But Ice has defence debuff resistance, something which I think Inv should also have as it relies on defence almost as much as Ice and certainly more than stone does when in Granite. Ice also doesn't have the same end issue as a fighting pool Inv tank, mainly because they have a full end recharge available every 30 seconds.