dave_p
-
Posts
1148 -
Joined
-
Quote:Yeah... except it's not. Taunt only hits 5. Your aura grabs more. Your taunt aura is the single most effective tool for grabbing & maintaining aggro, unless you're talking about single mobs or very small groups. Which is why, of course, said taunt aura is also available in every tanker *primary*.Originally Posted by hewhorocks
There is a reason why taunt is in every tanker secondary. It is the single most effective tool for grabbing and maintaining aggro. -
Wait, what? Woot, thank you, thread necromancer! I never knew this option existed (and for like 6 months?!).
Time to visit Icon w/my Darks... -
I think someone mentioned this, or a variation of this, above. If not, well, I take all the credit.
How about if we can just craft down levels of the IOs? So if we have a lvl 40 recipe, we can craft it at any level below 40? Obv, a lvl 50, which are the more common, could be crafted for any level. This would alleviate pretty much all the low-mid level shortages, no? And yeah, there are IOs that top out before 50, but those are still far more available at the top end than elsewhere so would still help out a bit.
Big downside of this, though, is that it would dry out demand for the low-mid level stuff, since everyone would just try to buy the higher level stuff (which will initially be in greater supply, though this may correct w/the higher demand) and craft down. One way to work around this would be to make crafting down more expensive, so there'd be an incentive to buy at the actual level you wanted. A better way would be my original suggestion to let us vendor stuff, but it stays "in stock" for ppl to pick up at vendor prices x2. -
Quote:That's like saying Rad or Katana does -def damage...Originally Posted by Psara
I'd associate it more with tohit debuffs :/
Well, we got WP... which doesn't cap against Psi either, but it's also not an elemental set, so my original statement stands.Quote:Originally Posted by Rangle M. Down
So what we should be asking for is Mental Armor that caps resistance against Psi!
I think ppl have asked for Psi armor before, maybe a mix of TK force fields (good S/L, med or weak E/N/F/C) and a strong mental shield (capped Psi)? I played a character like that in the Champions PnP game, but we'd also need Psi or TK combat for me to make him in CoX (currently, he'd be closest to a Mind/FF controller... but not really).
-
Quote:Dark is synonymous with neg damage in this game though. Each elemental armor caps against like element damage, except for Dark. I always thought that was kinda... weird. Hell, even Ice, which is a primarily defensive set, caps to cold damage, you know, even though it's not called Cold Damage Armor or anything.Originally Posted by Clouded
It's called Dark Armor, not Negative Energy Armor.
-
At a risk of getting too pedantic...
Quote:In practice there usually is, but in this case there was no magnitude to measure, merely a binary statement, and qualified at that. X is perhaps larger (better, tougher) than Y. While some comparative statements can be hyperbole, e.g. I'm a better guitarist than Eddie Van Halen, you'd really have to stretch the meaning of the term to fit what you originally wrote. Really besides the point, so I'll stop here.Originally Posted by Hyperstrike
Hyperbole = Exaggeration
The definition of hyperbole contains no benchmarks for magnitude. -
Quote:A quibble, but saying and IO'ed out DA tank is a 100 times more survivable than Granite would be hyberbole. Saying a fully IO'ed out DA tanks is perhaps more survivable than an equally fully IO'ed out Stone, Invul, Elec, Shields, etc tank... is, while debatable, hardly a great exaggeration.Originally Posted by Hyperstrike
As I've said. Just about any set can be made to perform excellently when built properly. Dark Armor is no exception. As to "more than any other set", I'm not going to start into hyperbole.
-
First off, I love Tanker-Blaster duos. That's my favorite flavor of duoing by far, and I do it quite often w/RL friends & SG-mates, playing on both ends of the duo.
Second, *any* Tanker-Blaster duo works well, though I wouldn't want to play, say, WP or Invul w/an En blaster, since I might needs mobs to stick close to me for mitigation. But assuming you want somewhat optimal pairings...
If you're the tank, your primary responsibility is to soak the aggro and let your blaster friend go nuts w/his AoEs. You'll want a strong & fast acquiring aggro aura and decent mobility. Of course, you'll want survivability, but honestly, things will be dying pretty fast around you as long as the blaster friend can concentrate on damage-dealing while you hold aggro.
To that end, I recommend either Invul or Ice as the primary. They have two of the best (well, 3 if you include Icicles) taunt auras in the game, which pulse fast, last a long time & are auto-hit. Stone's is also auto-hit, but pulses slowly and you're not exactly mobile in Rooted or Granite, one of which you'll need for mez protection. Shields is also auto, but I don't think it's quite as strong as Invinc or CE (can't remember AAO's pulse rate ottomh either), though of course you'll have a lot more offense to offer up, and can prolly trade nukes w/the blaster. WP's aura is weak and the 3 resist-based primaries all have to hit checks on their auras, plus they pulse slowly (2s).
Your secondary should complement the blaster. If he's going for Fire, Archery or other AoE oriented, but little mitigating powersets, try something like Stone Melee w/very good ST damage (for a tank, anyway) and good mitigation. If he's going Sonic, go Fire or Elec to take advantage of his debuffs. If he's going Ice or Psi (ST-heavy), go again, Fire, Elec, SS or Ice for AoE goodness. Really, though, I think the secondary in this case can be left to personal choice. The only thing I'd avoid is matching damage types, i.e. all fire or all lethal.
BTW, if your friend is doing, say, a Fire/Fire blaster, I'd prolly roll up an Ice/Ice to complement it. Good concept, plus fire & cold damage are both little resisted, and a Fire/Fire blaster can do all sorts of nasty things to mobs w/Ice Patch (RoF, Burn, HF, BA...).
-
Quote:Yeah, I don't want to threadjack this, but I think you're underestimating IM's AoE potential a bit. Not a lot, but a bit. I'll just say that if it got ported to scrappers, it'd be behind Fire, Elec & Spines (like it's behind Fire, SS & Elec on tanker-side atm), but ahead of all the rest. Actually, I'm not sure about Claws because of Spin. Oh, and SS doesn't get a hold and SM is indeed arguably as good a mitigation set as IM, but I'll take abysmal ST damage over abysmal AoE damage on a tanker.Originally Posted by Kioshi
Sorry, I posted a wall of text. Would be okay in a thread about Ice Melee but I got carried away.
As to Spines/Dark or Spines/Fire, someone else put it better, but basically, there's a point where you have more than enough AoE damage and you want to focus a bit more on survivability. DA is better than FA for that, mostly because of DR, and you still get a 2nd damage aura, though you miss out on FE. If you're cherry picking mobs (say, fire dealing) to farm, go Spines/Fire. Oh, DA will likely need more IO'ing out for end recovery. My Spines/Dark had horrible end issues w/all toggles running including both damage auras before slotting in the Numina & Miracle uniques. -
Quote:Elec also has end drain resist and psi resists, and higher overall res #s (capped En), but has a gaping hole to toxic, plus the heal isn't *nearly* as good. That makes it feel a ton more squishy early on and I'm still working on my Elec tank's def, so I can't really say which I'll like better in the end. Overall, at least on blue-side, it's sorta close I think, but red-side ELM gets killed by the more frequent tox.Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison
Ding ding ding, we have a winner. Dave has stumbled on the reason I built a Dark Armor tank to begin with. I looked at the set and thought: "Damn, that has potential."
-
Quote:Subpar compared to what? Scrappers? Sure. Blasters? Of course, Other tanks? Not so much. Burn+Ice Patch is nice, but Build Up+Frozen Aura+Frost+Ice Storm doesn't exactly suck either. If Ice Melee ever got ported to scrappers, I'd think it'd be a good farm candidate.Originally Posted by Kioshi
What ice damage aura?
And yeah fire/ice is good if you don't mind taking 1 hour per run, even Ice Melee's AoE damage is subpar.
Having said that, yeah, there's no way a Fire/Ice tanker even belongs in a farm discussion w/Fire/Kin's or Spines scrappers. SD/ELM might not be too bad, since the 2 pseudopets are almost scrapper-level, and it'd be more survivable than the ELM/SD equivalent. SD/SS wouldn't exactly suck either w/Rage+AAO+FS/SC. Still, I wouldn't farm w/a tank, esp since you can cherry pick mobs to face. -
Quote:Remind me when the Burn nerf was again.Originally Posted by Psara
They did before i9, they can after i9.
I hated playing my Fire tank (and my Fire/Fire scrapper would be worse) before IO'ing his def up, unless I was on a good team, and then it really doesn't matter what the hell you play. Now he's all sorts of godly, even leading crappy PuGs. Dechs made a nice video post in the Tankers showing what a softcapped DA tank can do. Speaking of my Fire/Fire scrapper, at around 30% S/L def, he's a killing machine that can go many missions w/o even hitting Healing Flames. My Spines/Dark currently only has around 20% S/L def and has to resort to DR quite a bit soloing, but that's playing at +0, x8. Swallow a small purp and DR isn't nearly as needed. Not sure why anyone would want to limit themselves to just one type of mitigation.
Of course, it goes w/o saying YMMV when defining "well enough." Anyone can play on easy mode (+0, x0, or thereabouts) and Rest a lot too. -
Quote:Lol, yeah, that too. Forgot about the timeline.Originally Posted by Aett_Thorn
Well, that was only one of the reasons that Ice Melee was taken from Brutes. The other was that it sucked. Remember, I6 came out before Ice Melee got it's buffs. So it had low single-target damage, next to no AoE damage, and the soft controls that it did have and specialized in hindered Fury pretty well.
-
Quote:That's purely for ST DPS. DM is an AoE bottom feeder. If you want to solo pylons w/your tank, by all means, go DM.Originally Posted by Blue_Centurion
Also, if you look at the Scrapper boards you will see 2 sticky's at the top talking about results. One is for high recharge toons (think lotsa purps), and one not. Dark Melee is near the top of both damage dealers for overall melee in the game brutes/scrappers. Cannot be bad on a tank, especially when you get all the other nifty stuff in that set that helps make a tankers life easier.
-
Quote:Bit of a tangent, but I think they tested IM for brutes in CoV beta and found it didn't work, cuz slowed down mobs were bad for fury generation. Of course my memory's pretty fuzzy so I could be way off. But for scrappers? Hell, yeah, gimme my Ice Melee!Originally Posted by FireWyvern
If they wanted us not to make ice melee scrankers, they would have given ice melee to one of the 3 other melee ATs that do reasonnable damage.
-
Quote:Yeah, I honestly think that proc is the biggest dividing line for DA. W/it, you're awesome. W/o, you suck (end). I actually bought enough of them so that I give them to my friends who roll DA toons just to make sure they stick with it. It's the difference bet. spamming DR whenever it's up, which pretty much equals immortality in most situations, and being afraid to for fear of your end bar.Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison
While it doesn't go in the control auras, I'd like to bring up what I believe to be the single best IO for Dark Armor:
Theft of Essence chance for +end.
As for the argument that this isn't a valid test of DA since it's so IO'ed up, while I can't completely disagree, you also have to consider that other sets, IO'ed or no, will have some holes. My Fire tank is S/L (def) capped and is all sorts of tough, but fades to psi & end drain very quickly. He wouldn't have fared nearly as well against the carnies. Elec has serious issues w/toxic. Even Stone has to pick & choose vs Psi & non-Psi, and if there's enough of it mixed up, they can be put down.
A defense-based set doesn't profit by more +def stacking (tho they have more DDR) and still might have gaps. Also, a lucky hit streak or just +to hit buffs can make def-based tanks' lives miserable, but not the well layered mitigations of a res-based tank w/high def. Of all the potential combos, you could argue that a twinked DA has the best survivability in the game, or at least the least weaknesses w/its Psi res, end drain res and great heal (maybe best in the game), even if it doesn't quite have the peak performance of, say, Granite (against all but Psi, anyway). -
Is that your S/L/E/D def capped tank, Dechs? Nice job.
-
Quote:Wow. Just... wow.Originally Posted by Heraclea
Ghost Widow pretty much defines the broken gimmick fight. Yes, as has been pointed out, her hold is mag 100. You can try to eat a bunch of purples and hope you are able to defeat her before they run out. Or you can just drop the mission and /bug it. If it is Daedalus's arc, that's not the last mission in it.
-
So a lot of ppl say Earth/TA is control overkill. Well, not always, as I found last night, duoing (w/a scrapper) Malta at +1/x6. The Malta wasn't too bad, except I got really lackadasical once and got blindsided. Then, the arc (Crimson's) threw us some Knives. Who can see through stealth. Who have insane aggro ranges. Who, now, seem to all mez a ton (stun, hold, sleep) w/their attacks. Who throw down caltrops to drive your pet insane (that includes my pet scrapper btw).
W/the Earth/TA combo, I had just enough control that I could handle 2 big groups aggroing at once, which happened like all the freakin time in that map. And I needed hard control most of the time, cuz any mob that I missed would end up mezzing me (fire pool, no IW for me). Soft controls had to be layered thick, and preferably fired around corners. This was also the first mish in a while w/my Earth/TA that I was regularly using my EMP Arrow, not just for kicks, but for actual survival! Fun tho.
Anyway, a vote for Earth/TA. Supreme control, and a lot of damage once you get up in levels. Not as much as Earth/Storm, but VG + OSA + EQ, and lighting the whole thing w/a Fireball w/Acid & Disruption... well, things melt very nicely when you do that.
-
Quote:No procs in Jab/Punch either then? I dunno, I'd think I'd wanna include an optimal Rage-crashed attack chain to be fair, i.e. throwing in Sands, Blackwand & proc'ed attacks during the 10s downtime. Plus you can activate other non-attacking powers during that time too (turn on a buff, swallow an insp, etc) that you'd likely have to repeat multiple times, maybe even at regular intervals (Active Defenses, Practiced Brawler, etc) which would be best done during that downtime also.Originally Posted by FireWyvern
P.S. Assume no vets power for simplicity and assume the to-hit is irrevelant cause you'd somehow only miss 5% of the time even without rage.
Mathematically, I'd be curious as to the answers to your original parameters as well, but realistically, I'd say only calculate for tops 5~6 seconds out of the 10s crash, and even then calc in proc % from fast attacks as fillers. And no, I'd hate to run those DPS calculations; this is actually why I rarely bother and would rather simulate them by soloing a pylon. Just do it 2x, once w/, once w/o Rage (stacked or otherwise) and see what happens. -
Quote:And how many of those are available for under the max level? Prolly quite a few, but at all levels, and at decent supply? Aren't we constantly complaining that we can't find mid-level utility IOs (like snipe sets), esp red side?Originally Posted by Fulmens
There are 11,058 Computer Viruses for sale heroside.
69 Springfoot: Endurance recipes at level 50 .
50 Essence Of Curare: Hold/Range at level 50.
16 Focused Smite: Acc/End/Rech at level 40.
What exactly is the problem you're trying to solve here?
And from the seller, again, if I get like a level 27 sleep recipe, that's getting trashed (vendored), because I know it'll take months for someone to actually pick it up... which is partly because no one lists it, because it'll take months for someone to buy it, etc. Vicious cycle. If we have a "cache" of unpopular stuff (charity slots work too), you'll get more transactions, because people will figure out that you can get most things, even lvl 27 sleep IOs, at the market now.
Hell, keep the existing store system, but just link all sales to the market. Anything you vendor goes to the market, selling at store prices x2 (or whatever markup). Keep stocks to max at 9999 or something, cuz I'm sure you don't need to keep track of 2,000,000,000 lvl 5 TOs or anything. Then, people who are currently vendoring stuff and never sniff the markets can continue to play as they were (you can continue to delete too). Those of us who use the markets to frankenslot out 20s and 30s toons will see a nice uptick in supply. Hell, we might even see some more expensive stuff go up in supply since this would eliminate accidental vendoring (well, the vendor would still lose out on money, but the item will remain "in play").
Again, whom does this hurt? Other than as a programming challenge (and admittedly there are limited resources, so there might be bigger fish to fry), how does this in any way negatively affect the game? -
Quote:So that change wouldn't affect you in one way, and your actions wouldn't affect the markets. What about all the ppl who don't delete by vendor stuff? You'll still see more mid-level and low demand items on the market--are you against that?Originally Posted by Aura_Familia
Sure. I'll just continuously delete useless crap. I do anyway.
-
Quote:I was just gonna say, "sure, we Marketplace regulars mostly do that, but not everyone who plays does," and leave it at that, but now that I think of it, I do vendor a lot of stuff, and it's to save market slots. I mean, I'd like to put up my lvl 27 sleep IO recipe for sale for someone who might want one a month from now, but I don't want it taking up space for that long (and it will!). Even salvage, I'll put up the worthless stuff for 1 inf, but it still takes time to clear. Why not just have the market auto-buy at vendor prices if there's 0 demand? Really, who gets hurt from this?Originally Posted by Necrotech_Master
i rarely vendor anything, the only time i even go to the quartermasters is when i need to get or reslot SOs (i dont see vendors before SOs, and i only see vendors when the SOs im using become out-dated)
so in the end, i put everything i dont want on the market (although 99% of the time its only recipes since i usually just delete common salvage when it gets full because it is so dang cheap to buy)
the only thing i do vendor from time to time when i know im getting full is generic IO recipes (since those usually sell for double to triple the market price that they are listed for) -
Shouldn't whips be like a subset of Pain Domination? Just sayin'...
-
Quote:Now those are changes I can get behind. Wouldn't change the power balance in any meaningful way, but might help alleviate the (still!) prevailing perception that IM is teh gimp.Originally Posted by Ice Knight
Make Freezing Touches damage non DOT or frontload most of it like the Midnight Grasp change.
Frontload or split Frosts DOT into only 2 ticks of damage over 3 seconds instead of 6 ticks over 5 seconds .
As for GIS, as I stated above, I certainly wouldn't mind a buff, but I'm afraid that getting IM's ST damage out of the basement might upset the tanker secondary balance. Then again, no one would ever believe IM was OP, so we could prolly get away with it.