docbuzzard

Actually I forgot to respond to this part.

Set balance does not incorporate damage type (I asked Castle about this and he said only other factors go into the balance equations). Thus if EM is better against most targets at high level, that it all well and good, but doesn't matter in set balance.

In any case fire melee has an even less resisted damage type, and it outdoes EM in single target damage (and AOE of course).

The brute sets which actually use lethal are all below EM in single target work in any case. Smashing, while more resisted than energy, does have its strong points at high level (robots are fodder and there's a lot of robots in the 40+ game).

I'll have to assume you are unfamiliar with the thread in the scrapper forum comparing attack chains. It assumes a ridiculous amount of recharge so BU is up for a fairly good sized chunk of time. To be quite honest on a more realistic recharge number I imagine it would suffer more. I may be inclined to work such chains up out of curiosity.

Now it is better than some other sets for single target, but those arguably have a much stronger AOE focus. For the single target focused sets, it is the weakest. It's not the best at single target damage, and sucks miserably at AOE. The mitigation is also pretty iffy at that. So what good is the set?

It was only quick in recharge, not animation. It used to royally suck in terms of damage per activation time. It's better now (but not great by any means).

Because of rage, the chain becomes good. Without it, not so much. SS also actually gets a good AOE to cap things off.

Looking at BillZ's list of DPS for the different sets, EM sits only above, DM, War Mace and Battle Axe in the attack chains(didn't see a listing for claws, it might be below as well), and that is because they won't do gloom. Now that BAB has a fix for weapon draw, I expect EM to lose to WM at the least.

So it doesn't do single target well, and it doesn't do AOE. What the heck does it do?

Honestly I'd be shocked if anyone was daft enough to still play a EM brute anymore. With only slow attacks left (besides energy punch), it's a simply crappy set. It's got crappy single target chains and abysmal AOE damage. Unless your character idea is gimpasaurus rex, you will be skipping EM. I had one EM brute in development and it got the axe when the change came around.

My EM stalker remains, but I did drop TF since having two molasses speed attacks in my chain was not beneficial.

Yes, actually I did think you were saying something different, and you have continued to do so by claiming i0 content beats that of Striga and Croatoa. I find it amusing how you make arguments which you latter dismiss in the same post.

Semantics is a use of words. I'm not nitpicking words. I'm nitpicking facts. You claim that half of a story arc is hunts, and it's under 1/3, you are presenting disinformation. You can try to weasel out of it if you like, but the facts remain.

Oh really has it? First mission in the RWZ arcs is a hunt.
The Cimerora contacts you get have hunts (and kill alls).
Your precious Faultline contacts give you hunts (Penelope Yin) and kill alls since you dislike those too. (considering Yin only gives 5 missions, that's 20% hunt ooh aaah).
While they have fewer hunts, they still have hunts.

You just have some sort of grudge against the older content when it is only marginally worse than the new stuff. It's been incremental improvement, while you seem to think there was some form of night and day seeing of the light by the devs.


Multi-hour marathons? Yep, you surely haven't done those TFs. Hess and KHTF are both quite short and full of good stuff. If you don't bother with them, it's your loss. And yes, they are optional content. Then again so is every mission in the game.

Also if you actually think you've done the whole RWZ storyline without doing the Lady Grey TF, you are sorely mistaken.

How about you don't whine about missed stories if you don't want to do the content that contains them? The option is there, you don't choose to do it (based on constraints you create).

As with everything else in the game, things develop over time and not every part is of equal quality. Why this is something noteworthy escapes me.

Learn to be consistent and factual before you rant.

You claim to have played the arcs multiple times, and yet you make inane commentary like the above? Gordon Bower introduces you to the situation in the town. It's infested by a number of supernatural warring factions. It's the start of the story, you aren't yet supposed to resolve it. You rant a great deal about poor storytelling, but don't seem to understand the basics of how a story is told in different parts. As for the ghosts, that's part of how the town is slipping into the spirit world. You sure you bothered to read all the story? Heck, I generally only breeze through it and I get the point.

If you, for some obscure reason, decide that the story told in Croatoa isn't a story, I can't change your obstinacy.

So the fact that I, and others are able to glean a story out of the Croatoa arcs makes us either some form of perception wunderkind or maybe the issue lies with you?

I hate to break it to you, but this is an MMO. I know that comes as a shocker, but MMOs are full of filler so people can gain levels without street hunting. Granted, changes in XP progression have shifted things such that it's not that way any more (also appreciably more content), but back in the starting days of this game, you could easily chew through the story arc content and be left with level gaps where you had to street sweep to finish up levels and get to new contacts. As such, each arc had to have filler or the situation would have been even worse. It is worth noting that the Faultline arcs which you find so wonderful are extremely short. In an earlier age of the game, they would have been a roadblock if all content was so terse like that.

The Striga arcs are basically an introduction to the place and its enemy groups. No, you don't really resolve anything. The TF offers that opportunity. That's how the Devs did things back then because that was how MMOs did things. Heck the fact that this game was soloist friendly at all was a big innovation. Placing some of the story content in the area of team effort was par for the course in the industry. It doesn't make the content crap, it makes it normal for the standards of the day.

A classic Corvette from the sixties does not match the handling and performance of the current model, but that doesn't make it a crappy car.

Repeat after me, this is an MMO. MMOs have filler.

Set the way back machine to when these issues came out. There was only so much content, and no repeatable mission filler in the game (scanner missions were way off, much less AE or Oroboros). If your model of tight, focused stories had been the rule, then people would have been street sweeping even more levels than they were stuck with as it was. Granted, on teams it wasn't as much of an issue since you could just do someone else's arc, but you are a soloer, so you would be screwed.

Yes, some of the original content was good. Some of it was also bad. Much of it was filler because MMOs need that.

I can't change your perceptions when they are obviously fixed. I and others get the story in Croatoa without a problem.

I'll concede the Hollows isn't the best zone out there with the best arcs, but it does have some variety in missions not present in i0 type content. It's an incremental step. It has some new maps and new enemies.

As always you lack context in your criticism. Is the Hallows content worse than the current stuff being produced. Yes. Should this surprise anyone? No, unless the Devs are incapable of learning. It is, however, an improvement over what was released with the game.

Context is key here. The content of what you speak is comparable to what was out in other MMOs of the time. They learned and improved. However as I said, i2 had stuff in it that was better than i1 and i0. i3 was better still.

I think you are spoiled by current content to the extent that you don't remember how things improved to the place they are now. Sure, compared to the latest and greatest, it's not wonderful. But this criticism is well over the top. I didn't much care for the Hollows, but with the revamp it is much more bearable. In any case, you are in the level range for it for a couple days at most. BFD.

It's a bad idea to claim numbers without checking. You are likely to be hoisted by your petard.

Four Striga contacts:
Peebles: one hunting mission out of 8
Long Jack (the likely source of your hyperbole): 4 hunts out of 8
Lars Hansen: 2 hunts out of 8 missions
Tobias Hansen: 3 hunts out of 8 missions

That makes 10 hunting missions out of 32. Your math is a bit off. You claimed half was hunts when only one contact is that bad. I know this won't convince you, but have some grounds for your criticism.

Dare I suggest something as radical as running the TF yourself? You know, in case you want to actually control the pace. Pshaw, but then you would only have yourself to blame if you didn't read it (then again since you haven't put the TF together yourself, you already are to blame now aren't you?).

Who ever said red-side was rosy? Umm, YOU:
Newer content, from CoV onward and especially from Faultline onward does much better with the narrative and with making missions easier.

So you moved the goalposts a bit back by throwing CoV content off the bus.

If you think Striga content is worse than the pre-i2 content, then you are delusional. Ranting about Croatoa is even more loony. Those arcs have a clear storyline which actually does progress with meaningful missions. The missions show even fewer hunts than before:
Gordon Bower: 2 hunts out of 9 missions
Skipper LeGrange: 2 hunts of 7
Kelly Nemmers: 3 hunts of 6 (low point for Croatoa)
Buck Salinger: 1 hunt of 7.

So for Croatoa, it's 8 for 29 hunts, which is a step up from Striga(27% vs. 31%), though one could say still a bit much.

However the story in Croatoa does progress and clearly. Bowen simply introduces you to the problems. LeGrange gives you the Skinny on the Firbolg in particular with a challenging mission at the end (arguably too challenging, but certainly different). Nemmers clues you in on what is happening behind all the obvious strife. Then Salinger shows you the real culprits and has you foil an ultimate plot. You can't really complain about that narrative (though I'm sure you will nonetheless). The TF for the zone is very easy to come by. It's quick, and has some interesting and challenging missions. By no means is the KTF a bad task force.

Hollows is i2, not i1. i1 was the expansion to level 50. i2 got us the Shadow Shard, Hallows, and respecs.
You ought to be more careful when stating absolutes, especially when they are blatantly wrong. The Hallows was revamped a couple issues ago in a very positive manner. I can't imagine you missed it. Sure, the story arcs didn't change, but "At All" isn't true.

You're saying there's no narrative in Striga and Croatoa?!? Wow, that's quite a claim since both have zone involved stories. Sure, Faultline and onward is better, but to lump Croatoa and Striga in with the original stuff is pretty ridiculous. Heck both even have well designed, quite TFs. I still think the Hess TF is one of the best in the game. When it came out it was to absolutely rave reviews.

You seem to have too many issues with content that which is fully optional. The Hallows trial is very much optional, so getting in a huff over it makes you seem very silly. It's a trial, as such it is supposed to be a bear.

As for Striga and Croatoa, I don't really understand your grounds for complaint. They have stories. They have decent TFs. Sure, there are some kill all missions, but heck that doesn't really kill you. To cite the redside missions as if they are the holy grail when they also have their share of kill alls is disingenuous.

Honestly the redside missions are a lot like Croatoa and Striga. They keep you in one zone as a rule, and tie the story into that zone. They have fedexes once in a while, and have their share of kill alls. You must have a very faulty rose colored set of memories if you think redside missions are that different.

You have an axe to grind, but not much to grind it on. Sure, the i0 content which we're subjected to (rarely) can be awful. But from i3 onward story content was vastly improved (and this includes Striga and Croatoa). The Hallows is a bit on the iffy side, but heck there's some nice named villain stuff (Frostfire is still a very good mission), and unique maps.

I'd go with the brute myself because I don't care for banes and prefer crabs. In particular a bane in an ITF is subject to cascading defense failure due to the lack of debuff resistance that the SR brute has.

Now built right the bane does do more for the team, but you are certainly going to die a lot more.

Actually I think they have high perception in addition to ignoring stealth. If you fight them on a large map, they see you from way the hell away and start swarming.

Of course against the KoA I cited, a stalker is close to useless.

The tells don't bother me that much since I ignore them. However there is no moral onus on me to like being pestered. If you choose to pester people, don't assume some kind of high ground. You are intruding. Politely done, that's OK enough I suppose, but don't assume you are inherently in the right here.

No I don't do that, nor do I have any desire to try it. I don't play COH for that type of atmosphere either. It's a bar to me. I can be social and gregarious if I feel like it, I can hang with only buddies if I feel like it, or I can just spend time by myself if I like.

Nope, it is nothing like a party. It is a public place in which I do business (or rather purchase as service). I didn't invite you to COH. Nobody we mutually know invited us to COH. We both decided to visit a public place by choice. There is no common ground guaranteed other than we happen to play the same game.

A party implies that at some level of connection, we have common friends. That is not necessarily so here by any means. COH is populated by people from all over the place with very different backgrounds. I could just as easily abhor you as want to deal with you. There's no means by which to express that.

I don't like it because I consider it intrusive.

Since the thread has been looking for a good analogy and failing, try this one.

A team is like a group of buddies in a bar. They can either be open to meeting new people, or quite satisfied with their current company and not wanting more. Bars are certainly pubic venues and places in which to meet people. However there is an etiquette by which you can get the idea of whether you want people to join your group. You can ask them. Alternatively some group can simply seem gregarious, talking to all (that would be a LFM flag). There is, however, contrary to Sam's claims, no expectation that you have to be intruded upon. It can happen in such a setting, but let's be honest, how many times have you had someone simply walk up to you in a bar and ask to drink with you?

If I saw a table full of buddies sitting there at a table, drinking and telling old stories, I'd be not even vaguely inclined to intrude. If, they were standing in a cluster at the bar, it might be different. There are cues which can convey this sort of information.

The game lacks the accepted MMO means by which to give these cues. The LFT is available and can be used, but LFM is lacking. As such the self promotion you used is understandable, but that doesn't mean I have to like it nor respond to it at all.

Well my SS/SD tanker does OK farming, though I certainly understand it is sub optimal. However softcapping it is very cheap since you have a very short distance to go. On just powers and no IOs, he runs around 39% defense.

As such you could use a build like that as a stepping stone to a deadlier build (though of course playing the market is probably easier money).

I've never really had that issue. I've rarely seen more than two brutes on a team, and you can generally always can get enough aggro to keep fury up. Though if you have your attack chain set up right, you can keep fury up that way in any case.

Also on teams the brute can get buffed to truly godly status.