je_saist

... anybody else struck with the horrible thought that if Michael Bay actually saw that... it would happen...

you could have perma hasten in the game before hand: http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Perma

just need 110% recharge.

Incarnate Alpa Uncommon brings this around to ~95% base recharge.

Actual information on your computer would be helpful:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=219502
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=231628

I've been sitting on this posting for... well... a while... waiting to see how the Incarnate System was going to play out. Then I watched a couple of global channels descend into madness over the death of defense and the marginalization of defense as a damage mitigation effect. I have seen several statements to the effect that another Global Defense Reduction is coming, and that all Defense based avatars are going to be thrown to the wolves.

The primary cause of this behavior, from what I have observed, is rooted one of two causes:

• The first is the in-between lines from the developers that the number of defensive IO buffs available was un-intended, and that there is concern over Archtypes and power-sets reaching Soft-cap defensive protections that they should not be reaching.
• The second is the current Incarnate System that features enemies with higher native comparative levels, and thus higher accuracy and to-hit ratings, that can more easily ignore defensive protections.

The short point is this: I cannot see the developers, in this case specifically Black Scorpion and Synapse, overhauling the defense system in a negative manner. Power-sets such as Force Field, Cold Domination, Super Reflexes, Shield, Energy Aura, and Ice Armor have powers based primarily on defense as a damage mitigation. Making any changes to how defense works would not only require extensive recoding to the game's processing engine to handle the new effects; it would also require significant re-balancings to preserve the comparative protections of defense with other mitigiation effects.

I do not, at this point, have any reason to believe that either Black Scorpion or Synapse intend to push through a system overhauling how defense itself works. That being said, I do agree that something probably should be done about the marginalization of Defense as a damage mitigation. I do think that Black Scorpion and Synapse are going to look at some kind of solution to lessen the important of defense as a combat utility tool to archtypes and power-sets that do not depend on defense as a native utility.

So I'd like to propose a solution that I think will work, based on an existing in-game system.

Currently in the game players can achieve both Status Effect Protection and Status Effect Resistance.

• Status Effect Protection determines whether or not a status effect applies to the player.
• Status Effect Resistance determines how long a status effect applies to the player.

My suggestion is to implement a Defense Protection system based on the Status Effect Protection System.

• All defense debuff attacks are assigned a magnitude rating
• Player defense debuff protection is based on existing defense debuff resistance
• only melee archtypes with native defense debuff resistance receive defense debuff protection
• add defense debuff protection stats to Force Field Dispersion Bubble and Cold Dom Frostworks Powers
• In order for a defense debuff attack to apply the defense debuff, the magnitude rating must be passed.

The conceptual idea is that power-sets that already offer defenses continue to be valuable against enemies with higher-to hits or debuff effects. The developers can seed more NPC groups with enemies that debuff defense, thus countering the rise of the IO soft-capped builds, without negatively impacting power-sets that rely on Defense as their primary application.

Cold Domination and Force Field users can also give players without native defense protection the benefits of defense debuff protection, but even then application is largely limited.

I don't know if this is the direction that Black Scorpion and Synapse will ultimately take, but the concept has largely been proven to work.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...item&px=ODk5Mw

http://www.gametreelinux.com/

This just popped on Phoronix.

I don't know yet how this will, or could, relate to CoH on Cider / Cedega.

...

Schismatrix: just out of wondering, what exactly do you intend to do when somebody takes the time to shoot videos of WoC in action?

Say... like these 4:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8_vDfmx9PI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixhc66W-X-Y
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoJ7EWa8yEE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kJIwqBv-Pc

The matter has been passed to Black Scorpion and the powers team for comment on if WoC's behavior is Working as Intended or if there is indeed a bug in the damage component not disabling Stealth on damage initiation.

Have a nice day deary.

Quick shot: does not exist

Long shot: okay, if you really want to try and make a scrapper that does some kind of debuff, I'm not really sure you understand the concept of scrappers.

While some scrapper sets offer off-set debuffs, slotting those sets for debuffs will leave you critically weak in the area that matters most for scrappers: DAMAGE

For example, Dark Melee takes to-hit debuffs on some powers, and Spines takes slow on some powers. If you slot those out to where they'll actually have an effect... you'll use up valuable slots that should be used for Damage.

Now, if you want to get really tacky and don't mind playing the Random Number Generator for laughs, the Claws, Broadsword, Dual Blades, and Katana sets offer defense debuffs as secondary effects. The Achilles' Heel Resistance debuff proc is not flagged as unique in the game: http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Achilles...istance_Debuff

You could, in theory, toss a chance for resistance debuff in every single power that offers a defense debuff, and then hope that the proc actually activates often enough to do something for a team.

You'd be better off making a Tank and working the Bruising instead.

Actually, you'd be better off with a Tank or Brute to begin with if you want to debuff. They get stuff like:

• Darkest Night which is a Toggle To-Hit debuff and minus damage debuff
• Melt Armor which does resistance and defense debuff
• Arctic Breath which does resistance defense debuff with added slow debuff
• Shiver which is a massive slow
• Ice Storm which should be tagged with do I have to explain?
• quicksand which is a defense debuff and contains movement debuffs

The catch here is that because the Melee arch-types are not debuffers, the debuff values on the Melee archtypes are really low. Using the tank values as displayed during a respec:

• Melt armor on a tank does -7% defense and -9.75% resistance
• Darkest Night does -21% Damage Resistance and -10.5% to-hit

Compared to their equivalents:

• Melt Armor on a Mastermind does -15% defense and -22.5% resistance
• Melt Armor on a Controller / Corruptor does -20% defense and -22.5% resistance
• Darkest Night on a Mastermind does -22.5% Damage debuff and -11.5% to-hit
• Darkest Night on a Corruptor does -30% Damage and -15% to-hit

So, basically, for the same power, the debuffs are even weaker than that of a Mastermind, and much weaker than the secondaries on the Controller / Corruptor classes.

Now, if you want to try and somehow force a melee archtype into a debuffing role... go ahead. That's your choice.