makerian

Basic Telepad Question.

Is there any way to increase the max connections of a Basic Telepad? It lists 2 max connections and the only auxiliary items are beacons.

Is there an 'advanced telepad' or something else that can support more connections?

I looked on all 3 workbench tables, but didn't see the option, maybe I missed it.

Thanks.

I concur with Dismal on blinkie sounds.

Also, what is the splashing water sound?

I would prefer to lower the sounds rather than silence them, but this is a good workaround. I do remember once replacing a file with something else, but the times weren't quite right so it did funky stuff and I replaced it with a silent file instead.

First off, mission combination is a great idea. Even though I've tried to use it, I still haven't been able to, but I know particularly in the high-level game it will be handy. Please implement it for CoH soon!

Second, great changes with the Broker missions/Heists.

Third, exemplaring down to do someone else's content isn't quite as appealing as letting you do your own. Perhaps one temprorary fix for some of these old outleveled contacts is that if you exemplar you get credit toward that contact if you do the missions of their arc from someone else? And if you eventually do all the missions exemplared, you are awarded the souvenir? I'd prefer to just be able to talk directly to an old contact and be auto-exemped akin to the TF, but something would be nice by I7 at the latest. Teaming = losing content progression on your hero or villain, unless other people forego their content in favor of yours or you mission combine (in CoV only).

Fourth, some of the content is broken for CoV, or at least appears to be.

For example, I logged off one day came back the next and I had failed a non-timed mission.

And I logged off one day and came back the next and my mission title changed to P102203940 or something to that effect and so did the short info. I also failed the mission because they aggroed the device and destroyed it before I could intervene (which was sadly confirmed by others in my SG as happening to them as well)

Those issues also affect those of us that wanted reminders of the content but were forced to fail the arcs because of bugs that persisted beyond the beta. Now we have no way of rectifying those problems.

Also chiming in about the Placate issue.

I trigger Placate
The mob appears to attack almost simultaneously
The mob gets placated
The mob's attack lands and I am no longer hidden
The mob remains placated

I think that losing the Hidden when you miss makes some sense. I don't like it, but it does create some risk that might be necessary. Perhaps AS could be buffed 10-33% over it's current base, so that against a White minion even at L6 you have a 95% change To Hit? Seems to me that AS is a melee Snipe and Blaster Ranged Snipes I think have about a 20% Accuracy boost. Perhaps that's a good baseline for all AS attacks?

I have a question about Overload in the Energy Aura set. The recharge time according to a popular hero planner is 300 seconds and the duration is around 100 seconds. Are we to expect a 700 second penalty assessed to this power in the near future? It seems the other final powers in the other sets are around 1000 seconds.

Personally, I think after perma-hasten was broken, that the 1000 second penalty is too extreme for any power in the game; however, if you're gonna nerf Overload, please do it soon, so I don't have to take it. As it stands, it's a viable power, it won't be if it is penalized along the lines of the other final secondary sets.

Is it possible that at least these final powers are reconsidered for I6 with I5, I6 and ED changes in place? And by reconsidered, I mean have the recharge times brought back down to playable levels (e.g. 300-500 seconds).

Another thing I noticed, or think I noticed. I did 2 bank robbery missions and both times I was sometimes able to 'evade' the security guards that would spawn, if I had Hide + Super Speed active before they spawned. Then they would be standing around looking stupid. Of course, the trick is to make sure you are no longer suppressed (as if you could do much about that) before they spawn. I was hiding behind crates, but just to be silly (and kinda in character), but I don't think it matters, as before L14 I would try the same thing but get aggroed on immediately even if Hidden. So that might be a workaround; perhaps Hide needs to be upgraded from Stealth to Invisibility, but of course still gets suppressed.

I'm curious if these guides will include the base values for the secondary effects of a power, that might be worth the money.

Wait?! Is mission sharing going to be in I6? If not, why not? How long are we going to have to wait for something that is such a big quality of life issue (and it encourages grouping (and it encourages grouping within your level range)). Please make this available ASAP.

I was gonna post this in the Enh Div thread but it was locked without notice. I apologize for the length and that it is 'off-topic'

Some of the issues that I see with the Enh slotting penalty system:

1) Defender's base damage was reduced a long time ago because some Defenders were outdamaging Blasters, notably Rad, but potentially Kin and now maybe even Dark. However, with this change, 3 slotted Damage for a Defender will be equivalent to a 1 slotted Blaster. If a Defender cannot expect to receive much of a benefit for the additional slotting of Damage in an attack, then the Base Damage for a Defender should be restored to 75% instead of 66%; alternatively, an appropriate base number should be determined.

2) There are a little more than 630 powers in CoH. 22 of the powers (excluding Warshades and Peacbringers) are Auto powers. These powers use 1 enhancement type (e.g. Defense, Damage Resistance, Endurance, Health, Run Speed, Jump, and Recharge Reduction). These powers are unnecessarily penalized since there is no possibility for diversifying the enhancement choices. It is by design. Consider giving Auto powers some secondary bonus (e.g. Def and Dam Res, Health and End, Jump Height and Run Speed, Rec Red and Acc) so they can be diversified.

3) It seems you are moving everyone back to the trend of City of Lethargic Heroes. It has always frustrated me some that to create a good attack chain seemed to require Perma-Hasten. Quite a few powers had their recharge times increased (notably final attacks such as Blaster Primaries/Defender Secondaries, Unstoppable, Moment of Glory, Elude, Recovery Aura/Regeneration Aura, Controller AoE holds, etc.). Please reset recharge times to their I1 or I2 levels, since you have made a concerted effort to penalize players that rely on recharge times to attack or contribute to a team; alternatively, re-evaluate every recharge time that is in excess of 2 minutes to determine an appropriate recharge time with the Enh Div change in mind.

4) Recharge Reduction and Reduce Interrupt Time work very differently from almost every other type of enhancement in the game. Most enhancements used to be calculated by multiplying the base effectiveness of the power by the percentage increase of the enhancement; i.e. If the base damage is 10, 1 damage SO (33.33% increase) is calculated by 10*1.3333 or 13.33 as the end result. On the other hand, powers that affect the recharge time are calculated by dividing; i.e. If the base recharge is 10, 1 recharge reduction SO (33.33% reduction) is calculated by 10/1+.3333=7.5. The main difference is that there is already a system of diminishing returns built into Rec Reduction. Change Rec Reduction to follow the Schedule C just like Reduce Interrupt; alternatively, reevaluate penalizing Recharge Reduction and Reduce Interrupt at all and just leaving them out of the penalty calculations for enhancements.

5) Allow players to combine SOs just like HOs are combined, to create multifunctional enhancements; alternatively, make the secondary effects of some powers meaningful. E.g. Disorient Duration, To Hit Debuff, Range, Defense Buff, Damage Resistance Buff. Some of these powers were reset (and claimed to have been internally tested with the I5 changes). One of the reasons that there is little enhancement diversification in the first place is because slotting anything to improve a base effectiveness of 1-14% seems almost completely useless in the scheme of things. It was better to have the additional 33.33% damage then the additional .5% or 2% buff of something else, particularly because Damage is the great equalizer in the game.

6) Change the enemy AI. The Enh Div does nothing to make the fights more interesting, more fun, more interactive, require much more thought, etc. There might be more defeats because are heroes are wearing Kryptonite spandex now, there might be longer fights, but they will look the same. Cluster of enemies, engage, enemies approach melee, fight up close, defeat, move on. The fights have continued to lack any sense of maneuvers, tactics, or positioning to be very effective, beyond the most rudimentary things (like making sure you had enough end to engage, that critical powers for the fight were recharged, that people positioned for cones, or that the team knew what the basic method of attack was (e.g. Snipe pull, Tanker aggro, Controller rush, Defender debuff, Pet drop, etc.). Those methods will still work, and the enemy AI will remain the same. That is a tragedy, because the lack of an entertaining fight encounter in a game that is centered almost exclusively around combat, just begs the question as to why this is not a priority.

7) Give us the numbers! In particular, a table that has as its columns, TO, DO, SO for each schedule and as its rows every point at which a percentage reduction occurs (e.g. when does 99% get reduced and is it a flat amount like:

Enht | 05.00 08.35 10.00 16.66 20.00 30.00 33.33 40.00 60.00
__________________________________________________ _______
0-90 | 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
100% |-1.00 -1.10 -1.40 -1.60 -1.75 -3.00 -5.00 -6.00 -7.10
120% |................................................. ....
140% |
160% |
180% |
200% |................................................. ....

and fill it in with accurate numbers instead of the bogus ones I put in here, etc.

OK, I guess we could determine on our own accord once it goes on test without violating the CoV NDA by testing there and posting here. It already seems that the CuppaJo post indicates that instead of getting 3*33.33% benefit (99.99%) you will only get 94% (is that exact or is it 94.99 or 93.99%?), but for some reason using DOs you could get 95% instead of 99.99%. Why the discrepancy? In the past, we have had infrequent but much appreciated posting of numbers, particularly those that are broad sweeping changes (my favorite was when Positron posted the xp changes in table format).

8) This will affect nearly every build guide and will affect every hero planner that has been designed. Such a system begs for actual numbers for buffs to be given. Please provide actual stats for powers, or have a company like Prima publish actual stats for all enhancement types that each power can be slotted with. The old Prima guide, which is now hopelessly outdated and the new PDF manual that was hopelessly outdated within a month of it being released to the public cannot fill the void. We are being forced to make many uninformed decisions. Another good reason for the lack of enhancement diversification was that people could not detect bonuses for slotting and had no stats to back up whether it would be worth it to slot ancillary enhancements, so they ignored those enhancements in favor of ones that worked and/or produced cognizable results, like Damage and Accuracy.

9) You are forcing us into City of Mathematically Min/Maxing Builds. I think in the smoky back rooms where these nerf negotiations occur, the developers have in the back of their mind something like: We want players to be less cookie cutter, how can we accomplish that. Or, the game is getting too easy, even Defenders and Controller can solo now and Scrappers never die, what can we change to make the game harder (even though enemy AI never seems to make the priority list there). Because these changes add further complexity to the enhancement system with no additional control (e.g. rather than giving us the ability to 10 slot some powers or combine enhancements, we are only faced with further limitations), players will have to seek out those that do the hard work behind the scenes to min/max and will try to replicate them. This method takes a while, and those that read the forums again become the Haves that will make good choices and the rest of the community is the Have Nots that have to rely on trickle down information about good build and design choices that are useful.

10) There seems to be no point in having Schedule D enhancements. Remove the Schedule D classification and make Knockback Schedule A or B/ Knockback is almost universally reviled in team settings and this enhancement does not increase Change to Knockback it increases Knockback Distance. You cannot Knockback a villain beyond their return fire range distance, and it's my understanding tha tno Knockback power is so small unenhanced that they remain within melee distance once knocked back. So why give such an inordinate bonus to such an unloved enhancement (unless it is to make it less reviled, which it would not unless you are a compulsive solo player).

11) Travel powers (Hover/Fly/Teleport) seem to be hit harder than other Travel powers which are good "out of the box". Exempt Travel powers and pool powers that have travel effects from the Enh Div changes; alternatively, increase the base flight speed of Hover and Fly and the base range of Teleport. The only way Hover is useful if you do not have Power Boost is by multislotting it with Flight Speed. I have 4-5 slotted Hover on a couple heros and it's nice, but will now be slower yet again.

12) Builds that are defense oriented, despite a plethora of complaints about the discrepancy between scaling Def and unscaling Dam Res, are once again kicked in the face (and can't dodge it). An SR scrapper has 3 Autos that only take Defense (last I checked, I deleted my SR a long time ago).

13) Consider implementing something in game that helps players cope with these changes. Such as indicating when penalties kick in when people are trying to add slots, warning messages before slotting, enhancement calculators in game at trainers or stores, etc. Find ways to help players make informed decisions.

14) Also, don't forget you all encouraged, damn near demanded that we did not diversify enhancements. By selling only 'Power-10' enhancements at stores and making enh drops so useless in the game experience, you required us to go Acc, Dam, Rec Red, End Red, Def, Dam Res. It wasn't our fault, it was your design that made us do that. Try relying on drops for Recovery Increase, To Hit Buff, Range Increase DOs or SOs. You'd be wasting your time. Until around 30-35 (depending on whether you tweak your heroes, have people pass you DOs/SOs, etc.) you are quite limited in what you can purchase. The goal it seemed was to have you using secondary effect TOs when you could get power 10 DOs and secondary effect DOs when you could get SOs, but since the secondary effects are nigh negligble, it was a WASTE of time to get TO/DOs of things like To Hit Debuff, Range Increase, etc. Change the store model so they sell all enhancements of their type(s) and do the same with contacts at all level ranges; also, consider making drops more customized to your build (so that the game tries to give you a higher percentage of drops that occur in your powersets and pool powers or at maybe just the powers that you have chosen. I.e. you would get more Defense SO drops if you have Def powers and a very low chance of getting Range enhancements if you have no powers that accept Range.

So, in summary, please look at previous changes made to Damage, Recharge, Endurance Cost, Def, and Damage Resistance for other powers before making this change. Consider Auto powers in the equation. Think of ways to diversify slotting in ways that don't penalize players. Please post the numbers for the enhancement penalties so we can make informed decisions.

As for other thoughts, this will allow most players to 3-4 slot each and every power, and heavily discourages them from 5-6 slotting some of their powers. The addition of 1 recharge reduction and 1 endurance discount (or secondary effect enhancement) into some powers won't add diversity to the gaming experience, but might at least counteract the neutering of single enhancement powers like Hasten, Health, and Stamina. The change can be somewhat liberating at the same time it constricts the vitality out of the game. Whereas before many players stressed about finding enough slots to fill powers, now it is likely people will be unsure and make uninformed and uneducated decisions as to where those slots should now go since the penalties of diminishing returns are so severe for 5-6 slotting some powers that only benefitted from being 5-6 slotted with the same powers. It's not doom and gloom, it's just a tragedy that it took so long, that it's being done so heavy handed and without informed consent. As usual, many users might have chosen not to continue their subscriptions had they known this change was being implemented behind the scenes. I might even like the change if I can find a good hero builder that lets me make informed decisions, since relying on a strategy guide or CoH manual is a waste of time.

Please let this be the last massive game-breaking, mold destroying, archetype rebalancing feature in the game. PvP nerfs almost wrecked me the first time. Random snipe attacks on powers and powersets were further disheartening. The continuing reduction of fun for non-buff bot defenders and the continued effectiveness of controller buffs over defenders still has me questioning why Defenders are considered the epitome to balance around, I still think they should be balanced up. Really, anymore massive changes and it might just take away any confidence I have left that the development team is still in touch with the player experience. Respeccing every 1-2 months is not fun. Some people have probably spent a considerable amount of time in the last year and a half just trying to overcome the non-game challenges the dev team keeps throwing our way. Give us a real out of combat system, not the Sisyphean task of continuous respeccing.

edit: Not ALL powers benefit. Every power that is Auto receives no benefit whatsoever, and remains penalized by the Enhancement Diversification system. Particularly because Auto powers tend to only take 1 enhancement.

I appreciate the nod in our direction with endurance. I will probably also comment in the Enh Div thread too, but what still seems troubling about these changes:

1) Many powers were changed over the past 16 months or so to increase their base recharge times. With this change, I think you all could consider restoring those powers to their original recharge times.

2) Endurance reduction is not our only concern, or even an overriding one (but I haven't seen how badly Stamina has been nerfed by the changes, since it's a 1 enhancement power). Since the informed players on the threads are being told not to overslot powers, we almost have to throw in an end reduc if we don't want to 'waste' adding another damage to an attack. So we are probably already getting an endurance discount in our powers (although it's not mandatory).

The rest I'll put elsewhere, thanks for posting the update Positron. I suggest you all seriously give more thought as to how else you can soften the edges of this change.

Thank you Positron for being a role model for dev responses. These recent responses have answered several questions nicely.

I am glad you understand and appreciate that one of the concerns of not datamining the badges is that some people only suffered through the Shard TFs because they were under the impression that they were being tracked and mined for future badge releases. I was among the people that thought it was merely an issue of a backlogged art department, not that the devs hadn't implemented some tracking system to retroactively award badges easily at some later date. The explanation of the TF accolade and its demise and the reasoning behind not developing other TF badges makes sense, even if it seems inconceivable now given the prevalence of badges for all kinds of activities.

The souvenir system is still a shame. However, for those that want to read souvenirs you can go online and find some good sources, particularly Red Tomax's Awesome Site. My feeling is that it is easier to read a souvenir in a document or html file than it is to read it in game because of the game's window size limitations. It is a bit of a shame, though, since one of my heroes has 40 souvenirs and it appears the new maximum is 36 or so since the TF/Trials have been removed.

Thanks again for taking the time to answer the questions and give more thoughtful responses. You can't make everyone happy all the time.

First off, thanks for taking the time to read player questions.

Great work overall with the missions and arcs. Some of them are really entertaining, i can tell lots of thought has been put into them. Ever since they upped the mission reward, i do missions almost exclusively.

For the website:
1. Can we please get at least one other color scheme for the website or a change to the current scheme? After 1+ years, this layout is getting kind of annoying to look at all the time and some font colors just do violence to one's eyes on a blue background. (Plus, it's hard to read at work and look legit ).

2. Please have someone look over and rework OR remove some of the really outdated information on the CoH website. like Geography, Villain groups, Archetypes, and the Powers section links! It's embarassing that the powers hasn't been updated in over 16 months. The lack of a link for the character copy tool. The Account interface for this is awkward. Just some reviewing and updating of the website would be real nice.

For the story arcs/missions
1. Some of the TFs and arcs seem to have some redundant missions (e.g. find 1st sonic bomb, find 2nd, go to 1st Crey facility, go to 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th!). Perhaps these can be consolidated, they don't make me feel any more involved in the story, it feels like filler and on a TF it's a painful time-consuming filler that just makes me stealth the missions when possible.

2. Not sure if this is the place but Can you please remove Defeat All criteria from all missions please? At least make it defeat 95% :P

3. Lots of people want souvenirs for the TFs/Story Arcs, can you please give them to all members of a TF and for every story arc (and mini arc would be nice too...)?

4. Can you please make reading mission info and clues an enjoyable experience (resizable windows, no constant refreshing) please?

I understand some of those are more in-game, technical questions, but use your considerable influence at Cryptic to lobby for these please

Thanks!

Verdict:

Adrenalin Boost (single target final empathy power for Defenders/Controllers) completely negates the effects of slow powers if I recall correctly. I have had it used during dozens of stacking caltrops and during stacking quicksands and the target hero can travel normally again.

So, while the whole 'team' isn't pulled out, perhaps one person can be. Others have mentioned other techniques for whole teams (group teleport, available to any AT, taken by none, would be one such option).

When I fought Earth Thorns the problem that I perceived was not just the multiple stacking (which was annoying) but that the Quicksand summons didn't disappear when the Earth Thorn was defeated.

Hero Earth Controller's Quicksand (and Volcanic Gasses, and Earthquake, etc.) will disappear immediately when the hero is defeated. Villains and heroes should function the same way in relation to pets and summons. If enemies can keep their pets and summons alive after being defeated (turrets, quicksand, etc.) then heroes should as well.

Thorn Casters using the power isn't the problem, imo, it's that the power remains after the villain that summoned it is defeated.

States and Kublai, when you two duke it out in PvP, don't disable observers m'kay?

Thanks for the responses.

Has anyone that uses Dmg/Mez thought it at all worthwhile for their Controller to slot them on the Single/AoE Holds/Immobs?

I'm not sure if it would be worth 4-6 slotting something like Fire Cages, Stone Cages, Crushing Field, or Frostbite. It seems that normally 2-3 slots is sufficient (1 Acc, 2 Immob), but perhaps with the right combination of 2 Acc/Mez and 4 Dmg/Mez these powers might actually be decent for damage?

On the other hand, 2-6 Acc/Mez might be better to slot for these AoE powers (although obviously 6 Acc is way overkill unless you're trying to hit MoG or Elude Scrappers or people with bubble Shields in PvP i'd guess).

So slightly off topic, but anyone have thoughts on this?

Does the Mez component of the HO increase the base duration of the power's mez by 50%?

E.g. Gravity Distortion Field. Base duration of Hold: 15 seconds. With 1 Acc/Mez or Dmg/Mez HO that would be 22.5 seconds right?

Also, this doesn't in any affect the Mag of a mez does it? Can't imagine that it does, but haven't had an opportunity to test it yet.

Two thoughts.

One is that Blasters/Defenders/Controllers all have the same HP, so I think Defenders would be Med/Low not Med/Med

Two, Blaster/Defenders/Controlllers seem to be in a section apart from Scrapper/Tankers because of the discrepancy between Range and Melee. There is no third melee hero (and none that could survive with the equivalent of the Controller Low/Low for what seem to be obvious reasons).

The way you have them sorted would I think be different if you didn't consider Melee v Ranged. So if you considered Damage to be the sorting criterion first and then HP secondary:

(AT, Dmg, HP)
Scrapper: High/Med
Blaster: High/Low
Tanker: Med/High
Defender: Med/Low
Controller: Low/Low

or HP primary and Dam secondary:

(AT, Dmg, HP)
Tanker: Med/High
Scrapper: High/Med
Blaster: High/Low
Defender: Med/Low
Controller: Low/Low

Either way, the polar opposite of the Tanker of the Scrapper would be the Controller not the Blaster. Note: There is no Med/Med AT anymore in the primary 5. That in itself might very well be the problem for people who want to play ranged but don't want the label squishy.

Here's how I see it:
RANGED
(AT, Dmg, HP)
Blaster: High/Low
Defender: Med/Low
Controller: Low/Low

MELEE
(AT, Dmg, HP)
Scrapper: High/Med
Tanker: Med/High

In a sick sorta way, those two meta-types, Ranged and Melee, are kinda balanced (although for symmetry Defs would be Med/Med and Controllers Low/High).

Throwing my two-influence in, if the issue isn't decided...

Shift+# to select teammates is something I do very often (sometimes almost continuously because of the short buff durations (hint: increase buff durations for short duration powers, please!) if I am using: Force Field, Empathy, or Kinetics. If you have a hero that can Grant Invisibility or Recall Friend, you might also use the Shift+# combo as I do to select teammates.

Ctrl+#, when it is used, is almost always accidental and results in me changing my Tray 1 to something like Tray 9 and then all of a sudden i'm wondering why i'm not attacking (since i use # keys to activate powers and not the mouse).

Not to say Ctrl+# is useless for me, but of the two Ctrl+# is used less. I'd still like a way to switch trays quickly (other than using the + and - keys)

And I really like the idea of locking/unlocking individual powers in place and/or locking trays in place.

This is fabulous news.

Short term:
The boss changes seemed to be too much for some of my Defender/Controller/Blasters. Even rolling back the changes are too difficult for some of my Defender/Controllers. Can you look into a long-term solution of a -1 difficulty slider (and you devs can figure out how/when it applies, how much xp to reduce it by, etc.)

Team XP bonuses increased. That's great news. Playing on a soloing server means that there might be more chance of people LFT or interested in teaming up.

The mid term changes from named Boss to named LT is also welcome. Since a solo player may not be capable of a boss in some builds/configurations, this gives them a fighting chance to have the option to do missions until I can create or find a team to group with.

Long term solution. Flash back would be so welcome. Just please assure us that we will be able to do all of our old contacts/missions/TFs/Trials as if we were that level again. Again, my Controller/Defenders so many times outleveled their contacts, had their missions marginalized because they were below the high level team member's missions (people rarely want to spend 20-30 minutes traveling to and fighting in a mission of greens and grays), and missed out on some experiences that I might be able to solo if I respecced the characters properly. Plus, there was a time when missions were not very interesting and very repetitive.

I think you should consider adding more temporary powers to missions, like what has happened in the Striga Isle contacts. I think the Hollows should've been like that too. Maybe at least 1 temporary power per contact? Just to add some spice.

I like the new content too. I think the Dr. Vahz room was changed for I2 or I3. The new changes made the encounter quite enjoyable. I definitely felt more like I was in the lair of a mad scientist as compared to just another room in a sewer mission.

It seemed to me that some of my complaints are aptly mentioned in several of the above threads:

Namely, give me a notification in the mission descriptions that alerts me to the presence of one or more Bosses that will spawn if I'm solo. That would help me to select the missions based on circumstances (do I have enough time, are there enough people online, etc). If I queue up 3 boss missions and I can't find a team willing to do them, then I have to street sweep or do other people's missions (assuming, for example that I might be 1-2 levels below them and they only want "good xp" type missions).

Give me a solo difficulty that only applies if no one else is on the team. Allow me to set it or purchase it from a Field Trainer, but let me have it, please! Call it eggshell or something to show that I'm really a wimp disguised as a Hero, unless I am in a team and can prove my AT-defined role.

Reduce the damage and/or recharge rate of Boss attacks. I would prefer them hitting lighter and faster than harder and slower though. But don't make them Scrappers (the criticals can be so deadly to 3/5 of the archetypes). Like was already mentioned "one-shots" are often really 2 shots, but they occur so quickly or after a status effect or knockdown that there is no opportunity for recovery using inspirations, heals, etc. If bosses hit lighter but faster, then you could at least respond to the problem (maybe in a non-solo situation someone else can divert the aggro, you could be buffed or healed, etc.)

Those that have to rely on damage avoidance, instead of damage mitigation (read all Defenders/Controllers/Blasters, SR Scrappers, Ice Tankers, purple inspirations... with the exception of self-heals and heal buffs, but those don't do much good when you get faceplanted in the first couple seconds of a fight) there is little opportunity to face a boss. Even with max defense, they only have to get 1 or maybe 2 hits in for you to die.

It also seems to me that most of their attacks do high or extreme damage. Someone else suggested a different villain AI. How about this: if you're solo, make the bosses first couple attacks not the high or extreme damage attacks so that there is a chance to evaluate our chances for success.

shh.. MA+GA, MA+GA. If we cry loud enough, they have to do it, right?!

but still I think RA+other armor is likely, but you think RA+BA+CA+MA+Rooted, or even 3 at once? That's just about as optimistic as MA+GA.

MA+GA for teh w1n!

Yeah I can live with that, and I might even play my Stone Tanker to 50 before they even make Ice and Stone aesthetically pleasing or viable to the non-masochistic portion of the CoH playerbase.

If they just let me stack MA+GA, I'll be alright...

I really like the endurance regen idea while rooted as well.

Spiritwrath also mentioned that it had this power back in the daze of way back, but I don't know when.

We already have Earth's Embrace for health compensation. There are a variety of other sets that have the ability to boost health and endurance (fiery aura, regen, empathy, kinetics, radiation, dark melee), so it doesn't seem that balance is what's at stake? Give us some sort of meaningful boost (+acc, +dam, +recharge, +red end cost) with Rooted.

Devs, with the datamining, when you figured out that almost no one took Taunt, did you see how many Stone Tankers took Rooted or kept it? Did you notice how many Stone Tankers are even logged in within the last 7-30 days (under the assumption that many have either rolled, but don't play, or retired their Stone Tankers)? I fear that Stone and Ice Tanks don't get love, because no one loves to play them. It's a vicious cycle.

On another topic, why is it that Stone and Ice are defense based when it seems that a giant block of ice or concrete would be more effective at resisting damage (being slowly chipped at, so to speak)?

Someone sorta mentioned this earlier, but the difference between Defense and Damage Resistance (imho, subject to the more qualified opinions of those much smarter than me):

Defense is damage avoidance, you can increase your defense, but it is capped. And if you get hit, you take 100% of the damage.

Damage Resistance is damage mitigation, you can increase the amount of damage that you resist, but it is capped and you will also take some nominal damage if they hit you.

So, for example, in a team situation, with one or more people designated to heal the team (and you), someone with Damage Resistance provides a predictable heal ratio. You can watch them get whittled down and respond. With someone that relies exclusively on Defense, everything looks peachy, and then suddenly a few succesful, damaging melee attacks and that person is face planted.

What used to make me as an Invuln Tanker pretty sick is that I could hit healing flames for several hundred hp+, and with my TI (+res smash, lethal) and Invincibility (+def (all but psionics), +acc) both on at the same time, I was designed to herd. With 6 slots in TI and 1 slot in Invinc, it made sense to get as many baddies around me as possible so that I quickly get very high Defense without slotting. In addition, I had lesser Auto +res to (smash, lethal, fire, cold, energy, neg energy) and Auto +def (all but psionics). The Autos make a lot of sense, but being able to noticeably boost the Defense cap and Accuracy for a L20 Power (nothing negative) compared to the Stone's L32 power (3 things negative)? Seems weird. Sure, in theory this makes the Stone Tanker really awesome at L32+, but the Invuln is doing the same thing at L20+ (or mine is at least).


Some people have properly noticed that effective Defense can be very effective. But Damage Resistance is usually still superior (particularly when there are auto hit pbaoe toggles (like Envoy of Shadows or other powers that bypass or lower defense), since you can predict when you need to escape with Damage Resistance, use an inspiration, or receive a heal from a teammate. And you can't buy Damage Resistance Inspirations.

Stone Tankers get Granite Armor which is (+def, +res all but psionics) -spd -dmg (changing to -acc?) -recharge. No Autos, no stacking. At L32.
The way around it, get Fitness for endurance, get Superspeed to overcome the -spd, get Hasten for the faster attacking. Use lots of Damage inspirations to compensate for being a giant slab of silly putty.

I tested Fly on a test server character, a L35 toon that chose Fly and no Stamina.

With no slots, my test results indicated that it took about 285 seconds (4:45) to go from 100-0. That calculates to -2.02 eps.

The Toggle Costs Calculator estimates at -2.03 eps. I think those numbers are sufficiently close that I trust the Toggle Costs Calculator (but can you trust me i guess is the next question).

You can verify yourself when you hit respec and copy your character over to the test server. Or copy any character that does not have Stamina.

OK So I did some testing on my L13 Ice Tanker.

Methodology: Copied character over to test server, deleted all endurance recovery enhancements. I would turn on all my toggles which gives me a negative endurance recovery, meaning I lose endurance as I sit around doing nothing. I would run around a tight circle of multiple swarms of baddies and use my fight powers to lower my endurance more quickly. As I approached 0 endurance, I would drop the toggle I wanted to test (so it would be recharged when I went into out of endurance mode). When I hit 0 endurance and my toggles dropped, I made sure all dropped (e.g. occasionally combat jumping would stay up) then I would hit one-2 more attacks, the last being brawl to really get my end as close to 0 as possible. Then I checked the time and click on the toggle I wanted to test. I recorded the time and lingered over the endurance bar to watch it climb as I was monitoring the clock.

Note: If the end bar hit 99 i would note the time and see if it would count down enough before hitting 100 the next time. I would record both numbers and average them. Normally, the endurance bar would jump from between 95-97 to 100 so the averaging wasn't necessary.
Note: I have 5 toggles, Frozen Armor, Icicles, Chilling Embrace, Combat Jumping and Sprint.
Note: I have Hasten but did not use the power during any of the tests
Note: I do not have Stamina
Note: I did multiple tests of each power to get a representative sample (albeit very small)

Results for:
Frozen Armor: calculated to +0.35 eps, approximately 75 (74) seconds to recharge from 0-100 endurance
Chilling Embrace: calculated to +0.35 eps, approximately 75 (74) seconds to recharge from 0-100 endurance
Icicles: calculated to +0.72 eps, approximately 105 (104) seconds to recharge from 0-100

I don't have Wet Ice, Glacial Armor, or Hibernate to test those results yet.

I feel somewhat confident these numbers are correct. For example, with base recovery at 1.67 and the three toggles (FA, CE, IC) running, I should be at a positve endurance recovery of +0.25 (1.67-.35-.35-.72). If I turn on Sprint, then my endurance recovery should be -.10 (1.67-.35-.35.-.35-.72). I did confirm that with the three toggles on, I hovered around 96-100 and never went below that amount. With Sprint added to FA, CE, and IC, I went into the negative and was slowly decreasing toward 0.