parabola_EU

Yeah, in the end they have to work towards the middle (or the upper end of it maybe) and try to keep as much variety in the game as possible. Variety almost inevitably leads to imbalance but thats the price you pay for having an interesting game.

I would say though that they have an interesting dilemma with bringing new powersets into the game - particularly those that have to be paid for. If they aim them all at the top end of performance then people will buy them but they risk overshooting and then having to nerf later bringing with it much rage from those who bought it or just having a situation where all legacy sets start to look very sorry indeed. Get a paid for powersets performance too low though and they lose sales defeating the entire object (from thier point of view). They really can't do anything other than try to find new and interesting ways to hit more or less the same spot over and over again.

Title says it all really. I re-rolled my dark/storm into a water/storm and then to a water/dark (realised that I much prefer storm as a troller secondary) and wow. Only lv25 at the minute with very basic SO slotting in most places and the survivability of this combo is hugely impressive. A couple of things I've found so far:

Not using the dark heal very much at all ... It's nice to have as an oh crap button but the wind up time seems overly long and of course it misses at all the wrong times. Also the siphon life (can't remember names for any powers!) clone in water is a constant source of top-up healing and seems to be a solid attack (not in love with the sound effect though).

I dropped the tier two blast as soon as I had the siphon life one and the tier three (water jet?) and haven't looked back. The animation for the tier two just seemed out of place and even without large amounts of recharge I don't seem to spend much time without anything to do.

End use ... Pretty much the only downside. I've stamina three slotted with a perf shifter proc in it and the miracle proc in health but am desperate for more slots in my attacks to get end reduction in them.

Not getting killed much though. The combo of darkest night (only one to hit debuff slotted) and fearsome stare (no to hit debuff slotted) is absolutely amazing. The biggest problem so far seems to be highly mobile enemies who can get out of the debuff area. I'm planning to go redside to pick up leviathan for both theme and for the immob.

Not using the build up as much as I thought I would. Given the combo mechanic I thought this would be used much more but I tend to forget it's there half the time. That's probably more to do with me though!

All in all water seems very good indeed. It trades a bit of damage against fire (although the combo mechanic claws some of that back if used) for loads more utility. I'd even say *gasp* that it's better than fire . Dark is of course an awesome secondary and much has already been written about it. Together there is lots of control, plenty of damage and it's pretty themeatic with the right colouring.

Something that I've found with Jolting Chain that I don't think has been mentioned is that it's a great spawn pulling power. Assuming you hit the first target it will ripple through the spawn aggroing everyone without allowing return fire (you only need to be able to see the first target). Given a corner or even just sufficient room to run backwards you can then run the group into the sleep patch in relative safety.

I'm very happy with the idea of standardization between bought and found procs and also that some of the more useless proc rates may be looked at. However there is an aspect of the current plan for this that I don't like so much.

If I'm understanding this correctly the recharge in the power holding the proc and alpha slot recharge will combine as a factor in the calculation for the proc chance but global recharge from other sources such as IO bonuses and hasten will not? While it is good that this removes the 'stop buffing me you are flooring my proc rate' problem it does seem to encourage building toons in a very specific way - get the maximum global recharge, always take hasten and try not to use recharge directly in powers you want to use procs in.

Now I know that what I've just described is not a million miles away from general build philosophy - taking hasten is a bit of a given in most of the builds you see on the boards but this feels a little limiting in build choices if you want to use procs. It seems to me that various game design choices (ED, inherent fitness) have encouraged variety in building toons which this doesn't sit well with.

This would also mean that procs will work better for the better off builders among us. They can afford the expensive high global recharge builds giving higher proc rates than someone frankenslotting a cheap build where more recharge is likely to be directly put in each power. I know there's nothing wrong with an expensive build working better than a cheap one but shouldn't the same proc work the same for all people?

Not that I've got any better ideas for how this could be done differently to avoid these issues!

Personally I would love this - in fact I'd pay extra to have an issue full of rebalances, bugfixes and QOL stuff. Then again I can see how this wouldn't work overall and that just the way of it I guess.

My position is possibly not usual in that I'm not in the slightest bit interested an any of the incarnate content so recent issues have been a bit content light for me anyway. After years of playing I still only have a couple of 50's and my raging altitis causes me to delete far too many toons in the lv30-35 range (I value recycling the concept/cossie/name more than the levels).

I also have a particular fondness for this idea as I work in software development (sadly nothing as interesting as a game) and we are constantly pouring more and more customization into our already creaking system. The idea of calling a halt to everything for a couple of months and rewriting/fixing/stabilizing would be a dream come true!

Ah fair enough - makes sense it being like that. Thanks for the replies all

Yes but surely a 7' huge character is wider than a 4' male/female character?

It's just occurred to me to ask this ... Does character size make any difference to the effectiveness of PBAOE attacks and auras? Say you have a small radius PBAOE at 8' (mudpots on dominators for example) - would the size of the character model affect how many mobs can get into the area of effect?

I suppose this comes down to whether the radius is measured from the centre - in which case it makes sense that a very small character would take up less space and therefore be at an advantage or if it is measured from the edge of the character model (which I doubt) in which case you'd want to be as big as possible.

Or does all this make no difference whatsoever - are all character models treated as being the same size when it comes to collision detection with the mobs?

I imagine this'll make little difference in the end but the idea that we should really be City of Tiny Heroes in order to push the bleeding edge of performance amuses me

A couple of requests that may or may not have been mentioned before:

Dark Melee - this currently consists of three punching animations and several casting animations. It would be really nice to have the option to use all casting animations for a melee magic kind of theme. I can drain your soul/cause you to shiver in fear/entrap you in the tentacles of the underworld - why on earth would i actually need to punch you?

Power customisation in general - I often want to use basically the original colours for a power with some minor ajustments. Could we have it so that selecting custom colours defaults to a pairing that is as close as possible to the original rather than a random selection? I don't think it would negatively impact anyone who is going to make large changes to thier power colours anyway and would save a lot of messing around trying to find something close to the original.

Effect desaturation - many power and aura effects are very obscuring and the only way we have currently to tone things down is with colour. It would be nice to be able to desaturate individual effects while being able to keep any colours we like. I'm not sure how this would work tech wise, I imagine the particle count etc is baked into the powers/auras so controlling that may not be easy. How about an additional palatte of progressively more transparent colours to choose from?

Thought it was about time I chipped in - my elec/ice is now at 22 and I've not had this much fun on a toon in a long time. I'm a sucker for unusual mechanics and elec/ has that in spades. I have to say that I've mostly teamed and been with some good folks so that's helped.

The negatives:

I have died quite a bit. In a team setting enemies are constantly getting woken up and I can't resist spamming jolting chain, chain fences and attacks (mmm ice sword circle). I'm also by default standing right in the middle of the action and so when the licks come they come hard. Also I can see what people mean about the /ice secondary and damage. It does fine but the hard hitters come at the end so it can take that one extra attack to get the opponent down.

The positives:

Always available, layered soft control that firms up as the fight goes on. Between the sleep, end drain and knocking people up in the air the enemies opportunities for retaliation are limited. It's a different mindset to most controlling sets where the aim is to create a battlefield full of statues. The benefit is that these controls are always available and i think they tend to be less resisted than hard controls.

I'm planning on taking the mass hold as an oh crap power but am more looking forward to chilling embrace and the chain confuse. I much prefer every fight powers and both of these should be useful for adding extra layers of protection into the mix.

A counter point to the damage of /ice is just how fast the attacks are. You never find yourself in the situation where you wish you hadn't clicked on a power because you know you aren't going to live to see the end of the animation. Also elec/ gives you all the end you could ever want so it really doesn't matter that you need to use extra attacks. It also looks great

I agree with what was said above about knockback. I have been killed more than once by some idiot using gale to throw everyone out of the sleep and end drain fields. As chain fences has no -kb component there really isn't much you can do about this apart from making ascerbic comments while examining the floor...

Ok I'll stop rambling now

This isn't helping my altitis! Just looking at mids Elec/Ice/Ice looks a really nice build for up close and personal. Ok so that's a different toon re-rolled ...

Still not sure what to do about my Mind/Eng though - might give in and go Mind/Fire.

So many toons, so little time ...

Hmm ... Thanks for the info.

Yeah I've written off chilling embrace as not doing anything particularly worthwhile. I think I'm going to give this a go and if it doesn't work out reroll again as Mind/Psi! I'm a recent convert to the world of dominators and am just trying things out really.

I've had a look through the first 20 or so pages of this forum and you can count the mentions of /Ice on one hand. Even more rare is /Ice paired with anything but Ice/.

I've been having a go at a Mind/Eng but have stalled out at 12 (not a good sign). I've realised that although I enjoy the primary there's nothing I'm really looking forward to from the secondary and I'm already a bit irritated chasing my own knockback around. Also although this was primarily supposed to be a soloist I'd like to be able to team when the mood takes me so swapping secondary to something with more aoe and less knockback seems sensible.

So /Ice then? Really that bad that no-one plays it? /Fire seem to be the goto set for superior damage numbers but it doesn't feel right for this toon - besides I'm also thinking of rolling a Plant/Fire or Earth/Fire for total aoe carnage.

Any thoughts?

Of course swapping out the lockdowns in grav distortion for another set of thunderstrike would solve one of those issues ... And I'm going to stop replying to myself now

Eureka! Think I've got it. This is one tight build ...

My goals were: Capped ranged def, full stealth + tp for tf's etc, no purples (yet), no pvp's.

And this is what I have:

Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.92
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

grav_storm_v3: Level 50 Magic Controller
Primary Power Set: Gravity Control
Secondary Power Set: Storm Summoning
Power Pool: Flight
Power Pool: Teleportation
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Speed
Ancillary Pool: Ice Mastery

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Crush

• (A) Thunderstrike - Accuracy/Damage
• (3) Thunderstrike - Damage/Endurance
• (3) Thunderstrike - Damage/Recharge
• (5) Thunderstrike - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge
• (5) Thunderstrike - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance
• (7) Thunderstrike - Damage/Endurance/Recharge

Level 1: Gale

• (A) Explosive Strike - Damage/Knockback
• (43) Explosive Strike - Accuracy/Knockback
• (46) Explosive Strike - Chance for Smashing Damage

Level 2: Gravity Distortion

• (A) Lockdown - Accuracy/Hold
• (25) Lockdown - Accuracy/Recharge
• (34) Lockdown - Recharge/Hold
• (34) Lockdown - Endurance/Recharge/Hold
• (34) Lockdown - Accuracy/Endurance/Recharge/Hold
• (36) Lockdown - Chance for +2 Mag Hold

Level 4: Snow Storm

• (A) Endurance Reduction IO

Level 6: Propel

• (A) Thunderstrike - Accuracy/Damage
• (7) Thunderstrike - Damage/Endurance
• (9) Thunderstrike - Damage/Recharge
• (9) Thunderstrike - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge
• (17) Thunderstrike - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance
• (17) Thunderstrike - Damage/Endurance/Recharge

Level 8: Crushing Field

• (A) Enfeebled Operation - Accuracy/Endurance
• (31) Trap of the Hunter - Accuracy/Endurance

Level 10: Steamy Mist

• (A) Luck of the Gambler - Recharge Speed
• (11) Luck of the Gambler - Defense/Endurance
• (11) Luck of the Gambler - Defense
• (13) Luck of the Gambler - Defense/Endurance/Recharge
• (36) Steadfast Protection - Knockback Protection
• (50) Steadfast Protection - Resistance/+Def 3%

Level 12: Hover

• (A) Luck of the Gambler - Recharge Speed
• (13) Luck of the Gambler - Defense/Endurance
• (15) Luck of the Gambler - Defense
• (15) Luck of the Gambler - Defense/Endurance/Recharge

Level 14: Fly

• (A) Blessing of the Zephyr - Run Speed, Jump, Flight Speed, Range
• (50) Blessing of the Zephyr - Run Speed, Jump, Flight Speed, Range/Endurance

Level 16: Freezing Rain

• (A) Recharge Reduction IO
• (36) Recharge Reduction IO

Level 18: Gravity Distortion Field

• (A) Lockdown - Accuracy/Hold
• (19) Lockdown - Accuracy/Recharge
• (19) Lockdown - Recharge/Hold
• (21) Lockdown - Endurance/Recharge/Hold
• (21) Lockdown - Accuracy/Endurance/Recharge/Hold
• (23) Lockdown - Chance for +2 Mag Hold

Level 20: Hurricane

• (A) Dark Watcher's Despair - Recharge/Endurance
• (37) Dark Watcher's Despair - To Hit Debuff/Recharge
• (37) Dark Watcher's Despair - To Hit Debuff/Recharge/Endurance
• (37) Dark Watcher's Despair - To Hit Debuff/Endurance

Level 22: Recall Friend

• (A) Blessing of the Zephyr - Run Speed, Jump, Flight Speed, Range
• (50) Blessing of the Zephyr - Run Speed, Jump, Flight Speed, Range/Endurance

Level 24: Combat Jumping

• (A) Luck of the Gambler - Recharge Speed
• (25) Unbounded Leap - +Stealth
• (43) Luck of the Gambler - Defense

Level 26: Wormhole

• (A) Stupefy - Accuracy/Recharge
• (27) Stupefy - Endurance/Stun
• (27) Stupefy - Accuracy/Endurance
• (29) Stupefy - Stun/Range
• (29) Stupefy - Accuracy/Stun/Recharge

Level 28: Thunder Clap

• (A) Stupefy - Accuracy/Recharge
• (31) Stupefy - Endurance/Stun
• (31) Stupefy - Accuracy/Endurance
• (33) Stupefy - Stun/Range
• (33) Stupefy - Accuracy/Stun/Recharge
• (33) Stupefy - Chance of Knockback

Level 30: Hasten

• (A) Recharge Reduction IO
• (46) Recharge Reduction IO

Level 32: Singularity

• (A) Blood Mandate - Accuracy/Damage
• (40) Blood Mandate - Damage/Endurance
• (42) Blood Mandate - Accuracy/Endurance
• (42) Blood Mandate - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance
• (42) Blood Mandate - Accuracy
• (43) Blood Mandate - Damage

Level 35: Dimension Shift

• (A) Accuracy IO

Level 38: Lightning Storm

• (A) Thunderstrike - Accuracy/Damage
• (39) Thunderstrike - Damage/Endurance
• (39) Thunderstrike - Damage/Recharge
• (39) Thunderstrike - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge
• (40) Thunderstrike - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance
• (40) Thunderstrike - Damage/Endurance/Recharge

Level 41: Hibernate

• (A) Recharge Reduction IO

Level 44: Frost Breath

• (A) Positron's Blast - Accuracy/Damage
• (45) Positron's Blast - Damage/Endurance
• (45) Positron's Blast - Damage/Recharge
• (45) Positron's Blast - Damage/Range
• (46) Positron's Blast - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance

Level 47: Ice Storm

• (A) Positron's Blast - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance
• (48) Positron's Blast - Damage/Recharge
• (48) Detonation - Damage/Recharge
• (48) Air Burst - Damage/Recharge

Level 49: Tornado

• (A) Brilliant Leadership - Accuracy/Damage

------------
Level 1: Brawl

• (A) Empty

Level 1: Containment
Level 1: Sprint

• (A) Empty

Level 2: Rest

• (A) Empty

Level 4: Ninja Run
Level 2: Swift

• (A) Flight Speed IO

Level 2: Health

• (A) Miracle - +Recovery

Level 2: Hurdle

• (A) Jumping IO

Level 2: Stamina

• (A) Endurance Modification IO
• (23) Endurance Modification IO

Ah nuts. I was afraid that'd be the answer. Back to staring at mids trying to find that extra slot it keeps hiding from me ...

Hi All,

I'm trying to figure out what my end build should be for my lastest project - grav/storm. I'm shooting for the cap to ranged defence and it would be really helpful to be able to use the whole of stupefy in wormhole but that means taking the knockback proc in there ... Has anyone done this and can you tell me what happens? I'm thinking that either:

a) It's a good thing - anything tagged by the power when activated is still teleported regardless of where they end up in the meantime and so the knockback serves to mitigate retaliation during the activation window ... or ...

b) It's a bad thing - anything knocked out of the 15' power radius doesn't get ported leading to a greater chance of a split spawn.

The way it looks to be shaping up this is the difference between having to take the fighting pool or not (I hate burning powers to get weave - seems like such a waste).

Cheers!

Funny - was thinking of starting more or less this exact topic until I stumbled across this so i'll stick my thoughts in here instead.

The tl;dr version of all this is that I would like to see far more bugfixing, rebalancing, proliferations and zone and story revamps. Something approximating to reasoning below:

I appreciate that in the face of rival games it is better to be releasing new content than doing less immediately sexy and headline grabbing stuff such as bugfixes and the rest. The thing is (imo) the game already has a MASSIVE amount of content. The sheer quantity of different powerset combinations is staggering. There are zones everywhere - so many that some are barely used.

The trouble is that not everything works as well as the rest. We have powersets lagging behind others, entire AT's lagging behind, old content that no-one bothers with because it's not as well thought out and written as the newer stuff and bugs that have been around for years that just seem to never have been fixed. Many things have been mentioned in this thread that are all worthy of consideration (and I'm going to list a few of my big ticket items below) but my general point is that I feel that taking a bit of time to fix what we already have, give it a bit of a buff up, would be time better spent than shoving more stuff into the game.

Right - particular things I'd like looked at:

Heroside content - particularly early on. This is just not up to the same standard as the rest particularly in the light of the Pretoria content. I've been playing for years and am well used to the old content but it must be a little jarring for a new player emerging out of Pretoria to find that all of a sudden the context to their missions has just disappeared. There isn't enough tying all of those storylines together, there's not enough of a feeling of being involved in the greater story of the city. Where are the political subplots? Moral choices?

Which leads also to the look of the old zones. Praetoria is shiny and the rest isn't and again our hypothetical newbie fresh out of Praetoria must wonder why Paragon City seems to be in some kind of graphical timewarp.

Powerset rebalancing. I have to state that I love quirky powersets. I find the different mechanics available is precisely the thing that keeps me rolling alt after alt. Therefore the last thing I want to see is for every set be homogenised into a clone of the current fotm. However I'd love to see a bit attention given to those sets that clearly need a bit of help. On every AT board there are endless discussions about the underperformers and what is wrong with them. With this number of people testing and reporting back it couldn't be simpler for the devs to see where this attention is needed (I work in software development and would kill to have the kind of user involvement these guys have).

AT rebalancing. Stalkers need more help on teams. The last attempt at fixing this didn't go far enough and for the sake of changing a few variables this could be alleviated if not completely fixed - see stalker forum for details. This might be a little controversial but imo blaster secondaries could do with being looked at too (as a whole). To my mind blasters give up too much survivability for their damage in comparison to other AT's. If the control effects on their secondary powers were beefed up a bit (devices probably needs a more thorough going over in light of its team usefulness) they would be more survivable and still retain the flavour of the AT.

IO's. More sets please - particularly where the choices are a bit thin on the ground at the minute. Also it seems odd that the defence bonuses have been paired up but the resist ones (which are thin on the ground anyway) haven't. The resist bonuses could probably do with being beefed up too. And while we're on the subject of defence bonuses:

If IO defence is a balance problem (and all indications are that it's looking that way) then change the to hit equation. Split out power generated defence from IO generated defence and allow them to be debuffed separately. That way IO def debuff could be added into the late game to create more challenge without crippling sets that rely on defence granted by powers – ice armour etc.

Phew - that went on longer than I expected! Sorry for the wall of text ...

Fascinating discussion this - it's a credit to the writing in GR that it's capable of sparking it.

The concept of ideal moral or political positions or even of absolute human rights is a compelling one but in my opinion ultimately flawed. As somebody once said (no idea who off the top of my head) - the universe could be ground down to its constituent atoms and you wouldn't find a single grain of truth, beauty or justice. These and many others are merely concepts we have invented for ourselves.

In a sense I think the storylines pitch the choices about right. You compromise at every turn. Most of the time neither choice given to you seems all that appealing. 'Good' things are done for the wrong reasons. 'Evil' is done with the best of intentions. Sounds a lot like life really ...

I'm having my first go with a stalker playing a KM/EnA. I've no idea how good or bad a combination it is but when both sets look as good as this I couldn't care less .

Every time i log in and i get the 'online store is not available' message i'm looking for the 'no that's not ok actually' button ... they seem to have forgotten to put in that option