teflonshugenja
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Posts
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Joined
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That's like insisting that Controllers need to have a Time Control primary to go along with their Time Manipulation secondary. Sure it'd be thematic. It's also largely unnecessary.
You don't have to have a custom-tailored set pairing for every conceivable character concept. More to the point, you're not going to get one. Powersets are a ton of work to make. The new ones are going to fill broad thematic and aesthetic categories, not narrow, niche ones. -
Quote:Betsy's awesome and all, but the fact is that anyone who wants to do something like this already has the tools available.Originally Posted by ClawsandEffect
No, like this: http://marvel.com/universe/Psylocke
Psylocke uses psychic melee attacks. Lately she's been shaping her mental energy like a sword, but it's natural form is sort of like a psychic energy blade extending from her fist.
AT: Scrapper or Stalker
Primary: Broadsword or Katana or Energy Melee. For the former two, unlock the Vanguard weapon option and color is a nice glowy pink. For the latter...well it's already pink.
Secondary: Willpower or Energy Melee or Super Reflexes. Again, pink.
...and this is assuming you aren't happy with the already-available options of Mind/Psi Dominator or Psi/Mind blaster, or a recolored Energy Blast, etc.
No, you won't get the Psionic damage type but honestly...are you sure you'd want it? It's a detriment at least as often as it is an advantage. I would much rather the dev and art teams spent their time on other, more interesting stuff than implementing this set just to cater to a concept that can be done really well in a variety of ways already. -
Quote:I have been playing my shiny new StJ/SD scrapper and I think the animations work quite nicely. In particular the forearm-strike animation of Heavy Blow coupled with /SD makes it look like you smash the edge of your shield into the enemy's face.Originally Posted by darkcrabs
how do animations work with a shield out?
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Quote:I rebuilt my old PB a few days ago and included Spring Attack, and I like it. It's not incredible, but it's a very solid power and if you're building enough recharge to perma Light Form/Hasten then it's up fairly often. I enjoy having the option to initiate a fight with either Inner Light -> Nova -> Scatter -> Detonation or Inner Light -> Spring Attack -> Seekers -> Solar Flare. The variety of choice makes me feel like I'm playing a Kheldian instead of something else.Originally Posted by Angelxman81
I was wondering if Spring attack is worth it to add some AoE epic feeling.
Anyone tried that with Khelds? -
No reason to use Clarion, status effects shouldn't be an issue. I like Ageless Radial for the recharge, debuff resistance and endurance refill. Alpha is Cardiac, no question.
If you're looking for ideas (or just examples of what other people have done) I'll throw my current build in the ring for your perusal. It's a little unusual (no OG or CoF but opts for Darkest Night instead) but softcaps S/L with 65% recharge without using any PvP IOs or purples. Alpha and Ageless make endurance no problem. If you have an unlimited budget you can do more, but I've found myself satisfied with this so far.
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Quote:Originally Posted by SuperMouse
I paid $50.00 for COH over 4 years ago....
With all the paid upgrades and the $15 a month not to mention the booster packs.
I'd say im well over $1,000 paid into this game.
How about Freeing your hands from my wallet.
And Let me keep all my toons on-line and Off
"I'd like to play my toons offline at some point"
I'd even PAY you to make an off-line "A.E." type of game
That we could save and play all of our cool toons offline.
Thanks SUPERMOUSE
I paid $15,000 for a car a couple of years ago, and I've paid hundreds of dollars in gasoline since then, not to mention the cost of repairs and regular maintenance. I'd say I'm pretty invested in the automobile and oil industries. It's about time they started providing a complimentary limousine to drive me around, and they should also include a mini-fridge. That way I could save money and have a mini-fridge!
...what? -
Quote:Nitpicks aside, do you genuinely think that they'll allow a character to have both?Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison
They are far from identical. TT recharges in half the time and has a -tohit debuff, costs less endurance, and has a much wider cone.
Not so simple, eh? -
Soul Tentacles already exists in blaster Soul Mastery. It's a carbon copy. Ergo TT will not be a part of Dark Blast. It really is that simple.
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Quote:You mean like Dark Obliteration? Just saying.Originally Posted by Midnight_Tempest
I like powers that move things around, but Torrent doesn't pack a similar punch to it's cousin in Energy Blast. I'd rather see it replaced with something like a Dark version of Fireball, because Dark Blast feels like it could really use a non-cone AoE attack.
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Shielded a whole BAF league with two clicks yesterday and was smiling ear-to-ear for the rest of the trial.
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Quote:They look like the wisps that float around the woods in Croatoa.Originally Posted by Angelic_EU
not sure what exactly is Polar Light. Need to see one first.
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Quote:Not even remotely.Originally Posted by Haetron
Just to be clear, that's what is being said here?
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Quote:You're trying really hard to score points here. It ain't working.Originally Posted by Haetron
Well... you managed to go a mini-paragraph without bringing up IOs.
Check my sig. Those are my 50s. My brute has been max level for years. I leveled him right after CoV came out, before the Invention system ever existed and all we had were SOs. No powerleveling. It was a fun and blisteringly fast ride.Quote:See, now that sounds like a challenge. What server do you play on? And do you have a level 50 /DA Brute where I can lay out a counter challenge?
Edit: (Actually, server doesn't even matter, we could copy over to test.)
I have no interest in whatever challenge you can dream up, though. I know how powerful Dark Armor is. My own experiences bear out the math, just like plenty of other people here. I don't need or want to prove it to you because you've already made up your mind and, frankly, I don't care if you like it or not. I just don't want you spreading misinformation and turning other people (like the OP of this thread) off of it. -
Quote:I'm not sure how to say this any other way: you're wrong. What's more, it's clear that you still don't understand why you are wrong. You should go read some of the math that you keep dismissing, because it explains how layered defenses work and layered defenses are what Dark Armor is all about.Originally Posted by Haetron
But the entire set is crutched up by the one power, in a way few other sets experience. Sure, every powerset has "Must take" powers in common opinion, but Dark Armor's reliance on Dark Regeneration is much more severe.
Dark Regeneration contributes to the survivability of Dark Armor, but it doesn't constitute the whole of it. In fact, Dark Regeneration is only as powerful as it is because the rest of the set exists. You say that people sing Dark Armor's praises only because they're stacking defense from IO set bonuses, but that only reveals that you haven't considered why they are doing that. It's easy to get large amounts of defense from IOs, but getting good healing or damage resistance values is hard because IOs suck at that. Since those are the things that DA offers, it stands to reason that of course the set benefits from heavy Invention slotting - IO set bonuses fill the defensive layers not already covered by DA powers almost perfectly. Knockback vulnerability? Handled. Defense softcap? Handled.
What's more, IOs are also good at giving you lots of recharge, which (surprise surprise) lets you cycle your active survival tool - Dark Regeneration - much more often. What's that? Too endurance intensive, you'll be sucking wind after the first click? Inventions also let you cram a ton more endurance reduction and recovery into a build than SOs do and offer neat things like the ToE proc to make that issue go away. You think this is evidence that DA is weak, but it's not - it's evidence that DA is uniquely positioned to take full advantage of practically every bonus that the Invention system offers in quantity, because its weaknesses align neatly with those things that the Invention system does best.
Compare it to Super Reflexes: no active mitigation tool means that SR can't take advantage of all that +recharge you've been stacking, and the one defensive layer that IOs do well (defense) is the one you already have. SR is positioned poorly to capitalize on those things the Invention system does best. Every set has weaknesses, but not every set can so easily fill all of those weaknesses the way Dark Armor can. It's no worse right out of the box than anything else, but maybe no other set has such a high maximum performance potential and the ability to easily achieve that performance potential with the tools available in-game. Every time an enemy gets near me my CC aura kicks in, limiting how often he can attack me. Every time he attacks me he has to hit me, and my defense kicks in. Once he hits me I take damage, and my resistances kick in. Once I've taken that damage I can mash my active healing, and erase that damage - and the more often I can hit that button, the more invincible I make myself. Invention bonuses are a part of that, but they're building on the suite of powers I already have to create the whole package. To say that DA relies on Dark Regen for its survival is to focus entirely on the last link in the chain and give it credit for everything that came before. It's just wrong.
But hey, maybe you're right. Maybe I'm totally off base. If you think DA's survivability is all bound up in one power, go run a couple missions with the resistance toggles, CC toggles, CoD and Death Shroud turned off and let us know how it goes. You can go ahead and use Soul Transfer all you want, though. My guess is you'll have plenty of opportunities. -
Quote:Goalposts have shifted a lot since the old days. What is considered "decent performance" now is quite a bit different than what was considered "decent performance" in Issue 2. You can still play the game the way you used to with nothing more than SO slotting and be at least as effective as you used to be (in the case of Dark Armor, it's quite a bit better now than it was). It's just that many people aren't satisfied with SO-level performance now that there are so many ways to exceed it. Sounds like you're one of them.Originally Posted by Amy_Amp
The devs can say what they want to, but playing on SOs with inherit fitness and thus dealing with more powers with equal slots went out the door. About the only way a number of SO builds really perform decently would be after going Incarnate and that's a long wait.
But not everyone plays that way, and they are not wrong or bad for having a different expectation of fun than we do. Let's keep that in mind. -
Quote:The Invention system at this point is very complex and can seem quite daunting to someone who isn't already familiar with it. It took me a long while before I decided that I was going to sit down and dig into it, and a spent quite a bit of time and inf making mistakes before I got comfortable.Originally Posted by Comfort
I like dark armor, having a dark/dark scrapper and having played a dark/dark tank.
It takes a lot more thought and making decisions based around your positions with mobs, powers that are active, that sort of stuff... so it is a much more intense set to play than say shield or invuln where you run around and just shrug at about anything.
I think dark really shines when you consider IO's and the wide variety of unusual IO's it makes availible for any class with dark. If you can't handle IO's, I have to wonder what you're doing playing at all. It's like playing chess with nothing but pawns. Monopoly with nothing but $1 bills. Gonna be a long slow haul for sure.
There's no doubt that Dark Armor really shines when you can support it with invention sets, but I take issue with the notion that it can't be effective and fun even without them. It's just not true. -
Quote:That's hilarious.Originally Posted by Haetron
I've said it before, Ill say it again Dechs. If Dark Armor was half as defensive as the people who preach how great it is, no one would find any complaints with it.
No, not the part where you obviously aren't very good at playing Dark Armor, the part where you think people on the Internet won't complain about everything. That's comedy gold right there. -
Muon and Neo have given you really excellent advice, so this is really just going to be me reiterating a couple of key points based on my own experiences with the set. Dark Armor can be very powerful, but it's not like Willpower or Invuln or another set where you can just buy powers, slap some SOs in 'em and then run all your toggles and be okay.
- Dark Regeneration is your most powerful tool and your most demanding one. Six slot it: 1 Acc, 3 EndRdx, 1 Recharge. I know you said you don't like Inventions, but do yourself a big favor: make an exception and get the Theft of Essence proc for this power. Run tip missions for a few days and buy it with A-Merits if you don't have the cash. Trust me. It makes all the difference in the world, because...
- Endurance is absolutely bar-none the most important thing to maximize for this toon. Contrary to popular belief this is not because your toggles cost too much (though CoF is ugly that way). It's because how much Endurance you have throttles how often you can use Dark Regen. Dark Regen lets you convert Endurance into survival. The more End you have, the more often you can mash your I-go-to-full-health button. More endurance = more survivability.
- Invest in Knockback protection. Seriously, it'll get you killed. If you're on your back, you can't push buttons. Can't push buttons = can't hit inspirations or Dark Regen = you're going to die. Get either Acrobatics or pick up a KB Protection IO. The Steadfast Protection one isn't that expensive. While I was leveling my /DA brute (way back in the day before inventions) the number one thing that killed me was knockback. I got Acro and suddenly the world was a much nicer place. Nowadays I just slot a BotZ in Super Jump and call it good.
- Carry defense and endurance inspirations, and don't be afraid to use them. Stuff happens. Don't worry about offense - as long as you're in the fight, you're doing damage. Make sure you stay in the fight.
- Slot your attacks for Accuracy, then Endurance Reduction, then Damage. You burn up more endurance attacking than you do on any toggle power. One Accuracy and two EndRedux SOs is a standard while leveling, with whatever left over spent on Damage or Recharge if you can spare it - you have Follow Up and Fury to handle the damage, so slotting for slightly higher numbers isn't nearly as important as slotting for end. Which leads me to...
- Death Shroud. Slot this up heavily and let it + Follow Up + Fury do a lot of the work. It's one of your best DPE powers by a long shot. Seriously. When I was leveling my brute I struggled badly for a while, then downloaded HeroStats and ran a few missions and checked the data. I was astonished to find out that Death Shroud was consistently either 1st or 2nd in overall damage done among all of my powers and that it does competitive DPE against even one enemy; against more than one it was more damaging and more efficient than anything else I had. I changed my approach and started budgeting my End better, letting DS do more of the work, and things improved. Claws is more forgiving than SS is, so you should have it easier.
- Check your difficulty. Try turning bosses off and then setting it to 2-3 players. Play around with corner pulling to get spawns of 5-6 guys to bunch up and rip the Lieutenants apart. Hit Dark Regen when you hit ~1/3 health and the minions are worn down by Death Shroud and FU -> Spin, then finish them off. Finish the pull with near full health. Head to the next one. It sounds paradoxical, but once you get used to it you may find yourself in less danger of dying by fighting more (but weaker) enemies at a time - the magic of Fury will crank your damage up and make the fight shorter and your attacks more DPE efficient (especially DS and Spin), and hitting Dark Regen with a group around you practically guarantees a full health reset midway through the fight, when you need it. You don't need fancy IO builds to do this - if you've taken a few of the steps outlined above, there's no reason you can't start it right now.
- Stick with it. Dark Armor is a great set, and Claws/DA is a very good pairing. It just requires a slightly different approach than other, more forgiving combinations might. -
Short answer? No.
Slightly longer answer? Choose devices if you really really want to (i.e. concept reasons), but be aware that it's pretty poor from a mechanics standpoint. -
Yep, I have a SS/DA/Soul brute. One of my favorite characters and one of the most powerful I've played. It's an excellent combination at all levels.
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Quote:I'm just going to ignore the rest of this argument and point out that this assertion - this one alone - is patently ridiculous. Unless 100% of your time spent on teams is spent on teams that you have personally constructed out of close friends who share your passion for knockback, I guarantee that a large portion of these team members find Solar Flare KB unhelpful and are just too polite or too apathetic to say anything. Acting like you can speak authoritatively about so many other people's preferences is just ludicrous and hurts your argument.Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill
the teams I'm on with my PBs (and anything else causing AOE KB) don't find it unhelpful
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Quote:Both. It's a PITA to retoggle every time you come back to Human, but if that were all it was I could probably deal.Originally Posted by Timeshadow
Question on toggle suppression in forms: Is this about convenience, survivability when down shifting or both? I don't use the human shields so I'm curious.
The fact is though that Human form's defenses are balanced around the assumption that you are running your toggles all the time, just like Scrapper/Brute/Tanker defenses assume that they run their toggles all the time - and they do, since there's no reason to turn them off once they're up. But Kheldians are also assumed to be shapeshifting and are inadvertently punished with substandard survivability every time they shift back to human until those toggles go up again. It's a problem that comes from applying a Sc/Br/Ta-esque toggle-based defensive suite to an AT that is designed to operate differently from any of those other ATs. Square peg, round hole. No great surprise that it causes issues. -
Quote:You may have meant it to be a simple question, but it isn't. That's where you're going wrong.Originally Posted by Dlloyd
it was meant to be a simple question
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Saying that you have to take /FA in order to "make the best" of your dps class is dramatically oversimplifying things. Fiery Aura is a defensive set. Every bit of extra damage that you are wringing out of it comes at the expense of survivability. That's not to say that a /FA character can't be very tough, but it's not what the set does best.
If all you care about is maximum damage output? Sure, take a gander at Fire. But keep in mind that how much dps you can put out is far from the only thing that matters. -
Just tried this on "threshing machine" mode using my SS/DA brute and finished in something like 40 minutes. I'm positive I could get it down lower now that I know the map, especially if I turned AIM off this time instead of alt-tabbing to chat with friends.
It's a neat challenge, with some real unexpected dangers lurking for the unwary. The first time a Smoking Fury used Soul Transfer it caught me off-guard, so I started finishing them off last and from a distance. I also got caught by the Sparking Fury's Blinding Powder a couple of times, which got me killed since Dark Regen is no use when you're Confused. Had to start carrying a couple of BFs just in case it landed to avoid faceplanting. Was also saddened to realize that my own Soul Transfer was all but useless - it locked down the spawn I was fighting, but rezzing without my own Stealth up inevitably drew the attention of another nearby spawn and just made things worse.
Didn't use any temps, and it is definitely doable without Incarnate powers (though Destiny and Void Judgement make a huge difference), but I would hate hate hate to try it without inspirations.