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and telling people that think it needs some tweaks/work that they just suck at the set.
[/ QUOTE ] This is a lie. I've said the set is great if you are skilled. To that end people have told me I was wrong. My response is that you lack the requisite skill.
No where...and no place...has this anything to do with whether or not a person is calling for an improvement. I have made comments that giving TA a perma-sticky-anchorless-debuff is too powerful. That's my opinion, nothing else.
Accusing me "hating" people who want to improve the set is a bold faced lie. Either retract that statement or I'll just ignore your posts.
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So a powerset isn't broken if the elite 5% of the players can play the set flawlessly while everyone else suffers from the set's many problems. Then define this uber skill it takes. Is it the skill gained from taking a defender from 1 through 50 without ever powerleveling? That's something I'm working on. Is it the elite skillz needed to defend a team who could do the mission just as well without you? I leave those teams since I'm a fifth wheel. Maybe it's the Skillz needed to solo invincable when you can't actualy prevent damage from more then one or two enemies at a time? Yeah, sounds like skill to me. The same skill it takes to solo a blaster on the same dificulty without dying alot. The same skill it takes to solo a SR scrapper on invincable currently without relying on elude.
I must have those elite skillz then. Except as I already mentioned, I'm finding TA currently can't stand up to the second dificulty, let alone the highest. When I'm in a team they tend to want me debuffing first. I tend to want every empath focusing on healing me so I *might* survive to get three debuffs out.
Balance Issue: TA is the only defender who can't survive the agro their debuffs create. While it's not always true, just about any other debuffing defender's debuffs will actualy protect them from the retaliation volly. TA's debuffs can't do that. It can lesson the force, but taking 50 damage from 6 guys is still gonna hurt big time.
Balance Issue: TA defenders will easily out agro a team of tanks on a consistant basis during fights. Since we can't survive the retaliation attacks, why are we able to tick off everything with a single arrow dispite having seven tanks doing their best to hold agro? 16 enemies, 7 tanks, and I'm the one everything's attacking?!
"The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern." Lord Acton
Madam Enigma's History
I solo on Unyeilding with my TA/A. It's hard and take a lot of patients and often results in debt. That mostly has to do with whether or not Oil Slick decides to light. Here's how I take out a boss:
Power Build Up
EMP Arrow (I have this baby with 4 recharges in it so I can have it up as much as possible.)
Ice Aorrow on the boss
Oil Slick
Blazing Arrow to light the Oil Slick
Disruption Arrow
Acid Arrow on the boss
Glue Arrow
PGA
Rain of Arrow (Actually one of the best attacks in the set, does GREAT damage and recharges fairly quickly)
Exploding Arrow (To take out the rest of the minions)
The rest of my attacks on the boss.
Of course at this point the boss is no longer held and I have to run/attack/run rinse and repeat.
That works in direct coorilation to the percentage that Oil Slick decides to light. And you can see how many powers you have to shoot off just to make it possible. Yeah, they may not be toggles, but it sure does take a LONG time to get them all out.
Oh, and I dinged 49 yesterday on my TA/A!
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Oh, and I dinged 49 yesterday on my TA/A!
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You've got a pair of brass ones on you.
Sgt Liberty - 50 Martial Arts / Super Reflexes
Verdigris Eagle - 50 Archery / Energy Manipulation
Stormeye - 50 Storm Summoning / Electric Blast
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Oh, and I dinged 49 yesterday on my TA/A!
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You've got a pair of brass ones on you.
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Yes, but Mieux has a broader view of the powerset than I do remember!
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Oil Slick is decent?
I thought it caused fear and did utterly craptastic damage...
is it actually good? 
(no seriously, I absolutely LOVED TA when I tried it...I'm just interested in how it does now)
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I can defeat 16 even-con minions at once with it. Oil Slick Arrow, Blazing Arrow to light it, and sit back to watch the show. The AoE is very large, the damage, when slotted with 3 enhancements, is JUST enough to take out even-con minions, and it's both a knockdown and a slow, so it's tough for runners to get out before the burn finishes them.
That's why it's going to get nerfed. It's basically a pre-ED defender nova. When combined with something like Disruption Arrow, it's even more powerful. Throw in Glue Arrow to keep everything moving as slowly as possible, and most of the time, you can turn an entire spawn (within the 16 enemy limitation) into a pile of ashes without anything but lieutenants or bosses getting out.
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Hard to say. Debuffs can boost your damage by 30%+, but fulcrum shift can take you right to the (defender) cap, basically doubling your damage. Oil slick comes early, but it comes early on a set that doesn't have the same overall damage boosting capability of sets like radiation or kinetics and has no endurance boosting capability.
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The caveat is that it's finicky about lighting. Some days, it'll light EVERY time you use it, other days... well, it can get extremely frustrating.
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Interestingly, (if I hit it) I seem to light it practically 100% of the time inside of missions, and hardly ever outdoors. Amusingly, police drones are capable of igniting it.
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They'll nerf it, though, despite its quirky behavior being one of the inherant limitations on the power. Probably by removing the ability to slot for damage. Especially with the ability to buff things like rains that's coming, which will probably also allow you to buff the damage on OSA.
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Unlikely that you'll be able to buff oil slick. A couple of reasons: first, many pet-like things are not going to be buffed: I believe it was said things like turrets won't be. Second, even if oil slick *was* somehow buffed by Aim, oil slick itself does no damage: the act of killing it creates the burn patch, and there's no real reason to believe that having Aim on at the time you shoot the oil slick will somehow cause the new burn patch to have higher damage: the burn patch isn't "coming from you" at the time.
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The second level of difficulty is the exact same level of mobs as the first....the spawns are bigger. So claiming the the "second dificulty[sic]" level bosses are a show stopper means the first level ones would be a show stopper, which means you are lying i.e. Making stuff up.
[/ QUOTE ] i'll have to eat a little crow on this one M_E. I only solo on Heroic when I'm trying to finish story arcs before leveling. The vast majority of my Heroic and Tenacious mission have been on teams, so I haven't finished any story arcs on Tenacious. I tried two missions and in one...neither diff had a boss. In another, one had a PP lt, the other a PP boss. Clearly you were not "making stuff up" about bosses on Tenacious. Apologies.
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For the record, Heroic and Tenacious missions have evens and +1s, Rugged and Unyielding have +1s and +2s, and Invincible missions have +2s and +3s. Furthermore, Tenacious and Unyielding have more spawns than Heroic and Rugged, which is the source of their difficulty difference. And while all missions can theoretically spawn bosses if the mission calls for it, a special rule demotes all bosses in heroic missions to scaled down LTs, and this exception is for heroic only.
Also, I'm not sure if anyone notices this, and its been a long time since I mentioned it ages ago, the game seems to have a round-off issue that is highly prevalent when levels are concerned. If you are close enough to the next level (i.e. 8 or 9 bubbles in), it seems sometimes the game "rounds off" your level to the next highest: I've seen missions with +2/+3 foes in unyielding - and no +1s - and it virtually always happens when I'm close to leveling.
This happens time and time again. Anyone remember CoV beta when the level bump happened and people at 9.75 were bumped with the 10s? I wasn't surprised (although I don't know if that was being deliberately merciful, or another round off error).
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Hard to say. Debuffs can boost your damage by 30%+, but fulcrum shift can take you right to the (defender) cap, basically doubling your damage. Oil slick comes early, but it comes early on a set that doesn't have the same overall damage boosting capability of sets like radiation or kinetics and has no endurance boosting capability.
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Since Electron Girl is a Kinetics scrapper, I never got to experience the joy of murd... um... defeating an entire spawn at once with a single power, using FS. I know it can be done, but the point I was making is that it's entirely too easy with OSA. Shoot, light, done. A Kin at least has to risk insta-debt by running into range to get a full buff. OSA can be fired from a very nice distance, mitigates the alpha response with the KB component, and allows a TA to simply wander off and do something else while the minions are roasting. The ability to debuff resistance or boost damage doesn't really factor in, either, because all of the secondaries have fair to middling AoEs that can be used to suppliment OSA. If I threw, for example, Rain of Arrows at the spawn after lighting OSA, it's going to be just as effective as debuffing them.
And end has never really been at a premium, in my experience, for TA. At least, not when combined with Archery. The animation times are so long on everything, you actually recover end almost as quickly as you use it, if you have Stamina 3 slotted. Coupled with the complete lack of toggles in either set, it makes it possible to go through several spawns without even pausing.
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The caveat is that it's finicky about lighting. Some days, it'll light EVERY time you use it, other days... well, it can get extremely frustrating.
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Interestingly, (if I hit it) I seem to light it practically 100% of the time inside of missions, and hardly ever outdoors. Amusingly, police drones are capable of igniting it.
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I've seen the same behavior. Indoors, solo, or solo in instanced missions, it's almost reliable. On a team larger than a duo or outside, I don't even bother to use it unless I've already fired off everything else and really need a debuff to keep the foul waste from striking the rotating blades.
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They'll nerf it, though, despite its quirky behavior being one of the inherant limitations on the power. Probably by removing the ability to slot for damage. Especially with the ability to buff things like rains that's coming, which will probably also allow you to buff the damage on OSA.
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Unlikely that you'll be able to buff oil slick. A couple of reasons: first, many pet-like things are not going to be buffed: I believe it was said things like turrets won't be. Second, even if oil slick *was* somehow buffed by Aim, oil slick itself does no damage: the act of killing it creates the burn patch, and there's no real reason to believe that having Aim on at the time you shoot the oil slick will somehow cause the new burn patch to have higher damage: the burn patch isn't "coming from you" at the time.
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Isn't this essentially how all of the Rains work, though? That was the reasoning behind not being able to buff their damage, that it was caused by an instanced pet-type summoning and not the player. OSA basically works like a rain once it lights, it's just going in the opposite direction. So I'd think that the buff, if it's possible, would be when OSA was used and/or before the buff wore off, as the case should be with the various Rains.
Regardless, though, I still think it's going to get nerfed. I just hit 38 last night with Dancing Hawk, and after running around shooting arrows into the air for a while, I'm going to get back to work so I can level up again (to slot Rain of Arrows with more damage) and see just how effective it can be when used on a spawn that's in a burning Slick. If I'm right, it's going to turn OSA into a yellow to orange killer. Now, given that most defenders need to use their nova power to do that kind of damage, and that OSA + RoA + Disruption Arrow still doesn't totally drain end and all three recharge faster than any nova...
Nerfing the one really cool, SET-DEFINING, power? Really? I don't really see it. But who knows.
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Balance Issue: TA is the only defender who can't survive the agro their debuffs create. While it's not always true, just about any other debuffing defender's debuffs will actualy protect them from the retaliation volly. TA's debuffs can't do that. It can lesson the force, but taking 50 damage from 6 guys is still gonna hurt big time.
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No offence, Madam_Enigma, but I think this problem goes away once you have Oil Slick Arrow. It might just be about the best, if not the best, power for alpha damage mitigation available to Defenders.
Consider: You can fire it off from around a corner, or behind a wall, reducing alpha strike damage to nothing. ZERO. In addition, it slows and knocksdown, and can be lighted by a strategic shot as the enemies are all flopping around.
Even in the rare situation where a corner or tree or wall is unavailable, the flopping and the range puts it at least close to the level of Fearsome Stare. And remember, Fearsome Stare can't even affect the full 16-mob spawn in a large team.
This is before we even talk about EMP Arrow. Sure, it's only usuable every 2 to 3 spawns, but a ranged long duration critting hold? With a MASSIVE area of effect? That's complete protection from the reliation volley right there.
So, while I agree that TA defenders have problems pre-26, many of these problems are reduced dramatically come Oil Slick and EMP.
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Balance Issue: TA is the only defender who can't survive the agro their debuffs create. While it's not always true, just about any other debuffing defender's debuffs will actualy protect them from the retaliation volly. TA's debuffs can't do that. It can lesson the force, but taking 50 damage from 6 guys is still gonna hurt big time.
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No offence, Madam_Enigma, but I think this problem goes away once you have Oil Slick Arrow. It might just be about the best, if not the best, power for alpha damage mitigation available to Defenders.
Consider: You can fire it off from around a corner, or behind a wall, reducing alpha strike damage to nothing. ZERO. In addition, it slows and knocksdown, and can be lighted by a strategic shot as the enemies are all flopping around.
Even in the rare situation where a corner or tree or wall is unavailable, the flopping and the range puts it at least close to the level of Fearsome Stare. And remember, Fearsome Stare can't even affect the full 16-mob spawn in a large team.
This is before we even talk about EMP Arrow. Sure, it's only usuable every 2 to 3 spawns, but a ranged long duration critting hold? With a MASSIVE area of effect? That's complete protection from the reliation volley right there.
So, while I agree that TA defenders have problems pre-26, many of these problems are reduced dramatically come Oil Slick and EMP.
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That's encuraging to know, but these last four levels before OSA are very disgcuraging. I'm quickly becoming perma debt, and I hate debt.
"The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern." Lord Acton
Madam Enigma's History
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Notice how everything but heroic includes bosses. I hear it use to be Ten dificulty was the defult, and only setting. Could be wrong since it woulda been before I found CoH.
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Originally, "Heroic" was the only difficulty, except bosses spawned. When the difficulty slider was added, bosses were also boosted heavily. This led to things being too hard for some builds. The boss change was rolled back and bosses were removed from heroic missions.
Also, for a long time, there were really only two kinds of mission spawns: Even, which meant everything would spawn at your level; backloaded, which would start with +1 spawns near the entrance and devolve to larger and larger lower-level spawns. You could end up fighting bosses at the end who were two or three levels below you.
We were given mixed-loaded missions, where even and +1 spawns pretty equally. Originally, it was supposed to be three even minions or two +1 minions, but the numbers reversed at some point. For a short time, it was implied that this was a bug, but was later changed to be working as intended. There's also backloaded missions, where the first spawns are lower level and the later spawns increase in level.
For a long time, larger teams would also spawn higher levels. You'd get +1 at 5-6 and +2 at 7-8. This had the tendency to make large low-level team missions into death traps for relatively inexperienced players.
I wish there were a difficulty setting between Heroic and Tenacious, which would give Heroic spawns and bosses.
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