Still dont understand.

Ok, I have to ask the same question iv asked before, but ill ask it in a diffrent way.Maybe ill get more then flamming this time around.*crosses fingers*

Now, what I want to know is why people stick to Mids, and why they only stick to Flavor builds that 1 Min/Max suggjests to another?

I get flak from other players and booted from teams before missions begin, as well as have minor to cases of extreem biast when I play something that they dont commonly see when it comes to builds.Lets not forget a snarky player that belive your combonation is horrible and lets you know they feel that way.Reguardless if the combo is good or not.

I know alot of you on these boards claim you dont have this issue when you play with other people.Odds are, your playing what they play or whats common.I however dont.

I know this subject acctually angers people, and everyone wants to belive they are individuals, but im still not understanding how thats a possiblity when almost everyone plays mostly the common builds that everyone else does?

When I see 20 Blasters ranging from level 1 to 50 under Atlas.With common or identical combos and looking like a Mercinary re-hash, or Hit Man likeness.All with the Dual Pistols Primary, and 1 of 2 Common Secondaries like Energy Melee or Mental Manipulation.It makes me ask why.

I see more then I care to count in Fire/Kin controllers.We dont even have to get into that one.Its self exsplanitary already.

Most the Scrappers and Tankers I see anymore are basically Willpower or Shield Defense with either Super Strength, Mace, or Fire Melee when it comes to the Tankers, and Elec Melee and Fire Melee mostly for Scrappers as common now days.

I see on forums where people say things along the lines of "Worthless joke build." and its oddly a very nice combonation.Like Ice/Sonic on a Controller, and Storm/Elec on a Defender.These builds arnt jokes, nore are they bad.I have these builds and they are awesome.

Why do people push more then half the power sets in the game back so feircely when they are alot better then they belive them to be?

Is it a fear of the unknown?

Im curious.

You are essentially asking "Why are some players rude and inconsiderate?" It is one of the great mysteries of the universe.

The only thing that really matters in playing a game is that you have fun doing it. When you find guys that you don't mesh well with, politely leave at the end of the mission.

Eventually you'll find someone who likes to play the way you do: friend them or join their SG. Also, different servers have different kinds of players. You may find a group of low-key players more to your liking on another server.

I play whatever seems cool to me* at the moment. My fire/kin controller was an accidental fad, because nothing else went with fire. I didn't know how good it was supposed to be when I first made it. My dual pistol/mental happened because I bought the pistols and never played a mental set. I have a /elec blaster, a /energy tank, /traps MM, a /fire blaster and , so nothing else really stood out.

If I play a set and it doesn't feel super, I trash it. Not meaning Super=Damaging. Energy on my tank did not seem to smash enough, so I went with super strength. Ice armor looks ugly to me so I won't play it. Nothing against the set, just the look. I don't know what build I am supposed to have, just that powers are supposed to be good at what I pick them for. Damage powers should damage, "look good" powers should look good. I really haven't had anyone deny me a slot for the powers I picked, only for the AT. If they want a healer or tank, I can't get mad because I chose my blaster that night...

First, let me ask you a question. Are you playing on Freedom?

As much as I hate talking bad about my home server of Freedom, the kind of behavior you're talking about is the most common on that server.

But as for people kicking you for having a "gimped build"? Well, you probably wouldn't want to team with them anyways, because they sound like real idiots. If that happens to you, right click on the leader and add a note. Give him one star and forget about him. If you ever see him again, no matter what character he's playing, he'll have one lonely star over his head, letting you know exactly who he is.

Well, for your other two questions. Why do people use mids? It's a useful tool for number-crunchers to get the values on their builds without wasting time and money in the game. For more casual players like myself, it can be used to simply plan out your levels and when you'll pick certain powers, seeing how things work out.

For the FotM builds, why do people play them? Well, the particular powersets you mentioned are the most versatile, and can do most things well. Other powersets are more geared towards certain playstyles and have different tactics associated. Spines has a plethora of AoE attacks, but not much in the single target attacks. Electric melee however, has an even mix of AoE, Single target, and one extremely powerful PBAoE teleport. So, while it doesn't have the AoE power of Spines, it does everything in moderate balance.

While there are probably many other reasons certain builds are favored over others, that's just my opinion on it. Seriously though, if anybody mocks your build, or labels it as "useless" just ignore them and play on. Every build in this game is perfectly viable. Although some may be more challenging than others, they all work. Just ignore the jerks and play the game the way you want to. After all, if you're not having fun, what's the point of playing?

Mids: because forgetting your travel power while respeccing just ******* sucks.

It may not be a big deal now that respecs rain down from the heavens every day, but wasting a respec back in the day was a big deal. For that same wasting a respec because you picked up a crap power was just as bad. You know, back when there were 'bad' powers, not just lackluster ones.

It's a couple of things.

First, many players have a very narrow scope of knowledge about the game. For example, I've known many people who played only Scrappers, knew about only Scrappers, and cared to know about only Scrappers (I'm not saying that everyone who prefers or exclusively plays Scrappers is like this, of course, just go with it). Such a person, with a very limited knowledge of powersets and therefore of builds, tends to gravitate to FOTM (Flavor of the Month) combinations. These usually are builds with obvious synergy and/or very obvious min/maxing going on. Fire/Kin Controllers or Stone Armor (Granite-centric especially) Tankers would be examples of this. These players tend to gravitate to the FOTM and dismiss anything else because they're ignorant and assume if it's not FOTM then it must suck.

Second, you have the powergamers, people who only want to play a character if it's as ridiculously powerful as they can make it. Not all min/maxers are like this - plenty of people just enjoy tweaking and getting the most out of their characters - but some people declare anything short of the absolute min/max to be 'unplayable'. You see this a lot as a way to dismiss powersets or builds that don't conform to a preconceived idea of the 'right' way to min/max something. I see this quite a bit with Controllers as some people see a Fire/Kin and then have a concept of Controllers as a high-damage AT. Then they try to use that do dismiss the Mind controller as useless.

Third, you've got people stuck in mindsets from other games. ____ Defender doesn't heal, so it's a bad healer, and we need a healer, right? Gotta have a healer or we won't make it. Granite or GTFO, those are the only tanks worth anything... and so on.

Ultimately it comes down to ignorance and/or stupidity. Sometimes you can fix ignorance - often I'll get on PUG teams with a non-FOTM character and players will be suprirsed at what I can do, maybe even broaden their horizons a bit as to what different builds can do in this game. Of course, you can't fix stupid.

Wow that post was hard to read. Firefox and Google Chrome have built in spell checkers you know. I'm no grammar nazi, English is not my native language but ouch, reading that hurt my brain.

I always played on Freedom and Virtue and never got kicked because of my build, be it a dm/da scrapper, earth/sonic troller, dark/traps corr, em/nin stalker before the stalker buff, dm/ea stalker, whatever. I did PUG and channel TFs with all kinds of group setup and lots of powersets. I've seen a lot of unusual combos in Freedom and Virtue like say, MA/Dark Armor scrappers, Sonic resonance defs and trollers, loads of blasters with /fire, /devices and /ice secondaries and I've teamed with a lot of WSs and PBs, deleted my WS at 35 because I didn't enjoy the playstyle.

Just go hang out in AP in Freedom, there are all kinds of 50s with all types of powersets, same in Virtue's Pocket D.

Been leveling a DB/Elec and a FM/SD scrapper, both are squishy at level 25, and with both I 'tanked' for big teams because I had support. As long as you are a respectful player and don't do stupid stuff like aggro more than the team can handle, you'll be fine in most cases. I've just NEVER been booted because of my build on Freedom or Virtue in 26 months, blue or redside, even when I was playing Stalkers a lot and they were known as 'lolStalkers' (before the i12 buffs).

Freedom has enough variety, it seems you only pay attention to the FOTM builds which will always exist in ANY server.

Then again, I can't say I give you a lot of credibility since I've seen you post that you solo AVs without insps on a SO dark/dark defender and that your Fire/Fire tanker outdamages 'all scrappers'.

And Mid's is a great tool, whether you want to plan a build and IO it up to the wazoo or even just calculate the number of slots you want in each of your powers, especially useful for Warshades and PBs for example. Not everyone is trying to softcap defenses, stop thinking that the scrapper forums is a reflection of the whole game, most of my friends in-game don't even access these boards.

But I saw people telling you all that stuff already and you still question Mid's and say that everyone has the same builds, so either you're a troll or you just refuse to change you view on the subject, so why ask this again?

'Fear of the unknown', L-O-L. Nobody's afraid of trying powersets in this game except for new people who think they might be going for gimped builds with their first toon. After 3 months or so teaming / playing, any reasonable person won't be 'afraid' to try out a new powerset, knowing they can just delete the toon if they don't like it. Well since you fail at understanding basic things like Mid's utility even on SO builds (you don't need to use Mids to at least acknowledge it can be useful), I wouldn't include you in the 'reasonable people' category. And if you don't like Mid's, why do you seem to get bothered by people who use it? Nobody's forcing you to install it.

It's just a little program that helps you manage your slots since they're limited especially on SO/common IO builds without multi-aspect IOs, check if your end costs are okay, if your powers are well slotted for acc/dam/end/rech/whatever, if your set bonuses aren't over the cap in the case of IO builds, if you're chasing the right set bonuses when you wanna build for defense/recharge/regen/recovery/hp/etc, and for me, also a way to try to help people fine-tune their builds when I'm able to offer helpful advice.

No build is gimped except in 'srs business' arena PvP where you can make horrible horrible choices especially with the new system that made so many builds almost useless, like my ice/psi permadom who relied on slows and holds in i12, both are laughable now.

Well you CAN make a gimped build in PvE if you roll a petless MM or an Emp Defender with the Medicine pool and only one attack, but that's the player, not the powersets' fault.

Damn Thirty Seven, you forgot the 'feircely' in the end

j/k, you made me laugh really loud Ok I won't post in this thread anymore, let him get his answers and ask again next month why people min/max and use Mids.

People are sheep. If one build is considered to be the "best" by the majority of players, then I'd better have that build as well so I can be the best too. In doing so, I don't have to put forth any effort of my own, and am cool by association. Just like wearing a popular type of jacket gives you a certain degree of acceptance in the hip crowd. It's not like you MADE the jacket - hell, depending on how old you are, you probably didn't even BUY the thing. But if all the other kids are playing fire/mm blasters and wearing GUESS jean jackets, then by god, you'd better be doing the same thing, or we'll kick you from this TF!

Nothing like conformity for fitting in...


(Sorry for the reference to GUESS jean jackets. I have no idea what kids are wearing these days over their tattoos)

I've been playing since 2006. I don't use mids nor do I do FotM builds (at least, not that I know... I don't pay attention). I've never once been booted off a team for any reason, much less for what build I have.

The closest thing that happened to me was I got a tell asking me if I was interested in an ITF. I said "maybe, as long as I can bring a friend" (was running duo with the wife). They then started asking me a bunch of questions about my powers, my build, and "what can you bring to the team" like it was a job interview. I told them to just forget it.

That's my one and only brush with build-snobbery in the past four years.

Quote:

Originally Posted by eltonio This is over the top mental slavery.

I often play a plant/ff controller without the ally shields. So far, it hasn't been kicked from any teams. I only recall one instance where someone asked for shields. I stated that I did not have them and the response was a simple "oh".

As for why people gravitate towards certain sets, I think some very good reasons have been put forth already. There are obviously some powerful combinations that min/maxers and/or farmers favor. There are new sets that attract attention by virtue of being new. There are some combinations that combine effectively for concept. There are even some sets people favor because the powers can be rp'ed as a variety of different things.

Also, to address the specific example, you've given of Sonic/Ice controller. I assume you're referring to this thread here, in which only one person suggests anything other than Ice/Sonic. In fact, one person expresses a great deal of enthusiasm for the combo. I'm not sure where the skewed perspective is coming from.

Why do I use Mids'? Because I am to a large extent a min/maxer and Mids' takes care of the addition and record keeping for me so that I can focus on important things like selecting which set to use in a power and deciding how many slots to assign. For me planning and tweaking a build to maximize it's potential is a lot of fun. In fact, I get a lot more enjoyment from that than I do from actually playing the tweaked builds. I enjoy playing the characters but the difference in enjoyment between an IO'd character and an SO'd character is, for me, pretty minimal. I IO characters because I enjoy it as an activity not out of any real desire to play IO'd characters.

Given this, I like to spend time reviewing my build before respecing. Looking it over and deciding on places to tweak it. Agonizing over power selections and wondering if I should shift slot assignments. Now I could plan it out by hand, the question is why the hell would I want to? I've made RPG characters by hand and even in systems which are designed with the assumption that you are doing them this way it's a pain. In a system like CoH which has effectively 182 variable (24 powers, 67 slots, 91 enhancements) trying to do it by hand is just painful.

One of the things I love about CoH is that the build and gear relationship is so complex. In other WoW (for example) the relationship is pretty weak. There is gear for your particular spec but the particular items that you're going to want aren't very different from someone else with the same class and spec even if they have a different build within that spec (there might be one or two different ones, but for the most part you want the same things). In CoH your build and your gear are heavily entwined and that gives very broad scope for min/maxing.

I need to stop getting reeled in by these posts. Although this thread has inspired me to make a Flame/Fail Troll(er).

Kioshi and Thirty, a bit overboard don't you think? I know there were misspellings, but it didn't make it any less readable. At least Fire didn't use a wall of text.

As for the OP...

Why DP/NRG? Having Build Up very early in the game is extremely nice.
Why DP/MM? You're gonna be in melee range with Hail of Bullets, so Drain Psyche will be handy and I suppose the extra AoE attacks doesn't hurt either.

Empty Clips -> Bullet Rain -> Psychic Scream
Drain Psyche -> Psychic Shockwave -> Hail of Bullets

I can't speak for Shield Defense characters...probably 3 of my 4 would be considered FotM even though I didn't intend it that way.

SD/DM Tanker
BS/SD Scrapper
Elec/SD Scrapper
MA/SD Scrapper

well, I play mostly on my DM/SD scrapper, I do this because I like to be able to aggro a coule of spawns with little to no worry. I also play this toon because I LIKE to be of help on my team. Where you getting booted because you've slotted for knockback? Or how about having 1 attack on your defender? Or m aybe you have 3 rezzes and slotted them all for recharge?, in fewer wors you should try sucking less.

There is a big difference between having a sub par build, and having a build that is so bad it endangers the entire party.

Example - Having an empath defender with only your starting attack is sub par, having a tank who hasn't taken his mez protection at level 40 endangers the whole party if he's the only tank.

I've never seen anybody kicked for the former (although I know a couple of people who would kick for that), I have for the latter.

Making somebody else's build without understanding how you're supposed to use it is one of the worst things to do, and sadly a lot of people do this.

Well, I'm not going to go out of my way to be nice here.

I use Mid's to get an idea of what I'm going to do with a character I already have. Mid's doesn't play any part at all in determining what that character is.

I just recently created my first fire/kin EVER. Not because I'm a min/maxer, and not because I want to farm (I farm when I have insomnia and want to fall asleep quickly). I made a fire/kin because it fit the character's concept and I like teh synergy of the sets.

As far as the getting booted from teams goes:

If you're as arrogant and egotistical in the game as you tend to be on the forums, then I can't say it surprises me that you get booted from teams. It's unlikely that EVERYONE you team with is a powergamer to the point that your build is unacceptable, which means your personality is probably playing a part in it. Some of the things I've seen you post, had you said them to me in-game I would have booted you too, and probably put you on /gignore.

I can understand not wanting to team with you in some situations. For example, at the moment I'm running a gimmick toon that's only taking power pools past level 6. He'd absolutely weigh down any team he's on, so I don't blame anyone for kicking him off.

However, if they didn't want me just because I wasn't Fire/Shield or whatever the FOTM is, then I wouldn't want to team with such arrogant jerks anyway, so it all works out!