Why do SoA refuse to get tactical training : Tactics and Tactical Training Maneuvers?
By
Alkirin,
Posted on: 2010-10-08 06:04 in Soldiers of Arachnos
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I agree with all that.|
Originally Posted by Bloodspeaker
Hmmm, I think we're possibly making incorrect assumptions about what the other person is advocating here.
I'm not debating that most/all of the TT powers are good to have. I'm not debating that, in either a team OR solo context, they're some of the best powers for a SOA to take. And I'm certainly not advocating blindly teaming with someone withOUT them on particularly difficult content - AV/GM fights, MO TFs and the like. The two things I DO have a problem with: kicking someone from a team that does NOT fall into the above categories simply because they don't have them, and telling someone else how to build THEIR characters. I honestly don't care about the REASONS a person might not take them. It was, after all, their choice to make. Might make ME scratch my head, but if they can take up the slack with solid tactics, I don't have any long term issues with it. An idiot is going to be a detriment to any team, regardless of the power choices they make, but the power choices they make don't automatically make them an idiot. |
I have only EVER kicked people from teams for A) being a jerk or B) going afk inside a completed mission. I will never kick someone for having a bad build.
I WILL tell them they ought to improve their build. I'll explain how and why, as politely as I can considering that I'm telling them they did it wrong.
Wavicle, Energy/Energy Blaster, dinged 50 in Issue 4, summer of 2005.
@Wavicle, mostly on the Justice server.
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Yeah, if I saw an SoA without TT:M, I certainly would point out that it would considerably help their defense. Especially prior to 24, where even a Widow needs all the defense she can get her hands on to survive in melee. |
Originally Posted by Wavicle
I WILL tell them they ought to improve their build. I'll explain how and why, as politely as I can considering that I'm telling them they did it wrong.
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I do think the idea that it costs too much Endurance, as well as that the Defense isn't that great, is a holdover from Leadership. They've heard talk about Manuevers being all of that, and assume it's just exactly the same power. I would say, for a Soldier, "No, it's like half the Endurance cost of Manuevers, and three times the Defense. It costs no more End than any defense used by a Scrapper or Tanker. In fact, you can think of it as your defense, and that it helps the rest of the team is a bonus." Seriously, I'd say exactly the same thing if it gave the 10% defense only to the caster, and the rest of the team only got 5%.
Obviously, no one is going to learn that if no one tells them.
I think it's essentially OK to tell people they are making mistakes in their build because:
1. With IOs and i19 coming builds are more open than ever before. There is no reason anyone should be skipping powers as key as this. There are usually only 2 or 3 essential powers like that in each set.
2. It's a multiplayer game. Yea, they're your characters, but how you build them effects me too when we're playing together. I can choose not to play with you, or I can be Social and try to help you improve your character. Some may call it arrogant to judge what contribution the toon is making in that way, but I call it experience. I can judge both your performance and your build.
Wavicle, Energy/Energy Blaster, dinged 50 in Issue 4, summer of 2005.
@Wavicle, mostly on the Justice server.
To make a SoA and skip TT Maneuvers is kind of rude in my opinion.
I wouldn't bother making a fuss about it, though I might add a player note along the lines of 'poor grasp of game mechanics', just for future reference.
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Ok, I'll grant you that the comparison to the petless MM is a little off.|
Originally Posted by Jade_Dragon
Okay, this has come up twice, and I feel the need to address it.
First of all, a petless Mastermind is skipping FIVE POWERS from his Primary. Likely, he is skipping a sixth as well, as it only effects pets. Thugs would be an exception, but then one might argue Gang War is itself a pet and thus off limits in a "petless" build as well. The point is, this is a huge chunk of the Mastermind's available Powers, and not in any way comparable to the choice to take or not to take ONE power from the Secondary. A Tanker not taking any of his defenses is, again, dropping a good 33%-50% of his Powers. It's not like the Tanker has anything in his Primary other than defenses, at skipping them both reduce his contribution to the team, and lessen his ability to deal damage, since he won't be able to survive to finish anything off at his Tanker level of damage. A Tanker skipping his Taunt aura, however, is again not the same thing. Sure, in most cases he can't Taunt as well with it as he can without it, but you might as well say that all Tankers should take Taunt. One or the other should be adequate to do the job, both is just ensuring good aggro handling. The bigger issue to me would be whether the Taunt aura itself was integral to the Tanker's defense, like with Invincibility or RttC. (And RttC is going to be far more useful for its survivability than for its Taunt aura, leading to the likely need to take Taunt on TOP of that) Tactical Training: Manuevers is ONE POWER. Yes, it's a good 75% of his defense on a Spider. It is not on a Widow. And even a Spider doesn't have a Secondary devoted entirely to defense. There's a reason TT:M is so important, it's because a Wolf Spider has 3 defensive powers in his whole Secondary, a Crab has 6, and a Bane has 5. (If you count Cloaking Device as a defense, it's primarily an offensive boost) TT:M is valuable, yes, but it's a long way from a petless Mastermind. |
What I meant with Tankers is to compare the lack of TT:M to the lack of EITHER Taunt or a Taunt aura. I didn't say lacking Taunt, because I wanted to suggest that actually skipping Taunt is ok so long as you have the aura, and I suppose the reverse is true. However, imo the aura is actually more valuable than Taunt itself, but they're both good.
I think the comparison of a Taunt-less AND Taunt Aura-less Tank to a Soldier without TT:M is apt enough.
Wavicle, Energy/Energy Blaster, dinged 50 in Issue 4, summer of 2005.
@Wavicle, mostly on the Justice server.
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Absolutely, as long as it's handled with a modicum of civility.|
Originally Posted by Wavicle
I think it's essentially OK to tell people they are making mistakes in their build
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| It's a multiplayer game. Yea, they're your characters, but how you build them effects me too when we're playing together. |
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| I can choose not to play with you, or I can be Social and try to help you improve your character. |
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| Some may call it arrogant to judge what contribution the toon is making in that way, but I call it experience. I can judge both your performance and your build. |
Kicking someone off a team for NO OTHER reason beyond not having 1-2 specific powers is roughly the same thing, as far as I'm concerned.
Where to find me after the end:
The Secret World - Arcadia - Shinzo
Rift - Faeblight - Bloodspeaker
LotRO - Gladden - Aranelion
STO - Holodeck - @Captain_Thiraas
Obviously, I don't care about NCSoft's forum rules, now.
I rarely play virtue server, but i frequent quite a few others and haven't noticed any significant amount of spiders/widows not taking the TT powers. well, maybe TT: Leadership....
Then again, I don't personally care all that much what powers someone else chooses on their alts, and don't often check others' powers unless there's something amiss in their playing, like extremely frequent deaths, or causing trouble for the team, extra aggro etc.
In the case of kicking people off your team after inviting them, it's extremely rude, IMO. If they're constantly causing teamwipes, or being rude themselves, that's one thing... and even then, I'd likely try hashing that behavior out first.
On a side note, if anyone is so bold as to tell me what powers I should take on my alts, they're welcome to pay my sub fees too... put up or shut up, ladies. 
My SoA is on Virtue.
I can say, from experience, that precious few VEATS actually skip the leadership abilities. Some, like me, DO take them a bit late in the build. In my case, I took defensive a bit early, but went with Leadership, Assault, Pool Maneuvers, and Pool Assault in one big splurge near level 30.
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In all fairness, skipping a Tier of pets on a Mastermind is probably an appropriate comparison, too. |
Originally Posted by Wavicle
I think the comparison of a Taunt-less AND Taunt Aura-less Tank to a Soldier without TT:M is apt enough.
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I once made an analysis that if you have three powers, the MM attack powers, that provide about 25% of your damage (more like 20% past 32, but let's not nitpick) and six powers that provide the remaining 75% of your damage, then on the average a Pet power is about the equivalent of two attack powers. Or conversely, the attack powers are about half the value of the Pet powers. Of course, this doesn't include the defensive benefits of Pets, but it's a good rule of thumb.
For most ATs the Powers are, for the most part, weighed equally, that's the way the game is designed. When those rules are broken, that's when you get the "must have" powers. In the case of a Mastermind, it's just design that the Pets and their buffs count for more than the other three powers.
TT:M is at least similar. A great deal of capability is built into that power that isn't redundantly available on Spiders. Likewise, it's pretty easy to make the comparison that one Spider TT:M is the equivalent of TT:M + Mind Link on Widows. One power that is the equivalent of two. If you do choose to skip it, you'll need two more powers just to take its place...
This is not to say that you can't, or even that two powers out of nine, or eighteen, or even 24, is all that game breaking. But why beg the question, when you've got 24 choices to choose from? Then it becomes not a question of whether you pick up TT:M, but when?
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This I agree to some degree. I used to run a Necro/Storm build that focused on me blasting and using Hurrican to push everything away from me and putting -tohit recharge in Grave Knight and Lich so all of us were blasting fast. I ditch this build after they got rid of -recharge in pets. |
Originally Posted by Jade_Dragon
I once made an analysis that if you have three powers, the MM attack powers, that provide about 25% of your damage (more like 20% past 32, but let's not nitpick) and six powers that provide the remaining 75% of your damage, then on the average a Pet power is about the equivalent of two attack powers. Or conversely, the attack powers are about half the value of the Pet powers. Of course, this doesn't include the defensive benefits of Pets, but it's a good rule of thumb. |
I only summon zombies to take alpha and I didn't bother to heal them. I just put one -recharge in them so I can summon for next mob sooner. It was a weird build but I kinda like the ST damage from all the Dark Blasts.
So yeah, if you blast yourself, your damage output is comparable to at least tier 1 pets, except for Ninja. Genins' damage is higher than your arrow attacks for sure.
PS: TT: Maneuver is too important to skip though.
What's left is to normalize all Assassin Strikes and improve Stalker's old sets (Claw, MA and EM)! You don't need to bring back the missing PbAoE attack. You just need to make the existing ones better! For example, make Slice a WIDER and LONGER cone.
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I will typically only summon my Punks at the beginning of the mission, and not replace them unless the Arsonist dies. My build was pseudo-petless for a long time, though, I didn't get the Punks/Arsonist until just before 32. (He wouldn't have have Burn before that) |
Originally Posted by Jibikao
I only summon zombies to take alpha and I didn't bother to heal them. I just put one -recharge in them so I can summon for next mob sooner. It was a weird build but I kinda like the ST damage from all the Dark Blasts.
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A good rule of thumb is that each Tier does about the same damage, overall. Meleers tend to do slightly more damage, both because their attacks are better, and henchmen have a higher melee damage modifier. Tier 2 tends to do most of the damage for Ninjas, Necro, Thugs and Demons (from what I've heard) for Bots and Mercs it's the Tier 3.
Your own attacks are always a controversial subject, but you can pump out a lot of damage just by adding Vet Rewards to your chain. (In fact, my Nin/FF doesn't even USE her bow, she uses Sands of Mu and Temp Powers like Revolver and Hand Grenades)
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Take away the team buff aspect of the power. Pretend for a moment that it only affects the soldier. It's still one of the better personal defense buffs in the game - as someone pointed out, it's only slightly worse than 3 SR powers combined.|
Originally Posted by Bloodspeaker
Has nothing to do with creating a "theme" character. Stop acting like the notion insults your sense of balance. If you can't survive having an SOA on the team without the team buffs, you must not be able to survive without an SOA on the team in the first place, yes? Would you die if you replaced a TT-equipped SOA with another Brute (for example)? I hope not.
You act as if team buffs are the only thing ANY character has the ability to bring to a team. You will never be anything but wrong. |
If you don't have that power, you don't understand how defense works. And these are soldiers, not doms or trollers, so these is no control based "I don't need defense" build option.
I, too, have trouble coming up a theme character that doesn't have it. "Dies Too Much Man" is the only one I got.
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Yeah, again, I think that's where most people who DON'T take the power simply misunderstand the intent of the power. |
Originally Posted by rsclark
Take away the team buff aspect of the power. Pretend for a moment that it only affects the soldier. It's still one of the better personal defense buffs in the game - as someone pointed out, it's only slightly worse than 3 SR powers combined.
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They think: "It's Manuevers. Expensive in End cost, low Defense, intended to support the team, when stacked with other Manuevers."
The truth: "It's a personal defense shield offering 10% Defense to All. End cost balanced to that intent. Oh, and as a bonus, it extends to the team as well."
Heck, even on a Widow it's still better than Weave, because it costs less End.
I'm not going to argue with anyone not wanting to take the power because they don't want to take the power. I'll point out the weaknesses in that choice, but I assume they made an informed decision on the basis of concept. But if they simply don't understand what the power does, it's easy enough to tell them.
Now, TT:Assault and TT:Leadership, they ARE the same thing as the Pool Powers, except for costing about half the End. Still a benefit, but not any better than another attack or Aim/Build Up.
My problem is (and Ive touched on this before) this forum is called Soldiers of Arachnos (or SoA), that appellation includes Arachnos Soldiers and Widows. When you say Arachnos Soldier you speak of the Soldier, when you say SoA you speak of both.
Now that I see people really solely mean Soldier (to include Banes and Crabs) then theres merit in speaking of the value of TT:M. When you say SoA, well that has a different meaning and while I cant find anything more useful to replace TT:M with if someone were to make the case for a widow, I wouldnt find fault with even the simplest explanation.
Of course kicking someone for being a leech or useless is a stance I dont want to encourage or would. Not everyone is a 4 yr veteran....some people just made level 20 and saw the big gold letters (VEAT unlocked or whatever) and made one. I think an explanation would be the better way to go in ALL cases regardless.
Anyhow...thats my stance smelted down from the earlier semantics and verbal sparring....
YMMV
--Frog
Where to find me after the end:
The Secret World - Arcadia - Shinzo
Rift - Faeblight - Bloodspeaker
LotRO - Gladden - Aranelion
STO - Holodeck - @Captain_Thiraas
Obviously, I don't care about NCSoft's forum rules, now.