A CoH cleric?

So I was thinking about leveling a DP/EM blapper to try and emulate the Grammaton Clerics from the Equilibrium film.

Any suggestions or advice from the blapper crowd out there?


^

If you are set on this concept, go for it. Just let me say, as someone who tried, that the results were less than desirable, for two reasons (in my opinion): The quick feel of the DP animations clashes with the generally slow-but-powerful animations of EM, and the redraw of the pistols is a pain in the butt. (I'm not one to complain about redraw, it is what it is, but it kills this particular concept.)

Having said that, I would use your pistol powers far more than trying to melee. Take Hasten and slot it up quick, since that will help you keep a constant stream of bullets. Using standard ammo gives you a decent amount of knockback, which is very present in the Clerical combat, and the secondary effects of Swap Ammo aren't all that present with Blaster debuff numbers. Suppressive Fire is a great opening attack and will buy you some time (Piercing Rounds should go before it, but that's post-26). Executioner's Shot is a great finisher. (An approaching enemy should get to melee range just as ES finishes its animation, making for a point-blank killing stroke that sends the enemy flying back in rag doll fashion. I SWEAR the game goes into slow motion when it happens!)

Basically I would get yourself a bunch of recharge and decent slotting in Stamina and use the guns as much as you can. You will feel far more like a Cleric than if you actually try to punch something.

Bearing in mind that concept causes compromise

• The glowing hands. Not really good concept.
• You lose out on damage potential not using fire ammo.
• (correction to Winterminal) Redraw takes no time, but yeah, the flashiness of it all.

Equilibrium was definitely awesome, and I've thought about similar character concepts. Personally I would make a Grammaton cleric as a DP/kin corr with (ideally) capped DEF from IOs. Then spend a lot of time using Siphon Speed, Fulcrum Shift, Hail of Bullets...

Thanks for the advice! I have played (and love) both an Electric/Electric and an Electric/EM blapper but I fully expect the DP/EM to be a fairly different playstyle.


^

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...12#post3547612
From Arcanaville:

The most confusing thing about discussions surrounding weapon redraw is the fact that different people interpret the words "factor into" and "redraw penalty." Here's the entire scoop so everyone knows what is going on here, and what changed.

Weapon based attack sets have a special requirement on them that non-weapon sets do not, for visual purposes. In order for a weapon attack to execute, the player must be in the "weapon state" and have the weapons drawn. If the player is not in this state, the game will automatically put the player into this state. The act of doing so plays an animation which "draws" the weapons. This is what players call "weapon draw."

The best case scenario for using a weapon attack is you're already in this state, and you simply execute the attack. The worst case scenario is that you're not in this state, and have to execute weapon draw + attack, which takes longer. In the old days, the attack's *cast time* was calculated to be this worst case time. So if an attack takes 1.0 seconds and weapon redraw takes 0.6 seconds, the attack had a cast time of 1.6 seconds.

If you were not in weapon mode, the game would play redraw, then the attack, which would take 1.6 seconds. The attack animation and the cast time would expire a the same time, and you could use another attack after that. If you were already in weapon mode, the game would play the attack, and that's it. 1.0 seconds later the attack animation would be over but cast time would still be running. You could not execute another attack until cast time expired, because *both *cast time must be over *and* the attack must be finished playing. So you'd stand around for 0.6 seconds until cast time expired, *then* be able to play another attack.

So a weapon set would look like this: Draw -> Attack -> Wait -> Attack -> Wait -> Attack -> Wait. The pauses were as long a redraw, so whether you needed to redraw or not, the attack chain would take the same amount of time. But it was a little jerky. Some people described this situation thusly: there is no weapon redraw penalty. Obviously, whether you have to redraw or not, the chain takes the same amount of time.

BaB and Castle decided to reverse this. Instead, cast time was set to the actual running length of the attack, period. So now, what happens is this. If you are already in weapon mode, you just Attack -> Attack -> Attack with no need to wait around for cast time to expire. But if you are *not* in weapon mode, then what happens is this: you draw your weapon, which takes 0.6 seconds (in this example). Then you execute the attack, which takes 1.0 more seconds. 0.4 seconds after you start the attack, the cast time of the attack expires (1.0 seconds) and the combat engine says you can use another attack. However, the attack is still playing and because its rooted, you cannot do anything until its completed. So you really cannot attack anyway: cast time expires early, but the attack itself runs its full course. It costs you the time to draw the weapons when you are not in weapon mode, but there's no cost if you are already in weapon mode.

Weapon draw used to be factored into cast time and now cast time no longer includes redraw time. Because of this, there is now a weapon redraw penalty whereas in the past there was no penalty. But its more precise to say players always paid the penalty and now they only pay it when they have to. In other words, there has always been a weapon redraw penalty, but now you don't have to pay it all the time for no reason.

One interesting side effect is that weapon sets have always actually been pretty fast, because they were designed with redraw in mind. When redraw was eliminated from cast time, all weapon sets suddenly became much, much faster - and thus better. On top of that, BaB improved many of them by shaving frames and eliminating further pauses in the animations, making some of them - I'm specifically thinking about Katana here - amazingly better from what they were.

So they reversed their reversing.

If you didn't read the whole above post, the next to last paragraph sums it up.

And maybe some day, they will allow majority of powers to be cast with your weapon active. You can trow a 'magic thingie' holding your weapon, but the same animation to cast a fiery ring.. impossible. You can use buildup from your 'weapon set' with a gun, but cant use the same power from set that doesnt have a weapon.