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Bodhivajra

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  1. Ordinarily, I try to participate in online fora solely for informational purposes, or to try in my own feeble way to spread some positivity. If you don't have something nice to say, et cetera. But I read the OP, and then I sat for a bit. And then I logged in, and gave it the only reaction I've ever employed, a thumbs-down. I know! It's shockingly rude. But the combination of a ready-made, however imperfect, metric of unpopularity right there on the post and the sheer bottom-of-the-barrel repugnance of the idea convinced me that now was the time to break my emoji silence. And then I read some more. And I thought: Is there some possibility, however remote, that someone might take this idea seriously, even for a moment? What if the cascade of disapproval somehow isn't overwhelming enough? What if this is the case in which the mask-wearing madman has been set on fire, shot five times, dropped from a window, and somehow STILL GETS UP for one final stab because I, standing by with an unused revolver or a small container of gasoline and a cigarette lighter, thought, "No, he's dead enough," wishing to save my gasoline and/or bullets for some unknown future disaster? We would all regret that, I think, and I'd certainly feel guilty. So I say, let the gasoline rain down upon this misshapen madman of an idea! Let the lighters be flung upon its perforated, hideous corpse! Let its charred remnants be pumped full of bullets by anyone with bullets to pump! Let it be reduced to ashes which are then ground with a mortar and pestle into a fine paste, separated into component chemicals with a centrifuge, separately sealed with nuclear-waste protocol, and shot into space in a trajectory that will eventually, on some happy day, cause these misbegotten molecules to fall into the sun and, let us hope, find a productive use by granting us a few picoseconds more of fusion time. /jranger. --K
  2. Thanks for these notes! I'm absolutely stunned that this project was essentially a learn-as-you-go experience; I feel deep personal and/or professional jealousy that you were able to put together such a polished, engaging, and challenging piece of work while also teaching yourself the tools necessary to do so. Aeon is a great SF with enormous replay value, capturing exactly the feel and detail that characterize City of Heroes at its most glorious. I hope you will find the time and desire to produce more in the same vein -- dare I even hope, he says, qua player primarily of heroside characters, a blueside TF to these standards? -- in the near future. There are a lot of City of Heroes missions that I've played that are fun, but that sort of fall into the memory hole. On the other hand, there are a few that go into my personal headcanon as things my character absolutely did, part of his or her history; those are the best stories, the ones that are so good I want to make them part of my own. Dr. Aeon is definitely one of the latter.
  3. Ohh, I get it. I misunderstood the original sentence I quoted! I thought you were saying that some aspect of the Aeon design might not be healthy for the game in the long run; you were suggesting that the current meta of steamrolling TFs might not be healthy. Yes, agreed. I absolutely like that the Aeon has me reexamining every one of my buffer characters and checking the name over every mob's head to identify what needs to be punched first.
  4. I'm curious about this bit! Not trying to draw out a disagreement here, just wondering if you'll say more about what you think. Here, working on mission 2 difficulty level 2. I guess Malicious? I'm finding it easier than expected -- which is to say, not easy at all, but achievable without deaths so far. I'm not sure that's going to remain true through some of the harder enemies, but so far so good. Regarding the amount of plot, I'm actually completely OK with it. It seems to me, after all, that every mission is such that only the mission leader gets the full benefit of the mission text, and only the simplest missions can fully convey their plot outside of mission text. I'd rather have an interesting and developed mission text which one has to read at leisure, accepting that this will demand soloing or an accommodating team, than sparse plot information conveyable through dialogue bubbles to everyone on the team, and I don't think that's a false dichotomy. I think it's just an artifact of the way the game conveys information. We're all expert at skipping text blocks when we want to punch things, after all.
  5. For what it's worth, this seems almost exactly right on the low end to me. I've been through up to 801.2 4/8 and don't feel confident about higher runs; last time I checked on a pylon, I believe my DPS was in the range you specified for Villainous, which was in fact the difficulty I finished over the weekend (with one death, but it's clearly avoidable on future runs). That doesn't make me feel good about the possibilities for soloing Malicious, but we'll see!
  6. I'm on what I believe is the last mission. (Don't judge; I have the time in the mornings to do about 1 mission and then I usually have to leave it for another day. So getting through this is taking me a while.) I got taken down on the Rodney/Zoe pre-Midas fight... on basic difficulty! And I'm ecstatic about this. These fights do require thinking and they aren't foregone conclusions, which is exactly as it should be, but by the same token looking at the opposition I know I can take them if I'm careful. The environment was disorienting and that put me at a disadvantage, and again, I think that's great. I *cannot wait* for the challenge fights. Also, this is another one of those arcs that makes me *feel* superheroic. Or supervillainous, I guess, but you get the point. (I'll come up with an in-character reason for my blueside character to be doing the arc, OK?) Really epic imagery that I'm stunned to have associated with the Goldbrickers, whom I always thought of as distinct third-stringers. The sideways-buildings map? Loved it. May have actually gasped audibly when I zoned in. It's great to know that the game is capable of things like this. I'm sad I didn't keep Becky alive first run-though, but there is always time. Once again, great work in my book.
  7. I've been working my way through on base difficulty preparatory to going back in and trying the new stuff. Not to gush, but this is fantastic on all levels in my book. The story is interesting, Aeon is hilarious, the fights are fun and challenging even on base, the art is far beyond what I expected. The DE cave is visually terrifying and I love it. The new mechanics I've seen so far have all been fun. I can't wait to see how things work in challenge mode! The devs have yet again impressed me; I start out with high expectations and extreme trepidation with regards to any change, and every time something new has come around it's been, as far as I can tell, soberly and thoroughly considered and tested and it's better than I expect.
  8. So I went in the first time -- SR/Claws tank, no temps/insps -- and got blasted down to about 5% health by the first spawn, at which point I left to gather my courage, psychologically broken. The second time went just fine -- easier than expected, in truth -- just by running out of the Tar Patch. I don't think the mobs could land enough tohit debuffs to make a combat difference; I was initially mistaken about which mobs had Vengeance, but by the time that was an issue it was usually down to 3 bosses, which were not too bad even buffed by their fellows' deaths. There was a lot of running around and I'm definitely not feeling confident about +2 or higher. Re: the new challenge settings, there is zero chance I can maintain the DPS on my main to take down 54 AVs with added resistance -- I know because a 54 AV with 25% lethal resistance is a hard wall for me -- but I still look forward to it as a team challenge. I mean, if one COULD solo everything on all hardmodes, the endless cycle of samsara would just begin again, right?
  9. For what it's worth, just thinking the about the endurance issues some people have mentioned vis-a-vis SR: While I can't summon the math offhand, my character doesn't seem to lack for endurance most of the time (though see the next paragraph); obviously endurance never needs to be a problem for anyone post-Incarnates, but Bruno took Ageless Radial for the debuff resistance and +recharge rather than the endurance, primarily, and I frequently forget to even use it. Looking back at Bill's build at the beginning of the thread, I see that I built for endurance recovery just about the same way, which seems to me basically the sensible way -- accolades, Physical Perfection, performance shifter procs, all the relevant healing globals and procs, as much endurance modification in Stamina as I could fit in. Under those conditions, the character can run constant fu/foc/slash or fu/spin/fu/foc/slash chains (I know, I don't use Shockwave in AoE, for Reasons, or possibly just Idiosyncrasies) for... well, I guarantee at least 45 minutes, because that's the longest time I remember paying attention to in one continous fight. And if you can do it for 45 straight minutes, you can pretty much do it forever. Mind, endurance recovery is a bit stochastic, but that's just a way of life for SR; sometimes the dice come up badly and the blue bar shrinks unexpectedly, just like the green bar, but it seems to work out fine over the course of things. Indeed, my experience is that this is true even exemped down to the lowest level at which those chains can be run, which is well below Physical Perfection's availability. It is perhaps also worth noting that the lack of endurance debuff resistance doesn't really bother me on SR; a single Malta Sapper hit is sufficient to drain about half a bar, but odds being what they are, the chances of even a sizeable, high-level Malta spawn hitting twice before I can burn them all down are quite small. And perhaps regrettably, experience teaches that an SR tank is sufficiently durable to survive a complete toggle drop in the middle of a reasonably challenging spawn (Malta 4/8) just by popping blues, retoggling, and starting over. Not that this should happen normally except for my own stupidity. So what I'm saying is, I don't even consider the endurance thing, either self- or other-induced, to be a hole for SR. Indeed, it's one more thing I like about SR: Its primary layer of damage mitigation is (almost) perfectly smooth and gapless. You can wander into virtually any situation (hi eyeballs, Hami) without having to think too hard in advance about what you might be facing. I'll trade some situation-specific durability for that go-anywhere utility. (I'm obviously fired by evangelical furor by this thread....)
  10. So my main, and without a doubt the all-around strongest character I've ever made, is an SR/Claws tank. But at the same time, I confess to two of the epistemic flaws mentioned in this very thread. First, I didn't believe, prior to trying it, that SR could be effective on tanks, because I drastically underestimated the scaling resistance. I just didn't think of the set as layered mitigation, but as a one-trick pony, as Werner put it earlier in the thread. I had tried it once on live on a tank, but not to max level, and definitely not to the point of having a serious build or taking on serious opposition. Second, I never tried Claws on live. Just didn't like the theme; I know, I know, I'm a namby-pamby concept guy, but I didn't like the notion of my characters running around and gutting people with claws. I'll just punch them into brain damage, tyvm. But I did make a sort of casual bio/claws tanker on Homecoming and I really got to enjoy the set's gameplay, for reasons everybody on here already understands. It plays incredibly smoothly, it's got a great balance of single-target and AoE, and most important for my simple mind, Followup means that I don't have to pay attention to a Build-Up power. One less thing to think about. Even THAT didn't really click for me -- the bio/claws was just funsies, not a serious build -- until I ran across a thread in which Bill Z. mentioned the exact amount of recharge necessary to run a gapless FU-Foc-Slash attack chain. Now, I'm not good at attack chains -- I'm more of an impulse button-masher -- but I saw the number and I thought, well, dang, I can put that together on an SR tank, no problem. Let's give it a try. So I did. It really was that simple -- one thread, a global recharge percentage, and some back-of-a-Post-It math that put primary and secondary choices together for me. And it is MAGIC. I took the Widow claws to kinda make it look like he's punching, and this character is glorious fun. I'm not going to pretend it's as bleeding-edge as the builds of some folks posting in this thread, but it exemps well all the way down to level 1, can do the stupid pet tricks stuff, suffers anxiety from Rularuu but can still take them at 4/8, et cetera. Only has to worry about four offensive buttons, which is good for my simple mind. So cheers to SR/Claws, I say. And a special thanks, Bill, for casually posting a number that gave me my favorite character.
  11. Well, you certainly make sense there. I'm going to have to redo the math; I wouldn't have thought Fu/G/Foc/S would have worked with 170% global and no recharge in the powers. I definitely didn't make my build to maximize procs; each attack includes one damage proc and one other, but the others are just tanker ATO procs and Achilles, and I favored hitting the 300-something% recharge target over optimizing proc chances. Honestly, I'm behind the meta on procs, and that could well be it. This build *would* be at 170% global without the sets in those three attacks, so your line of thought is tempting.... Ah well. Thanks for the knowledgeable input! Now I need to think about whether it's more arduous to grind up a new character or to scrap this one's concept and redo. --B, imagining a fist punching Marauder, forever
  12. My sense is Gloom would bump up the damage a bit. But I didn't think it was *that* much. And I'm running close to *ten* minutes on a pylon, running near-gapless FU/Foc/Slash. That can't be right, surely? (And while I can't leverage both -res procs, I've got one of them going, and they don't stack, right?) I mean, I'm keeping up status protection so I never get knocked down, I never have to stop to heal, obviously I'm not losing time-on-target. I do have to stop every few minutes to hit Ageless, but that's the only departure from 3-2-1-repeat. I feel like my time is almost supernaturally bad here, which is why I turned to the forum. 😛 --Bodhi
  13. So earlier today I posted something about an underperforming SR/Claws tanker, but apparently I did so without looking down the page to see this. I am a forum noob! I scourge myself with nettles in penitence. But in the meantime: This exchange made my ears perk up. I'm running a relatively new SR/Claws character whose ST chain is Followup/Focus/Slash and I'm not even coming within shouting distance of three minutes on a pylon. It's embarrassing! Anybody on this thread got a sense of what I'm doing wrong? Genuinely not trying to threadjack, just trying to pseudo-merge two related threads. Here's the other topic: Thanks and apologies simultaneously, --Bodhi
  14. Thanks! He was running T1 Degenerative at the time of the test; the speed of attacks ensured that the debuff was pretty much constant, judging by visual effects. That's not a perfect judgment, though, and I will certainly try again after I've ground up the mats for T3! I have to confess, though, it still feels like the raw damage is too low for what an optimal Claws attack chain ought to be delivering, regardless of associated debuffs. Maybe my expectations are just distorted. He's fine with lower-level AVs, but that +4 setting is just a wall right now. --B
  15. Folks: I recently tried to make a high-damage tank for +4 AVs. He's SR/Claws, because that seemed like a simple way to get high enough recharge to run what seemed to me like the best attack chain. However! Having more or less finished his build, I found his pylon time was abysmal -- I stopped watching the clock, but it was around ten minutes -- and he couldn't overcome the regen of +4 Marauder or Nightstar. What's going on here? The character has a reliable global recharge of 202.5%, increased by the Ouroboros day job and/or T3 Ageless. He's got a global damage bonus of 18%, obviously increased by Focus. He's running Followup/Focus/Slash, not quite gapless but close enough (I think). He's running T3 Musculature core. Slotting for his main attacks is Superior Might of the Tanker on Followup (all except Acc/Dam) plus the Gaussian's proc, Apocalypse on Focus (all except Dam) plus the Superior Gauntleted Fist proc, and Hecatomb on Slash (all except Dam), plus the Achilles' Heel proc. What am I doing wrong? Help me, Forum-Wan! You're my only hope! -Bodhi P.S.: I fear I'm a luddite and don't use Mids, so I can't post a build. Happy to give more details if it would help the critique.
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