Seroster01

Sorry for the relatively vague title, but I'm not in front of my PC (I browse the internet on my phone while winding down for bed) & I can't find any info for Sentinel's Bio Armor anywhere on the net. I'll also apologize for being a bit fuzzy on the numbers for what I'm discussing, but the last thing I did in-game was take the power when I trained up to 35 & thus I didn't play around with it a lot other than briefly checking the numeric results of each toggle... ANYWAY, the 2nd to last power in /Bio gives a small-ish amount of Resistance by default (6% I think, so pretty solid for a Sentinel passive) & says that it gives additional bonuses depending on the current Adaptation. The listed bonuses are as follows: Defensive Adaptation gives additional resistance, Efficient Adaptation gives a bonus to max end, and Offensive Adaptation says it's bonus is +range. My general... confusion, I guess is for the Efficient & Offensive bonuses. The resistance bonus from Defensive was very small, but the power already gives a decent resistance bonus & just about any resistance is generally useful. However I was extremely underwhelmed when I looked at the combat info window & saw the bonus for Efficient. The following may be wrong, but IIRC, the bonus increases a character's maximum endurance by a fraction of a percent. That just doesn't seem like it'd do much of anything. Moving on to the bonus from Offensive; after repeatedly toggling it on & off and switching bewteen the other Adaptations, I can only conclude that either the bonus is bugged or doesn't show up in the info tracker properly. As far as the bugged portion, it might be that the effect is just completely broken & does nothing, it might be that the power's bonus was somehow overwritten by the + range bonuses from my 2 Sentinel ATOs sets, or it might not actually be bugged at all & the effect just isn't shown. That in itself could be a bug, but it could also just be a result of an alternative style of implementing +range that I'm not aware of.. Is anyone else in a position to examine these effects? This might need to be moved or created again in the bug report forums instead, but I wanted to check with other folks to make sure it wasn't an isolated issue.

Title is the question. It was pointed out in a different thread that Frankenslotting your pets was a good idea, partially because putting 2 pieces of Mark of Supremacy in each of the main pet powers would give you subsantial +rech for comparatively little slot investment. After having done that, I'm now trying to figure out what to put in the OTHER 4 slots of all the pet powers. (My character is Thugs/Time, so he's got Gang War to mule all of the auras). My first thought was that I would simply do the same thing with Command of the Mastermind (since I'd bought it before I thought about the frankenslotting) for 3 bonuses of 2% damage boosts, but I wasn't sure if a +damage set bonus would do anything, since my understanding was that few (if any) set bonuses affect pets. On one hand, I thought that no set bonuses affected pets, but on the other it seems very silly that the devs would make an MM ATO with a bonus that was almost completely useless. As such, I asked about it in the help channel & got both yes & no answers, so I figured I'd take it to the forums & see what yall had to say. Thanks for any replies.

I mean, that's all very fancy but IDC at all about 99% of what you listed off & TBQH I think most of that 99% is a waste of effort. Why would I need a keybind specifically to put an individual pet on passive? If I want a pet on passive, I want ALL my pets on passive. I also don't think individual attack commands are neccessary, since I can't think of any real situations where I want to split DPS like that. The inspirations & buffing bits might be useful, but even then I don't have enough buttons within easy reach to assign specific buttons for that when I can just use the mouse for it. Perhaps I've misunderstood how it works, but the reason I don't want to use the bind files is because I don't want to take my hand off of my mouse to use the numpad (TBH IDK how anyone could play like this...), and while I do have a Razer Naga, my abnormally short thumbs mean the only buttons within easy reach are the 6 at the "back". With that in mind, there is no ergonomically efficient way for me to use the binds, since I can't reach all the keys they use. All I really want, or could really even use well in this situation, is a command to move my T1 & T2 pets to a spot.

So I remember back on live I had a little note file that I'd saved with a custom set of macros for pet control that I'd then further modify for the specific sets. Having thought COH was gone forever, and not playing MMs in a while before that, I have long since deleted it. I'd like to try re-creating some of them, and the primary reason why is Thugs. Thugs obviously has the T3 pet being a melee attacker & the T1 & T2 pets are best used from range. This part of the equation may have changed, but when I was last playing Thugs the Bruiser's AI was terrible, and to get ANY proper usage out of him you needed to manually command him to move into melee range. This one seems easy to set, dragging the applicable command out of the Advanced Mode interface. The one that I'm drawing a blank on how to set up is actually a macro that would move only the Punks, Enforcers, & the Arsonist around the battlefield (in order to set up the best angles for their cones & to try to keep the Arsonist out of melee). Obviously I don't want the bruiser included in that cause he doesn't need to leave melee range. As such, an all pet command wouldn't work out. Anyone got suggestions? I swear there were more things that I was thinking I wanted a macro for, but of course I can't remember them now. If I remember any more I'll bring them up...

This is certainly true, but I mostly brought it up because the higher-tier Rikti seem even more resistant to S/L than most other mobs at those levels. Anyway, I was mostly bringing it up as a "keep this in mind" rather than a suggestion for more testing.

Given your powerset & choice of target, these %s may be a bit skewed. Near as I can tell the non-minion Rikti (especially the bosses, but it's not clear from your post if this was a boss Mentalist or the Lt. version) have noticeable amounts of S/L resistance, & as was mentioned Toxic is almost never resisted. Since the bonus toxic damage seems to be a % of the base damage of a power rather than a % of the actual damage done by it, the actual increase for most mobs may be smaller than this testing indicates (because the Mentalist is resisting a significant amount of the lethal damage while having little to no resistance to the toxic).

I'd like to disagree a bit with your input on Offensive Adaptation. In addition to the +25% damage mod it gives +7.5% to-hit AND it adds an effect to your attacks that causes bonus Toxic damage. I'm not sure on the #s for Sentinels, but for Scrappers the Toxic dmg is about 10% of the base damage. -7.5 resistance to all damage is a comparatively higher cost for Sentinels than other ATs given our lower base #s, but barring an odd situation where you're the primary tank for a large group I think Offensive Adaptation is well worth it. In a bit of a different vein, for whatever reason, BR/Bio felt significantly weaker than my Dark & Water /Bio Sents. My anecdotal assumption from my time playing him is that BR doesn't look like it gets as big of a boost from the +toxic portion of Offensive Adaptation, probably due to how the set is balanced around the Disintegration mechanic & as such the base damage of the abilities (& thus the toxic damage) is lower, but I have no empirical evidence for this. It could also simply be due to the fact that the other options have better defensive bonuses in their kits (Water has significant KD, Slows, & a self-heal in its main rotation, while Dark has a lot of to-hit Debuffs, a short hold, & a bit of Knockdown itself), or it could just be that the AOE doesn't seem very strong without some Disintegration luck... IDK. But he felt significantly less damaging than the other 2.

I'm not really a programmer, but a thought occurred to me based on your word choice & I figured I'd bring it up; would it be easier to implement the effects as parts of the adaptation & then have them toggle on/off based on whether the other abilities are on? In theory it would be simpler than having to change every power individually for each adaptation. Of course this primarily applies to the passive self-effects of the toggles, but those were my primary concern so that's fine with me. You may already be doing this, but I thought it was worth bringing up in case it hadn't been considered & might make things easier.

OK, TYVM. The current version seems to have fixed the Refractor Beam issue, but Bio Armor is still funky (or more specifically the Adaptations are) for both Scrappers & Sentinels. Bear in mind that I haven't checked any of the #s for accuracy, I'm just toggling things on & off to see if they have any effect on the "View Totals" window. For Scrappers, toggling on Def. Adaptation doesn't seem to do anything except apply the self -damage. Efficient Adaptation seems to affect the things it's supposed to, so it seems OK. Offensive Adaptation seems to've been partially resolved, as it now shows +damage & +To-hit modifiers, but it doesn't add the bonus toxic damage into the damage calculations. Sentinel's version doesn't seem to have been changed, as it has the issue with Off. Adaptation that I originally posted about (has no shown effect except the self -res), Def. Adaptation seems to only apply the self -dam, and Eff. Adaptation doesn't seem to do ANYTHING. This might all be low priority, but a large part of my original questions had to do with trying to find the right version, and if nothing else y'all have pointed me in the right direction for that. Thanks!

Honestly that's part of my confusion. People keep talking about 2.6 & I must be real out of the loop somehow. The main window says it's 2.23. I DL'd it off the front page a few days ago, and just DL'd it again to double check, still 2.23. How do people get ahold of the 2.6?

Something I'd clarification on, does it auto-update every time it's started up? Or do I need to keep downloading updates off of the first post? Edit: is there a list of what's been updated? My primary concern is that Offensive Adaptation in Bio Armor doesn't seem to do anything in mids except apply the -7.5 resistance, at least as far as I can tell. Another one that springs to mind is the Sentinel Beam Rifle's unique targeted AOE ability (Refractor something-or-other) will only take ranged ST sets. It may or may not also have incorrect description text, cause I think it has the description text for the Snipe ability it replaces from the other ATs sets.

Had a question that isn't BR related & if it doesn't get answered I suppose I can make another thread, but in the interest of trying to keep thread counts down I'll ask here: Does anyone know how much Water Blast's Tidal Power increases the damage of Water Burst & Geyser? I've got my BR/Bio to the same level range as my other recent Sentinel creation & BR seems MUCH better at ST, but WBs AoE seems much stronger. This could be due to the differences in set mechanics, including both the fact that the damage of BRs AoE seems a bit delayed after cast, that I usually delay my AOE to see if I can proc some Disintegration spread, & that Tidal Forces -> Water Burst is a great opener. I'm also aware that WB has an abnormal max target count for Sentinels. But whatever the reason, Water Burst and Steam Spray seem much more bursty than Cutting Beam & Refractor whatever-it-is. The T9s could shake things up even more depending on how much bonus 3 stacks of Tidal Power gives to Geyser. It's a tough call for me right now cause BR seems really great for harder targets, but AoE damage is one of the main reasons I was trying Sentinel. This also prompted me to think about the following: how long does the Disintegration effect actually last? Thanks for any responses folks.

Decided to make a Beam Rifle/Bio armor character & having played him a bit he seems pretty strong. My primary question is a relatively simple one; usually I only take the T2 ST power for my Sentinels, but given how Disintegration spread works I thought adding the T1 to my chain might be optimal. Of course that requires I take some other power out of the build & the appropriate # of enhancements to make it a useful attack. I also haven't reached high enough level for Piercing Beam, so maybe that will increase the amount of spread I get? Anyway, if folks have some feedback on this or tips/tricks for BR in general, I'd love to hear them!

Well, I'm not Kael either, but here's another take on WM/Bio to compare. I went for more survivability and got softcapped S/L and F/C, as well as nearly hardcapped S/L res with offensive adaptation (combat attributes in game show 73.56% with 1 enemy in melee range). Hasten is also perma. Naturally this comes at a cost of lower DPS as I had to go for Core Agility. Haven't done any Pylon runs yet as I want to get the the Core Assault T4 first instead of my current Radial, but I'm certain that my numbers are going to be significantly lower than Kael's. This one does look significantly tankier which I like, but it does run into the same thing I noticed on Doyler's, there's no -res proc in Shatter, which I something I definitely want. I didn't play with the setup like I did the other, but it'll likely have to be modified a fair bit to fit it in. I did like your idea to put a 2 set of Rectified Reticle in both tactics & BU, seems like it could potentially be very useful. Thanks for the ideas!

I've made several Sentinels & played them into the 15-20 range, but I've never had it work that way for me. I do think it'd probably be an improvement. Perhaps significantly better, if you can immediately hit someone with Vulnerable as soon as the old Opportunity wears off. Anyway, that's certainly an odd story.

What was poorly conceived was much more how they went about creating multiplayer Fallout than any issues with the basic idea of having a multiplayer Fallout game. They basically took a genre (RUST clones) that was over-saturated & wasn't super popular with their core fanbase, put a FO skin over it & thought it'd sell a gajillion copies. If it were more akin to a traditional RPG w/ real NPCs, towns, etc. it might've worked. Even something like a combination of Borderlands co-op with a Fallout skin would've been a much better option. As it was they created an empty game that was fundamentally built around the settlement building system from FO4 (which wasn't super popular to begin with) and thus it flopped massively.

I'll believe TES6 is a financial flop when I see it, and not before. There's an exceptionally vocal portion of internet fandom that shits all over Bethesda constantly, & Fallout 76 was a terrible idea from the get-go, but they've released 99 million versions of Skyrim because people keep buying them. Until TES6 crashes & burns you can color me skeptical that the majority of gamers care about most of the things that Bethesda keeps getting mocked for. As to the death of the Fantasy genre, you may very well be right, & I'll really miss it. But that doesn't really have much effect on what we're specifically discussing. For whatever reason, people who like MMOs like medieval fantasy. Maybe that will change in the long-term, perhaps it already would've if there were more interest in the MMO genre currently. But TBQH, I think MMOs are going to go the way of the dodo much faster than Fantasy RPGs. Still, even if things have changed or would change, at the time when WoW & CoX were competing MMOs & RPGs = fantasy settings, and to this day fantasy-based MMOs seem much more widespread & successful than any other genre of MMO. Just like I said last time, the question isn't at all about what "most people" like, it's about what the people who like to play MMOs like, or more specifically what they liked from 2005-2012. For whatever reason, that seems to be medieval fantasy. /shrug

Almost all of the "superhero mania" in mainstream culture is really just driven by the MCU stuff. If that falters, expect superheroes to largely disappear. It's not like superheroes movies didn't exist until Iron Man. They did, quite a bit, and remained niche. What's not niche is MCU, but don't expect it to bleed over to superheroes as a genre. The DCEU has done rather well for itself after finding its stride at last and banishing away the influence of Snyder, and both Marvel and DC's television efforts have proven to be highly successful. Meanwhile swords and sorcery fantasy's last big attempt at the box office was the Hobbit Trilogy and the Warcraft movie; the former of which made money but sucked, the latter of which was only saved from box office failure by China. My hero academia is also the current new hotness in Shonen Anime with a highly active and deeply involved fandom, and One Punch man was also a significant phenomenom in Anime circles; meanwhile most western fantasy influenced animes just come and go with little long term noteworthiness. The idea that it's just Marvel or that Fantasy is a more popular aesthetic outside of nerd spaces simply doesn't bear with reality. Tabletop and Video Gaming (and non-visual literature) are Gygaxian Fantasy's primary redoubts and always have been. But games traditionally move far fewer units than film (they make more money because unit prices are higher and because of microtransactions, but far more people watch a movie that grossed a billion than played a game that grossed a similar amount). More people watched Aquaman than have ever played world of warcraft and Dungeons and Dragons and Warhammer: Age of Sigmar; the two big tabletop fantasy games (for role playing and wargaming respectively) likely count playerbases in the hundreds of thousands to single digit millions at absolute best. And even in video gaming: swords and sorcery faux-medieval european fantasy is...kind of middling in popularity at most? The current hottest games are by and large set in either modern (or faux-modern/fantastical modern) settings or have a vague sci-fi or outright space fantasy aesthetic. Aesthetics that allow for guns are like; the big thing in gaming and have been for years. I'm not going to disagree with any of your over-arching points, but the habits & interests of people who are likely to play MMOs is really what we're discussing here, not the "overall" popularity of Fantasy vs. Superheroes. Whether Joe Blow on the street likes Superheroes & FPS games more than Fantasy games doesn't really matter if he's not willing to pony up $15 a month to be "allowed" to spend days worth of playing & planning time trying to eke out optimal performance on individual characters. Joe Blow is not the target audience for MMOs, because Joe wants to drop into a game for 30 minutes at a time, shoot some dudes in the face & then quit playing after 2 months & move on to the Next Big Game. MMOs are designed for Nerdy McNerdyson, who wants to devote significant amounts of his time to making his character kick Infinite Ass. Nerdy Mcnerdyson is almost always an RPG enthusiast, because RPGs & MMOs are designed & targeted at the same primary audience. Now, these days there's quite a bit of overlap between genres, but the overwhelming majority of mainstream & even indie games that are promoted as RPGs are either completely medieval fantasy or medieval fantasy + various levels of Steampunk. It's certainly not exclusively so, but think of the following; have you ever seen a Superhero-themed RPG that wasn't an MMO? Cause I can't think of a single one. Maybe someone else can tell me one? So yes, the issue of which genre is more popular & monetarily valuable would undoubtedly go to Superheroes. The problem with applying that to the discussion at hand is that the Venn Diagram of people who like Superheroes & the people who like to play MMOs seems to have much less overlap than the diagram of people who like medieval fantasy & like to play MMOs.

That's assuming, of course, that everyone is in agreement that the latest chapters in the saga are just universally bad. There are some of us who enjoy them, while also acknowledging that they are not quite the same as the Star Wars I grew up with. Doesn't make them inherently bad, just different. :) I would second this for the most part. If nothing else, I've enjoyed the first 2 of the new ones more than I remember liking the first 2 of the Prequel Trilogy, though it's kind of a wash. Phantom Menace was just... bad. Attack of the clones I barely remember. I did rather like Revenge of the Sith, so that was a positive. In the Sequel Trilogy the first movie was similar to Attack of the Clones for me, imminently forgettable. In what is probably a super unpopular opinion, I rather liked the second movie. TBH, I liked it about as well as any Star Wars I've seen. It was basically a movie about imperfect mentors/parental figures who had experienced colossal failure & then having them try to change & be better. Eventually Luke accepts his failures & resolves to press on in spite of them, and he gets a nice little conclusion to his arc. Now, ole Ben Swolo is a character I really dislike in large part because his arc has been pretty aweful, since it feels (like many things from the 1st to the 2nd movie) they decided to abandon the arc they originally intended for him & as such his actions in the 2nd film feel disjointed &... silly. It also feels like they really bungled the arc for the super-secret Leaderguy, at least for now... But there's at least 1 more movie & that could let them end on a strong note. I'm not burying my opinion on this set of movies just yet. Anyway, there's a lot of poorly thought out plot points & bad acting throughout the whole series. At the very least Hayden Christiansen was worse in the Prequels IMO than anything in the Sequel Trilogy to date. Honestly compared to the Prequels I'm not sure why the Sequel Trilogy gets so much crap. Of course, this is all opinion. 8)

I'd debate whether pure DPS ATs have more AOE damage than a properly built Crab at least. The other ATd damage per attack is probably a fair amount higher, but the sheer # AOE attacks with low-to-moderate cooldowns that crabber has access to by lvl 50 means they can have an almost continuous attack chain of cones & targeted AOE, which is full of -def & -res effects. The combination of the sheer volume of attacks & their debuffs makes it hard for other ATs to put out the same level of continuous AoE damage & then makes your groups' AoE that much more effective.

What you're describing is typically due to market shenanigans that the homecoming servers use as part of the "i25" package. I can't speak for certain on ATOs, cause it seems like there's a few rare exceptions to the following system & Superior ATOs may be one of them. But almost everything that's sold on the market uses the following system: Put simply, when you list an item on the market it gets dropped into a "bucket". This bucket is basically just a count of the # of that item up for sale, and it includes any level of that item & makes no differentiation between attuned/not attuned. This results in several potential shenanigans, which all revolves around the result of the previous concept: someone can list a level 10 non-attuned IO & someone else is able to buy it as whatever version of that IO that they want. IE, a lvl 10 was listed but whoever buys it can get it as a level 50, or attuned, etc. & the price is exactly the same. The biggest result of this is that it's almost always cheaper to buy the attuned version of an IO off the market than it is to craft the IO & attune it yourself (because you basically get a 3-4M catalyst "for free"). For the IOs that cost less than a catalyst (most of them) this is potentially a significant "profit". A side effect is that for situations like your question, normal ATOs are usually in the same bucket as their Superior counterparts, no attunement required. As I mentioned at the start this may not be accurate for ATOs, but I haven't looked real far into the exceptions to the system so I could be talking a lot about something unrelated...

I actually find that WM's narrow cone (Shatter) is much less of a "line" than the similar attacks on Katana & Broadsword, & thus much easier to take full advantage of. IIRC, it actually has a cone size similar to (maybe identical to?) to Shadow Maul. The KT/BS cones are like 10-20°, & I think Shatter's cone is 30-45°. In any event, Crowd Control is a long time in coming (level 32!), but man is it awesome. Given the combination of its recharge, animation time, & the size/shape of the cone it seems exceptionally good. This is mostly because it has good damage, but it's ALSO very good CC, as it feels like the chance for Knockdown is really high & given that it's Knockdown it works against most Bosses just as well as it does against Minions & Lts. If you can get a good level of +rech the mobs will basically stand up just in time for you to knock them down again. Whirling Mace seems about as meh as most all of the other versions of "Spinny weapon attack" that were introduced at launch. Mine never got very well enhanced, but I never felt like the damage was worth the animation time compared to Shatter & CC. When I got most of my +rech built & threw the +crit chance proc in Jawbreaker, there wasn't really enough downtime between the 3 of them for the animation to fit, so I dropped it out of my build. Once I get him fully built out I might even be able to continually chain Shatter & CC back-to-back... But i'm not sure it'll end up that way & even if it did I'd probably want to work in Jawbreaker for a shot at the proc (CC critting every mob in a big stack is glorious to behold.) Honestly I wish I could fit the +Crit into Shatter because it gets used more reliably in AoE situations (Jawbreaker gets dropped a lot because I have to move, switch targets, etc.) But from what I understand putting a -res proc in Shatter is a bigger deal than putting the crit proc in it, which means you can't get the 10% +rech for 6-slotting the ATO set, so I gave up. All of that being said, if you're talking fully developed characters it seems like the damage #s on basically every piece of TW are hilariously overtuned. It pays for this by having huge end drain with the optimal attack chain, being a pretty late bloomer, & being a bit harder to master than most sets, but the end-game results are ridiculous. Thus, TW is likely much better at AOE than any of the other sets (just like it is at ST...)

Title is basically the question. This question came up primarily in regards to Bio Armor, Will Power, and other sets that have something similar or identical to Stamina in their kits (at least in terms of Recovery/sec). For pretty much any character that doesn't have these things, putting a single slot in stamina is a bad idea, and the normal suggestion I've seen amounts to 2 pure-recovery IOs (usually a generic + Perf Shift End mod) and the Perf Shift proc. But since several character concepts can include basically double stamina, it seems they'd might be able to allocate those slots to something else (slots that I really for my current WM/Bio build plan, and I might use it on other characters if it works out well). Given that this question this spans across multiple classes, the fact that the same power set for different ATs almost always have different values, & that I didn't see anything like an AT-agnostic "Builds" board, I thought General would be a good place to put it. My assumption, given what I've seen in other discussions of how to slot stamina, is that 1 50+5 generic End mod IO in each power would probably be the best, but I wasn't sure if that was actually better than a Perf Shift in each, or if either scenario would have a specific set of upsides & downsides. Anyone got advice for this?

In my neck of the UK people pronounce Ms and Miss differently. In the US, too. Miss is pronounced like the word "miss", but "Ms." is pronounced "miz". If there is "0 difference" in the way you pronounce those two words, you're pronouncing at least one of them wrong. Perhaps it depends on where you live? I've never heard anyone specifically called or request to be called "Mizz", at least not to differentiate it from "Miss". Some people kinda slur the difference between them due to accent or such, like my mother pronounces "Wash" as "Warsh" cause she grew up in rural TX... but at the very least I have never in my life, in any setting, had anyone bring up that there was an intentional difference between "Mizz" & "Miss". Regional dialect differences perhaps? A thought I just had that kinda goes against my point but not really, I think at least once when I was filling out paperwork & it had the boxes at the top to check your preferred Mr./Mrs./Ms., there was an option for "Mz.", and I remember thinking that was very odd... still different though.

Could you clarify this bit for me? I don't really understand this lumping together of Whirling with my ST attacks, though it may have to do with the following: I originally left Whirling out of my build because Crowd Control and Shatter are good enough AoE & on short enough cooldowns even at my current level of +rech that I don't really need it. Whirling's animation seems really long for the damage it does, though since I'm not in front of my PC right now I can't say for certain. With that in mind, both Whirling and/or Bash were incorporated almost purely to be set mules, so it doesn't matter much very much to me which of those 2 goes in that power slot. I suppose Whirling would be slightly more useful than bash, but even then I don't have a good place to hotkey it with all the other buttons I have for WM+Bio + my priority target macro.