gameboy1234

If I'm reading the power info right, the Dampening Bubble debuffs (by -25%) foe to-hit, all movement, perception, regeneration, and -12% to defense debuff resistance. The -To-Hit is pretty beefy and should provide some mitigation, especially when stacked with the +Def in the rest of the set. Effectively it's already -Damage. Those are some decent foe debuffs. What I'm concerned about is it doesn't really feel Tier 9 ish. Maybe that's just a perception problem but it's not a very apparent effect. The power is useful but feels "off" for a Tier 9. I'm not sure what my point is, I just wanted to point out that there are some debuffs already in the power.

Just kinda of thinking out loud, I also found Dampening Field to be a bit of a let down, esp. for a Tier 9 power. Its effects (and sfx!) where difficult to see. To make this feel like a real Tier 9, perhaps make this much more powerful, and greatly increase its recharge time as well. Greatly increase the Defense Debuff protection so that suddenly your own buffs will be most effective, increase the radius and add the Absorb that everyone has been asking for (you could replace the Regeneration buff). The other aspects can stay the same, the stationary bit is OK. Increase the recharge to (pulls number out of the air) 5 minutes, you'd have something that feels like a Tier 9 rather than as some folks are saying feeling like a clone of Faraday Cage. Overall I like the changes, they just feel a bit weak in places. It's good to see HC trying to improve some of the oldest powersets (some really need it) and overall the changes to FF are a great addition.

Well, that itself is a hassle. I wonder what's painful about that particular technique that makes HC want to avoid it.

Since some folks seem to like these, I wonder if PFF and DT are good candidates for getting the "two powers in one" treatment. PFF could work like now, or be a personal Deflection Shield+Insulation Field, your choice. Just adds a smaller amount of Def to you personally without the Affecting Only Self. Using one power locks out the other, and both are required to recharge before either can be used. Same with Detention Field. One power works like it does now (although perhaps make it a toggle, so we can turn it off), one is just an ordinary hold with a much smaller magnitude. An AoE hold even with just Mag 1 would be pretty nice. I'd like to have the choice to either put a boss or his minions in detention. Again both of these powers lock the other out and both have to recharge before the other can be used. To me those feel like easy fixes, although I'm not the one who has to create and test it.

I think more importantly the bots are cycling their powers much more often, which increases End drain quite a bit. I don't recall slotting my bots much for EndRedux either, but I also recall way back on Live that soloing with the bots was a major drag and their attacks were really slow before level 32. Which is why I started thinking about the rate of fire as the real culprit here. But I think I did slot for EndRedux eventually on Live. On HC I think I tend to start IO sets much early than back on Live, and it might now be a necessity.

I'm going to double down on this. The SFX seems to be back, but even if I go to the Tailor and color it as garishly as possible, the SFX is still too light and easy to miss. It's a pain because it doesn't stand out in a sea of rather strong SFX from other powers, and it doesn't communicate to a team what is going on. It barely communicates to me that my power has landed, and I was watching for it. I think it needs: 1. new polygons for the hold effect, the transparent bubble isn't cutting it. I'd like something nearly solid to demark the Detention Field effect. 2. New animation, the target just does an idle pose, which is easy to miss again. A more definite animation like the waist struggle one or something that has a sharp and quickly repeating animation would also help people notice that the Detention Field is active. If there's a "let me out" animation (like beating on a door or pushing against a barrier) that might work as well.

If I recall correctly, Burn Patches were a little overtuned on live because mobs were also feared by them, and would just run out. Then overlapping Burn Patches became a problem, so the patches were made so that only one would be in effect, regardless how many overlapped, and the tuning was increased somewhat to compensate for the reduced damage. If Burn Patches now look overtuned, that's why, they're a big big source of damage for Robotics, and if they get de-tuned it might have a serious effect if nothing else is done to compensate. Obviously AOE Slows or Holds will massively increase the damage done, but that's the sort of power synergy that is supposed to happen in a game. Maybe reduce the fear (substitute a chance for fear?) or something else to improve actual damage taken a bit (add a slow effect to the patch?). The idea here is that if a held mob is seen as taking too much damage, then adding a slow won't increase the damage. Holds are still synergistic, but they don't increase damage if the mob is also slowed. (Personally I didn't test this yet, but "stuff dies in a burn patch" is a big part of how Robotics kill and feels strong. Too much reduction here might weaken the set too much.)

Gotta agree with this too. Played a Bots/FF to 50 and beyond on Live, and did eventually put Force Bubble in a build once we got our 3rd build, tried it out a few times (ITF), couldn't really find a good use for it. On a small map I might have been able to use to pin enemies in corners, but the "spread out" effect pushing all enemies away a common center made it really hard to do any sort of herding with. I eventually gave up on that build. The iconic powers in FF are Deflection Field, Insulation Field, and Dispersion Bubble, and fortunately those happen really early. (And maybe Detention Field is iconic too, in a "terrible power design" sort of way.)

This is actually a good point. With Faraday Cage, you get a really strong AOE effect, and there's an effect on each affected person too, a relatively bright red effect attached to their head. You can tell pretty much at a glance who has the power effect on them. Dampening Field has a really soft visual effect, or maybe none at all. It could be dialed up without any problems imo. If nothing else, the SFX from Faraday Cage could be reused and recolored (both of them), though I'd like to see a different individual effect myself. (Detention Field still needs a better SFX too, or maybe just an SFX because it seems to have none at all.)

Well the 16 (I thought it was 17) mob cap went away last update, so that's no longer an issue. Just get in their face any way you like, they'll all follow you now. Though quickly grabbing aggro away from the bubbler still sounds like a smart plan.

Besides auto levels from the "Freebies Menu," don't miss that you can get free IO, SO and DO from the same menu. Also if you look just below those (just beneath "Special") there's an option to Auto Enhance your character with SOs, generic IOs or IO Sets. Yup, you don't have to even get free Enh and place them manually, the game will just do it for you! It's not half bad either, though it often needs tweaking. Saves a lot of work. Some of the options in the Freebies Menu have more extensive commentary and instructions, there's one that says "How-To" that's worth reading. Like it says too that Auto Enhance if used more that once will change what the system placed before, so if you don't like the slotting it did, you can just try another.

Just randomly spitballing here: Apply a small taunt to one or both of these powers? And allow Taunt Enh to be slotted for those who want more, perhaps. Is there a Taunt proc in game? I guess also if you really want to you can get Provoke. OK now I want Personal Force Field to affect only self, *except* for Taunt powers like Provoke. Yes I want to stand in the middle of a group of foes and make waggle ears at them and go "you can't hit me, nyah nyah."

I think at the moment my "main" is the Create New Character button. Seriously, *why* do I have all these toons? I've saved Atlas Park so many time I think I should get a repeat discount. Mathew Habashy doesn't explain what's wrong to me anymore, he just points and I go there. For a while my main was my Fort, but getting every last IO I'd need for her was getting to be a pain, so I ended up making about 50 alts instead.

I'd probably slide all the tiers down so they can be picked in order as new levels come up naturally. Then I'd move Fitness back to a power pool except for Stamina, which should stay inherent. That removes exactly three powers, the same as what you got extra at level 1. Then I'd add a couple of powers to Fitness to round it out and stop there. So your "nukes at level 20" is three extra power pool picks, and you can have the same set of powers as you have now if you like, or you can pick new ones. Personally my builds are always kind of tight and I'd like to have three extra powers to chose. I'd probably increase base movement, running and jumping, somewhat to make Swift and Hurdle not needed so much, but I'd probably turn those two powers into a near-travel power if you take them. Like a Parkour travel power or something, maybe add some "wall climbing" inherent in those two powers to increase vertical movement a bit. Fitness Health is still valuable for the slots it can take. Dunno what the other two powers should be.

All I got so far is Detention Field on Test is situationally useful. Mostly solo, because otherwise it's likely to cause frustration on a team. If nothing else it could use a much stronger visual effect so folks can tell when it's applied. That's all I got. Repulsion Field and Dampening Bubble are interesting, haven't played with them much so far.

Second try on Brainstorm, I respect'd my Bots/FF with the new changes in mind, moving slots around and adding more End Redux. I skipped two powers to add in Maintenance Drone and Upgrade Robot (the second pet buff, now available at 26 instead of 32 I think). This reduced my clear time to 5 minutes from 8, although at least part of that was me being more familiar with the map and enemies. I also looked more closely at the power descriptions -- Force Bolt (now Repulsion Bolt I think) and the MM attacks apply their debuf for 30 seconds but recharge in about 10 secs or so. So I started using them more sparingly. This plus the reslotting for End Redux fixed all my personal End problems. However I also noticed that my Bots were running low on End. I don't know if that caused any delayed attacks or power problems, everything seemed OK. I think getting the Assault Bot earlier will help with the mastermind "hell levels" around 18 to 26. I really don't want to try to manually grind through those levels, though I'm hopeful they'll be a bit better. Overall, my build is a bit tighter (I had to give up two powers, though maybe I could have cut out one personal attack). Power level seems about the same. I think some folks are going to gripe that without large changes it's kind of a pain to have to respect a character for some relatively small but important changes like these (I'm talking about moving -Regen from the Assault Bot to the personal attacks), and this is my main concern. You're basically forcing two to three powers into a bots build, and it's just enough for folks to feel they need to address it, but also it isn't going to change that much in the long run, so why do it? Is there a way to let people keep their current powers until they respec? That would seem ideal to me. Don't touch the build and you have the same (old) powers, only if you create a new character or respec the current one do you have to deal with the new stuff. Edit: This is for my level 30 Bots/FF on Brainstorm, Iron Miss. In case you want to look at the build(s) (I have the original from live on Build1, and the revamped one on Build 2).

If it were up to me, I'd make things even easier at level 1. A problem with the basic game design in CoH imo is you have to grind before you get a decent power chain. This led to "cheap" powers like the origin based powers and brawl so players could have something to mash. I think a better solution would be let players have their first three primary and first two secondary powers right at level one. This would give most ATs a decent attack chain and a bit more, just so that the earliest levels aren't a drag to play. This isn't a power creep issue, it's a fun issue. And an "I win" or story mode button isn't a bad idea. For certain content, maybe TFs and other "hard" content, a solo mode with constant buffs would be fine. For regular content one can always set the difficulty to -1, which is pretty close to I win, and also asking for help is not beyond consideration either.

Thanks, I tried out the mission test beds. @Vanden So first report is clear times were very similar, 8 minutes live vs. 8.25 minutes on test. The most noticeable difference was endurance usage, which jumped at least on Force Bolt from 6.5 to 12. I ran low on End constantly and even completely out at one point on test. Never got close on Live. I have one Performance Shifter proc but that's it. Of course this is a live build so Force Bolt was completely unslotted, this is likely fixable with just some slotting. Though I kinda agree with the "slots are tight theme," not sure where I'd get a couple of extra slots. Equip Robot without any Resist IOs didn't seem to hurt anything.

Was doing some light testing, going back and forth between Test and Live. Noticed that on Live right now I don't really have much use for my personal attack (I had taken them because they help a bit at lower levels). I joined an Eochai team on Live and had little to do. On Test I would have at least had a reason to toss some attacks into the mix. Side note: someone mentioned using Pylons as damage tests. This works at 50 but a lot of gameplay doesn't occur at 50, especially if we're aiming to make changes that are friendly to new people. Some test dummies that you can actually kill and measure time on would be handy (my Bots/FF I copied over is currently level 30). Not sure how this could work because we'd need a comparison with Live. Maybe a Dev sponsored AE mission? Something like that where we can run a consistent mission with consistent enemies that work well for testing, spawned at any level, might help the testing in general. Just thinking out loud mostly...

Bots primary also gets Seeker Drones after level 32, and Fold Space will yoink a spawn right on top of them. Fold Space also means a MM doesn't have to take an alpha strike as well, and the response by a mob will usually be decently distributed across your minions, so no specific alpha strike there as well. (FF secondary is excellent for this, though it's a bit passive. I imagine /Time and /Thermal would be useful too.) Though occasionally you'll lose a bot, they're easy to replace.

Forts in general can provide a lot of benefit. Team buffs, damage (ranged or melee), control, and even tanking a bit. The only thing they can't do with their powers alone is heal, though you can dip into power pools if you must have it.

Yes, the best fix would be to figure this out. I'm curious how the contact system works. Is there a custom script that has to run per each contact? Is there something more like a vanilla text file with the mission text and other things like contacts in a simple format? One is obviously much easier to debug than the other, it should just be a matter of running this in isolation and testing the various code paths, which should only be a few, at most.

This would be a nice addition to regular arcs, anyone who participates on the whole arc gets the merit rewards and associated badges (if any). I realize there are technical limitations but a lot of the arcs are short and could just be that you did all the missions in a row, with the same team/leader and just award based on that. "Remembering" arc mission progress would be better but I realize there might be difficulties doing that.

So I deleted an old level one character to change them to the new Symphony power set. The character was "expired" after 39 days not being logged in. After deleting them I couldn't create a new character with the same name. I think there may be something wrong with the new naming code. I also did a /getglobalname on the name and it came back "nope" with no global. So I think it's deleted but something else is preventing the name from being reused. (Does the database actually delete characters, or just mark them as deleted? Could the new naming code not be checking for a character that's been marked as deleted?) EDIT: P. S. I've also recently (two days ago?) had trouble renaming a character. I renamed an existing character, played a bit, then decided to switch back to the old character name. It wouldn't let me rename it back, gave me a "That is not a suitable character name" or similar message, even though I just had the name less than an hour ago. I think it's possible this is related, there may be some way old names are "sticking around" and interfering with renaming or creating new characters.

I reported this during beta test, though for me it occurred on a Villain character. Maybe that's why? Working as intended or bug?