Jump to content

quietkane

Members
  • Posts

    10
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Reputation

4 Neutral
  1. Today I learned how many players have never played the Baby New Year missions in Pocket D... >_>
  2. Y'know, I'm not that impressed with Psi Mastery on Doms, either. I want to love Mind Link, but it just doesn't seem as good in practice as it seems on paper. I always wind up reverting to Soul or Ice for Soul Drain or Sleet.
  3. OK, you're right that Super Reflexes is allowed to be pretty tough from an early level on a Tanker. Its defensive package isn't complete until level 29 on Brutes, which is what the OP was talking about, so that's why I called it bad below 30. Still, my experience is with Tankers, so I guess it wasn't completely fair to lump it in with Invuln and Ice in that way. However, even as a Tanker set, Super Reflexes has several issues that Invuln and Ice do suffer from: SR is very power hungry, as you mention, and it isn't much better when it comes to slots. Because all of its resists are in its auto powers and most of its defense is in its toggles, SR must take its first 7 powers. Delaying any of them delays your ability to tank for your team. Contrast this to Shield Defense whose toughness mostly lives in 4 powers, Willpower which can get away with only three powers for far longer than it has any business doing so, or Dark Armor whose toughness budget is almost entirely Dark Regeneration. While the set's toughness being spread out does mean that SR can't "miss" its key power, it also means that you have much less build flexibility. Save for Elude, basically every SR tanker has the same power picks, and pretty much the same slotting for those powers. Super Reflexes has a Tier 9 which does not make you any tougher as a Tanker unless your enemies have +ToHit or -Defense. To be fair, the most-run TF in the game has an enemy set which has a crap-ton of -Defense, but I would still wager most players spend at least half of their time fighting enemies that don't bring -Defense or +ToHit. It's useful that at least one of its powers is skippable, but when you compare it to Shield which both can reach soft-capped defenses and has a Tier 9 which hard caps your S/L resists, it does sort of leave something to be desired. This is also bad design because the game does nothing to explain to a player that any Defense over 45% won't help them in most situations. That's information that the player base discovered for themselves. If you don't read the forums or research builds, you sort don't have any way of knowing that Elude is useless most of the time for a Tanker. Super Reflexes mostly doesn't do anything except make you tougher. That can be appropriate for Scrappers and Stalkers, but it's borderline for Brutes, and it's a straight-up flaw for a Tanker set. It is tied for having the worst aggro-management kit, it does nothing to help your endurance management, it doesn't help bring the enemies down faster, and it does nothing to help keep the rest of your team safe if you lose aggro or the enemies have a lot of AoE. It is slightly better than Invuln in this regard in that Quickness can make you better at doing any of those things if your other powers do them, but otherwise Super Reflexes is only about making you tougher, and that's only half of a Tanker's job. SR's mitigation isn't much more than a whole lot of defense. Which, yes, that's powerful, but it's also a reachable goal for other sets that bring other mitigation tools to the table. Shield Defense can hit 45% defense against all ranges with just Maneuvers, Combat Jumping, and the two +3% Defense IOs, and it has native, always-on resists that are roughly as good as SR's scaling resists are at 25% health. Bio Armor gets to ~42% defense against everything but S/L with Combat Jumping, Weave, and the two +3% Defense IOs, and it has a ton of other mitigation tools. The point is, it may be easy to get SR to the soft-cap in defense, but it is quite difficult to get it much tougher than that because of the way pool powers and set IOs grant other mitigation. If your goal is a cheap build with lots of +Recharge that's tough enough to tank +1x4, then Super Reflexes is great. If your goal is a reasonably-costed build which is tough enough to tank +4x8 without outside assistance, Super Reflexes is playing on hard mode. "Astonishingly powerful" is clearly a subjective statement. My Will, Dark, Elec, and Bio Tankers are all much tougher than my SR Tanker, and of the four only the Bio Tanker spent more on her build by a significant amount. Can my SR Tanker still tank for an ITF? Absolutely. But I feel like I'm working harder for it on him than on my other tanks.
  4. I'm guessing this is a display bug. In the Auction House interface, when I go to check the current price of a couple of ATOs that I have outstanding bids on, the last 5 transaction window shows one winning bid in what I consider the normal range for the ATO, and then four winning bids well under 1m inf. My own bids are over 5m, and in one case, I can actually see that one of those bids has won and the others are still outstanding. Screenshot of that latter case attached.
  5. I know you mentioned Brute, but I have recently gotten every Tanker primary to level 40 or higher, so I'm here to provide some thoughts on melee sets: Invulnerability, Super Reflexes, and Ice Armor are all bad sets below level 30, and of those three only Ice Armor feels like it matures into a good set without devoting a significant budget and effort into shoring up your weaknesses via IOs. Even then, Ice Armor doesn't feel quite as tough as other sets, it's just that it's tough enough to get most jobs done, and it offers enough other benefits that it feels like you've made a deliberate trade-off of peak toughness for some additional utility tools. Invuln can become very tough, but you have to tailor your build to make that happen, and it feels pretty end-hungry for a lot of its level curve. Invuln also doesn't do anything but make you tougher, which is sort of not that much fun in my book. SR is in more or less the same boat as Invuln. Willpower, as many in this thread have said, is a completely effortless set. It is practically nothing but toggles and auto powers, it helps with your endurance management, and it is reasonably tough if you're willing to take and use its Tier 9. Honestly, High Pain Threshold, Fast Healing, and Rise to the Challenge are pretty much good enough to get you to the mid 20's all by themselves. Shield Defense is surprisingly tough for a set which only actually has 5 powers which do anything to make you tougher. And it has three different powers which offer some pretty cool utility. It, like Super Reflexes, has a click mez protection power, though, so while it is good at its job, I wouldn't count it as an easy set to play. Of all the defensive sets, Stone Armor makes the most direct, obvious trade-off. It has more toughness on demand than any other defensive set, bar none, but it pays a steep price for it in stopping power. If you want a character who doesn't feel threatened by anything, Stone Armor will do that. If you want a character that feels invincible and lethal, Stone Armor is not the set for you. Fiery Aura is the other side of that coin. It doesn't deliberately sacrifice toughness for damage, but it brings less mitigation to the table than other sets, and instead of moar tuff, it has Fiery Embrace and Burn. It doesn't have any inherent Knockback protection, it has the "classic" set Psi-hole, and it barely protects against Cold damage at all. Healing Flames is also a serious portion of its ability not to pass out when there's foes all about, so it's not the best at getting you through a tough spot without breaking a sweat. Caveat: Fiery Aura is also an anomoly in that it can hard-cap resists against its primary damage type without IOs. Because of this, you can make /FA Scrappers, Brutes, Sentinels, and Stalkers who can handle very large groups of enemies at very low levels if those enemies deal nothing but Fire damage. Hence all the Spines/Fire Brutes that exist so as to abuse this fact in Architect missions. Regeneration can be a strong set, but it is by no means easy to play. It benefits more from +recharge, +resist, or +defense than any other set, and IOs can yield those things in spades, but there's no version of Regeneration that doesn't need to manage at least two click powers on a regular basis, and missing Dull Pain can mean a face plant, so it definitely doesn't count as easy. In general, I recommend people try Willpower before they try Regeneration. Dark Armor has endurance issues. Like, bad endurance issues. Once you have overcome these endurance issues, Dark Armor feels like there's just no way to kill it, but it is a long, long road there. Dark Armor is in the same boat as Fiery Aura in that it has no inherent -KB protection, and a lot of its toughness is tied up in a click heal. It is by far the best click heal in the game, and at very high levels of IO bonuses and incarnate boosts, it will basically top up your health bar every 20 seconds, but it is still a click heal, and it is a very end-hungry click heal at that. I love Dark Armor, but it's not an easy set to get into. Electric Armor is, in my opinion, the devs' attempt to do a resist set right. It doesn't have a Psi hole, it has slightly better resists than Dark Armor or Fiery Aura has, and it has -KB protection. It also brings a click heal to the table, but it feels less like it needs that click heal to get the job done and more like it's there as another tool in your kit. It gets a +recharge buff and an end management tool, so its kit feels like it's got lots of utility. Its -KB protection only works when you're on the ground, so you can't play a flying character with it, but otherwise I would say Elec is a pretty easy defensive set to play well. Radiation Armor and Bio Armor are both sets that seem like they're trying to do everything at once. Rad has resists, Absorbs, regen, a click heal, enemy to-hit debuffs, a +recharge buff, and a couple of damage tools. Bio has +regen/+recovery, an absorb click, a +health/+end click, resists, defenses, enemy damage debuffs, enemy -resist debuffs, enemy -regen debuffs, and a +resist click that scales with nearby enemies. Of the two, Rad feels far more like you can just sort of set your toggles and click your powers as they come off cooldown. You do need to pay attention to when Particle Shielding and Radiation Therapy are up and sort of juggle those two cooldowns, but I feel like between them you actually have more survivability than you need, so you've got some wiggle room to fumble a cooldown once in a while. Bio Armor absolutely has the most ridiculous peak performance of any defensive set in the game, and when you get really good with it, you'll feel like you have toughness on demand, tons of extra damage on demand, and solid endurance management tools. It absolutely requires you to learn the ins and outs of the set to get there, though, and it is not a set that will ever let you just set your toggles and cruise. It a clear outlier in terms of its ability to become an enabler for your team, but it is the most complex defensive set in the game by a country mile. Personal recommendation? Broadsword/Shield Defense Scrapper is pretty tough, deals serious damage, has satisfyingly "crunchy" animations, solos well, and teams well. Respec out of Slash once you've got Disembowel, and don't lean on Parry too much. Pick up the Steadfast Protection Resist/+3% Defense IO and the Gladiator's Armor Resist TP/+3% Defense IOs as soon as you can afford them. If you plan to team, slot the Achilles' Heel -Resist proc in Slice and Whirling Sword when you get the chance.
  6. quietkane

    Ice/?

    I rolled one up a while back under a different name. I'm just throwing ideas out there for other people.
  7. Super Reflexes, much like Invulnerability, does basically nothing except make you tougher. It doesn't debuff enemies. It doesn't deal damage. It doesn't offer any control. And the only buff it offers you is a modest attack rate boost. Other defensive sets do other things that make the rest of the team safer even when the enemies aren't hitting you, or are using AoEs. SR does not. Some other defensive sets do things that help the team deal more damage. SR does not. Some other defensive sets help you manage your endurance. SR does not. Some other defensive sets have strong "get me out of this crappy situation" buttons. SR does not. If your goal is to be difficult to kill so long as your enemy didn't bring Tactics, SR is a great set. If your goal is to be the unbreakable fulcrum upon which your team's damage lever turns, there are better sets than Super Reflexes.
  8. quietkane

    Ice/?

    Ice/Dark. "The Long Winter." Lots of end management tools. Strong incentive to get lots of recharge. Dark's -ToHit has strong synergy with defense sets. Ice's dual aggro toggles help mitigates dark's lack of AoE. Dark's self-heal helps you rely less on Hibernate. Ice in general tends to feel a bit subpar until you're in your mid twenties, and dark melee can't completely fix that. But by level 30 it's pretty damn fun.
  9. I agree with the main sentiment of the responses in this thread, but I think there's a critical element no one here has really touched on, yet. City of Heroes is a social game. The reason many of us still love this game 15 years later is because it has fostered a particular community. And a community has certain assumptions and expectations. A full quarter of Defenders are Empathy/X, even though Empathy is not optimal for a majority of content or a majority of teams, and it's not because other Defenders can't do the same job that Empaths do. If you're a Brute with ridiculous IOs that cap your resists and allow you to live at, I dunno, 20% defense across the board, that's great. You're still not going to get picked up by most teams who are "looking for a Tank." I play Tanks because I want to be the toughest sumbitch on the team. I want to be the mountain which weathers the fury of the storm without flinching. But I also want the team to know that I am the toughest sumbitch there. To know that the safest place in the world is behind me. To know that I will not yield, because I am a mountain, and mountains do not yield. Because I don't worship at the altar of Big Orange Numbers. I worship at the altar of This May Get Crazy, But We've Got This.
  10. Two advantages: Level scaling is advantageous to the player in multiple ways at level 1, in order to make new players feel powerful. (Players have To-hit bonuses, relative enemy health levels are lower, all characters' damage values are normalized towards Blasters, etc.) The higher an enemy's level, the more powers that enemy needs to have in order to yield the full xp value for its rank. At level 1, that's only two or three powers. At level 50, it's closer to 20. So enemies designed for a level 1 mission can have only a couple of weak powers and still yield full xp, but at level 20 those same enemies would yield much less xp.
×
×
  • Create New...