oedipus_tex

I have a morbid desire to see what happens when 8 players run Arctic Air. Anyone want to form an 8 player Ice Control team? You can be any secondary, but the primary must be Ice Control. This could be the ice cold alternative to that team of green plant lovers. Who's in? I can run weekends or afternoons, American time.

Some do, some don't. Repulsion Bomb and Force Bolt (Force Field) do. Gale (Storm) does. Lightning Storm (Storm) does not.

While we're talking about Radiation, think about whether Nature isn't even more attractive to you. Radiation and Nature are sister sets. Nature has the fewer debuffs of the two, specifically (much) less Regen. It has much better endurance management and team buffs though. Many other powers are the same or similar.

Does anyone actually play Thorns? I keep wanting to try it, but then backing away because it doesn't seem to have much going for it. Build Up and Thorntrops are the special powers, which seem pretty dull. Is there an evangelist for Thorns out there? I don't know that I've even seen a Thorns Dominator in the game before.

Despite its slow cast speed, Psionic Tornado is one of the most satisfying powers in the game. The knock up animation causes the enemy to do a flip and land on its back. The animation is rarely seen in-game because knock up is rare. When it procs on a bunch of enemies at once it is very very cool looking. I always wished there was a power with 100% chance to cause the flip animation. I think it can happen if you Mass Levitate a bunch of enemies who have been hit with an immobilize that raises knock resistance.

I agree Deflection and Insulation Shield are the two most natural powers to merge. We just need to keep in mind that whatever replaces Insulation Shield would have to be a Defense power. There are existing characters with Luck of the Gambler and other IOs slotted in both powers, to avoid character corruption the new power has to take similar sets. A potential replacement for Insulation Shield would be self cast only, keep IS's graphic, and apply a minor amount of Defense, some Absorb, and the Recovery and Endurance Resistance that exist in Insulation Shield. Currently, Force Field grants great Recovery and Endurance resistance to to teammates but gets none for themselves.

I think Energy Blast (exclusively) should be able to turn its knockback on or off at will. They are masters of their energy blasts. Dual Pistols already has this mechanic. I'd like to be able to decide shot to shot if I want knockback. Then I could slot the attacks for knockback distance but only apply it when I want it. Brilliant.

The existence of powers that gain strength when more enemies are around you has always been counter balanced by the threat those enemies present to you. On squishy characters in particular, most of those powers were actually designed with the idea that entertaining too many enemies at once was risky but by taking the risk you should gain some reward. Nothing changes there, just the degree of the threat they pose when the character is heavily armored in ways the game didn't originally anticipate.

So the answer is "Yes." Thanks. I am not that familiar with Spirit Ward because it was added very late in the game's cycle. I just took a look at it on the test server. It does appear to be a third kind of "Absorb" power. Each tick of Absorption is applied manually with a delay. So, it could work in Deflection Shield, but you'd need to manually add ticks for every delay in re-application. How often do you envision a Force Fielder re-applying the power? If it's every 4 minutes like the current duration of Deflection Shield and the absorb reapplied every 3 seconds, you'd need 80 instances of manual reapplication in the code. You could get that number down to 24 ticks if you were ok with a reapply only every 10 seconds though. It's an interesting thought.

Does Absorb work that way though? There are only 2 types of absorb I can think of: The toggle kind that exists in Blaster secondaries that adds back a little Absorb each pulse. The Absorb has a short duration (generally 3 seconds) that is constantly expiring, preventing the character from building up a huge block of absorb from multiple ticks. The net effect is chipping off a lot of damage if it comes in slowly, say through a DoT, but doing little to absorb big alphas. The cast kind that instantly applies a large volume of Absorb. This is the kind that Nature Affinity has in Wild Bastion. The Absorb lasts until it expires (I think this is one minute but the in game power data is hard to read on Absorb times) or it is dropped from taking hits. This kind is equally good at handling damage over time or a huge alpha strike. Is there an "Absorb Over Time" power in the game? There are "Heal Over Time" powers (example: Temporal Mending in the Time set). Is there an Absorb Over Time I've missed? I would think the effect of that power would mean with every tick your max Absorb steadily creeps up. The only Absorb over time effects I know of rely on toggles were the Absorb constantly expires and is then reapplied. But I may have missed a power.

I think Energy Blast (exclusively) should have a power to toggle the strength of their knocks between knockback, knockdown, and none. That mechanic exists in Dual Pistols. I want it and have always wanted it in Energy Blast, the knock expert. The IOs have helped but I would like more control over deciding, blast to blast, what I want to have happen. Sometimes ruining an enemy picnic with a knockback Nova is just what I wanted. What this would let me do is slot as much knockback strength as possible in my blasts, then decide with each shot whether I wanted to apply it. I think it would be incredibly fun to play.

It's not a bad idea. I think the mechanical aspect of it is the challenge. It's resolvable, but I think we need to think through the logistics. For Dispersion Bubble, adding Absorb may not be very difficult. We have examples of Absorb toggles in the Blaster secondary sets. Ice Manipulation has one example. It's a toggle that places a small amount of Absorb on you every tick. Here's the power's profile in the detail view in game: The game uses the term "Max Absorb" but really it just means "Absorb points." Absorb points have an amount and duration. The amount in this case is 60.24, lasting 3 seconds, non-stackable. My assumption is this could work in an AoE power like Dispersion Bubble without problem. With Deflection Shield and Insulation Shield, the difficulty is that these powers currently Recharge in 2 seconds. You'd have to figure out how to allow Force Field to apply Absorb without resulting in a scenario where Force Fielders are constantly casting the power. One solution would be to make it so the Absorb only applies on certain conditions. What you want to be careful of is putting Force Field in the position of it being an effective tactic to spam the shields. That's why I suggested doing to Detention Field what was done with the Medicine pool's injection power. Detention Field recharges in 60 seconds, in my mind the perfect Recharge time for a big, healthy chunk of +Absorb. I'd probably make the value granted a Percentage and set the value at around +35% on a Defender. I'm basing that value on Nature Affinity's Wild Bastion power, which grants 25% Absorb in a PBAoE, hitting more targets and the caster, but having a much less friendly Recharge (240 seconds--this is a true "Gather Power").

Yes, there is currently an implicit penalty when you add another enemy. The proposal is for an explicit penalty that increases with additional enemy past the Start Line for the AT/Power Set. The original developers of CoX felt that an implicit penalty was enough. Not all games do this. Some include an explicit penalty. The reason it would help City of Heroes is that currently, if you increase your defense from 40% to 45% you reduce all in coming damage by 50%. If each attack had a different chance to hit you, though, you'd smooth out the soft cap. If the Start Line was 3 opponents, the decrease in damage taken would be 50% for the first 3 opponents. But it would be 40% for the fourth opponent, 30% for the fifth, etc. Overall damage taken would not cut in half like it currently does just because a character acquired 5% defense. BTW I forgot to mention one critical thing. Because the intent is to put limits on characters whose Defense and Resists are very high, the penalty would need to be a multiplier and not a hard -1, -2, etc. A character with zero defense wouldn't lose even more Defense when under a Multi Opponent Combat penalty. They'd stay at zero. The penalty represents degredation in your performance and not a new penalty meant to smash unarmored players to bits.

Thanks for your thoughts. I agree the outcry would be extreme. I wish there were some way to have a "difficult" server with higher difficulty than the main ones. I suspect this server would be extremely popular if the mechanics were done right. One thing I don't agree with is more defense and resistance caps. I think those are fine. For example, let's say I'm a Controller. I play on teams, and usually I'm pretty good at not drawing too much aggro. But sometimes I slip up and an enemy comes running up at me. I can get some Defense to make these encounters more survivable. I consider this fine. Where the issue comes in is that the game mechanics for making me survivable to potshots by a single enemy are the same for dealing with full spawns. This is why the soft cap is so effective at making me able to survive. When I dive into a group of 16 enemies, I'm soft capped to all 16 of them. With a Multi Opponent Component in place, I'd be fine dealing with just 1 enemy. But when I tried to engage lots of enemies at once, each successive enemy gets harder to deal with. The enemy in the 16th position may be incredibly dangerous to deal with. The list would shuffle periodically, so I'd never know for sure which enemy was in which position. One thing this also does is "smooth out" the soft cap. Right now if you're at 40% defense you have half as much defense as a character at 45% defense, for the whole spawn. With Multi Opponent stat in place, you're soft capped to some of the enemies, but a couple of them you are not. So the difference is not nearly as stark.

Hi all, This suggestion is not a "real" suggestion for the main game in the sense that this is something we could implement in a direct way. IMO the change is too drastic. It's just meant to serve as a theoretical model for how to fix an issue that has cropped up in City of Heroes. If anything, it could be the model for a new zone or series of iTrials. The question this model hopes to answer is: How do you challenge players with extremely high Defense and Resistance without killing players without high survival statistics? The solution I am proposing is a statistic called Multi Opponent Combat. Concept: Multi Opponent Combat Statistic This idea is not new. In this case, I am borrowing from a series of titles run by the Simutronics corporation called "Dragonrealms" and "Gemstone IV." These online text-based games have been with us since the late 80s (Gemstone) and mid 90s (Dragonrealms). Though little known outside of MUD circles, they are still praised for their excellent game mechanics and attention to detail. (Their combat system includes damage to limbs and healing that involves scars. I won't get into that level of detail in this post but it might be worth checking out if you're curious). These games, in addition to a combat statistic for "Evasion" "Parry" and "Shield Block" (more or less our "Defense") have a statistic called "Multi Opponent" that registers the degradation of the character's defenses when engaged with multiple opponents. The idea is that a player character facing a single opponent should have high survivability, but as more opponents are added, survivability should drop. How Multi Opponent Stat Could Work in City of Heroes In City of Heroes, we have an implicit drop in survivability when more opponents are facing the character. More in coming damage = more chances to take damage. A Multi Opponent Combat statistic penalizes players explicitly for engaging too many opponents. Thus it is possible for there to be no aggro cap. Too many opponents will spell death for any hero, and he or she must actively disengage when overwhelmed. The idea is that with a Multi Opponent Statistic you make it possible for a character to be very survivable against a handful of enemies but for their survivability to plummet when they engage too many. Thus, as content developers, we have a new way to put some controls on runaway Defense and Resistance stats. We can say that a soft capped Blaster is only capped for the first 5 opponents. Then start to drop their defense for each additional opponent. Tankers would naturally have the highest Multi Opponent Skill numbers. They'd suffer the least. The Numbers I don't have any charts for how light or extreme Multi Opponent Combat statistics would work. The existing of a "soft cap" in City of Heroes makes it hard. What I would probably do tho is create a table of values like this: Amount of defense and resist a character has for each relative enemy in the list beyond the Start Line: 2) -1 Defense, -2% resist 3) -2 Defense, -3% resist 4) -2 Defense, -4% resist 5) -3 Defense, -5% resist 6) -3 Defense, -6% resist 7) -4 Defense, -7% resist ... Each step on the table represents -Defense and -Resist incurred. These values are then reduced by a factor of the character's Multi Opponent Combat stat. Note that these values don't mean that at 7 opponents the character has a global -4 Defense -7 resist. It means they have that penalty for the 7th enemy past the Start Line. The enemy at position 2 has the values as Position 2. The enemy at position 4 has the values at Position 4. You'd want to scramble the aggro list every few seconds, so enemies are constantly changing positions in the list. Also note the concept of a Start Line. The Start Line is the number of enemies developers feel it is "acceptable" for a character to enagage before the combat penalties begin. For a Tanker this may as high as 16 (they're supposed to be engaging lots of enemies) but for a Blaster as low as 1 or 2. Since Multi Opponent Combat is a statistic, it is possible some buffs Defenders/Controllers can cast can help the team out. Dispersion Bubble might make fighting multi opponents easier for example. In this way you make Force Field's defense more meaningful. Nutshell Version In essence, what I'm really saying is that the path forward may lie in adding a "Purple Patch" for the number of enemies engaged similar to how the current patch applies to level differences between character and enemy. As enemies are added to the aggro list, penalties are incurred. Again I don't suggest dropping this mechanic into the existing game. I'm just theorycrafting it and presenting it as an idea for how you can have Defense and Resistance still be valuable but still challenge players.

I didn't see Pax Arcana's suggestion earlier in the thread but I'm in total agreement. A implosion style power would be excellent for this power. They don't necessarily have to rename it, although I wouldn't mind. They didn't rename it when it changed from a Repulse power to a Knockdown. There are some technical hurdles with knocking enemies "in" toward a center, but you could teleport them instead.

I recommend passing on Ice/Ice in favor of Ice/Psi. Psi will provide you with a tool to make surviving in melee easier. The -Recharge in Psi also stacks with your -Recharge in Ice Control. Ice/Psi/Ice would be my recommendation for the full 3 selections. The Ice APP will give you a Slash/Lethal armor and a second knockdown patch, Sleet. Sleet stacked on Ice Slick increases the rate of knockdowns. Very useful for a set relying on its knockdown chance. IMO Ice Control is a hard road to take for a first Dominator. The set does not directly benefit from Domination mode in the ways you'd expect. Domination provides mezz protection and +3 Magnitude to some of the Dominator's controls. On Ice Control, the only AoE that benefits is Glacier, a hold power with poor accuracy that is only up every 240 seconds. Instead Ice Control mainly benefits from Arctic Air. It's a PBAoE toggle power with a chance to Fear or Confuse enemies. On a Controller its vulnerable to detoggle if you get mezzed, but Domination mode provides mezz protection. That's the main Dominator ice synergy. Ice Control lacks ranged hard mezzes that most other doms have. It makes up for it in "soft control." Emphasis on soft. Ice Control glaring hole is the ability to deal with alpha strikes. If you want an easier time of it, you could try Earth Control/Icy Assault, and color the Earth powers blue. You can even select a 'crystaline' look for the powers.

Repulsion Bomb got its name from its original effect. It was a power that you cast on a teammate that would cause the "bomb" looking graphic to knock enemies away from your teammate. In that form it was a positioning tool that was designed like a one-pulse Repel. When this power was converted to a quasi-attack, the rationale was that players who wanted to retain the knockback (they existed on the forums and said that changing the power would ruin the spirit of Force Field, no idea if anyone actually slots this for knockback for real) could slot knockback IOs. Force Field was always supposed to be a set that was a master of positioning. It just isn't very good at it because of the limitations of knockback and repel. f I recall correctly, Repulsion Bomb dominated the list of "worst powers in the game" for years until it was changed. The current Dispersion Repulsion Bomb (sorry, inside joke) has a 3.07 cast time. That is one of the longest in the game, more suggestive of a control power than an attack. It does have a 40% chance of a Mag 2 stun and some damage, although not damage you'd associate with an attack. It has a 30 second recharge and deals the same damage as Fistful of Arrows, which has a 1.17 cast time and recharges in 8 seconds. It does have a 40% chance to stun Minions. I've played Force Field to 50 3 times over the years and gotten to the mid 30s a half dozen times or so. I used to take Repulsion Bomb on Controllers but not Defenders, mainly because Controllers have so few other damage options. In the current game tho I'd pass on Repulsion Bomb for Force of Will.

Philotic, I respect your contributions to the community and I know that you are posting only because you want to see positive changes to the game, which is the same thing I want. I mixed up the words "Dispersion" and "Repulsion" because "Dispersion Bubble" is the name of a power in Force Field. Please respond to the idea without remarking on my credibility. Thank you.

Not bad overall. Great foundation. Incarnate Alpha slot. Which one are you going after? It will impact the build a lot. Stealth powers. I'd drop these for Manuevers or Hover+ some other power. Possibly Dragons Tail unless you skipped that on purpose. Roots. Treat this more like an AoE blast. Especially important on Plant because it deals x2 damage it should compared to all other sets. Seeds of Confusion. If you've got 5 slots in this its worth it to slot a 6th for the +5 Ranged defense. Dragon's Tail. Why Spin Kick but no Dragon's Tail? You may have a legit reason. The 2 powers animate fast and seem like they work well as a combo. But I dont play Martial often. Vines. Move the archetype control set here from Roots. Summon Tarantula. Don't skip this if you're going with this APP. It's too good a power. x4 Expedient Reinforcement (+6.25 recharge) and 1 recharge IO. Personal Force Field. Drop this. Too situational. Fly Trap. Slotting is technically fine but think about slipping a resist debuff proc here.

Make sure the animation and sound effect from Storm's Thunderclap ends up somewhere too. Everyone skips that power and I always thought it had one of the best sound effects in the game.

Considering they just announced a new change for Illusion Control on the test servers (customizable Phantom Armies that look like clones of you--very cool) I am hopeful that with eyes on Illusion Control we could get it.

That's amazing. I may finally play Illusion Control again.

Meaning, when Farsight is cast it should also affect the caster. As opposed to an ally-only shield that affects only people other than the caster.

Feel free to say no, but adding to the list of possibilities, would it be feasible to add teleport to Dispersion Bomb so that it teleports struck enemies to its center point? Like as in you throw it, and everything within that radius teleports to the blast area's center point. That would be a positioning power I'd actually use, even with the extremely slow animation.