roleki

Understand completely; I think one of the things that compounds (causes?) consternation amongst the various camps is that nobody actually SAYS "Well, we can put a nice fireplace over here" but rather we all walk in one day to find there's a hobo warming his hands around a trash fire contained in a 55 gallon drum smack in the center of the kitchen. One group will start howling how they never wanted a hobo in the kitchen, another group will tell them to shut up because we have a small team of volunteers who worked hard to grace us with a hobo in the kitchen, and another group will lament that the hobos on Live were in The Hollows and you had to crawl naked across shards of glass and lava to get a glimpse of them, and now the hobos are in our kitchen.

Myself, I would prefer feature creep over stagnation, but stagnation will always have its dogmatic adherents. The great thing about HC is, it IS small, and while the work the devs do is not trivial, if they somehow break the game, it's not like there's accountants telling them they can't afford to scrap all that work. HC can change course if it comes to it. And as has always been the case, if people don't like the direction HC is going with their beloved CoH, they have the option of going to any number of alternate servers or can even roll their own.

Have tested FF as a Controller. Thoughts: Repulsion Bolt: The recharge on this seems out of whack. Force Bolt has always been more of a strategic survival tool than an attack. I'm not saying it should remain at 4s in perpetuity - especially now that it's a debuff - but 10s is far too long a wait at those low levels where Bolt gets most of its use saving the buns of characters who might only have a couple of attacks to their name. Dispersion Bubble: It is nice that the protection chases people that run out of it, but Dispersion Bubble is still totally outclassed by Faraday Cage. It should give some level of DDR or +Recharge or Absorb or SOMETHING... it may not be the best power in the set, but it is certainly the signature power; it would be nice if it did a little better than half what Faraday Cage does. This is especially true when you consider that Faraday Cage can be reapplied as a Break Free whereas if something drags you down through Dispersion Bubble, they can have their way with you all the way until DB recharges. {Edited to add, I forgot about the 15s duration on nu Dispersion Bubble, so that is less of a gripe than it used to be. Point still stands, though... Dispersion Bubble is anemic compared to its peers} Force Bomb: Would like to see the Stun Chance moved around a little. 10% is just far too low a chance for a Mag 2 mez, especially when it was already pretty low to begin with. The -Res is an interesting add, as Repulsion Bomb is already used to soften up the mob, but having "90 percent" of the members of that mob hop right up and immediately start swinging at you DECREASES the utility of the power. Dampening Bubble: Base DDR on the Controller side could use a little bump; with max investment, the power chunks out ~28% DDR, would like to see this reach 30% DDR if the player completely sells out chasing that. It's a T9 in a Defense-centric set; the other debuff resistances are interesting, but thematically, the DDR is why people would take it and they should feel compelled to chase a big number there instead of "well, it's better than nothing!" and leaving it at that.

I understand why Burn had its cooldown adjusted, but that's an 80% nerf. It's too much.

If you read the patch notes and they gave you even the slightest inkling of concern, I would highly suggest heading to the beta server and trying the subject changes out for yourself and get your feedback into the relevant focused thread ASAP. The track record for "first suggestion wins" around here is staggering.

Illusion Dominators? ::swoon::

Agh, you're killing me. You're supposed to say "Nobody is even ToTing, I think they're respectfully waiting for you to get out of work, @roleki!"

Oh man. Halloween Event is live now and I'm stuck earning money so I don't die from starvation or exposure to the elements. I *knew* I should have transferred my consciousness into a robotic chassis when I had the chance years ago.

https://youtu.be/evz9-hxS5NU

Oh, you rolled a Sentinel?

Love Fire/TA, it's honestly one of my favorite characters. I like the idea of Power Boosted TA, but I slot for ranged def over recharge. How's the survival going full recharge?

Thanks @JJDrakken! I do like me a good Sentinel!

I am going to try that next, as - apparently - a DB/Stone stalker is not the way to do it. At 25 I just don't have enough slots in the right places to handle +1s and +2s that are everywhere I want to be. Have to say, I didn't imagine this little project was going to be such an endeavor, but now I kind of HAVE to do it.

I may try that; I've never done Stone Armor because people used to complain about Rooted or whatever. I know that's no longer a thing, but it's still carried over in my brain that there's inconveniences built into Stone. I might only slot up one ST and one AoE, and pour the rest into armor. It's not the kill speed that is deterring me so far, it's the constant health maintenance. I just want to liiiive. I hadn't considered a Stalker, have never run one of those. Being sneaky would come in handy... I wonder how Stone is on a Stalker??

As we are heading into the fall, I got the idea to solo something through the Croatoa content, but most everything I have in that range is extremely floppy and between terrible offense and having to retreat to heal, it takes about 8 minutes to defeat a random smattering of Fir Bolg. Unappealing! So, if you were going to solo through Croatoa (theoretically), what would be the AT and combo of choice? I was thinking a Brute or Tank, but which, I do not know. There's a lot of Fire, Lethal/Smashing and Energy/Negative energy going on in that zone, so maybe instead of resist-based armor I should be looking at Shield/Nin or something? Any ideas? What would make it less of a slog?

I had to retire my MA/WP (RIP Vladimir Bootin') and replaced him with a MA/Nin; I'm glad I had to because those two sets just go together so well, just an endless flurry of limbs. Love that combo. My main, if there is such a thing, would be Burner Account or Tootboy; they're identical Fire/FF controllers that leverage high Def and KD to survive, while melting everything around them to nubbins with their AoEs and immortal Imps. They're just beautiful contraptions.

Pretty much this. I only take Leadership on characters that are in the rear with the gear. Otherwise, I build with the goal of not needing attention from the people in the rear with the gear. That's not being selfish, that's being a good teammate - it frees up the support types to concentrate their efforts on patching up the teammates with selfish builds, or, god forbid, bringing their debuffs and attacks to bear on the mob we're trying to mow through. It's not that I don't appreciate support types, in fact, that's mainly what I run. I just don't like the dynamic of a glass cannon that needs (expects?) dedicated support staff to remain upright. While that is a 'thing' in comic books (like, Cloak & Dagger) it's not THE thing in comic books, and it would suck if it was THE thing in CoH. Luckily, it's not.

Oh, I do all that, Clarion, Boosters, and so on. If something is going to blow ME up, they're going to have to work at it. But I still don't like the def/res I can get on a blapper. I'm going to take @Frostbiter's suggestion and try /Ice, maybe that's where it will make sense.

When you say it takes a lot more effort to make a tanky Blaster, what exactly IS that effort? I've attempted blapper builds but I never get them off paper because I can't get the numbers to a point where I would be confident it would survive in melee. The closest I've come has been on a rad/rad/dark Corruptor, where Choking Cloud and Oppressive Gloom make it 1 vs 1 with 13 spectators, but even that is a little janky because all it takes is 1s of mez and it's all over.

Matter of perspective, I suppose. I rarely do TFs, so VL is pretty much my only source of Emps. Flip side, I roll up hundreds of RMs a week doing MSRs, and clear a few thousand running monster hunting teams over the course of the ToT event, although that isn't as lucrative as it was when we had 3x the pop.

Pretty much this... Reward merits are a LOT easier to get ahold of than Emp merits; I wouldn't even consider trading Emps for RMs in an environment where members of the HC team quasi-openly posit that the Vet Level Emps should never have been included in the 'live' game, which signals Emps will eventually be even harder to come by.

I'm partial to Corruptors because, even though they only approach Blaster damage under certain conditions, the whole time they are making everyone else on the team more effective via buffs/debuffs and therefore "bring" more DPS, albeit in a roundabout way. In other words, the ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force (multiplier).

Maybe your family shouldn't hang around on asteroids knowing full well they only have two attacks, neither of which deal exotic damage.

Yeah well, when you need the Bomb Specialist badge, THEN you'll want a Corruptor on your team!

It's not *that* strange if you think of it in terms of a (probably) older playerbase who has to mow the lawn and take the kids to soccer and all that domesticated stuff on the weekends, but have a couple hours free on weeknights. I've been keeping tabs on server population for the better part of two years, and based on my random grabs over that time, if people really are leaving in droves, then others are arriving in droves. Not much more than ~10% difference on any given date/time sample, comparing 3PM EST on one Friday to another, and so on. But I've been looking at the Server Status page, not Discord.