roleki

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.

Driving them around, P4 has been a mixed bag for my Ice controllers. Let me preface this by saying I use Flash Freeze in place of Glacier because while soloing, Flash Freeze might as well be Glacier only it's up more often, while in teams, nobody would notice an AoE hold if it fell out of the sky, landed on their face and started to wiggle, so why carry one around that's only up every 3rd mission or so? All that said, Ice Slick was kind of a "cooldown" that I dropped while in melee after things started waking up from Flash Freeze, but now that Ice Slick breaks sleep I have to keep Slick in my pocket a little longer. On THAT specific front, P4 has kind of changed the dance a bit, not good or bad, just, changed. On the other end of the spectrum, I used Cold Snap (RIP Shiver) as an opener before Flash Freeze, then would close to melee and get to work. I still do that, but I've seen a clear reduction in alpha with the new Fear effect in Cold Snap, so that is a change that has been very useful to ME. The added damage in Ice Slick should be great for MSRs, where you get merits against any Rikti you damaged that eventually dies. It's probably a decent proc mule with that long recharge, but I'm not into that stuff these days. On the whole, I think Ice gets a bad rap because people tend to only think of a set in terms of what kind of orange numbers it produces; nevermind that BEFORE P4 Ice was one of the most effective control sets, what with all the -SPD, -Rech, Confuse, KD, Immob, Sleep, and Holds. Adding Fear to the party has just made it that much better. The damage in Ice Slick is nice to chip away at minions and, in theory, should lead to an uptick in VMs awarded in an MSR, but it still lags behind other sets in orange numbers, which, I am FINE with because in practice, I feel much more like a 'Controller' when I am running an Ice/xx than I do running most anything else.

Farming is gameplay. Full stop. Is the executable running in the foreground? Am I interacting with it? Then I'm playing the game. Whether I'm dawdling in the costume creator, standing around in a costume contest, role-playing in a sewer, triggering epilepsy in an MSR, running PI radios vs Council for 50 straight missions, doing DFB until my eyes bleed, hot-footing it between zones to get badges, PvPing in an arena, zone, or Wentworth's... I'm playing the game. Basically, every activity a player can engage in while the executable is in the foreground and they are interacting with it, is playing the game. Except farming? No. And to state otherwise is ridiculous; to claim I am 'lying' or being disingenuous is horseshit. I am playing the game. I don't come in here shitting on any other style of gameplay, and so far I haven't seen an avowed farmer do anything of the sort. And aside from RP and the varuous formats of PvP, I've never seen anyone look sideways at any other style of gameplay. No. That's only reserved for farming. And why? Out one side of their mouth, anti-farming folks will tell you it's because of inflation. And out the other side, they'll tell you IOs are too cheap. So which is it? Hint: it's neither of those. It's the old "they got more than me" bullshit that most people have outgrown during their developmental stages, but is somehow construed as a valid concern in this game. And how does my having 'more' than this person or that person affect them? Not one whit. Market prices? Stable. Server population? Damn near flat since the majority of COVID restrictions were lifted. Does farming flood the game with 50s who don't know their ass from a hole in the ground? It might do exactly that, but there are plenty of sphincter-uncertain people waving the "ban farming" flag in these forums, you don't see me blaming Dr. Trevor Seaborn for it. Just because you're on the treadmill of contact->mission->level->contact doesn't mean you're an idiot amused by shitty storytelling, or a simpleton what needs incremental rewards to remind yourself you're having a good time - just like my killing 33000 straight NPCs who happen to be wearing the same costume doesn't indicate that I'm an idiot amused by tedious tasks, or a simpleton what needs billions of inf to feel I've accomplished something. I just happen to prefer 50s over 1s, 50s over 13s, 50s over 33s and even 50s over 49s, whereas some people seem to really enjoy the progression, like they have a surprise waiting at the end or something. Farmers don't shit on that. So why all the shitting on farming? Why does it even appear on your radar? I'm way the hell over here, doing THIS, you're way the hell over there, doing THAT. And now that AE has (rightly) been removed from the loading zones, we may never cross paths in-game, aside from maybe when you buy stuff off me at the market. I apologize for the convenience. And for the record, I never said that "content was equal to farming" I merely presented a visual aid to combat the notion that farming wasn't playing the game, when it absolutely IS playing the game in every possible sense of the word. I can't launch excel.exe and minutes later have a bunch of inf in CoH. I can't level up a Defender playing Rocket League. To get inf in CoH and level up a Defender, I have to launch CoH and use the varuous inputs and .dlls and whatnot associated with that executable and that executable only. I'm playing the game. And if I'm coming off a little heated, it's because I rather don't appreciate being accused of "being disingenuous at best, and lying at worst" when the entire girth of the accusation is based on a willful misinterpretation of what I actually said. To be honest, it was awesome to find CoH again, and it was great for a while there, but coincidental to players whining to the devs about farming and the devs diligently chipping away at it ever since, the whole spirit of the game and the community had changed, and not for the better. You never saw threads like this back then. Now it's all you see. Well this, and forced attempts at NOT this. Progress!

I'm always down for practical onomatopeia in the wild.

I have the same outfit on my Elec/Dark Controller, "Spastic Colonial."

Toxic Dart is sneaky good; I can't fit it into a lot of builds but those that it can fit in use it quite often. It's especially good at getting runners to turn around and come back. Corrosive Vial has a tiny AoE (8') and can only hit 5 targets, but it's an auto-hit on a long recharge and has access to 9 procs: 4 damage, two -Res, two KD, and an Immob. For a one- or two-slot investment, you get some decent ROI. Speed of Sound is my favorite always-on travel power, perfect for popping from mob to mob on melee/PBAoE types, and just as useful for instantly appearing next to teammates who could use a hand. Or, if you're hopelessly lost on a map, just target the nearest person who doesn't appear to be lost and blorp in next to them. Adrenal Booster offers some nice buffs, seems tailor-made for Corruptors and Dominators but I can never fit it into one of those. I have fit it on some Claws and Spines characters and it definitely amps up the damage output, especially when used in conjunction with Corrosive Vial. Experimental Injection is a modern take on Sir Not Appearing In This Film.

Sheesh. How's the power tray arranged on THAT?

I dunno, I'd kind of like to see that applied to a level 1 minion and see if I can coax a gib out of the graphics engine.

@Hedgefund2, any chance your team composition changed during the MSR, and/or both players got credit on all Pylons? 9 is a suspicious number.

That makes sense, but there are actual Masterminds in comics along the lines of CoH - characters like the Red Ghost and his Super Apes, or the Golden (née Yellow) Claw and the Atlas Foundation. Sure, the Red Ghost had powers (he could Dimension Shift himself and wallhack) but without the Apes, he was just kind of feeble. Golden Claw's secret power was that he was really old, and could use the Dragon Corridor to move around from place to place; any action taken against his antagonists was done via minions, associates, or subtle plans that percolated for decades before bearing results. Mole Man is another one; he's got a stick and can see in the dark... not very formidable, until you factor in he has all of the extras from Fury Road doing his dirty work for him. I feel like Doctor Doom is another character along the lines of Superman who couldn't be pinned to one AT or even multiples... he's a Sentinel (En/WP?) but also a Mastermind (Bots/FF) and some kind of Dominator, but like, if Dominators had access to Illusion and Time powers. He's a bit of a freak.

Oh, so you have no idea what happens in a farm. Hint: I click the same powers you do, just more often with less time wasted. I get less rewards per click than you do, but I make up for it by sheer volume.

I think the animus felt towards PvPers and PvP in general boils down to that right there... when you get used to just waltzing through NPCs, getting your ass handed to you in an instant by some random character is going to bruise your feels a little, even moreso if you're not there for the PvP but for some other reason, like collecting badges. There are probably people shitting on PvP who have never even been in a PvP zone, just because of the carryover stigma of PvP from other games.

Don't get me wrong, Superior Unrelenting Fury% is a very nice proc, but if I somehow dropped SUF from one of my Brutes, it might feel 'off' but I'm still doing what I do; if you removed Superior Critical Strikes from a Scrapper or Superior Might of The Tanker from a Tank, it would drastically change how those characters operate, full stop. Just in terms of relative value of the benefits, think how many slots you would have to burn, or how many enhancements and boosters you would need to pay for, to get an extra 13-20 Res(All) on a given character. Tanks get that with one slot. On the Scrapper side, the SCS proc stops just short of guaranteeing that the next attack will crit, whether that's an AoE that will evaporate everything below a Boss or your ST/T9 that will get rid of the Boss in a second... how many damage enhancements/boosters/procs would you have to jam into a Scrapper to make up the difference in damage output provided by the SCS proc? Meanwhile, the SUF% is by and large the Panacea proc that anyone can drop in Health and be done with. It's nice if you already have the Panacea proc but it's not nearly as impactful as the Tank/Scrapper procs. Old-school Defiance! Onliest thing is, it would be more useful from 1-40 than it would be 41-49, and almost of no use past 50. I mean, in most situations.

I still think Superman is *way* more than a Tank; if every T4 Tank was Superman, it'd be like City of Viltrumites around here. He's just too powerful to fit into our sandbox. Even the Hulk and Juggernaut don't REALLY fit, because the Hulk has no damage cap, and Juggernaut literally cannot be stopped. There are plenty of Tank-like beings (Ben Grimm, Rhino, Piledriver, Gargoyle, a billion others) who are largely interchangeable aside from their personalities/ethos/lore: tough, resilient, and possessing superior offensive capabilities. But I do like the idea of so-and-so being a Level 35 Tank, and so and so being a 50. That would explain the wide gaps between a guy like Luke Cage and someone like Namor, then the gap between Namor and Gladiator, and the gap between Gladiator and Silver Surfer. Another thing I need to keep in mind when thinking about these things, is how the lore surrounding well-known characters is very fluid, and so are their capabilities and handicaps. In the thread where I kicked this beehives little too hard, I had mentioned I was looking at the old TSR Marvel Super Heroes stats, which I think the book I was looking at was from 1986 or 1987. They had Iron Man weak as hell (don't recall exactly but they were Aunt May-level stats). I wonder what their ratings for Iron Man would have been in 2016 or so. I bet they'd have him at Tank level 'toughness' and strength, even though I think he's a Sentinel through and through.

I didn't mean to cause that much of a derail, but I dig this sort of navel-gazing as these are the kinds of things I think of while farming instead of saving Positron's ass or whatever it is people do in missions. Well that, and sick basslines. As for Brute ATO changes... would it be a complete fart of an idea to restore Fury to its original state (or whatever state it was when it got redlined) but attach some kind of penalty, either a -Res, -ToHit, or -Endurance% to kind of emulate the consequences of going all-out? It's not my intention to make something bad even worse, just trying to think of a compromise that would let Brutes have their moment but with some element that would at least blunt some of the blowback from all the other ATs.

As in all things, I'm rarely more than 65% serious. That said, this is me being serious: if people think of Superman as an example of a Tank, then that's our problem right there. Superman is singular; he isnt just a pile of hitpoints, some armor, and some mid-level offensive capability that is frequently outclassed by his less-hardy friends. He's got every power in the book, many invented and subsequently retired between panels. The normal rules that apply to everyone else don't apply to Superman, and the rules that DO apply to him are generally discarded whenever it's convenient. If anything, Superman is closer to an AV/GM than a Tank. Ben Grimm, he's a Tank... tough, strong, (almost) no weird mechanics that make him tougher or stronger in combat... no matter when he announces that it is time to clobber, it's the same punch that follows. Along the same vein, Colossus is a Tank. Rhino, a Tank. Hercules, maybe a Tank, except it's established canon that he's got that Brute Fury mechanic going. I went looking for characters who were inherently resilient/tough/strong who also got "stronger" at the height of combat, and that's where Wrecker comes in, moreso than Loki, but Loki does have a tendency to fight at the level of his opponent, plus or minus. Others like Sabertooth, Wolverine, Puma, Lizard, and so on, seem more like Scrappers in function, even though they do have that Fury mechanic written in, in some fashion. Anyway, what I was getting at is that it seems like, when thinking of existing characters in terms of CoH ATs, everything that I thought would be a Brute was actually more like a Scrapper, and everything I thought would be a Tank was more like an AV. Made me think that perhaps the Tank doesn't exist in comics, just Scrappers, Brutes, Stalkers and Gods.

Slight derail, con permiso. I was thinking about the question, what well-known characters would I consider to be Brutes, and it occurred to me that there is a quasi-official quantification of a slew of these folks in the Gamers Handbooks of the Marvel Universe. After being sidetracked for a couple hours with those, I realized that old-school Marvel had a Brute problem as well. I'm not going to get into FASERIP or anything, but it was kind of an interesting experiment to think of a character as a Scrapper or a Tank/Brute/Stalker, then go look at the numbers to see if they thought of them as such, too. Like, say you think of Captain America as a Scrapper; his Strength and Health are 30/150. Spider-Man, another Scrapper right? He's at 40/160. On the other end of the spectrum there's Rhino at 75/175, and the Thing/Thor at 75/200; these would be Tanks in my CoH brain. I figured Luke Cage, not being as strong as Thing or Thor, but tougher than Captain America or Spider-Man, would be the prototypical Brute, but his stats are 40/130 - as strong as Spider-Man, but not as many "HP" as Spider-Man or CA. The closest I could find to what I would classify as a Brute in those rankings (made nearly 40 years ago!) were Loki (50/150) and The Wrecker at 50/160. Everything else that has a huge pile of Health also tends to have an outsized Strength ranking to go with it. In fact, what I did NOT find was a huge pile of Health with mediocre Strength. Closest I came on that front was Machine Man at 30/170. Is it possible that Brutes are actually "Tanks" and Tanks as they exist in CoH just do not have a counterpart in the comic-book world?

Just to clarify the differences between Real Superheroes and Dirty Farmers, allow me to introduce this handy Goofus and Gallant table: REAL SUPERHEROES DIRTY FARMERS Log in Log in Choose Character Choose Character Recruit/Join Team Recruit/Join Team Travel To/Call Contact Travel to AE Ignore/Read Mission Description Ignore/Read Mission Description Select Mission Select Mission Make Mission Active Make Mission Active Travel to Mission Entrance Travel to Mission Entrance Ignore/Read Mission Text Ignore/Read Mission Text Defeat Enemies/Meet Objective Defeat Enemies/Meet Objective Exit Mission Exit Mission Shore-up Team (if necessary) Shore-up Team (if necessary) Clear Inventory (if necessary) Clear Inventory (if necessary) Level Up (if necessary) Level Up (if necessary) Repeat to Taste Repeat to Taste Geez, it's almost like we're playing the same game.

Uh. What do you think happens in a farm?

Yeah, guys, farming just gets shittier and shittier every time the devs release an update, nothing to worry about! You can still do it! Why all the complaints? Ingrates!

Thing is, you can absolutely just craft what you need without it turning into a full-time job utterly replacing any other in-game activity. Yes, it's faster to just pay retail, and it's more lucrative to just play market PvP, but there IS a middle ground where you spend a few minutes, get what you need, and go about your business. Literally a couple minutes a night, if that.