Neiska

Happy Turkey Day!

As I read it, I am imagining an Australian speaking in a Louisianan Creole accent. "Crikey, oh sa bon! Enpresyonan!"

Don't worry hon, I gotchu! I'll be salty enough for both of us. 😆

Here is a Bio-Armor post of mine with a lot of helpful info that I have copy/pasted for you. - Bio Armor is my favorite Armorsets, so hopefully I can help you out or give some guidance. They say it "takes skill" because the set is kind of unique in playstyle, in that it doesn't focus DEF or RES like the other sets, it gives a "bit" of both. Not much mind you, but enough to build on. No, where Bio Armor shines is it is kind of a swiss army knife, with many powers doing multiple things, some like DNA siphon has both offensive and defensive uses. It also has stances - an offensive, defensive, and efficient stance, each of which boosts one feature like damage or defense, but at the expense of something else. Later on when you have all the purples, you might find yourself using offensive stance 90% of the time. To put it simply, think of Bio Armor as a set with mediocre defenses, but with multiple ways to heal yourself. But the survivability of Bio comes from 3 key powers - 1. Ablative Carapace - this is an absorb. Your first reactive/pre-emptive power. This will be your main clickable at lower levels, but it becomes overshadowed later on, and is best used as a pre-pull tool to help absorb the alpha strikes, as well as act as a "bridge" when Parasite Aura or DNA Siphon is down. 2. DNA Siphon - a PBOAE that does minor lethal and toxic damage. This power affects BOTH living and defeated enemies. For living targets, it applies a -regen debuff to your targets, but it also gives you a bit of health and end for each living enemy hit. Against defeated enemies, they give less of a heal, but will give you both a regen and recovery buff for a short while. Which means you can use this power in many ways - as an emergency heal, as a -regen debuff, or use it as a stacking regen + recovery buff that stacks per target affected. Personally, I like to slot DNA for Endurance rather than healing so I am not relying on Ageless or Blue Inspirations to play at peak performance, regardless of secondary set. 3. Parasite Aura - another PBAOE that affects living, but gives you a stacking healing and recovery buff per enemy hit. This also does additional effects, depending which stance you are in. For example, if you are in defensive stance, it applies more damage absorb to you and a damage debuff to them. This buff can stack 10 times if you hit enough enemies, giving a massive absorb, regen, and recovery buff for each enemy hit. And make no mistake, for that 45 seconds you can heal from zero to full several times in a row quickly. It is more or less super-sayian-wolverine mode for those 45 seconds. And you can get the recharge down to 90 or so seconds, giving you nearly 50% uptime on it. During the "downtime" is when you use Siphon, Carapace, and/or other tools like Rune of Protection. Then its rinse-repeat! So, Bio Armor loves recharge. Ideally, you will want as much uptime on Parasite Aura as possible, with around 50% uptime on it. During the time it is down, you will use Ablative Carapace and DNA Siphon (if you need it.) The TLDR behind bio is, instead of giving a flat persistent boost to DEF or RES, it instead relies on stacking buffs. Now the numbers might be deceiving in mids. But Bio Armor is definitely in the big boys club with the rest and can outlive most other sets, but not due to its inherent DEF or RES, but by just flat out absorbing and out healing incoming damage. Playing it would go something like this - Pre-apply Ablative Carapace before the pull. Run in. When absorb from Carapace falls off, pop Parasite Aura, hitting as many targets as possible. Enjoy 45 seconds of near immortality. By the time Parasite Aura wears off, Ablative Carapace should be ready to use again. Use DNA Siphon/other tools as necessary during the time Parasite Aura is waiting to recharge. Rinse repeat. Changing stances between offensive-defensive-efficient as needed. But at 50 fully incarnated, I am in offensive nearly all the time, only against big targets do I feel the need to swap to defensive stance for the extra absorbs and damage debuffs. Another upside to Bio is that it sort of has extra layers of defenses that most other sets don't have, multiple ways of healing, absorb, regen, and recovery. Some sets like Radiation Armor has "some" Absorb, but nowhere near the amount that Bio has. So, this is an additional "layer" of survivability. Even without your regen, absorbs and such, you can still build to softcap melee defenses and get resistance capped to smashing and lethal, with respectable amounts in the others. Which in itself is pretty good. And Absorb/Regen/Healing together is effective against nearly every kind of foe you will come across, regardless of attack or damage type. There are some enemies that bypass absorb and such but those are rare. But there are downsides to Bio - 1. You can't really skip any powers. Well, you "can" bbuutt its not recommended. This is because there is a domino effect, and each bio power you have, affects the others. 2. It can be a little rough starting out as Bio, relying on a single +absorb at first, then that and a heal, and finally Parasite aura. And even then its a bit skippy until you have enough recharge to begin your cycle of buffs. But once you hit that point, you are more or less wolverine in just how much damage it takes to put you down. 3. For many players they dislike the visual effects, even with minimal VFX on. This is entirely personal preferance though. Some like it, some do not. Personally I just wish there was something that went with it visually, but there really isnt. You can get close with some looks like Chitin but it still looks off. 4. Lastly, and this the BIG downside - the set more or less relies on buffstacking, which is affected by how many targets you hit with DNA Siphon and Parasite Aura. This means against fewer targets like AVs or GMs, you don't heal as much, and you cant just rely on any 1 of the buffs to keep you alive. As far as what to pair with it, well, pretty much anything you like. Bio loves recharge, so it pairs very well with fast sets like Savage or Claws. But it also has offensive stance, giving a very nice damage buff, so it pairs very well with sets like Energy Melee, Super Strength, Fire Melee, Battleaxe, etc. Honestly, I don't think there is a melee set it "doesn't" pair well with. But to give you an idea of how well it pairs, my Bio Armor/Energy Melee Tanker can perform 600+ Single target damage, which is fantastic for a Tanker. Granted, credit goes to Energy Melee for that, but Bio Armor certainly plays a part. But if I had to say what it pairs with the BEST, Savage, Dark Melee, Claws, Energy Melee, Fire Melee, Battleaxe, Spines, and Radiation Melee are all top choices. One tool I wanted to mention that goes fantastically with Bio Armor is Rune of Protection. It pretty much fits the holes in Bio Armor like a puzzle piece, and I almost always take it. It is yet another big buff you can put onto the pile, boosting your damage resists and CC resistance, and also being another "bridge" between buff cycles if needed. Anyway, know that was a lot to explain but I hope it puts you in the right direction!

I feel this is appropriate for this context.

Personally, I am going to wait until after Turkey Day to log in, give it a few days for this poo-storm to settle. Already hearing things about the folks leveling up/playing on +0/Ouros stuff. And at this point a lesser woman might say "I told you so." But what I expect to happen is for people to "Deal with it" or just not play their MMS until after the holidays when whatever big hoopla that's been hinted at hits. Anyway, ya, same. Not going to bother even glancing at my MMs until at least after this holiday weekend. Because I suspect I will be upset and I don't want to affect holiday stuff.

Absolutely not. I would sooner listen to a serenade from Snarky. Keep your loot box and gotcha-game stuff out of CoH. And I strongly suspect most feel the same. PS - as far as "why"? IMO RL money stuff, no matter how you slice it, destroys games. As soon as real money gets involved, people with less morals will figure out a way to profit from it, and we will be exposed to such actions. Here are a few examples off the top of my head - ESO - not "pay to win" necessarily, though there are perks. Riding speed and such. But it is 100% "pay to look pretty." But things like riding speed do impact things like PVP. EQ - each time there is a new server launched, the game is over-run with multi-boxers who farm the important/rare stuff, and trade them for Krono, which is then sold for real life money. These groups will train you, steal your kill spot, it even bleeds over into the raid community where its not uncommon for entire raids to be made of a handful of people more or less taking items from bosses and profiting from them. On one server a krono farmer completely locked down a critical step for the cleric epic, which is 100% vital for raiding, and was charging people 20 krono to loot it. A krono is like 15 bucks, so do the math. And each time there's a new server, we see a new wave of it. WoW - game tokens are now used as a kind of off-currency and trading, and only encourages the farmers. Diablo - DSP is still a thing that's used as an alternate trading currency. There was also the auction house that more or less destroyed trading in D3. Lets not mention the re-occuring price for season pass, they even had a 65 dollar horse in the store. For reference, that is cost more than the base game expansion. Think I made my point - as soon as money is involved, it ruins games. It makes companies try to squeeze every penny out of you and me joe-gamers. Other players will exploit it. And IMO it is AAA game company greed is why little indie games are kicking their butts these days, and in my book, rightfully so. Little games like Megabonk or Silksong etc are way out profiting them. Which I am more than happy to see.

While I am rooting for you (I enjoy soloing big monsters too) just be aware that I believe since GMs don't have a level, they fall into the +0 which means your T1's will do 20% less damage and your T2's will do 10% less. Normally I would not be too concerned about that, but since GMS have mountains of hit points and regen, that can substantially extend the duration of the fight. But it should be easier to stand against their attacks now, but it's going to take longer to complete the fight.

Maelwys and I have always agreed and disagreed on some things, depends on the thing mostly. But it's always been mutually respectful, or at least I felt it was that way. Which is a big part of the reason why I really respect them where MM stuff is concerned.

I do appreciate all the time, math, support, and passion you show. Truely. But for now, I am at the "well, let's wait and see" stage. Mostly because going over all of HC history, most instances of "just wait guys, it will get better, we kiss-elbow promise" never came about. Or what they consider "better" is where we find ourselves now. Things aren't "better." Not for all of us. But forgive me if I am doubtful of what the end result will be. Which I expect will more or less be right where we are now, that is - -Some combinations are good, others are bad -MMs still in the bottom 50% of overall AT performance, bottom 80% in some cases -The weakest secondaries will remain there - Fewer build options/more obligatory/forced slotting if you want to be viable at +5 or higher - The major issues MMs face will remain there, at least for awhile -Accuracy - Am I the only one who doesn't seem to have great difficulty with pet accuracy? That has never been a complaint of mine. I always take tactics, so that might be a part of it. But I am genuinely perplexed by this sudden "but their accuracy" notion is coming from. Sure, pets miss at times. But that's to be expected. -Damage - Been discussed thoroughly. All I will say is that it still feels like a kick to the groin. People are free to like the changes. Just as people are free to dislike them. And regarding MMs specifically, I have generally disliked more changes than I have liked. About the only thing I liked was the new secondaries. That's really about it. But despite all the math and spreadsheets and whatnot (not just in this patch but previous patches) what is claimed and what I experience is not the same. "But its better now" does not hold true. At least for me. Quite the opposite. Things have gotten harder, and harder, and harder, and more tedious with each change. I duno, it could be because unless I 100% am forced to, I generally skip the personal MM attacks. And to this day I refuse to use them. We shouldn't "have" to. If I wanted to focus more on personal attacks, I would play my Crabbermind. So I remain skeptical. Who knows, maybe they will shock us with a new primary set for MMs or something, or address the major issues, or maybe even add pet customization options. I expect those would almost universally be received well. But I ever so tire of the "lateral" buffs with nerfs as part of the package, and people celebrating like it's this big massive boost or change to MMs. And if they gave the option to play the original HC pet sets, I would. Heck my old Robot/Time and Demons/Cold does better than most of my MMs now. These aren't buffs. These are tweaks. If changes suddenly make MMs in the top 50% or even top 30% of AT performance, then we can all agree to call it a buff. (I don't mean those figures literally, only example for context) They are free to surprise me. I hope that they do. But forgive me if I don't hold my breath.

The T3 missile burn patches were reduced in targets substantially, from 12 to 3 IIRC. The damage wasn't the initial hit, it was the fire puddle after that. The Drone is nice for secondaries that didn't have a heal, and the KB removal was nice. But the loss of the AOE was a bit impact, especially since Robots was the one primary that had good AoE in the first place. Now none of them really have good AoE. They have some but none of them excel at it. And personally, I dislike being forced/bribed/encouraged to take personal attacks especially since none of them do good damage to begin with, with an END penalty on top of that. So, in order to make personal attacks worth considering they added secondary effects, which is kind of lame in my opinion. Doubly so in robots case, due to us originally already having -regen in our toolkit in the first place. Other primaries got something new, we kept what we already had, but now it takes us more power slots to get it. And to this day I don't feel the "increased ST damage" a fair trade. Not even close. And far as my builds, my clear time with the map I test with went from 3 minutes to clear, all the way to 9 minutes. Same build, same enhancements, same everything. My demons actually clear the same map faster now, at 7 minutes. On top of that, things I used to solo such as GMs, are either no longer possible, or it takes so long or it's so cumbersome to do that it just isn't fun to do anymore. So, in a nutshell - if you take the personal attacks, then you might see some benefit. But if you don't and want to use those slots on other things, then you will do worse. I wouldn't call that a "win." And it's fine if we disagree. I consider the robot change old news by now, it was 2 years ago. But I did far better, did more activities, and did them faster with the old one than the new one. Make of that what you will.

I never said HC was in a downward trajectory. Only that they are rather selective with their nerfs, aiming only at some and not others that I would consider over-performing. In a word - Bias.

Wouldn't be the first time. And this is why I kind of dislike the direction the games updates has taken. I mean, let's break it down - Fire Brutes nerfed, because they were too efficient at farming. Titan Weapons nerfed because Titan/Bio Scrappers were dominating (or were at least VERY popular) melee Rune of Protection nerfed because people were using it as a buff to bridge gapes in sustainability. Now its more of a break free with a RES buff on a timer, but you can't reduce the recharge. Tanker AOE damage was nerfed because it was "too good." This one was so bad that even players like Veracor quit because of it. Robot AOE damage was nerfed because it was stackable. (Which only mattered if more than 1 robot MM was present and their fire patches happened to be in the same spot, a rare occurrence unless you multiboxed robot MMS) Plant Control got a hardcore nerf to the point many people who played Plant Control mains shelved their character. etc. I am sure I am missing more, but I feel this is enough to make my point. I don't buy the "oh, but they will complain" for a moment. The rest of us had to swallow bitter pills for some time now. And if you ask me, some folks doing too much damage is the problem. Nukes SHOULD cause crashes, for both Blasters and Corruptors alike. The problem is, is that some ATs are apparently allowed to go absolute HAM with damage, but they stop things like Brutes and Titan Weapons? You can call it what you like, but I would consider that Favoritism. IMO if anyone should be doing more damage, it would be melee, because it's harder and riskier. But you can't nerf some damage because it was "too much" but allow others and call it fair or "balanced." IMO if anything in the game needs to be downgraded, it's the glass cannons because all reward and in most circumstances not even a risk unless you are soloing. If you are on teams "but they are squishy" is moot due to the team buffing them anyway. The "glass cannons" in this game are not "glass cannon" at all. Not for the damage that they do compared to others. And at this point I have little faith that they will reign those things in, because they have been the meta for so long and I suspect they have balanced everything around that, and I suspect they don't even want to in the first place. I am hard pressed to think of any single Glass Cannon nerf. I even browsed the patch notes going all the way back to 2022. Not a single one. Or if there were I didn't see any. (I actually hope its a case of me missing them, because if they didn't even get so much as a single re-tuning then its honestly kind of depressing.) Moral of the story - Want to be OP? Play a Corruptor I guess.

Sounds about right. "Your pets get 40% of your set bonus" sounds good at first, until you sit down and actually do the math. And if you do focus on pushing that 40% bonus as much as possible, your build is going to suffer elsewhere. I think the way MMs need to build for things like recharge and so on that doesn't affect pet kind of self-sabotages this 40% value buff.

Maelwys, I really respect you and you are likely far more involved in this than I am, but I am skeptical at best that "major buffs beyond these are coming." Case in point - you consider this patch a buff. I consider it a lateral nerf. We never receive "buffs." We get "shuffles" or "trade-offs." I don't consider giving up 18% damage for 15% durability an even trade on this particular AT. For builds that build accordingly for things like pet durability, lets say, robots/time, they are already got strong defenses, so have minimal gain. But give up 18% damage for essentially nothing? About the "but pets get 40% bonus" is really moot, due to how we HAVE to currently slot with the pet unique IOs. They would REALLY have to buff some of them to make them worth slotting as a full set. I will add in a pic of my Robot/Marine as an example - So, here are the sets I have, with their values - 3-piece Expedient - 1.5% Energy/Negative resist, 2.5% Mez resist 6 piece Preventative Medicine - 2.25% Smashing/Lethal resist, 15 hitpoints, 3% Fire/Cold resist, 3.75% Endurance Discount, 8.75% Recharge 4 piece Gladiators armor - 2.5% Recovery, 3 Knockback Protection, 3.75% Toxic/Psionic resist 2 pieces Unbreakable - 2.5% Endurance 2 pieces Superior Mark of Supremacy - 10% Recharge Time 6 pieces Reactive Defenses - 1.5% Smashing/Lethal resist, 15 hitpoints, 3% Fire/Cold resist, 3.75% Endurance Discount, 8.75% Recharge 4 pieces Superior Mark of Supremacy - 10% Recharge Time, 15% Accuracy, 5% Defense Melee, 2.5% Defense Smashing/Lethal 5 pieces of Ragnarok - 4% Recovery, 6% Fire/Cold Resist, 15% Accuracy, 10% Recharge 4 pieces of Shield Wall - 10% Regeneration, 18 Hitpoints, 4.5% Energy/Negative resist 5 pieces of Panaca - 2.5% Recovery, 10% Regeneration, 12 Hitpoints, 7.5% Recharge 3 pieces of Adjusted Targeting - 2% Damage, 3% Energy/Negative Resist 5 pieces of Gravitational Anchor - 4% Recovery, 6% Fire/Cold Resist, 10% Accuracy, 10% Recharge 2 pieces of Unbreakable - 2.5% Endurance 4 pieces of Unbreakable - 2.5% Endurance, 2.25% Energy/Negative Resist, 3.13% Defense Melee, 1.56% Defense Smashing/Lethal 2 pieces of Performance Shifter - 7.5% Movement Speed Now that's all my set bonuses. Now not even all of them apply to pets, like Recharge. I don't know things like Accuracy or Movement Speed would. But here is what I would get with this fairly optimized setup (with all values added together) - 2.15% Energy/Negative Resist -7.2% Fire/Cold Resist -3% Endurance -3.2 Melee Def -etc. Honestly? Nothing to write home about. Now, if I re-slotted my entire build to make that 40% set impactful, my overall build would suffer. Substantially. The irony is that one of the most important things that MMs slot for is Recharge, nearly "all" MMs require that (except possibly Forcefields?). Which doesn't affect pets. Which means all this is at odds with one another - you can slot for pets getting set bonuses in mind, bbuutt your overall build is going to be much weaker if you do. Or, if you optimize a build like this, the bonuses your pets get won't be hardly anything at all, single digits in fact. Its a nice little boost, but hardly anything game changing, much less breaking your build over. Especially when considering the set bonuses for like... Call to Arms? And all MMs essentially have a 6 slot tax to begin with, for our unique pet IOs which is more or less required for everyone. (A few can likely get away with skipping 1 or two, IMO but that's semantics really and not something worth breaking an AT over.) Anyway, point being aside from niche things like the Knockback protection, which is nice for sets that don't have any, the rest really is "meh" at best. And this isn't taking into account things like KB to KD, Guissans Buildup unique, etc. Basically there are too many things we have to Frankenslot to make it GOOD, especially without crippling our build just in order to give our pets another .3% Defense or whatever. In closing I do not believe this is a buff. It's at best, a trade. And a trade that focuses on some secondaries but is essentially a kick in the wedding tackle to others. And for me personally, "But it's better doing this harder difficulty" is not a selling point. And this is coming from someone who PREFERS harder difficulties like +4/8. So, yes, this patch does seem to hyper focus on MMs on Harder Difficulties and pet scaling, IMO the tradeoff isn't worth it. And I am doubtful that they will actually make it a net positive for any secondary that already focuses on things like durability or has KB protection in it. Say for Kinetic? "This is Great!" But for Electric Affinity? "Yippe. I am just as durable as before but I do less damage now. YAY." Marine might go "Oh, KB protection. Awesome" But Time is going to go "....horray?" Again, I respect you Maelwys, and you and I have compared notes and things before. But I do not consider this patch a "buff" at all. Nor do I have faith that the powers that be will actually "buff" MMs to the point where they are comparable with other ATs, at least where Damage is concerned. Because until they look at the real issues, like pet movement, pet re-summoning and re-buffing mid combat (especially during a cascading failure situation), all of this is very wishful thinking at best. It won't matter what your pets max values are, if they SPLAT while resummoning them before you can even buff or heal them. It doesn't matter how they perform in +5 on teams, if it takes pets 30 seconds to move from pack to pack (being out of supremacy range the entire time until they catch up) and the pack is nearly dead by the time they get there. The pets may as not even be there for all the DPS they might contribute. Don't get me wrong. I do appreciate them at least thinking about MMs in higher difficulties. But IMO this is the wrong way to go about it. Especially if most of the secondaries struggle on +3, why are they focusing on +5 and beyond? Shouldn't they, oh, I don't know, lift up the ones that are struggling, and THEN make a baseline for all of them? Instead of making a new baseline for the "best of all possible builds" situation?