Neiska

Personally I am okay with silly or funny. I mean, what if the shield has like a tree painted on it or something and the rogue is pulling the whole "YOU CANT SEE ME" bit?

I wish there were more robot/cybernetic parts. Like - -missile pod backpacks -gun turret shoulder pad - chest mounted rocket launcher - tri-mounted rotating nuclear fusion powered admantine chainsaw -gun arms -sword arms - T shirt gun -rubber duck gun A lot of the costume options seem to favor mutant/cape kind of style of heroes. Which isn't bad! But the tech stuff seems pretty slim pickings. PS - one costume/transmog I've always wanted to see in a game, was a gnome tied to a giant stick and used like a club.

Personally I am fine with Super Strength on stalkers, STR based Rogues are actually a meta setup in some games. But the idea of a rogue sneaking around with a 10 foot long greatsword is kind of funny, but not enough to stop it from adding IMO. I mean, we have people with granite form who do kung fu flips, spin kicks and so on too. Lots of silly looking things in the game. And to me, honestly? That's part of the charm.

A few reasons - 1. Ultimate freedom of character creation, from looks to powers to costume etc. To date no other game I know of comes this close to pretty much every aspect of your character. 2. I love pet classes in games, and CoH has some of the best pet mechanics I have seen. They are more than just a summon/pet, and there are even many ways to build them. So this game doesn't just have pet builds, but has different ways to build them which most other games don't compare to. 3. Most of the people ingame are pretty chill and enjoyable to be around. 4. Strong solo presence. You can play the whole game entirely solo and still eventually end up with the best things. Unlike other mmos where you might raid for years and still not get what you want. 5. The game "doesn't begin" at level cap like some MMOs seem to these days.

Ack sorry, double post

@Scarlet Shocker - I have a suggestion that nobody has mentioned yet - SoA, specifically, a crabber. I see them as sort of the hidden "Battle Mage" of the game. Its fairly easy to hit your DEF softcaps, and their resists can get as high as 85%. You can have an all-ranged build, even with flying. The only CC to speak of is web grenade or patron pool stuff, but often Hover proves to be enough. You can just hover, throw web grenade, follow up with venom grenade, frag, suppression, etc. Your full attack chain can be ranged. And your AoE is actually very good. Your ST isn't so good though. You can boost it with things like Arcane Bolt, Gloom, Spirit Shark etc, but even then it's pretty "blah." Only with the pets all dogpiling things can you do good ST dps, but the problem is (when solo) you have limited tools to keep them alive. Even if you built to make them as durable as possible, on anything harder than +3/8 they are going to die often. Most of the time they shoot a few times, and then run in, and get clobbered. On teams its quite good since the pressure isn't ALL on them, but alone your choices really are play on lower difficulties than +4/8, or accept they are entirely disposable and will die often. The other Crabby issue is they are fairly harsh on the blue bar. Not as bad as Dark Armor is, but its rougher than most. The way I see it, you can build them two general ways - 1. Focus on Recharge to keep pets perma, and up as much as possible. You sacrifice a lot of slots and a few power picks doing this though, but this is kind of the "go-to" setup for Crabbers. 2. If I want to solo harder content, I have had much better results omitting pets entirely. That frees up many power picks and slots to put elsewhere. When I go petless I always plan to fly and push DEF, Resists, with the best attack setups I'm able to cobble together. And while I am not soloing AVs/GMs with this setup, it's still one of my favorite builds in the game to play and is quite capable of soloing +4/8. Just Elite Bosses can take awhile, so I usually just ignore them or pass them. Not many people build Crabs this way, but its certainly an option to omit pets entirely. But if you like being a very durable build that can fight at range, with good AoE and "meh" Single Target, you can try a Crabber. I attached a pic of one of my setups, (the first kind of build with pets since that's what most people like.) As you can see it sports VERY good Defenses and Resists. Even plugged the Psionic hole. And this is without any buffs, no rune of protection, no destiny, etc. It also has an immobilize with Soul Tentacles, and Dark Obiliteration to help pets a bit more outside of Destiny big-buffs. This is just you flying around with toggles on, and you are as tough as some Tankers. Without the pets, you could push these resists even Higher, and beyond even that if you are willing to accept a Psionic Resistance hole. This setup has been the best results for me for crabber "with pets" solo-play. My "all resists, no pets" setup is similar defenses with 80% to pretty much everything. Again, no buffs or incarnates on. Thats just you flying around with your toggles. There were times which I outlived everyone else on the team, which honestly is kind of funny. Anyway, Hope this helps! Or at least inspires someone. PS - added a pic with rune of protection on to show what top resists values look like with a crabby.

Me? I don't really dislike anything specific in the game right now, aside from them wildly changing some powersets. Tweaks are one thing, complete overhauls are another. That and the mentality that we often see that is "I enjoy playing the game MY way, anyone who does not play MY way is wrong." My entire wish for CoH is effectively - more options for everyone. That way people can play in the way they like. You can't please everyone, sure. But the more things change the more they seem to push certain activities, namely teaming. I consider teaming a side activity, not my main one. And for all the things they add, they don't really add much specifically for people who mainly solo (if anything they seem to almost discourage it), and while not a pvper myself, I do feel bad for the avid PVP folks who have not gotten so much as a ray of sunshine as far as I am aware. I could be wrong though! I am not really involved with pvp things, but do think them and solo-play could use some polish.

While I agree with most of your points, there are some who argue that pylons are the end-all-be-all measurement. Which I hope we all can agree is not the case. As I said, I consider it a "ballpark" estimate. But not a kiss-your-elbow evidence for changes as some like to present them. It's not so much the data itself I object to, it's the how it was obtained, and how that data is being presented to change something not related. And I go back to my original argument - that DPS is given way, way too much weight vs everything else. And it seems to be essentially the only thing they present as a basis to make changes on. And I think the irony is that at the endgame, DPS isn't even king. I would argue that debuffs are king in the high end of this game. I also think the irony and even perhaps part of the balancing is that the kinds of builds that are most needed for the hardest content aren't necessarily the best solo, or even the fastest. And those that solo the best, or are fastest, are not necessarily the best for the highest difficulty. And comparisons such as that rarely even make it into balance conversations.

Certainly not balance that only exists in a single context but not in the rest of the 99.5% of the game, sure. Because balancing things only around one part of the game against standing still targets that don't fight back is such a clear, balanced, and fair metric after all. Look arcane, I suspect you and I agree on more than we disagree on. But I think we both agree that we will never see eye to eye on this. And until a Dev steps in, anything you or I say are merely our respective opinions and just that. Not facts, not kiss-your-elbow infallible logic, or even perfect math. You may personally think pylons are a good enough metric to balance everything on. I do not. So lets agree to disagree here?

Not everyone believes it's a problem, but okay.

That's one way to put it, certainly. To my mind, a better more complete data crunch would involve - Single target DPS AoE target DPS AV/GM DPS All against targets that actually, you know, fight back. This kind of data-cherry picking is similar to testing a product in a lab, then producing it for sale without field testing it, and then seeing it do things that nobody expected or thought of.

My objection is not observing DPS. My objection is using DPS in a specific situation that don't exist in the game outside that single situation, as any kind of data to lend weight to any kind of "nerf" argument. If those numbers "only" exist in pylons, and NOPLACE else, but ONLY in pylon tests, then what do those numbers matter? If anyone playing the actual game doing anything else wouldn't achieve those numbers? That's not even comparing apples to oranges. That is comparing apples to the price of pineapple seeds. I never said testing wasn't useful. Its people presenting pigeonholed data collected in certain circumstances to make changes that don't exist except in those certain circumstances. Another example - "During a leap year, A fire melee scrapper is best. They should be nerfed" "But a leap year only happens once every few years? Why are we treating leap years as the normal?" "Doesn't matter. They are best. They need to be toned down."

Then what value is such data in an argument, gathered contexts that don't exist or if they do only exist very rarely? If no other game activities involve hitting a target that doesn't fight back, then what does it matter what the data says? Since the actual data could be quite different? 1.) "Against a single target that doesn't fight back, move, run, or do anything then X is best dps." A.) "Alright. But what about every other aspect of the game?" 2.) "Oh, then it would be different. But I still think it should be nerfed." B.) "But the data you use for your argument only exists in your single situation, and only exists in context? And you want to use this data to prove your argument that X needs to be nerfed?" 3.) "Yes."

I never said testing DPS isn't a good thing. But if you are going to present data for augments that things need to be changed or fixed, then I think testing it in a more realistic game situation has far more weight to it than a niche and almost never repeated situation. You want to test DPS in a more realistic scenario? All you testers should use the same AE map. That way enemies fight back, enemies run, enemies do things and don't just stand there. Your test disregards even things as simple as them running away which would lower/impact the "actual" dps than if it was just standing there. I never said pylons should be disregarded entirely. Only that their actual value for things like game balance and tuning to be dubious at best. If the game was everyone standing around fighting stationary targes that don't do anything, then you would have a good measurement there. But that's not the game. So why not take your pylon builds and go run tests in actual game situations and use that instead when making arguments for balance changes. Methinks its because certain things can be controlled or even omitted entirely and thus don't arise during the re-balancing discussion, but that's just me musing. I mean, this isn't even taking things like "bad agents" into account. People who want to deliberately nerf some ATs/powersets and use pylons as their bible to present their point. Or people purposefully underperforming to try and argue that their at/build/setup needs a buff. I look at data professionally. Not this kind of data mind you, I am more on the finance side of the house. But everything presented in pylon discussions as arguments to change things never made sense to me. At all. Not as a standalone anyway, which is what it seems to be most of the time. A comparison of pylon times as far as what's good or bad. Now some big brains here have done their due diligence and compared different setups in different situations and scenarios. But only using pylon times as a soapbox to stand on, well, strikes me as lazy data-generation. If you are going to compare different points of data, in a context that has more than two points, then you need to use more than two points as referance.

Hold up. So you are "isolating a variable" (in this case, dps), using a situation that is not replicated in 99% of the rest of the game, using uncontrolled measures and dubious metrics (such as ignoring all survivability stats entirely in favor of more DPS) and then some people present such data as "evidence" that some things need to be nerfed? That would be like me entering a bike race, with a motorcycle, that I used illegal upgrades on, and then made the augment that since people swim too fast bikes need to be nerfed.

Warning - possible unpopular opinion. You want to know a reason why Pylons don't matter? I can give you a few! 1. It doesn't resemble actual combat. It is literally a target dummy. Actual enemies move, fight back, buff, debuff, heal, and all kinds of other things. All you are presenting is a race, and a very narrow visioned one at that. DPS is but a small slice of the COH combat pie. 2. It doesn't compare ST to AOE. I don't think I really need to elaborate further on this, do I? 3. It doesn't take things like Brute fury-build up into account, and so on. 4. A person can say to heck with things like defense, resist, debuff protection, etc etc and build full out for DPS and DPS only, and perform awesome on a Pylon. When such a build might very likely fall flat elsewhere, especially on harder difficulties when things fight back, and especially solo. 5. I don't recall who, but someone once set a record with of all things... ...wait for it.. ..a Crabbermind. This was awhile ago mind you, 2-3 years I am thinking. But I recall at the time people were very surprised by how good of a time it was. It wasn't FIRST, but it was certainly up there. More than most expected. But I doubt anyone here would argue that Crabbers need DPS nerf, especially when they enjoy the infamous reputation for being "meh" dps to begin with. Not to mention that on anything harder than +3/8, its hard to keep all your pets alive for any duration longer than your barrier wearing off. 6. Lastly, the "but meh DPS!" mentality is a trap. And frankly it irks me that its the only measuring stick that people seem to care about. What do I mean by "its a trap?" It reminds me of the days of yore, back during raids when some people would just stare at the DPS meters and go "IM WINNING!" when they are standing in the fire, or messing up the raid mechanics, and wipe the raid. But are utterly convinced that since they were "top of the charts" they could do no wrong and it was everyone elses fault. How DARE people expect them to move, swap targets, click the thingy, and so on. That would drop them to number 3 at least, possibly even number 4! THE NERVE! Now I hasten to add that I make no accusations that anyone here is of that same mentality, only that some remind me of such. When in any content that actually matters, frankly, DPS is at best, a 3rd or 4th concern. At most. On any hard content, the questions usually asked are - "do we have the right debuffs?" "do we have the right debuff protection" "we good for the purple patches" etc. I am hard pressed to think of a single solitary time was the question asked "do we have enough DPS" on any hard content. So I take any claims of Pylons or DPS with a very large grain of salt. Which is to say, I utterly disregard a lot of it unless it's from a voice that I respect, of which there are many. But the funny thing? For all the outcries of "X NEEDS DPS NERF!" Or "look what I can do! LOOK AT MEH NUMBAS!" I can take a build that does half that and solo things that your shiny glass cannon can only dream of. Soloing AVs, GMs, entire TFs, etc. Anyone built only for DPS and DPS only isn't soloing any of those. Which makes me wonder why DPS seems to be the only measurement that people seem to go on crusades for. However, I do want to add that I don't entirely disregard Pylon data. Only that I don't think its a good metric at all to compare different ATs. What it IS good for is rough ballpark estimates, as well as comparing different powersets on the SAME AT. NOT different AT metrics or balance arguments. As far as the Changeling thing specifically? I'll throw that into my "who cares" bin. What they do doesn't affect me. If they found a way to make an underperforming AT at least mediocre, then I say the onus is on the admins to fix it so such things aren't necessary or even an option. I only played one once, years ago, a Warshade and got to level 30ish. I remember it being so painful I regarded it in the same category as petless MMs. Granted I know much more about the game now than I did way back when, but I am skeptical that they have really changed all that much except with the change specifically cited. And I scoff at any claims of "but the DEVS want..." or "the DEVS said...!" without specific direct quotes. I can claim they think Santa Clause is a IRS agent who vacations in the tropics, but that doesn't make it true. So, until I see an actual Dev post that directly addresses an issue, I will take what people claim what they said with a very large pile of salt. As in entirely disregarded altogether. Just my two cents PS - if people wanted to compare actual combat data in a more realistic situation, they would be using a specific map on the AE where other combat features are also a concern. Not just how much damage you can do against a non-moving standing target with no powers or abilities.

How I used it was I would just stand in my own Bonfire, so they would have to come to me. The AI is kind of dumb that way. Most enemies don't fly or have a full cycle of ranged attacks. Works for more than just Bonfire too. Instead of trying to make an enemy stay in place, sometimes its so much easier if you just stand where you want them yourself. Bummer to hear about the flopping nerf, I took it more for that than the "meh" damage. I was actually pondering trying a multi-stack of such "pool" effects, like Bonfire + Corrosive Vial + Enflame + Tar Patch/Sleet/Secondary of choice etc. Pretty much just stacking multiple "Ranged Area of Effect" powers and then just standing near or by it. I doubt such would be a top performer, but it might be fun to try. That kind of "plant the flag" playstyle would go well with /Traps and Trick Arrow, come to think about it.

Two pages and not one person mentioned the Ski Slope?!?!? ⛷️ Op! Just saw Flea did in first post. ^.^ Faith in Flea's restored.

Welcome to "en masse" play. It's how I farm with my MMs. Pretty much engage as much as possible and burn it all down. I consider it more a solo activity unless I am with friends who also like playing in that manner, not something I do on random teams as most don't seem to like it. Instead of going group-by-group of spawns you run through the first, past the second, jump over the third, and smash into the fourth and round them all up into a giant death ball. On the Asteroid map I engage 5-8 groups of mobs at a time. While my damage vs brutes isn't even close, since I can engage so many MORE at a time, the damage vs the map as a whole is comparable. Robots before the change used to be ABSURDLY fast - 3 minute clear times in fact. But since the change the missile burn patches got nerfed so it's more like 7 or so minutes now. Nowadays if I want to farm with my MMs I just go with my 3 demon team. Almost as fast, but the pets are much studier which makes it all easier. Just bums me out how the devs seem to dislike people playing in such a way, as they keep changing things to make it more and more tricky to do. Some tricks still work, you can always line-of-sight things, but in wide open spaces unless you are on a AT with pets that can engage a LOT of mobs at a time, the rest of the spawns will just hang back and pelt you with things. But with a big enough aggro list (pets have their own aggro tables) everything will come into the death ball and get clobbered. But to me, going spawn to spawn one by one is JUST.. SO.. SLOW... I mean, if it takes me the same amount of time to burn down one group as it does to burn down 3 groups, why would I stop at fighting one group at a time?

Agree with most of the points have others have made, have a few gems to mention - Depending on the Primary, Group Fly may want to be considered, mostly with Mercs and Robots since they are ranged. Bonfire "used" to be a great pic. I recall reading elsewhere it's not worth taking anymore, but I have no firsthand knowledge of it either way. It "used" to be a fantastic duration lockdown ability that was a huge boon to some setups. Enflame I have had both good and bad results with. Think it depends on pet type, and its difficult to tell for sure what its damage or proc rates are. Depending on the Primary and Secondary, Burnout can be a powerful tool. It can let you get double-gangwar or hell on earth, but is also useful for sets like Nature that have a powerful buff. Fold Space might be situationally useful, but I've had good results with it. Hoarfrost and Hibernate are also situationally useful. Soul Consumption is also nice to have if you dislike relying on inspirations and don't want to take Ageless. Not all of these will shine on all MM primary+secondary pairings, a tool thats fantastic for one may not be fantastic for another. IMO MMs more than most other ATs can vary widely in playstyle depending on primary and secondary. A scrapper is always going to scrap. A tanker is always going to tank. But you can build MMs to be super buffers, super debuffer, solo GM hunter, tankermind, a hover team, etc etc.

Well not for MY characters, but I'd love to see Weird Al or Carrot Top in a superhero movie.

After playing/testing, I put all my tankers on the shelf right next to my Robot MMs. I've kept 2 or 3 in case a friend needs a tanker for whatever reason. But if their goal was to have fewer people playing tanks then they have been successful.

Farming isn't the problem. Them favoring some activities, playstyles, ATs, more than others is the problem. And I would argue that for the past 5 years there have been more nerfs than buffs, and I suspect some things that need fixed aren't even on their radar. Some may disagree, and that's fine. Each to their own. But I will have little empathy for folks who complain when what they liked gets nerfed, after the things I liked go through multiple rounds of being nerfed.

I would argue that for the majority of 95% or so of content, "nobody" is "needed." You can do pretty much any activity with any AT makeup. You don't NEED a tank, you don't NEED controllers, you don't NEED healing, and so on. And I think they did an overall good job balancing things. If you have a lot of Tanks/Brutes, you don't really need healers. If you have a lot of Controllers, you don't really need tankers. If you have full on DPS, you don't really need anyone. If you have full MM group, you don't really need anyone. If you have a full SoA/Widow group, you don't really need anyone. I have never been on one, but I suspect if you had all Warshades/Peacebringers, you definitely don't need anyone. (And that might actually be a blast to play, come to think of it.) One of the things I like the most about this game is that you don't really need the MMO party tri-fecta of Tank/Healer/DPS. You can go all Tank, or all DPS, or all Control, heck, you can even go all Support or Healer and accomplish 95% of the game. The only real difference is how long it will take and how many people may die in the process.

Never played that, but I remember a lot of the Disney games for all their silliness were actually quite difficult.