Neiska

I did! 🙂

I actually like to use it on Masterminds, due to the stun which can be boosted to be as long as 28 seconds in some builds. A 28-second-long stun is absurdly strong to keep pets alive in hard content. And yet I don't see many others take it!

Some memorable ones for me - The first time using power boost then FarSight and watch my DEF skyrocket. The first time I turned on group fly with robots, instantly loved how they even added little rocket boots to them for the occasion. The time I did what I thought was a meme build, stacking as many puddle/ranged aoe effects (bonfire, corrosive vial, etc etc) all atop of one another. I thought it would just be a goofball move, but it surprised me how fast stuff in the area just melted. The first time I tried flying with a crabby. Survivability instantly went through the roof, like I was a flying tanker. The first time using Burnout + Gangwar. Then figuring out how to perma-gangwar. Fold Space. A game changer if you know how to use it. Lastly, I think many underestimate Oppressive Gloom, and it is entirely exploitable and I am surprised I don't see more builds with it.

Fair!

While I don't disagree that its often better to just block someone and move on, isn't that sort of going "la la la I can't hear you?" or "I'm taking MY ball and going home?" Healthy discussion and debate can be good. Arguing like toddlers on the forums less so. Some people can disagree respectfully. But just ignoring someone doesn't make the problem or issue go away either. Side thought - I cannot be the only one who doesn't get this whole "jranger" thing?

Not sure why people treat farming and selling things as if they were mutually exclusive of each other. I farm a lot and often, and often I'll just throw the mats into the AH for storage and press on. Then after a couple hours I'll sit and make whatever I happened to find and sell the rest. I never got the "us vs them" mentality when it comes to ways of getting resources. Some people like to farm merits, convert, and sell them. Others like to farm. Some buy recipes and craft. So on. If it's in the game, there's no "wrong" way to play. Arguments could be made that some things are more efficient than others, but honestly, who cares? I would rather be a bit less efficient and have a fun time playing, then have my arm twisted and have the game feel like a chore in order to be a bit more efficient. People can have fun and make money at the same time ya know. This comparative fictional economic peenie-measuring is honestly really unnecessary. Personally, I go by "live and let live", you do your thing, I'll do mine. And I don't particularly care what you do since it won't affect me in any way. You have piles of money? Great. So do I. Are your pixels somehow more important than mine? I think not. And I have a pretty low opinion of people who want to try and control the actions of other people or get on their soapbox and lecture them. Personally, I find it kind of funny that not only is there AT/Group meta now, but even an "economic meta" now. Seems to be by the same names I see pop up time to time, and I don't think that's confidence either. I suspect it's not about efficiency, or even what's better. I suspect its more about some people seeing others enjoy the CoH sandbox their own way, and for whatever reason, it upsets them. "How dare other people do stuff I don't like or play in a way I don't" and so on. Nobody is asking you to, and nobody asked if you liked it or approved in the first place. Let people enjoy the sandbox how they like. Unless your name has a "CoH Staff" by it, then your opinion is just that - an opinion. Not a rule. And certainly not something others have to abide by or adhere to and thank God for that.

Honestly the Global Toxic proc is probably my favorite one. Not the best and so on, but it's quite nice to have a chance for "every" attack. See it go off pretty constantly!

Managing a toggle is too much work? You should try numberpad masterminds!

3 Accounts here, Lord knows how many characters on them. I know it's at least 3 pages, mostly 40-50s. Almost all of them are Tankers or Masterminds, with 2 or 3 Crabbers, plus the odd other powers or builds I wanted to try at one point or another. Lately though, I have really focused not on making alts but taking my current favorite and making it "perfect" or at least make it so it can solo +4/8 without being painful/cumbersome to do so. She does fine on +3/8 currently. (Shes a Crabby) On a side note, I do tend to loose track of what alt has what. Sometimes I will blow the dust off one and log into a character I haven't played in 500 or so days, only to see that shes got an auction house full of storage, several things sold, sitting on 1-1.5 billion, with a whole pile of merits that I completely forgot that I had. And this has happened more than once! 😄 But yea, alts can be great, if nothing else to change up the feel and gameplay a bit. But my obsession with crabbys is keeping me busy for the moment.

Two thoughts - 1. The forums is the real CoH endgame, and it's kind of a turn based PVP. And 2. Staff of Aesculapius

Plenty of people do the hardmode things. At least on Everlasting. I see calls for them everyday I'm on. As far as difficulty itself? I think the claims of "anyone/everyone can solo +4/8 hardmode" are a bit strawman. No, not everyone can. And some if they can, take so long to do it that there's no point. Which makes me wonder if the disagreement is more about how long different people think a mission should take. Unless I am farming, I have little interest in a single mission taking longer than 10-20 minutes. Also, context matters here. If we are saying the game is too easy with a team vs solo. And the other side of the coin is that people might have also simply gotten better. The game has been out for a bit now, and what took people a bit to figure out is now pretty common knowledge. I mean, one of the best teams you can have is 1 tanker and 7 corruptors now. And with the right secondaries, that pretty much gives you everything you need - buffs, debuffs, healing, debuff protection, etc etc etc. Personally, I think the "glass cannons" aren't "glass" at all. The difference between DPS among the ATs can vary pretty widely, but not so much their survivability. Everyone has the same DEF softcap, a bit of difference between resistance caps, but the biggest difference is in max hitpoints. Which if you are running with buffs and healers, the max hitpoints aren't as important. I also think that the high dps people perhaps do too much dps, compared to everyone else. A tanker gives up a good bit of DPS to be as tough as they are (when compared to Scrappers/Stalkers, melee dps.) But dps don't have to give up much to do their damage. 15% resistance softcap and a bit of hitpoints. If Glass Cannons were suddenly actually "glass" I think most people would suddenly find the game challenging again. But the problem with making them too squishy is suddenly DPS might have a harder time soloing. So the DEVS have to take that into account as well. Not that I actually expect them to make dps more squishy. I don't think we have seen much in the way of survivability tweaks and changes, most of them have all been DPS orientated. Some have been CC things as well, but I can't immediately recall any hard survivability tweaks to ATs speak of. Maybe powersets here and there? But not like, balancing adjustments which I would argue is needed. But I also doubt it would be popular.

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.