DrunkFlux

I know I'll see +4's on the game when you set at +3. Didn't need to reply to that on this, I only mentioned +4's spawning to also include that I also got a taste of what they'd be like on +4 so people wouldn't assume that I couldn't handle them at +3, it was +4 that gave me trouble on the blaster. My stalker handled the new council relatively easy compared to my ice blaster, in fact she managed to clear the map faster than the ice blaster simply due to having far superior single-target DPS, as thats what you need to deal with the dark warwolfs, they are so tanky that the AoE power advantage blasters have is completely negated, and the blasters having lower ST than scrappers and stalkers ultimately causes them to fall behind the stalker I had (who to be fair had decent AoE as a Dual blades stalker). This was including the +4's that are in the map.

This is, beyond words, cruel. Like Cyptic nerfing everything not-healing in CO cruel.

I'll have to give it a try sometime then, as the hard-mode ITF and nictus possession, things feeling unavoidable was a major quit moment for me when it comes to hard mode content, I played hard mode ITF once and then never touched it again after that. Although it was also the cysts blowing up 1-shotting my bio armor stalker who actually wasn't fully incarnated out and only half IO'd (still 50), that wasn't the best idea, but it made me feel I had to bring toons in who were 100% perfect to do any hard mode content after that, and by the time I had more i felt were ready everyone was only doing 4* with barrier stacking on all toons.

Finally got around to fighting the new council, I liked the galaxy ones but I hated the dark eclipse archons, they res and the holds from my ice powers weren't working half the time, and it seemed like they had an auto-hit attack, died twice in one mission on 8x+3 solo (though the game put +4's and those were the ones that defeated me.) on effectively the same mob. On a toon with every IO with as much defense as I could stack in every category, barrier, Inner will ect and still said blaster couldn't keep alive effectively. I ended up putting in an extra kb protection IO before continuing. Maybe I should have tested this all on beta or something. An auto hit attack.....that hits hard as heck. RIP defense users I guess. The other things I liked, I also fought the CoT 8x+2 solo, they seemed a lot more fun as I simply had to react and watch that I was attacking the right mobs. Though it wa sa cave and the mobs were rather scattered, though I don't try to fight in tar patches/quakes ect either. Honestly they seem to be likely easier simply due to not having auto-hit abilities. I like they got equivilants of Ruin, Madness and Agony mages(and nice touch with the huge explode power on near defeat, make me keep a distance). CoT = fun to fight again(so far anyways), mobs debuff/cc patches is a nice touch so far as it can be moved out of(or teleport out of if immobed/slowed ect), I can react to them and they react to me, its fun. Council = Why do they have to have an auto-hit attack? Wasn't it bad enough Ralaruu had auto-hit mobs in abundance? I mean do we really want them to be ludicrously hard now I dunno, I wasn't having fun fighting council once I moved from +2 to +3(and the game tossed +4's at me). Simply the fact that the vampire archons are always going to turn into super warwolves(all of them in the entire map did this to me by the way), and seem to have extra high resistance to holds and can auto-hit occasionally before they turn, not very soloable anymore unless your stacked with dark resists. At least, thats how I'm left feeling about it anyways. I felt like it was all luck in the end and keeping a distance from the enemies so they don't auto-hit on me.

I was playin with timers for a long time now, so I'm used to these scenes of horror from cooldown reduction debuffs :D. But I love it since on some of my toons I can perfectly time my BU + Aim + nukes on my blaster(I want both fired off just at the tenth of a second the tier 9 nuke is ready, so its off as much as humanly possible so I can win that DPS race I do as a means of making myself better at this game). Welcome to my world! But don't worry though its only if they actually land em on ya.

Haven't played much since the update (rimworld, yeah, i'm addicted to that game) but I had already respecced my widow. But I will have to see how my two maxed blasters do. I was indestructible on them before the patch(then again I always make my toons tankier, rather than just loading up on damage procs like everyone under the sun). Though its also my play, I'm always watching every single power enemies use and I'm never satisfied until I'm soloing the mobs again :D. Maybe i'll run the water blaster first with it, since she has rise of the phoenix, which to me is effectively a free nuke and extra health bar, it even recharges super fast on Alma :D. If not then it'll have to be the widow just to be sure the team has more force multipliers.

Hence the idea is the badges are more like challenge badges than anything. Not really intended for casual players as much.

Not trying to be elitist on it, just thought it'd be nice if there was more incentive is all, I mean they are adding more incentive to mix team roles a bit, why not more incentive for map clearing to? As for the 8x, that was so people wouldn't just set the mob counter or smallest team allowed for quickest obtaining of said badges, more than anything. *Shrug*

Oh yeah, credit should only be if the difficulty is at 8x. Maybe even 8x+1 through up to 8x+4 or maybe just make it hard mode exclusive.

What it says on the title. Badges or extra rewards for 100% defeats, as in absolute, 100% defeat everything in every map in a task force. Even timed missions. Guild wars had something similar, the "Vanquisher" rewards for wiping the entire map on its hard difficulty, so why not something like that for CoH and the missions in task forces? I only also suggest this as I admit I enjoy kill most ITF's and also like to clear entire maps of mobs in missions. Also, I'd noticed in task forces sometimes people are speed running even when they say they are running a "Normal run". Unfortunately, that later one annoys me to an extreme. If I wanted a speed run i'd have joined or form a team FOR a speed run. How about also another idea: Completion scoreboard. On mission completion, a scoreboard shows up on how much time was spent on mission, how many enemies missed ect. Because, why not?

You picked praetorian side as a new player? Yeah they are putting in a warning in the upcoming update about that. Gold side is very, very hard compared to blue/red side. I often say its for experts only who know well in advance high strength powerset combinations. I get it a bit not all sets are equal, Dual pistols IS a middle-performer overall atm, due to activation time flows. Dual pistols though isn't a "late bloomer" and you did reply about the hold power, yes, never, EVER dismiss a power in a set especially if your using it for the first time. Theres often what we call "hidden gems" in some power sets on some classes. Dual pistols suppressive fire on sentinels is one of those. After you've hit higher levels then you get a feel for the chains and whats effective/skippable and can respec and fine tune a build to get more out of the set combination. Also, holds can prevent a TON of damage even if they are low damage, they are great for applying "Active defense"; defensive measures that cripple/disable enemies through cc effects and raw debuffs. Ice blasters know this all to well, they rely almost exclusively on active defense to survive; both the holds are the powersets most powerful attack and blizzard debuffs to-hit. In fact, hardest experience is to play a support class gold side, I even started a support toon there and had to specifically build for it to get through. Also, sentinels are not blasters with extra defense, but blasters who sacrifice the high damage melee/utility secondary for a defense set. Sentinels lose a lot of damage and often utility that can include holds for that, ironicly, they get attacked more compared to a blaster who also uses the melee attacks and so defeats the enemies quicker or cripples them so they get attacked even less. I actually found sentinels are very strong WITH DP, though, and is potentially brutal with defense-focused secondaries thanks to luck of the gambler later, you can then simply load up on procs in DP attacks with reckless abandonment, have high defense AND high proc damage with very solid global recharge.

It's not so much that but knowing what your getting at each level range and how to make the most of it: Assuming NOT playing in +4 teams such as PI 54 or AE: 1-15: Assuming you get enhancements yeah, your at DO's likely. Beginners luck runs out around 20 but the base bonus accuracy helps. Low damage due to not being able to slot properly. ALL powersets suck at this point. Your main talents are not fully online 'yet'. Usually you end up taking both tier 1 and 2 powers if your concerned about power here. 15-22: The crunch, still on crappy enhancements, enemies are getting a bit tougher. Things are almost online, but not quite. Some sets don't come fully online yet, some do. DP is usually mostly online, barring its tier 9. Respeccing early 'here' isn't a bad idea necessarily if only to get rid of redundant attacks and tighten your slotting a little. 22-30: Everything looks spread thin or your loading all your damage abilities, saccing survivability on a sentinel. However, your overall build concept is "online" now, just underslotted. It only gets better from here. Respeccing into something comparable to the final build becomes very viable if you have it fully planned out in mids. 30-40: Slotting finally fills out to be reasonable, still not IO'd but at least now your seeing a significant power increase. 40-50: Build becomes even more powerful due to slotting, tertiary/filler powers such as leadership/fighting is taken depending on what hasn't been taken already. 50+1: Your able to contribute to 54 teams efficiently regardless of archtype, your damage effectively doubles over sidekicked to 49 due to going from fighting -5 vs your enemies to only -3. And course other incarnate powers. And no need to slot new enhancements/replace SO's and so your able to start thinking about full sets or proc spamming. There IS a major power curve here that EVERYONE goes through, even the most powerful sets and set combinations experience this. I think only support classes can see a significant improvement in overall power contribution at the lower levels, including the VEATS. Non support classes and tanks generally depend entirely on themselves for there performance, and so aren't as able to contribute to a team as much, but are more effective solo compared to support. But its also down to WHERE you put what slots you have to work with, some builds are weaker at lower levels than others and sometimes making a build with low levels in mind, if even only temporary, isn't a bad idea to account for that.

I second this, suppressive fire is very, very good on a sentinel when your using fire/ice ammo. In fact, superior on a sentinel over the other ranged archtypes if I remember right.

Firstly, you've only leveled up to 15, you don't even have SO-enhancements(or equivilent IOs) yet. And not to mention procs if you decide to use them. Also why not play a different character to level 50, save up a ton of influence and then transfer it to the struggling DP toon? Even then though, why are you playing solo all the time? Teaming gets you more experience/hour and if you wanna solo the archs consider using Ouroboros to play them after you've leveled up a bunch. AND teams can provide things like buffs to make up for your weaknesses until your high enough level to hold your own. I mean my first 50 on homecoming was a DP/Time manipulation corruptor, and I had no major difficulty, because teamwork. I played in teams and debuffed everything in my path, I used PBU to boost farsight(and also sometimes hail of bullets) and make myself and allies ridiculously tough. Build would probably be even stronger today than back then, in fact. And in fact i'm starting, of all things, a DP/devices blaster to lately. I also maxed out a DP/bio sentinel to, and found it rather fun, and probably stronger now due to the sentinel buff. She wasn't the highest damage but her staying power was amazing, I almost never went down when I was leveling her. If it still feels like you have problems perhaps reroll a different powerset or archtype. Honestly, your judging the powerset far to soon, level 15 is again very, very week, most sets are rather weak at that level range. Some just more than others(looking at you SR on scrapper/stalker). Either level it up some more OR try something else. Honestly? If your going for solo play, i'd recommend scrapper if your new to the game, rather than sentinel. Many scrapper sets have far higher raw DPS, good burst, and also scrapper secondaries most mature rather quickly(but i'd ask a little on this maybe, some like super reflexes aren't fully online all the way until level 28 on a scrapper, but Bio armor and radiation armor are both very good even at low levels). Sentinel is far more a niche archtype, it can be great, granted, though it struggles with sets that depend on procs or higher levels to feel fully online compared to the other ranged archtypes.

Most of my character names are derived from thesaurus definitions, with a few exceptions. *Shrug*

On Iron man, yes, Sentinel 100%. A very defensive focused Sentinel but a sentinel non the less.

Sometimes I wonder if they should have a "Score system" that gives extra EXP for doing something stylish like knocking enemies around :). And I play with my twitchy, high mobility style constantly for style(besides just utility of always being where I want to be at all times), jousting just looks cool.

I usually hybridize my builds with blaster, in fact, if I didn't want the melee attacks i'd just roll sentinel. If your like me and tend to "joust"(jumping just before attack in range activates to ensure you keep moving), it becomes very easy to both hit them with melee while keeping at a happy medium distance. This makes it easy to inflict very high single target damage, which the blaster melee attacks excel at, and enables you to be well positioned for ranged cone AoEs and easily target center targets. Effectively, it keeps you in a excellent position. I also joust myself so tankers are between me and anything that does agro onto me. I see little reason to not take the single target melee attacks. the PBAoE's on a blaster though, are not necessarily worth it, they can leave you poorly positioned for your ranged AoEs and expose you to more mob AoE fire than you need to be.

Title says it all. I'll share a pic but all ammo types are effected. This only happens when flying.

I admit, i'm one of those friends who not only has all the better stuff but even has a superior racing line, so to speak, so I'm gonna be even further ahead and lap ya in this analogy :D. And yeah, my blaster runs rings around other blasters as it is (just due to how I play her) let alone storm blasters.

Also uninstalling old version also had no effect.

I have the same error message, and when I try to install via the zip I get an error stating interupted file transfer. so I cannot get the newest version, this is debilitating.

The in-game description and numbers in-game shows the main damage as being 30 seconds of the 151 tics of damage that are low and 25 seconds of higher damage tics. I kind of put two and two together in how I was seeing it function and its description that for 5 seconds the later 25 second higher damage tic doesnt apply. In fact I pulled my numbers from what I was looking at in game from the blaster charts(as they are most accurate and also allowed me to use my water blaster as a control in the math). Inferno applies a majority of its damage upfront and then the rest as DoT, thats true of all fire blast powers, the DoT in fact is really more of a very nice bonus. It isn't smoothed out over that 10 seconds :).

100% the vibe I got from Rubra here last night I admit. I'll just leave here since I'd rather not spend the entire day talking about things; my blaster has a cooldown of 39 seconds on geysar. I don't use hasten I don't have it slotted. My other maxed out blaster has energy blast, no knockback to knockdown, no hasten. Her nova cooldown is approx 1 minute. A "stop having fun! guy"(Or scrub, which is an opposite) would chastise me for not having hasten to squeeze like, 6-7 seconds off geysar or 10 seconds off nova. Because Hasten is "meta"(note the quotes though), all the while, many would hate me on my energy blaster for not slotting kb to kd, even if I was mopping the floor with the entire map, over not playing their one specific way. Both though are extremely optimized for me to play at the highest level for how I play and how I coordinate with the team when necessary, both are built allow me high levels of adaptability and reactiveness to changing situations. But shfg's dismiss that, i'm automatically lesser for not playing like them. Even when I mop up half the map. (If your wondering, i'm a VERY twitchy player and its very visible in my movements, racing lines with flight, combat teleport binds and I jump around and joust a lot) To Rudra: It IS very lacking in maturity to get upset over others playstyle. If thats the entire reason you dislike my ideas on improving storms category 5, well how would buffing category 5 to be a serviceable nuke effect you if you still only use it on AVs? I'd recommend that you seriously think about things instead of having a huge level of disdain for how others play. Because thats very unhealthy and to be honest, I've seen that mentality outright destroy games before, its toxic. (Edit to clarify the last part who its for)

Mostly saying it could be better, doesn't have to be the best, just needs adjusted. Even the AoE weak sets are a lot stronger. The fact that many mobs die way to quickly before the lightning strikes/high winds from storm cell become relevant and the DoT from cat5 takes as long as the shiny pistol takes to clean itself after every single shot. I mean, a later post I think I even pointed out just tightening the damage on cat 5 would be great. I think also maybe making storm cell more like a toggle centered on the user would significantly help storm blast to, wouldn't need to recast it all the time. Or just make it move faster.