DrunkFlux

Cat 5 I brought up and derailed a little as it has the same problems as Storm cell. Actually worst, since it doesn't even move. Both powers need a LOT of time to matter. I'm talking 10-20 seconds+. Inferno, at that 3 seconds hits for its FULL damage. Meteor once landed hits for FULL damage. Even Rain of arrows hits for full damage much, much, MUCH faster than either storm cell or Category 5. Some sets have even higher initiative: Water Geyser not only applies full damage but is targetted AoE so easy as pie to fire off. Electrical blasts Tier 9 Also hits for full as does Beam rifle and both are targetted AoE. Non tier 9s, standard powers that are slow but I still use them: Fire breath needs about 3 seconds, but unless enemy dies right away, it'll usually get its damage in. Many melee attacks at high tier have long activations but still get full effect. Also them failing doesnt egregiously effect your other powers. In fact, every powerset when you activate a power, unless you fired it when everything already was dead practically your getting the full effect out of them. Both Storm Cell and Category five need at least 10 or so seconds to be useful. And even then, may not be useful if RNG decides not to trigger the lightning strikes. THAT is the problem here as why the OP wanted the activation time to be lowered. You not only have the activation time of storm cell and category five but ALSO THE ACTIVATION TIME OF EVERY SINGLE ATTACK YOU USE DURING THAT. AND EVEN THEN IT DOES NOT ALWAYS APPLY! It's unreliable, horribly unreliable and that was a complaint in the test forums. So you've got a powerset that has a finicky mechanic at best. It has almost no initiative. It's effectively a set thats only useful vs AV's and really, really tough mobs that don't die right away. Yet every other set I play also is useful vs really, really tough mobs.

And an FYI: I have a lot of fun with most every one of the other power sets and enjoy them a LOT, its more than the numbers, in fact if I only cared about damage sure I'd just pick fire blast and call it a day, but in fact I actually value UTILITY in my builds(including blasters), but I don't even see that with storm blast. The effects are awesome to, I also enjoyed seismic a ton because it had utility and I was still able to land the meteors in time with how I adjusted my playstyle to ensure meteor could land on the mobs before everyone else melted them. Cat 5 cannot even do that.

Well I dunno, I just don't seem to feel like storm blast is a useful powerset, in fact I feel it kind of sucks and if the idea of "fun over performance" well, I'm just gonna stick with ahem; Fire blast Ice blast Water Blast Beam Rifle The new Assault Rifle Energy Blast Archery Dark Blast Dual Pistols Sonic Blast Aka, every other set in the game where if I fire the tier 9, unless everything had died before it lands its because I messed up, not because someone else quickly joined in and fired off there judgement or own T9 that isn't Category 5. No other set has this problem. Category 5 sucks and storm cell just seems unreliable and to slow for the meta, the powerset as a whole suffers tremendously for it.

Actually i'm not arguing about "Uber maximum damage at all times" but actually the power getting to apply and be a factor 'at all', theres a huge difference. A energy torrent for example if it fires off and lands, even if the mobs are killed before anything else is used, is still a power that got to be a factor in that fight. Is freezing rain useful if the mobs die so fast it doesn't land? Nope, even fulcrum shift can become irrelevent if the mobs die way, way to fast for it to apply. But thats a case of speed to the mob and it's still able to get a sizable damage buff on a few enemies. Problem is, Cat 5 doesn't matter in most fights since well your likely to get 1-2 powers off after using it even if you opened up with it but ignored storm cell, or vice versa with storm cell. Only if your way ahead of the team does it matter. Thats what I am talking about. It becomes a wasted power use when you fire it at anything anyone else is already engaging and they are powerful enough. The mobs have to live long enough for it to work at all. Even if it did even so much as say, 100 damage upfront it'd be 100 times more useful than it is now, because then at LEAST you get to see 'that' damage inflicted.

2.03 seconds I'd seen entire mobs die in that time. In fact, i see it all the time. Thats why me and Axer are bringing it up. It only matters when a majority of mobs are very very tough, but a lot of the games content the mobs aren't. If your soloing the mobs on 8x and able to handle fine, more power to you it'll work fine. But your practically forced to do that to see the powers actually come into play, its either that or AV's which storm blast can definently do well against. It's just down to the law of practicality :/. It's not the most impractical thing i've seen, and honestly we are trying to give constructive criticism and your basically stating it's perfectly fine, when multiple times in the forums they brought up these potential issues, and now its seen in play.

I'd add though, I think storm blast screams to be used on a corruptor and I think it can be crazy with any secondary. Its attacks seem to hit hard even with the lower damage modifier without scourge and just hit like a truck with scourge. Since corrs/defenders aren't known for being super devastating with most T9s as it is, this works out for them.

And if the player is a blaster? Then what? As for the star eating everything on the map, well thats why I spear-head, but thats actually so mobs are dealt with faster and the map is cleared faster overall. Honestly I don't do that except on my main blaster who is made to be a hyper-aggressive build, which I'm building my own storm/time manip for a similar play style. Again I'd brought up it has tremendous staying power, so it's effectively an Archvillain killer, it does seem less valuable on anything without AV's though, or without lots of high health enemies. I wonder if someone could make a fire farmer with storm blast :D.

I think storms biggest problem is while it has high over time and sustained damage but it's DPA INITIATIVE is very, very bad. In fact, it's the worst in the game I've ever seen, a complete opposite of my usual playstyle of "Full spearhead, hit hard, fast and first". And I favor reliability, all of my builds are made with that in mind, otherwise I feel kinda useless. Simply, many mobs will be dead before you land anything due to all that time in trying to open up. Solo though, I decided while teaming just now to rush a team by myself after quaffing a purple and having farsight active and times juncture active. I was able to slaughter it no problem as the AoE sustain and consistency in hitting hard AND hitting more than one enemy at a time at all times was very effective. It just seems to as a set over-focus on that mechanic.

He's 100% accurate on this though, many teams kill mobs very fast, often so much so that in the time it takes for you to get all your stuff in, the mob is already dead. I'd argue storm blast is a phenomenal solo set that doesn't work well in high damage teams, as by itself it can do a lot of AoE once everything gets moving, but the problem is everything HAS to get moving and rev up. The revup factor is very very bad for doing burst AoE which is more important in teams as you just don't get to do anything otherwise. Storm cell should also move quicker once its summoned, much quicker. It should fly and should even teleport to whatever your attacking. Or I'd have asked to make it an AoE toggle. Again, it produces no agro. But it's necessary for all the powers to work. Everything in CoH is activation time economy, and Storm blasts biggest problem so far is just that, so it's actually, while a fun set numbers wise, they rarely are relevant in teamplay. It does seem to be an exceptional solo set though, as then once its going the mobs die very quickly, quicker than average in fact as the high AoE damage just keeps going. I cannot help but feel it wasn't tested long enough for feedback to matter, it was pushed out to early. Activation time and burst is 'everything' for AoE power in the current meta of the game. Thats why fire, ice and water blast are so powerful, they need no setup time to inflict the maximum damage, or can prep 'before' engaging.

Title says it all, I sent a memory dump+crash report with homecoming client, but picking EMP arrow during the power customization crashes the game.

Iwill have to try the new AR since.... it be https://tenor.com/byN8A.gif

Honestly they could get the same result as everyone having barrier if everyone would just take leadership: Maneuvers. In terms of defense anyways, it wouldn't help with resists but thats what people with resist shields are for. I don't really care for hard mode since, well, it is just a number change and its kinda silly to reduce team divsersity in a game about well, having a mix of characters to play with. At least everyone can take barrier I guess but I think people just underestimate leadership powers still.

Honestly it's appreciable how you can diversify your financial income and items you sell in this game, AND it's not all tied to an easily hyper-inflatable currency. I noticed influence in CoH isn't hyper-inflating, there seems to be a lot of resilience so it's much closer to a natural rate of inflation, where even just earning influence your still earning something. Contrast to live where prices for say, purple IO's went from 20m to 100m to 500m in a ridiculous short time span. Or like STO where dilithium got so horribly devalued that everything has become completely inaccessible. Compared to CoH homecoming where there are multiple means to obtain everything you'd purchase with influence, not just exclusively influence. Not to mention some items serve as sinks the way they set everything up, like the hero packs.

Sometimes converters are better, sometimes boosters are better, other times you have enhancement recipes that could be crafted and rerolled to something stronger. OR you can bank the merits and wait a little. At least people earn recipes in AE, otherwise yeah, we'd have the broken economy of live with influence meaning nothing at all.

+0 often means never getting to use 90% of your abilities when your a powerful character, or getting minimal amounts of EXP and leveling to slowly for me to feel it worth my time. It's a combination of the enemies just dying to quickly yet also giving way to little experience it feels like I just don't see the level bar move, even with double exp on a non 50. Granted I don't mine 0 when it's speed running a taskforce/strike force, since then we can be done and get the merits at the end in record time. It's however just less entertaining and actually lowers performance when everything is so weak you just don't get to use anything on the enemies. It's like one punch man: Saitama certainly has technique, but nothing ever lasts long enough for him to use 'any' of it when they all go down in a single punch.

I actually made my arachnos widow with carrying bad pugs in mind. There was one moment where the main tank(a brute) died and 2 other people went down. Well, my widow has vengeance and also had rebirth, I fired vengeance off on the tanks body and then immedietly rebirthed, and the team went from being slaughtered to an unstoppable force. In fact, my widow operates that way in general, bad teams become unstoppable with her. I generally enjoy PI radios even on non-50s since its a lot funner than fire farms. Fire farms your often forced into door sitting as everyone else does just that, door sit, except the fire farmer. It's often impossible to make any kind of contribution at all in any form. But PI's often let me get a feel for my attack chains/improvisations and how the character will feel once I hit 50, it's like running with a parachute strapped to my back, and hitting 50 the strings get detached and 50+1 the parachute is removed entirely. Then it's extremely satisfying to see how my damage had doubled, my hit-rolls are succeeding way, way more and enemies drop like flies :D. That never happens with a fire farm except on very, very few builds. Granted, sub-50 teams fighting +4 is dangeorus without lots of leadership stacking. And I actually find +3 to be more enjoyable at times since then it's just like fighting at 50 on a 54, it gives me a more accurate feel of how the character will perform later.

I thought about this recently to, in fact even made a post about it, how even 1-2 peoples rp if especially bad can get in the way of old friendships, even ruin them. Like the unchecked god mode marty stu/mary sue who somehow gets away with it all the time somehow, even though there very rp would not allow anyone else to really get the spotlight. Or even allow no room and elevate themselves to king/godhood, no equals allowed. I cannot help but be left feeling even they are only where they are because they have a few yes men. I even had one time I did try to rp with the old friend and the god-mode prone player decided to throw up a scene to pull them away. That one person I realized got in the way just by being, practically, and even if I thought I got past my feelings somehow the same mistakes are made and i'm once again put off by it. Granted, I have a lot of new friends and a few new crowds I hang out with now on and off, and I have a lot more fun with them, in fact they actually rp more seriously and I get variety when I hang out with them. Its sad also since even they have had drama and still have some drama going on. I guess many people are having problems because they cannot handle disagreements, and some cannot even handle not being on top of everything in the entire game and hog the spotlight. Or even override the entire universe for there own world building with no room for anything else. No one can come to a middle ground. I also think some rp groups or sg's claiming to be rp aren't necessarily rpers at all. I know an SG, I won't name them necessarily, who aren't really rpers much at all, the limited rp they do is such the characters are almost extensions of there own persons. Not exactly munchkins but not quite rpers with any serious plots. Of course my perspective may have been skewed because of the first paragraph, there may have been but I had since stopped hanging out with them a long time.

So I had some long thoughts, largely due to this having come up at least a few times with people, and at least one person I know is especially egregious at this(even saw it about a month ago, granted I hadn't gone to that club in a few weeks since, but they were making the same mistake still somehow even after all this time), I wanted to talk about when someone insists their world building plot to override everyone else, even on the first meet. I'm not gonna name the person in particular(they know who they are), but I still sometimes run into them. And of course, they try to over-ride everything. Like time travelers/manipulators, which honestly spring to mind first thing. The one person I know insists his character is THE time stream, time itself. Uh, wheres the room in allowing anyone else? Theres none, period to that. It's instantly off-putting to me, as I hanged out with them more and saw what that meant it was one thing that ultimately lead me to not want anything to do with them. But I also saw the same person for example make a character thats single-handedly solving a problem with the sun that over-rules vanguard. Or another toon who is just over-ruling the whole multiverse. It comes off as a god fantasy. And with no limits placed at all. To me no one should rule CoH's entire world. It just sets for no one to have any plots of there own to matter, to have any impact. Even more-so since it requires effectively reactions of the world that results in a mary sue/marty stu, or mary suetopia(whole world revolved around said players characters to the extreme). The whole reason I held back from bringing this kind of rp up was because it is thankfully rare, but it gives a very toxic vibe to me. Like keeping me from hanging ou with entire SG's when I used to enjoy hanging out with them levels of bad. Old friends no longer hanged out with to, at least a few. Granted this was a long time ago, but I still see it done sometimes when I hang out at the occasional bar/club. And I don't seem to see them with the SG I used to hang out with anywhere near as much. (Some of my not hanging out with the SG I used to is also schedule, friday nights just don't work for me anymore). I instantly cringe when I see it. Granted this goes for everyone I see if they do something like that. Time manipulators its especially easy to do that, the player I knew prone to it wasn't the only one. Of course, I sometimes just rp behind the scenes the players who do something like that, as the characters are just delusional narcissists. But it also bothers me since when hanging out at the clubs sometimes, I cannot get away from them. Should I just add them to the ignore since they never seem to really learn? Or really change after they'd been in the CoH community for years? I'm not entirely sure, since ignoring someone in say, a club environment you end up missing dialogue, or create awkward situations where someone's character says something in response to them. Some of the old friends i'd try hanging out with more but then the god-moder in question still manages to over-ride everything, so it leaves me once again not hanging out again. I post this because well, while I hang out with other groups now and other friends, and even got my own plots off the ground finally after a lot of retconning for some of my characters, I still cannot help but sometimes, sometimes wish to hang out with old friends, but cannot. Even if just catch up on things, of course it's well past that I suppose. Since then though I thankfully had been able to move on with my own plots and my own character archs after having made a lot of new friends, even ended up with new mains and stories with them. Stories that probably would never have been interesting otherwise due to entire plots being mary sue'd in an instant. Involving multiple rpers even. And I ended up involved in other people's plots again, which also felt great, more-so when my own char got to use a solution she prefered over just brute-forcing the situation. A battle she assisted with using wits rather than her own raw powers with a mark of discretion felt way more satisfying. I worked it out with the two people who 'were' in the actual fighting and I was able to let my character do something without disrupting the story/character development.

He was probably a "scrub" or "Stop having fun guy", aka extremely intollerant of how other people play or other peoples builds so he immedietly assumed in anger you weren't gonna be able to do much since you weren't the "One true way" farmer. Don't let it get to you. Those kinds of players are usually to bitter and angerable to be worth having along anyways in my experience.

I'd rather just the resources go towards keeping the four we have already, and improved QoL that homecoming is known for. Again, if you don't want things like the double exp, theres nothing forcing you to use them, heck theres even benefit to not using them, like more influence or getting to do more story archs before outleveling them(or turning off exp). I just dont see a point to making a server dedicated to just longer grinding and no IO's. I wouldn't be surprised if theres a private server out there that has reverted to the old super grindy ways of the earlier pre-IO days.

A hard mode server on homecoming? Hmm, waste of resources if it's just taking away stuff. Could just, I dunno, not use any of that stuff. I've seen to many games do the "Hey lets just take a million things away from the player and make it grindier and call it hard mode", like fallout 4's survival mode(limited saves on a game prone to crashing, no thanks, oh yeah extremely limited inventory) and No Mans sky survival mode(increased death penalties, shorter time in hard environments and ridiculously lowered inventory space). It's never well received.

That first commend is actually very dangerous, heres why. Procs are overpowered and sadly have to be nerfed, many people and the devs know this. To say that they are the benchmark for powersets for future balancing of powersets is faulty, it could lead to overbuffing sets very seriously if we were to assume procs are what to balance around. They are a TERRIBLE metric to balance around right now until a direction is establshed on what has to happen to them. Metrics to compare for procs themselves is fine, I don't think procs metrics are good for checking the balance of the sets themselves though. Thats like making scientific tests without having a control. Two, not everyone likes using tons of procs, and it should not be the "ONLY WAY TO PLAY!", not by a landslide. On the last point if you have cooldown between attacks your not doing it right :), should always have an attack ready at high end builds and should be zero time between your attacks unless your jousting/repositioning. The only thing that matters at that point is damage to activation time(higher the better) and how that effects procs. Some powers cooldown longer, yes, thats why you have faster powers for use while they are in cooldown. So in that sense, it could easily end up with higher proc rates for some sets and lower for others, when those others would otherwise perform stronger compared to other sets.

Since you mentions procs and having the chart be made with procs in mind. But theres also another reason why some people would prefer a "no proc" test; besides working at different %'s of triggering across sets they also, at least IMO, don't truely reflect where a set truely is in regards to balance, not accurately anyways. I think the devs want the sets to be balanced with or without procs.

Even with hardmode, tankers on original damage scales would be considered inferior brutes, because with hardmode your going to want buffers/debuffers. Resist-capped brutes mitigate as much damage as a tanker. And forcing an AT to be required in this game would be bad design, and not help that AT perform well in content where it's not hard required. With min/maxing and max-performance builds being extremely important or even required to do high difficulties, and leadership buff stacking extremely important(8 stack maneuvers is extremely powerful, and multi-stack tactics can easily overcome enemy defense increases), the tanker with a mere .75 damage modifier would still find itself even less desirable. I agree tankers are to damaging though atm, even my friend whos a hardcore tanker enthusiast agrees. At .95 with a much higher health pool + easier maxing resists makes the tanker a far superior solo AT, probably superior to all other AT's currently. As for "Proc Monkey", I kind of came up with the term considering other games and "Crit monkey" builds; high damage through critical strikes. Procs are effectively that; critical strikes, just not criticals that scale from damage buffs. Granted, I don't like using procs excessively; sure it's the meta but it will have to be nerfed/adjusted sooner or later. I usually prefer maxing defense ratings out anyways, and procs usually fall in desirability when your needing those 6 slot set bonuses for that defense. I usually only load procs into longer cooldown attacks like assassin strike or anything comparable on other melee/ranged AT's(the best compromise I can generally find, lower tier powers often have lower animation times, which means lower proc % rates anyways, and I always have high global cooldown which has no actual effect on proc rates in powers(only cooldown reduct from direct enhancement/alpha slot lowers proc % chances)).

I decided to look at some of these builds, it looks like they are predominantly proc-monkey builds , many attacks with 4 damage procs in them.