Neogumbercules

I've been thinking about making an Ice Blast blaster (or resurrecting one I have mothballed) and I'm curious about these two powers for proc options. Ideally I'd like to slot the chance for hold procs in them but I can't get on mids right now to check if they take Hold sets. Besides that I'm guessing damage and... What else?

I started playing an Elec corr not realizing that the SHOCKED effect is only 20% now. I think I read the patch notes that indicated it was +100%. Sadly, I'm not really sure it's worth playing around an end-drain mechanic just to eek out up to 20% more damage on drained enemies (that are probably dead/about to be dead anyway). There are sets out there that have more up front damage, or better secondary effects, or a real T3 blast, and they don't have to jump hoops or play at point-blank range to function. Unfortunately the buffs to elec are just extremely underwhelming to me, and I think the devs here really missed the ball on this particular revamp.

I was thinking about dropping Volty (on my Corr) because, while it may be true that it's a great ST damager, it's unreliable since you can't specifically target it. Great if you're fighting an AV or straggling boss maybe, but overall, I was thinking it would free up room in my build.

I tested an elec/dark/soul on Beta and found it to be very powerful and fun. /Dark is an amazing set that improves everything attached to it, and with Elec's new mechanics and power boost from /Soul it can really shut down a mob. Tons of soft controls, debuffs, end drain, recovery drain, scourge, Shocked crits, and two pets following you around.

OK I've had a chance to play the set and I can say on a corruptor it feels very fun and powerful. I paired it with /Dark/Soul and I felt like I could completely lock down entire spawns. Without having to slot for end-mod at all, I could use power boost + charge up to completely drain a mob and follow it up with a devastating thunderous blast. This was on a completely baby corr with just a slap dash of IO sets, no real build, and no incarnates. Overall, I feel like the set is great, but here are a couple of points: I feel like Short Circuit should be even faster. It's basically part of the Charge Up > Buff Power > combo and all I want is to blast it out and be done with it. I'm pulling TONS of aggro standing there, so I really need this power to pop off a lot faster. Lower the damage if you have to, but just let me get this power out ASAP. It's just a set-up ability now so I always wanted it to be faster. Thunderous has a slow activation time, so with that and ball lightning I just had this anxiety that my buff window was gonna close before I could get the powers out. Corruptor Voltaic does not start with red colors. Tesla Cage seemed like it wasn't doing much for me. I felt like between my other primary powers, my secondary, and my epics/patrons, I always had something better to use. My suggestion is this: Swap Tesla Cage and Short Circuit in the set order. Buff the end-drain of tesla cage, and make it a 16 target Targetted AoE endurance drain ability without a chaining mechanic. Why? Because Short Circuit FORCES elec to be a PBAOE/Melee ranged primary, and the other AoEs in the set are both ranged. Most Defender/Corruptor secondaries are designed to operate from range. Blaster secondaries are usually melee BUT it's dangerous and makes the leveling curve more difficult when your primary is forcing you to stand in the middle of 100 mobs. By swapping the build order and simplifying the mechanics of Tesla Cage you are giving low-level/newer players the ability to engage with the set mechanics early on, safely and easing the learning curve. Moving Short Circuit to later in the build will make it more optional, but will still give it the ability to synergize with specialized builds that thrive up close (these builds might respec out of Tesla Cage). Ball Lightning and Thunderous Blast are ranged sets on ranged ATs and if we're in the process of making the set have synergistic mechanics, short circuit is out of place. Lets not force noobs/lowbies to stand in PBAOE range when only 1 of the ATs with Elec Blast has any reason to be there. The mechanics on Tesla Cage right now are too esoteric and slow to make it a good ranged end-drain setup option. I need to be able to follow up with Ball Lightning/Thunderous Blast immediately. I can't sit there and wait for it to chain around to random enemies. Anyway, there's my focused feedback.

I haven't had a chance to play yet, but in theory I see where they are going with giving Aim the end-mod boost. The idea is I punch out Aim (whatever now called, I don't remember) and pop Short Circuit (also enhanced for end mod). Short Circuit is faster now, so I should be able to quickly follow up with Ball Lightning (also faster) and Thunderous Blast. If it all works out, I should be shocking the hell out of everyone. I would just like to make sure that the shock scale chance is such that I'm pretty much guaranteed to proc it after a new-aim boosted Short Circuit, otherwise that damage loss and the risk I'm in (being in melee) might not be worth the trouble. If anything though, I'm really happy to have an active gameplay mechanic to the set. @Captain Powerhouse Two questions for you, Can scourge and shock proc together? Does shocked deal just the enhanced damage of the power or does it also add in the scourge proc damage as well? Also is the shocked proc chance calculated based on the targets endurance when I activate the power or will it take into account the drain OF that power? For example, if my target is at 100% endurance and I use Thunderous Blast with it's unresistable -30% endurance, will the shock proc chance be calculated based on the targets 70% endurance remaining, or will be be calculated based on the target's 100% endurance at the time of activation?

Just use Aim more often (and put the Guassians chance for build up proc in it). The to hit buff is nice, and the +damage is essential for a blaster. The proc just makes it into another build-up. You can still take tactics too, but I wouldn't trade Aim for it.

I have a whole series of suggestions for Assualt Rifle in general but here's one for ignite. First, Ignite sucks. The cast time buff doesn't help it. The aoe is tiny, the dot takes forever, it's clunky to use, it slows teams down, and when enemies get feared by it they become a pain in the ass to chase down. Second, AR doesn't have a cool flashy nuke. Full Auto still needs work but at least it's a functional power, unlike Ignite. Solution: Swap Ignite and Full Auto. Replace everything about ignite and make it a clone of thr Assault Bot's incendiary missiles attack. That's right, make it a huge, flashy, massive AOE. The benefit now is AR has a cool nuke and Ignite doesn't suck anymore. And yeah enemies will try to flee just like they do with current ignite, but with a huge AOE you're going to to have a much easier time keeping enemies inside the general area for much longer.

Replying to highlight this suggestion. I'd love to have any power that grants invisibility/stealth to have various options that range from "Off" to what Invisibility is. Or if that's too much to implement, then some kind of character setting or toggle power that controls the transparency effect of any given stealth power, including the Celerity IO.

My suggestion is to make it a single target attack that will chain to enemies that get close to the original target. Or replace it with the Assault Bot Incendiary Missiles and make it the T9 power of the set.

After having spent some time playing with AR I would strongly prefer the speed up of Ignite be applied to Flamethrower instead. Ignite is still an awfully situational power and even using it on tightly packed enemies in a x8 AE mission I use to test out builds It was challenging to get more than 2-3 enemies trapped even with Web Envelope from Mace Mastery. Plus the rare situations where one might try to use Ignite (like the ITF Computer, for example), the long animation isn't gonna factor in. However the long animation and slow dot of Flamethrower is a hassle on every encounter for an AR user. Plus I dropped it on GM Jimmy when he was standing near Ms. Liberty and it did literally nothing to him. Trash power! As an aside... one of the new powers, I don't remember which one. May have been the new flight toggle has a "whilst" in the description. I understand some of you are speaking the Queen's english but it was a little jarring considering the rest of the game doesn't have English-ass English writing in any of the descriptive text.

That would be great too. Right now it's just kind of tough to keep an enemy in it and hardly worth the effort VS throwing out another AOE.

I've been campaigning for some QoL buffs to AR for a long time so it's great to see some here. I want to offer up the following suggestion for Flamethrower that goes directly in line with the idea behind the rooting, Ignite, and FA changes: Reduce the cast time of flamethrower significantly and make 75% of the damage be dealt up front with the remaining balance of damage dealt as a faster DoT over a few seconds. With the other changes included this would shore up ARs greatest weakness which is slow ass Dots that don't flow with the 2021 state of the game. Here's my radical AR suggestion... Remove ignite, put Full Auto in that power spot, and make the T9 a copy of the Assault Bot's incendiary missiles. This will give AR that much needed huge nuke type power AND it would be a suitable and highly useful replacement for the otherwise very situational Ignite.

Gun Drone Now has 80% resistance to all damage Taunt aura reduced to 8ft, mag 3, max of 4 targets Death explosion now has a knockup component I would love to see Gun Drone's duration drastrically increased, or just make it a toggle power. The biggest issue for playability is having to resummon it all the time. Giving it another attack or two might be a good idea as well. A Cone or AOE perhaps?

This is why I suggested that Energy Focus be a timed buff like Momentum and not just blow the load on a single attack. It'll give people room for error (I'm guilty of clicking wrong or pre-loading an attack at the wrong time too) and it'll also allow for some build optimization to squeeze as much into that Energy Focus window as possible.

Sticking with the mechanic idea, personally I like the idea of Momentum as a short buff that will effect your powers while it's active. If I were to suggest a change to EM's mechanic I would change it so it isn't like a "builder/spender" system. Instead I'd keep powers within the set that have a chance to give the player an Energy Focus buff that lasts for 5 seconds (or whatever) and isn't consumed by a "spender." TF being the 100% chance to grant, as it currently is. This way you have a chance to pop off a couple of focused attacks in the duration of Energy Focus before it wears off, and if players optimize enough, they can have a build that gives them as much Energy Focus uptime as they can get. I'd also change build up to "Build Energy" or something and allow that to function the same way Build Momentum does from TW. Yes I understand the irony of buffing a powerset to be more like TW in the same patch that we're nerfing TW 😛 That said, I personally really like the way it is on beta right now because we get to keep that feeling of EM, particularly ET, being a very powerful, which I think is the most important thing to preserve. I'd also accept removal of the mechanic for a straight reversion of ET (and keep the new PBAOE).

100x this. Works great in Water Blast with Tidal Forces.

I'm already late to this party. Others have provided good feedback. I think the set is strong and super fun to play. My only negative feedback is on the animation of the new PBAOE. Perhaps it can be something besides the baseball pitch?

I don't think there's an easy solution to game difficulty but if given unlimited time and resources to address this issue I would eliminate levels from the game and use the gray/green/white/yellow/red/purple conning system as a starting point. I'd then rebalance what those cons meant in terms of power effectiveness, to-hit, etc, and then rebalance every enemy group in the game to have more interesting mechanics across the board. More buffs, debuffs, strengths, weaknesses, and tactics required to be effective against them. Then, after doing that, there would have to be a long period of adjusting player power on a set by set and AT by AT basis to make sure everyone gets a fair shake out of the level/enemy overhaul. A lot modern games take this approach. It has its downsides of course, and some do it better than others, but it's at least a stable starting point. I'm not really advocating for HC to do this. Just, like I said, given unlimited resources, I think this would be a valid approach.

I saved everything CoH related on a storage drive that I totally forgot about after shutdown. It was surreal to have all my costumes and enemy groups 7 years later, most of which I had no memory of.

The previous poster is correct. There are a couple of things that you may lose, though, depending on where you saved stuff. Your saved costumes and saved AE missions and custom enemy groups are local files. Everything else is coming from the server though so you won't lose your characters or anything else. Just don't delete those files I mentioned, if you even have them.

Can't wait for my blaster to wear TWO body armors!

Archery is one of the primaries I may lean Corr. The reason being Rain of Arrows. Unlike a lot of DoTs, each tick of damage from the psuedopet it summons is counted as a separate attack and it inherits your scourge inherent. That means there's a decent chance to get off a scourge tick on each hit, depending on enemy HP. It would be more useful on higher difficulties where baddies last longer. That would push out your secondary powers till much later though. /Kin is notoriously obnoxious to play since you have to wait to 38 for Fulcrum Shift. Going Corr may also throw off your defense numbers since their AT values are a little lower than Defender.

The useless endurance drain effect is the least of Elecs problems in my opinion. The biggest issues for me are mechanical. Ball Lightnings slow dot gives enemies too much opportunity to shoot back and causes wasted damage on a mob that you (or volty) fire a ST attack at who would have died from the DoT but just wasn't dead yet. Short Circuit has the exact same problem only you get to stand in the middle of the enemy group and wind up that long ass animation on top of it. Voltaic Sentinel is weak and you have to rely on the AI to fire at the correct enemy. It's AI is wonky and recasting it all the time is annoying. Tesla Cage on its face isn't bad but I would prefer a T3 blast over a ST hold. Thunderous Blast seems to have a shorter range than it should and the animation time is kind of long, in addition to the cooldown. I would love for Volty to be permanently out and, when in combat, to fire at my target. Crank up the damage of Tesla Cage to make it comparable to a T3 blast, swap the animation of Short Circuit to the Water Blast TAOE attack, speed up or eliminate the DoT on ball lighting, and increase the range and reduce the cooldown of Thunderous Blast. I think those changes would increase the playability of Elec Blast a great deal.

I think your ideas are awesome I'm just not sure they would fit as an update to assault rifle. It'd be better suited as a concept for a new powerset. Thread jacking a little bit here, these are my ideas for AR: Burst: Make this a smallish cone. Keep everything else the same. Slug: KB2KD and add -res. Buckshot: Increase range and cone radius simultaneously (I know range makes more cone but I'm asking for both). KB2KD, add -fly for the lols. Beanbag: replace with flash bang grenade. Pull an actual grenade. No damage, TAOE, 16 targets, chance for mag 2 stun, chance for mag 2 confuse, and 50% chance for knockdown. I feel like that would add interesting slotting possibilities. M30: Change the lethal damage to fire damage and do a KB2KD. Sniper Rifle: super narrow pierce effect (essentially a tiny cone like Beam Rifle), deal more damage for each enemy pierced. Ignite: change to incendiary grenade. Grenade throw animation, 1.5-ish animation time. instant high fire damage that leaves a patch of fire on the ground. Ignited enemies have a chance to ignite other nearby enemies. Flamethrower: decrease the animation time down to 1.5 or 2 seconds and deal 75% of its damage up front with dot procs to make up the rest. Full Auto: Widen the cone, 16 target cap, increase defense when shooting to mitigate counter attacks during the long animation. Roll that chance for extra damage into the damage of the attack and remove the chance.