Luminara

Oh, so when you repeatedly make claims which are proven to be false, it's not because you're trying to promote a narrative in which the game is unfair and push this campaign to have all enemy damage nerfed so you can solo AVs with your... concept builds, it's because there's just been a slight misunderstanding... every time? https://cod.uberguy.net/html/entity.html?entity=legacychain_serafina Serafina's strongest attack only deals 1028.5941 damage, and that's at level 50 and using the AV tables, not the EB tables, but somehow, through some wild misunderstanding, she "hits (you) for 1400 damage"... on a /Elec brute with minimum 26.25 Psi Resistance... at level 36-37... And this report of 11,000 damage, or even the 3000 max that the AV could deal, at his max level (which you weren't fighting), if your defender had a massive pile of -Res stacked on it, that could not have occurred because you were had Steamy Mist active (20% Energy Resistance), even if the TF were set to Enemies Buffed, was a moment of confusion on someone's part, something that the rest of us somehow misread and definitely not an exaggeration? And even in this very thread, AE AV Level 50 KO Blow damage: 1715.5765 points of Smashing damage (all affected targets) but, somehow, even with your character using Temp Invulnerability (30% Resistance Smashing/Lethal), and the enemy not having any other powers, thus not capable of stacking any -Res on you, this attack managed to deal nearly 50% more damage than the attack is actually capable of, isn't a false report on your part, it's just that none of us know how math works... or something... Do you want me to keep going? Should I pull up the original forum archives and show your posts from the old days, in which you falsify data in exactly the same way and push for exactly the same agenda, and backpedal exactly like you've done here? Really? Really?

From the episode, Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges, when Koval, head of the Tal Shiar (Romulan intelligence), states that there is no Section 31 and accuses Sloan (the Section 31 on DS9) of fabricating it. Koval is later revealed to be a double agent, working for Section 31, and the events of the episode were a ploy intended to pave the way for him to assume Senator Cretak's seat on the Romulan Senate, specifically because Cretak is loyal to the Romulan Empire and might turn against the Federation during or after the Dominion War. But Koval being a double agent is a pretty good indication that the Tal Shiar did know about Section 31... and at the same time didn't. He might've learned of them, but he would've kept the information to himself, and after he was turned, he definitely wouldn't be spreading intel about them around, because it could've cost him his life. If the Obsidian Order knew anything about Section 31, it would've come from Garak, who would've learned of its existence in the aftermath of the episode Inquisition (when Bashir is holodeck-napped by Sloan)... but anything Garak could tell them would've amounted to little more than rumor, and Tain's actions in the episode when he gets his entire secret fleet destroyed by trying to take on the Dominion proves that the Obsidian Order was too arrogant to accept that something like Section 31 could exist, much less be a threat. And the Klingons had no comparable organization. They just don't think or act in a way that would allow it. There's a distinction to be made here, though: the Tal Shiar and Obsidian Order aren't just intelligence organizations, they're also secret police. Space Stasi. They weren't well-kept secrets, they were known and feared, and they utilized that fear to gain a degree of independence from their respective governments. And Section 31 wasn't an intelligence agency at all. They might've shared intel with the Federation government (or the Romulans, or the Cardassians, or even the Klingons, whomever was necessary to realize a goal), but they were completely autonomous and capable of enacting their plans without governmental assistance. No reports filed, no committees to answer to, nothing, just them and what they felt was "best" for the Federation. Klingons would never tolerate anything like any of these organizations. Did they have one or more intelligence agencies? Of course. Did they have something like the Big Three? No, it's not something their societal or cultural structures would allow to exist. So Tal Shiar maybe but unlikely, Obsidian Order maybe but it wouldn't have mattered because they would've dismissed it as an ordinary and inferior group, Klingons no.

Vampires swallow.

Section 31: an ultra-secret organization that conducts extralegal covert surveillance and clandestine missions to maintain the security of the Federation. Trailer: WWWWWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO PARTY, MOTHERFUCKERS! LET'S GET SOME FIREWORKS GOING! RAISE THE ROOF, BITCHES! I can't quite put my finger on it, but something seems... off.

"It came to pass that Amun-Ra sailed through the house of Horus on his way to the Duat, and Osiris spake, 'Behold, Amun-Ra, for the players of City of Heroes and Villains, which they refer to as Cocks, will be Mostly Soloing, as this prophesy foretells, because I have written it after the fact!'. And Amun-Ra spake, ''k.'"

Half an hour of real time is one day in the game. Too short to be viable.

How much damage did you take when you used your support secondary? How much when you were in Bodyguard mode? How much when the enemy ignored you and attacked one of your henches instead? How much when you used inspirations, or base buffs, or amplifiers, or temp powers? How much when you pressed a movement key to put some distance between your character and the scary bad guy with melee attacks? I remember you doing the same things, performing the same warped "tests", trying to use the same flawed arguments, and even playing the same deliberately badly built Marvel and DC rip-offs... sorry, "homages", with your best attacks skipped and damage mitigation powers skipped and more pool powers than primaries/secondaries, as far back as 2006. No you aren't. You're pressing an agenda that never gained any traction on the original forums, with the same shady tactics, and won't gain traction here. You've had 18 years to learn and improve, and all of the improvements Homecoming has made to the game. Move forward.

I can't. I don't team, so I can't apply the appropriate double standard to drive it home.

You can get to level 20 in 20 minutes here, if you ask for a spot on a farm, or a few hours of easy mode solo. It's about as deserving of a reward as not soiling yourself for the same period of time is.

It's been 48 hours, and apparently, we're going to have to finish this without @Diantane. And not even a "Gotta go, sorry", or "Something came up", or even "Later, SUCKERS!". Don't you just hate that.

The Karma IO is set to stack, rather than replace, and has a 10.125s duration/10s activation.

Thank you, Simone.

Well, that's going to rule out... defenders and tankers with more than one attack, all dominators, masterminds, blasters, sentinels, scrappers, controllers, people who use IOs, people who play level 50 characters, people with Incarnated characters, people who play for less than 8-12 hours/day, people with character names over an unspecified limit, people who don't carry extra Awaken inspirations, people who don't zerg, people who do zerg, people who aren't where he/she thinks they should be...

Those ambushes are a lot more entertaining if you're listening to Yakety Sax.

A question has percolated to the top of my brain... @Diantane, were you going to communicate when you intend to stop replying to this thread, or just suddenly disappear (like you've always done in the past)?

@Snarky is the resident neck romancer.

Yes, but it's usually subjective, based on a variety of factors rather than a direct 1:1 comparison and analysis. Primaries and secondaries in Co* are all individual. Even the ones that appear to be clones have differences. Factors like hit rolls, special mechanics (Crits, Containment, Scourge, Fury, Chance to effects, to name a few), even the spawns themselves, what's in a spawn and how the spawn is arranged, can alter how a set performs. And the players themselves aren't identical, either. The same build in different hands will always give different results, due to differences in reaction time, responses, play style... Even something as basic as general perception can sway how a set is viewed (sets with Smashing or Lethal damage are frequently spoken of poorly, because many people "know" that "everything heavily resists those damage types" (despite data collection and analysis proving otherwise)). Personal preferences muddy the waters even more. Some people consider a set "unplayable" if it doesn't have a minimum number of proc-slotting opportunities, or a specific type of power (a Hold, or a PBAoE attack with a minimum X' radius), or a power that can be slotted with the Achilles' Heel proc. There are people who build characters completely reliant on multiple click powers to keep their attack chains fluid, instead of leaning into IO set bonuses, and other people who eschew anything more complicated than setting a single power on auto-fire, and people who bind all of their keys to inspiration combination and consumption binds, and people who use inspirations so infrequently that they forget they're there. Attempts to quantify the performance spread tend to be tainted by personal play style, preferences, build patterns (yes, this is a real phenomenon), expectations and perceptions, despite the best intentions and efforts. There is a bottom of the barrel in Co*, but the barrel is very shallow and where a set ranks is as much determined by the individual player as it is by raw performance. What someone else might rate top tier, you might find to be lackluster, and vice versa. So don't sweat it.

With all of that chrome, you bet your ass they need buffing.

But the banana walks with the purple buffalo in the spring.

NCSoft didn't. NCSoft was the publisher. Publishers don't make games, they finance and market them. NCSoft had nothing to do with balance decisions or how the meta evolved. Referring to Cryptic, the development studio, that being the people who actually worked on the game, not NCSoft, the publisher, they absolutely did strive, constantly, for balance in all of its multitudinous forms. Cryptic was obsessed with balance. Cryptic had such a massive hard-on for balance that they preferred to leave less powerful sets languishing rather than risk over-buffing them. Cryptic brought the hammer down on six-slotting one category of SO in a power with ED, for balance. Cryptic instituted the Global Defense Nerf, for balance. Cryptic spent almost as much time trying to achieve perfect balance between sets and powers, between players and NPCs, as they did creating content. Paragon was just as anal-retentive about balance. The Homecoming developers are big fans of balance, too. You strike me as someone who's never looked at a patch note in his/her entire life. If you had, you'd see the detritus of the endless struggle to keep everything balanced. Or, at least, not made such a ridiculous statement as that. That's the first thing you've said that sounds correct. Paragon had a plan for the future. It was called "more Incarnates". We've read the AMAs, we know what they were planning. We also know they weren't planning to redesign the game around IOs. They wanted the Invention system to give players a way to become stronger than the SO balance. They specifically stated that IO sets were intended to allow players to develop their characters laterally, to become more powerful without requiring an increase to the level cap. That was the primary goal and expressed purpose of the Invention system. Had the economy not been horrendously fucked, the game we're playing now would've been exactly how the game would've evolved then. Fully kitted-out characters, ROFLstomping teams, people soloing *Fs with their favorite characters, everything we're enjoying now. That was always the plan. You don't know who worked on the game, you don't know how hard Cryptic and Paragon, and now Homecoming, struggled to maintain balance, you don't even know what changes were made for the sake of balance, much less why. So don't try to con anyone with the mysterious insider with earth-shattering revelations schtick. You know nothing that the rest of us don't already know, and less than anyone participating in this thread, so save . Neither are you. That's... the whole point... of balance...

Your proposal is to make the game feel more challenging... by forcing players to use the strongest enhancements after level 35... You think buffing critter powers by 1.5% will compensate for mandatory player power increases of nearly 40% per slot (a level 50+5 IO (53%) gives a ~38.5% increase in enhancement value over a +3 SO (38.3%) (and note that this is only the math for single attrib IOs. multi-attrib IOs offer even more enhancement value despite the ostensibly lower value per attrib))? I would very much like to see the calculation you used to derive a result of 1.5% = 38.5% * <number of slots>.

That was enough information for me to figure it out. The Toxic Defense portion isn't respecting Enhancement Diversification values. Base Defense for this power as a defender is 7%. Three +0 SOs enhances the power by 60%, but ED reduces that to 56%. 7 * 1.56 = 10.92 7 * 1.60 = 11.20 It's not ED capping on Toxic. Don't know why, but that's what's going on.