UberGuy

This may be beyond the control of our crew, since I know they don't necessarily write the forums software, but in case they have the juice... I am not sure I can explain why, but really hate that being in "Clubs" eats up horizontal real estate when viewing the top-level forums, because your "Clubs" appear to the side of the main "Forums" widget. You can change what side they appear on, but as far as I can tell, that's all you can do to them. (Not counting using something like TamperMonkey to modify them ... which I might look into.) So while I like this... This makes me sad... I really wish Clubs appeared "in line" with the rest of the forum sections, rather than to the sides. Or perhaps it could be accessible via a flyout button. Anything to take up less space on the sides.

This may suggest that one of the mapservers has a system clock problem. Assuming you changed zones when you died, the timer would continue based on the "wall clock" difference in the zone you died in and where the hospital was. If the hospital zone's clock is slow, that would add time to your recharge. If that's what's up, it's still a "bug" in the sense that someone may need to check the server system clocks. 😜

I have Afterburner on a handful of characters. As annoying as it was to have to take a 3rd travel power to unlock fast movement for Fly, most of the characters who had Flight as their movement also had Vengeance, and I decided I would get more personal benefit out of fast travel than I was getting out of Veng. Since both would work as somewhere I could stick an LotG (that's what was in Veng), I made the switch and haven't regretted it. I personally despise using actual temp powers as travel powers (for myself, I don't care what others do), don't find the prestige movement powers fast enough, and like the pseudo-damage-mitigation frequently offered to ranged characters by being in flight (historically meaning Hover). So I always take actual travel powers and so dig these changes.

I'm not sure this is a bug. Or, rather, I'm not sure it's not a bug in the description. While the power description suggests that what matters is how many applications of the buff you apply, what it really does is check how much the target already has of the buffs. You can see this on the power's CoD page (link is to the Defender version). The recharge boost has this condition if (target>Str.kRechargeTime < 1.21) && (target>kMeter < 0.9) The movement speed boosts have these respective conditions (I omitted the bit that checks for Null the Gull's "don't buff my movement" token.) (target>Cur.kRunSpeed < 1.25) && (target>kMeter < 0.9) (target>Cur.kFlySpeed < 1.25) && (target>kMeter < 0.9) (target>Cur.kSpeedJumping < 1.25) && (target>kMeter < 0.9) (target>Cur.kJumpHeight < 1.12) && (target>kMeter < 0.9) So basically the buffs stop doing anything if the target already has more than a certain amount of buff from any source. What's not really clear is whether that was always intended and the wording is weak, or if this is designed incorrectly. (Making each effect have its own separate stacking limit is possible, but nothing like what they actually did here..) What doesn't make sense to me at all is the kMeter test. That's normally for things like Rage and Domination, and means this power won't apply these buffs to a Dom with a full Domination bar, a Brute with 90% Fury or (IIRC) a hidden Stalker. That seems exceptionally weird.

That wouldn't affect existing enhancements, and updating them would require database surgery during server downtime. IMO that makes it a harder change and therefore not so helpful as a "temporary" solution. Changing the available level ranges of the enhancements/recipes is just an off-line code + data change that could go out with a new release. Edit: Thinking about it, I guess that doesn't matter. Existing stuff would just change to the new target on conversion and be fine from there. In that case though, I'd probably just go for the max level instead of the average.

Seeding is manual, so the reason it's not being done would be that no one is doing it! So it's not a bug, because this isn't a code thing.

I'm not sure that's correct. The code doesn't seem to support it. (I'm looking at 2019 code, but I don't think this has changed.) Base on what I see, when looking for sets to convert to, the target level for conversion is the same as the input enhancement level. I think what should probably happen here is either: The minimum levels for the RAoE sets need to be normalized. Either Air Burst needs to rise to 20 or the others need to come down to 10. The logic for finding valid conversions needs check for sets that have any overlapping available level ranges, and not just "other sets that exist only at this level". Only if no sets exist at the current level would the conversion resort to finding mutually overlapping sets, and it would convert to their lowest level. I think the 2nd option is complicated and may have edge cases or implications that are easy to overlook. I think changing the low-end level of the RAoE sets is the simpler, safer option, and of the two ways to do it, bringing the other RAoE sets down to level 10 is probably the least disruptive. We don't generally generate a lot of drops in the level 10-19 range. If this was just about being able to convert a dropped Air Burst to some other set, I wouldn't even think this was worth fixing, but the fact that any attuned (non-PvP/VR) RAoE set can dead end by being converted to an Air Burst makes this a problem worth fixing, IMO. By the way, looking at the code also confirms that a conversion of an attuned enhancement always creates an enhancement at the minimum level of the (new) set. So all the other RAoE sets can be converted to an Air Burst, but the Air Burst can never be converted back.

In my opinion, this game did a few things that caused it to be extremely popular with certain types of players. Completely freeform character backstory plus immensely varied appearances (which are, other than VFX, completely independent of your abilities) plus complex character build process that creates the potential (if not the reality) for a wide variety of builds. A fantastically flexible teaming mechanic in the form of sidekicks, breaking down one of MMO's most common content barriers - level gates "Loot light" mechanics, with no loss of progress or "gear" on defeat. (This was common in other MMOs at the time CoH came out.) Related - no open world PvP - also common at the time. No one could loot your corpse. A massive design skill hole by the original devs to achieve, mechanically, their vision of balance, creating a game where characters were significantly more powerful than they intended. Yes, bullet number four was completely unintended at the scale which it happened, and yes, I think it was a significant factor in this game's popularity. And, yes, that means that trying to change that about the game is going to create anger and a sense of loss, and cost the game the interest of players for whom that factor is one they care a lot about. As far as people saying "if you're not blasting, you're not contributing", first, I'll be blunt - these people are dumb. Even absent Inventions and Incarnates, this game is, by and large, too easy for people to be micromanaging how other players contribute in that way. That said, let me point out that CoH is structured so that, fundamentally, the most important thing is ... damage. How do you complete missions? Most of the time, you deal damage to foes. How do you earn probably 99% of all XP and Inf (outside the AH)? You defeat foes. How do you complete objectives that don't involve defeating foes, like clicking glowies or leading hostages to the exit? Guess what? You still probably have to defeat foes to get to the non-combat objective, or lead it out. And since defeating foes is a source of XP, Inf and drops, the only reason to not defeat foes is if you are optimizing some other goal, like Reward Merits / time. With current content, things like crowd control (whether via mezz or aggro powers) are means to an end, but don't directly achieve the end most people are looking for. And if there were no Inventions or other sources of +Def, people would do what they used to before them - seek out teammates who could do that for them the easiest, and probably prefer the ones who could blast as well - Defenders and Corruptors. The game is structurally designed to reward certain kinds of play over others. Tweaking the metagame isn't going to change that. It's just messing around at the edges, and doing that while pissing off wide swaths of the player base isn't that useful.

This isn't something anyone would have done as a result of that opinion. For one thing, it's a pretty empty gesture - if there's anything tagged toxic that's not also tagged ranged, it's very rare, so the omission is basically meaningless. Given the fact that stuff like this was done by hand for basically forever, it's vastly more likely someone missed it.

They don't all grant Toxic defense. For example, Weave does not, but Combat Jumping does. Looks like inspirations do too. So maybe Weave was just overlooked.

I've never noticed behavior like this. I do save my keybinds locally, but I never actually load the bind files I keep - they're for reference. I usually edit long binds in the files then copy/paste them into the game. The files are loosely named after character they go with, and so would never be loaded by default. If it matters, I normally set keybinds using the /bind command rather than the UI, since most of the things I most commonly change from the default binds are complex binds you can't configure in the UI. I probably changed binds on my most-played characters dozens, maybe hundreds of times. Complex binds sometimes take fiddling to get right and I so sometimes I end up changing the same bind a lot. So I've definitely not been bitten by a 5-6 try limit. Can you try maybe making a test character, getting it into this state, and seeing if resetting its binds changes anything? I am wondering if somehow you're getting a bind in there that the game can't persist. Like most things about your character, your binds are probably only saved when you zone. If the game can't save something you're setting, all your binds may revert to the last time they did save correctly.

I wonder if that was an oversight, or what.

The levels weren't random, but they used to be something like it. At sunset, there was only one way to get an attuned IO - buy it from the Paragon Market. If I recall correctly all attuned IOs obtained this way had a hidden "internal" level equal to the set's minimum level. After sunset, because there was no more Paragon Market and thus no way to obtain attuned set , the SCoRE team added using Catalysts to turn crafted set pieces into attuned ones. This method created attuned pieces whose internal level was equal to the level of the original crafted IO. This caused strange things on the Auction House. Every attuned IO with a different internal level was treated by the auction house as a distinct item. Yet no matter which one you bought, they would all act the same way when slotted. So this was simplified with a code change so that converted attuned-Os were always their own minimum level (like the ones that came from the old Paragon Market). I want to say the auction house code was updated to enforce that same level change on any attuned-Os dropped in it as a way to avoid the need to bulk update inventories. So now they're always the same (minimum) level.

I agree, but I really do think that this is an unexpected and unintended side effect, caused by an understandable lack of awareness that Air Burst is special in this way. Which itself was probably not specifically intended, as such. I suspect not that many people are converting attuned RAoE sets, so it just doesn't come up often. (Though even fewer of those it bites come here to report it.)

Just to be clear, I do think this is a problem that needs to be fixed, because (as mentioned in this thread) it makes converting attuned Ranged AoE sets "dead end" at Air Burst. How best to fix it is less clear. Probably the most correct thing to do is to make conversions of attuned IOs pick valid conversion targets based on the (mathematical) set of Sets that have overlapping level ranges with the set you're converting. That's a code change. Every other solution I can think of involves modifying the internal level that attuned IOs use, which requires an change to update the level of every existing attuned IO - this is a database update and something that has to be done during server maintenance.

I think Flea wins a no-prize there. If you have one that's below level 20, an "In Set" conversion would only let you convert it to itself. Air_Burst 10 Annihilation 20 Artillery 30 Bombardment 30 Detonation 20 Positrons_Blast 20 I bet everyone who has hit this issue is trying to convert an attuned version. Attuned versions always count as the set's lowest available level for purposes of the "internal" level of the item.

I can't say for 100% sure since I'm looking at data pulled out of the client, but what I can see looks sane when I view it in a hex editor. Edit: What I can see isn't the actual thing that determines the valid conversion groups. Looks like it's a display name only. Old i26 versions of the source code make the actual thing that determines this look fine, but I can't attest to the current config.

I honestly and truly don't understand why we would propose trading HP/s for AP/s. That will not help the set. Literally, mechanically and mathematically, that will fail to achieve the goals. The problem, simply stated, is that HP replacement is a linear counter to incoming DPS. Want to survive another 100 DPS? You need to replace an extre 100 HP/s. We cannot achieve enough HP replacement to counter the DPS that sets with high resist and defense can. And when I say we can't, I mean two things: The numbers we need are huge. A crowd of +3 Cimerorans, for example, can deal over 2000 DPS. (I ran a test in AE and got numbers ranging from 780/s to 2730/s from second to second. Remember, several other sets can stand in these guys and not care. No sane dev would actually give us anything close to those HP/s numbers, since layering team buffs or even set bonuses on them would make Regen unkillable in the vast majority of the game. And that is the problem with (nearly) pure HP replacement as a survival tool. It's very binary. Either you are basically immortal or you're not, and when you're not, you can be dead very quickly. Layering a really large amount of Absorb on top of Regen does make its total bag of effective HP unusually large, but even at maxMaxHP and max Absorb, you're talking about around 4800 HP for a Scrapper or 6400 for a Brute. At 1000 DPS, a (conservative value based on foes that hit like Cimerorans but don't nearly double their DPS by debuffing your defense), and an immense HP/AP recovery of 500/s, you'd still be dead in about 9 seconds on a Scrapper or 13s for a Brute, assuming a perfectly average scenario. To survive with more reasonable and modest HP replacement rates, what Regen needs is most likely more damage resistance. If we can't make the HP/s we recover high enough, we need to make the hits hurt less. The resist can't be too high (or, alternatively, too consistent) or we have to start taking away Regen's HP replacement to account for it. But it needs more than it has now. Even with higher resists, if we keep them modest, we might want to tap into the Absorb mechanic simply because we may want Regen to have an even bigger bag of HP than it does now with Dull Pain (especially since it's easy to cap maxMaxHP on Scrappers and Stalkers). While Absorb is usually described as some sort of ablative covering, it's not totally inconceivable that Regen could treat its own skin and muscles this way, as long as they "grow back" easily.

This is weird. The set's definition looks OK.

The biggest problem with the descriptions is that they are mostly static text with no way to give you "real" numbers unless someone actually types them in there. That's a problem, because the effect of an awful lot of powers varies in ways that make giving a specific number immediately wrong if a character has any accolades, set bonuses, or so on. That then creates more questions and confusion than it solves.

Indeed, I was thinking that his Unstoppable was something the ray removes, but it is not. Even the 9999s duration on the Grounding effect does not eventually result in his untouchable status returning. Once you ground him, a power on him actually removes several of his powers from him, and nothing ever gives them back. So being grounded is, indeed, forever. Still, the change to make the beam stackable for people who enjoy collecting the temps is an easy one with few downsides. 10 charges per player in the 2nd-to-last mish at completion is wild overkill - making it stack to 20 would not be a balance issue. Alternatively, we could make it grant 5 uses and stack to 10. 🤷‍♂️

No one has a constant absorb. That would be D&D-style damage reduction, which does not exist in CoH. To be clear, ticking absorb is not constant. Absorb is removed by damage exactly like regular HP, and absorb stops blocking damage once it's exhausted. The rate at which the ticking absorb is replaced is directly analogous (though not exactly the same as) receiving heal over time. If you get 100 absorb every 4 sec, and damage is fully stripping it away before each refresh, the average effect on how long it will take your foe(s) to kill you is exactly the same as healing 100 HP every 4s, or regenerating 25 HP/sec. The fact that Absorb is a separate pool is only relevant in that (a) it can be added to you when your regular HP bar is full, even if you are at your maxMaxHP, and (b) that it doesn't actually heal damage to your regular HP pool. For ticking aborb, this second point is actually a weakness compared to heal-over-tiime - HoT will eventually reset your regular HP to full if you stop taking damage for a bit, while ticking absorb never will. (HoT is a form of "sustain", where ticking absorb is not.)

It's just HP. The same rationale applies to having an extra 30 max HP and healing 30 HP/sec. Comparing Absorb (or healing) to damage resistance ever is, IMO, a mistake that will wildly inflate people's understanding of Absorb's benefits. Adding 20% damage resistance to 40% existing resistance drops the DPS you suffer by a third, no matter what the incoming DPS actually is. How long you can survive that is a function of your HP recovery rate, but whatever that rate was, it will now keep you alive forever at 1.5x the incoming DPS it would before. Increasing your HP/sec recovered by 1.5x instead (with Absorb, healing or +Regen), is a huge ask, especially when it was already high.

Different of these powers may grant you slightly different things, including: +fly "magnitude", which counters things that try to remove your ability to fly fly speed (the speed you reach after acceleration from rest) movement control (acceleration from a stop) movement friction (drag that causes you to come to a rest faster after moving) Broadly, the highest attributes from the total set of powers you're running wins. Evasive Maneuvers is the exception, as it stacks with the other effects. So basically it's "highest attribs from everything else, + EvMa". These things work with the temp flys, but you can only run one temp fly at a time (since running multiples would just burn endurance to no gain).

His invul absolutely does reset. Some teams can just kill him fast enough it doesn't recharge, but it definitely happens. (PS: Making the temp stackable is about as trivial a change as one can make to powers.)