Parabola

Yeah this would be great. As you say the problem would be that a macro can be linked to more than one power or function. There must be a way it could be implemented though. Maybe by creating a 'macro_image_cooldown' function with an extra argument where you specify the power that drives the cooldown displayed as well as the image to use in the first place. Edit: Sorry op, I've just seen the title of this topic and realised I've suggested exactly what you were suggesting anyway. It's early in the morning here and I'm clearly not up to speed yet!

I'm always impressed when someone has multiple outfits for a character. Mine get a single costume and they have to like it. Some of them even share costumes because I like them and multiple concepts fit. As far as I'm concerned you've just posted 15 characters ... at least! I love the idea you've got here. Inspired by world tendancy in demons/dark souls?

Ok wow. Bad day? I did in fact read your arguments but I can't say I came away convinced by your reasoning. And I will make my own arguments wherever I please. So lets talk about a typical CoH combat situation where a tank dives into a full team spawn. It consists of something like 2 bosses, 4 lieutenants and 8 minions. The enemies immediately unload everything they have at the tank. Now the tank isn't bothered by the attacks of the minions or the lts but the bosses have something nasty that is better off being avoided. How would that be acheived with a manual blocking mechanism? How would the player pick out the moments to block in the maelstrom of attacks? I said it before and it bears repeating, if this game has a combat system you don't enjoy what are you getting out of playing? Sure there are the social elements and the costumes and such but the combat is the absolute bedrock of the gameplay. It's what we spend 99% of our time doing in game and if you're not enjoying it then maybe don't?

Yes it is seriously a question. Manual blocking mechanisms only seem to me to make sense in games where you are facing a limited number of enemies. You can see their attacks coming and you block them or not depending on your reactions. In CoH we face a tide of enemies hurling attacks at us from all angles and we'd never be able to take our finger off the block button. And we already have an auto block mechanism in defence. Defence gives us a percentage chance of avoiding (blocking, dodging, call it what you will) an attack calculated and applied by the game. The combat mechanics of CoH seem entirely appropriate to both the type of game and it's context. Other combat mechanics are appropriate elsewhere, as I said before Skyrim is a good example. It is single player and the fights have a limited number of participants (unless you really screwed up). There the action based, manual targetting and manual blocking system is appropriate and it works. I can't for the life of me see how it is appropriate to the hero against waves of goons MMO setting we have in this game. It's not perfect but I'm very happy with it the way it is.

It is very difficult to guess what would be easy changes to make but if I could create a wishlist including some 'possible quick wins' for game difficulty adjustments it would look like: 1) Remove the incarnate level shift in regular content. This would be the same as adding a +5 difficulty without having to rework any mobs. It's been discussed before and frankly I still cannot get my head around any objection to this. The level shift just makes zero sense to me. 2) Leverage existing mechanics within enemy groups that are underperforming. Council for example have a super stunner type trick where on defeat a regular dude can spawn a warwolf. If the odds for that could be upped considerably at the higher levels they would offer more resistance. CoT are another group that basically become pushovers. They lose access to some of their better debuffers at higher levels, perhaps this is an angle that could be looked at? 3) Increase rewards for harder content. This may not be a quick win as such but I think it would get to the heart of a couple of problems. The game has a ton of content in it that isn't used very much and at the same time people are complaining about the teaming dynamic during the content that is being run. We are always going to be drawn towards the content that gives us the best rewards vs time. We optimise our builds and we optimise our playtime too. If something easy gives the same reward as something hard we have what we have now; endless PI radio/portal teams and night ward is a ghost town (in every sense). Extra reward could take the form of bonus xp/drops for content judged to be more difficult. If it can't be done on a mob by mob basis then maybe some bonus things could be tacked on at mission completion? Maybe merit rewards could stand to be adjusted red and goldside to tempt folks over? 4) Make it easier to do a wider variety of content. The flashback system in theory gives access to loads of different and sometimes challenging things to do. In practice it's a soloing tool because of the task force limitation around not being able to add team members halfway through. Make contacts approachable by any higher level character and have them offer their story arcs and general missions. Auto exemp the character to the appropriate level on acceptance of a mission with an option to revert back by calling the contact and dropping the mission. That way casual teams could run just about anything and not get stuck in the cycle of endless radios. As it wouldn't be under the task force setup everyone would likely have to accept not getting merit rewards but the flashback system is still there for that. 5) Migrate some or all of the challenge options from the flashback system to the regular difficulty set up and incentivise their use with rewards. Again this would be pointless if it didn't give better rewards but these options exist so lets exploit them. The enemies buffed setting in particular would seem to be perfect for use in regular play. Overall I'm thinking of something of a carrot and stick approach. The stick is slightly upping the difficulty of the easiest bits of the game and the carrot is various changes to encourage people into running a wider variety of content.

I've long been of the opinion that the fact that any character can solo any content at 4/8, no matter how overtuned the powersets, expensive the build or easy the content, is a failure in the game design. This is a team game; soloing should certainly be possible and fun, but just not at the maximum difficulty. If the absolute bleeding edge of uber builds could just about survive a 1/8 council radio mission solo then in my opinion (and I'm well aware it's not an overly popular one!) the game would be much better balanced.

This. There is a time and a place for active combat mechanics like blocks and dodges and in my opinion it isn't in mmo's. CoH combat still contains the odd element of active combat, mainly around positioning, but basing it on dice rolls brings the strategy of the build, and target and power prioritization to the fore and is appropriate to the medium. I played a huge amount of Skyrim when CoH was gone and enjoyed playing in a different way there, there were strategic build elements but there were also the active combat mechanics. In the context of a single player offline game these were appropriate and in fact my preferred characters used dodging and blocking to make combat as reactive as possible. Different medium, different playstyle. I've tried a couple of other mmo's with active combat mechanics and always found them strange experiences. It's like they are trying to be something they are not and I find them lacking as a result. Also active combat mechanics only really work when you are facing low numbers of enemies. The huge selling point of CoH is that we are constantly wading into a sea of enemies in big chaotic combat. How would dodging and blocking work when 16 enemies are hurling powers at you from all angles at the same time?

I'm no expert on mm builds. I know the lower tier pets need plenty of accuracy but that's about as far as it goes. Be aware that running lots of leadership toggles and putting something like a healing aura on auto can get a bit end intensive so slot accordingly until the bot can self sustain. It's probably not worth spending a huge amount of inf on a bot though, they won't make much use of an expensive build. A word of warning about dual boxing. No matter how hands off the second account bot is it will take attention away from what you are doing on your main character. You won't be able to play your main at 100%, particularly if it's in any way complicated to play. Sometimes simply getting the bot to navigate the map is a challenge in itself...

I'd auto the heal and check in every now and again to fire off farsight and chrono but yeah time seems to bring a lot with minimal effort involved. It might be worth looking at a time mastermind rather than a defender though. That way you also get the benefit of the pets attacking. I did a bit of dual boxing back on live and an mm on the second account was generally the strongest option.

This leads me to question why you are even here? The combat mechanics are the core of the game?

Yeah good tip. I had thought that the full guassians set had too much recharge in it and it would have hurt the performance of the proc but running the numbers it's only by a percent or two. It would never have occurred to me to slot guassians on a typed defence build but here it works. I end up in the same place with two enemies hit by energy absorption but better off with only one and get some extra set bonuses. The drawback is it drops frost to 90% to hit +4's which was one of the things those 4 slot lotg sorted out. I could pull a slot from energy absorption to put the kismet proc back in hide leaving just a lotg+7.5% and an endmod/recharge in EA. I like this actually because the kismet proc is great for exemping, which brings me to ... I'm always looking to build for all round performance. Having said which ice/ice seems a slightly late blooming combo for a stalker anyway and I'm not all that fussed about being softcapped at lower levels. I wouldn't expect to be facing higher level mobs without support and ice/ice is blessed with other mitigation. I could look at moving weave earlier but there are so many good powers to fit in!

Mace has a no redraw option doesn't it? This sounds like a great combo - rad fixing the high end costs of mace, lots of aoe from both sets, the ability to use ff+rech to power everything, and good soft control for protection.

Yeah I totally agree. I love the power and it's sneaky good mitigation too. Water Spout is another very thematic power and I have to take one of the first two anyway. Spirit Shark Jaws isn't really needed but it's bringing 5% e/n/f/c. I could dump Maneuvers and rely on Energy Absorption. Shuffling a couple of slots around I can get it so that s/l/e/n softcaps with two enemies hit. I think I may be able to live with that.

I have an Ice/Ice who for concept has to take Leviathan. Looking at ideas from both builds by @Sovera and @Croax above, I have come up with the following so far. This has been one of the more frustrating builds to put together because I want more powers than I can have and trying to hit all the usual build goals at the same time has seemed impossible. So I've had to drop f/c def back from softcap to the 32%+ bracket and lost Chilling Embrace along the way which I really wanted in the build as it fits the theme perfectly. However my understanding is that it doesn't currently play with the hide proc very well? Hibernate is the other 'for theme' power that could make way for Chilling Embrace but ideally I'd like to have had both ... Oh well. Spirit Shark Jaws is basically a hugely expensive mule but the ability to stack 6 mag of hold could have it's uses. Hasten is perma before incarnates and accuracy is more than solid. Any suggestions?

It would be fun if one of the toggle options was 'kd until dead'. So with this set all kb powers would apply to mobs as kd unless the power reduces the mobs health to 0 in which case the full kb would apply. That way you'd get team friendly mitigation and still have the satisfaction of blasting the dead mobs to the four corners of the room. It even makes a certain amount of thematic sense, the mob is resisting the effects while alive but when dead they get tossed around.

This gets suggested a lot (and I recall it coming up fairly often back on live). The problem is that while it would be great for dominators or melees that have clicky mez protection it would also benefit afk farming and that's something the devs have already expressed reservations about. My advice is always the same; put the shorter recharging thing on auto and get used to monitoring the cooldown of the longer, usually hasten. I also find that even when I just have hasten on auto I'm queueing up so many attacks that it often has to sit there waiting to go off until I notice that it's ready and pause to let it happen. At that point the functional difference between it being on auto and me firing it manually is minimal.

My advice would be to start slotting procs as soon as possible. Mind you I slot sets absolutely as soon as I can anyway. I have base bins full of common IO's that I rarely use anymore - attuned set IO's are nearly always a better investment.

And this is what I have come up with for a Dark/Sonic. It won't break any records for damage but it will be soloable while being exceedingly safe and will provide fantastic team support.

Just been playing with what a SM/FA might look like. This is what I've got so far: The last two slots in Maneuvers aren't strictly necessary for the s/l/m softcap but they are just chasing the extra +acc bonus. I'm also not totally sold on the ff+rech in the mallets which if my maths is correct have about a 25% chance of proccing each - might not be worth it. The fury proc is also a bit wasted in consume but it needs the recharge and blazing aura certainly doesn't (while needing all the enhancement it does have) so this seems to be the least worst split between the powers. This looks like it could be fun though. It won't be the sturdiest brute in town but it would reward a very aggressive playstyle.

I do exactly this on a sonic sentinel. It is a grinding process rather than burst but it's very safe and frankly feels a bit evil. Once you have them caught there isn't a huge amount they can do about it. If you have any kind of ability to limit their movement towards you to cover the moments when they aren't asleep or on the floor then you are set. Dark/sonic would work really well actually, tar patch to provide that extra safety (and -res), darkest night to pull them into it, fearsome stare can take a proc or two and is also a cone and then blast away. Cones require either good positioning on your part or the ability to position the enemy and dark would provide that. That's yet another alt I need to roll up at some point!

Yeah that was exactly my thought on time. Such a shame that the heal isn't the tier 1 power. You can live without the hold and the amplifier power (forget the name) is skippable but the rest are pretty much must takes. From dark you'd always want the heal, tar patch, darkest night, the aura, fearsome stare and probably fluffy. You could drop howling twilight if you weren't going big game hunting and were really tight on picks. The stun is very skippable and the hold again could be lived without. Then again it's been a while since I played an mm (and I'm not in front of mids), do they have much that is must take from their epics? Could that be what stands aside for more fighting powers?

It is possible to make sonic do some aoe damage. It has three cones that can be procced out. The new bombardment proc is a massive help here so howl now gets three damage procs, shockwave can take four (but you will likely want a kb->kd and ff+rech so it's unlikely you'd fit them in) and sirens song takes three. All the -res you are pumping out will amplify the damage of the procs too. It requires building a certain way to take advantage of the way procs function but it does work. One thing sonic has going for it in this regard is that the cones are fairly easy to use. Howl and shockwave are identical in range and arc and sirens song isn't that far off.

Getting us back on track. Given that masterminds would seem decent candidates for this with their limited and end heavy attack options a thugs mm would seem fitting from a theme perspective if nothing else. Thugs aren't all melee so it wouldn't have that synergy but a thug leading other thugs and getting stuck into the fight themselves has a good ring to it. You'd need a secondary that gave you the room to pick up a lot of pool choices though.

At no point in this discussion has anyone said that the goal is to take the entire fighting pool to the exclusion of all other pool powers. The topic being discussed is what character might benefit the most if they were to take the whole pool. The analysis that Bopper has given about the relative merits of the attacks against other pool and main set attacks is entirely relevant, comparisons against powers from other pools that do entirely different things isn't. And his analysis also proves that they aren't entirely 'weak attacks' given the synergy bonus but whether they out dpa other options will depend on what AT and what powersets we are talking about. Which is the subject of this discussion.

I know you've said you've done rad recently but I think it's the perfect match for stone melee. It completely fixes endurance and provides some extra aoe to a set that's a little lacking. Both these sets proc out really well so this combo also works well as a tank. As I write this I'm wondering how fire armour would work too. If consume could handle the end needs then you'd get all the aoe you need and fire would certainly love the mitigation. Force feedbacks in nearly every attack would recycle the heal quickly. Sigh, another alt, just what I need...