nihilii

Also, oh no, proc nerf discussions! I think Frosticus and Luminara have made salient points, that is, the significant conditional taxes a build with heavy reliance on procs must pay. Endurance is the obvious one. In most cases you will not be able to sustain a proc build without Ageless. Right away this locks you out of Clarion mez protection for most squishies, or of Barrier for extra survivability. Accuracy is also easy to forget. On a normal IO build you probably don't even think twice about Accuracy. On a proc build you will likely have to pick Tactics, Kismets and specifically chase set bonuses in order to get to 95% tohitchance against +4s. It's not as simple as "plug procs, do more damage". Proc builds definitely require extra thought and a level of planning that goes beyond regular minmaxed builds. At least for me (and that's where I find my fun, so I will shamelessly defend the current state of procs). I think everyone has an intuitive sense of these tradeoffs. Hence why so few people actually go the heavy proc route. You can be softcapped to everything or you can load up your build with procs but you probably cannot do both. That's a good thing. Not only this means balance, but character immortaility is an often named problem of high level play. Anything that lessens average survivability should be especially good. In truth, proc builds might trade as much as ~50% of their survivability to deal maybe ~20% more damage. It's likely even lower than that, because I'm not sure how many proc builds proc out *all* AoEs and STs. Got to get some set bonuses somewhere!

To give proper credit, this was @josh1622's entire idea and build. The man has a knack for achieving proc feats I could only dream of. 😄

Interface choices that aren't Degen or Reactive are unfortunately really bad. The debuff values are too low to have any effect. It's not going to be a make or break thing if you have to stick with theme, but if you want the most bang for your buck, Degenerative and Reactive are your options.

Entirely fair point. It would be interesting if more involved to crunch the numbers of an attack chain involving Boggle. Whether the quote and the answer to the quote even implied these TFs or not (IMHO they both did) is IMHO irrelevant. I strongly feel the statement "Boggle is never an enabler" to be true - if we stick to good faith performance metrics, obviously. One could argue Boggle is inherently an "enabler" because it "enables" you to confuse a Tsoo Sorcerer who then heals you and no other power can "enable" that, but... something being *unique* doesn't inherently make it an *achievement* or quantitatively *useful* in achieving feats you could not achieve otherwise. To my view this is more wordplay than anything. Solo Apex, TinM, LRSF are useful in presenting a specific example of a high difficulty challenge that can serve as a benchmark for discussion. Presumably if you can solo these you should be able to take on most other TFs in the game (notable exceptions being STF, LGTF...) simply because they're markedly easier, even on +4 - although exemplaring might make it harder for certain builds optimized at 50. I must say I find it rather arbitrary to run mid-level TFs at +4 and indeed, never saw it discussed before this thread, but there's nothing inherently less valid about the idea. So if the best option for the hardest tasks is not to use Boggle, it follows that even if Boggle can be useful there and elsewhere, and even if it happened to be the best option in some lesser challenge, it still wouldn't be an optimal option. Presumably, the best solo build would be the build that can handle the hardest tasks, or as many tasks as possible and that would include the hardest tasks. Although at this point, we can open yet another can of worms about the definition of "best". Big YMMV. Throw it strong claims like "THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE" and "JUST BECAUSE YOU DON'T KNOW HOW TO USE A POWER...", and you have a recipe for short-fuse nihiliis to reply with walls of text. 😛

It's hard to overstate just how much quality of life the upgrade button added to traditional leveling. I don't think I've used/crafted a common IO under level 50 anymore. It's so simple to just slot SOs once right as you level up, then upgrade them all the way.

Regarding Claws vs DB, Claws/Bio can deal 600+ DPS running procced out Follow Up -> Focus -> Shockwave -> Moonbeam -> Follow Up -> Focus -> Shockwave -> Slash. Can DB match the above? I'm curious. Contrary to Live days, I've found BF -> Attack Vitals to significantly outperform BF -> AS -> SS -> AS... on my Tanker. But that's a Tanker, where proc damage matters more and BF -> AV allows for no local recharge whatsoever (and maximum proc rate). I wonder what would an optimal Scrapper DB chain look like. I have vaguely toyed with BF -> AS -> SS -> AS where one AS out of 3 is replaced with Moonbeam.

At this point in the conversation, you still haven't addressed the following arguments: 1.) "he did point out very specific scenarios (soloing Apex, TinM, LRSF), and I don't think arguing vague general statements make for convincing rebuttals." 2.) "i.e., the value of Confuse is not obvious to me, because the main threats of these task forces are level 53 and 54 groups of archvillains where you'd need mag4+ confuse to confuse them, and only during the short window of time purple triangles are down. " 3.) "More importantly, there are opportunity costs to every action. You have to deal 400+ DPS to make decent progress when everything is factored. Spending ~2 seconds on a nondamaging Boggle cast is devastating to your damage output." 4.) "You're preaching "tier2" build knowledge to someone who is likely operating at "tier3" or "tier4" build knowledge. We are not talking about the Citadel task force here. To get to that next level, you often need to move beyond a conventional defense/recharge bonus chase, and into proc-loaded attack chains and squeezing every slot to maximum potential." 5.) "Boggle has marginal uses against anything that matters." 6.) "Things that might seem to make sense on paper turn out very differently in a high pressure environment. Namely, sacrificing efficiency for the sake of one situation where Confuse might be useful is likely to hurt your build to the point you may not succeed in the end. These are very tight scenarios that require optimisation of what resources we have." 7.) "FYI, the Confuse approach to Penelope isn't even "efficient" per se - it takes a lot of time, and because you don't control her attack behavior, it comes down to dumb luck. It's generally faster to do pulls, and in those cases Boggle is dead weight. " 8.) "To me the strict DPS requirements that come with the territory in a Stalker solo Apex/TinM/LRSF attempt is obvious, to Hjarki it seemingly isn't. So either he knows something I don't or he doesn't know something I do, and the less information we withhold about that, the more likely we are to have some kind of fruitful exchange. What feeble attempts you make to actually address something tend to break down something into a half-quote in order to remove meaning from the point, then answer with an equally offtopic comment... i.e. "the strict DPS requirements" in point 8 is not a statement confronting Stalker primaries with each other, but rather once again pointing out you need so much DPS both build and playstyle optimizations are in order, and spamming Boggle or Blinding Powder simply won't cut it. This is yet another point that would likely be obvious to anyone who tried the task at hand. Your insistence on attacking the point of the question seem only matched with your determination to prove that point through your apparent ignorance of the topic... Enough with the nonsense. Pure theorycraft in itself isn't bad, provided an earnest attempt is made to support theorycraft with numbers and facts. Running away from any specific point back to general abstractions, burying targeted examples into semantic drivel, does not even qualify as theorycraft. It's just plain trolling. A theorycrafter who would believe in good faith anyone who can't make Boggle work in a LRSF is ignorant could make a decent attempt to quantify the theoretical impact of Boggle on DPS. He might start by looking at the cast time (2.244s), the duration (24s once slotted against a +3 with player level shift), the requirements (mag4 = 2 casts). This gives us 1/6th of the time spent in Boggle casts, assuming ideal player execution. Losing 1/6 of your DPS might or might not be sizeable. As a theorycrafter with no practical experience we could attempt to work out AV regen and player DPS numbers to get a better picture. A level 53 archvillain regens close to 100hp per second, and DPS against a +3 will be 80% of what it is against a Pylon. Imagine our Stalker deals 300 DPS 300 * 0.8 - 100 = 140 300 * 0.8 * 5/6 - 100 = 100 100/140 = 29% At 300 DPS, a pretty steep decrease Imagine our Stalker deals 500 DPS 500 * 0.8 - 100 = 300 500 * 0.8 * 5/6 - 100 = 233.33 233.33/300 = 23% At 500 DPS, still a sizeable hit This doesn't look so well even from a theorycraft perspective. To be honest at this point of the post I don't know where to go, because I was attempting to do the theorycrafter's homework, point out this would be the right approach for supporting pure theorycraft arguments, THEN argue there are other factors that show up in practical play and try to define these. But it seems the numbers are so damning against Boggle even the theorycraft approach breaks down early. Unless one doesn't consider 23% performance hits significant, I suppose...

Oof. I need to cool down.

I do feel someone who strolls into a topic and introduces the idea of soloing +4 TFs when there previously was no such discussion, and preemptively assures everyone "this is impossible", would be helped by practical knowledge. Especially when that same poster goes on to reply to someone else merely offering their own experience with something that boiled down to "L2P, noob". YMMV, of course. I find your own assessment of my position to be as distorted as Hjarki implying Croax said Boggle was useless. But if I'm misreading you here, I apologize. To clarify, I have no problem with anyone offering any argument on anything even if they never moved out of Atlas Park. Nonetheless it helps to know where other people come from, if only to better frame your own point so it's understandable. When the discussion starts circling around pointless abstractions instead of addressing a previous showstopper point, there's clearly some breakdown in the conversation. To me the strict DPS requirements that come with the territory in a Stalker solo Apex/TinM/LRSF attempt is obvious, to Hjarki it seemingly isn't. So either he knows something I don't or he doesn't know something I do, and the less information we withhold about that, the more likely we are to have some kind of fruitful exchange.

@Hjarki I am asking you a simple question because in my opinion, your objections and arguments betray fundamental misunderstandings of the task at hand. I'm open to the possibility I don't know everything and that you have a different approach to the problem I am blind to. As far as I'm concerned, I already made central points you choose to ignore, in favor of focusing on an undeveloped tangent I served you on a silver platter. We could go in circles repeating the same things. Or you could tell me if you speak from experience or not. Rest assured if you actually answer the question with a straight "yes" or "no", I'm more than willing to address your previous points.

Cool to know in itself. Now I want to try it. I'm not sure I have a single character that can take on Maria's Siege at +4. His heal is truly massive and fast recharging, and he has (I think? wouldn't be hard to check for sure) 50% res to Smashing and Energy. The two combined are a showstopper for many of the conventionally powerful AV builds. But then again, dualboxing with a cold defender makes the fight a breeze. Maybe Demon/Cold MM, then.

To add insult to injury, I'm pretty sure this room was only added in later issues. So, the devs had years of feedback on us hating the cake rooms... and one of them decided to make a room that would be worse than all other cake rooms combined. Had to be someone's pet project. And to be fair, it does look intimidating and sticks with you.

S/L damage is roughly a 15% damage tax. Source: my butt. It's not so bad if you like IOs, because many S/L heavy powersets get opportunities to slot Achilles' Heel -RES, or have other interesting effects. And ultimately, overall powerset design matters more than anything. Neither Fire Melee nor Ice Melee top the charts.

You got it. All three powers are excellent against AVs.

@Dr Causality had the fun idea some time back to try a +1/x8 MoITF with incarnates but only SO/HO slotting. Proved to be a decent challenge. I managed it on +0/x8 personally. SOs/HOs + Incarnates + insps roughly put you on par with IOs + no incarnates/insps, IMHO. There's definitely a stark difference and it's an intruiguing change of pace, to try to optimize a build with SOs and Incarnates.

-RES works great. -DAM works great against AVs that have no extra resistances through their specific powers. -REGEN from debuff ATs work great by virtue of having huge default values. The typical -REGEN power is -500%, so even after 85% resistance you're still cutting their regeneration rate to a fourth of what it is originally. This falls down if the AV is higher con. All other debuffs aren't too efficient. If you want to solo AVs on a debuff AT, it's generally good to have -RES and -REGEN, then focus on raising your personal defenses and dealing damage.

Can you answer the question before we go down yet another endless semantic debate that is equally abstract and pointless? Have *you* soloed Apex/TinM/LRSF on a Stalker, specifically the Psi/Nin you advocate? Things that might seem to make sense on paper turn out very differently in a high pressure environment.

Man, I am giving you the best argument I can think of for your side in the form of an edge case, and you grab it like it's a fully developed universal answer and run with it to claim dominion over Stalkerhood. 😄 Have *you* soloed Apex/TinM/LRSF on a Stalker, specifically the Psi/Nin you advocate? Things that might seem to make sense on paper turn out very differently in a high pressure environment. Namely, sacrificing efficiency for the sake of one situation where Confuse might be useful is likely to hurt your build to the point you may not succeed in the end. These are very tight scenarios that require optimisation of what resources we have. FYI, the Confuse approach to Penelope isn't even "efficient" per se - it takes a lot of time, and because you don't control her attack behavior, it comes down to dumb luck. It's generally faster to do pulls, and in those cases Boggle is dead weight.

I don't see where Croax said that. However he did point out very specific scenarios (soloing Apex, TinM, LRSF), and I don't think arguing vague general statements make for convincing rebuttals. i.e., the value of Confuse is not obvious to me, because the main threats of these task forces are level 53 and 54 groups of archvillains where you'd need mag4+ confuse to confuse them, and only during the short window of time purple triangles are down. More importantly, there are opportunity costs to every action. You have to deal 400+ DPS to make decent progress when everything is factored. Spending ~2 seconds on a nondamaging Boggle cast is devastating to your damage output. Addendum... I think any player capable of soloing Apex/TinM/LRSF on a stalker is well aware confuse sets have juicy set bonuses... You're preaching "tier2" build knowledge to someone who is likely operating at "tier3" or "tier4" build knowledge. We are not talking about the Citadel task force here. To get to that next level, you often need to move beyond a conventional defense/recharge bonus chase, and into proc-loaded attack chains and squeezing every slot to maximum potential. FWIW I love Boggle and will always find excuses to include it in my build and to use it. These are just that, excuses. Boggle has marginal uses against anything that matters. The best you miiiight be able to argue here is confusing Penelope, simply because her damage is so absurd she is sometimes able to kill the weaker members of the Phalanx even just during her purple triangle downtimes.

Some excellent choices listed already. Fireball and Blaze have good crunch. Meaty GFX and great power. Fire attacks tend to sound amazing, that deep noise tied to the DoTs. Even Fire Cages feels powerful to use, despite its piddly damage. The new TF + fast ET combo. Ohh. Dev team definitely hit a homerun on that revamp. Atom Smasher, which I guess was listed already because it's the same animation as Mighty Judgement, IIRC. There is an extra nice aspect to Atom Smasher on meleers after popping Build Up, seeing a flurry of damage numbers from the "Contamined" effect. Crane Kick. You can feel the dislocated... whatever, wherever the enemy in front of you was hit, you are now sure it's dislocated.

I tried to solo an Apex with alpha unslotted on purpose, on a TW/bio that was otherwise fully incarnated and at the height of their overpowered glory. I think it took me 10 minutes to clear the first 2 groups of the first mission. A +8 minion is harder to defeat than a +4 boss.

"This time, I'll try something different." Build ends up with CJ, Hasten, Tough/Weave, Maneuvers/Tactics/Assault, Musculature/Ageless. Every single time.

We can draw from the ample wealth of data we have from other games in the same genre (RPGs), where the staple is character progression and once that character progression stalls, interest wanes. Heck, you can even work backwards and look at the number of NON-RPG games who have added RPG elements over the years to improve player retention. Nowadays you level up in Call of Duty. It would take an assumption there is something particularly special about CoH to make its playerbase react differently to incentives. As much as I love the game and think it *is* special, I'm not seeing it. For someone determined to dislike the market, it's also possible to move the goalposts endlessly with experiments. I'd argue the goalposts have already been moved significantly compared to Live, here you can build a fully purpled out character with merits and veteran levels. Whereas the market was a necessary step for realistic timeframes on Live, it became truly optional on Homecoming.

Serious reply in a fun thread, I'm excited for machine learning developments making this reality closer every day. See AI Dungeon for a very rough, very early proof-of-concept.

I love, love, love Arctic Air on Doms. I ignore my entire primary and just attack, while enemies get confused passively. No doubt it is extremely silly design, but damn. FUN!