nihilii

I have no clue whether there's a bug tied to Power Slice, but I've always felt certain animations, due to their length and look, lend themselves to psychological tricks where we *expect* to see them hit, and so the misses stick more easily to our subconscious as a result. Whenever the animations are long or composed of several hits, it feels wrong to watch the character whiff.

What do you mean by "weird things"? I haven't had that happen, even on hundreds of packs. I rightclick and press O, rightclick and O, about 2 or 3 times per second. I do get that tinge of apprehension/superstition wondering if things will be properly opened, but everything has always shown up in my emails afterwards.

You get all the Incarnate story arc contacts added once you unlock the alpha slot, whether that's going through Mender Ramiel or gaining experience.

Neither have you, nor anyone claiming this fix will crash the economy. More influence generated for same amount of goods generated = higher price for goods. This is econ 101. The existence of double inf + the patrol XP exploit only meant that playing under any other condition was penalized on the market. Absurd. Double inf farmers were a net drain on the economy, due to the above reason. This is not a hard idea to understand. Player A plays missions. During the time he gets X recipe drops, he generates Y influence. Player B farms with the double inf exploit. During the time he gets X recipe drops, he generates >2Y influence. Player B has generated less than half as many recipes as Player A for the same amount of inf. Or, Player B has more than twice as much inf to spend on the market as Player A. The naive counterpoint would be that Player B earns vastly more recipes over time than Player A, by virtue of farming being so much faster. But this is an irrelevant point, especially once you expand your perspective to the entire playerbase. The ratio of inf to recipes remains skewed in favor of the farmer, meaning the farmer has more weight in the competitive marketplace that is the AH, meaning farmers spend that inf and hike the prices for everyone else. That so-called "helping new players out" complainers love to mention? It essentially transfers some of the competitive advantage of the farmer to another person, *at the expense of everyone else*. Powerleveling someone to 50? You help them generate more influence per recipes earlier than they would otherwise, so once again that's a net drain on the economy. Mind you, I'm not making value judgements here. Namely talking about the economic aspect. There is no economic reason to complain about this change. Period. You are protesting a change that literally curbs inflation. (Meanwhile, the Fed is printing infinite dollars to prop up a bubble economy where zombie companies buy their own stock. Woo! If you want to direct your inflation-related outrage at something, there's no shortage of appropriate targets in the real world right now.)

Oh yeah, I didn't mean to imply mine was optimized for DPS or anything. By not only using Total Focus but not even giving it any damage proc, it's a far cry from what it could be on that front. Good points. 🙂 But in the end, EM does comparable ST damage to other good secondaries while using long animations, taking self damage and having a secondary effect that is useful for mitigation but detrimental for speed (enemies wander off stunned). And then, it has one bad AoE. The difference becomes apparent when, say, soloing an Apex Rikti Pylon. On any other of my DA tankers I can sustain the autohit toxic damage + other attacks generally without inspirations, perhaps popping a luck at most. This DA/EM gets really low on HP before Dark Regen recharges, sometimes to the point of death even. Granted, that is partly a consequence of my choices. If I went Gloom I could kite some, if I skipped TF I would have less animation lock... No argument. 🙂 But I enjoy EM a lot, actually! The damage might be low but it doesn't *feel* low - and I've been using her extensively before having any incarnates, so her DPS was likely in the 160-180 range then. Having a chain of 2 big + 1 medium power makes for satisfying floating numbers. Even godawful Whirling Hands becomes enjoyable with a 12 feet radius. A friend actually rerolled an EM alt after watching mine, feeling his Rad Melee didn't compare. Goes to show how perception can matter over pure performance.

DA/EM Tanker. Yes. EM. Don't judge me. Musc T3, Degen T3, Ageless T4, Hybrid T3 Energy Transfer -> Bone Smasher -> Total Focus -> Bone Smasher. Build Up replaces Bone Smasher whenever up, ideally before the next ET. Heca + ToD procs in ET Mako + ToD + Perfect Zinger in Bone Smasher No damage proc in TF Hybrid OFF 5:41 = 240 DPS Hybrid ON 5:32 = 243 DPS Good reminder one or two runs is not enough for a reliable number, even on lowish DPS characters. Subjectively, I whiffed a lot on that Hybrid attempt. EM might not be much these days, but with the general power increase and the Tanker buffs, we can get to something decent. Makes the nostalgia trip more enjoyable, while waiting for buffs.

A couple runs with my Elec/Inv/Psi Sentinel, now that Degen is fixed. Musc T3, Degen T4, Ageless T4, Hybrid T4 Zapping Bolt -> Dominate -> Mind Probe -> Zapping Bolt -> Tesla Cage Tesla Cage is replaced by relevant clicks as needed: Ageless, Voltaic Sentinel, Charged Bolts + Aim when Opportunity is ready Apoc + Gladiator Javelin procs in Zapping Bolt 4 common damage procs in Tesla Cage 4 damage procs + Unbreakable Constraint in Dominate Heca + ToD in Mind Probe Hybrid OFF 2:44 = 361 DPS 2:40 = 367 DPS Hybrid ON 2:44 = 361 DPS (sloppy execution) 2:17 = 407 DPS I've been playing this alt for a while and have been happy with her damage. Easily competes with my Fire/Rad, despite using a purely defensive secondary. And on top of that, throws boss level holds as part of her attack chain. And drains mobs dry. Whew! I believe an Elec/Bio would likely top the charts for Sentinel DPS. That said, this DPS is conditional as it relies on fighting one and only one target, for Voltaic Sentinel to do its job. Making a good macro for VS is IMHO such a strong quality of life upgrade for Elec. I'm using "powexec_location forward:20 Voltaic Sentinel", so I don't have to fiddle with the targeting reticle to summon it. Having to aim is a hard price to pay for a 60s summon that may or may not pay off, whereas simply tapping a key makes the cast easier to fit seamlessly.

When it comes down to it, the core gameplay loop is great. Creating your costume. Activating powers. Leveling up and picking new powers/slots. CoH is chock-full of meaningful decisions on micro and macro level. Agency makes for strong player engagement.

Nitpick: very few AVs are actually immune to endurance drain. Most have high resistance to it, similar to their high resistance to a variety of other debuffs.

I think "no incarnates but envenomed daggers" makes the challenge vastly less interesting than "incarnates but no temps, period", because EVERY melee AT would end up spamming Envenomed Daggers as the prime source of their effective damage output. The required DPS to win becomes 1 or above. Ok, probably more than 1 DPS because you don't want your 300 dagger charges to run out too soon. But in general, significant -regen is autowin against Lusca, especially on melee ATs where it's trivial to build enough mitigation to passively survive the incoming damage. Incarnates even with Lore are somewhat more interesting, in that you can't keep pets up all the time and you do have to manage them so they don't die. Heck, incarnates *without* Lore is possible for melee ATs and ought to be a decent challenge.

The main "gotcha" with scrapper KM is that you'd expect Concentrated Strike to autorecharge Power Siphon through the Critical Strikes ATO. But it doesn't, because the chance to recharge Power Siphon is a hardcoded value rather than an actual crit. KM/Bio is indeed capable of good damage, but the special toxic damage of bio isn't boosted by damage buffs - and KM being balanced around a higher level of +dam than most other attack powersets, it gets proportionally less from the straight +dam of bio. Basically, it's a good combo because any attack powerset with /bio is a good combo. But it isn't as spectacular as some other choices. That being said, KM/Bio has the advantage of being an absolute powerhouse through the leveling process, *especially* if you preplan IOs. By level 10 you're a machine gun spamming your first three attacks, powered by a Gaussian Power Siphon, enhanced by Offensive Adaptation, and all that +dam is much more meaningful at low levels where you don't have Musculature, Hybrid or even SO level enhancements. My own KM/bio leveling experience was going through paper missions with another melee friend, starting on +0/x4 and gradually cranking it up to +3/x8 in the 20s. We got to level 40 in basically a couple play sessions of 2-3 hours each which were glorious murderfests. This character may not top the charts at max level but it was a joy to level.

I agree with khy on every point made. My experience comes from playing an elec/ice defender at max level, but I think elec affinity lends itself really well to MMs. You can spam the absorb and heal back to back for downright impressive sustain. In an unique manner compared to typical support sets, both of these casts have fast animations. I too was unimpressed with Energizing Circuit looking at it in Mids. Then actual use made it click. Energizing Circuit can essentially replace Ageless for yourself (let alone your teammates). Faraday Cage is perma mez protection that will never drop, unlike bubbles/sonic. So let's recap. You've got healing covered. You've got endurance covered. You've got mez protection covered. Meaning you're free to take Barrier without a second thought, and stack even more defense and resistance. It is a pure support set with no "meaningful" way to increase your damage (Empowering Circuit is nice, don't get me wrong, but it's no -RES). On a defender or corruptor, that mitigation can be fun in groups but will likely be wasted in this world of uber builds. But on a MM? Say goodbye to resummoning your stuff, methinks. As someone who loathes that part of the MM experience, elec affinity might be the thing that finally lets me stick with them.

Subjectively? I dislike porting newer mechanics onto older powersets. It changes its identity; whether to a meaningful extent or not is another question, but still. Subjectively, electric boogaloo? Elec Blast (and end drain) are IMHO a lot better than most people give it credit for (even on Blasters, Defenders and Corruptors), in a world of fast elec DoTs, fast snipes and crashless nukes. There's a finite amount of buffs you can give a powerset without making it too strong. Can Elec Blast get a chain power *and* a damaging Tesla Cage *and* a longer duration Voltaic Sentinel? I don't know. What I know is that Elec isn't hurting for AoE damage as is. So adding a chain ability to Elec might turn out to be a "wasted" buff in that it improves performance according to theoretical formulas, but that improved performance turns out to be minimal due to overkill in practical gameplay. To put it another way, Elec needs help dropping bosses, not minions or lieuts. It would be great if we get both a chain power on, say, VS attacks and a damaging Tesla and a longer duration VS, but it'd be a shame if we got a chain power *over* a damaging Tesla or a longer duration VS. Somewhat more objectively? I'm mostly reacting to your suggestion Zapp might take a damage hit. It's one of the cornerstone of Elec ST damage as is, and if anything Elec needs more ST damage. So any buff to other aspects can't come at the expense of what ST damage we currently have.

Hard pass on nerfing Zapp's ST damage. The last thing Elec Blast needs is more AoE damage, with Ball Lightning + Short Circuit + Thunderous Blast and thanks to the sped up DoT on Homecoming, it's already great in AoE. Elec Blast is only lacking in ST damage, and only for Blasters, Defenders and Corruptors. That's another thing: the Sentinel version proves it doesn't take radical changes to turn Elec Blast into a top tier choice. Retrofitting complicated newer mechanics onto Elec Blast, changing its playstyle for an unknown result, seems like a rather inefficient approach when there's a working blueprint for improving Elec Blast. Bump the damage on Tesla Cage, for that matter give Voltaic Sentinel a longer duration... see if this doesn't fix all the issues already.

Fun. Wait... I mean. HOW DARE YOU, HOMECOMING?! You will never see me play again. For another 24 hours. Unless I really need to log in for my daily fix.

This change is highly misunderstood. Less inf will be generated, but the same amount of recipes will be produced. Ergo the people who farm for inf will farm somewhere between what they are doing now and twice as much, and the recipes they will generate will be somewhere between what they are doing now and twice as much. Any recipe you buy from the market was earned by a player. Corollary, because the rate of earning recipes is the same no matter what, people who used double inf were generating less recipes proportionally to their game activity than other people; AND, worsening inflation, because they had all that inf to spend relative to other players. (I've seen naive arguments along the line of "I farmed so I could give massive inf gifts to other players". Where do you think that inf ends up, once given? Spent, likely on the market. So the net effect is the same, hiking up the prices for everyone else.) - For what it's worth, I haven't bothered to use double inf for a long time while in AE farms. I still delete most of my yellow and orange recipes and all of my white/yellow salvage. Influence gain without double inf is still way too good in AE, to the point even the 5 seconds per recipe it takes to list for 1 inf on the market is a pointless loss of time. When AFK farming you find yourself with 80/80 recipes faster than you know it. Your time investment to earn inf is near 0, while your inventory management takes some time. Influence generation in AE would have to be slashed another 75% (that is, 1/8 of what is currently is) for me to actually bother feeding the market.

This is actually how it works on Homecoming since these servers went up. You can trade 1M inf for 1 merit, and 100 merits buy you any purple you want. Ergo you can buy any purple for 100M inf. Works for just about any recipe. To fully IO out an alt, you don't ever need to use the market if that's not your thing - but of course, player market prices are much cheaper than straight inf conversion to merits.

I think Longbow is generally the most practical choice for AVs, as they deal good damage at range (although the Cataphract has a tendency to go in melee), and most importantly the Cataphract has a -500% regen debuff tied to one of its attacks. Banished Pantheon is another favorite, due to high damage + -res. The right side tree is also slightly "bugged" in that the support intangible pet has an attack, which can be a fun way to add some DPS in situations where your Lore pets would be obliterated. Cimerorans deal very high damage in melee, with the caveat that they have to survive melee, of course. Even though Storms aren't talked about much I've always liked them, they do decent range/AoE damage and they fly, which lets you do all sorts of jetpack shenanigans (i.e. to split AVs when some fly and some don't). Probably not relevant to a +4/x8 MoITF.

There's literally no downside to the inf change. You only lose out if the % of your game activity that is farming is superior to the average % of game activity that is farming for the rest of the playerbase.

My go-to strategy for Ghost Widow on a character without overwhelming damage is to stack up on tier2 lucks and pop 2 at a time. This way, even if her hold hits, my character stays softcapped during the magical levitating moment and *should* stay alive through passive regen and resistances. Her heal on its own (at floored tohit) probably shouldn't a dealbreaker for a scrapper, provided you have your ducks in a row with attack chain and all. If you're not sure, it can be worth hopping by the scrapper forum and starting a BS/SD thread. DPS increases matter disproportionately against +4 AVs, between the purple patch and their regen. An option to trick Lore pets into fighting without feeding can be to start flying about 40 feet above ground. GW flies too so she will follow, while your pets will stand under and be forced to use ranged attacks, away from her heal.

"I have another opinion" - rewards should be buffed on harder content so people don't stick to easy content past the point they don't need to. When the experience of 90% of the playerbase is AE farms, radio missions, +0 TFs on full teams, the game is bound to feel too easy. Appropriately buffed rewards wouldn't be a magic bullet. Homecoming opened *several* cans of worms at once, through power creep here and there but also speeding up incarnate progression and making things more available through cheap converters, level agnostic market and the like. From that point there's little way to make the game harder without resorting to (IMHO) unfun rulebreaking mechanics as seen in iTrials. Or taking A LOT of stuff away. So, the best solution might be to accept this is an easy game by default and also gently incentivize you to crank up the slider and seek the harder content that already exists.

Staff has a fairly wide bag of tricks, rather than a singular definer: good AoEs, a divine avalanche-like +DEF cone, a ranged attack, a decent T9 if you use forms optimally. However, it lacks Build Up and animations can be pretty lengthy. Which means as great as iStaff should be on paper, in practice you wish you had more (animation) time to make full use of your toolbox. It doesn't compare well to Titan Weapons, because nothing compares well to Titan Weapons. TW is grossly overpowered. But Staff is viable regardless. Not one of the top 5, but not one of the worst either. Also, subjectively: Staff is stylish. There is one controversial look in Eye of the Storm, which half of the players find stupidly awesome and the other half just stupid.

Food for thought: DA is also resistance-based and gets an extra 8% def in Cloak of Darkness. Which lets you swap Barrier for Ageless, and you end up with better defense and better end management. My full offense specced DA tankers typically end up with 45% melee, 20% ranged/AOE, and 90% res to all save for ~70-80% to energy. With Dark Regen on top, they're absurdly survivable - I don't even have to use insps soloing +4/x8 DA arcs. So for a defensive build, I think you'll get even more outlandish results with DA/MA. 45% M/R/A + 90% res to all + minimum 1100 HP heal every 10 seconds should be within reach. DDR and slow res remain as flaws. But then again... If you're not chasing optimal damage, you can likely combine the debuff resistance side of Ageless with Conserve Power and carefully placed Winter IOs to get your numbers up there as well while staying afloat with endurance. -- Edit: I realise only now DA has a bit of a toxic hole as well. And for all I say "should be within reach" through building defensively, I'm struggling to get there myself. Still, here's my attempt. (Chance for psi proc in CAK should be Achilles' Heel. I use the older Mids, as my eyes struggle with the color scheme changes in Mids Reborn.) 48% M, 42% R, 41% AOE. Should be at or close to 90% res to all with 2 might of the tanker procs, 74% energy 63% toxic. Capped slow resist with the debuff tree of Ageless. Cobra Strike and Eagle's Claw with Oppressive Gloom for maximum stun goodness against bosses 😛 You'd likely want to manage leadership toggles when CP is down, but I like having them. I often see comments on overslotting for acc/tohit, but with extreme survivability builds we have to consider the kind of things we're likely going to face to even use that survivability: solo +4/x8 stuff with debuffs, where having extra tohit does come in handy. It'd be nice to cap R/A, although I'm not sure how. Easiest way would be to pretend slow resist and energy resistance aren't so important: sacrifice Unbreakable sets for Aegis, kill the ToD/Mako/Blistering Cold in one attack for a full Mako set.

But then, the critical end drain suggestion is a straight buff. I'll take any unnecessary buff to my already top performing Elec Blast characters, thank you. ...and bit my lip very, very hard to not reply to this thread.

Return to Battle is probably my favorite CoH power, just for the universal use of it on all of my characters. Not only I don't fear death, I'm sometimes actively *looking forward* to it for that nice buffer of T3 insps.