America's Angel

We want to find the best melee fighter in City of Heroes...is that you? What: A 1v1 PVP tournament for melee fighters only! When: Saturday March 27th 2021 @ 4pm PST // 7pm EDT // 11pm GMT Where: Pocket D on Indomitable Who: Anyone can enter! Want to enter? Want to know more? Click here to go to the official sign-up thread.

We want to find the best melee fighter in City of Heroes...is that you? What: A 1v1 PVP tournament for melee fighters only! (Aka Fightclub) When: Saturday March 27th 2021 @ 4pm PST // 7pm EDT // 11pm GMT Where: Pocket D on Indomitable Who: Anyone can join! Just post your @global name and character name in this thread to sign up for the event. Discord: https://discord.gg/B2agqnSssN (We'll be posting matchups/recording wins on Discord (via Challonge). Be sure to join the discord so you can follow the event as it happens!) Hosts: For questions, please refer to @CR Mochi or @America's Angel How it works: FIGHTCLUB is 1v1 melee-only PVP. Each match is set to 15 minutes, and it works like this: You load into the map. (Monkey Cage or Coliseum) You run into the center of it. Your opponent does the same. You hit F7 when you are ready to fight. Once you've both said you're ready...you charge into melee range and fight! You should do this no later than 14:45 on the clock. (Even if your opponent hasn't said they're ready!) Once you are fighting, no moving! (The entire fight must take place in melee range.) First KO wins - the first person to KO their opponent wins even if there's time left on the clock. Stalkers - you have to start fighting at the 14:45 mark just like everyone else. After this, if you stay in hide for longer than 10s once the fighting starts, you forfeit the match. If a match goes to Sudden death, it is considered a draw. Rules & Restrictions: Minimum level: 50 Observers must be left on. No inspirations (Switch them off in the arena settings for your match!) No switching characters between matches. (You use the same character for the whole event.) Switching between builds is fine. Allowed Archetypes: Brutes, Scrappers, Stalkers, Tanks, Peacebringers, Warshades, Arachnos Widows, Arachnos Soldiers Incarnates Allowed: Alpha, Interface, and Hybrid can be slotted. (But Hybrid CANNOT be clicked!) The Following are banned powers: All phase powers such as Phase Shift, Quantum Flight, Nebulous Form, etc. Hibernate from the Leviathan Patron Pool. (Hibernate from Ice Armor is fine to use) Judgement Incarnate Lore Incarnate Destiny Incarnate Hybrid Incarnate (Passive bonus from slotting it is fine. But clicking the power in the match is not allowed.) Non-Incarnate Pets are allowed. (Such as the Arachnos Soldier Summons and the Patron Pets.) However. If you have summoned a pet: If you summon your pets during the 30s countdown at the start, that counts as saying you are ready. If you summon your pets during the fight, they must be summoned within melee range of your opponent. Your opponent can move to fight your pets from a better position if they wish. (I.e. repositioning so that a cone attack hits both you and your pet.) You can also reposition to counter their repositioning. As long as you both remain in melee range of each other as you do the repositioning, neither of you will forfeit. Combat Teleport is allowed as long as you have it set to cast via "powexec_location me". (I.e. just teleporting on the spot.) You cannot use it to leave melee range. Scoring: This will be a swiss draw tournament. Everyone will fight the same amount of matches. We will use a points system method for keeping score: Win = 3 points Draw = 1 point Loss = 0 points Winners are responsible for posting their match results in the dedicated Discord channel after their match. If you do not, your win will not be scored. (If discord isn't working for you for whatever reason, send a /tell with your match results & character name to @America's Angel in game.) If your opponent has cheated, or if you have been scored incorrectly on Discord, please contact @CR_Mochi on discord or in game. Prizes: First Place = PVP Fightclub Champion gold title and 3000 Merits Second Place = PVP Fightclub Finalist gold title and 2000 merits Third Place = PVP Fightclub Semi-Finalist gold title and 1500 merits Fourth Place = PVP Fightclub Semi-Finalist gold title and 1000 merits @CR_Mochi will also be running 5 raffles throughout the event with prizes of 300 merits each. How to sign up: Reply to this thread with your @global and character name. You don't have to say what sets your character has. But the character you bring on the day is the one you have to use for the whole tournament. (No switching characters between rounds!)

"How should the game be played?" I've given it a bunch of though this week, but hard testing parameters are impossible in PVE, sadly. The PVE side of this game is just played too differently by too many different people. There is no such thing as a hard baseline in such an environment. A baseline for DPS and HPS are almost impossible to work out. (Unlike PVP, where everyone plays pretty much the same way and balance is pretty easy to figure out, comparatively.) The best approach to PVE balance is just to have the players, each of them with a varied playstyle, provide their own, unique feedback based on how they play. And then collate all of that feedback get an overall "feel": For example... Galaxy Brain likes to stand still in Cimms using only SOs - this is their feedbackl. America's Angel likes to run missions with insps, P2W, and everything else - this is their feedback. Infinitum likes to run missions without insps/P2W, but uses incarnates - this is their feedback. Werner likes to run missions with enemies debuffed, no insps, alpha-only, etc - this is their feedback. Uniquedragon likes to run missions with red number SOs - this is their feedback. Etc etc. And then from all of this feedback mixed together, an overall consensus emerges. (Which the devs can then compare against their own knowledge, datamining, and number-crunching to conclude the best course of action.) What this means is that Focused Feedback threads, and the debates within them (to help sort the good ideas from the bad) are already the best way to test armours in this game.

The small pools next to the atlas statue cause SEVERE lag when walking/flying in them. Also, they no longer have water in.

For the most part, yes. Although the internal recharge of the snipes has also been changed in PVE. (Meaning that they will proc as if the power had a 12s recharge, rather than a 24s recharge.) 3.5 PPM procs will go from 90% chance to proc to 77.76% chance to proc. 4.5 PPM procs will still stay at 90% chance to proc.

/jranger Ice Blast does not need a buff. BFR is fine for what it is.

I think the -fly does stack but the -flyspeed does not.

Glad to hear it's working right. I was testing it earlier, too. Even with hover+evasive maneuvers stacked, the pvp temp web grenade was still dropping my flier.

Yeah, Evasive Manuevers is a complete non-issue in PVP. Especially when you can take hover instead for +3 mag fly and run it alongside flight to cancel out Air Superiority, Entangle, etc. (Without a cooldown.)

BUG REPORT > OVERLOAD Just tested the PVP elusivity changes on the tweaked defense armour T9s. Elude and Kujin-Retsu seem to be working fine. Overload is not. I dual-boxed with my friend's beam/poison/psy corruptor versus my Dm/EA scrapper with overload active. I shot my scrapper that had overload up with two attacks: Penetrating Ray - Energy Damage Dominate - Psy Damage This is what happened... As you can see, Penetrating Ray has the right hit chance, but Dominate is way way higher than it should be. I was confused at first - Overload provides Psy elusivity. Why was the hit chance higher? So I fed the scrapper some purple inspirations and... Sure enough, that fixed Dominate's tohit chance. Seems like someone at Paragon forgot to make Overload also grant psy defense in PVP. So while Overload has Psy elusivity, it does not have psy defense. Solution: Add Psy Defense to Overload to that it is balanced relative to Elude and Kujin-Retsu.

BUG REPORT > OVERLOAD Just tested the PVP elusivity changes on the tweaked defense armour T9s. Elude and Kujin-Retsu seem to be working fine. Overload is not. I dual-boxed with my friend's beam/poison/psy corruptor versus my Dm/EA scrapper with overload active. I shot my scrapper that had overload up with two attacks: Penetrating Ray - Energy Damage Dominate - Psy Damage This is what happened... As you can see, Penetrating Ray has the right hit chance, but Dominate is way way higher than it should be. I was confused at first - Overload provides Psy elusivity. Why was the hit chance higher? So I fed the scrapper some purple inspirations and... Sure enough, that fixed Dominate's tohit chance. Seems like someone at Paragon forgot to make Overload also grant psy defense in PVP. So while Overload has Psy elusivity, it does not have psy defense. Solution: Add Psy Defense to Overload to that it is balanced relative to Elude and Kujin-Retsu.

Other PVP changes: Stalker > Melee (All Sets) Powerhouse made a large pass through every stalker set to reorganize their effects and make sure their crit damage was correct in both, PvP and PvE. This means powers like Greater Psy Blade might do less damage when scoring a critical hit on players, now. **EDIT** Stalker> Psy Melee> Greater Psy Blade Damage has been reduced from scale 3.6666 to 2.75 for both base damage and crit damage. Insight damage reduced from scale 1.8333 to 1.3434 Phase Powers (Phase Shift, Hibernate, etc) No Phase suppression window for all powers (PvE and PvP) has been reduced from 2 minutes to 90 seconds. Scrapper ranged_pvpdamage modifier has been raised to match melee_pvpdamage modifier. This means pool attacks such as Arcane Bolt will now do more damage. Radiation Blast | Radioactive Assault > Proton Volley (All versions) Fixed a bug where these powers were doing 20% less than intended damage in PvP. They are now doing the correct amount. Ice Melee > Assassin's Ice Sword This power's stealth bonus damage should no longer be resisted in PvP. Concealment > Stealth PvP Stealth increased from scale 389ft to 611ft. Fighting > Boxing This power was missing it's 35% synergy chance for stun in PvP, this has been fixed. Leaping > Super Jump > Double Jump This power shuts down automatically after 10s of continuous use in PvP. In PvP, this power will be disabled for 30s after it shuts down. Sorcery> Speed of Sounc > Jaunt The notes above have it listed as both 20s and 30s cooldown. It should be 30s.

It's a videogame. Use everything. That's how you discover what is over-performing. It's impossible to balance a game if you're not looking at it as a whole. Current overperformers: -Inspirations -Judgement -Lore -The 10s/30s/60s buff from Destiny I'd rather see those four things looked at before procs / any powersets are significantly rebalanced. Build a healthy foundation and all that.

I can 100% control what insps I have available. Therefore they are not variable. So what's my reason for ignoring them?

SR's scaling damres can be replicated with orange insps. Set bonuses =/= insps. Ideally you want to pick a secondary that does things you can't replicate with insps. It pushes your potential higher. Inspirations exist in this game. At the high end of min/maxing, chaining inspirations is how you get the most out of your characters.

Regen provides +regen and +HP, and does not have its HPS reduced by autohit/unresistable attacks to the same extent other sets do. Bio and rad provide +absorb Damage auras and burn increase DPS. Ice has Hibernate. etc. These things cannot be replicated with insps. The benefits of SR is that it gets 20% recharge, doesn't need to use purple inspirations, and has good DDR. At the high end, that's not all that impressive. At high end play you want to build for big global recharge, +HP, procs, and chaining insps.

Ideally you want to pick a secondary that does things you can't replicate with insps. It pushes your potential higher.

Ideally you want to pick a secondary that does things you can't replicate with insps. It pushes your potential higher. Inspirations exist in this game. At the high end of min/maxing, chaining inspirations is how you get the most out of your characters. It's how my 11% defense fire/fire blaster can clear an ITF in like 15 mins.

I've noticed the people who like RPing assholes don't like it when you RP someone who doesn't want to talk to assholes. Apparently "hey it's just RP" doesn't apply when you do it back to them. Funny that.

Which benefits more from purple inspirations - an SR Brute or a Regen Brute?

For those confused by my last post, Sir Myshkin summed it up perfectly, below. (replace "team-mate buffs" with "inspiration chaining" and you've got your How To Play High End Regens playbook):

"It's harder to play" is a bad reason to rebalance a set that is already balanced. Whenever I post a build people start nerfherding. So no. :)

Do any of you actually play min/maxed regens at level 50? They're insanely good. You can tank anything in the game, in both PVE and PVP. It's harder to play well than something you can fire-and-forget like WP or Invuln. But it's a great armour set. I'd hate to see it rebalanced because people don't know how to play it.

Well aren't you Mr. Specialpants. Yesss.

What I'd love (speaking only for myself here): -New level 50 missions/trials/TFs that have stupidly OP fight mechanics. I don't mean missions per se. I mean the end bosses of them. Just stupidly hard to fight. They laugh at defense softcaps/-res debuffs/inspiration stacking/destiny/judgement/procs/all other level 50 min/max staples. They break all the rules. (And these "end bosses" would be tweaked every ~3 months so that the strategy for defeating them would never be the same. Similar to how Hamidon was in the early days of live.) Of course you'd only be able to do this if you introduced new incarnate slots/currency that can only be unlocked fighting these bosses. (Otherwise people would just ignore them like they do Dark Astoria.) I'd rather this be the direction the PVE game moves in. Rebalancing the ITF/LGTF/etc around tricked out IOs and Incarnate powers just seems so misguided. The game is 17 years old. It doesn't matter how quickly you can run through old content.