Zect

A trend I've noticed is that less knowledgeable players tend to fixate on extremely specialized strats (e.g. building only for defense, or only for offense, rather than a balance of both); and insist that such builds are a lot more optimal than they really are. For another example, just look at those awful Tanker builds that take phys perfection, hasten at 49 (if they even have it), dump rech and damage procs completely, skip all their best attacks, toggle on Rune of protection to look better in Mids for forum chest-thumping, and somehow still end up with barely any more mitigation than a balanced build. I have a hypothesis as to why this is so: novice players may not be able to juggle multiple build goals nor perceive synergies in the IO system, and focusing exclusively on one area results in high stats in that narrow area, which gives them an illusion of mastery. If you're new to coh and reading this: don't be fooled by the one-trick pony. Attacks apply debuffs and soft controls, provide defensive IO set bonuses such as res and def, and whittle down enemies, reducing incoming fire. Conversely, strong defenses allow you to play more aggressively, maximize the potential of aoe firepower, survive mistakes, and output superior dps. Jack of all trades, master of none; but better than a master of one. Here are the numbers for FF bubbles only, slotted 1x lotg 7.5, 1x +5 lotg or shieldwall, with agility or nerve core paragon. This is the optimal slotting, and gives 65.47% +def enhancement value (red ED starts at around 69%). 3-slotting is only worth it if the set bonus from the 3rd slot lets you hit some kind of performance breakpoint. For example, 3x lotg may give you enough HP to be HP capped or close, and on a 4* may be worth the extra slot, depending on what the rest of your build looks like. Corruptor Base 18.62 Powerboost 27.47 Defender Base 24.82 Powerboost 39.57 At first, it may seem that the fender numbers are significantly higher. However, corrs will also have dispersion bubble and maneuvers which are worth 15-17% def depending on how deep into ED you want to go. The result is that FF corrs can actually softcap naked toons, or fall just shy of it, and the defender numbers end up being overkill in a lot of situations. I do like FF fenders on 4* hard mode, though, if I am the only +def buffer; in that case the extra def really does seem to make things comfier.

This was in the days of yore, when blaster nukes were not crashless. I was on an ITF, playing a fire blaster, and I used the nuke. Without a word, the kin beside me recognized the animation, and immediately used transference, the +end power. The timing was so precise that my blue bar was back to full before my toggles could tick again, and I never detoggled. I always remember this incident as an exemplar of what a good coh player is. Truly excellent players are defined not by having the most finely tuned builds, but rather by their situational awareness and adaptability. You may be familiar with the military concept of the fog of war, where a lack of information, direction and orientation combine to cloud an individual soldier's perception of the battlefield, resulting in confusion and paralysis. Low-skill players are so deep in the fog of war that they are often barely cognizant of what is going on right in front of them, and typically can only follow a rigid script of actions. High-skill players see through the fog of war and perceive not only what they are doing, but also what their teammates and enemies are doing, and adapt their response swiftly, decisively and appropriately.

This is only true for ST damage vs a hard target, e.g. an AV or pylon. For mixed groups such as the trapdoor test (bunch of normal mobs, then an AV at the end) all 4 AT's have approximately the same killtimes, but tankers are significantly safer and easier. Sentinels are below all 4 melee AT's and significantly below tanks. However, it isn't that sents are weak; it's more that tanks are offensively too strong. Tanks have: Access to superior offensive powersets such as SS, Savage, TW Universal, strong taunt aura This is critical for soloing at high difficulties where no toon can wipe an entire spawn within a few powers. Being able to keep everything tightly grouped and stationary for aoes and damage patches is invaluable. Higher target caps and larger aoes Combined with their high damage scalar of 0.95 (compare corruptors: only 0.75), these advantages have synergistic, multiplicative effects that catapult their offensive power above the actual dps AT's. Tanks are the #1 solo AT, and also the #1 AFK farmer (for active farming where you're converting and gobbling insps, brutes are still better because they have tanker resist caps but higher offense caps). The tanker damage scale needs to be no higher than 0.85, approximately a -10.5% damage nerf.

I enjoyed both of them. I think that your complaints, while mostly valid, are not HC's fault; it was Cryptic's very cryptic decision to make most contact dialogue only visible to the leader. There are some ways in which clever writers can convey the gist of the story even to non-leads, the ITF being a stellar example of such - an attentive player can get the whole story just from NPC dialogue, the mission objectives, and all the nonverbal storytelling going on, such as going through Vespillos Pass (fun fact: vespillo = one who carries out the corpses of the dead at night for burial) to be greeted by the 5th column. However, this will likely not be suitable for conveying fine details. HC's lead writer seems extremely verbose, but I do not feel it is a detriment so far. I liked the Agent Watkins set of storyarcs (for all alignments) very much, and the different dialogue options add replay value; they are on par with my favorite legacy story arcs. When you look at what these missions feature, compared to a lot of legacy arcs which are really just a paragraph of contact dialogue and a couple defeat alls full of trash that just stand around waiting to be massacred - it's no contest, really.

You are correct. CAK = crippling axe kick, the Martial Arts attack. FC = fire/cold damage, always paired together as a defense or resist IO set bonus. ST = single target, as opposed to aoe. Ranged ST are single-target blasts. Fortunately, this is one of my better days. At my worst I refer to the toe proc and assume people know that means Touch of Essence: chance for +endurance.

The most authoritative source for power data is City of Data. Mids is hilariously inaccurate and should not be trusted for anything other than calculating enhancement values and set bonuses. In-game real numbers does not display many power details (which are sometimes displayed as "special" or just hidden altogether). So you go to City of Data, and select corruptor's Charged Shot, and it displays everything the power can do, in pvp and pve, whether it is autohit, whether the caster or target needs to be near ground, etc. Looking at the list of power effects, at the bottom we can see: This means charged shot has a 39% chance to cause a disintegrate spread, if the target it is shooting (it says "all affected targets", but charged shot is ST) has the "disintegrating" debuff (Temporary_Powers.Temporary_Powers.Beam_Rifle_Debuff). The "any" means it applies in pvp and pve, and the icons on the right describe how the power stacks, whether it inherits boosts (enhancements and buffs) from the caster, etc. Following the link to Pets.DisintegrateSpread.Disintegrate_Spread, we see it has the following effect: So 1) it applies a 5.5s dot, 2) applies the "disintegrating" debuff to the targets so that they themselves can now be shot at to spread disintegrate, and 3) displays a visible effect to notify players of the debuff (because coh does not have any UI element that allows you to see enemy statuses, unlike some MMO's, so this information must be conveyed by visual effects on the target itself). The panel on the left displays more useful info: The disintegrate spread is a 15ft sphere, so enemies can be out of range. It is not autohit. It is a 1.8 accuracy power (most powers are 1.0, or normal accuracy) so missing is unlikely, but disintegrate spreads can miss. A successful disintegrate spread only spreads to 3 enemies. In a big horde the "Disintegrate spread!" text can be obscured, even though they were successfully hit. Of note is the red target icon next to the chance, which shows that the main target itself is not affected. That is, if you use charged shot on a mob that is disintegrating, and it triggers a disintegrate spread, only surrounding enemies get the dot, not the one you shot with charged shot. In short, cod is great. Per the site description, "Data on this site is extracted using automated tools which pull the data from files provided with the game client. Much of the data, stored in so-called "bin" files (packaged in "pigg" archive files), is shared by both the client and the game servers. While the client uses the data to display power data for players, the servers use that same data to actually run the game. Thus, what CoD displays is the actual powers data used when playing the game." It displays a lot of power data that is not shown even in real numbers, such as which powers are autohit (and which parts, because many "autohit" powers have one component that is autohit and others that are not), the precise pseudopet used for many power effects, and the powers behind IO procs and uniques (all your enhancements and set bonuses are all powers in the game engine). Homework assignment: does slotting the performance shifter: chance for +end proc in Storm Summoning's lightning storm give you end? Explain your answer, with reference to cod, and confirm the results with in-game testing.

You people are misunderstanding the suggestion. They want soothe and nullify to give the caster a +dmg% buff based on how much is healed. Neither the caster nor the target takes damage. I mean, come on now. Do you think someone who wants autohit -res powers and thunderspy-style “all ally buffs must work on me too” munchkinism would suggest giving their powers any kind of downside?

Typing "zzz" was never effective on live either; I just assume people learned to give up after all these years. If you think the average coh player has the presence of mind to 1) read your chat message promptly, 2) have taken the appropriate antimez power, 3) select the matching name from the party list, 4) activate the power, and 5) do steps 1-4 before the mez wears off, I have a lucrative investment opportunity involving a Nigerian prince you might also be interested in.

You do realize that ageless gets significantly weaker over time? You do not, in fact, have permahaste or anything remotely close to it. After just 10s, your global rech drops by 40%. Mids does not correctly calculate recharge time when rech bonuses are not permanent. Brutes should not take musculature, or assault for that matter, unless you really know what you are doing. The design of brutes is that they have a low AT damage scalar, which is compensated by the damage buff from their fury mechanic. A side effect of this is that +dmg% bonuses on brutes are, pound for pound, weaker than they are on other AT's; +10% damage on a brute adds less damage than it does on a tanker (Brute damage scalar: 0.75, tanker: 0.95). If you want DPS, take alphas that contribute rech, def or res (e.g. agility). Then, take slots devoted to rech, def and res set bonuses and invest them in damage procs instead. Brutes on typed defense armors should always consider splitting their Brute's Fury ATIO 3 and 3, getting the 5% SL def bonus twice. It is the most slot-efficient SL def in the entire game. For example, in your case you could drop the Underwhelming Farce slotted in storm kick. Slot storm kick and CAK with 3x Brute's Fury each (proc out the remaining slots if possible) and complete the 5x hecatomb you have in crake kick (what is it with forumites and going out of their way to avoid extremely powerful set bonuses?). This is far more efficient than putting 4 slots in resist physical for a mere 1.25% SL and EN def. More generally, the most slot-efficient sources of typed def are: SL: Brute ATIO, blistering cold EN: Hold, ranged ST, and pbaoe sets FC: Winter IO's, aegis Psi: None. You get 5% from 6x apoc, and that's it. Get resists instead. This suggests a general layout for a typed defense armor: ATIO's and blistering colds in melee attacks, aegis or unbreakable guards in resist toggles, and an epic blast/hold/taoe with such sets as basilisks, T-strikes, or winter IOs (an epic blast such as fireball or dark obliteration would also vastly improve aoe potential). You have no epic blast or aoe necessitating heavy investment elsewhere to get the bonuses you need. For example, you 6-slotted dragon's tail for 3.13 EN def and 6% FC res. 6-slotting a high-dps epic blast such as gloom with superior winter's bite would give 5% EN def, 5% FC def, and 6% FC res - the same res and 3x as much def. Sets such as bombardments and basilisks offer rare combos of rech and res that are otherwise extremely difficult to get for armored AT's while opening up new tactical possibilities - they should not be overlooked. If you are not taking an epic with a good blast/taoe, then you should fully exploit the potential of energy mastery powers by slotting heal procs and endurance procs. An invuln brute with energy mastery can fit 4 heal procs (panacea and 3x power transfer in stamina/supe conditioning/phys perfection), invaluable on a high-mit, low-sustain set such as invuln. Phys perfection is extremely weak (only 20% regen and 12.5% recovery - an epic blast with 2x apocs already gives 16% regen). It is only worth it if procced out or if it makes the difference between being eps stable and not. When using 4x shield wall make sure to include the proc in one of your sets instead of slotting it separately in CJ - this saves a slot. For example, your tough hide could be slotted def, d/e, d/r, proc because tough hide does not need end as an autopower. As a PVPIO, shield wall can be boosted +5 without losing enhancement value when exemplaring. Boost boost boost.

I think there is nothing bad about seismic (mechanically or conceptually): it's just rather conformal, very by-the-book. It's the kind of set I could design. While not every set needs to be wildly different, I do think creations such as storm blast are the ones that truly show the creators' mettle as designers.

Excellent read. I got a good chuckle out of the heated discussion surrounding the use of an Energy Transfer icon and a super strength animated gif as forum avatars, their relevance to game balance being obvious only to the posters.

I should have specified high sustained aoe dps. All the way back in issue 1, AR was the only set with a crashless nuke. All of AR's aoe's also do more damage than the design formulas specify, e.g. Buckshot "should" do 47.499 damage on a blaster, but actual damage is 56.931 - a differential of +19.857%. So from the start, AR offered a different strategy. Instead of one extremely powerful broadside of damage (classic nuke), it had multiple powerful aoes that could be chained one after another for a withering barrage of fire. Thematic, effective, different. Since then, crashless nukes have proliferated, and AR's identity as the sustained aoe dps set has been eroded. Giving it aim would've been the final nail in the coffin. Fortunately, since AR is now "the best set at clearing groups of enemies" as you claim (and I'm not disagreeing, mind), it is in no need of aim. Whew!

MMO players are kids: they will never vote to have less candy, even if it rots their teeth. Putting development decisions to a vote will also merely result in a tyranny of the majority, where only the dominant meta (and powersets that jive with it) ever get development effort. Terrible idea - let's all hope it won't ever happen. I'm so thrilled that Cat 5 isn't a standard "click 2 buttons and delete all non-bosses" nuke, and such an unconventional idea would never have been brought to life were it put to a vote. Players would've chosen the familiar over the innovative, the meta-friendly over the meta-breaking. I think Homecoming team has performed superbly this time round and I applaud their efforts to bring us something different and varied, because that's how you get replay value out of the game, not killing council or PI radios 5% faster, Finally, since the popularity of homecoming's homebrew sets was criticized: popularity and usage rates are a terrible metric to judge a set's success by (though it's certainly one that creators of all kinds can't help but value). Different powersets appeal to different playstyles. This means that a powerset that is only liked by a few players is still an asset as it brings enjoyment to a group of players who otherwise would not engage with the game at all, therefore, giving the game a larger audience than otherwise. There's a reason Baskin-robbins has 31 flavors on sale, with the associated logistical headache, instead of only selling peanut butter chocolate. Overall, I approve strongly of homecoming team's very measured approach to development, and this includes wisely not overtuning sets on release because compensating nerfs are very difficult to push through. It would've been real easy for them to just make "Fire blast, but with 50% more dps", and it would've been the most popular set ever. Instead, we get art. Maybe there is a God after all.

Brief post since I haven't had much time for coh lately, but I'm completely blown away by storm blast! Blast sets have been a stale, uninspiring affair for many years: sure, there are 2ndary effects and differences in DPA and proccability, but in general these superficial differences do not lend themselves to materially different strategies. Essentially, if you've played one blast set you've played between half and two-thirds of them. Storm Blast, however, is centered on a completely different paradigm of encouraging the player to fight within areas of tactical advantage - storm cells and category 5, rewarding the strategically minded hero. To top it off, we're seeing mechanics that have been de-emphasized or homogenized out of existence elsewhere, such as repel (the real thing, not reverse-repel). This is precisely the breath of fresh air we need - I didn't expect this dev team was capable of such creativity given how by-the-book seismic blast was, but this time they've certainly displayed what they're really capable of. Storm blast is an exceptionally powerful set that delivers formidable debuffing and soft control capacity, while not slouching at all on the dps front. It's clearly designed for a different paradigm than the current meta (speedkill/mass-aoe), which is exactly what Homecoming team must do: supporting and encouraging alternative playstyles to the dominant meta, whatever that might be, so as to develop a vibrant, diverse metagame. Bravo, bravissimo! P.S. A brief glance at beta forums tells me that one of the early changes was to replace AR's beanbag with aim, which would be a hugely negative change - further reinforcing the oppressive aim/BU/nuke meta. The fact that this change was walked back really tells me that Homecoming team does take feedback into account: listening to players when valid (maintaining AR's traditional identity as a low-burst dps, high sustained dps set), while rightfully dismissing knee-jerk/munchkin suggestions (storm blast's damage is "too low").

First of all, you need to understand the current 4-star pug hard mode meta. Note: this is for pugs that recruit publicly, and allow any average joe to join. If you're running your own superteam or doing special challenges, you should be knowledgeable enough to adjust your build accordingly. The meta is for each team to have: 7x barrier destiny 1x incandescent destiny, carried by the leader/most skilled player, which may well be you - though I don't recommend that the leader also be the tank. This person will speed/stealth what is to be stealthed and teleport the team around. As many tactics and tohit buffs as possible - HM creatures and AV's have very high def. Respect it. One def buffer: cold or FF preferred. Time manip, forts, etc. easily miss teammates with their long-recharge mind links. One healer: kin preferred, for its very powerful spammable transfuse, and because FS/SB are an easy panacea for clueless dps players with no clue how to optimize dps. However, elecaff, nature etc. are all strong candidates in this role. One tank (the MMO role, not necessarily the AT) with taunt: that's you! The 7 barriers will be run continuously whenever the team is in combat. No effort will be made to stagger them - average players are not capable of that level of coordination. Because barrier core T4 is permanent, 7 barrier core epiphanies is, at minimum, perma 35% def to all and 35% res to all. A single cold corr on top of that adds about 29% def to all. Then on top of that you stack maneuvers and miscellanous def/res buffs, etc. In this buff-heavy environment, all tanker primaries, even SR, will be res hardcapped and def softcapped. This means that excessive build investment in mitigation and especially defense are wasted. I often see people fuss about hitting the incarnate softcap, thinking this will help them survive. Extra defense may provide comp flexibility or some buffer against mistakes (eg. someone slow on refreshing barrier), but does not actually translate into more survivability because you will already be operating at your mitigation caps after buffs. Secondly, the fights are quite long. It takes a good pug team about 5 mins to kill the 8 vanguard heroes; a bad one may take closer to 15 mins. It takes a good pug team to triple-kill nictus romulus in 1 cycle of barrier nictuses. A bad one may take many cycles, even assuming you don't wipe. The AV's must be tanked for long periods of time, often with no healing except what you can get from the kin spamming transfusion. You will take hits, and the AV's do enough damage to kill a tanker through 90% resist in just 3-4 hits. This means that sets with high mitigation but low sustain, such as stone and invuln, are not necessarily the best for hardmodes. Hence, in 4-star hardmode, armor sets are differentiated less by their base def and res, and more by: Sustain - you need to be able to take care of yourself for long periods, as not every team can afford an emp to babysit you. Even if they can, given the average skill level of emps, do you want to take the risk? DPS - you need to kill things quickly. The longer you take to kill the AV's, the greater the chance for something to go horribly wrong. The longer you take to kill trash, the more debuffs you eat. Debuff resists - Hero 1 and the vanguard octet drain end (and it's a really nasty drain too). Nictus Romulus slows, King Midas slows. Sustain, mitigation and dps are dependent on rech and end to function, so you want debuff resist to keep them. My #1 tanker primary for tanking anything outside of Hami is Rad. Rad armor is overpowered by any measure with its combination of strong debuff resist, advantageous resist profile, vast amount of end, 2 very strong click sustains, and a rech buff. The only thing it lacks is +maxHP, which it kind of gets around by having particle shield give absorb instead of the more conventional heal, and cold resist which is not (yet) significant in the game... At least, until we get HM Manticore with super Crey cryo lasers. #2 would be a toss-up among fire, bio and shield (shield favored more for ITF, fire and bio favored more for aeon). #3 would be all other tanker primaries that have strong sustain, either a low-rech click such as dark or from toggles such as WP. #4 would be all remaining armor sets.

Mobs don't like to be kited. You hover, they spaz out and jump all over the place in an attempt to get you. This is counter to the current meta, which is tightly packed mobs that stand still in burn/debuff patches and die. The best aoes are still all pbaoes. Foot stomp, burn, spin, whirling smash etc. Hovering means not taking advantage of auras such as invulnerability, rttc, aao, beta decay etc and less saturated buff powers and heals such as soul drain, dark regen etc. Hovering means not taking full advantage of ally buffs and heals such as FS, overgrowth, transfusion, world of pain, etc. Few tanks can muster a full aoe attack chain from range. Not mixing in your best ST attacks like KO blow is a dps loss. Power creep has resulted in so much defensive power in the system that hovering as a means of mitigation is superfluous. It would be like putting a hardhat on Superman to protect him on a construction site. If you need to hover to survive on an IO build, that is a symptom of severe build design errors. Stop flying and fix your build. There are certain niche uses for hovertanking, but these are specific strategies for particular situations. One is to separate flying mobs from non-flying mobs. For example, in 4-star hard mode aeon SF 8 vanguard heroes encounter, only incandescent and hero 1 fly. If you attempt to brainlessly facetank all 8 heroes in a big mob, hero 1 will taunt, prevent the team from focusing down incandescent, who will then wipe stupid players with her lambent light. If you attempt to tank hero 1 and the other 7 separately, it's very easy to miss critical buffs and heals - and you won't survive without them. Hovertaking hero 1 on top of the party easily allows enough separation that hero 1 cannot taunt the other players but the tank can receive buffs and heals such as transfusion. P.S. they fixed the MLTF lord recluse hovertank cheese, too.

It appeals even to people without much disposable income, because P2W games use decades of intensive research into human psychology, manipulation, and addiction in order to coerce their players into continually forking over money. You're right that there is a pathology, however, personal wealth and personal goals in-game are not a factor because the techniques used rely on weaknesses in human nature that we all have. If I inject heroin into your veins daily for a month, you will be addicted regardless of your moral virtue or character, and this is the same thing. Here is the best explanation (YouTube link) of the unethical techniques involved in these games I could find on short notice, often straight from the mouths of the soulless execs behind them, and backed up by testimonials from current, recovering and former addicts that reveal how they do not fit your stereotype of "people with a ton of disposable income who enjoy being "the best" in games so they can curbstomp everyone". Warning: large amounts of profanity and coarse language.

Holy trinity is fine, provided that your game is designed around it from the ground up (coh is not, though a coh2 could be) and the concept is well-executed. The problem is that since the majority of games out there are trinity games, and by Sturgeon's Law 90% of them are shit, that results in a lot of shit holy trinity mmo's. Well-made trinity games can provide superior gameplay to what we have on homecoming right now, which is Holy Unitary gameplay - everyone is a tankhealdps. I'm puzzled that you cite DDO as an example as it is not a very strict holy trinity game. You sometimes need specific character types to pass specific challenges in missions, e.g. a certain quest might require a fighter or other high strength toon to push a lever for a bonus chest, but I recall it's typically only the raids that need a tank and a healer to take care of them. You don't need a healbot when you can get healing SLA's or read a scroll, nor do you need a buffbot when you have deathward armor and boots with charges of Freedom of Movement. NCSoft may not have been the best corporate overlords, but Coh's lack of success was fundamentally due to the flaws of the game itself and the mistakes made by its developers. Lack of effective balance testing; any competent testing would identify enhancement diversity as an issue very early on, for example, not allow it to fester for multiple issues. Lack of effective dev tools to quickly produce content; early missions were painstakingly done by hand, and this was not remedied until Paragon developed the internal tools that would later be released as AE. Lack of clear design vision; tacking on incarnates onto a horizontal progression MMO, really? Failure to effectively monetize the game; the F2P trend hit coh in the middle of its lifespan, and it failed spectacularly to adapt. DDO, which did, is still profitable enough to keep going till this day. I'm also going to be blunt and say that the gameplay in this game, the actual combat and missions and so on, are lackluster. It's a superhero MMO, yet I can't even pick up a car or barrel and hurl it at the villains, nor even move and shoot at the same time. These are the kinds of issues I'd expect a coh2 to fix.

The answer to this will depend on what attacks you are picking in place of tough/weave, as well as what attacks you currently have. Taking more attacks increases offensive power if you are replacing low-dpa attacks with high-dpa ones, or if the new attacks fill up your attack chain (i.e. prevent a situation where you are stuck doing nothing for a few seconds because all your attacks are recharging, resulting in unspent animation time - this is a sign that you either have too little rech or too few attacks). They may slightly increase offensive power if they can mule offensive set bonuses (usually rech). Taking more attacks does not increase offensive power if you already have fully developed attack chains using all the highest-dpa attacks. Blasters typically have "too many" attacks available to them, and a common build error is taking more attacks than effectively contribute to offensive power. Well-slotted attacks are very slot-intensive, and you only have 67 to assign. With that said, challenge or concept builds that trade combat power to better express a concept as a thing. I do have toughless weaveless blasters - but I don't pretend they are a performance improvement.

I think the sheer prevalence of mindless steamrolling has led to many basic skills being atrophied, such that when those rare situations crop up where a modicum of strategy and thoughtfulness are required, the playerbase fails to perform, even though this is objectively an extremely easy game. When I say basic skills, I don't mean designing builds in mids or speedrunning TF's. I mean things like following a player around the map being aware of whether you are with the team or alone reading and obeying simple chat directions ("come to me"/"stay put"/"fly") using a specific power when directed or on cooldown I am reminded of one kill-most MLTF I did where I was playing an illusion controller. The tank bragged that they were very geared and should be able to tank lord Recluse easy. They arrived at the towers, and Lord Recluse instantly turned the tank into a red smear with his channelgun while I cackled in glee. Can I just say - I love debuffs, and I love watching heroes getting humiliated. Anyway, I instantly concocted a solution to get us out of this debacle. I was levelling (hence my presence on a kill-most TF) and did not have my purples slotted for perma-PA. However, there was one other illusion troller on the team. If we could alternate using PA, we could tank Recluse indefinitely despite neither of us having perma-PA. However I was either unable to effectively communicate this concept to them or they were not intelligent enough to comprehend it. If they would just use their PA after mine, when I verbally told them to, we could complete the TF. Alas, they did not, and we did not, and somehow, that team invented a way by which infinitely, instantly respawning superhumans may still fail a mission. I still remember that encounter fondly as one of the precious few times the game stood up, grew a backbone, and said to the players: "No; that is not good enough. You do not pass; there will be no reward; you must do better."

Define "good". With that said, here's an analysis of possible synergies with illusion. Illusion is defined by its phantom army which are untouchable pets that require high recharge for full uptime. There have been two schools of thought as to how to maximize illusion's performance. The dps school of thought views PA as a source of dps and holds that since the pets are unbuffable (specifically, untouchable, the same status that some self-rez powers give you; imagine an impervious wall dividing the PA's from other entities, through which damage, healing and buffs all cannot pass, however the PA's are able to use their own powers on themselves, including any self-buffs they might have e.g. build up proc), weakening enemy resist with debuffs will achieve high performance. In particular, debuffing sets that also feature self rech buffs to help perma-PA such as ill/rad and ill/time were popular on live, however, homecoming power creep has introduced enough global rech that modern builds trivially perma-PA without the help of rech buffs from the 2ndary. This shifts the balance towards heavy-duty debuff sets such as ill/cold and ill/TA that output superior -res, since rad and time are only average in -res output. The support school of thought views the PA's not as damage but as tanks (the MMO role). From this school of thought we get combos such as ill/emp and ill/kin that attempt not to maximize PA dps, but rather to bring complimentary support powers that either defend the team from any circumstance or provide offensive support to balance the mitigation provided by the PA's tanking. This philosophy has cratered in popularity given the massive amounts of power creep the game has experienced in recent years; however, in the right circumstance it is still worthwhile. An ill/kin on 4* hardmodes for example is not too bad since there are situations where PA's offtanking is valuable and kin makes up for the dps loss that is bringing a controller.

You do you, obviously, but if it reassures you, my experience is that forumites may complain but people never confront me about it in-game. I'm certain I've committed every sin being shellacked in this thread and got complimented for it! The purpose of the tank - the role, not always the AT, though it does get tools to facilitate that mission - is simply to set up good engagements. That could be anything from carefully pulling with a snipe (while knowing precisely which mobs in the horde are linked and will come when one of them is killed), to a surgical strike killing all 4 surgeons on top of the sybil temple perfectly timed such that the angry romans follow you to the steps just as the team finishes cleaning up the group before it. You have a blank canvas; now paint with the blood of your foes.

Sometimes, I can't help but suspect provocations are a mistake. The dev who made them may not have realized that unlike set IO's, these are not restricted in what category they can go in, and acc/rech significantly benefits certain powers that cannot get that combo from set IO's. It's a cautionary tale of how new enhancements have to be very carefully balanced, subject to comprehensive testing, and swiftly nerfed or adjusted if unintended uses surface. In any event, I'm satisfied with the price as-is and think it serves as a well-deserved boost to ASF participation. It's pretty good, but a 7 mission SF (with one mission that sends you to 3 more instances) in 2023 needs a hefty payoff, and merits don't cut it.

Yes. 😄

The best answer is a stalker. Typically, it's bosses and EB's that survive the initial broadside of aoe's and need to be cleaned up. A well-played stalker can often ensure that these hard targets die soon after the smaller critters. Alternately, since it's monotonous to play stalkers all the time, the next-best way to deal with stragglers is to pull them along with you to be killed with the next spawn. I often see players stay behind to attempt to deal with surviving hard targets. If you do not have a means of killing them quickly and the wavefront of the team is already departing, dragging them forward to get nuked with the next group upstream (or herding the next group back) can be more efficient. I'm amused this thread has spawned 4 pages of people talking past each other on how to tank, what pace the team should move at, and who is and is not being a team player. If pressed, I couldn't give an answer to any of these questions that's not "it depends" followed by a 5000 word essay. Sometimes I stick with the group, other times I'm halfway up the map. Sometimes I'll make every effort to keep everyone alive, other times I'm indifferent to their deaths. Sometimes I'll ensure every critter is dead before moving on. Other times, I'll run in and aggro the next 3 rooms while you clean up the one behind me. It all depends on my assessment of the tactical situation and my own as well as the team's capabilities, while always keeping in mind my knowledge of the content, terrain, mob behavior and the group's goals and declared strategy. The most I can say is that if I took the effort to join a team I am explicitly not playing as a solo player, even if the payoff for what I am doing may not be immediately or easily apparent. I do sympathize with the people who feel that the game has got far too lolzerg since the beginning of the incarnate era, which is why hardmode has been such a breath of fresh air.