TheMoncrief

Well, I busted out my extremely rusty computerese skills, and came up with this. All on a level 50 Brute with all Fighting attacks taken, and assuming that I'm understanding DPA calculations as the game does them, and assuming that the synergy changes base damage instead of applying a 15% damage enhancement to the power (that last one is a big assumption): Boxing: 41.207 damage, 1.067 animation time, 38.620 DPA Kick: 45.544 damage, 1.833 animation time, 24.847 DPA Cross Punch: 68.860 damage, 1.67 animation time, 41.233 DPA Jab: 28.3612 damage, 1.067 animation time, 26.580 DPA Punch: 41.7077 damage, 1.2 animation time, 34.756 DPA Haymaker: 68.4066 damage, 1.5 animation time, 45.600 DPA So the fighting pools look pretty decent compared to the first 3 attacks in Super Strength. Not definitively better, but decent. For most Brute builds, you have to take one of the Fighting pool attacks anyway, so you may as well use it. The secondary effects from the synergy I'm not considering, just purely on a damage output basis. This all depends on taking *ALL* of them, though. If you're only taking one of the Fighting attacks, even Jab is comparable, and Punch and Haymaker both outshine it. It also depends on my assumption that the synergy effect is part of the base damage of the attack. If it's just an enhancement, they're still trash, at least on a Brute.

I've really wanted to know just how the damage bonus from Fighting synergy works. I tried reading City of Data, and it's... opaque. Maybe my reading comprehension has gone the way of my hair as I get older, I dunno. I'd really love to know whether they are actually worth taking and using over, say, Super Strength's forgettable 6 powers (ie, everything except Knockout Punch, Rage, and Foot Stomp). It's not even clear to me if that bonus 15% damage is an increase to their base damage or a buff, which makes a substantial difference when you are (as I am) considering them on a Brute.

As long as it's not a universal "Your secondary will just be disabled in all future content, choose a better set scrub!" problem I'll stick with it. I have a concept and Willpower fits better than anything else, so I'll cope. Hiding behind corners does help. As does having another contact providing missions that aren't complete nightmares when I need a break.

OK, I have a War Mace/Willpower Scrapper who's been running into some massive problems starting at level 40. I went into Tina MacIntyre's story arc and immediately get bodied by the Praetorian Clockwork. It's like they are custom made just to utterly wreck Willpower, with massive regen and defense debuffs. I can beat the missions at low difficulty, but I'm a *SCRAPPER*, I'm usually running at, well, not low difficulty. Is this what playing Willpower is going to look from now on, facing massive debuffs that make most of my secondary set pointless or at best massively dependent on inspirations or locked into difficulty settings that make more sense for a poorly built Blaster? Or are Praetorian Clockwork just the exception, my personal kryptonite, and I'll not be facing many enemies so perfectly designed to hard-counter me in the future?

Agreed. Demons don't need *MUCH*, but they do need some attention. Thugs and Beasts are both well below Demons I'd say, but all 3 sets that weren't touched in the most recent set of MM overhauls could use at least touch ups.

The article you linked was probably gained by dumping the default binds. Which is no longer possible.

Since the Battle Axe rework, I've been looking for a character concept to use it with, and run into a problem. How am I supposed to do a lumberjack character waging his solitary crusade against the Devouring Earth tree monsters that slaughtered his family without a plaid shirt costume option? Please, can this be in the game?

To be fair, some control sets have very few actual control powers. I think Illusion Control only has 4. That's still more than some Mastermind primaries have powers to slot their ATO's, and the same number as the best case Mastermind primaries. But 7-8 is not a universal rule for control sets.

No they're not. They are Mastermind ATO's. Period. Any other restriction beyond what is expected from an ATO set is arbitrary. Just about the only consistent thing about ATO's is that they must slot into powers specific to that archetype rather than pool powers. Tankers and Defender mostly have to slot their ATO's in their secondaries, for example, because it would be challenging to design ATO's to fit usefully into their highly variable primary power sets. The argument that having globals that benefit pets means they shouldn't be slottable in personal attacks is silly. They benefit pets because they are Mastermind ATO's, and the Mastermind archetype was designed to focus heavily on pets. That does not mean that their ATO's should be restricted to pets. Have you seriously considered the number of globals out there that can be slotted into powers that do not benefit from the global effects at all and are not even relevant to it? Luck of the Gambler in Tough Hide? Miracle in Health? Power Transfer in Stamina? Kismet in almost any power that will take Kismet? Globals are not always relevant to the powers they slot into. That's why they're globals. As long as their restriction still requires that they slot into Mastermind powers (which my suggestion guarantees) there is nothing inappropriate about allowing Mastermind ATO's to slot into a slightly broader selection of powers.

And I didn't ask to slot pet sets - Pet Damage or Recharge Intensive Pet - into Mastermind primary personal attacks. I asked for Mastermind ATO's. ATO's are slottable, generally, in whatever kind of powers are convenient for the Archetype in question. Notably, Defender ATO's don't slot in their Buff/Debuff sets (mostly), they slot in their attacks. Restricting the Mastermind ATO's to their pet powers is incredibly restrictive, especially for primaries that don't have a fourth pet power. Are Mastermind primary attacks thematic to Masterminds? Well, every single Mastermind set has three such attacks. Many Mastermind primaries only have three pet powers. The number of personal attacks in a Mastermind primary is actually more consistent than the number of pets. And Mastermind ATO's have exactly zero enhancement aspects that do not fit personal attack powers. That is actually fewer than the aspects that do not work for pet powers, since as I mentioned, pets completely ignore recharge reduction from any source, including slotted enhancements.

One issue that many Masterminds will face is that keeping their henchmen alive requires finding some place to slot the many global IO's that grand defense or resistance to them. Some Mastermind sets have only 3 powers that accept these (Pet Damage and Recharge Intensive Pet) IO's, and those are the henchman powers themselves. This leaves the Mastermind in a bad situation - either give up set bonuses and effective enhancement of your henchmen, or give up the global benefits of the IO's that allow your henchmen to survive in order to be effective. Compounding the issue is that some, but not all Mastermind primaries have a fourth power that takes these sets. This allows these sets to face drastically less slotting pressure for these critical global IO's. My suggestion is simple - allow the Mastermind ATO's to be slotted in a Mastermind's primary personal attack. That would take two of the global IO's out of competition for the precious slots in the henchman powers and allow some freedom to arrange the remaining global IO's without completely crippling the effectiveness of any of the henchmen. It would also allow Masterminds to actually make use of the Recharge Reduction on the Command of the Mastermind set, which has quite a bit of it - the pets completely ignore this enhancement value, making the ATO significantly less desirable. Ultimately, this would narrow the gap between the Mastermind sets that have a fourth power that can slot the global IO's and the sets that do not. And also encourage players to actually take and slot up their personal attacks, which are often completely ignored as overpriced and ineffective.

And Energy Cloak still lacks a "no transparency" cosmetic option.

That's my issue. It's not a bug fix. Inasmuch as anything is definitive, the Corruptor version of the set is the definitive expression of the original developer intent for the power set. If there was a bug, it was that it was ported without alteration to Defenders. I don't *LIKE* the change, but I can accept that it was needed. But please call it what it is - a nerf. It is produced not by a programming failure to properly express design intent being fixed, but by a change in design intent. They decided that Cold Domination was too powerful and nerfed it. Nerfs happen. Players are rarely happy about them. We get over it. But misrepresenting what happened implies that there's nothing to be unhappy about and the players are being whiny cheaters having their broken stuff fixed, rather than players being unhappy about a change in the game that, however necessary, negatively affected their game play experience.

I've had a long and not particularly happy relationship with Blasters since live release back in the day. My first character was an Energy/Energy Blaster who never made it much past level 20, as the frailty of the AT just meant I had no fun playing. I tried various other builds, like AR/Dev and Fire/Fire, and always bounced, right up until live shut down. Which is to say, I've tried to play Blasters for a really long time. I could never make myself keep playing one. But I'm stubborn, or perhaps merely a slow learner, so when Homecoming opened up, Blasters were once more on the menu. The first one I made was a Water/Temporal Blaster, and after various struggles, I figured some stuff out, and actually started to have fun. Sometimes, anyway. But today I finally managed to get my Blaster - still only level 39, so not even at the cap much less incarnated out or anything - to feel fun and satisfying to play consistently. Not sharing a build, it's not anything special, just trying to grab Artillery and Thunderstrike sets so my Ranged Defense is enough to keep me alive while I Hover above and wash my enemies away. But to me it feels worth celebrating that the very first AT I played when CoH first went live and have consistently found unsatisfying until today is actually enjoyable for me.

I believe the version I saw was "I'm a Defender, not a kindergarten teacher." Possibly prefaced with "D***it Jim!"