drbuzzard

OK, since the stalker was a bit of an edge case (not exactly the most popular AT) I decided let's try driving a tank through the shiny new CoT. Tank build is radiation armor/dark melee. The goal was first to attain 90% resistance to as much as possible (basically all but cold and psi). Then I chased recharge hard to get soul drain up as often as possible to be a self buffer. Given that I had the purple tanker proc in place and used it a lot, I was likely 90% resistant to everything pretty often. I had run this tank on a LGTF 1* a while back, but I was rushed to finish the build as people were waiting. I was able to respec and get things done right this time, so it was quite optimized and fully decked out in t4 incarnate. Running radios in PI I eventually pulled up some council. First council run was on +4x8 no bosses. This wasn't a huge amount of trouble since council could only do damage I had 90% against. Yes, the debuffs, especially slows, got annoying, and it was a bit close at times since the heals were recharging pretty slow. I will say the nebulas using more of the warshade tool kit is a nice touch. Those bastards would just use stygian circle and they went from almost dead to full. Next mission I turned bosses on and while it got a little more hairy, it was still quite doable. Radiation armor happened to line up fairly well with the tricks they were pulling, so it wasn't arduous. Compared to live, they were a more rocky road than the freshly paved highway that we normally steamroll. I don't know that they need any more tuning since it was an alignment of optimal tank for the case. Many other builds would have a lot rougher time.

OK, since the stalker was a bit out an edge case (not exactly the most popular AT) I decided let's try driving a tank through the shiny new CoT. Tank build is radiation armor/dark melee. The goal was first to attain 90% resistance to as much as possible (basically all but cold and psi). Then I chased recharge hard to get soul drain up as often as possible to be a self buffer. Given that I had the purple tanker proc in place and used it a lot, I was likely 90% resistant to everything pretty often. I had run this tank on a LGTF 1* a while back, but I was rushed to finish the build as people were waiting. I was able to respec and get things done right this time, so it was quite optimized and fully decked out in t4 incarnate. I took him for a test drive in PI. First mission was CoT minus the bosses (solo bosses off setting) at +2x8. Radiation armor is one of the toughest sets, and I built this tank to be optimally tough (to my way of seeing it). Things got a bit hairy at times, but nothing I couldn't handle. Cold damage is rough on a rad tank, and those ice demons do hand it out generously. The stacking debuffs were also no picnic. I liberally used my heals to keep standing. Next mission was CoT again, but this time I cranked it to +4/x8 (still no bosses). This got a whole lot more hairly with many moments of being locked down in terror, or confusion. Nonetheless I was able to keep up use of the heals, absorb, or barrier to stay standing. Last of the missions I ran was CoT at +4/x8 with bosses on. This one finally got me killed and had to do the walk of shame back from the hospital (ok flight of shame). I did finish the mission, but an optimized radiation armor tank gives new CoT the thumbs up for no longer being a joke. On a team the tank would have had the support to do the job without inordinate trouble (assuming support had powers and slotting).

You don't read very carefully. There is no shortage of options, there's a shortage of people using those options. That is not really something the development team can fix. People want the easy way, and will find it. Blaming the developers for that is like blaming them for water being wet. You're saying there's a shortage because people are using easier options to effectively get power leveled. Hell, a bunch of players would probably like to just have the freebies menu available on live. DFB is absolutely relevant to the issue. It gets you to 11 or so very quickly and easily. Sure, you could play arcs at that level as well, but some people (me included) don't like the low levels since your options and abilities are very limited. After you do a posi 1+2 and you're looking at 20. That's just the path I favor. There are plenty of story arcs in the range as well, some of them of fairly modern vintage as well. You don't need to go suffer in the Hollows. For the 20s there's Striga, Faultline, and half of Croatoa. There is no shortage of low to mid level content. With double XP option on, low level content takes no appreciable time. Hell they even made SOs available all the way down. Though DFB is actually especially relevant to this. When HC first started up, there was no diminishing returns on DFB so people would ride it all the way to 50. I can't imagine indulging in such tedium, but then I can't stand door sitting in fire farms either. They killed that option with those diminishing returns for a reason. I'm not sure what your point may actually be, other than complaining about human nature applies to games, but the changes are a good thing. Enemies at high level should not be punching bags.

There is absolutely no shortage of low level options unless you mean people not using them. Given that DFB recruitment is almost continual (on excelsior), it's hardly that either. People take spots on PI teams so they can rocket up in levels. Even on Indomitable, which is one of the least used servers, DFB gets run all the time.

As I have been leveling up characters on Indomitable, and they don't have the ITF familiarity of excelsior, I've had to do these adjustments rather often. On Excelsior, there's enough people with fully IOed and incarnated builds for 4 of them to carry 4 35s with SOs. You can just get away with a +4. On Indom, you run a +4 at dire risk of team collapse if you don't start tumbling that difficulty setting fast (particularly after the kheld ambush in the first mission). We are getting a bit far afield though. I wouldn't mind if this change took people on a more clear path to team with more like level people. I'm not optimistic enough to assume that to be the case however. This is not to say I wish to have such outcomes enforced.

I agree fully. I like this change. However I also expect more people begging for fire farms.

This is fully dependent on how many characters of significant level and equippage are on the team. Too many lowbies and they won't be able to do squat and things will go sideways. Even teams with lobwies now can steamroll CoT and council. Those lowbies often are using prestige powers for much of their attack chain. This won't cut it anymore. Again, I don't think that's a bad thing. The enemies at 50 shouldn't be a joke.

Current PI radio teams already avoid or dread carnies, malta or arachnos. The death count is generally quite high on the lowbies with unslotted powers, no defenses, and few powers in total with those factions. Council and CoT are now appreciably harder than those factions. Unless the one running the team is a good buff/debuff guy, they will be soloing missions with a bunch of lowbie corpses strewn around which randomly pop up from level rezzes and then die again. That may be a touch hyperbolic, but I cannot see teams being the free for all of inviting anyone, even fresh out of the character generator, to join a PI team. You will have to have a good core before you can carry a team of lowbies. Heck you must have seen how sketchy a 54 KM ITF can be if you don't have enough 50+1s. Council and CoT are now probably tougher than cimerorans. I was fighting +1s (and +2s) on a character which probably cost a billion influence or so with all accolades. Since electric melee is pretty solid AOEs for a stalker, I mostly cleared out the minions without trouble. I also had bosses off, so only lieutenants, and that makes a big difference. Those lowbie teams will have the bosses. It will be a slaughter. I should be clear though, I don't think that is bad really. People should expect high level enemies to be tough. CoT and Council in PI have been something of a loophole. That loophole will close. Of course what is likely the sad consequence of this is those lowbies which used to get some runs on PI teams will now go to fire farms, where they won't even make a pretense of playing along, merely sitting at the door. They'd be better off with the DFB, Posi 1+2, Yin route, but water and players will always sink to the lowest level.

I took a elec/enaergy stalker for a drive and tried out a few things. The build was level 50+3/ thoroughly decked out as one might expect. I went to PI and started up the old radio. First selection of missions was arachnos-carnies-carnies. This was a bit annoying since I wanted to try the new Council and CoT. However I said no big deal, I'm trying electric melee with Thuderstrike update, so why not? I fought my way through the carnies at +2x8 and it wasn't over the top. Fought my way through without any real 'oh shit!' moments. The radio finally cooperated, and I went into a warehouse of council. After carnies, I figured 'how bad could it be?'. Bad. Granted energy aura has a bit of an issue with negative energy, but still it was bad even fighting the rest. The wolves were really durable even when toned down from boss to lieutenant (I didn't set that up in difficulty). I eventually got offed by the council, and had to visit the hospital to have by features restored to intact. I went back in and used some incarnate powers which I'd rather skipped and cleared the place. The contrast with carnies who are universally seen as being tough was stark. Carnies were still slightly tough. You had to take out the bosses fast, and they could hurt you. The council was downright rough. You had to be on your toes. I ran into a concentration of nebulas and that was it. On live, council is the running joke in PI. Everyone can just invite newly minted heroes from AP and a single 50 can drag them over a +4x8 map of council and basically PL all the lowbies. That will no longer be the case. You better have half the team be of significant level and bring some support.

I took a elec/enaergy stalker for a drive and tried out a few things. The build was level 50+3/ thoroughly decked out as one might expect. I went to PI and started up the old radio. First selection of missions was arachnos-carnies-carnies. This was a bit annoying since I wanted to try the new Council and CoT. However I said no big deal, I'm trying electric melee with Thuderstrike update, so why not? I fought my way through the carnies at +2x8 and it wasn't over the top. Fought my way through without any real 'oh shit!' moments. Eventually the radio gave me a CoT. Mission. In a cruel twist of fate it was blue cave (gag). I went in and engaged my way through fighting everything. OK, now that is night and day. Normally people do CoT happily on steamroll PI radio missions where a bunch of your team is lowbies fresh out of AP. That will simply not work anymore. There were quite a few touch and go moments, and ultimately I ran into a group with a magma mage and I ate cave floor. After a short hospital stay where they re-inserted my spleen, I went back the (ugh) cave and went back after that spawn, but this time used barrier. I did clear the mission, but it was hairy. There will not be people carrying lowbies around anymore.

I'm willing to be happy with the small sop they are tossing us with the liquefy change for the moment (I'd prefer 120 second recharge though). The set needs more love than that, but I get the impression that there's some innate fear or caution hammered into the power guys heads about resistance and -resistance being way overpowered. In general the players chase defense because it's easier and dodges payloads of debuffs on attacks, but resistance is the one that's harder to chase.

Made up a thermal/fire defender on test to try the melt armor changes. Ran it at low level a little bit first to test all the new player stuff, and that seemed to work fine. Did a DFB with some people and killed a zombie on purpose. MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Oh, ahem. Back to the testing report. Freebied my way up to 50 and decked it all out with shiny fancy IOs and stuff (118 global recharge before perma hasten). Then I took them to Cimerora to see if I could get an ITF going since test was pretty full. Silly me. Off once more to solo defenderland. I did the same thing as on the sonic- the repeat mission contact initial mission at +1/x4. Owing to the fact that melt armor was up all the time ( recharge was 24 seconds iirc) my defenderly pace was a bit better than on the sonic/sonic. I was not as safe as having liquefy up most of the time, and I did have to pop hibernate once to save my butt from a second spawn getting aggroed. Warmth being fast recharging was my saving grace. I finished the mission easy enough. Would have preferred a team test but getting a team on test is rather rare. The odd thing is that heat exhaustion now recharges more slowly than melt armor. I think I would prefer them to be identical because it would synch up.

OK, then trim my last post down to 'the liquefy recharge should be 120 seconds so you can perma it by yourself. '.

Odd, I even went back and re-read my post. I suggested nothing actually. I merely criticized the current state of sonic resonance and said the liquefy changes were not enough to fix it. You didn't actually rebut a single thing I said, but I am somehow wrong anyway. Sonic is not in the top half of sets. I've played them all fairly extensively, and I can assure you other sets do a better job of amping up a team. Fixing liquefy will help. It will not be sufficient. Making siphon into a siphon could potentially help depending on how it is done (if it buffs the whole team, then yes). However the set will still lack in variety of tools. It would still be mostly + or - resistance. If I had to make suggestions we'll go down the powers: 1: Sonic Barrier- I suppose keep as is or perhaps add a rather esoteric defbuff resistance like regeneration. 2. Sonic Siphon - you could go with the siphon and transfer resistance to the team. I've contemplated either -damage (probably not good since it stacks with the resistance being handed out) or -regen. 3. Sonic Haven- again add some esoteric debuff resistance perhaps endurance drain resistance. 4. Sonic Cage- nuke this from orbit. Yes, It has limited uses, but even those are frustrating (wall off a sapper or surgeon, but someone will want to kill them and waste their time trying). Maybe put in an endurance boosting power. There's a lot of heals which are pulses in a toggle. How about an endurance boosting pulse toggle? 5. Disruption field- fine as is 6. Sonic Dispersion- This already does a fair amount, so fine as is. 7. Sonic Repulsion- it requires an IO to be useful. How about we just make it a knockdown toggle the way it ends up, and cut to the chase? Also fix the noise. 8. Clarity - since it's fairly redundant, people often skip it or let it gather dust in the tray. How about we throw in half a forge on top of the redundant status protection (+12.5 to hit and +25 damage) ? Keep the short recharge so it can be handed out easily for a change. In a world with lots of team damage buffs that just go to the whole team, a fast recharging single target one is no crime. 9. Liquefy- I'd rather see the recharge go to 120 instead of 150 so you can actually get it permanent without outside help. The gap is small on rest right now, but why not bite the bullet and make sonic catch up in damage mitigation? OK, now you can complain about suggestions since I've actually made some.

Been a while since I did goldside, but it had more enemy debuffs iirc. That could get rough. Personally I dislike the low levels so I DFB to Posi 1+2 and after those I'm in the 20s where I actually like things.

I can't say I object to this suggestion, but it doesn't address the main issue. Sonic Resonance is a set with a very small bag of tricks. Basically every other set does a wide variety of effects, while sonic has a very, very small toolkit. I agree that the liquefy change improves things to a good degree, but I tested at +1 (given alpha shift, +0). It was completely slotted up so it gave -56.23% to hit debuff. This sounds mighty impressive, and at even level it rather is. What about when you take on the +4s that happen when things are actually tough? Let's slap on that purple patch and see how it drives. 56.23* .48= .27. Ok, now you're enemies go from base .50 to .23 chance to hit (higher for non minions). That's not bad. You can hand out 55% to most things (ignore psi hole for a sec here). So 45% *.23 = 10.35 % damage. Let's look at a bubbler. In set they can hand out 39.25% defense before dipping into leadership. This is with just the base 3 shields of course and comes to about the same level of mitigation as the sonic with 3 shields and a not perma T9. Take leadership on the bubbler and we're at softcap and the damage cuts in half. The bubbler doesn't need to stack a pile of IO bonuses and achieve perma hasten to get this effect. It's a pool power and there you go. Also, since they are defense to everything (but toxic) they don't have that psi hole and all the packaged debuffs miss as well. This is merely showing that debuffs are much weaker with the purple patch than buffs. FF is a buffing set mostly. Liquefy is pure debuff. At even level liquefy+sonic shields is superior, yes. Then again you don't really need a defender for even level now do you? So if the liquefy change were possible to make permanent (which currently requires the recharge cap) you're at bubbler level mitigation kind of. The power also does a defense debuff (so does the T9 FF bubble), - recharge, and knocks people down (except Romans now, who seem to have been given weeble capability). The FF T9 offers a bunch of interesting debuffs as well as some debuff resistance for all the effects which managed to hit your softcapped team. It should also be noted that the FF T9 can be permanent with just 100% recharge slotting in the power. One of the best sonic tricks is rigging sonic repulsion for knockdown, which of course takes an IO for the purpose. This is probably the only interesting effect FF can't achieve (repel being in repulsion field). Of course to mitigate this nice trick, the endurance cost is an expensive toggle plus more cost per target knocked. Sonic then has the shared with FF useless 'get in the corner child' power (sonic cage), and then clarity which is pretty redundant with sonic dispersion. I have tricked out level 50 sonic and FF defenders. I know which one can turn a sorry team around and make it plow through things without much trouble at all. That isn't the sonic defender.

Finally played the sonic defender I made on test to try out the liquefy change. Still could not get a spot on a team, so I just did the cimeroran repeat mission intro solo. Went in with it set at +1 x4. Individual spawns were not an issue. I could lay down liquefy, and proceed to beat them all down at a defenderly pace. After they were down, I waited till liquefy was back up (not very long since I was in perma hasten +spiritual core alpha) and repeated the process. One time I got a bit too ambitious and while in the middle of a spawn tossed ion judgment at the rest of the room. That did not end well for me. I went to the hospital, returned and cleared them out at the measured pace of one x4 spawn at a time and it wasn't an issue. I was running with bosses off which no doubt made it much easier. Sonic is really not a soloing set given how many powers need allies to even be used (5 of 9). The liquefy change is nice, but I think sonic needs more love than this. Other than being the king of handing out resistance to a team (and thus providing less protection than a bubbler), it really shines nowhere else. It's not even king of resistance debuff. Poison, Cold, and trick arrow all debuff a single target just as hard. Poison and trick arrow are also better at the AOE debuffing. I don't know if I need to note this, but the defender is level 50, and fully tricked out with all the free goodies and incarnate powers.

I always play with the sound off. In the beta version I set audio to the off point like in live, but I still get the sound effects, just fairly quiet. This has been for every character I've played with.

Made a elec/energy stalker to try out the thunderstrike change. It is definitely a good thing and puts electric melee into the realm of good sets. Thunderstrike used to be a somewhat marginal power IMO. It is no long marginal, it is good.

I'm respeccing my SoA and it's calling me a tanker when I check the information on powers. Ok, it's weirder than that. The attack data is all off during this respec. When I was looking in a respec earlier, it seemed to be correct, but now values are completely different than when I check in the enhancement screen back out of the respec. Further weirdness, just did /respec again and now it sees me as a SOA and the numbers are correct again. Previously I had been running a 1* LGTF on a tank if that had something to do with it.

Tried the psionic mastery set on a tank (part of it mesmerize and harmonic mind). I chose mesmerize because it is listen as having pretty high damage in the stats. However in the text below it seems to be about 1/2 that. In practice it seems to follow the 1/2 value from the text. Harmonic mind seems to be working OK.

Corrupter sets are at 75% value of the buffs compared to a defender, so it is a bit harder to softcap (yourself and others). They also get reduced value from the leadership sets. In exchange ther have an appreciably higher damage scaler, and scourge (which doubles damage at low target health). All the data is here: https://cod.uberguy.net/html/index.html

Yes, the big bubble gives you the benefits. You are only short the individual bubbles. You can get to softcap with IOs, manuever, and weave without that much trouble.

Force field only has 2 powers which buff others, so it's actually not a bad choice. With a careful build you can easily softcap all defenses and hand out softcap defense to your team as well. For a novel suggestion, you might consider the Soldier of Arachnos or the Widow. Both have leadership toggles present in their sets which can be stacked with the pool powers. This adds up to some respectable numbers for you and everyone even vaguely near you. For SoA You can hand out about 20% defense and 30% damage to your team. It's a lot of toggles, but it works pretty well.

2 DFB, Posi 1&2, Yin (repeat if needed). If there's PUG teams, that can pad XP as well.