Scientist

I would recommend /Traps for soloing, /Time for teaming. I was soloing AVs redside in the early 30s with my Bots/Traps, since they popped up in those arcs and it was before you could change them to EBs solo. This was using SOs and frankenslotting, not even set IOs, which were hard to find redside before the market merger. Web Grenade does indeed work on most AVs to immobilize them, and if they do get out, they may well run out of your caltrops instead of over to squish you or a bot. But I have other, more team friendly characters for teaming, MMs will rarely be a first choice for teams. I'm using the new Bots/Traps MM I've rolled up to read story content without having to worry about an ambush when I'm "talking" to an NPC, or impatient teammates. 🙂

I know for the Degenerative slot in the Incarnate system it is usually recommended to go the Core path, for the -HP debuff, rather than the Toxic DoT. I was curious whether for a Crab using the Arctic Breath patron power, which has double the -resist to Toxic, -40%, it might be worth going the Radial path for more toxic DoT. Are there any numbers available on that DoT to see where the crossover point might be?

I like the options available now, from double XP to turning it off (though a friend has seen a bug where XPs turned back on for him after logging out and back in, that was annoying). I have never been into the AE or other mission map farming, but am happy it supplies the market, and cutting AE XPs by 2x early on seems to have been about the right factor to send people to a wider variety of content and apparently reduce load on the servers a lot. I'd rather make my money marketing, but I'm glad other people enjoy farming and buying the stuff I'm selling. When starting on Homecoming, I've gotten 3 characters to 50 quickly by a mix of TFs and joining +4/x8 council teams, so I can participate in high level content in any of the major roles needed, support, tank and dps. I've got several others where I plan to play a lot of solo, story arc stuff because it has been many years since I've seen it, so they will be many months to 50. One character is shutting off XPs for much of the 1-20 range so I can duo Praetoria with a friend and see that, most of which I never did in the original game. I like to do a variety of things, and CoX is supporting that.

The player count is low, that is correct, and the content is actually fairly hard in a lot of cases (they love ambuhes while you are already fighting another spawn). I thought it was a very interesting change to regular blueside/redside content, though. It is the first time they added content to the game where things you did earlier have a very real effect on your world, and what other arcs you can do. In some cases in an earlier arc you actually kill off someone who could be a contact later, and they are GONE from what you see in the outer world, even though someone else can still do their missions. Betraying a faction actually changes later dialogue you see from your former faction. A friend and I made up characters there to see as much of the content as possible, though, and we are following the Guide in the Guide section of the forum about how to change factions every time you get a chance. You have to turn off XPs at points to do all of that, in particular at level 7.9, not 9.9 initially. It will probably not be to your taste if you want to play a really "heroic" character, though, there are a lot of very morally grey or worse missions. Fine if you are the villianous type, though, arguably some missions are more villianous than most redside content. I recommend either duoing with a friend, or making a pretty sturdy, self sufficient character like a MM for soloing it so you don't have to coordinate faction choices.

Accidentally did that on rare salvage I was buying to craft some recipes I'd bought in bulk, lost about 120M before I noticed my mistake. Turns you you CAN pay over 1M for rare salvage, even if you SHOULDN'T. . .

I actually had someone quit a Market Crash TF a couple of months ago about 15 minutes in because "it wasn't challenging enough". If you have particular expectations for how a TF is going to go (speed, kill all, etc.) they should be communicated, and that goes for a team member as well, not just the leader. It is perfectly fine to want to run your TF on +4/x8, or run it slow and read all the dialogue, or stealth everything, but ask before you start so you end up with a whole team who wants to do it that way. Unlike radios or even a mission arc, you can't get replacement members on a TF.

If you want lazy but still be more desirable on end game teams than FF, consider Radiation. While it has a lot of tools, you bring most of what is useful about Rad when you throw two debuff toggles (fire and forget for the most part, especially now that they linger on corpses) and Lingering Radiation. If that is all you do people will still be pretty happy. Against content the team is blowing through, skip Radiation Infection, the slow to cast toggle. One caution, there are a few mobs you don't want to use the toggle debuffs on; Tsoo Sorcs, Gunslingers, anyone who teleports around, causing your debuff to aggro more spawns.

Well, my friend and I discovered that if you level to 9.9, you go directly from Jack Hammer to Mr. G and miss several arcs and switches. Apparently we should have turned off XPs at 7.9, to avoid leveling to 8. Question, your guide cautions to avoid doing any Calvin Scott missions until after you have done all the Aaron Walker ones. In the Mr. G arc in Imperial City, at the "Reveal Truth to Eddie Polstra" mission, it offers the option to talk to Calvin Scott about going undercover in the Powers line for Loyalist. Is that mission and similar ones safe to do, until Calvin's actual arc at level 15-20 when you need to make sure Aaron Walker is done first?

When playing my Rad defender back in the day, I ran into another who hadn't taken either debuff by the mid 20s. He was focused on Acc Met, Hasten, and Radiant Emission because he wanted the fastest cycling heal possible for "end game content". I'm guessing he was from another MMO, which could be just about any of them, where you needed constant heals for hard content, and debuffs were largely worthless.

I didn't see Praetor White's initial missions mentioned, any reason to do or not do those before, for example, the Ricochet arc if you have gone Resistance in the Tutorial?

I see a lot of discussion of dual pistols for proc builds, does beam rifle work reasonably well for that? I prefer those animations.

I actually wonder if a sports category might make sense as a non-profit type for Homecoming, given the rise of e-gaming as a spectator sport and the increasing number of professionals in it. I saw a projection by Activate that by 2021 e-sports will have higher viewership in the U.S. than every sports league but the NFL. I think the time frame is way early, but it could be just as legit as making CoX "educational", for example. On the broader topic, I have been quite impressed by the Homecoming team's ability to stabilize servers that swelled in population by 100x in a mere week or two that were running 15 year old code they didn't write, move them almost seamlessly to another provider later, get forums running, find GMs to answer petitions in game, and get into substantive negotiations with a company that wouldn't talk to the developers originally running the game back in the day. They also know when they need to hire specialized expertise, lawyers specialized in the gaming industry, rather than thinking they can do everything themselves. They were also VERY transparent about their finances, money taken in and what it was spent on, so I believe them when they reveal that negotiations are going well, but they have reasons not to release details yet. Frankly, to come back here every day and write up notes on what got discussed that day, deal with people's posts about what they should do the next day, and try to go back to the table with it would be a huge waste of their time, IMHO. We are lucky they are taking time to write as many posts as they are to clarify what they aren't willing to trade off, e.g. free to play. That demonstrated level of competence in both computer operation and people management skills makes me comfortable with their decisions on what to release and when. I also agree with several other posters that the fact that NCSoft is negotiating with them over an extended period is a good sign, not a bad one, at least for Homecoming.

I thought that too, and in fact I've suggested that they raise their contingency fund to a full month's operating expenses. That gives them a lot more flexibility if, for example, they change to a different server supplier that wants a month up front, while they still have to pay the last month on the last one. Like when you change rental apartments, you usually need at least one extra month of cash. I realize implementing my plan could drag out the donation window to a tedious 8 minutes, admittedly. . . 🙂 If they are getting involved with attorneys, bills and filing fees could also lead to unexpected lump sum costs.

Oddly, I don't think I've seen a single Hami raid in the 7-8:30ish AM EST time slot that is almost my only play time. This morning I saw a TM/Apex forming, and it took them half an hour to get from 4 to 8 members for it. That was about when I needed to log, unfortunately.

I do think some of the redside arcs are better written than blueside ones, but I agree for a lot you are working for someone else, and they are really getting the rewards for it. I'm playing one redside character for the arcs I liked (Vernon von Grun, for example, really any of the mad scientist ones). I also agree the Mayhem missions are more fun. I wouldn't play exclusively there with a highly team oriented character like a tank or defender, though, population just isn't high enough, and when you are actually reading stories it is hard to do that on a team anyway. I think it's a great place for a Mastermind, though, a lot more AVs in the arcs, and many MMs can actually deal with those. I was part of one VG that worked well, but it was with RL friends. Concept was kind of like the Paranoia game, we all had implanted cortex bombs to prevent disloyalty, called each other Comrade, and made threatening comments to report each other at any real or imagined infraction. "Oh, Comrade, what a pity you failed to survive that encounter. I'm sure the Supreme Command will be very forgiving, though, they have that reputation, do they not?" Add bad Russian accent for even more flavor. I actually found it fairly fertile RP potential compared to anything I saw blueside, where supportive comments and "Lets get'em!" action cries got a little hard to be creative with.

AVs as AVs at level 50 have 85% resistance to all debuffs but -resistance and -damage (it starts lower, at 60%, and scales up). That is one reason you see a lot of discussion in the defender forums about which sets can bring the most -resistance to AV fights. I wasn't sure if they retain that 85% resistance as downgraded EBs, but I'll take Vanden's word for it. Note that mobs which are higher level than you also "resist" everything, including damage, a +4 mob resists about half of everything you do to it. So a -30% tohit debuff becomes about -15%, the 100 damage hit you do to it becomes about 50, and so on. That is one reason +4 mobs are very slow to take down without a fairly powerful team. It is usually not even worth the effort to fight +5 mobs. Also, higher "rank" mobs like lieutenants and bosses have a built-in accuracy modifier, a boss has 34% bonus, so even if you floor them they hit you 6.4% of the time instead of 5%.

Just a note for any MMs looking at procs in secondaries, there is a thread on the Defender forum, "Proc Monsters, the New Offenders" where there is a lot of actual data on that, especially for Traps, which has a lot of odd "pet type" powers with unpredictable interactions with procs.

A friend of mine told me that many powers have their actual effect take place before the end of the animation, so perhaps the Venom Grenade takes effect at 1.65 sec, and the animation finishes and lets you do something else at 1.84 sec? For attack chaining purposes you might want to use the latter number, but for purposes of something not shooting back at you maybe the former. He said Suppression is especially pronounced this way, a long listed animation time but it starts doing damage pretty early in it.

Ignoring the Incarnate level mobs mentioned above and mob tohit buffs like Nemesis with Vengeance, the way the formula works out is that 45% defense floors the tohit of everything, Lts, Bosses, AVs. Higher rank foes floor out at higher than a 5% chance to hit, though, a +0 AV floors out at 6.5% to hit you, and a +4 AV floors out at 9.1% to hit. A +0 minion is 5%, a +4 minion is 7% to hit you.

For a set bonus, you always get it, which is why people occasionally slot "mule" powers like Brawl with sets. I saw a build that slotted it with purples, now THAT is dedication to recharge. 🙂 For a proc, it depends on the proc. The Stealth proc, for example, will only run for a short time (1 min?) after you stop using a power. Don't put it in Teleport, for example, as I did early after IOs came out, because it was much cheaper than the Runspeed stealth proc. Kismet I believe only works while the power is used, like that. Luck of the Gambler acts like a set bonus, on the other hand, and gives you +7.5% recharge even if you never use the power.

I have fought him, someone called him out in LFG and I managed to get there just in time, and I saw one other call-out since then. He was not super common even on live, though. Perhaps the theory about not killing his entourage is correct? I've also seen and participated in one Rikti invasion, but that was it. I'm hoping for more, still need the Bomb badge.

The spreadsheet is missing the -resist value from the Annihilation proc, and I've not been able to find it listed anywhere else, does anyone know what it is? Also, is Caltrops likely to work similarly to Distortion Field, with about a 20% chance of each normal proc firing each 10 sec? Trying to figure out if it is worth proc slotting that for Traps, assuming I can immobilize foes in it of course.

I rely heavily on the fact that many of the people on these forums (not me, btw) are very knowledgeable about computers and code, and would probably have spotted anything dangerous about programs like Pine's/Mids that are getting heavily used. As witness the fact that a subset of them turned passed-along I24 code into the game we are playing. 🙂 That said, if I see something new posted, I'll wait a few days for other people to check it out, just as I do for Microsoft updates, for example.

So does that mean the defense of Traps - FF generator, for example, is not boosted?

I assume the Venom Grenade you are testing is from the gun, right? Pines builder lists both the gun and Crab venom grenade as having a 1.848 sec animation, part way between the 1.65 you see and the 2.1 sec you measure. Same animation for WAWG from the gun, a Crab doesn't get that.