Catalyze

1. This post is meant for Developers and not Any Forum Poster. 2. I have 3 Plant Controllers at level 53 on Live: 2 Plant/Dark and 1 Plant/Time 3. I tested a version of my Plant/Dark today on Beta and these are my thoughts/opinions. 4. My opinions/thoughts are based on play feelings with very few hard numbers. Numbers don't make me want to play CoH. World of Warcraft is a numbers game. CoH is a feelings game to me. I wanted to have a repeatable mission that I could adjust builds and difficulties without varying much else, so I ran the Oro flashback mission of Marauders Cell 1.16 . I chose this because Marauder has no exotic damage types, stands by himself, does hard melee damage of smashing/lethal, and is 50% resistant to Smashing damage. At low health he goes really resistant to damage. This is all from a P2W analyzer and notes on all AV's that I have accumulated over time on Beta. He is in a warehouse and not a cave/base so I can Hover or stand without problems. Run on Live: The time was 23 minutes to click the portal. I did this toon first since it would be the "bar" for performance. The mission was run on +2/4 . This was comfortable to me since it works to be 1 level higher than my Incarnate equipped Live controller. I used nothing except the Alpha of Agility. This controller is Ranged Defense capped at 49% with Fade. I used No inspirations or any other Incarnate. Marauder died with a lot of healing on my Flytrap. The pet took damage in chunks and I almost had Healing in a rotation. Most damage was probably from 4 procs in Carrion Creepers and 4 procs in Strangler. He isn't going to sleep/hold for any appreciable time so it's just debuff him, stay out of melee (except for end replacement), heal Flytrap and spam Strangler. Dark Pet (aka Fluffy) was toast midway thru the fight. Marauder fight was the same as I remember from doing the MJ mission for Portal Jockey a few years ago. It's a grind but Carrion Creepers just whittle away with the non resisted damage type procs (Cold, Psionic, etc) and the same with Stranger's procs. The rest of the mob packs were active with Creepers, Roots, and Vines. Vines is off cooldown for each movement down the halls since this controller doesn't dispatch mobs like a Scrapper. Oh, Spirit Tree was dropped in mob packs sometimes and not on Marauder. I actually forgot I had it in the build. Run 1 on Beta: The time was 26 minutes with roughly the same build but No Spirit Tree. Spore Burst took its place since so much of this powerset's adjustment seems to be based on it and Carrion Creepers. The playstyle was a lot different. What to use as an opener was not clear cut to me. Confuse a pack, sit around and watch your xp not happen. Confuse a pack and Strangle the misses while your xp disappears. Sleep a pack, Strangle the misses, drop Roots for some kind of damage AOE, drop Carrion Creepers for more damage....etc. This run was a learning experience and a mess. Marauder died slowly......really slowly........really....slowly. No Creeper procs, Roots won't help much, Vines does something over the course of 1 minute, and Flytrap is pathetic....BUT sturdy!!! 2 heals is all it took for the fight and I was impressed but not by the damage. It felt like a taunting target dummy would have made the fight the same. Run 2 on Beta: The time was 20 minutes with Damage Set in Vines replacing the AT set (mostly control improvements). No procs were placed in Carrion Creepers since the combat log rarely showed them doing anything in Run 1. Damage set in Creepers instead. Tactics changed. On Marauder, I just dumped Anything that cold do Any damage under him, on him, and in his car trunk. I dropped Roots, Vines, Creepers, Flytrap, Strangler, and debuffed him as usual. I didn't care, if it had a damage component, I threw it at him. I don't think Flytrap has a damage component.....seriously.....even 5 slotted with Recharge Intensive set (4 pieces) and a crafted level 50 Damage in slot 5, Flytrap is a Pansy in disguise. However, the mob packs on the way to the Portal were different. I was getting much more familiar with the New changes. Vines: Very nice now. Most packs got them and they work a treat. I can wander in and grab endurance off the mobs nicely. They seem to hit most everything. Spore Burst: See above...lol. Very nice now and all I had to do was Strangle the very few misses. I would take this power in every build now. Never had it before since Sleep is a TF joke in every team I have been on. Open with Spore Burst and do your slow "arresting" with Strangler or open with Vines and do the same thing. Having two nice "statue" contains allows one in your pocket in case you pull that second pack (which uncontrollable Fluffy is great at doing). Carrion Creepers: If I hadn't ever played with them as they are now on Live, I wouldn't harbor as much resentment at you Developers. They aren't the AFK farming power that a lot of posters (who may or may not ever have played the game with them) seem to opine that they are currently. They and Roots are why I play a Plant Controller. They make me smile when I play solo. In teams, they aren't very useful since I can Root every mob pack and watch the Axe scrappers go to work. For a solo Plant controller, they are a blessing since Flytrap on Live isn't very sturdy (looking at Stoney and dreaming) or invulnerable (looking at you Illusion and dreaming). On Beta, Creepers don't do much damage, it's mostly flop control on mobs but not like Ice Patch or the old Bonfire. I can see skipping Creepers as Beta has them and not really missing them except that on Elite bosses, you NEED every thing that can do damage because your pet sucks. TLDR: I don't like you Developers for ruining the best DPS power I had and leaving me with a Statue Controller....the same complaint that got EM Pulse nerfed into the ground back in Issue 4. City of Statues they called it on the forums in 2005. Flytrap: I don't think that I need to expound much on this one. Sturdy on Beta......Yes.......thank you!! Almost worthless on Beta..........Yes.....whatever. Flytrap is controllable now and that is so much nicer. No more random pack pulls.....etc. Damage is not even noticeable. I watched a boss's health bar as he was held...just Flytrap on him....and it was hard to see it move at all.....at only 1 level higher than me. End of Testing Thoughts: I wouldn't make a Plant controller as they are on Beta after playing one today. I would go with Earth (love the controls and pet), Illusion ( we all know why), Gravity (throwing a couch at a mob even makes my wife laugh as she watches over my shoulder) or Electrical (never played one but the changes seem interesting). I stood in the middle of a double X4 pack pull today and just looked at the statues and thought "How the hell long is going to take to Strangle each one since I do such low damage?"

The Beta server has never caused ANY change in my video card performance until this set of patch notes has come about. On Live servers my card uses about 10% - 30% resources depending on solo play up to Hamidon raids. On Beta it now uses 45% to 70% of resources anywhere while Live has NOT changed. Other games have not changed it's performance either.... just Beta.

This is a post for Developers. If I could post to them directly, I would. If I could post on a non reply forum, I would but that is not available to me. Game Patch changes should fall into 1 of 3 categories: A. Increasing Game Play Fun for players B. Quality of Life improvements for players C. Repairing game behavior causing player problems If Developers make changes/additions to the game that don’t meet any of the above, they should consider why they are being done: 1. The Developer wants the change and since they run the Circus, it will be done 2. The Developer feels pressure from aggressive/high count forum posters, it will be done 3. The Developer wants to put something into the game that is Shiny and will be noticed I played this game in 04 and 05. I came back to it about 2 ½ years ago and the changes were staggering. Other than the graphics, most of it had changed. I don’t know what was done on Live and what was done on Homecoming but the changes were Wonderful. Quality of Life is so improved that it is amazing. I didn’t experience the “over time” changes, just the Then and Now. I have read every line of the patch notes and see several proposed ideas rolled back or modified. This patch seems to be continuing the Uniformity in All Powers approach. Pool names unified (quality of life) and power types “templated” for uniformity (quality of life? My Circus?), new power sets (Game Play Fun), and damage increase procs canceled by combat (nonsense but it’s Your Circus). Developers have presented new powersets this round. Shiny new sets for the existing players and New Influx of players. A lot of effort for Gameplay Fun. A bit ago, Battle Axe was reworked from what it was into a fantastic powerset. The visuals are spot on and the play is very smooth (single target and aoe). A recent forum poll by Scrappers showed it to be the most preferred attack set. Well done lads! This round, I see mostly tweaks and templating to powers that exist. No Battle Axe magic. Instead of Shiny, why not rework the power sets that are sitting in the attic? The unpopular kid that eats lunch alone. Example: Kinetic Melee. The forums and Help Channel will debate this power set endlessly. It has a gimmick mechanic that you either don’t use (Stalkers are spared from even getting it) since it takes a long activation (and if it misses you could have used 2 – 3 other attacks instead) or you use and hope it a. hits and b. hits often enough to matter. Fix it like you did Battle Axe. Make it a show piece of your ingenuity. Shiny is harder and eats time. Existing Mending is easier and faster. Enough with the shiny new I Phone to add to power set bloat. Fix what you have and make it into Battle Axe type of magic. And to those already pounding replies, I have donated into every monthly finance event since coming back. I don’t intend to leave any time soon.

This post saved me a lot of time. I agree fully with what is reposted above. Newer players are coming from games where specific callouts are common. This won't do anything but continue their familiarity with reward based team compositions.

Just checked out Beta Test (Brainstorm) and the problems seem to have been fixed. Thanks to the IT folks who accomplished this.

Creating a new character on Beta Test tonight at 8pm EST. Logging in took about 3 minutes. Selecting Server took almost 5 minutes. Retrieving characters took 5 minutes. After creating my new character every map change took 2 minutes at least. Picked up the arc from MJ in Peregrine Island and headed to the Portal Corp to defeat Infernal. Clicking the portal to enter the mission map caused a disconnect. I spent the next 15 minutes getting my account logged back in, server selected, character selected and another "mapserver disconnect" as soon as I click the portal to enter Infernal's lair. Defeated mobs in the parking lot for 3 minutes just to see what would happen. They fell over. Didn't want to spend another 15 minutes trying to log in if I touched the portal again. Sleep Well Infernal, I can't get to you tonight. Just a side note: I made a new character on Monday night and ran the entire MJ arc with no problems. This is new for Tuesday.

Here is a build that has worked well for me. It almost soft caps Melee (and does with Agility Alpha) and has capped resists on most damage. It leaves the Toxic hole but has over 50% on Psionic and Negative. You will have double Rage a lot of the time, a long stun time on Rage crash with Handclap, 20 second End replenish, and only a 4 second delay on Energize. The Winter set is expensive and the other Purples aren't cheap. You get Fly as your travel power and you can activate Hover for precise flying control if needed. You also have 2 types of Invisibility; Stealth and Infiltration. Each will give you over 60 rating for nice sneaking and you can run them together for 85 rating. I took Infiltration as a mule but it also has really great movement speed and jumping while sneaking. Just shut off Stealth and haul yourself to the final boss/objective. I found it handy but your mileage may vary. Timing (Super Strength - Electric Armor).mbd

I am really confused with some IO enhancement power percentages listed in their descriptions. They do not match the equipped percentages. Example 1: Energy Manipulator - End Mod - Level Range 10-20 - maxes at 25.6% ...... BUT if you mouse over one in the AH it will say it is Attuned and provides 42.4% of endurance. I bought one to see why the discrepancy. In my inventory the Description says 42.4% endurance and when I equipped it on a Level 50 toon, it provides 25.6% as capping at level 20. Example 2: Kinetic Combat - Melee Accuracy/Damage -Description says 26.5% of each power as viewed by a level 50 toon. Equipped on that character it provides 22.9% of each attribute as if capping at the top of its 20-35 level range. Why are all these descriptions showing level 50 attributes and yet equipping them provides only the crafted range levels? Why aren't the descriptions matching their power level caps? If an enhancement caps at level 35 with 22.9% Accuracy when equipped, why does the mouseover description have a level 50 percentage of 26.5%.

Here I am again because of a set of changes to my fire farmers. After a long period of stasis from Page 3 to 4, the developers are changing things much more rapidly. The Burn changes are what effects my fire farmers most. As per the notes a the start of this topic: 1. Multiple Burn patches - fine with me, never had Burn on auto activate so I probably don't stack enough to matter 2. Burn should "now" hit 5 enemies instead of 4 - Huh? I checked the description on my Brute farmers and Live says it hits 5 now. Maybe it hits 4 on other AT's, don't know, only have Burn on my farmer Brutes so this one is fine if it is buffing other AT's and helping them. 3. Upfront damage radius increased to 15 feet - Don't care one bit. I have packs of mobs so tight against me that I can't see my character half the time. Again, if it helps other AT's or players in their pursuit of mob "arresting" , then great. 4. Procs in Burn - Not affecting me one bit. I don't slot procs in my Burn powers. If it was causing activations in excess of what seems "reasonable" to developers and was out of line with other powers that are similar, then okay ...... I guess. No dog in this fight. 5. Burn should inherit Accuracy - Okay, I don't fully understand this one. I really don't care since mobs fall over without any problems for me as it is now on Live. Whatever I have going on now works just fine. Hope this helps players who are missing hitting mobs. 6. Burn should now gain AT class caps and modifiers - Once again, I don't really care one bit. Mobs fall over just fine for my Brutes with whatever coding is going on now on Live. I hope that this will help other AT players do well and have fun. 7. Cast time lowered - This is a half second buff that I will never notice. No, not once. Just no. Burn has never been on auto so my old eyes and hands do just fine at 2.03 seconds on Live. Once again, I hope that this will help other players achieve fun. For me, that half second activation buff gets destroyed by Change #8. 8. Recharge increased from 25 to 45 seconds - This is the Nerf that concerns me most in my gameplay. Fanboys can argue the semantics but it is a negative impacting change to my fire farmers. After experiencing the mob aggro changes in Page 4, I immediately ran to my copied farmer on Beta and verified the power description numbers for Burn on Live versus Beta. I then went and tested my usual fire farm map. My Live times are from 10 runs with 1 door sitter as are my Beta times. My Base Recharge is 165% and I use T4 Ageless on cooldown. Live: 10 runs - worst time 10m 38s - best time: 10m 20s - average of all runs 10m31s Beta 10 runs - worst time 12m05s - best time: 11m36s - average of all runs 11m52s On Live my Burn recharge time varies from 5.9 seconds with 235% recharge to 6.5 seconds at 175% recharge. Without Ageless it is 6.8 seconds. On Beta my Burn time varies from 10 seconds to 12 seconds (without Ageless). The average that I noticed was 11 seconds for most of Ageless activated. Pretty much double from Live conditions. Add on that "buff" of a 1.47 cast time and it is 2 1/2 seconds from being able to have a constant Burn patch up. On Live it is easy to keep a constant Burn patch up for maximum damage. TLDR: The recharge on BETA Burn is Too Long. Drop the recharge back to Live levels of 25 seconds. TLDR Paranoia: Here we go again with another Nerf to fire farming. You backed off on Page 4 and came at it again through the power set.

I decided that this was a good time to try making a fire farming map. I have based mine on Big Gotter's 19823 tunnel map. I used AA's above mob powerset settings and they work a treat. I can run the entire tunnel solo or with an alt at the door and never have to heal .... and that is the problem. My mob pack sizes run around 12 mobs (2 bosses, 4 lts., and 6 minions). It doesn't seem to vary with our without alt at the door. I am used to 19823's mob packs which spawn around 18 to 20 (sort of hard to count precisely) mobs per pack. Since I am brand new to AE map building, can I increase the pack size in my program editing somewhere? I counted 19823's pack size with an alt and without, and it is way bigger both times. Thanks!!

Read several complaints today in chat about Farsight from the Time powerset not buffing Toxic Defense. I checked on my /Time controller and Farsight is buffing all defenses except Toxic.

I copied my fire farmer to Beta and ran map 19823 which is a tunnel map. I had a friend door sitting to simulate a typical farm for me. I died on the first pull. I came back and went at it again and almost died. My farmer's health dropped in chunks of 1/4 to 1/2 at a time in a very few seconds. That is when I noticed all the packs ranging at me. Not just one or two but most of them. I adjusted my pulls to be smaller by never going beyond the first available pack. I would then pull damage from the pack beyond them and at least one pack to the side beyond them. I healed more per run than I have in a month total on Live. I don't like the change. It seems overdone to me as an attempt to just put difficulty in the game for no other reason than difficulty. 1. I can still farm with my farmer. 2. Farming on that map is not as easy or relaxing as it is now on Live. 3. Another part of the game has become less fun for me. I have not tested any other content than my usual farm map.

I do not like the changes on Beta concerning Vet XP and related changes to Farming. I played in 04 and 05 before quitting due to farming changes. This game encourages alts like no other that I have played. Most games encourage a Main character. This seems to be the way CoH is moving. Grinding out Vet levels without AE option, seems to be requiring me to run team events that are a compromise of my available playing schedule. Incarnate teams and event choices get limited during some hours of the day. I notice it because I am in game during these periods. So your removal of me getting Vet XP easily at my schedule, really hinders thoughts of trying to do it on many alts. I left this game 17 years ago, when fire farming was nerfed into oblivion. It seemed like the Devs were mad that folks were powerleveling and players were not doing other available content. Back then, there wasn't much end game content and now there is content at 50. The Devs seem mad again 17 years later for players not doing content. When I came back last year, I was so impressed by the quality of life changes: Base Portals for everyone, P2W Vendor, AE farming, and Incarnate powers that were not an unpleasant grind to get. Hurting the AE part of the game is familiar history to me. It was important to me then. It is important to me now. Taking away from farming forces me to evaluate the game just like in 05.

I ran AE map 19823 set at +4 X 8 tonight on my farmer. My wife door sat on a character so we had 2 of us in the tunnel. Minions and Lieutenants gave the same amount of influence as Live. Bosses on Beta gave 30,143 influence while Live gave 40,051 influence. I ran the tunnel to completion 3 times. I then ran the same map on Live with my wife door sitting to verify the difference.