Riverdusk

I ran both a necro/time and merc/time through a +1/x3 radio council mission at level 30, bosses on, and just used auto enhance with SO's only. Was interested to see how both did after buff in a sort of standard test. Damage wise they both seemed decently close, mercs seemed to kill a bit faster. Didn't actually time it and ended up with different maps, so can't be totally objective on clear speed. Survival wise though I can say merc did very well and only lost a couple of tier 1 soldiers on average per mission. Necro did not do nearly as well and I lost all 3 tier 1 zombies a couple of times and a couple of grave knights as well. I can say I still think necro needs a bit more survivability imo. Probably a lot of it was that council of course do a lot of lethal damage, and zombies have none whereas mercs have good resistance there. But lethal is the most common in the game, so I think that is going to carry over on average. As previously mentioned as well, at times necro now has a LOT of pets out at once, which is very cool, but the new ones aren't pushable and are solid. I can see them getting in the way and blocking doors, narrow passages, etc. as probably an issue on a team. As it stands I'm very excited to start a merc MM on live. Necro is better and the buffs are nice, but still would like to see them (leaning toward both tier 1 and tier 2 pets after testing) get some lethal resistance, even if it is a lower amount than their other resistances. Anyways, thematically why wouldn't a zombie be able to at least somewhat shrug off bullets/sword slashes? (unless you take their head off with it). As @Lazarillo mentioned, I also had more endurance issues on the necro.

I like Spectral wall and would take it because I like to be able to assure sticking an AV in place so they aren't running all over, which they will likely do without phantom army taunting them. Of course some dom secondaries also have an immobilize, so for those I could see skipping it. I also know some don't mind or seem to have an issue with the running, but it drives me crazy. Agree with you that it looks cool, but pretty specific, it's a lot of skulls. I'd actually like to see an alternate animation for Wall. Using dark color version seems to tone it down okay though. On a lot of powers the "dark" version doesn't really tone it down, so was happy to see it kinda worked out okay for this one, to me anyway.

Minor issue, but the power description text on all the tier 3 epic powers still says "you must be level 41", even though it seemed to work fine picking them at 38 when I tried it. Data from while respecing a scrapper. I'll assume you probably are just not bothering to update those until you decide this change is final, but wanted to point it out just in case. 🙂

Just tried it and same issue, but still seems to work out. You'll notice you are still at "level 0" after you pick the secondary and the primary options light up. You just end up picking your secondary power first, which is unintuitive but it still works out.

Didn't match my experience when I tested it before and just tested it again to make sure. At level 50 running just stealth (confirmed in combat attributes 55 foot pve stealth radius). Ran right into the middle of a level 54 mob of council including bosses. They did not react.

That is funny. I guess they could just depend on the ATO proc to hide them. Wouldn't do it myself either, but yeah, some probably will try it.

Or just a misc one for "other changes". Seems like there usually was in the past.

I'd be all for that as well. I love infiltration (much more than super speed anymore anyway). I typically end up running/jumping around 80mph with it and find it much easier to use than SS. And you can't slot a LoTG in super speed.

Yes, they are mentioned separately near the end of the overall patch notes. They get it as well.

Thanks for testing and confirming that.

I'm not sure a little bit of pre-level 38 "power creep" is going to really matter much. My own personal reasons for loving it is that it makes leveling the "normal" way as someone put it, more smooth and fun. For level 40+ it makes zero difference. For those that power level of course it also makes zero difference except for when they exemp down. However, I wouldn't be against them changing things with this to where when you exemp down you no longer get up to +5 your level in powers. That'd make things about equal to where they are now when you exemp, but make it easier when actually leveling.

Very nice changes overall. I'd still like to see at least the grave knights to also get lethal resistance (they are kinda wearing armor?) Being the heavy knights and in melee I feel they kind of need it and it is appropriate. Can agree on the hit box thing in that they should act at least the same way as all the other MM pets (if they don't already) and let other players easily get through them. (Same always wished for illusion phantom army but different topic).

My bad, misread which one you meant. Didn't even realize the decoy phantasms even had a taunt, thought that was only army. Learned something new. Agree that would be nice to be changed, especially if the kb to kd IO doesn't also affect them, then it'd be an absolute must.

Very nice, but can we get the quicker combustion for dominator fiery assault too? It is always a skip on my doms as it stands now, it is so painfully slow and also so slow to tic (which I'd also like to see sped up). Was sad to see doms skipped on the electric blast updates and now this one too.

Haven't tested myself yet, but per city of data and the in game data PA Power Bolt and hurl are only .6 knockback and hydro blast is .67 so they should already be knockdown. Hopefully that's how they actually are. Not seeing any other knockbacks.

Ah, that is true, have you tested it to make sure? Maybe they could make an exception for super speed somehow.

You couldn't stack these stealth powers before, so nothing should change in that regard. It should be a QoL change only. Only potential drawback I could see is if you forget to turn off the extra stealth power now instead of it automatically toggling off when you activate a 2nd one. If you aren't paying attention it could be an extra endurance drain you didn't have before, and that isn't actually doing anything for you.

Pretty much my reaction. As someone who never power levels and only does it the "slow" way, this is amazing. Love it.

Seeds does notify mobs, it is just different in that way from most other confuses. Also seems reasonable to give it a drawback like that for balance reasons when you are looking at it compared to Mass Confusion. It also will not confuse bosses with its base mag (mag 3 only, a normal boss needs mag 4) unless it "crits" which it has a 20% chance to do for an extra mag bringing it up to mag 4. The purple Contagious Confusion proc can help with that though eventually by adding extra mag when it procs. Or unless you are a dom using it under domination of course.

You can use it that way, but I think most eventually try to use it for damage. It does pretty good aoe damage when combined with fire cages to keep them contained and cooking. Assuming you can survive being in melee of course. /cold might be a bit tougher of a combo. The classic fire/rad had choking cloud working in synergy, even fire/kinetics had spamming the heal to help survive. I've heard fire/dark is just a flat out tank so it can do it. But with the right IO build /cold is probably doable. Bonfire (with kb to kd IO) can potentially help later as well and add even more damage.

I do think nature/dark would also work well since you mentioned it. Nature gives you and your team some nice resistances and some moderate tohit debuff in spore cloud. That would stack nicely with the tohit debuffing of dark blast. Should make for a nice safe combo.

Just to clarify, the mez resistance cap is actually 10,001%, not 45% or 50%. Also note that it has the same type of formula as recharge does in reducing times, as in 100% mez resistance reduces mez to 50% duration, 200% would reduce it to 1/3rd duration, etc. From the wiki: https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Limits Players have a hard status resistance cap of 10,001.01%, which translates to 0.99% mez duration in the Combat Attributes Window. Because player status resistance buffs do not generally exceed 216.25% (for example, Accelerate Metabolism), it is unlikely that the cap will ever be reached in normal gameplay. This was changed in Issue 13; previously, the cap was 100% resistance, resulting in 50% duration. The change was in part due to the change to status protection in PvP, necessitating a higher resistance cap.

I'd also start with the level issue and probably a bump to hit points. I'd also like to see a possible lookover for each set's special level 18 power and maybe let them all take ATO and pet set IO's so that some sets don't have a "tax" on having to slot the MM ATO's and pet +def/+res IO's in their actual pets, where some others get to stuff them into their level 18 power. And general things like making necro's soul extraction not so clunky to use and making serum actually useful... And speaking of mercs, for other damage/buffs to individual sets I think the only one that really has a damage issues is mercs (which could probably be solved by "fixing" its level 18 power). Rest are much more debatable and more depends on how/what you are fighting. For instance you state bots are in the top 3, and yet Galaxy Brain did one of his "standard comparisons" he likes to do and bots actually did poorly in that environment and beasts actually showed real strength. If you are fighting late level x8 then of course I'd assume bots would shoot back up and beasts would fall back down. But that's kind of standard for most CoH powersets in variety. Personally I'd also like to see necro pets get some better resistances. They are also on the low side for damage (and that's okay), but in exchange they should be among the "tankiest" imo, and right now they really aren't. That'd be my wishlist anyway.

To be fair, it isn't only MIDS. The in-game numbers summary includes scourge as well. Can be very confusing and personally I wish they'd display the top summary numbers without scourge (and still list scourge in the details further down of course). I always have to back it out manually to find the "real" damage for corruptor attacks.

So tempted to vote Dr. Quaterfield just to troll. 😁 I sure do love the merits for it when it is the weekly though.