macskull
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Posts posted by macskull
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On 5/13/2024 at 8:19 AM, jprewitt73 said:
I think I've seen some changes, but that's mostly because the population seems to be increasing. Higher population = more people willing to lead.
The population is lower now than any time in the last four and a half months, it is definitely not increasing.
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On 5/9/2024 at 6:58 AM, Tankshock said:
Hole crap, live? Am I that out of date?
It was changed in Issue 22, which was released about 8 months before the game shut down. The behavior you’re describing (which also let you do things like put Membranes in Mind Link and Vengeance, or Centrioles in Thermal/Sonic shields) was around for a long time and many people don’t know that it ever got changed.
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On 5/3/2024 at 9:41 AM, brass_eagle said:
You sorta saw that sort of design take front row when Widows were introduced as an Archetype (same issue I believe). "Mind Link" is not enhanceable by recharge-focused enhancements. Then IOs came along.
IOs predate VEATs by over a year. Mind Link has never allowed recharge enhancements, but it's always been affected by the recharge portion of set IOs. It used to be affected by Hami-O's with a recharge aspect, but that was fixed sometime before shutdown.
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On 4/30/2024 at 11:27 AM, Trickshooter said:
For clarity, Scorpion Shield's +Resistance is NOT unenhanceable in the way that prevents it from being boosted by Damage buffs; the power itself just does not accept Resist Damage enhancements. The +Resistance is grants can be enhanced if you can find a way to sneak Resist Damage or Damage enhancements in there, like maybe with Hami-Os? I can't remember if that's still a thing you can do.
For +Resistance in a power to be truly unenhanceable, it needs the flag that says "Ignores enhancements and other boosts" with the little lock icon to the left of the +Resistance value on City of Data, as seen on Deflection Shield.
Scorpion Shield cannot be slotted for Damage Resistance, but it's +Resistance IS enhanceable, so that's why the whole power is flagged to ignore external strength boosts.
These two methods of preventing boosts are functionally equivalent from a player-facing standpoint. Considering the slotting oddities with Hami-O's haven't been possible since Issue 21 (22? I don't remember), there's zero reason for the power to behave as it currently does.
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2 hours ago, Frozen Burn said:
But the other side to that is, if 6 or so people are just AFKing / leeching - do they cause a "Yellow Dawn"? Do they cause the raid to fail? I doubt it. Did they prevent you from doing what you came to the Hive/Abyss to do (hunt GMs, then the Mitos, and then Hami)? No, they did not. Again, unless they grief in some way to cause a raid to fail - then they really have no impact on you or what you do. Ignore them and be happy about your experience.
With a 50-player cap in the zone, a handful of people who aren’t actively involved in the event absolutely can result in failing. The raid leader can adjust their strategy to mitigate this risk but then that falls onto the raid leader to 1) correctly guess whether there are enough potentially “AFK” players in the zone for it to be a problem, and 2) communicate the change in strategy to the group at large, who may not be familiar with the new strategy. This wasn’t at all a concern when the zone cap for the Hive and Abyss was accidentally bumped way up in early/mid 2019 but it became one once the 50-player cap was restored.
2 hours ago, Frozen Burn said:And if it's really justice you want.... When you're defeating Hami and they are AFK'ing AOEs or jumping in for their few hits... Incan the league out and let Hami kill them. Doing that right as the mitos respawn too. Sure, you'd have to kill the mitos again. but you could also do it again at 50% and 25% Hami health. You could get a little justice/revenge that way, and just perhaps, they might learn a lesson. 😄
This would not solve anything and would more likely than not cause the raid to fail, because half the people on the league will have TP prompt on so they’ll get blasted too, and instead of killing Hami you’ll just have a full-health Hami with three or four sets of mitos which you’ll then have to meticulously clear or give up and wait for a zone reset. And if you do manage to recover from that, the dead people in the bowl already got their hit in so they’ll still get credit for the defeat at the end as long as they don’t move.
EDIT: I don’t particularly care about the arguments around the one or two people at a raid who aren’t on the league. The zone cap at 50 and league cap at 48 are incompatible with each other, much like how hot dog buns come in packs of 8 and hot dogs come in packs of 10. A full zone is always going to have at least two players who aren’t on the league. There may be a perception from some on the league that those players aren’t participating, but a cursory glance at name colors during the entire event should make it obvious whether that’s actually true. A good raid leader should already be doing this. An instanced raid does not make things more difficult for soloists; rather, it makes things easier for the raid leader and significantly minimizes the risk a griefer poses to the event.
EDIT 2: Even if an instanced Hami raid accomplished nothing else, it would still provide a solution to the dozens and dozens of wasted man-hours spent across the servers each and every day by players waiting around to secure a spot at a raid.
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32 minutes ago, Rudra said:
I wasn't against it until that post I quoted. I didn't care if an instanced Hami was made. See my reasoning above.
Liking an idea and then later being opposed to that exact same idea because of why someone wants it is kinda yikes. At that point you’re no longer opposed to the idea on its merits but because you want things to continue to be difficult for that person.
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Also, different leaders do raids differently and I ain’t trying to do a Hami raid the slow way on a different server.
P.S.: @Mayaedits get back to work
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1 hour ago, Oklahoman said:
If I have to be in Abyss 1 50 minutes in advance of the advertised start time, that's a couple iTrials I could have been running instead of cooling my heels. With an instanced option I can still run those iTrials, then show up in Echo Park at 6pm Eastern to form my Hami raid - which could be the second or third league being formed at that time. How is that not better for everyone?
This is the biggest reason I don’t come to Hami raids much anymore. My time is limited and having to get to the zone 30-60 minutes early to have a chance at even getting in is a non-starter. Sometimes I’ll show up closer to the start time and get in but usually the zone is long full and I’m off into the depths of AE farming again.
+1 for instanced MSR. Griefers are still gonna grief but at least if they’re being obvious about it the leader will have an easy way to make sure they don’t end up on one of their raids again.
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Global chat doesn’t have chat bubbles like other chat channels because the global chat server is completely separate from your local character and the rest of the game.
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3 hours ago, Uun said:
Not disagreeing that this happens, but it's not the only power in the game that has this problem. Among the others: Martial Assault/Trick Shot, Electric Control/Synaptic Overload and Electric Control/Jolting Chain. The latter two use pseudo pets and it still happens.
It’s a problem unique to chain powers. In this case, Storm Blast is the only blast set that has this limitation, which makes its AoE clunky and inconsistent. I’ve brought this up to the powers team already and was told that it is unlikely to be changed because Chain Lightning has several benefits from being a chain power. About the only reasonable benefit I can see out of it is that it has a theoretically larger AoE area than a standard targeted AoE, but I don’t know that the larger potential radius ends up making much difference in practice and it comes at the expense of proc rate and that 5% chance to just be a dud. Even some kind of “second chance” mechanic would be good.
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To the OP: have you tried to talk to the person holding the name? How do you know this person is “camping” your name?
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On 4/25/2024 at 12:37 PM, KaizenSoze said:
There is more to this game then focusing on faster clear times. How about an actually challenge, maybe get hit occasionally before the spawns are nuked out of existence.
Slowing down the game doesn’t make it harder, it just makes it slower.
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Can’t speak to most of the discrepancies without seeing your ingame and Mids slotting, but the discrepancy in mez resistance is easy to explain - Mids and the game express those values differently. Mids gives you the actual mez resistance value, and the game displays it as the final % duration based on the amount of mez resistance you have. The way the game displays it is arguably more useful since it doesn’t require you to do any math. The formula is here, and using your Mids numbers your 70% hold resistance equates to 58.82% duration.
Discrepancies between Mids and the game are always due to one or more of a few things:
- Ingame and Mids power selection (or powers in use) does not match
- Ingame and Mids slotting does not match
- Mids has the wrong info on a power (this one is common)
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46 minutes ago, Crysis said:
I was under the impression that any power that applies both a +Def and +Res effect is unaffected by outside boosts like Power Boost and the two shields from Cold?
Any power that applies both defense and enhanceable resistance is flagged to ignore outside buffs, otherwise the resistance portion would be affected by the caster’s damage bonus. Powers that apply unenhanceable resistance do not need this flag, which is the case for Scorpion Shield.
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10 hours ago, Blastit said:
Some people just have that dog in them.
Those people should probably see a doctor, the number of dogs inside a person should be zero.
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2 minutes ago, Ratch_ said:
Power Analyzer is your best friend.
All that is showing is that the -res is applying to the target, it doesn’t show the actual accuracy or hit rolls for the patch itself so it isn’t really useful for what we’re looking for here.
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14 minutes ago, AlwaysAPrice said:
Hadn't taken a close look at Dom Dark Mastery yet but this is really goofy. I can understand the power being generally weaker, it's opening tier in the pool so it doesn't require any additional power picks, and a dominator isn't a support AT, so the recharge, radius, and effect strength all being lower than any Dark Miasma version all make some sense to me. Adding a to-hit check does not. At all. The recharge doubling is already enough to push it out of One Slot Wonder territory, it doesn't need to be made multiple enhancement dependent too.
Meanwhile comparing Dom Tar Patch & Sleet to their Corruptor secondary versions in Mids gives me further wtfs. Sleet's recharge increase is only 50% while its duration gains 15 seconds, and its debuff strength is identical while Tar Patch's is 25% weaker. Tar Patch does get a duration buff for doms at least: a whole 0.5 seconds.
It's hard to imagine how this could be WAI and not a situation along the lines of "oops, made a Tar Patch with ToHit checks to weaken it in the hands of the updated Circle of Thorns but accidentally gave that version to doms instead".
Turns out the Tanker version of this power also has the same limitations, except that one is a level 44 power pick so you’re even less likely to have the extra slots available to give it the attention it needs to perform well.
If you’re looking at Mids for data, most of the Page 7 powers changes aren’t on there - Dominator Sleet used to have a 90 second recharge and now it’s 2 minutes along with other nerfs that Sleet as a whole got.
Unfortunately, I don’t think this is a case of “oops accidentally gave a critter power to players” since the pet the epic version of Tar Patch spawns is named “Tar_Epic” and it’s flagged to allow enhancements. This seems to be a conscious design decision.
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13 minutes ago, Greycat said:
Honestly, of everything I don't give a damn about this as an argument. There are so many ways to get enhancements, and cost can be variable, so...
As for the rest? Yeah. No acc check would be ideal, as it's already getting penalized pretty hard, and no, it doesn't seem all that sensible for the power.
I’m coming from this with the perspective of having to pay a slot tax for the accuracy that’s required. I don’t know if the summoned pet inherits accuracy buffs from the caster but I’d assume it doesn’t since many summoned pets don’t. Ideally I maximize the accuracy and recharge with as few slots as possible. Tar Patch is unique among area -res patches because it will continuously require hit checks for the most desirable part of the power to work. It takes slow sets but unfortunately only one slow set has both acc and rech in one power and that’s a 4-piece so you’re not getting much out of it. That pretty much leaves you with common 50+5 IOs or the acc/threat/rech D-Sync/Hami.
Sure, the cost is going to be variable, and you might get lucky if you run enough Aeons or hard mode LGTFs, but at the end of the day no matter how you slice it you’re having to spend the time or inf or rely on luck just to get a power that still performs worse than the power it’s based on because of an arbitrary design decision.
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Hi it’s me! I would have submitted this as a bug report but it is apparently Working As Intended so I am here to lay out a few things so that others may understand how ridiculous this power is.
Dominators got access to Tar Patch with the new Dark Mastery pool in Page 7. Sounds cool, good new thematic match for some existing builds. Of course, since Tar Patch is an epic power, it must be strictly inferior to the in-set version for reasons that are still unclear. Generally this is accomplished by a recharge time penalty on the order of 2-3x the source power’s recharge. In-set Tar Patch has a 90 second recharge, so the epic version is set to 180 seconds. This change alone isn’t particularly egregious but it does already put epic Tar Patch at a disadvantage from a usability standpoint. If it was just this difference, I would probably have just shrugged and moved on.
BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!
Dark Mastery’s version of Tar Patch is not only slapped with a three minute recharge, but it has a few other key differences that aren’t immediately obvious but make it an objectively worse power even if it wasn’t already on an obnoxiously long cooldown:
- The power has a reduced radius of 15ft instead of 25ft (epic Sleet is the same way, 10ft instead of 20ft).
- The resistance debuff requires a hit check to work. This makes no sense since the rest of the power effects are autohit. On a power like Sleet the hit roll is annoying but not a problem because once a tick lands the target is debuffed for a further 30 seconds, but because of how Tar Patch works the power must make a successful hit roll every 0.5 seconds for 45 seconds. This already means the power is at best 95% as effective as the in-set version during its half-as-much uptime. That’s the best case scenario, which will only happen 0.0063% of the time (and no that’s not a typo).
- The power takes accuracy enhancements to account for point number two, but in order to actually maximize accuracy and recharge you’re forced to turn to multiple enhancements which cost 350-400 million each just to still get worse performance than the in-set version.
Come on, we can do better than this.
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The closest thing to a Mids analogue hasn't been updated since Issue 16. Unfortunately Mids is pretty much it.
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I read these tags @Videra, don’t worry.
Yeah, I understand that they’re called “alignment” powers because they’re locked to an alignment, but when I can switch alignments at will with 3 mouse clicks it doesn’t make much sense to make us wait a week to get a power and then have to stay as that alignment to keep it. Frenzy and Call to Justice are good but especially in the case of Frenzy it’s not worth being alignment locked to the side that has less content and fewer players. You can get either Frenzy or Call to Justice clones in PvP without being alignment locked, there’s not much reason the same shouldn’t be true in PvE.
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Meh if I’m leading the team and I can’t fill for a piece of content I might log on an alt, or I might just run with 7. Multiboxing ain’t against the ToS (in this scenario) and it ain’t hurting anybody.
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1 hour ago, FupDup said:
Hardmode's meta is kinda sorta fucked, to the extreme, so if even the mighty Tanker of all things can't compete against a Scrapper there, it's gonna be real hard to make a Brute compete without just making them outright better than Scrappers. Again, I'm not saying don't change Brutes, I posted some ideas of mine earlier, I'm just saying that maybe there might be some underlying/overarching metagame issues to resolve so we can get a more clear picture here. And hopefully have a meta that isn't a harem of 7 ranged supports following an armored melee AT of some sort.
FWIW a Tanker is usually the play over a Scrapper on LGTF because the higher resist cap, better aggro management, and higher HP actually does end up mattering (for one 5-10 minute portion of the TF, anyways). Outside of hard mode, though, if we're talking "speedy meta" teams it's almost always just a bunch of Blasters with one or two Corruptors, melee need not apply.
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4 hours ago, Shin Magmus said:
What about the other Epic Armor which is both Def and Res: Frozen Armor - https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=epic.defender_ice_mastery.frozen_armor
It appears to have the same flag. Maybe this should be looked at in a batch, good find Macskool.
Frozen Armor's +res can be enhanced, so the power has to be flagged that way.
Has HC culture reached the Pinnacle?
in General Discussion
Posted · Edited by macskull
Check the links in my signature, which has historical data for player counts over the last two years. Any "seasonal variation" that exists in a game with a population the size of Homecoming's is so small that it's basically imperceptible. You are correct in that the population has increased compared to what it was immediately before the announcement (roughly 55-60% higher), but it's also around half of what it was at the peak shortly after the announcement.