Jacke

That's another difficult issue that is interlaced with other stuff that does need to be reconsidered. Right now Defense is better than Resists because for squishies, not getting hit means not getting mezzed or other secondary effects, but even more so, all can get Defense (and -ToHit) high enough that the mobs have the minimum chance to hit (5%; Lts 5.75%; Bosses, EBs, Snipers 6.5%; AVs, Monsters, GMs 7.5%). While going with Resist Armours means mezzing still takes place and 25% of the damage gets through. The resistance cap is higher for Tankers and Brutes, 90%, and Kheldians and Arachnos Soldiers, 85%, but I think many should be improved. Say 95% for Tankers; 90% for Brutes, Kheldians, and Arachnos Soldiers, 85% for Scrappers and Stalkers, 80% for the rest. Such a change would need other adjustments and careful thought, testing, and review. But this should be looked at. The long existence of the Streak Breaker shows this is an issue that really does affect play. https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Attack_Mechanics#The_Streak_Breaker Although mobs get to benefit from it too, I think the players get more out of the Streak Breaker. What we're talking about is a real corner case, because with 95% chance to hit, you will only get one miss in a row (assuming there's no issue with the Streak Breaker). It's why I have "Last Hit Chance" at the top of every toon's Combat Attributes Monitoring Window. I want to know when my chance to hit starts dropping so I can do something about it. But then that 1 miss in a row happens to a long recharge power with no backup alternate power and suddenly things are very different for a great part or all of a battle To fit in the Pool and Epic Powers I want, I'm always looking to only keep the Powers from the Primary and Secondary that are the best. And those that are flawed get put on the list to skip. And because Siphon Speed is long recharge and the speed boost isn't autohit and will have that chance to miss--and radically alter what the toon can do--I decide not to take it and build the toon to move faster despite not having Siphon Speed. Because I'll need that 100% all-the-time speed anyhoo. Excellent thoughts, @Akisan. I too like the idea of an Enhancement-Diversification-like solution to give actual final calculate ToHits higher than 95%. And you're right about only so much +Acc, +ToHit, -Def (as well as +Def and -ToHit) is needed. Right now, I go into Mids and change the base ToHit to 48%, that against a +3 target. If I build to a final hit chance 95% or better on the powers, I know that toon is good in virtually all cases. Allowing more out of both player and mob buffs and debuffs can make more things possible, useful, and interesting.

Kudos to all the devs who worked to make this release and with the beta testers polished it for release. It must be something about the general case in many or maybe some particular zones, or some implementation detail that was changed. Because we still have /enterbasefrompasscode in a more limited sense. When close to a Base portal, including the summoned ones, or after invoking without using Long Range Teleporter, Base Transporter, or the Day Job temp power Monitor Duty Teleporter, /enterbasefrompasscode can still be used. Already tested that today.

Now that Issue 27 Page 1 has released, bugs should be reported in the Bug Reports forum. https://forums.homecomingservers.com/forum/32-bug-reports/

On my Kinetics toon, I always take Speed Boost, because it delivers the buffs to my teammates 100% of the time. I never take Siphon Speed, but instead slot Sprint etc to get the running speed up. Because to have that Siphon Speed fail 5% of the time means that I don't get a chance to try again for 30s or whatever the 60s Recharge is enhanced to. And that means I now go a lot slower and need to change how I play a very dynamic toon. (There's a reason the Repeat Offenders Kinetics Super Group is called Pinball Wizards.) If I miss an attack, I've usually got another attack to follow up right away. On a toon that uses soft control from Knockback/Knockdown, like my AR/Dev Blaster, I've got 3 powers that do KB/KD. But for buffs, debuffs, mezzes, cage powers, etc., that have long recharge and few if no alternate powers to back them up, that 5% miss now means tactics have to be radically different when that 5% chance to miss, to fail, hits. 5% chance to miss, chance to fail, on powers that are going off all the time, means that almost certainly in every battle, I will have to deal with that 5% chance of failure. If there's a similar power ready to go, dealing is trivial. If there's no backup, it's serious. And a 5% minimum-chance-to-fail is not realistic. How many times swinging a sword or other weapons have I missed the pell? How many times have I not struck a blow with close to full force? Even against a person, when skill and other factors push advantage to the limit, there is no way there's a 5% chance to fail. There's a reason that there's now special handling for powerset resources like Titan Weapon's Momentum, Energy Melee's Focus, and other things that are parts of attacks. All of them used to depend on hitting the target. And having that 5% chance-to-fail for them had greater consequences well beyond that single miss. Now many of them are separate from the chance-to-hit to damage and if the power is used, the special effect like granting the resource is now 100% automatic. @Number Six, it's kind of like taking off the 95% ToHit cap and adding in a system similar to Enhancement Diversification. It makes those last few percent on the way to 100% non-linear. Of course, put in a system that makes it possible to push ToHit over 95% and approach 100% will require some other adjustments to things that are the way they are due to having the current 95% ToHit cap.

I think Sprint by default has the dust clouds. Was this with Sprint (and the Prestige versions) off?

If it's in the i27p1 RC2 Patch Notes and not noted as removed, it's still part of it.

A reason could be that a power is used in a bind, like I use Prestige Power Surge to contain the Celerity Stealth Proc: /bind G "powexectoggleon Ninja Run$$powexectoggleon Prestige Power Surge" but in one costume, I want to not have the FX of the Prestige Sprint, but not needing to change my bind when I swap costume.

Excellent post, @AboveTheChemist. I've long done the same, get all the Badges and read all the Plaques in one run. I usually just wing it with Vidiotmaps installed to guide, but I've done some zones so many times, especially Atlas Park, that I can do them without little or no help from the minimap. I recently added the Sewers and the Abandoned Sewers on a toon. They are special and are best done together. Running the Sewers is best done overleveled at 15 or higher. To run the Abandoned Sewers, should have a toon at 50. Full stealth helps lower those limits, though the Abandoned Sewers has Rikti with Drones that ignore stealth, so there should be at least 40 and just keep running. Vidiotmaps is essential because besides the location of the Badges and the one Academic Plaque deep in the Abandoned Sewers, it also has the best routes through both Sewers marked which run right past all the Badges and the Plaque. There are Sewers entrances in 5 zones, Atlas Park, Kings Row, Steel Canyon, Skyway City, and Boomtown. Each entrance has 1 Badge near it, as well as a door to the matching branch of the Abandoned Sewers, which also has 1 Badge near the start. Using a teleport power (like the Long Range Teleporter available to all come Issue 27, or Ourobotos to get to Atlas, or the Base Transporter power and a set of Base Telepads), in succession go to the 5 zones, then to the Sewers entrance and in, through the side door to the Abandoned Sewers, then to the Badge closest on the branch (all 5 Abandoned Sewers entrances have a Badge very close), back to the Sewers, down to the nearest Badge, then teleport and travel to the next zone. To get the last 3 Badges in each set of Sewers, modify some of those runs to add in the deeper Badges and the Plaque in the Abandoned Sewers. For the Sewers, it's best to get the deeper Badges from the Kings Row entrance. For the Abandoned Sewers, it's best to get the deeper Badges and the Plaque from the Atlas Park entrance after changing the sequence and getting the Atlas Sewers closest Badge before going into the Abandoned Sewers.

How about this for an AoE buff. I know, RC1, but.... Keep the Shadow Maul changes. Revert the Touch of Fear changes. And buff P2W (and even temp) Sands of Mu in place of changing ToF. Make it have the same AoE and target cap as Shadow Maul does now. Right now on my Dark Melee toons, I do an AoE chain of Shadow Maul - Sands of Mu - Shadow Maul - gap for everything else. Sands of Mu has the older narrower arc that Shadow Maul used to have. It's much harder to align to get more mobs in the AoE. But from learning to keep aligning before attacking with Shadow Maul, I've transferred that to Sands of Mu and I do hit more than 1 mob most of the time. Buffing Sands of Mu does benefit all toons. But I don't think it's an overwhelming out-of-control buff. And that would ease the delay in dealing with Dark Melee more thoroughly.

Yeah, partial name matching has to be used. Means you can target onto particular bothersome Lts and Bosses, not all of them. But also means the macro has to be tailored to each enemy group or a particular Task Force, etc. And with some you struggle to keep it under 255 characters. Quickly gets to be a lot of macros. Having a targetnext* command that would allow selection by rank and special function (sapping, healing, engineering, exploding) would help. Some of those functions are in the names right now, but not all.

I think I've adjusted my options to always show that info over the mobs. Still can be very hard to target just the bosses or any particular mob out of a crowd. Usually an appropriate TAB targetting macro (as I showed above) is needed to quickly lock onto the right mobs even in moderately fast play. EDIT: As @Sovera points out, the targetting macro can't just have ranks but needs a partial name to match a mob to to target it. Makes things tricky.

Some AoE thoughts. But I think my Dark Melee thoughts below are more important. Dark Melee, that I know. The -ToHit helps. Great to have the +Heal in a good attack and the powerful +Dam and +End AoE powers. As for how good at ST, I'd have to compare exact numbers, but I think it's at least reasonable to good. Shadow Maul is awesome and I think due to how the mobs move, the target cap nerfs don't really touch it that much. But I worry about the changes to Touch of Fear. Back in 2006, The_Gamemaster's guide said it allowed Dark Melee at low levels with some slotting to shut down Bosses with two applications and keep them weak until defeated. I think that it's received a bit of nerfing, but with enough fear and recharge from IOs it can still be stacked well. And if Dark Armor's Cloak of Fear is used, a Dark/Dark Scrapper, Brute, or Tanker can do a good Fear build (and would be better if Cloak of Fear was given some love). Fear Builds are still usable even in fast team play. Fear Protection is still rarer than Stun Protection among mobs, so it's stronger than stacking stuns. But the changes to Touch of Fear have turned it into a poorer Fear Power. Slower to cast. For slotting, now needs not just acc enh, end red, rech red, and fear enh, but also damage. Siphon Life has the same challenges with healing and damage, but there exists Accurate Healing IOs to help. Will there be Accurate Fear IO sets? Not sure the changes to ToF are worth it. So it's either enhanced as a damage AoE that seems to be underwhelming. Or focus on a Fear build and just get the damage as a bonus. And hope the extra aggro that little damage causes isn't much of a drawback.

Unfortunately not that simple, but somewhat possible. I use Tray 9 for tab targetting macros with these entries in my keybinds file. SHIFT+` "powexectray 7 9" SHIFT+TAB "powexectray 8 9" ` "powexectray 9 9" TAB "powexectray 10 9" Here's a standard tab targeting macro I use. It is installing into Slot 9 Tray 9 and normally invoked with the ` key. /macroslot 88 xBug "targetenemynext$$targetcustomnext Embal$$targetcustomnext Engin$$targetcustomnext Surge$$targetcustomnext Genera$$targetcustomnext Trans$$targetcustomnext Communi$$targetcustomnext Porta$$targetcustomnext Mage$$targetcustomnext Sapper" And this one is in Slot 10, invoked with key TAB. /macroslot 89 xQV "targetenemynext$$targetcustomnext enemy alive quantum$$targetcustomnext enemy alive void" Note that the long one doesn't have the 'enemy' or 'alive' fields as the whole command can't be greater than 255 characters or the macro will be silently broken and can't be fixed either with editting. Anyhoo, I hit TAB and whichever beastie matches the rightmost targetcustomnext command gets targetted. Hit ` and whatever irritant beastie gets targetted. Want different mobs targetted, write up the macro, create it, and swap the new macros into TAB and '. For a given enemy group, you can customize a macro to fit that groups' lieutenants and bosses. Here's one I have from way back for Freakshow: /macro xFrk "targetenemynext$$targetcustomnext enemy alive Tank$$targetcustomnext enemy alive Juicer$$targetcustomnext enemy alive Stunner" I've got others, but many broke the max-255 character rule and I have to redesign them or they don't work.

Interesting thoughts, @Coyote. I think the AI in City isn't that complex, so that mobs' maneuvering and packing is more an emergent phenomenon than designed per se.

I think you may have something there. I was thinking the problem with ToF's AoE, the 6ft radius circle around the targetted mob, might be it getting partly cut off calculation-wise for targets where it was farther away that 7ft from the Dark Melee character. But the same effect happens if the mobs themselves move, perhaps to close to 7ft, but definitely empty part of the AoE. Assuming the primary target is at 7ft, over half of ToF's AoE could be emptied by mob movement. In fact, ToF's effective AoE could be about 1/3 of its full size. That means Touch of Fear's effective AoE becomes about 0.75 the size of Shadow Maul's AoE. And I think it gets worse, because there are only a few mobs in the AoE's, so the numbers can easily round down a lot. I remember actively positioning and using Shadow Maul and hitting mostly 2 to 3 mobs, sometimes 4. That means in the same circumstances, ToF would hit 1 to 2 mobs, sometimes 3. ToF is already about 2/3's Shadow Maul's DPA and DPE, with single hit damage about 0.8 that of Shadow Maul. And hitting fewer mobs. Thinking back on what people said about their testing experiences, I feel this effect would make the new ToF feel weak, but not quite as weak as what they experienced. There may be more issues, perhaps case #2 in my previous post. But in most mob density situations, a short-ranged melee circular AoE of about 6ft radius may have this problem, which means Street Justice's Spinning Strike and the new Touch of Fear. The mobs need to be thoroughly packed before either power shows their full value.

I actually have that downloaded for i26 and i27, primarily for the internal icon and power names. Unfortunate, the JSON display device is me (using Notepad++), so it's tricky working through it. And the capture is lacking for temporary and day job powers, so I had to get some supplemental info that isn't as complete. I can see the linkinfo in there for the powers. And I thought the descriptions in the character creator called from the same sources. So if that was from the internal database for the servers, why are there typos in the creator ?!? Mistakes I can understand, but they should be consistent. Are there field values like damage set to non-zero values but flags that aren't displayed effective quash the damage? I'll have to take a look at that. I'm used to the old City of Data website that had (near) complete powers information displayed from a copy of the backend database copied from the servers. Similar to how CIT has a copy of the Badge and other data. I think it's more than an awful power. I think it's a power that either can't get enough targets effectively during gameplay, has value mistakes (this one least likely), or effective code limitations that curtail its effects. Or some combination of all 3 problems. It's the only way I can see the competent devs we have now producing such a power that should be good but ends up being meh. From what I've heard, I think the same thing could be afflicting Street Justice's Spinning Strike. And because we're in RC1 and close to RC2, we may see this go live. If that happens, both powers will have to have a careful examination to see what's really going on. Perhaps decoding combat logs, if that can be done effectively. I've got a number of Dark Melee toons and have a Street Justice toon planned. At least ToF is a low level power, so I'll be able to experience it myself quite soon. (Damn, Touch of Fear was the Dark Melee power I skipped, this is going to be tricky....)

It was a mistake I made. However, I clearly said I was getting the information from the i26 character creator's power description field. Not from anyone else. Thank you, @modest, for actually checking in-game in i26 on Scrapper Touch of Fear and proving that text is wrong. Upon hearing that the power description is incorrect and not matched by the actual power in i26, I went back and editted all my posts striking out the errant text and adding notes saying that the i26 power description is incorrect and the actual power does not have any damage for any AT in i26. Unfortunately, we don't always have the time to check each piece of information in-game and depend on those descriptions being accurate. (I'm busy with something else for i27p1 and have very limited time for testing.) Even though there's plenty of history of description typos and in-game data mistakes. So we depend on those who do take the time to actual check in-game to provide a sanity test on what the powers actually do. (There is some work on creating a new City of Data that will extract the power data from the game server itself, but we don't have it yet.) But my analysis above still holds, because I'm using real game feedback on i27p1 Touch of Fear: it's underwhelming and much worse than Shadow Maul. While the numbers imply "ToF is 2/3 the DPA and DPE of Shadow Maul but if you pack in the mobs, ToF has 2.2 times the area, so it'll be 1.5 times better." But that implication is wrong because many have tested i27p1 Touch of Fear and it ain't that good. Possible causes: You can't pack in the mobs into a 6ft radius circle within 7ft of the Dark Melee toon (ToF), not as well as into a 120° arc 7ft deep in front (Shadow Maul). The numbers in the descriptions for ToF versus Shadow Maul are wrong versus the in-game numbers, or they aren't effective in-game to give the true AoE area. Or both. And likely Street Justice's Spinning Strike suffers from the same issue. #1 can be somewhat tested by taking record of how many mobs are close enough and who gets hit, as well as getting screenshots. Touch of Fear needs to hit 50% more mobs than Shadow Maul just to match it. #2 can only be tested by a dev plunging into the code to see what the actual server numbers are. And whether the code that calculates the actual AoE is right. If #1 shows that Touch of Fear is hitting those 50% more mobs and better than Shadow Maul, then almost certainly #2 is true. If careful examination shows that #1 shows that some mobs seem to be close enough to be in the ToF AoE but never get struck, then almost certainly #2 is true.

And Talos Island for Blueside. Redside has Cap Au Diable by the north Docks and the University. Goldside is designed to suffer. And I can make a clone of my minimal base in under an hour. Full set of teleporters, vendor NPCs, medbay, and storage and crafting. Already have tested the needed changes for i27p1 and that takes about 5 minutes. If you can master driving a toon in City, you can pick up enough base editting to do so in an aftertoon, for yourself or your Supergroup. Note the Base still has the pieces for power and control, even though power and control were disabled back in i25.

Good catch. Confirmed. EDIT: damage in the i26 Scrapper Dark Melee Touch of Fear power description is typo. Touch of Fear has no damage in i26 for any AT. And another excellent point. I'm assuming what's in the character creators both i26p5 and i27p1 descriptions is correct. My experience with the powers besides the old and the new Touch of Fear jive with what the numbers say. I don't think I've ever hit more than 5 with Shadow Maul and certainly at most very rarely, so its target cap reduction shouldn't change that.

Me too. Last night I got the numbers from the character creators for both i26p5 and i27p1 and though "When did Touch of Fear become so awesome ?!? And now....". And still went back to the character creator today to confirm. ToF has damage on i26p5 and Midnight Grasp is only better for alpha strike and immobilize. EDIT: damage in the i26 Scrapper Dark Melee Touch of Fear power description is typo. Touch of Fear has no damage in i26 for any AT.

Oh, I know. Playing Dark Melee since 2006. 🙂 Thanks for pointing that out because others may not have known it. I'd manage to miss that ToF had damage added, sometime after Siphon Life received damage I'd think.... Okay, I can't find when either power gained damage. But on i26p5, it has the damage I posted above. And in fact in i26p5 is the best ST attack, better than Midnight Grasp (except for alpha strike and it gives fear as opposed to immobilize). EDIT: damage in the i26 Scrapper Dark Melee Touch of Fear power description is typo. Touch of Fear has no damage in i26 for any AT. That's what I assume is the intent of the change and what the code should implement. However, is that how the power acts? Because based upon the numbers for Scrappers, even though Touch of Fear has about 2/3 of the DPA and DPE of Shadow Maul, it also has about 2.2 times the AoE area (6ft radius circle versus 1/3 of a 7ft radius circle). If there are enough mobs in front of the Dark Melee character, Touch of Fear should be hitting about 2.2 times the number of mobs as Shadow Maul. If Shadow Maul would hit 4 mobs, Touch of Fear should hit 9. And if that was true, Touch of Fear would have about 1.5 times the summed DPA and DPE compared to Shadow Maul in a faster activating power. Even if Touch of Fear was hitting 3 mobs for every 2 that Shadow Maul would hit, it should feel about the same for damage, again in a faster activating power. And with the feedback of all you who've played the new Touch of Fear provided, there's no way that's true. Something is wrong in my analysis's assumptions. A couple of possibilities : Touch of Fear, despite having what appears to be a bigger AoE, is hitting at most about the same number of mobs as Shadow Maul or worse less, due to how mobs group and are encountered. Touch of Fear, despite having what appears to be a bigger AoE, does not have an AoE 2.2 times the size of Shadow Maul, but is less for some strange reason in the code (and I've had to work with all sorts of code, great to non-Euclidean). My example of chopping off all of the circular AoE more than 7ft from the Dark Melee character was just a wild guess. Both separately or worse together would reduce the effective number of mobs Touch of Fear strikes, giving it the meh feeling reported. There must be something that's killing the new Touch of Fear's feel.

Interesting idea. I don't think the players will object to more speed, but it's a complex mess of equations that were made that way for balance. The speeds of some powers and all the caps rise as the level goes up to 50. And the actual speeds short of the cap are made of components that add together. For historical reasons, that for fly speed is very complex, especially to give an appropriate speed for hover. Layered on top of that are special speed powers like what the Kheldians have, all the teleport powers, etc. It's a big set of interconnected design. And somewhere above the Superspeed cap there was a limit to how fast the server and client code could properly handle a character or a mob moving, which may have changed. I think revisions to speeds will be considered, but it would be best to put in a suggestion and get support for it. I can't see anything happening until after i27p1 is released. Then would have to be carefully examined and tested.

You can actually have a few buff pets at a time. I've got the Red and Blue Wisp Pets on a toon or two, just to test this out. If you use '/execpowtoggleon' in your chain of commands, the right-most one will execute to turn on that pet. Not quite sure here, but I think next use of the macro, the next-to-rightmost command will execute, which will force off the last pet as well. And so on.

Well, that's disappointing. Going back to the article by The_Gamemaster from 2006: https://web.archive.org/web/20120904194137/http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=114804 Over the years as I used Shadow Maul and the Vet/P2W/temp power Sands of Mu, I'd always try to really position my toon every time to get more targets in its arc. Which really helped offset missing if I'd at least had a chance at 2 or 3. Then joy of joys, Shadow Maul got buffed really well. More arc, more max targets. The expanded arc was what really improved it, as I could see the difference between the buffed Shadow Maul and the unchanged Sands of Mu. Now Shadow Maul's been nerfed a bit and Touch of Fear transformed. Let's get some numbers out of the character creators for i26p5 and i27p1: L50 Scrapper Damage Cast (AT) Rge AoE Tgts End Rech DPA DPE Expected AoE Shadow Punch both 52.55 1.056 7ft ST 1 4.37 3.00 49.8 12.0 Smite both 82.58 1.188 7ft ST 1 6.86 6.00 69.5 12.0 Shadow Maul i26p5 146.82 2.508 7ft 120° cone 10 11.02 11.00 58.5 13.3 i27p1 146.82 2.508 7ft 120° cone 5 11.02 11.00 58.5 13.3 51.3ft² Touch of Fear i26p5 121.89 1.32 7ft ST 1 8.53 8.00 92.3 14.2 ^^^ Damage is a typo in the power description for Scrapper Dark Melee Touch of Fear ^^^ Touch of Fear for all ATs in i26 has no damage i27p6 81.48 2.112 7ft 6ft radius 10 8.53 8.00 38.6 9.6 113.1ft² Siphon Life both 122.62 2.112 7ft ST 1 10.19 10.00 58.1 12.0 Midnight Grasp both 186.75 2.244 7ft ST 1 11.96 15.00 83.2 15.6 Shadow Maul compares well with the ST attacks even hitting only 1 target. Hit 2 and it's phenomenal. With that arc and mobs even loosely clumped, I know I can hit 3 or more. But to get the same performance out of i27p1's Touch of Fear, it needs to hit 3 targets when Shadow Maul hits 2. From the raw AoE, Touch of Fear should have over twice the area to pack in its targets. But from what everyone who tested it is saying, it still feels underwhelming. Is Touch of Fear's AoE truly a full circle of 6ft radius? Or does a mob not fall in the effective AoE if it's more than 7ft away from the Dark Melee toon? If that's the case, then it could lose up to just over half its expected AoE. And as Touch of Fear's fear is still only on the selected target, it's now a slower fear power. It also went from being the best Single Target Attack to now being the worst AoE attack. EDIT: damage in the i26 Scrapper Dark Melee Touch of Fear power description is typo. Touch of Fear has no damage in i26 for any AT.

Agreed. I wouldn't want a power designed to be a leveling crutch, expecting it to be thrown away at a higher level. I still remembered reading a article early in my playing City that went into a lot of detail on leveling a Dark/Dark Scrapper, with build for levels 1 to 12 with TO slotting, then levels 13 to 22 with DOs, then to level 40 with SOs, then a respec, then a level 50 respec build, then some alternate builds. But with all those builds, the powers respec'ed out of were good powers, like Air Superiority, the melee attack in the Flight Pool, to give another attack before others unlocked in Dark Melee. That was well before other powers were added to do this, like the Origin Inherent Attacks and the Veteran Attacks (now P2W) Sands of Mu, Ghost Slaying Axe, Blackwand, and Nemesis Staff. I like to design a build that I can both level and later play at 50, with a bit of accommodation to respecing. Eventually I'll revise the build as I get more knowledge about its power and how they work together. But I'll never plan to respec just to change things at a later level. Link to that article in the spoiler.