Maelwys

I've not observed much difference on my Bot/Kin if I'm being honest, at least vs CoT (they've always been annoying, for all the crappy cave maps if nothing else). Council have gone from "facerollingly boring" to "may need to press an extra button or two occasionally". Admittedly that toon is pretty much twinked out, so the deck is rather stacked in favour of my henchies even without Bonfire.

Correct. Valuewise, Defender modifiers for the buffs/debuffs are higher than Controller, Corruptor, Mastermind, etc. but otherwise the same behaviour and ratios apply. Also; buffs/debuffs from later castings of Fulcrum Shift will stack with those of previous castings. So a Kin with decent +recharge% can still get their team to the damage cap in a target-poor environment via multiple Fulcrum Shift casts (although Siphon Power helps too!)

Yes Zep's post is still accurate. In short: Target a mob. Activate Fulcrum Shift. #1: The target and any other enemies near them get their damage debuffed. #2: Any players (or friendly units like pets) close enough to the debuffed enemies get a damage buff; which INCREASES DRASTICALLY depending on how many enemies were debuffed. #3: Any players (or friendly units like pets) close enough to the player that activated Fulcrum shift also get a SEPERATE damage buff; this one is constant regardless of how many enemies were hit. So if the person casting Fulcrum shift and the target(s) hit are close enough together, then it's possble to get your damage buffed twice by same same Fulcrum Shift activation. However if the person casting Fulcrum Shift is hanging too far back, then the best place to stand depends on how many foes get debuffed. With 1 foe, stand near the caster. With 3 foes, stand near the target. Two foes is dead even. Yes, it definitely needs accuracy slotted. See here for defender Kinetic numbers; and note the three components at play here: the DEBUFF OF THE TARGET (not autohit; accuracy modifier of 1.00 so no special bonuses), the BUFF AROUND THE TARGET (autohit) and the BUFF AROUND THE CASTER (autohit)

Over the recent beta release candidate patches; Bonfire varied wildly. It started out as a MAJOR nerf to KB chance (from 140% to 115%) in Release Candidate #1. Then they reverted part of that nerf in Release Candidate #2 (raising it a bit to 120%) but introduced a ToHit Check for the damage component. Release Candidate #3 (which made it to live) kept the changes from #2. I can't find any hard numbers on the KB -> KD IO "reduced effect"changes themselves, but I did a fair amount of personal in-game testing on Brainstorm with my MM... and over a reasonable sample size (5 AE farming missions with several hundred mobs) the resulting flop rate of Level 50 - 54 mobs was very slightly less than it was on Live. The actual observed increase in foes staying upright within Bonfire's radius was only about 8% (and whether I used a 'Sudden Acceleration' IO and/or an 'Overwhelming Force' IO made no noticable difference; and neither did combining either/both of them with a 'Ragnarok: Chance for KD' Proc). It was the other changes to the Epic Pool variants of Bonfire which have unfortunately resulted in my MM having to respec - the Epic Pool version of Bonfire was also hit with a vastly reduced Radius (25 -> 15ft) and Duration (45s -> 30s)... and that radius reduction in particular was enough to seriously cripple their performance. However neither of those changes affected the Controller/Dominator Primary version of Bonfire.

Bots/ pairs pretty well with almost any secondary; it really repends what you want from the character. I've played Bot/Dark and Bot/Traps extensively, but my favourite is a Bot/Kin. It works reasonably well (it was *very* well prior to the recent patch that crippled Bonfire) - Speed Boost and Transference counter your henchies' endurance woes, Increase Density fills in useful gaps in their Damage Resistance and Mez Protection; and Transfusion is a solid AoE heal with -Regen debuffs baked in. Plus, obviously, Siphon Power and Fulcrum Shift makes your pets' AoE damage output completely skyrocket. Unfortunately it's impossible these days for a Bot/Kin to softcap their pets' defence solo without Incarnate abilities (the Assbot and Drones used to be able to hit >45% back when Protector Bot bubbles double-stacked) but they can still reach around 36.6%, so a single Support Core Embodiment or +Defence AoE Inspiration will softcap them. Running Barrier Core Epiphany is also capable of softcapping all your pets for the first 60s of its 120s duration (providing you're running a +Defence Alpha Slot like Agility Core Paragon to increase its default buff slightly!) and if you combine it with a Lore Slot support pet that has a +defence buff (such as Warworks, Robotic Drones, IDF or Clockwork) then it can push your henchies over the softcap during the rest of the time. + The Warworks and IDF and Drones Lore support pets have an AoE +5% Defence bubble that constantly cycles "on for 10 seconds then off for 10 seconds" plus a fast-recharging Single Target Heal/Mez Protection buff. + The Clockwork support pet has a Single-Target +5% Defence bubble that can keep four of your henchmen bubbled constantly (it targets the oldest pets first, so summon your Assault Bot before the rest!) plus a slightly-slower-recharging Single Target Heal. + The Talons support pet has an AoE up-for-20s-down-for-25s +5% Defence/+10% DmgRes buff and a ST Heal. + The Seers support pet has a ST +5% Def buff in Fortitide which can only affect one pet at a time; plus a ST Heal. + The Arachnos support pet has an AoE +10% Defence buff with 90s uptime; but it'll only get it off once per summoning (so 90s every 15 mins). I typically run with Warworks, since the LT deals decent and consistent -Regen debuffs; which when combined with Bot/ attacks and Transfusion can halt an AV's regeneration. For "normal" gameplay rather than "farming" it can help to run Clarion Core Epiphany instead of Barrier, since no native mez protection for the Mastermind themselves can make things a bit iffy (although the henchmen being immune to everything due to their native protections plus ID helps drastically). Mine is currently sitting at roughly 50% Defence to all positionals with just Maneuvers and Combat Jumping running plus the Protector Bot shield and a smattering of set bonuses; but they've got no real noteworthy damage resistances, so a few henchmen tend to stay in Bodyguard mode just in case! Until recently a large part of this character's soloing performance at endgame (fighting endless hordes of +4s) relied upon Bonfire from the 'Flame Mastery' Epic Pool with a KB>KD IO slotted. Since the Page 7 nerf, Bonfire remains useful for pure survivability (it has a reduced radius and a slightly lowered KD rate... but it still reliably flops enemies that remain within the radius) however it has become far less useful for keeping enemies bunched up - too many enemies now manage to flee out of the area of effect, which means that they escape your Swarm Missile Burn patches and also become much more awkward to catch in a Fulcrum Shift. I'm currently experimenting with other options (like Repel combined with Web Envelope/Electrifying Fences) but am yet to settle on a new optimal setup. That said, if you bring a duo buddy (or second account) with a Taunt or AoE immobilise etc. then it's still a crazy effective combo. Same goes for any teams short of +4 Hardmode TFs (where /Kin is always appreciated, but continually resummoning the Drones can get annoying!) [EDIT:] I spent quite some time this evening testing a number of possible new combinations on Brainstorm. It looks like it's currently a toss up between Mu Mastery (Repel with a KB>KD IO, plus Electric Fences can keep things neatly bunched up) or Fire Mastery (Bonfire with a KB>KD IO, plus Fireball with a 'Superior Frozen Blast: Chance for Immob' Proc - the Immob proc triggers just often enough to keep a sufficient number of foes within the bonfire). The first setup gives you greater survivability by way of Charged Armor, however keeping Repel up in the middle of a big horde of enemies is a major endurance drain and basically requires you to spam Transference. The second setup gives you greater damage output due to Fireball's better numbers plus an extra 'Annihilation -Res' Proc in Bonfire; but the Immobilise proc gets less reliable as enemy level/rank increases. Mace Mastery performs worse than both due to the long animation time on Web Envelope, and Scorpion Shield is useless since you're already softcapped.

Speaking as someone who has also recently returned to CoH after going AWOL for a few years to pick up the [Married] and [Daughter] and [Son] achievement badges... ...Welcome Back. For me, CoH is one of those odd edge cases where there is sufficient rose-tinted nostalgia to make me want to play it again AND where logging in and actually running a character through a few random missions/TFs/story arcs is genuinely enjoyable (rather than such a grind that it feels like a second day job, like some other old MMORPGS I could mention...) That said, please don't burn yourself out. I know personally how tough it can be to get free time whenever you have lots of other new RL commitments; and taking a breather to detox/recharge is very important for mental health. It's not great if you constantly feel like you're trudging uphill in the snow with a tractor strapped to your back; regardless of how many people are relying on you to keep going. So if updating CoD feels like "work" rather than "play" then by all means take a step back and let it sit slightly out-of-date for a bit. CoDv2 is a great + very useful resource; but the playerbase will survive if its updates don't quite manage to match the breakneck pace of the Homecoming dev team! 😉

MM Fire Mastery Epic Pool Bonfire still has the incorrect duration. It was 45 seconds, and is now 30 seconds. No mention of the reduction in the Patch notes. I previously reported this on the Beta Testing Bug forum , the Main Feedback thread and the Focused Feedback thread ... This had been affecting release candidates 1, 2 and 3 and is now affecting Live as well. CAN I HAZ FIX PLZ? 🙂 [EDIT: Whoohoo Fix Incoming! - Thanks Kindly! 🙂 ] Now, on to some more general feedback... The Good: Fantastic job on the RWZ revamps, Advanced mode changes and customization features. Clearly a lot of work went into this and it is genuinely appreciated. The Bad: Whilst my Bot/Kin/Flame MM was *very* negatively affected by the Epic Pool changes, to the point where I am seriously considering taking both Repel and Whirlwind in order for him to continue soloing at +4/8, I can appreciate that the intent of the power rebalancing aspect of this patch was not to cremate Fire Mastery but to try to bring Epic and Patron pool performance roughly into line with each other. However Bonfire as a KD patch filled a very useful niche. None of the other MM Patron/Epic pools contain any powers that provide noteworthy AoE Crowd Control; which is a real shame. The closest out there is Web Grenade from the Mace Patron pool. Having something along the lines of Freezing Rain, Ice Slick or even Ice Patch available would be greatly appreciated (and if it wasn't for the cottage rule then I'd be very much advocating for Flash Freeze or Hoarfrost from "Chill Mastery" to be swapped for Ice Patch). As it stands currently, Bonfire's area of affect has been reduced to almost a third of what it was before and the "flop rate" notably reduced when a KB>KD IO is slotted - foes are now able to flee the area of effect far more quickly, with the result that my AssBot's Burn Patches end up scattering large spawns across the map again. Sad Keanu is Sad.

The above patch notes are taken from Release Candidate #3 (the current build at time of writing). However it appears that Bonfire has also had its duration cut from 45s to 30s... but I can't see any mention of this duration adjustment in this nor within the patch notes for previous Release Candidates)? Further details here and here. Cheers!

I SAY THEE NEIGH!

To be fair, in that case I'd go with Thugs/Storm. Purely to keep hurricane up so that you never have to catch a whiff of what The Rock is Cooking.

Aww. But witchhunts are fun. Any chance we can throw Elon Musk into a pond and see if he floats? (My money's on the water spontaneously combusting...)

HERETIC! EVERYONE KNOWS ITS A COMET! 🙈🙉

Same, FWIW. Unfortunately... that label isn't always particularly good indicator of what a person finds funny or acceptable, how thick their skin is, or where they sit on the sliding scale between "prideful/holier-than-thou/prosperity-gospel/get-the-heck-out-of-my-pew-we've-been-sitting-here-for-generations" and "humble/chief-of-sinners/dirt-poor-suffering-servant/can-I-give-you-the-shirt-off-my-back". Example: I'm from Northern Ireland, which is a lovely place where two sets of supposedly-Christian groups have been knocking the absolute stuffing out of each other for decades because a bloke named William liked Orange tictacs and they prefer Green ones or something equally ridiculous. One of our country's major claims to fame is that we have some of the best joint surgeons on the planet because the eedjits can't go five minutes without putting bullets through each other's kneecaps. OK, things have supposedly been on pause since 1998, but it's still it's all themmuns' fault, they started it and we don't want their sort 'round here. Personally I find "Life of Brian" downright hilarious; I'm pretty self-depreciating with a black sense of humour, I have a large threshold for profanity and for what some might consider verbal heresy, and it takes a *lot* to rub me up the wrong way enough to break out the metaphorical pitchforks. But I have a few friends who went protesting outside the cinema waving placcards and chanting "Down with this sort of thing!" whenever 50 Shades of Grey hit the screens. The old George Orwell quote is unfortunately often quite accurate: "As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents." It's usually difficult to find someone online who argues that Jesus was a bad person; but you'll find plenty of people that argue that Christians are bad people. And I'd be right at the top of that list. (Because I believe that I'm fundamentally (ha!) a bad person, who has been saved by Grace... although I fully recognise that other's Milage May Vary) However as a result, if anyone posts something like "please stop X/Y/Z it offends me because I'm a Christian"... heckles can get raised. Best case, you'll end up with a bunch of folk thinking "why are they bringing something so off topic as religion into the discussion forums for a fantasy RPG?". It's similar to bringing up political beliefs, but with a few thousand years of hate, bigotry and martyrism thrown in for good measure. It might look like a nice broad road to take... but... just don't. Even if you're lugging your cross behind you. Now. ALL THAT SAID, the General Chat Channel is a wretched hive of scum and villainy (and heroes, rogues and vigilantes). You must be cautious.

Also in the BBS, Usenet and IRC eras, if someone actually made the effort to connect to the interwebs and join a particular subforum/group/etc then chances are they were invested enough to treat being shamed/excluded/banned as a bad thing; so it was a suitable deterrent. Then over time, someone invented myspace and youtube comments and trolling somehow changed into a badge of honour; if not an outright art form. Looking back through the rose-tinted lenses, I seem to recall the most the old CoH forums ever had to put up with was the odd "/jranger" and "Gone to the Americans!" interspersed with endless 😉 from Golden Girl. It was almost relaxing. Sure, there was the occasional thread full of people completely freaking out over something objectively hilarious, such as someone spawning the Malta Titan on top of a Hamidon Raid. But in my defence it was just that one time and you all had it coming.

It's not good game design, but it can be good build design. Most good builds get better when you slot procs into them. As others have pointed out, it's always a balancing act because any slots taken up by procs won't be granting you better raw +enhancement numbers or (usually) set bonuses... but in most high-end builds there is a bit of leeway there. Often you can get "all you need" from an attack power with just 3-4 slots - so why not use the others for procs? The annoying thing for me is the interaction of procs with recharge enhancement % in the power itself (e.g. in order to get the most out of a damage proc, you want to raise its liklihood of activating... which you do by lowering the recharge% enhancement slotting for that attack to the bare minimum needed to keep an unbroken attack chain going). To my mind this is messy and counterintuitive and I'd very much rather that all +recharge % was ignored for PPM calculations, not just global +recharge %. Thankfully CoH was never balanced around IOs, let along procs. Even "Hard mode" quests can be handled by a bunch of toons using only SOs (as long as the characters are reasonably well built and buffs are liberally employed) Incarnate trials are similar - although having higher-tier incarnate abilities is *almost* required in some of them due to how helpful the level bump is. All that said, I do have a VEAT Crab Soldier called "Proc Lobster".

Bonfire behaviour in Release Candidate 2 appears unchanged from Release Candidate 1. Compared to live: slightly less bouncy, smaller radius, now requires accuracy for the damage component. And it still has the wrong duration (30s instead of 45s; which may be intentional but isn't listed in the patch notes)

Bonfire from the MM Epic Pool still has the wrong duration. (30s down from 45s; which may be intentional but is not listed in the patch notes)

The OP lucked out and caught Luminara on a good day, so all the important bits have already been covered. 2c follows. This is the build design aspect of "attack chains" in a nutshell. Choose several attack powers that you want to rotate, then look closely at the ones with the longest recharge times. You'll want these powers to be fully recharged by the time the others attacks in the chain are finished animating (and adding up the animation times accurately is where "arcanatime" comes in). "Hard mode" is figuring out the damage-per-animation-time (DPA) of each of your attacks and making sure that the attacks with the highest DPA get used as often as possible. "Expert Mode" is the same as hard mode, but also factors in things like damage buffs / resistance debuffs (since often it will make more sense *not* to use the highest-DPA power if your buffs/debuffs need refreshed instead - Claws "Follow Up" is a good example of this). +Recharge buffs can sometimes be useful to include here too. "Ludicrous Mode" is breaking out the spreadsheets for Damage Proc likelihood (PPM) calculations (where you need to balance "recharge rate reduction" slotting in each power so that your damage procs activate more often) and figuring out what T4 Interface Incarnate slot will work best (and it's not ALWAYS one of the Degenerative flavours!). --------------------- However after you do all that, you'll still need to actually play the character and rotate through the attack chain. This can have its challenges, because not all attack chains are created equally. Some characters will have very simple repeating optimal attack chains (such as a high-recharge Katana Scrapper - Gambler's Cut -> Soaring Dragon -> Gambler's Cut -> Golden Dragonfly) but others can be infuriatingly complex (the best I could get an old Axe Tanker of mine down to was 9 steps Chop -> Cleave -> Swoop -> Chop -> Gash -> Cleave -> Chop -> Swoop -> Gash). CoH doesn't have "sequential power activation scripts"... the closest you can get are binds/macros that activate multiple toggles. Clicky powers are trickier. But there are a few lifehacks that can help to automate activating a large bunch of clickies. One option is to use keybind text files - this will let you mash a single button on your keyboard/joypad/etc that cycles through all of your attacks and tries to activate each one in turn. However the more powers used in your chosen attack chain, the more times you'll have to mash that chosen button in order for the bind sequence to "find the right power". You can get around this somewhat by setting the button itself to 'Turbofire' (either via a hardware gaming keyboard/joypad/whatever setting, or via something like a GlovePIE script) but it'll only ever work as fast as your computer can load up the text files. So there'll always be a chance of a slight delay between power activations; which is why manually activating one attack and queueing up the next is always going to be the way to go if you care about bleeding-edge maximum damage output (most don't, so sequental keybinds are often "good enough"! 😁 ) An alternative option (which can also combine nicely with the bind files!) is to use the green "autofire" feature that is built into CoH. If you hold down the "Control" key and click on one of the powers in your tray, it'll put a green circle around it. That power will now automatically try to activate whenever it is recharged + has a valid target. This only works for a single power at a time, but if you use it on a decent-damage fast-recharging attack then it can often be enough to fill in any gaps in your chain and over time it'll save you an awful lot of button mashing.

I played STO, and this always cracks me up. How on earth was anyone on that Dev team surprised? The holodeck misbehaves on the shows almost every other episode!

I may have missed out a "😜" smiley and/or sarcasm HTML tags in my OP. (That said, I seem to recall a certain expletive-laden comment from BackAlleyBrawler whilst observing players combining Howling Twilight and Oil Slick during Hamidon raids... we always managed to surprise the devs somehow) 😇

You just know that there's someone out there with an Empath/Archery Defender that specialises in administering curative suppositories... 🏹 🚑 👨‍⚕️

I'm sure different people will have different takes on it, but I always looked on "Frankenslotting" as what heppens when you "mix" IOs (e.g. some sets, some basics, whatever) as opposed to using a "Full IO set" (which is nice and clean and surely the the dev-intended "right" way of doing things...) That doesn't necessarilly mean that you need to fill every single enhancement slot with a different type of enhancement; it's enough as long as there are at least some visible stitch marks and/or duct tape. Dr Vahzilok would be proud. There are an awful awful lot of builds out there with 6-slotted full IO sets and nothing else; some people honestly can't see past "full set = always best".

I'm 132% confident that my builds are properly slotted... 🙃 More seriously, I'm a OCD powergamer across all games, tabletop or computerised... ...which basically means that I'm a complete spreadsheet junky and numbershead but not a "spoiler or shamer". I enjoy completely grokking the underlying mechanics of a game and learning abilities/powersets in exhaustive detail. And min/maxing. However I don't particularly like being the star of the show and I certainly don't like causing my teammates to have less fun. So I'll often roll up a "sub par" (powerset combinations that are considered underperforming/conflicting/bad) and/or "support" (team buffing) character and then push its mechanical performance as far as I possibly can. And whenever I'm on a team I'll typically hang back unless I'm being called upon to tank (in which case you can bet that I'll be leading the way, virtually unkillable and keeping everything tightly bunched up for AoEs; and playing merry havoc with the concept of the aggro cap via pseudopets and mez effects). For City of Heroes, that has translated to things like a creating a viable Spines/DA scrapper that simply could not run out of endurance back in i9 (unheard of at the time), Blasters that got around the T9 Nuke recovery crash by using *Rise of the Pheonix* or *Drain Psyche* as part of their regular attack chain, one of the first melee-defence-softcapped Electric "Blappers", a Katana/Regen scrapper that outdamaged Claws/ (due to -res and damage procs), a INV/SS Tanker who could go toe-to-toe with Ghost Widow and the Clockwork King, a Peacebringer without Nova form who still put most Fire blasters to shame, and a Sonic/Elec Defender that was instrumental to scoring quite a number of team "firsts" (e.g. MoSTF) on the server in question and almost clocked up more playtime than all my other toons put together... And much more recently; taking *Repel* on a toon that has no native Resistance/Defences or Mez Protection (a Bot/Kin MM which can keep its henchies alive unaided whilst ploughing through groups of +4/8 faster than a Brute, even *without* abusing Bonfire). Oh, and a /RA Scrapper that has Softcapped positional defences, Hardcapped S/L resistances, and more effective Maximum HP than a Tanker with Dull Pain up and greater self-healing over time than a /Regen. I'm a firm beleiver in "frankenslotting" - not using full 6-piece IO sets everywhere; but instead 3 or 5-slotting to get more useful procs, set bonuses or raw enhancement % numbers. And also in taking "Confront" on Scrappers... 🥴 Now, if you ask me if I'm confident in my costumes, that's another question entirely... one of my coalition Supergroups back in the day was called "the Iconites" for a very good reason, and I rather suspect more inf has been spent on tailor fees over the years than on respecs!

The latest revision of the patch that went live a few hours ago has altered Bonfire yet again. I've been tracking and testing the changes on my Bot/Kin/Heat MM. A longer comment is in the main thread , but the main points are below: ------ + On Live, a player always flopped five times over Bonfire's 45 second duration. A critter was likely to flop ten times. + On Brainstorm yesterday, a player always flopped five times over Bonfire's 45 second duration. A critter was likely to flop four times. + On Brainstorm today, a player always flopped three times over Bonfire's 30 second duration. A critter was likely to flop six times. Yesterday I noticed many large spawns that didn't have a single flop before they all made it out of the bonfire. Today was better. Not quite as good as on live, but better. The smaller radius means that critters are rather more likely to make it out of the patch than they are on live; but providing you can keep them within the area of effect then the flop rate is good enough to make bonfire "viable" once again as a CC tool. The shorter duration is annoying however - 120s base recharge, 30s duration, and 3.07s cast time makes it practically impossible to run permanently any longer; even for a /kin with Perma-Hasten, triple-stacked Siphon Speed and a +33% recharge rate T4 Alpha Slot. I don't see anything in the patch notes about a reduced duration, so I'm hoping that's a bug...? Notably the ToHit check does indeed appear to only be kicking in for damage. The knockback/knockdown didn't appear to be missing; even vs players. My "hostile" target player in warburg noticed a lot of misses from the damage ticks; but they still got flopped on their rear the same number of times regardless of +defense toggles or insps. I also tested both Sudden Acceleration KB->KD and Overwhelming Force KB->KD individually and combined; as well as adding Ragnarok: Chance for KD. There did not appear to be any noticable difference in flop rate from the additional IOs (e.g. pick any one single KB->KD and don't bother adding a Ragnarok proc) However combining Bonfire with another ability like Whirlwind or Repel (with KB->KD procs in them) made the critter flop rate skyrocket. [EDIT: @TheDevs: I know part of the balance pass involves a penalty for "Hard Mez" (like Holds) of 3.0x cooldown and for "Soft Mez" (like Immobilises) of 2.0x cooldown. And Bonfire as a KD patch could nearly count as "Hard Mez". However 30s duration/120s recharge combined with the reduced 15ft radius feels a bit too drastic to me. Any chance of 30s duration/90s recharge or 40s duration/120s recharge instead; or bumping the radius back up to 25ft please? Personally I'd actually lean towards the latter - Bonfire's damage is honestly an afterthought for me; but there are people who have been leveraging it as a AoE damage patch... and at least if it keeps the original radius they could choose to slot it for +Accuracy and Damage Procs, at the expense of Recharge Rate and CC effectiveness. Alternatively, perhaps apply yesterday's lessened KD rate but allow multiple slotted KD IOs (Sudden Acceleration KB->KD, Overwhelming Force KD Proc, Ragnarok KD Proc) to combine and raise the rate so that 2-3 IOs = equal to Live?]