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tidge

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Everything posted by tidge

  1. These show different 'times' on the order of a minute or less between Scrappers, Tankers, and Brutes. And IIRC (without reopening the builds) the various builds don't rely on what I'd consider typical for those AT... from memory, and I could be wrong because I don't use MIDS, but I think the Fighting Pool's Cross Punch was leveraged. Ston's work was interesting, and necessarily somewhat niche, but it is IMO showing neither a big difference (even if measurable) nor one completely applicable across all content and player builds.
  2. The MOAR REGEN for critters is a head-scratcher for me. I can think of only a handful of circumstances where this can be an issue: low-level characters that have low-tier Damage-over-Time powers... the DoT is going to make less of an effect (AFK) Farming characters that rely on DoT... this is going to slow them down solo-ish characters that get defeated (by a boss) and have to trudge back to the mission from a hospital... to find the baddies completely healed up. If the reasoning was offered, I missed it. Maybe it's because new sets are getting -Regen components?
  3. I almost never take Hasten, the economy of Homecoming makes it relatively easy to achieve high levels of global Recharge (plus other good stuff) from IOs, on every AT. I also tend to find the Speed pool mediocre, so picking Hasten often restricts other alternate build choices(*1). Many people choose to try to make Hasten "perma", but in practice this isn't really necessary. I can imagine circumstance when perma-Hasten would be preferred, but those are all niche content or for builds that are exclusively running attack chains exclusively relying on inherently long recharge attacks. When I do take Hasten, it is: Dominators, who won't otherwise have perma-Dom, especially a leveling-up Dominator, or "Tankers" that rely on longer recharging powers to survive the hardest content. (*1) There are a number of pools that have 4 (of 5) excellent powers; picking Hasten delays how soon I can get that 4th or 5th power *and* is getting in the way of a pick of a prerequisite power from those pools.
  4. Canasta... the card game with the most grind. IMO, YMMV.
  5. I can't say that I've ever soloed an AV with my Dark/Dark Controller, but I know I 2-man tackled most of the AVs helping someone else run through the MJ stories. The dominant impression of that Dark/Dark was that long before level 50, it was actually unusual for it to be in any sort of trouble on the Citadel+ TFs, even if I was solo against rooms of turned-up enemies. It felt odd that the character could be so survivable without being fully slotted or having a full kit of power picks.
  6. Some of us have to speed through content to get back to costume creating and base building! I don't think Controllers are getting nerfed... obviously Seeds of Confusion was a massive outlier, it was pretty absurd to have THIS level of AoE control at level 8. I wasn't expecting the changes to Carrion Creepers... sure I see the explanation, but I rather liked being able to turn this power into a sort of 'nuke', given that the Fly Trap has always been somewhat meh. Tankers... they get nerfed in a much more meta way (i.e. all tankers are affected by a common set of changes), but this looks to be a dialing back as a result of other recent changes. I don't see how the Tanker changes upcoming in i28p2 are going to make the game go faster. Without testing (on my part) the Tanker changes look to have done more 'turning down' of the AT than I would have expected (less self-buff, less debuff, less damage dealt, etc.) It remains to be seen how this plays out on x8, on x1 there will probably be only a limited amount of content that it will be noticeable.
  7. Of the Tanker-focused, across-the-board changes, I agree that the reduced damage for 'overcap' is a bit of a head-scratcher. In practice: if my tanker is targeting bosses, then I'm slightly less bothered by minions taking less damage... but with PBAoE and some cone/AoE attacks I can't guarantee that I'm actually going to hit the Bosses in the first 5 (or 10) targets. It also feels like one more thing for RNG to mess up. Radiation Armor (on Tankers) is going to take a little getting used to... I was mostly opting for Radiation Armor to use on characters which I didn't particularly crave loading up on offense from the secondary (early-ish in the build) because of the proc-ability of Radiation Therapy from the primary. It doesn't look to becoming a bad power for %procs, but the utility of it will diminish. I'm probably going to have to revisit my choices of Healing/Recharge in it and swap into Accuracy (while leveling, and I have at least one character that has slightly fewer ToHit and Accuracy bonuses that I usually opt for.
  8. Here is a new reason to reject the idea of trudging everyone to the cell block on a TF just to fight "doors"... the number of doors in a cell block is only a fraction of what is needed for the Doorbuster badge.
  9. 1) Players have to do enough damage (over time) to overcome the inherently high values of health recovery from the Regeneration GMs get (for being big sacks of HP) 1b) Players debuffing GMs helps 2) Players have to survive contact with the GMs (usually through Defense values) 2b) Players have to be able to "take punches (and controls)" #1 is typically done by players by summoning Lores. #2 is typically done by using Destiny powers. A solo player that can handle 1 and 2 doesn't need Incarnates. A couple of players with full slotting (so close to 50) that have both 1 & 2 covered can usually handle most GMs. Jack in Irons is somewhat interesting since his rework: It's got several melee AoE (so it can hit multiple opponents at once) and several different controls (so it can take some opponents out of the fight). Jack (in the open world) normally isn't a "level 50" monster, and during the Halloween event I believe it is the old (pre-reworked) Jack that can appear in high-level zones.
  10. On my Tankers, if the Tank lacks protection and has an obvious gap in resistance coverage, I'll often try to add the Aegis 20% Mez/5% Psi resistance piece. This is about the only circumstance when I chase more mez resistance.
  11. As this is a low-level arc, extra START vendor attacks may come in useful for many players working on Doorbuster here.
  12. I like Beam Rifle on Sentinels better than I like it on Blasters. The disintegration mechanic favors lots of target-switching and the shorter range is really no problem for Sentinels. I don't have a SR Sentinel but my general experience with the AT is that the secondaries are wicked good and it is pretty easy to make an extremely survivable character with most any of them. A casual (Sentinel) comment: For whatever reason I found it pretty easy to end up passively hitting the MaxHP cap on my Sentinels, usually with the two accolades. SR has the Master Brawler +Absorb, so I would definitely leverage it. If the protection from Practiced Brawler is desired... I'd probably go a different route (Sorcery pool perhaps?)
  13. In the open world, the XP rewards for Giant Monsters is pretty miserable IMO.
  14. This is the main reason why I rarely pursue "caps" (for the purposes of this thread, "Defense caps") There are some amazing things to be done with characters, especially now (in the HC era) when we have gotten earlier access to so many different powers. I feel lucky if I can squeeze as many as four powers outside the primary and secondary before level 26... there is no way in this era I'd plan to burn 4 power picks on (for example) 3 from the fighting pool + Combat Jumping, just for a smidge more S/L resistance and some extra defense before level 30. IMO, that's old school thinking from when we had more 'empty levels' and needed to invest slots faster into the primary/secondary powers. I'm unpersuaded by arguments like "but you will take 10% - 100% more damage per attack!", especially on ATs where that might end up being less than +10 HP of extra damage, or the damage to the green bar is otherwise going to be completely mitigated by Absorb, Regeneration, self-healing, blah blah fishcakes.
  15. Nova form supports a team by Blasting... I think the Nova form is a mediocre Blaster above level 20, but that's a different discussion. Below 16, they are top-notch Blasters. Dwarf form is a pretty solid tanker at all levels... its just that the Dwarf form won't get ALL the tricks available to other tank classes... but they do get pretty much all the tanking tricks to support a team. Self-buffs? Each of the forms gets an 'auto' power that can be further slotted and does buff them. Sure they can't trivially dip into power pools like non-EATs for powers to use outside of human form... but there are IMO precious few pool powers that actually support a team. If the argument is primarily "I want Hasten in Dwarf form"... Hasten *is* a click, so it isn't like that is off the table... and Hasten, despite the propaganda, is probably one of the least necessary powers to 'perma'/'auto'. Defensive/Resistance toggles from pool powers aren't nothing, but they aren't world-breaking... and any global pieces/set bonuses slotted in them will also work in non-human forms.
  16. But I have Kick/Tough/Weave and Hasten by level 20!
  17. I actually have done this (under the guise of "running lvl 40 arcs") to get level 45 IO recipe drops, used to get the 45/50 recipe crafting badges (and the rewards that go with them). The uncommon+ recipes are cheaper to craft when they are below level 50, but those drops are somewhat unreliable (compared to the commons, which we need lots of).
  18. I'd be against the OP suggestion... but for complicated reasons relating to current ease of crafting and my personal willingness to make IOs available for cheap on the AH. Also: lotsa squeeze, little juice. Personally: I tend to craft common 25/30 and 45/50 recipes for the inventory space rewards. I almost always skip crafting the others; I'll post those (the first 50) recipes on the AH to earn more AH space. I find it personally convenient that 25/30 is when the common IOs (almost) meet/ (finally) exceed SOs, and players can spend a lot of time (solo) between 42-47 so 45s offer utility. 50 is 50 of course. I *think* I've got at least one character with a (incomplete) second level-50 build that is mostly populated with level 50 commons, waiting for me to get back to it.
  19. The original sin of Inspirations, if there is one, is not the inspirations fault, it's that certain powers in the original game were inferior versions of inspirations, including some Armor T9s, and many original self-healing options. Long recharges, crashes, gatekeeping powers are all things that can be avoided by just using Inspirations.
  20. IIRC, the OP was upset because they felt that "drive by" buffing was affecting their data parsing. I can recognize how this circumstance could be seen as a negative, but I find the request bordering on absurdity, especially with respect to "I want to stand by Ms. Liberty in peace!"... There is no shortage of other trainers, and there is a second trainer in Atlas Park. You can install a trainer in a SG base. At low-levels, I don't understand the desire for parsing logs The game is applying scaling boosts There are few powers, with few slots XP will bring levels, which also changes scaling It's incredibly easy to delete an unwanted buff, or to just play content "behind closed/instanced doors" If the data parsing is in "open world", I also don't want to hear about "kill stealing" or "stop debuffing my targets!" I don't do script-based data-mining, but I do try to remember to activate the "deny Mystic Fortune on myself"... frequently whatever I have been "gifted" doesn't matter, but there are a few circumstances where it has made a character's performance 'uneven enough' that I've come to not like it.
  21. I agree with Senator @Troo Tar Patch has been crazy good for a long time, and nothing has changed for it. From my PoV, the only thing that has stolen some of the shine from Tar Patch is that since Homecoming allows either T1 or T2 to be taken at lvl 1, the power sets that wish they had something like Tar Patch at level 1 don't feel so bad any more.
  22. Some time back the blue side version of SSA1 was adjusted so that the villain who appears in the final mission counts as a defeated villain. The equivalent SSA1 mission redside does not award hero counts the same way. I haven't tried defeating the +20 level heroes that appear at the end!
  23. That was something of the point I was trying to make. All Masterminds used to be "active" (because... "keep henchmen alive"), some (in the era of easy defenses) can get away with being relatively "passive"... that is, stay in bodyguard mode and go stand toe-to-toe with an enemy. I think Marine excels at this, because it's debuffing/buffing/healing along with Shifting Tides... but the MM has to pick targets. It's not like Dark where (in the old days) simply standing near henchmen and spamming heals was a top-ish tier strategy. For a real eye-opening perspective on how MMs and Controllers are different, I suggest a Crabbermind. You don't get pets until late, but it really exposes the different mechanics in play that IMO gives players a good feel for the balance decisions between pets and henchmen... and how those different things feed into how the ATs play.
  24. /Traps will keep you crazy busy. Robotics/ is a dark horse candidate for active... the bots are 99% ranged, so repositioning them (when you feel like it) can take up some mental bandwidth. My hot take... /Marine can be somewhat "active" (it is probably the strongest of the MM secondaries, with plenty of good powers) but for melee-based henchmen all you have to do is keep the henches where the marine action is.
  25. When I've had issues changing an incarnate power (when I should be able to), I do two things: detoggle all powers and stop auto-powers change zones to reslot. Not all characters have to do this, but there appear to be some powers that end up 'resetting' the Incarnate re-slot timer.
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