dukedukes

I don't think poison is enjoyed by everyone. Personally I like it for easy -res application. Barely any time is spent using poisons kit for big payoff. You get to spend more time on your other powers. You do have to solve survivability to an extent, I've had success on a troller taking alphas with heavy defense investment and success on a corruptor with almost pure damage investment, for the rare time I get in over my head I've got a self rez.

Yeah strategy changes depending on the mobs. Line of sight or a bit of movement is needed to pull some mob types in, assuming that's possible. I use provoke on some of my (tanky) trollers and have a good amount of success even without the -range component, but it's more situational. Regardless it's an effective strategy that is underutilized by most people, I always love to get on a team with a tank that uses it well.

A good taunt user, in situations where there's no risk, does not care about threat. They care about forcing distant enemies closer with the -range component. Sure it's not mandatory but attacking is optional too. Taunting a distant mob effectively kills it by getting them into the aoe range of your team.

I think it's a good pick up for stalkers since they don't get whirling hands. 120 degree arc and 10ft range is comfortable to use (for a cone) and procs very well with a 16s recharge (scrapper recharge is 9s, not as great for procs). It's a 71% chance for 3.5PPM procs, compared to crowd control which procs at 54%. No kb though so you lose the ffb opportunity. War mace isn't an option for stalkers but just for the sake of comparison. Some trouble with power crash is needing to spend energy for the 10 target cap, but this isn't too bad for stalkers as you should be trying to crit total focus. Overall power crash on a stalker hits harder than crowd control on a scrapper when both are proc'd up. Energy melee is very good on stalker too. If OP likes the stealth crit nin offers then stalker is a very strong option. I agree, especially for energy melee. It's really good at specializing as a boss killer. You'd probably want to fit in some aoe from your secondary and epic for when aoe is needed but it's situational. If you're doing typical pack to pack gameplay just hitting bosses should be the most effective strategy since everyone else is probably aoe'ing.

I've seen this happen several times. I know it's not a general solution but with singularity every time i change floors i tp target my pet next to the door i'm about to go in and never experience the pet getting stuck. You'd have to experiment to see if waiting for your pet to reach the door helps.

Ah, okay. You'd need to rely on punchvoke and have your aoe attacks pull their attention. You'd still have the AI issues I mentioned: flyers, running away eventually, some immediate movement depending on obstacles around you like higher surfaces than what the mobs are standing on. If you're fine with dipping in and out of melee range to reapply your taunt aura you could use a combat tp macro to make the process simpler like: /macro down "powexec_location down:20 Combat Teleport" /macro up "powexec_location up:20 Combat Teleport" You could machine gun taunt between Provoke and Taunt to keep the enemies attention but you'll be changing targets a lot to be optimal which might be too annoying. If you only use ranged attacks you may have some spare cycles to do this while you wait for cooldowns. Like I mentioned I have done hover tanking where you hover juuust above the mobs heads and the AI issues doing this are not too bad, plus you can still be in range for all your melee attacks. Flyers will still go airborne, some melee teammates may not like that, but they're not that high from the ground if you're not. This position is actually decent for tanking because your character collision is above the enemies, so enemies are able to go directly beneath you, letting the mobs pack together just a little better. Cones are surprisingly decent in this position too. If you're close like this a taunt aura would still be doing its job as well. Maybe you can find a sweet spot where you're off the ground, out of melee range, but your taunt aura still hits a few enemies. You could use combat tp to move exactly to this height from the ground if the sweet spot is really tight.

Taunting and flying away is generally a bad idea. If the mobs decide to run at you they are going to run away from your teammates, making it more difficult for your team to fight them. They will jump on top of light posts and climb up buildings if it's an option. Flying mobs will obviously fly after you. When I taunt mobs they always aggro to me and no one else (except other tank AT's), but I don't put myself in an out of reach location. From a basic test the mobs appear to try for a while (not the full taunt duration) to reach the taunter then seem to give up and run away, maybe they'll attack someone else in some cases but I see them eventually run away. It seems like you should place yourself within range of being attacked, otherwise they will eventually give up, but there is a time window where they will try to chase you. The strong purpose of Taunt is for the -range it applies to the enemies, it makes ranged mobs run closer to you which is very effective for grouping mobs. Most tankers don't seem to prioritize this but it's actually the best thing a tanker can do. Good use of taunt is what separates the men from the boys so to speak, holding aggro is only a small benefit compared to the -range. If you try to fly up in the sky as a tank and cause mobs to run around everywhere your team will probably think you're trolling. I've hover tanked before but I always stayed close to the ground to stop mobs from doing stupid things.

Catherine Wheel inherited this, I'm guessing it was a copy paste from Singularity.

Sudden Acceleration does, Overwhelming Force doesn't. I've heard someone say theirs stopped working, it was something to do with the level of the enhancement. If you attune it you're good to go. It's a big difference. With Sudden Acceleration they get knocked up instead.

The other poor gameplay decisions people can make greatly outnumber even the amount of times someone has a knockback power on the team, and often these decisions are just as impactful as a pbaoe kb. I've come to appreciate the chaos some teams can be, deleting mob packs in a couple seconds is really not that interesting of gameplay. I'd prefer at least one troublemaker in a team to mix things up.

The request is asking the person bugging them not to play how they want, it's not exactly a request to take kindly. If the offense is not preventing progress it can't be that serious, they should suck it up for the mission/TF and move on. It feels unanimous, to me at least, in COH telling others how to play isn't taken well, that's likely why knockback is fairly tolerated, even if it's annoying at times the experience won't last that long. One time on a TF a few pulls in someone asked me to stop using Singularity on a grav because I use it to assist in herding. It's a major part of gravs set, I'm not going to give it up. I'd feel like I'm sitting on my hands for the next half hour or whatever it was. I'd rather leave than do that. This guy might have been a forum poster, actually 😅. What would the KB player need to do to appease the complainer? Not use aoe's or even ST attacks? I'm not sure it's reasonable to ask this of someone, if it's one particular attack, okay, but it's often many.

Yesterday someone tried to annoy me by using knockback, I thought that was interesting. I was grouping mobs with singularity and I saw them change strategy half way through the mission. They decided to KB (enhanced) on the initiation so I couldn't group them together, then after the mission said "hello" with a fortune telling. I guess knockback can be used as a tool for people who like to piss others off. I wonder if there's any terrorists like this roaming around making people hate knockback... Ignore lists exist for a reason at least. I hope to run into them again on the right character, some PvEvP would be fun. KB doesn't bother me but the intent in this case stood out.

I don't agree with the communication requirement, it's typically obvious when fold space would be used. Mobs are spread a decent distance? It's getting used. Granted sometimes it can happen late and be more surprising. Certain people may overuse the power but you should be able to pick up on their habit. Being able to adapt to teammates is a good skill to have, it's part of the fun of teaming, adapting makes gameplay more dynamic. What makes the best COH players I've personally seen is this ability to adapt, but that goes well beyond predicting fold space. The other side of the problem is melee who always try to kill stragglers. It could be a minion or LT and not a boss, melee don't care. When I play melee I either kill bosses or aoe, so I don't get this at all. Melee even get a power to pull in distant enemies but knowing what taunt does seems to be rare knowledge 20 years later. If the team has a fold space user and mobs are spread your best bet is to try to position in the middle of them all. Ideally fold space is the first thing that happens so nothing gets pulled from people. Fold space is problematic for many reasons, it is disruptive, part of that is the sudden TP with no FX. With Wormhole the mobs at least glow for 3 seconds, so it's in a better spot. Every person potentially having fold space is odd too, it's stronger than wormhole in many scenarios which is weird for a pool power. For something that changes combat so dramatically (at times) it really should belong to a power set instead of a pool, but I think we've crossed that bridge already. The speedrun thing I can understand, but if people have the means to speed up a fight they likely feel they hold the role or responsibility to perform that task. It's less about zoom zoom and more about helping the team from their view, that's how I feel at times anyway. Many people do enjoy being efficient as well, it's part of the game.

Yes, assuming the level difference is +3. As a general rule if the minions have a purple name you can't TP lieutenants, if the minions have a red name you can't TP bosses. Orange named minions is +2, you can TP bosses in this case. Keep in mind there is a 16 target limit, if there's 2 packs of enemies you won't be able to pull them together until you defeat a bunch. Keeping the target limit in mind should set your expectations right.

The TP magnitude determines if something can be TP'd. I'm not privy to the exact math for this but assuming you're 50 and have a t3 alpha for the level shift you're up against +3's at most generally. At this level difference you can't TP bosses without an ultimate inspiration. The amount of accuracy you need depends on the rest of your character. You usually get some accuracy from set bonuses, kismet, tactics, etc. If you use mids you can check the accuracy of the power after setting the mob level to +3 with the dropdown at the top of the mids UI. 95% is the goal. In game you can check the combat tab to see what your hit chance was.

Any repel haters? Go on, melee my mobs 😎

Some issues regardless of my stance: Hurricane debuff is too good to apply all the time Repulsion Field kb would likely trigger constantly to close targets Black Hole might end up phasing all targets if they're immune to repel, so you'd need phase protection too Repel players would not like this, myself included. Maybe if it was kb convert only and single target or a tiny aoe I wouldn't have much issue as this happens anyway with some powers as others have mentioned, but there is no power currently that disables repel for other people, other than phasing. There are some of us that can use these mechanics very well and is a good chunk of the fun this game has to offer. Disabling my character would not be cool...

If the designer wants a certain outcome and need to give resists to mobs for that outcome then so be it. It's not necessarily a perfect design but it doesn't have to be. You may be missing that the weaker mobs are not immune to repel, so you can group all the weaker mobs indefinitely which may allow your team to take out the stronger mobs easier. Granted I did this with Repulsion Field and not Hurricane, so Hurricane might not be able to do it. I tried this my first time on BAF with my repel character, me (troller) and a scrapper managed to hold things down for one particular spawn. Nothing super impressive, but the repel power made things easier for us. The other player I was with was having a blast apparently, they complimented me on the strat. Skill issue probably, I think it's good some powers are harder to use effectively. Maybe they just wanted a huge amount of -tohit though.

Thank you for giving me hope in this forum, you brought up great points. You're treating balance as nebulous here, really it's two different approaches: solo viability as a result of power creep (everyone does good damage and is tanky) vs AT identity (you excel at a specific thing). I only point this out because it's an unfair dismissal, the issue is created by the former approach while people are arguing for the latter, while both are 'balance'. A more balanced game toward improved AT identity and viability would arguably be a more interesting game in isolation, at least for people who like overcoming challenges. In reality though it's more complicated. The position it's too late to change anything doesn't stand the test of time given things do change. A common dismissal of balance changes brings up the most extreme example someone can think of to point to the balance change as being 'pointless'. You're kind of doing this here by bringing us back to the early days of balance and potential decision making. The topic is not asking for 2004 COH, they're asking for smaller changes that push things in a direction they view as fostering better gameplay. They're not asking for a complete overhaul. What I'm seeing the HC devs do in their approach is increase challenge with new content. Enemy revamps, new enemy types and mechanics. If enemies are more dangerous the AT roles become relevant again. We're going to see more changes in this direction and I think that's awesome, it's the best approach. You're right, nerfs aggravate people, and balance changes in this direction should be treated very carefully. Let's not forget though the hypothetical world where nerfs don't happen does not exist. We recall tankers were nerfed last patch? So nerfs happen. Devs have several tools to try to improve the gameplay and nerfs are one of those tools. Sometimes you can solve an issue with other tools but every now and then a nerf is what makes the most sense, unfortunately for some. You can disagree on the root issue of a nerf but arguing against nerfs as a tool is a lost cause.

A basic example: no barrier means you take more damage, which means you could die. You do no damage while dead. What follows is strategy to not die, like using a mez power, etc. This would bring more value to all roles and functions in the game as the OP said.

Grav is difficult to master for a few reasons, proper use of Wormhole is a big one. The general goal of Wormhole is to place a second pack of mobs on to the main pack of mobs your team is fighting. Why this is difficult: Assuming you're 50 with level shift fighting +4 (therefore +3 mobs) you can't Wormhole bosses. This means any Wormhole you do cannot pull the entire pack where you want them, so you split the pack into 2 groups. Your team wipes out the original pack plus the ones you Wormhole'd over, then they have to perform janitor duty to clean up the mobs you failed to TP. From my observation people do not like dealing with this, often just choosing to ignore the mobs. This situation is frequent and it heavily limits how useful Wormhole can be. To add insult to injury mobs that resist the TP do not resist the knockdown effect, slowing the pull down even more. If you're fighting +2 mobs or less Wormhole gets a lot more opportunities to be used. The goal I have with Wormhole is moving the entire pack of mobs. If I'm fighting +3 this means sometimes I simply won't use the power. My decision to use the power is mostly whether I believe I can successfully pull all the straggler mobs to the main pack before everything in the main pack dies. If your team has very high damage Wormhole is almost always bad to use. There's some exceptions, like if two packs are almost right next to each other and you don't expect a blaster to try to solo the 2nd pack then you can Wormhole them over. The bosses won't be terribly far behind. The strats I use to pull the straggler mobs are a few things: Slot a proc in Wormhole so the mobs aggro on to you. If you miss a mob or they resist the TP they will aggro on to you and run over when they can. Sometimes the proc isn't enough because some mobs were too far away, in these cases I'll hit them with a power so they aggro to me, then run them over to the main pack This is more advanced but I'll sometimes use Provoke and position myself so the taunted straggler mobs run straight into the main pack. If you don't do this the stragglers may attack at range for longer than the main pack will be alive If the stragglers are not bosses you can do a late Fold Space (<16 mobs remaining) to pull them in but it's a bit of a waste Kill stragglers yourself if they're minions/LT's and few in number I'll talk about Singularity now. This is your strongest power if used correctly, if you don't use it correctly you're like a bird without wings. The goal with Singularity is to tighten up a pack of mobs, sing has a 45ft trawl aura (most effective around <25ft, the pull gets stronger the closer the mob is), so the goal with proper use of sing is to place sing in the middle of a pack of mobs. You can do this with Teleport Target or the pet goto command. I can't stand the goto move AI so I almost always TP but kin could use goto commands reasonably well because speed boost makes sing really fast, so moving it around is less annoying than other secondaries. You also want to TP the pet ASAP because if other people start hitting the mobs they'll start flopping around from knock-up effects and the sing trawl aura does nothing if mobs are flopping. You want to jump into fights fast or even initiate pulls which means you need to be careful of your defenses. I know you didn't ask about this power but I know for a fact a majority of people do not understand how to use sing like this yet it's the strongest mechanic grav has, so I had to bring it up. A good grav is basically a play-maker, similar to tanks. They control what your team is fighting. Since you're not actually a tank you need to get a really good read on how your teams tanks are engaging fights, and what your other teammates will likely do when situations present themselves. If you Wormhole a pack away from a blaster nuke that wouldn't be good for example. This is why grav is so difficult to master, you need a strong understanding of what your team is likely to do, and what you need to do changes depending on your teammates, like if the team has good damage or not or you have teammates that like to split. As a kin you make your team do a lot of damage so you lessen the potential for good Wormhole opportunities. If you don't understand the nuance with playing a grav you can be more a hindrance than an asset to your team. You don't have to be the best, and people generally expect a bit of chaos with a grav on the team I think, it's fine to make mistakes so you learn from it and improve. I wrote a guide about grav/ff in this controller sub-forum if you want more grav information. It repeats a lot of what I just wrote but there's more I didn't mention. Both Wormhole and Singularity need KB->KD conversion.

Being rich is having an active and engaged global friend list, a tight knit supergroup that can support you on the darker days, and lots of influence... I'd say 1 bil, that's at least enough for 3 more alts.

Containment as an isolated mechanic is amazing, it's scrapper crit on roids. It falls flat because there's a better, maybe accidentally, alternative (procs). A single proc may do more damage than your power enhanced, it's kind of a clown show if you think about it as damage values on your powers become irrelevant for damage. I wonder how the devs feel about balancing sets with procs in consideration, personally I wouldn't be happy about it.

I agree, it seems haphazard that some categories get a ton of procs while others get very little. There is an argument for things like def debuff or slow receiving a needed boost from procs, if you look at blaster sets the sets with these secondary effects are generally weaker than say, fire, which gets very little procs, so it serves as a slight balancing mechanism. This is a bit of a narrow view though. For sure, there's still some good decision making even if you mostly fill everything up with procs. I wouldn't say it's very interesting but it's decent. Yes I don't think these AT's should ever be meta for these things unless their primary purpose becomes very useful for some content. I'm not a fan of these AT's leaning on procs in order to feel impactful. If they were ever hurt by proc changes their sets damage output should seriously be revisited in response. Controllers specifically have Containment which procs do not interact with at all yet you still see controllers lean on procs over a double damage mechanic... this smells very off to me. The magnitude procs are superior to other slotting options gets ridiculous fast for some powers. This is my biggest gripe, I want to make difficult decisions building a character. Ideally sets, procs, and special enhancements all offer something you want. With the meta mostly being damage output procs are too easy of a choice to make. The meta isn't the fault of procs necessarily, they're just the obvious solution to the meta, it's more a problem of power creep which is a bigger issue.

I've heard the devs want to change procs in some way, so I assume the community consensus is procs create some problems we could use some solutions for. I would like to present some problems I personally observe about damage procs and hear any you have, as well as discuss whether the problems are valid. I'd prefer to avoid discussing solutions, I'm more interested in what the community thinks are problematic about procs. I'll state that I do like damage procs existing but I recognize they are overused and create issues. Here's my list of observed problems and a basic justification: No diminishing returns Add a proc and you just get more damage linearly. Two damage enhancements receive DR/ED adjustments but six damage procs do not Can make a power meant to do a small amount of damage do a lot of damage This makes power sets do good damage by coincidence and is difficult to balance Benefit heavily from global recharge as it's ignored by the proc rate formula I know it used to use global recharge and was changed, but this is still a problem to me. The recharge downside is simply bypassed by global recharge. Problems related to power slot competition: Many set bonuses are weak while others are very strong Set bonuses could use more opportunities to be competitive with procs There is not much use in enhancing mez and other enhancement categories like range These are enhanced here and there, but I'd like to see it be more impactful to compete with procs "Meta" builds don't care about any enhancements other than damage as they're built like glass cannons This means barely any slot competition and lots of procs. This is a bigger issue than procs alone but it would be nice if meta builds had more competition for slotting. Barrier I think is a big reason for this.