MoonSheep

hey i think it’s time to log off 😛

to add a bit of a spanner into the works.. i’d recommend looking at an elec/shield stalker, it has arguably the best version of elec melee as it has assassin’s strike and the stalker ATO granting you extra build ups and hide (usually placed in AS so you’re hidden after a strike) the controllable crits, extra ST damage in AS and two teleport AoEs that don’t break hide is quite fun - i played one to 50 and found it a really engaging, fast paced alt

poison defender takes the crown for all round debuffing in my opinion. it’s not overly strong on the -regen front, but its -res, -def, -tohit, -dmg and -special are pretty much unbeatable i really enjoy my poison/fire defender, i’ve put a lot of damage procs into it, it devastates AVs nicely here‘s a classic poison guide by @Frosticus worth reading

“came back wrong” is so funny You cast your flagship power, Revive, unfortunately it doesn’t activate properly and you return to battle as yourself.. just.. different. Your outlook isn’t great but you feel AMAZING” +Self Revive +80% DMG for 90 seconds +20% To Hit for 90 seconds +50% Recharge for 90 seconds After 90 seconds your mutated heart explodes inside your chest casting a base 110 smashing damage 15ft PbAoE

hopefully this means they'll be fixing regen, aka giving one of the clickies a +absorb component and integration a +absorb tick

absolutely - check the edit i made when i first did the post. another great change that avoids wasted powers like ye olden days

It's been around 2 years since one of the more significant changes to CoH was introduced: The level at which key powers are made available. This has led to a fundemental re-think on which powersets are worth taking and really shook up the pile of which sets were the most desirable Compounding the impact of the change, being able to use a power up to -5 levels below its availability level (e.g. you can use a lvl 30 power at lvl 25) has meant certain popular activities like the Yin TF now allow people use of their level 32 and lvl 38 powers I'm reasonably consistent on not wanting the game to experience power creep, however this is a change which has increased the fun factor of the game and made previously less-desirable power sets much more appealing, especially for those who enjoy the pre-lvl 50 portion of the game How have others found the change? I've pasted the patch notes below for reference Level Availability Changes Primary Sets (non-Epic ATs) Tier 8 powers moved from level 26 to level 22 Tier 9 powers moved from level 32 to level 26 Secondary Sets (non-Epic ATs) Tier 2 powers moved from level 2 to level 1 (character creation) Tier 7 powers moved from level 28 to level 24 Tier 8 powers moved from level 35 to level 28 Tier 9 powers moved from level 38 to level 30 Epic Pools Tier 3 powers moved from level 41 to level 38 edit: and being able to take the second power in a secondary powerset as a starting power has also been great and has avoided some sets having to waste a power to get going. looking at you, flares..

i definitely agere that seeking to make sure each and every power is 'balanced' is a one way street to creating a bland grey mush of a game. with regard to CoH, i think the 'balance' efforts are largely futile and a bit pointless given the following point - one i've raised a few times and isn't overly popular as people have been given their sugar fix and understandably don't want to have it taken away the game has never recovered from the introduction of recipes and IOs. they fundementally broke the game dynamics and there hasn't been a clear fix on how to resolve it. do i love IOs? hell yeah, but they weren't right for CoH when you read patch notes and see the recharge of a power being reduced by 0.3 seconds, or damage being increased by 8% is completely dwarfed by builds being able to provide an extra 70% +recharge in their builds, set bonuses providing an extra +20% def or more and so on archetypes in modern CoH are largely irrelevant - every AT has one purpose: deal damage. previously, every role (at least on heroside) had a task to play. a defender would provide support or debuff, a tank would be able to take the aggro - but often not forever, a controller gave some breathing room to the chaos and so on with this in mind, i agree with a quote in the article that it's not worth spending more than 5% of available time on 'balance'. unfortunately, from my perspective, the HC developers seem spend a considerable amount of time on 'balance' changes which largely go unnoticed, other than the changes to mastery sets which were ruined across the board for no real reason ..and yet in nearly 6 years haven't made any adjustments to regen, what happened to the balance agenda? 🤷‍♂️

i like this, i've been playing ice/ice as a side effort since around 2007, one day i'll make it properly.. i have one on beta i've played for the last few years some thoughts on an ice/ice build if interested: - there's not much point trying to proc out things like sleet, ice slick and ice storm as they're pseudo pets and it doesn't work as well as you'd hope. i'd remove everything from ice slick and just have a recharge IO - give ice sword circle another slot, remove a damage proc and put in the armageddon damage IO and an acc/dam HO, it needs some accuracy and will benefit from having some +damage as its base isn't too bad - i can see you're a proc lover, good choice. i would take chilling embrace and proc the hell out of it, do the same with arctic air also. the procs are delivered in bursts and can be quite fun. it might not be as dramatic as you'd hope, but still a laugh - put a damage proc in both ice slash and bitter ice blast and also don't use the damage/recharge IO, use the dam/end instead so you're getting more reliable procness - jack frost is actually not too bad, i'm a pet hater as i mostly play a mind/fire dom but his damage is surprisingly good, especially combined with sleet - put another recharge IO in power up - if you had enough global +recharge in your build i would consider slotting ice slash with 4 damage procs as its base recharge (17 seconds) works well with procs that are 3.5pmm Hecatomb DMG, Hecatomb Proc, Mako Proc, Touch of Death Proc, Gladiator Proc, Acc/Dam HO

i love that, posting a screenshot of my poison/fire defender to share the love of procs fireball - 3 damage procs poison trap - 5 damage procs inferno - 4 damage procs char - 4 damage procs greater fire sword - 4 damage procs blaze and bolt - 2 damage procs (sad)

your attacks are considered to have 100% damage as a starting point, so the in-game max damage buff you’ll see will be 400% further to this, the damage you slot in your powers also contributes to this amount, e.g if your attack has 90% buffed damage from your enhancements, this will mean you are 190% towards that 500% cap. this means you need 310% to bridge the total i wouldn’t worry about a damage buff filler. lets say you have an external damage buff of +250%, an extra 30 or 40% won’t be noticeable a 10 foe buff of fulcrum shift wouldn’t give you 400% damage. it would be 240%. you get 1 hit of the +40% buff on a corrupter and then each foe contributes 20%

it does feel like a while since the last refresh, some fun ones like the domigator in the next batch would be nice

i’d recommend looking into an elec blast sentinel, i think it will meet what you’re looking for. the defender AT and its characteristics work against what you’re looking for a sentinel will give you higher damage and a much better ability to build defense for the attack:shield playstyle you’re looking for or, consider rolling a corrupter for higher damage output defenders specialise in having the most potent buffs and debuffs, skipping things like freezing rain which is the primary power of storm would be a really sub optimal choice. elec blast on a defender also has a great potential for endurance drain which is also a missed opportunity

if there was a mobile version of mids i would spend so much time making builds on the train to work each day

in your post i can’t see that anyone was rude or unkind. some people simply have different gaming preferences to yours excelsior is a big server which allows people a good amount of agency to play the game in the way they want, such as teaming with preferred archetypes or levels as long as people aren’t being rude i don’t see a problem with it

wait, CoH is back?! i thought the forums were just a massive RP activity - you mean people are actually logging in and playing? snarky’s posi posts aren’t creative fiction? oh no

that is funny, the team planted a memorial garden

hey - i would suggest playing the character for a good few levels in game before making a build so that you have a sense of what's useful and what would benefit the alt. from the powers you've chosen it seems you may not be familiar with the archetype or the powersets, e.g. your two primary damage dealing attacks are missing (gloom and midnight grasp) and the overall build doesn't make much sense for a dominator i would also suggest looking at rolling something like an ice blast sentinel, it may fit what you're looking for from a playstyle. ice blast has 2 holds and a whole secondary for defense which looks to fit better with your aims, else you may be disappointed to play a character which isn't inherently set up as a attack:defense playstyle

that looks more like it! it’s personal preference at the end of the day, though i love powerboost on my defender and that’s just for transfusion or vengeance goodluck with your continued journey on the dark/dark, one of the all time classics

says the vampire

i am surprised at your conclusion. your detailed analysis shows that power boost - a reasonably fast recharging power available with a single pool choice - benefits almost all of your powers quite considerably, yet your takeaway is that it has no use? - twilight grasp has the same heal % as transfusion from kinetics, they are two of the strongest AoE heals available within all ATs. a powerboosted twilight grasp can really turn the tide of battle, especially if needing to heal a high HP tank in the later levels - i haven't had time to run my own numbers, but the ones in your table look quite high. would i be correct that you are lvl 35 and casting this on a lvl 30 enemy, aka 5 levels below you? if yes, you will be seeing the strengths of your debuffs multiplied by 1.55 as a result of the purple patch - consider that when you are fighting enemies that are +3 or +4 above you that your debuff effects will be minimised by 0.65 or 0.48. also consider that some enemies such as cimerorans cast vengeance, improving their to hit. many enemies also cast -def attacks, like CoT, making the team more vulnerable to attack. a powerboosted -to hit can really make a difference in these scenarios, likewise for a number of AVs - the situations where a debuffer is really valuable - powerboost is fantastic for powers like vengeance too. a powerboosted vengeance gives the team around +63% defense and +68% to hit, this turns them into an unkillable machine. aside from a few niche cases, a defender is incomplete and underperforming without this combo overall, i can't see how a dark defender could live without powerboost unless they were a role player and weren't interested in the efficacy of their alt edit: from a quick numbers calc, looks like you might be a lvl 50 casting these powers onto a lvl 30, 20 levels below therefore benefitting from a 3.1x purple patch debuff booster as a result - let me know if my hunch is correct

i think that's slightly too negative a view on ice assault. ice sword circle's animation is a little slow, but it's 15ft radius is nice and as you say, chilling embrace enhances the damage further. two ticks of chilling embrace + ice sword circle is not too bad a damage output for a 15ft radius AoE attack ice slash and bitter ice blast also have a pretty good damage dealing combination. again, adding in a tick or two from chilling embrace enhances things further

modern illusion is actually quite good at crowd control in my view: - The ST confuse can be procced with Contagious Confusion - Gleam has a nice wide 90 degree stun cone and would be recharged every 30s with a permadom build - Flash is a reasonable PbAoE hold - Spectral terror can be summoned to semi-mez mobs, e.g. those which aren't being attacked i'd give it a second look. also consider that although some of these powers have a slightly slow recharge, they don't always need to be used. the best way to play a dominator is to look at the situation at hand - do i actually need to mez this mob, or simply mez the key trouble makers? e.g. bosses or nasty debuffers if the steam is steam rolling things, lean into being a damage dealer instead. if the team is constantly being wiped, focus on being a master of lockdown

i’d just mez the enemies that give you slows, my mind/fire permadom is built only for +recharge

if you’re close, consider things like the offensive amplifier from the P2W vendor for extra +recharge. hasten will help too