Crysis

So download the server code, adjust it and test it. Easy enough if you have design/coding experience here, and please report back your testing results along with allllll the unintended consequences from doing same. The Global Defense Nerf and ED were introduced to pave the way for IO set bonuses. They were balanced that way. You could have a sturdy build but you’d have to make a trade off for them. You may believe, minus any evidence to support your beliefs, that the trade off isn’t enough. I believe it was and remains so today. So go build your evidence and report back and then we can talk.

Speaking of upping difficulty.... One of the more enjoyable aspects of this game to me are all-X ‘themed’ teams. There’s a player on Excelsior, EV-3000 or something can’t recall their name, that routinely sets up “dueling ITF speed runs” with themed teams. Gadget teams (Traps/Trick Arrow/Tactical Arrow/Devices) vs. All Offender (Procc’d out Defender) teams. Two teams compete for a speed run, no deaths, no inspirations. I’ve run these dozens of times and it’s a fantastic example of using the EXISTING game development framework, content PVE and all, and coming up with a new game difficulty level. This is absolutely KEY to the game’s design principle. Mix different AT’s with different abilities and you get different challenge levels. No brute/tank? Then don’t play the missions as if you have someone to soak the alpha while everyone else hangs back. Or let the Controller lead with an AOE Hold shot. Or let the Blaster/Corr/Defenders run in and drop nukes alternating between spawns. The TEAM makeup creates DYNAMIC tactics for how to approach the game. This is also what fuels Alt development. We see different Alts operating under different team dynamics/mission variables and it inspires us to “I wanna try that!” In ways we wouldn’t have otherwise. And these libraries of Alts we maintain become fuel for the missions as we realize “hang on a sec, lemme go get my Controller for this mission” based on the dynamic difficulty we are facing. You start messing with these dynamics at your own peril and that of the player base in general. Very few people on these forums are game designers. Myself included. Balance is a delicate matter and playing “Nerf that!” Is not only dangerous but outright destructive. You destroy the very things you wish to improve. Diversity of play style and difficulty abound in this game as-is. Change your attitudes to diversity and not the game to get the desired outcomes. Nerf your desire to change things to your liking, and adapt instead. EDIT: I also think the overwhelming majority of posters on this forum, myself included, greatly overestimate the number of players who even UNDERSTAND things like IO set bonuses, how To-Hit vs Accuracy works in the world of buffs/debuffs or even the broadest definitions of damage mitigation. They understand that Green = Heal and Bubbles = Shields. What they can see visually is about the extent of their understanding of the die-roll mechanics of this game. Heck, I played for a couple years on Live before I even took a look at the Combat Logs, let alone learned to decipher them. So pushing for a 2nd Pass Global Defense Nerf means jack and squat to anyone OTHER than those who understand what the 1st Pass Global Defense Nerf did to this game. Which means basically, you’ve got min/maxers trying to nerf other min/maxers, and that almost always boils down to simple control-oriented personalities trying to assert “I’m right!” Into the game mechanics.

It’s also POSSIBLE to LEAVE IO’s and DEFENSE values THE FARK ALONE and get your brave butt out to a zone/mission that’s harder than the norm to up your own difficulty level and enjoyment of the game. It’s also POSSIBLE to TARGET those who wish to punish players who enjoy the game AS-IS by claiming that they are somehow doing us all a grand favor by diminishing OUR enjoyment of the game for the benefit of....well, for nobody. Nobody gains anything from this. There’s a straw man argument that someone will gain something from this, but I’ve yet to see what the gain is other than to the person/people who simply want everyone else to define “enjoyment” and “casual” under their terms. The only dots I need to connect are the ones that have existed for almost 12 years. Some people really have an issue with how others define “fun.” And since they can’t realistically change the definition of fun, they yell for nerfs. Some of the nerfs of the past made sense when cast against a profit motive that was built around slowing leveling speed, improving longevity of subscriptions, paywall things like Invention licenses, etc. These reasons, veiled as they were, no longer exist. So just leave this alone and go find your difficulty that’s already built into the game.

@Sir Myshkindid a lot of testing on Traps and found this to be true as well.

I don’t think the +Influence works in AE but the +Drop rate certainly appears to work.

So much this. I joined a PUG for Night Ward 50+2 today. Eight on the team. Took 10 mins for half the 40-somethings to FIND NW. First mission multiple deaths. 2 players quit without a word. Recruited again. Another 10 mins waiting for new members to find the zone. Second mission no deaths but three people quit at the end saying “this is too hard.” Did I mention it was PLUS TWO?!?!? People saying “too ez, nerf Hasten, nerf Defense, nerf anyone but Empaths and Bubblers” has a secret wish for a private server with exactly eleven souls playing empathy defenders with six slotted First Aid pool and single slotted secondary T1/T2 blasts. Insanity.

Boy this list changed quite a bit with Homecoming vs Live but.... DP/MC Blaster....Ki a Boss across room and while he slo-mo flys away shoot him dead. A3on Flux. TW/Bio Scrapper....it’s OP broken in so many deliciously good ways and it’s fun to have a 7-member somewhat supportive audience while I basically solo the entire mission while they watch. AR/Tactical Arrow Blaster. Rambo never had it this good. Fire/Storm/Dark Corruptor. One person wrecking crew. Hold my beer. Tie for Thugs/Storm and Thugs/Time MM. Both with Burnout for double everything. Nice to have my own private army. Fun to watch the Tank say “so why am I here?”

It’s really not difficult to get softcapped DEF or near it on a Blaster with IO’s and at least Combat Jumping and an Epic shield. Thunder strike for all ranged attacks and two BOTZ IO’s in fly/SS/SJ. So no you don’t need maneuvers, but it does help. Actually, with minor investments in the P2W temps and base amplifiers you can pretty much skip a lot of powers in HC.

I’d also like to say that thanks to Brigg, farming on HC is actually a lot of fun. It’s always a hoot to me to burn down some big community names and I’ve greatly enjoyed seeing all the different and varying costumes. Made it a lot more fun than nameless Council or glowie bodies.

See my comment above. Rularuu, Carnies, the entire Night Ward and DA Zones. Redside has some tough foes as well, although that entire side of the game is devoid of more than a handful of players most of the time. But the game is filled to the brim with tougher critters. Almost ENTIRELY devoid of organized, active teams. Adding more "tough foes" to this game will NOT matter. People will gravitate to the easier-to-feel-super/heroic/powerful missions and foes because that is the total essence of this game. You wanna feel like you can take on +4/x8....and you CAN with the right teams or even the right solo builds. But there are very, very few who go out and solo the Miss Liberty TF. It's entirely do-able, but takes some dedicated effort, strong builds and the right strategies and tactics. But almost nobody wants that. They want easy gaming, fun experience and the ability to chat about the recent episode of Westworld while taking down foes and earning rewards. There is absolutely NOTHING wrong with this. It's what the game is, what is has become and what it likely will forever be. You want difficulty, go look elsewhere. You want a game built around a social interaction engine, play this one. Trying to "fix" this is only going to destroy it further.

Until I see zones like DA and Night Ward so full of teams that they spawn a second instance, and Arachnos, Longbow, Rularuu and Carnie AE farming the norm, I’d say the overwhelming majority of players do NOT want additional challenge in this game. Additional challenge exists aplenty in this game for those that want it. Almost nobody does. So using this as a means of trying to minimize every other AT just to make a bubbler or “pure healer” feel loved and needed is an asinine argument.

You’ve obviously not tried Unleash Potental on a squishy with high recharge. It’s a Scrapper/Brute level T9. Damn near Incarnate Barrier T3 by level 40.

Hard to say, although graphics bottlenecks don’t always lead to network congestion. They can, but really shouldn’t. Perhaps try some experimentation. Lower your graphics settings (Particle counts in particular for MSR’s) and see if things improve. You can save a configuration file and I often load one just for MSR’s and Hami’s, and I’ve got a RTX 2080 Ti and you can’t go a whole lot higher than that. But old game and drivers aren’t optimized for COH so.....it helps to keep things running smoothly. You generally don’t have to go to potato quality, just lower things from Ultra settings a bit. If you do that and still have issues with drops and rubber banding, I’d try to load another visually demanding game that has online play and see if the problem exists there also. Could be any number of things.

No, buying stacks of recipes, stacks of salvage and sitting there clicking converters is the most tedious activities in the game. Perhaps figuring out which recipes can create the most value in the shortest number of clicks is a cerebral pursuit of enjoyment, but I’d argue the same for using MIDS to create the perfect build is the same. But the actual act of Marketeering is incredibly tedious and has nothing to do with playing a superhero, which is the point of this game. Farming isn’t by any means the MOST enjoyment I get out of this game, but at least I’m actually focusing on targets and some degree of strategy to try to min/max my efforts and using the actual “superhero” game mechanics to do it. Except for AFK farming obviously. Which is neither tedious nor time consuming. It just runs in the other instances while I’m actually playing in the foreground. To directly answer the question, I used to do it for Influence and PL’ing to kit out my fleet of alts on primary account. I was a “buy it now” player and barely crafted anything for the first 8-10 months of the game. But I had far, far more influence than I had alts to outfit so that eventually slowed down considerably. I’ve burned through several billion in influence in past few months since I slowed my farming down, and from here on out given the recent influence nerfs, likely will only AFK farm. But I did enjoy trying to “beat my time” when active farming. It was more fun than running solo PVE content and faster than trying to form a team. I really didn’t find repeating the same AE fire farm any more/less boring than repeating the same kinds of content missions over and over again. I skip over the dialogue boxes at this point in PVE anyways, having played them so frequently. Honestly, Brutes and the Fury mechanism makes ANY content other than run-and-smash irrelevant. Farms feed this the best.

Rather than nerf things to make others feel more valued, why not either buff the sets that feel undervalued (preferred) or just remove the “useless” sets entirely? I never quite understand the desire to remove something of value for the majority of the player base rather than just remove Or buff the underperforming minority.

Ironically, my DP/Regen Sentinel feels far more like my old Katana/Regen Scrapper did before all the nerfs.

Well after all this I realized last night the “Invisible Katana” bug still exists. I’m the only one who can see it except during combat animations. So everyone just sees me jumping around with my hands wrapped around an invisible sword. Disappointing but I hope they fix it someday.

Great stuff, this shouldn’t just be stickied but turned into a Guide and posted in Guides section. I’ve got several Sents, hit most of the stronger build combo’s listed here. My only continued issues with the AT is lack of damage, procs notwithstanding. And while I am happy to hear that Sents will (eventually) be addressed by the Devs, likely via a damage, aggro or damage/aggro buff, I’m also well aware that the Devs have mentioned that Procs are NOT working the way they intended (eg; ‘too strong’). So I see Proc’ing out Sents today as a workaround to a fundamental issue. And I’m betting you won’t see Sent damage changed/buffed without a corresponding nerf to something...possibly Proc PPM’s. That of course is an entirely different topic and I’ll leave it for now. Thanks again for great information. For the record....the only Sent I currently feel is perfectly balanced for damage and durability as a melee-distance ranged damage dealer is a Fire/Rad/Fire, and that’s really because of Cages/FireSword Circle combo in addition to Inferno + Ground Zero. All my others just feel far lacking in DPS and while they are sturdy things, they aren’t tanks nor scrappers, which really leaves them as kind of nothing more than crosshair painters on teams. I do play them for theme though since the durability makes that more feasible.

And it doesn’t always fail either. I often PL an alt to their 20’s and level them up all at once. Sometimes I’ll decide to stop the leveling process at 10 and run a respec so I can choose a different T1 power pick. The respec goes fine and then I just continue leveling them from 11 on up.

According to this Focused Feedback thread, this appears to have been addressed via some changes to the No Redraw options in March Page 5. However, invisible Katanas for Katana scrappers remain. The player themselves can see the weapons but to other players it appears I’m wielding an invisible weapon.

I have a sort of guideline and it depends on how cranky I get. If I’m trying to play converter roulette for a particular Proc or piece I want/need, I’ll spend no more than 6 in-set flips (18 converters) before I’ll stop and just sell what I have and buy what I need. I figure with the RNG not smiling on me it’s time to move along. Doesnt apply to PVP, Purps or Winter pieces. Those are worth the converters. I hoard those by the hundreds. Wish I’d never sold a single one in the early days of the game. I’d farm and get several per session and just sell the uncrafted recipes because I couldn’t be bothered to slow down and craft them. Dumb of me.

Actually, started building out my "dark side" Sith today. A Katana/Elec/Mu. Will also fit in Force of Will pool.

All great advice and I appreciate it. I was really struggling to get to softcap with +DEF and I knew I was likely chasing something that wasn't "the way it was supposed to be played" with /Regen Sents. Thanks for the feedback, great builds to consider!

Just a note of thanks for all the great ideas on this thread. @Sir MyshkinI ended up using the build you posted. I did change up a couple of things. I fit Build Up in there as I see it as a “Channeling the Force” kind of thing. And a Jedi has lighting fast reflexes so I worked Hasten in also. Kept Tactics but dropped Weapons Mastery entirely. I picked up the drone prestige pet at level 1 from the P2W vendor and renamed it “Training Droid” and created a secondary costume with a helmet and “blast shield” blocking my vision. The Jetboard fly power also makes a fun little stand in for Luke’s X34 Landspeeder. With a couple of minor slotting changes I ended up exactly where I wanted to be. I considered swapping out Blinding Powder for Divine Avalanche as DA could behave a little like my light saber deflection capability. And it’s a nice +Def to overcap me for Incarnate or AV battles. But I’m going to roll with Powder for now and see how it behaves. Can always respec later if I find it doesn’t augment the theme or play style. Hit 39 last night. Absolutely a blast to play, not gimped at all.

A few days and you’ll be back up again. Meanwhile some level 9 blaster is currently delving into MIDS and dreaming of the build they’ve always wanted but couldn’t afford. Let that thought warm your heart in your cold, ebil chest.