ForeverLaxx

You know what I like most about the "PvP ruined my PvE game!" crowd? When I catch them blaming PvP for PvE changes in a game that doesn't even have PvP. Some people just want a group to blame, and PvP is an easy target because so many people seem to hate the idea of comparing their reaction times and decision making against real players rather than against AI. Now, obviously, I'm not claiming that CoH doesn't have PvP (it obviously does), but because of my experiences both with mega-toxic raiders/PvErs that far outstrips any toxicity I experience in PvP and the fact I've had people blame PvP in a game with literally zero PvP in it, I never take the "PvP ruined my PvE game" complaint seriously anymore. Not to mention that CoH specifically isn't guilty of this for probably 99% of the changes made. I'd say 100%, but I'm sure there might have been something that was shown a light upon it due to PvP getting changed for PvE and I'd rather not "lose the argument" because of one obscure change I didn't account for. In any event, movement suppression is something that allows the PvE in this game to even begin to pose a threat to a player by forcing you to move slower and risk retaliation for engaging a mob. That's a game balance knob and nothing more. I understand that it seems silly in light of the current meta of Defense Softcaps and Nuke-the-spawn every 30 seconds turning most content into something exceedingly trivial, but cutting out suppression would only push us further down the hallway of power. I don't know about the rest of you, but I think we're already too strong as it is and if I wanted to play a mindless "blow up the screen" game I'd just play a shmup or a beat-em-up, not an MMO.

Some communities can stand to have a little bit more gatekeeping. Of course, that comes from the perspective of one who's hobbies have been infiltrated by crybullies in skinsuits pretending to be outcasts and fans just to demand everything change to suit them and kick out all the people that let them in in the first place, declaring them to be bigots. Now I'm not saying that's the case here because honestly, we're far from it. Most of this game's playerbase seems to be primarily comprised of the old guard because "new blood" doesn't seem particularly interested in it. That said, I'm always wary of people who claim to want to be part of the group while simultaneously demanding that group change established practices to suit their specific personal needs/desires.

Which isn't what the thread is about, so I don't know why you felt like stomping in here with your righteous indignation about rules with a snide aside about how lame it is to be in the costume creator for a long time.

I already spend hours in the costume creator tweaking until everything looks exactly right, or close enough to it. Sometimes I even scrap the whole thing after those hours and start over again because my idea just isn't tenable. You say "yawn" but I fail to see a problem here.

I'm not talking about people looking for specific threads. I'm talking about someone asking a question in General, getting some halfhearted attempt at an answer, having the thread moved to the "correct" section (still unanswered), then no one replies to it and it only gets 2 more views before it's months old and no longer relevant. I don't really care if things get moved or not, I'm just describing what I see happen more often than not when a thread gets moved.

While I don't disagree, the centralized nature of "General" and the much smaller playerbase contributing to a much smaller forum userbase oftentimes causes moved threads to completely die once put into the "correct" section. That can't be good for people trying to get an answer to a problem.

Until HC decides to rework a set into a gimmick set when it wasn't one before, but I'm sure people who enjoyed the old set and just wanted number tweaks instead of circled powers don't matter.

Outside of my issues with global recharge being a huge culprit for why procs are so valued (and really, an issue with much of the game as a whole), my biggest wish for procs is for the control-focused ones to be more useful. There are so many different damage procs that can let certain ATs or individual powers begin to "encroach" upon a traditional damage AT's level of offensive power, but the same can't be said for the control procs. Not only are there not enough to really stack, the powers you'd want these procs in are almost all universally sub par for the usage of procs. One top of that, the magnitude of these procs is so low that only the weakest enemies will be affected by them, assuming they aren't being defeated outright before the proc even has a chance to do its job. The final nail in the coffin is that many of these control procs are put in sets that belong to control powers and become functionally useless (who needs a slow proc against an immobilized/held target?) What sets the damage procs in damage powers bit apart is that those procs do damage irrespective and in addition to the power's own damage slotting. It's bonus damage on top of what already exists; but a slow proc firing against targets that already can't move, that doesn't even last as long as the control power's own effect, is useless. Even in the realm of "stacking mez," the control procs come up extremely short. Hell, I run the immobilize proc to try and mitigate the "stumbling problem" of being a Dark Armor/Stone Melee tank and it does practically nothing. I just want a reason to want to go for these procs where they shine. Currently, even in their best-case scenario, they aren't doing anything.

Its nuke is like Rain of Arrows or Blizzard, though the delay is even longer than RoA is. That delay does line up pretty well with Upthrust's delay though so you can hit a spawn very, very hard with both attacks landing at the same time. My only complaint really is that the set is less "rock blast" and more "rock wrap and shatter." The animations feel like control powers and it's an odd choice to me.

Still leveling, somewhere in the low 30s. I haven't ran into issues, but I don't play at breakneck speeds. I get that question a lot, so all I can think is that people seem to have forgotten how to slow down after getting used to running over +4/x8 with full builds and incarnates.

I run an Chance for Immob proc on OG and Chance for Knockdown in DS to try and mitigate the "stumbling problem" but it rarely does anything, unfortunately. That said, I also run Stone Melee with the set so I'm stacking stuns constantly. I probably wouldn't take OG at all if I had no other way to stack stuns since it's just Mag2 by itself. I did run into someone trying really hard to sell CoF as a huge boost to your defense (in the form of -ToHit) but the accuracy of the effect is a huge hurdle and only works against things that are surrounding you, and when you're Dark Armor/Stone Melee, the things that surround you are too busy stumbling around to hit back in the first place.

I think they're also picking it because it means they don't have to spend a Pool on Leadership and can grab a different Pool or pick up another power in a current Pool (since you'd need two picks to get Tactics whereas you only need one pick to get Focused Accuracy).

Worth noting that this is actually a ToHit bonus and not an Accuracy bonus, despite the name, so it's better than it first appears.

It's detailed in the Attack Mechanics section you linked: Accuracy is subtly different. It modifies an attack's chance of hitting by a fraction of itself instead of by a fixed amount. Accuracy changes how often an attack hits in proportional terms instead of absolute terms. Example: Consider an unbuffed, unenhanced attack that hits 30% of the time. If it got a +50% ToHit buff, its hit chance would rise to 80% (30 + 50). If it got a +50% Accuracy bonus instead, its hit chance would only rise to 45% (30 + (50% of 30), which can also be written 30 × 1.5). Accuracy is applied in a second step, after all ToHit and Defense modifiers are applied. To note, this is also there regarding Accuracy in the case you have bonuses that grant +Accuracy (not +ToHit): So for players, AccMods is calculated using: AccMods = the power's inherent Accuracy × (1.0 + the power's Accuracy Enhancements + all global Set Accuracy bonuses) For reference, this is the full formula in question: HitChance = Clamp( AccMods × Clamp( BaseHitChance + ToHitMods – DefMods ) ) BaseHitChance is what the attack's chance of hitting would be if there were no modifiers at all – no Enhancements, no buffs, no level differences, nothing ToHitMods is the sum of all ToHit buffs and debuffs (the debuffs will be negative) DefMods is the sum of all relevant Defense buffs and debuffs (ditto) AccMods is the product of all Accuracy multipliers, and Clamp(x) limits x to the range of 5% to 95% ToHitMods and DefMods are 0 by default. AccMods defaults to 1. Extrapolating the information in reference to your question, you would calculate your ToHit value first. If it's above 95, it's lowered to 95. If it's below 5, it's raised to 5. After that's done, you multiply that number by whatever the power's Accuracy is, which is gathered from all sources of bonus Accuracy (such as set bonuses) and whatever the base Accuracy of the power is (almost always 1, but check the power directly to be sure). If that number is higher than 95, it's lowered to 95. It's also somehow lower than 5 (in the case of powers with 0.8 Accuracy and no bonuses, for example), it's raised back up to 5. Enemy Defense contributes only to the ToHit portion of the equation. If they have some Defense against your attack, that's taken away, 1 for 1, from your ToHit score. This is done before that value is clamped, so if you have... 140% ToHit and the enemy has 45% Defense, your final ToHit is lowered to 95% which is the Clamp Cap so it's like they have no defense at all. If you only had 80% ToHit though, against that same enemy, you'd have 35% chance to hit them. That 35 would then be modified by your Accuracy... say, 50% bonus accuracy, which puts your final chance of hitting that target to 52.5% (35 x 1.5, assuming a standard attack power). In short, Accuracy (not ToHit) is a multiplier of whatever your ToHit value is and comes at the end of everything. Any bonuses to Accuracy (not ToHit) are on top of the usual base of 1.0. You can see what the Base is in Mids for every power under the "Accuracy" label in the power info window. 75% is the 1.00 standard, and if you hover over this value, the popup text will tell you at the far right what it is, assuming you haven't slotted anything. The % value is just a representation of your Final HitChance with all calculations done for you, assuming the enemy has no modifications to their Defense value. You might also want to check if you've set that Gaussian Proc to be active on your sheet. I noticed you have it slotted in Leadership and Mids likes to default to "buff procs" being active. If you have a little yellow button next to the green one on the power name line, click it to turn it off -- that's the proc button. I make this error often regarding Force Feedback and it stinks.

On the HC Wiki it's still listed as non-existent. That said, the forums back in April 2021 said it was being added and I guess I just forgot. I almost never care because it almost never matters. I think outside of the Vahzilok, Halloween Zombies, and maybe a couple other mobs I'm not remembering, there aren't attacks that are just pure toxic damage with no additional damage type/positional tags. That said, when "Defense All" has 4 variations and doesn't always actually mean "All," it might be time to look into that. As you noted, Maneuvers apparently provides Toxic Defense but Weave doesn't despite both being described in-game as "Defense All." Even Mid's doesn't have a category for Toxic Defense (I know it's not a "dev program" and has other issues, but you'd think the players working on it would have added it by now as it's been updated multiple times since). I'm guessing Edict's minion defense, despite being listed as All, is like Weave in this regard and doesn't include Toxic. I wonder if these instances are intentional design decisions or simply just oversights. It's been almost a year, apparently, since the update to include Toxic as a real defense flag so I'm guessing it's intentional. Either that needs to be re-evaluated or some of these powers/Global IOs need to say "All except Toxic" or something. At the very least it will avoid confusion.

Necro thread, but eh. They paint this up as "preservation" for "gamers," but it's plain as day what this is really about. It's just more monetization of nostalgia in an attempt to take another "market" away from pirates/fanmade emulation and sell it back to you. I know I can't say much since I've bought Ocarina of Time three separate times (though to be fair, one of those times came with the Master Quest disc), but these corporations see people willing to shell out money for old games they already bought a decade ago. The "buy in" section and "check for the 'right' to play a game" lines say it all.

As far as I'm aware, there is no "Toxic Defense" in the game because there is no "Toxic Attack" delivery tag. The only way to avoid Toxic damage is to have defense against any other attack tags the attack might have, such as Ranged, Lethal, or whatever else it might be. Beyond that, Toxic Resistance is all that's left.

I always thought it was weird that Arachnos, Black Scorpion in this particular case, were so dang proud of their mace that they made it shoot lasers. It's basically a utility belt disguised as a mace and it's so jarring to use on anything but a Bane Spider. Nobody other than Arachnos agents even "look right" when using it and I'd argue that much of the time, even they don't look right. I mean, who pulls out a 40 pound slab of metal, shaped into a bludgeon, to stand 60 feet back and fire lasers out of it, other than Arachnos? It doesn't even fit the theming you'd expect of a "spidery organization." What, are the maces supposed to be spinnerets? If so, that's gross. Anyway, people take Mace Mastery almost entirely for Scorpion Shield. It targets the most common damage types in the late game. Beyond that, it has some decent powers but the animations stink and I'm sure most of the time, those powers are used for sets and not much else. I do like the Spiderlings, though.

Yes yes, you can sound smart when you boil down the nuance and scrape the bottom of the pot. I get it. If you want to be facetious about it, that's fine, but I know you know what I'm talking about. Not replying to you further on this matter.

My only experience with the MSR on Homecoming has been... well, let's just say that my character, who was in zone asking for an invite like others were, was ignored by the guys running the League until I got a /tell from them telling me to leave the zone so that others could get in. Of course, I did nothing of the sort and just hung out in the bowl, blasting Rikti solo anyway. Pretty sure I ended up deleting that character though for unrelated reasons, but still. When I follow your directions and you ignore me before telling me to leave, I get a bit vindictive.

I personally find combo systems to be lazy design when applied in areas they don't make much thematic sense, and I especially hate when they're incorporated into a powerset that didn't originally have them so I can pretend I'm getting what I want as long as I play the set the way the devs want me to play it. It does more than stifle an individual's choice in how to run a set, it also actively punishes that player for doing it "the wrong way." Unless I'm soloing content and have to beat down a foe that takes minutes to defeat, I don't need an "optimal chain." Even if you want to be stubborn about it and ignore the combo system anyway, the set will be wonky because it's not designed to be ignored. Even Dual Blades, the "original" Combo Powerset, can look weird if you don't flow the attacks in the "proper" order, but the combo system there was new to the team at the time and, ironically, you get the most out of it by ignoring the combo mechanics. Future combination systems avoided that "mistake." Oh, one last thing I hate about combo systems being everywhere -- it lowers your character's "uniqueness" relative to other players using the same set and often locks you into taking all, or nearly all, of the attacks in that set which reduces your ability to supplement your character with Power Pools that can help define your concept. You're often so restricted that you're only able to barely fit the minimum "optimal" Power Pools for an end-game build and you're not allowed to branch out if you want to be functional. I don't mind Combo Systems when the set has them from the start, even if they make you take 8-9 powers to use them right (though I do grumble at that). though I do dislike how most sets released in Late Live and HC Updates almost demand you take every power in them. I will reiterate that I loathe them when a set is updated and it's shoehorned in. Nothing makes me more upset than powerset updates that change the entire feel of a powerset, causing me to drop that set. Sometimes I revisit the set later with a new concept, but the characters it was on prior are always deleted when that happens.

I'm of the opinion that a set needs to be evaluated under Generic IOs/SOs. Level Shifts, Incarnates, and maxed out Set Bonuses completely warp the game so heavily in the player's favor that you'd be hard pressed to fail with even an objectively bad build, like a Petless Empathy MM. At that point, your Incarnate powers and Set Bonuses are just playing the game for you. It doesn't matter to most players how "strong" something is when they've shoved a million Super Mario Invincible Stars down its throat to no longer care about its weaknesses. What usually matters to the average player is how the set feels and the playstyle of that set, and you get a feel for that while leveling it, not by PL'ing to the level cap and dropping 5 billion influence in its lap. If you want to play that way, more power to you, but don't pretend that it's really giving you any fair evaluation of a set. I will never take a "cap your level and finish your build before you judge" recommendation seriously. Before the pitchforks are raised, I do like Poison. I'm not necessarily asking for it to be changed. It would be nice if the shift from the set encouraging you to keep your distance at the start didn't make a sudden, and frankly powerfully dramatic shift, right at the end. Not many people are prepared for that kind of whiplash and they might not even be taking Venomous Gas at all for that reason alone. I know the set was adapted from the MM version but it might need a power order pass.

On a Defender, that means you're jumping into the middle of spawns yourself. Without a kitted build, you're just going to fall over. On a MM, you put that on a minion, but he'll just fall over, not go where you want, or require a ton of micromanagement that I can't be bothered with (I know from experience, my main villain on live was Necro/Poison). I'm not saying Poison is weak. Far from it. I'm saying that you get almost no use out of your debuffs spawn-to-spawn unless there's a tough target in it. I'm fine with this; it's everyone else trying to change Poison that isn't and my post was explaining why.

In a game world where maximizing your AoE and blowing up spawns immediately is "the norm," Poison's very small AoEs are considered useless. Keep in mind that Poison didn't even have the tiny AoEs to start with and it was almost entirely single-target for most of its life. I believe that if they wanted to make the AoEs any larger, they'd have to nerf the power of the debuffs to compensate and I don't really want that happening. Poison's niche has always been turning hard, single targets into whimpering sacks. This becomes even more potent if you're a Poison/Sonic Defender. I'd rather not lose that niche just so it can pretend to be Radiation Emission more effectively.

I'm going to preface this first by stating that, generally speaking, I'm a min/max player. I'm a PvPer. I tend to care a lot about fractions of a percent if those fractions mean I cross a threshold or not. Before anyone goes hunting, I gave up PvPing in this game back on Live because I'm a solo PvPer and Fight Clubs started getting boring. With that out of the way, worrying about raw DPS will only matter in this game if you're soloing content meant for a team or you're trying to compare your numbers to someone else doing the same thing. That is, the only time it matters is if you're trying to burn down Pylons (not generally a good use of your time for anything other than seeing what your numbers are), or outpacing an AV's regeneration (something that matters far, far less when you have a team). CoH isn't like other MMOs. There really aren't any functional "dps checks" in the game unless you go out of your way to create those scenarios. Sets like Fire, touted as "king of damage" will falter against fire-resistant foes and sets considered middleground like Energy can outpace its "betters" when fighting the correct enemies. What you should be asking is not how to maximize DPS, but rather, what enemies you're going to expect to fight the most often in the late game and picking powersets that either attack their weaknesses, or at the very least, don't suffer from their resistances. Maximizing your attack chain with proper IO slotting will just naturally give you the "leet deeps" you're looking for, assuming you execute your attacks properly. Which, by the way, is basically unnecessary in this game for previously stated reasons.