Redlynne

So I dual booted over to the Windoze side of my Mac today in order to take TW/Ninjitsu for a spin in Pine's 2.22 and get a sense for what's happening in here and ... wound up with something (starting from scratch) that makes me kind of sit back and wonder if there is a DOG. Allow me to explain. On my Ice/Ice Tanker build, one of the things that I am exceptionally keen on doing is frankenslotting Frost as a Melee Cone for Range so as to get its allowed reach up from 10 ft to around ~15 ft ... which doesn't sound like much, but it actually increases the AREA of space that Frost can attack/hold at risk by very nearly DOUBLE in size (in square foot terms). That's because 1.4*1.4=1.96 ... so increase the Range on a Cone attack by +40% and you nearly double the area of (2D) ground you can hold at risk. So what I do with Frost is something I like to call the "Hop 'n' Pop" with it ... where instead of just standing on the ground (like a Stone Tanker) with my feet nailed to the floor, instead I'll JUMP UP above the cluster of aggro I've gathered around myself (see: Tanker with Auras) so as to point the Cone of my Frost attack DOWNWARDS at everything clustered up (temporarily) under me, rather than pointing Frost off to one side of the pie and missing 75% of the $Targets around me. So I'm not doing THIS ... ... instead I'm doing THIS ... ... and even just from this extremely simplistic representation of a (not even 90º wide) cone, you can see how the addition of the blue and purple layers at the bottom of the cone intersect a much larger/wider area on the ground than the green layer does. Well, I worked out that with Hurdle (only, so no Combat Jumping, and slotted with a single common 50 Jump IO) your PC will jump straight up about 15 feet in height ... which just so happens to almost exactly match the "reach" of a Range extended Frost, so that I can quickly jump up ... point the Cone of the Frost attack DOWNWARDS into the dogpile of aggro I've got around me, click Frost when I'm at the top of my jump (you quickly develop a feel for the timing to do this) and successfully turn Frost from a Cone that misses most of what's around you into a Cone that hits pretty much everything around you as if it were a PBAoE (even though it's really a Cone). Clever use of game mechanics (and positioning) and all that. Ye ken hoo i'tis. So I was looking at Titan Weapons, which I haven't played before, and noticed that for Scrappers the powerset has three 120º melee cones of 10 foot range. But then when I went to go and start frankenslotting them for Range I found something I hadn't been expecting ... in Pine's at least you can't slot common Range enhancements into Titan Weapons(!). This is at least consistent with legacy info found at City of Data for Titan Weapons, where Range enhancements were not permitted to be slotted into the Cone powers. But then, that's never stopped me from wondering about these things before ... So even though I shouldn't have been able to do it (ha ha) ... I was able to frankenslot my way to getting some Range enhancement slotting into the three melee Cones available to Titan Weapons, along with some +Defense set bonuses (definitely needed on the build I was working on) and even a proc IO in the 6th slot. This brought the range (in Pine's) for these three Cone attacks up to 14-15 ft, just like I'm accustomed to with Frost in Ice Melee, but each of these attacks in Titan Weapons has a wider 120º Cone instead of a more limiting 90º Cone meaning increased opportunity to PUNISH fools who don't run away fast enough. PUNISH. PUNISH. PUNISH ... The problem with all of this, of course, is that it works great In Theory™ ... but I have no idea if it will work "properly" in the actual game engine itself. Would anyone be willing to conduct a simple test of the proposition for us (and me) on Justin? All you need to do is create a Titan Weapons Scrapper on Justin, insta-level to 50, and slot 3 Damage/Range Hami-O enhancements along with a couple Accuracy and an Endurance Reduction into each of the three Cone attacks (so as to keep the results from getting too skewed by missing and too tedious due to running out of blue bar). After that, it's just a matter of determining if the Cone attacks get more "reach" with the (not meant to be allowed) Range enhancement slotted into the powers or not. I figure the basic difference between Titan Weapons and Ice Melee on this point is that Titan Weapons is a melee WEAPON (meaning costume item) powerset, while Ice Melee does not have an associated melee weapon costume item (although Ice Sword and Greater Ice Sword will temporarily manifest weapon-ish looking items as part of the animation of those powers). Frost, however doesn't manifest a weapon at all, so "allowing" the Range on the Cone of the attack to be enhanced doesn't wind up with a conceptual oddity of a "weapon" being able to reach farther (via taffy pull?) than usual, and in the process wind up looking ridiculous from an animation perspective. At the very least, being able to verify this particular distinction would have value for the community, I'm thinking. So ... any takers testers willing to help out a Mad Engineer known agent of KAOS take control of the world?

I also recommend Huntsman ... but then I'm (hella) biased. ^_~

You know, it wouldn't surprise me at all if there were some ... typos ... of the "off by 1" variety involving how the Pet AI logic reads attack animation times and readies the next attack for use. So instead of "thinking" that an animation only takes 2 seconds, the AI behaves as if the animation takes 3 or 4 seconds to complete before activating another power for use. As I recall, even the Paragon Studios devs had trouble with the glitchy Pet AI doing "stupid stuff" it wasn't supposed to with the options it was given. In a lot of cases what they wound up doing was "rigging" the Pet attacks in such a way as to reduce the ... collisions ... of available options for the Pet AI to sort through in order to choose what to do/cast next. I'm thinking this would be a relatively simplistic proposition to test. Take the current baseline of ... ... and simply modify the recharge times like so ... As I'm sure plenty of our math majors will notice, that would then put the recharge times on prime numbers for those powers, reducing the risk/opportunity for ... indecision ... by the Pet AI for equally usable options at any given time. The other possibility would involve "educating" the Pet AI system with what amount to a Priorities List of: Use THIS power first over other options Use this power NEXT over all options except the one above ... etc. ... That way, you prevent the Pet Ai from potentially falling into a "trap" of having more than one option to choose from and not being able to make a choice between them.

So ... Scrapperlock ... basically.

My guess is that Enflame is the damaging counterpart to the reworked Stimulant Injection from the Medicine pool ... with the idea being one of aiding allies and harming foes (slightly). As for the "working as intended" part, there's really *two* questions buried in that. Is it WORKING as intended? Is it working as INTENDED? All too often, Developers vapor lock on the former while ignoring the latter. Yeah, the scripting may run just fine and the game doesn't crash to desktop ... so it's "working" ... but you've completely lost sight of what the "intent" was behind what you were trying to accomplish (and whether or not that "intent" was a worthwhile thing to pursue in the fashion you've achieved). So yeah, you can make it "work" ... but if the "intent" behind it is all fouled up it doesn't matter if it works or not, because the INTENT behind it is broken.

Gravity is more of a "blastery" set than a "controllery" one, in the sense that Gravity has a remarkably limited collection of powers to apply lockdown or even AoE on piles of $Targets. Look at the powers of Gravity Control. City of Data ... Gravity Control Crush ... single target Immobilize Lift ... single target Knockup Gravity Distortion ... single target Hold Propel ... single target Knockback Crushing Field ... target AoE Immobilize Dimension Shift ... location AoE Intangible + Stun Gravity Distortion Field ... target AoE Hold Wormhole ... target AoE Teleport Foe + Knockback + Stun Singularity ... summoned Pet (crush, gravity distortion, lift, repel) You've got 2 Immobilizes (single target and target AoE), 2 Holds (single target and target AoE), 2 Knocks (up and back) ... plus an Intangible, a Foe Teleport/Stun and a Pet. Notice what's missing in that combination ... ways to shut down $Targets attacking you and your team. Gravity is somewhat lockdown-lite, compared to other Controller primaries. Now there's some pretty decent soft control in Knockup/back but it doesn't "last" like a Hold or a Sleep does. Immobilizes keep $Targets from closing to melee range, but do remarkably little to stop ranged attacks (surprise, I know). So to contrast, when I play my Mind Controller, I'm playing City of Statues the whole way when soloing. I lock down piles of 3 and just beat them down in Containment. And if it's more than 3, I Confuse them and divide and conquer. But when playing my Gravity Controller, I'm almost constantly being attacked because I haven't got enough lockdown to go around. So I have to BLAST my $Targets down with a weaker lockdown while getting attacked the entire time. But with Time Manipulation, there's +Defense for me (and mine) and -ToHit for them combined with -Recharge helping to shut down my $Targets in a way that helps provide the necessary mitigation to incoming damage that Gravity alone isn't going to be preventing all that well. It's that complementary factor from Time that helps Gravity be a lot better at achieving lockdown status. Crushing Field + Distortion Field + Time's Juncture + Farsight = AoE shutdown (if not outright lockdown) ... and the recharge on this combination is faster than the recharge on Gravity Distortion Field, meaning that having this "ghetto hold" combo dramatically improves the control "power" of Gravity, and you can still use Lift and Propel to smack $Targets around with Impact in combination with Gravity Distortion. Add Energy Font for summoning Stun Aura pet(s) and you've got a winner for area denial and shutdown (if not outright lockdown, close enough to make little difference). That's how I think the two sets complement each other beautifully, and I haven't even mentioned stacking repeat casting of (Time Crawl + Time Stop) and Gravity Distortion along with Singularity also casting Gravity Distortion so as to stack enough Hold MAG to pierce PToD and Hold Archvillains.

Ninjas are really good IF THEY LIVE ... the problem is keeping them alive with next to no protection built into them by default. Solve their survival problem and they (*ahem*) kick butt and stomp on names.

Honestly? I'm of the opinion that none of the Time Manipulation powers are skippable in the sense that they do things you don't need or want to do, as a Mastermind.

Full Auto in the Blaster, Corruptor, and Defender versions of the Assault Rifle powerset are all 60s recharge times ... which is "fine" when you can slot for (and gain the benefit of) Recharge Reduction enhancement. Pets are completely unaffected by Recharge enhancement. AT ALL. So a recharge number that makes a lot of sense on a PC makes little to no sense on an NPC that cannot be affected by Recharge modification (positive or negative). The net result is a gimped (granted) power that is used so infrequently as to be only slightly better than nothing. I mean, we're talking a base damage production of 1.4 DPS per second of recharge once per minute with no opportunity or means to have that improved by recharge reduction. I'd say that reducing the recharge time of Full Auto to 24 seconds (a 2.5x reduction) and LRM down to 24 seconds also (a 10x reduction) would go a LONG WAY towards correcting this ... injustice ... to Mercenaries.

I'd consider Mace Mastery ... but only so as to access Power Boost in order to augment */Time effects.

Solo ... I'd say it's middle of the pack for damage production, slightly below a Blaster and competing with a Corruptor. Probably exceeding what a Sentinel can output, simply because of the stacked Leadership Auras. I'd honestly put the Crab (with backpack attacks or rifle attacks) on par with either a Mastermind or a Kheldian in terms of survivability, largely thanks to Serum and the designed preference for attacking from Range combined with the stacked Leadership Auras. Likewise, I'd put the build ahead of Sentiels on this score too. So not the absolute "best" at any of these parameters, but certainly a "contender" as an All Rounder™ while solo. In teams though, the double stacked Leadership Auras turn you into a permanent force multiplier. I can easily imagine 8 Crab builds being able to "mosey" through almost anything short of Devouring Earth Quartz emanators (which wouldn't survive long against the massed firepower AoEs) and of course Rularuu Eyeballs (with their stupidly broken +ToHit buffs). I'm thinking that 8 Crabs running an ITF would be humorously quick.

Yeah. It was annoying to learn that's how the code hash chunks worked (active build only, no alternate slotting included). It was more a matter of dropping in (unique) Purple Sets into various things so as to maximize them. A number of the purple Sets with a proc in them work perfectly fine at 5 slots if you skip the single purpose IO (that winds up being wasted by ED).

Oh and +1 Inf for that gloriously appropriate reply. *^_^*

I hear that someone has taken my name in vain again. Now who would be so- Oh. Sorry. The biggest thing that will determine your performance is going to be HOW you engage, tactically, and in a broader sense the toolkit of strategies you use to engage. How you maneuver and position yourself relative to your Foes and your own allies (and Pets) will make a huge difference in the outcomes you can produce. After a cursory examination of */Nature for Masterminds (I'm not steeped in history with the powerset), I'm thinking that Nature is a slightly better "fit" for a Mastermind Primary that wants to be attacking from range rather than melee as a matter of simple positioning. Which leads me to a really odd choice of primary ... Mercenaries ... slotted with Achilles' Heel for increasing the amount of Resistance debuffing and therefore the damage throughput you're able to inflict from your Pets and team. That turns you into a force multiplier of Resistance debuffing, and you stack that with the Resistance debuffing available from */Nature. Agreed. If you can heal your Pets en masse, via either Cone or PBAoE or Target AoE, you want to be using Bodyguard to your advantage in which your Pets help your Mastermind "soak" incoming damage and in effect multiply the effectiveness of your healing in a way that favors you ... particularly if you're able to soak the alpha strike (even if there's Mez in it) so your Pets and your spousal overunit Controller ally are free to counterattack with your own debuffing and controls to "ruin the day" of whoever opposes you. Anyway, that's what I'm thinking might work well for you.

That was my conclusion. Martial Arts (and Super Reflexes in combo with Martial Arts) is simply better/more synergistic on Tankers (and presumably Brutes) than on Scrappers. Of course, I figure that a major factor in that was the whole buff 'n' polish those sets got from being ported over to those other archetypes in a way that makes them "competitive" for the game as it stood when the ports were made ... as opposed to needing to struggle with a legacy of being "competitive" in Issue 0.

More like "give item to Other" has a basic limited range that doesn't discriminate between PC or NPC at the game mechanical level. Then again, I've always thought of other PCs on teams with my Mastermind as being especially poorly behaved Minions ... or words to that effect. I mean ... they'll run into melee when they're not supposed to (for starters) ... /em roll eyes

Sounds like a database transcription error, where the Dev entering data into fields put them in backwards.

City of Heroes is an EDUCATION ... for parents and children alike. The worst thing you could do with this opportunity ... is squander it ... just like NC$oft did in 2012. Don't make their mistake. Give your kid the gift of a lifetime. Give them the chance to DREAM WITH YOU.

To quote Captain Kirk in the episode "The Galileo Seven" ...

No objection. Please proceed ...

Looks like I was using slightly inaccurate info in my post upthread. I should have just quoted my calculations from my SR/MA post ...

An App? Why not a HTML5 web page that we can link to?

And here I was thinking of how many Costume Contests you could hold under Atlas ...

I have experience with Ice/* (obviously) but no experience at all with Radiation on any Archetype, I really don't feel "qualified" to comment on the combination of Ice/Radiation on a Tanker. For me, I found the -Recharge stacking of Ice/Ice to be extremely useful, but your mileage may vary (of course).