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City of Heroes 20th Anniversary Q&A Responses

Redlynne

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Posts posted by Redlynne

    Mid's Reborn: Hero Designer

    in Forum

    Posted

    3 hours ago, Mikewho said:

    also seeing that Homecoming was working on their own thing.

    This has perhaps been the most insidious factor, as I mentioned.  The whole "somebody else is doing it so why should I?" ... which then winds up with no one reaching completion.

    Mid's Reborn: Hero Designer

    in Forum

    Posted

    2 minutes ago, staylor said:

    Mobile app?

    I've been telling people for the past YEAR that what is really needed is a webpage that does all of this online, which dynamically generates a URL hash code as you edit, so all you need to do to link to the build is the URL and the webpage will load the details from the URL hash.  Over this past year, more than one such effort has been started and stalled out (for various reasons, including "somebody else is doing it so why should I?") ... so we STILL do not have a webpage based version of what Mids' does, even though such a webpage would be platform and OS agnostic, not require any program installation or update patches and would presumably be easier to maintain once everything gets set up correctly.  The problem is ... getting everything set up correctly.

     

    Here's an example of how that kind of thing would work (link is to a WoW Classic build planner that is obviously MUCH simpler to program than a webpage based Mids' service would be, but the underlying design and usability principles are substantially similar).

    LINK

    • Thanks 1

    Hold sets with damage

    in Suggestions & Feedback

    Posted

    33 minutes ago, MTeague said:

    I'd actually be LESS likely to slot these sets on a Dominator. You have your entire secondary tree to melt face with. The primary is to hold your enemies down while your secondary does unspeakable things do them.  Really, it's on a Controller, where very often your Primary *IS* your damaging tree, that I could see these being used.  

    @MTeague said it before I could.

    This is one of the reasons why I feel like the Controller ATOs are just bass ackwards game design for what Controllers NEED in their ATOs.  Controller ATOs are all Acc/End/MEZ/Rech with procs tacked onto the end of them ... meaning that realistically you ought to be 6 slotting them into control powers that do no damage ... and Controllers don't have a whole lot of those in their primary powersets.  Controllers need their control powers to control AND damage, but the segregation between those two priorities is very nearly absolute such that you can't find Damage/Hold or Damage/Stun or Damage/Immobilize or even Damage/Fear outside of HO type enhancements (Titan origin, etc.).

     

    It's enough to make me think that we would be so much better off, especially in a PPM world for procs, in which we took the existing Mez Sets and simply duplicated them to make additional copies of them and then on the additional copies changed the Recharge enhancement parameter to being a Damage enhancement parameter ... and just kept all the set bonuses exactly the same on both copies.  The only exception to this that I can think of wanting would be just outright changing the Controller ATOs in order to drop Recharge out of them entirely and replace that part of them with Damage enhancement on the Controller ATOs only.

     

    Here's an example of the difference this kind of change would make possible.

     

     

    Lockdown (1)

    Set Bonues:

     

     

    Lockdown (2)

    • Lockdown: Accuracy/Hold
    • Lockdown: Accuracy/Damage
    • Lockdown: Damage/Hold
    • Lockdown: Endurance/Damage/Hold
    • Lockdown: Accuracy/Endurance/Damage/Hold
    • Lockdown: Chance for +2 Mag Hold

    Set Bonues:

    • Like 1

    Mercs: Secondary

    in Mastermind

    Posted

    2 hours ago, Coyote said:

    Although... Serum? Actually spend the time and Endurance to activate that power? BLASPHEMY!!!

    So is taking (and using) the personal attacks in your primary.  Coincidence ...??

     

    Or to put it another way ...

     

    PAGANISM.  It's not just for Heretics anymore!  😁

    Reducing End Drain

    in Suggestions & Feedback

    Posted

    2 hours ago, GetRidOfWires said:

    It would be nice if there was a set bonus available that could help

    There is ... it's called ... Defense.

    If you aren't HIT by the attack that drains you, then you aren't drained.

    With "sufficient" Defense you only have to worry about autohit attacks that drain (remarkably few of those, thankfully) and the Roll A Natural 20 hits that leak through your Defenses.

    • Like 3

    Mercs: Secondary

    in Mastermind

    Posted

    17 hours ago, Knottewe said:

    You could take presence and fighting and tankermind with crosspunch, repulsion field, and maybe thunderstrike + charged armour or KO Blow + shark skin.

    Bah.

    Take Group Fly so your Mercs/Force Field Mastermind can show Sky Raiders just how badly they're DOING IT WRONG ... with your Mercs as ... Airborne Rangers ...

     

    Once your Mercs are so much less vulnerable to melee attacks (only fliers can reach them), they'll be a lot more survivable ... and you'll be able to concentrate on Ranged+AoE Defense for them, while Melee Defense becomes less of a priority (not zero, just less).

     

    In order to get to Group Fly, I would honestly recommend taking Hover, Air Superiority(!) and Group Fly.

    By switching from Group Fly to Hover, you "airdrop" your Mercs into ground combat.

    Air Superiority allows you to (melee) guard your Mercs against fliers who come up to melee you and your Mercs as you "Keep Away" move.

    Group Fly keeps your Mercs up in the sky where most attackers can't get up to in order to melee them.

     

    Combine with Force Field so as to take the T9 Force Bubble that your Mastermind and Mercs stay within (it's a 50ft radius!) to make incoming melee damage even less of a possibility.  The radius on Group Fly is 60ft ... so as long as your Mercs stay within the Force Bubble, they're within Group Fly radius at all times (making it a nice demarcation field to tell you when they're about to drop out of range).

     

    You'd even be able to combine the whole air vs ground movement thing through use of Force Bubble.

    Keep your Mastermind some 15-30ft above the ground (when you're not dealing with low ceilings) with Force Bubble toggled on.  Use Group Fly to move around, but then toggle Hover on and Group Fly off (to save endurance), so as to "airdrop" your Mercs to the ground but still within the Force Bubble you've still got toggled on, when you need to engage in combat.  Force Bubble then ensures that EVERY fight from Exemplar Level 33+ is a RANGED battle with little to no melee in it, and for Exemplar Levels 5-32 (if taking Hover at 4, Air Superiority at 8 and Group Fly at 10, because the Level 6 power pick is automatically chose for you) you'd be able to fall back on use of Group Fly to keep foes at a distance for your Mercs to shoot up in relative safety.

     

    Take Stealth and Grant Invisibility from the Concealment pool to make VERTICAL ENVELOPMENT a reality ... especially when keeping Force Bubble toggled OFF until you're ready to impose DEATH FROM ABOVE onto whatever it is you're fighting against (so toggle on to begin the battle).  You can then use Force Bubble to "press down" onto a location by moving your Mastermind so as to impose a CONTROLLED spreading of $Targets below you, if that's useful to you (and sometimes, it will be).

     

     

     

    So it wasn't until the last couple of posts that I seriously considered this idea of going 3D movement Mastermind with Mercenaries/Force Field.  Might be worth doing a little more research into because the combination sounds REALLY versatile, and you'd be able to stack SO MANY Force Feedback procs into the build that you might even be able to leverage long recharge powers such as Serum to much greater effect than you'd otherwise expect.

    Time Manipulation/Dual Pistols/Soul Mastery ... Say Your Bullet Time Prayers

    in Defender

    Posted

    15 hours ago, diefree said:

    So trying to respec into build, thanks for letting me know Red, but my epic power sets aren't showing soul just dark, flame, power, psychic, and electricity. Is this a bug or am I missing something?

     

    14 hours ago, Darkir said:

    You need to do the villain patron power pool.

     

    The Villain Patron pools are not available "for free" like the Hero Epic pools are.  You need to be a Villain/Rogue and go Redside and do Ghost Widow's Patron Arc.  You will need to talk to Arbiter Rein in order to start the arc to unlock any of the Villain Patron pools.

    [v3.0] Huntsman (pre- and post- Level 24) Bane AND Crab leveling builds

    in Arachnos Soldier & Widow

    Posted

    5 hours ago, KelvinKole said:

    Of course, this comes at a lower proc rate for Force Feedback, so choose your flavor. There's no right or wrong way.

    That's actually one of the things that I wrestled with while making the build, since the slotting was in a lot of ways somewhat interchangeable.  As you can see, I decided that the higher proc chance per $Targets was the (for me) better solution, in which case it was more important to put the proc on the power with the smaller AoE so as to increase the proc chance per $Target.  That in turn makes the proc more "reliable" with fewer $Targets to affect ... which has been known to happen from time to time.

     

    Besides, I wanted the -Damage and Terrorize proc happening on the larger Venom Grenade AoE instead, since it offered a greater crowd control (via Terrorize) than the alternative of doing that through Frag Grenade.  So that was my thinking there.

    Is Orbiting Death that useful for Tri Form?

    in Peacebringer & Warshade

    Posted

    1 hour ago, Zanthyna said:

    I remember when players use to be call it "Orbiting Debt"  because of how fast it would get you killed.

    Orbiting Death is one of those powers that NEEDS slots in order to do "useful things" for you.  Without slots (and without enhancement) the power is really lackluster.  However, because you can take Orbiting Death SO EARLY (Level 4!) there was always this biased assumption that it must be good for ... something ... early on, right?

     

    Well ... kinda ... but not really ... maybe?

     

    The problem is that Orbiting Death, on its own, unsupported by slots, enhancements and/or other power picks (I'm thinking Hover specifically!) just really isn't all that good.  You're paying a lot of endurance for a toggle that isn't doing all that much damage (single digits per tick) every 2 seconds.  So it's expensive and slow ... and draws aggro, which Human form isn't well equipped to deal with until MUCH later.  Early on, the best way to deal with aggro is to not have your feet/tentacles nailed to the floor.  Hovering/Flying above everything is the safest place to be from an avoiding/mitigating incoming damage standpoint ... and for the longest time (Issues 3-24 was it?) Warshades were LOCKED OUT of the Flight pool and therefore couldn't even get access to Hover/Fly AT ALL.

     

    So Orbiting Debt would pull everything towards you, where you stood on the ground, and you'd have multiple $Targets trying to melee you (successfully) and their melee hits (for lots of damage!) would make short work of your Human form Warshade and then Bob's Your Intern at the hospital.

     

    All of that WAS true.

    The thing is, that as you level up and finish out your build it doesn't have to STAY TRUE forever ... but a lot of people took that "first taste" of the power, didn't like it, turned their noses up at it and then never looked back.  And as is rather typical, HOW you use the power (tactical positioning, etc.) has an enormous impact on how "effective" Orbiting Death is for you, in a solo context ... let alone how "effective" it can be for you in a Team context, since it is honestly best used in conjunction with a herding aggro magnet who is NOT you (see: Tanker/Brute).

     

    However, when you actually slot up Orbiting Death and use it as a damage aura in the context of a "completed" build, it actually starts getting pretty respectable.  Take my most recent Warshade build where I can ultimately manage to start getting 18.32x5=91.6 Negative Energy damage every 10s per $Target (max 10 targets) with a 17.95% chance for 71.75 Smashing damage every ~10s at a cost of 6.6 endurance per 10s.  Used on a group of 10 $Targets, that yields a theoretical average damage (ignoring ToHit checks) of around 916+(71.75*0.1795*10)=1044.8 total damage every 10s ... at a cost of 6.6 endurance for those 10s.  That's a total damage production of 158.3 damage per endurance in that (10 targets) scenario ... which is REALLY GOOD ... and you don't have to spend extra animation time to produce it, it's a 20ft radius damage aura ... and that's not even including what Sunless Mire damage buffing will do to it.  Pile that on top of all the other damage you're doing with your attack(s) in Human form (and potentially the damage buffing you're adding to your Team if also running Assault from the Leadership pool) and you can start generating some pretty serious force multiplier numbers just by being "present" where the action is.

     

     

     

    The moral of the story being that EARLY ON in your Warshade's life career, Orbiting Death will often times feel like more of a liability than an asset.  It's only later ... possibly MUCH later (like 40-50 later) when you've got the slots available to invest in Orbiting Death and you've got your protection scheme sorted out (usually Eclipse, but there are other options) that Orbiting Death can make a comeback into being a "useful" power in an overall integrated scheme for how to play and engage with your Warshade.  In that sense, Orbiting Death will often times wind up being something of a "late bloomer" of a power, despite being something that you can obtain as a power pick as early as Level 4.  The thing is that once you're Level 50 and have all your slots invested, you can Exemplar back down and Orbiting Death will STILL be way better than it ever was while you were leveling up the first time around.  So there is a sort of Jekyll vs Hyde quality to the power in terms of how it "ages" in the context of a build, and where it will finally "settle" into once you've reached Level 50 and have all of your powers slotted up the way you want them.

     

    A lot of people think that Orbiting Death simply isn't worth the effort it takes in order to do all that.

    They're wrong ... of course ... but it doesn't stop them from thinking they're right about it.  😉

    • Like 1

    [v4.0.0] Tri-form Peacebringer Light Speed

    in Peacebringer & Warshade

    Posted

    4 minutes ago, Lorak_Vanadius said:

    @Redlynne so this is best version so far of all your builds?

    Best of the Peacebringers, sure.

    Warshades are their own beast, which is why there's a counterpart build for them that requires use of Force Feedback procs to pull off the same stunt without Hasten.

     

    I've had a little more time to play the build (finished the last 10-14 arc) and have moved on into the 15-19 set of arcs, so I'm still growing into it (slowly...) but I'm really liking what I'm seeing in terms of dynamics in gameplay.

     

    One of the more "Huh, that's interesting..." things about the Peacebringer versus the Warshade is that on my Warshade when I run into a situation of "okay, that looks like it will be A Bit Much..." my go to solution is to pull the spawn group apart using Starless Step (Teleport Foe) in order to take on a piece of the spawn group (often times a Quantum or Galaxy) one on one.  So when playing my Warshade, it's all about being sneaky (Shadow Cloak) and scouting and knowing everything you need to know about what you're fighting before you clean their clock(work)s and so on.  The Warshade is all about Divide TO Conquer as a strategy.  It's all about "ambushing from a distance that breaks Line of Sight" so as to take a spawn group on sequentially, rather than in parallel.

     

    My Peacebringer plays VERY differently than that.

    Whenever I come across a situation of "okay, that looks like it will be A Bit Much..." my go to solution is to use Inner Light, then Nemesis Staff (Natural origin) for a huge hit and Knockback on whatever is the "most obnoxious $Target" in the grouping (often times a Quantum or Galaxy), followed by a shift to Nova form and then charging in to hit everything with Bright Nova Scatter (Cone) and Bright Nova Detonation (Target AoE) so as to end the fight as quickly as possible.  I then use Glinting Eye, Bright Nova Bolt, Bright Nova Blast, Bright Nova Bolt, repeat as my single target attack chain to mop up whatever survived the initial attack.  It's all about "dropping the hammer" on them so as to take a spawn group on in parallel in the shortest possible time, rather than sequentially like on my Warshade.  It's a really fun dynamic, since with the Peacebringer I don't need to herd BEFORE I can buff with Inner Light, unlike how Sunless Mire works on a Warshade, and Inner Light recharges FASTER than Sunless Mire (90s versus 120s base) so I have Inner Light available for that kind of "hydraulic press" kind of action more often.  It's very satisfying to be able to buff up +ToHit and +Damage like that, on demand, without needing to "herd and drain" any $Targets for the privilege of doing so.  It's just one of the key differences between how Peacebringers and Warshades play that makes both interesting to compare and contrast.

     

    And as soon as I reach Level 16, I'll be adding Assault to my Human form powers, which will make things "interesting" in a whole new way ... especially on teams and Task Forces (still haven't run Positron yet).

    • Like 1

    [v4.0.0] Tri-form Warshade Symbiosis

    in Peacebringer & Warshade

    Posted · Edited by Redlynne
    pytos

    10 hours ago, madatlis16 said:

    So Red originally my WS was 43.. so I thought I would respec into this build.. and I will say I am quite impressed it is fairly flexible and fun.. I have not played in a team yet but I think it would be fun with a team as well..

    💪

     

    A LOT of how much you'll enjoy the build depends on How You Use It™ ... and a lot of that is determined by your preferences for playstyle.  The way I tend to think of it is that Nova form is the "blaster" while Dwarf form is the "tanker" and Human form is the "controller" due to the status effects (Immobilize, Hold, Knock).  As mentioned in my OP, adding Hover to the build very nearly revolutionized what Human form can "do" simply by changing WHERE you can do those things FROM (up off the ground).  The sheer number of possibilities that this opens up is simply dazzling, particularly when you can use Hover to stay out of melee range while still being within Orbiting Death and/or Mire radius of the $Targets beneath you.

     

    But you're right, the flexibility is an extremely key part of the build.  If trying to engage in one form is "dangerous" switch to another form and use a different strategy.  The only limitation on HOW to play is determined by the capacity for imagination inherent to the Player.  Some people (often times min/maxers) will assert that "redundant" capability like that is simply wasted (and would have been better spent elsewhere), but I personally do not consider alternative means to achieving the same ends to be a flaw or an error.  I say that because situations and circumstances change, such that you can't always count on a One Trick Pony™ (or even a one trick per form pony!) to be able to carry you, at all times, through EVERY theoretical situation.  And that's before considering the thought that Leadership toggles can potentially "add more" to a team than whatever damage you're directly outputting yourself.

     

    So the challenge is one of awareness and having the willingness to recognize that you've got OPTIONS in almost every single situation and circumstance, and that this build is well positioned to give you all the tools you need to exploit those differences to your best advantage.

    • Like 1

    [v3.0] Huntsman (pre- and post- Level 24) Bane AND Crab leveling builds

    in Arachnos Soldier & Widow

    Posted

    6 hours ago, AustinSmith said:

    are not endgame builds

    Depends on the endgame you want to play, I suppose.

    Solo ... there are gaps (obviously) in the Defenses.

    Team ... it is likely that the gaps in Defenses will be filled by someone else on the team, so long as you cooperate with them in terms of positioning.

    League ... it is HIGHLY UNLIKELY that in a League context (that doesn't split the teams up) that you will have any gaps in your Defenses.

     

    So it really depends on context for what it meant by "endgame" here.

    Mercs: Secondary

    in Mastermind

    Posted

    7 hours ago, Coyote said:

    That leaves me with Emp and TA as my main choices, and Sonic or FF as backup. What should work best?

    Mercenaries/Electrical Affinity ...?

    Mercenaries/Nature Affinity ...?

     

    However, if you're limiting yourself to Empathy/Trick Arrow/Force Field/Sonic, I would honestly go with Empathy ... although that then begs the question of whether or not you've got Pain Domination available as a secondary.  Having Suppress Pain available as a +Regeneration TOGGLE to keep your Mercenaries healed up around you would seem to be a better option than relying on Regeneration Aura in Empathy for the same service.

     

    Second best choice would be Sonic because the -Resistance debuff powers in Sonic will help you Mercenaries overcome their ... limitations ... as damage dealers (as well as any teammates you happen to fall in with).  Of course, if you do go with Sonic you will want to pick up the Medicine pool for Aid Other, Aid Self and Field Medic ... because relying on the Mercenaries Medic for all your healing will be ... inadequate ... to the task.  The Mercenaries Medic is certainly better than nothing, but not by much.

    Trying to understand Kinetic Melee

    in Tanker

    Posted

    1 hour ago, Sovera said:

    In the time it takes to be used (3 seconds) we can use the first three attacks (3.8 seconds combined) and do the same damage (or more since procs on each attack x3 instead of procs just on CS) with less of a downtime if the lovely 5% chooses to happen after 3 seconds of animation time. Using the three attacks also works much better for the stacking mechanic of Power Siphon, but also for Stalker (the one AT I'd recommend playing KM on) since the AS stacks play well with the fast attacks.

    There's a caveat to using procs instead of damage enhancement on Archetypes that have Critical Hits happening ... the damage procs do not get doubled by Critical Hits, while damage enhancement will get doubled by critical hits.  Just one other factor to consider.

    • Thanks 1
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