Redlynne

Ain't broke, don't fix it. Can't fix it, so leave it broken.

I take this as proof that it's possible for Players to learn the maps.

Think I've got a solution. 0.00 to 0.25s: Damage ... and Hold (unresistable! unenhanceable!) ... for 0.25s 0.25s onwards: Sleep duration Basically do a 1/4 second Hold effect to prevent the retaliation shot and then end the Hold so as to let the Sleep take over. Could do the same thing for Terrify, because it has the same timing issue, as Mesmerize. Would be a relatively simple tweak to implement.

On Virtue, I was playing my Warshade on a Dr. Quarterfield TF attended by The Man Himself™ ... Dechs Kaison ... and he was playing the "actual" Dechs Kaison character (a Robots Mastermind). At the time, my Warshade build wasn't even "properly finished" after having done a respec, so I had some empty slots(!) and wasn't up to full power ... but I wanted to play the TF (and get all those lovely merits!) so as to finish out my build with the proceeds. So I'm playing my incomplete and therefore slightly gimped Tri-form Warshade and then during one of the Defeat 150 Hunts a collection of us gather up a pile of Rularuu and nuke them down and I swoop into the mound of corpses, shift to Human form to use Stygian Circle and let rip with my $Battlecry ... Your soul is my chewtoy!! And the very next comment in Team chat is from Dechs Kaison saying, "MFing WS indeed..." Another one, on Virtue again, was the time I joined a Tanker Tuesday with my Ice/Ice/Arctic Tanker and warned the 7 other Tankers on the team that my build "inhales aggro like a wind tunnel" ... which got the expected "yeah, right" responses from jaded Tankers who were not inclined to believe my warning (they thought I was just boasting). We choose to run an ITF ... and then for the entirety of every mission of the Task Force ... ALL OF THE AGGRO WAS MINE. The other Tankers on the team simply couldn't believe what they were seeing. They were Tankers ... and they couldn't get any aggro! A couple times, one of the other Tankers would peel off and try to aggro a second group ... and I would just throw a Taunt at that other group and they would IGNORE the Tanker who tried to get their attention and come bumrushing over to me and my dogpile. When it kept happening, the other Tankers "learned" that I HADN'T been boasting about "inhaling aggro like a wind tunnel" with my build and they basically had to revert to Scrapperlock Mode around me while I kept ALL THE AGGRO. What surprised them even more was just how ... aggressively ... I was playing, since Ice/Ice on a Tanker doesn't have a Rage crash, but DOES have a defensive "crash" if Energy Absorption isn't kept fed from fresh (live) bodies. So the pacing that I was setting through this ITF was more like that of a steamrolling Brute than a Tanker, and I was very nearly indestructible while everyone else was left grasping at straws for any aggro at all (I let them have NONE). At the end of the run, there was a near unanimous agreement that my Ice/Ice/Arctic Tanker was the MVP of the run, that we'd completed the ITF faster than they'd been thinking it would (or even ought to) have been run because of my need to stay ahead of the Energy Absorption recharge cycles (and stay "fueled" with endurance and defense buffing), and that none of them had EVER seen anything like the kind of performance I'd been able to put on during that run. Some of them even admitted to crying about not being able to get any aggro at all during the entire run, and how that was eye opening for them! Good times. 😎 Another incident, still on Virtue, was on a Moonfire Task Force where I showed up with my Storm/Dual Pistols Defender. Some of the other Players made somewhat elitist comments about how they wouldn't mind "carrying me" through the Task Force since I couldn't really do any REAL damage with my build or anything. I just politely let them hang their ignorance out where everyone could see it while we waited for the team roster to fill up. The Task Force got started and almost immediately it was kind of obvious that the front line melee monsters were having trouble absorbing all of the incoming aggro in the tightly confined spaces we were breaking into in each of the radar stations. People were getting frustrated, and I could see where they dynamics were going (people were wanting to quit) so I asked before the 3rd mission if people would object if *I* "took the safeties off" what I was doing and made everyone's lives a lot easier? There was, of course, some more mocking derision thrown my way (after all, I was a Defender ... what could I do to change the battlefield dynamics?), but the consensus was to let me give it a go and see if we could run more smoothly (with fewer defeats and trouble). You can, of course, guess what happened next. I toggled on HERDicane (fully slotted up) and proceeded to -ToHit debuff everything into the ground while herding them into groups for the melee monsters to massacre without remorse, pity or a whole lot of need for healing support. Needless to say, at that point my Storm/Dual Pistols Defender basically "took over" the rest of the Task Force and became the central focus that protected everyone else while they all did their thing from within the safety of my HERDicane aura. Before we even got to the last missions, I was starting to get tells and team chats asking me what my build was because people had never seen anything like it before, and now they were getting inspired by seeing just how DOMINANT it was in action to want to play a copy of it themselves. I was even getting such requests from a couple of the melee monsters who had mocked my Defender before the Task Force began who had been insinuating they would have to "carry me" and here I was "carrying" the entire team for them (because they'd demonstrated that they couldn't manage aggro more than once). The bittersweet irony of that experience was that I'd rolled up that Storm/DP Defender only a couple of weeks before Time Manipulation was announced ... and as anyone who follows my build posts knows, here on Homecoming I've made a Time/Dual Pistols Defender build, but not a repeat of the Storm/Dual Pistols build, because (in my opinion) Time/Dual Pistols is better than Storm/Dual Pistols as a pairing on a Defender. Yet another incident, which happened on Virtue again, was when I was playing my Hunts(wo)man on a Task Force and we has a Force Field character in the group. I sent a tell to the Force Fielder saying that the two of us should stick together, because between us we'd defense cap everyone around us (including ourselves) and if anyone got too far out in front of our protective auras, that's THEIR problem. The Force Fielder readily agreed to my proposal, so the two of us stuck together and everyone who stayed near us had NO PROBLEMS. A couple of the melee monsters got a little too ambitious/adventurous and got too far out in front of us, promptly faceplanted when they weren't within range of our protection, complained that we weren't supporting them adequately ... and got resoundingly mocked by everyone else on the team for going off on their own and paying the price when they should have known better. Since everyone else was fine and they only hurt themselves by getting too far out over their skis, the consensus was there was no need to change what we were doing and the melee monsters just had to settle for going at our pace instead of at theirs (because we held all the support that kept them alive). However, we also had an Empathy Defender on the team. Once the Force Fielder and I teamed up, that basically left the Empath with next to nothing to do, since they were playing as a healbot and reserving all of their endurance and animation time to twitch reaction healing ... that "suddenly" wasn't needed anymore, because everyone nearby to the Force Fielder and my Hunts(wo)man Soldier of Arachnos weren't taking much (if any) damage anymore. So the Empath was just following us, with nothing to do. So after we got to the next mission, I told the Empath in team chat to feel free to start offending at any time. The Empath just stopped moving. Stopped. I figured they were trying to process what I'd said and compose a response, so I stopped advancing (which also made the Force Fielder stop advancing too) in order to give the Empath time to type their response without leaving them behind (unprotected). The answer from the Empath was ... "What did you just say to me?" To which I replied that they may be a DEFender, but they also had a secondary powerset and given how the team was running there was no reason they couldn't start OFFending while they were with us using their secondary. There was another pause ... longer this time ... while I waited for answer. Finally, after a long delay, the Empath replied in team chat ... "That may be the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me." And from then on, for the rest of the Task Force, the three of us (myself, the Force Fielder and the Empathy Defender) were practically inseparable. Our Empath stopped "flying the gauges" as a healbot and started using their secondary powerset on anything and everything that came into range. The entire team noticed the increase in tempo and pacing and everyone was a lot happier as a result. Our Empath started "painting the town red" with contributions to our XP generation ... and was loving every second of it. At the end of the run, the Empath sent me a tell saying that they had never before enjoyed a teaming experience as much as they had on that team, and they were inspired to keep playing their Empath even more now than they had been before. And all it took was telling a Defender they didn't need to stay in their pigeonhole as a healbot. Defenders have a secondary. And they should feel free to use it. You may be an Empathy primary ... but you can be MORE than just your primary. Feel free to start offending at any time. "That may be the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me." And that was my turn to be the one saying something nice to someone that got them to play their character better in a team, to the benefit of everyone. And yes, receiving is pretty nice ... but so is the giving, when you can do it.

It Depends ... It depends on the entirety of the build. You can't just take things in isolation in an attempt to "Take All The Bestest Things" and just throw them together an automatically wind up with the Bestest Integration™ of everything together. Classic example of optimal components with sub-optimal systems integration is something that was done on a Soviet era satellite design. They had a fantastic infrared sensor that they put on the satellite. They had a fantastic heat sink that they put on the satellite. Guess where they put them on the satellite? Right ... they put them right next to each other ... so that the fantastic heat sink contaminated the results of the fantastic sensor, rendering the data from the sensor objectively terrible. What that means is that you need to go to the extra step/layer of checking your work for the assembly of animation times and recharge times so as to see how they all "fit" together (tetris style) without gaps and how "efficiently" they fit together. It's something that I've been trying to do on my more recent build posts (once I figured out a process for doing so). Because it's not enough to just have "All The Bestest Things" in the build planner if those "All The Bestest Things" do not fit together (neatly or well) resulting in a lot of waste/inefficiency despite all being individually "All The Bestest Things" as per the build planner. As I have found, I often times need to do multiple revisions on builds in order to "test out" various tweaks and alternatives to the build plan and then cross-check that against the animation times of various attack chain sequences to make sure everything "fits" together efficiently without "wasted" unnecessarily excessive recharge that serves no useful purpose. And yes, a 20s base recharge time sound like a minor eternity for an attack chain ... but once you pile on all the global recharge and start getting the power recharge down under 10s, you can start getting some really good results. I mean, when you add up 71.25% global recharge from set bonuses, plus 70% recharge from Hasten and 50% recharge from Chrono Shift ... that's 191.25% recharge affecting every power in the build even without any recharge slotted into a power itself and from a 20s base recharge that means that Suppressive Fire recharges in ... 6.87 seconds. Let me repeat that to make it really really obvious. 20 second base recharge 191.25% total global recharge bonus 6.87 second functional recharge Powers that recharge in under 7 seconds can be put into an attack chain pretty easily ... which I detailed in my previous posts in this very thread. And when you stack the animation time for Suppressive Fire on top of the less than 7 second recharge time you get an attack chain cycle time of less than 10 seconds per repeat ... which is "useful" in a variety of knock on ways, particularly if the duration of any debuffs/mez effects are 20s or higher because you can potentially double stack them within 10 seconds of starting your attack chain, which can then sustain that debuff/mez effect nigh indefinitely while the rest of your attacks in the chain defeat the $Target(s) you're attacking. And that's before you factor being able to stack the Hold of a Cryo/Incendiary/Toxic Suppressive Fire attack with a Time Stop to neutralize $Targets, particularly if you're wanting to spread the suppression around beyond a single $Target in the dogpile. In other words, you have options of engagement in relative safety that you wouldn't have by dropping Suppressive Fire and/or Time Stop. This isn't a matter of what are "All The Bestest Things" ... it's a matter of HOW do you use the tools you give yourself ... which is a very different level of thinking about your build and your gameplay strategies and tactics.

Oh ... but it isn't as a proc monster ... Level 20: Suppressive Fire (A) HamiO: Endoplasm Exposure (+2 Acc/Mez) (21) Gladiator's Javelin - Chance of Damage(Toxic): Level 10 (21) Gladiator's Net - Chance of Damage(Lethal): Level 10 (23) Neuronic Shutdown - Chance of Damage(Psionic): Level 10 (23) Ghost Widow's Embrace - Chance of Damage(Psionic): Level 20 (25) Decimation - Chance of Build Up: Level 25 Suppressive Fire: Gladiator's Javelin (3.5 PPM), Gladiator's Net (3.5 PPM), Neuronic Shutdown (3.5 PPM), Ghost Widow's Embrace (3.5 PPM), Unbreakable Constraint (4.5 PPM), Apocalypse (4.5 PPM), Decimation (1.0 PPM) 3.5 * ((20 / ( 1 + 0 / 100 )) + 1.67) / (60 * (0.25 + 0.75 * (1 + 0 * (11 * 0 + 540) / 30,000))) = 90% (Pre-clamp: 126.41%) 4.5 * ((20 / ( 1 + 0 / 100 )) + 1.67) / (60 * (0.25 + 0.75 * (1 + 0 * (11 * 0 + 540) / 30,000))) = 90% (Pre-clamp: 162.53%) 1.0 * ((20 / ( 1 + 0 / 100 )) + 1.67) / (60 * (0.25 + 0.75 * (1 + 0 * (11 * 0 + 540) / 30,000))) = 36.12% 71.75 * 4 * 0.9 = ~258.3 average proc damage (71.75 + 107.1) * 2 * 0.9 = ~321.93 average proc damage The ~258.3 is without Superior/Purple 50 ... and the ~321.93 is with Superior/Purple 50 ... averaging the 90% proc chances into things. The Decimation Build Up proc though is what can really act as a force multiplier for the AoE attacks of Empty Clips and Bullet Rain, since it buffs the damage dealt to every $Target hit after a Decimation proc. It's one of those 1-2 combos that you have to experience first hand in order to appreciate it.

Depends on if it's a DoT or not. If it's a DoT, say goodbye to your Sleep powers working for Mind Control.

Procs do "instant" damage along with the rest of the damage output (unless the damage is delayed within the power's parameters, like is done with Lift). I have the Will of the Controller ATO proc for damage slotted into my Mesmerize (where it procs a pretty good deal) and it does damage up front before the Sleep effect 0.25s after the damage is done. This means that a damage proc on Mesmerize will break a Sleep that was already applied, but will not break a Sleep that happens after the damage is applied (which the power does natively).

Yes ... however you can swap Dimension Shift for Crushing Field if that is your preference. However, if you do swap Dimension Shift for Crushing Field, you'll need to use different slotting. For Dimension Shift, the Endurance/Recharge ATO is the ideal IO to slot and simply isn't replicated in other sets. Dimension Shift does not require Accuracy (and has no use for Accuracy enhancement). Crushing Field, however, NEEDS Accuracy in order to be useful because Crushing Field starts off with an Accuracy PENALTY on the base power, and has a very high endurance cost per click (you can easily burn your blue bar down by spamming this power). The big deciding factor (for me at least) is that due to the demands of the rest of the build Dimension Shift/Crushing Field power can only afford to be a One Slot Wonder™ power. As a One Slot Wonder™ my sense is that Dimension Shift works out better with only a single slot, while Crushing Field CAN work with only a single slot but Crushing Field really wants to have more than a single slot in it to get the most out of it (especially as a proc delivery power).

PPD Sergeant

Working on it.

Dominate Yes. The sequencing is different. The damage and the hold land simultaneously, so there's no opportunity to retaliate.

Counter-proposal: "Hard Mode" inverts the Minions and Bosses quantities. Every Minion spawns as a Boss instead ... and every Boss spawns as a Minion instead. So instead of lots a Minions, some Lieutenants and a few Bosses ... you invert those numbers ... a few Minions, some Lieutenants and lots of Bosses. Total numbers are still the same per spawn, but the weighting of what ranks are spawned in what quantities swap the numbers of Minions and Bosses per spawn group. Note that such an inversion would "work" as a Reputation choice from -1/x1 all the way on up through +4/x8.

Problem solved. Change it from a Click for static deployment to instead be a PBAoE Toggle and make it look like one of these ... ... except with green laser light beams coming out of it instead of blue or red. Problem of mobility REALLY solved.

That's only true if AV Regen is near zero and Resistances are also near zero.

Should be easy enough to test on the test server ...

Because damage happens first, enemies are NOTIFIED ... and they reply/respond to being attacked ... just like with any other damaging attack. They get to queue up their attack choice before the 0.25s delay until the Sleep/Fear takes effect ... and because City of Heroes works on a Resolve First/Animate After basis, everything about their reply attack gets computed and "laid in" to happen before the 0.25s later Sleep/Fear effect comes into force. It's just a consequence of the order of operations and how the game "works" under the hood. I just checked Flash Freeze and it works the same way as Mesmerize. Instant damage with notify mobs ... then 0.25s later apply Sleep. Note that this formulation means that Flash Freeze CANNOT STACK WITH ITSELF since the power does damage (breaking Sleep) before reapplying Sleep ... unlike Mass Hypnosis, which can be stacked with itself if you put enough sleep duration and recharge enhancement into the power.

Brutes have ramp up/ramp down cycles with Fury. Guts doesn't need to use any kind of Fury to ramp up/ramp down his power. He's a capable of delivering maximum devastation/power on his alpha strike ... which is a Scrapper attribute rather than a Brute attribute. But then, Guts is totally OP (except when he's not) so it's hardly a 1:1 comparison mapping.

I'll readily acknowledge that the blue/purple caves are more challenging for some Players than others, and that they're really good environmental camouflage for all sorts of things (like where the tunnel is). But I see that as a challenge to be overcome, not something to be done away with as an inconvenience or an annoyance. Not everyone is going to build their lair in Sinclair Mansion.

YES. Unfortunately I've been composing posts for the past 4+ hours straight in other threads so I'm going to have to defer my contribution to this thread till another day ...

Another way to look at this is to do "Minion Equivalents" for higher ranks for their HP (and I'm going to round off for simplicity). Minion = 1x Minion Lieutenant = 2x Minion Boss = 6x Minion Elite Boss = 12x Minion Now start thinking about what would happen if every $Target of Minion rank and above generated a small PBAoE field around themselves that granted +Resistance (All) to all the other $Targets of their Faction around them. I'm thinking something like this ... Minion = +1% Resistance Lieutenant = +2% Resistance Boss = +6% Resistance Elite Boss = +12% Resistance Needless to say, you shouldn't have any problems figuring out where I pulled those numbers from, given what I've been saying so far. Now, what this would do in actual gameplay practice is that it would mean that massed hordes of $Targets herded up together would become harder to defeat than the exact same number of $Targets scattered around. If you've got a "dogpile" of 10 $Targets that contains 2x Bosses, 3x Lieutenants and 5x Minions ... and ALL of their PBAoE Resistance auras are overlapping to cover everyone ... that's (12+6+5)= +23% Resistance(All) given to that "dogpile" of future XP, meaning you'll need to do more damage to them "together" than you would if they were all "apart" from each other. You could even vary the radius of their PBAoE Resistance auras like so: Minion: 7ft radius Lieutenant: 14ft radius Boss: 42ft radius Elite Boss: 84ft radius Again, it shouldn't be that hard to figure out the "pattern" of what I'm saying here, let alone the inspiration of where I'm pulling it from. This is actually something that I kind of wish City of Heroes had done WAY way back, since it would mean that it would give "scattering" and Knockback potential advantages over the "pure" dumpster fire strategy of Herd & Burn. At the very least, it would mean that using massed "nuke" attacks on closely packed high densities of $Targets would be "less effective" than doing so on more widely scattered clusterings. Want do do more damage to your $Targets? Well BREAK THEIR FORMATION you imbecile! Is it a "perfect solution" to the problem? By no means. Would it mean that the "leadership" of Lieutenants and Bosses would "matter" in any meaningful way that the Players would need to adapt to? You betcha they would. And best of all, it would mean that tactical positioning (who is where next to what) would become a LOT more important than it is right now.

I do wonder if this in particular is a possible knob for the devs to turn... Defenses come in two flavors ... Positional (Melee/Ranged/AoE) and Typed (Smashing, Lethal, Fire, Cold, Negative, Energy, Toxic, Psionic). Resistances come in one flavor ... Typed (Smashing, Lethal, Fire, Cold, Negative, Energy, Toxic, Psionic).

Close Quarters Battle requires different tactics and strategy than Open Field Battle. The fact that the close quarters "cramped spaces" environments to fight in is something that everyone needs to LEARN how to deal with ... even the snipers who would rather be a mile away from the action. It's that VARIETY of terrain and environments that prevents any one single build plan from "winning" over everything in all situations and circumstances. You can build a long range character, but still need to deal with tight confined spaces where long range is irrelevant ... just like how you can use Superspeed as your travel power pretty freely almost everywhere except the Shadow Shard and Grandeville due to environmental features. Yes the spaces are cramped and claustrophobic ... and that's a GOOD THING(!) ... because how you maneuver to fight in there, and how you move, is DIFFERENT than in more "open" settings and locations. That difference is important and shouldn't be sacrificed upon the altar of convenience.

Telekinesis is NOT trash inherently ... but it is made TERRIBLE by the STUPID decision to limit the Max Targets to ONLY FIVE instead of the 16 it ought to have. When you can scoop up an entire spawn group and repel them into a corner and HOLD THEM THERE for as long as your endurance lasts ... that's VALUABLE. It also happens to be UNIQUE. Changing the Max Targets limit on Telekinesis from 5 to 16 is so simple, easy and effective that I consider it developer malpractice to have not had it done by Paragon Studios. The Homecoming Team could fix this travesty of rank and rancid injustice in less than 1 minute. Because this is what use of Telekinesis is supposed to enable ... That's TEN Skyraiders all packed within a 10ft radius Target AoE around the anchor in the center, pushed into a corner of a catwalk in Terra Volta. If you can only do that to FIVE of them at a time ... you can't do THAT.