Redlynne

There are a number of Invention Sets that are ... how should I put it (politely?) ... GIMPED BY DESIGN. I am referring specifically to the Invention Sets that cap out at a lower Level than 30. According to Paragon Wiki these sets are: Melee Damage Bonesnap (10-25) Pulverizing Fisticuffs (10-25) Ranged Damage Far Strike (10-25) Salvo (10-25) Knockback Volley of Velocity (10-20) Explosive Strike (10-20) Taunt Annoyance (10-20) Triumphant Insult (10-20) Defense Debuff Exploited Vulnerability (10-20) Achilles' Heel (10-20) Endurance Modification Adrenal Adjustment (10-20) Energy Manipulator (10-20) ToHit Buff Encouraged Accuracy (10-20) Rectified Reticle (10-20) ToHit Debuff Discouraging Words (10-20) Deflated Ego (10-20) Because none of these sets is "allowed" ... by design(!) ... to reach as high as Level 30, and thus "SO strength" enhancement values for their pieces, all of these sets are rendered WORTHLESS for slotting as sets. At best, a proc can be harvested from the sets that have one, while the rest of the set NEVER GETS USED. I'm reasonably certain that if the Level 40+ PCs were datamined, the number of characters slotted with any part of these sets that isn't a proc would fall under the rubric of Limit --> 0 for those of us who have encountered calculus in our lifetimes. There is simply NEVER a "useful" case to be made for using any of these sets AS SETS to be slotted, simply because they're underpowered BY DESIGN thanks to the Level Cap of 20/25 placed on these enhamcements. Let's not mince words here ... THIS IS JUST DUMB ... plain and simple. So what do I recommend as a remedy? Change the upper boundary limit on Levels to be minimum 30 for ALL invention sets. Change the 10-25 sets to instead be 10-30. Change the 10-20 sets to instead be 10-30. DONE. It's really that simple. Modify the Level bounding parameter(s) on 16 invention sets, so as to allow them to reach "SO grade" enhancement strength on their non-proc enhancements. If they stopped being GIMPED BY DESIGN then people might be inclined to start using them (heresy, I know). For example ... Far Strike and Salvo are the ONLY ranged set IOs to feature actual Range enhancement within their sets(!). All other Ranged Damage sets feature no Range enhancement in their sets whatsoever. But because these sets are limited to Level 25, they will always provide a "substandard enhancement value yield" at all times relative to other options, effectively making these sets "worthless" ... even for frankenslotting. I presume that the original design plan at Cryptic, when Positron was designing the Invention System, was to have a sort of "gear progression" going on with the invention sets ... meaning you start with the lowbie/weak stuff and then replace them with stronger/more powerful sets over time ... which makes sense in the context of 2006 when looking at the item progression towards BiS (Best in Slot) itemization that was the motivating factor behind playing World of Warcraft's endgame raids. The problem is ... this idea DOESN'T WORK in a City of Heroes context where inventions don't need to be replaced every 5 Levels like TOs, DOs and SOs do, because the inventions are designed to be "forever" enhancements. Once you craft it and slot it, it's good forever. The only other context that I can imagine applying here is that these sets would make sense for someone who liked to Exemplar a lot (as in, ALL the time they were playing) and wanted to use sets that wouldn't lose their bonuses ... but even that doesn't make any sense since the set bonuses are Gimped By Design too, offering wimptacular bonuses that no one is (ever?) going to consider worth the effort of even crafting any of these IOs, let alone using them in a build (unless it's a proc, which is a completely different value set). In other words, this looks like a result of a poor design decision by Positron VERY early in the process of creating the invention system that just simply never got revisited (because, seriously, who cares about these worthless sets, right? for a touch up later. Given the demands of wanting/needing to craft just the Common IOs in the 10-25 Levels, "wasting" useful salvage on the IOs for these sets makes next to no sense whatsoever (except for the procs, which are useful when frankenslotted so as to jettison the remaining balance of their host set). Anyway, something to think about as being a low hanging fruit that would be easy (presumably) to update.

So ... Power Boost added a whopping +169.7 HP to the Absorb ... which across 7 $Targets (Mastermind + 6 Pets) that's 1187.9 HP for the lot of you, which very nearly equates to an "extra Mastermind green bar" worth of increase in a Tankermind scenario.

True ... but that kind of Conventional Wisdom™ can only get overturned by examples of "oh now that's clever!" gameplay that makes people envy what you just managed to pull of in front of them.

Exactly. You only need to slot: SEVEN KB>KD converters into your Human Form powers. TWO KB>KD converters into your Nova Form powers. THREE KB>KD converters into your Dwarf Form powers. You should be HAPPY to "pay" a Knockback TAX on 12 of the powers you can take, leaving you with only 55 slots to go around on a Tri-Form build with 36 powers that can take slots ... right? RIGHT? RIGHT?? I mean, you usually make your builds with an average of 1.5 slots added per power ... right? RIGHT? RIGHT??

(Temp) Buff from Flurry ... sounds good ... although I'd think a sort of "built in" Force Feedback style of effect (so you wouldn't need to slot the proc) would be more appropriate. Recharge buff from Superspeed ... no ... that's going to open a whole can of worms that is best kept sealed (in concrete at the bottom of the North Sea). Whirlwind though ... I can easily imagine putting in a global recharge buff into Whirlwind that affects all powers while the toggle is on ...

The whole flavor vs flavour thing was actually done to save on typesetting costs, because 1 less letter is cheaper to print in bulk than the alternative ... meaning that Americans did that to ultimately save pennies on the dollar, because we're just that cheap.

Easiest way to think of it is that no attacks can "reach" ACROSS the boundary layer of the bubble. Inside to Inside works. Outside to Outside works. In to Out or the reverse of Out to In does not work. Easiest way to resolve the issue of NPCs not "knowing" that the bubble of Dimension Shift is "blocking" their attacks from doing damage is to use Wormhole to reposition the $Targets you want defeated. Wormhole them onto your Singularity and THEN cast Dimension Shift to "lock them in together" while you stay outside and do /em Newspaper until the Dimension Shift toggle drops after 20s and then start blasting away at the survivors who are all firmly aggro locked onto your Singularity. If the NPCs aren't going to be "smart" about things, at least the PCs can try to be ... (try) ...

With the new build that I made which is in another post that builds on the discoveries made in this one.

At that point you might as well just reduce the base recharge time on every power in the game ... Downvoted.

Not everyone knows what they're doing (yet), and sometimes people just take stuff that "sounds cool" without getting into the game meta of "knowing" what powers do.

I'm not throwing shade just simply to throw shade (even if it looks like that at times). I'm simply pointing out that if a developer wanted to build the functionality that MRB provides "from scratch" today you'd build it as a web page which would allow people to link to builds and all you'd need is a web browser. It seems like the only reason why we're still tied (chained?) to the legacy UI of Mids' is because ... well ... that's what was done almost 15 years ago, so ... why reinvent the wheel? Is the program useful/functional? Sure it is. Is it what we'd really want to be using for this purpose if we were starting over? Not exactly. That's all. The last time I did anything webpage construction related was about 25 years ago using what is (by now) hopelessly outdated HTML written by hand (back in the days of BBEdit). I wouldn't even know where to begin with the prospect of coding a web page, let alone one dedicated to this specific purpose. I personally don't have the skills (or experience) to program that kind of a web page.

If you're limiting yourself to SOs only, then Stone Armor starts looking mighty survivable. After that, it's just a matter of picking a secondary. I mean, Stone Tankers were the "stone standard" before Inventions came along for a reason.

++ yes pls! Well ... if the build planner was running on a web page instead of a (windows only) app ... /em significant look

S imple. E asy. E ffective. ... not being done ...

/jranger

Counter-proposal ... change all KnockBACK into KnockUP on Peacebringers.

The problem is that although you might want to pick two, you wind up with only one ...

That all comes under the heading of "No Free Lunch" combined with "You Can't Please Everyone." The problem is that the accretion of Technical Debt will eventually cripple your development processes if you don't budget time to address it. Paragon Studios was heading in that direction when NC$oft pulled the plug.

It's the Quartz. The Lieutenants drop the Quartz buff aura pet which gives all DE with radius like a +100 +ToHit (not Accuracy as advertised, +ToHit, just like how the Kismet proc advertises that it's +Accuracy when it's really +ToHit), completely totally and utterly negating ANY Defense oriented protection scheme. It's just stupid broken "kryptonite" for Defense schemes. Against "weeds, shrooms and rocks (and bosses)" you'll be fine, but against "crystals" you're going to have to be more careful and kill their pet drop as fast as possible if you want your Defenses to be worth a damn. The other pet aura spawns do different things.

If you look at the coding I used for my Ninja/Time/Mace Mastermind build, you ought to be able to find the necessary inspiration for being able to make this work. The key is writing a bind that will "change" functionality depending on which Pet you're "addressing" at the time.

During the last Player Summit in 2012 I was talking to Noble Savage and at one point he mournfully admitted that "it's all spaghetti code now" for City of Heroes. Considering the fact that at that Player Summit during one of the Dev Panels they straight up asked the question ... "Do you want new features or to fix bugs?" ... and the OVERWHELMING answer from the room came back as FIX THE BUGS ALREADY!!! The basic underlying problem was that the almighty schedule that controlled game development essentially dictated that there was NEVER any time budgeted for refactoring the game's codebase, meaning that bugs of yesterDECADE "lived on" to ruin everyone's day and constrain the possible. It also didn't help that you could introduce a friend to the game and they'd run into bugs that everyone knew about (and politely ignored) in relatively short order. So Paragon Studios decided that it was time to take an Issue's worth of time to FIX ALL THE THINGS as a result of the feedback of the 2012 Player Summit ... and then NC$oft pulled the plug on them.

It's alright, I wasn't offended or anything. On the contrary, I simply wanted to be very clear on what my position was (and is) regarding the builds that I post, mainly for all the lurkers who aren't replying and who might have thoughts along similar lines. It's the age old story of being "competent" at what you do, which I like to summarize like so as one of my catchphrases: If you've been buried in IT for 30+ years, you've almost certainly had cause to feel the same way. It's one of the hazards of creative endeavors, whether it be programming, build creation or artistic pursuits. It takes a lot less time and effort to "consume" (or even appreciate) a particular piece of work than was required to create it in the first place. Quick to read ... takes "forever" to compose, by comparison. That's just the way it goes. And while I do post my builds for everyone to "learn" what they can from them (and some people are even brave enough to try them), in a lot of ways my main motivation is to leave a record that I myself can use and reference. However, I've found that public posting of builds like I do can have unexpected benefits to it as wide ranging as inspiring someone else in a way that rebounds back to my benefit when they discover something from what I did that then goes on to help me discover something that even I hadn't known or been aware of. So publicly posting builds helps push back the "frontiers" of not only knowledge in general but also sometimes overturns the generally accepted Conventional Wisdom™ in ways that are just as beneficial as they are unforeseen. Or to put it another way, I post these builds for myself just as much as I'm posting them for everyone else to learn from and enjoy. Share the wealth of what you "know" and we all become "richer" for that shared "knowing" of the game. Everything after that is pontificating on the relative merits of myriad alternative approaches to the age old question of ... how do YOU want to play YOUR game?

You don't see the problem with the question because ... YOU DON'T SEE THE PROBLEM WITH THE QUESTION.

I'm fine with not having a (cinematic) travel power during Levels 1-3 ... And I'd point out that if you take said travel power by Level 6 (either at 4 or 6) then you can Exemplar all the way down to Level 1 and still have that power. So the ONLY TIME you CAN'T have a travel power is Levels 1-3 on a NEW character. That time doesn't last that long ...

I'll just leave this here for you to peruse ...