JusticeBowler

My weekend is crazy, but I'm hoping to get in touch with you anyway and join you in this awesomeness. Let's get something started.

Dark is also not particularly costume friendly in a way that WP or Invuln is, but it lends itself to certain effects. Back in i23, I had a dark tanker who colored all of the armors and auras bright pink. I colored Dark Armor's powers red and orange to suggest heat back then. As long as we're sharing styles Bob The Janitor uses orange scented products while cleaning up the city streets of Paragon. So I tried to diminish the effects as much as I can, but if they have any color at all... it is a soft orange. :)

Bio can be worked with if tinted. I'm a 'themed character' fiend, and this is what I did with it: Bio/TW fairy with bark armor and thorn axe. A four foot tall tank amuses me. Bio/Fire demon, bio can look demonic, fire tinted to look like dark melee. I have a bio strapper who has FX on minimal so essentially there is nothing at all. I get a hand glow when I switch to offensive, I think, but that's it. Otherwise I look like I don't even have a secondary.

I feel like I'm arguing, but I promise I'm just explaining my own confusion about this. The problem is that I was confused, not that I think you're wrong or anything. I just want to make that clear. My point is that procs could have recharge times just like powers. That is, 3PPM could just be, "if the proc hasn't fired in the last 20 seconds and the power hits, execute proc" that would be what "PPM" really means. That's what it sounds like it means. That way a player would always get fair value from the proc and be able to expect behavior. Perhaps the devs like the randomness of the proc as a feature, not a bug. It sucks to think that a -tohitdebuff I am counting on when I hit that AV the first time, just might not trigger even though I haven't used the power in several minutes before the fight. You see that's how my brain works. Chance is great for surprise, but ruins tactical thinking. If you use Broadsword, you start a fight in a big group of mobs with perry and not disembowel, so you can take advantage of the +DEF for the alpha and you "benefit" contextually. If I have [Devastation: Chance for Hold] on a power I will have no idea if I get a hold or not, even if I haven't used the power in many minutes. Frankly that ambiguity ALONE makes the proc much less valuable to me. You only benefit from them if they are better than something else you could have slotted instead. That's largely what I'm trying to judge here. Are the procs with all the maths something I "benefit" from and if so, in which specific situations are they actually a "benefit". It looks like the answer is yes assuming a player takes the time to match up the proc with the power rather specifically. I was really hoping procs could help my Traps Defender, but given how heavily I'm slotted in recharge enhancements I think it won't work out how I hoped. Of course, we haven't even talked about how procs do or don't affect pseudo pets like my Acid Mortar.

Go team IA! I've always been suspicious of certain powers and effects that were capped without explanation or seemed WAY underperforming and how the devs seemed to utterly ignore them. I suspect the devs had internal prejudices from their own playtesting experience (or someone's math) that didn't play out in the way players experienced them. -RCHG is clearly one that got flagged as "potentially game breaking". It is possible they actually designed some powers to suck so that the set as a whole was balanced against some other power they thought was too powerful. I don't know. Of course, other game breaking things happily marched on to become FOTM and they didn't seem to care. One of the weirdest ones is the insanely long recharge time on some powers. Wasn't rest like 8 mins originally? The only exception to this rule was weapon redraw which they not only capitulated to, but expended enormous efforts to recode into the activation times of powers. It still feels psychologically broken (which is why I usually turn off the animation), but it is really and truly fixed. But then I'm looking back to a time when you couldn't take every single power in your set because you wouldn't have room for travel powers, health and stamina. Rating which was the best set back then included which powers were skippable. So I know the game has come a long way since then.

Ice/Axe FTW! and yes, I made it because people told me not to make it. It was "let's see what I can do with this" character that turned into my signature toon back on Live. I didn't stick around to see Incarnates happen though... and all my IO set slotting was for the Enhancement value, I pretty much ignored whatever set bonuses I was getting as gravy. Svengjuk was a legend. I haven't been able to bring myself to play him again. In fact, all my old toons, can't do it. I've moved on to new things. I'll admit, sometimes the naysayers are right and something is gimped. But it is fun to prove them wrong when you can.

I had an Ice tank back on live before IOs and before the devs fiddled with it. Everyone told me the set was trash, but I could do everything anybody else could do except the things that (at the time) only Stone tanks could do like Hami and Recluse. People would get on a team with me and demand a backup tank because I was "Ice" and we all know Ice sucks, then I would do crazy tank tricks that would have them wanting to roll an Ice tank of their own by the time we were done. I really don't buy most of the FUD about tanker sets that "suck." I'm not saying that a tricked out Rad tank isn't more survivable than an Ice tank in absolute maximal terms (especially with set bonuses), but depending on your playstyle you can do crazy things with any tank. And as for the Fear and Stun auras on a Dark tank being a gimmick... well they've never seen someone use them well. The DAMAGE aura is the gimmick (far too little damage to be useful and it isn't really needed to hold taunt, especially when you can use your heal for that). Being able to taunt, terrorize, and stun multiplies the number of mobs you control which is actually MORE important than raw survivability. Tanks are just better controllers who need HP to make their powers work. People who look at it the other way around will never see the possibilities. This is why my Ice Tanker was so stunning back in the day. People who just calculate set bonuses for raw resist and defense are playing a tank with one hand behind their back... and missing out on what I consider the more fun aspects of live tanking. Meat shields are boring and don't contribute anything to the team outside surviving the alpha strike. IMNHO.

Yeah that's what I'm hung up on. Because increasing the slotted recharge lowers that percentage WHETHER OR NOT I take advantage of the faster recharge of the power. It punishes me with a lower % chance even if I don't fire the power that often. It also punishes me for putting it on a power with a shorter recharge + activation than the % assumes. I'm also hung up on not "wasting" a proc on a power that has a longer cycle than the PPMs (accounting for global recharge assuming I even have any, which I almost always don't). If I have two attacks, one is almost equivalent to the PPMs in terms of recharge and activation time and the other has double the recharge, the proc isn't going to make up for lost opportunities. I know it seems weird, but all this stems from the use of the term "per minute" which gives the false impression that the procs are hard coded to give some sort of balance around how useful they are "per minute" when really PPM is just a catchphrase for "we give the proc a percentage chance to fire based on how often the base power can fire every minute." It isn't "this proc fires this many times per minute." Originally all the procs were just straight % all "PPM" does is make that % adaptive to different powers recharge times to move the sweet spot from AoEs and quick attacks to mid-range single targets.

So what you're saying is the PPM is completely a factor of innate power properties that assume you are firing off that power continuously even if you aren't. So slotted recharge can't help since that will only decrease the % chance of it firing ... in fact it will hurt it because if I don't fire the power off as often as it is slotted to be able to I may miss a proc. Look at it this way. If I cut in half the recharge it is going to drop the percentage chance on any given attack that the proc will fire to maintain the PPM. But if I don't take advantage of that attack as often as I have slotted it, then when I do fire it, I get the lower % even though I haven't enjoyed the max benefit. This punishes slotted recharge and pays out on global recharge (from sets and hasten) which isn't figured into the formula. So if I don't have much global recharge to speak of on a toon, I should put procs on powers that as closely match the recharge + activation time of the power out of 60 seconds. So if an attack is 18 seconds + 2 seconds base and the proc is 3 per minute I'll get it every time... its still up to me to hit the button just like anything else, but adding slotted recharge only lowers my percentage and if I don't fully utilize the power (every time I can fire it I do) then I'm out of luck. There's no point putting it on a faster attack and obviously a slower attach will miss out as well. It is really about matching those numbers as closely as you can.

It does seem like some sort of bizarro reverse-elitism elitism, doesn't it. I didn't mean it that way. It is a relative term, a sort of experience of observing the playstyle and content choices. I'm sure there are colorful metaphors for relative slowbiew like myself (though I'm on superspeed compared to how my wife plays the game).

That's what I understand. But in this case understanding isn't helping me. Because you don't just fire one power continuously for a minute the process doesn't make much sense. And I might not use a power for a half a minute, does that mean I've wasted 30sec worth of the proc not firing? And what if the proc "fires" on an attack that misses?

OK... you've got me. If anyone from Red side is willing to put the time and energy into setting up an "Undercover Heroes" (I'm not sure my redemption arc concept would fly in this context) or possibly "Vigilante Heroes" (ala Punisher)... Villain Group... I will commit to joining, supporting, and participating in all the Red side content. I'm totally willing to commit two alts to this all the way to 50, playing a couple of nights each week (though I think we should all cover as we can, I can't really schedule which nights I'd play, but I promise to show up that much at least). Red side wants some love, if we've got people willing to make it happen, I might as well move while the interest is there.

For the record, I'll admit to loving stupid tank tricks like herding. And I liked it even more when the mobs collision and AoEs were broken and you could dump the whole lot of them into a crack and melt the lot. My Ice Tank (Svengjuk) was still in the "ice tanks suck" stage back then, but I adapted and learned to do some crazy things (like large sections of IP). But even though I liked it, I wouldn't do it most of the time, even back then. Some players enjoyed it in hazard zones, in part, because XP grind was so bad back then. Some of them just loved the theater of it (the build up, anticipating insanity of 60 + mobs, then climax of chaos). I suspect it wasn't that many people who liked it because herding more than 3 or 4 groups quickly raised objections as players got bored. My experience is, the real problem with herding is that in a small room where two spawns are supposed to "up the difficulty" because you have to take out one group without aggroing the other, having sufficient taunt just made those rooms more lucrative rather than more difficult. That's the sort of thing that sticks under the craw of "play it my way" developers (and Dungeon Masters for that matter). The truth is even though it would be a hoot to do some of that again, I'm not asking for it and the vast majority of the playerbase wouldn't want to play that way even if I did. Even doubling the limits wouldn't enable any of this silliness. I see no harm in a tank being "possible" to hold taunt on two x8 person spawns. If they are that worried, lower the AoE size of taunt to make such an effort more "strategic and challenging" to pull off (and make RCHG worth slotting in Taunt sets), but let it be possible. Or shorten the length of taunt's effects on threat... or reduce the overall threat multiplier of taunt, but let us try to hold more mobs. All of this makes tanking MORE interesting, more invigorating, more vital. I think all of the ATs could use this same sort of treatment, allow some cool things to be possible, but make us work for them a bit. Everyone who plays CoH these days is a long time vet who knows what they are doing. on solo damage... I can see an objection to raising the SOLO damage because of AE farming, but it still wouldn't put tanks on par with Brutes for people who are into that sort of thing. Otherwise I can't see the objection apart from "we have so many worthy things that's just going to have to go in the queue."

That was what I was thinking only more specifically, just a magic switch for solo play. If you are in a solo team, you do scrapper damage (no crit). Nothing complicated. I also like the suggestion of increasing the tanker taunt limits. If a tanker could hold aggro on a much larger group than a Brute could manage, then the higher caps a tank can manage damage wise would matter more and he would be more helpful even on large teams. Right now I cheat this on my Dark/Staff tank by being a tank-troller. I taunt a different part of the mob group than the one my dark auras (that to fear and disorient PBAoE) are managing. It works out if the difficulty isn't too high and I miss too much on the effects. While I'm sure there are Incarnate/Grape Brutes out there that can handle more straight damage than my lightly-setted tank, I suspect I can still outperform them this way. But that's it, I think. Solo damage buff and higher taunt limit. There is no fix for 8 person teams with 2-3 of them tricked out. But this would make tanks substantially more viable than they are now. This is not a problem that must be fixed. But to quote Winnie the Pooh, I don't need it, but I would very, very much like it.

They are still there. All the origin contacts (Azuria etc) are in City Hall and hand out their missions, and intros to other contacts. Out of curiousity I've recently skipped all of the newer stuff on one alt, even radio missions, and that alt is cheerfully meandering around Perez Park and doing hunt missions in KR and Steel Canyon. This. You just have to go in the building and get started. Oh and watch that you don't outlevel the contacts too quickly or you'll miss stuff. The contacts push you off very abruptly at certain levels. But there's a HORDE of content that almost no one touches. I know this because my wife has decided to do the ultimate completist run and get a full bar of red on every contact in the game. Wow... that's a feat I wouldn't try to repeat!

I've speculated about this in the past. The "locusts," as they say, will burn through everything they can burn and then fly away. But what are the locusts really providing except low cost Rare Salvage via AE farms? That's it. I suspect that HC might have to make some market tweaks if something truly breaks, but they've already put the system in a sweet spot. The thing that balances everything out is that there is a finite amount of INF in the game no matter what anyone does. The only way to get new INF into the economy is to play (missions) and it gets bled out by market and crafting fees. You almost can't mess up as long as that balance is in place. In other words, just because the locusts keep the three Red dots on the server status, it doesn't mean they are really a part of the experience of playing the game on any given evening. Maybe they make it a little easier to get critical mass in a Raid, but I'm not even sure they are at that. I see a lot of lower level toons in Raids and not as many Incarnates as you might think. If there were some very real drop in population that made servers feel bare, they can always merge the lowest to servers together, or do something of the like. I have been thinking that we need an unofficial Villains server and even unofficial Praetorian one, just to encourage people who like to play that content to more easily organize a critical mass. But that's the only thing I worry about when I think about server population.

+1

I'm spreading ideas around and encouraging everyone to consider some things I've been thinking in private (I assume a lot of other people are ALREADY doing these things too, but I don't know about them until they post). Yeah, sort of recruiting, though not in a formal sense. The only way for their to be posts on the boards other than "best single target DPS builds" is to post posts which aren't that! All the ways to play the game ought to be able to find ways to carve out their spot. I've decided its time to start talking about some of those ways. That's all. As I said, I'm not telling people how to play. Just beginning to give a voice to some ways I'm thinking about playing more often.

I'm going to try to keep this short, even though in my mind there's a lot to say on this topic. I've been thinking about it since Homecoming launched. How to keep this game fresh when it frozen in carbonite?.. how to get the most out of the experience as long as it is here?.. you can ask the question many different ways. I've been on ITF speedruns, blazing hot PI Radios, and a lot of other high end content now and while I suspect that some of you might never get tired of "melt-mob, move faster to melt-next-mob faster than your teammates" I think there's a maximum limit on that for me (and for most people). I think 8 person Incarnate/GrapeIO game breaking light shows are awesome, but ultimately they are a one trick pony. I'll never stop doing them (they can still clear your mind after a hard day at work), but they can't be much of what I do. I'm putting out the controversial idea that we should self-nerf. No, I'm not telling all the defenders to make heal-bots with no attack powers, or every Blaster slot for secondary effects instead of damage, or MMs not to take pets... though we should be open to more of that sort of thing. I mean, I want us to consider running smaller groups and more concept builds and going back down into the content doing stories, largely ignored parts of the game (Hollows beyond FrostFire, Striga, Croatoa, PvP zones maybe, whatever). It does mean "slowing down the game" while still keeping the difficulty up to a level that is engaging. If I want to play this game, if WE want to play this game, for very long at all, we'll need to explore all the different nooks and crannies again and do so "with a fresh look." So yeah, that means concept toons, smaller teams, following story lines... It means listening to Red and Gold side folks looking for a bit of love. (I'm as bad as anyone else on neglecting this.) At some point I suspect even the folks who are addicted to AE farming just to build better AE farming builds will hit a wall. It would be really something to actually use AE to make interesting "fresh" content to play instead. I've been thinking about this for some time, but I've never once seen someone in LFG advertising for an AE team just for teaming the content and, in fact, the nerfs to farming inadvertently punish anyone who would. I'm not telling anyone how to play. I'm putting my idea out into the forumbase to encourage folks who might be willing to look at the game this way so that there might be enough of this for these "alternatives" to be viable for those who want them. I'd like to put together a 4 person team to do Striga arcs without having having people freak out at the idea. You don't have to join my team, but if I never seed this idea out there, I feel like I'm forever missing something and maybe others will be missing out too. I'm not one of those people who complain that LFG is full of people forming DFBs. I'm not telling anyone to stop doing that (I love DFB in my own way). I'm just trying to open up the space for those who might be interested (or become interested) in something different.

I did see "no warshades" once or twice, but not in a while. I love my WS and he's useful in a lot of different contexts even though he's only in his late 30s. I can tank "good enough" for a balanced team that isn't running too hot and if there is someone better than me around, I can go self-buff-beast mode and throw down DPS better than a blaster, especially on big teams with big mob groups to grab all that buff from. Now, doing all that form swapping might be a bit of an eyesore for some people (boom-boom-boom all the time as well). Maybe that's what's pissing people off, but no one has ever asked me not to. But this might explain why people like PBs better because everyone I've encountered spent 90% of their time in human/light form. In tank form QUANTS etc are almost irrelevant now since they've been (sadly I should say) nerfed. I never even bother to look out for them.

I'm going to call it a feature rather than a bug. BUT it is a feature that folks might want to consider voluntarily dialing back. I know everyone is afriad of not being all-that-and-a-bag-of-chips, but this game is incredibly forgiving especially on 8 person teams. You can make a weird build for fun. You don't have to be the most awesome thing ever. You can experiment and RP. People complain about heal-bots but who really cares when you are completing TFs in about an hour anyway. And more than anything else NOT FILLING TO 8 all the time! Even in your mid20s you can run +2/x4 on a four man team and have a fresh experience in the game without actually "slowing down" all that much. If you are that worried, take a bloody XP boost from P2W.

RP completely determines my build, but in reverse. I always chose my playstyle first, what I want the character to feel like in a battle. What's their vibe, how to they "save the day," can I justify contributing to the team in a certain novel way? Why are they there (both RP and tactically). Then I build the backstory and everything falls into place. My point is, I'd never fail to chose ... say Snipe on a blaster because of a concept because I'd never write a concept for a Blaster that didn't have snipe, I'd roll a Sentinel because ... no snipe! The whole thing is Synergistic. One of my goals is RPing more in teams. I type relatively fast and can usually pull off quick bits even moving from group to group. The problem I'm having is that it is FAR too easy to fall into the "Spiderman quip" mode and just be comic relief. Even bad jokes work far too well and are too easy to spit out (especially when you change groups you are teaming with so each group hasn't likely heard your "shtick" before). My goal is to try to push out in different directions to RP something other than the CoH king of dad-jokes. One of my toons is in an "RP" supergroup now, we'll see how that goes. So far, not so much. I may have to look for PUGs that are explicitly RP as well.

JusticeBelievers and JusticeBowlers should hang out more often. I have dug your vibe for a long time now.

Which is why I purchase flight via P2W for characters that aren't flight characters. You can do very well with super-speed, TP, or SJ more of the time than you'd think, but when I "need" flight I use my leased/borrowed tech to get it done. My main tank Bob "The Janitor" got all the way to 50 without a travel power. From an RP point of view he was "borrowing" something from the office he worked. Even at 50k per session, it is dirt cheap for anyone who has a toon or two.

I'd love to have you on any team I ran, like Solarverse said, to try to keep you alive and see if there was anything you could do. So don't be shy in the LFG channel, I'm sure folks who care will keep an eye out for you. But the most important thing is, don't be discouraged by blow back that you get, there will be plenty of people who dig your vibe. You just have to be patient. I hate to give you a challenge breaking suggestion (because this might make your journey too easy/short). Go to PI and get in on Radio mission groups led by someone who supports your quest (it won't be hard to find them). You will rocket to 50 and probably faster than even DFB would have done.