JusticeBowler

Welcome home! You'll get all the acronyms. If not, just spam questions in the HELP channel like a noob, there's no shame in that. Folks will sort them all out for you. If you weren't around for late-live play you're going to see the game has really changed. It is still what it was, but it's like there's another game layered on top of the first one. They are imperceptible different to the naked eye, but once you realize the difference it is like two completely different worlds. (Mostly around things that are now OP or in some cases "broken" but still fun.)

The point has been made and we don't need to beat it to death but I'll repeat it once. Everyone is useless on an eight person high end team (assuming there isn't some really out of balance skew going on). Incarnates (and grape colored builds as well) break the game to exaggerate this feeling of uselessness. I am beginning to think that the 8 person team is what is broken. You can still do +4/x8 with only four people on a team and get a challenge. And if you only had four people on a team, you'd need everyone frosty judgements or no, especially on the high end mob groups. When you are one of 8 on a well-balanced team with a vibe, you can just stop playing for a bit and the team will hardly notice. That's just a fact.

How does the procs-per-minute work? I assumed that was a downgrade since you aren't always firing the attack or whatever you put it on so you'll never reach those levels. Are you saying that if I fire a power once per minute I'm guaranteed a proc on that power when I do? If I fire a proc every 20 seconds and it is a "3 proc per minute" will I get a proc every time?

I hate to say it but... play a Brute. Putting Tankers and Brutes (or Defenders and Corruptors, for that matter) on an apples to apples scale devalues both (pairs of) ATs. I'm talking about SOLO when you are playing BY YOURSELF. That doesn't affect anyone except make it not take forever to slog through every kill all like Statesman is still around punishing me for not playing his game his way. Defenders got the buff for the exact same reason. This is an apples to apples comparison that doesn't hurt Brutes a bit. Incidentally, I can play scrappers and stalkers, but Brute's fury is a nightmare for my OCD.

I've always played Red side with a hero twist, either "undercover" like you describe or "the long redemption arc" (e.g. Scirocco). I'm just not there yet. I just got my first 50 set up and a few other ALTs well outfitted in the 30s and 40s and then decided to do a completist Gold Side double run first. That will take a while. Red side was hard on me back in live. But I think the earlier travel power (flight at 4, or even instantly with a little cash at the P2W vendor).. that'll make all the difference in the world. The layout of the isles is physically punishing, but the main problem is that it is just grim in color and scope. Gold side is more of what Red should have been (and Gold should go to 50). All the teenage black nail polish matching color scheme of ugly is just completely off putting. It depresses me playing it for too long. So I'll never live over there, but I'm coming, you just have to give me time to get my bits together first.

But there's no toolset for people to create anything. I suppose someone could make a story arc in AE that was really good and perhaps that could get imported into the game, but nothing like an ITF, new Zone, or other major additions. We don't even know how to edit an image file to offer it up as a "better" texture for an old costume piece, much less make something new. Until dev tools or guides come out, we are just passengers on this train.

I do think that Tankers need a damage buff for solo play, just like Defenders get! The actual gameplay of 1-50 (or going backwards through Ouroborus) can be quite punishing if you want your Tank to be your completist/main toon. I've gotten stuck on a few teams running PI radios or ITFs with Incarnates doing all sorts of silly-broken things. Far more than what 500-700 million will buy you in sets (though they may have had that too). I saw a Blaster tank the end battle of ITF without even pulling, just ran in and piled on ridiculous powers of who-the-hell-knows-what. Didn't care that the three healing Nicti were still firing away, just blew them the hell up. Not my idea of fun. I miss the days of stopping to rehearse of bit of strategy in CoH. It does come up from time to time, but it is very rare even on raids. Folks just spam everything and expect their OP build to carry the day and it almost always does. My main tank Bob The Janitor has about 200 million invested in almost entirely mid-cost sets and I can do some really fun stupid tank tricks with him (especially since Dark has two PBAoE status effects to work with). I've been on teams where people said, "I learned something about tanking watching you." And WOW that was amazing to hear! But your durability is way overkill if you are running anything less than a 5 person team at accelerated difficulty (though I usually use those cases as a test for how well I can cross-pull mob groups into each other and that sort of thing to keep myself challenged and interested). Sure, I've gotten bored running behind a Brute Incarnate and politely exited the team after the mission was over to look for a team that actually needed a tank. Those teams are out there if you go looking for them, especially on challenging mob groups. So that's what I do "for a living." I get jealous from time to time when people talk about pulling down 100 million in an hour and so once a week can completely purple a toon, or playing a Corruptor-tank or whatever. But the thing is I'm actually here to play the game and the experience of that is really the point. If I have to put artificial constraints on myself to do that sometimes, I'm happy to. But I have too many ALTs to worry about whether or not my tank (which is awesome) is better than anyone else's toon, even if that toon isn't a tank at all.

Thanks, I appreciate the input. Let me react to this a bit. I've run defense sets before I know I the drill on them, but my experience is that DEF is stronger than RES at lower levels (though streakier), especially positional DEF. Hoarfrost and Dull pain simply aren't around enough to solve the problems (they end up being a free green inspiration every 6 minutes) and Regen/Rad/Willpower only work if I'm constantly willing to run away to myself a change to recharge. More so, these things work much better for Tanks and Brutes who have much larger health pools to work with to begin with. They are less effective for things more squishy. Keep in mind Shield Defense has RES and bonus hit points (from True Grit) as well. In fact it has as much smashing/lethal resist as Radiation or Willpower (plus the DEF). In contrast to Dull Pain though, at least Willpower's heal is up often enough to matter. I'm going to have to trust to inspirations for heals, that's guaranteed. I suspect I will take the Inner Inspiration prestige power as well. Now Gamma Boost is a strange animal and I don't know just how much REG I'm getting when my health is high. And if my lowbie attack chain and toggles turn out to be crippling I might which I could have had that. But it is a mystery to me just how much that might help especially when it drops off in favor of REC when you've been hurt.

I'm not sure about the difficulty level setting. That's a different sort of thing. Once I've established my strongest play I suppose there comes a point at which I set the difficulty based on how bored I am (either because the content is too easy or because it becomes a slog on Kill Alls). You could argue that since I could always set (like you recommend) to -1 then even the most broken primary and secondary would be fine, even OP, so what's really the point in talking about the best lowbie set at all? Well, I'm glad I asked that rhetorical question: 1. No matter how low you set it takes 'X' amount of time to deal with LTs (I've noticed this on my tank running -1s through Ouroborus for badges). MOAR DMG! matters even at -1 when it comes to pacing. 2. Bosses (and I assume EBs too) will show up in Praetorian content and famously ambushes that still have to get dealt with over and above 3 mobs = 1 hero balance. If I end up pushing the content up a bit I still have to manage these solo. 3. While I didn't directly account for this the feel and flow of an attack chain matters. Now I could build 5 toons on Justin, set them to level 6, and see who has the best feel, but I can't see suddenly preferring Fire Melee's longer animations. 4. Part of the point of this is the exercise of it. So many people care about what their toon will look like tricked out with grapes, that I find that sort of thing kind of pointless. I have alt-itis and I want to know what toons are like at playing through low and mid level content AT LEAST as much, if not more than what they'll be like at the end game. All builds are OP at endgame anyway. Another side note, Fire Melee really bites compared to its advantage over on the Blaster side. On the Blaster side, Fire does the most damage period, full stop (if that's all you want). Here in Stalker land is is effectively an underperformer with no secondary effect and at best the same damage as other sets. Another side note, I might impose Hardcore mode on myself as well. If I die I wipe the character and start over from the beginning. Getting to 20 won't take all that long anyway and the idea that I don't get rezzed might make the whole thing more dramatic and remove some of the sloggyiness in places.

I'm going to make a Praetorian and I'm determined to play through all the low end content legit. I want to poke a hole and suck everything worthwhile out of that expansion in one probably very slow run through. Since so few people play Gold side, I decided that I've got to build for low end solo and I can't think of a better way to do that than to finally scratch my Stalker itch. To that end I have a very different question. Since I'm not leveling faster than a ferret on cocaine Blue side ... what are the best lowbie power sets primary/secondary for stalkers. I want to get as much as I can out of this on day one. This character might never see level 50 and certainly not any enhancement sets. Secondaries first: At first, I thought Super Reflexes is the best bang for the buck because positional defense offers the strongest play against even a smidge of the secondary effects you run into at low levels. If they can't hit me they can't -tohit me. This is nice because status effect protection often comes late (so to speak) even in SR PB comes at level 16 over 75% into the content I'm playing for. It is sad that I'll never see Quickness though. And there's no AoE defense since Evasion is late. Ninjitsu looks a little more intriguing (it was always the set that made me say, "why didn't you just take SR?") it is defense and fills the AoE hole and add caltrops which I think is one of the most underrated powers in CoH especially soloing (unfortunately the DEVs know this which is why the recharge sucks). My only question is will the DoT mess me up for hides and such. Energy Aura is all DEF at the low levels and actually gives you full status protection at 10. The numbers are better than Ninjitsu but they are types instead of positional. Then there is shield... which feels so "not stalker." But covering all my positional DEFs in two powers and filling out general resists with "free" True Grit... in terms of damage mitigation this looks like the king at lvl 10. It does restrict which powers I can take as primary and it also restricts ... well ... how odd it looks to be punching or kicking people with a shield on your arm. Concept wise, it is simply easier to go with BS. Part of me is really sad I couldn't get Mace and walk around with a bully club thwapping people from Hide. Primaries: At this level damage type is probably irrelevant. He who hits hardest, most, wins. And I can't count on adjusting that much with SOs/IOs whatever because I'll never see them. Primaries have to hit hard and be useful out of the box, but I also have to have a viable attack chain right up front. I'm going to be playing half the content with just the first five powers of the primary. Stalker primaries tend to be identical with one exception. Two single target hits, some form of AoE, AS, Build up, then Placate. Ice reverses Placate and Build up but I can't say whether Placate every 60s or Build up every 90s is better. I think I lean towards Placate since it also has damage mitigation and tactical options build up doesn't. About half of them exchange that AoE for a harder hitter (Energy, Fire, Kinetics, Martial Arts, Psionic). Which becomes a question of style as much as efficiency. If I get a cone, I have to make it count since I can't avoid using it and I need to make the animation time and end cost work almost every time. Now, that's a lot of tactical foot shuffling to position mobs and sometimes switching targets to keep someone alive expecting to kill them off as a sort of by-product of hitting someone else as the main target. This is interesting and compelling combat play, but it can also make things a lot more work. Really not sure on this one. Then there is the DoT question. DoTs potentially waste a lot of End (and animation time for another attack) especially at low levels when you can't just overwhelm everything with force. You are constantly wondering whether or not it is better just to "hit the guy again and get it over with" or wait patiently to see if the DoT is "just enough" to kill them. We're dealing with just a few variables. so I decided to make a chart: It looks to me like Psi crushes it. But here's a little rub... I've got a Psi scrapper and would rather not double up. So even though at this point Shield/Psi (which was a totally unexpected result from the beginning) is probably the winner, I'm going to have to go with whoever ends up number two on the primary. I wonder how much better is the chance to crit from Storm Kick? It doesn't say. The Stuns on Kinetic are just a bit better and the recharges are the shortest. Smashing Blow is a real disappointment but it's just a part of an overall superior chain so I'm not sure it is worth a complaint. And actually given that the animations are shorter than Psi, it might not be as far behind in DPS as it looks at first glance. Conclusion: It looks to me like Shield/Kinetics is the winner, though I think there's an argument for Ninjitsu for Caltrops sake. At such a low level it might really mean more than Shield's slightly better damage mitigation (though Caltrops offers a form of damage mitigation) and it gives more flexibility for "costume/theme" rather than locking me into the Shield-thang. But I'd love to have someone argue with me about this, or at least point out some things I'm missing.

I think the play here would be to "turn around" which I already do as a tank in most team play because I like to see the team tactically. I can get a lot of information from the audio in smaller teams, but big ones are just audio noise so I have to see what's going on. I also tend to use target_enemy_near on my tanks (for all sorts of reasons) so one usual experience is target_enemy_near... run "through" the group slightly and hit "taunt" which forced your toon to do an about-face faster than you could rotate yourself and more importantly "precisely" backwards. So that's what I'd do with this cone probably. Tag my own pet, run forward through the mobs, click the heal and about-face hard throwing out a cone of heals across the "team" of pets. At least that's how I'm seeing the mechanic work.

As my alt-itis has finally given way a bit my heroes are now regularly in this level range and playing around these zones. I have yet to be hit by a single sniper. I remember them being a real problem in FF on live,but now zero. And the same in Crey's. I was quite surprised when I saw this thread. Frankly, I'd love to run into the buggers for some variety of zone-design content.

Or so Marijuanaut has promised. Keep an eye out in LFG! Bob The Janitor will likely show up along with new friends! (I still have alt=itis)

h/t Redlynne again So I was going to roll a Mastermind up to play with my wife in a small duo. And I was fiddling with the sets and realized my original thematic pairing of Beast and Nature wasn't going to work because... well, Nature is too good at what it does. With her playing a controller we need DPS so I need Poison (which is all well and good and I'm happy). So with that decision made, I decided to hypothesize about what someone might do with Nature. But it occurs to me that Nature is insanely good at health/regen/aborb and in Defensive mode you share all that pool with your pets. So which set of pets is the best to try to truly Tank-by-healthgen with? It would seem to be whoever has the best total HP, but it might not be that simple since the bots can heal each other. Resistances and such don't matter because for the pets they take this damage directly. It would also matter how much damage the pets themselves are taking from other sources and how the whole lot of you spreads out aggro. Protecting yourself is another matter (outside what you can get from Nature) there's no status protection though with pets around that might not be much of a problem. Combat Jumping, Acrobatics, Weave, Maneuvers ... do add up. Maybe hover to avoid melee damage? I think you'd certainly want Provoke to hold as much of the aggro as you can without it overwhelming you. Thoughts about the storm in my brain?

This is a really weird thread. Sure. Someone who never fires a shot in a PUG is a little weird, but that's the most extreme case. The line "there's no holy trinity" gets thrown out there to disguise another prejudice, THERE IS ONLY EVER DPS. There is only ever "are you maximally contributing to the speed things die without getting yourself or us dead." If this is your mentality, then empaths (in fact about half the defenders out there) are underperforming. They should be MM/Empath or Fire Control/Empath or something else much more "useful" since use = DPS period full stop. The crazy thing is you are all just enough right that you can defend your maths as if they were virtue. But a lot of wrong things are "just enough" right to argue that way. This isn't a job This isn't about how fast can I farm these missions for XP/INF even my personal preference Badges. This is a game we play for fun and weird and quirky builds that push the limits of the game design and are FUN to play are the reason for being here. Yes, one version of that fun is DPS or direct contributors to it, but not all. I like to run hot as much as the next guy. A Tanky Tank I finally got past my alt-itis and made a Tank for a main. He's Dark/Staff and so packed with my powersets that I buy my fly as a temp travel power every time I log in because I don't have a free slot to pick up one without giving up something I think adds to the fun and playstyle of the build. But he's such a tank that frankly (especially in Form of the Soul which is needed to manage the END problems of Dark/ ) he does trivial amounts of damage. Yes, I hit things, but I hit them to taunt and I do so little damage that I've considered taking out the damage SOs and putting taunt sets (for the set bonuses of extra Max health) so that I can be better at doing what I do well and what's fun... tanking. I suppose most of you wouldn't want a "taunt-bot with a huge health pool" on your team either. Because that Brute standing next to me will be almost as good a tank as I am and put out an order of magnitude more damage than I ever could even if I slotted for maximum damage. The danger of the broken trinity I do a lot of PUGs and I get in teams with Brutes, Scrappers, last night even a friggin BLASTER that could tank every bit as well the group needed (post-50 game breaking buffs I guess) and far out damaged me. You could say I can tank too well, beyond what the team needs. I must be broken. I should give up some of that and figure out some way to squeeze damage blood out of a Staff stone. I must not be playing the game right. You must not want me on your team either. You might as well write a thread say "I hate Tanks that just tank" or... (wait people have said that in this thread too... and no, I don't pull-tank that's not my style... I actually run hot keeping the group supplied with fresh juicy mobs to shred as fast as they'd like, but I don't do the shredding, I can't.) How about my Gravity/Storm controller that can lock down and debuff a planetoid, but also doesn't have a single RED slotted except in Propel for when I solo through old content in Ouroborus. I "over control" at the expense of the almighty Lord of DPS. I'm just as "useless" as any Empath handing out Fortitude candy in terms of DPS. Separate the two problems I hate it when it looks like someone is not "playing along". I'm not talking about lazy or distracted players. No one likes it when the bio breaks go too long or wife/husband aggro happens at inopportune times. The random scrapper that runs off every time down the wrong corridor... whatever. But this is a game, we're playing it for fun. Our toons should be fun to play. Who cares if someone has a nutter-butter build (or doesn't even know how to use their powers) ... so that the mission finishes 90 seconds later than it would have if everyone was "working hard" instead of "goofing around". In about an hour you'll be PUGging with a completely different set of people (unless you are running Dr Q's TF). The pain of going a little slow because someone has an odd playstyle will be over soon enough and you'll finally get to complete the mission 90 seconds faster when that Fire/Kin arrives to give you the crack you've been waiting all evening for.

I wasn't going to complain about this officially, because on my last couple of toons I by-passed KR, but it is crazy how mobs around the Tram and on the way to Blue Steel and the Detective are almost always spawning zone max. And there does seem to be an odd lack of variety, especially low level Lost which is a problem for the Midnighter Unlock if you are doing it solo (Hollows seems to be under populated in Lost compared to my memory as well for specifically this mission). I suspect it might be that high level characters are running through. I know sometimes on Steel in the old days that used to be a problem in certain places where higher level characters "passed by" and caused spawns to max level for the zone. But in KR it is really bad. ESPECIALLY the rooftop crap if you don't have a flier. Yes, I know you can get a temp power, but necessitating it for a story arc mission so early is just bad design. Killing CoT (and Skulz) in Perez Park seems jacked up as well... it's like all the low level zones are overspawning, but it is by far the worst in KR.

Bob The Janitor Bob is tired of watching other heroes make a mess of Paragon city streets. He's vowed to clean up this town, sweeping the villains up without making such a mess in the process. With his trusty broom and orange scented cleaners he's protecting the citizens of his hometown, on call, day or night!

Enhancements themselves are scaled down as you exemplar on a smooth curve (which means no bumps at 22 and 12 so you might feel like you underperform in a couple of spots). Enhancement set bonuses work for five levels below the power they are slotted in (based on when you took the power) Uniques (your proc) work to the lowest level they are exist at... So you'd be good to 20 (I think it is 20, not 21).

Over the weekend I was playing my Tank. When I tank, I tanky tank. I take it as a short of challenge to keep the group moving, stay ahead of the nutter scrappers and brutes, and generally pace all the mob sets as well as I can. But I had a couple of teams where I wasn't needed. On one the leader was a brute who could easily take the alphas, especially with the quality defenders on the team. He was faster than me, did way more damage than me (I don't do damage as a rule) and because he had the star folks often took his lead over mine. A couple of times we split into two teams which was actually rather fun, but in the end I just felt extra. It happens to everyone. The other team had two exceptional controllers that could lock everything down so fast I hardly took an alpha and if I did, that was the only contribution I made to that mob spawn. Still. I was there to catch something if it fell through... or so I told myself. It happens to everyone. 8 people on a team, no one is essential, or should be. Everything is about play style, mobs-on-tap, and how all the builds stack up against those two. Sometimes you just have to relax and let go.

I should point out that I am in the vocal minority on long TFs (especially Dr Q. or even ITF if it isn't a speedrun merit-farm) If I'm going to be here for hours I want to enjoy myself. I think it is a HUGE mistake to put your head down and just "grind" the longer TFs... adding just a few minutes (in the big scheme of things) to banter and role-play actually makes the thing FEEL much shorter and more enjoyable.

If there's a Katana player on a team with a Broadsword team, you can be sure the Katana player will remind the BS guy (and everyone else) that Katana is so much better. At one point it was like Katana players were doing Crossfit and they just wouldn't shut up about it. (Note: I've had BS scrappers and experienced this almost every time I came across a katana player. I've actually had them private tell me until I started ignoring them. I don't know what the heck is wrong with these zealots.)

Bingo, with no "sponsor" higher level toon or SG to support you, there has never been enough INF. When the XP curve sucked in the early days (pre-I6 or so) if you were very disciplined selling all trainings and the DOs to the correct stores to get maximum value, you could ALMOST slot DOs at 12 and 17... but when they increased the speed of leveling and ADDed Fitness to the Inherent power list this wrecked even that. DOs to SOs were also a gradual conversion during the 20s and most folks who didn't have a bankroll used Exemplaring Posi and Synaps for the INF to pay for the bling.

I have 12 toons already over lvl 20 but no toon higher than lvl 40. I've made and deleted about 10 others that were abandoned before they got to DOs. I think I've finally found my "main" but we'll see. I suspect that I'll still play other characters at least half the time. Alt-itis is a way of life for me. We'll see how long that lasts.

My wife has a completist streak even wider than I do playing CoH. She has a character she soloed on the original shards very nearly to lvl 50. She did this by doing every contact of every origin through all the missions they gave until their bar was all the way across. Back then you didn't get enough XP doing that by yourself to out level the content. I didn't realize what she wanted to do and when she started and told me she wanted to do "all the content" I told her not to worry "Ouroborus" can take care of that problem. But of course, it doesn't. It only accounts for the story arcs and badge missions. It leaves out a mess of contacts and getting a contact in Ours doesn't let you go back in game and get "referred" to the next level origin contact. So, to be clear, this is what she wants... to get to lvl 50 with an inactive contact list that includes EVERY origin contact and each of them with a "full bar". Is there any way to do this? And now that's level 10 has she already blown her shot at doing the initial 5 origin contacts making it impossible for her to get referred up the tree to the next contacts and so on. Help, advice, whatever?

I banter a lot on teams, but there is a careful balance depending on what AT I'm playing and the opportunities for more than a remark or two. I usually throw out a couple of quick ones to see if anyone will chime back. If you directly name someone you have a much higher chance they'll respond, but even on an RP-ish server, there's not always someone in the mood (even if they like doing it most of the time). How HOT the team is running, the mood of everyone, how specific and inviting the RP thread you have in your head is... all those things matter. But I'm glad I get it as often as I do, if for nothing more than color. It's never going to be a D&D session around the kitchen table. Though maybe in Pocket D or something it is.