Banana Man

It's not the same as changing all attacks to not root. Using crey pistol required both a button press (not hard), and made you drop target (unless the target was closer to you than anyone else). So situationally, crey pistol cancelling does have significant drawbacks to the user. Unless you're 1v1ing or emping, you can't just spam it every attack. It's really unfortunate, because more powersets were viable before the crey pistol "fix." The sort of middle ground the developers gave us was reducing all roots to 70% of the intended animation, to try and compensate for the effective nerf to powers with long casts from fixing crey pistol. As a few people warned, though, this alone was not a sufficient remedy, and actually does the exact opposite of the intent. Powers with fast roots/casts just got a buff out of it, and most longer animations are still pretty useless (beam went from being viable to trash tier instantly, psi went from being good to literally broken now). For the current system to work, root times would have to tweaked on a powerset by powerset basis, or even a power by power basis.

I don't think it's a matter of ruffled feathers. I thought Battewraith brought to light a pretty important distinction, actually. Someone "ganking a noob" is so easy precisely because there is such a skill gap between that player and the "noob." With PVP balance in general, it's important to look at it from the perspective of the "noob" getting "ganked" sometimes, especially when concerning the system having high barrier of entry to play/being inaccessible to newer players. A new player isn't going to think PVP is easy because they just rolled some other newer player, more likely they're going to find it frustrating or difficult because they're the one getting rolled.

If something is harder in more ways or more often than not, then it's harder overall. It's not always harder. It is harder to be "good" at PVP than it is to be "good" at PVE. Can you agree on that?

Trust me, I remember. Also, if Aeon SF is the "high end" example of PVE, it's still way easier than anything on the high end of PVP. I've done PVE stuff, to include speed TFs in record times with teams mostly comprised of people on PVP builds who barely if ever PVEd/ran TFS, had little to no knowledge of PVE builds, or which AV came next, or what to do. The barrier of entry is pretty low and you can figure it out in a matter of minutes to hours. There's no way you're beating or coming even close to beating a PVP team that does 8v8 scrims if you're playing with a bunch of people who haven't PVPed at that level before, it'd take months before even having a chance, and in the end (depending on the team) you might not ever even win against them, even if you do it for years. I'm not trying to sell PVP as crazy hard or anything, but I'm just going off the data we have and what I've seen. I don't want berate that point too hard, because again, PVP being harder doesn't invalidate or diminish PVE at all. Is it harder though? Yes.

Part of the reason Indom has a lower population because it had a PVP connotation associated with it, sure. It doesn't really matter, except that it's a symptom of the PVP system being broken in the first place. Granted, if you "fixed" it, people wouldn't just flock to PVP (or indom) either. People have all kinds of reasons for not wanting to PVP, ranging from simply not liking PVP games, to not having the time, to their favorite sets or play-styles not being viable, or even reasons that are totally illogical--and that doesn't matter either--no one has to justify their reasons for not wanting to do something in a video game. PVPers aren't superior. PVP isn't greater. But PVP absolutely is harder, and that's an objective fact. You can legitimately make PVE builds for "squishy" characters that can solo +4/x8 content while basically face-tanking everything. There aren't any difficult mechanical skills, you don't need to use fast reaction times, and there isn't a high barrier of entry. In PVP you're playing against real human beings that want to beat you. There's no question that PVP is harder, but that doesn't make it better or invalidate PVE or those who prefer or enjoy it. They're basically two different games at this point. PVP is different, harder, and neglected, which makes it less accessible to people who don't do it and would even think about trying it. Balancing the game would help do that. The problem is that developers have never had the required understanding of CoH PVP or the motivation balance it, and people who did have the understanding and motivation didn't have significant input. Even on homecoming, where the community has had more input than before, the rate of change and significance of changes was still way too low to keep people interested in a 20 year old game. Most changes have been limited to low effort fixes that are at best a bandaid for the root cause. Some steps in the right direction have been made, like purchasable accolades from the arena store and some new maps, but most of those came after most of the initial hype of the game returning had died down and a good chunk of the PVP community had already left. Sort of too little, too late, you know?

I'd be slotting for max instant snipe damage (should be insanely easy with perma soul drain), and I'd put the achilles heel -res in my snipe. Rad snipe in particular is good for this, because the -res will actually take effect on the first dot tick, meaning the next 3 will do 20% more damage. I know you said you weren't planning on perma soul drain, but I feel like it's worth it and pretty achievable, especially with things like ageless in the mix. Smite, rad snipe, and midnight grasp would probably be my single target bread and butter. Definitely be taking and slotting the damage aura for free dps. AoE wise, irradiate is one of the best in the game, but everything else you have access too is pretty... bad. Realistically with soul drain being up every 30 seconds, and you having a massive damage bonus always... I think soul drain and irradiate, with your damage aura should be enough AoE. You'll have your nuke too. Pretty much all the other AoEs have really bad damage for the cast times. Shadow maul was changed recently right? I'm not familiar with those changes, maybe that's useful now? /dark's main issue is that touch of the beyond is really clunky. I feel like in both /dark and /elec, the sustain power should just be merged with the damage aura, kind of like /fire.

With temps, some are more high maintenance, like the amplifiers from p2w, since they cost 2.5 mil each. I can understand not wanting to build around those. Others are really cheap, and it's just a matter of replacing them. Kinetic dampener is like 12ish (i think) percent s/l defense. It's a toggle that you can buy for pretty cheap (I think about 1 mil for an hour's worth). You can buy up to one hour of the temp, and you can turn off the toggle when you're not using it, so you won't waste any time. Basically, you COULD make a build with s/l defense in the 30s and then softcap with the temp, saving you some slots for other things. I feel like it's worth using the temp, because in most fights, you don't actually NEED softcapped defense, and 1 mil isn't that much for an entire hour of combat, especially if you're turning the toggle off when you don't need it. I can also totally understand not wanting to deal with re-purchasing it and remembering to de-toggle it, though. So, up to you! You can also use VERY cheap base temps (we're talking like 2 pieces of common salvage and one piece of uncommon) to get things like 30% +recharge, or +recovery, drain resist for fighting certain AVs, etc. They last for 1.5 hours, and I almost always run the +recharge one when PvEing.

I mean, plenty of people have seen me do it, and plenty have done it themselves (because it's not a crazy achievement, and anyone can do it), including the people who made the asteroid farm map in the first place. But sure, indom server, @banana man. Idk if I can do 2:30 regularly anymore, but I can still probably do around 3 minutes, which is a little faster than most top tank/brute speeds. It's not about bragging or having a big head, it's about answering a player's question asking about blaster farming.

I can make you an all purpose PvE build, or at least something to point you in the right direction. I'd ask a few questions first, though. 1. Do you use temps? (base temp for 30% recharge, kinetic dampener for s/l defense, amplifiers, etc) 2. Is fly a must? If it's a must, I can make a build with it, but combat jumping is pretty key on /fire blasters so you can get into good positions quickly to maximize your AoEs.

I'd like to think I don't weigh in on subjects unless I have some sort of idea what I'm talking about. I don't farm much anymore, because I don't have any reason to, and I have a pretty short attention span for it. When I did farm, I farmed using an ice/fire blaster on maps functionally identical to the popular "Comic-Con" map set at +4/x8 with bosses on. I did full clears or near full clears in about 2 minutes and 30 seconds, closer to 3 minutes on the higher end. I can show anyone who wants in person. Anyway, I was talking about the fire secondary. Fire primary is like, maybe top 4? Also, you don't need a primary or secondary to mitigate any damage. Surviving on fire farms is insanely easy if you're built for it. If you're only fighting one group at a time, you could probably afk for a few minutes and not die... don't do that, though, because fighting only one group at a time is a very slow way to farm. You want to be fighting as many things as you can so you're not wasting any damage from your AoEs, and you're minimizing you're time moving/not casting. Every now and again you'll get bad RNG and take a bunch of damage, but you'll usually out-regen the follow-up, and if you're especially worried, you'll be gaining insps at a rate that you can spare a green. Indom 😄

Basically any blaster can do it with the right build. -regen doesn't really matter because most AVs are going to resist it heavily, and blaster -regen debuffs are pretty weak to begin with. You want a lot of global recharge, a lot of damage, and ideally something you can slot a -res proc into and have it proc regularly. With dark blast you're gonna want to build for instant snipe and use that as your main attack. Moonbeam is the only good single target attack in the set, so you'll want a secondary with more damage options. I'd go with /fire. Dark's weakness in normal gameplay is limited single target damage, and bad aoe. AoE isn't as important vs AVs, but /fire is probably still your best move. It not only gives you AoE, but gives you more single target damage in fire sword, two damage auras, and burn (great place to put fury of the gladiator -res). It's the best blaster secondary in the game in the vast majority of cases. Runners up would be /dark (damage aura, decent single target damage, soul drain) and /elec (damage aura, very high dps melee attacks), but you'd see some fall-off if paired with dark blast, because both /dark and /elec lack AoE, both have really clunky sustain powers, and no reliable source of -resist. You might already know this bit, but I saw you were also asking about farm builds. Keep in mind that, for killing AVs, a standard PvE build will work just fine. On the other hand, farming blaster builds will typically require a very specific build, unless you're farming really slowly. Farm builds are in most cases gonna be terrible for killing AVs.

"Whilst Homecoming is still undergoing efforts to become a legitimate operation, live broadcasts or uploads of gameplay footage are not permitted." Fire is far and away the best for any primary when farming (and usually in general). For farming purposes, the best primary with a secondary that isn't fire probably would get out-farmed by literally any primary paired with fire. Tldr: For farming: best primary/not fire < worst primary/fire Dark isn't great for farming, but its doable with /fire. The only powers you'd probably use from dark for a farm build are umbral torrent and blackstar.

Posting videos is against the CoC so I can't give you a video. I can show you in game sometime. I'm probably easiest to reach via discord. I'm @S on the PvP discord and @CR banana man on the main homecoming discord. Kin is basically non-existent in asteroid farm runs. Most of what it offers is fulcrum shift, and you can damage cap for the entire run using t1 insps. I feel like the best buff/debuff secondaries would be things with aoe -res debuffs that are ticking patches, so they can hit more than 16 things (sleet, freezing rain, etc).

A single ice/fire blaster can farm faster than a single brute, so I don't know that I'd call it a novelty. It's much more work than farming on a brute, or a tank (tanks are probably better than brutes now), but you can reach similar or slightly greater levels of efficiency. When farming with two people, ie one blaster + one tank or one brute, it starts to get considerably faster than running two brutes. Spines/fire scrappers could POTENTIALLY be better than anything, but it'd be a matter of how much saturation you can maintain on it. Fire isn't a bad primary for farming, probably top 4 for farming blasters. Atomic though is pretty lackluster, so you won't be out-clearing any min/maxed optimal brute builds on that. It can still work, it just won't be super fast. Incarnate wise for a farming blaster, I would use -Musculature (for proc rate and increased judgement damage, and having to pop fewer reds) -Ageless for recharge that won't mess up proc rate, and recovery -Degen interface (75% chance for -hp side) -Ionic judgement (max aoe version) -banished pantheon lore pet with the invincible pet to pull more aggro -Double-hit assault hybrid

Orrrrrr you could come play too. lol.