Call Me Awesome

Hmm, as if I didn't already have enough characters I'm suddenly curious about a Kat/Regen. I've played Regen to 50 5 times, 4 with a scrapper on Live and once here on a Stalker but I've never played Katana. Ok, Broadsword twice so I pretty well know the set but Kat's a bit different.

Only if it has a Frickin' Laser on its head.

And a Dwarf CAN tank if needed, just not as well as a Tanker or Brute... two AT's that are designed to hold aggro. An AT that's designed to be as versatile as a Keld can NOT be equal to a specialist AT in that AT's specialty. That means that, by design, Kelds can't be as good at tanking as a true Tanker, nor can they be as good at damage output as a Blaster or melee damage as a Scrapper or at control as a Controller. They can perform all of those roles in a team at need, but not any of them as well as the specialist AT. This is BY DESIGN and REQUIRED for any semblance of game balance. If a Keld can deal damage like a Blaster, tank like a Tanker, melee like a Scrapper and control like a Controller then it's one hellaciously overpowered AT. I play Kelds. I had both a PB and WS at 50 on Live and I have a PB in the 40's here. I enjoy the AT, it's fun and a challenge to play well. I can fill most roles needed in a team at any given moment. Melee getting overwhelmed by incoming damage? Dwarf can take the brunt of it to allow a moment to regroup. Everything going smoothly? Nova puts out good damage with Human adding utility and melee attacks when the party gets close along with some light control. I do not need to fill every role perfectly, I'm flexible and can fill the role needed at that moment. YES a Tanker can, and damn well should, out tank me. YES, a Blaster can and should out damage me. YES a Scrapper can out do me in Melee. What none of them can do is take whatever role the team needs at that moment. A Keld isn't a mediocre Blaster, it's also a pinch hitter Scrapper, an off Tanker and a weak Controller. All rolled up into one AT and able to change roles in an instant.

I'm not sure it would have been intentional, it could have simply been an oversight. We know the Devs at the time weren't exactly married to the concept of consistency. We did have Red = damage and Green = heal/regen. I guess it made too much sense for Blue = endurance/SB and Yellow = To Hit. If it were still Jack at the helm then it's anyone's guess, but I believe Positron had taken over by the time the STF came about. I think they just tossed the buffs out without considering the tower color for the Blue & Yellow. The old "never attribute to malice what can be explained by ignorance or incompetence" and we had quite a revolving door of Devs at the time.

True, they have no idea of the power of Total Radial FREEM.

A Kin/Sonic defender would likely fit the bill; it's capable solo and even better in a team. Kinetics is hard not to place as one of the top sets and Sonic not only does decent damage but also applies a hefty -res debuff to everything you hit thus increasing your damage even further. You'll have to look to IO bonuses and pool powers to build your defenses; that's really the only downside for playing at the damage cap (Fulcrum Shift) and beyond (Damage Cap + -Res = more damage still) while having infinite endurance (Transference), a fairly massive heal (Transfusion) and +recharge/run speed (Siphon Speed). You'll have a couple of cone attacks, one with KB (KB-KD proc suggested) and several fairly hard hitting ST attacks. Also remember that Defenders get more out of Leadership than any other AT. My only real complaint about Kinetics is the limited IO set potential. I ran a static team back on Live with 2 Kin/Sonic defenders paired with 3 Ill/Rad controllers and one Fire/Rad controller. Massive amounts of butt was kicked; we took down Lusca in under 5 minutes at level 25. Unaided by anyone else.

Without the debuffs there's not a lot of benefit to taking Radiation.

That would work. How would you handle Illusion though? Is Phanty our pet at 18 or do we keep our PA there? Personally I vote for keeping PA at 18. Maybe trade Flash and Phanty?

Solo Fire/Rad can be a bit slow starting and a bit squishy even late game... their power comes as a force multiplier. Two of them are much more effective and each additional one is more effective than the last. A full 8 man team of them will move through a map without ever even pausing for anything short of an AV, and even an AV isn't much more than a "Hold up a sec, we need to cook this AV"... "Ok, let's move on now" 8 high level Fire/Rads are just stupid good at killing anything in the game. Huh, I just had an idea, how about a full 48 man league of Fire/Rads on a MSR? Think we could smoke it?🤣

As a FYI all anchored debuffs work this way now, not just Darkest Night. Toss 'em into the group and turn 'em off when you move on so they're ready to toss at the next group. It's definitely better than the old days where your anchor would always be the first mob the group killed and then the debuff was gone. It was almost magical the way no matter what mob you toss your debuff on would always be the first one killed. "Oh look! That mob is GLOWING, kill him first!" You could tell the team 20 times a mission to save the glowie guy for last but it was no use, it was always "GLOWIE MOB! KILL IT NOW!!!"

Blasters tend to have more attacks than any other AT since both primary and secondary are attack sets. On my blasters I tend to set things up like this: (By the way, I use a Razor Nostromo gamepad with 3 rows of 5 keys under my fingers, that's why the layout of tray 1 may seem strange... I map the first two rows to tray 1 slot 1-10) Tray 1 - slots 1-5 will be my single target attacks as a general rule, with the snipe in #5. Slot 6 is my travel power. Slot 7 & 9 will generally be secondary melee attacks I commonly use. Slot 8 will be my main AOE and 10 is an open slot for whatever other attack I need quick access to, frequently a mez from the APP. Tray 2 - this one is situational and frequently has powers I use via mouse binds so I can monitor recharge. Aim/Buildup are usually mouse button 4 & 5, my nuke will be here and bound to one of the third row keys on my gamepad and the others will be various powers I need occasionally. Hasten lives on this row as well. Tray 3 - this one is full of all my toggles and long recharge buffs. Tray 4 - this one is all my teleport powers, O-portal, mission TP, team TP, recall team, base TP, pocket D etc. Tray 5 - this one is mainly for anything that doesn't fit elsewhere like Incarnate powers and whatnot.

I'm certainly not arguing that Scrappers as a whole need a buff. It's a philosophical opinion that every power needs to have a valid reason to be chosen. If Confront gets buffed so that it's a valid choice in a build then there's going to have to be another power left out of your build to make room for it. Take Confront and suddenly you don't have room for your APP blast/AOE power. Or take Confront and skip Weave. Power choices should be tradeoffs and as it stands now there's no reason to bother with Confront so you automatically have an extra power choice with no downside.

City of Heroes. Now with more FREEM!

SwitchFade mentioned that in the post above mine. I've seen it brought up as a request in several other similar threads.

I personally like the idea of a short duration -to hit debuff added to it; with the exact numbers needing to be determined. I'm a big believer that every power in a set should have a definite reason for you to include it in your build; if the power serves little purpose and is an easy choice to discard then it needs to be adjusted. Any power choice should be a valid choice, nothing should automatically be skippable. It should be a definite sacrifice to skip something to make room to take something else.

I agree wholeheartedly with the toggle suppression instead of deactivation, the way it is now the various shields are close to useless for a TriForm thanks to the time involved to retoggle everything once you drop to Human only to have them detoggle once you swap to another form. This part I'll agree with 100%. A taunt aura for Dwarf form I'd agree with to some extent, but keep the taunt magnitudes and duration below Tanker or Brute values... a specialist AT should be better than a Keld generalist. Dwarf form is a backup or emergency tanker, not a replacement for a primary aggro management AT. I'll give a straight no on the idea of a toggle aura inherent. It's pointless in the Human and Nova form and redundant or OP in the Dwarf form. Some moderate level of Mez protection in the S/L shield would make sense, maybe MAG 4 or so? Let's keep the slot crunch as it is currently, it's part of the tradeoff for being a jack of all trades. Slot placement should be a tradeoff. Kelds have more powers than other AT's so they have more versatility. Allowing them still more slots is just too much... although you're already getting more slots than other AT's thanks to each additional power having a base slot. Let's just go with the toggle suppression and forget the rest; that will make a fairly large difference in and of itself. It'll also cause more angst when building your character as you'll have still MORE powers to choose between. Choosing between different powers should be a tough choice; there should be definite benefits and drawbacks to going whichever way you choose. Human form toggles suppress when shifted? Now I need to decide if the shields are more important than another power and this is a good thing.

While AT respecs sound good and I don't have any particular problems with it personally it would likely be considerably more involved to make happen than we'd think. Although there's certainly precedent in the Comics, like the time Superman got split into a pair of Blasters, Red and Blue. I can see the point about playing an early maturing combo and swapping to a late maturing one I don't know if it's really a problem. Still, it's likely more trouble than it's worth to do and our volunteer Dev team already has their hands full.

Sounds like a good idea. For a quick and easy addition just add some appropriate GM's from Blue, Jurassic, Lusca, possibly the Kronos Titan to name a few. That would get the monsters you're looking for without making a lot of work for our volunteer Dev team.

I've had it happen, opening the base edit menu then exiting it will unstick you. I'm not sure but /stuck might work as well.

He does go down very quickly doesn't he? I've solo'd several AV's with an Ill/Rad 'troller, perma-PA makes a huge difference. I've taken a few of the easier ones with a BS/Shield scrapper. Maestro is enough of a wimp I took him with a Fire/EM blaster at level. I think I've taken him down with most AT's I've played. The last Manticore TF I ran I ended up soloing Hopkins with my Fire/EM blaster while the rest of the team pounded on Countess Crey. It was nearly a tie killing off the two AV's, although my blaster was level 50, defense soft capped to ranged and capable of playing keep away with the AV. I think I ate 4 large red inspirations to help out the DPS. That did cause some commentary as the rest of the team didn't realize Hopkins had rezzed until they dropped the Countess. I think they were all relatively new players, and they had no clue what a blaster could do with a high end build and an experienced player.

The best pairing to Regen I played on Live was Broadsword due to the way Parry boosts the durability rather dramatically. Katana would be another good choice for the same reason. Regen's biggest drawback is that it's squishy. Getting significant amounts of melee defense makes a big difference and opens up more options for IO bonuses since you don't need to build Melee defense.

I've been there several times and you're right, it's a lot of fun. One of the most memorable was back on Live shortly after the ITF went live. We were dealing with the computer and everyone bit it when I ran out of aggro cap on the robots. I ended up finishing the computer and then started passing out wakies. I never had any issues with survivability and finished the fight with nearly full health having hit Dull Pain once.

Never played a Mastermind past level 15. Every other AT except the new Sentinels I've played to 50 at least once on Live. I have a current Thug/Dark MM sitting at around level 12 now that I'll pull out on occasion when the mood strikes.

I always run TF's at +1 default and adjust based on the team. If we're mostly level 50 running a lower TF I'll bump it to +2 at the beginning. Once we've seen how the team is handling things in the first mission I may adjust the difficulty up or down as needed. If we're having lots of close calls or deaths then the difficulty goes down. If we're steamrolling then it goes up for more rewards. That seems to be the default I've found with TF teams on Excelsior. Yeah, Synapse is an exception because it's such a PITA most play it at +0. I've only done Quarterhell twice, once on Live and I got talked into another here a few months ago when it was the WTF. Somehow my opinion from 2005 hadn't changed... that's by far the worst TF in the entire game, with all the other Shard TF's filling out the rest of the basement. And yes, you do have the idiots spamming "Looking for x for y TF, please send AT & level". Strangely enough they rarely seem to fill their teams and it's not unusual to see a couple of other teams for the same TF fill up while they're trolling for their "Perfect Team". You do occasionally see the elitist idiots but they're the exception. Most of the leaders I've teamed with don't care what you're bringing as long as you meet the minimum level and have a clue what you're doing.

Nothing wrong with pairing Invuln with anything; it'll work fine and give you top tier durability. Unfortunately Shield can't pair with Claws; that would be a nice combo. Ice is the undisputed king of aggro control and offers decent durability with some IO bonuses.