dragonhawk777

Perspective: Ground based archery blaster. Taser: Great damage and a built in stun. Think of it as the melee attack other sets have but it actually has a 20 ft range. Caltrops: Good utility for ground based, particularly if you use it with an ability like Bonfire. Enemies are slowed and have more chances to get knocked around by Bonfire before they reach you. Both knockbacks and slows work on bosses so the only thing immune are EBs and AVs. If you take fly Caltrops lose alot of their utility imo as you can just fly out of range easily enough. I would rate it a 5 utility wise if ground based and a 2 if you take fly. Another perk is you can get alot of the ability even if you dont slot it, so if you have all the key powers you want, and are running low on enhancement slots and are looking for something to take and not invest in it then Caltrops are a good option. Smoke Grenade: Useful in situations, though I would say more useful solo than in teams. Again a viable option if you want to pickup something and not have to invest in it. Utility wise I rank it about a 4 or 5. Time Bomb: Useless. I have been advocating for this to get changed since COH was live. It is by far the most useless ability in the game. It should be changed to something like a Sticky Grenade that is short range and does aoe damage. Then Taser is your single target melee damage ability and Sticky Grenade is your aoe damage ability. Gun Drone. It has decent damage but has a number of defects to its mechanics. Its basically uncontrollable and will randomly attack any mob that wanders into its aggro bubble. thereby negating the stealth bonus to Covert Operative. You dont get the pet control menu with it so they are more of a pain to dismiss. The plus is it can act a minitank if you are solo and have too many mobs aggroed to you. In groups that are moving fast and you arent getting any stealth advantage its added dps to the team, so overall Id say if you run in fast moving groups its ok damage, but solo or slower moving groups its probably more of a hinderance. In general I think the Seeker Drones that Traps get are better than the Gun Drone as you can just summon them as needed, they fly out and hit the target and explode.

I built this guy with control as a backup so I slotted it for holds. With Atomics hold and Char I can keep bosses held indefinitely and can even get EBs held at times. I like Atomic because it has abilities that allow you to change your playstyle with a respec. You can go ranged damage with ranged control, can be a blapper, or can do pbaoe with abilities like beta decay, radioactive cloud, and inferno. At one point my build had both ranged and the pbaoe abilities but I decided to go with an all ranged build on him. My Rad/Rad Sentinel has the pbaoe abilities though and does very well with it. I cant speak for plant as I never made a toon with it, but I found that if your not blapping Energy doesnt do much for Fire. Ive never noticed Power Boost affecting the dot damage on Fire and seems better suited for abilities like Sonic or Rad that do things like debuff def or resistance. Boost range I always felt was more situational and back on my Fire/Energy toon back on live I rarely used it. It was great for snipes though, particularly when soloing.

If you want a range centered build for your fire/atomic blaster feel free to try this one out. I took a heal from the Medicine pool, so if you dont want that if frees up to powers and 3 enhancement slots to play around with. One good option would be to pick up Melt Armor as it is a very nice debuff for AV fights. ]https://www.midsreborn.com/builds/download.php?uc=1474&c=683&a=1366&f=HEX&dc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

I would disagree I have a Fire/Atomic blaster that is all range and it performs great. Atomic has some nice holds on it so those would be the things to go after if building for range., combine it with Fire epic powers and you have a good amount of control and debuffs at your disposal.

In the past on the old live servers it was, but not sure if it got changed or not. I know when I played the game back in the day that i was able to use Aim on them, but that was well before the game shut down and I dont know if Cryptic ever changed that. I do know that now you can lay a very large stack of Trip Mines on top of each other and one shot EBs. It takes time, but if you go around a corner, keep dropping Trip Mines on top of each other till they start detonating (timer running out), then pull the EB and stand by the mine field around the corner, the EB comes around the corner and dies. EBs that fly like Nightstar are problematic to do this with as you have to play with them some to get them to fly low enough to trigger the mines, but any nonflying EB can be one shotted.

Can we get sleeveless robes and jackets to work with robotic arms. I get why you wouldnt have normal jackets or robes work with it, but the sleeveless ones would be a great fit option.

I would really like to see some more options for Arachnos Soldiers and Widows. I understand the need for the backpack on the AS to remain limited but there doesnt need to be any reason to keep them from gaining access to all the other costume options available to normal characters. Yes the alien ATs on the hero side have locked forms also, though you can fully customize their normal form and actually play in that form all through the game. Its not a min/max character, but it is viable. So please allow the AS and Widows equal access to customization options.

There wouldnt be any copywrite issues for any eye beam set. There are a number of heroes that project eye beams of different types, and none of them have ever had a copywrite issue. You can copywrite names, but you cant copywrite powers. Both DC and Marvel have heroes and villains with sonic powers. Hyperion is a complete ripoff of Superman and the whole Squadron Supreme is nothing more than a Marvel Justice League. I would also say that since they did give us claws and three claws to boot, that they werent too concerned about losing a lawsuit. Wolverine was a much bigger property than Cyclops was. As far as head attacks go it would probably fit best with one of hte full helmets and would basically be a big beam that would engulf the characters head. Wildfire from the Legion of Super-Heroes would probably be the best example of projecting this. He would sometimes release all his energy in one blast from his face plate. I would consider a head beam though a low priority to get done as it would probably get the least use as far as the number of players choosing it as an animation option. Eye beams would be the highest priority, followed by chest and lastly head.

I wouldnt be opposed to that, but I was thinking there might have been some issues implementing it when Cryptic didnt back when they added animation options. I remember there was an expectation that adding the animation options would include the ability to project beams from eyes and chest. They never said why they didnt add that to the options, so I didnt know if it was just due to laziness or if there were some technical issues. It was also why I setup the powers the way I did so that you could use existing animations as much as possible.

While there was much within DCUO I couldnt get into there was one thing that it did better than COH as far as player options go. I liked how powers and weapons werent locked together. So you could have a fire based character and still have that toon equip a bow or sword. The idea was that you were shooting fire arrows or using a fire sword. Now in COH, barring Beam Rifle, all the weapon sets do smashing or lethal damage. The most resisted damage types in the game. It also restricts some concept themes, such as a hero who is able to fire a freeze ray/bullets or shoots fire arrows. What I propose is that when you select your tier 1 or 2 power you would gain a new option to select your damage type. All your shots now do that type of damage and have the associated existing damage procs. Initial power options would include; Fire, Cold, Electrical, Psychic, Dark, and Radiation. You can also choose default if you wish to keep the standard damage type. Your power choice would also dictate what control shot you would have. So Archery would have Stunning Shot affected, AR would have Beanbag, Beam Rifle would have Lancer Shot affected, and Dual Pistols would have Suppressive Fire affected. So if you chose Fire, Ice, or Electrical then you would get a hold like Char, Freeze Ray, and Telsa Cage. Dark, Radiation, Psychic would get stuns like Scramble Thoughts. Powers within a set, such as ARs Flamethrower would be exempt from the changes as already is an elemental attack. Dual Pistols already has something along these lines with swap ammo, but with more limited options and you can swap ammo at any time, vs what I propose would lock your damage type in unless you did a respec. The question of what to do with DPs Swap Ammo power I had a few optional ideas for. One would be to loose the ability and add another shot to the power options. Since the set lacks an Aim power, that was one thought. The other was to leave the power alone with one little change. If you chose either fire or Ice as your main weapon damage you would lose that ammo option. So if you chose Fire then you could only swap to Cryo or Toxic rounds. If you used Swap Ammo you would act the same as it does now and your shots would no longer be doing fire damage till you turned it off and swapped back to normal rounds. Having attacks doing two different procs and damage types at the same time would likely be problematic. Aside from improving player options this could also help with some of the issues sets like AR experience with dps. Giving players the option to use a different damage type could help the set considerably. For melee you dont need to add damage type options, as all the damage types are already covered with different power sets. What melee can use though is more animation options. So for example you chose to make a Fire scrapper, but wanted him to be channeling his attacks thorough a mace. So add options to allow players to choose different weapon animations for their attacks if they so choose.

I had long hoped that COH would have added animation options to the different power sets to allow us to project the different ranged powers from different body locations such as eyes, chest, head,... So since that never came about I was thinking, why not just create an optic blast set that allows you to choose different power options. So the unique thing about this set is when you choose your first power (tier 1 or 2) you also get an option to select what damage type your eye beams will have. Each one would have the same proc effect as the existing power sets. Current choices would include: Heat: Fire damage, burn dot proc. Freeze: Cold, slow proc. Electric: Energy damage, end drain proc. Force: Energy damage, knockback proc. Radiation: Energy damage, def debuff proc. Psionic: Psionic damage, -recharge proc. Powers include: Eye Beam: Basic single target attack. Eye Blast: Heavier single target attack. Optic Sweep: Moderate cone attack. Aim: To hit and damage buff Telescopic Blast: Long range sniper shot. Optic Stun: Ranged hold attack. Eye Burst: Targeted AoE attack, medium damage. Optic Deflection: Fires an eye beam that ricochet up to 10 targets. (Would use the mechanics like the Ion Judgement power) Optic Devastation: Targeted AoE attack. Does high damage. Most animations can be taken from the existing eye beam powers such as laser beam eyes or x-ray beam. Optic Sweep would need some new animations due to it being a cone attack, but the rest of the set is either single target attacks or targeted AoEs.

I wouldnt have an issue with rebalancing damage numbers if needed. It is the mechanics of the power that are the issue not its damage numbers. If its felt by the devs that the numbers are too high if mobs are standing in the Ignite patch and need to be tweaked I dont see an issue with that. In groups the whole fear factor just makes mobs run away from the tank and spread out making the teams ability to aoe much more limited. Solo you are running the risk of the mob running into another group and aggroing them. There is a reason that after Jack left they got rid of the run away fear effect on nearly every other power in the game. Overall it was hated by the community and was just a detriment to group gameplay, even Energy Blast knockback effect was preferable to mobs blindly running around the map, as at least you can somewhat control the knockback effect.

Yeah the pre ED days were interesting. I had made my fire/energy blaster the ultimate sniper in pvp. I used HOs and stacked up accuracy and range to my snipe. It had so much range it could reach across most of the arena maps. I would use a tanker or scrapper as a spotter, target off of him, hit Aim and BU, then one shot controllers, defenders and scrappers from beyond visual range. The only thing they would see is a red beam then dead.

Burn had a fear effect on it for one reason and that reason had nothing to do with it making sense thematically. Jack (forget his last name) hated that so many people were making fire tanks and using them to power level other players like people do now in AE. They tried putting timers on missions that were heavily farmed (notably the werewolf map) and when that didnt work he nerfed Burn so it put a fear effect on the power rendering it useless. He just wanted to end Fire tank farming, and was going to do it any way he could. Eventually he left the company and they reset the power back to its old mechanic. My guess is Ignite got its fear effect around the same time as Burn did, as I dont remember there being complaints about the fear effect back when the game first launched. Overall fear effects that made mobs run away proved detrimental to overall gameplay and the new effect was they would stand there shaking in fear. Illusion controllers ran into the fear effect making people run around with Spectral Terror but the ability was later changed to make them just stand there shaking. Any ability that makes mobs runout of it is generally bad and it becomes useless. AR already is the red headed stepchild of blasters with only sonic being considered worse, so if for no other reason than to give AR something good they should dump the current fear effect and make it the standing there shaking effect if anything. As another poster pointed out putting anything that makes 'sense' in a super hero game is pretty pointless. How many street thugs would face a guy that shoots plasma out of his hands with only a .38 or a bat, yet groups like the Skulls, Hellions and Family do it all the time. Sense would cause them all to run away the moment they saw any of us, making gameplay fairly miserable for any class. Heck even the most run TF, ITF which is filled with Roman soldiers just holding swords and spears would be doing nothing but running out of the instance since by the time you are doing that one you likely are all IOed out and probably have some members with Incarnate powers, so you basically have ancient rome fighting super heroic gods.

Well maybe if someone would actually answer the questions posed instead of just saying people dont know what they are talking about people might stop arguing about a specific point. So I will ask again why should Hasten have this cost when none of the other things like IOs or even Incarnate abilities do? I can literally reach tier 4 on every incarnate ability on any toon and never even step foot in an incarnate trial. Where is the cost for having incarnate powers?

Why because I dont list every power in the game affected by Hasten. I like how you just take a piece of my post out of context to try and manipulate things. Why didnt you include the part about me saying that most defensive powers are toggles and as such dont benefit from Hasten like click powers do. So yes there are other powers like the cc abilities that also benefit. You have never been polite in any of the responses I have seen you make. You insult people and are condescending in all the replies I have read by you. I have yet to see an explanation for any of the questions I have posed to you either, so saying you dont get it just shows you know nothing about the costs of things in this game. You just sit there and say people dont understand about costs and offer nothing to show you do, particularly in the context of how this game has operated for years, now and when it was part of NCSoft.

I would say Stamina was more impactful than Hasten as it affected every power in the game, minus the passive ones. Hasten chiefly affects attacks and heals. Most defensive powers are toggles, a few clickies but most toggles. Every power in the game be they a clicky or a toggle requires stamina so while Stamina may not offer as big of a boost as Hasten does its boost affects more powers in the game. As some have said there are entire ATs that dont get much of a benefit from Hasten (MMs) but I dont know a single powerset that didnt benefit from Stamina. Yes now with IOs that benefit is less vital but its still there. Again though it isnt free, it still requires you to slot it and either click it or tie up your one auto power to keep it running. Keeping it tied to the speed pool and making it the only big recharge reducer in the game just makes its placement more of an irritant than a true cost. It is also the only thing in the game with any form of cost real or otherwise. As good as Hasten is I get far more benefits from all my IOs than I do from Hasten, and there is no cost for having them, other than influence.

I understand it perfectly. You and he just seem to want Hasten to be the only thing with a cost/benefit system. Why can I outfit a mid level toon in all IOs for no real cost? Why when I scale down to do a tf do I still keep all my set bonuses? My point is, and which I have yet to see anyone answer it why is Hasten the only thing in the game that requires this imaginary cost/benefit when nothing else does? I also disagree about it being a defense buff, but I do agree it is both a healing and damage buff. Most defense powers are toggles, there are a few clicky mez protection powers, but the vast majority are toggles and dont really benefit from Hasten.

For a number of maps I dont even think CJ is enough. Back in the day I ran a toon with both SS and CJ for a little while to see how it could get around. Maps like Skyway were still a nightmare and the fact that you dont run on top of water meant that maps like Talos mean you lose much of your speed boost as soon as your forced to swim. Cryptic just didnt do a great job syncing up SS with how they made the game world.

The only difference in cost is having to tie up a pool with one power. You keep going on about costs but dont explain yourself. You have yet to explain how moving Hasten out of the speed pool screws up cost balance any more than being able to slot up my toon at level 25 with complete IO sets and get all the recharge and other set bonuses. The game has been pretty much cost free for years before it even shut down, so how does moving Hasten out of the speed pool screw up costs any more than a level 25 with full IO set bonuses?

Well if now it only requires you to pick up the first power in the Speed pool then what is stopping people from getting it now. If Hasten is not a "mandatory" power than certainly no other pool power is and in fact the big buffs that people like from other pools can be found in a variety of pools. Since you say the most you could see is it not take up a pool power than whats the difference if its inherited? I am getting the idea that you and maybe some others are equating making it inherited with making it a passive like the fitness pool is. I know I am not proposing that and I dont think the op is either, but I dont have psychic powers so I cant say for sure. I am saying still require it to be slotted with recharge enhancements and its still a click power that you can set to auto if you want to tie up your auto power with it.

Well for one thing the cost would still involve putting enhancement slots in it and having to set it to auto if you wanted permahasten by default. You may not feel that even that cost balances out the benefits of Hasten, but as I said in my earlier reply to you this game through out real costs to things long before these private servers even existed. What costs is there to going to the auction house and buying up sets of IOs at level 25 to get a bunch of recharge through set bonuses? Influence, big deal I have multiple toons outfitted with IOs and if I need more influence to gear up a new alt then just hop on my fire brute and farm some AE runs. The only IOs that are level restricted are the epic ones and the pvp ones, but you can build a super solid character even without them. You can only equip one epic set as it is so even if your not 50 they dont affect your build all that much. Hasten does fit within the theme of the Speed pool but I do agree with the op that overall Speed has more issues than other travel powers. Teleport used to have them also but the built in hover effect seems to have relieved most of those. Super Speed however still has a number of issues due to how the game world is setup. Super Jump is needed for so many maps and if you didnt take it with SS then you basically negated the travel benefits of SS. I dont give DCUO much credit but I do think they did a much better job with SS in that game by allowing players with it to scale buildings and bypass any vertical obstacle. The tech may not have been there when CoH was first launched but DCUO was out before CoH shut down so the tech existed before the game shut down.

So by my suggestion not everyone would have Hasten working by default. You still need to slot it and set it to auto if you want permahasten. The only change is that its removed from the Speed pool. As far as other popular powers go I would say its a false equivalent in that Hasten is unique among the power pools, most if not all the other pools have a power that provides a defense buff (combat jumping, hover, stealth,...) but Hasten is the only ability that gives a recharge boost. If you want to stack defense for whatever reason then you would go after multiple defense buff powers in a variety of pools, but with IOs reaching def soft caps doesnt seem to require taking multiple pools. As far as it making the game too easy, if the vast majority of players are taking it already then how is moving it out of the Speed pool changing anything but the players ability to experiment and find a new meta build. The easy issue is more of a content and mechanics issue than a thing related to any one or even any set of powers. The devs a long time ago made the decision to make raid content super easy in this game and to not have much in terms of gear progression. They said they didnt want a WoW style of game where you were chasing the next gear set and the next raid tier. Well the consequences of that are that players very quickly become powerful enough to make the raids easy. Between IOs and Incarnate powers we are doing a Tier 1 raid in Tier 3 gear (to use WoW terms). The fix is to make raid content that is set for more geared up characters and for raid mechanics that are tight enough to make the raid benefit from being on Discord and listening to verbal instructions. Currently all you need to do is have a macro typing in the basics of the mechanics and you can get nearly every Incarnate achievement badge there is. I had been saying for years before the game shut down that they needed to add content more suited towards friends in an SG and on Discord working together in order to get it done. Give people a real reason to be in an sg, other than it being a crafting base and teleport hub. Even now I would like to see more challenging content, but I do understand that its much tougher since the guys running Homecoming have lives and jobs outside of this game.

The main argument against is the cost factor and how such a powerful benefit should have some cost to it. Sorry but CoH gave up on real costs long ago. IOs pretty much ended limitations put in place with ED, AE farms made influence a cake walk to get, so you can have a toon IOed out at level 25. I would say that if the game had more level based and item based progression the argument would have greater weight, but for years now CoH has been much more about being able to play around with new builds and have them be heroic whenever you want (level wise). Making Hasten inherited does that or just lose the power all together and put more recharge boosts in other powers, so they arent in just a few.

I fail to see why anyone would be against the idea of Hasten being inherited. If you dont want to take it then dont slot it and dont make it run on auto. Then its just an unused ability in the inherited section and can be treated like Rest is. The ability may not be mandatory, but it is widely used on a vast majority of the characters in the game. Some power sets may not need it much, but that was true for Stamina also, but the devs still made that pool inherited. They left it up to the player if they wanted to put enhancement slots in it or just leave it alone. If you didnt slot it then it didnt help you that much, but it did open up build options for players that wanted to use that option.