Sovera

Just the Kb that is turned off. I play Fire Armor with only one -KB IO and it works fine.

That's when you bite the bullet and take Focused Accuracy, and add a Rectified Reticule +perception on top of. I found the RR +perception was not enough in Trapdoor once the blinds got stacked.

It does not, don't bring your assumptions and tout them as valid facts. The devs listen, yes, but when they are firm on an idea it goes through. On the other hand when something you, personally, do not want and discourse against it you will be happy the devs are not dictators and will listen, and even revert the changes, if enough public opinion is against it. Is that too going to be smeared as 'loud crying' or will it be a clear and concise presentation of fact if you're the one who is doing it?

Yes, and you said the 'shrieking mob of infants' forced the devs to reconsider. The following post said the previous rested XP changes thread had reached 79 pages (as opposed to the 21 in this topic) and the devs had not budged.

Pylon test with the same Sonic/Bio Sentinel under the new patch: 5:13 Previously 5:43. Also tried including the nuke into the rotation and the times went down to: 4:30 4:35 Definitely worth including the nuke even for the ST rotation. I did not include the nuke in the previous patch test to compare.

Not really sure what this changes for players (though some were loudly asking for it and not just NPCs having it). We already build for 95% chance to hit, so...?

Perhaps not the same players though, ne?

Not quite on topic but I come from testing the new Sonic on the beta server. Paired it with Bio with some minor changes from this build. Pylon test: - 5:43 Okay, not really impressive after coming from 3 minutes. But it's an AoE set what with three cones. So to Trapdoor with me: - 7:20 - 7:19 ... To put it in perspective the Elec/bio did it in 7:28 with just humble Ball Lightning and the nuke compared to Sonic's three cones and the nuke. This is Staff and Elec Melee all over again with people ready to swear Sonic does amazing AoE because it has lots of it. That said it the set does carry a hefty tax due to the -res so anyone who plays it knows that they will be helping the team. Just, y'know, personal performance aside. P.S. Caltrops is being amazing. I had mobs all over the place messing with the cones until I got into the habit of Build-Up, Dreadful Wail, Caltrops (Tsubishmishinmi), then hop away and start wailing with the cones. Moibs were very accommodating and stopped running to me. It did not stop runners though.

For what it is worth I tested the new Sonic for Sentinels on a Pylon. It does not say much since I do not have a Live version to compare with. - 5:43 I did test the 'new' Elec paired with Bio and got 3 minutes when leveraging the Shocked mechanic and 3:40 without. This is apples to oranges though since different sets. But if new changes I'll have one data to compare against. But since this is an 'AoE' set what with three cones plus a nuke I also did a Trapdoor test. - 7:20 - 7:19 To put it in perspective the Elec/bio did it in 7:28 with just humble Ball Lightning and the nuke.

Speaking of Sonic, were the alternate animations ever fixed? I vaguely remember the brouhaha about them having increased cast times.

Brought the build to the test server to test. Pylon times: - 3:37, no nuke used. Pylon endurance about half. - 2:57, nuke used. Obvious improvement with the endurance of the pylon tanked half way through it allowing the Shocked mechanic to work at full power. - 2:56, nuke used until pylon's endurance was tanked and then no longer using it to not go through the uber slow 4 second animation. No discernible difference. Well, it's definitely not bad. Bit faster than some of my Brutes, a whole minute faster than my best Sentinel times (fully ranged). This is not a 100% translatable thing because, for example, AVs are much harder if not straight impossible to sap, but during my gameplay I found I could reliably prevent +4 (+3) ITF EBs from activating their annoying T9 by tanking their endurance, same with Paragon Protectors. Even Fake Nemesis did not activate their bubble. The caveat is that it only happens if the nuke landed on them. That's easily half their blue bar gone and then regular attacks are enough to kill the rest and keep it zeroed. Did a Trapdoor test while at it and bit dismal with 7:28 and 7:52. No real danger but runners gonna run. No inspirations popped for it nor incarnates clicked. Made a few changes to the build which may have helped and that was to add Caltrops (Taishibisimimiminimish). Even in normal teams it's something I found useful. Charge-up, Ball Lightning, Caltrops, Thundering Blast. Ball Lightning makes the mobs mill around while we are smacking them. Do not use on AVs though, they are skittish enough without adding Fear. For solo, like in the Trapdoor test, it was useful since even at just 33% defenses and not able to hoverblast the mobs mostly refused to come over. I only had to heal myself twice and I feel I could do better were it not the cramped quarters not letting me gauge where the center of the spawn was for the nuke to hit them all. As It is I'm sure I failed to hit all mobs several times with full HP minions peppering me with leaded loved.

Market Crash's first mission. All Freaks, no Super Stunners. Mostly Smash or Slash with only a scattering of electricity from the lieutenants. Anything could handle it.

Joke's on you, I sole handedly (when I craft a handful of IOs once every two months) prop the yellow salvage prices by always buying for 5000 since I buy common for 500 and can't be arsed to do more than add or subtract a zero.

You can have either. Near zero difference if the slotted damage is compared. CAK does a tiny bit more damage and can slot a -res proc if you intend to break pylons. But while leveling there is no point in using Thunder Kick since it is very bad in terms of damage. For leveling the rotation is something like Storm Kick, Crane Kick, Cobra Strike, Thunder Kick, Storm Kick. If there are gaps then mix in more Thunder Kicks. But around 20-ish the recharge starts kicking in and Thunder Kick can be completely removed from the equation. Without Cobra Strike then Thunder Kick would still be in use until 38. At max level and depending if you never intend to exemplar pick CAK or Cobra Strike. If you do exemplar lower than 33 then Thunder kick is back on the menu.

Yep, good catch. It's been up for years and no one ever noticed. I've replaced it for a real leveling build for Fire/MA.

In practical terms you might find you do not need more than a procced out Ground Zero as your opener. That will hurt mobs plenty, then just mop with Spin and Shockwave. Personally I would just ditch Shockwave because of this. Might as well open with Ground Zero and then focus on a boss and throw Spin when ever it is up to kill the rest at the same time the boss is being wailed on. But if you want to add more procs the usual second target is Radiation Therapy. I would leave Spin as a strong and fast AoE to mop up because procmonstered GZ and RT will take too long to recharge to help more than once per spawn. That double leaves Shockwave as excessive but it's a bit of a sin to pick up Claws and not have Shockwave, so give it a try. My Fire Armor/Claws characters don't have Shockwave because I feel Spin and Burn are all the AoE I need. You might feel the same after throwing GW, RT, then Spin, and see you only have 3-4 mobs still alive, mobs you can now Spin while focusing on the boss(es) who will have the most HP. But Shockwave offers nice mitigation, and you can/could keep Radiation Therapy as a second heal instead because you got more AoE than you can realistically use per spawn. Once you're down to 3-4 mobs it's Spin and single target mopping. Looking at Mids Shockwave does 270 damage while a procced out Radiation Therapy does 418. But shockwave recharges in 4.5 seconds (faster thanks to the Forcefeedback proc having a chance to go off with multiple targets) and RT in 24 seconds (hence my above 'only usable once per spawn'). So by using showckwave twice you've already done more damage than RT while also KDing mobs. Of the three scenarios I lean towards procced out GW, RT, and ditching Shockwave. This is simply because Shockwave is a cone and demands positioning whereas we can jump into the middle of a group and PbAoE three times with GZ, RT and Spin. Then just spin to mop up while focusing on the boss. Mileage may vary but respecs are cheap so give it a try and see which fits you best.

You can swap Gamma Boost for Ground Zero and use the slots for it. You will lose 86% resistance to endurance and recovery debuffs. Or remove Taunt, take the slots from Gamma Boost but keep it to have the debuff protection. Or if you don't use Fly you can replace Evasive Maneuvers for Ground Zero while taking the slots from Gamma Boost. World's your oyster.

Try this. Your resistances are at 83.44%/83.54% with one stack of the ATO in Follow-up. With a second stack you go to 90%. S/L defense is at near 40% and Barrier will put it at 45% if you find yourself in trouble and need to use Barrier (it's only when you're at a point where you need to use Barrier that you really need that last 5% anyway).

Fire Armor can do the new Manti without even using inspirations, but you do need to slot IOs. You should not be having endurance problems if you've slotted Consume. It's a full bar of endurance every minute. Why do you resist buying IOs during leveling anyway? Most can be slotted by level 22/27 and will accompany you to level 50 without needing to be changed. The ATOs at level 10 even. As for blinds the easiest way is just to slot a Rectified Reticule +perception unique in Build-up. Since two of them give 1.88% S/L defense it is something you'll probably want anyway

And it's not going to change anything. People who only wanted to farm will still want to only farm, people who did not want to spare 30 minutes a day to do a Tinpex to slowly gear their characters between farming still won't want to do it even after the Devs come out and say 'this is City of Heroes, not City of AE'.

Any character can do any farm if they are built for general gameplay. All farmers do is build the cheapest and simplest focused character for a specific content. None of my brutes or tanks with Fire Armor falters (or even needs healing) in Market Crash if farming the first mission is desired. They don't care about Arachnos or CoT either. In fact other than -def factions they mow through things. Build a character to handle all types, or just one type, and it can farm pretty much any of the easier factions. Will this be harder? Lol, like copying a build from the forums is hard. Will it be mroe expensive than the cheap farm builds? Yeah, but a farmer should not be hurting for money.

And they might just do that. How can I know? But only when the devs do a pass for AR. So far this particular tweak was for the defense change that they did which they wanted to go easy and see if it was not too much. I can't speak for the devs.

Understandable. But lets not forget these changes are not roleplay based but rather gameplay. Smash and Lethal are already rolled into one and with the exception of Parry powers that buff Smash exclusively, or Slash, any bonus or toggle will buff both be it defense or resistance. So a grenade doing Smash and Slash makes less sense than doing fire and... smash, or slash. Slash if wanting to adhere a bit more to realism. I never 'got' why electricity is energy and smash, or sonic being energy and smash, or reversing it why ice does cold and slash. After all if we get hit by an ice club we get our brains spilling out, we don't freeze, and throwing an ice spear is the same with our body perforated at which point the cold of holding an icicle is inconsequential.

Defenders keep on chiming (see what I did there?) so loudly the changes will end up being scrapped like the obviously better changes to Rage because it could no longer be stacked.

Agreed. Just like Neverwinter Nights had Improved Invisibility be an important buff because it had a 50% chance of making enemies miss so does Confuse have room to be an important power. But as it is Confused is more like Mind Controlled with mobs 100% hitting each other and 100% ignoring players. Things that would/may make Confuse less cheese might be: - Friendly fire is turned on. Enemies now hit themselves with AoE, or, players get hit by AoEs from NPCs but NPCs also will be affected. - 50% (numbers to be tuned) chance of enemies hitting their allies instead of players (true confusion either because they are blinded by a fog or spores increased their paranoia). I'm just rehashing what Enjoy said but it does seem like a better version for Confuse, though not the current OP one. In particular a single Plant player makes a mockery of the game with Seeds of Confusion in a 15 second cooldown that affects a whole spawn.