jack_nomind

I haven't had a chance to test it yet (got busy) but I think there's only like, a small handful of powers in the game that'll do that (for that proc). Good call thinking of the purple patch, that would never have occurred to me.

Well, now. That's just fascinating. (As is the one in the top-right, for a different reason: RttC has three +regen values, instead of one initial and an identical one per target. That might just be a hiccup though.) I think your initial call about it being very closely related to RttC's function is right. I'm gonna try and test it on Justin with Parasitic Aura. Sorry to make you get unslotters -- I could've run this on Justin too if I'd known it was going to cost you.

BF -> AS -> SS -> repeat requires 444% total recharge, which is reasonably impossible(*) for a melee character without outside buffs, and would quadruple-stack BF for AS and SS. BF -> AS -> SS -> AS -> repeat requires ~300% recharge, which is barely in the realm of reason, and triple-stacks BF. BF -> (Attack Vitals) -> repeat does very nearly the same ST damage and more AoE damage and only requires ~200% recharge, but basically limits you to double-stacked BF rather than triple-stacking it. If you're relying on a pocket Kinetics for recharge, then you're probably damage capped anyway and BF is worse than any other set attack. Attack Vitals combo -> repeat does more damage AoE and eyeballing it I think your best ST might be AS -> SS -> AS -> (Cross Punch? Maybe insta-Moonbeam?), but I'd honestly just spam Attack Vitals for sanity's sake (and it outdamages any ST chain with 2 or more mobs in the cone anyway). (*) As in, all the ways I can think of to do it are stupid.

I'm not sure I'm understanding. Could you post a screenshot? (Ideally two, one surrounded with low level enemies and one with equal or higher-level enemies.)

i never knew how much i wanted this until just now.

I knew an MMO where Taxibots used part of their paid subscription time to act as ferries to other players. I knew an MMO where I'd get and send tells just to tell people how great they look. I knew an MMO desolate for a long time because of a player-created content system... which was resolved not by removing or even heavily undercutting that system, but by hiring the players who were best at creating for it to make the entire game more fun. Indeed we did. The current system is the result. CoH has always tended towards 'carebearing,' and there have always been players claiming this ruins their experience. I'd say a substantial minority of such players mean it ruins the experience of ruining other peoples' experiences. Griefers persisted -- for example, by teleporting low level players high above an enemy spawn or the like -- but it became unreliable, particularly when changes were made to auto-accept settings. The "no death by falling damage" rule was kept anyway for lore reasons. In comic books, nobody but Gwen Stacy ever dies from falling.

You're skimming again, eldriyth. Slow down and be more thorough.

No. I think the reasons why are intuitively obvious to many of the previous responders. But off the top of my head, strongest to weakest: There's no version of this that doesn't result in massive developmental headaches whenever a new set is created. Or just all the time, really. There's no version of this that doesn't result in people making unplayable characters and getting frustrated about it. There's no version of this that doesn't destroy power category scaling systems. As one example, right now Masterminds have low scaling for support and damage powers to balance their pets. A pets/assault character with Mastermind scaling would probably be terrible. A pets/assault character with different scaling would break something else. Letting players "choose their own" scaling (like a hypothetical default "5/10-5/10-5/10-5/10" damage/support/control/tanker scaling that can re-arrange those points) just purely replaces all existing ATs. This erodes the prospects of EATs, which is something I'd like to see us as a community start designing.

In my ideal system, an arch-nemesis is a way of showing off your creativity to other players. It would, of course, be purely optional. For players who do it, that player would design their AN like a Mission Architect enemy -- giving them a costume, powers, and writing their standard dialogue/taunts/monologues. They'd also assign the AN an Arcane or Science 'type,' like salvage. When fighting enemies of the appropriate type, the AN would have a chance to spawn, and would always chatbubble taunt when 1) any player from the group got near or 2) when the player themselves got near, with a 30s lockout timer to prevent double-ups. This precludes voicework, but I'm fine with that; that sounds expensive and prone to difficulties maintaining. The AN could only replace a Boss or EB spawn (although it'd be cool if there were a mission arc where they could be fought as an AV). I don't know if I care about players making cheesable ANs (e.g., a FA/ tanker making an enemy that only does fire damage). But a brute-force way of avoiding that is making a database that assigns one or more fixed powers to every AN based on their PC's power combination. This could be assigned by default per archetype (so for example, Tankers' ANs would have a psychic-damage spell or gadget) and manually overwritten by the developers for specific sets or combinations (so a DA/ Tanker's AN would have an Energy + Knockback spell or gadget instead of a Psychic one). A system to vote on other players' ANs, with friends' ANs, 'favorited' ANs, or highly-rated ANs showing up in the AN spawn slot occasionally.

I could've sworn I responded to this post a while ago, but evidently that was an alternate reality. (Or I composed then closed. Nice to see I'm still sharp.) Yeah, this accomplishes the general intent. The reason I keep saying Bruised is, one, it's better for solo Tankers; and two, it's easier for me to imagine implementing "addtl effect on target when having an effect named Bruising" vs "addtl effect on target when taunted by another player if that other player is a Tanker." In my ideal world, the specific additional effect varies from one Tanker secondary to another, but a general shared debuff would be fine too. Since this is generally supposed to help team utility, I do prefer debuff to buff if the effect is universal. As above, the Bruising utility would occur while solo; and the aggro cap increase would also be a solo benefit (at least at high levels). Adding Bruising to all attacks (earlier proposal in my list) would also be a solo buff. Primarily, though, as Sura said this is about team role utility. I'm absolutely adamant that every AT should be able to solo 1-50, but I'm fine with some efficiency differences and I don't think this is out of any Tanker build's reach.

So do you mean like toggle suppression? Hmm. I wonder if there's a way for Kheldian toggles to suppress, but pool toggles to remain. I think this makes a lot of sense at low levels, but at high levels I have a hard time imagining them ever getting a shot off with all the AoE flying around.

I'm gonna repost this chart a few times for public use until I finally make it into a spreadsheet or something better. This chart lists your effective HP multiplier at certain levels of resilience. The horizontal axis is Resistance, the vertical axis is Defense. (I made this for Tankers and I don't feel like adding a column for 75 Res right now, but it should be illustrative anyway.) D/R 20 40 60 80 85 90 10 1.56 2.08 3.13 6.25 8.33 12.5 20 2.08 2.78 4.167 8.33 11.11 16.67 30 3.13 4.167 6.25 12.5 16.67 25 40 6.25 8.33 12.5 25 33.33 50 42.5 8.33 11.11 16.67 33.33 44.44 66.67 45 12.5 16.67 25 50 66.67 100 Without changing anything at all, a /FA Brute is 2.5x as survivable as a /FA Scrapper, just because the scrapper caps out fire resist so much lower (and FA provides well over-cap fire resist on either AT). More than, really, because of the higher HP. To make up the difference on a Scrapper you need to have more Defense (or more active mitigation. Always slot Blazing Aura and Burn with KD procs!). Sentinels cap at 75 Res like Scrappers do. They get less Resistance overall out of the FA kit, enough so that they don't just cap fire resist without enhancements, but even basic slotting will still get them there. However, all the Sentinels also get some version of Blaster sustain powers. For /FA, it's a toggle heal (and Sentinel /FA also gets a toggle version of Fiery Embrace, combining that power and Blazing Aura which they also lose). Since it's at the same resistance cap as the Scrapper, that means the Sentinel will actually be more survivable in fire farms than /FA Scrappers. You'll still need to build for Defense -- particularly as the heal toggle doesn't come until L35. But you might find it noticeably more stable. (Since you were asking about Sentinel armor kits: Generally, I think the Sentinel secondaries are overtuned. Although ostensibly weaker defensively than Scrappers, they tend to get two pluses for each minus. The AT as a whole isn't strong enough to warrant nerfing its defense powers, which only really shine with IO sets anyway, but if it gets significantly better offense at some point they're gonna need some gutting.)

I'd say 90% of it is its powers' effects do not justify their cooldowns. I am positively mystified by Disruption Arrow, as one example. Similar lower-tier powers like Tar Patch have higher effect magnitude and additional effects at the same relative (50% unenhanced) uptime -- and Tar Patch requires less recasting -- while other mid- to high- tier -Res powers are just straight toggles (Enervating Field or Venomous Gas as examples) with, again, higher magnitude and additional secondary effects. If Trick Arrow wants to be the "effect stacking" kit with weaker up-front magnitudes but fast casts and quick recharge, fine; cut all its recharge times in half(*) and we'll see how it stands. The other 10% is a mix. TA's endurance costs are a bit high given the above, and it doesn't have internal way of mitigating the end costs or recharge speed issue. It also doesn't have any PBAoE or ally-targeted powers, so there's some clunkiness in responding to problems with your allies because you have to find and hit whatever's attacking them (either by targeting that enemy or by putting an aoe on them). It really could have done with an AoE toggle buff (some kind of "morale aura" or w/e, all the comic book archers are wisecrackers and spotters for the heavies), but failing that for cottage reasons it'd be great if the arrows could be fired directly at allies, and/or had larger effect radii, and/or left buff patches along with the debuff ones. (*) I have not evaluated every power to make sure 'half' isn't going to break something.

Night Widows are Claws/SR scrappers except with -regen, ranged attacks, and also they're really FF defenders because the whole team is softcapped now. "Decent" is underselling it to the point of absurdity. And yeah, your rad/fire should be just fine. For anything else... you end up having to take a set with capped Fire Resist and a chunk of Ranged/Fire Defense (or vice-versa), or "a bit" of fire mitigation and enough damage to just gottagofast it. Which is... not too hard, really? For melee, Fire gets there fastest, but /Invuln can do it well enough, Shield and SR obviously just... dodge... and Dark Armor, Willpower, and Stone Armor (on a Brute) can get there without any special trickery. Going further afield, Masterminds and Dominators have a fair bit to recommend them and you can always learn to appreciate your melee even more by trying out a Blaster, Sentinel, or Corr (they're gonna be an uncomfortable ride for quite a while, but can work just fine at max level). The MFing Warshade build might also work on a similar principle. Post-Lightform PBs are fine, but before that you might feel pretty squishy (Crab tops out at 60% fire resist before IOs, and non-IO'd PB crabs are a little more awkward to use than WS ones). My suggestion? Water/Fire Sentinel. Great AoE availability, solid general damage, caps Fire resist (at 75%) with a couple of IOs and gets you out of your comfort zone.

And what is the difference, exactly, to a player who wants Serum but knows it's bad, if the devs simply give up on it and put another power in its place, mutually exclusive with it? If that's the approach they take to add the utility to Mercs that Serum is failing to provide? I'm gonna make some friends here and say, er... you're both mistaken? Cottaging is about preventing drift -- it's a rule of procedure that stopped the Paragon developers from 'changing their mind' about one power at a time, leading eventually to sets that look and play nothing like their original implementation. It's a lot less about a per-power, keep things as they are system (obviously players are going to choose to respec or even have to respec after merely 'numerical' changes, too) as it is about a 'don't rebuild the town after every strong breeze.' If that analogy makes sense. Not all games have a similar design rule and many games do fine without it, but it is something that 'flavored' CoH. 10/9 sets do evade the cottage rule in its literal sense, but they undercut the spirit of it because there's no bright line guideline to stop 11/9, 15/9, 27/9 sets -- which would be, if anything, worse than the situations cottage rule is supposed to prevent. I'm ultimately (I think) with kelly here. I think this is a situation where cottaging is warranted because the arguments here convince me the power is under-performing in a practical sense and at a design sense (since it affects the meta-balancing of IO sets. Even with the argument that "sets aren't balanced around IOs," which I find dubious, IOs are undoubtedly balanced around sets -- new pet or MM IO sets will have to account for different MMs having significant differences in even the ability to slot the sets). I also don't play MMs often at all, so that's my disinterested opinion. But I do have to say -- cottage or don't cottage, but don't 10/9 just to evade the literal "rule" and destroy its intent.

In that window, the Numina's bonus listed doesn't refer to the two-piece set bonus, but to the unique +Regen/+Recovery proc. The 12% set bonus is one of the Large or Huge (don't recall which) bonuses. What's confusing you is that your regen is listed in the window you're looking at as a % of your total health per second, rather than a % of your base regen per second (which is how it's shown by default in Pines or etc). "100% Regen" is "0.42% hp/s." So adding 20% more of .42/s adds 0.084. Which is what you're seeing. edit: damnit arcana i thought you were asleep.

I meant the pure-melee, tbh.

That's it, you done broke the game! I'm just sad no one's commented on the actual build. I'm incredibly proud of the DBZ I accomplished with it.

Invuln is a defense-based set -- its totals are very closely comparable to SD by the point of Tough Hide.

I think if you're serious about keeping the Deflection, Insulation, and Dispersion numbers the same as they are, this set ends up with more defense within three powers than SR gets in six -- but has no other layers, so it's in the same boat as pre-scaling-resist SR was. It ends up being overwhelmingly good against easy content (since it softcaps easily without any sets at all, and anyway minions would never stand up again) and overwhelmingly bad against difficult content (anything with +acc that's immune to the constant free KDs and immob). Speaking as a primarily melee player, I'd skip the attacks unless I needed a slot mule, and end up with 1 (mandatory), 2, 4, 6, 7, and 9, so it's a six-power set. I like the enthusiasm and I'm sure there's a way to adapt FF to melee, but you'll need to trash most of the KB/KD/etc, lower the Defense numbers, and add at least one more layer. I wouldn't recommend keeping the attacks. Click attacks are usually going to be "the new OP" (e.g., Gloom/Moonbeam) or "always skipped" (e.g., Shuriken).

Thank you! But I'm gonna defend keeping FF on the list. On a Force Fields Defender, Deflection Shield + Insulation Shield give ~24% def/all to allies, +~16% def/all to allies within 25m for a total of 40% def/all (enhanced). The set as a whole provides some protection against Hold, Stun, and Immobilize, which is nice, and some resistance to a few things including a very nice end drain/recovery debuff resistance. As far as support's concerned, that's the entire set. The pool power Vengeance, on a Defender, provides a ~40% defense buff to all (enhanced), as well as +65% damage, +35% tohit (unenhanced), and a 13% heal (unenhanced). It doesn't offer status protection to Hold, Stun, or Immob; or end drain resistance... but it does offer a fair bit of status resistance and protection against KB and Fear. But really FF isn't bad because its numbers are matched by a pool power that recapitulates the entire effect as long as you have some +rech and a floor-prone blaster; it's bad because it does one trick period and that leaves it open to being easily mooted. Its offensive powers need to be significantly tweaked to have debuff components or some other utility against hard targets, and its defensive powers should have something that contributes to a team that already has two Corrs or one VEAT on it. That's why it's on the list. War Mace is fine as far as damage goes. Few people use it because its secondary effect is less obviously useful than others and the customizations don't match many concepts. If it needs a tweak to be relevant, it's better animations and weapon skins.

It gets a little better -- particularly with Integration, Dull Pain, and at the end Moment of Glory. But Regen is a very expensive set to build for (it needs lots and lots of +recharge) and click-intensive to play. Once good(?) thing is that once you pick up Resilience, you're immune to being stunned by wakies. That should tell you a fair bit about what to expect.

Empathy (at this point, fort and adrenalin might as well be teamwide; absorb pain probably ought to be cottaged) Trick Arrow Force Fields (power tweaking, probably some absorb) Ice Armor (on tankers specifically, maybe brutes too) Battle Axe Broadsword Beast Mastery + Kheldians generally, although it's less specific power issues and more a design issue + APPs generally, ditto the above + Tankers generally, ditto the above

An in-progress "unlock team to LFG" would be one way of handling this, although right now the LFG queue is so desolate that this still runs the risk of someone kicking a member for a friend.

Minerals is only exclusive vs Granite, and the rest of the set cumulatively manages to be more durable than Shield even w/o Granite.