Pixie_Knight

Enhancement Diversification proved that the 'optimal' slotting of "Six Damage Single Origin enhancements" was neither needed, nor actually optimal. Neither was six Hold Duration enhancements in a controller's holds. Other things could be viable too, and possibly even more optimal. And remember, you can still six slot for damage if you want to. Your damage wont be as high as it was in issue 1, true. But it'll still be higher then anyone who isn't six slotting for damage. So your 'optimal' slotting strategy is still viable. Enhancements after the 3rd one do still have an effect, it's just greatly diminished. But that's still a viable strategy. In fact, I may experiment with Madam Enigma with taking fewer attacks on one build, but six slotting defenses. You know, see how that works out. If the idea of only putting 3 enhancements of one type in a single power offends you so much, the option to use more is still there. It's entirely your choice to not use that option. Just as it was my choice in issue 1 to not six slot Super Reflexes's powers for defense buff. Three def buff enhancements gave me more then enough defenses for most things, and if I needed more there were always luck enhancements. I didn't start six slotting defense until the Defense Reduction patch, due to fear that my previous slotting strategy would be unplayable. ED merely showed that 3 def buff enhancements per power was still just as effective as before.

To be fair, even in Issue 1 it was expected that you'd be getting a travel power of some type by level 14. So large zones and missions which require you to travel from zone to zone weren't too bad. And the fact that you can travel on foot from Atlas Park (or Galaxy City originally) to any other zone in the game (except Croatea when it got added) helped add to the immersion and make the city feel like a real place.

Grandville is still possible. There's elevators to take you up and down. That said, my original main Madam Enigma was a claw/super reflexes scrapper who never took a travel power. Instead I put 3 run speed slots into swift, sprint, and Quickness. Yeah, I know. Madness. My land speed was on par with getting hit by Speedboost without sprint toggled on With sprint toggled on I was just a little slower then unslotted Super Speed. And I kept telling kinetics defenders or /kinetics controllers to not use speedboost on me. The +recharge didn't help Claws much, neither did the +recovery help me much. And the additional run speed kept causing me to lose control of my character's movement. Actually, the few times I tried using Super Speed I'd have control problems due to it being too fast. I kept running into bus stops :) My initial villain main, Mistress Poison used 3 slotted swift and sprint for travel for much of her career. Eventually she picked up Super Jump, but that was close to level 40. And my VEAT Arachnid Huntress (who became my new villain main) again never got a 'real' travel power. Arachnos Soldiers had a power in their secondary I believe that boosts run speed, so I 3 slotted that, swift, and sprint. I used jet packs from mayhem missions to get around Grandville, and learned how to get around other zones. And when the jet packs ran out, I learned where the elevators were in Grandville.

And to be honest, if you want to 6 slot damage SOs, IOs, or Hami-Os you're still able to do so. You'll still do more damage then anyone who isn't six slotting for damage. It just wont be double the damage. But you can still do it. Enhancement Diversification didn't remove the ability, just made using other enhancements instead more viable.

And I wouldn't be among them. While I raged with the loudest of us over Defense Reduction and Enhancement Diversification when they were being added, Defense Reduction did solve the problem it was intended to solve. It, alongside adding an aggro cap and a max targets cap to most AoE attacks, put an end to the Tanker Farm 'teams' where everyone except the tanker was expected to just sit just inside the mission so the tanker could go round up and slaughter a full mission's worth of difficulty four or five enemies all at once. Until other changes such as reducing how much XP you got from enemies too high above your level and adding the Sidekick/Exempler system came about it didn't completely get rid of snorefest 'tanker farm' teams. But it was a step in the right direction. All ED really did in the long run was force everyone to realize that no, you don't 6 slotted damage in attack powers or six slotted defense/resistance in defensive powers. Enemies still go down just fine, your defenses are still just fine too. In fact, continuing to six slot for Damage or Defense after the previous Defense Reduction patch was entirely based on the idea of "if my defense/resistance isn't hard capped, it's not high enough". When in fact you didn't need that much defense anymore since enemies no longer started off with a 95% chance to hit. Of course that change slipped under the radar due to the massive ragefest over our precious defenses getting reduced.

For some reason I read this as "Go. Hunt. Brill Skulls" at first.

Can you attune sets other then the ATO ones?

What if they prefer blintzes? Blintzes are irrelevant, only the preference when given a choice between cookies and donuts. But what if you hate both of them, but love ice cream sandwiches?

Welcome to Paragon, Benny. I'm sure you'll enjoy your time here a lot.

I typically wait till the mid 30's to start slotting sets. Before then, the overall enhancement values make them a bit worse then level 25 IOs.

Reminds me of the first time I saw Clockwork Paladin in Kings Row. I was playing a brand new TA/A defender since those sets had just hit live. I was level 8, I think. And I saw this HUGE clockwork. I'm going "Wow, he's huge..." My friend was sitting next to me and going "Yeah, what the hell that?!" So I targeted it to get the name. And we're both going "Giant MONSTER?!" At which point we both watched in horror as my character drew an arrow, pulled back the bowstring, and launched it at Clockwork Paladin. In my shock I'd reflexively hit Numpad 1, and launched an attack. My friend was yelling "RUN!" I was yelling "I'M TRYING!" And Clockwork Paladin was easily keeping up with me and attacking. Realizing I couldn't get away, I said "Screw this!" Turned my character around, and started unloading everything I had as fast as I could. Surprisingly, I managed to get the Giant Monster's health down by 1/3 before I died... And I did it all by my self with a Trick Arrow defender days after they were launched.

You're right, the defense re-balancing and a few other things were to try stopping a specific playstyle. But you didn't mention what that playstyle was. So I'll enlighten those who weren't around at the time. The playstyle in question was "one tank (usually fire armor, but not always) gathers up every enemy in a large open map and kills them with an aoe while the rest of the team sits by the entrance doing nothing". Stopping this was a good thing. I intentionally joined such a team only once. I did so because Madam Enigma was level 38 and had run completely out of missions. And she wouldn't be able to get more until level 40. I stuck around on that team for 2 'farm' mission runs, then left because it was boring me to tears. Instead I went back to farming mobs in hazard zones and fighting those freaking eyeballs which ignored my entire defensive set. It took me ages to get to 40, but at least I wasn't bored. Note that this was before the Sidekick/Exempler system was in place, so I also couldn't run most of the Task Forces available to me due to having out leveled them. After level 16 or 18 (depending on their primary) you would join a team, only to have the tank on the team constantly tell everyone to "wait here" at the entrance, then run off to solo the mission via gathering all enemies into one large group and AOEing them to death. Or in other words, the 8 man team existed just to increase spawn sizes and enemy levels for the tanker's enjoyment, and everyone else was expected to be bored while "reaping the benefits". If you were lucky, and playing a fire blaster, you might be allowed to join in by having the tank gather everything together then you hitting Rain of Fire or another AOE that could kill them all quickly. If you didn't play along? If you tried to fight alongside the tanker, or support him since you're playing a defender or controller? BAM! Kicked from the team. Ending this "playstyle" was a good decision since if it had been allowed to continue unchecked it likely would have lead to the game's early demise. While I raged about the changes to Defense since they directly impacted my (at the time only) character, the other things were gladly accepted for the results and reasoning behind them. Before those changes I was seriously thinking about quitting the game because 'farm' teams were ruining the fun. Instead I rolled up my first Defender (a Dark/Rad defender if you must know).

That is awesome. It felt great to see multiple instances of Atlas Park again.

My standard slotting for attack powers is generally 1 accuaracy and 3 damage. I'll then consider adding a 5th slot for recharge or endurance redux if it's a slow charging attack or high endurance cost attack. 6 slots to get both if needed. Or if I'm planning on putting a 6 piece IO set in the power. Arachnos Soldiers and Nova form kelds can get away without slotting accuracy, which can be good. Especially for a keld since they have so many different powers that need slots, far more then any other AT does.

Late nights just standing in Atlas and chatting about the strangest of things. civil political debates, discussions about what cartoons we grew up watching, who would win in a fight between X villain and Mister T, you name it we'd chat about it. Feeling bored, not wanting to play the game, not wanting to do anything else, so just flying in figure eights through the arms of a statue for a couple hours. Fighting my first Archvillain, stealthing my way to Icons in Steel Canyon at level 5 because I just had to change my costume's appearance Right Now, these are things I look back on fondly. I even missed the (surprisingly friendly) flame wars on the forums. Speaking of which, the forums were surprisingly friendly. You could be in a heated flame war with someone in one thread, but in another thread the two of you are chatting like best of friends.

I ended up signing back in, and lost way too much time this evening. I had stuff I wanted to do tonight that wasn't CoH.

I've said it before, and I'll probably say it again. But welcome to Paragon! And welcome home. Feels so good to welcome people to Paragon City once again after all these years.

I was playing since around 1pm today, and only signed out because my stomach was yelling at me to eat breakfast. Or lunch. Or supper. Or an entire cow. It didn't really care which.

You are aware that beating a dead horse, bringing it back to life, beating it to death, then beating the dead horse once more to start the cycle all over again is a long standing CoH forum tradition, right? People were raging about ED and how it would kill the game and make X class unplayable for years after it was first implemented. That this topic has returned? Not surprising in the least.

One thing that always stuck in my mind was an encounter I had while playing a lowbie alt on Atlas Park server, I think. I decided on a whim to accept a blind invite, something I almost never did after being burned too many times. Anyway, the group was competent, at least. And I was having fun. Then someone on the team sent me a private message which said "Hey, you're new. So Here's some advise from one who learned the hard way. If you ever see a scrapper named Madam Enigma, try getting her to join your team. She's rude as hell, and will probably say no. But if she does join, she will manage to pull the team's fat out of the fryer." At which point I remembered where I saw that person's name before. A few days previous while playing Madam Enigma I joined a team running missions against the Outcasts. And the team leader for some reason had the difficulty set to max, meaning with the 8 person team there were a lot of high level (compared to the party) enemies. At the time Madam Enigma had been the highest level person on the team, and everything was conning purple to me. Wall to wall outcasts too. I kept having to hand out Awaken inspirations to the team cause I'd be the only one not killed every fight. And let me tell you, I laid into the team leader something fierce for setting the mission difficulty that high at level 16 when the only support types on the team was a Rad/Rad 'healer' who only really had their aoe heal, their rez (I think), and pool power heals. The guy who was telling my alt to try recruiting Madam Enigma because she'll save the team... He was that 'rad/rad healer'. He'd rerolled his character while keeping the name in order to make an effective Rad/Rad defender after my chewing him out.

As I mentioned, I was one of those people who entered nerd rage both over the great Defense Nerf and Enhancement Diversification. I feared my claw/super reflexes scrapper would become useless, unable to survive anything. I wrote long winded posts about why both were a bad idea. But in the end, once ED went live I realized I was wrong. Only slotting 3 defense enhancements in my powers didn't make my character unplayable. Sure I was now getting hit more often, but I was also having more fun. I realsed that the 'defense nerf' hadn't been the killer I feared it was going to be, and that I had over reacted in my panic. Yes, everyone lost damage, or hold duration, or recharge, or whatever else they were 5 to 6 slotting. But they gained other things. Tankers could start devoting enhancement slots towards fleshing out their attack chain and damage dealing capability, meaning they were no longer *just* a meat shield. Controllers could start adding damage to their control powers that did damage, thus making soloing less painful. Everyone gained more then they really lost. And Inventions didn't change this or 'fix' anything. Sets tend to have lower total values for things like damage and hold/stun duration then you'd get if you slotted 3 damage, hold, or stun enhancements. Especially if you're using lower level sets in order to not lose set bonuses while exemplered or doing flashback missions. And while very useful, many set bonuses are kind of weak when taken on their own. High level generic IO enhancements on the other hand let you get to (or at least near) the soft cap with fewer enhancements needed, thus giving you more options for how to enhance your powers. ED was never the 'game breaker' some people still claim it was. It was just a difficult pill to swallow, even though in retrospect it had been the right decision.

I think you're overstating how bad it was. Yes, the global defense reduction was perceived to be bad. I was among the ones who raged against it. In the wake of that I went from 3 slotting defense enhancements to six slotting them to get the same (perceived) benefit. What's overlooked is that while defense was lowered, so was enemy to-hit. Instead of needing to hit 95% defense or 95% to-hit debuff to floor enemy chance to hit, now you just needed to hit 45% defense or to-hit debuff. In the wake of the Global Defense Reduction patch everyone with a defense based build had respec'd to a build with maximized defense slotting, even if they hadn't considered it necessary before the patch. We didn't pay attention to how the other changes affected the way defense works. We just panicked and raged. ED again made us rage, but we adjusted. And many of us then realized that wait, we didn't need as much +defense as we'd been thinking we did. Our Defense based characters were still just as survivable as they had been previously. Possibly more so now since we could afford the slots to run more offensive powers, thus defeat enemies quicker. Instead of feeling obligated to 5 slot damage into an offensive power, we could experiment. Controllers could afford to add some damage to their holds and immobilizes instead of just hold duration and accuracy. Hell, I experimented with adding knockback enhancements to a couple Claws attacks to give myself a bit more soft control during difficult fights.

Welcome home. I had a friend who shared my account with me since he couldn't afford a computer of his own back in Issue 1. Well, while he was in the Hollows he ran into someone who became a good buddy of my friend. They constantly teamed up while playing. Well, at one point they were in Kings Row, I think, and they saw a group of Paramilitary goons. Not the council either, these guys had fedoras. One of them was called a Sapper too. Plus they had set up a turret. And the enemy group name said Malta. Neither of them, nor I, had ever seen or heard of Malta at the time. And these goons were level 50. My friend and his buddy were hiding behind a fence while looking them over. For some reason they decided to try attacking using hit and run tactics. The plan was to jump over the fence, attack, then jump back over the fence before the Malta goons could retaliate. Well, my friend jumped over the fence as planned on the count of three, and his buddy ran for the hills at the same time. My friend went down instantly to turret fire. Yup, it was a hit-and-run assault.

Join the club. I'd spend days just running around Paragon getting plaque badges, exploration badges, or hunting low level enemies for hunt badges. Even now when I remade Madam Enigma the first thing I did was spend an hour or so hunting Contaminated in Outbreak to get that badge.

I grabbed the Dark Fairy buff pet since that's one I had on live, and I got to say... I'd forgotten that enemies can and will target the buff pet. Of course, I'd also forgotten about Embalmed vahzilok zombies exploding, and that the LT can revive fallen zombies in that enemy group. Also forgot that destructible alters EXPLODE upon defeat. Rediscovered this during the Dr Graves arc when I used Pummel (Arachnos Soldier VEAT) to rifle but the channeling alter in one mission, and died due to the explosion. Er... oops?