[Tiny Tanks, Huge Support Characters]

My characters are based on a concept I have for them, and that includes how they look, how tall they are, etc.

 

All my D&D/Pathfinder immigrants are based on their game races, so their heights are pretty defined from the get-go. The tallest one is the giantkin barbarian. The shortest are the two halflings, and a gnome who's a couple inches taller than them. The two dwarves are built with the "huge" male body, cranked to minimum height and large physique, since I can't make a proper female dwarf using the female body -- the legs end up looking too long, even with minimum leg length. So I just go with the "small-huge" male body, put them in full armor, and they end up looking like proper female dwarves. Besides, nobody but other dwarves can tell male from female anyway, so it's all good!

 

I have a couple of very tall other characters, and a lot of short characters. But none of them really follow any sort of role/AT pattern with their heights. Just whatever I feel like for the character.

[Gender of human MM pets]

It would certainly be nice to see a new mastermind primary, considering the last new one was at the tail end of live, with beast mastery. Other ATs have had primaries ported over to them, or created entirely, but MMs still languish with only 7 primaries to choose from, by far the lowest number of any AT in the game (other than kheldians and veats, but they don't really count).

 

Going purely by damage types, the ones that we already have are:

Lethal -- mercenaries, necro (the grave knights' sword attacks), thugs (all the guns), ninjas shuriken/swords, beast mastery animal claws/bites

Smashing -- thugs Bruiser, necro zombie punches, ninjas kicking

Fire -- thugs arsonist, ninjas oni, robotics assault bot flamethrower, demons tier-1 fire demon

Cold - demons demon prince attacks, beast mastery dire wolf attacks, demons tier-1 cold demon

Energy -- robotics all the lasers

Negative -- necro all the undead pewpew

Toxic -- necro zombie barf, demons tier-1 toxic demon

Psionic -- ...nothing?

 

So a set that focuses on psionic stuff could be interesting, just to fill the niche that has nothing in it. Another energy-focused set could also be good, to have something other than robotics. Same with negative, as only necromancy deals with that -- though to be honest there isn't much in CoH that uses negative energy that ISN'T undead/necromancy. Or maybe a set that focuses on cold, or fire. 

 

The simplest (in terms of models and such) would be picking from existing groups and summoning up versions of them. Though the MM stuff is all "generic" rather than specific, so that might be stepping into an area the devs just don't want to deal with. After all, the moment you add ONE existing group as a MM set, people are going to be demanding the others that they want to play, and arguing that "if you did it with that one, these ten can't be that much harder, right?" 

 

 

 

 

[Alt-itis Therapy]

Alt-itis isn't something to be ashamed of. Embrace it.

 

My current project that I've been working on for the last 6 months or so has been my group of D&D/Pathfinder characters who were punted into Paragon. 

It's been a lot of fun coming up with builds for each class, and making sure I don't repeat any powersets, unless it's a slightly altered version of one of them (Sentinel Regen vs Scrapper regen, for instance). I was GOING to just make the "standard" 12 classes (barbarian, bard, cleric, druid, fighter, monk, paladin, ranger, rogue, sorcerer, warlock, wizard), but along the way I kept finding more concepts and classes that would be a lot of fun to build in CoH. So now I've got a dozen more that I've leveled up. 

 

My rule I made for myself was that I had to get a character to 50, fully unlock all their incarnate abilities (just at tier-1, didn't need to get them all to tier-4) and fully kitted out before I'd let myself work on another character. Helped me figure out if I really wanted to stick with them, too. A bunch ended up getting abandoned in the 30's and 40's because the build just didn't feel right for that class, or it wasn't as much fun as I'd hoped. 

 

But it's definitely been fun. Especially coming up with their little quirks in the bio. I have a fairly standardized "here's how they got to Paragon" that is in every bio for them, and then their stat block. Alignment, stats (str, dex, con, int, wis, cha), race, class, etc. It's fun coming up with them all.

 

Once I'm done with the latest few I think I'll be "done" with the adventurers. Then I might start working on the group of elementals idea I had. All four main elements (air, earth, fire, water) and the quasi-elements (smoke, mire, lightning, ice). 

[Sigh...this is why we can't have nice things.]

And stuff like this is exactly why I stock every type of salvage in my base.

"But why keep common salvage? Just buy it on the AH if you need some."

Yeah, no thanks. I'd rather be able to just step into my base, step over to the crafting building, and make anything I need without having to go in and out of the base to buy salvage. I've got about 20 of every type of common, 10 of every uncommon, and 6-8 of every rare. I can make anything I need. 

If I DO manage to run out of rare salvage, I've got a couple dozen characters with 9000 AE tickets who can just hop up and buy a bunch and restock.

[A little salty...]

I haven't quite been "one-shot" by any of the mobs (though I've mostly done my ToTing on characters who are 30+), but I HAVE been two-shot a couple times. Mostly by the Arisen Mummies, who do HUGE amounts of toxic damage. I was door-knocking with my fire/fire sentinel, who was breezing through it for the most part, and out comes a mummy. "Okay, let's see how this goes" I thought to myself. He punched me in the face and took about 70% of my health. I used my heal, and got back up to about 90%. Then he used KOBlow and insta-killed me. 

 

I couldn't even be mad. My toxic resist is like 10% or so. He hit me for somewhere around 1600 damage. 

 

Got my revenge, though. I sent my necro/pain MM out to knock on doors until I got another mummy (and I'm going to pretend it's the same one, out of spite), and curbstomped him. 🙂

[MM Peeves...and Living with Them]

I have a macro on one of my alternate hotbars on all my MM's that I just label "GO". It's petcom_all dismiss, which makes all my pets stop what they're doing and immediately leave. I use this all the time to just abandon my pets out when I need to do something like sneak around, or don't want them trudging along aggroing everything behind as they try to catch up to me. 

[What's in your head canon?]

7 hours ago, Saeletra said:

My other head cannon is that "Incarnate" also doubles as a power or threat designation. "The Well" doesn't fit into most people's origin stories or background or even where they want to take their character.

 

Yeah, all my D&D/Pathfinder characters that wound up in Paragon don't have powers granted to them by "the well of furies" or anything like that.

They're just gaining epic levels. 🙂

[Officially Unofficial Weekly Discussion #49: In-game Currencies]

6 hours ago, lemming said:

 

Reward Merits: I think some activities reward a bit too many, but for the most part there are a lot that are under valued.

 

Which ones in particular? Most of the merit rewards seem pretty average. The only one I can think of as "a lot" is the mothership raid, but I don't tend to do those.

Though there are a couple of story arcs that I think don't reward enough. 

One that springs to mind is Mr. Bocor in Port Oakes, who gives you a 4-mission arc (3 kill-alls and a hunt) and gives you a paltry 2 merits for it.

[What's in your head canon?]

2 hours ago, lemming said:

I always think of Sally being invulnerable, just doesn't want to deal with people.

She is. When you 'defeat' her, she doesn't crumple or pass out, she just ducks back underwater. 

Everyone just keeps interrupting her peaceful swim.

 

 

[OCD!]

11 hours ago, ZemX said:

 

Wait, you mean even if you have AAABBB and two are procs you'd still put the procs to the right?  What if it ends up  AABBAB?!?

Well, I've never used two 3-part sets that both have procs in them, so it hasn't come up. 

But if it did, it would end up being like AAA-procBBB-proc

Having the three set pieces together overrules the procs always being in the rightmost slots. However, they'll still be in the right slots of that series of enhancements.

[MM Peeves...and Living with Them]

44 minutes ago, Gobbledigook said:

 If the pet upgrades were auto and  cast when the pets were summoned would be a big improvement.

I would be very leery of doing something like this. Given that MMs on HC get a MASSIVE reduction in recharge on the pet summoning abilities, the ability to just churn out fully-upgraded pets when you start losing them would be a bit imbalanced. I've had plenty of fights where I can just keep throwing out pets in tough fights that eventually the constant replacement of them ends up tilting the odds in my favor and I win. And that's without them being upgraded, as I'm too busy trying to just get more pets into the fight. If they popped out fully upgraded it would be way too easy. I believe the devs have stated before that they have zero intention of auto-upgrades for pets.

 

I do agree that they need a bit more run-speed though. Maybe let +movement bonuses affect the pets, too, since a lot of times I'll end up with like +30-40% runspeed, which puts me pretty far out ahead of my pets. 

[/Empathy]

2 hours ago, kelika2 said:

I am legit curious how much recharge you have to have fort on 6 targets all the time.

I'm at work so I'll probably be slightly off, but off the top of my head:

 

97%-ish recharge in the power itself (4 x Def/Rech enhancements)

70% from Hasten

4 x 10% recharge from ATOs (splitting Superior Mark of Supremacy amongst the three tiers of pets, 4 parts Superior Command of the Mastermind in one)

2 x 8.75% from full sets of Preventive Medicine (Healing Aura) and Reactive Defenses (Maneuvers)

3 x 6.25% from 5-part Decimation in Aimed Shot and Single Shot, 5-part Positron's Blast in Fistful of Arrows

2 x 5% from 5-part Doctored Wounds in Heal Other and Adrenaline Boost

5 x LotG 7.5% globals

 

I THINK that's about it. So in all, around 194% global recharge, and 97% in the power itself, for about 290% recharge total.

120s duration, and around a 22.5s or 23s recharge 15.5s recharge. Enough to keep it on 6 targets if I don't slack off.

And if Secondary Mutation gives me Quick Reflexes, it becomes easier.

 

<edit> Oh, duh. I had a brainfart and was calculating the recharge time on it being 90, not 60. With 60 it recharges in about 15.5s. 

[/Empathy]

On 10/2/2023 at 8:46 AM, kelika2 said:

Healing to keep pets alive is ok at lower levels, not so much in mid levels and no way in hell does it work at max level.

With a huge amount of recharge you can keep 4 targets under fortitude.  3 in general, 2 at low level.

 

I personally do not like that.  If you are going to go through with emp then your best bet is ranged pets

most mercs like to stay back.  Commando likes to march in with his short range flamethrower.  spec ops i treat as melee because they have no cone attacks and they get a rifle butt attack.  3 fort targets right there

same with thugs.  arsonist goes in for firebreath, bruiser is melee

also same with bots,  assault bot flamethrower, and prot bots do not have a cone so i send them into melee + their seeker drones go off more effectively.  a prot bot in melee summoning seekers on themselves vs seekers coming in at a range and exploding on the edge of a group.  another 3 fort targets

 

I got more mileage out of Thermal with demons, thugs and zombies.  the 3 resist auras IOs are required to not die instantly.  Demons natural resists + IOs + fire shields

 

Keeping your pets alive with healing works fine at all levels as long as they have good resists or defense or both.

I have a ninja/empathy MM and she works fine even in incarnate content. I have enough recharge in the build that I can keep fortitude on all six pets if I stay on top of the cooldown, which pushes their defense up to around 45% for range and melee, and 60% for aoe, though their resists are somewhat lacking, having only 35% from the three +resist auras, so when they DO get hit, they get hit pretty hard. But they have enough defense that it's not frequent enough that they're dropping constantly, unless I'm trying to go up against bosses at +4.

Regeneration and recovery auras have a recharge of around 130 seconds for her, so with 90s uptime, they can be maintained about 70% of the time, and I'll always pop them before going into a big fight. While the pets not having a ton of HP means regen isn't quite as effective on them, being able to give them around 1200% regen heals them enough that combined with spot-healing and their own self-heals I only occasionally lose minions. 

[Halloween EB Rarity. WAI?]

I've done all my trick or treating solo on my various characters so far.

 

On the first one, I got all the vampires really quickly, and the rest kind of staggered in over time.

On the second, I got all the werewolves quickly (like 5 out of the first 8 EBs I got were werewolves), and the rest over time, though the last couple spectres took forever.

On the third, I got all the witches super quick (3 doors in a row had a witch EB), and the rest fairly average in distribution.

On the fourth, they were pretty average in distribution.

On the fifth (which I'm working on now), I've gotten 4 vampires, 2 werewolves, 2 witches, 1 spectre, and 2 mummies (but only 1 kill, as the first mummy popped and killed me in two swings).

[MM Peeves...and Living with Them]

On 9/27/2023 at 10:39 AM, Hedgefund said:

Yes I can give attack orders but that takes me out of BG which I want to keep in that scenario.

This is where specific attack commands come into play.

 

For instance, you can order SPECIFIC henchmen to attack, while keeping the others in bodyguard mode. I generally keep the tier-1's in bodyguard mode and order the tier-2 and 3 to attack in this case, as it keeps enough of them in bodyguard mode to split the damage effectively, and the tier-2 and 3 tend to deal the most damage.

/macro T3at "petcom_pow Commando attack" (for instance)

That will make your commando start immediately attacking the chosen enemy, while the rest of your pets remain in bodyguard mode.

You can set up others for the other tiers of pets, and make them selectively engage various targets. It's useful to try and focus-fire one or two pets onto an enemy to attempt to peel them off of you.

 

I use specific-command frequently when I'm playing mercenaries, as the spec-ops gain a 150ft range sniper attack with the tactical upgrade. You can order just them to attack from long range, and they'll engage with snipe. Then immediately pull them back into defensive-follow so they won't try to move closer to continue attacking. You can do this to pull and split spawns, or just try to pick off stragglers.

 

You can also order pets by specific name (petcom_name <petname> <command>) if you don't want to order all the pets of a particular type to do something, or want to order just one (such as the mercenary medic or thug pyro) to hold back from attacking.

[Officially Unofficial Weekly Discussion #48: There can be only one (if you could only have one toon, which one do you keep?)]

It would probably end up being one of my masterminds. Maybe the necro, I don't know.

 

Though if I WERE restricted to one character, I'd end up getting bored of the game and uninstalling it after a few weeks. No variety = no fun, to me. 

[OCD!]

I always make sure my enhancements are aesthetically appealing to me.

Like if I have 3 of one set and 3 of another, I make sure that the two sets are AAABBB.

If it's 3-1 it'll be AAAB. Etc.

Procs always go in the rightmost slots of a power.

Same for mastermind auras.

If any of the enhancements are attuned, they ALL have to be attuned, so they match.

 

 

[Whats a good combo to solo with ??]

5 hours ago, MoonSheep said:

 

this is outdated advice - tankers now outpace brutes in gameplay due to the wider AoEs their inherent provides

He's talking about soloing, not running at x/8. The larger tanker aoes are irrelevant if you're not fighting enough mobs to make the bigger aoe matter.

 

Also, I think you underestimate how fast fury builds. Even running at 0/1 it's incredibly easy for a brute to maintain 85% fury for nearly the entire mission, unless you're literally moving at a walk and stopping to go afk every couple minutes.

[Benefits to going above the soft-cap for Defense?]

1 hour ago, Story Archer said:

What enemies tend to feature Regen DeBuff?

 

I get that Regen is a big part of what Willpower does, but I wouldn't call soft-capped Defenses and 90% S/L Resistance exactly neutered...

Vhaz, Arachnos, Longbow, Carnies, Malta, and Banished Pantheon are ones I can think of off the top of my head. I think some Nemesis might be able to as well, though I don't fight them enough to know for sure.

 

And as SwitchFade said, Willpower has zero defense debuff resist, meaning the moment an enemy tags you with a debuff your defense crumbles. And while smash/lethal being capped is good against groups that only deal that kind of damage, Willpower doesn't really have much else in the way of resists other than psi. Fire and energy are two other extremely common damage types, and Willpower doesn't offer much resistance to them at all. My heavily tricked out Willpower brute gets absolutely MELTED by Banished Pantheon out in DA, because her non-physical resists are only around 50-60%. 

[Whats a good combo to solo with ??]

All depends on what you like, really, and what difficulty you're looking to solo on.

 

Tankers are probably the easiest AT to solo with, as it's fairly simple to build them up even with just SOs where you can plow through missions without much issue.

 

Brutes are similar, though their defenses are a bit lower, but their damage is substantially higher due to fury. If you go nuts with procs tankers can be very close behind though.

 

Masterminds are (at least to me) incredibly fun, since you've got a whole squad of friends with you at all times, and you can manage all sorts of interesting content with them. Their biggest weakness (at least early on) is aoe damage, which can crush you pretty hard, but they're very good at dealing with EBs in story arcs, making it a comfortable solo experience.

 

Scrappers and Stalkers are fairly similar, with lower defenses than brutes and tankers, but very solid damage output. They can become quite tanky, but not to the point (generally) of just ignoring mobs.

 

Sentinels are basically ranged scrappers, though they give up crit for the ranged damage. They can be quite durable, and most of their defensive sets are slightly different from other AT's, giving them a unique play experience even for a set you've used before.

 

Blasters, controllers, dominators, defenders, and corruptors can all play solo, though they're more difficult (generally) than the above, either by virtue of being much squishier, lower damage, lack of CC protection, or a combination of several factors. They can sill work just fine if you don't put the difficulty too high too soon though.

[Benefits to going above the soft-cap for Defense?]

4 minutes ago, Hedgefund said:

So when people talk about a min of 5% chance to hit, it's really 5% * accModifier.  For +3s that means they'll have a minimum 6.5% chance to hit (5 * 1.3).  I'm not going to paste it but note the next table named "Rank-Based Accuracy Multipliers for Critters Attacking Anything" so lieuts and above get additional acc modifiers.  Again, no def is going to counter that.

Yeah, I believe bosses have something like a 9.25% or so chance to hit you regardless of how much defense you have. I remember testing it with my SR tanker one night (she's got around 60% defense to all positionals), and while the rank and file +4 minions only had a 5% to hit, the bosses had a bit over 9%. 

[Benefits to going above the soft-cap for Defense?]

For defense-focused builds, I almost always aim to get as close as I can to the incarnate softcap, since I like running the incarnate content. It's more challenging than endlessly farming Council in PI.

 

[Officially Unofficial Weekly Discussion #47: Hard Mode (A discussion on advanced difficulty levels)]

On 9/28/2023 at 11:51 AM, Spaghetti Betty said:

 

In all seriousness, I would like to see all of them get the treatment at some point, but my biased choice is Katie Hannon. I love that TF.

I've joked about this one a few times on that TF.

"Hard Mode Katie Hannon, featuring the brand new badge: 50 Times the Victor!"

[Speedy vs Regular (Players forcing Speedy Runs on Regular Teams Needs to End)]

5 hours ago, tidge said:

Complete aside: (*1) I wish that more "villains" in blue side missions offered progress on Villain Disruptor; I'm always peeved when I have to keep repeating the PI Bank/PD station to complete that one. I'm less bothered by Hero Slayer because of the ease at picking up Bloody Hands... although it would make some sense for those badges be similarly easier for Villains to collect organically.

If you do Provost Marchand's "A New War" arc, the first couple missions throw 10 named villains at you. Makes it super easy to get Villain Disruptor. 

[Speedy vs Regular (Players forcing Speedy Runs on Regular Teams Needs to End)]

How I play and lead TFs is pretty much the same. I want to get things done in a timely fashion, but I'm not out to break any speed records. And I'm completely fine with just caving in the faces of every mob on the path towards the objective. Sometimes it's a lot of fun to just leave a swathe of destruction behind you. And sometimes speeding things up can be nice, especially with sloggy TFs like Synapse or Citadel. 

 

If a TF is taking longer than normal (and "normal" is somewhat relative, but having been on both slow and short versions of all the TFs, I have a mental note as to what "normal" for me is for each one) but the group is chatty and we're having fun, I have no problem just tooling around and killing stuff while chatting. If nobody is talking and it's taking a long time, it does start to get a bit grindy. But that's pretty rare, at least on Everlasting. RPers tend to be a pretty talkative bunch in general.

 

Some missions I DO tend to pipe up about things that might make it smoother/easier, such as the Moonfire TF having someone with ATT park at the entrance and just yoink everyone back to the start to avoid having to escort Dr. Roberta "Deathwish" Todd.

 

For the most part though, when I join a TF it's because I either want the credit for it, the merits, some faster exp than soloing, or just to hang around with a group for a while. I tend to just go along with however the group is playing.