WumpusRat

Also remember that you're up against Malta. They're SUPPOSED to be the "anti-super" villain group, with the tools to take down superhumans. But if you're on a character without innate status protections, yeah, carry break frees, proactively take out the enemy CC-casters, stack a lot of defense (purple insps can help you mitigate a lot of incoming), etc. Malta aren't meant to be easy. They can and will absolutely shrek you if you're not prepared.

A lot of times if I'm just hanging around in Ouro (usually because I'm afk for a while), I'll go out to one of the little islands and do /lotus. Meditate among the planes. 🙂

I certainly hope the gun attacks don't become "required", though I don't think you're "gimped" in any of the other MM sets if you don't take their attacks. Mercenaries give a stacking +3% damage per attack you land on a target for the mercs. But simply running Assault gives +11%, more than all three attacks combined. Necromancy can summon wraiths, which deal (minor) damage and can taunt. Handy, but not absolutely required. I do tend to take them when I'm leveling, but respec out of all but Life Drain at higher levels, just for a wraith and self-heal. Robotics moved the -regen to the MM's personal attacks instead of the Assault Bot. While this is the closest to "required", it's still not mandatory. You can pick up Envenomed Dagger. Or take a secondary that has -regen powers. Mostly I'm looking forward to what I hope will be a good revision of Beast Mastery. Ever since the upgrade to Robotics, Mercenaries, Necromancy and Ninjas, BM has become the absolute bottom-tier MM primary, and definitely needs a rework.

Laura Lockhart's mission was honestly the first one I can remember doing in CoH and being honestly angry at what happened to her. You don't get much real interaction with her, but she definitely made an impact. Though my favorite contact will always be Dean McArthur. D-Mac cemented himself as my favorite the first time I ran into him back on live when he high-fives you after a mission, and how he seems to honestly respect you. He may be a cheesy flirt if you're female, but he knows what you're capable of, and he's doing his level best to help you out. There aren't many contacts that even my most hardened villain characters would lift a finger for, but if someone said "Hey, you know that D-Mac guy? Some vigilante guy kidnapped him..." that poor vigilante would get the beating of a lifetime. Probably from quite a few red-siders.

I was doing some testing with a Sentinel build today, and ran into a bug with one of the powers in the set, Proton Therapy. The power has a 50s base recharge, and while recharge IOs slotted into the power function normally in reducing its recharge time, GLOBAL recharge bonuses don't seem to affect it properly. For instance, with 3 50th level recharge IOs in the power, it has a 99% recharge rate. It recharges in just over 25 seconds, which is normal. With 100% global recharge, the recharge rate only went down to 23 seconds. Both Mids and the game server list the recharge this way. With 199% recharge, it should be recharging in just under 17 seconds. I added Hasten, which brought my global recharge up to 170%, and the same 99% recharge in the power, and the power's recharge dropped to 17s, when it should be closer to 14s. Is there something in the power (or the Rad Armor powerset as a whole) that somehow affects how global recharge affects this power? And if so, is it intentional?

And since it benefits from containment, a power boosted bolt on a contained target actually does a significant amount of damage. I've hit stuff for over 400 damage with it.

One of the characters I played most back on live was a thug/dark MM named "Tiny Whispers". She was a little "shoulder devil" that gotten a bunch of otherwise normal guys to "go bad" by constantly urging them to sin. The pyro was a former diner cook, the two tier-1 thugs were accountants, the enforcers were police officers, and the bruiser was a rugby player. I had a whole slew of RP macros set up for them, where the thugs would be talking with one another, with one of the former-accountants giving tax advice, the rugby player reminiscing about a big game he made the winning touchdown in, all of them sitting around aimlessly chatting and ogling spandex-clad girls, etc.

My favorite spot is probably in Atlas Park, there's an area at the top of a building that you can get to via a doorway down at ground level. It's a glass-ceilinged little indoor park with benches and plants and such. We used to go there to rp a lot. And "the hole" in KR. A massive double-tower building with a walkway that goes between the buildings but has a roof over it. Except for one square hole that goes from the ground up to the top of the buildings. And there are windows along the inside of the hole. I can't imagine why you'd want to look out your window and see that.

I've never really had a "main" character in any MMO I've played. I have characters that I play MORE than others, but they tend to shift around based on whatever mood I'm in, and if I've fallen in with a regular group. Usually I just keep thinking up new ideas, and go "Ooh, I really like this!" and play the heck out of it, and by the time I'm in end-game and finishing the build up and stuff, I've had another idea and that becomes my next big project. I think my highest vet level is around 15-16 on any character because of it.

I think I have one angel character (a demon/thermal MM), because I liked the idea of this constantly-frustrated angel shepherding a bunch of unruly demons. I have one demon character (who's also a demon mastermind) who gets into arguments with her minions about who's the most powerful. And among my D&D adventurers, I have a tiefling and an aasimar, though I don't know if they really qualify, since they're based on D&D demons/angels rather than Christian ones.

Demons and Thugs definitely don't really need much "upgrading", just an overhaul to bring them in line with the other pet sets. Beast Mastery definitely needs a thorough overhaul, though. Particularly the set's damage output needs to be decoupled from relying so heavily on the Fortify Pack passive. The fact that it's nothing more than a mule power for LotG (and maybe Kismet, a KB IO, etc) is sad. The passive is the only real benefit of the power, as triggering the active dumpsters your pets' damage output for the duration of its effect. IMO, what I'd love to see for Beasts is to put Fortify Pack on a swing-toggle like Staff Mastery has. So that you can give your pets more tactical orders. Fight Aggressively: +crit and +damage based on stacks of Pack Mentality, like it is now. Fight Defensively: +def and +resist based on stacks of Pack Mentality. Fight Tactically: +to hit and %chance to knockdown based on stacks of Pack Mentality.

Same. Since I run mids on another computer, I can have the mids window open on one monitor and the game running on my main machine, and just glance back and forth to verify changes I make. It becomes fairly easy, and the whole process takes less than 10m.

Depending on the archetype I'm playing, I'll do anything from 0x2 to +1x4, while leveling. Anything beyond that becomes a bit too much of a slog, since I'm generally running story arcs for badges and merits, rather than just raw exp, so I want to get to the end and get my rewards. If it's a story arc I haven't done before, I'll usually stick to minimum to run it the first time, so I can focus more on the story, maps, etc, rather than grinding for exp.

CoH's rng has always been loopy. That's why they added the streakbreaker in the first place, because you'd often see 6-7 misses in a row even with a 95% to hit.

Tested it on my shield/axe tanker, bots/ff mastermind, elec/elec defender, and dark/dark sentinel tonight. Tanker, MM and defender did just fine on +3x8, though the defender had a couple rough moments in big packs. Sentinel got her hiney spanked a few times, since they were doing enough damage to overcome my regen/healing, especially when warwolf bosses were mixed in.

I'm really keen to try them out now. Once I get home from work I'm going to take a few of my characters through some missions with CoT and Council and see how they do.

Demons, thugs and beast mastery all need to be updated. I was hoping it would get done by this issue, but no such luck. At this point I'm guessing it won't be for another year or so.

I occasionally did some PI groups that specifically went after Malta and Carnies, since people tend to avoid them like the plague. And it was always a fun time introducing some people to Carnies' giant weakness to lethal damage, and watch them just tearing through missions like a chainsaw through cotton candy. 🙂

They definitely struggled a bit early on, since it takes a while for Empathy to really reach the point where you can start juggernaut-ing your way through stuff on the power of fortitude and regen aura. My goal for this particular build was to get as close to the recharge cap as I can, to leverage Regen and Recovery Aura as much as possible. I'd tested the idea out a few times with other pet builds, and it worked pretty well, so I was curious how it'd do with ninjas, since their damage output is so high they can chew through enemies in seconds. Overall, the only time I really struggle is against particular EBs or AVs who can one-shot the pets despite their defense, or ones who spam caltrops or other such things (I'm glaring at YOU, Silver Mantis) since that's always been a huge issue for MM pets in general. A lot of times I don't even bother putting fortitude on all of them since mobs die so fast and their defense without it is enough to that most mobs can't get past my healing. I generally only NEED fortitude against EB/AVs. And yeah, if I want to keep fortitude on all of them it DOES require tossing it out pretty often. Mine's on a 17s recharge, so I've got a bit of leeway in terms of "must cast on cooldown". But if I'm trying to keep it going on all of them I have to pay attention to the cooldown pretty closely. Though the oni can definitely get along fine without it, as he's got 43% m/r def and 68% aoe before fortitude. The damage buff is nice though. It's definitely not my strongest MM build, but it's a lot of fun and Empathy is actually a decent choice for soloing as a MM, as you have a premade team with you to benefit from the buffs.

The ninjas don't have any resists to speak of (other than the oni), but they have high defense and a self-heal once you get their upgrades slotted up. The Train Ninjas power gives the genin around 17% defense, the jounin 23% defense, and the oni 29% defense, and all get about 5-10% more vs aoe, as well. Combine that with the auras, maneuvers, secondary sets' +def powers, etc, and the ninjas can hit the defense cap pretty quickly depending on the secondary you have. My nija/empathy MM's pets are at 49% melee/range and 70% aoe for the genin, 55% m/r and 93% aoe for the jounin, and 61% m/r and 86% aoe for the oni, due to having enough recharge in the build to keep fortitude on all six pets at once.

Hm. Could have sworn the drones triggered procs. I might be thinking of another power though, it's been quite a while since I played any of my /traps builds. Just popped onto my bot/traps to check though, and you're right. And if you're really trying to squeeze a couple extra points of defense out, then sure, though it's not really necessary depending on your build. And with bots/trap not having any extra pet power to stick the auras in, if you want all 6 you're only working with 4 slots per pet. Adding a +def IO into the prot bots means they're going to be at 3 slots, which is going to seriously cut into their damage output, accuracy, and end management. With my build, between the prot bot shields, scorpion shield, FFG, maneuvers, CJ, weave, and various IO/set bonuses my bot/trap MM is sitting at around 55% ranged/melee/aoe def, 75% smash/lethal def, 67% energy def. Toxic/psionic def are her weaknesses, but not many things are PURELY psi/toxic attack without having a ranged/melee/aoe component as well. The bots are at 43% range/melee and 57% aoe def. So not quite soft-capped, but even losing some bots to incarnate stuff I have enough personal def to get them back up and into the fight without getting shredded. I kind of built her to be extremely durable though, so YMMV depending on builds. 🙂

I was trying it out on the test server, and the damage seems ... very awkward. There's no reason to put a damage set into it, considering the damage only procs when a mob actually slips on it, so it's not going to deal any significant damage at all. Which makes the way it's coded seem extremely silly. 151 ticks of X damage over 30 seconds, but really only ends up ticking a couple of times before the mob dies to other stuff.

Play all of them! You can never have enough masterminds. As for the various setups: End will always be a problem with /storm if you run hurricane. On the couple /storm MMs I have, I toggle it on and off a lot just to use it as kind of a "get out of my face" power, and once they're pushed back enough, I let the pets go to work on them and turn it off. If I really need the -to hit, I'll leave it on and try to converse end as best I can. Though once you get fully slotted up, your end problems can be mitigated a lot depending on build. Necro/Dark is a classic. Generally you want to build for a lot of +recharge so that you can leverage Soul Extraction as often as possible. One way you can really get a lot of mileage out of it is to get the full set of Mark of Supremacy, and at 50th make it Superior. Split it into three 2-piece bits for each of your pets, and you'll end up with 30% global recharge just from that. I don't often use Hasten in builds, but if you like that power you can probably get SE close to perma. Bots/Traps is another classic. Bots can sometimes feel like they don't do damage-churn as well as some other sets, but a lot of it depends on how the assault bot chooses to use its swarm missiles and incendiary patches. Against groups of mobs, they'll melt targets very quickly. One thing to note is that the protector bots USED to do so-so damage, but were good for support, so a lot of people (myself included) would spec them up to add a bit more defense. These days, they're one of the highest damage outputs of the set, so setting them up for max damage is essential for maximum damage output. But they SHRED their end bar. Even with 95% end reduction they'll drop themselves to low end in under 30 seconds. You'll want to leverage Acid Mortar for the debuff, and you can slot Seeker Drones with several procs to turn it into a mini-nuke, too (Positron's Blast, Javelin Volley, Bombardment, and Cloud Senses procs for damage, as well as Annihilation's -resist proc). You can get a mod that will keep them from making so much noise. It's a great help. And Fulcrum Shifted beasts deal ENORMOUS damage. My Beast/Kin goes hunting giant monsters, and kills them with pure damage output, no -regen beyond Transfusion required. She can solo Jack in Irons and Eochai together at the same time. Ninjas are one of the highest damage minion sets in the game. They have a lot of fast-animating attacks with fairly low cooldowns, so they can do some serious damage churn. With /TA you can debuff the hell out of enemies to let the ninjas really go to town. The downside is that you have no healing for them or for yourself, without investing in the Medicine pool. Generally what I do is set up several minion-specific attack commands for my /TA MMs, to keep some pets in bodyguard mode while directing others to attack. You can mitigate a lot of the incoming damage that way. Plus leveraging Oil Slick and EMP Arrow for a lot of extra damage mitigation. Especially if you take a resist armor from one of the epic/patron pools. Once you get rolling with this, they'll churn through just about anything you throw them at. My Merc/FF has incarnate softcapped def for all the mercs, as well as Serum boosting their smash/lethal resist to softcap for a bit as well as boosting their damage output. I picked up the attacks as well just so that I could contribute a bit of damage, as /FF is a pretty passive set overall. And with Repulsion Field you can generally keep stuff out of melee, letting your mercs just dakadaka stuff to death.

Yeah, it's not the same though. The old port was fairly quick, and would make you vanish just as the animation for the costume change was about to end and shift the costume, so it made it look like you "beamed out". Summoning a base portal isn't the effect I'm after, and the long-range teleporter has a really long animation time, so you'd have to wait and trigger the macro right at the proper moment. It's not a big deal, it was just a cute setup that allowed to look like the characters were being beamed up by the ship.

I was kind of sad to see it go, since several of my characters operated out of a starship, and I had a whole macro set up for doing an emote, saying "Ship, one to transport" and then doing a costume change with a special effect right as they'd teleport to the base.