Kaika

BUG: I got FREEMed! in the face while fighting a Eclipse Warwolf, big "FREEM!" pop up and everything. I'm guessing something isn't set right here. NM apparently this is intended FeedBack: I love the changes in general, but I do feel a few things are a bit annoying. I think the Galaxy Archons should be limited to 1 per spawn, in high team size missions it's not uncommon for there to be two in a fight and it just causes things to drag on a bit. The fact that their res is auto hit for Heavy damage also can make things kinda dicey for pure def sets like SR or shield since it does not even interact with their main mitigation, most of the AT that have these are melee focused, so killing them from range can be difficult, and if two of them die around the same time, it can bring you very low. Limiting the spawn to 1 would mitigate this issue, and even help make the groups a bit more diverse. Edit: Honestly after fighting them a bit more with my Ice/shield stalker, the entire group seems to now come with ALOT of +to-hit; Tactics on normal bosses, Mire on all the Nictus boss varients, and the mentioned auto hit on the res, make the group very punishing towards Def focused armor sets. I would mind seeing that diversified a bit so its not as punishing to specific play styles

This is an issue that AR also has on live right now. I'm assuming it just inherited it. Most likely it shares the other issue that sheathed AR weapons have, where other players see you holding nothing when not actively using a power. I am unfortunately not able to test this atm though

Not understanding the hostility towards the original suggestion, some people like playing a single, or few characters, if they have fun that way, why discourage it? I do agree though that rewarding Aethers or Merits is not the way to go, as it punishes players who alt if they want those rewards. I think it should simply reward a very small amount of Emp merits (1-5) every 3 levels indefinitely. These can still be used by a character even after incarnates are done, and if they pile up still actively encourage alting to make the best use of them, while not offering anything more then what a lower veteran level character would receive. This would make it less effective then alting, but not punish people with no rewards for playing the same character.

I can also confirm, that Frag grenade not being fire-able from the mace is not a oversight, but intended. I think sighting lore for why you can't shoot a frag grenade from a mace that already shoots two other forms of grenades is just silly, specially considering players are not tied to that lore. As of now on live you can already fire the frag grenade out of a Sniper rifle, a Sub machine gun, and a laser rifle, all of these makes less sense then a mace already known for firing grenades. If you want to encourage me to pick Mace Beam blast, make it comparable in effectiveness, otherwise I need to nerf myself if I want a specific ascetic that the whole sub class is designed around. On the note of the mace beam attacks, at least from the numbers, outside of Poisonous Ray which is fine now, they all seem very lack luster still, I get we can't have too many good ranged attacks, but they seems rather pointless when you can just take the gun attacks which are still way better. It just strikes me as odd that the starting gun attacks are much better then the mace attacks that you specifically need to choose Bane to obtain, even Poisonous Ray is not nearly as good as Burst in most situations. To me these beam attacks are Iconic to the mace and really are what sets it apart from normal mace, and leaving them as the lesser options really does the class a disservice in terms of the class fantasy. I don't suspect this could be in the cards now, but if it's really that much of a balance issue to make most of the beam attacks decent, I would rather see them become mutually exclusive copies of rifle attacks that just do energy or toxic damage instead, in the same way Venom grenade is on crab (with old builds getting grandfathered in). That way Huntsman can keep their rifle attacks, and we don't overload the AT with good ranged options. I wanna stress that I still see the current changes made as big step in the right direction, I just think we still need more. Almost every time I see a Bane these day's it's a Huntman who does not use the mace (or makes very little use of it), and while I don't want to weaken or discourage that playstyle, I think it's pretty telling about the state of Bane if it's less common then what should be a niche specialty build, and that's saying nothing about the amount of crabs vs bane. I just want to see it be the best it can be. PS: Maceless Build up for Huntsman would be awesome

Um... Cool? Glad you are having fun with it? So first of all Gale is primarily a support power used for its low cooldown 100% AoE knock back in a single direction which lets you displace and move enemies, its not primarily an attack, the damage is entirely secondary. Second, no one is arguing you can't take flurry because you find it fun. ITS A FUN POWER, that's why we want it to be better. We just want it to be both fun and good, or at least decent. Edit: Somehow forgot the original Topic of this thread was to replace flurry, which I am against. I do however think it needs a hefty buff

Apologies I have a bad habit of referring to DPA and DPS interchangeably, I am speaking entirely about DPA ... where by your math it loses to BRAWL. The fact it's damage is so low that we can compare it closely to brawl like this proves my point I feel.

So originally and for a rather long time, the developers of the game did not consider animation time when looking at a powers effectiveness... for some reason. Powers like Flares or storm kick used to have animation times of around 3 seconds, making them basically useless, like flurry is now. In this mind set they only really looked at raw damage and recharge when balancing a power. Most of these power got updated to bring them in line with a better understanding of balance and how impactful animation is. Even jump kick, which used to be just as bad, has received buffs making it only sub par, while Flurry for some reason was left out, and is still rotting in the terrible state it was in back in 2004.

This isn't just a case of "it's sub par thus the worst". Stuff like Jump kick, Air superiority and Boxing are all sub par, but you can find offensive uses for them on classes like controller, or even sub them in for RP reasons without a massive loss. This is Flurry doing about the same DPS as brawl with a 3.3 second activation time. Yes, the Damage per animation time, it deals about the same as the entirely free power you get and are encouraged to stop using at like level 10, while taking three times the time to come out. It's entirely arguable that brawl is more worth using at any level then flurry. As far as I can tell, it is the lowest DPS attack power pick in the game. When I say it has Abysmal DPS, I mean it's TRULY abysmal. If you asked me outside of this thread what the worst power pick in the game was, I would say flurry without a second thought.

Honestly just make flurry not abysmally terrible DPS and that's good enough for me, as it stands it's quite possibly the worst power in the game.

Looks really solid! I would maybe move a slot from somewhere to get ball lightning to 5 slots for that 10% recharge buff. Otherwise though, at a glance, looks great.

I tend to default with super speed and combat jumping, but I use any of them if it fits the concept, they all have their own strengths and weaknesses. Super Speed: Fast, but can be hard to control, especially in confined spaces. Combat jumping is almost a requirement with this or you will find your jumps sending you hurtling into the distance. It's got a bit of a learning curve but once you get used to it, it's extremely fun, and very easy to build into as Haste is one of the best powers in the game, and is in the same pool. Fly: Just a solid travel power all around, and with after burner, very fast as well. Flight can also REALLY play into your combat strategy, as it can make it impossible for some enemies to get in melee with you, and while all enemies have ranged attack, they are usually significantly weaker. Teleport: The Fastest travel power in the game once you get it down, and by like ALOT. The downside however is that its only really good at getting from Point A to Point B. If you want to roam a area, or search for something it's not too great at that, neither is it very useful inside. However there is utility in just being able to bypass anything, and combat teleport in the same pool can help with indoor spaces. Super Jump: This is kinda the jack of all trades travel power, it does just about everything and does it well. It works well indoors, outdoors, anywhere, even in confined spaces, small hops get the job done with little to no loss in speed, with the added bonus of not having to worry as much about getting stuck on geometry (with SS and even fly suffer from). The downside is that it tends to lose in raw speed, that is however not to say it's slow by any means, but on a straight away SS will run circles around it. Super Speed, Fly and Super Jump, also have alternate version in Sorcery, Experimentation, and Force of Will pools, these are effectively the same thing but come with different secondary powers, most notably Mystic flights and Speed of Sound's teleport powers, which can be really useful.

I do agree with the nuke thing, unfortunately like you said, too late on that. At 50 I think what people really underestimate is the Alpha level shift, which basically removes the highest level of difficulty in most content from the game. From my experience there is a fairly significant jump in difficulty from +3 to +4, particularly in enemy survivability, that no longer exist for anyone with the alpha slot above t3. It's effectively the point where the game starts to punish you for going after enemies much higher level then you. While it's certainly not the only reason why players are more powerful these days, I think its a nice low hanging fruit that could be adjusted, as it could be regulated to Incarnate content only like the other level shifts, without really effecting player builds.

Thank you. I've been telling this to people for a while now, with so many people lamenting "how easy" the game has become these days, and while I'm not gonna deny the game has become easier in many aspects, it was NEVER hard. As someone who has played since release in 2004, I can assure you that CoH has always been a very easy game, its a big part of the reason why it was successful. While IOs and incarnate certainly make us more powerful, all of these things pale in comparison to how much more experience and knowledge about the game people have these days, a large portion of this player-base has been playing this game for years. They know all the systems inside and out, they know how to handle specific encounters and how to take them on without issue. To add to that most players are very open to teaching newer players the ropes and provide them with all the resources they need to succeed, Knowledge leads to more knowledge. Information moves so quickly these days, MUCH faster then it did back when the game was live, you release content, the very next day there are comprehensive guides on how to do any aspect of it. For comparison, the OG devs didn't mark stores on the map, because they wanted them to be a secret, that only a hand full of players would find, they were surprised when players quickly shared all this information and it became common knowledge. The game may be easier in some ways for sure, but the player base, as a whole, is just WAAAAAY more knowledgeable about all aspects of the game. Much of the stuff that people are complaining about now has been possible since 2007 when IOs dropped, it's just easier to access. CoH hasn't gotten all that easier, everyone has just gotten better at it.

That sounds correct, but to add to that, Statesman was also severely depressed, to the point that when he died in the comics, he refused to be resurrected. Manticore had to literally blow himself up and drag him out of the afterlife with him. Even if you had the capability to res him, he likely wouldn't accept it, dude just wants to rest.

As someone who was around back then, he was incredibly unpopular, The guy was confidently the face of nerfing your characters into the ground. In retrospect the nerf's like ED back in the day were kinda needed for the game to have any semblance of challenge at all, but Jack could be a case study in how to not break the news to a community. He just had this vibe about him of not caring about the players opinions, and wanting the game to fit his vision, ironically, he had the air of a Tyrant about him. From what I hear though he is a nice enough guys IRL, but he was not doing himself any favors with the community. When "Who will Die" came out, literally everyone knew Statesman was gonna die, it was obvious. I'm pretty sure Sister Psyche was killed partially so they still had something to surprise players with, but her death also served to push Manti fully down the vigilante path as they wanted to have major characters on each side shift alignment (Scirocco was going hero). Statesman was kinda the perfect character to kill off though, he was attached to a unpopular dev, easy to remove from the game as he barely was in it directly, and would parallel the whole "Death of Superman" thing being this games "Superman". On top of that it makes a vacuum for the player to take his place as "The Big Hero" which seems to be the sort of move they were starting to make when the game shut down. Either way, killing off characters purely for shock value, is an EXTREMELY comic book thing to do, if anything the move fits well with the genre, good writing or not. Keep in mind too, that this was the first signature story arc, and required a monthly subscription to access after the game went free to play. They had to make a big impact to convince people that these story arc were worth paying for. I suspect this is likely why States and Psyche were straight up removed from the game outside of oro while wade is still chilling in Sharkhead, because it drums up curiosity from those not subscribed when big important figures suddenly are replaced. Wade gets to stick around because he isn't an important or well known figure, and him getting removed would spoil his involvement.

You can go on the beta server and check for yourself, though I would assume no, since its a full model replacement. On the same hand I would assume it does not work with PB/WS forms. Either way I've never seen a mini of either. It should work with all other powers though as they are the only model replacement powers I'm aware of.

For Guile, the re-hide proc always goes into Assassin's strike, since Assassin's strike from hide is lower DPA then hide-less AS and can cause issues if you unexpectedly hide into it. It works well anyways since you basically always wanna be using Assassin's strike on cooldown, it adds to the quick burst with a high damage follow up, and its kinda right in the perfect golden area for consistent proccing even when slotted for recharge. Splitting it for the double 5% S/L is a solid plan if your a res/non-positional secondary, but going the full 6 for the 10% recharge and 6%s/l res isn't a terrible idea either, it's really build dependent. As for Mark, it can kinda go where-ever I like to 6 slot it in my T1/2 for the 10% recharge bonus since I rarely wanna put procs in those, but since the proc is global it can go where-ever, just you do have to use the power at least once per zone to get the proc to activate.

I have literally done both those things, no idea why you are going to 55%-60% on a stalker anyways, that massive overkill.

I have no idea what you are talking about with the "extreme dip in survivability". First of all that's EXTREMELY build dependant. I personally I never had issue managing that, all of my stalkers are capable of 4x8 with most if not all groups, and usually have around %190 recharge and at least S/L def at 45%, its very doable without a "extreme dip in survivability". So, yes, the rotation is not air tight, but it's no were near 0.7 seconds, not in my experience at least. I think you might be forgetting to include ArcanaTime or did not have Albating strike enhanced for recharge? In practice in it's closer to a 0.1-2 second delay and after Assassin's Blades, when you repeat the rotation, at least on my character, there is no delay after sweep. This does cut into your DPS a little bit but much less then Power Slice would. Even if that were the case then, Zapp or Moonbeam would be FAR better choices, even with the loss of a assassin's focus as they do over twice the DPA.

Just to correct this you can actually do better with a little more recharge BU> Assassin's Blades> Ablating strikes > Sweeping strike > Ablating strikes again No Power slice needed as Ablating strikes does almost twice the DPA and insures that Archlies heel proc has max uptime

Movement - 5/5 I used to PvP and still haven't lost my skill in kiting and jousting, I keep super speed on all times and joust around to minimize melee downtime, and maximise my AoEs. Regardless of the character I'm basically always in motion. Leading task forces/raids - 2/5 I can do it just fine on most basic TF, but I usually prefer not to, and I don't even try to lead stuff like Itrails Character builds - 5/5 I have over 100 builds I have made in my mids folder, I don't consider a build complete unless it can solo most groups at 4x8 and solo 54 AV/GMs (unless that's specifically not what I want or effectively impossible). Badging - 3/5 I badge casually but I'm no were near the level of some of the crazy folks around here. Key binds - 2/5 I can do some basic binds but.... I don't play PB/WS, even my MM just lives on the simple stuff. In-game knowledge - 4/5 I'm shocked when I learn something new, I feel like I'm about at the edge of what one can learn with this game without becoming a huge number cruncher or going into the code itself. Not that I'm never wrong though, CoH is an absolutely vast game.

I've done ToT with several characters to get the PAPs and it's been consistently inconsistent, so pretty random. Thats not even a large enough sample size to get the badges, so you likely just got unlucky.

Damage type honestly means very little overall, the impact it has in most situations is minimal. For sure it can become relevant but for every situation where it matters, there are magnitudes more where it did not. Lethal is pretty unarguably one of the worst damage types in the game, but that doesn't stop sets like Axe from being considered one of the best melee sets the game has. On the flip side, negative is likely the best damage type, but I can count on one hand the number of Dark blasters I've seen. What I'm getting at is that even from a min/max perspective is has a fairly minimal impact overall, with the actual effects of the powers being way more important. Damage type really just amounts to a situational bonus/downside that if anything just serves to make characters feel a bit different vs different enemy types. This is of course assuming that the character is being made for general play and not like, specific speed runs or other more focused play.

You generally should fire off AS whenever its up even without the assassins focus just due to the high DPA. With Ice melee if I recall, most use moonbeam or Zapp as a single target fill, as the damage gain is worth the loss of a single Assassins focus.

-1x0 and you can run literally anything with little issue, even without full enhancement slotting. But yeah as others have pointed out: Tank, Brute, Scrapper, Stalker, Sentinel, and Mastermind These classes all tend to have a easy time solo, if -1x0 is your goal though, literally anything will work, though those AT will still have a easier time.