Rare power sets that used to be popular.

[Doc_Scorpion]

21 hours ago, Myrmidon said:

For me, it has to be Controllers that don’t immediately spam their AoE Immobilize the moment the team makes contact. Those are about a 1 to 20 ratio with the ones that do. 

 

1 hour ago, subbacultchas said:

I see this a lot, especially a lot among lowbies when running DFB or Posi 1 & 2. If I'm really tired, I probably do it myself. But the general rule is to wait 1-3 seconds and see how things things bunch up around your brutes/tanks before hitting it. 

Agreed.  The controller that doesn't immediately spam his immobilize the moment the team makes contact may be the controller that waits a moment to see how the battle develops.  (At lower levels, it may not have even recharged yet.)  Or maybe the controller that knows how the team approaches battles and when it's best to fire off his controls.  For example, I'll fire off early if I know there's badly used knockback on the team.  I'll hold off if the tank or brute is doing a good job of bunching them up.  Or maybe there's a nasty boss or mob with a special attack... I often chose to fire my holds at them first to quickly lower the overall threat level.  Etc... etc...  It's also a matter of aggro management, letting the melee types take the alpha and grab aggro keeps the alpha and aggro off of me.

Absent knockback or some unusual circumstance, I've rarely found there was any particular value in immediately firing my immobilize.  As subbacultchas says, there can be value in waiting a few seconds.

That's why I enjoy playing controllers and defenders, the tactical game they play is ever so much more fun than the scream-and-leap often typical of the scrapper, tank, or brute.  (Mind you, the latter is fun too when I'm in a mood for it!)

While it's a matter of personal philosophy and playstyle...  It's inarguable that a team can succeed with a controller who impulsively spams their controls, to my mind they're not really different than a defender who does nothing more than spam their heals.  They're certainly contributing to the team, but not as much as they could contribute if they intelligently used the full span of their powers.

[Clave Dark 5]

18 hours ago, DSorrow said:

Acquiring influence and IOs is so ridiculously easy

This is always how I see this phrased, not to attack you for doing the same.  I point out that the homework for doing so isn't often all that fun for some people.  Just about all the characters you'll see in my sig are twinked out with some ATOs, purples, etc. because it can be done without the market-playing and so on, but it comes slowly.  Gives me something to aim for I guess.

 

Also still not sure the "concerns" with forum builds being twinked out should be dismissed because we tend to be harder core players.  That still leaves open that some of us are not.   Still, thanks to those who do post builds (twinked or not) when people ask for them, they've helped me a great deal.  I do agree though that if you have questions about leveling, they do usually get addressed with forum posts like "how should I slot Earth's Embrace?" or "what's a good attack chain for Dark Melee?" or whatever.  The question just needs to be more focused.

[DSorrow]

14 hours ago, Doc_Scorpion said:

No offense, but did you even read my message?  Did you even read the part you quoted?  The part where I was specifically talking about things that aren't endgame builds?  That aren't builds at all?

 

Thank you for so eloquently proving the point that srmalloy and I were making - in the end it always circles back to endgame builds (often expensive ones) and grinding for inf to build them.

Is the hostility really necessary? I did read your post, and honestly I just could not relate to the problem you had. From my perspective people here are generally very helpful and do answer well formulated questions all the time, if you ask nicely. It's your decision to choose what kind of a build you want to play with and ask questions about just like it's your decision to choose what kind of attitude you want to display when asking said questions.

Edited March 11, 2020 by DSorrow

[DSorrow]

3 hours ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

This is always how I see this phrased, not to attack you for doing the same. 

True, maybe a bit too simplified to put it like that but I feel like there's very little point in elaborating when better writers have produced really good guides on the subject. While I can empathize that the homework for getting IOs isn't necessarily fun, even just playing the game gets you there very quickly compared to pretty much any other MMO. My estimation is that just playing pretty much any activities that give you reward merits should get you a top of the line build in less than 100 hours of gameplay.

 

3 hours ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

I do agree though that if you have questions about leveling, they do usually get addressed with forum posts like "how should I slot Earth's Embrace?" or "what's a good attack chain for Dark Melee?" or whatever.  The question just needs to be more focused.

Definitely agree with this. My view is that slotting doesn't really matter in the large scheme of things: in normal team gameplay just slotting the relevant attributes is enough and any appropriate IO set is already above-par. So, unless stated differently, I assume anyone asking the question is most likely trying to optimize a build.

[Snarky]

I used to run Super Strength as my Go-to Brute set.  Not so much anymore.  The Rage crash, even though i have every trick in the world to deal with it, is not something i care to have as a constant companion in combat

 

For melee these days i much prefer Dark Melee.   

[Leo_G]

Reading the 1st page of replies, I'm curious if people view the way things were as a good thing or if the current changes are a better thing. 

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

22 hours ago, Heraclea said:

The scrapper I am talking about is Fire/Regen.  All damage, no control; I did take Air Superiority on the character to give a little.  Basically a melee blaster with mez protection.  Definitely a glass cannon.  I also take Caltrops to try and mitigate burst damage.  Never attempted to solo an AV; that's why I run Old Posi which doesn't have them.   Like I said, I knew exactly what I was in for creating this character.  I have not tried to collect multiple set IO bonuses on this character; her reason for being is to farm low level content to earn merits and drops that will be used by other characters, so she is slotted mostly with un-catalyzed, frankenslotted hand me downs.

 

The experimental brute is Staff/Regen.  Primary chosen mostly because I didn't have a Staff character yet.  I also wanted an attack set with slow animations, the better to test Regen with.   With heavy IO investment including all the Brute ATO set bonuses, Tough, Weave, and Combat Jumping, and catalyzed Kinetic Combats in every single target attack, she has around 55% S/L resist and 35% defense; all else is much lower.

 

In other words, with heavy IO investment she gets to be about where a Willpower character would  be on generic SO/IOs.  The click heals do not do enough; they are not instant, they wait out animations, and by that time it's too late.  Debuff resistance is a problem; again, by IOs I've gotten her to around 405 recharge slow resist. 

 

You will not persuade me that Regen is anything other than seriously underperforming.  Fire may also be almost as unimpressive out of the box, but there isn't really a way to build an AE farm to play to Regen's strengths, either. 

Uhm yeah ok so you chose one of the worst partners for regen. Fire melee is frankly just bad in actual gameplay, fire res is very common in mobs, and a scrapper is about killing quick so the dot aspect of fire usually doesnt get to do enough to actually make it better dps then most other options.

 

The fact you mention AE farming is starting to hint to me the real issue. Your approach to game play. AE farm builds by their nature tend to suck outside of AE farms. Like I have yet to meet a fire/spines brute that doesnt spend their time eating dirt on TFs unless there is support to back them up.

 

Likewise WP users also often face plant on teams, because this I see very often inn game btw is the WP tank/brute/scrapper runs in to take the aggro and herd, the blaster runs in and nukes, all mins and LTS die, the WPs regen from RTTC tanks, and the bosses then smack down said WP user who suddenly lacks regen enough to sustain through the dmg. In fact while most WP users I see in active game play end up being lightly mocked for their constant dirt naps, my own WP user who does not even bother with RTTC, and is a brute that approaches combat more like a stalker, often gets compliments and called a powerful build even though he is a  rp flavor build that is intentionally gimped to be more of a normal human.

 

Also i find it odd you feel regens click spot heals are to slow, I have never once found them to be to slow for my needs. Then again I do like to build my regens with some kind of buffer aspect either defense or to hit debuffing mainly. It sounds like your trying to play them more like a Hulk then a wolverine.

[Caulderone]

1 hour ago, Bentley Berkeley said:

fire res is very common in mobs

A detailed analysis of mob damage resistance has been done.  I'll link it below.   From an average resist standpoint, Fire is 2nd only to Negative Energy.

 

 

Fire still doesn't bring any mitigation to the table, but from a "doing damage" point of view, its problems aren't caused by mobs resisting the damage type.

[Brutal Justice]

Out of curiosity I took my stj/regen brute into the s/l comic con map to see how it performed.  He has 55% s/l res and 20% s/l def.  the most expensive IOs he has are a set of panacea and the brute ATIOs.  He also has global procs slotted but those are fairly easy to gather with converters.  No purples.  T3 spiritual alpha.  

 

Set at +2x8 I had no issues at all.  With dull pain active my basic regen lvl was enough to sustain me until the next click of dull pain. At +4x8 I had to do a little more work cycling my regen powers.  One small orange and I was rock solid.  I made sure to try to stay at aggro cap the whole time and generally only needed the orange once I had a large number of bosses pounding on me.  

 

I am not a farmer and my build is far from a farm build so my kill speed was atrocious.  I wouldn’t set it to +4 simply because it was way too grindy for this build.  If the same build was on a tank I would guess it would be equivalent to my brute popping the small orange.    

 

Regen is perfectly capable if you’re not offended by having to actually contribute to your survival.  The larger base hp of a tank would help immensely with insta death from an alpha or really big hit.  Already a brute takes it better than a scrapper who takes it better than a stalker.  My stalker is the one most susceptible to a spike death.  

 

My build cost estimate:

7.5 mill x 12 for ATIOs = 90 mill

7.2 mill x 6 for panacea = 43 mill

maybe another 100 mill to cover crafting and converting and 12 catalysts and my other IOs.  

233 million total cost.  

[Chris24601]

On 3/10/2020 at 7:47 AM, Lines said:

I design all my builds for an estimated <100 inf budget, since I have a rule that all my characters must fund themselves, so I get them to an achievable plateau before decking them out. I'd be happy to start posting them, but I often build for odd gimmicks rather than optimisation.

Now that I'm established, my general rule for a smooth ride is to six slot two powers you can put the two ATO sets if its at all practical (its not for controllers because their ATOs don't boost damage, but most of the rest do) because slotting those two sets at level 10-11 for the set bonuses makes a HUGE difference to pre-SO performance (ex. +9% acc is like putting an extra +3 TO into all your attacks while slots are at a premium).

 

This doesn't mean I'm actually dropping a ton of inf on them anymore either. I'm on my fourth scrapper, but only one of those I've been happy enough with to catalyze the ATOs at 50. The other two and the one I'm currently leveling have all used the same set of ATOs that I just unslotted and mailed to the new toon.

 

Beyond those two though I tend to stick to relatively cheap and easy mainstays like Thunderstrike and Crushing Impact. At 3-5 million per full attuned set those actually save me money over SO's in the long run and are "good enough" in terms of set bonuses. If you're not trying to break any records, sets without any procs or gimmicks like those I think actually give you better overall benefit from their sixth slot worth of enhancement bonuses than a damage proc will get you in some of the the more expensive sets.

 

I'm also someone who got my funds my just playing the story arcs and turning the merits into converters and dumping them on the market for 1 inf each so its not like I even blew more time on that that I used to re-buying my SOs every 5 levels in the olden days and WAY less than I did in the old IO days where IOs were in separate categories by level and attuned wasn't even a thing yet.

 

Another trick I have is that, if you buy the double XP power from P2W right out of the Galaxy tutorial, then run the Freedom Atlas Park arcs (Matt Habashy, etc.) you can ding level 10 inside of 15 minutes with enough merits (I forget whether its 9 or 15 from the three quick arcs) to get yourself 2-3 million inf via converters and not have to worry about paying for slotting again until you reach SO levels.

[Doc_Scorpion]

3 hours ago, Mr.Sinister said:

Regen is perfectly capable if you’re not offended by having to actually contribute to your survival.

I'd add "or not bothered by not playing at max difficulty levels", but otherwise... yeah.  Quoted for truth.  I'd be sympathetic to the argument that doesn't come into it's own until you hit SO levels, but it's a perfectly playable set. 

[Frunobulax]

I honestly don't want to call out any powerset combos because there are people out there who probably do or could make them work in ways I haven't thought of or can never think up on my own and I'd never want to discourage somebody with my ignorance, but I've got to say, returning from long ago, some of my old workhorse combos are woefully obsolete and I rarely see them anymore.

 

What I find really interesting is that some old standbys are still really popular despite being nerfed so hard that they don't remotely play the way they used to.

That's a situation that in my experience anyways is rather unique to COH, I like it, people have their hero ideas and they will make their hero shine as much as they can come hell or high water, which is why I am reluctant to actually name anything specific.

 

I love the fact that there are people still putting work into this game so maybe someday those fading star combos will get their time in the sun once again.

 

Like Fire/dev, that was an old standby, at least in my circles, I returned home to this game and of course rolled up one of my favourite characters and was disappointed in how lackluster it was compared to when I had originally played it on live.

And then one day months later I log into him, and he has been buffed and is fun as hell again! In some ways its way even better then it ever was in its heyday on live!

 

My morale is actually pretty high about this kind've stuff in light of all the great work our devs do, personally I won't be mentally writing off any combo for good.

[Heraclea]

53 minutes ago, Doc_Scorpion said:

I'd add "or not bothered by not playing at max difficulty levels", but otherwise... yeah.  Quoted for truth.  I'd be sympathetic to the argument that doesn't come into it's own until you hit SO levels, but it's a perfectly playable set. 

My experience is almost the opposite: it's the levels below SO levels where regen is at its best and tends to excel.  Quick Recovery at level 4 is the most important thing it has over other armor sets.  It's easy to start a Regen character, much harder to finish one. 

 

Like I said, I have Regen as an armor set on two characters, scrapper and brute.  The scrapper is made for efficiency running story arcs and doing under-30 TFs for the merits and works very well for that purpose.  The brute was made to see if Regen could be turned into a tanking set, and it doesn't really work; you start from too far behind. 

 

The brute has Tough and Weave,  since the experiment was to see if regen could be made tough enough to wait out animation lag so the heals could save the character.  The scrapper doesn't, they'd negate her real advantage, and from the out of the box numbers that little bit of resistance and defense would be lipstick on a pig.  The brute has set bonuses; the scrapper mostly frankenslots yellow sets for efficiency.  The scrapper has a role to play.  The brute is a much poorer fit, although she took Taunt and has a taunt slotted aura, she has to use them very situationally. 

[Ironblade]

3 hours ago, Doc_Scorpion said:

I'd add "or not bothered by not playing at max difficulty levels", but otherwise... yeah.  Quoted for truth.  I'd be sympathetic to the argument that doesn't come into it's own until you hit SO levels, but it's a perfectly playable set. 

I would also make the argument that it's quite a powerful set once you do get IO's.

Ironblade (BS/regen) is currently slotted with level 30+ common IO's and and I've participated in every iTrial and have the Master badges for some already.  Do I die occasionally?  Sure.  But, the rest of the time, I'm tearing sh** up.

 

Once I get all his IO sets assembled, I'll respec out all the common IO's (don't want to just throw them away) and he'll be even better.

On a side note, the Spiritual tree for the Alpha slot reads like it was MADE for the regen set.  My click heal powers are at around +125% heal and recharge using common IO's.

[Gobbledygook]

On 3/11/2020 at 10:38 AM, Bentley Berkeley said:

 Fire melee is frankly just bad in actual gameplay, fire res is very common in mobs, and a scrapper is about killing quick so the dot aspect of fire usually doesnt get to do enough to actually make it better dps then most other options.

 

On 3/11/2020 at 11:51 AM, Caulderone said:

A detailed analysis of mob damage resistance has been done.  I'll link it below.   From an average resist standpoint, Fire is 2nd only to Negative Energy.

 

 

Fire still doesn't bring any mitigation to the table, but from a "doing damage" point of view, its problems aren't caused by mobs resisting the damage type.

 

This is false, as already shown by actual testing.

I take issue with it though as it is actually my preferred choice for melee ATs'.

I can solo nearly any AV in the game with it (I don't solo TFs'), It's capable of dealing significant AoE damage (with enough recharge, an epic/patron choice and incarnate AoE)

Now, is it a poor choice for regen? Possibly. 

What's a poor choice for Invuln, DA, Bio, Rad? 

[Galaxy Brain]

8 minutes ago, Gobbledygook said:

It's capable of dealing significant AoE damage (with enough recharge, an epic/patron choice and incarnate AoE)

Wanna touch on this, is this *unique* to fire melee tho?

[Gobbledygook]

5 hours ago, Galaxy Brain said:

Wanna touch on this, is this *unique* to fire melee tho?

No, it's not,

 

On 3/11/2020 at 10:38 AM, Bentley Berkeley said:

Fire melee is frankly just bad in actual gameplay,

 I tend to veer slightly from my point at times. I blame the meds, lol.

What I failed to mention in my previous post was that Fm excels under these parameters, but even without the heavy IO investment and the incarnate power, I was still capable of putting out respectable AoE damage (Fsc and Fireball from Epp) and soloing AVs. Did it get better after I invested the time and Inf to get more? Oh, hell yeah.

 

The point I think I was originally trying to make was contrasting his camparison of Regen to the other armor sets with FM to the other attack sets.

His claim, as I understand from reading what he has typed, is that it is balanced to the other sets. However, again, as I understand, Regen needs multiple pool powers, a specific Patron Power that requires a pre requisite power, heavy IO investment, and possibly specific Incarnate power choices to be on par with other sets. Not to mention that it has 5 clicks, (Reconstruction, Dull Pain, IH, MoG, and Shadow Meld) as well as 4 toggles, (Integration, Tough, Weave, Manuevers). Now the number of click to toggles may balance out. I played for four months when I found out about HC and because of "issues" I take an extended break.

 

Now, I am open minded person, so I'm willing to hop on Beta, and give a few hours at 50 in a sturdy build a whirl if someone has one I could try. The only reason I am hesitant about it is I don't get powerleveled. I play in PuGs for story arcs and TFs, so the actual build up to 50 is important to me, as it would probably take close to a month to get there.

 

Hell, maybe I'm just still resentful for how badly they beat Regen into the ground back in, what was it, I-4? 

Wasn't that also when they introduced ED and the GDN?

 

I digress, I'm getting off topic again. 

[Caulderone]

6 hours ago, Gobbledygook said:

This is false, as already shown by actual testing.

Were you talking to BB or me?  Since you quoted both, it is kinda confusing.

[Galaxy Brain]

1 hour ago, Gobbledygook said:

putting out respectable AoE damage (Fsc and Fireball from Epp) and soloing AVs. Did it get better after I invested the time and Inf to get more? Oh, hell yeah.

 

The point I think I was originally trying to make was contrasting his camparison of Regen to the other armor sets with FM to the other attack sets.

His claim, as I understand from reading what he has typed, is that it is balanced to the other sets. However, again, as I understand, Regen needs multiple pool powers, a specific Patron Power that requires a pre requisite power, heavy IO investment, and possibly specific Incarnate power choices to be on par with other sets. Not to mention that it has 5 clicks, (Reconstruction, Dull Pain, IH, MoG, and Shadow Meld) as well as 4 toggles, (Integration, Tough, Weave, Manuevers). Now the number of click to toggles may balance out. I played for four months when I found out about HC and because of "issues" I take an extended break.

Needing to use half of your powers outside the set, when others do not need to, does not bolster the set....

[Gobbledygook]

1 hour ago, Caulderone said:

Were you talking to BB or me?  Since you quoted both, it is kinda confusing.

I apologize, I was responding to BB. I don't normally participate in full conversations on the forums, just random posts here and there.

[Gobbledygook]

19 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

Needing to use half of your powers outside the set, when others do not need to, does not bolster the set....

Which Is what I believe what I was trying to get to. That Regen requires all of these extra powers and heavy IO investment to perform on the same playing field as other Armor sets.

Yet the statement he made to Heraclea, "Fire melee is frankly just bad in actual gameplay, fire res is very common in mobs" was false.

To which Caulderone responded with a link to your guide showing it is actually the second least resisted damage type in the game.

 

I apologize for the confusion. I have reasons, but I honestly believe that the average person doesn't care to here other peoples excuses.

Which is why I mentioned in an earlier post, I tend to stay out of forum conversations and just pop in and offer the rare insight, like in the SS/StJ/debuff/Rage nerf conversation

 

[Galaxy Brain]

Hey its all good! It can be hard to convey certain things in text 🙂

 

 

[Brutal Justice]

Anyone who thinks regen needs all of these extra pool powers to be on par with other sets should read the fine work @Galaxy Brain did in another thread about regen for scrappers.  He compares regen, willpower, and invulnerability.  You’ll notice that it has a higher baseline, peak, and sustain than invulnerability.  

 

https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/14862-can-we-have-regen-please/page/2/

[Sir Myshkin]

So much ire for Regen in one thread, scary.

 

In other news, Deus Excalibur was recently seen doing stupid Scrapper tricks throughout Paragon City with neigh a care in the world. Regen is fine. Carry on.

[Heraclea]

On 3/13/2020 at 8:12 PM, Galaxy Brain said:

Needing to use half of your powers outside the set, when others do not need to, does not bolster the set....

This is what I was trying to say earlier.  Regen, with heavy investment in defense and resistance set IOs, and pool powers to boost defense, gets to be where Willpower is out of the box, without those pools or sets.  To me this suggests that it lags far behind.  It needs more base resistance, more always-on and fast acting regeneration,  or relief from the artificial lag of animation times, to enable its repertoire of self heals and trouble buttons to be actually effective in live game play.