Starting to Group a Bit....

[WuTang]

So, I'm an old school, mostly solo'er, but good as a group player. I started way back when Team Fortress was using the old Quake engine. It was my first real online team up, then came SWG, then WoW. I was always in a guild but also solo'd alot. Any who... When did people stop playing tactics on missions? Just kidding but seriously LOS pulls seem to be a foreign concept to some. Especially if we wipe a couple times and people still keep face pulling mobs or not letting them aggro on the LOS pull. It's like everyone is running DPS meters and are in competition with each other for top spot. I just wanna pull, kill, repeat til the last bad dude drops. Group one rage quit even after the leader plainly explained what he was doing then they'd just do whatever and we'd wipe and they blamed him. I hung in there he regrouped and the second bunch paid attention and were an awesome bunch. Honestly, we palyed like we'd always teamed up. The second group revitalized my faith in puggers. 

 

Training operators today, they are currently testing so....idle hands hop on forums and type....

 

Oh what is the XP bonus in groups? I didn't realize that was a thing but I popped 2 levels fairly quickly.

[Snarky]

33 minutes ago, WuTang said:

So, I'm an old school, mostly solo'er, but good as a group player. I started way back when Team Fortress was using the old Quake engine. It was my first real online team up, then came SWG, then WoW. I was always in a guild but also solo'd alot. Any who... When did people stop playing tactics on missions? Just kidding but seriously LOS pulls seem to be a foreign concept to some. Especially if we wipe a couple times and people still keep face pulling mobs or not letting them aggro on the LOS pull. It's like everyone is running DPS meters and are in competition with each other for top spot. I just wanna pull, kill, repeat til the last bad dude drops. Group one rage quit even after the leader plainly explained what he was doing then they'd just do whatever and we'd wipe and they blamed him. I hung in there he regrouped and the second bunch paid attention and were an awesome bunch. Honestly, we palyed like we'd always teamed up. The second group revitalized my faith in puggers. 

 

Training operators today, they are currently testing so....idle hands hop on forums and type....

 

Oh what is the XP bonus in groups? I didn't realize that was a thing but I popped 2 levels fairly quickly.

So I just ran on a PUG kill most +4 Market Crash, last mission set to +2.  There was a Tank, and a Brute.  I was on a Corr.  I build for tricks, accuracy, recharge, and DPS.  Not defenses, or survival.  I was in front of EVERYONE half the time.  Because I could.  I can stun, Nuke, and make anyone left alive short life miserable.  why wait?  i died once.  And  Dark Dark Corr has a combat rez that stuns the bejeezuz outta anyone near them.  

[cranebump]

Power differential. Your average group can blow away a lot of stuff these days (esp. when you consider the % of vets we have still playing). The old school pull to a corner, etc., doesn't really come up unless you do get a situation liked you described, above. Then the old ways is the best ways. I just don't see it all that often in default mode. There's a few folks that want to run that way, and still do.

 

Speaking of: One person in particular who runs mission arc teams fairly regularly insists on that mode. Which is fine, but, they're just...bitchy about it -- like it's orthodoxy. Took an invite to a team, got on it, and the first thing they did was complain there were too many ranged toons everywhere.* I just said, "Got it. I'll clear a spot." Hopped off before mish started. I should've recognized by the toon name (having run a few excruciating times with them before), but I figured it out too late. I wouldn't normally bail on anybody, but for some people you gotta make the exception. 

 

*Wondering if they ever had the pleasure of a group full of Rad DEFs that just melts everything. But then, maybe that's the issue.

Edited February 26 by cranebump

[Psyonico]

1 hour ago, WuTang said:

Oh what is the XP bonus in groups?

Let's see if I can explain this without making it more confusing...

 

If you solo a mob and it gives 100 XP for defeating it, then you get 100 XP.

 

If you duo the mob, but are not teamed, you get a proportional account of XP to the damage that you do, so, do 50% damage, get 50 XP

 

If you team, you get a proportional amount of XP to what the team does in damage divided equally among the team, plus a modifier based on the team size.  So, if you're in a 2 man team, you'd get 50 XP plus whatever the modifier for a 2 man team is.

[WuTang]

2 hours ago, Snarky said:

So I just ran on a PUG kill most +4 Market Crash, last mission set to +2.  There was a Tank, and a Brute.  I was on a Corr.  I build for tricks, accuracy, recharge, and DPS.  Not defenses, or survival.  I was in front of EVERYONE half the time.  Because I could.  I can stun, Nuke, and make anyone left alive short life miserable.  why wait?  i died once.  And  Dark Dark Corr has a combat rez that stuns the bejeezuz outta anyone near them.  

Yeah I get that and you had success doing that...but the first bunch I was with can't say that. The lead didn't start out with LOS pulls but if we wiped a couple times then he would.

[Snarky]

18 minutes ago, WuTang said:

Yeah I get that and you had success doing that...but the first bunch I was with can't say that. The lead didn't start out with LOS pulls but if we wiped a couple times then he would.

The path to success is failure.  I started on Brutes and I was horrid.  Now i play squishies and I am only bad.  I learned the mobs, the maps, the fights, and enough of the under the hood mechanics to grind a little harder.  

 

A lot of the 'new crowd" is either very rusty or has never seen a mmorpg like CoH.  Some want Tank, Blaster, Healer Trinity.  others see CoH veterans doing wild stuff and take an SO outfitted whatever into mobs they are unfamiliar with.  "you're gonna need a bigger boat..."

[Sovera]

The reason it is not done is because it was not needed.

 

In WoW back in TBC it was common to play  v e r y  carefully. Sheep a mob, freeze trap the other, sap a third, then quickly kill one of the two remaining mobs. CCs were carefully monitured and reapplied during combat. Any of these fragile CCs being broken would be touch and go and might lead to party wipes. Definite party party wipes if so much as two mobs got free.

 

In the next expansions that was dropped and it was an AoE fest sometimes even dragging two groups to be AoEd down. Then came Cataclysm and players were FURIOUS that they had to  freeze trap, sap, etc all over again and not doing it meant party wipes.

 

Then it was eased off again and once again it was AoE time.

 

 

This is CoH. Mobs in instances are the same weak mobs outside of instance. No elite status, no quintuple HP, no triple damage. If you can defeat these mobs outside of the instance you can do so inside of them as well. Any decent IOed out build can be immortal. Just look at my last experiment in my signature with the Stone/Fire that is unkillable pretty much by level 13.

 

At that point why bother doing fancy pulls or use CC? Just go in and smash.

 

Is this good practice? No. But it's the practice that the game breeds. Gird yon loins, jump in, don't kite, don't bother about CC. Then the moment it gets SLIGHTLY harder (we can always identify the first timers in an ITF by their constant deaths) they are puzzled.

 

But it makes sense, the game showed them that they were unkillable and when the difficulty slightly upped they got caught by surprise. There are a few honorable exceptions that will remind players they are not immortal, and of course dumbassery with the difficulty settings.

 

 

This is doubled for teams where the mob's low HP means 3/4th of the spawn is dead in the first 5 seconds. Heck, I, solo, kill three fourths of the spawn in the first 7 seconds. Now imagine a second person doing the same.

[WuTang]

8 minutes ago, Sovera said:

The reason it is not done is because it was not needed.

 

In WoW back in TBC it was common to play  v e r y  carefully. Sheep a mob, freeze trap the other, sap a third, then quickly kill one of the two remaining mobs. CCs were carefully monitured and reapplied during combat. Any of these fragile CCs being broken would be touch and go and might lead to party wipes. Definite party party wipes if so much as two mobs got free.

 

In the next expansions that was dropped and it was an AoE fest sometimes even dragging two groups to be AoEd down. Then came Cataclysm and players were FURIOUS that they had to  freeze trap, sap, etc all over again and not doing it meant party wipes.

 

Then it was eased off again and once again it was AoE time.

 

 

This is CoH. Mobs in instances are the same weak mobs outside of instance. No elite status, no quintuple HP, no triple damage. If you can defeat these mobs outside of the instance you can do so inside of them as well. Any decent IOed out build can be immortal. Just look at my last experiment in my signature with the Stone/Fire that is unkillable pretty much by level 13.

 

At that point why bother doing fancy pulls or use CC? Just go in and smash.

 

Is this good practice? No. But it's the practice that the game breeds. Gird yon loins, jump in, don't kite, don't bother about CC. Then the moment it gets SLIGHTLY harder (we can always identify the first timers in an ITF by their constant deaths) they are puzzled.

 

But it makes sense, the game showed them that they were unkillable and when the difficulty slightly upped they got caught by surprise. There are a few honorable exceptions that will remind players they are not immortal, and of course dumbassery with the difficulty settings.

 

 

This is doubled for teams where the mob's low HP means 3/4th of the spawn is dead in the first 5 seconds. Heck, I, solo, kill three fourths of the spawn in the first 7 seconds. Now imagine a second person doing the same.

Yeah I fully understand that god mode is achievable, but the first group, me included, still have many miles to go before we can taste that ambrosia.

[Snarky]

15 minutes ago, WuTang said:

Yeah I fully understand that god mode is achievable, but the first group, me included, still have many miles to go before we can taste that ambrosia.

usually pre 30, sometimes pre 40, the only "god mode" possibles are tanks and brutes.  and even then it can be iffy depending on armors and mobs

[Sovera]

12 minutes ago, WuTang said:

Yeah I fully understand that god mode is achievable, but the first group, me included, still have many miles to go before we can taste that ambrosia.

 

Someone else mentioned on how all it takes is one or two god modded characters to get the wrecking train going. A solid tank that does not go down allows for the rest of the group to unleash hell. Trouble is when people get used to it but lack that linchpin.

 

Sometimes it's not even a god modded character but having an innocuous background wallflower you're not paying attention to... but who has the team covered in a chunky 25%+ defense shieldage, or someone debuffs the mobs with something as simple as a Fear Stare.

 

But it brings what I mentioned in the previous post that was the game does not breed caution in players. There is always a buff, always a debuff, always an expensively geared character, that carries the day.

 

Except when not 😄 

[Snarky]

5 minutes ago, Sovera said:

But it brings what I mentioned in the previous post that was the game does not breed caution in players. There is always a buff, always a debuff, always an expensively geared character, that carries the day.

 

Except when not 😄 

this.  if i hang back and fear, debuff, and harass the mobs the team are on they feel awesomeness.  i just choose to go out on the tip and do that for the mobs i work.  some trollers doms and fenders all they do is make the team feel invincible.

Edited February 27 by Snarky

[Clave Dark 5]

Yeah, I've been on more than one PUG where somebody drops out and then, suddenly, we're getting wiped a lot.

[WuTang]

11 hours ago, Snarky said:

usually pre 30, sometimes pre 40, the only "god mode" possibles are tanks and brutes.  and even then it can be iffy depending on armors and mobs

Yeah well in this one case the highest level was 46, I was 43 and the only "tank" Brute in the first group and all I've got is a hodgepodge of enhancements and mostly all in melee...so not as tanky as I prob should be.

The second group had an even lower level Brute, but the 2 of us managed alright. But there was a storm-something that could laydown a nasty effect that kept the baddies bouncing, good fun being right in the middle of that chaos.

 

The lead had mission set on +4 or 3, because the mobs were all 50 and there were 3-4 bosses in every group and the mobs were huge but not sure what all he had setup.

 

Oh and I know you like the Corr but what makes them so good? The raw stats just shows a little more healing with less melee than a blaster.

[Snarky]

20 minutes ago, WuTang said:

Oh and I know you like the Corr but what makes them so good? The raw stats just shows a little more healing with less melee than a blaster.

Oh, it is not just me that likes the Corruptor.  You have to look at CoH history.  Redside was separate, and designed to never mix with Blue.  A chance to rebuild the game from the ground up.  Brutes were very good.  Meant to be meaner Scrappers, they were nerfed…more than once… to fit into the mixed stable.  MMs were meant to be the Tanks. But no Redsider had the patience, and Brutes made L Jenkins look like a tourist.  Corruptors got the best of both worlds, much like Brutes.  But…they have (so far) slithered past the nerf mallet. 
 

Due to their very respectable damage, mixed with buff/debuff/healing Corruptors are considered an S class Archetype.  The ability to provide so many aspects of the game competently in one package is quite sought after on high end teams.

 

Name any respectable team or league leader in the game.  Name three! Give them each a League roster of 24 toons, random ATs. (No Corruptors) This hypothetical league will race against other leagues.  Big rewards to the winner.  Cookies and bragging rights.  Now, pick ANY toon on the league and ask if the leader will trade that for a Corruptor.  To each League leader.  Now, one at a time, ask them each 23 more times.  I suspect you will see three Leagues with between 22-24 Corruptors each.  Maybe a Tank or two hear and there. The damn things are that good.  👍 

[WuTang]

14 hours ago, Sovera said:

The reason it is not done is because it was not needed.

 

In WoW back in TBC it was common to play  v e r y  carefully. Sheep a mob, freeze trap the other, sap a third, then quickly kill one of the two remaining mobs. CCs were carefully monitured and reapplied during combat. Any of these fragile CCs being broken would be touch and go and might lead to party wipes. Definite party party wipes if so much as two mobs got free.

 

In the next expansions that was dropped and it was an AoE fest sometimes even dragging two groups to be AoEd down. Then came Cataclysm and players were FURIOUS that they had to  freeze trap, sap, etc all over again and not doing it meant party wipes.

 

Then it was eased off again and once again it was AoE time.

 

 

This is CoH. Mobs in instances are the same weak mobs outside of instance. No elite status, no quintuple HP, no triple damage. If you can defeat these mobs outside of the instance you can do so inside of them as well. Any decent IOed out build can be immortal. Just look at my last experiment in my signature with the Stone/Fire that is unkillable pretty much by level 13.

 

At that point why bother doing fancy pulls or use CC? Just go in and smash.

 

Is this good practice? No. But it's the practice that the game breeds. Gird yon loins, jump in, don't kite, don't bother about CC. Then the moment it gets SLIGHTLY harder (we can always identify the first timers in an ITF by their constant deaths) they are puzzled.

 

But it makes sense, the game showed them that they were unkillable and when the difficulty slightly upped they got caught by surprise. There are a few honorable exceptions that will remind players they are not immortal, and of course dumbassery with the difficulty settings.

 

 

This is doubled for teams where the mob's low HP means 3/4th of the spawn is dead in the first 5 seconds. Heck, I, solo, kill three fourths of the spawn in the first 7 seconds. Now imagine a second person doing the same.

When you say beat them outside....is that without using any inspirations? Are there builds so strong you don't need them? Or is that a measure of your build's survivability?

Edited February 27 by WuTang

[Sovera]

15 minutes ago, WuTang said:

When you day beat them outside....is that without using any inspirations? Are there builds so strong you don't need them? Or is that a measure of your build's survivability?

 

Check the beginner friendly Tanker in my signature. By level 13 you should no longer need inspirations. It's not the only possible build that can do this it just starts real rea early.

 

It's mostly because defense is so powerful in the early level. Most builds don't use inspirations by level 30-40. Though this is because we level at +0 or +1 tops.

 

Edited February 27 by Sovera

[WuTang]

27 minutes ago, Sovera said:

 

Check the beginner friendly Tanker in my signature. By level 13 you should no longer need inspirations. It's not the only possible build that can do this it just starts real rea early.

 

It's mostly because defense is so powerful in the early level. Most builds don't use inspirations by level 30-40. Though this is because we level at +0 or +1 tops.

 

Haha I burn through inspirations at +0x3....doh!

When you set up slots is def/resist for a Brute more important than melee? Is that maybe why I'm going through insp so much?

Edited February 27 by WuTang

[Sovera]

23 minutes ago, WuTang said:

Haha I burn through inspirations at +0x3....doh!

When you set up slots is def/resist for a Brute more important than melee? Is that maybe why I'm going through insp so much?

 

The important thing is reaching a certain threshold. Tankers just have an easier time reaching it because the same powers (even things like Maneuvers and Weave) give better numbers for Tankers than for other ATs.

 

Brutes need to work at it, but they eventually get there too. Heck, most ATs can get to a specific defense number, like Blasters having 45% to ranged defense.

[Ukase]

28 minutes ago, WuTang said:

Haha I burn through inspirations at +0x3....doh!

When you set up slots is def/resist for a Brute more important than melee? Is that maybe why I'm going through insp so much?

Opinions will vary on this with playstyle preferences, anecdotal experiences and other factors. 
Let us look at a brute and ask ourselves...how much damage can it do when it's dead? 
In my opinion, each brute, scrapper, blaster, sentinel, corruptor, ..heck, every AT!  should have a balance between dps and survivability. 

A lot of the more experienced (rich in-game currency) tend to use a lot of the same sets and procs in every character. 

One guy I know, Stitch, who left HC for another server, is a great player. The dude would speed run MoTFs. "The faster we go, the less time there is to die". 
I would ask him for build advice, and over the discord, he'd send his build, as he had just about every combo the game could offer up. 

In these builds, they all had a full set of artillery. a combination of either 5 sets of purples or ATOs, depending on how good the set bonuses were on the ATOs, a full set of reactive defenses, full set of preventative medicine (if the character had some kind of heal) and what I consider the usual procs - miracle +recovery, Numina +regen/recovery, Panacea +HP/End, glad armor 3%, steadfast prot. 3%, shield wall 5%, Kismet 6%, and in some cases a winter set or two. And, one power would probably be proc'ed to the gills for as much damage as he could squeeze out of it. 

All of them had fold space once that became a thing.  

I'd look at his defense and resist numbers and they'd be a lot lower than mine. See, I solo fairly often, so my numbers need to be different than someone who pretty much only teams. I can't rely on Fort or Speed Boost. My character needs to be self-sufficient. 
Stitch's dps was always higher, for sure. He could afford to neglect slotting for defense a little because he had teammates who'd buff that up. 

So, that's my long-winded answer to your question. Someone has undoubtedly given you a more useful answer in one sentence by now. 

[Maelwys]

14 hours ago, Sovera said:

But it brings what I mentioned in the previous post that was the game does not breed caution in players. There is always a buff, always a debuff, always an expensively geared character, that carries the day.

I've been that character a few times. An utterly Indestructible Chain-Footstomping Inv/SS Tanker who consistently takes point, leaping from spawn to spawn to quickly bunch up a aggro-cap's worth of foes without any corner pulling shenanighans. A Sonic/Elec Defender who is quietly keeping everyone at the Damage resistance cap, draining all the Foes dry of Endurance and holding Bosses, and can stack enough Mez protection to overcome Ghost Widow's hold. An Illusion/Empath Controller with Perma-Phantom-Army and Powerboosted Fortitides who is keeping Andrenaline Boost on the Blaster so that they can ignore their Nuke crash, and is also somehow finding the time to chain cast confuse on all the tough bosses.... etc. etc.

I've also been the idiot everyone loved to hate. A Human/Dwarf bi-form Peacebringer whose number one priority was to go toe-to-toe with and mercliessly obliterate any and all Void/Quantum mobs and Shadow Cysts that dared to oppose them. A /traps MM who loved running in to toebomb every big spawn with Trip Mine (long before you could shove pets out of the way). And best of all... a Fire/Ice/Fire Blaster that had one gear ("Top!") and tended to completely ignore whatever pace the rest of the team were trying to set and was specifically built with 'Rise of the Pheonix' as part of their attack chain.

Spoiler

(Shiver + Fireball + Fire Breath + Rain of Fire etc. etc. as per normal, with the odd Ice Patch and Aid Self to keep myself just about upright. But then every few minutes, find a huge mob to leap into + use Inferno, then immediately find another huge mob to purposely leap into + faceplant in order to avoid the Nuke Crash. Then cast RoTP and Rain of Fire. WINNING! Then look back in abject confusion at the rest of the party who for some reason are half a map behind still trying to find their way out of the first corridor. "ARE YOU GUYZ COMING OR WHUT??!?"). Ahh, memories. 

 

[KITANYA]

23 hours ago, WuTang said:

So, I'm an old school, mostly solo'er, but good as a group player. I started way back when Team Fortress was using the old Quake engine. It was my first real online team up, then came SWG, then WoW. I was always in a guild but also solo'd alot. Any who... When did people stop playing tactics on missions? Just kidding but seriously LOS pulls seem to be a foreign concept to some. Especially if we wipe a couple times and people still keep face pulling mobs or not letting them aggro on the LOS pull. It's like everyone is running DPS meters and are in competition with each other for top spot. I just wanna pull, kill, repeat til the last bad dude drops. Group one rage quit even after the leader plainly explained what he was doing then they'd just do whatever and we'd wipe and they blamed him. I hung in there he regrouped and the second bunch paid attention and were an awesome bunch. Honestly, we palyed like we'd always teamed up. The second group revitalized my faith in puggers. 

 

Training operators today, they are currently testing so....idle hands hop on forums and type....

 

Oh what is the XP bonus in groups? I didn't realize that was a thing but I popped 2 levels fairly quickly.

 

Wu, are you on Everlasting?

[WuTang]

10 minutes ago, KITANYA said:

 

Wu, are you on Everlasting?

Yes I am.

Have we crossed paths?

Edited February 27 by WuTang

[Sovera]

16 minutes ago, WuTang said:

Yes I am.

Have we crossed paths?

 

Oh heck, as am I. We gotta smack heads together. I'm @Sovera there, as well as ... Sovera 😄

[KITANYA]

2 hours ago, WuTang said:

Yes I am.

Have we crossed paths?

 

I'd be more than happy to help you out if you need a group or something in-game 🙂

 

 

[WuTang]

13 hours ago, KITANYA said:

 

I'd be more than happy to help you out if you need a group or something in-game 🙂

 

 

I'm down!