Barata

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Training Enhancements don't make as much impact as later. Much depends on your build and your design. Me? I mostly go, as a minimum, all Accuracy until DO. At DOs I still keep at least 3 slots devoted to Accuracy and then drop to 2 at SO level. There is NOTHING i despise more than missing. Even a weak hit is better to me than a powerful miss.


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That's good, sound strategy. The urge to put damage into the slots is pretty strong, but at the TO level, nothing makes as much of a difference as accuracy, so I do the same as you. I use only TO accuracies until I get to DOs. I do wind up breaking down though and using only two accuracy DOs in some powers unless I've turned up the difficulty level. If the difficulty is higher, or if I wind up teaming a lot and going up against tougher mobs, then I stick with the three accuracy DOs.

I've not only been amazed that so many people don't know the concept of pulling, but also that so many people just don't know how to follow instructions.

I was on a full team doing a particularly messy CoT mission on one of the their cave maps. The spawn was in a cavern right at the entrance where the tunnel opens up. A couple of large spawns were there and we faceplanted a couple times trying to fight them all (those Earth casters are such a pain!).

I finally told everyone to just follow my instructions (I had to try to take control because it was just too messy and there were too many deaths). I backed up in the tunnel to just around a bend. I told everyone "Wait here!!!! Do NOT come from around the corner. I'll bring a portion of the spawn here and they'll all be in a nice tight group for our AoE's! Just STAY HERE until they show up!" My plan was to snipe one and then drop an ice patch down at the bend. Of course you know what would happen.... at least a portion of the spawn would try to follow me around the bend, then they'd all be gathered up in a nice bunch slipping on the ice slick.

I went over this several times with everyone. I get ready, lay down my ice patch, snipe, and back up around the bend..... passing half of my team which had moved forward to be part of the action. So of course most of the mobs stay in the cavern and attack from a distance, the tanks run to meet them aggroing the other spawns, and we all faceplant.

I try this again and tell them the plan again and tell them "don't deviate! Just stay HERE where I'm standing. They'll come!" I lay down the patch, snipe again, back up, and see half the group running out to meet everyone.

At that point I just told them that as long as they continue to play that way, we'll just keep dying, so I left the group.

Yeah, sometimes it's better (and more fun) to just go in and take on the group. But with a large team, you can easily get spawns you just can't handle (multiple spawns close to each other). Pulling is a great tactic and has its place.

I played my robotics/force field MM last night to test out the patch. My first henchmen are slotted with two DO accuracies, two DO damages, and two SO damages (so the damage aspect is at the cap for ED). My protector bot is mainly slotted for defense, with some accuracy and a heal thrown in.

Before: With the difficulty turned up one notch, missions were still tricky. It was pretty frequent that my bots would be overwhelmed before they could finish the job and the mobs would come after me. I would die more frequently than any of my other archetypes.

After: Bots finish the job faster. Bosses still take a while to take down. A blaster could do the job faster. It would take all of my bots concentrating on a single mob to take him down in a reasonable amount of time (but still be outdone by any blaster or scrapper). All battles could be done faster with other archetypes, but that's fine because there's less risk to me. This performance level of the bots is what I more or less expected when I created my toon.

Devs: If you feel henchmen have become too powerful because the ehancements affect upgraded powers, please don't revert. Instead, just tweak the damage of the upgrade power. My henchmen were obviously underpowered before, and while I think they're fine now, if you decide to scale them back, bringing them back down to the level they were at just makes them underpowered again.

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Sorry about this screw up. I wanted you guys to test it before it went to Live to see if it made MM's too powerful.

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I have a robotics/force field mastermind on live. He's level 22 now. I managed to get his Battle Drones slotted with the equilavent of one SO accuracy and three SO damages. He is definitely underpowered. I can't imagine the upgraded weapons using the enhancements being overpowered. All four of my henchmen run into serious problems with a +1 boss. I would have to back off, resummon them (after the boss would one-shot them all one by one), rebubble them, and then go back to the boss again. Even the battles with minions and lieutenants take quite a while. I even took the leadership pool to try to get their damage output a bit higher since they were so drastically underperforming.

Don't get me wrong, they're a fun class to play and I love them, but I see them being outperformed by just about everything else out there.

Unless it's a special task force, or something like the Hive, I'll have to say I'm against having heros and villains capable of teaming up. I can't think of a single reason, outside of a mutual threat to humanity (like the Rikti or Hamidon), that heros and villains would even want to team up! If you're a hero who would actually team up with people commiting the crimes that you're fighting against, then you're not really a hero.... you're just a guy running around looking for heads to bust. I don't like forcing roleplaying on people, but I say at the very least the game should adhere to its lore and purpose... keep heros doing heroic deeds, and keep villains doing dastardly deeds.

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the new Chilling Embrace also debuffs damage by 14%! So instead of 100 damage every blow, the mob would do only 93 points of damage.

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What am I missing? Wouldnt minus 14% of 100 be 86 dmg? Not 93?

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I caught that too.

Like I mentioned earlier, I don't have CE on a tank, I have it on my Blaster. But I've seen a big difference in the damage I take just by making sure I get close enough occasionally to trigger the CE effect.

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The fundamental problem is that the accuracy bonus isn't enough to replace the accuracy enhancements that people typically use above L12. Assuming you stick to even-level mobs (which is not always an option, even when doing your own Heroic-level missions), you'll hit them 87% of the time with no enhancements. Pre-DOs, that's pretty good. Once DOs are available, it's only par with what all the other blasters are doing. When you reach SO level, you'll find yourself hitting 8% less often than other blasters, because they will all have an SO accuracy enhancement or some equivalent, which brings them to the to-hit ceiling.


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So you're saying that with a single SO accuracy enhancement in an attack, that's more than enough accuracy for you? That when you're grouped and the mobs are +2 and +3, and you have much more lieutenants and bosses, you're comfortable with how accurate you are?

You're making the assumption that people won't use accuracy enhancements in their attacks. People will still use an SO enhancements in their slots. The difference is that instead of a 33% boost to accuracy, they'll have a 49% boost. That's pretty good because a 33% boost may let you hit the ceiling against an even level minion, but it doesn't when it's a +2 or +3 lieutenant or boss. And that's more in line with the kind of villains you're up against when grouped. Heck, even when soloing, if you set your difficulty up to midrange or higher, you're going up against +1 or +2 bosses! And you'll miss quite frequently with just a single SO accuracy.

The accuracy boost doesn't alleviate the need for some tweaking of the set (and especially doesn't alleviate the need for MAJOR tweaking of Trick Arrows), but there's no way you can discount it as being meaningless. Many many many blasters would greatly benefit from another 16% accuracy.

I think Archery, both the Blaster primary and the Trick Arrow sets, need some work.

But I simply won't discount the benefits of increased accuracy like some people here are. I have a blaster. I had him equipped with the typical 1 accuracy/5 damage enhancers. He played great. Until I was on a large team with some members a level or two above me! Going against a +2 or +3 lieutenant or boss meant that even with an SO accuracy enhancement, he would miss more than just occasionally. I'm currently experimenting putting two accuracy enhancements in some of my powers. I've found that with the increased accuracy, even when I'm up against a +3 boss, I hit very reliably.

Also, I'm amazed that people discount the extra accuracy when people consistently complain that "Defiance is no good because it only gives a damage increase, and what we really need when we're in danger is an accuracy increase!"

Seriously people, hitting something reliably is VERY important. Don't discount the extra accuracy. An SO enhancement is really nice, but as the Defiance threads point out, increasing accuracy beyond that is still very important!

That said, I still think the bow and arrow powers need some work.

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Why did it need the -Recharge changed?

Was it that overpowered with the damage debuff?

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Well, States said it was basically a 7% damage debuff, which is not insignificant. Now it's being upped to 14%. That's a pretty nice damage decrease!!! My own feelings is that the original recharge rate, combined with a debuff that large, might verge on being unbalancing. Remember, the debuff applies to the villains and reduces their damage regardless of their target. Someone turning their attention away from the tank and firing on the blaster or defender will still be debuffed, so in a way, it has one advantage over just adding resistances to the tank in that everyone on the team would benefit.

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My biggest problem with this set is that Defenders are supposed to be the BUFF archetype. It says so in the manual, right next to the words "Defender Primary."

This set has absolutely nothing to do with buffing; it is a watered-down debuff power set -- actually more of a SUPPORT set, which would place it as a Blaster secondary. Which is where they should have put it ... could have put it, before they pushed this issue live. Now it's too late.

I will never play a TA Defender, and I will do my very best not to group with any TA Defenders. It is a gross misconception, a lie even, to claim that this set has anything to do with what a Defender is supposed to do. If I am looking for a Defender to BUFF my team, the last thing I want is a watered-down Controller.

Even if they "fix" the damage they did with the nerf, it will still not be a Defender power set.

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The set needs to be tweaked a bit, that much is certain. But to complain that it's not a buffing set? Debuffing a villain is the same thing as buffing your teammates. Sonic gives you damage resistance, making your teammates take less damage. TA debuffs villains' damage, making your teammates take less damage. Force Fields increase defense, TA decreases accuracy. The end effect is the same. Rather, the end effect should be the same, which is the only problem with TA... the debuffs need to be equal to the buffs in other defender sets. But that's just tweaking the power set. Considering that all of the other powers are version 5 right now, and TA, Archery, and Sonics are version 1, it's understandable it has a bit of catchup to do.

Defenders, whether buffing or debuffing, are the true support class. Trick Arrows belong in the Defender archetype and shouldn't be squeezed into other archetypes because some feel Defenders should be limited to just a single type of action.

Actually, the change to Hibernate is pretty sweet. You can send out some taunts, get some aggro, and if you take too much damage, just slip into Hibernate for a few moments to get your health back up. You can come out of it quickly to regain aggro without having to worry about your defenses being down.

That's pretty darn sweet!!!!

Here's something I recommend being added to Defiance:

Increasing mezz resistance as defiance kicks in. Maybe when Defiance first kicks in, a hero's mezz magnitude increases by one. That would mean that single holds cast on the hero would be ignored, and it would take 2 or more to hold them. Then as the hero's health drops, he gets more and more magnitude so that it would take more to hold him or mezz him. There would have to be some tweaking so that while a Blaster gets some mezz resistance, he's not at the level of scrappers and tankers.

I think this could add a lot to Blasters' survivability.


On another note..... I personally like Defiance, so that negates the "nobody likes it" statement. Everyone saying that the high damage in Defiance doesn't kick in until you only have a sliver of health left is not realizing something. And that thing is that you don't have to wait until you get to a sliver of health to hit the 500% damage cap! Your attacks are already going to be slotted with damage enhancers and running at least at 200% anyway! (That's assuming three SO damage enhancements are added to a power). Realizing that, you only have to hit the point of Defiance where it buffs you an additional 300% to hit the cap of 500%! And that's being very conservative that you only have 3 SO damage enhyancers. I know that with my main attacks, I have at least four, with the other two being accuracy and endurance reduction or recharge. Some of my attacks have 5 damage SOs, which brings up the damage to 260%. That means I only need another 240% to hit the 500% cap, and that point comes earlier in your health bar.

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JESUS!!!!

.5 % defense?? I thought it was a bug.. dear god... why do they bother to say that power offers defense?

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Actually if the power can be slotted up to a total of +3% defense then it would be probably be better to either remove the ability to slot the power for +def and set it at 3% or just remove the +def component completely.

3% +def is virtually nothing, you need to take like what 20 attacks for that to make even a little difference. Players who DO NOT read the forums will end up wasting slots in that power thinking they will see some meaningful return on their investment. Which will not be the case.

Thats is definatly not cool as it punishes players who do not come to the forums or number crunch the game.

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I agree. I'm very supportive of many of the design decisions, but this one I have to say is not very good. The defense is just too small, even fully-slotted, to make a difference. But someone who doesn't come to the forum may be dropping slots into like crazy and wondering why he doesn't see a difference.

Either:
1) Make it a base 3%, slottable.
2) Take away all defense from it so as not to confuse anyone. or
3) Make it 5% unslottable (pseudo-noticeable, and you can't mess it up by slotting it for defense).

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I got a question...

How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootise Roll pop?



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Three (and if you get that joke, you're old).

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I feel so old....





I'm so old, Deckard Cain couldn't identify me.

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Its sad because it was (is) a great game, the biggest falw in coh is in fact the devs (

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Ummm..... that statement is contradictory. It "was (is)" a great game because of the devs. If it wasn't for the devs, there'd be no game.

Good guide! I wasn't as happy with Rexpendable's guide as other people were. He has it set in his mind there's only one way a stone tank should be built, and bases his guide upon that way. For example... he assumes you have Hasten. I don't because I haven't needed it yet. My toggles recycle plenty fast for me, and my defenses, along with rooted, lets me get by without Earth's Embrace (which I'm picking up at a later point). My own stone tank, Agatha Stone (I really love that character, she's probably turned into my favorite, and is one of the few I actually roleplay) is only up to level 27 at the moment, but I do have some observations that I've made while playing her....

Mud Pots is indeed a great aggro tool. When I've played alongside fire tanks, I notice their burning aura tends to pull mobs away from me, so it seems that it generates more aggro than mud pots. But other than that, it really keeps mobs centered around me. As my own personal choice, I six-slotted with 2 endurance reducers and 4 damage enhancers. Even then, the damage is not great. But Agatha isn't really a melee toon, and herding isn't as slow as you'd think it would be. I turn on rock armor and mud pots, then run through missions until I have a boatload of mobs centered around me. I'll then go into rooted and let mud pots take them down (supplementing it with a few AoE energy melee strikes). Sure, mud pots takes a while, but it's doing it for incredibly large groups of mobs, so I'm actually arresting the mobs at least as quickly as I would with my scrapper or blaster.

Once rock armor is six-slotted with SOs, it's really not difficult at all to tank large groups. There are so many misses that Rooted heals up your damage as it's happening. Only when I overextend myself do I notice my health dropping faster than it replenishes, but usually the mobs start dropping before it gets too low, and then I'm not taking nearly as much damage.

I also six-slotted Stone Skin. Because of mud pots, most mobs are in melee range and using appropriate attacks, so when they hit, the reduction in damage is sweet.

That leads to my next quandry. Rexpendable promotes living in Granite Armor, but with Weave and maybe Stealth, you can drop +2 or +3 bosses to the base 5% chance to hit. With Stone Skin and Tough, your resists won't be as nice as Granite, but your defense is going to be incredibly higher, and you'll get hit much much less frequently. And unless you turn on Rooted, you won't have the speed penalties associated with Granite. I plan on getting Granite (duh!), but am debating now if I want to invest in Tough/Weave. An advantage of having Tough/Weave is that it would seem that Granite is not necessary all the time, meaning you have more variety with what you can use at any given time.

Any thoughts on this?

I have a 27 fire/ice blaster that I created early in the game. This was before I knew the importance of Stamina, so he doesn't even have Stamina. I recently picked him back up again and started playing (he was 25 when I picked him back up, so I got him to 27 now). I can definitely see certain things coming into play that are making him more difficult to play. So here are my observations about damage and ability and defenses....

1) The secondary set is not melee, it's control. Only in the fire secondary set is damage-dealing given more emphasis than control. And some of the control mechanisms the blaster have are quite nice. Roots and holds are invaluable, as are AoE effects. To me, the secondary power set is what makes Blasters so fun to play. The wide array of effects (slows, holds, roots, etc.) make playing a Blaster interesting and not just a spam-fest of the attack buttons.

2) Range, which is supposed to be our defense, isn't working out that way in a lot of cases. It's true that there are plenty of mobs (level 27 Family) which shoot me from a larger distance than all of my attacks (with the possible exception of snipe). I dread the higher levels where just a couple of these ranged shots can take me out.

3) Damage output is quite nice still. I do massive amounts of damage and have little or no problem with how quickly I can dish it out.

4) Any kind of Stun or Hold is very often fatal. Having no defenses is bad enough, but not having any way to mitigate mezzes makes it much much more difficult.

Seeing those things, here's my thoughts on how to improve the Blaster set, and these thoughts do NOT revolve around the pissing match over the damage cap between blasters and scrappers ("I should have more power!", "No, I should!", "No, I should!"). In relation to each of my observations above:

1) Increase the effects of the secondary control set. For example, the ice set slows speed and recharge of the mobs. Increase the time that the mob's recharge speed is slowed, and slow it a bit more. Add in things like: A) Ice Set. Decreased recharge AND accuracy; B) Fire Set. Decreased defenses along with the normal DoTs. C) Electrical. Decreased Endurance Recovery AND possible chance of confusion. D) Devices. Not sure. It's a pretty impressive set for its variety. E) Energy. Knockdown/back AND stun (and 3-second stuns don't count, make them noticeable, like 5+ seconds AFTER they get up). Increasing the control aspects of the secondaries greatly helps to compensate for decreased defenses.

2) Naturally increase range of all blaster attacks as level increases. Decrease damage of mobs' ranged attacks in proportion to their range. If they're further away, they do less damage.

3) Damage is already nice. It's only the other stats that make blasters so difficult at higher levels. I don't believing upping the damage capability will help.

4) All ATs should get some kind of inherent stun/hold break. A click power that breaks a stun or hold and leaves you resistant to them for 10 seconds, recharging in one minute (not enhanceable and not influenced by haste or any other recharge-shortening power like Accelerate Metabolism). This would allow everyone to be able to break a hold and retaliate or retreat, but make them do it quickly because shortly it'll wear off and they absolutely will not be able to do it again for another 60 seconds.

Playing a fire/ice blaster, I've really had to change my tactics. I got comfortable playing scrappers and a new tank. I died a lot when I picked Searing Kold up again, but have been relearning him and found something out.....

Blasters are a VERY interesting and challenging class to play. They have high damage potential, but actually have some crowd control capabilities. Unlike scrappers where you spam your attack buttons after turning on your defenses, or tankers where you pretty much just herd (and if you're solo, spam attack buttons), you have to use strategy.

When I'm in a team, I really never feel like I'm not contributing. I do a lot of damage, and I help out the tanks with my secondary power set. Yes, that's right. I help the tank out. The tank is there grabbing aggro, so I get in close where my Chilling Embrace cuts back how often the mobs are hitting him. My Ice Patch placed right next to him also cuts back how much damage he takes. Runners are locked down with Chillblain. Aggroed groups around the tank are hit with my Fireball (AoE fire and smashing damage) and cone attack. And my snipes take out mobs at a range that are attacking teammates. I deal out a lot of damage, and I add some crowd control into the mix, and I HAVE A BLAST! (no pun intended).

So all in all, the only thing I'd like to see done to Blasters are the things I mentioned to make them not glass canons, but maybe plexiglass ones. When I'm surprised by a mezzer that comes out from behind something and puts a hold on me or stuns me, I'd like to know that I can still do something instead of just knowing that I'll be heading to the hospital shortly. They're already fun because of their seocndaries set, so I'd like to see those few changes to help compensate for their weaknesses.

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So, You spent your 20's using an AI exploit...
You spent your 20's and 30's using a specific ability that only 1 set has (I'm not sure if KB is an exploit, but players sure hate it!)
You spent your 40's using a Travel Power exploit.


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You honestly believe "pulling" is an exploit? I'm sorry, but you're weakening any argument you have by making totally outrageous statements like that. "Pulling" exists in EVERY MMORPG game I've ever played. For CoH, it's even covered in the Stragegy Guide (which is endorsed by Cryptic).

To a smaller extent, "Kiting" is a valid tactic too. For any ranged fighter, keeping at range while continuing to fire is a valid tactic. Even the U.S. Army will pull its troops back if the enemy advances too closely so that it can maintain a ranged advantage.