BellaStrega

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Since she's not been nominated, am I to assume that Kalimagdalene is not a woman?

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I am indeed a woman.

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OMG I cant believe I forgot to ask this.

8. What power is on the chopping block in place of assasins strike?
9. Will we keep shadow maul?

I am glad it will be a resist set, finally a stalker that can take a hit without dying so fast after an assasin strike . I know defense will be getting buffed but even then I dont see it making too much of a difference given there is always that 5% of getting completely owned.

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8. I'm still sticking with my prediction of Dark Consumption, especially since ToF is confirmed to be staying in.
9. Don't see why not, the other sets kept their cone melee attacks.

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Shadow Punch
Smite
Shadow Maul
Assassin Strike
Build Up
Placate
Touch of Fear
Dark Consumption
Midnight Grasp

Just a guess.

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Wait... so soul transfer is "counter productive" yet CoF and OG remain? I'm confused.

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OG and CoF are defensive countermeasures you can activate after breaking hide. Soul Drain is what you use to boost your damage and accuracy. Since Stalkers need to do this before they attack, Soul Drain simply wouldn't work for Dark Melee any more than Follow Up did for Claws.

You can't compare CoF/OG with Soul Drain and treat them as even remotely similar powers.

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And your comment about Seismic Smash being better than anything but ET is incorrect. Seismic Smash was recently buffed so that it would be brought up to the same level as Total Focus, before that it was worse. It still is if you consider that Total Focus is half energy dmg while Seismic Smash is purely smashing dmg. And then Energy melee still has ET on top of that. The energy melee set has *two single target attacks that are arguably better than anything in all of Stone melee, and most other sets as well.


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Seismic Smash currently does raw damage equal to KO Blow and Total Focus.

Seismic Smash uses the same animation as Haymaker, Bonesmasher, and Air Superiority. This gives it a much faster animation time than KO Blow or Total Focus. KO Blow gets Rage, though, and TF gets to do energy/smashing damage.

However, I think the activation time is a distinct advantage.

A bit of a minor quibble:

Vengeance is good. If someone drops, you can hit it (or as I do, hit power boost then vengeance) and pretty much give your team a substantial +def/+to-hit/+dmg boost until it wears off. I don't see the need to use it on a defeated character as a "not cool" thing, unless you find yourself letting characters die to use it. I've found it very useful when things start to go pear-shaped.

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I miss the old TG grasp animation. The old animation just had so much more style than the goofy handclap we have now. At least it survives in two powers, Bitter Freeze Ray and Thunderous Blast.

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The old animation looked really nice, I'll give you that! But it was just like the Trick Arrow and Archery animations now... it looked very sweet, but was painfully slow, specially for a PBAoE heal.

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When Dark Miasma had the old TG animation, the lack of status protection was a boon, as immobilized and held teammates could not run away before the animation finished and the heal went off.

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Prior to ED, it seemed like the HamiO Black Market was going to boil over with the demand for Ribos (Resist/End) and Golgis (Heal/End).

Lately, it seems like Nucleoli (Dam/Accs) are near the top of the demand list. Interestingly, the debuff HOs, Enzymes and Lysos seem to have gone up in value. Before, it seemed like you couldn't give them away. These days, it seems that the proliferation of multicomponent debuffing sets (Rad and Storm, for instance) has increased the relative value of these HOs.

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I've always taken Lysos, but I don't think I could realistically add one more to either of my 50s with any kind of reasonable benefit. People have been giving me enzymes recently, though.

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And here I was wishing that so many Acc/Mez HOs would stop dropping for me. I'm practically giving them away.

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Well, it just speaks to the point that HOs just weren't designed to be farmed, or collected en masse.

All those Dam/Ranges? There's a reason Flamer's attacks are almost all maxed out with those; I used to get them dumped on me like it was a Clearance Sale. To this day, I still get people trying to pawn them off on me.

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Those were dropping constantly for me...until I got my two ranged attacks slotted out with them. I really want acc/dam atm. Or maybe end reduce/to-hit debuff/defense-debuff.

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Then is there any chance of the drop rates for lyso's and enzymes being reduced to better even out the "economy"?

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Heck, I'd like an actualy "reward" screen to pick the right HammiO.

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That would be awesome to have. Trying to get enough acc/mez HO's for a mind controller is impossible...

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And here I was wishing that so many Acc/Mez HOs would stop dropping for me. I'm practically giving them away.

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I picked up an enzyme recently at a Hami raid and... is it just my imagination or is an enzyme really providing a 33% defense BUFF ?! That would make it better than Cyto's which only provide a 20% defense buff.

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It's a bug. It'll be fixed.

EDIT:
More specifically, Enhancements should only effect the things they are listed as effecting. Dual and Multi enhancements (such as Hami-O's) sometimes break that due to a flaw in our system. That flaw will be being closed in the not so distant future.

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Will there also be a fix so that HOs with traits that are supposed to be unslottable in some powers won't improve those traits in those power? I specifically mean things like: Membranes boosting Vengeance's recharge, or centrioles boosting range on melee attacks.

I've never really had a problem with them not exploding, but I tend to confuse as many as I can rather than fight them up front.

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Nice write up. Enjoyed the number portion and the compare and contrast with the various damage outputs.

Side note: Deceive is great fun against Malta. Sappers just beg to be deceived into zapping their buddies, and Engineers are great fun to have their Auto Turret blast them after they put it down.

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I have an Ill/FF controller to 20 and a Mind/Rad to 14, and a small part of my soul dies every time I meet controllers who skip their confuse powers.

Like the time I was on a team with two illusionists, doing invincible sky raiders missions. When I suggested they deceive the FFGs, they said "But that would steal XP!"

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Deceiving FF generators is certainly one of the "right times" to use Deceive. I was disliked immensely by SkyRaiders.

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I also love deceiving low-level CoT bosses. It's really funny to see two ruin mages drop earthquakes under such conditions.

Edit: My favorite favorite use of Deceive is against embalmed. It's comedy gold.

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Nice write up. Enjoyed the number portion and the compare and contrast with the various damage outputs.

Side note: Deceive is great fun against Malta. Sappers just beg to be deceived into zapping their buddies, and Engineers are great fun to have their Auto Turret blast them after they put it down.

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I have an Ill/FF controller to 20 and a Mind/Rad to 14, and a small part of my soul dies every time I meet controllers who skip their confuse powers.

Like the time I was on a team with two illusionists, doing invincible sky raiders missions. When I suggested they deceive the FFGs, they said "But that would steal XP!"

Goodbye, Alexa. This is a sad day for us, but opportunities no doubt abound for you.

Goodbye and good luck with your new project. I'm sorry to see you go.

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Notice how everything but heroic includes bosses. I hear it use to be Ten dificulty was the defult, and only setting. Could be wrong since it woulda been before I found CoH.

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Originally, "Heroic" was the only difficulty, except bosses spawned. When the difficulty slider was added, bosses were also boosted heavily. This led to things being too hard for some builds. The boss change was rolled back and bosses were removed from heroic missions.

Also, for a long time, there were really only two kinds of mission spawns: Even, which meant everything would spawn at your level; backloaded, which would start with +1 spawns near the entrance and devolve to larger and larger lower-level spawns. You could end up fighting bosses at the end who were two or three levels below you.

We were given mixed-loaded missions, where even and +1 spawns pretty equally. Originally, it was supposed to be three even minions or two +1 minions, but the numbers reversed at some point. For a short time, it was implied that this was a bug, but was later changed to be working as intended. There's also backloaded missions, where the first spawns are lower level and the later spawns increase in level.

For a long time, larger teams would also spawn higher levels. You'd get +1 at 5-6 and +2 at 7-8. This had the tendency to make large low-level team missions into death traps for relatively inexperienced players.

I wish there were a difficulty setting between Heroic and Tenacious, which would give Heroic spawns and bosses.

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Here's another tidbit. Joined a team today who lied about what we were facing. Turned out to be all 26s when I was told 24s. I had extreme dificulty hitting due to no accuracy being slotted. If on those rare times I hit 3 or so times, my hit/miss ratio improved to the point my heal was actualy reliable. Still did almost no damage, but could heal. If I didn't hit 3 times nothing was gonna hit. Odds were I hit MAYBE once or twice against any one foe. That's facing +4s btw.

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This matches my experience with radiation blast. I'd have trouble hitting, but once I got one in, it sort of became a cascading defense failure. The first blast's speed + irradiate's debuff are really nice.

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Ever notice how the ears on elves just keep getting longer and longer and longer these days?


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They're called handles.





Seriously though.. I'd highly reccomend the next event be in boston. It's a pretty big place, alot of people available, close to NY/new england, a whole lotta good advantages (still a 5 hour drive for me, but it's still a damned nice venue)

Zeus - god of events

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Boston!?!

I'm sure you meant Tampa. Right? RIGHT!?!

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No, you both mean Seattle.

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It was nice to see those picutres and put faces to names.

Aaahhh... the pretty people.

It was also fun to be passing messages by proxy to people like Cuppa. Also, very cool to get phone calls from friends that I'd only ever talked to online.

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I almost could've been there.

Pesky short notice airfare...

Is this not the same for Elude and Overload?

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Then what would the reason be to nerf it?

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Real actual demonstrated balance problems. Hurricane may be the best argument to keep toggle-dropping to some degree. If you can kite and brawl or a bubbler can force bolt, that has a chance of getting Hurricane even through Clear Mind or the like.

Even so, as pointed out here, it is possible for melee characters to attack, and ranged characters have less of a problem. So, do stormers have vulnerabilities? Yes. They're not invulnerable. A well-played stormer can be hard to deal with in PVP, but there are counters.

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I can't wait for Recluse's Victory. Siren's Call is better than Warburg layout wise, but Warburg allows the higher level power. I haven't been in Bloody Bay since like the first few days of CoV's release. Siren's Call right now because there's not much else to do at 40. Getting to 50 will be nice. Then I can use the Stalker version of MoG till it gets nerfed. :-b

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Is stalker MoG qualitatively different from scrapper MoG?

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We'll see how weak my rationale is if the devs nerf hurricane. Then I guess it will be my fault that it happened.. Sure. Ok. Given the fact one of your own started this thread and was like "Nerf On the Horizon?" about Hurricane I think that clearly shows there are more then me aware or complaining about it being overpowered and it may be next to be nerfed whether you like it or not. If it's nerfed, go scream at devs and use your rationale to them and see if they listen or not. Make sure they lie first before you accuse them of lying like you're doing with me. Given their track record, I'm sure they'll fumble up something they say in regards to a nerf like they've done in the past. I'll save my responses from now on to the whiners who don't like change, but at LEAST can respond maturely. Peash.

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If Hurricane gets nerfed - and it could happen - you can rest assured that it's not because you can't fight a stormer in PVP.

Also, I'd really like to see how it works in Recluse's Victory before demanding such a necessity.

Dark One,

assuming I want to keep Ice Storm for the slow, do I need to slot slows in Blizzard as well?

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dark one,

very nice review of most of the powers. but I would question, just a bit, your review of aim and build-up, especially aim. you basically dismiss this power, except for bosses or AVs because you don't need the extra accuracy.

to that extent I agree with you, but as I understand it the two components of aim are: greatly increases your accuracy (this = 100% increase) and slightly increase your damage (this = 66%). a 66% increase to your damage !! not sure I would consider that a "slight" increase. I know you are just repeating the wording that's on the power, but (to me) that wording is very misleading.

build-up is reversed. it grants you a 100% increase to damage and a 66% increase to accuracy.

with the fairly quick recycle times on ice attacks, you can usually get off several blasts, bitter ice blasts, freeze rays, etc in the 10 second duration of those powers.

think about it this way. Aim basically = 2 damage SOs and Build up = 3 damage SOs. that's pretty significant starting as early as lvl 4.

to each their own, but one of the big advantages of the energy secondary is that you get build up at lvl 4, by far the earliest of any secondary. I slot both of those with at least 2 recharges, would probably go 3 here without hasten, and use them in every battle.

if there is one mob I really, really need to hit I might wait until both are ready and hit aim + build up. normally, I just alternate with which ever one is up.

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Just to back this up:

Aim + Build Up means I can finish many bosses in 4-6 attacks. Using both before a boss fight makes that fight very short and much less dangerous.

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Your right, because when the set came out and was on test most of the experienced posters on TA went over how it was balanced and what benefits it had then.

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Teams of trick arrows were combining their debuffs to amazing effect (as defenders tend to do).

Some vocal posters adamantly proposed that Trick Arrow should be a controller primary because it had "too much control." Others proposed it should be a blaster secondary because it had entangle arrow in the first tier.

At the same time, the devs decided to start nerfing control outside controller sets.

Also, one of the following might be possible:

The devs completely forgot how effective other defenders are and felt that reducing TA's effectiveness would be balanced.

or

The devs feel that TA effectiveness should be the target for defender primaries.

or

The devs overestimated TA effectiveness prior to nerf or underestimated it post-nerf.