Blood Red Arachnid

Out of sheer curiosity, I decided to experiment around with the mechanics of the various interface damage procs to see how effective they are, and how they behaved. I haven't seen anyone else do this, nor have I read about any explanation as to how these damage procs work. The three I had tested were as follows:

Preemptive Total Radial Conversion on a Willpwer/Battleaxe Tank
Spectral Total Radial Conversion on a Sonic/Archery Defender
Cognitive Total Radial Conversion on a Grav/Thorn Dominator

All fights were against even con and above enemies. What I found as far as observations go was... weird. First, general observations:

1)The damage procs will tick anywhere from 1 to 5 times. Ticking once or twice is far more common than 4 or 5 times.
2)At level 50+1, all procs did 11-16 damage per tick while unboosted on even con and higher enemies.
3)Procs only trigger once per attack, and not once per each hit in multi-hitting attacks (I.e. flaming arrow will only trigger the proc when it is fired, and not for the additional fire damage it does)
4)Procs trigger with PPP pets and troller/dom pets, but not lore pets.
5)Procs trigger on judgement
6)For continuous patch damage like caltrops, interface procs trigger at the same time and rate as regular damage procs.
7)The procs hit for the same amount of damage, regardless of the strength of the attack used.
8)The difference between a minor DoT and a moderate DoT is that minor DoT does 11 per tick, while moderate does 13 damage per tick.
9)The damage did not change from one AT to another.

I do find that the differences between "minor" and "moderate" were very hard to observe, with only one or two points of damage difference at 50+1. I also find it strange that, for a sizeable portion of hits, the damage proc will only tick once. This is somewhat misleading to the nature of the damage procs in the interface slot, and unfortunately means that the damage procs are doing far less damage than I expected.


Now for the weird, some of the stranger things I've seen are the following:

*On preemptive, after the proc first activates, hitting the enemy again will cause the damage to jump from 12-13 to 16 damage per tick, despite showing no evidence of additional activation. When multiple procs hit at the same time, they will both tick for 16 damage.

Also, in one instance while repeatedly attacking a phased enemy, when the enemy unphased the next hit triggered an 80 damage "tick".

*Spectral shows random effects regarding resistance debuffing. There are instances where debuffing the resistance would cause damage to jump from 13 to 17, and there are instances where debuffing resistance had absolutely no effect. All effects of debuffed resistance only changed the damage of the next triggered proc, and not if the target was currently under a DoT effect from the previous proc.



I do hope this helps anyone who is indecisive about whether or not they should go radial for damage or core for their effects. I do wonder if there is any outline that explains *exactly* what happens with the interface damage procs. What are your guys' thoughts on this?

They both have a 25 foot radius.

However... I almost never use them together. Hurricane in all its power has, in my experience, generally gotten on the nerves of my teammates who end up missing their AoE's and have to chase down enemies or in worst cases gets enemies stuck in walls. After all, Ice/Storm has plenty of ways to mezz an entire group into submission that doesn't involve scattering and throwing them around (ice slick + freezing rain's hilarious knockdown combination, Immobilize + -Recharge combination, Mass Hold + -Recharge). Due to the above and also due to the massive endurance drain of Hurricane, I only use it in emergencies and situations where the above control methods don't work (mostly against AVs).


One advantage to Shiver is that I can use Hurricane for defense while I use shiver at a distance to decrease recharge. This will keep my endurance drain about the same (which is currently too much) but gives me more defense.

This is on an Ice/Storm troller. I am in a debate about which of these to use.

Arctic Air Pros:
Always on
Slotted for 3 damage procs does ambient pulse damage
Pulsing confusion helps
-Stealth to enemies
Floors recharge to hard cap on enemies with use of nearly any other power in the set

Cons:
Drains endurance quickly, even with 3 IO endurance slotted
Requires to be in point blank range, which is dangerous for trollers
Requires a lot of slotting to be effective.
Draws aggro when I don't want it to.


Shiver Pros:
Floors recharge by itself
Requires very few slots
Good range and ease of useage.

Cons:
Does nothing else but slow movement and recharge
Wears off very quickly



What I generally do is use either of these powers in combination with Freezing Rain (when Ice slick isn't available) or along with Frost Bite to immobilize the group and hard cap their recharge so they spend most of the time standing around looking stupid while I pick them off. Currently, I am having both a bit of an endurance problem on my troller, and a bit of a "getting killed too often" problem, and I assume that Arctic Air, for all it's awesomeness, is to blame. But, I can't decide whether or not I should replace it with Shiver, which is safer but does very little for a comparatively short amount of time.

Does anyone have any opinions on this? Has anyone been in a similar dilemma and found a way out? Tune in next time, when some forumer provides an answer!

^Its called Godwin's law. The longer an online discussion grows, the probability of a comparison involving Nazi's or Hitler approaches 1.


From my experience, anyone who bothers to comment about how they're winning an argument or how someone else is losing is a troll. Just let this thread die.

A big priority regarding suggestions for me has always been this:

More zones, strike forces, Giant monsters, and generally more content for redside.

Even though I like redside a lot, it is kind of boring how I will always end up going through Mercy - Port Oaks - Cap Au - Nerva - sometimes St. Martial - Grandeville. All 40+ content is in Grandeville, or it is in a Co-Op zone. Blueside seems to have two zones for each level span, and has so many more task forces it makes me sad. The scarcity of contacts forces me to run paper missions, whereas in blueside it seems like you never run out of people to do things for. I remember getting that badge for catching ghosts just so I can have a contact on my very first playthrough redside.

So, I would like anything to help that along.

What I would prefer is for redside to get access to the shadow shard, but not the Hero's shadow shard. Villains would get access to different areas with different SFs for different aspects of Rularuu.

What I would be content with is another co-op zone. This eases the pain a bit for choosing to be a straight up villain.

If so, yay.

If not, then is there going to be an incarnate zone for redside to use, or is redside just getting a raw deal?

I currently play all different kinds of ATs with all different kinds of power sets. Currently, no two are alike.

Though the one I associate most with is a Stalker.

^Don't do that. You'll destroy the universe.

Introspection is always an interesting thing, since you'll find out that you're doing something crazy when viewed from the outside.

Me, I am similar in the sense that my sarcasm detector doesn't work and I get angry easy and somehow get other people angry easy. The difference is, I don't "change" when I go through real life or playing in the game. I'm pretty much the exact same way. I have been for as long as I can remember. Due to this and various other ticks, idiosyncrasys, and seemingly inherited strangeness and similarities with my parents, I'm pretty sure I have autism to some degree. The way movies and TV shows make it seem is overrated. Sure, I'm decent at calculus, but that is worthless when I'm getting chewed out by my boss because I made some customer unhappy for who knows what. I try my best to interact with people, but it is always like there is this secret code of communication that lets everyone else be in on the joke but me, and everyone else is furious as to why I don't get it.


As for why it is people fight on the internet despite not enjoying doing so, I have two theories.

First, there is the dominance theory. Essentially it is theorized that arguing developed not as a tactic to come to a resolution, but as a method to exert dominance over other people. Often times, the winner of an argument isn't even right; they're just more capable of putting things together and putting down the opposition. It's interesting to view dysfunctional marriages in this light, because it translates to being a large power struggle instead of who does the dishes.

But back to the topic, this strive for dominance didn't go away when the internet was invented. Instead, it is magnified due to the lack of empathy. The person you are fighting the top dog spot with ceased being a person altogether, and so because of this the stops are pulled out. And you never want to back down, because admitting defeat isn't just saying you were wrong about wonder woman's cup size. "Losing" is a profound statement about the quality of your very existence, and this quality resonates within the online community. The community looks down upon the loser and looks up to the winner, making the loser's experience that much more unpleasant in that forum. I remember once having an argument with someone that lasted nearly three months! We didn't back down... nay, we couldn't back down because the stakes were too high.


Second theory is based about Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Much like how tilling the land for food is unpleasant, arguing online fulfills a need. This isn't just dominance like above; it is attributed to one's needs for esteem and belonging. It justifies, identifies, and solidifies one's existence, provides competition and meaning to various facets about one's life. Without it, the opinions that one holds lack meaning. Someone being right, in order to have necessary and fulfilling value to any individual, needs to complete the dichotomy with someone else being wrong. And so, in the very same manner that you put food on the table, you feed your ego by making someone else be wrong. The absence of empathy due to the lack of face-time makes it easier to steal the metaphorical food right off of someone else's table.

EDIT: the second theory both compliments and contrasts the first one in different ways. The way it contrasts is that, according to the needs model, it is actually important to an individual that they be correct, and so they will often honestly seek out the answers. For the dominance model, this isn't actually important. As for which one is correct, well, I have both had arguments where I didn't bother to seek out the truth, and ones where I did. I have seen people claim to seek out truth when they obviously aren't, and I have seen people claim to seek out the truth when they just might have done so.

Many years ago I came under the impression that everyone is lying to me when they talk to me directly, so it is hard to see what is sincere and what isn't.

As I read through a pile of text citing various instances and generalized peeves that had no ill effect on my entertainment during those movies, I reminisce about a darker chapter in my life history where I was the same way. Growing up, I had a cynical phase where I hated most of the media I encountered. From movies to books to videogames to TV shows, I disliked them all. And it was often for very small reasons that would make me hate the whole movie. From thinking that the plot was too contrived, to thinking that the jaded plot wasn't inverted enough, to only remembering a few moments that would "ruin" the rest of the movie, as long as there was a reason to be discontent with the movie, I wouldn't like it.

For the movies I did like, they were often over trivial details, like not being a sequel or having a few funny or novel lines in them. But, it is a bit of an existential drug to be cynical about things. Dislikes are arguably a more distinguishing feature than alikes, so finding reasons to dislike things solidifies your position in the world. Discontent with the pedestrian in the mind of the cynic sets the cynic to be superior to the society that they are unhappy with. So then, they search out people who have the same "higher" standards to massage their ego.

Problem was, I was miserable, since I couldn't enjoy anything. I wasn't doing myself a service by hating movies, and I also wasn't doing anyone else a service, either. I would parade around the flaws of the movies that others like as if it were flaws to their very soul. Eventually I got sick of it and decided to to find reasons to like movies instead. Many years later, upon retrospection and introspection, I have come to learn the following:

• Disliking something does not make you superior to someone who liked unsaid something
• Your standards of approval are ultimately arbitrary.
• Therefore, things like simplicity and complexity don't equal better.
• Being unhappy with things generally doesn't pay out in the long run.
• "The best way to fight the cynicism of unreasonable standards is to get stupid about things."

A better way to say the fifth is to embrace your inner child, but I liked the phrase above. If you're being offended by the ending of the first Transformers movie, you seriously need to chill out.


Nowadays, I like most movies. From older movies like Twelve Monkeys, to newer ones like Inception (both I recommend), as long as there aren't any glaring plot holes or it isn't trying to shove a politically loaded message that I really don't like down my throat, I can enjoy most movies.

I wonder if anyone has considered just altering the incarnate salvage system so that the low rank missions give only common and uncommon, and the mid ranks up can give rares and VR. Or something along those lines... It's probably been covered, but truth be told I skipped a lot of this thread due to time constraints.


My biggest complaint over the incarnate trials is pacing. Whenever I was doing a TF for the first time, I always had the benefit of having someone be able to explain to me what they were doing, and generally what was going on. But incarnate trials gave me no such luxury. Before going to each one, I extensively read the strategy guides for each respective trial, knowing what I thought was full well what was going to happen. But, while running these trials I find myself hearing commands I don't understand (Slam, Nades!) with no time for anyone to explain them. The players were jumping from group to group, and I had no idea who specifically to kill or what motions they'll take next. When encountering a glowie or a terminal, I wasn't sure if we were clearing, luring, or just ignoring. The trial usually ended before I could figure it out, too. I couldn't take my time to learn the trial through experience, instead getting a wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am and a come back again soon. The instructions given by league leaders and the in-game text was so quickly given out that I didn't have time to understand what was happening.

This was different for the Underground and Minds of Mayhem. There was no absolute time limit to get things done, and because of this there was plenty of time to read the text, take in the sights, ask questions, and generally talk about what was going on. It is no wonder that these two trials are my favorites out of the bunch.

The others, I must have had to run them around four times succesfully before I could say I truly knew what was going on, the Lam requiring more since I had not memorized the locations of all crates and capsules. And this after reading the strategy guides. This spells out a very big problem for the whole trial system itself, and explains why it is that, despite the best efforts of league leaders, many trials fail miserably: at least a third of the players have no idea what is happening! When commands like "check your powers" are given, they don't know where to look, what they are looking for, why they are looking, what they do, where to use them, when to use them, why to use them, when not to use them, their distance, if they are re-useable or not, and how necessary it is that they be used. All they know is that the clock is ticking down, Marauder and his minions are kicking their butts, and it is possibly their fault but possibly not. Normally experienced and good players can compensate for the bad ones, and bad ones expect this. "If I'm bad at this, I'm one guy in 16, the others can probably cover for me", they think. But, this mentality carries a flaw that crops up whenever, by sheer randomness, a team is formed from of many of these bad players. When this happens, I'll end up having to do something crazy, like tank Marauder on my Dom. It never goes well.

It doesn't help that many players lack the wit to move league chat out of the general window, either.

After browsing through the forums for a bit, I am seriously re-thinking my Peacebringer build. However, I am not certain about many things, so I have quite a few questions.

#1: What is the minimum requirements to get Perma-Lightform? CoH planner won't work on my computer, so I can only gather so much info from build pages.

#2: Is it worth it to make a human-only build if you are *not* going for a perma-lightform?

#3: Likewise, aside from the benefits of usage in low levels, is there any advantages to Nova/Dwarf form in high levels now?

#4: Has there been any talk of tweaking/buffing/editing the Nova/Dwarf form of PBs?


Thanks for your time.

During the Minds of Mayhem trial's second phase, it seems like the voids are immune to being taunted. I've spent several trials just trying to get them to come near Penelope with no success. From what I have heard, taunting the voids toward Penelope was a tactic that worked in the past.


My question is this: Was there an update that makes voids immune to my constant insults, or is this a bug in the trial?

I imagine that the stalker combo chain will be different, since AS will still auto-critical after a placate. Depending on how potent Assassin's focus works, placate can still be useful. If the focus takes awhile to build up to good levels, or if it depletes after each AS despite failing, or if it depletes quickly between mobs, then my attack chain will look something like this:

AS -> moves while AS charges -> Placate -> AS -> continue to fight normally using non-interruptable AS and focus.


Additional placates shouldn't be necessary for anything that isn't a cyclops EB or an AV.

I, too, am still having a plethora of crash problems. It mostly crashes on trials, but there have been instances where it will crash while I am soloing in an instanced mission. It crashes whether I have graphics turned up or to a minimum.

Types of crashes: Unknown. The game just quits on me. No error screen, no assertion failure, just stop working and then quits itself.

Macbook 5,1
Mac OS 10.6.8
Intel Core 2 Duo 2GHz processor
2 GB 1067 MHZ DDR3 Memory
NVIDIA GeForce 9400M GPU graphics card 256 MB RAM

... AS benefits the most from placate due to the high damage it does. In many cases, the critical damage done by other attacks isn't enough to justify the 1.5 second addition to attack time. In fact, all attack with less than 1.5 second attack times are actually weakened by critical hits from placate. You can go further than that, since with innate critical hits placate technically only increases damage by about 90%.

All attacks that don't have a full critical are weakened. Total focus, for example, has I believe only a 20% increase in damage on critical, which is not worth adding 1.5 seconds to the activation time.

Attacks that are low damaging don't benefit much if the player is built to have some kind of continuous attack chain on them. It is, after all, more practical to just fill that 1.5 second void with another punch to the face than to somewhat increase the DPS of a weaker attack.


Your statements perplexes me, since the Damage Per Activation Time, as per my calculations, shows that placate + AS is one of if not the most time-efficient way to inflict damage.

I know the feeling, man. I recently canceled my subscription because, in large part, due to the random amount of assertion failures, sound loops, mapservers, and crashes that I get. It makes playing the game nigh impossible.

The issue is definitely with i19, since I didn't have these problems prior. Been trying things like running the verifier before each login, completely reinstalling CoX, running on minimum graphics, and the glitches don't seem to follow any rhyme or reason. Could go a day without a single problem despite running mothership raids and TFs out the wazoo, next day, I crash twice every half hour doing the exact same content.

I'm just going to wait for i19.5 and i20 to see if the problem gets fixed by then.

Hm... the placate + AS combo can take anywhere from 4.17 seconds to 5.17 seconds. Unless your KM or BS, it'll take 4.5 seconds.

From critical, an AS does 2.8 times it's listed damage, meaning it has a DPAT and a DPCC 2.8 times higher than what is listed, then only 2/3rds of that except for KM and BS. To be frank, I'm not sure how they calculate DPCC, so I'm just going to say that it does 389 damage in 4.5 seconds prior to slotting (DPAT of 85.63 for all but KM and BS). In my franken-slotted AS, I have 96.7% bonus before musculature, coming to a base damage of 273.45 with a resulting critical hit of 765.7 before resistances are factored in. Since I don't have all stalker sets to 50, I'll have to use the unboosted statistic for these following numbers. Top 3 DPAT for each of the following sets. I will leave out Dual Blades since I don't have the whole combo system memorized.

In BS:
Placate + AS= 75.24
Hack = 68.57
Head Splitter = 62.05
Disembowl = 60.55

Claws:
Slash= 55.19
Shockwave= 57.83
Focus= 66.07

Dark Melee:
Midnight Grasp= 74.15
Siphon Life= 56.47
Smite= 75.63

EM:
Lightning Rod= 69.13
Chain Lightning= 229.11 (?)
Charged Brawl= 56.28

Energy Melee:
Energy Transfer= 94.97
Energy Punch= 67.00
Total Focus/Bone Smasher= 60

Kinetic Melee:
Placate + AS = 93.28
Concnetrated Strike = 69.95
Smashing Blow= 68.59
Body Blow= 60.29

Martial Arts:
Storm Kick = 88.74
Crippling Axe Kick =73.68
Cobra Strike/Crane Kick= 65.27

Ninja Blade:
Soaring Dragon= 75.26
Gamblers Cut= 69.72
Golden Dragonfly= 69.28

Spines:
Ripper = 57.35
Throw Spines =46.36
everything else is less than AS before the critical...


For boosted DPAC just multiply it by 1.95 to get the numbers, but the ratio's all stay the same. This isn't fully comprehensive of attack deliveries and their resulting effects, but it seems the only two attacks that have a higher DPAT than Placate + AS is Energy Transfer from Energy Melee and Storm Kick from Martial Arts. Though AS is quite expensive at 14.35 endurance each use. The only attacks that cost noticeably more endurance are Total Focus, Concentrated Strike, and Eagle Claw.

Seems like the placate + AS combo not only does big beefy numbers of 700+, but is also rather time efficient and is accessible to all sets/ delivery types. According to the game, placate costs no endurance, so each time it's charged I would consider the combo as at least "worth a shot".


Also interesting I think, by these standards, Dark Melee would probably be the best bet for soloing AVs. Good damage type, nice effects, and good DPAT.

I remember hearing about this while watching a documentary on comic books.

The CCA was originally proposed in response to the backlash from a study done by a scientist. The study was to find the relationship between comic books and violent behavior, and this correlated very positively. Since the novel idea that it's possible that more violent kids just read comic books was too difficult (that, or people didn't want to risk it), people blamed violent behavior in kids on comic books. They did what any responsible parent should do, and solved the problem by trying to eliminate comic books and their influence. CCA gave standards to comic books that would allow parents to be at ease while their children watched it.

Which is basically the story of nearly any witch-hunt that goes on. Through the thralls of time, it is forgotten that these things are done with legitimate concern, and not trying to deal with a problem that legitimately affects kids is morally reprehensible.

I find that a lot of the communities value is linked directly with the server they are on. I remember going to one server (before GR so all but Freedom and Virtue were nearly empty), painfully forming the first positron TF, only to find myself adding two players to ignore because they were some of the most angry and annoying people I had met. I remember turning to my sister, whom I usually compulsively tell about this stuff, and saying "Well, I checked out this server, the bad news is that there are only 10 people on, and the worst news is that over half of them are *****". I can't remember which server it was, though.


But this community is really good. Though I see the trolls and the gold farmers and the super-elitist (second server I tested: "Everyone is super-elitist but strangely suck worse than others". Yes, I am not a very kind individual), the interesting thing is that I only encounter these people on occasion. Going in Atlas Park I'll hear maybe one troll once in the day, but that's about it. Don't find that many people who I have to add to the ignore list, either. When someone needs help, they get help, and people don't try to shamelessly scam other.

Without knowledge of MMO communities and gaming communities in general, you would think the above description depicts a rogues den. That is, of course, until you try to go to another community to find that these spammers, scammers, trollers, gold farmers, haters, and general unpleasant people outnumber other players 3:1. The epitome of this was when I tried to buy something, and the 9 offers I got from sellers were all trying to scam me. Every single one...

Aside from my general unpleasantness, I've actually been a game moderator in a few of these places. It is never pleasant when your the law around those places. On my first day being sworn in, a few players dedicated themselves to try to troll me for 3 hours straight. Non-stop barely rule-abiding insults and distractions for three hours. Eventually they gave up, but the magnitude of this sheer evil is ridiculous. I have problems merely doing anything for three hours straight, let alone just following someone around yelling nonstop.


It's the general curse of the internet to make people more angry than usual. The social outlets on the internet provide us with a medium where we can act out all of our daily rage without getting punched in the face, a place where all of the nonverbal and tone-cues are lost in text, and the ability to filter out annoying stimuli and differences leave us with thin, prejudice skin. In real life, these tendencies are rooted out by social interaction; the aforementioned punch to the face, having to tolerate people you have nothing in common with, and getting meaningful criticism from other people. But not on the internet.

Instead, these behaviors can make for some rather instant gratification. Just like how younger siblings will pester the older ones, getting a reaction from another person will be enough existential justification to do it again. Eliciting a reaction means commanding a certain level of power, and putting someone down simultaneously puts you up while being ten times easier to do.

Combine all of the above factors, and I do truely fear for what the next generation will have in store.

I would give my vote for Energy Melee on soloing AVs due to my experience with it. Energy Transfer and Total Focus can lay on a surprising amount of damage, and the stuns stack up during their down phase.

A question, though. I notice no mention of using placate + assassin strike on the AVs. Is this tactic supposed to be a given or are you avoiding it?

I personally didn't think I would need tough or weave on my tank... until I did the Apex / Tin Mage, and started doing +4 TFs. After Bobcat slashes you for 5000 damage, you'll want to have hard-capped slashing resistance if your anywhere near her pointy frontside.

The cool thing about the fighting pool on, well, pretty much any melee AT is that the bonuses from tough and weave become more potent the more Resistance/Defense you have. I.E. my Willpower tank can get his S/L resistance up to the low 80's without the fighting pool. Tough lets him beef up to 90. Doesn't sound like much at first, until you notice that I am taking 10% of damage instead of 20%; cutting the incoming damage by half!

If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing. My motto for tanking.

Hersoside is definitely more active than villainside. I was actually disappointed with redside on this server, since I rarely see any SFs run, very few teams form, and it seems like everyone just stands around at the market never saying a word. Sometimes I suspect they're gold farmers.