ClawsandEffect

Bolded what I'm addressing here.

I think the idea was to have the effect of the bullet traveling through the first guy and hitting the guy behind him, and the only way they could pull that off with the game engine was to make it an extremely narrow cone. The only way you're going to hit all 3 possible targets with it is if they are standing in a line. I don't think it was really meant to be a true AoE.

Knowing how it works makes me like it even LESS. Because it makes no logical sense whatsoever.

Anyone who is not aware of how dumb KB works in this game will fire Explosive Blast at an enemy expecting the ones on the side closest to them to get knocked toward them, because the KB is a radius effect. When they still travel away from you, it is defying laws of motion.

Comic books may ignore some laws of physics, but they still pay attention to basic laws of motion, because a number of characters' powers wouldn't work if they started making up their own rules.

Wait, what?

Kinetic Combat is a Melee Damage set, you can't slot it in a ranged power.

The Decimation idea isn't a bad one though.

No point in taking the Concealment pool. Stealth and Invisibility won't stack with Arctic Fog anyway. The only stealth power that will stack with other stealth powers is Hide.

Arctic Fog, Shadow Fall, Cloak of Darkness, Superior Invisibility, Steamy Mist, Cloaking Device, Stealth, and Invisibility are all mutually exclusive. If you are running any one of them, you cannot run any others. Toggling another stealth power on will detoggle the first. I'm sure there's a couple I'm missing, but you get the idea.

You've already stacked as much stealth as a non-stalker character can stack. Super Speed and Stealth IOs will stack with those powers though, because they are considered to be travel powers.

So, what you're saying is that KB in CoH completely ignores any and all laws of physics.

If you aim your AoE KB power, Explosive Blast in this case, at the BACK of a spawn, then the enemies between you and the target will be knocked AWAY from you, even though the KB effect is coming from the opposite side of them?



If so.....well, that's just frigging stupid. Anyone with ANY knowledge of how physics works would come to the same conclusion I did.

Thanks, it's my first child, so I'm sure I'm going to be running around frantically until it settles in that I don't have to do 3 weeks worth of stuff in 5 minutes.

I'm aware of that logically, but I suspect logic isn't going to be my strong suit where the baby is concerned for a couple months at least.

No idea, I've never actually put it together in-game. The only Elec/WP character I have is a brute, not a scrapper (though my planned build is similar). I put that build up to illustrate what I was talking about in my post.

If I had to guess, I'd put it in the neighborhood of 800mil-1.2bil, depending on specific IO prices. If you use merits to get the expensive stuff you can get the price to drop some.

And actually, for Willpower, not being softcapped to stuff isn't a huge deal. You have resistance and regen to fall back on when you do take a few hits. My brute is around 25% defense to most types, and his survivability increased quite a bit just with that much.

Also: Look at the build again, I had it set to only 1 in range of RttC when I posted it. When fully saturated the regen will be over 1100.

Pretty much.

I like when they reverse things on me too. Like the movie "War" with Jason Statham and Jet Li. It's revealed at the end that the protagonist who you've been cheering on through the whole movie is actually the bad guy, and has been the whole time. It's more complicated than that, but that's what it boils down to.

Going Rogue was actually a great addition for me, because I prefer stories where they leave it up to the reader or viewer to decide who the good guy and bad guy is. I don't like when they come out and tell you "This is the good guy, you're on his side " and "This is the bad guy, you don't like him"

There have been a number of stories where the I found the "villain" to be the more likable and human character and the "hero" was a caricature of what a good guy is supposed to be. That's part of why I usually prefer Marvel comics to DC, because for a long time Marvel had the more human characters, who have real flaws and issues to deal with. That isn't so much the case anymore, but since I preferred Marvel's characters when I was growing up I have more of an attachment to them.

Though it does annoy me when they kill off a character only to bring them back to sell more comics. Like when they killed Captain America, and all the other characters went through all these emotions (Wolverine losing it was especially striking to me, turns out Steve Rogers was actually important to him), but then they brought him back and it was "Oh, yeah, all that grieving was for nothing, cuz Steve's back now." However, I DID like how Joss Whedon handled the resurrection of Colossus, it was actually jarring to the other characters that someone whose death they mourned is back now, and not like he was never gone like a lot of other comics play it out.

It varies from character to character.

Most of my characters have a little bit of me in them (My BS/DA scrapper actually IS me....if I had accidentally received a demon possessed sword, instead of the one I actually ordered from eBay) All of my 50s so far are reflections of various facets of my personality.

I also have a number of characters that are just distinct personalities of their own. I like identifying with a character, but it isn't necessary for me to enjoy a story. Then again, I'm very good at putting myself in other people's shoes, so I can identify with almost any character presented to me. I don't really roleplay my characters to any great degree, so most of their personality is reflected in their backstories. All my characters have a history, but I may not have gotten around to actually typing them all out, as long as *I* know what it is.

Actually an interesting question there. Especially since I'm kind of on the fence about my answer.

I suspect because the devs are reluctant to give a powerset to an AT that could softcap with it with literally no effort. Tanker SR would softcap with just the powers contained in the set using SOs.

I am of course operating on the assumption that it would be balanced relative to scrappers in the same way Shield Defense is. In which case tanks would get 15% out of the toggles and I believe it was 7.5% out of the passives, before slotting. When I figured it out tanks would get around 47% defense with no IOs slotted whatsoever, and without any pool powers.

The downside to that is an SR tank would be helpless against certain things (a spawn of DE ripped through my SR brute like he didn't even HAVE a secondary. I literally jumped into a spawn and slumped to the ground before I even landed)

The protection is only mag 2, but the resistance is enough to noticeably lessen the duration.

(I'm not entirely sure what magnitude NPC holds tend to be, so I'm unsure how much protection mag 2 would actually be)

Do I get a consolation prize for setting it up for him?

I don't even know where to begin explaining how wrong you are on this, so I'm not going to try.

My Sonic/Devices has been softcapped to Ranged attacks for quite some time now, and since I am always hovering above what I'm fighting, I might as well be softcapped to all.

It has been proven repeatedly to be possible to softcap a blaster to Smashing and Lethal damage types, which covers a good 60% of the attacks in the game.

I disagree.

Depending on how you want to play, it can be the worst secondary, or the best.

There isn't one way to play that is better than any other, no matter what you may think about it. You can have an opinion on it, but opinion does not equal fact.

My Sonic/Devices blaster is VERY different from my Fire/Fire blaster, and I enjoy both of them equally.

Different people like different things. Your way of playing is not the best. Neither is mine. If the OP thinks Energy/Devices sounds like fun, then for him it probably will be. Whether you or I think it is fun is completely irrelevant.

The only Energy blasters I have any issue with are the ones that feel the need to use Energy Torrent and Explosive Blast while a tank is trying to herd, or while a controller is trying to lock a spawn down.

The only time I ever have a problem with single target blasts is when I'm trying to kill something with a scrapper and it keeps getting knocked away right before I get in melee range of it. And that's just mildly annoying rather than rage inducing.

Controller AoE immobilizes have a large enough radius that they will still hit most of a spawn after an Explosive Blast knocks them everywhere, but it completely destroys the point of immobilizing them (which is usually to keep them clumped together so AoEs will have maximum effect) A lot of the AoE immobilizes also have -KB in them, so Energy Torrent and Explosive Blast can be used after they are applied and not knock stuff everywhere.

Energy Blast is a great set for soloing, but a badly played one can make things significantly more difficult for a team.

And for the record, Explosive Blast applies it's KB from the point of impact, not necessarily away from you. If you aim it at a mob in the center of the spawn it will indeed KB them in a radius. Simple physics, if you apply KB to something from the opposite side of it, it will come toward you. If it knocked things in only one direction, Fireball would have to work the same way and only damage things in one direction. If you aim your Explosive Blast at an enemy at the front of the spawn, then it probably will knock stuff all away from you. If you aim at one in the back of the spawn it will probably send most of it toward you. It's just the difference between cones and targeted AoEs.

Since Energy Torrent is a cone, it will consistently knock things away from you, because it treats you as the emanation point of the KB.

Not really.

Just pointing out that the chance for damage makes sense in the context of the animation.

The defense it gives you makes sense too, enemies aren't likely to be as accurate while they are diving for cover

I was kidding about the second part.

Actually, with the adjustments it's really more that neither AT has any significant advantage over the other.

It used to be that top-end brutes would blow top-end scrappers away, now they are much closer in top-end performance.

The only advantage brutes retained is in the higher resistance caps and higher HP (more HP gives defense based sets an advantage)

Also, in short fights, like you would find on a lot of teams, scrappers have a slight advantage because they don't have a fury bar to fill. They will do good damage from the very start of a fight, while a brute has to build up into doing good damage.

So, nowadays it's pretty much a wash and more of a case of which playstyle you prefer.

Me? I like them both.

Praetoria isn't too easy.

I have found it is somewhat more difficult than low level Primal Earth content, but not to the point where I feel the devs have gone too far with it.

I suspect that this is a large source of the complaints.

"I usually play an IOed to the gills brute that solos at +2x8 with no problem, why is it so hard to play my level 12 brute in Praetoria?"

Seems to me that a lot of the people who are complaining about difficulty are the ones that haven't played low level content in a long time, or who PL their characters past it in Primal Earth. Since Praetoria stops at level 20, there really isn't an option to PL your character past it with a second account.

Another possible source of the problem could be people being used to how the mobs work in Primal Earth and having difficulty adjusting to new enemy types and abilities.

I play low level content all the time, and to be honest I haven't encountered anything in Praetoria that I found to be unfairly difficult.

Depends......do you WANT to send crap flying everywhere?

If your answer is "No", then you probably don't want it.