ClawsandEffect

Oooh! Can I play?

Albatross!

Discuss.

I think large birds that fly long distances over water are cool, and we need them in the game.

With clicky status protection I put 2 extra slots in it as soon as I can (usually level 11). With SOs it ends up being perma with a decent amount of overlap.

I dunno about Werner's Kat/DA, but my BS/DA is getting nailed pretty hard by it.

He'll still be stupid hard to kill, but he won't be the deity that he is right now.

I bolded the problem.

Just because his forum registry says he's been here 3 years doesn't necessarily mean it's true. He may not have been here the whole time.......or he may have acquired someone else's account.

See, the problem here is, whether I agree with anyone in this thread or not, at the end of the day it's not ME you need to convince.

You need to convince the devs that making a new AT, which is basically the thing they were trying to avoid by creating the AT system in the first place, is worth the time that would be required to program it.

I have serious doubts about your ability to do so. Because I think it just plain isn't going to happen.

Think about the most recent nerf to something: Blessing of the Zephyr. That nerf happened because it was too easy to stack for a crapload of defense on ranged characters, which the devs apparently never intended to be possible in the first place.

Somewhere in the BotZ thread Castle mentions that he wished that, with the GDN, a cap was put on defense for ATs not meant to have a lot of it. (Don't worry, he said in the same post that they aren't going to do it now, it wasn't done then so they have to live with it)

So, here you are essentially asking for an entirely new AT that flies in the face of the devs' apparent intentions regarding ranged characters. Hence my conclusion: Almost certainly not going to happen.

Minor nitpick:

You can't slot an IO of any kind until level 7. Not a big deal, but you can get Stealth 1 level sooner than you can slot a stealth IO.

More to the point, what compelling reason is there for the devs to introduce an AT that basically duplicates the playstyle of something already in the game?

You've already pretty much admitted that what you want is basically the same thing as an EAT. In fact you used it as an argument in favor of your position.

Why should the devs create an entirely new AT that will play almost exactly like an EAT, when EATs already exist?

They've already spoken out in the past against the idea of duplicating powersets within an AT, why would you think their position on duplicating ATs would be different? Duplicating powersets would be things like: Creating a set identical to Shield Defense, but wthout the shield.

Duplicating an AT would be: Creating an AT that has Ranged/Melee damage in it's primary and defense/resistance in it's secondary. That is a basic description of what a VEAT is, and to an extent a HEAT as well.

I have this mindset that won't allow me to farm for badges.

My main currently has 400-some, and not a single one was farmed. I earned them all the hard way.

So, yeah, earning PvP badges is a bit of a chore for me.

Unfortunately, since the server my main is on doesn't have that active of a PvP community anymore, I don't have much choice in who I attack. If they show up orange I pretty much HAVE to go after them.

Yeah, if you go too long without a kill your rep is back at zero before you know it. The last badge is for 400 rep......and you get 1 rep per kill if their rep is lower than you. I've never gotten more than 6 for a kill, and that was bonus rep. To top it off, it drains away if you don't fight.

It pretty much does. I play on Pinnacle, and my schedule lately has me playing at weird times of day, so my odds of actually FINDING someone to kill are slim. If they run before I manage to kill them I'm screwed. My main (the only one I care about the badge on) is a Claws/Regen scrapper, there's no such thing as an easy kill for me. My strong point is being very difficult to kill, not putting out a lot of damage myself.

Basically what it boils down to is, if I want to make ANY progress on that badge I have to kill anyone I see, no matter what they're doing.

Possible solution: Remove the degradation of the rep badges. Still lose rep if you lose a fight, but if you want to do something else for a while you won't have it draining away. As it stands now, if you want the 400 rep badge you have to do nothing but PvP until you get it.......and I don't have the time to commit to that.

I wasn't referring to anyone in particular when I said "anti-PvP crowd". There are people in this thread that fit that description perfectly, but I wasn't calling anyone out on it, because I'm not trying to make any of this debate/argument personal with anyone.

The things I'm talking about are things like:

PvP flags in PvP zones. As in, you turn your flag on to become a valid target. You're flagged for PvP when you enter the zone, the flag turns off when you leave the zone. It's been like that from day 1, and I see no reason to change it.

The (serious?) suggestion of moving all PvP to RV and basically taking away 3/4ths of the PvPers playground. Okay, fine. From now on we're making it so you only have a quarter of teh space in which to badge hunt. Oh, and the rare defeat items will now spawn randomly in that small area with no warning of any kind. You'll pretty much have to stay in that zone 24/7 if you want that badge.

It basically boils down to the anti-PvPers not being satisfied until they've chased every last PvPer out of the game for good. And since the devs are far more likely to listen to PvE players than PvPers they may eventually succeed.

And I don't think that's fair in the slightest. Their $15 gives them JUST as much right to play the game how they want as anyone else's.

I wasn't trying to open that can of worms.

I know it didn't actually make PvP any more newbie friendly, that wasn't my point.

I was simply mentioning that PvP as a whole was changed, even though the people who actually did it were very vocally against it, in order to make it not as harsh on the non-PvPer who wanders into a zone.

And now the anti-PvP crowd wants to make it even harder for a PvPer to take part in the aspect of the game they enjoy.

I'm currently working on two badges: Player Defeats, and PvP Rep. They work like any other badge, you defeat x of something you get the badge. In this case "something" = players.

When is the last time a Banished Pantheon mask fled the zone you were in, preventing you from getting badge credit for it? PvEers do that all the time.....there goes my player defeats badge. PvP zones are the ONLY place you can get that badge, I'm pretty sure arena defeats don't count.

What defeat badge starts you over from zero if you stop working on it? Only one, the PvP Rep badge. You can stop killing BP masks and pick it up right where you left off. If I stop killing players, I have to start over from scratch, because I LOSE credit toward the badge the longer I go without killing a player.

If the PvEer leaves the zone because there is a PvPer in there, they lose absolutely nothing. If that PvPer was working on his PvP Rep badge, he will have to start over on it, because it is no longer possible to earn credit toward it and it will dwindle back down to zero.

Can I get a show of hands from anti-PvPers that didn't realize the Rep badge worked like that?

Did it ever occur to you that the PvPer that killed you may have been desperately trying to not lose all that work he did toward his badge?

Every time someone flees I have to start over. I have been working on that badge for almost 3 years on my main character and haven't gotten it yet.

There's a flaw in your logic there.

PvP is not unexpectedly dropped on someone who enters the zone. They are warned repeatedly that they are entering an area where another player can attack them. There's even a big red countdown and a window that pops up on the screen that does not go away until you acknowledge it.

I could understand being upset if you are told you can get a temp power for doing this thing and there is no indication of the possibility of attack by another player, but that isn't the case.

Also, there is nothing anywhere in the game that indicates the existence of Shivans or Warburg nukes, you have to enter the zone in the first place to find out about them. There is no attempt to draw a PvEer in with the promise of shinies, because the shinies are never alluded to in the PvE game. Unless another player shows them to you, you will never encounter those temp powers unless you enter the zone.

Very few people will enter a PvP zone because there might be something useful to them in it. Most enter a PvP zone because they're curious about PvP. I've heard more complaints about there being no one to fight from people entering for the first time than I have complaints about being attacked.

All I was really saying is:

If there's no balance problem....why don't we have it already?

And....if Epic ATs are already like this.....why do you want another AT that does the exact same thing?

That would be an assumption, and not a sound one either.

If that PvPer is not slumming in BB at level 50, they still have leveling to do, in which case a Shivan would probably come in handy on occasion.

I PvP once in a while, but I play the game for the PvE first and foremost.

That's the mistake the anti-PvP crowd keeps making: Assuming that the PvPers do not care about the rest of the game and only want to make them miserable in PvP zones.

Not every PvPer that attacks you is going to be a rabid noob-ganking sociopath who just wants a chuckle at your expense. A lot of them are people that you would enjoy teaming with in a non-PvP setting.

Like me. I don't ask permission before I attack someone any more than I ask a Hellion for permission to attack them. I'm pretty ruthless in PvP, but I'm a decent guy to team with in the rest of the game. But, to an anti-PvPer that I attack I'm forever a "dirty, cheapshotting PvPer" and they never give me a chance on a team. I've had people kick me from teams before because I showed up on their player notes as someone who attacked them in a PvP zone 6 months prior. This was before a single mission was ever run and they had no idea what kind of teammate I was going to be. They just formed an opinion because I happened to attack them one time....I didn't even remember them.

But it makes it easier for the anti-PvP crowd to vilify the PvPers if they paint them as all being rude, mean, and petty.

This is an excerpt from a PM conversation I had with BaBs a while back.

I can't find the rest of it, but it seems to say that doing what you are suggesting with the Ninja Run animation is not a trivial thing to do, because it doesn't work like we think.

And since Ninja Run is an animation instead of just a stance it will be a LOT harder to do than what I was suggesting in my PM.

So, take that for what you will. I'd say it probably means your Ninja Run idea is never going to happen.

No, actually the numbers are the same on Scrappers and Brutes. Stalkers differ a little because they lose a power to get Hide, but Scrapper and Brute SR is the same except for power order.

The ONLY difference between a scrapper and a brute (in sets they share) is a brute has higher caps, the base values are identical. Brutes split the difference in that they have scrapper base numbers with tanker caps, and they can't reach those caps without outside assistance. Also, blasters have the same caps for resistance as scrappers, they just can't even get close to it (actually, I think every AT except tanks and brutes have the same resistance caps)

Besides, I can just hear the whining about how "The defenses on this new AT don't have the same numbers as the others with the sets! We want SCRAPPER SR, not this gimped version!"

I love how it never occurs to the people asking for these ATs that if it wasn't overpowered and imbalanced we'd probably already have it.

Seriously, they scrapped the "take any powers you want" mold in the first beta for the game because people were making characters exactly like what is being described here. And when the devs decided to implement the AT system, guess what combination was missing? Yup....the ranged/defense combination. Because it is inherently imbalanced to have a character type with strong ranged ability and strong defenses.

Imagine how overpowered the combination of, say, Psi Assault/Dark Armor would become at high levels.

That doesn't refute my point. This entire argument has assumed that there IS someone doing the PvE aspect. Otherwise, there would be no argument. And yes, it's an argument, it ceased being a debate about 7 pages ago.

My point is: It is possible for a PvPer to acquire Shivans and nukes by doing nothing but PvP.

Not only can they prevent someone from gaining a PvE reward....they can gain it for themselves in the process by killing them and taking their stuff.

That's what I meant about the intent and reward structure both being on the PvPer's side.

Really, you're not?

Lets see what you said in the SAME POST:

I highlighted the part where you completely contradicted what you just said.

Have you SEEN the things a well built scrapper can do?

A scrapper has SOLOED the Master of Imperious Task Force badge.

There was another that killed four AVs simultaneously.

Saying that you're not asking for good defense/resistance and mez protection and then saying you want Scrapper secondaries is a complete contradiction. The scrappers that did that were both Katana scrappers, one was Willpower, the other was Regen. As such they had to stay in melee range the entire time due to having zero ranged attacks.

You're proposing that secondary sets with THAT kind of survivability be given to an AT that has a Dominator's ability to deal ranged damage.

That is a tankmage...by YOUR definition, not mine.

Vertical travel with SS isn't possible with the current game engine, as per a dev post I'm too lazy to find. (At least I'm honest about it)

I wasn't making it up, they really can't do it. It has something to do with the way collision detection works in this game.

You're leaving out an important point here.

You said at one point that the PvPer has the zone's intent on his side, while the PvEer has the zone's reward structure on his side.

That's not true. The reward structure is on the PvPer's side as well.

How, you ask?

How do you get Shivans? You travel around the zone clicking on meteors for the shard you need to combine with the other 5, then you defeat a few turrets to unlock another clicky.

There's an easier way......Let someone else do the legwork and then kill them for the shards after they take out the turrets. And, voila! You just obtained a PvE reward through PvP.

Pretty simple really. If we weren't supposed to do that, it wouldn't even be possible to do. There are only 2 zones in the game where you can take something away from someone against their will....and they are PvP zones. Sounds to me like the intent was to fight over the shards and codes....which are the reward structure for those zones.

So, if you really get down to it, both the intent AND reward structure are on the PvPer's side in those 2 zones.