CrazyJerseyan

Originally Posted by Mousetrap

Status resistance doesn't really work that way. It doesn't reduce the chance to be mezzed, it reduces the duration. During the times when being mezzed would really count, the duration being cut roughly in half isn't much of a benefit.

Originally Posted by Kenteko

First off, I want to clarify that I'm playing devil's advocate to some extent, but the big thing is that you're comparing an extremely high cost inf build (which you can only effectively have at level 50) and simply not realizing that while a PB grows additively, everyone else with some very few exceptions grows exponentially. Ancillary pools ARE important because by the time blasters/doms get them, your above dream build would also be complete. Oh, and other people have the option of ancillary pools, something your PB does not have.

Realize that I -want- PBs to get buffed because right now, they simply have no scalability. Any uber build would have a large amount of the above, but simply build to their strengths. Being a hybrid is not a strength, and other classes (controllers, defenders, corruptors, crabs) do it better, cheaper, and produce much bigger results. Crabs can do all of the above, produce continually massive DPS, tank, AND give amazing support to the group -all at the same time- with a build of your monetary level. So let's go through a quick but itemized list.

1) This one's misleading, Kheldian base HP is 1079. Most of your "passive" HP comes from a Dull Pain clone, Essence Boost. Basically, this means that you permanently have it up and simply use it off cooldown, while possessing roughly 400-600 HP from sets. Any blaster, stalker, or dominator with this amount of HP automatically self caps, while a scrapper/crab would pull your HP (WP/Invuln/Regen scrappers) just as easily while having better synergy. It also bears mentioning that blasters/dominators/controllers can and do have a dull pain clone, so most can spec to HP cap almost immediately out of the gate. You do have a point that you get 500 more HP then blasters/doms, but the difference widens even more here.

2) I'm not even sure how this is a perk. Every single person has access to phase from an extremely beneficial pool for virtually everyone. 3 places to slot LotGs makes phase an extremely good filler power, on top of the fact that anyone who builds for it will walk away with phase. It's also a temp power that's pennies on the market, so I think you're kinda reaching here.

3) Reform Essence is nice, as any Reconstruction clone is gonna be. I'm not even going to bother comparing it to a regen scrapper/ninjitsu stalker because the gaping differences between the survivability of a regen scrapper and a PB are leaps and bounds apart, so I'll use the real legitimate alternative: Aid Self. Now, I'll be the first to say that Reform Essence is better than Aid Self, they're barely comparable. However, the fact of the matter is that most multi billion inf builds will be self capped to some extent, meaning that aid self can be used with relative impunity and can (reliably) go off in the hands of someone built to maximize it. Generally, if you're under enough fire that you'll be killed while using aid self, Reform Essence would likely not save you whatsoever either. Aid self also recharges substantially faster, with the interruption/animation time being the chief drawbacks. As for using that while in Light Form, I'll get to that here in a minute.

So to summarize: Reform Essence is certainly nice, but it pales in comparison to the tools in sets where it shows (Regeneration/Ninjitsu) and it only slightly pulls ahead in favor of aid self, a pool -everyone- gets. By the way, in case you're wondering, aid self gives substantially higher HPS compared to Reform Essence, but that's neither here nor there. Oh, and it gives a HUGE amount of stun resistance.

4) T9 recharge in 3 minutes, do you mean your nova or Light Form? What the hey, I'll do both. Every single AT gets a god mode, sometimes two. All of them have the exact same cooldown (hibernate notwithstanding). If your build has Light Form recharge in three minutes, so does the blaster, dom, corruptor, etc that specs for it. The thing is that they have all of their other tools ON TOP OF the god mode. It also bears mentioning that if a Blaster goes for Force of Nature, they're getting PFF as well, so what benefit does Light Form have? It lasts one minute longer and gives status protection. Oh wait, it also crashes harder in comparison, so I guess it's a tradeoff. This isn't counting the near impenetrable hibernate (remember phase? Yea, this is a better version you can't get), PFF, or RotP options that most everyone else has compared to PBs.

Enough about that, let's look at novas. Dawn Strike is a conglomeration of Atomic Blast and Nova, with less -defense and no hold (from Atomic Blast). Course, this is all well and good except for the fact that blasters do pretty much double the PBs damage with their nova. -TO START- Against level shifted content, odds are you gib most/all of the minions, hurt some of the LTs, and momentarily inconvenience the bosses. Blasters leave craters filled with the blood and tears of enemies they just exploded, and that's not even getting into the insanity of Rain of Arrows. So let's look at defenders and corruptors. Wait, defenders get a damage buff from being alone and produce massive amounts of support, so their nukes will likely have ridiculous debuffs (see: Atomic Blast, Dreadful Wail, or Psychic Blast). Corruptors have Scourge (Blizzard go crazy), do nearly the same damage as PBs and have dramatically better support. But hey, at least you get Build Up instead of Aim! As for Doms, the two main comparisons are Fissure and Psychic Shockwave. I'm not entirely sure that's fair for the PBs at all, so I'll leave it there. In all fairness, the biggest comparison is Solar Flare, which you use once and immediately cannot use it again because most stuff just got scattered. Moving on.

5) Ah yes, Glowing Touch, the holy grail of Peacebringer versatility. I gotta be honest, this is one of my favorite PB abilities, and is a genuine perk over blasters and dominators simply because spot healing can be useful from time to time. Granted, this is 100% the one and only support a Peacebringer truly brings to a team. A single, small, heal that is eclipsed by almost every other support ability ever. The worst part is that Glowing Touch is Cauterize/Heal Other/Soothe with its range -absolutely destroyed- Glowing Touch's range sits -just above- aid other, heals for the same amount, and sucks down end like it's nobody's business. If we really want to bring support into the mix, though, you have to account for Surveillance from Blasters, unrivaled control from dominators, and corruptors/defenders/controllers merely existing.

I'd like to have Glowing Touch, personally. Shame that it's the AT defining perk.

6) I would definitely love to know what build you have that gives you insane recharge, 500+ HP, and 70%+ mez resistance that doesn't involve clarion and/or break frees, because that exact build would make every other squishy nigh unstoppable, so I'm calling hyperbolic shenanigans. If, instead, you mean you're running around in perma Light Form, I wonder why you didn't just state that in its ridiculousness, which is kinda as inane as saying Energy Aura is awesome because you can run around in Overload (Hint: It's not). So I really have no idea where this is coming from outside of hyperbole.

You'll notice that throughout this post, I mentioned many different ancillary pools and their various uses, so how could I possibly justify blasters getting Force of Nature and Rise of the Phoenix at the same time? Well, quite frankly, they all have CHOICE in the matter to build as they see fit. Many blasters/doms choose Rise of the Phoenix AND INCLUDE IT in their attack chain as opposed to PFF, Hibernate, or Force of Nature (or any of them at all). Most soft cap easily and pull enough recharge to regularly liquefy alternating spawns, nevermind their secondary which can provide a large variety of tools depending on their options. We're not even bringing into the light some of the various blaster primaries that bring great options/damage compared to Peacebringers (sonic blasters being the obvious righteous beacon).

Sure, you have all of those things as "perks" but at the end of the day, they're shamelessly bad copies of already existing abilities. Warshades get things like Dark Extraction, Orbiting Debt, Unchain Essence, Stygian Return, and Eclipse that are so effectively rare/unique, that they're almost all unique to the Warshade and their playstyle. Peacebringers singular unique ability is Photon Seekers, which Robotics and Traps both get at lower damage with a ridiculously faster cooldown and much, much better utility all around (-tohit, -damage + chance to stun vs chance to KB. Yea).

Peacebringers -need- help, they bring absolutely nothing else to the table that anyone else doesn't do better, while everyone else retains a -much larger- choice selection. If you're going to use a billioned out Peacebringer as what's "Good" then you need to start talking about the archery characters that rain of arrows every spawn while being soft capped, the doms that are permanently locking down everything and breaking PotDs, the defenders and corruptors that produce peacebringer ruining damage (depending on the secondary) while providing amazing utility and virtually everything else as well. This isn't even getting into the absolute terror that warshades/crabs/widows/melee become when blinged out.

The only real comparisons to Peacebringers are Energy Auras, Banes, and Stone Armors, simply because those sets have the same stunted growth that Peacebringers do (i.e. linear/minor growth vs quadratic/exponential growth). Absolutely every AT and combination can be viable, but some are just garbage in terms of what they bring on an equivalent comparison.

Originally Posted by BeornAgain

So, what procs do you recommend for a human-only PB attack chain?

Originally Posted by Kenteko

I should point out that if one of your benefits is a self rez, then every single blaster and every single dominator already has one against you: Rise of the Phoenix. Except theirs does nova level damage, makes them invulnerable, and they have a better/stronger nova on top of that. This also includes anyone who specs fiery aura (scrapper/tanker/brute) and everyone who specs dark armor, willpower, and regeneration.

Oh, Warshades get one too. It makes them invulnerable.

So already you're losing out to pretty much over half the ATs, in addition to your sibling AT by a factor of exponential qualities. Regardless of what you believe you bring to the table, it's very likely that you can say one given thing, throw a rock, and hit 20 something other characters that bring the exact same thing, only better. Nova spam is great until you compare it to a character of equal value who does your job, better, and is likely tougher in the process. Blasters liquefy groups with equivalent recharge bonuses while likely being soft capped in the process (even moreso with archery and fire). Defenders/corruptors bring support a PB absolutely never could on top of fairly reliable repeatable CC on par or greater than yours.

When your belief of being awesome revolves around the stars aligning and the absolute perfect team being put at your feet, realize that IN ANY EQUIVALENT SITUATION, every single other AT in the game will be better except maybe one or two that simply do not scale that well. If I built a team around a brute, scrapper, or a blaster, they'd go from "passably good" to "Godzilla." PBs are phenomenally bad from a numbers perspective all around, and it really shows compared to most things.

Anyone can contribute in this game, nobody's saying otherwise, however the fact is that the Peacebringer is Superfriends era Aquaman: Sure he has his uses, but why would you ever, ever care to drag Aquaman along when any other Superfriend would do the job in half the time with less trouble?

Originally Posted by Flux_Vector

Your rad/sonic fills a different role than your PB, and would use different tactics, but in the endgame content being discussed here neither should have the need for capped resists and 2100 hps on a consistent basis because your PB doesn't have the aggro control to tank effectively against more than a token number of enemies that your rad/sonic could debuff or control against just as effectively... and if you did, you still wouldn't have the debuff resistance to survive the stacking -recharge, -resist, and -defense put out by praetorian IDF spawns.

With teammate buffs you could, but then, your rad/sonic would also have the same teammate buffs, to the same general effect.

Capped resist and extra hps, while doing weak damage, makes you about the same as a fury-less brute. Except without the chance to get to having any fury.

I've played my PB in less than 10 years. I don't hate the AT. I'm just honest about their performance characteristics. With a bunch of cosmic balance it's a decent AT. When the stars don't align and you haven't got the cosmic balance, it's substandard for its role, which is DPS, because it absolutely lacks sufficient support powers and aggro control and modern survivability to fill either the support or tank roles.

Originally Posted by Flux_Vector

Capped resist and extra hps, while doing weak damage, makes you about the same as a fury-less brute. Except without the chance to get to having any fury.

Originally Posted by Grey Pilgrim

Why do people honestly feel the need to make arguments like we see in this thread... like we're still back in the early days of the game and the ATs are all desperately needing adjustment? There are no bad ATs or powersets in CoH anymore: just good and better.

BillZ Bubba had a great comment in a similar thread on Stalkers, and I saved it to bring out in these threads. "In the end, all of these statements are completely useless beyond showing that no AT is obsolete as long as people continue playing them. Including stalkers."

People need to quit it with their "my AT is better than your AT!" contests. It gets old and lame, and equivalent to trying to say one Scrapper powerset is better than another Scrapper powerset. Some might be numerically a little better than the others, but they're still able to kick butt and chew bubble gum at the same time. Go play the AT and powerset you want and you'll be more happy, and we can be done with these idiotic debates.

Originally Posted by Flux_Vector

Peacebringers are simply too statistically weak. Even well-played, their performance will be choked by their power stats and the selection of powers available to them. Someone was saying they can do 1000 damage in 8 seconds with their PB? That works out to 125 dps. Which is low. I think defenders are able to do more (at least, sonic blast ones likely can).

Originally Posted by Energizing_Ion

Yes, as said above, the -regen from Envenom does stack with itself

I have a lvl 50 Demons/Poison and I found him enjoyable. There were a few 'painful' spots (before my Ember Demon got his PBAoE heal for example) but all-in-all he was a solid toon.

If you want I'll try to remember to put his build up here but he only has common IOs (and the 4 pet proc IOs in Hell on Earth)...so you could get an idea of what I did but wouldn't have any set bonuses to really look at.

Noxious Gas is fun/powerful but it always seemed to be my luck that the AVs/GMs would run away from my pet when I put Noxious Gas on him

Originally Posted by Dromio

I looked it up to make sure, the -regen does stack. In fact the duration is 30 seconds and recharge is 12 seconds so it'll stack twice even without any recharge boosts.

Originally Posted by TheBruteSquad

I agree with Memphis_Bill: I don't even look at ATs when I build teams, taskforce or not. Send a tell, get invited. Simple as that. If a team of 8 can't succeed regardless of team composition in this game I write it off as a development failure, not a team one. So in that regard - as long as someone knows how to play their character (or at least doesn't take the team down with them when they faceplant) - Kheldians bring as much to the team as anyone else.

Originally Posted by TriAngel_EU

Easy way to form a quick reply, but it doesn't make much sense.
If you read back you'll see I'm very aware of what the capabilities of a PB are, I just don't agree with many in that it would be sufficient to be a more worthy team asset than just about anything else.

Unless ofcourse you wish to argue that a PB is more a jack of all trades than something more specialized...
If not, my point stands and all that's left for you is to agree or disagree with it as you please.

Originally Posted by TriAngel_EU

True. A toon, PB or not, is generally never useless unless they're outside or at the start of the mission standing still, doing nothing.
Personally I'd say a PB in most any team context is a suboptimally spent team slot, so to say.

That said, I'd love the devs to give them some abilities that could make you say "For X you need a PB.". Then perhaps I'd dust off my own PB again, which I haven't really touched since i8 now I think.

Originally Posted by Master Zaprobo

Chance for Recharge in a pet will only proc on the pet itself. And since all pets can't be affected by recharge buffs... it's useless.

Originally Posted by TriAngel_EU

...I'm that type of guy who prefers specialization.

If I need a damage dealer I'll invite a dedicated damage dealer, if I need a healer I'll invite a proper healer. A tank, a tank, etc...
That one person who does a little bit of everything suboptimal to the toons more specialized in each respective task will never have my preference.

Originally Posted by jdogg_NA

In that case what does a scrappers/stalkers bring to a team? Damage khelds have that. Tanks/Brutes? Aggro Control yup khelds have that. Blasters/Corruptors? More damage? Guess what khelds have that. Controllers/Dominators? Mob Contorl yup khelds can do that as well. Defenders? Buffs and heals well.....khelds cant really do that but looking at it that way what doesnt a kheld bring to a team??

Originally Posted by TriAngel_EU

.... whyyy?

Edit: Also: In that case they really bring nothing. Sorry PBs - can't think of anything else for you...

Originally Posted by TriAngel_EU

Quant/void-panic?

Originally Posted by Tramontane

Some of us don't want to farm inf up the *** just to get a playable AT.