Dispari

Right now I'm sort of debating doing a CC tomorrow or not. It would be during double experience. Not sure many people would break away from it, especially on the last night. But it would be a large audience. Any thoughts?

For the second one, for some reason the help channel changed from /h to /hc. You have to type /hc to enter things into the help channel. It wasn't updated in the tab itself.

To help understand:

My widow has a great sustained damage chain. She has a very strong proc in her lowest damage dealing attack, because it recharges the most often. Over time this equates to better damage than if I had put it in my highest damage attack. I have a 4-attack chain which nets a fluid DPS and works out to be great rotation. On hard enemies like bosses and higher, I move right into the attack chain and repeat the moves until the enemy dies.

On weak enemies like minions, there's no need to do an attack chain. I could start off with minor -> moderate -> minor, but then I'm using several attacks to kill one enemy when I could've just hide-critted with my strongest attack and killed them in one hit. Doing that kills them much faster and I can move onto the next thing. I obviously can't create a chain out of just my strongest attack, but it's great burst damage for dealing with soft targets quickly.

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Just for the record, I own two laptops which are side-by-side. I use one for CoH and other games, and this one for IRC, AIM, forums. I can do both at once without changing windows, because they're on different computers. I can type with only my right hand, and play CoH with only my left hand.

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Where did you pick up that skill? huh?

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12+ years as a computer nerd and over half a dozen as a programmer.

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I was implying porn...

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I'm not sure Dispari wasn't implying porn as well.

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*fist shake!*

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I'm not too sure about Prestige, though.

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Not split. My friend and I have run two characters from 1-50 pacted, and our prestige donations to each SG/VG are totally different.

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Because you know... people can't play the game AND post.

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No you can't. Unless you can make them both in same window, otherwise you would be afk even a few seconds, meaning not playing.

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Just for the record, I own two laptops which are side-by-side. I use one for CoH and other games, and this one for IRC, AIM, forums. I can do both at once without changing windows, because they're on different computers. I can type with only my right hand, and play CoH with only my left hand.

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Where did you pick up that skill? huh?

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12+ years as a computer nerd and over half a dozen as a programmer.

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Because you know... people can't play the game AND post.

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No you can't. Unless you can make them both in same window, otherwise you would be afk even a few seconds, meaning not playing.

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Just for the record, I own two laptops which are side-by-side. I use one for CoH and other games, and this one for IRC, AIM, forums. I can do both at once without changing windows, because they're on different computers. I can type with only my right hand, and play CoH with only my left hand.

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Preanfamy.

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It needs to start with "inf."

How about Infirmary?

Blasters become pretty spiffy when IOed out.

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You mean like 33.3% acc and 33.3% dam for the HO versus a level 50 IO which has 26.5% acc and 26.5% dam ?

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Improper comparison.

Compare them to purples the other non-merit purchasable PvE loot. It's not pretty.

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Weird. For some reason I can only slot one Hecatomb DMG/RECH per character, while I can slot as many HOs as I want. Must be a bug.

Also, I forget which IO I'm supposed to triple-slot into Mind Link to max out Defense, Recharge, AND ToHit.

Is there a reason you're going for an over-the-top regen build? We had this discussion in another thread. I managed to make a build with a totally outlandish amount of regen, but it required a lot of cuts in other places and overall wouldn't've been as good as a build mixing HP, regen, and DEF. There's a point where that next regen bonus isn't as useful as some other type of bonus.

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FFG does not need any changes.

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I'd be all for changing FFG to a toggle, even being fully aware that would mean the defense would suppress while mezzed and endurance usage over time would probably be greater.

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No. Part of the benefit of the power is that it doesn't suppress. I can also resummon it whenever I please, wherever I please. I can use it to alpha. I also like on-demand endurance usage instead of a steady drain, where I lose end even when I'm outside of combat. If it was changed, I'd be very unhappy. There's no benefit I can think of for changing it to a toggle, except being lazier about resummoning it. The thing keeps up with the player just fine, and if it's actually an issue, the recharge is 15 seconds.

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I do not like the idea of making FFG a toggle given /traps for corruptors can be end heavy.

[/ QUOTE ]protip: Toggles generally cost less endurance/time than clicks

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FFG is 13 end for 240 seconds of protection. Dispersion Bubble is 0.52 end/sec. Even if you cut that in half, Dispersion is almost 5x the endurance.

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The OP hates MMs.

Because only MMs have knocback in CoV.

Oh, wait...

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Additionally, ALL MMs have knockback.

These are all pretty awesome. Glad to see the stone dagger move made it into Earth Assault.

As for the MA/SS:

Have one character with MA. She's a martial artist (duh!) who used to work with the Council. Great physical shape, very agile and flexible. Always bothered me MA was all kicks.

I like the starting kicks enough that I probably won't change them. The little gut-punch thing isn't flashy or fluid enough for her tastes either. I like the Cobra uppercut, but don't have Cobra sadly. Not too happy with the CAK exchange either. And the Eagle replacement is nowhere near flashy enough. Just watching the video I can't say I'll be replacing any. For that character I'm looking more for really flashy moves, akin to how DB was built.

Have a Troll Brute with SS. Ideally she's supposed to look clumsy and unskilled. She uses brute force and doesn't care about where she hits. So I actually like the classic Knockout Blow.

The new Jab is a maybe, but probably not. It seems a little to "intentional" to me though, at least for her. New Punch is a definite yes though. The old one looked half-baked. New one looks better, while still looking "clumsy" enough for me. Going to be really hard to pick between new and old Haymaker. I like both. New KO Blow is good, but it doesn't suit her. Foot Stomp is going to be hard to decide too. Love that new animation, but I think an actual stomp might fit a rage-o-holic better. Though a fist into the ground is just as angry. Gah, decisions!

Dispari's 13th Weekly Redside Costume Contest

Good CC this week, raising 35,000,000 for no VG in particular. Though as a note, we may be sponsored by Rogue Entertainment in the future. I know lots of people and they're willing to dish out 20m per week for it. So we'll see where that goes.

Entrants.

Prizes:
1st: 10m
2nd: 5m
3rd: 2.5m
Runner-ups: 1m

Male runner-ups:
Dead Eye Jake
Commissar Communism

Third place:
Spider Assault Unit

Second place:
Sanguine Aegis

First place:
Dark Cawshun

Female runner-ups:
Dawn Rose
Invader Zhu

Third place:
Briar-Rose

Second place:
Sasha Tova - level 9!

First place:
Nemesis Plot 44

Thanks to all who came this week. My usual helper-judge person will be out next week but I already have a filler. I may be looking for people to help judge other events, like bio contests or themed CCs. So if you're interested, look me up. Next week will be Sunday at 10:00 PM CST.

CC in 45 minutes!

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Can you hear that sound? It's the game tearing itself into two factions...AE babies and players.

It's a rift that may cause long term discord. I already find myself checking vet badges when I invite to teams.

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That's probably the dumbest way to check to see if someone knows how to play, and has been ever since i8 when the vet badges went in.

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Yeah, I tend to agree. I have a friend who's a really great player and she only has 5 months on her. I've run into a lot of people who have under 6 months and know how to play the game.

My best story for bad vet was when I joined a team with a Brute leader who had the 54 or 57 month badge. They had a list of all their level 50s in their description, and had over a dozen of them. Before even 3/8 of us were zoned into the mission, they bounced ahead and aggroed two separate groups and died upon impact. I quickly found a reason to excuse myself.

Vet rewards don't tell you how good a player is or if they know what they're doing. All vet awards tell you is how long that account's been paid for.

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VS really should have its recharge cut in three, be made immobile, and the 1 max requirement removed. Then it'd be a legitimate help in a scrap.

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I'd rather it have a duration/recharge of 240 instead of 90, so I don't have to repeatedly spawn a new one. It's somewhat useful on my Dominator, but past a point I just get sick of summoning it every minute and a half.

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I really hope you're joking. /Regen nerfed for Scrappers?

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I don't think anyone who has said "nerf Regen" in the last several years has been serious.

I get number 3 with 100% consistency if I've been logged in for at least 30 minutes. I'm to the point where if I need to hit the market I close and re-open the program again, because I know if I've been logged in already, I'll crash when clicking the NPC.

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That's not entirely true.

The original Defiance was supposed to alleviate Blaster problems.
Containment was added to help Controllers in the early levels.
And even in Issue 0 Scrappers had a limited form of Critical hits.

In regards to Scrappers, Critical Hits wasn't a formalized inherant until I5 or thereabouts, hence my original statement.

Anyways this thread has made one thing clear

/Regen needs to be nerfed for Scrappers
buffed for Stalkers
and given to Defenders as a new primary

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Fast Healing - All nearby allies will have their Regeneration rate increased slightly. This power is always on and costs no Endurance.

Reconstruction - Heals a single targeted ally. You cannot use this power to heal yourself. Recharge: Fast

Quick Recovery - All nearby allies will have their Recovery rate increased slightly. This power is always on and costs no Endurance.

Dull Pain - Makes one ally more resistant to pain, effectively increasing your ally's maximum Hit Points for a short time. Dull Pain also grants your ally resistance to Toxic Damage. Recharge: Very Long

Integration - Frees an ally from any Disorient, Hold, Sleep, and Immobilize effects and leaves them resistant to such effects for a good while. Also, grants target a Regeneration bonus. The Protection will improve with multiple applications and as you advance in level, although the Regeneration boost will only apply for the first few applications. Recharge: Fast

Resilience - Resilience gives your ally resistance to Smash and Lethal damage as well as Protection from Disorient effects. You cannot stack Resilience on the same target, however the effect can be improved by another ally using the same power. You cannot use this power on yourself. Recharge: Very Fast

Instant Healing - Instant Healing dramatically increases the healing rate of all nearby heroes for a limited time. This power costs you a lot of Endurance, and it takes a long time to recharge. Recharge: Very Long

Revive - Resurrects a fallen ally with full Hit Points and Endurance. The Resurrected target is left protected from XP Debt for 90 seconds. Recharge: Very Long

Moment of Glory - Dramatically increases an ally's Resistance and Defense to all damage types except Psionics for 15 seconds. Also increases Endurance Recovery and grants Protection from Knock Back, Sleep, Disorient, Immobilization, and Hold effects. Recharge: Very Long

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Excellent job completely ignoring the Stalker inherent here btw. Simply incredible since it serves to make your point actually seem to be true. Too bad it's not.

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Thanks for mentioning the inherents.

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Looking at average solo play, Stalker's don't particularly win out simply because they've only got a crit rate of 10% (well, they would if you discounted attacking from stealth). This gives them a functional scalar of 1.10 + a little extra versus a Scrapper's 1.21 (1.125 * 1.075). That's not actually all that bad, considering Scrappers are probably the single best soloing AT in the game (or at least are routinely shown to be).

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Solo, Scrappers are still better, as you've noted here. They do more damage AND are stronger in survival.

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Looking at maximized team play, Stalkers are, by far, the biggest winners around. (10 + 7 * 3) = 31% crit rate not including control crits from stealth and placate is a huge boon for Stalkers. Stalkers get put up to a (1*(1+4)* 1.31) = 6.55 functional scalar. Scrappers are only (1.125*(1+4)*1.1) = 6.1875 functional scalar, assuming that they're only targeting lieutenants or higher. Brutes get (.75*(1+7.5)) = 6.375, and Blasters get (1.125 * (1+4)) = 5.625. Less importantly than any of the previously mentioned, Tankers get (.8 * (1+3)) = 3.2.

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I didn't really want to include the damage cap in my initial notes, but it seemed like something worth doing considering the fact that Brutes have a low base damage but a high final damage, and with fury they can deal pretty good regular damage.

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This puts Stalkers a fair deal above everyone else in the maximum damage department (of course, this uses scalars rather than actual capability which assumes the same values across all powers and the same attack strings and slottings).

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For single target damage, when a Kin is along, yes.

You are correct in the fact that Stalkers, when fully surrounded by allies, can do a lot of damage through crits. Of course, when we look at damage caps, that really only happens when you have a Kin. Unless we're pushed up toward the damage cap, though, there are some other factors.

First of which is Scrappers have higher +DMG bonuses. So any time you use BU on a Scrapper, or have Fiery Embrace, or AAO, you're getting a larger boost than a Stalker (not that Stalkers have /Fire or /Shield). With a set like Claws, this difference is pretty drastic. But even with a Stalker hitting the 31% crits, a Scrapper wins over with BU because of the larger boost. It helps to shrink the damage gap between them. This is actually the main argument I have for Scrappers being cooler than Brutes. Brutes have the potential to do more than Scrappers, but under various conditions, Scrappers come out ahead due to high base damage and larger bonuses from BU/AAO. This is however less of a factor than:

AoEs. Stalker is only going to get high damage when on a large team, surrounded by people. At which point, the most important factor is AoEs. So their damage goes up, but it's largely irrelevant because their AoEs suffer. So a Stalker hops in and has slightly higher damage than a Scrapper because of the high crit rate. Too bad he can't attack more than one enemy at a time because he doesn't have Whirling Hands. He's not getting tics off with Quills, or tripping foes with Dragon's Tail. When the Stalker actually gets his best damage bonus is the time when it's probably the least useful, because he has less AoEs than anyone else to be able to use the boost with.

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Ignoring an inherent that is so fundamental to an AT's performance as a Stalker's is simply foolhardy. You might as well ignore Containment when comparing Controller damage to all of the other ATs.

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Even counting it, the difference is only really in single-target damage, which I pretty much said is difficult to compare anyway due to the mechanics of AS and other factors. Especially since Scrappers would have a 10%-15% crit rate against non-minions, and that's more time to leverage the BU difference.

And even then, you're only bumping Stalkers ahead in one factor. They may do more in single target, but only on a large team, where that ST damage is largely pointless. They're still the squishiest, with weak AoEs (any damage bonus they may have is negated by the -1 AoE penalty each set has). In other words, you may be able to bump Stalkers to #1 under single target damage only in teaming conditions, but the other points remain.

Though, the ultimate point is that we could throw numbers at eachother all day, but that won't change the fact that nobody is lining up to invite Stalkers to TFs. Or to anything, for that matter. Except maybe the new Khan TF, but only because it's forced, and has nothing to do with the AT itself.

Stalkers deserve better. For being the squishiest melee, they deserve the right to do high damage. At this point there's basically nothing that could be done to make them do enough AoE damage, considering everything is missing an AoE. They do deserve to at least be able to do more damage than a Scrapper in a solo situation, though, considering they're easier to kill.

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IMO, that damage badge should have never been a requirement for an accolade. There is not a single accolade heroside that requires such a long term commitment.

Of course, it's too late to change it now so we villains are just sol.



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Annoying as it is to farm for debt and damage, it only takes a few days and you don't even have to be playing. I have the set on 3 characters. I've yet to earn Task Force Commander or Eye of the Magus on any hero alts, and Portal Jockey only once.

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Are you saying you don't like my Widow's outfit? =p

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I love it! Can I steal it?

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Sure. I imagine she got it from somewhere.

It makes a good picture too.

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Honestly I think if anyone needs a buff it's Stalkers. As far as the melees go, it just makes sense in my head that the more durable one is, the less damage they should do. So it should be like this:

Damage > Survival
Stalker
Scrapper
Brute
Tank

Instead, it's basically Scrappers/Brutes at the top (depending on situation and fury/FS/blah/Rage/whatever), with Tanks at the bottom for damage, and Stalkers just above. Stalkers are the lowest for survival, though, so they get the short end of the stick by being the weakest survival-wise but also being outclassed for damage by at least two other melees. Add to that the fact that they get few, if any AoEs in some sets.

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How are your figuring this? Stalkers just got huge buffs to damage and survivabilty. Chance of AoE fear with assasin strike and not aggroing on a missed AS is huge, plus I believe they got a slight HP bump, or maybe it was the max HP level. Either way they are more survivable now than ever before.

On top of that they now do crits when not hidden more often than Scrappers when on teams. I don't see your logic. Stalker are quite good now IMO.

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Everything you just said is true. Stalkers do more damage and are harder to kill than they were before.

They're still lower than the other ATs, though.

Stalkers have Blaster HP, which is less than Scrapper, which is less than Brute, which is less than Tank. HP:

Tank
Brute
Scrapper
Stalker

Stalkers, Scrappers, and Brutes have the same modifiers for defensive buffs. So a Stalker and Brute get the same amount of RES from a power. However, Stalkers get less from heals, regen boosts, and are still weaker compared because of lower HP. In addition, Stalker HP cap is lower than the others. Base HP is actually quite close to cap, and it's easy to hit it and make powers like Dull Pain worthless. Survival:

Tank
Brute
Scrapper
Stalker

They have 1.00 scale damage. Scrappers have 1.125. Tanks have 0.8. Brutes have 0.75 but get Fury for up to +200%. All melee ATs outside of Scrappers have +80% for BU and the 80% modifier for other similar powers. Scrappers get +100%. Their damage buffs are higher. Meaning a Scrapper does more base damage and gets higher damage buffs. Damage potential:

Scrapper/Brute (huge debate here, but let's say they tie)
Stalker
Tank

Stalkers have a low balance of base damage vs damage cap. Brutes are 850% with 0.75. Scrappers are 500% with 1.125. They don't lose to Tanks, at least. Damage cap:

Brute (850 * 0.8 = 637.5)
Scrapper (500 * 1.125 = 562.5)
Stalker (500 * 1.00 = 500)
Tank (400 * 0.8 = 320)

Stalkers lose AoE powers (usually) to gain AS. They have less AoEs than all the other melee ATs. So they focus more on single target. For some sets like EM, this means they get zero AoE/cone attacks. AoEs:

Tank (one or two sets have an extra AoE that the others don't, like fire)
Brute/Scrapper
Stalker

Single target would be harder to judge. AS wins there of course but it's a one-use sort of thing. For the sake of argument let's say Stalkers are at least second place, though Scrappers and Brutes could probably outperform anyway.

Stalkers are next to last or dead last in just about everything. They aren't bad, and they are better than they were, but that's not to say they couldn't be better. They have low HP, are close to their HP cap, have a lack of AoEs, and do less base damage than Scrappers. Really, they could be and should be better.

I have one Stalker, who I don't play. So this isn't a rally for a Stalker buff because I want my characters to be better. I don't play them because they SHOULD be better.