DrGamma

I have a pre-24 Widow that I couldn't decide whether to level primarily as a Fort or as a NW... Recently I scrapped my NW plan for her (since I have enough stalkers to amuse myself with right now) and planned a Fort build that I really liked, with perma Mindlink and all, and not even using HOs (this was before the nerf, but I never liked using HOs much... worked out well in the end).

Thing is, without the rech from inventions in mindlink, it won't be even close to perma, and her defenses won't be capped. So I wonder if anyone heard anything, or think it's likely, about IOs getting the same treatment HOs did and not boosting mindlink's recharge...

Because if that looks likely, I'll probably go back to my NW build as my primary way of leveling with this character... Not having mindlink up all the time would make my Fort sad.

Anyone heard anything or has opinions about that?

I often take it on my planned blaster builds... And later find out that, with my blasters, I prefer just blasting things away instead of remembering to click a smallish debuff every 20s, so I remove it...

For personal, individual damage, I figure the extra attack I use the animation time for, plus the extra defiance boost from it, probably means I'm not loosing much damage by not using the 14% debuff...

In large teams/leagues, against tough targets, it might make a difference but those teams often already have strong debuffers that will probably trivialize my lil 14% -res (especially after resistances are taken in consideration)...

So I guess it comes to personal preference: if you want to take it, it's not a bad power at all, but if you don't and prefer just laying down the hurt with your blaster like I do, IMHO you definitelly won't gimp yourself by not taking it even if you go MM...

Meh, maybe I'm a bad group player, but I tend to act less busy with my Illusion/Kin than these posts indicate.

I think if you try to apply Speed Boost and Increase Density to every team member all the time, it gets super busy, but SB got the AoE buff treatment now, didn't it? So it's just one click (maybe a few if people are spread out) periodically, instead of 7. Even before it turned AoE I tended to use it more reactively - if people asked for it or if I noticed blue bars going down too quick. Stone Armor characters were the only ones I tried to always keep it on.

With ID I act reactively, too, basicly applying it to mezzed people when it happens instead of keeping it on everybody all the time (which is still so annoying it's close to impossible for me).

Other than that all I did was FS and Siphon Speed whenever they were up (no need to siphon power after fulcrum, usually, except for long AV/EB fights maybe), heal when necessary and Transference if I saw some blue bar (usually mine) getting dangerously low. Doing all that still left me plenty of time to attack with Blind/SW/Fissure/S.Smash, including time to run in and out of melee. Sure, Kin was busy, but not busy enough to stop me from attacking. I don't see why it would be busier to a Kin/Sonic defender.

I think the only time all I did was KINning and little else was in a BAF when there was no one else with a heal and too many 9CUs had accumulated by the end of the Siege fight... Things were starting to slide into a wipe when I started just spamming Transfusion/Fulcrum/both Siphons non-stop and it was enough to keep us all safely in there for the rest of the time we needed to bring the big guy down... I think even then I still had time to throw out some attacks...

As for FS not boosting the damage from the confused mobs for a Plant/Kin (as a res debuff like those from rad or dark for instance would), there should be so much FS-boosted AoE flying around, including from your Creepers, that I doubt the smaller damage from the confused mobs would be even noticeable. On my Dom, at least, I always thought of the AoE confuse more as a tool to keep me alive than as a tool to increase my kill speed...

Oh, forgot to mention something: because the -res applies to the enhanced damage value of the attacks, instead of the base value like damage buffs, higher damage enhancement values (for instance with musculature) will benefit Sonic even more than the other blast sets, I think.

Beau, just thought I'd point out that one of the mistakes in your eyeball math is the "5 second window". Not all sonic attacks have this small duration for the debuff, that's the smallest duration, Shriek's. There was even a time (before the high global recharge builds I think) when people actually advocated adding Screech to the attack chain only because of its 12s (!) debuff duration.

Something else that's weird in your numbers (though this time it favors Sonic) is the value for Scream's damage. Where did you get the 80.2? Both Mids and RedTomax are showing it as 58.4 to me...

Anyway, it's kinda trivial to stack 4 -res debuffs (so, 60% for a corruptor) from sonic attacks even with lowish global recharge. The classic Shriek(5s debuff/1s activation)-Scream(7s/1.67s)-Shriek(5s/1s)-Shout(10s/2.67s) chain will keep you at 4 stacks of -res most of the time and needs little global recharge.

Using Electric Fence instead of Shout on the above chain nets more or less the same DPS, but people tend to prefer EF for tough single targets because it has better range, roots for less time and will stack immob up to mag 12 (which is quite useful even if you're hovering out of range to stop the running away, especially if you debuff with traps or patches in fixed locations).

Having super-high levels of recharge (like perma-hasten or more) lets you chain only Shriek-Scream (plus a small gap, I think) and IIRC it's the highest DPS attack chain for sonic, despite the gap, keeping 5 stacks of -res on the target consistently.

Throwing Screech in the attack chain may let your -res debuff stack between 4 and up to 6 times at some points, but the overall individual DPS will drop due to Screech's negligible damage (if you're in a team, though, it might be worth it).

When we say all this, we're not pulling it out of any orifice, it's been calculated and debated a lot. You should be able to find several oldish threads about it, usually in the Defender forums (Rad/Sonic was the rage there for AV/GM killing for a while) and later in the Blaster forums, but one that I remember is this: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=195250 - beyond the detailed calculations it even has a spreadsheet with nice colors showing the debuffs stacking and all, to make it easier to visualize.

Sonic gets even better because some of Scream's ticks benefit from Scream's own -res. The problem, of course, is that your DPS depends on keeping the -res stacked, and it will suffer a bit when you have to stop attacking to throw in some debuffs or heals (especially bad for busier debuff sets), or when you miss. In a team, of course, the -res will win over any alternatives hands down. And if you throw Lore Pets or Patron Pool Pets in the mix, then Sonic wins again, even solo.

If you ignore the pets, then Fire has the best DPS but Ice and Sonic are not far behind. Ice has the added benefit of debuffing recharge to the point where it's not even funny, adding considerable safety. Fire's and Ice's DPS aren't hit so hard by pauses to debuff and heal, either, so that's a big plus. So if the OP prefers not to use pets (or can't keep them alive) while going after the AVs/GMs I'd pick Ice (since he said he didn't want Fire) over Sonic. With pets, I'd pick Sonic for sure.

Beam Rifle isn't talked about much because it's newer... I didn't see any threads with the calculations for it and I'm feeling too lazy right now to do it right, but from my [recend and still mid-level] experience with it, it does crazy ST damage with the disintegration mechanic (for ST my BR blaster seems comparable to my Fire Blaster), with the added bonus of even more -regen. It should be a top contender, especially with less busy debuff sets causing less redraw.

Just my long-winded 2 cents...

Ah, so that was you! I was in that bugged TPN and saw you in your radio mission there. My apologies for the involuntary intrusion.

I always prefer Kinetics on controllers, since it doesn't have the mitigation of other buff/debuff sets (I do have a lowish kin/dark defender, too). And Plant is just great. So my vote goes to the Plant/Kin, particularly for your goal of taking teams of random people and standing up to whatever comes.

Kin will add damage to everybody, Plant will also add some damage for yourself but, maybe more importantly for your goal, will make being defeated in your team hard (people can always rush away and poke uncontrolled mobs if they are trying to die, but it's tough to counter that).

As for the Kin/Sonic defender... Sonic Blast's biggest mitigation tool is the AoE sleep, which goes well with Kin since that doesn't wake the baddies up, but sleeps in random teams don't work so well, usually. My Kin/Dark defender adds some mitigation with the AoE -to-hit from his blasts, but it's still not even close to "Oh my god nothing can kill us now" (which is sort of the feeling Seeds of Confusion plus the rest of Plant often brings me).

Do you intend to play more in teams or solo with the character? From your choice of thermal and empathy, it looks like you want to team more, but some of those options are more solo-friendly than others.

I agree that out of those options, Traps/BR looks pretty strong, and it's good solo or in teams. TA/A not only benefits a lot from high recharge, but it's also very late blooming... I played one solo in the early levels and it was painful (the mid-to-high level build looks beastly even solo, though).

As for Sonic/Sonic, I must be weird, then. I really love seeing a Sonic Resonance character joining a team I'm in. Especially nowadays, with everybody and their grandma soft-capped to ranged or S/L, throwing nice resistance AND AoE mez protection on top of that makes my squishies (not so squishy anymore, with high def) feel very bold. And the res debuff is great.

And as a player, I really prefer just telling people to stay in the big bubble to avoid hold/stun/immob, instead of recasting thaw on each member of the whole team every minute and a half (the mez protection clickies didn't get the full-league AoE treatment that other buffs did, right?)...

I'm pretty sure it wasn't a stealth change, and I think I saw that note in the I21.5 patch...

Few guides talk about these powers because they are fairly recent I guess. Until a while ago, Leaping had no Spring Attack, for instance. Let me give you a quick run through of the Leaping pool, specifically:

Jump Kick: is generally considered a bad attack. Most of the power pool attacks are thought of as poor, with a notable exception in Air Superiority (although more for the control than the damage, but the quick animation helps, and looks good, too). Boxing is really not bad either, but most people seem to just take it to reach Tough/Weave.

Combat Jump: is a very nice toggle. Costs nearly nothing, adds a bit of defense to help reach that softcap and is a great place to slot all sorts of IOs, like KB protection, stealth, slow resistance, +to hit, or maybe throw an extra slot there to get that +ranged def from BoZ.

Super Jump: is probably the nicest travel power, IMHO at least. Might not be as safe for squishies as flying, but it's great.

Acrobatics: was a must-have for many squishies and even for some melee folks who lacked reliable KB protection, back before IOs. It also adds a bit of Hold protection. Nowadays it's often skipped (personally I still like it), especially because it costs a lot of end.

Spring Attack: is a mini shield-charge, with the teleportation and pseudo-pet summoning and all. It has 1/4 of SC's chance to knockdown (but it knocks up instead), about 2/3 of the damage and takes a bit longer to recharge. Shield Charge is a great attack. Spring Attack is slightly less great, but still not bad if you don't have a lot of AoE in your build. You might find better AoE in your patron pools, though...

Also, the reason why many of the guides are outdated is because nowadays it's quite easy to see what powers do, in-game, using this real numbers thing they added a good while back.

Just click on the detailed info tab or button, or drag the power to your chat window, or type it's name in brackets and you can see its numbers and figure out how it compares with other powers.

There are usually threads about new powersets and powers when they come out, too, discussing them more qualitatively and making comparisons and such, but you have to search for those threads, they don't usually end up in guides. One example for spring attack, for instance, is here: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=272047

As for other recent travel pool additions:

I took Afterburner for a FF/ defender, instead of PFF (he is soft-capped to almost everything and has some high resists before PFF, so the extra flight speed is rather nice instead of the extra, mostly useless mitigation even in trials) and I like it, but I wouldn't take it in a tight build.

I'm sure there are evil things one can do with Burnout, like recharging god modes and such, but the end cost is huge, and the end penalty (-25 max end for 1 minute) seems to have disappointed a lot of people, it seems to make using it a bit hard.

I'll have to respec my Warshade to take his version of Long Range Teleport instead of one of his less useful powers, it's too tasty, but once again it probably won't fit in tighter builds...

And that's it. Hope my verbosity helps.

I'm not sure if these are bugs or just effects of lag... And I couldn't find anything else in the forums about them... My apologies if it's already been asked/answered somewhere else.

Yesterday I created a TW/Elec tanker in Virtue, started in Praetoria (to take revenge on all those energy damage wielders), leveled him to 10... And I was noticing two strange behaviors:

1) I like running with my weapon out, so while running around from one mission to the next in the first levels, using Prestige Power Dash, I noticed that every single time I hit an attack to draw my titan weapon while running (I was using the Atomic Smasher), my running speed would drop considerably for a couple seconds, then get back to normal. This was weird and I don't think it happened when I was using Ninja Run instead of or along with Dash. Didn't look like a lag thing...

2) This looked more like lag... I was often corpse-blasting my own targets, while playing solo... I'd hit an attack, the animation would play, but the "hit" sound effect would not, no damage would show for a while, the enemy would run 100 yards away... then suddenly, a couple seconds later, the hit sound played and the damage showed up... Usually just as I finished chasing the target and starting a slooow non-momentum attack to finish it off, then blasting a corpse...

Did anyone else have those problems? Think I should /bug it or something?

Not sure if this was caught already but:

Having the same problems with Champion.

Also, for a while I couldn't even see any of my friends lists (it was showing that "you have no friends" message)... Then I could see it, but wasn't managing to send a tell to the global name of one of them.

Looks like I'm late to the party, and I don't usually post in this sort of thread, but I have to chime in this time: I love the new look!

I like original one, but it IS a little bland and this new one, for some reason, looks very super-hero comic-y to me (then again, I stopped buying them in the late 90's, so my opinions may be outdated).

I liked those so much that I had to send the picture to a couple friends who left the game, but should be returning with Freedom.

Then, of course, I had to send that comic strip too. It made me laugh hard.

So, I'm finally upgrading to a new and much better computer and would like to copy my CoH installation from the old one to the new one, instead of resintalling and having to download a ton upgrades.

I remember this was relatively simple to do with the old updater, did it a couple times 2 or 3 years ago and it worked fine, but can we still do that with the new updater?

If we can, could someone please list the important steps to do it? I don't need a visual guide with screenshots or anything, just a simple checklist would be great...

Thanks already for any helpful answers!