EarthWyrm

Actually, that's not what it says. I don't know if it was updated between yesterday and today, but the cost of "Any 2 Rare" for the Very Rare is labeled an "Ability Cost," not a "salvage cost." So it would appear that you're not paying with rare salvage, but with rare abilities. Functionally making "Very Rare" take exactly twice as long to achieve as "Rare".

This assumes that he actually didn't have his other powers slotted to his satisfaction, which we have no way to know. If my powers are all slotted to my satisfaction, in terms of what I need to enhance, and I've got slots left over I'll figure out how I can use those slots to get some set bonuses in. I know you're presenting this as an extreme example, but it assumes an awful lot about the scrapper and how everything else was slotted. (Although 6 slots of Efficacy Adaptor in Stamina is WAAAAAAY excessive to get that 5% recharge bonus...)

There are absolutely times that people slot for set bonuses when they shouldn't, though. Nothing will make me run screaming from a team faster than a tank (or brute...) who's obviously six-slotted his Footstomp with Kinetic Crash to get the 7.5% recharge bonus, and ends up scattering mobs all over the place every 10 seconds.


Beyond that, some (what I hope is) constructive feedback.

There are also some things in your guide that you should consider revisiting. For example, Crushing Impact doesn't have a proc. The piece you left out when running your numbers for 5 pieces of CI was the damage/endurance/recharge triple, which makes a pretty big difference in the calculations and is one of the pieces someone frankenslotting would never leave out (you even used it in your 2 Mako/3 Crushing Impact example). Using the d/e/r in place of either the d/e or the d/r piece gives you values of 68.9/97.5/68.9/42.4, which using your math is a 3% better total than you give the set credit for allowing. The things you gain with the 2 extra Crushing Impact slots are 7% global accuracy and 5% global recharge, which if we're being fair really ought to be figured in and bring the total per-slot average up to 57.94% enhancement/slot. It's not the 64.75% average you get using your frankenslot, but it's also not the 52.51% you computed.

Further, what are you *getting*, when you look past the raw %s? Your frankenslot gives 80.5 damage, 3.59 end cost, a 2.25 second recharge, and 135.7% accuracy. The Crushing Impact 5-slot (using d/e rather than d/r) gives 87.9 damage, 3.85 end cost, 2.71 second recharge, and 131.9% accuracy. So, better damage, everything else slightly worse, but in exchange you've buffed every other attack's accuracy by 7% and every other power's recharge by 5%. The percentages you quote are impressive until you think about what they mean in terms of actual game-numbers. Unless you're doing nothing but Air Superiority, having it on a 2.25 second recharge vs. a 2.71 second recharge doesn't matter; it takes 1.5 seconds to animate, and even Lift has an animation time of a little over a second. The extra .26 endurance cost per activation is unlikely to be a make/break kind of deal, and the accuracy is pretty silly high in both options.

When you talk about defense slotting, you also make it sound like there are fewer options than there are, in reality. Going D/E from 2 sets and D/E/R from one of them is fine, but you can have 3 D/E slots without going to a PvP set. If you have plenty of inf, you can always get a Cytoskeleton Exposure. Those are currently running over 100m, though, and this was more of a budget-wise guide, so we'll skip that (though my current favorite defense toggle 3-slotting is Cyto+LotG Defense+LotG Defense/7.5% global; note that you could change the Defense to Defense/End if you were concerned about endurance cost, and this wouldn't take the defense slotting for the power below the Mids "yellow" level). If you drop down to sets that cap at 40, like Serendipity, putting in the D/E from that gives you better defense and endurance values than including the d/e/r from one of the level 50 sets, at the cost of a 2.2% immob resist bonus (if you're using Red Fortune). That seems like an easy trade-off to make.

I also think that there are places where you talk about slotting that may be optimal for pvp without mentioning that's what you're doing. Your suggested slotting for Crush, for example, might be great for pvp, but in pve Crush is one of grav's more useful damage powers (I'm ignoring Propel entirely because of the animation time; clearly, it does more base damage than anything else in Grav); Crush sets up containment quickly and has high base accuracy (90%), plus does better damage than Lift (even if Crush is a DoT). Most pve targets are going to be stuck just from the immob, so slotting for slow on top of that seems like overkill when fighting pve mobs. (Mids doesn't list it as affecting recharge in either pve or pvp; if it did, that might make a difference in how I thought about slotting it.) So in pve it seems like you'd get more mileage out of slotting damage rather than slow, on top of the immob. For example, if you took 3 Devastations (a/d, a/d/r, a/d/e/r), 2 Trap of the Hunter (a/i/r, i/e), and 1 Enfeebled Operation (i/e) you'd end up with 85.71% acc, 66.25% damage, 71.4% end, 60.95% recharge, and 73.78% immob - or about 59.68%/slot. Your slotting gives about 56.25%/slot. None of which takes into account that slotting for damage is more valuable than the %'s would indicate, due to containment, either.

In pvp, where there's a lot more immob resistance (combat jumping etc.) around, and you may have more damage-focused teammates, the dual-slotting looks really good (though I'd still go with 2 from Trap and 1 from Enfeebled; it's an extra 2% immob duration for the set bonus, and it's not like anything from Trap of the Hunter is *that* expensive!).

Those are mainly nit-picky things, though, and some of it's playstyle. I think you did a good job with the guide overall. It could benefit from some side-headings to help organize things for the reader a little more, but I agree with your core message: People need to think about factors other than "complete sets" when they're slotting. They need to look at their powers and what those powers do, and figure out how to get the most out of them. One of the great things about the system is that it lets people build in very different ways (you and I both have grav/rad controllers, but I'm sure they're built completely differently - and not just because I don't pvp!) but still be effective. So, thanks for writing the guide, and starting the conversation!

No, but you're attacking it as such, when it's obvious that there's clearly not a true experimental methodology being employed. I stand by my statement that this makes your criticisms, at best, disingenuous, and that you are attacking something that you have to recognize as a strawman while criticizing people of strawman arguments right and left.

The author made full disclosure of methodology. There was no intent to mislead. If you insist on going after the semantic argument, that says more about you than it does about the quality of the exercise conducted.

I can't believe, with all your talk of strawmen, that this is your summative statement. "Experiment" does not even begin to describe this effort. There can be no control over an environment such as the CoH markets sufficient to engage in a true experimental design. The fact that somebody else stuffed it full of straw does not stop it from being a strawman that you're attacking. It seems at best disingenuous for you to continue along these lines.

What I saw in the OP - and I read it, then moved on - was more akin to a naturalistic observation with limited intervention. More a case of, "Here's what I did, here's what I observed, here's what it might mean." It seemed rather tongue-in-cheek, to be honest.

To have someone go after it on its scientific merits really makes me wonder.

Why? What's the point?

Does anyone expect true experimental research to be able to be accomplished in a chaotic system with a multitude of uncontrolled and uncontrollable variables, which include but are not limited to people who get their jollies out of mucking around with the market?

Who could possibly have an axe to grind when it comes to gaming-related research? I mean... waitaminute...

Twixt? Is that you?

We didn't have a full team, but 2 scrappers + rad defender + kin defender left us unable to take him down, even when both scrappers spiked a pile of big reds right after he healed to damage cap themselves (all the minions around him were already dead, so no FS...). We drained him to zero blue-bar with transfusion/transference and the heal still went off. It went off when he was chain held and the PTOD were down (switched from my kin to a grav/rad, and 2 rads was also a no-go). If there were something in the mission that you could DO (like, if shutting down the transmitters shut off his ability to heal), then there'd at least be some strategy. But a bag of HP who heals for 7k every time you get him down to 25% health is not a challenge - it's poor design. I shouldn't need to try to find a Cold or /Poison for some -special to beat a flunky AV.

Or there could be some other explanation that I used to link to, except that what I linked to no longer exists and I removed the offending reference.

Because they don't understand that they have the exact same number of slots they had before*, to use with 3 or 4 more powers?




* not counting the 3-4 slots that come as the "base" slots for the inherent fitness powers, of course.

You can also do this to figure out other people's listing prices when they post screenies of things they've sold.

Maybe. People who didn't play their 50s much made that decision for a variety of reasons. Given that there's not *that* much new content at 50, and given that the alpha slot might be the kind of "grind" that kept them from being interested in playing their 50s in the same content over and over prior to I19, the idea that people who weren't motivated to purple their 50s will suddenly want to do so isn't something I'm sure I agree with.

But I also stink at long term predictions on the market, so I guess we'll see what happens. =)

You do not need Hasten to perma-rage. All you need to basically perma-Rage is 3 Recharge SOs.

Rage has a base recharge of 240 seconds. It lasts 120 seconds.

With 3 even-level Recharge SOs, it recharges in 123 seconds and change. So it will recharge 3 seconds after your crash starts. If you add in a single 5% recharge set bonus (as for 5 pieces of Crushing Impact or Obliteration) the recharge is exactly 120 seconds in Mids. Barring effects that slow your recharge, that's perma.

If you have the slots to spare, sure.

Depends on which 4 pieces, but probably fine.

Bear in mind that you get almost no endurance reduction out of Obliteration (about one DO's worth, if memory serves), so you may want something else in the sixth slot to shore up that area.

There are some USB number pads that have a 000 key. I have one. I sometimes hit that key by mistake and laugh at how much I almost offered for something.

Other times, I hit it on purpose. Because I can. It's my 000ber-key.

Anyway, those mistakes actually are possible in the same fashion as the classic "extra zero" error. They're just 100 times more costly.

That's the same as saying, "Some sets are naturally more powerful than others," which is pretty much a truism. You can take any set and make it good with IOs, but it'll still be worse than a better set with the same amount invested in it. With zero investment, picking one set over another gives you something that is more powerful or less powerful. That's the way the game is designed.

I never said that EA is the most powerful set, which is about the only thing that your statement would seem to disprove. It's not the most powerful set. It's not even the second-best defensive set available to brutes.

EA is a fun set to play, and offers a good amount of "trade-off" decisions - and unlimited endurance. For me, it's been the most fun. If I want to play "Most powerful" I'll log my stone tank or my kin/sonic defender or my ill/rad controller. Given the option, though, I go for the SS/EA brute. I have absolutely powergamed him, and found doing so more rewarding than powergaming any other character.

As an unrepentant powergamer, I disagree. My /EA is my favorite character I've ever built in this game. I have complete control over every aspect of my gameplay (how much aggro I generate or do not generate, what mobs to target first, how to manage my endurance and health) and with a sufficient investment* have made it so that I only ever need Overload when I'm teamed and facing (a) mobs with large defense debuff capabilities or (b) substantially higher-level AVs. I walk around with over 2000 hp and am over the soft-cap to all types except psi (and toxic, which there is no defense against other than positional elements), and even my psi is in the low-mid 20% range. Most of my positionals are there, or above.

It's taken a ton of iterations to get him to this point, and I've probably logged over 2000 hours playing him, but I've not got another character that is as much fun to play. From a powergaming perspective he's also been the most enjoyable; anybody can take a stone tank and make it hard to kill; this took a little work and planning. /EA plays relatively well out of the box, but to make it really shine takes a lot of investment of time and resources. It's worth it, though. It's crazy-fun.




* = I don't want to think about how much it would cost to re-create his build from scratch.

The problem I've observed is that optional objectives - things that give you clues, for example, but aren't part of the list of mission objectives - also count against the things you have to clear for that logic to trigger, and those are never part of the task bar list of "things to do".

For example, in the level 50 hero tip mission where you have to beat up Flambeaux and that fire tanker and disarm two bombs, there is also a desk-glowie that gives you information about why Flambeaux is so pouty. It's not part of the objectives, but if you don't click it, you can beat both bosses and find one bomb and not have the other bomb show up. If you do click the desk, the other bomb then shows up normally.

I don't know if this is WAI, but it seems pretty consistent to me. It also seems to defeat the purpose of identifying mission objectives if non-objective glowies are cluttering up the game's "to-do" list, so it's probably worth bugging in-game.

I'm pretty sure Castle did. He found the perception-based arguments less than compelling, if memory serves, and anticipated a flood of bug reports if people moused over a full fury bar and saw it only indicating 85% fury (or whatever they dropped the top end down to).

I still don't see why cutting it off lower would be a big deal. The fury bar's an indicator, filling it up wouldn't put anyone at the hard cap for what Fury can supply. Having the bar only go to 85% would make Frenzy cooler, if anything. It would be a "But this goes to 11!" power, instead of a, "This is the only way in the game to maximize your inherent" power.

Other than that, I'm really happy with the brute changes from I18. And the bar? Meh. I can live with it.

Would buy.

I figured I'd just ignore Supes because he's too easy, what with having been brought up on a farm. I'll admit I wasn't an avid reader - but did he do a lot of tilling of the fields when he went home? Since that seems more in line with the OP than what I ended up saying.

Farming/mining/etc. as an active element of the game makes more sense to me in a fantasy MMO than it does a superhero MMO. If it were already here, I wouldn't mind it. It just seems like there's better stuff they can be working on (and, based on the threads from this weekend's con, that they HAVE been working on!).

Presumably because it's not genre-appropriate. If there are issues of comics where superheroes go off to the farm to relax, they're probably few and far between.

I find beating things up to be pretty mindless. I'm willing to suspend disbelief and go along with the notion that despite my having set them on fire, irradiated them, hacked them with a sword, or shot them in the face with a gun bigger than I am, they're going to be patched up and rehabilitated.

Punchin' stuff in the pixelated face is kind of meditative, for me.

I don't want to import WoW's systems. I also think this game has more than enough kinds of loot as it is, with more coming (presumably) in the incarnate system, and adding a new variety of grind that doesn't seem to fit with the genre isn't something I'd prefer the development team to spend its resources on.

BTW, the Suggestions forum is thataway. -----> You might get more meaningful dialogue there. =)

Not I.

It will only affect you.