Eldagore

I just wanted to add this....

I have always thought this game world was a mix of comic books, video game, and a strong dose of the movie last action hero with arnold the govenator. If you have never seen it, it is sort of like this discussion. Arnold is a cop in a different universe, a place where you can get shot 5 or 6 times and "that stings", crash your car into a building at 50 mph and dust your self off and jump out and shoot at bad guys, that type of thing.

Then, a young boy finds his way into this universe at a movie theatre. adventures go on, until the villain finds the portal and goes to "the real world". Arnold and boy follow, and a harsh reality check happens. Towards the end, arnold is shot in the chest, and is basically done for. Boy gets him back to movie-land, and calls for help, medics rush over, and then laugh in his face about "just one bullet" and shortly after arnold is all smiles.

I see CoX as this type of place, but even more over the top because of the super powers. in that movie, arnold was "just a cop". In CoX players can throw fire, shoot electricity, mind control foes, etc. If we wanted to put reality into this game, that lvl 1 hellion with a shotgun should have a pretty darn good chance of killing your defensless blaster/troller/etc instantly. But we role play away from that, after all, it was just a shot gun right? pfft, now, if it was rikti with space lasers and teleport powers, we would be a little more concerned. concerned enough to restrict access to those foes until your character has proven to the registration organization you are capable of facing them.

In the end it is just a game, reality is only applicable as a metric to make it so we can relate to the game in some way. things like fall damage. why is it needed? not really any place in the game where it is strategically needed or applicable in battles. so why then? because it "makes sense" for our heroes and villains to get hurt when jumping off of that 25 story building. its something for us to relate to. if everything in the game was totally out of touch with the real world, we would lose interest on some level-become detached from characters more easily, etc.

thats my two inf. anyway.

I disagree about dropping hotfeet/blazing aura. In a crowd, they do a lot of damage, and the mild mitigation hot feet provides is usually totally underestimated. Plus the slow movment helps with burn.
Part of the blaster conundrum is there are so many attacks available, it can become difficult to find a use for all of them. dmg toggles help here, turn them on, and they dont cost any activation times in battle.

To anyone new to /fire, it is an odd secondary. a lot of the powers are standard in the begining, but the last few are a little odd. seperate, they look pretty lackluster, but when used in cunjunction, the whole is much greater then the sum of its parts. hot feet/blazing aura and burn all work well, hot feet causes fear, but they cant really run away very fast. burn also causes fear, and hot feet keeps them in the patch. consume fits in with these, it provides the counter to the endo costs, and happens to be most effective in the middle of a spawn, same as the auras and burn.

I find with my /fire blasters that the lvl 30-40 is kind of awkward for the secondary. I actually dont mess with the auras and that until i get to lvl 39, so i can slot them and use them together. once slotted, and all set to go, the powers work very well together.

My only beef is that when hot feet detoggles, it recharges pretty darn slow. in the new world of suprressing toggles, having one toggle take so long is kind of lame. get held? sprint, combat jump and any number of others will keep going. blazing aura detoggles, but will be back to reactivate in a few seconds. hot feet will detoggle, but you might as well wait till the end of the battle to look for it again. lots of ways around mez now, but it happens. its really just a minor beef, more a QoL thing then a major put off, the power still works rather well.

I have to go with
My new elec/sheild. prolly some new character shiny, but I have wanted elec/ for scrappers for a long time, and blue instead of red is a big plus for me. I like his look, I like the animations, and it will have solid AoE that is sort of non-traditional with two TP attacks and chain induction/thunderstrike.

I would also have to say my expensive kat/SR. he can chain soaring dragon/golden Dragonfly pretty well non stop. he also sprints faster then base fly speed(before flight speed change recently) runs faster then slotted fly with elude. Makes going through a mission extremely fast paced, flashy and fun.

third is harder, I have a few i like, but I would have to say my MA/regen. he is a troll character, with a tsoo sorcerer hat that learned to "smash like ninja rawr" from a how to video he stole. I slotted the stupefy knockback proc in thunderkick, and put one in Eagles claw. it is hilarious. Kick a guy in the face, he goes flying backwards over his pals head. Crane kick a guy into the wall, he starts to get up, kick him in the guts and he flys arms and legs flailing. Eagles claw, jump in the air, kick guy in face, guy goes flying. Its random, hilarious and provides good mitigation. I bound em tarzan to my keyboard so I can troll rawr and beat chest at will. I have also decided devouring earth were made for MA. Knock a weed monster down, they get up slow, rock monsters eat smashing damage. But, most importantly, using crane kick to finish off a rock monster is priceless. hard kick square to the chest and they explode into tiny pieces as they fly backwards, makes me laugh every time. I have more powerful scrappers, and i cant say they arent as fun, but the light hearted feel of this one puts him in a special place.

as for not like? Not really a fire/ fan as I prefer the tank version 1000%. tried a fire/fire, didnt like it enough to keep it.

I just wanted to throw this in here too....

If you are going to slot SO's, BS shows more of the big hurt out of the box. It will move slower, but I think overall the dmg output is better then Katana. Note: you will have to pick your targets and target switch to maximize this damage, otherwise a lot of it is overkill.

If you are going to spend millions on set IO's, then katana will outdamage BS by a mile. Specifically with some +rech. Extreme +rech makes katana rediculous.

Think of it this way. Both sets have a plus def power, and both sets have amazing damage in the last two attacks you get. BS, gets a third good hit in hack, and katana cant compare there really, in real play. But, katana gets gamblers cut, which animates insanely fast and has awsome DPA. Used as filler between big hits, Katana will put better Dmg over time out then BS. Given significant +rech, Katana can chain its tier 8 and 9 with gamblers cut as filler for crazy dmg output.

Another thought, gamblers cut makes a nice place for an achilles IO.

So I would consider that too. Cant decide? Go for the gusto and make the BS/inv and make a Kat/SR or Kat/elec and slot plus dmg on the BS and +rech on the Kat.

I am sticking with my zoning bug idea lol.

Lots of stories about crappy drops while running in coop zones. Someone try logging a character out for the day(long enough for the server or whatever to "reset" the toon, I dont recall how long it takes for that) in a zone with no coop, no entry to a coop, no wentworths, etc. Inde port? then tomorrow log in, dont go anywhere, and try some radio missions. no zoning, just loading into the mission. no pocket D, no SG base tp's, etc. just log in, radio, mission.

the control for that would be to have a toon logged off in like pocket d, or wherever, then zone through pocket d, or a SG base, and then go to inde port and run radio missions.

there are a lot of areas that have different interaction with your character when you zone. WW is cross server, arenas and pvp zones and coop zones, AE, midnighters, pocket D. Inde port is the only place I can think of that has pretty well none of those, and it still has an AE. Maybe the test needs to be done in a hazard zone like creys or dark astoria with street sweeping. best bet would be to have any characters testing be 100% free of any missions, so the diffy settings have a clean slate/have no effect on the test.

If a character that logs directly into a zone after the "reset" period is shown to have a normal drop rate, and a different character that traveled to the zone has a crappy one, then the process of elimination could begin as to what zone or combo etc would cause it.

provided of course that I am not totally grasping at straws. the reports given here of complete lack of phat l00tz bothers me, but at the same time I can not bring myself to spend my few hours a week I play to test these. My new scrapper calls my name when I log in lol.

So, someone brought up the lag on live vs internal server test.....

Curious, how many of you guys with sucky drop rates play on east coast servers, where nasty lag has been reported of late? I know Liberty is one of them, I dont know all the east coast ones though.

Just a thought, maybe excessive lag/ping/whatever is losing packets? Kind of a stretch as other drops seem ok, but just a thought.

other thoughts.... maybe the drop rate is tied to zoning, or a certain zone? maybe a zone with/without an AE building in it would affect it, or coming from a pvp or co-op zone like rikti war zone? There is always a lag spike around wentworths for me, dont know why, but maybe that has something to do with it. There have been bugs involving zoning in the past. MIght not really be the drop rate, but the "team size"- what if on zoning, with your virtual team set to 8, it is adding another virtual 8- or the original virtual 8 is "converted" by the server to be seen as a normal 8 man team. Sort of how like a few issues ago(maybe still dont know) you could get hasten to stack by zoning and logging out or whatever.

Not sure. to me, it would be more likely to be something like that then a problem right in the drop code. It has happened enough times in the past where the server gets faked out one way or another when you zone or log out I could easily see it affecting the new virtual team size code somehow, inderectly.

Not sure how to test that....maybe select a mission in one zone, then zone to mission vs selecting the mission in the same zone. or select a mission, log out and back in, etc. It;s the type of test that would be tedious, as you would still have to run the mission every time, so it would be a whole lot of logging out or zoning. My PC is not up to that kind of exercise anymore.

Recharge does help with dull pain and recon. Helps with IH, but I like to build my regens to use IH as a backup power.

Another option, depending on what level you are, is to skip set bonuses and mix and match IO's. Slotting rech/heal IO's from different sets can get you to the ED cap in 4 slots in both heal and rech, compared to needing all 6 for SO's on powers like dull pain.

I went with some rech bonuses, some mix and match, and the thing that helped the most was melee defense bonuses. I use combat jumping, and I slotted touch of death 6 slotted into some attacks. ToD gives i think 3.75% bonus, so stacking it 3 or 4 times really adds up. Obliteration in dragons tail also gives a big bonus. I put the steadfast 3% defense IO into resilience. All those little 3% add up. It really took the edge off the alphas when engaging a mob, and after the big burst is over, it is pretty easy to use the other tools regen has to counter the more steady damage.

Nothing super uber, but it has worked pretty well for me. On a side note, I also put the stupefy chance for knockback into thunderkick. It goes off enough to notice, and acts much like crane kick then. its a good bit of soft mitigation if the knockback doesnt bother you.

I am bumping this because I want it lol, and I dont want the ideas to get buried.

I had a set hashed out on the old forums, I think it is deleted now. it was similar to the OP, minus a few powers. Important to note that anything resembling the current AR set should be thrown out, we dont need two cone heavy aoe gun sets. I had something like this- powers with stars I will describe below:

1. Pulse rifle burst (like the MM set blast)
2. Pulse rifle blast ( as above)
3. Photon grenade (as above)
4. Aim
5. Snipe
6. Pulse rifle barrage*
7. Concussive Blast*
8. Charged Pulse Blast*
9. Plasma Pack Detonation*

Ok, so the first 3 are available from the MM set, animations and all. Aim is Aim, Snipe could borrow the AR animation in part, but with different blast effects. That brings us to new ones:
Pulse Rifle Barrage: This would be the tier 3 blast, shorter range, but not just a single heavy blast, it would be 2 or 3 blasts in rapid succession. This could even just be a modification of the animation of the MM powers, modded for the additional blasts. it would be classified DoT, but it would only be 2 or 3 tics of dmg. Why its good- tier 3 blast is missing on AR so it differentiates this set, and of course the obligatory Pew Pew from multi blast. Multiple smaller blasts could be animated thematically faster then a "charged up" blast also.

Concussive Blast: Ranged(short range) Knockback power. Should animate relatively quickly, short range for defense uses. AR has stun, so we want to avoid that. ST knockback is a powerful soft mitigation tool, and we are working with energy blasts, so knockback or stun are on the menu, and one is already used in a gun set.

Charged Pulse Blast: This power would not resemble anything we have as a blast yet. It would be like a ranged Thunderstrike. A heavy charged blast, with a medium length animation as the rifle charges, then a heavy blast to a single target. This target takes the brunt of the damage, but the blast is so hard, there is splash damage to any foe in the targets immediate area. If you have ever played /elec for blasters or for a brute, imagine thunderstrike, but from 40 feet away. I would remove the knockback that thunderstrike has, because the mitigation should be dropped due to using it at range to keep balance.

Plasma Pack Detonation: Player removes Pulse Rifle Plasma ammo clip, pushes a button on pack, lobs pack like a grenade into the mob for a magnificent explosion with extreme energy/smash damage and high mag Knockback. No crash on endurance or anything for this power, but an "only affecting self" cool down instead. maybe 5 seconds or so. You just threw your ammo clip, you need to reload now. No endo crash, because why would there be- its a gun set. but you also cant just keep shooting, because you dont have an ammo pack. So here we would have a "sort of" crashless nuke, with nova type damage. The only affecting self fits thematically. Nova has a mass endo drain crash, fits because you just expended all your stores to nova. On the plus side, you can use a blue inspiration etc to keep going afterwards. With only affecting self, you can not "bypass" the crash, but you also get to keep your endo, so its a trade off that way.

This rifle set would give players that pew pew, without being a laser version of assault rifle. I cant stress this enough, it needs to be quite different so players dont call it "AR 2" or "the other AR". It offers new mechanics, and a wholly different play feel then any blast set we have now. Overall, the set is very ST oriented,(one cone, the other targeted aoe is heavily stacked on the one target with only minor splash dmg going to the rest) and should allow for fast-ish animation times to keep overall damage output on par with more aoe centric sets. Faster animations would also allow for more pew pew.

Plus, think how awsome this would look with I16 with players able to color the laser blasts any way they want. I vote: put this in for I17.

Anyway, thats my take on this. I have wanted a set like this since like I3. Pew Pew after all.

I just want to throw this out there...

I am not going to defend eighther side here. but, I will say I have read a thread like this once or twice and they always get under my skin. Why? because my first post onthese boards like years ago was in response to one of these that was about me.

My namesake was made in I2, with no forum help and min/max etc out the window. I picked whatever looked cool, whatever helped me out, etc. I made a skranker, when skranker was a dirty word. So a guy I teamed with made a thread about how he wished he could show me "what I was missing" and "what i have wrong", namely, how I hadnt made a giant meatball to aggro whole maps for someone else to defeat. My tank was built to fight, I used to laugh in Founder falls, Jose escalante used to routinely dump lvl 39 devouring earth on players when they went to talk to him. At lvl 30-ish, I would fight them, and win.

i had a tank that could fight plus 10's, and win, and here was this giant pity thread about my character. I was pissed.

Maybe that stone tank was a n00b, maybe he heard granite was awsome through AE spam, wouldnt surprise me given the state of new player initiation in atlas park right now. Maybe he is a 50 month vet, and is just a bad player, maybe he is a 12 year old, maybe he was like me and just had an odd build and wanted "to see".

maybe he was justified in kicking Pine, maybe he was an ***.

All I know is coming here and getting a bunch of people to heckle a guy/gal they never met is pretty small of Pine, EVEN if the tank was a total *** and kicked him just because. I think the phrase "let he who has no sin cast the first stone" fits here. people need to just get along.

I feel for you getting kicked Pine, with no warning or a "hey back off I want to try" or anything, the tank could have handled that better- especially being a TF. but dont come here and get a pity crowd going and wreck that guys rep. over one incident. be bigger then that.

If you are new to brutes, elec/ and dual blades may not give the best impression as to how the AT plays. /dark may not be the best choice eighther for a first brute.

First thing you will notice is how much endo you go through, and how it is the deciding factor of how fast you plow through mobs. that is why i would save a /dark brute for a second or third, until you get the hang of fury and how it will affect your slotting choices.

a simple brute to start with would be super strength/willpower. ax/willpower is also not too bad. basically, a primary with some soft mitigation built in like knockdowns/holds/stuns can give you a bigger window for error while you learn the ropes. to that end, willpower is a pretty straight forward secondary for this. i would probably wait on /elec /dark/ and /fire for a first brute.

here is a generalized pattern for how I lvl my brutes.

lvl 1-5: i skip the missions is mercy. it is far faster to just smash everything in sight on the streets and then skip to port oakes. smash a few around the arachnos base till you get lvl 2 and then pick another attack. then, smash absolutly everything you see, grey cons, purples, whatever as you run towards the ferry to port oakes. never stop, never hesitate, use the inspirations that drop as soon as you get them. dont rest(unless your health and endo are both down to nothing, one or the other down- keep smashing!) if you die who cares respawn and start the trip over, lvl up while you are there. once you hit 5, go to port oakes for paper missions. I have lvled brutes to 5 in 10 minutes(less on my stone melle) this way. as for power choices, take attacks. you need attacks for smash.

lvl 5-21: run qwhatever missions you like, explore etc. i havent found an enjoyable "fast" way to run this lvl area. dont mistake that as not enjoyable, just not a fast way that i liked. on my brutes, i moved along pretty quickly, and only ran a toggle power if the situation called for it. fighting a lost boss? might want to turn on your mez toggle. nasty looking spawn ahaed? toggle up, fight a few, drop toggles off in mid fight as the mob thins out. toggles suck endo, you wont have any in this lvl range to spend on them unless they are needed. if you keep a fury bar relatively high, the mobs are defeated before they can take you out anyway. for power choices, its up to you. keep in mind things like dmg auras and other toggles take a lot of endo to run at this point, if you take willpower for example, you can lvl into the mid-high teens on the passives pretty easy, with the mez toggle thrown in here and there.

lvl 22: yay SO's! this plus stamina slotted will totally change your brute. endo problems arent totally gone(unless you took stamina and QR on willpower and slotted both by this point) but it is pretty easy to run toggles full time now. ride this to the 30's.

lvl 30: by now your build has matured, dmg auras are easy to work in and pay for (endo) and you have enough slots to be pretty tough. where you go from here is totally up to you and your build.

hope this helps

Its funny how much speculation there is on this set. The devs have to be VERY careful how they deal with this set as it is likely the most anticipated port for blasters of all of them. I dont think there is any one power they could tweak or remove without making people t'd.

As for the self heal, doesnt anyone play scrappers here? siphon life just got its damage upped tremendously to the point of making it one of the star powers in that set. It got transformed into a power used for damage with a bonus of periodical heal as the cherry on top, vs a heal power that did some damage too. If that power isnt too over the top for the devs, why would it be so out of the question to have something similar on blasters? they could tweak the heal portion and use blaster AT modifier as the reasoning and I doubt people would bawk much. people will bawk if they remove it and leave the set with a tier one and a tier 2 that does DoT and no other ST at all. At least I would, IMO we dont need another elec blast set.

I would think a cone Immob would raise more eyebrows on the dev team then a self heal would. aoe Immob is pretty hard control for a blaster. but here again, WORMS!!! is a star power in this set, and the uproar of its removal would be deafening. So I doubt it would go. I expect the immob duration to be butchered though, but then again I am not sure how the FX would work out- if the immob is brief, the worms wouldnt hang around and that is sorta the point of keeping the power in the first place in the set. I suppose the FX could persist and the immob not if they wanted, lol, imagine a whole mob running around or super leaping onto a roof top or powerlines etc with the worms all around them.

I could see the set not getting aim. assault rifle skips it, and it works fine. not sure what they would give a dark/devices to compensate for no aim/build up though, unless they do the snipe bonus again. I would prefer it not get aim if it would help to preserve its current form.

As for dark obliteration, I could see them putting this in, eighther as compensation for removing the worms (players lose the worms, but gain an easy to use targeted aoe) or possibly instead of dark pit. I do not think they would do that however, unless a power is yanked out to put in a secondary. I am of the opinion we will see a dark secondary, as it wouldnt be such a stretch to make one after creating a dark assault for doms. 3 punches, soul drain, dark consumption, death shroud. that leaves three powers. maybe they will swipe dark pit, or worms, but the first candidate i think would be torrent. I could see them putting cloak of fear in there too, especially if they put death shroud in.

so, i see it like this. powers getting removed is unlikely, but if they do it would be torrent, dark pit, TT, in that order to avoid deafening uproar. so,

dark blast
gloom
dark obliteration(or torrent on dev whim)
moonbeam
aim(or torrent or dark pit depending on dev whim)
night fall
life drain
TT
blackstar

That leaves a good bit in the air, but it really depends on how they come up with a dark secondary. there are no dark single target immob or knockback powers. there is a good possibility the beloved TT maybe become a ST immob to serve as a tier one in a dark manipulation set. so,

1.)TT( as a ST immob, this would remove it from dark blast to be replaced by torrent or dark pit)
2.)shadow punch
3.)smite
4.)build up(if they cop out, otherwise soul drain)
5.)death shroud
6.)this one is up in the air. dark pit, torrent, petrifying gaze, siphon life
7.)dark consumption
8.)cloak of fear
9.)midnight grasp


of course, its all IMO. I just dont see them repeating the catastrophy that was psi blast. people still make threads about its dissapointment. some of this also depends heavily on what they come up with for a dark control set if they make such a thing,(imagine a dominator with dark control and dark assault...try not to overlap to many soft controls there) and also on dark assault for doms. i would not be surprised to see a dark assault set developed first and then a dark manip set from that, with the changes to dark blast thrid with the needed changes made to accomodate balance of the first two sets. in this way they can mess around with balancing a mixxed blast/punch/soft control set with dark assault and dark manipulation to get them right. if something from dark blast gets yoinked to make the dark manip set work, they will do it, and stuff aim or dark obliteration in its place.

the more i think about it, the more I am certain TT will be made into a ST immob for a tier one secondary power. it will be a shame, and cause outrage, but will also cut off a lot of balance issues for the primary, and its easy to replace with dark obliteration. to compensate, torrent will get a minor dmg uppage, when combined with AT modifyer it will be put in line with energy torrent. that way the cones of doom will still exist, to a point. not what people have their dreams based on, but not a total hack job like psi blast was.

in any case, its all speculation for a long while yet. we still have the next round of proliferation to come out before we even get into this one I am going to stop day dreaming about this and go to bed

My thoughts on this:

Neutrino bolt will get altered, but I am confident Castle has already schemed a way to get it to fit in defiance and still hold some of its "feel". being able to spam it loaded with procs etc while mezzed wont fly, so it will get slowed some, dmg upped, endo upped, but not to the extreme.
I wasnt of the impression X-ray beam needed much to be in line with defiance.

The AT modifier will take care of the -def and likely CB without further tweaks needed.

Why I will make one- Electron haze will be like fire breath, except with knockback. it is one of the most powerful cones out there, but has an endo cost and animation to match. still, mondo dmage plus instant mitigation? Yessah. The snipe rules, for sound alone. And of course, X-ray beam while mezzed. I am held? EYE LASERS ON YOU!!

Power spectrum could make this set even more interesting visually.

1. What is your favorite word?

Nein! After all, the German language is hilarious!

2. What is your least favorite word?

Anything baby talk, most notably Goo-Goo and Gaa-Gaa

3. What turns you on?

A soft touch from my wife.

4. What turns you off?

Gossip

5. What sound or noise do you love?

A mid to large V-8 engine under acceleration, with mellow exaust. no glass pack cherry bombs for me.

6. What sound or noise do you hate?

Ambulance sirens

7. What is your favorite curse word?

The f word, used after the realization that things arent going to work out as planned. "awwww f---"

8. What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?

Video game design. I cant program, but I have grand ideas of systems and visuals/animations etc. I would love to share what is in my head with the public.

9. What profession would you not like to participate in?

Military. I respect what they do, support our troops regardless of politics, but it is not in my nature to do the deeds required.

10. What would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?

"That's all you could imagine about heaven? pffft, you SERIOUSLY underestimated my RAWK!"

this isnt quite on topic of making a ranged eagles claw, but...

I suggested once or twice instead of major overhauls, the MA set gets some activation time rework instead.

Think of this, when you use storm kick, your character does the spin kick, and then ends in the "i am a baddass" pose. The character will keep that pose, as it is part of the animation.

However, it is not in the activation time. If you say, use thunder kick, then storm kick, then crane kick, your character will skip the pose part of the animation, because the activation time is shorter then the animation is.

So, lets apply this to crane kick, and eagles claw. if you want to watch the full animation of eighther attack, you can. if you are in the middle of a fight, you dont need to, you can chain some attacks and skip a little on the end of the animations. if eagles claw allowed another animation to start while your character was "falling" back to the ground, it could look totally freegin awsome, and would improve its DPA without ruining its badass-ery animation. jump in air, POW!, flip and as you start coming back down, THUNDER KICK IN FACE!

this change would improve MA DPA and DPS both, by allowing eagles claw to be worked into an attack chain without killing its speed, AND it would still keep the much loved OMG KICK animation.

5 months of having no CoX must have been terrible

Heres my 2 inf.

First, there are no unplayable sets, like many others have said. just sets that feel so blah they cant hold your interest, or just feel "not as good as my awsome other guy!" IMO, that feeling of blah and lack of awsome should be dealt with.

Also, lol at people saying SR is underperforming. at some point in the past, I would have agreed with this to some extent, but the scaling def change pretty much balanced it and IO's have made it borderline overpowered. to the point of this thread....

#1: elec blast. raw numbers show this set is fine. like so many other things in this game over the years, raw numbers do not factor in player skill nor player experience while using the set. The hardcores will prop this set up with /elec and /nrg and of course situational uses and poor comparisons, but if this set was as good as the others there wouldnt be weekly threads asking why it is so poor. The raw numbers are there, the player skill and play experience is not. It is just too meh.

#2: elec armor. this is a bit more tricky, as it doesnt feel meh, and it is relatively easy to find workarounds for it. Io's help, but more then that is the primary it is paired with. Unlike elec blast that only has 2 options to make it fair, /elec armor gets good synergy from most primary sets. Especially if the primary has abundant soft control, like stone mellee. Overall the set can benefit from player skill and other workarounds quite well.
For Brutes.
For stalkers, it flops. Stalker primary sets do not synergize like brute sets, and the caps in place make it hard to use workarounds. IMO, when this set gets ported to tanks, the shortcomings of the raw numbers will be more apparent. Stalkers are hard to datamine survivability off of i would think when considering a set, and brute play is not like tanker play at all in that regard.

#3: Martial Arts. This set offers reasonable damage- that gets resisted just enough to make it feel too wimpy. On certain targets, like early level CoT mages, MA feels good. On robots, it feels totally smashtastic. On many, many, other mobs, it feels t3h g1mpz. Fighting rikti or those crey mob specialist minions or a host of other 20% res to smashing damage foes makes MA feel so meh as to make many players put the character on the shelf. My MA/regen is like this, but I got around a little of the boring feeling by slotting knockback procs into powers(which is truly, truly hilarious IMO) but he still only gets on again/off again play time depending on my mood.

#4: Blaster Psi blast. The king of mediocre play. Little AoE, and after having played defender version, the blaster version feels like all the cool toys were removed. no subdue, or cone attack took away a useful tool and some aoe, and one of my favorite sound fx for the set. removing the range buff the set has in the defender version further removes Psi's uniquness. Whats left is lots of similar looking and sounding ST powers that mostly work the same way and benefit little from diverse building through power choice or slotting. Litterally, just push the single target attack buttons as they recharge, both solo and on teams. I actually did this with a mid level blaster i have since deleted on a team. I put myself on follow on a SG team mate, and pushed my 1-2-3-4 keys with one hand in random order while turned away from the screen and watching tv. When I realized i did a whole mission that way and no one noticed, I deleted that character.

#5: mastermind ninjas. I know MM in general are not underperforming in any way, but comparitively, ninjas just die, all the time. i named my genin " I will die" "me too" and "watch this" a stiff breeze kills the genin. green con minions can kill genin if i dont heal them in between fights, or if i send them off on their own solo.

I have not tried mercs, but I have heard there is issues with that set as well.


now, how to fix!

Elec blast: change voltaic sentinal. how:
change his avatar into something besides a little fuzzball graphic from launch. it needs an FX update. give it more powers to cycle. powers i would give it: lightning field, tesla cage, elec fence, elec fences. this list of powers could vary depending on AT using it. defenders should have access to more compared to blasters for example. giving the blaster version an aoe immob might be too much. lastly, give it HP, and let it take aggro and die. changeing sparky in this manner makes elec blast not only totally un-meh, but gives it that damage boost and removes that "sparky is an useless aggro machine". After all, who cares if he aggroes on himself, and who cares if he switches targets all the time if he is randomly firing out damage, immobs and holds on different targets.

elec armor: add some regen/heal. this set is hard to nail down until testing it on the tanker AT is possible.

martial arts: eagles claw needs some kind of tweak. prefereably, a small damage boost and a minor reduction in animation. not a full out change, but maybe cut some off the very end of the activation time to allow the next attack to start. I do not think it would make the animations in the set look wierd to allow them to sort of partially interupt the end of the previous one. think of storm kick. the pose at the end is skippable if you use another power. eagles claw and crane kick need that. also, up the damage by about 5-10% to compensate for the mob resist. dmage in MA is spread out amongst more attacks thenother sets, and IMO tends to need that one additional attack to finish off a mob compared to other sets. that slows play down too much. speeding up the set activations rather then re-assign damag and rebalance all the powers feels like a better solution to how the set plays out.

blaster psi blast: give back the range boost. it would give psi the edge for ST ranged style of play over other sets. right now, i can build an ice or fire blaster that will outperform and also out-entertain me for that style. both of those sets also offer something else, control or more damage. frankly, all sets for blasters are eighther more visually interesting, or have more tricks or variation in them. giving Psi range would allow for for that variation.

MM ninjas. this one, hard to say. if genin didnt die all the time i think ninjas would outdamage other sets by quite a lot. long ago i suggested changing one of the genins into something different, like a shaolin monk, sort of like the merc medic or thug arsonist. it would give the set more flavor, and could be tweaked as seen fit- if it provided a means to allow genin to survive it could cost the set some damage,(monk would not attack as much or something) or it could add aoe, or, well, most anything.

anyway, thats my long post. I wonder if devs even read threads like this, or dismiss them out of hand?

[ QUOTE ]
While in a team earlier tonight I realized that the desirability of certain Powersets and even certain ATs can wax and wane with the difficulty of the enemy. I felt it odd that I never realized this before.

Tanks can be a wonderful thing to keep the attention off of the squishies and tie up the enemy. But on a mission where most of the enemies con white or less the AT becomes less desirable because the threat from the enemy is less and more damage or control might do the job just as well or better.

The same thing goes for Empathy. Many teams STILL cry for a 'healer' from time to time but when the enemy is relatively weak there is less need for team buffs and more control or damage might be just as good or better.

Some Powersets, like Kinetics, are always desired because they bring a lot of utility to the team in any circumstance. Between the AoE Heal, the Transference, Fulcrum Shift and the ever-popular Speed Boost Kin is just a handy set to have around. In tough fights this is even more apparent where the damage buff from FS can mean the difference between victory and defeat.

Players who are struggling with some ATs or Powersets finding teams might want to consider forming their own and raising the Difficulty a notch or two. The guy who says the team can live without Bubbles or healing or whatever might change his tune when the enemy is all red con to him and his Health Bar is at 20% and falling...

[/ QUOTE ]

This is one angle to look at it from, I agree with what you are saying here, but I look at it from a different angle.

Theoretically, the devs have designed this game around "average" when it comes to difficulty. "Average" skill level players with "average" character builds slotted with SO's, etc, etc, the design is for this group of average players to run on the base difficulty setting in a group of relatively close level range(this includes sk's)

In order for a team to effectively run above this average, something has to change. it could be one or several of many things:

-Player skill increases.
-Character build is optimized, IO'd out etc.
-High level character exemps down(this used to be more effective then it is now, IMO)
- and of course, the AT makeup of the team is tweaked or adjusted.

The first one can make a much larger difference then is usually accounted for, because the effect is subtle.
The second is pretty obvious. For instance, I have a kat/SR scrapper with retarded rech bonus who can basically chain the tier 8 and 9 attacks back to back. If i handed that character off to even a "n00b sk1llz" fresh to the game player, that player will perform at a level higher then "average" on merit of the character build.

More to your post, the last one is harder to nail down. Much of it depends on the group dynamics of player skill and character build, and also what foes you face when it comes to which AT or powerset makes the biggest difference. Empathy healers tend to be common because healing is easy to use and player skill isnt as much a factor compared to say, storm defenders. thus, when a team is faced with to high a challenge, something needs to be adjusted. PLayer skill isnt exactly easy to upgrade..... "lvl 40ish team looking for highly skilled players!"....not likely to succeed. similar with character builds, teams cant just switch on uber IO mode as needed.

So, it really comes down to AT and powersets because those are the most easily altered attributes of a team. When it comes to difficulty, a well led team will adjust difficulty after it is shown the team is capable of it. A poorly led one will try to adjust the team after it finds out "the hard way" that they have jumped in head first into a whuppin. I have seen this repeatedly, I think anyone thats played for a while on this game has seen it too. You join the team, go in the mission, and its obvious you are going to struggle. but the team tries anyway, gets sent to the hospitol, and then everyone stands around while the leader tries to recruit that "key member that lets us win", which is usually that tank or healer, because thats the easiest.

Flip side, you join a team, steam roll the mobs like no one's buisness because your IO tweaked highly skilled /dark defender and fire/mental purpled blaster are just that far above average. next mission, the leader ups the diffy.

One other thing about healer/tank sets- they are reactionary in nature, healing is a reaction to the damage, and while a tank may try to initiate a fight for aggro control, a tank good enough to "make a difference" has to react and work at keeping aggro as the fight unfolds. It should not be a surprise then that the teams reacting to their difficulty being to high are looking for reactionary AT's and sets.

The more potent team, as always, is the one with more skill, better builds, and also importantly, the team that does not rely on heals but on force multiplyers. A reactionary team looking for that granite tank may find one, and thus enable them to complete their "hard" mission, but their success will pale in comparison to the team that ups the difficulty after verifying their team has the proper mix of skill/build/force multiplier to succeed.

So when you look at your team next time, dont just look at it as a group of AT and powersets, look at the whole, look at how it compares to "average" and adjust difficulty accordingly. I think most players agree steamrolling yellows is more fun then repeated hospitol trips trying to beat down a fistfull of purple cons.

Judging by your criteria as to solo/group, I would go Ice/Ice.

It offers good ST damage to eliminate foes quickly, and also some good soft and hard control powers to add safety. Ice as a primary is very potent at ST, with OK, but easy to use AoE, and later on Blizzard is magnificent to use on teams.

Ice as a secondary is ranked towards the top as far as utility. the slows, ice patch- it is a neat bag of tricks. Note: frozen fists isnt too hot for a blap, but ice sword is an awsome one.

do both. make a sonic/mental.

added bonus: you will rawk.

I have also wanted this set ever since I played my first robo mastermind, like cov beta.

after all, a model, and 3 powers already exist. add aim, a variation of sniper rifle from AR and you are over half done.

Animation for the nuke: plasma pack detonation- character removes "ammo" clip from gun, lobs it like a grenade at a target. Boom. may or may not include -end/-recov like other nukes as seen fit for balance. I would think yes to the -end/-recov, as it would be a ranged aoe with up front huge damage, and after all you just lobbed your rifles whole power source into the spawn to do it, now you need to reload.

that would make 6 powers. I would add a heavy DoT single target attack, like plasma barrage or somthing, where the character fires off 2 or 3 shots with a middlin' length animation, but does high DoT sort of like gloom in dark blast. Would add the 3rd ST "big" hitter like blaze or power burst, but in a somewhat different way for style. plus more then one shot = pew pew

that leaves 2 powers. another aoe, and then some kind of soft control would fill it in. stun comes to mind, but AR has that, I think a knockdown/back shot of some kind would be good here. as for another aoe, theres already a cone from the robo MM attacks, but a targeted aoe might be hard to invent for the rifle without more grenade type. I am thinking some kind of chain induction type power, or like a ranged thunderstrike, where the initial target takes a whallop and his buddies feel it and take some too, just not as bad.

then we would have a laser/plasma/pulse rifle set that wouldnt feel like "the other AR"