Frosticus

Fire/therm is capable of solo'ing most AV's without the use of insp/temps with a build designed toward that purpose.

Ah that makes sense.I think I realized that when I think about it as it wasn't dropping a massive single burn patch when he used it against a single target, so it only makes sense to work via smaller patches.

It is also consistent with my diligent work skirting the edge of the fight with hurricane and making groups snuggle up extra close. When I get them packed ***-bot (crushinator) casts it and everything (luts too) die in the blink of an eye.

I just wish the -regen the ***-bot uses was actually working. I have lofty goals for my bots/storm.

That certainly won't be unique to a demon/poison though. I say roll a d/p because it will be awesome and you think you will enjoy it. If you (generic you) need further convincing beyond that then such is life.

Ah but I do push the envelope to the same realm as pretty much everyone around here (I know this wasn't about me specifically). Like I said though, the only time I shy away from inspirations is when specifically doing things like AV's and the occassional RWZ test. On the toons that are just shy of softcap my success or failure has never been determined by the slightly enlarged probability of being hit. As mentioned I scour the logs after such runs.

I know over enough time it would statistically hold true and if you are looking for an iron man type of build that never uses insp when doing any content then it would probably be of value sooner rather than later. Granted my insp combining is almost always of the red variety, but I will combine them as the situation sees fit, unless as mentioned it is a "no insp" challenge.

All that said, I know I have a different personal design goal than many people. I push for "enough" survivability and then dump everything into offense. A couple of my projects are pushing for sub 2 min defeats of easy AV's without any -regen. So I attempt to lower the statistical probability of the RNG being against me by lowering my exposure to it. And as mentioned, I don't make the choice cuff my hands in normal missions, but I applaud those that do.

I've yet to see a kinetic defender that was self capping his damage complain about their damage output. Considering they do about as much damage as a blaster at full defiance buff (~40%).

edit: from rep
"and how often can you get them to full defiance?"

I could have just as well said a blaster using perma aim minus a tad, but it works out to be almost exactly a blaster with ~40% damage buff from defiance so I went with it. In other words, kin defs do pretty respectable damage, to the point that losing out on the new vigilance buff when in that state is a pretty small matter.

To answer the question though. Every single encounter... it's not particularly difficult to build up ~40% dam buff from defiance

It really depends on just what you are looking to "support" the team with. If you have people absorbing the alpha easily then seekers just becomes another run of the mill damage/tohit debuff/-perception/stun power...of course the mill doesn't produce many powers like that, but anyway.

seekers produce: (unslotted)
-40% dam
-10% tohit
-180% perception
25% chance of stun X 2 chances.
-ability to cast from around corner
-agro free alpha absorbtion

Compared to something like darkest night (which everyone agrees is great)
(unslotted)
-22.5% dam
-11.3% tohit

So even if you don't need seekers to take an alpha they still contribute a lot.

FFgen is good for about 15% def (all) once enhanced and strong mez protection

Poison trap is a slightly downgraded controller aoe hold that is up nearly every spawn, that also applies -recharge and is the most powerful -regen in the game.

You can also contribute direct damage with by toebombing mines (which can be great on a low damage defender set, or a MM. I never found use for them on my fire/traps).
If traps weren't dropped at your feet and all of them were like seekers in that regard it would make the set so ridiculously overpowered. It would be fun, but crazy powerful.

And unless the traps that were to be granted to ability to move (like acid mortar) were given a very high movement rate they would suffer the same thing as FFgen, but worse as it can fly, and they wouldn't keep up with fast movement either.

The ONLY thing traps doesn't do when people talk about "contributing" to the team (even fast teams) is direct heals.

Exactly, and those people that enjoy having 300hp under their foot don't swallow the reduced EM power well and just moved on to different sets.

The corvettes are AoE sets and the ZR1 corvettes are when you combine a strong set with shields

I was deliberate with the analogy because even as powerful as old EM was it was nothing compared to the supercars like a dm/shield or fire/shield.

No, I think it is more a case of the general population of the game not being young (as in very few new players relative to "old timers").

Generally when something goes from being perceived as good/great for years it is then ingrained into the makeup of the game. A reduction (especially a pretty heavy one in the case of EM) is never going to be received well, or moved past.

If we had a constant and sizable influx of new players combined with a similar rate of attrition for older players such changes are absorbed more smoothly.

The EM changes are like trying to tell a guy that has been driving a 300hp Charger for years that the 76hp pinto is just as good. He simply won't buy it no matter how you dress it up (ie arguments that EM is still numerically near the top for st damage, which ignore massive overkill and corspe blasting). You'd have a much easier time selling that Pinto to someone who has never owned a vehicle before (ie wasn't around when EM was actually good).

This game simply does not generate new players and at the same time old players don't go away (compared to the player stream of almost all other MMO's). So there is very little they could do to restore EM to its former glory short of restoring it to its former glory. The game more than ever has moved to an AoE damage focus so even if EM was restored it would still be a substandard set for anyone who values reward rates in the game.

On a personal level, I deleted my em/fire brute and my em/regen stalker after the EM nerfs. The reason was almost entirely because of how they felt compared to before. Swimming in molasses on sets that require quick reaction time on heals leaves a crappy taste in my mouth. A lot can and does go wrong on a /fire or /regen toon that is relatively squishy in the time it now takes to animate the top attacks. Being locked into ET for nearly 3x as long as before and still losing the HP was resulting in defeat too often for my liking. It seemed pointless to me and was unfun.

Edit: I think a lot of people fail to realize that the EM changes didn't just result in a fairly significant reduction in damage output, but also resulted in a significant reduction in survivability for many pairings. For my two EM toons it felt like a double nerf, because it was.

I'll take that under advisement the next time I take a break. I kinda just thought they did away with the 60day deal as long as your account was in good standing (as in you weren't booted from the game).

I won't leave things on there next time if I'm just rolling the dice on that one heh. It was nice to come back and have about 600M in sales waiting on me though

I actually find the attacks valuable at lower levels for demons (and only demons, other MM attacks are pretty lame). Likely much more than they will be in later game.

They do very decent damage prior to the AT modifiers kicking in and they greatly help your lesser pets (numerically and powers wise) take down targets.

As opposed to picking them up later when the demons themselves are already steamrolling everything.

Or such is what I've observed so far in playing with them

there is no tag present saying "effect does not stack from same caster" so it will indeed stack.

That is consistent with most -res powers in the game as more of them stack than don't stack. Even the ones that have that tag often stack if they conjure a pseudopet to do the work (like disruption arrow).

I can definitely tell the difference between ~40 and ~45 in game. Smaller margins though and my senses might just be a bit dulled since taking a break.

There was a time when lightning storm benefited from +rech that the storm set was able to produce enough damage to offset the lack of regeneration debuffs vs AV's (never vs GM's, they just regen too much). In fact you could build to extract about 100dps (after debuffs, procs) out of storm alone, vs the 73dps that most regen debuffs add in an AV fight.

Of course this came at the cost of about 15x more endurance than a regen debuffer, but it was at least possible. A high recharge storm build (perma 2 LS, 1.5 nados) now struggles to match a single regen debuff since the LS nerf/change.

The direct damage powers are still superior vs bosses though...which is something I guess.

Don't let that rain on your parade though. Storm is still a very fun set, it just has very hard edges on what it is now allowed to do.

Hibernate works well on a storm.

There is no solution for you to overtake a GM, you simply can't produce enough damage and you have no -regen.

There is a temp power called "envenom dagger" or something like that that debuffs regen and might you to suceed. It is half the strength of normal regen debuffs (ie lingering rad, benumb, heat exhaustion) so you will still probably need a maximum damage specced ill/storm. Even then I'd have to know how much dps you are producing now to give any definitive answer.

Of course, if you are going to use one temp powers then you may as well open pandora's box.

So short answer - not going to happen. AV's yes, some of them, but PA's taunt doesn't always seem strong enough to prevent them from fleeing from Lightning storm, nado, and Freezing rain. And once you start having to chase them it just gets ridiculous.

Indeed. http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...ge#post1302474.

I know I struggle to roll (and stick with) anything other than fire simply because of rain of fire. It will always scourge toward the upper end of probability and it double scourges making it the singular most compelling reason to play corrs over defenders (as I really like the higher buff/debuffs that defs have).