Fulmens

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agree with all of this but one. I have a Tanker who has TP, Health triple-slotted, and more damage resistance than a Sherman Tank.

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[tangent]
You know that the Sherman was an. . .err. . . well. . . go to this page and search for "impotent deathtrap".

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Send tells to four different people all on the same team asking for invites.


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I knew it was just a matter of time until I hit one of my bad habits in this thread. . . oops.

[in my defense: I only self-invite to Blasters, with a Force Field Defender, and I get "yes" more than "no." ]

I've heard 25% more XP for them- haven't checked it out for myself.

Every once in a while I go read my server forum and it's 80% about PvP BS. I'm sure the average experience isn't "Triple-one-shotted by a stalker, chain-killed in the hospital, then teleported into a tower where I can't get out." But who needs that kind of crap?

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Edited to discuss TO's: I consider them worth it for accuracy, but not much else. This is somewhat perceptual [cue the Shadow Maul sound: "miss miss miss miss miss miss miss miss"] but in practice, improved accuracy means faster, safer fights. And if you're there to sell, it's not that much slower to buy.

Any chance someone could post the updated Martial Arts numbers in here, so they don't get lost to history?

Note on testing:

I haven't checked this myself, but "people" say that the sets don't really acheive the final ratio of damage, etc. until level 20. I knowl, for HP, that the level 1's are all within 5 HP of each other, while at level 40-ish they've spread to whatever their final value is.

Level 15 may be a little early for testing.

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66% of "blaster damage" has been bandied about, but I'm not totally convinced of this. Most of the time it appears to be closer to 50% of "blaster damage."


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Futurias, there's a simple test. It will take 5 minutes, more if you have to recruit strangers.

Get an Energy Blaster and an Energy Defender to shoot the same badguy with the same attack, slotted for the same damage. I recommend a grey-con CoT, because it's funny, but any enemy will do.

Otherwise, you're not really "arguing" so much as "stating a fringe belief."

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It's not until we get to the fourth definition of the term that we start seeing the word as a synonym for "bad".


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And the third definition of "Seethe" is the one everyone uses. Dictionaries are flameproof but they don't protect a very large area. . .

(ed. I was using m-w.com ; dictionary.com has a slightly different ordering, it seems. What a blow to the perfectly ordered world! )

Futurias: The "65%" number isn't something that primarily comes from the Devs; it's something that comes from the players, testing Energy defenders vs. Energy blasters, Electric vs. Electric, and so forth.

Dark vs. AR is not really a good test; Assault Rifle's attacks don't have the same brawl indexes as the other Blaster sets. [3.0 BI on Burst vs. 2.7777 for every other first-line power, for instance.]

If you have specific enemies and numbers [Their snipe did 400, mine did 200, vs. an even-con red lectroid minion] please bring them up and we can try to figure out what happened. (Vazh are slightly weak to Lethal,for instance.) Otherwise, there are too many possible sources of difference.

Castle: I appreciate the work.

I have a couple of Force Field things that I wish to complain about. . . I don't know enough about the other sets, so I'm only talking about Force Field here.

TO CASTLE:
1) Why does high-end Force Field suck so bad? I wanted to like it when the END costs were changed, but. . .I don't. Cheap redundant worthless powers are still redundant and worthless. Maybe it's me.
2) Being a Force Field defender means the following, in playstyle: You have only one real thing to do, you have to do it every 4 minutes, it doesn't take that long. Easy job, except what you have to do is hit the "avoid teamwipe" button. Don't screw up, now!

TO OTHER PEOPLE:

1) "Does anybody have a good reason to play a Defender now? Anybody? "
I hate Controllers. If I'm not hitting people I'm not happy. (I didn't say it was a GOOD reason.)

2) "Controllers are about as good at Force Fielding as Defenders"- this is actually not true. If we consider the Proverbial White Minion [in I7, true for all badguys]:

Defender gives team 40% Defense, so people get hit 1 in 10 times.
Controller gives team 32% Defense, so people get hit 1 in 5.55 times.

FF Defender gives almost twice as much protection as FF Controller. . .excluding the Controller primary, that is. So "they bounce people around more" isn't that big a deal to me.

This is one thing they [accidentally?] did in the Great Defense Nerf: made Def bubbles distinctly better than Troll ones.

I'd put something in like "Every Defender set plays differently from every other defender set. "

Also, I'd put in something on powerw pools. Because people get confused sometimes.

"Travel/power pools: You need to get one of the first two powers in the set to get to the third. You also have to be level 14 to get to the third, and level 20 to get to the fourth.

Travel powers are the third power in the set, and they will change your life. One of the few set-in-stone rules I agree with is, always get a travel power at level 14.

If you run out of Endurance a lot, and you will, you will want Stamina. Stamina is the fourth power in the Fitness set, so you need two other Fitness powers and you will need to be level 20 or higher. "

Then I'd add:

"Most guides get you Stamina at level 20, by delaying other crucial powers for 2 to 6 levels. For most builds, you can live without Stamina till 22 or 24." But that's me.

There are a few that have disproportionately bad meshes. That isn't to say it "NEVER" works but it takes a lot more effort and may never approach the average. (Note that there isn't really a generic "Defender" the way there's a generic "Scrapper".)

Storm Defender/Scrapper is substandard, and so is Blaster/Scrapper. Kinetic Defender/Blaster is problematic. Anything where neither character is "the damage" [Defender/Controller, Tank/Controller, whatever] will be kinda slow.

There are other combos that work VERY well. Fire Tank/Darkity-dark-dark Defender is one[ the DD has area-based buffs, an area immobilize, and some Def/Res; the Fire Tank has Burn, which people might otherwise run from.] At the moment, Super Reflexes scrappers and Force Field defenders mesh very well defensively. [FF isn't much help offensively, though.]

The important thing is, play something you're going to be happy with for a long time.

Good guide for playing your way. My philosophies are different.

I haven't run through the entire game with a BS/INV in I6. But here's "my way" if you want light philosophical BBQing:

1. It's not worth taking 30 seconds to drag badguys around when you could be flat out killing them. Especially if you happen to have a fireblaster covering your back.
2. The minions are your friends. They make you Invincible and you don't really want to finish them too fast. I found that Whirling Sword thrown in the middle of my attack chain every time it came up tended to finish the minions either just before or just after the big threats.
3. I slot Parry 2x recharge, 3x damage, 1x Acc. This allows me to put Parry every other attack and do useful damage with it. [I used to do this with Slash- more damage, but I need the defense now.] Half the remaining attacks are Hack. Wonderful attack, Hack. The remaining attacks are your "big hitters"- the end-eating monsters that made the set famous. You need all three, and you need to use two of these to fill out the attack chain: Headsplitter, Disembowel, and Whirling Sword.

4. Yomo says if you only get one person with Headsplitter you're lazy. I say if you only get three attacks into Build Up you're lazy. With Slash I could do five.- I don't know if Parry lives up to that. Hack/Slash/Whirl/Slash/Hack, thank you and good night. Build Up is not a "nice bonus." Build Up was the core of my 6-35 (or more) game.

5. Single End Reducing all your attacks and triple End Reducing TI/UY is hideous overkill. I suppose if you're going for the Def/ToHit INV combo that Yomo uses it's valid. But my END lasts a long time and I don't see the problem. I doubleslotted TI/UY/INV/Tough, and singleslotted several attacks, but that was a level 50 respec.

6. Multiplying damage * number of foes is a nice approximation but the fact is, it takes about three hits to kill a minion. Minions aren't tough. Minions aren't where you spend the time. Killing minions fast just means a longer time fighting a boss without a warm blanket of bodyguards.

Leave the minions to the blasters, leave them to the firetanks, leave them to Whirling Sword. Work on the good stuff.

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it'll take a bit to wrap my head around this

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Mind if I sig that?

Attila said:
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4) Almost every respec I have done (with one exception) has been with a pick up team. They are not horrible players just because they need a respec. There are numerous valid reasons for respecing, including planning a respec when initially designing the character.


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I've met great people on respec teams. But I've also met terrible people on respec teams- terrible players who think that a respec will fix their incompetence. . . and it only takes one or two real boatanchors to kill the respec mission.

col007 talked about the sewer run.
I'm fairly ignorant on sewer runs. I'm usually "bringing the damage" for my friends, so making a Blaster or Scrapper. I once timed a Blaster to level 6 and, at the time, it was 75 minutes, soloing, including Outbreak [I didn't know that Galaxy street hunting was faster yet.] So for some characters, it might be faster to solo. I still figure that slowing down a LITTLE bit to help a Controller bears great rewards later. And it's a nice thing to do, and may even speed things up. Those levels go by so fast, it's hard to tell.

Tulzar: I think you're right on mission bonuses and team size. This would make me wrong. As for "diminishing returns" during the mission- I don't really think so. With eight people vs. five, you get "eight times the solo spawn" [not sheer numbers, but bosses and whatnot- I haven't done any math on it] instead of "five times the solo spawn"- and you lose FIFTEEN PERCENT of the XP on each kill. As long as the last three people, together, are making the team kill 15% faster, you're breaking even. And if they're not, that's a bad team.

Emerald_Fusion's comment that
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I've played the game since release and the perfect pentad is the absolute best team configuration in my opinion, so no, you wont change my opinion on that one. Two tanks, Two defenders, Two controllers are redundant if the one already on the team knows how to do their job.


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I'll settle for "amicable disagreement". For the viewing audience: my views on teambuilding, and reasons for them, are as follows.

1) If you spend a lot of time looking for a perfect pentad, you're overlooking one of the strengths of the game: Most teams will work, and work really well. Four Blasters and a Scrapper? The Scrapper takes the alpha strike and there is no followup fire. (It's risky, but incredibly fast. )

2) I think the "perfect pentad" needs more damage- it's usually overstocked with team protection and understocked with damage. Fights are unnecessarily long as a result.

3) There are times- a lot of them- when a second Defender will offer real advantages to the team. Two FF Defenders is FAR more useful than one- you could do without the Tank, because nobody's going to get hit twice in a row in that team. I've done it. On the flip side, a FF defender and a Kinetic have virtually no overlap. There are very few "pure" AT's- Ice/Ice and Fire/En are going to be very different Blasters.

4) I tend to build my teams Blaster-heavy and Controller-light. I think they work better that way. . ."Death is a 100% debuff."

Sorry for the non-constructive post. I was in an ugly mood yesterday and if I'd posted more it would have just been worse, but "no post" would have been better yet.

I'll try to be constructive and specific.

1) I disagree with the team size advice. There is a bonus to XP [both enemy and mission] for every team member beyond, I think, 3: I only clearly remember the multipliers for 6, 7, and 8-person teams.
4: 1.3 [very unsure]
5: 1.7 [approximate]
6: 2.0
7: 2.2
8: 2.5

What this means is that, if you get N experience points for defeating something solo, you get roughly (N/5* 1.7) or .34N for your 5-person team defeating it, and (N/8 * 2.5) or .3125N for your 8-person team defeating it.

So you're losing 15% XP in return for gaining approximately 60% more firepower . Now 8-person teams are fighting tougher, higher-level spawns, so there's less room for error and everyone needs to be better at their jobs, but with the higher risk is MUCH higher reward. .. and that multiplier also applies to mission completion bonus.

2) I disagree with the "perfect pentad" advice. In a 5-person team, having any two tank/defender/controllers will usually be enough for defense; three cuts firepower a little too much for my taste.

3) Telling Blasters to "target through the Tank/Scrapper to lower aggro" is not very good advice. On my Scrapper's way to 50, I did a lot of teaming with a Fire Blaster and some teaming with an Energy Blaster who ALWAYS targeted through me. What I learned from the Fire Blaster: No Scrapper can keep the aggro away from a Fire Blaster going full-out, and even a Tanker has to work hard. Blasters on teams have to use fire discipline and judgement. There is no substitute. What I learned from the Energy Blaster: Knockback and "Target-through" is a bad combo. It goes like this: I hit "tab/follow" to pick my next enemy. I take a swing. I hit "s" to get out of follow mode. The Energy attack lands and the mob goes flying. Now I have to wait for the next, killing Energy attack before switching targets. I was spending my time not Scrapping, but Forward Observing.

I suppose Forward Observer is a fine job, as long as both people agree that it's the Scrapper's job on that team, but it took a lot of time and recrimination to figure out that combo.

4) "Primary job and standard position" -this advice is oversimplified at best and, in some cases, misleading or wrong. "The Scrapper has one job: damage" is not . . . valuable advice. It's like saying "the team's job is to win fights." A good team Scrapper and a bad team Scrapper both put out about the same amount of damage, but the good team Scrapper directs it where it is needed. "Where it is needed " depends greatly on the team and the situation- it might be "run off and duel that Ancestor Spirit so it doesn't stun the Blaster and Defender", it might be "Assassinate that Sapper", it might be "Pile on the Boss" or it might be "Catch anyone who didn't die from the Inferno." Scrappers can tank [badly] for small teams, they can be sawed-off blasters, they can be the go-to guy when things get bad. Or they can be idiots who run off, start with the next spawn during a fight, and drag the rest back yelling "HEAL!!!"

That's one AT description. Defenders are nearly impossible to categorize- Force Fields doesn't play anything like Kinetic, which doesn't play like Empathy, which doesn't play like Storm.

4) The Tutorial takes 10 minutes; a Blaster or Scrapper can level to 2 before they get all the way around the block in Galaxy City. Estimated 3 minutes.

5) I found the best way to get to 5 was to streetfight on the way to and from the mission, but to do the missions themselves. Set your difficulty to Rugged, because you're levelling so fast that otherwise you'll have missions full of greens. It's streetfighting plus! ALso, I recommed teaming with a Controller or Defender, even if it slows you down. . .invest an extra 10 minutes at level 2, and you'll have a friend at level 37, when the Envoy of Shadows is reading your resume.

6) When you say "get a set of heroes [for the Terra Volta reactor] within the level range" I would modify this statement. Make sure the heroes for the TV reactor are all within, or sidekicked to, +/- 1 level. If you've got six level 35s and a level 38 on the team, the badguys will spawn at level 39 or 40. Also, I would recommend against doing the reactor with a pickup group- most people who "need a respec" are primarily bad players.

7) Buddy system: Make friends. If you find a combo - Force Fields and Super Reflexes, Dark/Dark Defender and Firetank- that works very well, get to know that person. If you get on a team that works well, get to know those people. A good player is worth two SO's in each power.

I disagree with most of the stuff in your guide.

I don't know if it's particularly useful to give details; it won't change your mind.

One thing: Dark Scrapper powers are NOT the same as the same-named Dark Defender powers. I don't remember the exact timing, but Petrifying Gaze lasted about 8 seconds and recharged in about 25 when I timed it, some eight months ago.

Also, I think the Blast times may be slower as well.

Last, I would point out that everything in the Dark set (and probably ALL sets) causes sword redrawing. Dark Melee and MA can just throw these attacks into the chain, but everyone else. .. not so much.

1) Story Arcs now have a very large "mission completion bonus" associated with them. The first Croatoa one gave me two bubbles [at level 27, admittedly.] Most story arcs send you all over the place, but the hazard zone ones [Striga/Croatoa] seem to be much tighter.

2) I PM'd you about this, Robo, but I'd like to bring it up for general commentary:

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It is important that you make sure you and the character you invite will be an effective duo.

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There are ineffective duos, there are normally effective duos, but there are some duos which hit a sweet spot and are VERY effective- either by themselves or as the core of a team.

For instance, an I6 Force Fielder can improve everyone else in the party's defense by a factor of 3 [VERY roughly]; that is, they'll take 1/3 as much damage as without the [Censored]. As a contribution to the team, this is pretty mediocre. It used to be that a Force Fielder could floor enemies' "to-hit" and provide a factor of 10 or more in defense. This was enormous and a team was only limited by "delivered damage."

You can still do that, but it takes two Force Fielders to do it. Two FF's and six "anything else" is a team that is only limited by the speed at which they can inflict damage. Or one [Censored] and some number of SR Scrappers, that works too. (If you're "building for fast levelling", pick FF; there are a lot more Super Reflexes Scrappers than Force Field Defenders.)

There are other Dynamic Duos out there- Robo mentioned Dark/Dark + Firetank, for one. I don't know if that scales up for a large team, though.

Anyone else have any duos that are Extremely Effective?

One kudo from Circeus is worth 10 from anyone else.

Here's .1 Circ from me.

I have my disagreements on how to play an FF'er; however, I'm not as confident in my FF techniques as I am in [say] my Broadsword techniques.

So I will say "nifty bind" and leave it at that.

JB: Arcanaville has done just that.

JaggedBones: Are you suggesting we not discuss Accuracy in the Accuracy thread? Or are you saying the reality of 75.22% averages beats the reality of 6-miss streaks [which, like everyone, I have had]? I'm confused.

As far as RNG's: Humans are pattern-matching creatures- we see faces in clouds, we lose money at roulette tables, etc. What this means is that we WILL spot the streakiness, whether it's statistically plausible or not.

So, given that the stdlib.h rand() function has known awkwardness, and probably isn't terribly fast. . .

and we've got at least three experts here. . .

any suggestions from the audience for a good, fast chunk of code to generate solid pseudo-randoms?

Would it be worthwhile or useful reseeding it [e.g. with the local time in ms] every time a character logs in or out of the server?

I knew a little bit about this, 15 years ago- not enough to really contribute anything more than you could get with 15 minutes and Google, probably.

/em goes off to wikipedia

Edit: Arcana made most of my early points, far more eloquently, while I was writing this.

I'm glad to see this post from Statesman. I would like details, of course, but I like the specific and general results.

DEVS: "We found a problem and fixed it."
PLAYERS: "There's a problem? There's a problem! And the problem is bigger than that!"
DEVS: "We're fixing the bigger problem."

They don't fix things instantly. . . and sometimes it takes a couple tries.

As for the elephant? I can discuss the elephant in any one of two hundred other threads.

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Frankly, my original idea didn't account for the fact that . . .

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Really States? You had this planned all along?


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*blinks* One of us is badly missing the point and it could be me.

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Balance: There is only one villian group which has vulnerabilities to psi damage and it's only in the early game when the set is weakest. By the time the set can actually do damage, most villian groups (nemesis, praetorians, Council, Carnies, Malta just to list a few) are not only not vulnerable, but have a high precentage of members with either sizable resists or defense to the entire set, save telekinetic blast, making the set feel underpowered throughout the game. (LadyMage)


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I built the discussion thread and discussed, and nothing in it has convinced me that Psi is badly unbalanced. [To oversimplify, Psi pretty much has a problem with Robots, Rikti psychics, and Carnies. Lethal has a problem with Robots, Rikti Psychics [they're always in partial/full armor], other armored Rikti, Crey armor/guards, Malta everything, Freak Tanks, rock-type Devos. . . it has some strengths to compensate, though. ]

I may change my view later, [I haven't done a comparison to Energy, which Defenders can actually choose in Energy or Electric] but I don't see this as a clear balance issue. Could we mark it as "under discussion" or something?