Gorgar
-
Posts
305 -
Joined
-
Don't know about SS, but I know Axe's Taunt sounds different with Hover on or off.
-
If you'd be willing to go dark/sonic instead, I think you'd see a lot more dps. The -resist stacks among the different attacks, I believe, which helps a lot. Plus, AoE-wise, you can do the cute trick of cone damage, then cone sleep, then single-target attacks until the cones recharge. Dark Blast does have the two cones that do damage though, where Sonic has only one. (I don't count Torrent, Shockwave, or Siren's song as damage.) Sonic will also let you concentrate on one target at a time and take it down fairly quickly. End of advertisement, and I'll assume you want Dark Blast for concept. I'm basing my advice here on my dark/sonic defender at 50 (probably my best character) and a dark/storm corruptor at 30 who hasn't really been a powerhouse so far. I'm also assuming you're taking the dark epic, which I'd recommend anyway.
Put lots of recharge in Tar Patch. A slow or two wouldn't hurt either, so things stay put for cones, and stay in the -res effect.
I don't know if damage procs are worth it. Personally I don't use them, and I tend to slot cones with Positron's Blast minus the proc and put recharge in the sixth slot. I also don't use the damage procs in Twilight Grasp (busy with heal, acc, rech) or Fearsome Stare (slotted with Cloud Senses for ranged defense). They're popular enough that I assume they're decent, especially in your tier 1 blast and anything aoe.
IO sets with +damage percent will help, and there are a few you can use. My dark/sonic is built primarily for ranged defense, control, and survival, so I didn't get all the damage I could, but I still got 9.5% damage (one set Lockdown in Petrifying Gaze, one set Gaussians in Tactics, two sets Red Fortune in Shadow Fall and Maneuvers), and I really wasn't even trying. You can also put Obliteration in Soul Drain and Dark Consumption for another 3% each. Efficacy Adaptor also works in Dark Consumption for 2.5%. http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Category...improve_Damage will tell you more.
You can also put Obliteration in Blackstar. Normally I don't take nukes on defenders, but dark can nuke more safely than most: stun everything with Oppressive Gloom, Dark Pit, and/or Howling Twilight, fire off nuke, then if anything is still alive, pop a blue, hit Dark Consumption to refill your end bar, and carry on. Even if you don't have a blue, Fluffy will probably keep you healed and the enemies debuffed. Also, having Soul Drain available makes a nuke more appealing. It should still be active by the time you hit Dark Consumption, even.
Slotting Fluffy with a partial set of Touch of the Nictus for acc and heal plus a couple common to-hit debuff IOs will make him a pretty decent healer/debuffer. Alternately, Dark Watcher's set will give a damage bonus, or you could even get one via Lockdown and have him occasionally surprise you by holding a boss with the proc. But don't bother slotting him for damage. He just doesn't do enough to be worth it. It's like putting damage in Brawl. -
If you do decide to go for the endurance alpha, it will make a huge difference. I broke my dark/dark scrapper with an experimental build where I slotted Obliteration in places no one would: Death Shroud, Dark Consumption, Soul Drain. (I think I was aiming for melee defense, here.) I also picked up the Fighting pool and Hasten, and I run Cloak of Fear. I was at the point where Fly + all my combat toggles was a slow net endurance loss. I don't even have an epic powerset in this build.
Obviously, the thing to do was to go back and respec into something sane, but instead I picked up the endurance alpha slot. Having 33% extra in everything made a huge difference, and I didn't care about ED issues because mostly I had very little endurance slotting anywhere. (I do have the Theft of Essence proc, of course, and a Miracle proc in Health.)
Every once in a while I think about going back and getting Spiritual instead for the recharge and better healing with Dark Regen on few targets, but actually she's fun to play this way, and the extra damage resistance can't really be hurting either. I still have enough recharge that I can Soul Drain, use a couple quick DM attacks, Dark Regen, finish most of the minions off with Dark Consumption, and by the time I've gotten to the next spawn, Soul Drain is back up.
Long story short, I'm pretty sure my scrapper was hurting a lot more than it sounds like yours was. I don't think there's any chance I could do an entire minute of sustained combat, and simply getting the endurance discount in the alpha slot made this character my default all-around no thought required character. I wait anxiously for Dark Consumption to recharge only because, slotted for damage, it's part of my alpha strike, and things take longer to die if it is not up. (Yes, this is geared towards +0/x6-8, but the build still works against higher-level stuff, just obviously I'm not going to kill all the purple minions with my end recovery power...)
And, when I respec, I most likely will pick up Body Mastery for Focused Accuracy and Physical Perfection, dropping Confront and something else, but that's more so that PP will help pay the cost of FA. It's really fine the way it is. -
Dark/Ice is nice because of all the holds. It's a pretty safe combo. Also takes advantage of what I imagine are better hold durations on defenders vs corruptors. I'd expect this to be a really powerful defender that anyone would be glad to have on a team. I like Ice's AoE better than Archery's. Dark + Ice looks fantastic and gives you loads of control. This would be my pick. Mine's a corruptor instead, only because I already have a dark/sonic defender.
I'd probably save the archery for a corruptor, though I'm sure a dark/archery defender would work well too, especially if you take the dark epic and Oppressive Gloom, which stacks with the archery stun and Howling Twilight. In fact, if you have OG running, you'd be able to do some pretty cool things to ambushes: stun them, stun them again, maybe drop Tar Patch, then eliminate them with Rain of Arrows. Dark has enough control that you can get good use out of a low-control secondary. This is second choice for me, but sounds fun enough that I'm tempted to try it myself. -
Wish they'd dispense with them entirely. If there was a way, say in Ouro, to view cutscenes out of a library, I'd be all for it. Expanding that so that one could get a lot of the lore of the game that way would be cool. But having them in the middle of missions is not nifty, in my opinion.
My favorite cut scene is the one at the end of the Alpha slot arc, because there's nothing else after that, so I can wander off and do something else, and come back when it's over. My least favorite is the ITF one, because I see it so often and it comes at a time when it's bad to be late getting back. Breaks immersion, but I can't do anything useful with the time. -
I'd think about trying DCUO, but even though I'm a huge DC fan, I might not do it. And they'd only get a chance because it's DC. Maybe try Diablo 3 when that comes out, but otherwise no other MMOs.
Mostly I'd play Civ, build VS decks, and work on music. -
Quote:I've had this problem. My solution: stop doing anything for a bit. If things don't start going wrong, your team doesn't need you for what you're doing. Find another team that does, because supporting those who don't need it is pretty boring. Actually, this applies to any character: if the team can steamroll without me, then I'm going to get bored very soon and leave, unless I really want the xp.Originally Posted by Mr_Squid
I don't feel like I'm doing much when I play support classes since the game doesn't give me enough feedback on what my powers actually do.
Also, seconding whoever said dark/sonic defenders are fun. I know mine helps, because I've brought her in to help out on AV fights and she's turned the tide. -
Quote:By that last paragraph, I'm definitely casual. I guess I'm sort of hardcore about it, though.Originally Posted by TheLadyK
1. Casual players don't invest much time - busy with life or whatever. play schedules from several hours once a month to an hour a day (More than an hour a day is hard to call casual to me. Less than 2 hours a month is hard to call a player... though I'm glad CoX is gettig the subscription revenue!)
2. Has less than 100 million influence on any given alt - casual with the market.
3. Doesn't have a badging character. Bonus point for not knowing what badging consists of as an activity.
4. Casual players don't run everything through Mids. Bonus point for not having Mids.
5. Casual players don't use purple IO sets. Bonus point for not using IO sets.
6. Casual players don't know how to get to the Shard. Or what the Shard is.
7. Casual players have fewer 50s than veteran's badges.
8. Casual players don't read the forums.
...I'm running out of diagnosis questions without going into PvP (I personally don't think there are casual PvPers, but I have a huge personal bias.)
Mostly i think casual is an attitude, the opposite of "no pain, no gain". A player who does only what they feel is fun and doesn't worry about min/maxing rewards by doing certain activities.
1. I vary. Sometimes I spend all my free time on CoH. Right now, I'm taking a break. Was busy with real life last week, and was going to take Sister P week off anyway.
2. I know someone who has maxed out inf on all her alts. Each one plays the market. That sounds like too much work to me. She told me her method, and I spent three weeks earning about two billion, then stopped marketing entirely. I'll pick it up when I need money again, or feel like it.
3. Badging is not interesting to me. If the character wants the title, I'll get it and use it. Otherwise, I'd rather just read all the badge texts on the net, pick up the lore, and skip the grind. I'm happy to help someone else badging most of the time though, if they need a lot of wolfies killed or something.
4. I don't use mids. I try out builds on test, and do everything in my head as a delta from what I have now. I don't worry about what it looks like at 50 until I'm close to that level.
5. I'm not willing to do what it takes to get the really popular purple sets. I pretty much just use sleep, stun, and confuse. Mostly I'd rather get the set bonuses from Thunderstrikes, Oblits, and Touch of Death/Crushing Impact. I'd probably start using Ragnarok next, as the targeted aoe sets don't do much for me. Also, except in the case of overwhelmingly cool powers (Phantom Army, Soul Drain) I don't tend to build for recharge that much. Squishies go for ranged defense first, and fit recharge in when they can.
6. Been to the Shard, would have to look up how to get back, know where to look it up. Haven't done the TFs because I've heard they're really long, and I'm not a completionist. Might change if they become TF of the week.
7. I don't think I know anyone that's generated a 50 for every three months they've played. Maybe one person. I started around the first Halloween, and a year ago I had no 50s. Now I have six. Eventually, I hope to have about ten or so.
8. There are forums? ...ok, guess I qualify here.
What about farming? Any serious player has a farmer, right, to get the purples? AV soloing? That's serious.
To me, it all seems kind of arbitrary. I test my good characters on high difficulty solo missions, and those are the ones I'll bring when my friends want to take on a challenge. I'm deathly serious about being as good as I can with my dark/sonic defender and my energy blaster, but I'm casual as hell about scrappers.
I'd say a non-casual player has the ability to run tough content. They're the ones you invite to your Apex. I don't care how much inf they have, if they choose to use purples, whether they've won any costume contests, gone to a meet and greet, or gotten the badge for going to that spot next to that one thing in that zone. So long as they're decent players with at least one good alt, they're serious enough for me. -
I've tried all sorts of builds on my energy/energy blaster, including lots of melee attacks, but I've been happiest with my current build, in which my only melee attack is the one I got at level one, the purpose of which is to swat things back out of melee range. I use Bonfire to keep things away from me. I'll stand in the middle of it if I have to. I've tried Personal Force Field, but I find I can get Aid Self off pretty easily with all the kb and two interrupt reducers in the power. I frankenslot the rest for heal and recharge, and that gives me a pretty reliable heal that is often up. If concept calls for Force Mastery, so be it. I find Bonfire better for soloing, but PFF might be better on teams.
My approach to ranged defense was to use all the Thunderstrikes I could (Power Bolt, Power Blast, Power Burst, the snipe, and Power Push), then do what I could elsewhere. I wound up with about 30% ranged defense, which is pretty survivable as it is, and any buffing from teammates or purple insps makes it very survivable. I run Hover and CJ, but didn't bother with the fighting pool. I'm sure it could be soft-capped, and I've soft-capped three other characters for ranged, but I didn't want to sacrifice slots to melee powers if I'm going to stay at range, nor did I want to take the other powers that take sets with ranged defense bonuses, so I settled on my medium defense build. I also have a few Blessing of the Zephyr pairs, as it's a way to spend one slot and get a bit of defense, if you weren't doing anything with the default slot anyway. Plus, kb protection. I do have the Steadfast Protection +def IO in my epic armor, but you can put that off.
Also, what Fulmens said about shopping defensively. Read his guide. Thunderstrikes are hard to come by at mid levels, or were last I checked, but they're in fine supply at level 50, and the thing to do is put low bids in now and wait. It takes a while to get used to this, and random weird price things will happen, but low bids + patience = Thunderstrikes. I'd never ever spend merits on a recipe that common, and I never use any other ranged set. -
What's important to me for versatility is what situations the character is useful in. These include: AVs/GMs, ambushes, nasty mobs that require immediate elimination (sappers, etc), +4s, nasty mobs that take a while to kill (carnie bosses, elite bosses, etc). Situations I am not taking into account include: soloing AVs/GMs/pylons, PVP, farming, speeding up steamrolling teams. No harm in doing these things, but they're not problems that interest me.
Most versatile:
- Dark/sonic defender. I can keep an AV from hitting most of the time, and debuff its resist and regen enough to make the difference between progress and futility, and there's no way it's going to kill me twice in the time it takes my self-rez to recharge. My team is going to win, and the AV is not. Nasty mobs can be stunned on first contact, and global acc is somewhere around +64%, along with fully slotted Tactics, so defense isn't much protection. Ambushes can be feared, slept, or sent to the black hole as a last resort. I definitely sacrificed AoE damage in favor of every kind of control I could get my hands on (even Shockwave), plus maximum survivability via heal, defense, and debuff, but I still have a full single-target attack chain. Most things less than an EB will be stunned until dead, and EBs and greater probably just won't hit enough to matter. Not the fastest soloer, but can eventually plow through most anything.
- Illusion/empathy. Between buffing damage, recharge, and defense, crowd control, and keeping PA in reserve for trouble if it's an ambush mission, plus some damage of my own and of course heal/mezz protect/rez, I'd argue that it's more versatile than it sounds, if only on a team.
- Energy/energy blaster. Resilient self-healing self-rezzing extreme range damage dealer. Adds only damage to a team, but can do so fairly consistently under nearly any conditions she's had to face. Sacrificed all melee attacks for ranged survivability.
- Inv/axe tank. Built for psi resist and damage, makes a decent main tank, a fabulous off-tank. Sacrificed s/l defense, hit points for mobility, aoe damage, psi resist.
-
Quote:Where do we sign up?Originally Posted by Arcanaville
If I were to teach a class on everything I know about how the game engine in general and the powers system in particular works, it would be a three to four day class. Of eight hour days.
-
I find it helps not to concentrate on one. I have a handful of characters I really love, but I can't play any one of them night after night without alting. I do nominally have a main, but also my other main, and my other other main. And a couple more alt mains on the way.
One thing that helps with really getting into a character for me is having powersets that let me transcend the AT a bit. For a lot of mine that means adding control to an AT that doesn't normally excel at that. Keeps them interesting in the missions, anyway, though it probably doesn't help any from an RP standpoint. -
I'm hoping there'll be something hawk-like too. In any case, grabbing this the second it's available. Looks very cool, and I'll probably spend a lot more time on my lion scrapper.
-
Did it six times, succeeded every time, including the one with 7 melee ATs and an emp defender. I'd never run it before this last week, but I had a lot of fun.
-
I tend not to team my DB scrapper any more. I built her entirely around cone attacks, and it seems like every time I team, there's some immob-happy controller that wants to make a constellation out of the enemies, so that I can't get more than two in a cone. Might be great for their damage, but it kills mine, so I wind up being that scrapper that doesn't stay with the team, or else fight one or two things at a time and wish it was five.
-
It's Oppressive Gloom for me. I'd probably do a green Dark Miasma at some point, but as soon as I turn on OG I look a little like Tentacle Christmas. It's just an unfortunate color clash. I'd also really like alternate Medicine options that fit a magic character. Something like Healing Flames, or the Peacebringer heals, or Empathy.
Power customization was huge in reviving my interest when I'd run out of ideas, and doing the epics and pools would be really nice. It's probably the number one thing I want at this point. (For me, my character's powers and appearance are most of the content. Story arcs and such are a lesser piece, for me.)
But I don't see the point in running down the existing appearances of the powers as they are. Wanting more creative control over appearances makes sense to me, but I wouldn't want to be the art department around here, as it seems like whenever someone asks for new power customizations, costumes, base items, etc, manners go out the window and terms like "hideous" get slung around. I don't think that helps the request get priority. -
Quote:I'd use Lightning Clap instead of Flash, probably, if you're going for containment damage. Won't work on LTs, but I like to save Flash for emergencies. But your way, if you then toss Blind on a boss, you should hold it for a bit, which is useful.Originally Posted by GATE-keeper
My strategy: if PA is available, I cast it on mob followed by Freezing Rain. I then run into the mob and do Flash. I then start throwing around Spectral Wounds, Blackwand (vet) and Sands of Mu (vet) until the mob is gone. I then run to the next mob and hope there's enough time remaining on PA.
I recently IOed out my ill/storm, and went with Steamy Mist and a stealth IO in Fly. Ill/storm gets a lot tougher with maxed ranged defense. It layers nicely on top of the mitigation you get from mostly not letting them attack you anyway.
I dropped O2 for a while, then picked it back up so I could dump six Numinas in it. I mostly have it for healing the Phantasm, plus the recovery and ranged defense bonuses from the set. Usually there's something more useful than O2 you can be doing on a team, and I don't like using it too regularly, but there are times when a squishy gets some serious aggro and I'm glad I have it. -
I've had it fail to reconnect many times when logging out to character select, leaving me to log in again, so I suspect under the hood it does actually disconnect and reconnect. So, I don't think it should be any more of a problem than it had been.
-
Quote:This might be true. In my experience, losing the reliable stun took away the thing I liked about MA, and for me the extra damage doesn't make up for it. I don't place a lot of value on control effects that might happen (I know, you can always flat-out miss, but other than that), so rather than rerolling my MA/SR to MA/DA as planned before the MA change happened, I just stopped playing the character entirely.Originally Posted by JamMasterJMS
I haven't had much play experience with the new changes to ma and how cobra strikes 100% chance being changed to 75% really plays out. I believe Arcana said it was generally more stunage being put out overall to a greater percantage of mobs.
Anyway, here's the deal on MA:
10% chance for mag 2, 4.8 sec stun in Thunder Kick.
75% chance for mag 3, 8 sec stun in Cobra Strike.
100% chance for mag 3, 3.2 sec stun in Eagle's Claw. Unenhanced, this is slightly longer than the 2.53 sec you'll spend activating the attack.
In practice, I find this changes MA from a control-oriented set to a set where control effects often occur as a side effect of trying to kill things.
Here's KM:
20% chance for mag 3, 4.8 sec stun in Body Blow
33% chance for mag 3, 4.8 sec stun in Smashing Blow
60% chance for mag 3, 8 sec stun in Concentrated Strike
So, probably somewhat less stun overall in KM. Neither set will let you ninja in and quickly stun a problem mob like you could with the old Cobra Strike, but they'll both let you randomly stun things now and then, so as you attack bosses, eventually something will stack with Oppressive Gloom.
There's an AoE stun in Electric Melee, but it's the tier 8. Duration and recharge mean it won't perma, but it sure would stack with OG for a while, and I believe it was 100% chance. Also, if you're willing to go brute instead, there's an AoE stun in Stone Melee, and both Energy Melee and War Mace have 100% single-target stuns as well as more powers, I think, with chance to stun than either MA or KM have. -
Sonic Attack
-
I know it works with Positron's Blast.
-
It seems early to get really worried that the rest of the incarnate content will all be team-oriented just because the first piece has TFs.
Especially given that TFs are a good way to get shards, I'm not surprised TFs came out first. And really, the only thing about those TFs that is incarnate-specific is that they debuff you if you don't have an alpha slot filled, and some content that basically says that. Other than that, there's plenty to do solo with the new power the alpha gives you: respecing to take greater advantage, running at higher difficulty, etc.
I'm introverted too, but something I try to remember is that one of this game's strong points is that it appeals to a variety of people, from the hardcore AV soloers to badgers to TF fanatics to casual solo players. For it to do that, it's got to deliver for everyone, but this happens steadily over time. It's rarely given *everyone* what they wanted in any single issue. -
Is that a bug, then? If that's the case, I might just shelve that scrapper entirely until they fix it. Cones still aren't optimal in a pbaoe-centric scrapper, but I really liked the concept and kind of missed them when they were gone. I just ultimately had to drop them because the damage was so low.
-
I haven't tried Shadow Meld, but I can tell you that I found Night Fall and TT to be kind of a pain to use on a DM/DA. I had five Posis in each and a recharge in NF, so I was hitting ED with damage, but they just really didn't do much. I was disappointed, because the character concept is a magic type and the ranged attacks really fit, but even using Soul Drain and backing up, I just didn't do that much damage.
So overall I don't think you'd be losing that much. I still miss the idea of it, but in practice, those powers just don't do enough to justify backing out of combat to use them. -
Is it feasible to achieve perma-PA on a non-rad? I didn't think that it was, but I've never tried. For survivability, I've had good results on my ill/storm with ranged defense. One thing I like about this approach is there's not a lot of muling required: lots of it comes from six-slotting sets I like in powers I'm happy to slot. Lockdown in the two holds, Red Fortune in Steamy Mist, Thunderstrike in Spectral Wounds, Ice Blast, Lightning Storm, Blood Mandate in Phantasm, Malaise in Deceive. Some of these you're already using. But it's a different sort of build not using Hasten or Fighting, which might not be what you want. I decided to go this route when I noticed that I pretty much lived or died on my old build depending on whether I debuffed things with Hurricane. Ranged defense is pretty handy. Won't protect you from AoE, but most mezzes are ranged, and you can keep melee away from you.
Hibernate does work well too. I prefer it to Aid Self on a controller: one power, no slots instead of two powers, lots of slots, and without some sort of power boost, it still doesn't do *that* much on its own. I'd go with Hibernate and O2 Boost over Medicine.
PA is a fantastic power, but it's not the only good tool ill/storm has. When testing my controller's build, I tend not to use PA at all, to make sure that he's viable when PA is not up. I do find Thunder Clap useful (and slot it with Stupefy for the ranged defense) even though it only stuns minions. It stacks just fine with Tornado.