Grendar

Apprentice
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  1. Enemy fire always has the right of way.
  2. "After courage and valor have long since fled, the day will be won by the guy who remembered to bring reinforcements to the party." - Howard Tayler

    Words to live by for a MM.
  3. Yea, I kinda ignored Manticore's lecture. The Zig has a painfully low villain retention rate, and besides, swooping in and reinforcing his Russel vs. The World mentality would have been the nicest thing you could have done. Just standing by while Penelope Yin took him down a notch... that was mean.

    Overall, I liked this one much better than the first one. I only had two problems, and only one was actually mission related. The final mission had no map, which made tracking your FP ally very difficult. I lost Numina right when I hit Clamor, I dunno if she got distracted by a shiny Freakshow somewhere or she couldn't figure out how to path up to the base of the Atlas statue.

    The second issue was... what genius decided to give yet another AV flight?! Diabolique was bad enough with her hiding in the bones in the top of the Mot-sewer, Clamor likes to fly up so high that my henchmen couldn't actually hit her. Finally cornered her on Atlas' right knee and finished her off, but honestly it doesn't add anything but frustration to the fight. Overall though, much much better than the previous SSA.
  4. Quote:
    Originally Posted by B_L_Angel View Post
    Excluding the AOE immobilize from the primary what dominator gets more than one targeted AoE from the primary and one from the secondary ?
    If we include PBAoE's and cones, most. Those are more dangerous, but then, Doms actually have tools that let them do close in work without being cut apart. And to be fair, there are Blaster combos that don't have more than two targeted AoE's.

    Quote:
    If you can keep your enemies at range you limit them to just the ranged attack. If they have 4 melee attacks and 1 ranged attack you have eliminated 80% of the potential methods they have to harm. If they have 1 melee attack and 1 ranged attack you have cut it down to 50%.
    And if they still have enough damage to kill you five times over? Enemies like War Wolves or Steel Strongmen may only have one ranged attack, but it hits like a truck.

    Quote:
    By the same token compared to Dominators, Controller mez is a toy.
    No. Controller mez isn't as good as perma-dom, but it's nowhere near as overshadowed as Blasters. Blaster mez is a toy. Controller mez is the same gun, smaller caliber.

    Quote:
    An AR Blaster can deliver 8500+ points of damage to a spawn of 10 from range in roughly 7 seconds and still keep going.

    A Fire/Fire dom is going to have fire breath and then whatever they took as their epic call it 5000-6000 points.
    Quote:
    You mean like your statement about doms doing as much damage from range as blasters ?
    I said keep pace, not outperform. You're really bad about that putting words into someones mouth thing. Point is, the Dom will be putting out solid damage, and also has impressive control.

    You still haven't actually answered my question. You call it the most flexible AT. What can it do that cannot be done by another AT? It does damage, can it do anything else?
  5. Quote:
    Originally Posted by B_L_Angel View Post
    Full stop.

    On a blaster I can have continuous ranged aoe chain and decimate spawns before they ever get close. Doms don't even come close till they get their EPIC powers. Look at AR. Full Auto then Flame thrower then Buckshot then etc etc etc .
    I will grant that, if only by virtue of the Dominators damage set being secondary instead primary. At level 50, however, both have fully fleshed out attack chains for melee, ranged, and AoE. What can the Blaster do at this level that the Dom can't?

    Quote:
    And blasters don't have crowd controls ? No holds, stuns or immobilize ?
    First off, Immobilize barely counts as crowd control anymore. I can't think of any enemies off the top of my head that don't have any ranged attacks, and a surprisingly high number are primarily ranged. Immobilize is pretty much only useful for keeping enemies in a tight cluster for AoE's. Secondly, compared to Dominators, Blaster mez is a toy. Most Blasters have one to three powers with an actual mez, the vast majority of which are either single target or come with a long cooldown. Dominators can lock down a spawn entirely, often with just one or two powers. The difference is an order of magnitude. And the Dom can still keep pace with the Blaster's damage.

    Quote:
    You keep asking that question and ignoring the answers.
    You keep giving bad answers. What can a Blaster do that cannot be accomplished by another AT?
  6. Quote:
    Originally Posted by B_L_Angel View Post
    Doms are designed to have to enter into melee you don't have to do that with blasters at all.
    You don't have to enter melee with Doms either. You do give up some of their higher damage attacks, but they have enough ranged attacks that you can build a fully functional attack chain from range. Blasters have the same range/melee dichotomy. The difference is, Doms have mez protection and crowd controls. To get back to my original argument (I'll drop my contribution to the other discussions, since other posters are more knowledgeable about such things), what is unique to the Blaster chassis that makes them inherently more flexible than other AT's?
  7. Quote:
    Originally Posted by B_L_Angel View Post
    Doms are explicitly designed not to let you do that.
    How? They have a mix of melee and ranged attacks, and often built for high recharge to get perma-Domination. In one powerset, they have enough attacks to get a ranged, melee, and AoE chain set up, because those attacks recharge much faster than they do for most other AT's due to the Doms unique slotting requirements.

    Quote:
    If you can't make your point name call.

    What is worse you can't even get your facts straight. When you say a few people, you are talking about the number three most popular AT at 50, according to the numbers Paragon Studios released last year.
    Perhaps I misunderstood, but it sounded like you were arguing that you can't buff Snipes because then you would be compelled to take them and you don't want that. That is the definition of selfishness, putting your own needs ahead of everyone else. If that wasn't what was being said, I apologize.

    St_Angelius covered it much better than I could on the facts though.
  8. Quote:
    Originally Posted by B_L_Angel View Post
    Well excluding the epic ATs, they can have both a good ranged attack chain and a good melee chain at the same time.

    Just as an example, fire/energy is a combo that has the longest ranged attacks in the game and can pick apart spawns with its snipe but also is devastatingly effective in melee.
    You mean like Dominators?


    Quote:
    Originally Posted by B_L_Angel View Post
    When a power becomes dominant to the point where not taking significantly lowers your damage output you are forced to take it. I can't think of playing a tank now that isn't actively using that 1st level power.
    So you contend that it's better to gimp an entire class so a few players can enjoy the difficulty than it is to boost the class so it's on par with the other classes and let the players who enjoy the difficulty add their own challenges? Do you realize how selfish that is?
  9. Quote:
    Originally Posted by B_L_Angel View Post
    That said they are the most flexible AT in the game. With a blaster you have the most choices on how you want to do things, and the means to achieve them.
    This mentality has always confused me. I've seen it pop up in several threads, but never backed up. What can a Blaster do that cannot explicitly be done by another AT?
  10. Quote:
    Originally Posted by dmurray View Post
    Okay, firstly, I'm very new to the game (as per my other topic) but I do understand the terms and basic mechanics so don't worry about throwing terms around and I know I gave a bunch of primary/secondary powersets but they're just all the ones I like most. I am really sorry for the long winded post, just pick whatever you can and answer it, thanks.

    Basically I hate that a few guides make it so you'll be the one doing the tanking (with defense mode). That isn't what I really want to do when I'm fighting; I'd rather my minions get beat up and do the damage and me supporting.
    -You can have your minions tank just fine, in fact with many secondaries I would recommend it. Poison, FF, Pain... any set with lots of "you cannot target yourself with this power" abilities really benefits from having your minions tank, and even EB's can be safely tanked by your higher tier henchmen just fine. You will lose more of them this way, of course, but you can always summon another one that looks just like him.

    Quote:
    I absolutely love the idea of necro/dark but from what I've gather bots/traps are really best at soloing things later on. I have no problem with this but I'd rather play a powerset that isn't relient on me having to tank the damage all the time. GMs/AVs are understandable since they're much rarer than standard bosses but like I said in the last paragraph, I don't want to be the tank; I want to be supportive and helpful.
    -Understand, you could solo everything in this game with Merc/Force Field just fine. Masterminds are the gods of soloing, play whatever you want and you will still be better off than any Blaster in solo content. So don't worry about if Bots/Traps is the best for soloing (incidentally, while it's a great set, I still think that /Dark and /Time both outshine it in some areas).

    Quote:
    Anyway a few questions about specific primaries:
    Guides are saying the Bruiser is bad since his hand clap has KB; that's been changed on the wiki and it does KD. But his ranged move does KB; how badly would it be if I had something that relied mostly on AoEs (like traps, for example)
    -The bruiser's knockback isn't the biggest issue with him, it's that he really, really loves his ranged attacks and getting him into melee where he belongs is a pain. It's not really that big a deal though, any enemy vulnerable to knockback will be taken out by him in one or two swings anyways.

    Quote:
    Speaking of traps with thugs, we only get one healing power. Is that enough? I get that thugs and arsionists will die a lot but call on a 60 second CD, do I just slot in some recharge enhancements to call thugs and that'll fix it?
    -Traps is a lackluster healing secondary. The Triage beacon gives 150% regen, not a healing buff, so you can't use it in reactive healing, and your pets will be taking a LOT of damage even with all your buffs and debuffs up. Don't worry about it too much, they're cheap. As for your question about slotting for recharge, the only sets with any recharge you can put in your pets are the Mastermind Archtype sets. So if you want to reduce the cooldown on your summon ability, you will have to reduce your global cooldown via set bonuses and Hasten. Don’t worry about it too much, you’ll get by just fine without the Arsonist every time he dies.

    Quote:
    With demons, I have zero understanding, it seems like it's a giant cluster of "here, have random abilities, a little bit of a different types of damage, buffs, debuffs, good luck". Or does all of that actually work well together? I mean at low levels they seem to be tougher than bots and even with the demonlings get into melee they don't see to be losing much DPS from what I can see.
    -I'm a little confused by your question about Demons being a grab bag of abilities. The demons attack types all work well together, it's actually better than if they were all of the same type since enemies with high resistances to certain damage types are still vulnerable to other demonlings. You want to take one or two of the whip attacks for the -res, and all the other attacks make sense on their own (summons henchmen, empowers henchmen, spawns imps, etc). It actually synergizes very well together, Demons are tied with Bots for the best MM primary in the game.

    Quote:
    With bots since they're all ranged and they have melee attacks, isn't this a bit awkward with mobs that run into melee? (or is this where the perma tanking MM works)
    -If you’re expecting your bots to behave like Blasters, you’ll be in for a very disappointing surprise. They love nothing more than running into melee to use their single melee ability and then firing their laser at point blank range. Even if you tell them to stand still, they have a tendency to completely ignore that and run into melee, then run all the way back to where you told them to stand before firing their laser again. It’s kind of annoying, but they’re cheap anyways.

    Quote:
    But dark looks like it'd work well (if not just for fluffy) since the demons do seem to get a massive amount of debuffs (or so it seems) so are demons/dark as good as bots/ff or bots/traps?
    -Avoid /FF like the plague, it's very boring. Very, very boring. Demons/Dark would work extremely well together, though. Demons get a lot of +res, which goes well with -tohit, and the -res from the whip attacks would stack with Tar Patch. Demons/Dark would be an excellent MM.

    Quote:
    With necromancy normally the third teir minion is the big guns (so to speak) but the lich seems a bit... anti-climatic? He gets most of your abilities which is fun but I dunno if it'll be as exciting as finally getting my bruiser or assault bot or demon prince. Oh and would storm be decent enough that I could still hold my own while soloing or does Fluffy make dark worth it? Since most of the necro minions can heal themselves, I figured that the AoE heal from dark might make dark not needed as much and the cold theme would fit in well with the necromancy theme. Though I am also partial to poison with undead.
    -The Lich... anticlimactic?! The Lich is the perfect henchman, he stands back further than you do and slings holds, debuffs, immobilizes, fears, and damage from a safe distance. It's like getting a pocket Dark/Nothing defender. Admittedly, his damage is lackluster, but his obscene amounts of finely tuned control more than makes up for it. He will literally decimate the incoming damage (literally reduce it by 90% in many cases). Damage is overrated, controls and debuffs are the kings of CoH.

    As for /Storm, I don't like it as much because the best debuff power Hurricane likes to throw enemies out of its radius. As for whether your minions can keep themselves alive with their self heal... no, they’re pretty terrible at it actually. Since it’s a drain rather than a direct heal, they use it in their damage rotation, and it recharges too slowly to make them self sufficient. You should be fine with the single target heal though if you just absolutely love /Storm.

    Poison would be a great secondary if Envenom and Weaken had a larger radius. 8 feet is way too small, it really should be 15 feet to be on par with equivalent powers from the other sets. As is, hitting more than one or two targets with them is almost impossible unless you wait for your enemies to converge on you, which makes them useless for soaking the alpha. Its not a bad set by any means, but for dealing with large numbers of enemies /Time, /Dark, or /Traps would all be better suited.

    Quote:
    As for secondaries, I don't really have questions. I just want something that can take down stuff solo and actually fits a theme. Hellspawned demons with me using traps doesn't really fit; neither do thugs and me summoning Fluffy.
    -As for Primary/Secondary sets that fit a theme and can take down tough stuff, a few work very well. Bots/Traps, Bots/Time, Bots/Thermal, Necro/Dark, Necro/Traps (go with a Frankenstein theme), Necro/Time, Demons/Dark, Demons/Thermal all fit thematically and would be great for taking down anything up to EB with ease. Taking down an AV or GM solo will usually require a very solid (and expensive) build, they're a special case. Literally any combination can solo basic content at +0/x1 though, Masterminds are the gods of solo content.

    Quote:
    I know I'm probably asking for a miracle with what I want but I have no problem with how long it takes to learn (so long as it's reliant on actual skill/abilities and not luck)

    Anyhow, thanks for any help.
    Masterminds aren’t hard to play, but keeping your roudy minions in check can be a hassle. I recommend you get a good set of keybinds to keep them reasonably under control. Beyond that, you should be fine. It's hard to mess up a Mastermind, they're a very well designed class.



    Oh, one more thing. You can use inspirations on your henchmen by dragging them over them in the henchmen list. Very useful if your T3 henchman is tanking and he needs a bit more defense.
  11. Demons/Time Masterminds. You debuff almost everything, buff almost everything, you have enough holds to lock down anything short of PToD AV, and you have varied enough damage that even if an enemy has immunities or capped resistances that only locks one or two demons per MM out. Most of the pets are ranged, so enemies that have instant-kill AoE powers can be safely engaged from range, albeit with some difficulty wrestling with the faulty pet AI. On top of capped defenses and the enemies damage debuffed to the bare minimum, the Masterminds are sitting on an additional 80% damage reduction from Bodyguard mode. In short, an entire team of players capable of fulfilling the tanker, blaster, and defender role, all at the same time, and all of them stack.
  12. Grendar

    Runaway Robots

    That's one AI bug down, half a dozen to go.
  13. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill View Post
    *chuckle*

    • Kheldian Dwarf and Nova transformations now occur instantly, down from 2.07 seconds.
    • Kheldian Dwarf and Nova transformations now have a 1 second recharge, up from 0 seconds.
    Teases. "It's instant... NOPE! One second!"





    .... not that I'm complaining.
    It's functionally instant. By the time you switch forms and fire off whatever ability you wanted it will have recharged. The only thing this prevents is something crazy like switching rapidly to and from Dwarf in between enemy attacks, which would require crazy reflexes and crazier latency. Well, and the much more plausible case of people rapid-fire shifting and causing server lag.

    Personally, I enjoy tri-form. I would love to see toggle suppression, since it would give me a reason to take some of the defensive powers (heck, I'd take toggles-active-but-no-bonuses just so I can have Gravity Shield up when I go human form), but forms are half the fun. The -kb is very exciting though.
  14. There was one, can't remember the name, about the Crystal Thorns the CoT use for trapping souls. It had an absolutely awesome story, but I finally had to give up because the mission designer loved MASSIVE Oranbegan maps, oftentimes the size of Kings Row or larger, with a single objective hidden somewhere inside - usually a person, so stealthing through and listening for a glowie wasn't an option. Each mission could take upwards of two hours to completely clear, and CoT are fairly tedious enemies to begin with. Even worse, if you died you had to navigate the labyrinthine map to get back to where you were. Extremely tedious but not too bad if you don't mind the CoT too much.

    Freakolympics was a good one, aside from being a bunch of kill alls. Made defeating the Freaks by the dozen satisfying.

    Haven't done the Hollows missions in a while, but that's no surprise - they seriously suck. Lots of kill-all missions with little plot. Doesn't help that I originally tried to do them during the Halloween event so street sweeping was basically impossible.
  15. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Primantiss View Post
    Happens a lot when your fighting Rommy for the first time.

    Many times I'm in a team that pulls both AVs at once, and whatever mobs come with them. It's not as nasty as one may think.
    You mean you can pull them separately? I always assumed that they attacked when you started destroying the computer, every single group I've been in has simultaneously taken on both AV's and the bot swarm. Honestly, not a big deal, both AV's are just a tank and spank, you just need a durable enough tank/enough support to keep them under control. Unless your team does something crazy like focusing the computer first it's really not that hard.
  16. I'd go with the Dom, but that has more to do with Blasters being underwhelming than any conceptual decision. Electric Blast on it's own won't be enough to completely drain a target (or at least, any target that matters), and while MM is a great secondary it can't make up for the Blaster's overall lack of survivability and utility.

    If you wanted to try Electric Blast, you could roll it as a Corruptor. Less damage than a Blaster, but depending on your secondary you could be looking at some serious utility and survivability. No psychic secondaries unfortunately, but plenty of good ones nonetheless.
  17. Ran the SSA followed by the Maria Jenkins arc. Cue several hours of "wait, you're dead! So are you!"
  18. /Signed. I like the Patron Powers, but I absolutely hate the tip missions and really hate Redside. I don't give a crap about XP, or even necessarily population, I just hate being a villain, really hate the tip missions for becoming a villain (good god, vigs are worse than villains), and hate that villains get something better for free that heroes have to spend more than a week getting... by becoming villains. It's fundamentally flawed, and needs to be fixed.
  19. Croatoa lost me with the massive, outdoor missions to find one or two hostages. Great story arc, but if I wanted to wander aimlessly and take down large groups of enemies, I'd street sweep. On the bright side, the devs seem to understand this now. Most post-GR content makes good use of short/medium length linear missions with varying objectives and mechanics. Shame they didn't know this from the get-go though, there's a lot of great stories with horrific missions to back them up.
  20. Pick a zone, pick a villain group, and declare war. Probably on the CoT. PitA to kill, and total jerks to their victims.
  21. I like the idea of small zone events. The problem with the current ones (Troll Rave, Fire Alarm, etc) is that they're designed for groups rather than individuals. Unless you outlevel the content (and in the case of the Fire Alarm, have a powerset with ice damage), there's no way for one or two people to do the event. If you used the Nemesis code that spawns enemies for each person in the zone, though, then the zone events could scale dynamically for however many people want to take part in the event. It would be something interesting to add, though.
  22. I'd recommend a Time defender for teaming. Time/Ice would be great for reducing the incoming damage, while Time/Sonic would bring some incredible damage boosting to the party. Either way, you have a ton of buffs and debuffs and almost all of them are AoEs. Overall a great chassis.
  23. I eat inspirations like candy. Yellows are basically useless after 22 but purples, blues, and greens are a godsend and reds and oranges are definitely nice to have.

    I pick up the occasional temporary power, especially the recovery booster. The cooldown isn't so great, but between that, a few blues, and rest I can afford a little inefficiency in my builds while leveling.

    That's about it, actually. I'll use other things like day job powers if I pick them up, but I find I don't really need them too much.
  24. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Arilou View Post
    Beast Mastery. Duh.

    "Granny, how many cousins you have!"
    I was just about to say this. It's the only real powerset that leaps to mind from Red Riding Hood. Dunno about a secondary though.
  25. Quote:
    Originally Posted by dugfromthearth View Post
    Revenge of the 90's Gritty and Stupid Heroes
    1. Manticore decides to not allow anyone else to protect Statesman's daughter at a meeting of villains. She is killed of course.
    2. They then decide to only have Ms. Liberty protect a hero doing a mental probe on a mind controlling villain. The hero is possessed of course.
    3. Then kill off the possessed hero
    4. Then kill off statesman
    That explains so much...