Greyhame

Bump, 'case this problem is not going away.

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bah, when all else fails, MORE DAMAGE!

Honestly, with a brute, i don't see the need for either CoF OR opgloom. Cof is another end sink (that you don't need) that only affects minions (which are going to be dead after the first FSC anyway) and OG is a HP sink (that you also do not need) that also only affects minions (which will be dead in just a heartbeat as well) why bother taking and slotting them, except as a holster for sets?

My fire/da is kind of a 'purist' build. skip the 'controllery' powers (Including CoD), slot in extra resist and defense via leadership (and also gain the +per that is normally DA's birthright), lean heavily on the damage shield and FSC for minion problems and soft-cap melee defense with IO's.

Anything that costs too much end or is of limited usefulness gets trimmed right out of the mix.

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fyi Brute CoF affects Lts. And yes, I've actually tested it - I was playing my 50 SS/DA all day yesterday.

I agree with Frost that most of the time neither mez toggle is needed. But on those occasions when you do want/need it - CoF is far more powerful, and end management is easy w/ IOs. Especially for a toggle that you don't run 24/7.

Edit: I would like to see that build, Frost. It sounds interesting.

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Not sure what the big deal is about this; characters will just be playing in Praetorian zones with different story arcs, right? New content is nice, I suppose, though.

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The big deal is now both sides will have access to ALL ATs, and it won't be just in the Praetorian zones. Heroes who go rogue will have access to the Rogue Isles, and Villains who are redeemed will have access to Paragon City. It has ramifications for putting together team throughout the game.

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Actually we don't know that. We know that we'll be able to switch sides, but NO idea what that will entail.

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We do know that, from the Press Release, from the email, and from Posi's interview:

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City of Heroes Going Rogue officially opens the "mirror universe" of Praetoria and an all-new alignment system that explores the shades of gray that lie between Heroes and Villains. For the first time, Hero characters can become Villains and vice versa, enabling Heroes to cross over to the Rogue Isles™ and Villains to experience Paragon City™.

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Emphasis mine. It's the whole reason I started this thread!

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But is your fallen hero in the Praetorian Rogue Isles only?

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That was how I read it too. But if we can only play the other side in the new zone it will just be like a villain playing a heroic AE arc or teaming in a coop zone. Kinda disappointing; certainly not worth a paid expansion.

On the other hand... if *real* side switching is allowed... most people will just go heroic, since that's where teaming and the market are easier. Redside will be even more of a ghost town.

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Time Control.

I've been trying to push a Time Control powerset for a long time. It has a lot of potential to include interesting effects, and a particularly unique one would be the ability to shorten animation cycle times (if that's possible). Anyway, we need more powersets with unusual abilities, not just another new weapon set; we have plenty of those.

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I like the sound of this one. The possibilities for unique powers are impressive.

Please. 'Cause I'm having trouble finding arcs that actually work.

A story that involves a political hot button (such as gay rights) will get banned because it involves such a sensitive issue.

Its not about whether the arc is PC or contains sexual content or anything else. I'd bet a billion inf that any arc which involved any other such close-to-the-heart moral/political issue (e.g. abortion ), whether for or against, would get banned for the same reason.

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<QR>

Not that this has anything to do with the actual topic, but the term you're looking for is "bad rap". As in "rap sheet".

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Heh. When I saw the thread title my first thought was "Bad Kheldian Wrap=Kheldian Sarong?"

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I was thinking more along the lines of sushi.

I'd suggest starting by checking out I13, they pretty much redid PvP from the ground up.

Grats to everyone there on the shiny name. Y'all deserve a bit of recognition.

Damn. I'm back in the game again (for a month, at least) and I can't believe this bug wasn't fixed with PvP 2.0.

Should we call it a Feature now?

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DoT Never broke placate prior to i11/i12

Confirmed on my spines nin prior, BU+Ripper, placate, they'd stand up and ignore me while dot'd

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As a spines/nin player from I6-I8, I call shenanigans. DoTs *always* broke placate, pve and pvp.

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I got sick and tired of this stuff.... World of Warcraft, Here I Come!

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LOL. You realize the devs over there are in the middle of a major game rebalancing?

And yea, this bug is pretty much why I quit trying to PvP with my stalker. Hard enough in RV for a stalker to just survive and score a few kills (against any serious opponent that is, pillbox farmers don't count ), having placate not work (still) is just gimp.

Very nice info. One nitpick - Tohit and Acc are not the same, and don't function the same. You can't really combine them additively for a meaningful number.

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While I'm glad that the tyranny of Radiation Emission might be drawing to a close, I wonder if this fix will really help matters. Given that buffs are now clearly more effective than debuffs in this sort of situation, what exactly does a debuff heavy set like Dark Miasma bring to the table?

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You don't have anything to worry about - debuffs in general are more useful than ever:

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Archvillain and Giant Monster class entities have had their global debuff resistances reduced. This should offset the changes made to -Regen powers and lead to more diverse team composition for certain encounters.


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from here.

Its just that debuffs are no longer absolutely required as they have been since the last round of AV buffs.

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Buffs win over Debuffs

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This I emphatically agree with. I'm seeing quite a few people say things like 'bring lots of rad' and I don't agree. Certianly rad will make it easier, but I've done it successfully with no debuffs except a kin (so -regen/-dmg/-spd). Major debuffing sets are not necessary, and that's a good thing. Serious buffage helps much more in surviving the last mish.

Also - I like the whole 'tower gimmick' as someone called it. It requires forethought, planning and coordination - as opposed to a bloody stupid high level multi-AV stacked-vengence, shivanFTW zergfest that is the RSF.

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Then BOOM! Mish ended, and I got a recipe for Tech Wings, followed by a Fear/End IO recipe.

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Whoa. Whoa, whoa, whoa.

The Tech Wings are in the Task Force pool? Significant info!

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I got bone wings on STF

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I got bone wings as completion reward for the 44 (villian) respec trial.

Question on Repel powers at the tower:

I have Force Bubble, but my team didn't want me to use it after we killed the first tower becuase the techs can rez dead towers. My thought was to stay on the inside side of the current tower so spawning techs would be pushed away from previously killed towers.

Is this feasible? Or too risky that the techs will go to another dead tower and rez it? We would have won even after the first d/c, I think, except we had very little AoE and couldn't stop the techs. Oddly, they didn't seem affected by Spectral Terror at *all*.

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So fellow Invulns, help me out here, what am I doing wrong? Have you completed this TF with non optimal build, non optimal team (No real debuffs) no shivas


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Honestly I think that's more about buffs. I ran my first attempt with an Ice tank + Force Fields, and he did fine when the bubbles were on, but when they weren't refreshed he went down *fast*. Bottom line is, without serious buffing, anything but a Stone tank is going down hard. After all, we are talking about tanking 4 +4 AVs at once.

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Controllers are well liked in this mission because of all of the ambushes. The developers never said that controllers would be more useful against AVs.

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Missed point there - I'm saying that kind of encounter is bad design in general; it's not about the desirability of controllers. I mentioned our troller secondaries specifically because the buff/debuff available on a team makes a difference in what the team can accomplish. i.e. I just included it for completeness' sake in my short review of what happened in our attempt.

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Then complain that AVs aren't controller friendly, rather than that this whole Task Force is controller unfriendly.

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... which part of "it's not about the desirability of controllers" do you have trouble comprehending? My post had nothing to do with controllers at all.

Just ran try #2, a technical draw. This team:
2x ill/ff
emp/dark
ar/dev
2x claws/sr
elec/elec
ill/kin

No real problems till the last mission. Aeon was a bit tricky with the timing of the temp power to bring down his shield, but that was a coordination issue, not a powerset/build thing.

Last mission: stacked bubbles let us survive the AVs without too much trouble as long as we kept the buffs up (even all 4 at once, for a while). The kin and emp could easily heal the damage that got through. We killed the AVs and first tower, but eventually were forced to resign due to a d/c and dentist appointment .



Observations:


1) Mako was insane - get his health down, elude+regen, start all over. I really think he needs to be nerfed; +4 AV Elude with no crash and fast recharge is just too much.

2) Fight Black Scorpion first - no god-mode or other serious problems, just tough resists and damage. Very straight forward.

3) Pulling - stealth, stealth, stealth. We cleared the map and were pulling halfway back to the ship. Our blasters were unable to pull a single AV with snipe until a controller started using Group Invis on them. After that we had no trouble with single pulls.

4) With -regen becoming resisted, and debuffs being more even, AV killing isn't as debuff-centric as it was in I7-8. We had only /kin, and did fine, if a bit slow. Buffs and damage were more important.

5) Phantom Army: with 3 illusionists, we had no trouble keeping PA out permanently when we coordinated our drops. Not a perfect solution, since we can't control what they attack, and they don't draw AV hate like they used to, but still, they were very helpful in keeping the team safe.

fyi, the Patron AVs are hardcoded level 54, meaning they are 54 on even the *lowest* difficulty.

Edit: did I mention that I think fighting the purple patch is stupid rather than challenging?

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Controllers are well liked in this mission because of all of the ambushes. The developers never said that controllers would be more useful against AVs.

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Missed point there - I'm saying that kind of encounter is bad design in general; it's not about the desirability of controllers. I mentioned our troller secondaries specifically because the buff/debuff available on a team makes a difference in what the team can accomplish. i.e. I just included it for completeness' sake in my short review of what happened in our attempt.

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Well I just tried, by the last mission we had 7 left.

1 tank, 2 blasters, and 4 controllers.

We actually got to the last mission - we took out Aeon somehow.

We were royally owned by the 4 signature villains. We could barely scratch them. A few times we managed to get one down to 1/3 their health - and then they would just starting running around like a super speeder on meth until they regened. (which does not take that long, in a few seconds they can get back up to half life)

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I was a part of this attempt. Our controllers were */emp, */ff, and */rads. Oodles of debuffs, sufficient damage, and the ice tank was doing fine with bubbles, stacked AM and emp buffs on him. We kept getting all of the AVs after the first attempt though, and the squishies on the team were just getting 2-shotted continually. Not sure if we just needed more buffing, or the tank was having trouble holding agro, or the squishies were just jumping into aoe range, but we just couldn't survive long enough to kill one.

I wasn't bothered by this, it was my first time after all, but the more I thought about it, the more irritated I've become. Not because we lost, but because of the design. The one big lesson that the LRSF teaches is that fights against multiple high level PToD AVs programmed to cross aggro is poor design. The devs talked a lot about learning from their mistakes (and I do see some evidence of that) but then they went and created another encounter with the *exact* same poor design. That's not cool.

Yes, its only 4 AVs instead of 8, and no they aren't buffing each other, and yes they can be beat - I'm not saying its impossible, I'm saying its poor design. The devs *should* have learned better from the RSF.

Looking for 2 sounds:

Defender/Psi Blast/Psychic Wail
Dominator/Psionic Assault/Psychic Shockwave

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Has something changed recently, that this no longer works?

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It hasn't been changed. I'm not touching the rest of that post.