Hammerfall

Odins son
invul/stone tank

And my mains (Hammerfall) ancillary is Arctic mastery, and will remain so.

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Yeah, going hovering while in caltrops removes the slow element but not the damage, fascinating, isnt it?

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Fascinating? Whatever rocks yer boat

I find them useful for pvp others may not, hey ho.

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yeah, Im wondering what im getting damage for if im not touching the caltrops

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I'm glad this question came up, cause it saves me asking it. Will still take caltrops and use them for retreating then

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Thats what the rl ninjas used them for, hehe.

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Yep, only fly or tp gets you off them. (in pvp anyway)

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Yeah, going hovering while in caltrops removes the slow element but not the damage, fascinating, isnt it?

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I'd be interested if someone could dig up issue 4 release notes?

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http://uk.boards.cityofheroes.com/sh...;Number=289614
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[...]
# Blaster: Energy Manipulation: Bone Smasher (100% chance of dropping one toggle, 75% chance of dropping a second toggle 50% chance of dropping a third toggle)
# Blaster: Energy Manipulation: Energy Punch (100% chance of dropping one toggle, 20% chance of dropping a second toggle)
[...]

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Thank you, that is clear now. I know from experience though that blasters total focus has very high chance of stunning me thru unyielding, whether its just power boost or something else, I don't know. I don't even know if chance is involved or whether it always happens. PvP is not very fun with a character whose only useful power is taunt so don't think ill go explore any time soon.

EDIT: As I tried to point out in my original posting, the end result of blasters total focus on me was stun and toggle drop. I didnt mean to imply that this was thru UY-drop->stun->all toggles drop or stun->all toggles drop. I was merely interested in which case it was.

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hmm, personally i think ED and the whole thing with duncing the tanks previous stupidly over powered plough thru the whole mission without a care for the mobs has been good.

now the whole playing field has been leveled, not just on tanks but across the whole game, tanks are not just meat shields that only need teams for damage, they can play a bit more individually.


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I know I still need team for damage regardless of my lvl and you can bet that I've tried to slot myself for attack power. Last morning it took me about 40 mins to solo thru my own heroic mission with my lvl 50 tank. Part of that was of course me stopping to occasionally yawn in boredom though. I can't turn anymore scranker than I already am and I suspect my friends still see me as a tank, do they?
I havent teamed with you for a long time, Gonk, I hope we can sometimes try it..

I do not want to delve into the discussion what the devs want us to do. About the change: this would be a nice 'buff' if war mace actually had a decent attack as fourth power which it doesn't. I have clobber that has very little use in early game PvE or PvE in general; stun yes, no damage.

It is true however that we don't need (and I don't want) taunt that early. Originally I took taunt at lvl 6 after dull pain, but in my current build taunt has been kicked back to lvl 16. Tanks are team ballast anyway until 16-22 I say.

I'd be interested if someone could dig up issue 4 release notes?

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Indeed, Spines is the only ranged stalker set and build up + impale takes 50%+ of any stormies health off on one hit, 2 more crits and hes down. Spines is the best stalker set for trollers who utilise PBAOES (IMO) as impale is a damn fine attack. TP into the stormie, land practiced brawler and TP away again is another good way of KOing 50%+ of a stormies health away, when me and D'monique are roaming sirens, stormies know they are vulnerable Otherwise due to the close combat nature of stalkers stormies are the biggest pain

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Hey, what happened to claws and focus?

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Impale is better than Focus for taking down Stormies. -Fly and immobilise means if they don't have a break free/other-form-of-mez-resist they can't chase you and get their acc debuff on.

Unless you immobilised them next to a phone booth and they had TP foe.

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Yup, impale is obviously better, I just pointed out that spines wasnt the only stalker set with ranged attacks.

iirc both focus and shockwave have pretty good knockdown however, thats not without merits..

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Indeed, Spines is the only ranged stalker set and build up + impale takes 50%+ of any stormies health off on one hit, 2 more crits and hes down. Spines is the best stalker set for trollers who utilise PBAOES (IMO) as impale is a damn fine attack. TP into the stormie, land practiced brawler and TP away again is another good way of KOing 50%+ of a stormies health away, when me and D'monique are roaming sirens, stormies know they are vulnerable Otherwise due to the close combat nature of stalkers stormies are the biggest pain

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Hey, what happened to claws and focus?

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I see. Well, does it matter? I can't remember if i've held a scrapper without him being stunned, as the animation for stun isn't very visible as you know, and encased in a block of ice i can't see him waltzing about like a drunken Michael Flatley.

Either way, the purpose of dropping toggles with a Dom is to hold anyway, so if you can do that as a result of any/some of the energy attacks anyway isn't everything else moot?

I still feel as if i'm missing the point here, but it still seems fairly straightforward. It's not like you're not going to get these powers if you're sensible. Hold -> Bonesmasher/Total Focus -> Held hero/villain.

...?

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Its much more difficult getting thru tanks hold/disorient resistance without dropping the toggle in question first. If you have an attack/attacks that automatically drop toggles then you can make better use of your hold/disorients.

The point here was indeed to find out whether or not dominators energy attacks automatically drop toggles independently of stuns - and apparently they do

Fact that total focus combines both toggle-dropping AND stun is another thing A blasters total focus on me has about 99% chance of dropping all my toggles and stun me on top of that regardless of how this happens.. Bonesmasher alone has about 0% chance of stunning me - but it always drops a toggle.

There are more annoying toggle-droppers out there too.. storm defenders lightning storm (if i recall the name correctly) is worse than total focus. Fought Talin in arena once, he said he had two clouds up most of the time and they dropped my toggles at about the rate of 0.5-1 toggle/second >.<

Having an updated ist wouldn't be bad, theres new lvl 50s coming up in our coalition every now and then. .By all means, if you have the energy

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A dominator with toggle droppers? The devs aren't that stupid, surely?

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Well why havent people tested out already? You can make an arena match with hero between villain

I have low-lvl (17 or so) dominator with bonesmasher.

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Well a stalker has more tricks than just AS, belive me the tank goes down if the stalker wishes. Hell if a stalker puffs 10 reds(cant be bothered to find the cap. but Im sure 10 will take you there) and build up he can 1 hit kill a stone tank in granite.

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Only got around to taking Faulty into Sirens today. Didn't bother before as he only has brawl and stone fist to attack with at that level. Anyway, had two stalkers having a go at me and I just let them. After several minutes and my hp bar only reaching 1/2 once (when I just hit Earths Embrace and healed) they both gave up and left me to go and find something easier.

As for one shotting a tank in GA, whouldn't that mean they would have to hit for about 16,000 points of damage? Probably 22,000 if running EE.

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Hmm... No. He needs to do 1630,41 points of damage (lvl38, Warburg) (if the tank doesnt have accolades or EE). AS is a critical hit and critical hits are unresisted in PvP.

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You took dull pain into account?

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It depends on how you play

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I think that's the key point, AP isn't for everyone. I never took it on Empath until I got to level 50, and I did fine without it. But after taking it, I didn't want to lose it! (and now I can't)

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although the implication above is that only Empaths that team on bad teams need absorb pain... which I would disagree with... otherwise almost every team I have ever been on is a bad team...

surely that can't be true...

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Im behind you with this Psy,
I'd never call AP a wasted slot..

Then again in the game's current state i don't think any one character or AT can completely turn the tide when things start to go wrong. AP however can provide second chance for one player in the team to possibly tilt the scales in the right direction. It won't win bad situations by itself - but nothing will post ED. Team effort is always needed.

There are many different variations of a well-functioning team, and i see that we are on different camps here I know Psy is more in tank+heals camp and the other one is control+defender camp with little need for heals. Both are fine and working ways to make a good team We shouldn't be arguing about this but enjoy the variety of COH.

We all know that there are several ways of defending but I don't want people to start dissing heals either..

Not exactly related question, but is it possible to fit a raid teleporter into the 2x2 room? I don't believe so because I have failed it so far - even when the porter LOOKS like it should fit.

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Let defenders buff/debuff/heal]

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I think this is where we were all getting to..

(as I perceived another knee-jerk reaction to someone hinting that defenders only heal.. Thats not my opinion btw )

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Let defenders heal when needed

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Here we go again.

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The Yanks have already tested the viability of confuse in terms of the Swarms and herding them towards Hammi as this will:

1) do -regen &
2) do -teleport. A theory came from their boards in which when Hammi spawns mitos, does he teleport them into the zone?

The 'Silver Bullet' theory is also proving to be nothing but the Devs attempting to muddy the waters a little bit. Got to admit though, theres a few strange things in the Hive that are there without explanation.

I personally don't think using confuse on either Hammi or GMs will result in anything less than disaster. The GMs & Hammi have resistance to such powers and stacking confuse will be quite a task, plus you would need somebody who excelled at herding GMs.

Its definatly getting close to a time whereby new tactics should be attempted. The only issue I foresee is the zone resets which haven't been formally explained which leads me to the conclusion that they haven't been fixed yet.

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So what did yanks conclude from their testing?

Personally I believe confusing Mitos could be possible but how would it be useful? Unless we confuse a whole lot of them and they take Hami core down by themselves? That sounds like a bit of a stretch.. Otherwise the Mitos need to get taken down anyway for us to get near and hack Hami core down.

Maybe confusing Mitos would speed up the Mito-clearing stage in the holdless strategy..

Ive seen plenty of Mitos held - they just get taken down so quickly one scarcely notices.. If they can be held they can be confused..

PS. whats this 'silver bullet' theory?

EDIT: Hey I got an idea.. If we use confused Mitos to take Hami down past the spawning threshold - there would be very little heroes in the bubble - very few more Mitos to clear.. Problem might be how to prevent Mitos from killing each other..

Grats from me, I teamed with Miss K at least once

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Interesting, I've found the exact opposite. I'll have to look more carefully at what I'm doing. I was wondering if they'd increased the aggro range, I find it extremely tough to kill one mob in a room without the whole room being instantly aggroed. Even mobs standing yards away facing in the opposite direction instantly turn around and start attacking. I'll have to scout ahead and see if I can find a better approach angle and see if it helps.

Have you noticed (and this one is annoying) how police mobs in bank raids chase you to the door and hang around waiting inside. As soon as you go back in, even fully stealthed, they attack. Takes the meaning of hit and run to a whole new plane. Put one down, click on door. Wait outside for health to recover. Go back in, instantly get pounded on. Repeat. Bit boring to be honest. What use is all that stealth when they can see right through it?

I am finding my stalker fun in PvE though, a bit exasperating sometimes but still fun to play. Maybe because it needs whole new approach to playing the game.

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Hmm, makes me wonder if theres a powerset-related bug present. I have ninja blade and certainly have no trouble soloing my stalker (tad boring yes, but that was not the point ). Bank raids (those with "defeat security to escape") have ambushes and thats a different ballgame. Recommend doing those with a team. Equally annoying soloing them with a MM as well.

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controller's random ability to get critical holds with +1 Mag.

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Err.. what's this?

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On the flip side once you get to a mature build its good, very good you'll solo invincible with ease can hit several levels above your weight and if people know what you're capable of be exceptionally popular for teams. It's worth the effort believe me.

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I would disagree here.. soloing invincibles is not that great idea anymore, we get more xp with lower diff lvl balancing difficulty with efficiency (And with good teams always get more xp). Personally I can solo invincible safely but it is such a bore that I dropped to unyielding for my personal missions.

Playing on heroic might also help.

I've said somewhere else as well that tanks are horrible in the early game. Not that great overall imo, but they are 'balanced' according to their lategame strength.. One more reason for beginners to shy away from them.

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I think only duration and magnatude are reduced, since with domination they are supposed to equal a controller, and domination doesn't boost accuracy.

Note that for both Contollers and Dominators single target controls tend to have higher than normal accuracy, but most aoe holds have lower accuracy.

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Just noting that from my experience, magnitudes with doms are the same as with controllers.. But I havent tested other sets than mind with doms.