Jade_Dragon

My main Brute was always intended to go blueside.

My secondary Brute will probably stay as a Rogue, though. And I plan to recreate him in a level pact with a Scrapper, with both of them starting in Preatoria. I'll probably keep both, even though the original is an EM/Willpower, and I want to recreate him as Claws/WP.

Honestly, if you had the option of what information you wanted to display on the select screen, that would be nice. I'd don't think I'd care about Born Date, but I would definately like to see my Level to the 10th of a level.

Defenders are Buff-Debuff/Ranged. They are not Buff-Debuff/Debuff. While the secondary effects are certainly useful, the concept of the Defender is around dealing damage. If you want team support, a Controller has more tools for that role.

That said, the Defender works best if he can buff his damage, for the very reason that his buffs are his strength. Ranged is Secondary, unlike Corruptors. So those Defenders that lack self damage boosts, FF and Empathy, can't really support their secondary role as well as an Offender.

So your best bet if you want to blast is to pick a Primary that best supports your blasts. Rad, Kin, or Storm are really popular choices. And Sonic Secondary is going to give you your best damage. Although with those Primaries you don't really NEED to Sonic -Res, the other options can be just as good. (It's really for the Primaries with low -Res that Sonic's secondary effect makes up for it)

And you should slot your damage, whether you want to deal damage or not. Do you really want to waste Endurance on an attack that only does 50% of its potential damage? It's probably better to take a few attacks and slot them well than to spread out slots among a bunch of attacks and not put any Damage in any of them. Save the secondary effect slots for the powers in your Primary instead, you'll get way more boost out of them.

I honestly don't think Ninjitsu would be Ninjitsu without stealth. It would essentially be Super Reflexes, which we already have. The theme of Ninjitsu is the additional flexibility that the gadgets in the set have, Caltrops, and Blinding Powder, and the stealth capabilities.

I think that Hide could be replaced directly with Cloaking Device from Devices with no problems at all. That leaves Smoke Flash, which as a Placate may be too connected to Stalkers. Then again, it would give no Critical (Scrappers don't Crit on Placate) so likely the duplication of Caltrops in the Epic Pool would be the larger issue. Personally, I would replace Smoke Flash with Smoke Grenade, so the grenade can be tossed from out of melee and let the Scrapper close to melee without being attacked, like a Stalker, and replace Caltrops with Quickness.

There are any number of combinations that could be used for the replacement, though.

In terms of taking the damage, I would say the order from best to worst would be:

Tanker
Tankermind
Brute
Dwarf Form Kheldian
Tanking Defender/Crab Spider
Scrapper

In terms of holding the aggro, I would say the order would be:

Tanker
Brute
Dwarf Form Kheldian
Scrapper
Tankermind
Tanking Defender/Crab Spider

YMMV. (For one thing, I think I'm underestimating the resiliance of a Dwarf Form Kheldian compared to a Brute. Then again, the Kheldian will probably not be in Dwarf form 100% of the time)

I would have said "Tanking Defender/Corruptor", however, it's less likely the Corruptor would be built for tanking instead of dealing damage. The Corruptor would not be quite as good at it because of the lower buff/debuff mods, but could make up for that with a specifically tanking build. Same goes for Controllers.

Honestly, I would like the scabbard be empty and the sword appear out of an empty scabbard when drawn than have a scabbard with a sword in it and have two swords when I draw one. Neither is perfect, but I'd think the former would look less silly. And no worse than what we have, really.

I'm guessing scabbards would have to be costume parts. Making them an object that interacts with your weapon model and is attached to a node would take additional technology, I am guessing.

Honestly, as the devs have in the past avoided making kludge solutions which do not look "perfect", although I'm not opposed to empty scabbards or holsters as costume pieces I think the devs would avoid them. It's the reason we took so long to get capes, for one thing. They wouldn't add the capes until they perfected the elaborate interactive animation we have for them now.

I honestly wish there was a command to do this, as well as a command to set the horizontal and vertical angle around the character with an integer value. I have a key which zooms the camera back for teleporting, (using /camdist) I'd like the camera to shift angle down on my character a little bit so I can see around obstacles better.

I'd also like a button to rotate the camera around to face my character for screenshots during combat.

Honestly, just the vertical angle command would be fine, since it could be set to 0 to reset it. Something like:

/camangle_vert 0
/camanger_hor 0

/camrotate is bound to the PageUp key to change the horizontal angle, but takes its input from the mouse, not a numeric value. I could have suggested /camrotate_whatever instead of /camangle_whatever, but I decided to make it distinct so there'd be no confusion.

You do realize that a CoH2 means that everyone starts all over. Years of work just tossed aside. All those characters, all those levels. Toss them all out. Start over.

Protector Bots, taken together, do a little less damage than Battle Drones, taken together. The main difference is that Full Auto Laser will do proportionally more damage than Photon Grenade, albeit in a cone and not a full circle AoE.

Personally, I prefer a defensive build rather than an offensive one, and thus I slot my Proto Bots for 3 Defense and 1 Heal, with the 1 Acc to make sure they hit. I go ahead and slot 1 Dam just so they do some little damage. I don't really think they need 2 Acc, though, only Tier 1s are that innaccurate against anything lower than +2. If you are taking on purples, I might go with the 2 Acc, but I'd do that anyway, for any attack power.

I can certainly see the desire for an offensive build, though, and I would probably go 1 Acc, 3 Dam and 1 Def.

You really shouldn't slot more than 1 Heal, for reasons mentioned earlier. I do slot the 1, so when my Assault Bot gets healed, he gets HEALED.

The secondary effect of machine gun fire is supposed to be -Def. This is the effect most commonly applied to critter fire. I'm guessing the idea is that rapid fire bullets "chew up" armor, allowing successive shots through.

As many of AR's attacks are NOT machine gun fire, however, the effect is not consistent. Only Burst has -Def, although technically I believe Full Auto should have it as well. Slug, Buckshot, M30 Grenade and Sniper Rifle all have knockback, presumably because it is a single larger caliber impact. This is consistent with Dual Pistols, which has a combination of -Def and knockback with Lethal Ammo.

Note that Archery has NO secondary effect, except for Blazing Arrow's DoT, and Explosive Arrow's knockback, the +ToHit is all it has. AR has a combination of +ToHit, -Def, knockback, and DoT from its fire attacks. So it makes sense that the +ToHit of Archery would be higher than AR. (And in fact Dual Pistols is comfortably between them) It's likely, though, that AR's +ToHit is not a secondary effect, but the innate +ToHit of all weapons that is meant to compensate for the penalty of redraw.

As for the OP, while new alternate animations for the set would be nice, along the lines of Super Strength and Martial Arts, it should be expected that older Power Sets do not look as good as newer ones. The old Power Sets were cobbled together from animations that were meant to be used for an open Power system (something like that of a certain other superhero MMO that shall remain nameless) and in many cases the same animation is reused several time. More money is, IMHO, going into the development of animations today than has ever gone into the game in the past, given the amount of time that was spent on those animations, and then amount of time being spent today. There were simply too many other things being developed at the time to devote such a huge amount of time to complex and showy animations. The devs were trying to get the job done and get the game released.

In the past, the devs have been loathe to change animations, as the people who are opposed to changes to the sets they have enjoyed and grown used to greatly outnumber the number of people who would be drawn to draw a set by the new animations. They have only made such changes where there was clearly no alternative, such as with the Sonic animations which were making many players of the game, even those not playing the sets directly, violently ill, to the point where they were driven from the game entirely. I expect this will change now, with Power Customization, and some of the alternatives that people have suggested for different Powers will be made available as customization options, so the alternates can be selected and used, or not used, as the player sees fit.

I wouldn't look to it happening overnight, though.

I'll also add that right now you can EITHER customize the color and/or animation of your Power OR you can customize the weapon. Archery, Dual Pistols, Broadsword, Battle Axe and so on allow you to choose what the weapon looks like, but the effects and the animations you use to make the attacks cannot be changed. Fire Blast, Energy Blast, and even psuedo weapon effects like Fire Sword in Fire Melee or Stone Mallet in Stone Melee can be customized and you can change the color of them, but you do not have a "weapon" that is constant across all Powers and customized independently of them. It is possible that later changes may allow modification of the machine gun effects as well as the machine gun itself, but it is equally possible that only one of these two values can be edited and saved, and not both of them.

If farmers want to play during 2x XP weekend, I don't feel I have any right to stop them. And really, what farmer WOULDN'T want to play during 2x XP weekend? So I expect them all to be online and farming.

I personally try to solo a lot and avoid them. If I get invited to a team from some of my usual hangouts, then I'll team with them. But I know what they're doing, I know they're there, and if I answer a private tell and run through a couple of missions only to see them stop and restart right before reaching the end, I go, "Excuse me, but I need to get some lunch. Thanks for the team" and drop out.

I don't need the teams and I don't need the XP. Their lure does not appeal to me.

Once you have a complete attack chain, you should theoretically be using the slowest recharging, highest damage attacks most often, while leaving the fastest recharging, lowest damage attacks sitting in the recharged state while waiting for a place in the chain to use them. This may not be the way attack chains are "officially" built, but there will always be an innate priority, and that priority will usually determine which are used the most often.

As such, it is always my strategy to slot the highest priority attacks for Endurance first. As my levels and available slots increase, I slot additional Endurance into my other attacks evenly. Once all attacks are slotted, or at least all those I intend to use regularly (i.e., I may skip situational powers) I may add additional slots to the highest priority attacks again.

High priority attacks are USUALLY the highest damage, but that is not always the case. If I have a lower damage attack I use more often than the highest damage attack, that is the priority. Also, while AoE attacks usually cost more endurance, they are usually also lower on my priority list. I will normally try to use them only if they can hit 2 or more foes. If an AoE attack is a high priority attack I use as part of my attack chain, I will add an additional Endurance slot to balance the greater End cost.

Note that the first End slot reduces the cost of an attack to 75%, the second to 60%, and the third to 50%. While the EPS of that is linear as you slot more End, the EPA is not. So IMO it is always more End efficient to slot two Powers with End than to slot one with two End. Similarly, attacks with long animation times, such as Sniper powers, Total Focus, or Propel, allow more End to be recovered during their animation times. Attacks which cost a lot of End very quickly tend to reduce End faster than it can be recovered, while lower End cost attacks can often recover close to the amount cost during the animation, or at the very least at a much closer rate.

I'm with the "Well, it could have been 30 or 40" crowd, but I can understand tying it to GR and the apparent end of the Preatorian starting arcs at level 20. I don't think it hurts anything, and I think it has the potential to make Kheldians more prevalent. Win/win.

The thing is, though, would anyone support raising the level you get capes from 20 to 50? Raising auras from 30 to 50? What about 30 to 40? We're used to them being unlocked at those levels, and it would be a huge disappointment to have to wait even longer. There isn't even an incentive for reaching 40. Once you start getting up to that level, it stops being an incentive for those who just aren't interested in racing to the level cap.

We have purple IOs now, there's Hamidon, Task Forces, and so on, and supposedly new endgame content is coming. Now that Kheldians no long ARE the one and only reward for getting to level 50 I don't really see what the fuss is about.

From Issue 17 Overview, on the official site:

Well, if they can tie animations to weapon models, I wouldn't mind Crossbows as an alternate, if they had the same cast time and effects. Another example, although further complicating things, is the idea of having a weapon drawn for another current Power Set. For instance, firing Fire Blast from a flamethrower or a magical staff. While this would add redraw time to a Set that currently doesn't have it, disrupting the balance of the set, it might be nice if a way could be found around it.

Another example is the "tricorder" used by the Medicine Pool. It would be nice if this animation could be replaced with something more suitable for a Magic user, like a spell. This isn't exactly the same thing, though, because the "tricorder" isn't really a weapon model. That's the basic idea, though, while the effect is the same, a different animation and graphical effects play.

A lot of the problem, though, is that Power Customization is per individual Power, while Weapon Customization effects the whole set. You could theoretically have a Weapon that you select, and then multiple animations to choose from that use the same Weapon. That's even more work required to do that, though, as right now you aren't given the choice to change Power Customization when you have a customizable Weapon, and vice versa. Every Power Set lets you change one or the other, but not both.

If they were going to advance the technology to allow more options like that, it would probably be for more than just putting crossbows in Archery.

The Human Form strategy is completely viable, don't believe anyone who says, "You're not being a true Kheldian if you don't take the Forms."

I believe everyone who plays a Kheldian should take the forms on ONE of their Kheldians, just as I say everyone who plays this game should take Flying at least once. It's fun, and you don't want to miss out on something that's fun. But it's hardly necessary.

The balance on a Human Form Kheldian is a little weaker, because it's balanced around the CHOICE to take the Forms. But you have the flexibility to choose different paths, as long as maximizing DPS is not your sole purpose in life.

Oh, and DON'T get in there and be a Scrapper. If you want that, Human/Dwarf probably is your best bet. While you will certainly be doing your best damage in melee, be like a Dominator and soften the foe up at range first. At the very least, go after the mezzers first, and charge into the group once you know you won't find yourself held and being wailed on in there.

It's my understanding there are two Tri-Form strategies. One is to emphasise the forms, and just put slots into the Human form Powers that support the forms. Obviously Mire, Stygian Circle and Eclipse are top of the list, with Essense Drain as a second heal, and possibly Gravity Well or Gravimetric Snare for some control.

The other is to balance the slots between the three forms, and make up for the relative weakness by constantly shifting forms. Deal as much damage in Nova form as possible, while making sure the Human form attacks and Dwarf defenses are strong enough.

Personally, I use a little bit of both. I don't concentrate hard on Human form attacks, instead concentrating on the Dwarf attacks, backed up with double Mire. I will pop out for Essense Drain or Gravity Well, though, making sure they're both slotted well enough to do damage. It's a balance between being able to do adequate damage in any form you end up in, and spreading out the damage between the forms so much it's useless. I try to specialize with a few attacks, though, so I can shift forms and use each of them for max damage, or stay in a form and use some of the less slotted attacks.