Jade_Dragon

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Honestly, I think in general the devs got better at selecting powersets intended to "fit" the archetype at the time CoV was being designed, and ironically that turned out to be something they ended up being slightly too good at.

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Well, hopefully Powerset Proliferation will help with that. Doms may not get Illusion, but hopefully they will get something similar, with some unique capabilities in place of the pets. And I think a gadget based Primary and Secondary could have some unique features, like stealth or traps.

Yeah, all stealth and -perception give you is the initiative. You can set it up so you make the first attack. Once you have attacked, however, you will have aggro, and the foes will be able to "find" you no matter where you are. So the benefit of stealth effectively vanishes.

The good part is, if there are foes in the group that have not aggroed, and you can keep their allies from alerting them, they won't see the fight and won't join in. So Smoke is really useful for pulling. Hit the foe you want to come to you, and then run behind a corner or obstacle. The foe you hit will come after you, but his buddies won't, unless you did a lot of damage to him, or you hit like a Boss or Lt. And seeing an ally drop dead in their midst will aggro the whole group.

Depending on your Secondary, you might want to pick a weak attack for pulling. A sniper shot, for instance, runs the risk of a one hit kill, which will aggro the whole group. The one thing you don't want to do is hold a foe, because he won't come to you and you'll have to kill him in place. Controllers sometimes have a good debuff for use as a pulling tool, like Siphon Power. (I almost responded with this, wasn't paying attention to which forum I was in) If nothing else, you can take the Blackwand, which not only pulls great, it debuffs accuracy. It also doesn't knockback like the Nemesis staff. (Which can sometimes cause unintentional aggro)

Honestly speaking, the thing I really can't get over about Orbiting Death is just how large an area it covers. It's much larger than the damage/taunt auras on meleers, and it always seems to surprise me when foes quite far away from me start getting those orange numbers.

Of course, it's also dangerous to use for just that same reason. I almost never use it, because I can't currently handle the aggro. It's just so cool, though, that I can't bring myself to drop it.

And just to mention, I have it on both my Tri-Form and my Human Form. My Tri-Form it's taking up space, I did not want to take any ranged attacks with him, so the choice was forced on me at 4. With my Human Form I have it on one build, but not the other. I suspect after I get my Human Form's shields slotted out and get Stygian Circle to handle the End cost, I'll be able to use it. But for now, on both characters it is unslotted and unused.

I just turn it on from time to time just for grins.

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Hey, just a random silly question. Why can't we pick up these quantum guns? Surely some mob along the way died/was arrested with minimal damage to the blaster! I mean, it would make the Imperious Task Force a little bit easier.

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Actually, I believe there's a mission villain side that gets you a Quantum gun. Yep, there sure is

You can only use it against Kheldians and Nictus, though, and that's a small part of the total baddies in the game. Also, it's apparently not usable on players. (I was actually holding on to it just to test it out, but ah well. )

You get it as a villain specifically to take down a Warshade boss or a PPD Awakened boss (actually, Sunstorm, too!) at the end of the mission arc in which you get it. I suppose there really is no reason to give a Kheldian player such a weapon specially for a mission since so many of their missions are against other Kheldians. Plus, maybe it's just that the idea of the Quantum weapons are so abhorrent to Kheldians that they would never even consider using it on a "brother", even one that is an enemy.

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Dominators, interestingly enough, seem to have one of the smaller ranges in qualitative design extremes (at least in my opinion).

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This could be because Dominators have so few choices for Primaries and Secondaries. They do not have access to Illusion, which is one of the more unique examples of the Control Power Sets. And they have no version of Devices, which again is a unique example of a Blaster Secondary. Although a Dom Secondary with no melee attacks would probably be TOO limiting...

Mind Control and Psi Assault are fairly unique choices, though, Mind for the lack of a pet, and Psi for Drain Psyche in place of Power Boost or Aim/Build Up.

I admit the "unable to detoggle to human while in a fighting animation" bug is annoying, but it just seems to be like Kheldians are so much more powerful now than they have ever been.

Human and Dwarf forms have more damage, Quants no longer have unresistable damage, your team bonus now effects you in shapeshifted forms, your toggles don't drop even when you are mezzed, meaning you can remain in forms while mezzed, you can go into Dwarf form to break out of a mez, you can remain flying while mezzed, Black Dwarf Mire comes up much more often, meaning it does more damage, (although you can't carry the damage over to Nova as much any more) and I'm sure that's not even the whole list.

And I'm actually hopeful something will be done about the detoggle issue. Honestly, I think the simplest solution would be to just have all Human form powers available when form shifted, and using them forces you to detoggle. So the moment you use one, you go back to human form without having to hit the form toggle first. (Or put it in your keybind)

The problem is really that the detoggle isn't queued, only a power toggle or a click power can be queued if you are in the middle of an animation. So the other solution is just to make it so a costume power that has to be detoggled outside of an animation will be put on the queue instead. That's probably a more difficult solution, but it's actually the right thing to do.

Quantum = Kryptonite. It's the devs way of giving us a weakness.

It pays to scout out your foes first, and make sure there isn't a Quantum or Void amongst them. If there is, make sure he's your first and only target until he is dead. One will usually drop you in three hits or less, unless you're in Dwarf form, and even then it still hurts.

I don't know the number of times I've rushed into battle without thinking, heard that distinctive zap, and said, "Oh, no..." just as I hit the ground. I just come back and take him out first the next time, though.

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The 'trick' being the Dom can be triggered when the bar is full (>90%) if the previous Dom hasn't worn off the bar is always full.

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Yep. Basically, you want Domination to recharge before it wears off. That's "perma-Dom".

Since Domination itself can't be slotted for Recharge, that takes a lot of IOs and/or ally buffs.

I've always thought that was a wierd design. It would be easy enough to just empty the bar the moment Domination goes off and allow you to earn points on the bar while Domination is going. I guess the devs didn't want to mess with that mechanism, though, so they're going to continue to allow perma-Dom.

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It says right on the box "Children under the age of 13 are not permitted to play"

[/ QUOTE ]No, it doesn't. Try actually looking at something before saying what it says.

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Read the fine print. Middle of the text in the red box.

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I never noticed that. That's not what the "T" rating means, though. More likely that's from NCSoft's TOS, and is designed to protect them against lawsuits.

I do know no one who is not old enough to have a credit card can own an account. And technically speaking, I suppose, you are not allowed to let more than one person play on a given account. Whether or not NCSoft makes allowances for family members using the same account, however, I don't know.

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Played my petless Dual Pistol Mastermind for a bit today. If you fight enemies like 10-15 levels below you....you almost feel powerful :P

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If I were to play my Dark Corruptor with only Dark Blast, Gloom, and Life Drain, I'd feel pretty weak, too.

Not as weak as a petless Mastermind, perhaps, but pretty weak...

While I am no expert on the subject, I believe when people spoke of Energy as FOTM they were referring to melee. Energy Assault was never quite the same thing. (We don't get Energy Transfer...)

Leadership isn't really a great pool for Dominators. Like Blasters, they don't get a great benefit out of it. If it's your concept, then go for it, but if you're trying to get some defense or something you would be better of with Tough, or even better think of your holds as your defenses.

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So Blasters are actually comparable to Dominators in terms of dual-primary design. It may not have always been that way, but its definitely that way now.

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I think where Blasters have a "Secondary" is with the control powers in their Secondary. While their melee attacks are at Primary level, their control powers aren't.

This is fine, and I don't think that Doms having a full two sets of "Primaries" will be imbalancing. Although if it's a problem, they could always lower the damage of ranged attacks and empasize the "Blapper" strategy for Doms. Fire would be hardest hit by that, but Fire already does significant damage. (Honestly, I would rather just lower the change from Domination to base damage somewhat, say give Domination a 25% damage boost, and rebalance the base damage to that)

As for the topic, I think the main advantage of this change is taking the 75% damage boost out of a buff to the base damage, and making it the base damage itself. This will make Dominators MUCH more powerful on a team, just about doubling the advantage they get from offensive buffs and debuffs. This should make up for the loss of double and triple Dom, along with the buff Dom's are getting to their damage cap.

Having that damage all the time is even better. But the best thing IMHO is making it BUFFABLE.

Castle has said that he is planning to introduce a non-Domination damage boost

The basic idea is that he's going to remove the damage boost from Domination and raise the base damage of Dominators so it equals the previous Domination values. Doms outside of Domination will do what they use to do in Domination, Doms inside Domination will do a tiny bit more damage, Doms with double Domination will do somewhat less damage, and Doms with triple Domination will again do less, but they were at the Dom damage cap anyway. On a team, a Dom will benefit more from buffs and debuffs, meaning even if he had double or triple Domination, he will still likely be doing that much damage, he just will need a buffer on the team to do it.

Some tweaking may still be required to make sure this is balanced (Castle may decide to only reduce the Domination damage boost, for instance, leaving some of it to still take effect during Domination) but he seems confident that this will not overpower Dominators. Perma-Dom Dominators already do this kind of damage constantly, so it would be no better than an existing Perma-Dom build.

Also note that by definition when you were seeing the performance of a Dominator in game, you were seeing a Dominator on a team, which means you were seeing a Dominator with Domination going much more frequently than it would be solo. The Dominator won't be any stronger than this. In essense, he'll get more damage for soloing and getting through the low levels when Domination is hard to build.

The Vampires in game have Dark powers. Either a Dark Corruptor, Dark Brute, or Dark Stalker would be perfect, depending on if you're thinking of a spell casting wizard type of vampire, a rampaging, feed off its foes to grow stronger type of wizard, or a stealthy, stab you in the back then drink your blood kind of vampire.

I personally think the vampire MM leading an army of zombies is pretty cool, though.

Yeah, there is a claw option with "Monstrous Hands", and zombie hands are clawed, too. And yes, if you use those hands with Claws, your clawed hands will be balled up into fists and you will use the claws that come out of the back of your hand instead. That's the way the graphics works.

I personally find that either Villain Claws or the Villain Claws with only 2 blades looks good with the Monstrous Hands, if you make them black, or the same color as the hands. While they still poke out of the back of the hand, they look like they MIGHT be claws coming from the tips of the fingers. The small size of the blades kind of confuses the fact that the fists are closed. (And the little bump at the top of the blades kind of looks like a knuckle)

Widow Claws I think look too big, but they are more claw-like, and there are five of them.

And also, I have used the Monstrous Hands with both Dark Melee and Energy Melee. It looks okay when he's just standing there, and when fighting the glow or cloud of darkness covers up whether he has his fingers extended, or is making a fist. In fact, I don't think there are ANY animations for attacks that use the open hand. (Maybe Cobra Strike...)

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I doubt it would be game breaking if they add this feature to CoX since no macro can actually activate more than one attack at a time. It probably will be quite a bit of programming work not to mentions quite a bit of QA.

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What I would basically like to see is a macro that can be defined as it's last command to activate a power, that you select. (You would basically click on the power to make a macro off of it) Then you can edit the macro to add the normal commands that would be executed before that final command.

I would also like to see macros that could be saved and loaded.

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So your Nova tray has macros on it that drop Nova, change to the Human-tray and activate a human-form power?

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Yep, same with the Dwarf Tray. I use a different tray for each, so I have 3 slots free on the Dwarf and 5 on the Nova. Might as well put them to use. (And actually, 3 of the macros do exactly the same thing, just obviously turning off the respective form. Pretty much it's the same three you use, mainly Stygian and Mire)

I also have a keybind to drop out of Nova or Dwarf and turn on a shield. The macros are specifically for dropping out of a form to hit a power, and then immediately going right back into a form. Mainly that's for Dwarf form, so my resistances will be down for the absolute minimum amount of time.

And I keep the powers those macros call on a detached tray so I can watch and see when they recharge. I wish macros indicated recharge in some way, but I guess there wouldn't be any way for it to tell which power it was calling.

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If Kheldians were ever modified so that Human-only toggle powers would suppress (with cost no endurance) instead of switch-off when you shift to Nova/Dwarf, [...] I doubt we'd see this happening though.

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I agree. While it is an annoyance, I see it as also somewhat of a balance factor. If you intend to stay in human form for a while, you turn on all your shields, if you are just form shifting for what is most useful, you can turn on just the physical shield and be fairly resiliant in melee with just that.

As I said, though, typically for a quick drop to human form I don't even bother turning on the shield. I will take less damage if I just fire off the power and get right back to Dwarf the instant I can. I didn't even take all the shields, I only have the physical one on my Tri-Form and take the other two only on my Human Form.

Being as there are so many power choices that you can never take them all, I'm guessing the shields are meant to be sacrificed. And you do have Essense Boost and Eclipse, which carry through to the forms. Honestly, being able to keep your shields up when mezzed, not to mention being able to remain in a form, and even go to Dwarf form to break out of the mez, is a much bigger improvement to me.

I definately think Human Form is a workable alternative. It can get a little hard to solo, but now that the forms benefit from the team bonuses, too, any Kheldian will now do better on a team. You really just have to learn how to leverage the unique properties of the Kheldian's human form.

I've played both a PB and a WS as Human Form, and as a previous poster said, the real advantage is that you can concentrate all of your slots on human form, and you don't have to keep putting up multiple shields. Even being stunned or held won't drop your shields any more, since they changed that. So you can get all three of them and keep them all up, once you get Stamina.

I seem to have a little more trouble soloing with my PB than my WS, but that is probably because I haven't yet picked up Essense Boost. (I based him in a FF Defender that I had previously, so I'm trying to avoid the heals, although I won't leave them out completely) Once you get Incandescent Strike, though, the PB plays very much like a Scrapper, except that you can "soften up" the foes with Proton Scatter and Luminous Detonation first.

With my WS, I seemed to have a lot of trouble with End, so I used a dual build to get Stamina at 20, but probably at 22 I'll have Stygian Circle and so I will not need Stamina so much. Even so, I'll keep it around as the dual build in case I need it. WS's are more about using utility powers than PB's, I tend to just attack directly, being a bit more ranged than the PB, since the melee attacks are not quite as powerful. I think that using the stealth from Shadow Cloak and Starless Step to tp foes to you would really help soloing. I tend to use this on my Tri-Form, but again, my Human Form doesn't really have this concept, so I just make do.

In short, I solo at a rate that's acceptable to me, and that's not even using the optimum build. So you can probably do even better. I personally like the forms, even though they are shared among all Khelds, and I wish there was some way to customize them, still, Khelds are rare, and I don't feel like I look like EVERYONE else.

Plus, it's just cool to glide around in Nova form, not having to land, or to hear those booming footsteps as you stomp around in Dwarf form. I guess it's not for everyone, which is why there's Human form, but I enjoy my Tri-Forms too.

A long time ago, I came up with this explanation for the Villain ATs. The Villain ATs PLAY like a certain Hero AT, but their ROLE is different:

Brute - Plays like a Tanker, but is a damage dealer like a Scrapper.
Stalker - Plays like a Scrapper, but does massive damage and needs to have aggro drawn off like a Blaster.
Dominator - Plays like a Blaster, but holds foes for the team like a Controller.
Corruptor - Plays like a Defender and... well... has the role of a Defender. With more damage.
Mastermind - Plays like a Defender/Controller, but takes hits for the team like a Tanker.

The Dominator and Mastermind really split the role of the Controller between them, the Dominator has the control powers, while the Mastermind is the main pet user. MMs can also buff the team like Corruptors can, which further make them like Controllers, they just can't hold. Unless they're Dark...

And with the damage buff coming up, Dominators should be even more like the hybrid between Controllers and Blasters. They will become more the main ranged damage dealers, instead of Corruptors. (Although Corruptors will still have the better AoE damage)

I have found that 99% of the time it's merely a lack of communication. I've sometimes engaged a foe, only to realize someone else was fighting it after the fact. By the time you get around to sending a chat message, the damage is already done, and someone likely thinks you're being a jerk. It's not the XP, it's the fact that without some sort of acknowledgement of the other guy it feels rude.

My solution is to set up a set of keybinds specifically for that purpose. When I spot someone who was fighting that MOB, I hit a key that says, "Whoops, I'm sorry, I didn't see you there." I also have keys for thanking those that help. I find that I don't really need to say, "I didn't really need the help". They usually give a "np" and leave. If they do continue to harass me, then I can take the time to send a polite chat message.

I also try to help out in "non-XP stealing" ways when I have a character that can do that. I'll put a buff on the player, or debuff his foe. If he looks like he's in trouble, I'll sometimes use a hold or stun, but that depends since that will steal some XP. Again, I have a keybind that says, "You go ahead, he's all yours" so the player knows I won't do anything but just watch and make sure he doesn't get in over his head.

Finally, while I don't think there's any problem with saying you won't allow any children on your team; it's your time, and you can play as you wish; I think it's a bit much to say children shouldn't be allowed in this game. Children can have fun playing superheroes just like everyone else. As long as the parents know it's rated T, they can make the judgement about what they want to do about it. It's not like it's rated M.

Here's another myth:

Weave grants no more Defense than other Power Pool powers such as Hover and Combat Jumping.

I actually believed this until I checked it with the Power Attributes window recently.

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Does it make you unable, no. This will lower your threat rating by 1 for each application on you from different sources. Thus your Threat modifier when calculating your Aggro is lessened.

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Powers that reduce Threat modifier by 1: (According to latest edition of City of Data)

Super Speed
Invisibility
Phase Shift
Superior Invisibility
Group Invisibility
Quantum Flight
Nebulous Form

Powers that do not effect Threat modifier:

Stealth
Grant Invisibility
Cloak of Darkness
Energy Cloak
Arctic Fog
Shadow Fall
Steamy Mist
Cloaking Device (both Blaster and SoA versions)
Mask Presence
Shadow Cloak
All forms of Hide

Which means that all those Tankers running around with Super Speed on all the time are actually worse at holding aggro than a Tanker running Stealth.

Also, while Group Invisibility does reduce Threat, I often point out that if EVERYONE has reduced Threat, then the Tanker should still draw more aggro. (In fact, he should be better at it, since his ratio to squishies will be 4:1 instead of 5:2) If he wants to stay out of the GI radius, that's even better. (5:1)

Interestingly, I could have sworn PFF either reduced your Threat or gave you a small stealth modifier, but there's no sign of that in City of Data. So either that's changed, or there's another myth.

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Archery (yes that might suck, but I have faith)

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I can't believe I forgot that. My Archer is why I want Martial Arts.

I think the bigger problem is whether it is possible to come up with an alternate animation that can be used with all of them, or if it will have to be one for each of them. I'd take Martial Arts even with redraw, though.

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What would the tier 9 in a dual pistols be? Dont get me wrong, Im gonna make me one the day it comes out (hopefully in beta). But I am just wondering what kind of "nova" you can get with dual pistols. It doesnt have to be "real", lord knows RoA isn't.

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Whirlwind of Bullets!

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Tetragrammaton Waltze

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The image that always comes to my mind is Junior from Xenosaga and his Storm Waltz.

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I am neither ignorant or misinformed about the mechanics of redraw. I simply didn't feel like explaining it in my post, since it was early in the morning and I was half asleep.

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I think he means Spiritchaser and I, not you.