Kioshi

Damn he's shutting down the wiki and the game servers?

Please leave at least Virtue or Freedom, that's where I have my extra bought slots

/Soul is great for Katana Scrappers (especially regen) because they get Shadow Meld to aid with defense.

Redraw is not a big deal for me (I have a Kat/Regen), at least it doesn't bother me nearly as much as it bothered on my Beam Rifle toon, but I don't plan on taking non-Katana attacks.

http://coh103.gtm.cityofheroes.com/s...postcount=1844

(link is weird because I found it on google, and with my forum configurations it won't be on page 93 of that gigantic thread)

So there you go and even without doing maths, I can't doubt Auroxis - in the very thread you linked to he said he took 23 minutes to kill Chimera with Interface/Reactive/whatever on his emp and later, FIFTY seconds using lore pets.

He said any AT can defeat a GM with Lore Pets. I'm not here to criticize/detract or whatnot, but an Emp/something defender did it sometime ago (solo a GM), I don't remember which pets were tho. So you don't need to have a high dps AT or power set combo to do it. Just like someone posted here about his SD/SS Tanker, an AT that doesn't solo GMs without them (a safe assumption to make I guess, since even the craziest 10 billion scrapper AV soloing builds don't post that they soloed GMs - the usual GM soloers without lore pets are /rad and /cold trollers, and sonic/traps-sonic/rad defs or corrs, besides /traps MMs).

Heh, same here, 1 blaster and 1 corr deleted because I wanted to make DP work for me until I found I was satisfied with a DP/Dark.

KM I hated the animations (they're well done, just personal taste) so I gave up on the set.

Me too. I didn't buy the set because I'm not exactly a melee junkie and I HATE the sounds (plus I still have to level my katana and BD - and Beam and DP toons since I've been so altoholic with all those new sets), but well, I don't think I'll ever buy the set now since I find MA quite underwhelming already (except on Tankers due to the new gimmicks they added but it's the only Tanker I still haven't deleted past 20)

I'm not gonna pretend I know what can stress the 'resources' or not, but say, an earth/rad troller can make a whole team glow while modifying each individual teammate's 'statuses', have a pet out, toss a mass immob, a quicksand patch, an Earthquake and Volcanic Gasses, all persisting for quite a long time, heal the whole team, nuke a dead teammate, have a permanent aura (Choking cloud), etc. A Fire/rad can have two auras that affects enemies and more pets. Even my ice/time corr can 'pollute' the whole battlefield with his Timey stuffs, it'd be worse in that regard if she was a troller, so I'm with Computer in thinking trollers are more 'resource heavy' than any other blueside AT. Although, since it's a wild guess anyway (the part that trollers would actually stress the game too much or not), it could be just 'we need to lock an AT heroside' - imagine the rage, especially from returning players, if they found out doms and MMs are locked and no blueside AT is.

Also, it makes sense from the marketing standpoint (at least this I can say I know a bit) - trollers are very popular, the f2p players will see us playing them and if they check the forums they'll see the horde of trollers posting they soloed Lusca or whatnot, doms you don't find as many ingame although they aren't the 'least popular AT' anymore like they were before the Domi changes (according to arcanaville's analysis, they were less popular than Stalkers).

MMs also screams 'premium class' in a f2p model - even though I was never able to enjoy one, they impressed me for a long time with their horde of pets, took me awhile to stop looking at the summoning animations from the Bots guys, Thugs using Gang War, the bruiser in action, the robots unleashing the AoEs, it's the only AT I have none (deleted all I tried) but it's the one that kept me looking at them for the longest time.

SS/Fire brutes are extremely fast, especially on ambush farms. Basically on an ambush farm (which are being nerfed) you'll go to a fire-dealing mission since you have 90% fire resistance, use insps to cap defenses and stand still using Footstomp, Burn and other Aoes (usually Elec Fences and Ball Lightning, Fireball works too), and the ambushes are so big that you're always at the aggro cap, half of them aren't even attacking you.

This video shows how an ambush farm is (you can skip to 4:40 to see) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4ziR1Y9-rM (since it's on the signature of the person who made it, I assume he won't care I post it here)

Now, since ambush farms are being nerfed (the subsequent ambushes will give less xp progressively) it may affect self-pling a brute (which is what the video is about). But a 50 SS/Fire or Claws/Fire can easily farm 54 mobs, and your insp tray is huge at this level so you'll always be at the def softcap and you can use a macro to convert everything else to reds like I do. So while it may affect powerleveling, I don't think my brute will 'feel' it because when you fight 54s you cap AE tickets after about the middle of the second ambush, so you exit and restart in like 2 minutes or less (even in the video the lowbie brute completes the farm in 3 minutes, but on the lowbie ones you have to kill more ambushes to cap tickets so it will be felt more).

Also, imo (I have a tricked out fire/kin I actually leveled the hard way, IOed him and in the end I did more TFs with him than anything else) I find it much more relaxing to farm with a brute, I got bored quickly with the f/k's use of siphon speed, Fulcrum, transference, etc. I'm lazy so I'm a bit sad the ambush farms will be nerfed because I actually prefer to farm with my level locked 33 claws/fire on a level 3 AE farm - eat 4 purples, click hasten before entering, leave Spin on Auto, I just have to click on insps and follow up (which is why I chose a level 3 farm, I get to keep powers till level 8, and I click Hasten before entering because it's not available for me after I enter, the 50 claws/elecs who do that click Power Surge and energize so they'll have +recovery and crazy resists while inside, diminishing the need to worry about insps). But I do just like the guy in the video shows, I mash f1-f5 not worrying about which insps will drop and I'm always good to go. Aside from some procs I put in the dmg aura and Spin, she has no slotting at all since it doesn't matter on a lowbie map (check the CEBR topic on the Brute forums).

But see, my ss/fire was self-pled in one of those lowbie farms, it was far from optimal until 33 because I had no AoE besides the damage aura and sands of mu. After I hit 33 (Burn+FS+slotting) I went to the normal farms and went very fast to 50 using SOs and insps. I wasn't fighting +4s like now but it was good enough, I also only moved from the lowbie farms after FS because on the lowbie ones mobs are so weak you can farm with a fury boosted damage aura.

Plus, brutes are free for f2p players, controllers are not. No need to softcap defenses or good end management because insps will rain anyway, my brute has 25%ish fire def in his farming build just because I want to softcap with 2 purple insps instead of 4 (Actually since the 54 bosses drop a lot of big insps I usually need only one purp and can convert the rest to reds), it's not like I needed it. No need to be an ambush farm either since they'll be nerfed, it will just be slower in the normal ones because you have to move. Maybe on SOs a claws/fire will be faster than SS/fire since Spin is godly on Brutes.

But I agree that, regardless if they're faster or not on SOs (I never farmed with my fire/kin while on SOs and farmed very little after due to getting bored and friends calling for TFs), fire/kins are good farmers with little investment, while all the other farming toons I can think of except brutes require heavy IO builds to be effective (Elec/SD scrappers rely on the long recharging telenukes, Arch/MM blasters rely on the nuke, drain psyche and PSW, Warshades need perma eclipse which can get expensive). I've seen Fire/Fire tankers farm, a lot actually, and I think they can do it on SOs too, but I always found them quite slow, even IOed out ones.

I asked because I got a bit irritated not by your post, but the lots of people who never played one past 10 or whatever saying 'TW would be OP on Stalkers' or something like that, and right after that saying something that proved they don't know Stalkers can actually scrap . But that's on another thread.

Yup I used Elec Melee and Kinetic Melee as examples (Spines could also be a case, I hate the set but since it has a huge radius Spine Burst might be a good opener despite only 30% crit chance).

I don't care much about optimal attack chains, I mentioned the TW ones because people are making a big fuss on 'how Momentum is clunky', but imo it isn't. When I was level bumped and started right away on a trial, I felt it was inadequate for my Brute, but after I read that it's simply a 5 second 'buff' and went soloing at 0/x4 (I was afraid to die because I had never played regen), it made sense to me and I was able to leverage it well.

The brute/scrap/tank version has very powerful Aoes, including a footstomp clone (same radius, basically the same damage and almost the same chance to kd compared to non-rage FS) with a 1 sec cast time that can only be used in Momentum. It's not hard to use because every attack in the set (except for the pbaoe and one of the sts only available in 'Momentum time') grant momentum, so if you do the (quite devastating) chain of the +def attack (my opener since I'm /regen) which has a 2.2 sec cast time, you can unleash the PbAoE and two devastating cones. And even when I had to click Recon, Dull Pain, etc during that and I could only get two attacks instead of three during momentum, guess what, the last one I used, as long as it's not the PbAoE which is greyed out when Momentum expires, would use the slow animation instead of the 'Momentum' one and after that grant me Momentum again (plus, no matter if I lost momentum, the slow version would still benefit from BU I used right after, or before, the +def attack), so it's simpler than it looks and could be used well by a stalker, scrapping or opening with AS.

When I understood how easy it was to get it and the mechanics are simple, I found it easy to maintain fury, I stopped corpse blasting a lot on the other trial I ran, fury was easy to maintain too.

It's not like Disintegration, which I dislike on Blasters because of the setup (Disintegrate, use Lancer shot, pray that the 52% chance to spread goes off, use the AoE cone) and because of this I find the set is much better on a corr or a defender. And unlike Disintegration which as an attack is kinda meh due to long DoT, if you have a secondary that doesn't need the +def attack later (which does less damage than parry but it's a cone) like /SR, you can open with the set's ST big hitter (Shatter Armor) and gain momentum from it, while still doing -res, -def and still do almost as much damage as Concentrated Strike (base for Shatter Armor is 200 on a level 50 scrapper, CS is 222, but SA recharges in 16 secs, for comparison Midnight Grasp recharges in 15 and does 172, and you get SA at level 18).

And btw I used BU+AS as an opener a lot too because the Stalker I played the most was my Em/Nin, even more ST oriented than yours (I love Shadow Maul, I have a 50 dm/da scrap so I learned to make good use of it as you probably have too unless you dislike the power like some do - in fact I was quite disappointed when I found out SM and headsplitter which is only a 20 degree cone have the half-crit chance, SM being 45 degrees would be a nice opener for hitting 3-4 targets since you can position yourself from Hide, it should get KM's Burst 100% crit imo).

You can see in this video someone posted how TW plays out - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmmeswm4Nkw

At the very end (2:00), he is beating a rikti dummy (with momentum since he's attacking fast), then he loses it, and you see that as the video starts fading, he uses a slow attack (in the case Shatter Armor, the animation looks a lot like an AS) and right after that he's attacking 'fast' again (the video is almost black at this point since it's ending but you can see it).

EDIT: I found another video http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=YS5jy55HvC4 - in this one, the player is repositiong, using BU during momentum, meaning he's not exactly worried about getting three-four attacks in EACH momentum, and even so he is still obliterating mobs and getting Momentum easily to use when he wants.

Do the ITF, you can do it at 35 and it's great fun. Many people ITF'ed exclusively from 35 to 50, but there are other things you can do that are very nice.

I believe you can also start your patron arc at 35 now, if you can get a team for that they give good xp and are fun.

At 45, there's the LGTF which is one of my favorites.

If you saying you see people forming trials on RWZ and RPing a lot, you're probably on Virtue. If you can join channels (You're premium right? Dunno how it works for channels) look at your server's global channels and join them. Sure lots of people in Virtue's channels are after iTrials, but if that's your server, in the main channels there are always people forming mission and TF teams, and the ITF and LGTF are ran fairly often there. Plus nowadays even if you join a low level Tf like a level 24 treespec or any other you'll still have gain xp, although you won't have access to all your powers (if you're exemped to 20, you get your powers up to 25). The LRSF is challenging (unless you are in a team full of incarnates), fun and can be done at 45 iirc, I've only run it at 50.

There are also some new tfs I haven't run (Apex, Tin Mage) - those are harder to find but at least in the Virtue channels you'll find people forming them at least once in a busier time.

Since you're premium and can't use the Incarnate content (not that I find it fun running 50 trials repeatedly to unlock your Incarnate powers and depending on what drops you get to do it), I don't think it will be very fun for you to race to 50 especially since you don't have one yet.

Thirty, have you played a Stalker past 30? At that level, when it's not one-shotting orange lts anymore, AS is a situational tool. A handy, but situational attack. One of the reasons you see Stalker players asking for a fix in the HP cap, but not asking for more *base* HP, is that we feel we're already 'durable' enough to scrap it out. On my Elec/Regen I shelved (because regen sucks on stalkers, rerolled him as Elec/Ea but still a lowbie) my opening combo was BU+LRod+Thunderstrike with 50% crit chance since I was hidden, and the Kinetic Melee users like to open with BU+Burst since it has a 100% AoE crit rate from Hide instead of AS.

Also, having played Titan weapons with a 50 Brute on beta, and excluding the RP argument (which I find garbage since we have electric armor, Lightning Rod - you go BOOM, damage and knocks down everyone, but stay hidden, lol - and whatnot), I find its mechanic perfect for the Stalker playstyle, being a very bursty set. Even including AS.

If AS gives momentum in a possible port of TW, doing AS-3 momentum powered fast attacks is perfect for a Stalker. I had my doubts before but after seeing Momentum lasts only for 5 seconds, the current mechanic would fit a Stalker very well, even in your example (which isn't realistic since we don't AS that much past 25-30): Bu-AS-3 momentum powered attacks-Placate-AS-3 momentum powered attacks again, and after, just like scrappers and brutes, some attack-3 momentum powered attacks, repeat till mobs are dead, that's how the set works. Then after the fight is over you can hide again and begin bu, as, etc. Mechanically it'd work flawlessly on a Stalker (I'm not getting into this staff melee debate since the set is not in beta).

Maybe I was able to identify it because I played the set, but if you check the video at the very end (when he starts beating the RWZ dummy at 2:00) it matches what I did when I was playing.

The video at the end shows the player finishing Defensive Sweep's animation to gain momentum, then he uses three AoEs, and as you can see they hit the three dummies - this combo is deadly and safe because each of the AoEs have a 75% chance to KD (Sweeping Strike is 66%, Arc is 75%, the footstompy one, Whieling Smash is 75% - and they're LARGE, 10 feet range 120 degree cones, the pbaoe is just like Foot Stomp, 15 feet radius).

After he loses momentum (when the video starts fading) he uses the 2ish secs cast Shatter Armor and after that, BU+three fast attacks (you can barely see them because the video is almost black at this point), which is quite the boss killer combo (I always used defensive first since it recharges in 4 secs and shatter armor does so much damage - about 200 unslotted on a 50 scrapper if you count the 85% chance for DoT, plus -res and -def, so I wanted to use it after bu, only Crushing Uppercut at combo level 2 and Concentrated Strike do more than base 200 damage if you turn off Mids accounting for crits, but Shatter Armor is available at level 18 and recharges in 16 sec instead or 20 for CS and 25 for CU, plus CS doesn't crit anyway - also Shatter Armor has a 9 feet range, iirc all ST attacks in the set are 9 feet and the cones are 10).

So the mechanic does not feel clunky to me after you get used to momentum lasting 5 seconds. It did feel weird at the beginning because I was level bumped, went straight to an iTrial and didn't know it lasted for 5 secs and was wondering if I was doing something wrong to 'keep' momentum. After I read Synapse post it was 5 seconds and that's it, my playstyle was like the video shows, Defensive Sweep (2.20 cast time) + BU then 3 AoEs or 3 STs.

I don't know if it wil be the OMG DPS set (not interested in av soloing anyway) but the set feels like it delivers both in AoE and ST to me, and that the gimmick is not a big deal because even when I basically 'wasted' a Momentum due to using recon/dull pain/etc, Defensive Sweep has a 4 sec base recharge and was ready again. I can see builds respeccing out of the tier 2 at a later level because since you can use slow Defensive, gain momentum and use 'fast Defensive' to double stack it like people double stack Parry, you don't need all seven attacks. Or in say, SR toons, skipping defensive and getting Crushing Blow, the tier 2, which does better damage (Defensive does less than parry and grants less defense but like Sweeping and Arc, it's also a 120 degree 10 feet cone).

I think this will affect the claws/elecs on lowbie farms since they have to kill most ambushes to cap tickets, so maybe now they'll get only 1000 tickets per 2-minute run instead of 1500? lol

Also, my SS/Fire who fights 54s now will have to go through two whole ambushes to cap! This will take like 30 seconds more than doing what I do now, clicking the glowie before killing the entire second ambush because if I don't pay attention I can cap tickets before I know!

That's what everyone always said, that the FF +rech proc wouldn't work on SC or LR due to them being pseudo pets and the +rech being applied to the pet (having no practical effect) instead of you.

FWIW it's working just fine on AE on Footstomp, it works in Thunderstrike like it always has, it works in Fault in AE or not, but I never put it in my Stalker's L. Rod (while he has it in thunderstrike) because I was always told it'd never work on a pseudo pet power.

Errr you stopped in 2008 I guess. Almost nobody uses fire/kins for farming anymore. MMS were never popular farmers. If there is ANY At that I see people use besides Brutes, it's fire/psi doms, which were the premium villainside farmers for a long time, now not so much after the psi assault changes.

And if you wanna talk about regular mission game breaking teams, look no further than 8-defender teams, they can debuff everything to oblivion and turn avs into kittens.

My guess is that since they wanted to avoid locking two redside ats, they decided to lock trollers because they have two very intensive powersets - a control set and a buff/debuff one, and the buff/debuff sets certainly are more resource intensive than a blast (defender)/assault (domi) secondary - after all you can change 'statuses' of all your teammates and fill the whole screen with long duration buffs and debuffs like fearsome stare, tar patch, rad toggles, time's flashy patches, auras, heals and buffs that affect a whole team - couple that with a control+pet primary and you have the busiest blueside AT - that's why everyone says Controllers play so differently depending on the prim/sec and most of them are better suited for players who don't mind multitasking a lot.

I always slot my brutes for acc and endred until the end problems are solvable, but I do feel a lot of difference when I manage to slot the attacks for damage, I usually do that around level 25 when I have enough slots. And I have 3 lvl 50 brutes, the incarnated one (t3 on everything) has two builds, one for farming with KO Blow slotted with a taunt set and one properly slotted for damage, believe me, in the later levels when mob hp is higher it makes a lot of difference - around level 30 I believe, which is the time Stalker AS start getting less use from me because with mob hp scaling up, you don't one-shot orange mobs like in the earlier levels.

Ok, here goes:

1) you use one attack (I always used the tier 1 since it recharges in 4 secs and gives +def like parry). If you hit, 'Momentum' appears in red letters, in the same spot 'combo level' shows up. That's the only obligatory slow part since any attack you use to go for momentum is slow, the tier 1 is a 2.20 sec cast, 4 sec base recharge.

2) For the next 5 seconds, you have Momentum - any attack you use while in Momentum uses alternate, faster animations. Two of them actually require momentum to be usable, outside of that they turn grey on your power tray. the foostomp 'clone' is one of them.

3) Unless you use something from your secondary, the momentum-powered attacks are so fast you can usually attack three times.

4) After 5 seconds, momentum is lost, but you can get it again using the tier 1 or other attack.

In this video you can see the difference between the normal and the momentum animations: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmmeswm4Nkw

It's not a killer. Momentum lasts for five seconds, so after you get it, you'll use three very fast attacks at most. Shouldn't be an issue with /ELA, actually a very good pairing for the +rech bonus.

I got a level bumped 50+1 TW/Regen Brute and had no issues, although since regen is way more clicky than any other secondary, I'd say that some people won't want to pair regen with TW due to redraw (and you won't want to use a clickie in the middle of your 3-fast attack combo), but regen is an 'extreme' case in the clickyness department. Not taking full advantage of *one* Momentum was no biggie for me, the tier 1 attack which gives you +def recharges in 4 sec base, so as long as you hit it you'll have Momentum again shortly.

My TW/Regen also had both a ST and an AoE attack chain ready for whenever since he had 33% recharge bonus (spiritual, they were giving away empyrean merits for 1 infl on beta). And I was slotted with 2 accs, 3 dmg, 1 endred in each attack, so no recharge at all in any attack but the one granted by Spiritual Alpha (except for the PbAoE which had 1 rech SO instead of the endred). So I think even if you frankenslot a bit you'll have enough attacks not to have gaps by level 26ish (actually by 18 you already have some nice attacks but at that level I don't think any toon except claws or katana have a decent attack chain, haven't played stj tho).

Or maybe you could have read what the OP wrote like everybody else? He stated he'd be fine if the name was taken since he'd have a rename token, he just got confused on how to rename the toon. He never said the name meant so much for him, in which case yes the 'checking available names' thing would be a good idea. He just wanted to know how to use the rename he got.

I'd even say they aren't a 'grey' group. I have three good farming toons, although I don't farm unless I'm bored. Two of them were leveled the 'hard' way and I enjoyed the ride. My SS/Fire brute was self pled in AE.

But except in cases like TopDoc's, who made a CEBR for every server just because he wanted to (and he plays the game as well since he's on Repeat Offenders and I team with him on lowbies! Who would guess?), there's no need to have more than one or two farming toons, and two if you farm every day because you'll want more mileage from the market slots and stuff.

Funnily enough, my SS/Fire is poor now because I was a bit bothered by my 20ish human-only PB and SD/MA Tanker end usage so I bought 4 health uniques crafted at buy it NAO prices, I'm helping the market am I not? Plus I sent the rest he had (750 mil) to my SM/Elec Brute to IO her since she's close to 50. Sooo are any of these three toons I spent money on lately optimal for farming or even soloing AVs/PVP? No, just like the myriad of toons I saw people who farm way more than me play.

By the way, usually when I farm with my SS/Fire it's because I feel like killing a lot of stuff and 'relax'. Because if I wanted to make money faster than I do with him killing hordes of 54s, I can get a shelved toon and buy recipes and sell crafted IOs, no resorting to flipping or etc. The toon who actually funded my SS/Fire was a 40 rad/psi def I don't play since I left in i12 - spent one week on the market doing this (buying desirable recipes for less than 50k infl each and selling the IOs for 10 mil, then I stepped up for more expensive ones), 20 minutes at a time, in one week he made more money than my SS/Fire ever did (the 1.5 bil I threw on the brute). And as I said, I didn't flip stuff or sold for over the asking price, so why is farming frowned upon since it's less profitable (although less boring for me, not every week I feel like marketeering)? I can do more money on a level 1 whatever/whatever toon (or several since at level one you have too few market slots) than with my 50+3 1.5 bil SS/Fire in a week just using WW.

And still, when I'm not bored/sick (I get sick a lot that's why I post so much on nights and weekends since I work by day), I may be farming and I'm always watching the server channels to see if there's a TF forming so I can go have fun be it on a Posi on a DO'ed toon or a LGFT on another one, even my farming brute has done most high end tfs because I wanted to take a break from farming. So yeah... we kinda 'mix', people who say 'farmers are a different kind of player' probably had one or two bad experiences with the two farmers out of 100 who think farming is 'the only way to play', but it's no different than the occasional stuck up RP'er/PVP'er you'll find (emphasis on 'occasional', because I get along just fine with a RPing team and when I was finally trying PVP - right before i13 landed - I was getting my **** handed to me, I was in a good arena team versus another vet arena team, on a non optimal PVP build, and all I got was friendly advice and that 'I was doing well for my first time in Arena Team PvP' even though it was not my impression lol).