Kractis_Sky

Im glad someone mentioned The_gamemaster; Desmodos deserves a lot of credit as well - both have made great contributions.

As an almost obligate melee AT player, I have used costume types to transform me to some degree. Usually, as has been stated, in conjunction with some set-defining power. Dark Melee's Soul Drain, Siphon Life, and Dark Consumption are good for that. Build-up is also good. Some tanks/brute bind to Rage or a quick switch with Foot Stomp. I could imagine that toggles would work as well. The only thing I wish I could do is bind the change for a specific duration (like 30sec or so many "ticks"), so the power would "wear-off," and revert back to the former costume once the power ended. Doent seem possible, but I am not that good at it.

From a story-line stand point, I've done novice monks progress to old sages, time travelers in different garb, stages of psychosis/decay/death/metamorphasis and different hosts for my parasite shield (the *shield* or other weapon or costume piece being the sentient hero) at different stages - but those were more for the back story of the character as they went from lvl1 - 50. In all honesty, Im too busy "arresting" things to worry about how good I look doing it, or rather, "arresting" things looks so good, who cares how.

a targetted to-hit set (with +acc/+rech/+to-hit) for things like follow-up, soul drain, etc

powers that cause increase or decrease in animation length (like snipe sets, but for other slow activating powers)

knock to a target attack (opposite knockback) with damage delt to target- wormhole is an ok example - but dont need a targetted "outlet." Or PBAoE as epicenter (tanker mass "come here" gravity well)

man I could go on, but no time...

New Contacts in game to explain email in a tutorial (yay travel missions! j/k):

Hero: The Post Master - give him a post... er, staff.
Villian: General Delivery - give her a... baby (LOL), or a six-demon bag.

I am looking at *all* the sets very closely as I speculate what benefits the new melee set will bring, as well as any balancing to existing sets (shields) that may come. As has been said they are all good and personal preferences make them stand out.

One of the things people should remember about new sets is the question: what will the addition of "set x" bring to the game that is new/inovative? While I see that some people would love some sets over others, in this instance, pole-arms would *probably* spawn more variety of toons and the ability to utilize different effects than shield melee. That is, using a shield as a weapon would unlikely provide so much variation over sword, mace, axe (proliferate plz) that it deserves an etirely new set. Yes, a shield can be used offensively and thus we have SC; yes, a sword has some defensive capabilities and thus we have parry/da.

As a digression, I'm really keen to know more of what kinetic melee is going to bring.

Can't believe everyone missed:

Quote:
"Syndicate Techniques—Chance for minor lethal additional ability triggered."

...the Syndicate Plot, which is a Nemi plot... or is it the other way, both or neither.

I thought it was a bug, but I was corrected. You are right in that it used to be modified by adding +def. I can't find where it was stated in patch notes, but I was informed by Kosmos in this thread:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...82#post2828782

My /SD is currently capped (using HOs in BA and AD and run GC), but I've done so in a way that doesnt rely on putting any +def in GC because I thought it was not possible *anymore* to modify it (since i17). There is a good chance I'm wrong.

I take it to cap DDR, which is harder now due to Castle's revision of the set - it is no longer possible to *enhance* the DDR or slow res it provided (to best of my knowledge). It's a flat 13.5% (?) DDR now.

Personally, I'd like the "open" option because a lot of my toons dont take travel powers since IO's, temps and ninja run are so abundant - esp with new recipe drops and despite the fact that I can pick a travel at lvl6 (ignore my join date; ive played since i1 open). I do like the idea of good tools being available at low levels (which opens the can of what is "good" and thus the tier system is cumbersome). I prefer to concentrate on my ability to destroy and keep myself alive.

If any thing *maybe* the pools should be level sensitive (but w/o tiers for their associated powers): at level 6: pools that have a travel power associated with them open; at level 14: presence, fitness, concealment; lvl20: leadership, fighting. But again this is too arbitrary.

I should mention that I like the suggestions on how the powers themselves could be improved. Great discussion, but I am skeptical.

Pool powers always seemed to be a bit of a mystery to me:

- travel powers like SJ, speed, fly, tp should have been tier one (IMO) and then opened up tools
- I understand (I think) that they wanted some sort of difficulty progression - easy techniques or less self-beneficial first (tp friend/foe, punch/kick, aid other) then the more difficult and more self-beneficial next (tough/weave, aid self, etc.).
- I think these 2 points kind of fell flat simply because not a lot of balance vision was focused on pools - probably rightfully so - and there definatly seems to be exceptions to this rule. ex. I'm glad hasten is tier 1.
- If pool powers are going to continue to be a mixed bag, I see good arguements here to free them up from tier restrictions. If the OP gets their way, then no, the tier restrictions would definately stay as would the helter-skelter nature of what people think is useful.

I doubt they will change it. I would like them to.

Stone/DM and Inv/DM shouldnt be overlooked. Great defenses with great tools. Stone/ slows them up solo - that's a little bit of a pain (use the dual build option), but out of the box and with some speed buffs by far the sturdiest tank I've played. Inv/DM is good. No penalties. Not as sturdy with SO's or basic IO's as stone/, but fully IO'ed using Most Amazing's Guide's, it becomes outstanding.

Light on damage, especially PBAoE? Yep, but they both manage argo well and I don't build tanks for peeps to say "hey, look how much damage that tank is doing."

Secondary effects like KD/KB go a long way for survival of self and team. In this reguard, IMO, DM is lacking. But DM's tools are really something to consider.

I'd like EM to be *the* top ST damage dealer, esp. with it's self damage component. Shave a second off animation to 1.67sec and increase the -hp by 15 - 20% (hard numbers - no, just throwing them out there. I think that would be reasonable.

I have to agree with J_S. I have a stone/dm at fifty and was comparing it to my inv/dm also 50 (both are *very* sturdy). The stone is build for flat-out survival, tho. I dont care a lick about damage. ~55hp/sec w/o EE and ~77hp/sec with - in granite. Then factor in SL and healself for 345ish and 750ish heals, also with CP, slotted PP from body mastery (yeah, I know thats the scrapper pool forgot the tank epic) and you have a hard to kill tank.

Inv is great, too, esp because the are no damage or rech penalties make the dm tools very good - for taking and giving damage I suggest this. (I also have a wp/stone - I like pairing wp with a knockdown/back set it is great for regen)

As the others have illuded to, when playing /regen, it helps to think harmonically when managing the green bar.

It's also great for a variety of sets.

An interesting set of ideas. I dont know if they'll be used, but w/e.

The only thing I'd anticipate would be some peeps may not find the *specific* diseases politically correct. (I personally dont care what you do because I had visions of powers that would also randomly mess with the costume and body editor as long as they were infected - like schizo-elephantitis! )

And as a nod to SD, replace "Tilt" with "Bend" and you are onto something, sir/ma'am.

After this much time in the game, do we really need 16 pages of discussion that could be answered with the dual build opion??

one build for solo
one build with sb

I agree that this *seems* like some combo of SS or stone (lots of KD/KB) and energy (long animations) with Jazz hands, but hey - we get Jazz Hands!!

I am would like to know more about any inovative mechanics to the set.

Unfortunatly, at this time it is all rampent speculation, so I'm not really interested in disecting a set too much that we know so little about.

I'm still going to play it. If it isnt an uber performance set, I have several concept builds in mind.

Maybe the more you're hit or more baddies in range the faster you become (interupt animations - a very interesting slotting option that is a highly UNDER used mechanic, IMO), with the power-up (siphon power animation) in effect. Say like you jump in a spawn, "siphon-power" and *while you are glowing* you would get a buff based on what I just mentioned. No doubt that a "double dependant" mechanic is unconvetional, but would justify a really nice buff. Or just the siphon quickens the attacks.

This is all just too early to tell.

*sigh* That's it. Had grant cover slotted with an enzyme. Thanks Kosmos. ...bracken...fracken...

I compared my IO'ed and HO'ed out Fire/SD to my SO'ed DM/SD scrapper, and notice that the (defense debuff resistance) DDR values where similar. Maybe an issue of HO's working correctly; unless there are plans to remove the "exploits" from HO's.

Make macros that bind a costume change to a power - like power-up's and others. Some powers are anoying, like when someone figues out how to do it and spams footstomp and broadcasts "look at me look at me look at me, hey mom, lookylookylooky." If done correctly it can be really cool. I used to do it with Soul Drain.

Where there any Defense Debuff Resistance (DDR) values that had changed unintentionally with this patch?

Prior to i17, my fire/shield scrapper had 95% DDR with 2 enzymes in Battle Agility 3 membranes in Active defense (that would allow for it to stack - 2 applications total) and one enzyme in grant cover. Now my stats only show 91.27%. I also use some cytos, but iirc they do not contribute to DDR.

As far as reading fortunes are concerned: thematically, I thought that a player should request his/her fortune be read and then the reader would have the option to read or refuse but w/e. Probably have the same impact as pre-i17.

I think there is a *max* performance bias with those who claim /sd is top and they may only be thinking about liminal perfomance - /sd benefits most from IO's and Hami-O's by a lot. Only using *SO's,* /shield, as has been stated, is far from the best in survivability or:

/sr - fast/light feel, +recharge, easy to soft-cap *with DDR*
/wp - great endurance, great regen, good resistance/health
/regen - have to watch health and plan a little, but can be great and very durable
/invuln - layered protection, performs best when in the frey of a lot of enemies that will survive the hero's alpha - something underused by the devs.

I dont know much about /da, and i wasnt impressed with /fa, but /SD and /FA have one thing in common they do a good job at enhancing damage, which is very important in mitigation. And that being said the faster you can kill everything the more survivable you are. This is a great benefit in this game.

Primaries not withstanding (and they contribute significatly to survivability, especially when seriously considering how to pair with the secondary), there are several secondaries that outperform /sd.

The big Q, in general, is what do want to do with the end build, and thus, in what areas are they performing so well?