Lobster

Ok, I replied just because I saw that Arctic_Sun had K-OS in his (her?) playlist. Good stuff. Here's mine (Sorry, K-OS is buried somewhere farther down):

1. Neutral Milk Hotel - Avery Island/April 1st
2. Radiohead - Prove Yourself
3. Screeching Weasel - Bark like a Dog
4. Tegan & Sara - Underwater
5. Frente! - Bizarre Love Triangle (I know, of all the songs from multiple Frente! discs this was the one to come up.. O.O ).
6. Son Volt - World Waits for You
7. Elvis Costello - You Belong to Me
8. International Noise Conspiracy - The Subversive Sound
9. Magnetic Fields - Blue You
10. Specials - Keep on Learning

numbers 11 & 12 deserve mention too, because having seen them in my playlist, I'm now going to listen to the respective albums:

11. Menoza Line - All Heart, No Eyes
12. Velocity Girl - Sorry Again

Dude...does this mean I will actually have to take build up on my ice blaster now? O.O Not that I'll ever play her again anyway ...

Less longbow in contact missions, more of anything else!

Something besides longbow in hazard zone missions would be nice too...

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Actually the deal is this:

We removed Recharge Enhancements from all Henchmen powers because it WOULD affect the recharge rate of the summoning power itself, and NOT the recharge rate of the Henchmen's powers.

This is inconsistent to ALL other Enhancements that are slottable for Henchmen... the Enhancements ALWAYS affect the powers of the Henchmen, and not the summoning power itself.

To avoid confusion, we just removed the option.

And I believe it was a good call, seeing as how many people would be confused as to how it would work if we left it alone.

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Yeah...because there is nothing at all in this game nearly or possibly even more confusing than this. Or is there... *coughED&enhancementschedulescough*.

Seriously. If confusion is the only reason for not putting this back, please put it back.

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Bug… In an upcoming patch, flying entities that are disorient will no longer behave oddly.

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Huh let's see..this has been a bug since when?
Oh right, CoH beta.
Complained about by players since when?
CoH beta, check.

Glad it's finally getting looked at.
A little late? Check. A dollar short? We'll see.

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Smoke Flash is a "Get me outta here!" power, not a setup for another crit power.

[/ QUOTE ]Ok, so why does it have a (from what I hear) 4 second cast time? That's not something you can use when the chips are down.

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OooO. Molded?

Except that there's nothing there for MM's?

[Edit: hm nevermind, I must have had an old cached page, or clicked the page just before it was updated. Everything is there now. Nice! ]

Yay for stealth buffs! Bout time for those stealth nerfs to be taught a lesson . But seriously, thanks for the fix!

I had time to test 2 missions (viscious difficulty, lvl 25 nin/pois) over my lunch break - I must say it was really nice seeing whatever the joey knockup attack is (golden dragonfly?) actually do decent damage - with a debuff and a crit they can hit decently now. This makes taking smoke bomb much more attractive - although still not a must have, mostly because the affected pet almost never uses the big attack after smoking (for me), instead opting for piddly ones.

The joey dart is now also finally doing as much or more damage than the jenny stars/arrows. Finally! Previous to this, using his dart attack was tantamount to a mortal insult to me, and would usually result in me sentencing said joey to death by tanking a boss with all the other missions on passive and /em laptop taking notes on his failure.

I don't think it's unbalancing at all - at least pre-oni. I'm not able to do anything I couldn't before, I just do it maybe 10-15% faster. I'll hopefully get to take oni for a spin tonight, but I probably won't be able to slot him until tomorrow or thursday.

So there is seriously no normal 20-25 SF for villains? Is that a special component needed in base to get it? IE salvage created, etc.

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So...why just S/L damage?

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Exactly.

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Yeah, seriously? If I'm jumping around being stealthy or weaving or whatever, do I just get lazy when I see an energy/etc attack heading my way?

I don't have anything positive to say, so I shouldn't even be posting. But I opened the stupid reply window and here I am. Would be such a waste to close it without hitting submit.

(Hopefully I haven't posted here since last dev post, I forget. If so, I apologize).

First off: STOP POSTING NON TA STUFF HERE! I know you really want to talk about new scrapper powersets or whatever, but please stop. I'm not sure why those posts are not removed..

Second: The devs have decided this won't be a blaster secondary, and you know how stubborn they are, so just let it go and lets try and make the best of what we've got.

Anyway, on to TA.

1) I love the way this set is balanced for you having perma-hasten at level 1, it's great!
2) I have a hold that requires 4 SOs (acc/holdx3) to perma hold an even minion/lt!!! That is so insanely useful!!
It appears to be 8 sec base duration, 16s base recharge. Compare that to 15 sec duration/10 sec recharge for controller single target holds. Doesn't that seem a bit much of a disparity?
In addition to doing damage, controller holds can critically hold a boss, I don't think there needs to be much more gimping than that. Consider: controller secondaries function at 75-80% (I forget exact percentage) of defender strength, why shouldn't defender single target holds have that ratio at WORST then? 11.5s duration, 12.5s recharge seems very fair to me. (this is 75% duration and 125% recharge).
3) I really love getting to use glue arrow every fourth or fifth fight, this is great! Very comparable to the rad, storm, and dark toggle debuffs!! /sarcasm off /disgust on. I do really appreciate the long duration of glue on the affected targets - but who cares when those targets are dead??? If my strength is debuffs, I should be able to use those debuffs as often as other defenders...just get off your lazy duffs and program in self debuff stacking prevention FINALLY. Hasn't this been a problem for long enough? Sonic debuff length was nerfed to deal with this problem in the same way instead of addressing the main issue - why in the world are debuffs from the same user stacking??

Yeah I realize this isn't the most educated post coming from someone who only played around with TA at the newb levels - but I was just too frustrated - I can't see how I could play this set on live as is, you couldn't even force me to suffer through the low levels until perma-hasten & SOs. I felt like a blaster with one weak attack and an occasional debuff.

Also, I don't believe it is harmful in any way to compare a newb level TA versus any other newb level defender. With the exception of FF, all others will be stronger out of the box solo - even sonic, who at least has a debuff with a quick recharge (even if it is only single target). And once you factor in a team situation, FF again seems to beat TA with buffs that are always up, as opposed to every 4th battle. Flash arrow might have helped even this gap a bit, but I couldn't convince myself to play the other levels to get it, I just wasn't *grabbed* by this set as a defender. I'm sure I'll enjoy it as a controller secondary though...

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Here's the real numbers (that's what I get for doing stuff from memory).

Wet Ice
0.5% base
1.265% Defence from Wet Ice with ++ SO's.

17.71% Max Defence from Energy Absorbtion (not what I had earlier).

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You are getting closer to clarity, but you could you please -specificy- how you are talking about EA? Is that the full 6 slotted ++ SO when used on 14 targets, or 1 target? or what?

I think putting a def bonus that small on WI is a joke, and utterly pointless - please just remove it all together rather than insult is with something too small to slot.

If 17% is the max def for EA.....that puts us at ~50% defense to sm/leth/en/neg ASSUMING we have 14 targets around us at all times (which should not be happening with all the new anti-herding junk, correct?). This is not enough to tank +1s, let alone +2s and +3s which will turn up in large team missions, TFs, etc.

Please consider:
a) putting EA back to the 5 target max,
b) upping the defense to around 4% per target (assuming a 5 max) unslotted (giving 44% assuming 6 def sos and max targets - an improbable slotting).
c) maybe moving EA much earlier in the set - with the WI nerf we have no way to tank clocks, etc as has been mentioned by numerous posters. Hit Points alone are not enough.

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Glue Arrow: Reduced Duration of Glue Arrow from 45 seconds to 30 second and Increased Recharge time from 20 seconds to 120 seconds to prevent multiple stacking. Fixed Glue Arrow visual f/x.


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At first glance everything looks ok except for this one. I abhor the "high recharge to prevent stacking" fix. Can't you just code it so powers from the same character don't stack? I've made this comment in other threads - but powers that can only be used every once in a while, forcing you to be much more strategic and sparing with their usage, really aren't much fun (for me). I'd rather have it available when I need it, and have stacking blocked the skillful way (via code) than the cheap way (by prevent situations where stacking could arise).

I don't know if the "usefulness" of targeting and area and not an anchor brings these powers anywhere near the utility of toggles once you throw recharges like that on there.

Seriously, consider this. Please. Oh, and it looks like hasten will be "required" (6 recharge SOs + hasten + AM required to get perma glue arrow with these stats I believe) for TA as well with multiple long recharge powers now. Fun. (not trying to be negative, I love this game, just fighting off cynicism).

20/21
I have no idea who the one was that I missed, and I've already forgotten my guess.
And who the heck is Commander Courage?

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The problem is that arscoh.com apparently vanished in late April, at least from the DNS servers in my part of the internet.


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The domain appears to be back up, but the Calc is still gone. It was possible to grab the page from Google's cache a few days ago, but that too, is now gone.

But even grabbing the page from the cache wasn't enough, because there was a javascript file that also needed to be downloaded (cookieFunctions.js).

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Noooooooooo........
I hope someone sets up a mirror somewhere, that was the most incredibly useful utility.

OK, as I promised AGES ago, I finally got around to getting the BIs for conttroller apps again (post boost). Anyway, here they are:

mental blast = 5.5569 psychic
psionic tornado = .9723 psychic x5

hurl boulder = 8.3350 smash
fissure = 2.5004 smash

fire blast = 5.55646 fire + .22752 fire x0-4
fire ball = .55553 smash + 3.8894 fire + .27766 fire x0-4
consume = 1.11123 fire (doesn't seem to have a burn)

ice blast = 2.2225 smash + 3.33393 ice
ice storm = 9.37866 ice (over 15 seconds)

energy blast = 2.2225 smash + 3.33398 energy

Shame that fissure damage is so low . Ahh well, still better than nothing. Also worth noting that fissure damage text is still bugged - it says "You hurl a boulder ..." (at least on test server).

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Got a new one here!

Repel: 100 end used in 40s, placing one skul (appropriately) in permanent knockback against a corner. No enhancements whatsoever (nice empty slot).

Should equal 2.5 eps.

Tested with a SL 8 Kinetics/Electric Defender on live.

Edit:

Oops forgot to account for base regen of 10/6 EPS (+1.667 )
That should equal 4.167 EPS unenhanced. Ow.

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Well, there are 2 costs for repel - one is an automatic cost every second, and one is the cost it deducts whenever you repel someone. First, you should determine the base cost - by just running repel + some other basic toggle with a known EPS value (fly is a good one) to drain you down to zero.

Then you can start trying to figure out how much end is drained per hit. You will need to do what you just did, but also count how many times repel hit the enemy.

Good start though !

If you guys read this (States/Geko/etc.):

Could you please consider giving us a direct shift from tank to nova & nova to tank?

I.e. no stoppover in human form where you can be caught without any benefits of either form? I'm building a form specialiast WS, and it is frustrating whenever I get nailed mid transform - especially going from nova to tank - and possibly have the transform interrupted/delayed by knockdown/etc. Then of course the inevitable death.

Good to hear that they are at least coming, however;

I'm sort of curious why something that seems a relatively minor fix should take months to go in? Is the coding more complicated than it seems? (Changing the hp #s, changing the resist penalty # to 0.)

I would also like to ask what is being done to compensate for the loss of tanking power? (Since hit points are being reduced to blaster levels our tank form, which had no resistance penalty (??), will only get weaker).

It is working on Pinnacle now, but the chat server is still down.
Maybe a chat server status could be added to the server status page?

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What is the EPS bonus for accelerated metabolism?

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I believe it is .25 for defender version - either .2 or .25 for controller - I'm not sure if this power is affected by the controller secondary penalty or what.

No APP #s yet? I think I posted all the controller ones somewhere at some point. I'll try and find them and edit them into this post later tonight.

You didn't specifically mention brawl index #s, but it would seem to be a useful addition to your information collection.. here are some controller brawl index #'s:

Stone mastery:
Hurl: 8.3x smash
Fissure: 2.5x smash

Psionic mastery:
Mental Blast: 5.6 psionic
Psionic Tornado: .972x5 ?? psionic

I'll get the rest when I get my comp setup after the holidays if you want them.

Sounds like a much better place to start from. I for one am definitely in favor of this.

It's just the psychology of the thing - no matter how great the reward when teamed, no one wants to start out with any kind of penalty, which requires grouping to offset.