LunarKnight

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The problem I have is I have been trying out defensive/follow. Using a low level mastermind, I had two pets. Both set to defensive/follow. I walked up to a group of three yellow-con minion enemies. I could have killed them all fairly quickly, if I just ordered the pets to attack them one at a time, but I wanted to see the fight play out by using defensive to get my pets fighting.

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That's just it. You were trying to use it in a situation where you didn't need it. Bodyguard isn't supposed to be great in every situation, if it were, there'd be no use for the other MM commands. It's to fix one specific situation, where mobs attack the MM while ignoring the pets. The Defensive stance actually works quite well in this situation.

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I ended up with three enemies attacking, one of my pets fighting back, and the other one just standing there next to me NOT fighting. I had to order an attack to get them both to fight.

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If you want the initiative Attack/Aggressive is a better option. If you need someone to protect you, that's what Bodyguard is for. Try turning on Defensive and attacking foes directly yourself. Defensive works best when you have aggro on you instead of the pets.

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I also tried out the idea of ordering my pets to attack and then quickly order them back to defensive/follow mode. This is no that easy. If you do it too quickly, they never attack. But the longer you wait, you are creating a larger window of bodyguard being down. Bodyguard is starting to seem more like a gamblers power to me.

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You're looking at it the other way. You don't need to be in your shell all the time. If you did, MM's would be horrible right now, and they're really not. Play the game normally as if Bodyguard doesn't exist. Then when you get aggro and start taking direct damage, flip on Bodyguard to get your pets to protect you.

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Have you considered the radius on this? Does anyone know, offhand what the raduis for Supremacy is?

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I think it's the same as the leadership toggles.

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And that's if I keep them around me, shooting their craptastic bows, and shuriken. Not sending them off to take out the threat, using their awsome melee abilities.

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You could always walk them into melee yourself. They are on Follow.

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I don't like this. Here's why: I have my Medic set to Defensive/Follow, so that he doesn't run about blasting everything with his subar damage. Instead, he heals. Now, he's going to be taking a beating instead of giving a healing.

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Why are you taking a beating? And if you're taking enough of a beating that it would hinder your medic, how are you alive?

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I stand beside my henchmen, with force fields up, NOT PFF, rebubbling and directing.

Why? What difference does it make?

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I'm just trying to understand the problem. Your medic will only be taking a portion of the damage that you would have taken at a 2:1 ratio. I guess I'm just trying to figure out how this is harming what you do. Is your Mastermind taking enough damage that it would kill your medic to receive 1/3rd of it through bodyguard? I'm not sure on the HP ratios, but how exactly are you surviving this now?

I guess I'm trying to figure out how this is actually hurting your medic.

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So you're saying they'll divy up the Unresistable portion too?
I duno man, that sounds like more coding than it's worth to me...

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I don't think our pets will be considered Resists, so I don't think the unresistable portion will matter. My guess is it works like this.

My MM takes an attack that does 100 HP damage to him.
The system then takes 100 / (2 + #Pets) and deals that damage to each pet.
It then deals 2x that damage to me.

So that would cover the unresisted portion, but only your personal resists would figure in. Your pet's resists would be ignored. But then, that's all speculation until it's on test... *pokes devs*

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I don't like this. Here's why: I have my Medic set to Defensive/Follow, so that he doesn't run about blasting everything with his subar damage. Instead, he heals. Now, he's going to be taking a beating instead of giving a healing.

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Why are you taking a beating? And if you're taking enough of a beating that it would hinder your medic, how are you alive?

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You get your choice of total offense, total defense, or a varying mix.

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Actually it's better than that. I imagine I'll become quite fond of pulling in Defensive mode. I attack an enemy, who then attacks me with my 75% Resists (even higher with the PPP shield ). My bots the retaliate against the foe that attacked me.

Remember it's Defensive mode NOT Passive. Your pets will still attack, but only in response to someone attacking you first.

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So basicly what you are saying is, that if we don't do anything and just stand there, we will be protected. If we actually try and fight, we will be cut down, in pvp just as easy as we already are...

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No, they need to be set to Defensive/Follow not Passive. Defensive means they retaliate when they (or you) are attacked. The idea is that if you're getting attacked, you can switch to Def/Follow and bring up your bodyguards who will not only take damage for you, but attack the foe that is damaging you.

In PvP you can use Bodyguard to avoid alpha strikes, which will cause your bodyguards to attack the player attacking you. You can also get the alpha yourself by choosing attack my target, then quickly switching back into Defensive mode to absorb the retaliation. Actually, I can think of a lot of ways to use this. Good job!

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No matter how many times I heard "We'll never balance PVE around PVP" I always knew this would happen.

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If anybody ever said "We'll never balance PvE around PvP," it wasn't a person with any authority. Statesman has said several times that they prefer to not balance that way and that they try to avoid it, but he made no guarantees.

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QFT. I'm sure I heard "we'll never make a change in PvE for PvP" a million times before I4. Sadly, the only people who ever said it were players...

The Snipes should only be a problem with Recluse's Victory. Remember, Stalkers don't get this attack until 41. At the same level, MANY heroes are getting Focus Accuracy and other +Per powers. I'll be curious to see how it all plays out myself.

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So there's no hope for Hover then

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Hope for Hover would be to increase its base speed. Really that's a better solution than making anything exempt from ED anyway.

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Hell, I recently saw the Collectors Edition on sale for $30 Canadian. CoV is cheap right now.

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Yeah, I bought a copy of the DVD edition at Fry's several weeks ago for $30. At that time the regular version was actually $40...$10 more than the Collector's Edition.

I also grabbed one of the preorders they still had there for $.01, which got me one of the special helmets.

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In addition, the CoV discs contain CoH issues 1-6 in their install. For someone who owns the original CoH discs, this meant that last night, when my hard drive failed and I had to reinstall everything, my City of games were available in about 30 minutes compared to the 8+ hours it would have taken to install CoH and let the updater bring me up to speed.

Yes, _Castle_'s doing a great job and has earned many well deserved Kudos!

I really like his system with the consolidated threads and responses, it works quite well. Even when the news isn't good (as Arrow just found out ) knowing someone has taken a look at the issue goes a long way towards keeping people informed and keeping discussions on track.

Many kudos _Caste_, keep it up!

Bah, suckup nothing. _Castle_'s doing the job we've been wanting out of the devs for the last year or so and doing a great job at it. He's developed a process and was asking us to follow it. Basically, someone makes a Consolidated Blaster Issues Thread and posts a laundry list of things to check. He then prints out that list, looks over each item and responds. This is far more efficient than scouring the boards for every little complaint thread. He's doing a lot of work for us and all he's asking is that we generate a list for him to make it easier for him. I don't think that's asking too much at all.

As far as my personal issues with my personal Blaster:

Energy Blast

Explosive Blast - I agree with most of the above. The knockback isn't much of an issue for me as it makes for a good defensive effect. It should however do more damage, as the scatter effect makes it impossible to stack AoE damage like other Blasters can.

Power Burst - The range is just too short. If it were just a little longer (even say 30') than range enhancements could do enough to make the power really worthwhile.

Fire Manipulation -

Fire Sword Circle - Animation lag, otherwise the power is fine.

Blazing Aura - I'm just not sure how a Blaster is intended to use this. Standing in melee long enough to do any significant DoT damage is simply suicide for a Blaster.

Hot Feet - a good power, but not a good 38 power. Moving this power earlier in the set (say, in place of Blazing Aura?) would make it MUCH more attractive. Also, the END cost is too high for the benefits this power provides.

I think the biggest issue with /Fire is that it simply lacks what Blasters need. It doesn't have any form of control or soft control to mitigate damage, and while it makes up for this with addition damage dealing powers, they generally lack the frontloaded damage of other secondaries. Adding Greater Fire Sword would go a long way towards fixing this set.

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I'm a bit puzzled by this apparent swap in defender/controller shared abilities. Initially we were told that Controler Secondaries were 80% as effective as the corresponding defender primaries. There was nothing about differentiating debuffs and controls. Now that whatever system of balance was set up determined that actually controllers have equal effectivness in most areas and even more effectiveness in some.

I share the sentiments on questioning the need for defenders in light of controllers effectiveness. Why not just eliminate all the defender sets save for dark?

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This is something that's become increasingly apparent over time - every AT has multipliers for:

Buffs/debuffs/heals
Control
Damage
Defense

And these multipliers apply whether the power is in the primary or secondary. Primaries and secondaries define, in broad strokes, what the AT does with those powersets, but a controller with a hold in a secondary will do better because all holds the controller has works off the same multiplier.

This doesn't really justify that some defender primary powers are better than controller secondary counterparts. I mean, if you take Electrical Blast, you can see that defenders drain more end than blasters. However, you can also see that Electrical Blast is more powerful for blasters because they do far more damage. Ideally, while certain traits of defender primary powers may be inferior to the controller counterparts, the defender powers should be overall superior to the controller versions.

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Don't forget damage ranges. People keep forgetting Blasters have a different melee/range damage scale. Khelds are just goofy all around

I'm just really sad for Lunar Arrow. Force Field is stronger for controllers, Archery is stronger for Blasters. Combined I don't really do anything...

Thanks for the response _Castle_. It's been a long time since the devs have just come out and explained things this directly and honestly, and that's what gave them such a great reputation to begin with. Appreciate the response, even if I'm told my character is simply worse by design

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Yup, it's time for the usual issue hysteria.

I'm going to be sitting out this one. It's more fun to actually play the game than to get wrapped up in the same cycle that happens everytime a new issue is introduced.

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DOOM?

*nods*

DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM

Listen, there's two choices here:

Either Cryptic can release the game a little early, opening up to the possibility that people can buy it before the servers are open and not be able to play it.

Or they can release it to store on Monday, where many people will not be able to receive their copy until Tues or even Thursday, making them unable to play for days.

And Corporate's post was the most decent and well constructed I've seen in a while. You tossed out ad hominum on it to divert the issue, rather than addess his points directly.

Assuming that's even possible...

I think it just makes the powers too complicated anyway. The recharge timer wouldn't start until you shut off the fly aspect. Essentially you're stuck with a massive End drain version of Fly that has a minute recharge timer. You're better off just putting the same slots in Energy Flight and limiting QFly to the Phase aspect. Since it's no longer limited soley by End cost, and the travel aspect that made it worth dealing with is more or less gone, lower the End cost and it's a great power again.

INTFH

No, your opinion is simply not valid by the fact it's different from my own 4, if you're going to start to take offense at our disagreements, this place is just going to fall apart. If I didn't find your opinion valid, I wouldn't bother to comment on it.

What I meant is that people shouldn't comment on the usability or effectiveness of a post nerf power without using it first, even if only on test. You're not claiming DOOM on this issue, but my point was that people don't try to use the power before deciding it's worthless and dropping it or throwing a fit. It's hard to convince someone a power is still useful when they've given up based on a description alone.

The problem I see is that people don't have a concept of how long 45 seconds is. What you can actually accomplish in that span of time is vastly different from what you *think* can be done. And this is time when the power operates exactly as before, you can get quite a bit of time past the limit. Until you've actually tried it, you're really just making an assumption, which is exactly how things get out of hand around here.

I'm just getting fed up with the negativity and inflexibility. People just fall into a cycle of bitterness and paranoia and if nothing is done, it can take months to pull them out of it. Most of this angst can easily be avoided by simply trying and adapting before declaring something worthless. A post from someone who's opinion actually means something around here can have a large effect on which way the balance swings. I'd just appreciate it if they had a little testing first

With that in mind, I tried PS myself tonight and found it decent, but not worth it for me. Less Phase time, more power choices, and longer activation add up to far more downsides than the cost of QFly, but that's where our opinions and builds differ. I'll agree that the End cost needs to be looked at. It's simply far too high for the limited utility of the power. I still think the power's worth taking, just not as amazing as it used to be.

That's exactly what I think is happening, but it's effects when combined with Conserve Energy are very strange. It actually says "Too Tired" which covers both ways of too little End. I almost wonder if there's not actually a hard timer on the power, or if the End cost of QFly eventually reaches +100 End/sec.

I agree, the bug exists, but I can't pin it down. Has anyone experienced it with over 25% END and without running Conserve Energy? My theory runs on it interfering with CE, but if someone can make it happen without, I'd like to know.

The benefit is that you're given warning. You're not cruising around near the flight cap and suddenly plummetting to the ground. Granted, you can probably get EF on before you hit, but I'm quite happy knowing how long I can push it before I MUST shut it off. I also like how I can push it past the cap if I wish. Since the change, I've been Phasing missions just to prove it can be done and I've had a couple great moments where I was in a bad situation and started chomping down on blues to sustain QFly for a few seconds more.

And Four, you can't really comment on it if you respec'd out before the change even hit. The worst thing about these boards is the sheer number of people who look at numbers and cry DOOOOM before trying them in game. I've still not respec'd out myself and I'm still using QFly for long distance travel (though I'll change that eventually, I hate feeling rushed when I'm cruising contacts). If people would try to figure out what they CAN do with changes rather than look at the numbers and assume what they can't, there would be a heck of a lot less DOOM on these boards.

On a side note: I5 had enough DOOMcrying to prompt me to rewatch Zim. I would like to thank all the pesimists out there for providing me with so much entertainment.

The END crash is a benefit IMO. Unlike every other Phase power, we actually get a warning when ours is about to fail. No other Phase power (or clicky for that matter) gives you a chance to get out of danger if you're pushing the timer, nor does any other Phase timer let you push the timer to its limits, staying Phased longer by consuming END. There's no crash if you bother to just shut the power off when you're out of time.

Seriously, when the timer expires, switch to Energy Flight and go on your merry way. That's what you're asking for now (Phase effect disabling without dropping Flight), except your Phase timer starts to recharge and you use FAR less End. The slotting requirements are comparable (if we're going to quibble over how many slots it takes to really max flight, I'll quibble about how many slots you're really using to maintain perma QFly) and the end effects are nearly the same.

It's not that I'm for the change, I just realize this isn't a battle worth fighting. Any attempts to make QFly a travel power first and Phase effect second are just going to leave us with something clunkier and less useful than it is now.

Of course, it also requires at least those same 3 slots to function well anyway. You just traded your EndReducs for FlySpeeds.

I agree there's a problem, I just disagree with how the problem is presented. I'd be quite happy with something along the lines of:

QFly and NF no longer function as reliable travel powers.
and I especially agree with:
QFly's current limited use does not warrent it's End cost.

Suggesting we remove the Phase component so that people can continue to use it as a travel power is rediculous, especially on an AT with 2 other versions of Fly.

Woohoo!!! Loud but few!!

In any case, I don't think specific solutions are the best way to post these situations. Something needs to be done to address post nerf Kheldian Phase concerns, but they should be posted as such, rather than a solution that only solves a fraction of the problem.