Madam_Enigma

But a very real problem. Especially if you need fine control for lining up narrow cones such as Shadow Maul. Yes, my dm/da (when teamed) likes speed boost for the +recovery. I like recovery aura or adrenaline boost more cause they don't make lining up my cones hard.

yeah, it's great. ALthough it does take full saturation to equal a /regen scrapper running their mez protection in regen rate. The lack of self-heal is also painful. I'm guessing getting the +def power eliminates much of the pain though.

The fact is that at the end of the day, sure you got a big heavy piece of metal/wood/bone/tech/whatever on your arm, and sure you can hit people with it... but it's still big and heavy. Let's say you have a bronze age style shield. It's big, almost as big as you. It's heavy, probably as heavy as you. And your carrying it into battle.

Yeah, there's a reason why so many Heroic Age stories involve the main proagonist and the main villain standing there taunting each other on the battle field. It was a contest of wills and endurance as much as a fight. Who ever got tired first lowered their big, heavy, cumbersome shield. And they thus created an opening.

Then we move into the time of the roman legions. Those shields were big, heavy, and not suited for swinging as a blunt object. European shields are smaller and lighter, but there's only so many ways you can bash someone with a shield and still defend yourself. Zulu shields are light too, and big. But they aren't suitable for bashing someone with. Although sometimes they did put blades on the ends.

But it's not really the best buff a kin has. It's a buff which while good, can be negated in usefulness by a good build. Do you need the recharge from SB? You can build your character to the point where you have recharge oozing out of your ears. Do you have endurance issues? You can build to fix them. And that doesn't even require a ton of IO's. Just slotting an end redux or two in the biggest offenders.

Yes, SB is nice. Being able to use powers like Omega Maneuver more often is always fun. But it's not the best power of a kinetics. What it is, is the most overvalued power in kinetics. People who were doing great without speed boost suddenly think their gimped without it.

Your attitude of "you must have this power or this type of power" is foolish IMO.

And actually, my TA/A defender has been chewed out many a time for USING disruption arrow (they claim it's useless), Acid Arrow (again claimed to be useless), and Oil Slick Arrow (blasters complaining I do more damage then them).

When on my sonic/sonic defender, I actually have been chewed out for putting my res shields on the team and NOT healing them. Even though I don't have a heal. Same on FF/A defender. I got chewed out for bubbling people. They actually wanted me to have the med pool instead of the bubbles. You know, cause that would be "a really useful change in powers" according to the team leader.

Well, another option is to put end mod with a +end proc in there. If it's 6 slotted, 3 dam resist/2 end mod/performance shifter +end proc sounds good to me.

True, but remember that they always would move into melee. Maybe not often, but it happened. Oh god, I remember trying to fight them originally with Madam Enigma. Especially when my ranged defense was lower then melee defense. They were the pits. Almost as bad as Nemesis before I got the aoe toggle.

Which I say is a foolish attitude. It's the same attitude that says "Trick Arrow can't defend a team, because it doesn't have a heal". Sadly, I see this type of thing a lot hero side. Villains, not so much really. But for heroes, there's the perceived notion that you 'must' have the same powers as everyone else with the powerset, and that all powersets must have the same type of power.

I see sonic defenders getting booted from teams because they can't heal, but the leader doesn't notice the blasters are *not* dying. Just the sonic defender who has the lowest damage resistance on the team.

I see force field defenders getting booted because they can't heal, nevermind the enemy can't actually hit the team.

I see Trick Arrow defenders who get booted for being 'useless'. Heck, in some teams I got told flat out to stop using the following powers due to them being 'useless: Poison Gas Arrow, Flash Arrow (ok this is close to true), Entangle Arrow, and Disruption Arrow.

I see empathy defenders getting booted cause they dare to attack when no one needs healing.

I see dark defenders getting booted sometimes for not using the single target heal to heal them from across the room. You know, the heal that doesn't exist. Or worse, because they use those 'useless' aoe to-hit debuffs instead of just spamming heals. Once I got booted from a team cause I used all my tools to try saving the team in a nasty fight, even howling twilight. They booted me cause I was the sole survivor, and had to wait for the rez to recharge.

Or... "I'm a Shield/Shield tanker! See, on my left arm I have a shield I use to defend myself. I carry a shield used to attack with on my right arm. I... don't have any idea how I manage to put my offensive shield away when not using it. That takes two hands to sling one across one's back or retrieve it."

Now, there is one shield I could see with shield offense. That's the lantern shield. Which was a buckler style shield with the following offensive attachments:
1. spike in the center of the shield
2. attached gauntlet which contains two sererated spikes for disarming one's foe
3. attached sword blade which extends to short sword length in the front, with the back extending to the elbow to protect your arm
4. attachments to mount a lantern (used to try dazzling your opponant, effectivness is questionable)

Now, attacks for this shield set I could see are Shield Rush (short distance charge+damage), Shield Bash (gives a def debuff to self for about 5 seconds), Stab (gives a def debuff to self for 5 seconds), Slice (again, def debuff to self for 5 seconds), and Disarm (damage debuff on foe, 5 second def debuff to self since your shield is again out of position)... Of course it would only really work if you made it a highly offensive defense set. The rest of the set would be defensive powers. The tier 9 could be "With your shield or on it", giving you moderate defense and resistance buffs and a slight recharge buff as you fight with more desperation. They were typically used for duals in France during the 16th century, and dualists using them would be armed with long swords.

But devs wont do that.

OOOR they may just not view speed boost as the 'must have' power others do. Maybe they had to make a build sacrifice, and speed boost is what got cut. Maybe they got tired of all the SB NAO attitude and respeced out of it. You don't know, and if you just yell at them then boot them as 'useless'... you'll never find out. Heck, you may have kicked from your team someone who would have been extremely useful just cause they lack one power.

I know. It feels really low when compared to nova form though. It seems on par with my plant/fire dominator on the other hand. Fun character, sometimes takes a while to beat enemies. Now my illusion/ta controller... THAT is low damage. I'd dread trying it without containment.

Unslotted super speed is 52 mph or so in run speed. And originally I avoided it because I couldn't control my character with that much speed. Over the years I've learned to control high speed characters. Mostly due to having a hero main with a run speed of 36 mph JUST using slotted passives, and a run speed of 48 mph with sprint turned on. Never being able to slow down teaches you to control such speed. And yet, getting slapped with speed boost when not expecting it will still mess me up. Especially on a char who runs super fast normally.

I do have characters who honestly don't need the other aspects either. Claws/SR for example doesn't really get much from the +recharge part. Especially when you already have 5 different seamless attack chains possible with any given attack used first. People that build for perma hasten without SB, probably don't need it either. They already got their character to have such high recharge bonuses they can have their heavy hitters up pretty much whenever they want them.

And the +recovery isn't always needed either. Why isn't it needed? Well, if you build your character to be able to fight for 3 hours strait without running out of endurance, you don't really need more +recovery. Some power sets can use it, but not everyone needs it.

It's funny, some people like SiGGy will boot a kin for not taking it. Others boot team members who dare not want speed boost. One group that booted Madam Enigma for not wanting it, then were amazed to see me speed off without even turning on sprint... as fast as they were moving with speed boost. I then later teamed with others from that group, and they were amazed to see me fight non-stop without ever having to wait around for something to charge... without speed boost. Actually, they wanted it for themselves just to keep up with me.

Oh yes, because speed boost is clearly the only useful power in kinetics. Never mind fulcrum shift, transference, increased density, or anything else it has. Only speed boost is useful.

Do me a favor SiGGy, add @Poison Bloom to your global ignore list. Please?

That, and if you look you can see that the defenses are all through the roof. I think I can icons for nearly every single +def pool power except stealth. And the engineers are using the burn patches I see. It's just that the patch seems to not spawn in the air.

No disadvantage? Uhm... yeah... Tell that to Mister Regen Scrapper who's getting whacked around for 400 damage per hit by eight rikti. Melee combat is far more dangerous then ranged combat in CoH.

No, Soldiers of Arachnos. This is the generic term for ALL arachnos troops. Widows, and spiders.

I had made it my mission with Madam Enigma to fully map out the sewers. Only took 25 levels.

For years now I've seen drones charge into melee range. They still sometimes hang back too.

Mercs prefering to brawl had long been an issue. For a while brawl was removed from them to try fixing it. It didn't that I recall. Bots charge into melee when they run out of ranged attacks and nothing but brawl is charged. A frequent occurrence I find.

Destructable objects in a mayhem have set levels, which are low. The highest level for any car/truck/van/anything is 15. So if your a high level and worried about them point blank shooting the car... why? It's only a danger at low levels. Now generators, THOSE are a threat.

That's cause the single target heal has a 30 second recharge. I looked.

Kelds do rather low damage with their human form attacks and dwarf form attacks. Their nova form attacks do really good damage, BUT lack damage mitigation. Gimme a sec to pull up some (enhanced) numbers.

Dark Detonation does 62.02 damage at level 33 (after a +96.5 enhancement bonus). It's a targeted AOE so I'm gonna compare it to one from a set with high damage. Mind you, this is a warshade, which is classified as a medium damage AT.

Defenders are also classified as a medium damage AT, so let's look at a targeted aoe power for them too. At level 33 Explosive Arrow does 52.98 or so damage with the same enhancement value. This is on a defender though. Seems pretty close however. But what about blasters, a high damage AT?

Same power as the defender, same enhancement value. 97.70 damage. Mind you, this is before the stacking damage buffs gained from simply attacking.

Scrappers get damage on par with blasters, and armors. True enough, but they also must be in melee. Which is where most enemies hit the hardest. And kelds too get damage resistance powers, BUT if played well can spend a large portion of the time in melee range too. Something tells me we'll never get a pure ranged blast AT with access to armors in their secondary.

Dominators, high damage? Uhhhhhh, news to me. I love my dominator, but it's only 'high damage' when compared to my controller. They are medium damage.