Madam_Enigma

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I think you're missing the point of DM. While it's true 6% is a small to-hit debuff, being able to stack it like crazy, to me, is what makes the set so potent. I know that my MM has enough to-hit debuffs to be hit maybe once or twice during an AV fight.

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I think your missing the point. That 6% during AV fights would be while stacking like crazy. It's using everything you got. Adding the /dm pet might bring it to 12% debuffing. Still not going to be THAT great of midigation. Better then nothing, but still not "you can't hit me" levels unless your also stacking decent levels of defense.

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I guess the question to ask here is TA really bringing all that much to the AV fight to justify the difference in a NON AV fight? Yes, the -to hit in /TA is unresistable but dark can stack nearly as much (if not as much) even after resistance. It has as much -res as /TA does and it has -regen in twilight grasp, +def and +resistance in shadow fall AND a heal - all of which will add to an AV fight. TA brings its -to hit which CAN probably be stacked to be more effective than dark, it has good -resistance and it might be able to stack its immobilize to reasonable effect (at least when the purple triangles are not up). All in all I would suspect that the two sets are about even vs AV's

Against non-AV's you get ALL the to hit debuff, a huge fear that is up every fight, a great single target hold that is just as easy to stack as ice arrow (if not easier - its on a slightly faster recharge base) and a heal - which, despite its low AoE is a pretty darn good heal.

Against all of that it seems hard to point to a small, unresistable to hit debuff and say that makes the set better. Yes yes, I know you can't single out one power for comparison - but more often then not it seems like folks arguing that /TA is fine do exactly that.

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Ok, let me ask you a few questions.

1. A melee enemy is charging towards you. If they are moving slowly and their few ranged attacks are charging slower is that enemy a threat?

2. The party sees three large groups of enemies close together. If the brute attempts to herd them he'll most likely get all three groups and probably cause a party wipe. Is it better to try herding, or fight each group where they are while using flash arrow to prevent the other groups from noticing?

3. The party is getting in over their heads. Is it better to reduce the party's chance to get hit by the 30+ enemies, or boost the party's ability to take down the 30+ enemies quickly while reducing the rate of incoming damage?

4. In an AV fight is it better to debuff an AV's to-hit by 12% or stack 6% to-hit debuffs with -recharge and immobilizes?

And this last one is from my personal experience

5. In a chaotic PUG that keeps getting in trouble due to killing anchors first is it better to do high to-hit debuffing that uses an anchor for a good portion of the debuffing, or fire and forget debuffs which can't be negated by one foe being defeated?

6. In the same vein, is it better to have a debuff that can miss or one that always hits?

Both dark miasma and trick arrow approach the situation differently. Both are equally effective though. One focuses on enduring longer fights via safety, the other focuses on ending the fight quickly while reducing incoming damage for that short battle. Both have the same goal, and once they have their toolbox filled both are equally good at it.

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I believe that what he's trying to say is that because ninja are made out of wet paper bags, a single target heal alone will not be able to keep up with the amount of damage it's possible for 6 minions to take, while an aoe heal allows you to keep on healing most or all of the minions enough that single targets can be applied.

Basically he's saying that Pain's aoe and heals keep them alive better than O2 boost.

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And yet Pain doesn't (as far as I know) really have many tools to prevent one shotting. So while you can aoe heal, you face the problem of losing multiple pets at once while your trying to spam heals.

Oh, and my ninja/poison doesn't have problems with single target healing my pets. Outside of Elite Bosses and Archvillains most things can't kill them. It's only if 4 pets get serioulsy hurt at once, or I have to chose between healing a genin or jounin that I lose someone usually. I always pick the jounin first if it's badly hurt..

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From what I checked out AVS and EBs got a 1.30x ACC innate increase.

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Actually, it's 1.5. They previously had 75% to-hit. A few issues back it was changed so they had 50% to-hit and 1.5 acc base. This still gives them a final hit chance of 75%, but made defense more useful against them.

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I think you're missing the point of DM. While it's true 6% is a small to-hit debuff, being able to stack it like crazy, to me, is what makes the set so potent. I know that my MM has enough to-hit debuffs to be hit maybe once or twice during an AV fight.

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I think your missing the point. That 6% during AV fights would be while stacking like crazy. It's using everything you got. Adding the /dm pet might bring it to 12% debuffing. Still not going to be THAT great of midigation. Better then nothing, but still not "you can't hit me" levels unless your also stacking decent levels of defense.

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Comparing TA to another powerset can make for a very compelling arguement.

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Comparing TA to other powersets doesn't make interesting debates, it makes threads get locked. Every "TA versus *" thread starts the same way, with some idiot yammering broad generalizations, ignorant conclusions and outright lies, then a demand for a "heal arrow", followed by a few days of me and the other well-informed TA players correcting the ridiculous disinformation, which eventually leads to pointless bickering and meandering side topics about fruit and/or cars, and finally a big, fat lock.

Then we get blessed peace for a few weeks, until the next clueless underwear stain picks up a bow, plays for fifteen minutes and comes to the forum to scream about how TA "is supposed to be better than X" and starts the cycle all over again.

Lord Nemesis could design an automaton with the schematics for these "debates". Steam, clockwork-like precision, it's all there.

*yawn*

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My Weaken does better -TOHIT than your Flash Arrow. My weaken also does -22.5% (mids) damage debuff. It even states that it makes opponents less special -74.5% -Special to be exact.

Discuss.

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Your weaken is also single target. Discuss.

Well, widows can get mind link for a click def boost, but that's not something IMO you can depend on always. And spiders don't get that to begin with. If a spider gets high melee and aoe defense, they had to sacrifice a fair amount of offensive ability. Part of which could easily be their pets.

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Ok, try to wrap your mind around this. A few issues back the devs made it so AV's and GMs heavily resist to-hit debuffs. Thus dark miasma's entire set when well slotted ends up being barely effective at debuffing the AV's to-hit. Fortunately they also made it so AVs have 50% to-hit instead of 75, and a 1.5 acc modifier.

Because Flash Arrow's to-hit debuff is unresistable if 3 slotted for to-hit debuff it's roughly equal in effectiveness to pretty much the entire debuff arrey of Dark Miasma at debuffing an AV's to-hit. Without Dark Servant Dark Miasma gets an AV's to-hit down by just under 6%. So does Trick Arrow. The thing is, Dark also has a powerful aoe heal and -regen which can be spammed. So it's not so much to-hit debuffing but the other things that dark does which helps it take on AV's.

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So you're saying that ~6% is "barely effective" as a debuff value when /Dark does it against AVs, and you're saying that /TA does the same value—not just against AVs, but everything in the game.

What was the point again?

And for a point of clarification, that spammable AOE heal/-regen also has -damage and a -tohit component, which may or may not have been counted in that initial 6%.

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My point is... That for the hardest content (AV's and GM's) the idea that dark miasma is innately stronger just because it's got high to-hit debuff values is not true. 6% to-hit debuff isn't very strong honestly. It's helpful if you already got defense to stack it with, but it's not going to make as big of a difference on it's own as people think.

That said, claiming dark miasma is better at AV/GM fights then TA because of it's to-hit debuffing is false. Both are equally valuable for different reasons. Even against normal missions both are equally valuable, again for different reasons. Both do the same thing, protect the team. And both do it in different but capable ways.

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For general content flash arrow's to-hit debuff isn't something I factor in. I stack it with my thug's defense, but it's not what I use it for mainly. I use it for the -perception. THAT is the true reason to use flash arrow. Same reason people run stealth powers. Same reason people use smoke grenade.

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EATs, all EATs, are powerful and contribute a great deal to teams that have them (Provided the players are good).


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I feel I should qualify this statement. EATs (anyone else think of food reading that) all are powerful, but IMO no more powerful in the long run then other AT's. HEATs are powerful due to versitility, although they sacrifice a lot to get that. Namely the extreme shortage of slots.

VEATs are also powerful, but tend to sacrifice a lot of personal defenses to get said power.

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FF is far and away the most boring secondary to play on a MM.

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Whatcha mean? It's equally boring to play on a defender.

Well, if you have spare slots (something kelds rarely do) then slotting swift for flight speed isn't bad per say. But only if you have the extra slots.

It's the only "defense fix" I can think of, and no it wasn't Isb 5. More like ish 7 or so I think.

Ah, my bad. Hadn't looked at the mag for it since we got the real numbers. I just know that it's more useful as an attack then as a rez.

Although, to point something else out... Your katana's end problems could be due to using high +recharge to use the more expensive attacks frequently. Sure it ups damage per attack, but at a high cost to endurance.

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I recall being able to give orders through the PFF, so I didn't have a constant need to drop it

[/ QUOTE ]I'm fairly certain that you have never been able to give orders while inside PFF

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Defenses were "rebalanced" at some point. How did that affect FF?

[/ QUOTE ]The only significant change to defense sets that occurred in anything you could call "recent" history was Elusivity, which only operates in PvP.

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I think the change being referred to here was changing it so enemies up to +5 go accuracy bonuses instead of to-hit bonuses... and bosses/elite bosses/archvillains getting 50% To-Hit and 1.5 accuracy instead of 75% to-hit.

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On test before SOA came out on live... picture an entire team of 8 widows and spiders. All with their leadership toggles. Half with the leadership pool as well.

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That would have been a sigh to see.

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It was... capped defense to all, soft capped damage (I think), and everyone was running around with close to 150% to-hit PLUS the accuracy bonus from combat training-offensive.

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Welcome to the fold.

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Thanks. I've been part of the fold for quite some time, but I have never been able to assemble a team that was made of nothing but Night Widows or Fortunatas until today and it was awesome.

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On test before SOA came out on live... picture an entire team of 8 widows and spiders. All with their leadership toggles. Half with the leadership pool as well.

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It wasn't published by Cryptic. It's Prima that published it. And man oh man oh man is it bad. By 25 Gloom is six slotted, but the pets are just slotted with one ACC. I'm having trouble seeing how the build would survive.

As I understand it, the CoH strat guide as of issue 6 still said that scrappers don't need to take or slot defenses due to not being hit (tanker gets hit instead) and tankers don't need attacks since their job isn't damage but to be hit.

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It sounds like an unintentionally hilarious read, but... could be an idea for a fun supergroup - wherein all characters must adhere exactly to the guide for power selection and slotting. Get 8 of them to 35 then try and do the ITF, on Invincible naturally

Plus, if it was an all-female SG you could call them The Prima Donnas...

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Actually, back in issue 4 I encountered 7 people who did follow the strat guide's builds like their the only thing that works. A pair of scrappers with the bare minimum from secondary at level 20, and never turning the two toggles they did pick on. Defenders with bare minimum of unused buff set powers. Blasters with a ton of melee attacks, and never use their ranged attacks. Controllers who didn't control. And a tank who never attacked.

The claw/sr in their group of friends said my claw/sr was horribly gimped because I was taking and using secondary powers. Granted, my build was gimped but that wasn't why. At level 20 back then I had swipe, slash, tp foe, recall friend, teleport, combat jumping, super jump, health, stamina, and swift. My build was gimped due to too many pool powers and not enough from my primary.

The tank never attacked (and had minimum required attacks) because the guide apparantly said tanks don't need to attack, just taunt. Everyone else's builds were built around the idea that the tank's the only one ever getting hit. That didn't work out from what I saw.

Rival? WS can blow everyone's damage out of the water if built right.

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Right...tell that to my Necro/Dark who's solo'ed several AVs with ease.

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Ok, try to wrap your mind around this. A few issues back the devs made it so AV's and GMs heavily resist to-hit debuffs. Thus dark miasma's entire set when well slotted ends up being barely effective at debuffing the AV's to-hit. Fortunately they also made it so AVs have 50% to-hit instead of 75, and a 1.5 acc modifier.

Because Flash Arrow's to-hit debuff is unresistable if 3 slotted for to-hit debuff it's roughly equal in effectiveness to pretty much the entire debuff arrey of Dark Miasma at debuffing an AV's to-hit. Without Dark Servant Dark Miasma gets an AV's to-hit down by just under 6%. So does Trick Arrow. The thing is, Dark also has a powerful aoe heal and -regen which can be spammed. So it's not so much to-hit debuffing but the other things that dark does which helps it take on AV's.

With dark servant (and maybe a lich too) you might get 10% to-hit debuffing going on. You can't floor a AV's to-hit by yourself with to-hit debuffs anymore.

Oh, and how high of defense do you have? Defense too can help you tackle AV's.

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The only defense I had was with SF and CJ. Both unslotted for defense. And they still went with ease. The only AV that I'm trying to take down right now is Ghost Widow, but I kinda figured she'd be tough to beat having resistance to neg. energy thanks to SF.

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I personally found her to be extremely easy (as an elite boss). Note that if your not actually fighting them as an AV (not on the highest difficulty when solo) then they don't have extreme to-hit debuff resistance.

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I fought her on invincible and failed, but I know I can do it.

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On invincible she's a full Archvillain. Keep that in mind. While some builds can solo archvillains, it's usually something you have to twink out and specialize your build to do.

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In regular missions, at least the "responsible" Kheldian can warn their team-mates... when I was in PI and finally noticed the Cyst that spawned in my "hunting-ground", I had already seen several lowbie toons (a Lv25 tank I believe, and some others) who were probably just waiting idely for their PL team to gather around for their next mission.

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heh, that'll teach them to PL. No, probably didn't. It's nice to dream anyway.

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Right...tell that to my Necro/Dark who's solo'ed several AVs with ease.

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Ok, try to wrap your mind around this. A few issues back the devs made it so AV's and GMs heavily resist to-hit debuffs. Thus dark miasma's entire set when well slotted ends up being barely effective at debuffing the AV's to-hit. Fortunately they also made it so AVs have 50% to-hit instead of 75, and a 1.5 acc modifier.

Because Flash Arrow's to-hit debuff is unresistable if 3 slotted for to-hit debuff it's roughly equal in effectiveness to pretty much the entire debuff arrey of Dark Miasma at debuffing an AV's to-hit. Without Dark Servant Dark Miasma gets an AV's to-hit down by just under 6%. So does Trick Arrow. The thing is, Dark also has a powerful aoe heal and -regen which can be spammed. So it's not so much to-hit debuffing but the other things that dark does which helps it take on AV's.

With dark servant (and maybe a lich too) you might get 10% to-hit debuffing going on. You can't floor a AV's to-hit by yourself with to-hit debuffs anymore.

Oh, and how high of defense do you have? Defense too can help you tackle AV's.

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The only defense I had was with SF and CJ. Both unslotted for defense. And they still went with ease. The only AV that I'm trying to take down right now is Ghost Widow, but I kinda figured she'd be tough to beat having resistance to neg. energy thanks to SF.

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I personally found her to be extremely easy (as an elite boss). Note that if your not actually fighting them as an AV (not on the highest difficulty when solo) then they don't have extreme to-hit debuff resistance.

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Right...tell that to my Necro/Dark who's solo'ed several AVs with ease.

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Ok, try to wrap your mind around this. A few issues back the devs made it so AV's and GMs heavily resist to-hit debuffs. Thus dark miasma's entire set when well slotted ends up being barely effective at debuffing the AV's to-hit. Fortunately they also made it so AVs have 50% to-hit instead of 75, and a 1.5 acc modifier.

Because Flash Arrow's to-hit debuff is unresistable if 3 slotted for to-hit debuff it's roughly equal in effectiveness to pretty much the entire debuff arrey of Dark Miasma at debuffing an AV's to-hit. Without Dark Servant Dark Miasma gets an AV's to-hit down by just under 6%. So does Trick Arrow. The thing is, Dark also has a powerful aoe heal and -regen which can be spammed. So it's not so much to-hit debuffing but the other things that dark does which helps it take on AV's.

With dark servant (and maybe a lich too) you might get 10% to-hit debuffing going on. You can't floor a AV's to-hit by yourself with to-hit debuffs anymore.

Oh, and how high of defense do you have? Defense too can help you tackle AV's.

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ninja's dont have force fields, ninja's bring pain but also live in japan which gets hit by some huge storms tsunami's and typhoons and monsoons.

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Speak or YOUR ninja. I have a ninja/ff mastermind who's story is he's actually a powerful psychic. He makes his enemies think their being attacked by ninja in hamster balls.. and he's so powerful the illusions do physical harm.

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I just came back to the game after well over a year. I'm looking to make a claws/sr scrapper, and I really have no idea what build to go. If anyone can recommend me a good build for leveling I would really appreciate it.

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My Claw/SR guide . The build I describe that I used gives about 30% to defense to all positions by 36. It's a no-travel power build but still moves pretty quickly from point A to point B. I haven't included IO sets since I'm still working on those myself.

It's from issue 7 or 8 I think, but still pretty valid. No number crunching, but rather discusses my personal views and recommendations.

I assume you know it would have been better to ignore the fluff balls and just destroy the cyst. But yea, I'm sure many appreciate that.

Given what I just said... If some lowbie is in PI near portal corp... I say let them die the stupid and horrible death they deserve. PLing is for lame ducks who can't figure out "Hey, I could get levels far quicker if I actually went out and did missions instead of standing in PI/Grandville begging to be powerleveled".