Madam_Enigma

Except I believe it does. That's why weapon customization took so long. Also why we don't get as many costume options as we may want at any given patch. Granted we do have triple the amount of costume pieces now as in issue 4 when I started.

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It will keep it from doing Flamethrower, whick may kill DPS.

Doesn't really makethe missles fire more often.

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Yea, I can't imagine it would either. I mean, the missles still gotta recharge anyway. And flamethrower is part of it's aoe damage capabilities I thought.

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I have to wonder if one of the reasons that so many people get down on /TA masterminds is that everyone wants to go ninja/TA as thematically it seems like a good combo. The problem here is that ninja's are the squishiest melee pets the games offers and /TA doesn't offer a lot to reduce the damage taken by melee pets.

Its primary defenses are glue arrow, which only works if your pets don't close with their targets; poison gas arrow with a small damage debuff that probably won't do much to save a squishy genin and oil slick arrow - which gives pets all kinds of problems.

As much as I think some of the MM values are to low, I might have tried a /TA myself just to get a feel for things but I am certainly not going to try them with a melee pet set and I have worked all the ranged pets sets up a couple times each (except for bots - for some reason I just don't have the patience to play bots).

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I tried ninja/ta too. It might get powerful later on. But at low levels it did feel rather weak. Especially fighting snakes. Then my thug/ta was able to mow through snakes with ease. Sure I still had to resummon now and then, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it'd be.

A lot of the TA hate I think stems from back in issue 5 when it came pre nerfed. On test TA had been powerful. And there were entire teams of TA/A defenders and Arch/Devices blasters mowing through things. Devs saw this, and over reacted. They nuked TA to gimphood. ANd they admitted it was gimped. Glue for instance had 30 second duration and 2 minute recharge after the nerfage. It'd orignally been 30 second duration and I think 10 second recharge. You could self stack Glue to the point where things couldn't attack.

Oh, Prima is good for strat guides for offline games... such as Resident Evil. But for MMOs? Personally I wouldn't trust a strat guide for an mmo to begin with. But tell me if THIS sounds messed up. This is the disclaimer for the guide.

"Prima Games has made every effort to determine that the information contained in this book is accurate. However, the publisher makes no warranty, either expressed or implied, as to the acuracy, ffectivness, or completeness of the material in this book..."

Then later:
"The publisher cannot provide information regarding gameplay, hints and strategies, or problems with hardware of software"

Uhm, what the?! I thought the whole point of a strategy guide is that it gives information regarding gameplay, hints, and strategies.

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TA does, in fact, have several debuffs that are unavailable to Dark, and against AVs, Flash Arrow alone is superior to the entirety of Dark's -ToHit.

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Wow, are you sure about this? I thought Flash Arrow debuffs only like 3.5% tohit?

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Against an AV, a dark's debuffs are combined not quite as potent. A while back AV's got massive to-hit debuff resistance. I recall a couple rad defenders going "WTF" while fighting one with me when they kept getting hit fairly reliably despite two sets of rad debuffs on it.

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Well, two Rad Defenders could maintain 14% ToHit Debuff and -50% Damage on an AV. The ToHit might not be as beneficial since it's resisted, but assuming the AV doesn't do one damage type along with having 90% Resistance to that damage type, the Rads would still be cutting out 50% of the AV's damage all the time.

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The AV musta been pretty resistant then cause it was still doing quite a bit of damage too.

Oil slick can be lit by energy and fire damage. If your primary/secondary can't light it easily, are you tech or magic origin? If so use the power you got at level 1. The tazer and magic charm attacks may suck but they do light oil slick.

Others have likely covered this better, but I want to adress the OP first.

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~ Change the endurance cost of Dark Regeneration to something more reasonable. Charging over a third of a bar of Endurance for a self heal in a set that uses resists and heals for mitigation is harsh. I would like to see the base endurance cost reduced to 20.

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Dark Regen's cost already has been lowered twice. Back in issue 4 DR took 50 endurance base to use. I think the hefty end cost is to balance it. DR is one of the two strongest heals in the game.

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~ Now that Cloak of Fear can only affect minions with Fear, fix the stats on it. Not only is the cost too much for what it does, but the damage aura the set uses actually interferes with its mitigation. The endurance cost for this power should be the same as Weave which would bring it down to 0.33. The power should also be changed back to base accuracy of 75%.

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Haven't really gotten to play with this toy, but I'm guessing I'll agree with you here.

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TA does, in fact, have several debuffs that are unavailable to Dark, and against AVs, Flash Arrow alone is superior to the entirety of Dark's -ToHit.

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Wow, are you sure about this? I thought Flash Arrow debuffs only like 3.5% tohit?

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Against an AV, a dark's debuffs are combined not quite as potent. A while back AV's got massive to-hit debuff resistance. I recall a couple rad defenders going "WTF" while fighting one with me when they kept getting hit fairly reliably despite two sets of rad debuffs on it.

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The sample build doesn't have you pick up enchant undead until level 32, and has you wait till level 35 ro get the second pet buff. It also has you NOT slot anything besides a single acc in the pets.

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That's... that's... well, words fail me.

Presumably this is a relic of the days when the design philosophy was that 3 minions or 1 lieutenant should be the equal of a single villain.

Or proof that the Devs have always hated villains

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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.

I'd love it to, but it wont happen. There's the worry of having masterminds doing 'pimp' characters.... Heck there's people who have even announced if we got female pets they'd do that.

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um..that already happened. you can pick any pool when you respec.

my thugs/traps did black scorpions patron, but currently used MU powers.

[/ QUOTE ] So, with that being said, what is probably the better Epic power for a Bots/Traps MM. Looking for the one that gives me the best defense, I am thinking Scorpion Shield?

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Really their about equal IMO. So go for the one you like thematicly. I went for Soul Mastery myself, and love it. If you already have defense getting a +def shield may be worth it, but it wasn't for me.

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I could be mistaken about this, but I believe Scorpion Shield is the only one of the four that provides Defense, the other three being Resistance based protection.

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Yes, but unless you have other defense to stack it with, it's not IMO any more useful then the resistances.

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um..that already happened. you can pick any pool when you respec.

my thugs/traps did black scorpions patron, but currently used MU powers.

[/ QUOTE ] So, with that being said, what is probably the better Epic power for a Bots/Traps MM. Looking for the one that gives me the best defense, I am thinking Scorpion Shield?

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Really their about equal IMO. So go for the one you like thematicly. I went for Soul Mastery myself, and love it. If you already have defense getting a +def shield may be worth it, but it wasn't for me.

No, think it's flavor of the decade.

Oni on the other hand can run out of endurance at 32 once they have both upgrades. And they do so in one battle usually. It's because they by then have so many fast charging abilities that they can spam.

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Yeah, us bad scrappers hate MMs, with Bodyguard Mode and all your pets out you're a freakin fortress. If you're part of a PvP team, you'll be the rock that shelters them.

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No, bad scrappers can't win vs a mastermind. Good scrappers give me really enjoyable fights which can go either way. /poison does have tools to deal with almost anyone though. It's only the bad scrappers who I can kill multiple times while afk

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i think its more simple than what you guys are eluding too, AE gives players an opportunity to play the game without quantum rifles and void slayers, allbeit it takes a lot of the fun outta the AT's but still, now ppl are willing to take kheldians on ae teams because that stuff doesnt spawn unless the author put it there.

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Unless I've been missing something, Voids/Quants/Cysts/Dwarfs/Novas aren't all that common enough to be discouraging. My wife and I run into them often enough to keep us on our toes and still surprised when we see one, but not to the point that we're always looking out for them. Though we did get a good surprise the first time we ran into a Cyst... On a Synapse... In the boss room... Thankfully we had a team with a good sense of humor and ability to take it out after regrouping.

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If a keld joins the team there's always a void/quant in every mission (on large teams usually multiples) with normal missions. There's also the chance of encountering novas, dwarves, and on large teams cysts.

I'd have thought that the special mobs (voids especially) would spawn in AE missions anyway.

I'm not entirely sure if the debuffs TG applies do stack from the same caster actually.

Dark... yea you want stamina. Those are some expensive toggles.

All I can think is... these people must use the official stratagy guide like it's a bible. Why? Because of how horrible the builds are. Take the mastermind build for example. *pulls out the city of villains strat guide binder and winces*

This is the build it gives for a sample necro/dark. Read and be dumbfounded.

Level 1
Zombie Horde (acc)
Twilight Gaasp (acc)(heal)(heal)

Level 2
Gloom (acc)(dam)

Level 3
slots in Twilight Gasp (healing) and Gloom (damage)

Level 4
Darkest Night (end redux)(tohit deb)(tohit deb)

Level 5
2 slots in darkest night (to-hit debuff)

Level 6
Leadership-maneuvers (end redux)(def buff)

Level 7
slot in TG (heal)
slot in Maneuvers (def buff)

Level 8
tar patch (rech)


Do you really want me to go on? The sample build doesn't have you pick up enchant undead until level 32, and has you wait till level 35 ro get the second pet buff. It also has you NOT slot anything besides a single acc in the pets.

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Then explain to me why masterminds have the same strength of recharge debuffing as defenders.

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From the context I'm not sure if that's rhetorical, but if not: it's because Glue Arrow debuffs via a pseudo pet, and the devs haven't created separate sticky-arrow pets for the different ATs. (MMs do get lower -recharge debuff values when applying recharge debuffs directly) (edit: going by city of data, anyway)


And re: enhancing -recharge, I *think* there is/was a display bug where it showed slow (and possibly runspeed) enhancements as also enhancing -recharge, but that it wasn't really having an effect. My memory's hazy on that one though.

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It was retorical actually. I just get a kick out of people saying "this power is great for X archtype but sucks for Y archtype" when it works identically for both. If something does the same thing for two archtypes at the same strength then claiming one is 'better' at using the power is silly.

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The fear powers are pretty terrible. Get them if you want another control option, but there are far far better ways to get control powers. The aoe taunt is the gem of the set. It's pretty much the only power anyone takes from that set.

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THanks, now I've got the desire to prove this wrong by making a character that takes the entire pool.
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Just like after someone said no one plays ice/mace tankers I went out and made one.

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Ok I MUST ask this, Jade Dragon, WHY ON EARTH would you NOT want your Bruiser to have Equip powers? They DID fix the Handclap, it knocksDOWN now, and the Haymaker is just a good all-around attack. They REALLY brightened him up. Mine (Tank Eater) used to get stuck flinging rocks all the time .. now, he charges in faster than a Kamikaze Pilot.

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I was wondering that too. Sure he sometimes still gets stuck throwing rocks... But I noticed yesterday he now throws one rock then charges in.

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I remember forming a team in the high 40s which included another Thugs/Poison. Since that's one of the few powersets I know well I took a look at his powers, which included all 3 of the pistol attacks, Alkaloid but nothing else from his secondary, the two attacks from the fighting pool (but not Tough or Weave) and the entire medicine pool.

How he'd got to 47 I don't know. I can only imagine he teamed a lot. This was pre-AE.

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Please tell me he'd taken the pets and buffs at least...

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I have seen ninja/TA perform great feats of damage. Only when paired with good healing or defensive support. The TA boosts the damage and helps the ninja's pick their targets more effectively, but doesn't do a lot for their survivability.

I have seen some amazing things done with /FF and /Traps with ninjas and Ninja/Storms is just scary. Pairing the most damaging secondary with the most damaging primary is always going to be a good idea. TA is a better grouping secondary than storms though, so if you're a fan of having greater team utility then stick with it. Otherwise you may want to reconsider.

Personally I would suggest /Traps if you want a good mix of team and solo play, /poison is you are concerned mainly with solo play and /TA is you focus mainly on teaming.

I don't think of MM's as healers. I use mine as tanking debuffers who happen to also deal pissloads of damage. If I have a heal I'll use it, but it's not a priority. If you picked TA I'm assuming this might be your idea as well.

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Yeah... my ninja/poison does heal the team... when I bother to check their health instead of watching my ninja like a hawk. but then healing the team with single target heals isn't so effective. I have binds set up to target my henchmen quickly thus making healing them a snap.

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Glue Arrow - Only really good defensive power in the set, however it is hard to place because it is a targetting AOE rather than a location AOE, does almost no recharge debuff (20% again, isn't much) and frequently won't last through a fight.

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Three recharge SO's and this recharges exactly as fast as it wears off. Look, no more complaint about it not lasting through a fight. Slot some slows in it too and the recharge debuff is stronger. Happy times. The same is true of PGA and most of the other debuffs too.

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Unless there was a change that I missed (which is possible), slow enhancements only affect -speed, not -recharge. The debuff portion of PGA (-damage) is also unenhanceable. So are the -resist debuffs in Acid and Disruption Arrows. That leaves -defense and -speed—and technically -tohit, though it's such a low return for the slotting investment—as the enhanceable debuffs in Trick Arrow.

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Coulda sworn it still enhanced -recharge too. Huh. I guess I should mention something then about the 'low' -recharge. Defenders get the most out of debuffs, right? And masterminds have the lowest values for baked in buff sets? Then explain to me why masterminds have the same strength of recharge debuffing as defenders.

If glue arrow is useful in the hands of a defender or controller due to the recharge debuff, why is it less useful for a mastermind who has the same strength of debuff?