Minotaur

[ QUOTE ]
Fun. I recently respeced my main here lvl 50 spines/da out of the darkness master pool.

I found w/ blackwand i didn't really need it. So I took the leadership pool! NEED. MORE. TOGGLES!

Of course these days I only play him for special events or new TF's w/ my brother's toon who is a mind/emp. Yay for endurance boost powers!

Buffy: I'd recommend not taking Cloak of Fear only because I'm a fan of Oppressive Gloom. From what I've read/seen, CoF is a real endurance drain. OG on the other hand costs less.

[/ QUOTE ]
I went with caltrops, web grenade and exploding shuriken, must have more AoE. These were a vehicle for positron's blast and trap of the hunter for some great set bonuses, and being able to throw spines and explode shuriken on the way in then spine burst is dead handy. I take OG not CoF. I duod a lot with a fire/kin, now that was carnage all the way up, the only concession I made was to delay taking CoD and not run it in the duo to make sure stuff didn't ignore me and aggro on the controller for the alpha as he liked to run in for hot feet and the kin stuff pretty close behind me.

One thing worth considering: if you're not going with set IOs, dam/range HOs can be picked up quite cheaply at WWs and go well in impale and throw spines.

One slight quibble, your imps most of the time will be attacking mobs that are debuffed, and they have good acc anyway, so do they really need the second acc (mine don't even need 1 against less than +3s), yet you only have one acc in cinders and flashfires which have -20%.

I suppose this is academic due to the arrival of IOs where you'll get enough acc from the set IOs themselves and the set bonuses.

[ QUOTE ]
Two things about that:

1. 3% is better than three slots in weave.
2. That's a million or two in influence, that unique.

[/ QUOTE ]

I paid significantly less than a million for the 3 really low level ones that I've bought. The 25 cost a bit more.

Another trick worth noting with the def/res slots. If you have tough and weave and were going to slot them above their starting slots, put an extra slot in tough and take it out of weave. Slot the unique def/res from steadfast protection, the 3% def is better than a slot in weave, and even if it's like a level 11 it's still some bonus res. (the 3% def is fixed, the res varies by level like a normal IO).

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Damn, LH; that's a wee bit early for you folks to go applying patches, ain't it?

Out of curiosity, any particular reason why?

[/ QUOTE ]

One of the "behind the scenes" corrections includes a fix for our friends who play on the European servers. The publish time is to simultaneously publish to both the EU servers and the US servers.

[/ QUOTE ]
Please if you're going to move the maint time, can you give us a bit more notice. Up to now it has always been the Euro maint time that has moved. I'm in Europe (but started on the US game before the Euro servers), so posting at 3am my time that the servers are coming down at 10am is not much use to me, particularly when I had a TF arranged for the morning.

*edit - the above may not have come across exactly how I meant it, but I would like to emphasize that when the Euro server maint is moved, Bridger usually gives plenty of notice. I'm not against moving the maint, and not saying "always move the Euro maint", but Bridger did say that the occasional moving of Euro maint was the price to pay for having the same consignment house on US and Euro servers.

[ QUOTE ]
I have plenty of content ideas for COX, but no way to implement them

for example, we dont have any missions with an insane amount of waves of ninja mobs ( think kill bill, or any hong kong MA film) and we don't have a Tsoo TF. This TF would allow heros to fight Tub Ci and a giant chinese dragon.

Another idea involves a trial that is a raid on a flying sky raider base and focuses on using current base defense technology for base raids to create a mayhem mission of sorts, but for heros.

If I could create custom missions and tfs and trials, I probably wouldnt sleep...ever...again.

[/ QUOTE ]

As has been pointed out, you get the ninjas in the Chimera mish.

Tub Ci turns up in Viridian's arc CoV side and I'm not sure I'd want to fight him.

The sky raider base is done in one of the villain SFs too.

I agree a tsoo based TF would be cool, they are one of the most fun groups of baddies. A BP one also would be interesting.

The other obvious thing to do would be to add a CoV trial/TF where you're trying to blow up the TV reactor.

Firstly at least one AoE hold does do damage, EM pulse although I'm not sure it's worth slotting for it.

One slotting scheme you haven't considered is one I've used for other powers, multiple part sets. This doesn't work as well as it does for some other types of powers (basically due to lack of hold/rchg IOs or HOs), but still is worth considering:

Eg: max silliness

Slot the acc/hold/rchg from all 4 hold sets (two would be level 30) plus the two chance for damages. Note that a 30 triple enhancement has very nearly the same total bonus as a 50 double.

You get +77.2% to all but two possible damage sources, some immob res and + run speed

More sensible:

EoC and GWE acc/hold/rchg, 2xacc/mez HOs, common IO rchg, GWE chance of psi.

This comfortably gets you into major ED territory on acc and mez, gets you into the mid eighties for recharge and also gives you some damage and + run spd.

Acc/mez - Tanker stone melee set, seismic smash has a hold attached much like KOB, so presume it can be slotted there.

I believe you should also be able to stick golgis in tanker ice armor - hibernate.

Lady Lahar 39 ice/stone tank Virtue

Things to add:

Geas of the kind ones works wonders v Mako.

We had no buffing to hit other than a couple of tactics, and not much debuffing (only defender sets present were kin and FF) and rolled this fairly easily so not even the debuffing is mandatory.

A stone tank is a big help as he can fight recluse without taking accuracy/damage towers down if bubbled a couple of times. He can also tank Aeon and all his clones which simplifies that fight.

A second tank prepared to jump in on GW if she holds the first one is also useful, but mainly allows one tank to keep all but one of the AVs taunted, while the second one and the rest of the group kill them one at a time.

Mr Minotaur 50 stone/axe tank Freedom

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Will the builds feel gimped when you exemp? I don't think there can be any question that they will - the set bonuses are too powerful not to notice their absence. But will they be gimped compared to the i8 build exemped to the same level? I don't think so.

[/ QUOTE ]

I have a pretty hard time understanding this, and if you posted a breakdown of your thoughts on it, I'd appreciate it.

Why do I have a hard time understanding it?

Well, you've adimittedly done several non-optimal slotting from a I8/ED perspective things. In particular, you've slotted less damage, recharge or accuracy than "normal", in the expectation that these will be corrected/supplemented by set bonuses. In addition, you potentially have slots that literally do nothing, such as the extra three slots in Health that contain the uniques. Maybe not all three are nulled, depending on your exemplar level, but in the I8 build those slots would actually enhance something somewhere else.

If you're one of the lucky folks who has access to a lot of HOs, this seems even worse, because the "slot compression" you get out of HOs goes a long way to helping counter the loss of enhancement strength that happens with Exemplaring. Since (in contrast to HOs) multifunction IOs have enhancement strengths lower than SOs, it's hard for me to see how it wouldn't be better to just blow off set bonuses nearly entirely if you plan to (for example) PvP in Siren's Call. I'd be happy to be shown this is wrong, though.

[/ QUOTE ]
QFT, if you are comparing a standard build with one with almost nothing but IOs, and I suspect some of them pretty hard to get, you should compare a fully tricked out HO build. That is probably somewhere close to as difficult to obtain, and is an equally viable strategy for I9 with the STF.

That said, this is a really interesting read, and has given me plenty of ideas for I9.

Mr Minotaur 50 stone/axe tank Freedom and 100+ alts, see you in the invention tutorial for the first 3 weeks of I9

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

For the PvE folks reading this, no, Vengeance is not meant to stack in PvE, either and the change, when it happens, will apply in those encounters as well.

[/ QUOTE ]

A note on this point. In PVE, heroes don't NEED to stack vengeance, not with power boost/power build up. The +dam is probably the least interesting aspect of the power, especially if there's a kin on the team. The +def and +tohit, though, are absolutely ridiculous -- CoD lists PBU at 149% buff. That's like being able to double-stack veng all on your own. (And I say this as someone who constantly veng + pbus, and loves doing it.)

Villains don't get power boost or power build up, so single-stacked veng is just nice.

If stacked veng is 'too good', maybe PB'd veng is too?

[/ QUOTE ]
Villains DO get power boost, /ice or /energy doms get it, and use it on the RSF. There are also a lot more AV/heroes with tier 9s in CoV, so it can be very handy. Heroes will appreciate this far more after tangling with Mako on the STF. There will be some groups who can't succeed on the STF without PB vengeance or stacking it.

[ QUOTE ]
Your post makes me sad for my Storm/Psi def, AR/Traps blaster and FF defender. . . .oh and I have a 50 fire tank too, LOL. Guess I really need to get my 42 Ill/Emp to 50 sooner rather than later if I want regular invites to the SF.

And your point 3 continues the trend of what others have been saying and my experience on the team last night. No one had tactics or focused accuracy. The only way I see my Stormie getting regular invites is by having Assault, Tactics and Vengeance....cya Medicine pool(currently have Aid Other, Aid Self, Resurrect for all the good they did).

[/ QUOTE ]

Don't be sad about the bubbler, they're golden, a granite tank with bubbles can tank pretty much anything there (including +4 AVs 3 at a time and recluse with all the towers working), we had nothing but bubblers and kins of the controller/defender types, and had very little difficulty (note no darks/rads). Also force bubble is cool for keeping repairmen off the towers.

Mr Minotaur 50 stone/axe tank

A lot of them use psionic lance which I know has some sort of bonus, but not sure where in the equation it fits.

Granite is best, barracuda I tanked with minerals/weave rather than granite and she couldn't hit me. I died once on the whole SF, and that was after several minutes of fighting Aeon and all his clones alone.

Another tank is dead handy, what we did was to pull the patrons, we got all but scirocco, and I tanked Mako/Scorp while the rest of them killed GW. Then handed another over to the other tank and the rest of them.

Also I kept recluse busy while the rest of them dealt with the towers.

A bubbler is good to use the repelling bubble effect to keep the repairers away.

I'd recommend:
Stone Tank
Other non stone tank
Empath (controller or defender)
Bubbler (controller or defender)
Kin (controller or defender)
Scrapper or blasterx2
Another troller or defender

Mr Minotaur 50 stone/axe tank Freedom

[ QUOTE ]
Stood around the boat and watched the various chat channels as well this evening and watched 8 different groups stream out of the helicopter. 6 were unsuccessful due to giving up after a 30 min to 1 hour fight with Mako. Of the two that were successful, one said they used shivans and yellows, the other seemed to have no idea why they were successful, said it was a tough fight but he eventually fell.

I noticed several of the toons had tactics in their build.

So I'm thinking shivans, tons of yellows or stacked tacics will get the job done and break through that elude.

Still think it's broken if these are the only ways to beat Mako, but at least its more information.

[/ QUOTE ]
Didn't need shivans for Mako, vengeance and Geas of the kind ones ftw, didn't have focussed accuracy, but suspect that's good too.

[ QUOTE ]
Question on Repel powers at the tower:

I have Force Bubble, but my team didn't want me to use it after we killed the first tower becuase the techs can rez dead towers. My thought was to stay on the inside side of the current tower so spawning techs would be pushed away from previously killed towers.

Is this feasible? Or too risky that the techs will go to another dead tower and rez it? We would have won even after the first d/c, I think, except we had very little AoE and couldn't stop the techs. Oddly, they didn't seem affected by Spectral Terror at *all*.

[/ QUOTE ]
We used a bubbler to keep them away from the towers, after all we had 3 and could spare one ...

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
One thing I think is wrong, I wanted to test out how good minerals was, so my stone tank went out with minerals and weave running and found an even con illusionist lieutenant. 63 attempts later, she finally hit him, so I'm fairly convinced that villains don't get the benefit of a streakbreaker.

Mr Minotaur 50 stone/axe tank Freedom

[/ QUOTE ]

Minerals is 25% defense to psionic unslotted, and 39% defense slotted. Weave is 5% defense unslotted for tankers. Combined, you are basically perma-eluded against psionic-typed attacks. Anything lower than net 20% tohit, and the streakbreaker doesn't kick in until 100 consecutive misses, as indicated in the guide.

The streakbreaker affects everyone. I've directly measured it affecting NPCs. In fact, my current hyper-precision method of measuring defense values relies on NPCs being affected by the streakbreaker, and would not work at all if NPCs were not affected by it.

[/ QUOTE ]
This is strange, because psychic clocks were hitting me like 30% (subjective estimate) of the time, do they have a huge +acc/to hit ? That was the basis of me doubting the minerals figures in the first place.

One thing I think is wrong, I wanted to test out how good minerals was, so my stone tank went out with minerals and weave running and found an even con illusionist lieutenant. 63 attempts later, she finally hit him, so I'm fairly convinced that villains don't get the benefit of a streakbreaker.

Mr Minotaur 50 stone/axe tank Freedom

One thing that's occurred to me since our attempt, if the toon with Power of the thorn DCs, are you completely screwed, or does it pass on to somebody else ? If the former then this is a major design flaw as I'd be pretty frustrated if it became impossible to complete for that reason.

Also we found that by somebody sniping one of the 4 patrons and somebody recall friending him out, we didn't have to fight them all at the same time. I think that with the changes to debuffs and AV regen, debuffing is not as important as it was if you can handle the aggro and incoming damage (we didn't need to take the dam/acc tower(s) down). A stone tank being able to handle Aeon and all his clones with minimal support or 2 and sometimes 3 54 AVs does make it a lot easier.

[ QUOTE ]
Is the general opinion to take out all of LR's Minions together? Anyone have any success on pulling them away if so what is your method? The team I was on tried to pull and we ended up getting all 4 of them on us, I was the only tank there, and we didn't have any debuffs except for a kin controller who was having trouble hitting transfusion.

At one point we were able to pull just mako, and we got him down to elude range, he ran off a few times, came back he did this maybe 3 to 4 times no one was following him when he did run either, finally on the last time he came back the rest of his gang decided to help. We couldn't take a single one out, this was a straight up PuG, no WB bombs, and no Shivas. Of course next time I try i'm getting all of them (bombs, and shivas), I also assume I might have to spec into Unstoppable, which I am unhappy doing.

[/ QUOTE ]
We got Mako, GW and Black Scorp together, I (stone/axe tank) left them with GW and led Mako and Scorp away and kept them taunted while the rest of them killed GW. Then they did Mako then Scorp (suspect might have worked better the other way round for those two). We barely used Shivans, think we never had more than one out at a time and no nukes. We also had few if any debuffs (only bubbles and kin available to us of the defender sets) so the regen reduction seems to work.

I found Geas of the kind ones good for hitting Mako through elude.

Mr Minotaur 50 stone/axe tank Freedom

Just completed my first attempt at this - success.

Our team:

2xfire/kin trollers
Grav/FF troller
2x bubble/? defs
Stone/axe tank
Invul/SS tank
Energy? blaster

Note very little debuffing.

Our issues - The temp item for nuking Aeon dropped on the granite tank, so we had problems keeping him hittable enough of the time, which might have been insurmountable without the 2 kins.

Many of the AVs were dropping nothing at all despite me having space for everything except insps. At least before, they always dropped a 53 SO. I only dropped 4 or 5 enhancements in the whole TF.

We only had problems with Mako and recluse really, Mako's MoG was as awkward as it always is, and took ages to get thru and recluse was just tough.

High spot of the TF - being asked by one of the level 50 participants where I got the custom costume piece from, while I was standing there in granite armor.

Mr Minotaur 50 stone/axe tank Freedom

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Along this line... What can you tell us about the various +Stealth IOs from the Travel Sets?

Specifically, can they be slotted in passive powers? If so, how is this going to interact with NPC hostages and such that won't interact with a stealthed character?

[/ QUOTE ]

Currently:
<ul type="square">[*]They can be slotted into passive movement powers.[*]You can have one of each type on your character for some massive bonuses.[*]Escort NPCs will not follow you if these are slotted on your characters.[/list]
Now, before the uproar starts, I have to say that unless we find a satisfactory solution for the last item on the list, these IO's have a high probability of being cut before reaching the live servers. Even if that problem is solved, it is still unlikely that you will be able to slot all 4 versions in a single character -- either that, or the stealth aspect will be reduced greatly.

[/ QUOTE ]

Perhaps just allow it to be used in Sprint. You'll only get the Stealth benefit if Sprint is running. The extra End cost would be a very low cost considering the benefit. If you don't have Sprint running then you aren't Stealthed.

[/ QUOTE ]
My main is a granite tank, I could currently slot this in swift, if it can't be slotted in passives, it's useless to me as the main travel powers including sprint are incompatible with granite and rooted (so I can't have both mez prot and stealth at the same time). Now I can see good reasons why you shouldn't be able to stealth in granite as they can hear you coming, but reality hasn't set in anywhere else, as your 'massive bulk' of granite is still pushed around by 100 lb npcs.

Mr Minotaur 50 stone/axe tank Freedom

[ QUOTE ]
The meteor run is likely easy on purpose, because it's catering to CoX newbies. As well it should. The main problem I'm seeing is the disproportionate reward for such an easy task - five elite bosses. I know some people disagree, but I really wouldn't be sad if they got downgraded to mere bosses, simply because dropping a Shivan makes a mockery of any task in the game.

[/ QUOTE ]
QFT but I wouldn't say makes a mockery of any task, but certainly makes some otherwise very awkward tasks possible. Friend with a 46 human only PB had my 28 troller SKd on the tyrant mission. Tyrant spawns in as a 50 EB (as he does, it being his minimum level). Could we have done it without a shivan ? Probably not, as basically we'd have needed to kill him before light form dropped and I don't think we could have done enough damage in time.

I would suggest it's brought in line with some of the other pets and reduced to 3 uses if it's going to be changed. Making the task to get it harder will simply disadvantage casual players and sub optimal builds who are more likely to need the shivans to accomplish stuff that the l337 brigade can do without them.

Mr Minotaur 50 stone/axe tank Freedom and many others including 8 other 50s

[ QUOTE ]
Solo the Shadow Shard TFs in under 30 minutes... then you'll have MY respect.

[/ QUOTE ]
Particularly the missions that require 4 simultaneous disarms ... (admittedly not as many as claim they do), a few more of those would kill soloing TFs.

[ QUOTE ]
Well, good for you? I guess? The devs need to balance for how the rest of us play, and I'm just going to hazard a guess that most folks are not soloing trials and TFs in 30 minutes.

If a few farmers are swimming in rares, so what? Let em sell em at Wentworths. If, on the other hand, the devs decide to nerf drop rates because of posts like this, it'll just bring added frustration to the majority of players.

[/ QUOTE ]
If a few farmers are swimming in rares, we're going to get the 'I PL for rare recipes' guys out in force. I think there will need to be a limit on how many times in a set period you can do the same trial/TF, as a group with no lives farming say Moonfire could quite comfortably get the best part of 20 TFs into a weekend, much worse if they run a scam like this. 8 people log on to start it, then log out, log on 8 alts and start another, do this 4 times in total. At this point, 4 duos separately do the different TFs to the last mission. Then the 4 last missions are done with full teams.

Also the sewer trial may need attention as you can be level 50 fighting greys throughout on it (barring about 15 seconds while you grab a cannon) and do it comfortably in 30 mins, I did for the badges.

An altoholic with 9 50s