Moonlighter

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  1. Quote:
    Originally Posted by EvilGeko View Post
    Define "meaningful" progress? Personally, I would define meaningful as having uncommons in all 5 slots. That takes significantly less than hundreds of hours for ten characters.



    Strange. I was able to log on last night and be in a mission inside a minute. What's changed in your mind? The fact that you have content that takes longer than two minutes to form? How has that changed from pre-Issue 20? Even forming an ubiquitous ITF can take 20 minutes or more at slow times.

    But solo content can and always has been able to be done quickly upon logging in and is still there last I checked.
    I guess I don't understand how you could have logged onto a level 50 that has completed their IO build and alpha slot and made meaningful progression on that character. Is there some content that provide progression to my IO'd out 50s that I missed?

    If you point is that I can log onto my many 30's alt and still play the game then while that is true it is irrelevant to the point of end game progression being designed as primarily a raiding experience.
  2. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Celestial_Lord View Post
    You still have all the non-Incarnate content available. The developers have taken nothing away from you. And even then, only the Alpha slot level shift can be used outside of the Incarnate trials.

    Really, all this crying about not being able to get Incarnate abilities outside of running the Incarnate trials is sounding like, "I want to have my cake and eat it too." Most of the Incarnate abilities are for the Incarnate trials. You can still run level 50 missions or a Lady Grey Task Force without having a Tier 4 Destiny or Lore just fine.
    The whole of my post talks about how raiding is an unsatisfactory for end game progression, which means to most people a direction for completed level 50s with maxed levels and completed IO builds to advance. Saying that the old content still there is totally irrelevant since the whole post talks about end game progression and that old content you are talking about no longer provides progression to those characters.

    Next, your point that the end game raiding provides some rewards that are only useful in end game raids only bolsters my argument. Thanks, though.

    While the "have your cake" comment might be useful to sound dismissive it doesn't actually relate to anything I said.

    For seven years the game's strength has been scalable small group content that makes it convenient and fun to group in a wide variety of set ups. Raiding is completely contrary to this strength. I don't want the devs to abandon this type of play when designing an endgame. If I wanted to raid for loot I'd be playing WoW.
  3. After seven years, the entire level 50 progression system has been moved to raiding. Scalable small group and solo play, always the games biggest strength, has now become the after thought. With Positron's latest letter the dev team is revealing a design where raids are the primary progression and small group and solo play come months later as an after thought. I am unhappy with this design paradigm.

    Worse, from what I can tell to make meaningful progression on my 10 level 50s will take hundreds of hours grinding out the same two raids.

    Actually "the same two raids" is off topic. There could be 8 more raids and it still wouldn't make me happy. The problem isn't that there's only two raids, the problem is that after 7 years the devs are moving the game to a raiding system. Endgame progression? Yes please. Turning the game into a raiding system? No thanks.

    The strength of the game has always been its robust, scaling group mission system. When friends ask why I still play the game I've always said it's because I can log into the game and being doing a meaningful mission within two minutes.

    That's all changed.

    By making end game progression all about raiding the game has pulled a 7 year bait and switch where it's abandoned it strengths and adopted the same old tired idiom that the other MMOs (that I don't like) use.

    Why am I unhappy? It's not that I hate raiding. I don't mind occasionally jumping into a league and grouping. The problems arise when this becomes the preferred play style.

    First, the time to form a raid group varies from 15 minutes if I am lucky and things are hopping to 45 minutes if things are slow. I usually play in two hour increments. That means to progress I am basically usually wasting 25%+ of my playtime hopping in place waiting for a group to form. Also, for every successful TF or raid I run there is one where the raid half forms, I wait around for 30 minutes, and the whole thing is abandoned due to lack of players.

    The LFG league system isn't working for some reason. Each time I have entered that automatic queue I am still sitting there 30 minutes later with no feedback.

    Even if these systems were working, the "sweet spot" of the game is the 2-4 range. This is where I've always had the most fun, and where CoH shines. This is where I don't mind grouping with a Mastermind because in this group size the pets don't crowd the screen. Even in 8 man groups everything tends to blur into a zerg. No other MMO I've tried supports this sweet spot of 2-4 players like CoH, and the game has moved completely away from this strength.

    (This is at the same time when the competition is finally releasing mission arcs that are high quality and scale for 1-5 players. Basically they are hitting this experience just as CoH is abandoning it.)

    I supposed there are people that like hopping in the RWZ until groups form and power run league missions over and over and over getting endgame loot. I am happy for them, and I am glad that the dev team is supporting that playstyle. Doing so, however, at the expense of solo and small group play and then throwing on that progression months later as an afterthought is not cool and not something I want to see from the game in the future.

    I know in Positron's letter he said they are working on solo and small group ways of obtaining Incarnate rewards. To be honest, the fact that this is added as an afterthought months after the system goes into place doesn't bolster my confidence. This type of play shouldn't be an afterthought of a departure from the core gaming into a raiding end game.

    TLDR version. The core strength of the game for seven years has been scaling small group and solo play. Changing the entire game to rely only on raiding for end game progression is bad. While having a raiding element to the game is fine, please make solo and small group play a primary focus for progression, not as an afterthought to raiding.
  4. Two things:

    First, I was totally disappointed. I thought when I read the title we could finally pick a character from a long list, pick any server, and just log into it. I don't know why any modern game doesn't do this, other than games with specific PvP servers that want to limit jumping into and out of PvP worlds.

    Second, I wouldn't mind having an alternate guild name and being able to check off an option to display <alternate character name> of <guild name>. So if I really wanted to by, say Snowblind but couldn't get the name I could appear as Snowblind of the Obliterators or Enforcer of A.R.M.O.R.
  5. ~ In other games, various and spontaneous world PvP encounters.

    ~ Attacks on cities to kill enemy leaders.

    ~ WoW's battlegrounds. Arathi Basin and Eye of the Storm. I have some fun in the larger ones like Alterac Valley as well. (I hate capture the flag.)

    ~ Yes I like WoW's arenas.

    ~ In CoH, RV pre-diminishing returns. I loved grinding through enemies there waiting to get jumped. Since a majority of the zone was stalkers and I couldn't actually initiate combat with them I'd grind Arachnos waiting to be attacked. Back then the PvP enemies had good drops.

    I never liked the lower zones nor would I play them as long as I lose all my set bonuses. The concept of collecting sets at reduced level so the bonuses work in lower level PvP areas is annoying and frustrating to me.
  6. My MA/SR is the only character I have that can effective both punch an enemy in the head *and* kick an enemy in the head while maintaining good DPS.

    ...

    What?
  7. The easiest way for me is:

    All toggles with 3 defense.
    All passives with 3 defense.
    Combat Jumping with 3 defense.
    Weave with 3 defense.
    Tough with the Steadfast +3% defense.
    A full set of Gaussian's in Build Up, Tactics, or Focused Accuracy.
  8. Moonlighter

    Devs Top Ten

    Here's a few of mine, in no particular order, that haven't been mentioned or that I had additional comments for. I am trying to pick ones that haven't been mentioned.

    ~ Respecs. Early on I deleted and rerolled my Claws/Invuln scrapper from scratch four times because of messed up builds.

    ~ Auras. The initial game didn't have them. They are awesome and still a better customization than any other game I have played.

    ~ Ninja Run. I can't begin to explain the amount of joy this one power has given me. Since I run a lot of natural, gritty characters it really fits. It's also just fun to navigate using it. Best of all as someone who doesn't like the default run and jump animations on regular body types, having an alternative like this is really awesome. I can't wait for Beast Run and hope for other alternatives in the future.

    ~ Inherent Fitness. I found myself playing the 1-20 game. *Playing* Not leveling up to 20 like I did previously, but actually playing the game and enjoying the missions.

    ~ Katana animations rework. To this day they really are awesome and stand up to the newer work.

    ~ Alternate animations for Martial Arts and Super Strength. Let's hope some are coming for Dual Pistols.

    ~ Praetorian Police boots, Resistance boots, and Sports boots. Before Going Rogue the game seriously lacked good boot options so adding three in the same update was awesome. More boots please.

    ~ Rikti War Zone. This is really the only solid high level zone they put out that gave my high level characters lots of new things to do. This is still, IMO, the best update for high level characters. I still play the arcs of this zone, and I still have to reduce the difficulty on my IO'd out powerhouses. Although the incarnate stuff is cool, it doesn't really add an entire zone like the RWZ did.

    ~ Magic Booster Pack. The "Baron" coat is my favorite general costume option added to the game and the collared cape with the shoulder overlay my favorite cape option. I wish they had the mantled cloak from that pack without the tall collar.
  9. Quote:
    Originally Posted by _Elektro_ View Post
    Yea... I'm seeing from your edit you realize it sounds like you're disagreeing with me. lol

    But you're preaching to the choir. ;P

    I'm going to post in Dual Pistol thread on this just because I don't want to muddy this thread with discussion specific to DP when it's about Alpha slotting in a more generic discussion.
    It's actually about /Energy. The discussion has little to do specifically with DP and applies to any primary that can't generate continual AoE damage.
  10. I *really* wish Dominators had the weapon assault sets. I really want a AR, Dual Pistol, or Archery secondary on a Dominator.
  11. Quote:
    Originally Posted by _Elektro_ View Post
    Yup. Dual Pistols/EM.

    Basically I look at the damage monitor while I play.... there is no way I'm taking Musculature on a blaster. YMMV but I'm definitely going Spiritual Core.
    The reason I ask is for /Energy, recharge equates to a chunk of defense. Power Boost increases your defense boosts from powers by a good chunk; going with recharge to make Hasten and Power Boost perma indirectly boosts the defense that your powers contribute to your mitigation.

    The bigger the defense from powers (as opposed to set bonuses) the better perma-PB looks.

    By leveraging a recharge based build in DP/Energy with, say, Scorpion Shield I can cap S/L and Energy defense at the same time as having Hasten and Power Boost perma.

    The advantage of this strategy as opposed to stacking defense in the traditional way is that the up time for Build Up and the recharge of Empty Clips, Bullet Rain and Hail of Bullets is dramatically better than my build that had less recharge and more defense stacking.

    Edit: This post is meant as a discussion of strategy and not as a disagreement. The tone upon rereading might make it sound like a counter point or disagreement and I didn't mean it that way.
  12. Quote:
    Originally Posted by _Elektro_ View Post
    It's funny you mention almost 5 sets of purples.

    Here I am thinking that if I did go recharge Alpha, I might skip the purples, because the downside of purples is you can end up giving up a lot of defense. Right now my attacks are loaded with positional defense. To give those up means I get squishier, but faster. Not lots faster, because in some cases we are talking about replacing 6.25% recharge, with 10 %.

    So what's the verdict? Are you keeping him this way? My thought was to keep the bonus to defense sets, and bonus to damage sets, and forgo the Purple sets. (as said in my previous post my recharge is really decent already.)
    Wait, aren't you /Energy?
  13. I was surprised when they had alternates for all the blast sets except pistols, since alternate pistol animations were a popular request. I'd be happy if my basic attacks used the Thug MM animations tweaked if necessary to be the same length as the current ones.

    Most of the animations are cool for a trick shooter, but less desirable for a gritty pistol blaster. The animation I really hate is the throw my pistols up in the air and then fire though.
  14. Also, you're SR. Blind and Spectral wounds have no positional component so you'd be using Psi defense.
  15. Moonlighter

    Alpha Slot Info

    What about the Defense buff? I know Accuracy and kind of lack luster as compared to the other three, but with the ultra-Rare giving an extra 20% defense buff with 2/3 over ED, that's 1.333% on all defense powers. If that pushes interim sets to soft cap can you swap out defense buff sets for damage, recharge, etc?
  16. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Cheetatron View Post
    From Dpa and Dps perspectives, pretty sure its the worst DPA attack in the whole set can the additional follow up crit redeem it?
    Yes. Attacks chains with Eagle's Claw followed by Crippling Blow are only 4 DPS behind the top chains, and the ability to use EC and follow it with Dragon's Tail makes it worth it. In normal game play you shouldn't notice the DPS loss and the extra crit on DT adds to the somewhat lack luster AoE.
  17. One other point about /Invuln... since my Invuln is softcapped with one foe in range, the extra defense from multiple foes from Invincibility actually provides excellent protection against defense debuff cascade since the first couple lucky attacks in a big group don't usually kick me under soft cap.
  18. Quote:
    Originally Posted by _Elektro_ View Post
    okay...

    So I worked this little puppy up to have good ranged/AoE and other defense mostly. I skipped fighting pools, and went CJ and Scorpion instead. This is about the best I could afford, skipping Purps and Ham.
    If you are going Ranged/AoE I would probably skip Scorpion Shield in favor of Weave. I tend to treat defense stacking as an either/or proposition. Either go S/L, then work on Energy/Negative and Fire/Cold, or forget Scorpion Shield and go Hover + Ranged, with some AoE.

    Going over to villain side, doing the arc, and dealing with the purple glow are all a giant pain in the... let's just say if you are going ranged you would probably be better served sticking with the melee/ranged/AoE world.
  19. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Dispari View Post
    I soloed the incarnate intro arc with SOs on my DP Corr so my mileage has definitely varied.
    Quick question; I started a DP/Traps corruptor twice and rerolled due to kill speed. Theoretically it look like I might be able to get good damage, except my -Res trap wasn't available every spawn and by the time I dropped two trapped and fired off my AoEs my blaster basically killed things.

    Have you been able to round out the Corruptor to have a satisfying kill speed? It doesn't have to be blaster good, but I don't want to watch paint peel while I am doing missions either.
  20. Quote:
    Originally Posted by _Elektro_ View Post
    Just a quick question as I try to figure out a way to make my DP/Energy guy a bit.... more... epic.

    Some people suggested switching sides long enough to grab Scorpion armour.... I just looked at it, and it gives 'good' defense to Smashing, Lethal, and energy..... What's the deal with that? I thought 'Positional' defense was the way to go... I mean how does that work? A roll to hit gets through, then a roll to see if the 'lethal' part of an attack gets through?

    That seems weaker to me than just cranking up positional defense with the means of the Fighting Pool or something like that. I wanted to avoid the fighting pool this time, and just go something like Combat Jumping and the Scorpion Armour.

    BTW: Does the Scorpion Armour have a physical appearance? (I hope not)
    First, Scorpion Shield has a purple glow. It's not terrible, but with some concepts it can be distracting. Don't even get me started that we have to choose between swapping to Villain for a purple glow or use clunky ice cube armor to get the best protection.

    Second, Scorpion Shield is very high defense. I know it says medium, but the actual numbers when buffed are over 16% in S/L and Energy.

    Third, S/L is great overall defense to have because a large number of attacks have a S/L component. Stuff you wouldn't think would, like Total Focus, Bone Smasher, Fire Ball, Inferno, Ice Bolt, Ice Blast, etc. Since it's defense, the game uses your best defense against the attack, so attacks with a little bit of S/L are fully mitigated by S/L defense.

    Ranged is great for hovering blasters but when you have a primary like DP where you have to get down and dirty in the middle of groups to use your nuke S/L is excellent defense. The fact that you can also cap Energy is bonus since a lot of commonly encountered groups also use energy attacks.
  21. Quote:
    Originally Posted by _Elektro_ View Post
    Very nice answer.

    But still... is it worth the influence? What is the goal? Do you get the bang for the buck from your blaster than you would with a different AT?

    I like the way you play your blaster though... sounds like a fun way to live... or die.
    It isn't yes or no, but a matter of degree.

    First, if you don't chase Defense you won't, in my experience, really feel any advancement from, say level 34 on. Maybe you'll get a cool APP power, or if you are lucky your secondary power rocks, but your capability won't really increase much.

    The first level of increased power comes from getting to 30% defense. At this point you really start to notice the increased defense and it's easy to cap with Purple inspirations when you need. If you don't want to dump lots of influence into the build then go for, say, 30% S/L and 15 to 20% in others. You can do this through normal play by running tip missions to go villain and grab Scorpion Shield, and then using tip missions to gain Hero Merits to pick up Kinetic Combats.

    Increasing power level no longer requires you to play the market or farm in the traditional sense; you should be able to slowly build out using tip missions and hero merits. If you are market savvy you can but and sell recipes and then buy what you want, if not then you can get a new recipe every 2-4 days of play. Tip missions should only take like 45 minutes to complete.

    Also, recipes don't bind. You can accelerate the process by running tip on two different characters.
  22. I would like to see a 35-50 level zone with a China Town theme. It would update the Tsoo up to high level standards, add in another China/Korean styled totally new group, maybe a more natural based group like the syndicate. It would have a live event that was like a Chinese New Year with the large costume dragons and fireworks where you had missions to do like stop assassinations, track down fugutives, etc. I might even go so far as to include an asian flavor of Freaks!

    I think the large amounts of red and green you could incorporate into the zone color would make it visually exciting and unlike anything out there.

    I would also avoid having Giant Monsters in the zone, instead have random spawns of Elite Bosses causing trouble (robbing banks, destroying property, terrorizing important NPCs, etc.) so people who encountered them could deal with them solo or in small groups. But I am a firm believer in the concept that randomized encounters = solo play and group play should be preset content that can be started at the convenience of an assembled group.
  23. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Hejtmane View Post
    I think I only have one toon left with a travel power spines/da and got it late just for adding a second KB IO so I never have had issues using just Ninja run + sprint

    But back in the old days on my /sr i use to use swift + sprint + quickness for a travel power as well with no issues
    Back in the old days my travel power was perma-Elude.
  24. PleaseRecycle has some good advice.

    Once I hit the 40s on a blaster (37+ really) it's time to concentrate on survival. If I am going with a ranged defense build, I am picking up Weave, CJ or Hover, and maybe Manuevers in preparation for hitting 47 so I can build out ranged defense with Red Fortunes and Thunderstrikes. If I am going for S/L defense I am swapping over to villain for Scorpion Shield (because the graphic on Ice is concept breaking) and at 37 I am running tips to build out my Kinetic Combats and other sets.

    The progress actually gets better for me as I build out defense as opposed to picking up basic blaster powers. Before this level I am rounding out my power sets but I am really not increasing difficulty. Once I start upping defense and mitigation I get a sense of accomplishment from upping difficulty to x2, x3, x4 and to +1.

    But not when I am doing tips. God no, I leave difficulty at the base for tip missions in the 40s.
  25. Moonlighter

    Concept

    If you can dump the Stealth pool and use IOs instead I'd love to see Air Superiority worked in there. It still has a natural feel and it's great mitigation against bosses that aren't immune to knock down.