MrTPF

Hey all, and happy new year

Thanks for the tips, Silver Weasel.

[ QUOTE ]
Only use it for attacks that are almost guaranteed hits (Torrent/Nova/Explosive Blast/Power Push); Power Bolt/Blast/Burst/Snipe don't give it enough chance to be worthwhile.

[/ QUOTE ]

So how come the powers in the first list have an almost guaranteed chance to hit whereas the others don't? Is there an accuracy penalty for the second list? I didn't notice anything like this in the in-game descriptions, though hero builder does mention an accuracy buff for Sniper Blast (20%), Power Push (30%) and Nova (30%). In contrast, I take it the 'Status: Knockback x%' in the power description is how much KB is applied once you get a successful hit? It would be great to know more details


[ QUOTE ]
Learn that KB from above means KD. Very useful for all.

[/ QUOTE ]

Never tried this before. Interesting. Might be going for hover/flight but more likely hasten/superspeed.

[ QUOTE ]
Don't slot more than one KB to a power; unless punting cogs [Even without ED, the increase is minimal over the initial; think it's something like half a second extra per slot]

[/ QUOTE ]

Hmm, is that from a source I can read up on, or from experience?


[ QUOTE ]
Whilst you may LOVE the KB, others don't; so use it sparingly.

[/ QUOTE ]

Heh heh, I think everyone in this particular team will LOVE it.

[ QUOTE ]
The other thing is that KB is one of the few secondaries that don't work at ALL against a number of higher mobs; so over-reliance on it will get you dead.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ok, do you mean that certain types of mobs I'll encounter at higher levels will be 100% resistant to KB, or do you mean that mobs that con higher to me will be resistant, at any level I am? I reckon you ment the former, but I'd like to be sure .

I've been checking out that guide linked from the 'Know Your Enemy' thread, but it isn't entirely clear to me yet which are 100% resistant.


Something we discovered on the first night was that Lt's and Bosses sometimes withstand the KB on certain powers even if you get the hit and they take damage. This often worked to our advantage: in slightly larger spawns we'd use a couple of torrent waves to KB and clear away the minions to a safer distance, leaving the Lt's/Bosses standing for a more focused pummelling by the three of us. Once they were down we could clean up the minions.

Haven't come across many flying mobs yet, so not entirely sure about this one, but are flying enemies also resistan to KB? Or do they just have the faster-to-recover-from animation that people sometimes take hover for? Or do they just get knocked out of the sky, Air Superiority style? Perhaps I'd have to use your 'KB from above = KD' tip.

Thanks for sharing

To the others that have expressed an interest in joining in - haven't been on recently in light of other festivities. I will however be on this evening, and tomorrow night (tuesday) is a guaranteed session from 20:00 onwards.

Heheh, never heard him called that before, but can totally understand the reasoning heheh. Kinda like it. I call mine Stoney Montana - hes ma lil friend!

(Scarface reference for those who don't get it)

[ QUOTE ]
I love knockback heavy teams, have you got any room for a stormie? Which server are you on? What lvl have you got to? I want to see the chaos!

[/ QUOTE ]

Woo! Only noticed your post after I had submitted mine, but I seem to have answered most your questions already. Would love to have a stormie on-board. If I'm honest, I don't usually enjoy teaming with them because of the chaos control. My main is Earth and likes things tightly packed and held around the tank, Storm always seems to scatter things all over and I find it frustrating. But for that same reason, I'd love to have one on our team

[ QUOTE ]
there is another advantage to slotting knockback: it increases 'magnitude' not just distance, so you can knock over things that would otherwise not be affected. For example, carnie strongmen can resist gale slotted only for accuracy, but stick a KB SO in there and they go flying.

I think it's a shame that KB doesn't stack like mezzes though. 8 simultaneous torrents should knock anything over

[/ QUOTE ]

I've been wondering about breaking KB resistance. So KB enhancements in a power do go towards breaking any res, but stacking two KB powers from several blasters won't accumulate?

[ QUOTE ]
Mad as in you can knock minions to interplanetary trajectory with power boost and KB enhancements but why would you want to do that?

[/ QUOTE ]

As I said, purely to see if we can . It's entirely for fun. It may work out, or it may not. It might even turn out that we are incapable of beating anything more than equal lvl mobs in this group. But we are certainly going to enjoy finding out . I can appreciate how many other players will find this a pointless exercise, but after having spent several hours last night in a team of 3 blasting our way to lvl7, I can safely say it will be a hell of a ride to nowhere



[ QUOTE ]
.. would be funny if the first human on Mars would be a skull though.

[/ QUOTE ]

Heheheh, got chatting to a 50 Elect blaster last night called Plight Trawler. He was curious about my search comment and we got talking about the whole KB thing. He showed me some serious PBAoE KB power he had and told me energy blasters could do 3 maybe 4 times that distance. So I have high hopes for sending Skulls into orbit



[ QUOTE ]
Ok ive strayed completely from your original question!

[/ QUOTE ]

Not a problem at all! It was both a very interesting and very encouraging read.



[ QUOTE ]
I don't think ED affects multiple Kb slotting much, so 2 or 3 in your attacks should be fine. But it's a unique idea on putting knockback over damage and accuracy, knockback has it's advantages and disadvantages in PvE. For example as i mentioned earlier once your target has been knocked back you have a few seconds, maybe more depending if you activated power boost/vanguard or slotted more kb enhancements, to finish off your target with more attacks. However from a more efficient point of view for a balanced team, too much knockback can mean your targets splitting, which evidentally can lead to more mobs being aggro'd, and AoE's affecting less targets in the group as they are more spread out.

[/ QUOTE ]

Definitely a good point for consideration, and something we'll need to play around with I think. The team is just starting to get a feel for the powersets and each other, but we're trying to coordinate all the KB so it isn't too disruptive (to us). There were a few occasions last night when the mob completely split and was a little unmanageable afterwards.



[ QUOTE ]
I admire you for coming up with this, and if there's room left on the team I will have to join you. ... If I can join I'll have to make a kin/en defender and keep Repel on all the time

[/ QUOTE ]

Heheh, thank you kind sir. And certainly there is lots of room! We'd love more people to join, as long as they understand this is for fun and not xp, and certainly not to be taken seriously. I'd be interested to see how storm/en, ff/en, rad/en defenders would do in the team, but I'm sure a kin will also be very tasty. Mmmmm, siphon POWAH! I might be rolling a defender myself and switching now and then depending on what the team will need at the time.

We launched the group last night, with much laughs and giggles. We're currently lvl 7, first base mishes from Lt. Wincott. We play on Defiant, and will hopefully be able to team for this 2-3 nights a week, but at least once, from 20:00 - 22:00 UK time. This is to accomodate one team member who doesn't have a whole lot of time available for gaming, and we don't want to outlvl him.



[ QUOTE ]
I would suggest slotted attacks with 2 knockback, 2 damage, 2 accuracy, just so you have the knockback and damage output to go with it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Seems wise, I'm certainly slotting 2 accuracy as I HATE to miss, but I'll be juggling the knockback and damage depending on how things go.

My global is below, send me an ingame message and we can hook up

Mad as in, slotting KB won't really have much significant effect?

Or mad as in, you crazy fool, what sort of team idea is that!?



This is part experimentation and part fun, mainly just having a laugh and see how far we get. Did you want to join us, Shannon?

Besides, you've said it yourself in other tank-related threads. For some people it's not about xp, it's about the journey... you play as you like or you don't need to play at all

Oh yes, Power Boost! Been playing with Hero Builder and that's a definite choice!

So is there a knockback distance cap?

Hello blasters,

I'll soon be creating my first blaster char. Until now I've mainly played support roles but am recently trying other builds. I've done some searching in this forum and the Guides section, but there doesn't seem to be much info on my specific questions. Your input would be welcome.

Some friends and I will be starting an experimental PvE team of eb/em blasters. The focus here will be on entertainment value rather than high rate of xp gain, and therefore we will be teaming only with ATs that have a good deal of knockback in their sets. The basic idea is to get as many mobs flying around as we can, simply because we find this incredibly funny. We are going to follow some basic guidelines in our builds, such as to always slot KB enhancements before slotting DMG where possible.

My question to you is: Is there an actual benefit to slotting KB on each eb/em power that takes it, or is the actual gain negligible compared to the base KB of the power itself? Also, what's the recommended KB slotting? 1? 2? 3 where possible?

Perhaps the answer will change from power to power, and I've already read a couple of threads where people seem to disagree on this general point. It would be nice to hear a few more opinions from experienced energy blasters.

I once made the mistake of slotting my Earth troller with KB enhancements on EarthQuake. The effect was quite marked, and I'd say that if this also applied to eb/em I'd do the same there.

Thanks very much.

Thanks both, for the detailed replies. It's cool to hear advice from contrasting perspectives - certainly food for thought. And thanks very much, Shannon, for the maths - this is the sort of thing I had tried to do with the hero builder but didn't quite manage. Very insightful, and I appreciate how the maths would convince anyone of certain things.

Since my char is still pre-stamina and pre-Lotus Drops, I thought I would try the same analysis on my current attack cycle. Apologies for the alignment, it's a little hard to get right with the forum font:

[ QUOTE ]
<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>
With no End Red slotting,


End Act
Focused Fighting 0.2388 0
Focused Senses 0.2388 0
Combat Jumping 0.0740 0
Total toggle EPS 0.5516 0 = 0.5516 EPS

Sting of the Wasp 6.0320 1.67
Flashing Steel 6.0320 1.67
Divine Avalanche 4.368 2.17
Total cycle EPS 16.432 / 5.51 = 2.9822 EPS


Assuming base recovery is 1.667 EPS,


Final EPS = Attack + Toggles - Recovery = 1.8668 EPS


Which means 9 cycles over ~53 seconds.





With 1 EndRed DO at 16.7% on each attack,

End Act
Sting of the Wasp 5.025 1.67
Flashing Steel 5.025 1.67
Divine Avalanche 3.685 2.17
Total cycle EPS 13.735 / 5.51 = 2.4927 EPS


Final EPS = Attack + Toggles - Recovery = 1.3773 EPS


Which means 13 cycles over ~72 seconds.





With 1 EndRed DO at 16.7% on each SR toggle,

End Act
Focused Fighting 0.1988 0
Focused Senses 0.1988 0
Combat Jumping 0.0740 0
Total toggle EPS 0.4716 0 = 0.5516 EPS

Final EPS = Attack + Toggles - Recovery = 1.7868 EPS


Which means 10 cycles over ~55 seconds.</pre><hr />

[/ QUOTE ]

So the difference is quite significant in this context too, 3 attack cycles (ie 9 attacks) over almost 20 seconds of up-time. I think this has convinced me to slot my attacks for Endurance Reduction. I suppose I'll be able to do mostly without Rechard REduction once I get Quickness, so it will mainly be 3 Dmg, 1 EndRed, and 1 or 2 Acc on attacks.

Problem is, I've already gone and slotted the toggles, taking advice from an in-game /sr player . The question is therefore, will the End Red slots on the toggles be worth it later in higher lvls or should I just respec them out now with my freespec?

Practiced Brawler seems to be very near-perma with 2 Recharge Reductions after Quickness. I'll be adding some ToHit to Build Up as well.


Ok, so now we have that out of the way, here are some more items for discussion. In my current build I've opened both Leaping and Speed, but have yet to decide on travel power. I took CJ for the added +DEF to stack with my SR. Is this 2.5% worth taking a power? If not, then perhaps I can just drop Leaping altogether. If so, then is it also worth taking Manuvres to stack another further 2.5% +DEF? I'm worried the difference will not be noticeable and that I could save the choices for elsewhere.

Thanks again folks.

Quick update. We had an offer to do Positron last night and (finally!) finished at 2:30am I think. Here's a tip - don't try it on invincible unless you have time... looots of time.

Anyway, that means we'll be interested in Synapse for now. Pinkette may be moving house that week, so I will update as soon as I know more.

[ QUOTE ]
Change Posi and Synapse to Wed and Thurs and I'll be there with Leese.

[/ QUOTE ]

You might not want to start swapping things around now that players have begun to comit, but if you do... then we should be in for both of those. Pinkette still needs Posi too.

Positron: Pinkette (ma/sr), Me (kat/sr)
Synapse: Pinkette (ma/sr), Me (earth/emp)


[ QUOTE ]
can do the 3rd, but at what time is it?

[/ QUOTE ]

He said,

[ QUOTE ]
So I was thinking of a Taskforce bonanza at 20:00 from 1st-4th Jan; every night

[/ QUOTE ]

Hey Kendai, this time I definitely recognise you

Pinkette (ma/sr) and I (earth/emp) are possibly up for Synapse. I believe that's the last one I need for the Accolade too. Will confirm soon.

Good luck with the other TFs, have fun!

I left around 20:20-30 and there was still a team of heroes though not too many villains I could see. There were far far more players earlier, I think they regrouped in WB around 20:00ish.

Thanks everyone for helping to rescue Cassandra. See you next time I get Spelunker.

[ QUOTE ]
Would like to see another one of these organised in the new year when Sirens gets sorted.

[/ QUOTE ]

I second that! It was much fun, for the short time it lasted. Never seen that many people in PvP. It was pure mayhem, but the crashing proved to be a little too much mayhem.

The irony was I crashed on my way out of the zone too. *sigh*

Have crashed 4 times already. First time was moments after I'd zoned in and joined a team. Now I keep crashing on the SC loading screen whenever I try to log in

I hope the battle goes well...

Thanks for confirmation you lot. Updated lineup:

1. Me
2. @Azazel
3. @Sargatanas
4. @JamieB
5. @Lord Viscera
6. Ixia
7. @Himura Kenshin
8. @Hey Man

Still awaiting confirmation from #4 and #5.

Hi folks, thought I'd post in here rather than start a new thread since the topic covers my query too.

I'm currently playing my first proper scrapper, so far I've mainly played Controllers. He's a *suprise suprise* kat/sr and just dinged 15. I've tried melee chars in the past and always found I preferred Controllers, but I'm REALLY LOVING this guy. Glad I chose these sets together, because they seem to have some nice synergy going on - defense-wise. He is primarily for PvE, but may become a PvP main in future.

I am currently slotting DOs. I still have two slots to add, now I've dinged 15. The build to this point is as follows (although I may have chosen the slots in wrong order in the builder):

---------------------------------------------
Exported from Ver: 1.7.6.0 of the CoH_CoV Character Builder
---------------------------------------------
Name:
Level: 15
Archetype: Scrapper
Primary: Katana
Secondary: Super Reflexes
---------------------------------------------
01) --&gt; Sting of the Wasp==&gt; Dmg(1)Dmg(3)Acc(3)Empty(5)
01) --&gt; Focused Fighting==&gt; DefBuf(1)DefBuf(5)DefBuf(7)
02) --&gt; Flashing Steel==&gt; Dmg(2)Dmg(9)Acc(9)Empty(11)
04) --&gt; Focused Senses==&gt; DefBuf(4)DefBuf(11)DefBuf(13)
06) --&gt; Build Up==&gt; Rechg(6)Rechg(15)Rechg(15)
08) --&gt; Divine Avalanche==&gt; Empty(8)
10) --&gt; Practiced Brawler==&gt; Rechg(10)
12) --&gt; Combat Jumping==&gt; DefBuf(12)
14) --&gt; Hasten==&gt; Empty(14)
---------------------------------------------
01) --&gt; Sprint==&gt; Empty(1)
01) --&gt; Brawl==&gt; Empty(1)
01) --&gt; Critical Hit==&gt; Empty(1)
02) --&gt; Rest==&gt; Empty(2)
---------------------------------------------


I have some questions that are mainly related to use of Hasten and Stamina. I plan to definitely get Stamina, and I already have Hasten.
<ul type="square">[*]Should I be slotting my attacks with Endurance Reduction before I get Stamina? [*]How about after I get Stamina?[/list]<ul type="square">[*]Should I be slotting my sr toggles with Endurance Reduction before I get Stamina? [*]How about after I get Stamina?[/list]At the moment I don't have a serious endurance consumption problem - unless I pop Hasten.

I was really excited getting Hasten coz this is the first time I've ever tried it on any character. I was impressed, yes indeed, and it certainly fits with this character's concept. After having used it a couple of days now though, I'm a little worried. As expected it allows me to perform an almost non-stop chain of attacking, but also as expected, at the severe cost of increased endurance consumption to the point of detoggling. Here are some questions you could help me with:
<ul type="square">[*]Is Hasten recommended on this build?[/list]If I was to keep Hasten,
<ul type="square">[*]Would Stamina alone handle the endurance burn while Hasten is activated?[*]Would Stamina + Endurance Reduction enhancements on attacks handle the endurance burn while Hasten is activated?[/list]If I have to slot my attacks for Endurance Reduction, then an alternative might be to slot for Recharge Reduction instead. In that case, perhaps I could save a power and drop Hasten altogether.
<ul type="square">[*]Would Quickness + Recharge Reduction enhancements on attacks come anywhere close to Hasten?[/list]I've tried to figure this out using the numbers in the hero planner and making the attack chains, but I'm afraid I still need some guidance. Thanks, all.

Update:

1. Me
2. @Azazel
3. @Sargatanas
4. @JamieB
5. @Lord Viscera
6. Ixia

So far, 3 have voted to go for Friday night, around 2100 UK time start. Awaiting confirmation from the others.

Thanks for the comeback, all. I hope I don't regret it when I start doing the Carni mishes.

Okie, I have had some takers. The lineup so far:

1. Me
2. @Azazel
3. @Sargatanas
4. @JamieB (or @JamesB?)
5. @Lord Viscera

I'll spam the badge channels for the next couple of nights, and we can go for this on saturday. How does that sound?

Will send a few globals in case not all of the above check forums.

I'm a casual PvPer but I do enjoy it, so I'll be helping to fly the heroside banner high!

So far no date in mind, was expecting a larger response in interested parties. Will keep the offer open till next week and then get in touch with you Azazel.

Hi all

Ok, I'm a currently lvl35 earth/empathy controller, primarily PvE. I've spent much of the last few months trying my best not to lvl, waiting for some friends to catch up. So even though I've only had Animated Stone for a couple of lvls, it feels like I've had him for a long while. This means I understand the uses of my pet, and his limitations.

However, much of that time has also been spent exemping to between lvl25-30, which means I've gone without him for quite a while. Now that my friends have caught up to my lvl, and I'm starting to use him again, I've begun to wonder whether he is really worth the slots.

I'm a team oriented player, I never solo - unless I'm providing empath support to low lvls in the Hollows. What I'm trying to say is, my team always has a tank and always has damage dealers. Given my pet's slow recharge and often-stupid behaviour (ie running away instead of attacking mobs) I wonder whether it is time to say good-bye and respec him out.

I'd like to hear from higher lvl earth trollers on how long they kept him and whether they felt the tradeoff was worth keeping him or whether they eventually specced him out.

Thanks.

'Find missing fortune teller / rescue the mystic' has just popped up on a new char I've recently gotten to lvl 14.

[ QUOTE ]
Most people will probably have this important badge already, but I know it's a real pain in the butt if you've missed it and outlevelled the mish. So if you want Spelunker, respond here or in-game to @Oneiros and we can arrange to include you.

Will leave this post open for a good few days, hopefully we can get a full team of Spelunkers.

[/ QUOTE ]

Priority goes to those heroes that have outlevelled the contact. I'm cool with rushing the mish at any lvl, I'm not interested in the xp - just wanna help fellow heroes missing the badge.

Hey Tommy, did this go down?