Muon_Neutrino

At this point, all I care about is that the series goes 7 games so I get to watch more delicious, delicious hockey.

So, at the moment, I'm a 'whichever team is behind' fan.

According to city of data, at level 50 it's doing 6.26 damage to you per tick per enemy, so a total of 31.3 damage/s when saturated (max targets 10).

Base scrapper regen is 5.58 hp/s, so 31.3 hp/s is 5.6 times your usual regeneration. So you'd need a total of +460% regen to counteract that, if I did my math correctly. At the HP cap your base regen jumps to 10.04 hp/s, so you'd only need a total of +212% regen, again assuming I did my math right.

Honestly, though, I wouldn't worry about OG's self damage versus regen too much - I have a feeling that incoming damage from enemies and healing from dark regen will be the dominant effects on your health bar in the long run.

To figure out of OG does more damage than it prevents, you'll need to know how much damage those minions would be doing to you, which is going to vary a lot. Basically, though, what you need to do is figure out a single minion's damage output per second, modify it by your resistances and defense, and compare that to OG's 6.26 damage dealt to you every 2 seconds. Note that OG will still damage you even if the target is an LT or boss which it can't mez, so even if a simple calculation says that the minion would deal more damage to you than OG, if the spawn is only half minions OG might still come out worse if it's on the border.

It can still accept all 4 of the hold set damage procs; the difference is that the power is no longer capable of the truly absurd number of proc rolls it used to be. A digression:

When you lay the trap, the little green orb has two powers - one that gives it status effect immunity, and one that causes it to self destruct and summon the gas effect when an enemy gets close. Originally, the self destruct/summon power either had no target cap or an extremely large one (I don't remember which), so it would summon one copy of the gas for *every* enemy in its effect radius (16 feet, according to city of data). *Each* gas cloud would then proceed to make its proc rolls against every foe in its 25 foot radius.

So, if you had two procs in the power (both original hold set damage procs) and there were 20 enemies in range when it detonated, the power would make *80* proc rolls against *each* enemy when it went off (because the gas cloud has 2 effects, the one shot hold and the continuous debuff). It would then make another 40 rolls on each foe every 10 seconds after that until the cloud expired, assuming that anything was still alive.

That's what they fixed by giving the gas summoning power a 1 target cap. Nowadays it's still an ok proc power. It gives two chances for each proc when it first goes off, plus another chance at 10s, 20s, and 30s - it's just not the overwhelming proc nuke it used to be, and it's probably not worth slotting too many procs at the expense of enhancement percentages given the power's mitigation role.

It's not autohit - or, rather, the part that offers the initial mitigation isn't.

Poison trap has two effects when it's set off. The first is the pulsing -regen -recharge chance to vomit, which is autohit and lasts for 30s. The second is the initial hold, which goes off once, lasts 6s by default, and is *not* autohit. It's this non-autohit component which provides most of the power's mitigation (generally you plant it in the middle of the spawn at the start of a fight), giving you time to toss a couple more traps - if it hits and lasts long enough.

Poison trap doesn't take accuracy enhancements, however accuracy from hold set IOs *does* improve the initial hold's chance to hit. Nowadays the power isn't a damage proc monster like it was before they fixed it, so I like to slot it for acc, hold, and recharge along with the lockdown proc. A 4 pack of basilisk's gets you some decent numbers to start, and you can fill it out with the lockdown proc and something else to round off the enhancement numbers.

I would indeed say that this is better, although there's still some things I would change.

First, are you trying to go for typed or positional defense? You seem to be doing a bit of both at this point, which is a bit odd - you're over the trial softcap to S/L/E, but you also seem to be going for AoE defense? Personally I don't think I would bother too much with AoE - S/L/E is going to cover a *lot* of what's coming your way already, and some of those slots might be better used elsewhere. That isn't to say that AoE defense couldn't be useful (and I think you will still be able to get away with a fair amount), just that I wouldn't hesitate to sacrifice it if I needed the slots.

Specifically, I would try to free up an extra slot for each of your attacks (apart from HoB, which is pretty well slotted already) and add a 4th piece of thunderstrike or a 5th piece of posi's to each. This nets you some nice set bonuses (accuracy and recharge) and rounds out the enhancement values of each attack. For the AoEs, 'everything but the dam/range from posi' is a good slotting, and for the ST attacks I'd go with thunderstrike acc/dam, dam/end, acc/dam/rech, dam/end/rech (in addition, of course, to the procs you already have in those ST and AoE attacks).

You can free up a couple of those slots with simple swaps as follows. Force bolt doesn't need enhancement, and specifically you should move the +rech proc to bullet rain (where it will proc much more often, since it's an AoE) and just stick an acc/end/rech or an end/rech or a damage proc or something in the base slot. Similarly, PFF doesn't need enhancement for defense - it already provides a ginormous 75% at base. That slot can be deleted, and then you can move the LoTG +rech from CJ to the base slot of PFF (it doesn't need recharge either since your global recharge will cover that) and save another slot.

That makes two, but you still need 4 more for your attacks. To get those, I'd sacrifice a bit of AoE defense. Instead of slotting deflection and insulation shield with serendipity, slot them with LoTG def, def/end, +rech. This saves 5 slots from those two powers, in addition to a 6th from removing the LoTG +rech from dispersion bubble (since you'd be over the limit of 5). Use two of those slots to put the other two pieces of BotZ in super jump (getting back half the AoE defense you lost, as well as a bit of ranged def), and then use the other 4, along with the two from earlier, to beef up your attacks as suggested above.

The last change I would suggest would be to try and get a 4th slot in weave for a bit more end reduction (and you can pick up another accuracy bonus while you're at it). To do this, I would delete the second endredux from force bubble - it *is* a very endurance hungry power, but it's also one you're not likely to be running very often, or for long periods of time, while weave will be on continuously. If you swap the end in FB for a LoTG end/rech in weave, as long as you're using force bubble less than half of the time you'll use less end overall (and I can guarantee you that you won't be using force bubble even close to half the time), and you get a nice accuracy bonus to boot.

Finally, it's worth considering whether you actually want executioner's shot or not. With its long animation it's not necessarily a mandatory power if you've got piercing rounds (especially if you've got a fair amount of +rech), and so if you're not especially wedded to the power it might be worth swapping it for repulsion bomb. AoE damage is generally more useful on teams than ST, and repulsion bomb has nice KD and stun effects too. The number of slots required wouldn't change, just swap the 4 thunderstrike and proc for 5 posi's.

Yes, death is the ultimate debuff, even for defenders. There is no point in slotting your attacks for 'not damage', *especially* when the two (slottable) debuffs are -defense and -movement, which are very much not worth slotting for. If you want to debuff with pistols, you're going to be doing effectively just as much debuffing with damage slotted attacks as you will with debuff slotted ones, just because slightly increasing the small defense or movement debuff isn't worth bothering with. The actual debuffs are the -damage or -recharge.

Meanwhile, you do roughly half the damage of a blaster with your ranged attacks. That's not especially huge, but it's still more than worth slotting for. You aren't going to be mowing down spawns by the dozen, but if you can finish off a few minions or take an annoying LT out of the picture that's still a worthy contribution. Just because you might not be there *primarily* for damage doesn't mean it isn't your responsibility to contribute what damage you do have.

Regarding the specific build, please pick up force bolt, personal force field, and piercing rounds (unless you dislike the animation too much, which I can certainly sympathize with).

Force bolt is your 'hello nasty boss, please flop in the corner and never get off a shot while my teammates kill you' tool, and it's a beastly one. Aoe or unreliable knockback can be disruptive if not used carefully, but extremely reliable, very fast recharging ST knockback is very useful (and to boot it requires almost no slotting). PFF, meanwhile, is one of the best panic buttons in the game. Sure, you can't attack while it's on, but very few things do a better job of keeping you alive when that nasty enemy decides your face needs bifurcating or when everyone drops around you (and, again, it requires effectively no slotting). Finally, piercing rounds actually carries a *good* debuff in the -resistance it offers with standard rounds. Since you're primarily a 'keep my teammates alive' kind of defender, it's nice to have something to toss out to help your team in the damage department against an AV or similar (for similar reasons, an achilles' heel -res proc is very nice in pistols and empty clips).

As for the slotting, I'll let someone with more experience in very high end builds comment, although I have to say that at first glance you might want to pay more attention to the actual enhancement values (whether under or overslotted) - full sets are not necessarily the be-all and end-all of set slotting.

This is one power I would definitely frankenslot for maximum damage *and* endmod.

Damage, of course, is important, and damage auras (despite their small damage per hit) are generally among the larger contributions to a character's damage. As well, since damage factors into the threat formula, the more damage you deal the better your aggro control will be, so it's definitely important to slot it for damage.

However, endmod is also important, since even if you aren't /elec draining is still a big part of your potential mitigation. Fully endmod slotted power sink will be draining 78% of an enemy's endurance, which doesn't do anything on its own. However, fully endmod slotted lightning field drains another 5.8% every 2 seconds, so it'll eventually drain them dry (or keep them there, if someone else drains them first or you hit them with another powersink). Most fights won't last long enough for drain to really have much impact, but it can definitely help in tougher battles. (This is also the reason you want powersink fully slotted for endmod *and* recharge, so you can drain stuff as fast as possible.)

Personally, with unlimited funds at level 50 I'd slot it as follows:

Armageddon dam/end, HO acc/dam, multistrike acc/dam/end, efficacy adaptor endmod, endmod/acc, endmod/end.

That gives 81% acc, 87.6% dam, 80.8% end, and 95.4% endmod, along with a couple minor set bonuses. You could also replace the purple with a plain dam/end (and possibly switch to scirocco's to grab a regen bonus) if you don't want to shell out the inf for it, at a cost of 6.8% damage and end enhancement.

well, no dice on the channel thing. The two usually visible networks are on channels 6 and 11, and they were actually joined by a new one today (looks like someone else nearby just got wireless hooked up) also on 6. However, the network I'm trying to connect to is on channel 1, so it's already as far as possible from the potentially interfering networks.

Looking around online, I've seen a fair number of reviews decrying this particular router as unreliable and having a weak signal. A few people even talked about having similar connection dropouts as me. However, in all the cases I saw it affected all networked computers at the same time. Do you think it could actually be the router after all?

(sent during a brief window of stability)

In regards to distances and obstacles, I live in a large house that's been carved up into 4 apartments. With the way the ground slopes, at the rear of the house the basement is effectively at ground level, and I live in the apartment that takes up the rear half of the 'basement'. The first floor is divided into two other apartments, and my landlord lives on the second floor. So the router is in the same house, but it is a couple floors up and more towards the front. I suppose the distance issue could explain why his computers are working and mine isn't, if there's interference from the neighbors.

I will try scanning to see what channels the networks are using. If it turns out that there isn't any overlap with the other networks, is there anything else to try besides getting a different brand of adapter?

Hey all, I'm hoping to get some help figuring out why my computer is refusing to maintain a stable wireless connection. Back in january I got my desktop hooked up via a usb wireless adapter to my landlord's wireless internet, and once I sorted out the initial glitches it was working pretty well.

However, it did have occasional periods where the connection would die for no apparent reason. The general pattern would be that it would suddenly drop the connection and the network would no longer appear on the list of visible networks. The adapter itself would still be working, since I could still see the two other nearby networks that are usually visible (neighbors, I assume), but I couldn't see the network I had been connected to. It's not a signal strength issue, because when it's visible it's usually a pretty healthy 3 bars. Occasionally, the network would reappear and my computer would try to reconnect, but it would usually fail and the network would then vanish again. Either that, or it would say that it had reconnected but I wouldn't be able to actually access anything, and then it would disconnect and vanish again in a few minutes. This could persist anywhere from less than an hour to an entire evening, but it was only a occasional occurrence.

A couple weeks ago something changed, and it suddenly started doing the above continuously. In all that period, I never had a stable connection for more than an hour or so, and that only a few times. Additionally, even when it was connected it was *extremely* slow and laggy - web pages took forever to load, and the one time I managed to get into CoH the rubberbanding was atrocious and netgraph was reporting 1000+ ping and large spikes of packet loss.

Initially I was assuming it might be a problem with the wireless router, simply because the behavior seemed to be so random. There seemed to be no link at all between anything I was doing and when the connection decided to drop out, reconnect, fail to reconnect, etc. Talking to my landlord, though, apparently there are 3 other computers and a wireless printer that have all had no problems, so it's something that my computer is doing.

I really don't know where to look for something like this. I consider myself a modestly computer literate person, but not enough so to fix them when they break. I did some googling and tried the steps listed here, and it *seems* to have helped slightly - I now have a stable connection perhaps 20% of the time rather than 2%, but it's still incredibly unreliable and is also still very slow and laggy. I don't really know what else to do.

Specific info: my system specs are as detailed here. I'm on windows 7; the other three functioning computers are all on vista. The wireless router is a Linksys E1000, and the wireless adapter is a Belkin N150 usb adapter. Does anyone have any ideas, either on what might be causing the problem or suggestions on where to look?

One thing to note is that if you want to plant it in the middle of a spawn to open a fight, you'll need two things - stealth, and for PGT's hold to actually hit.

Generally I find that if you just run straight into a spawn, the FF generator lags far enough behind to deny you its protection just when the spawn uses its alpha. Some form of stealth, or indeed full invisibility, is very useful to prevent them from unloading on you while you're vulnerable (I use super speed + stealth IO). Even if you're using seekers to avoid the alpha (which is a very good idea), stealth is useful to prevent them from noticing you while you get within the rather short 60' casting range.

The other issue is that, at base, the initial hold is not very reliable. Even against even cons it'll only have a 75% hit rate and last 6s, and of course those will both degrade against up-level foes. You can slot hold to make it last longer, but the power doesn't accept accuracy enhancements. However, since it accepts hold *sets*, and hold set IOs can have accuracy in them, it *is* still possible to boost the accuracy of the initial hit. I prefer at least 60-70% acc to get good CTH on +2s, but any at all is still helpful. Acc/hold/rech IOs are your friend. If you can get good acc and hold enhancement in it, that initial hold suddenly goes from 'unreliable and very short' to 'reliable and short-but-long-enough', where 'long enough' is enough time to lay whatever other traps you want and get out of the way.

Regarding the 'every AT should have a unique set' argument, that ship already sailed quite a while ago. Discounting set types which are by nature unique since no other AT shares that category (i.e. dom assault, blaster manipulation, and MM summoning), blasters, defenders, scrappers, brutes, doms, and corrs all aready have no unique sets left.

Even if we count the unique set categories (giving blasters and doms back their 'unique' status), defenders, scrappers, brutes, and corrs all have no unique sets. Given that recently every new powerset added to the game has been given to all applicable ATs (with the sole exception of /shield for stalkers), does anyone seriously expect the devs to create *4* new powersets and then give each of them to only *one* AT just so that everyone can be 'unique'?

The only unique powersets left are illusion control, ice armor/melee, ninjitsu, and poison. None of them have any overriding reason why they can't be proliferated to at least one other AT. Given the precedent of the aggro auras in shield, willpower, and invul, aggro control isn't a reason to deny scrappers ice armor. Given the precedent of the mezzes and KD in dark armor and stone melee, fury issues aren't a reason to deny ice/ice to brutes. Given the precedents of the multitude of control pseudopets in sets such as earth, ice, and elec and the ability of high recharge fire/ and mind/ doms to perma-mez PToD EB/AVs, domination issues and potential perma-PA EB/AV mitigation aren't a reason to deny illusion to doms. And given the precedent of the stealth and mezzes in dark armor and the gadgets in weapon mastery, there's no reason to deny ninjitsu to scrappers.

It isn't your imagination - in addition to the 'needing to be on the ground' thing, grounded is indeed not quite as strong as most knockback protection powers. For an example, let's compare it with ice's 'wet ice'.

For knockback, wet ice has the following effects:
-10 Knockback, Knockup for 0.75s If NOT on a PvP map
RES(Knockback, Knockup) +10000% for 0.75s If NOT on a PvP map [Ignores Enhancements & Buffs]

Meanwhile, grounded has the effect:
-15.578 Knockback, Knockup for 10.25s

So, grounded actually has higher magnitude knockback *protection* than wet ice does. However, it's lacking the 10000% *resistance* that wet ice, and most mez protection powers, have. This resistance reduces the magnitude of almost any KB power you're hit with to a very small number, which the mag 10 protection is more than sufficient to cover, so only unresistable KB would be able to breach that protection. Meanwhile, while grounded has (at level 50, anyway) mag ~15 KB protection, it has no resistance and thus any KB over mag 15 sends you flying. Since KB mag scales up with level due to the purple patch, +4 enemies in trials could easily be packing enough KB to put you on your butt.

You could try slotting a -KB io or two and seeing if it helps - I don't know exactly what magnitude KB the enemies are packing, but if it's somewhere south of 20 then a couple of -KB might be able to get you over that. Similarly, since the purple patch scales up KB mag, if you don't already have your level shifts then those would help.

As far as I know, it's a visual effect only. I believe the actual radius doesn't change, just the size of the graphics effect.

I honestly never even gave a second thought to CoH's default movement keybinds. To me, w/s move forward/back, a/d move left/right, mouse turns/looks, it has always been that way in everything ever anywhere, and shall always be. When I sit down at a computer my fingers automatically go to wasd until I actually start typing. If a game didn't let me reassign movement to wasd I think I'd probably go nuts.

I would convert a few billion into prestige for my personal bases, and then probably just sit on the rest - my taste in IOs isn't expensive enough to use up that much money very fast, so I'd just be very slowly using it up to fund characters.

Haven't had the opportunity to test such things myself yet, but about the lore pet, I'd actually think that you might want the radial there too. Why? Well, from what I hear the resistance debuff can stack up to 4 times, and so if you've got 2 sources for it then I'd imagine you'd probably keep the debuff nearly fully stacked even with the radial's low chance. If that is the case, then presumably the radial's higher DoT chance would lead to more damage. This would require some testing with a power analyzer, tho, to see whether you + pet could actually reliably keep the debuff in the 7.5-10% range.

It it needs IOs, ranged defense, extra resistance, perma mez protection and a self heal, then it's not fine, it just means that you can compensate for its weakness. No control AT should need that much help with mitigation. I agree that skipping AA is nuts, and people doing that definitely contributes to the set's poor reputation, but that doesn't mean it's fine.

Well, first off I'd say that healer is definitely a sub-type of buff/debuff, not a category of its own. Apart from that, I'd more or less just add the category 'control', and note that control and tanking are related.

The real thing I'd think about, though, is how the archetypes generally fulfill more than one role. Tanks are aggro management with a side of damage, controllers control and buff, defenders buff/debuff and blast, doms control and do damage, masterminds often do damage, buff/debuff *and* aggro management... etc. Every archetype other than maybe blasters fall into more than one category.

edit: bah, cross posted. Basically, what he said.