Muon_Neutrino
-
Posts
1274 -
Joined
-
Quote:I wouldn't be too down on the chance of getting siphon life or life drain. Dom primaries are control sets, none of which would have a self heal anyway. Dom secondaries are mashups of blast and melee sets with an occasional utility power thrown in. Again, (excluding dark sets), there wasn't an *opportunity* to give them a heal, apart from the utility power. And of the secondaries with a utility power, only fire, ice, and earth even have thematically matching self heals that could have been included. Plus, doms get two +regen powers in drain psyche and spirit tree. Finally, we do even get an actual heal - a dull pain clone (hoarfrost) in ice mastery. I don't think that 'no self heals' is actually a design decision (like apparently is the case with stalkers and endurance recovery tools) so much as they just haven't had any reason or opportunity to.Originally Posted by Benchpresser
If I don't get some kind of Dark Dom by I22 I will be buying a plane ticket out west and my only carryon luggage will be a 2X4 and a wet noodle!!!!!!!!!!!!!
OK, now that I got that outta my system- I do believe we will see Assault first, BUT.. do not hope for either Siphon Life or Life Drain. It seems to be a design choice not to give any Dom's any self heal in sets. We very likely will get stuck with a stinker like Dark Pit. BUT I'll gladly skip that if it means blasty goodness of Tents and Nightfall...
Not to mention Midnight Grasp....
On the other hand, I definitely wouldn't expect to see either tenebrous tentacles or dark pit, because I expect those to be yanked for use in dark control (suitably modified, of course). I also wouldn't be too surprised to see some variation on touch of fear or cloak of fear in dark control, so I wouldn't expect those in dark assault either. All of the various possible new dark sets are interrelated and thus will need to be handled carefully - Sunstorm posted about this once.
For a hypothetical dark assault, I'd look at it this way. Dark blast, gloom, and at least two from the list (shadow punch, smite, shadow maul, midnight grasp) seem sure choices. Soul drain is out because it's in two epics already. Nightfall seems likely, but there's no dark-themed PBAoE to give them, so a possible second AoE is up in the air (unless it's shadow maul). The possible issue with nightfall, though, is that it's a *very* narrow cone to give to an AT which is expected to be in and out of melee - perhaps they'll modify it some. I would think that one of siphon life or life drain would be in, but of course not both. Oppressive gloom would be incredibly difficult to balance (mag 4 stun aura when in domination?
), so that seems a bit questionable to me, although there aren't too many other utility powers *left* to give them. Torrent is another possibility for a 'utility' power, or maybe death shroud (unlikely). Moonbeam is a definite possibility, especially if they choose siphon life instead of life drain. And, as a *completely* off the wall possibility, I could see some insane dev putting in soul transfer as the 'utility' power (which would be awesome 
).
If I were making it, I'd probably do something like this (if I was only allowed to use existing powers):
1: Dark blast
2: Shadow punch
4: Shadow maul
10: Gloom
16: Smite
20: Nightfall
28: Torrent or Soul transfer
35: Moonbeam/Midnight Grasp
38: Siphon life/Life drain
Basically, either moonbeam+siphon life or life drain+midnight grasp, depending on which one the devs decide would be more appropriate. Give me the life drain/midnight grasp/soul transfer version and I'd be taking all 9 powers.
-
Elec/ is an interesting set as, like ice/, a huge chunk of its mitigation comes from its aura. When I see a set like that, my first thought is to look for mez protection to keep the aura running. However, while ice/ is so endurance intensive already that you'd have to be nuts to pair it with something like /sonic, elec/'s aura actually *gives* you endurance.
Both FF and sonic will give mez protection to elec. However, only sonic will actually do anything to boost elec/'s lackluster damage. FF will keep both you and your pets safer, but it has very little offensive support and I think the KB wouldn't mesh very well with a location-based set like elec. Besides, pairing it with elec/ is the only way I've been able to think of to play sonic without being perpetually out of endurance, so if you've been wanting to play sonic somewhere, this would be a good place.
Is /sonic the best secondary for elec/? Probably not - even though it gives mez protection, it's just not as strong a secondary overall as something like /rad (which also has its own synergy with elec/ in overlapping auras). However, elec/ is almost certainly the best *primary* for *sonic*, and the mez protection will still be very nice. I haven't rolled her up yet, but elec/sonic is what my planned electric control character will be. -
If you lost 20% of the XP, given the way the curve works that means that the confused foes did 50% of the damage. In that case, you probably finished the TF 50% faster, not 20%. And the confuse would only reduce the total XP you get if you then proceed to stand around doing nothing during the 50% of the TF's time you saved. It's not a choice between doing a TF for N XP and doing a TF for 0.8*N XP - it's a choice between playing for (say) an hour and getting N XP, or playing for a half hour and getting 0.8*N XP.
Total XP for any given task is irrelevant. There are always more tasks to do in the game, even if the current task has ended. If you're worried about XP, the only relevant stat is how much XP you get per unit time, and confuse doesn't decrease that. -
Funny thing is, just based on looking at the server load lights, it seems like there's a lot more players on consistently than there were before GR. I almost never used to see any of them in yellow/red apart from virtue and freedom unless there was some sort of event, now most of the list is usually yellow when I log in during prime time.
So where is the impact of all those players? Were they just players who were already subscribed but not playing very often? Seems a bit farfetched. -
Quote:Ooh. May I ask what field you work in, to have to worry about CMEs? I've always worried a bit about those, although thankfully we do have some satellites like ACE that ought to be able to give us at least a bit of warning as to how bad a CME might be.Originally Posted by DumpleBerry
Work work work.
Though one of my meetings earlier today involved discussing emergency response protocols to a coronal mass ejection.
Dear god.
As for me, I plan to grade homework , sleep in, play way too much video games, and maybe head down to the local gaming store for some warhammer 40k. I don't care for too much effort in my leisure activities.
-
Quote:Yeah, that whole 'only the proper type of set' peculiarity was what I was basing my assumption on. Good to know it actually does work - having that initial hold actually have a good chance to hit was a big part of the planned mitigation I have for my defender when he gets higher level. Thanks for testing it!Originally Posted by Adeon Hawkwood
I tested on my Traps/AR defender and the initial hold had a 91.4% chance to hit against an even con enemy. So I was wrong, the accuracy enhancement I've got slotted in it does help the initial hold.
Reflecting on it further that does actually make sense. For MM pet powers there is an issue where if you slot a set IO in the pet then any powers that do not use the primary aspect of the set will not benefit from any of the enhancement values. In this case the reverse is applying. The hold does not benefit from accuracy enhancements but the enhancement being used is a hold enhancement so the accuracy boost does work. -
If you can test it, please do - I'd love to find out for sure. Pet power mechanics in general are so weird (and change so often) that it often seems a real chore keeping up with them.
-
It's true that poison trap doesn't accept accuracy enhancements, and the initial hold doesn't list acc in the list of enhancements it benefits from. However, if it works like other similar powers in the game, if you sneak some acc in there anyway through an acc/mez HO or a hold set piece with accuracy, it should affect it. This is similar to widow mind link not accepting recharge enhancements, yet still being slottable for recharge through tohit buff or defense set IOs with recharge. I haven't tested it personally, but I would expect it to work like this.
-
Eh, a lot of defenders don't actually need mitigation from their secondary anyway. It's not like my dark/psi actually *cares* that his secondary does -recharge. And dead mobs do no damage anyway, so you can still mitigate damage that way.
(Yeah, I can't wait for thermal/fire too.) -
The 1.2s animation was actually the original. Way back when, flares had that godawful 2-3 second animation and fire blast had a 1.2s animation. I don't remember when flares was changed (before this, I think), but fire blast was changed as part of defiance 2.0. They normalized the cast times of all blaster tier 1 and 2 blasts, presumably so that all blasters would get the same benefit from the 'fire through mez' part. I believe it was a buff for a couple sets, but for fire's fire blast and ice's ice blast, their cast times went up. On the other hand, corruptors never got that normalization, so they still have 1.2s cast time fire blasts and 1s cast time ice blasts. It's not a case of corruptors getting a special buff, it's just that they never got a change that blasters did.
And given that blasters are still the only ones who can fire it through mez, and that flares and fire blast are still the highest DPA tier 1 and 2 attacks for blasters, I'd consider it a small tradeoff.
(And you really do have to use arcanatime. I know it's more complicated, but if you're talking DPA you're just not getting accurate numbers without it. For example, with arcanatime flares has a 1.188s cast and fire blast has a 1.848s cast - averaging in fire blast's DoT, that gives them unenhanced level 50 DPAs of 53.19 and 50.1 respectively, according to mids.) -
Quote:I think you're severely underestimating the number of people who do this. At least on guardian, even at level 50 I still see probably 75% or more of people with no IO set bonuses listed at all (I compulsively check people's /info), and most of the rest just have a couple of '2.5% immob resist' or '1% recovery', or a -KB or unique or two. If something's only good for people on SOs/generics, that's still an awful lot of people.Originally Posted by YoumuKonpaku
...So, with all of that said, I don't feel Nerve is really worth it unless you are:
Running on SOs or generic IOs against +3s/+4s.
With one SO, you're only capped against +0s. With 2, you're capped against +1s and nearly capped against +2. Not even 3 SOs will cap you against +3s, although you'll be close. However, running on SOs, putting more than 1 acc into something is a rather significant sacrifice since it generally means slotting either no end or no recharge. Slotting the nerve alpha means that they can actually cap tohit against more than +0s with one acc. And given the +4s (effectively +3s) you can fight in several TFs, I wouldn't go near one of those TFs on a SO'd character without a nerve alpha. -
The answer to your question is that that's not the right question to be asking. In this game, healing is probably the *weakest* form of team support, simply because buffs, debuffs, and mez are so good. A partial list of random support style things I think are more useful than healing (in no particular order):
Defense buffs and tohit debuffs so that you don't get hit in the first place
Resistance buffs and damage debuffs so you get hit less hard
Knockdown, slows, and other soft controls so you get hit less often
Holds, confuses, and other mezzes so you don't even get attacked
Damage buffs and resistance debuffs so that the foes die before they get very many attacks off
Recovery and recharge buffs so that the team can gogogogoneverstopattacking and kill stuff faster and see above
That's not to say that healing things or giving them regeneration buffs (which are actually often more useful than heals) aren't *useful*, because they are. Tthey make a great complement to all of the above support effects, and I'd never turn down a teammate just because they had a heal as opposed to another type of support (especially since, while other types of support may be *better*, often healing is still *good enough*). However, what it *does* mean is that if someone were to roll an emp/* defender, take all of the heals and the rez, one unslotted attack, the entire medicine pool, none of the buffs, and a bunch of travel powers, they'd be seriously missing the point. The real strength of the empathy set is actually in the powerful buffs, especially fortitude.
If you want to experience the firepower of this fully armed and operational battl... wait, wrong line. Sorry. Anyway, if you want to really experience the true power of buffs, debuffs, or mez, try dark miasma or radiation emission. Both of those sets have a decent heal, but both of them also have mondo powerful other abilities. That line above might be from star wars, not CoH, but trust me, you'll be cackling like the emperor the first time you leave an entire spawn permanently trembling in fear with dark's fearsome stare.
Anyway. To try to answer the initial question, if you're looking for all-out support I'd go with a controller. Controllers don't get dark miasma, unfortunately, but they do get plenty of other nice buff/debuff sets. Defenders get somewhat better numbers on the sets that they share with controllers, but in my opinion the safety provided by a controller's primary set outweighs that in terms of team support. Defender blast sets may tack on some additional minor debuffs, but that doesn't compare to the lockdown ability of a control set. Defenders seem to have been intended as somewhat of a hybrid ranged auxiliary damage / support archetype, while controllers are lockdown/support (that's not to say that you can't do damage as a controller, but on average they don't do as much).
If you haven't tried a controller before, I'd suggest earth control (multiplicity of good control options), plant control (seeds of confusion = best single mez power in the game), or illusion control (two long-lasting fire and forget options in phantom army and spectral terror leaves you with plenty of time to use your secondary). Pair those with the support secondary of your choice and go forth to neuter your foes. Just one tip: repeat after me, 'immobilize is not a control'. It doesn't stop your foes from attacking, and sometimes immobilizing things is actually counterproductive if they're currently spread out, or teammates are relying on knockdowns. Use your AoE immob if there's both an advantage to mobs remaining where they currently are *and* reason to believe they won't stay there without it, but otherwise be sparing in its use. -
For something which is already AoE: it gives a chance to stack mag on bosses if you don't have dom running, if you missed someone they might be confused anyway by splash from a mob next to them, and it potentially allows you to confuse more mobs than you could normally hit if someone's got a really huge melee going on. Not as big of a bonus, but still worth it.
-
Loving this new release - I'm glad that I can finally stop doing a bunch of scratchpad math every time I wanted to figure out how much an alpha boost was helping. I do have two things to note, though.
First, I'd like to echo the request for a way to easily turn the incarnate boost on and off. One of the things I first wanted to do once I selected the boost was to go through and see how many seconds of recharge I was saving off of various powers. Unfortunately, clicking back and forth through that window to select and deselect the boost to compate numbers for each power really got old fast. I'd personally make it work like the old accolade power did - one click to turn on/off, double click to alter. I understand that this probably coming, I just want to note that there's at least two of us eagerly awaiting it.
Second, I seem to have some sort of weird display bug with my warshade. Specifically, the power icons have all become significantly smaller, unless I drag the window size narrow enough that they start to go off the edge. At that point they snap back to regular size and start scaling down to fit as usual, however the inherents are then cut off at the bottom even if there's more than enough room for them.
Pictures:
Everything has become small
Inherents cut off
I run windows 7 with a screen resolution of 1920x1080, if it makes a difference. -
It really depends on the character - what they want, and how close to the ED limit they already are in the relevant powers. The difference between 45% and 33% isn't too important to me unless it's the last few percent to something important like a res/def cap - in which case, the ED ignoring is likely to be the more important part of the alpha anyway.
For example, the only things my shield/mace tanker has pushed into ED levels is def and res on the defensive powers, and damage on the offensive ones. I'm not really interested in the defensive bonuses since she's already over softcap, her endurance management is fine after she dumped her merits into the uniques, and AAO already gives me enough damage buffing that more would be significantly diluted. So I'm just going spiritual to tighten up my attack chain, but I don't need the very rare since not a single one of my attacks has more than 56% recharge in it anyway, so I'll just stop at partial core revamp for the level shift.
On the other hand, my FF defender would go all the way to very rare on any of the three alphas I'm considering giving him. Nerve core paragon for the ED ignore on defense buffing and accuracy for those nasty level 54 TFs, cardiac core paragon for the ED ignore on toggle endredux for solo, or musculature core (or radial) paragon for ED ignore on the damage (and potentially endmod).
My warshade will also be going to spiritual core paragon, because she *is* pushed into ED cap on recharge on the important stuff, and wants MOAR! Not to mention tightening up the nova and dwarf attack chains will be nice.
-
Apart from the misleading 2.0 listed accuracy, there's another weird quirk with pets and IO sets - each enhancement only benefits any of the pet's powers that could slot that set type. So, for example, enhancements from cloud senses (an accurate tohit debuff set) shouldn't boost the tohit debuff in his aura, despite the fact that the set enhances tohit debuff, since his aura is an autohit power that doesn't accept accuracy sets. Similarly, an enhancement from an accurate healing set won't boost the accuracy of his tenebrous tentacles, since they don't heal.
For this reason, I think it's best to slot him with straight tohit debuff sets. Debuffing tohit is what he's best at, and a normal tohit debuff set will benefit all of his powers apart from the hold. Then, add some generic accuracy IOs on top of that, since they actually work for all of his different powers that need to hit. My own personal slotting would be 4 dark watcher's despair and 2 generic accuracy enhancements. -
I love how je's still banging on about this, as if making visually distinct alternate animations to fill the time was flat-out impossible. Maybe there's just a lack of imagination involved. And bringing up the (legitimate) model-to-model interaction engine issues involved in a hypothetical street fighting set is awesome, especially since it has damn-all to do with a blast set where you never touch your foe. Regardless, I'll just leave here what I said last time he brought this up. Suffice to say, it's nowhere near as impossible as he thinks.
Quote:Originally Posted by Muon_Neutrino
This is an interesting angle to take on this. I'm personally one of those who would like an alternate set of animations, but I will admit I had not thought about making them all distinct as a potential issue.
That said, I don't think this is necessarily an insurmountable roadblock. Let's look at each power's cast time and animation individually and see what I can come up with for possible alternate animations.
Pistols: animation time 1s. The character raises one arm and snaps off a quick shot with one pistol. No gun-fu here, no alternate animation needed.
Dual Wield: animation time 1.67s. A 360 degree right handed spin into a crouch, firing both pistols held sideways, then spinning them as he stands back up. The alternate animation I would use would be for the character to raise one gun to eye level and fire a shot, then raise the other and fire. Optionally, if that doesn't take up enough time, have him fire off another shot from each pistol after they're both raised.
Empty clips: animation time 2.5s. The character fires off quick volleys of three or four shots from each gun with the pistols held over his head, crossed in front of him, and normally. An easy pick for an alternate animation is to keep the volleys of shots, but just hold the guns normally and slightly change aim between each volley.
Bullet rain: animation time 2.4s. The character fires off three shots from each gun while swinging his arms in broad arcs. This one I'm not sure how you'd make an alternate animation for. No matter what animation plays on the character, the curving bullet trail effects will be the same (I think), and I'm having a hard time coming up with a non gun-fu justification for that.
Suppressive fire: animation time 1.67s. The character turns his right side towards his target, crouches slightly, and snaps off a quick shot with the right pistol while holding it sideways, spinning his guns as he returns to the ready position. Kill the spinning and this animation is fine as-is.
Executioner's shot: 2.57s. Turning side-on to the target, the character raises his right arm above level, spins the pistol, brings it down, and fires off a single aimed shot. Again, kill the spin and this animation works for a non gun-fu character, in the same duration.
Piercing rounds: animation time 2.5s.While spinning to his left, the character throws both guns up into the air for no apparent reason. After completing his spin, he catches the guns and 'punches' the right gun at the target while firing it. For an alternate animation for this I would have the character kneel, bring both pistols up to eye level and aim carefully, then fire off a pair of shots from each gun in a measured 1-2-1-2 and stand back up. Keep the motions deliberate and calm and it can easily fill the allotted time.
Hail of Bullets: animation time ~3.5-4s (doesn't list it in-game for some reason). The character performs three complete 360 spins while firing his guns continuously in a variety of different directions. The thing about this animation is that it's intentionally flashy in the *details*. The spins contain quick crouches, turns, and jumps, the guns are held at strange angles while being fired and are re-aimed quickly. It would actually be relatively straightforward to create an alternate animation that does more or less the same thing (spinning in place while firing in all directions) but lacks all of the overly-fancy elements that put it over the top. Simply make the spins more deliberate with no hopping or jerky crouches, and have him hold his guns in normal outstretched arm positions while firing them. He can still fire in two directions at once and reorient his guns quickly, but make it feel controlled and measured instead of acrobatic and 'faster than the eye can follow'.
Honestly, I think it can be done. I just came up with distinct alternates for all but one attack in an hour or so of thinking. They might not be polished ideas, and of course I'm no animator to implement them, but it ought to be possible. -
It probably doesn't work at all. I haven't tried it myself, of course, but if it follows the usual rules then the pseudopet will be considered the source of the placate effect. This means that, when the proc goes off, enemies will be rendered unable to attack... the pseudopet. Since they can't attack the pseudopet anyway, it shouldn't do anything at all. A lot of procs work weirdly with pseudopet powers.
-
Quote:Graded homework...Originally Posted by Chaos Creator
To save a new topic on the same basic thing but not quite;
What did you do during the downtime everyone else?
I took a short nap, read some manga, took another nap and read forums.
-
As to whether damage procs are still worthwhile, I'm not really sure. They still do get a fair number of chances to go off (two immediately, plus 3 more at 10, 20, and 30s from the pulsing cloud), but I'm not sure it's worth sacrificing enhancement value for the procs. I haven't tried it for myself, so I'm not sure how well the numbers translate to in-game usefulness.
If you do want to try putting in procs without sacrificing enhancement value, I don't really see a way to do it without using purples. Purple acc/rech, acc/hold/rech and a regular acc/rech is enough acc and rech, and that gives you 3 slots for procs. Unfortunately, you'll be sacrificing any set bonuses. Alternatively, you could slot all of the purple set apart from the straight hold and fill the last slot with another proc. That's one less proc and is a bit light on acc, but you still get a recharge bonus. Of course, all of these will be very expensive, and I personally wouldn't bother. -
If you want to decide which is better for PvE purposes, asking 'who would win in a PvP battle' is totally meaningless. You'd have a better chance of getting the right answer by flipping a coin. (In fact, most of the time the better PvE build is *worse* at PvP).
PvP in this game is just such a totally different animal that comparing overall character performance by head-to-head PvP performance is like comparing personal net wealth by the color of the sky that day. It just isn't relevant. -
I think you can still do 4 basilisk + lockdown proc - I was planning to use the first 4 basilisk pieces (skipping the quad and proc since they're pool Cs), the lockdown proc, and an acc/hold/rech from one of the cheap sets. That gives you 60ish acc, a bit of end, and 80ish hold/rech, which seems like plenty to me - 60%+ acc gives you 90%+ CTH on +2s and at least helps some against even higher level foes, and the last 20% rech only gives you a few seconds.
You could also possibly replace the acc/hold/rech with the purple acc/rech if you can afford it, you lose a bit of (honestly unnecessary) hold and gain extra acc and rech. -
One thing to note is that poison gas trap isn't *quite* autohit. When the trap goes off, it summons two separate effects - one is a one-shot 6s mag 3 hold, and one is the pulsing -regen -recharge chance to hold/vomit. According to city of data, the persistant pulsing part is autohit, but the initial hold isn't. So if you're relying on that initial hold for mitigation or if you want to give your procs one extra chance to go off (they have 4 chances to go off on the pulsing part, so this would be a 5th), you might want to slot some acc.
-
Quote:Nah, I move around too, but the interrupt period is only ~.7s with one interrupt enh, so since you can move after the interrupt period is over, it's short enough that I don't mind stopping to use it. I'm not trying to say that it's not a drawback, just that when you're softcapped it's not *much* of a drawback.Originally Posted by Leo_G
Okay, now use Aid Self while moving. That *is* kind of what Ninjutsu is about...particularly the non-static positions unlike Stone, Willpower and Invulnverability. Or did you want to just stand in one spot and hit buttons? I kinda sorta have to move about when I play my DB/Nin Stalker to line up cones and get at foes that are moving around on my caltrops (I really need to finally respec out of that power...)Quote:
Yeah, I just didn't think it was too important given the assumption of soft capped characters. 1 interrupt slotted aid self is pretty reliable if you're softcapped, leaving the long animation and end cost as the main downsides.
I actually like hearing about that sort of thing as well. For me it's an optimization problem. Generally a character starts as a powerset combo and then grows a concept (although occasionally vice-versa) as I develop the build and costume. Then I decide exactly how I want the character to turn out build-wise, and it becomes almost a mini-game to see how I can satisfy that within my chosen power and cost constraints. I probably spend as much time in mids' as I do in-game. It's just how I enjoy making characters, I really find it hard to get into them if I'm not satisfied with how their powers will develop.Quote:It's actually nice to hear how people build there characters in general. As an aside, I tend to lack a concept until I visit the costume creator of open up Mids'. I generally start conceptualizing how their powers work, look through pools that I'm interested in or the costume pieces I find 'click' together then start forming the character from there. I have no list of 'performance powers' or 'concept powers', I just have the build and the look. After getting both the look and theorizing how their powers work and interact with eachother, I make their backstory and then from there it differs from character to character.
It sounds rather limiting making a list of 'musts' and 'wants'. Occasionally I'll just say 'hey, I haven't used the concealment pool. that'd totally could work like blah blah blah' then shift around the build to fit it. And I can usually work another angle of the build or cover over the loss of some other power with IOs. In the case of dropping one of the passives for confront, that's if you cannot swap anything else and if not, you'll be losing some passive resists but you can cover over the lack of defense for a position by swapping some IOs around to cover it.
As for dropping a passive, I probably could make it work, I'd just rather not. I tend to operate on much more limited budgets than most of the melee power builders, though, so covering the loss would actually be a bit tough. The loss of the DDR and passive resist would probably be more painful, though. Arcanaville once showed that the passive resistances don't scale linearly; having 3 is about twice as good as having 2, and dropping from 95% DDR to 85% would really hurt. In that particular contest, confront loses since it's more of a 'just for fun' power than a 'concept' one. Having room for it would really just be a perk.
I'm not expecting anything super powerful, certainly not more powerful than caltrops. Although I would definitely consider caltrops worth taking in that spot if I were making a character with the stalker version of the set, so unless it's truly crap in comparison I would still probably take it. A passive is certainly another possibility, I'm just hoping it's not.Quote:Well, it'd have to be a pretty crappy/situational gadget or you'll surpass Ninjutsu on the AT it was created for. No, you'll probably get some sort of throw-away/utility passive instead.
It does sound better that way, although I'd still wonder a bit - it doesn't sound like you're actually trying to be derogatory, but 'entitlement' still carries some negative connotations, at least to me. Min/maxing is definitely a 'straight towards the goal' type mentality to be sure, though, and if that's all you're after I'd agree.Quote:My apologies. The way I tend to write, I use words and heavily direct their meaning through context. That is, don't try reading too deep into the extra meanings because I've most likely forgotten/ignored them in favor of particular meanings, specifically:
elitism - 1. The belief that certain persons or members of certain classes or groups deserve favored treatment by virtue of their perceived superiority
2. (A) The sense of entitlement enjoyed by such a group or class.
So yeah, I'm leaning toward the entitlement version of the word. Entitlement that one must have the best defense, the best version of the heal, the best recharge, etc. and anything that gets in the way of this mentality must be removed.
I respect your right to think this way, but I really have to disagree. Having a stealth doesn't mean you have to use it to run and hide, and if a stealth doesn't fit the concept of scrappers I don't think dark armor would have one. I'd have a much harder time figuring out how to justify the set for brutes, but even they get a powerset with a stealth.Quote:The difference is, I'm not trying to make a bad argument. I'm making a logical argument. And I've used multiple points to argue the issue. The thing is, I haven't really read much opposition to the direct points I brought up:
-Theme. Ninjutus is about guerrilla warfare and spying. Explain why this fits a Scrapper who themselves have expressed how upfront and in-your-face their style is. What Scrapper wants to run and hide? And even if a Scrapper does, they don't get as much from it. The style of the set does not support the style of the AT and the theme is a mismatch.
The only thing that really seems like running and hiding would be smoke flash, and if it works the way I think it does, I think I could even possibly find a combat use for it - correct me if I'm wrong, but attacking only breaks the placate effect on the target you hit, right? So could you use this in the middle of a spawn and then beat a few of them up while their buddies stand around picking their noses? Cause that'd be totally hilarious.
Overall, I guess I just don't see a disconnect between being a tricksy little ******* and being a scrapper. Certainly, they're generally in-your-face fighters, but I don't usually see them as being stupid. Scrapperlock aside (which is an issue with the player, not the character
), I don't see my scrappers as turning down anything that could let them win the fight (especially the natural-type characters the set would be so nice for), and that's what I'd see the problematic parts of scrapper ninjitsu as - a set of dirty tricks useful for *in-combat* misdirection and disruption of the foes, not a set of tools for running and hiding.
Put this way, it makes a bit more sense - I think I may have been misinterpreting you slightly. That said, I don't necessarily think that this is the way it'd have to turn out. There definitely are problematic sets, but it seems to me that the issues tend to fall more into mechanical areas than conceptual ones - the only clear-cut conceptual ones I remember were emp/pain and stalker shield. Specifically, though, I'm not aware of them saying *anything* about scrapper ninjitsu one way or the other. Given that in the past they've often mentioned when sets might be problematic, that strikes me as a good sign.Quote:-Proliferation. Tends to be on a whim of the devs. If a set doesn't fit, has balance implications or like above does not support the style of the AT, it tends to get backburnered...that's as good as never proliferating it. The same things happen to sets like Regen Brutes, SS Scrappers and Shield Stalkers. For balance or theme reasons, these sets will see resistance and Ninjutsu is no different. Conclusion: If Shield Stalkers are a no-go, I can imagine Ninjutsu Scrappers sitting in the same boat.
On the other hand, while I don't remember them saying anything specific about stalker shields either (which might just be a function of not having been in that beta), we do know that they specifically passed up the chance to give it to them when it was the only thing on the docket. Meanwhile, all we really know about scrapper ninjitsu is that, out of quite a few armor sets available, they haven't chosen it for proliferation so far. So, while stalker shields seems to have received a definite 'no' (which I think is silly, but that's for another time), there doesn't seem to be any real hints about the dev's attitude towards scrapper ninjitsu either way. It *could* be on the back burner, but I personally hope not, and I don't think there's any real evidence for it.
SR + weapons is indeed the closest you can come to a /nin scrapper for now; I just really wouldn't call that equivalent. In this context, 'equivalent' for me would be using the 'functionally identical' definition, which I wouldn't call it. And I would still be giving something up to get it; 95% DDR, a recharge bonus, extra slots and sets that have to go towards softcapping, the passive resistances, and native KB resist, to name a few.Quote:To put it plainly: SR+weapons *IS* equivalent to a Scrapper /Nin built for the only reason that /Nin isn't available for Scrappers. No, it's not the same as a /Nin Stalker but then are you willing to give up a chunk of your HP and slightly lower DPS for that equivalence? If not, and not to sound rude but, I honestly don't *care* about the entitled equivalence you expect.
And while I might not be giving up the HP and base damage, even if I was there *would* still be some upsides. Whether they are enough to balance the negatives or not, the increased crit rate and semi-controlled crits are still tasty, and AS + demoralize is still a useful tool. Believe it or not, I would be more than happy to give up the HP and base damage, if a lot of the upsides I was getting in return weren't bound up in a playstyle I don't care for. I just don't want to give up the HP and damage and get *nothing* (mechanically speaking, since those are mechanical issues) in return. -
Didn't have much time to play, but I got my fire/stone tank from 27 to 34 - yay RotP! <kaboom>
For some reason, Citadel TFs were popular on the guardian channel last night - one was just starting as I logged on, I got on another which started about 20 minutes later, another one started just as that one finished, and at least one more happened about an hour after *that* one finished. I think I saw more announcements of citadel teams forming on the channel than I saw announcements for anything else.