Netphenix5

Regarding the perf shifter's proc - if I read all this correctly, it means that my Claws/Regen/Energy Brute could slot 4 of those babies for an almost 60% average chance of +10% end every 10 seconds?

Love the hot tub and fireplace ideas.

THANK YOU Local Man for yet another excellent piece of work. This is a great guide. I'd be honored to add some contribution to it, if I may.

First off, I'd like to make a small case for the Entropic Chaos' proc in Jolting Chain. Much like the Tempest one, it's an oft-overlooked proc that really shines in a chain power. And the set itself gives some nifty bonuses for fairly cheap at WW. My controller loves it to pieces, but then again she spams JC more often than TG.

Which brings me to my other point. I play an Elec/Dark controller, and even though she's only 28 so far, I'm LOVING the combo. There's some nifty synergies in there, although it's a bit late blooming :

- Twilight Grasp is a fantastic heal that benefits you and your team and debuffs tough targets; handy on a boss until your controls can stack to shut him down. The theft of essence Proc is just gravy.

- Static field and Tar patch make a great combo to melt down stuff. It helps compensate the low damage of Elec at early levels, caps the slow on uncontrolled foes, and makes going in melee doubly secure.

- Darkest night is a great way to make yourself safer when you use Conductive Aura. Since you'll go to the mobs in melee range, they'll bunch up on you and most if not all will be affected by DN, unlike when you stay at range and enemies can get spread out.

- Add to that the defense and resists of Shadow Fall and Fade and you'll be safer in melee than any other controller - and you'll make your melee teammates safer as well !

- Howling twilight is a sick sick sick power to use on tightly-bunched mobs. It's autohit, takes minions right out of the fight (setting up containment while at it) and debuffs everything, guaranteed. I use it everytime it's up.

- Soul Absorbtion is yet another reason to stay in melee range, it's like Drain Psyche on steroids and affects your teammates too !

- Even though I don't have it yet I expect Dark Servant to help a lot on damage and melee range safety along with the gremlins. Can't wait for level 38 ! Plus as another recharge-intensive pet it lets you slot the other second unique to make your pets more survivable.

Of course, Darkness affinity is a luscious set all on its own, but I feel it really shines paired with Elec because of the dual patches and the many PBAoE.

Could anyone please re-upload the i22 upgrade? the link provided doesn't work and I'd love to try it out and give my 2¢.

I'm of two minds about this.

On one hand, I can't really point fingers, seeing as I already all but deserted Vigilance for Freedom due to lack of teaming potential. Even after Freedom launched, the population never took off, and I got tired of being stuck in the ONE trial being formed a night day in, day out. But then again, I have the advantage of being fluent in NA english, so it wasn't a big deal. Hardest part really was leaving behind my 2-billions prestige one-man-army SG base. No real buggy in the end. And I KNOW I'm far from the only French player to take advantage of the server lists merge to take off. And frankly, with the abysmal level of translation efforts and quality, I'm almost relieved you're giving up on atrocious (and too often weeks belated) attempts.

On the other, I still feel that the marketing argument is fallacious. If I hadn't had Americans friends online, I'd NEVER have heard of CoX in France. It's virtually unknown, and (far worse) all-but-utterly UNADVERTISED. WoW markets here. Some MMOs advertise in the parisian Metro. GW 1 & 2 (sic...) got full-pages ads in the gaming press. CoH got ZILCH, and believe me, I LOOKED. Even Freedom didn't get announced so much as vaguely mentioned in some circles. So I'm sorry, but if you expected to magically attract new customers with no marketing effort whatsoever in a culture that's already less comics-savvy than the US, all I can say is that you were delusional. The argument doesn't fly for a millisecond. Frankly, were I even a tiny bit paranoid, I'd say the lack of non-english advertising in the world was a step to facilitate this current move, so as to cut costs on all fronts. I'm not saying Paragon Studio would stoop so low, but hey, NC Soft never said they were in this for anything but the dough, after all.

Now, since it's all but acted, I'm gonna roll with the punches and try to help the few hardy French souls who stay transition to English gaming as best I can. But I DO have a question for the Red Names That Be™. I play on a MAc, and our language files are hard-coded into the CoH client. We CAN'T change the interface's language - which believe me, made playing on an english server a pain already. HOW do we get our hands on an English client when all the current versions calibrate their interface on the system's language?

For the @, I found through trial and errors that on a French Mac keyboard you can type it (in the email addy field for example) with the option-` key combo (just to the left of the carriage return / right of the ù key - that's on a normal full keyboard though, dunno where the key is on a laptop). Not sure how to get [ or ] though, but when I need them I just drag a power icon to the chat line and then delete the extra text. Rest works fine that way.

Just a bit of necroposting to let you guys know that apparently Suckerpunch's online builder is still offline. Which is too bad for guys like me who are on a mac and use it as a last-ditch substitute for Mids.

Beat me to it. Stacked mortars debuffs is the main reason you want high recharge on your Trapers - not the only one though, but definitely the main one. It's like having a couple /Poison toons doing nothing but spamming Envenom while you blast. With a DoT to disrupt stuff to boot.

I mean, you KNEW Mortars debuff resistance, right?

On a side note, I can now confirm that the Devastation proc stacks with itself - I managed to hold bosses and Lts for a bit with even only one mortar out last night. Granted, it's up to the RNG to see it does, but it DOES happen.

It's not so much the fact that they brought the servers down for an update (I'm all for new shinies, believe you me), it's the fact that communication about those unscheduled updates has gotten more than spotty.

Beaststyle used to give us at least a few hours warning here, which were much appreciated by those, like me , who actually have to schedule our game time. Lately, no such forum updates have been made... And with the Help channel clogging most chat windows with LFT requests (), even a red admin warning is easy to miss while, say, in a fight or a slotting spree.

I don't begrudge them the need to tinker with the game, I just wish more of an effort was made to LET US KNOW - ideally more than 20 minutes in advance. That's all I ask, and it doesn't even violate the Cottage Rule®©™ or need a SCR®©™ warning.

I wish they would announce those on the forums - or heck, put an alert window like they did for the German Paragon Market issue today. I tend to log minutes before the shutdown due to work schedule, and once more I missed the 10-minutes red warning.

Seriously, they used to let us know here on the forums about those maintenances. I know Beaststyle is gone, but there has to be someone who took over his job and could post about such. It'd save them those "couple hours of what-the-heck" and complaints threads...

Then again, the launcher is still set to announce the WINTER EVENT, so obviously timely news communication is nowhere near to a priority for NC Soft in 2012. And yes, I know I sound peeved - I am peeved.

Just got kicked out of Freedom without any warning. I managed to relaunch, see that some servers are off ans some on, log into Vigilance, and by the time I get my toon selected, I get kicked of that one too... Now I can log into the game but no servers are up. Is this an unscheduled maintenance or a global crash?

My one and only character (so far) on Freedom, Wyccan, a Plant/Storm hit 50 earlier this week.

In the two evenings I played since, I managed to do the Ramiel arc, 3 Lambda, 3 BAF, a Keyes (sadly failed) and an UG (surprisingly succeeded) and hit Alpha T3, Interface T2 and Judgment T2. Last time I did Incarnate stuff on my original server, getting to those levels took me three weeks. Go Freedom !

What is most surprising about today's Publish/Maintenance/Whateveritwas is that there were no announcements either here or ingame. I got kicked without so much as a "by your leave" and I can assure you that there were no red messages anytime prior to the kick. Which is something totally new as far as I'm concerned - even for unscheduled stuff they at least give you an ingame warning at the 30, 15 and 5 minutes marks, IIRC.

Well she obviously knows more about it than me, because I can't wrap my brain around it - though it might be sleep deprivation getting in the way. I'll just take your word for it then, though I find weird that this aspect of AVs can't in essence be debuffed to any relevant degree. Seems really unfair to defense-based sets like SR or Ice - not to mention Dark sets which would lose their main mitigation.

In reply to the OP :

I could be wrong on that (wouldn't be the first time - Hi Kioshi !) so feel free to correct me, but although you can't rely on defense to drop the ToHit of AV's under 9%, can't you directly debuff it? You had a stormy in the team, and Hurricane is a HUGE ToHit debuff - he could have just skimmed the AV's once every 10 seconds and lowered their ToHit.

Even with the AV's resistance, they'd have lost a couple percents at least, which would have increased your statistical survivability by a significant factor (from 9% to 5% ToHit is almost half chances of getting hit...)

Since we're on slotting and such, what's the general opinion on Carrion Creepers and non-damage procs? I'm kinda curious about how well it goes with a Grav. Anchor's chance for hold (thouhg that one may be more useful in Roots) or a Force Feedback's Chance for + Recharge?

I took my snipe on my AR/Traps corruptor because

a) I can reliably shoot it in the middle of a fight (dispersion bubble's def plus the -ToHit of my drones plus the fear of Ignite makes me pretty damn safe)

b) AR lacks both an Aim-type power and a hard-hitting single target attack, so I have to make do and

c) It's actually useful to weaken tough guys to the point where Scourge starts happening.

Ah - I don't know why, but I thought the boost affected ToHit, not accuracy. My bad. Thanks for pointing out the correct info.

However, since many end-game toons have higher base accuracy and buffs helping them hit, I think my point remain somewhat valid, though I was wrong on the specifics. I know for a fact that I get hit much less often by Malta Bandits or Vengeance'd Nemesis than the rest of my team, for example. Against those, SR's base advantage remains. And for i-trials, getting 59% to all positions all the time - and stay there - is far easier to do with SR.

[Edit : Rest of the post deleted for inaccuracy. I forgot that conning +5 isn't the same as being 5 levels higher. ]

One detail that too many people often forget, I think, is that the fabled "defense cap" at 45% is based on even-con minions. It'll get you hit once in 20 attacks on average only then. Question - in the end game content, how often do you go against one of those?

Against anything above your level or above minion rank, let alone both, you need more than 45% to "soft-cap". In those circumstances, SR I believe pulls ahead of SD because :
A) it gets you much higher defense numbers (I got a level 47 tank at 54/48/44 positional defense with only SR powers running and a couple set bonuses, and since I have CJ and Martial arts' Crane Kick I can add 13% to all this at any time)
B) it lets you keep the higher caps easier since any DR will be much better resisted (that same Tanker has over 90% DDR round the clock)

In end-game content, especially incarnate (all the more in the interval whre you don't have the incarnate shifts) I think Elude is actually very useful since it gives you, well, godly levels of defense and recovery. Until you crash that is , but with some luck you can quickly pop a blue and get your shields back up - I've done it in an ITF while Romy was pounding at me, didn't bite it.

Sure, SR is a one-trick pony. But it does this trick so much better than anyone else that there's no comparison. It doesn't get the layered protection of Invul, or the utilities of SD, but it is perfectly viable in end-game content (with the one caveat that going for the old "Mo" badges is a nightmare since all it takes for you to die is a couple RNG hate-shots.)

To the argument of higher HPs on SD, well, I may not have as much, but I've managed to add some very respectable bonuses through sets - because for once, I don't feel I need to chase the defense hare relentlessly. I have great regen, decent recovery, excellent recharge even without Hasten (gotta love LotGs) and even without stats-boosting accolades, I believe somewhere around 15% extra base HP. I can solo +2/x4 Carnies and Malta at level 47, and I'm proud of myself for it.

I'm not saying it's better than other sets. It's too highly specialized for that. But I don't consider it worse either, because I've proven several times in the last few weeks that I could be as good a Tanker as any other.

I'd like to respectfully ask the devs to switch the order of Gale and O2 Boost for Controllers, the way FF was reordered for Masterminds. It is probably the single most useless power to a Controller in the game, and we are FORCED to take it at level 1.

I can understand the mitigation potential for a Defender or Corruptor, or heck, even a Mastermind. But most controllers' sets have, at level one, either a hard control hold, an immob that has -KB, or in the case of Mind and Illusion, a soft control that gets broken by Gale's pitiful damage component (Illusion's hold can sleep nearby mobs, but Gale would wake them up.) Only Gravity has its -KB in its hold, but even then, the mitigation brought in Gale to one or two sets is, in my view, not worth it. And it only gets worse later in a character's life, since all sets have an AoE control that negates -KB.

Now other powers rely on KB or KD to mitigate - Ice Slick, Freezing Rain, Earthquake, among others. But they have a long duration, are easier to position, and carry secondary effect that make them worth using even when KB is negated (well, maybe not Ice Slick. ) Gale only has a damage component that is as pitiful as its accuracy, so turning it into a useable power - note I didn't say useFUL - requires several slots at least.

I understand that some people like that power - for fun, slot mule use, or what have you - so I'm all for keeping it in the set. But pushing it to level 2 would give us the OPTION of skipping it if we want, and forcing us to take o2 would not, I think, generate half as much frustration. Heck, just switching them around would not force any reslotting, just maybe a respec for those like me who'd like to get rid of it. I'm sure we'd be willing to put up with that much annoyance.

Sincerely yours,

Netphenix

Now the one thing I really wish they did for storm controllers is switch the power order of O2 Boost and Gale, like they changed the power orders on FF for Masterminds. That way you'd get O2 at level one and get the choice to skip Gale, which is incredibly useless to most Controllers (outside of gravity), since our fastest recharging control/damage power, the AoE immob, has -KB. What were they thinking?