Nihilii

I enjoyed Equilibrium, but sometimes I wish the movie was never made.

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skill...this game needs very little skill. Regen takes very little skill "I'm hurt...HEAL!". If you're going to go on about skill, solo an AV with a defender, that takes some skill. Everything else is just ego.

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Call it "skill" or "mashed potatoes", the fact is some people can do stuff on regens I can't do, but I will be able to do everything anyone can do on a WP (assuming same builds) as it's a 100% passive set.

So, I'd say mashed potatoes do indeed play a bigger part in Regen than WP. Whether it's a lot of mashed potatoes or just a few ones is irrelevant, the difference is still there. Yes, if you stick to soloing invincible missions set for 1 player, the amount of mashed potatoes required is so low the difference is hardly noticeable if at all, but if you go for bigger stuff you'll need more mashed potatoes.

For the record, with some defender powersets, soloing AVs is easier than on many scrappers. I had a Rad/Son which required no mashed potatoes at all, he could solo AVs by level 35 with SOs, spamming two and only two attacks.

Cool vid, rather unique build too.

I don't know if this is just me, but the video stopped working around 8 min in.

If HOs are so pointless, how do you explain the going prices for some of them on the markets ?

Congrats.

You know, you're almost making me want to level a Fire/SD just to prove my point. Yes, I am that silly.

You could pick a mission and use the "drop mission" feature to drop it right away. This should give you some starter inf (not much).

As far as I know, you don't get XP from badges if you haven't actually gained at least one XP before.

Edit : oops, didn't notice it was already said 2 posts above.

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This is the kind of thread where someone makes a statement and taunts others to debate it. Nobody's actually looking for answers here. Nobody is going to change thier opinion as a result of this thread.

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I don't know. I used to think WP was better than Regen, because (I thought) they had the same high end performance but WP, requiring less skill, was more forgiving. Of course, many people had a different opinion, and while I didn't agree with them at that time and still don't on some points now, it made me think and now I did a 180 on my stance.

... or did you just trick me into debating the statement you made ?

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You two are debating an issue that has no definitive answer and differs on a case-by-case basis

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This claim is exactly what I'm debating. I believe the situations in which adding minions to fuel AaO hurt you are the exception, not the norm.

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odds are that if the AV couldn't kill you in the first 5 minutes of the fight then he probably doesn't have an attack chain that will be able to do it at all (barring some really insane RNG rolls).

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This isn't my experience at all with AV soloing. Most of my defeats occur past the 5 minute mark.

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If you have 11 enemies in range for that length of time the odds that they will manage to sync up attack rolls and all hit at close to the same time are considerably higher than if you are just dealing with one enemy and his sequence of attacks.

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All of them hitting in, say, a three or four second timeframe is just not going to happen, ever. It's theorically possible, but statistically the chance is so slim you're probably never going to see it in a lifetime (assuming you're at the softcap and they haven't tohit buffs, of course).

It's not like two or three minions hitting you at the same time as the AV does will instantly kill you.

[ QUOTE ]
This also doesn't factor the likelyhood that the swarm on minions may have secondary effects attached to their attacks such as -tohit, -end, -recharge, etc which could also negatively effect a long fight.

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If you build to have a 95% tohit chance against +4s, you can hit an even level AV just fine through a few tohit debuffs (not that it's very common for minions to have tohit debuffs). End drains can be a problem, but off my head I can think of only one AV with minions doing significant end drains (Neuron). Recharge debuffs aren't that common with minions either.

I don't want to imply it's never a problem, but the situations where it was were few and far between for me.

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Again, I have seen this happen often enough on my Fire/Shield character to have to think that surrounding yourself with enemies might not be the best plan for a character's overall survival.

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You're using your experience in normal PvE with a level 32 Fire/Shield that's probably not accoladed, not IOed out, doesn't have OwtS, might or might not have resistances slotted might or might not have Tough, and you assume AV encounters for a high end Fire/Shield build will work the same.

Granted, all I can use is my experience with my DB/inv scrapper (which also leverages mobs to saturate auras) and my Shield/DM tanker, so I can't claim I know exactly how it'd go either ; but the issues you mentioned that I replied to here aren't build dependant and are just inaccurate in my experience.

Frankly though, theorycraft won't get me to believe a Fire/Shield scrapper can't handle 10 minions + 1 AV while my Shield/DM usually takes on 12-13 lieutenants + 1 AV, with lots of overkill mitigation.

I'd actually argue Regen has better mitigation than WP for some playstyles (read, mine). Of course, Regen also relies more on skill and lag, and doesn't have (what I consider) QoL features like complete mez protection, +perception and an aggro aura.

If we were talking about SR, I'd be inclined to agree ; but a high end Shield build should have, in my opinion, ~38% S/L res (73% while OwtS is up), ~20% F/C/E/N res (37% while OwtS is up) and over 2000 hp, on top of softcapped defenses and high DDR.

With a DPS boost that's roughly 1/3 on most builds (at least, my builds, as including BU they're often around 230-240% damage, and AaO gives ~+80%), saturating AaO makes a significant difference.

Imagine you have 180 DPS without AaO, it'd take you 28271 / (180 - 94) = 329 seconds to kill an AV.
With AaO, the DPS would jump to 240, and the time would go down to 28271 / (240 - 94) = 193 seconds, which isn't that far from being twice as fast.

This is the worst case scenario for saturated AaO. If the AV actually has some resists, heals, t9 powers, saturated AaO will look even better as the scrapper without AaO (or with only one target in range) will be barely above the regen while the one saturating AaO will most likely be just as fast as a "regular" scrapper.

Now, this is just my gut feeling, but if you ask me if I'd have an easier time taking on one AV for 5 minutes or one AV + 10 minions for 3 minutes, especially considering there's OwtS for 2 of these 3 minutes... I'd pick the second scenario.

MA made me Asian.

At least, according to the folks who sit in Atlas Park all day.

I wonder if I get some cool ninja powers or something.

The animation feels sluggish to me. It fires right away, then there's that ackward pause before I can fire off another attack. Despite being only 1.32s, it always felt like a slow animation to me.

For my Claws needs I play a widow and am very happy with it.

[ QUOTE ]
Well, your survival may factor into it since more mobs attacking you means more chances for the random number generator to get snarky and let you get hit with a streak of shots in past the defenses.

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You've got to consider the damage boost is also a survivability boost. You're taking down the AV much faster, so you don't have to survive as long.

[ QUOTE ]
Keep in mind that for A/V soloing there may not be enough minions/lts around throughout the fight to keep AAO fully charged up.


[/ QUOTE ]

Unlike a DM/Shield you don't need to use any AoE, so nothing is stopping you from saturating AaO, except for maps with multiple floors.

Focus is the reason I rerolled from Claws to DB.

I doubt scrapper ELA will have CP.

(I'm wondering if brutes will keep it as well. It could be an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone and address the balance concerns many brutes players have about ELA.)

FM has good DPE, with Conserve Power making a FM/SD without end issues outside of end draining mobs isn't a problem.

SD can also get softcapped defense easier and good DDR ; FM does good DPS at low levels of recharge, so it's not hard to fit Aid Self in. I think Fire/SD would be much more powerful than Fire/WP for AV soloing.

Hey Crime,

Thanks for sharing your experience. It might be somewhat selfish for me to say this, but I'm relieved I'm not alone - if we're enough to have this problem, they might get around to fix it faster.

On the other hand, if even network specialists don't know what's going on, that's not too reassuring.

Thanks for your help, Texas_Justice.

I've looked up tracert and PingPlotter ; it's rather confusing for me, I'm not really good with computers or technology in general.

Now, it looks like I'm getting "Destination Address Unreachable" with 100% packet loss on most NCSoft IPs, regardless if it's West Coast, East Coast or even Europe or forum boards.

I've tried a wide range of other IPs, these seem to work just fine.

Honestly though, I've got to apologize, as I didn't want to make you waste your time, but I don't feel like going back and forth with support and/or my ISP, having a hard time figuring out tons of things I don't understand at all just to get a video game working right. I was mostly just looking to see if other players ran into the same kind of trouble lately. Regardless, this is all very good information and your effort is appreciated, thank you again.

So, I have been playing this game for a few months, since about october or november 2008. Pretty much only on East Coast servers, mostly Freedom and Infinity. Everything was perfectly fine, I never lagged except on the ITF Laghill, my netgraph constantly showed a green bar with a ping hovering between 220 and 260 (playing from Europe).

Now, since a few days, here's what my netgraph looks like.

There's bursts of lag every second or so. It's still playable, but not very fun - people teleport forward and backward, animations often skip, powers don't activate in time. Using the Market has become tedious ; bids tend to appear for half a second then vanish after I hit enter, I often have to give the same input three or four times for anything to work successfully there.

My connection seems to work just as fine as usual on other websites, games, tests, and so on.

Now, this just happens on East coast servers. I'm still getting a green netgraph on West coast servers - along with a lovely 350-370 ping (which is normal, this was the situation when I joined months ago), and at that point the latency is so bad it's not much more fun than the laggy situation above. The Market works perfectly on West coast servers, too.

Note this is completely irrelevant of the place I'm in in game, the server activity or anything except the physical server location. Standing in a solo mission in Triumph (East Coast server) will give me the messy netgraph, while sitting in the Atlas AE building in Virtue (West Coast server) will give me a perfectly smooth netgraph.

I'm not really posting this for help (although, if you've got something that could fix my problem, I'm all ears... ) as I doubt there's much I can do on my end, just wondering if anyone else has ran into the same problems lately.

Thanks for the spreadsheet. Yeah, the global damage bonus in addition to the damage procs is what does it. I (try to) aim for sustainable end usage, and never stopped to think you never said you did here, hence a 20-25 DPS difference seemed rather big to me.

Using BrokenPrey's build as a base, I made a few tweaks to try to improve recharge, damage and end management.

Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1,401
http://www.cohplanner.com/

[u]Click this DataLink to open the build![u]

Level 50 Magic Scrapper
Primary Power Set: Spines
Secondary Power Set: Fiery Aura
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Fitness
Power Pool: Fighting
Power Pool: Speed
Ancillary Pool: Body Mastery

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Lunge -- KntkC'bat-Acc/Dmg(A), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx(3), KntkC'bat-Dmg/Rchg(3), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(5)
Level 1: Fire Shield -- RctvArm-ResDam(A), RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx(5), S'fstPrt-ResKB(7), RctvArm-ResDam/Rchg(46), RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(46)
Level 2: Spine Burst -- Oblit-Dmg(A), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(15), Oblit-Acc/Rchg(15), Oblit-Dmg/Rchg(25), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(27), Oblit-%Dam(27)
Level 4: Healing Flames -- Dct'dW-Rchg(A), Dct'dW-EndRdx/Rchg(7), Dct'dW-Heal(9), Dct'dW-Heal/Rchg(9), Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(11)
Level 6: Combat Jumping -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A), LkGmblr-Def(37)
Level 8: Impale -- Enf'dOp-Acc/Rchg(A), Enf'dOp-EndRdx/Immob(11), Enf'dOp-Acc/EndRdx(13), Enf'dOp-Immob/Rng(13), Enf'dOp-Acc/Immob/Rchg(17), Enf'dOp-Acc/Immob(31)
Level 10: Blazing Aura -- Oblit-Dmg(A), Oblit-Acc/Rchg(42), Oblit-Dmg/Rchg(43), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(43), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(43), Oblit-%Dam(45)
Level 12: Build Up -- Rec'dRet-ToHit(A), Rec'dRet-ToHit/Rchg(45), RechRdx-I(45)
Level 14: Swift -- Run-I(A)
Level 16: Plasma Shield -- RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx(A), RctvArm-ResDam(17), RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(25), RctvArm-ResDam/Rchg(40)
Level 18: Quills -- Oblit-Dmg(A), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(19), Oblit-Acc/Rchg(19), Oblit-%Dam(21), Oblit-Dmg/Rchg(21), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(40)
Level 20: Health -- Heal-I(A)
Level 22: Stamina -- EndMod-I(A), EndMod-I(23), EndMod-I(23)
Level 24: Consume -- P'Shift-EndMod/Acc/Rchg(A), P'Shift-Acc/Rchg(37), P'Shift-EndMod/Acc(39), P'Shift-EndMod(39)
Level 26: Boxing -- KntkC'bat-Acc/Dmg(A), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx(36), KntkC'bat-Dmg/Rchg(36), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(37)
Level 28: Tough -- S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(A), HO:Ribo(29)
Level 30: Weave -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A), HO:Enzym(31), HO:Enzym(31)
Level 32: Throw Spines -- Ragnrk-Knock%(A), Ragnrk-Dmg/EndRdx(33), Ragnrk-Acc/Rchg(33), Ragnrk-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(33), Ragnrk-Dmg/Rchg(34)
Level 35: Fiery Embrace -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(36)
Level 38: Barb Swipe -- KntkC'bat-Acc/Dmg(A), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx(39), KntkC'bat-Dmg/Rchg(40), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(42)
Level 41: Conserve Power -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(42)
Level 44: Focused Accuracy -- Rec'dRet-ToHit(A), Rec'dRet-Pcptn(46)
Level 47: Energy Torrent -- Posi-Acc/Dmg(A), Posi-Dmg/EndRdx(48), Posi-Dmg/Rchg(48), Posi-Dmg/Rng(48), Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(50), EndRdx-I(50)
Level 49: Hasten -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(50)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- KntkC'bat-Acc/Dmg(A), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx(29), KntkC'bat-Dmg/Rchg(34), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(34)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Critical Hit



<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>| Copy &amp; Paste this data into Mids' Hero Designer to view the build |
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Edit : made a better build, so I just overwrote my first one.