Oedipus_Tex
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Quote:Originally Posted by Mr_Heat_Stroke;Then there's Ice Slick. While a good soft control, it's function is duplicated in Earth control and the Earth counterpart is in better company with more solid controls. You'll also be gritting your teeth if another dom joins your team and spams their AoE immobs after you drop an Ice Slick.
Ice Slick actually has a 1% greater chance per tick to knockdown than Earthquake. That may not sound like a lot, but Ice Slick ticks at a rate of .2 seconds. After 2 seconds of activation, Earthquake has a 7*10 percent chance to hit, or 70%. Ice Slick has a 8*10%, or eighty percent. -
Quote:Originally Posted by Castle
The perfect team = 8 players who:- Know how to play their chosen character well
- Don't do terminally stupid things
- Know how to adjust and adapt tactics on the fly based on what is happening around them
I can get about 75% behind this statement. The player makes a lot of difference.
However, I think some things really do come down to the tools the player has to work with and the situation the team is in. If success were determined purely by the player, as a player of 40 or so characters I'd have a similar success rate with all of them in every situation. I can work around a lot of things, but I can't, for example make my Ice/Thermal Controller put out damage like my other characters. -
I'd suggest a Mind or Plant Controller. /Radiation or /Cold in particular. Plant has wonderful AoEs. Mind has incredible single-target mezzes, good AoEs, and the ability to bypass positional defense.
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Quote:Oops. Yep, you're right.Originally Posted by Fleeting Whisper
Defense enhancement is schedule B, so it would be ~22.5% after enhancement, not ~30% (unless you're exploiting defense debuff HOs). Normal slotting plus Power Build Up would be ~37%. (~44% with debuff HOs and PBU)
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Quote:I really don't want to get sucked further into this, but in the interested of clarifying, I'm going to repost the statement you made that prompted my response:Originally Posted by StratoNexus
First, I did not twist your meaning. You said that Fort does not really prevent damage.
I accept that you want to take that statement back and change it. I would if I said it.
At the time you said this I had not yet made any claim about whether Fortitude was a good power. I said that it doesn't completely protect you, and it doesn't. The defense buff in Fortitude is the same as you'd get out of Cold Domination shields, the only difference being it blocks more positions.Quote:That is not a smart thing to say. Fortitude is a game changer.
Do Cold Dom's shields completely protect a team? Not in my experience, and the Cold Dom shields can go on the whole team at the start of the mission, not 3 or 4 members of the team with a rolling start to add one new protected person every recharge period. Fortitude is a great power, but it does not protect a team to the point that nothing else is desired. This is materially relevant because it was said in reference to someone else's statement that Empathy "only has 3 powers that heal" and they'd rather "prevent damage than heal it." The statement about "preventing damage" was actually supposed to indicate the player would rather invite a Force Fielder or other character in place of an Empath, but I didn't infer that from the context of the original conversation.
No argument there.Quote:Second, while not direct damage mitigation, Clear Mind will often prevent massive amounts of damage when used proactively. Finally, the offensive nature of the buffs in Fort, Recovery Aura, and Adrenalin Boost can also go a long way towards preventing damage, but are also not direct mitigation. -
Quote:Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison
Learn to read.
Not taking the bait this time. If you really want to continue this line of communication please send me an email message. I don't think anyone else is interested in our personal conflict. -
Quote:Originally Posted by StrykerX
To be fair, Empathy actually has at least seven "healing" powers, at least as far as general MMO thinking goes. Adrenalin Boost and Regeneration Aura are essentially Heal over Time powers, which in most MMOs are counted as heals rather than buffs. Sure Adrenalin Boost does more than just boost regen, but to the average MMO player anything that makes you get health back faster than you normally would is a "heal". Breaking status effects (Clear Mind) is also something "healer" classes normally do, as is rezzing and often mana (endurance) recovery. Really, the only difference between Empathy and a standard MMO "healer" is Fortitude... most healers have no offensive buffs, those are more likely to be found on hybrids (Paladins, etc...), though in some games they do.
I'm not saying that we need "healers" in CoX teams... our buffs are far stronger than what most MMOs allow and so are our debuffs. But the fact is that if you replaced Fortitude with a PBAoE resist buff and renamed Empaths "Clerics" they'd fit in perfectly in a generic fantasy MMO. And they'd be healers.
Of course that's not counting the Empath's other power set... in fantasy MMOs a healer usually has mez powers, like a Mind / Empathy Controller, and really terrible offense. Again, like a Mind / Empathy Controller. They don't generally start blasting things when they get bored of healing (at least not for enough damage to notice)... which is why I'd much rather play an Empathy Defender than a Cleric. 
I realize I'm way past my post-limit with this comment, so I'll take a breather in a bit and let some other folks weigh in. I agree with most of what you posted, just wanted to say that Mind Control does decent damage and should be able to solo missions easily from level one--probably more easily than many Empathy Defenders, anyway.
Ice Control/Empathy on the other hand... -
Quote:Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison
Sure, I'll explain.
The two statements of mine were not related to each other. Never did I say that I wanted an empath that only prevents damage. Reading comprehension. Try it sometime.
I'm not interested in getting into a drag-out fight with you. If your two "most favorite things to say to healers" are unrelated to healing and to each other, the problem is not my ability to read. -
Quote:Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison
The discussion was never about how many powers Empathy has to prevent damage.
My two statements were that Empathy is not a healing set and I would rather prevent damage than heal it.
That's a way of saying I'd rather have a FF or a Cold defender than an Empathy one.
Really? Please explain, because you are the person I was responding to. Specifically:
Quote:Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison
My two most used lines with regards to "healers":
"Empathy has nine powers. Only three heal."
"I would rather prevent damage than heal it." -
Quote:Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison
When the message of "NEED HEALS" is so ingrained in our community, it takes radical action to counter it.
The other messages that are ingrained in our community are "Heals are never useful" and "You should go out of your way to avoid calling Empathy a 'healing' set. I don't think 'radical action' is the solution to anything though. It just entrenches people's position. -
Quote:Originally Posted by StratoNexus
...
That is not a smart thing to say. Fortitude is a game changer.
Yes it is. But don't twist my meaning. I said it doesn't completely protect you, and it doesn't. It's +15% defense, around +30% enhanced at 50 and possibly more if Power Boosted. It's awesome. But the discussion was about how many powers Empathy has that "prevent damage," and the answer is one. -
Quote:Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison
My two most used lines with regards to "healers":
"Empathy has nine powers. Only three heal."
"I would rather prevent damage than heal it."
Minor quibble. Empathy has 9 powers, 5 of which do nothing if no one ever takes damage, and one of which removes/protects from mezzes. It has one power that "prevents" damage, but even then not really (base +15% Defense on a Defender).
I agree with the OP that a healer isn't "needed," but can be "helpful." But I also think we sometimes go too far out of our way to avoid using the word "heal" when talking about Empathy. It has some direct heals, and some very powerful heal over times. -
One more thing about Endurance Drain. It actually would work quite a bit better if enemy AI were changed so that enemies thought like players; if their endurance drops below a certain amount they slow their rate of fire.
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Quote:Originally Posted by Airhammer
Problem is my blaster is more effective at draining end from a Mob than my defender ever was. So is my corruptor. The blaster gets Short Circuit and Power Sink much earlier than the defender and so did the corruptor.
Yep. A weird issue with Defenders. Technically they get better endurance sapping from their powers but they struggle to floor an enemy because sapping isn't very well supported for anyone outside of folks with very specific powers. I'm personally hoping Controllers stay far away from the sapping stuff... unless sapping as a whole is going to be changed. Given that Defenders are (at last!) getting a revision to Vigilance, maybe hope is on the horizon for Electric Blast too. -
This has probably come up a hundred times before, but with Going Rogue approaching the answers are changing as we get closer to release date and more is known.
What, if anything, has been said about adding new animations to some of the existing sets? In particular, some of the melee sets like Broadsword and Battle Axe I could see Back Alley Brawler or his staff make incredible. Is there any chance of it happening, even to a few of the powers (some of the AoE "twirl" powers, the uppercut in Sword, Parry, and some of the heavy hitting axe powers in particular I'd love to see creative takes on). I can also see something great made of some of the existing long-animation powers, like Energy Transfer, which gives BABs team almost 3 seconds of animation time to work with. -
Quote:Originally Posted by DrMike2000
I agree end drain is underwhelming at present. I've played Elec/Elec Blasters to 50, Kin/Elec Defender to 50 and Elec/Energy to 30-odd.
But that's because its only been offered to us in Blast sets so far (and only in AoE form), and not in a Control set. Dark Pit in Dark Blast is pretty underwhelming (mag 2 stun on a 60 second timer) but that doesn't mean the entire stun mechanism is useless.
Dark Pit (weak Blast set stun) is to Flashfire (good Control Set stun)
as
Short Circuit (weak Blast set end drain) is to <insert effective Electrical Control Power here>
The thing is, most Controllers actually have weaker debuff values than Defenders. The two major exceptions, Earth and Ice Control, are both very low damage team-support sets. Gravity Control has a Slow component but not -Recharge. Mind, Plant, Fire, and Illusion have no debuffs at all (except for a token ToHit debuff in Fire). If anyone should excel at endurance drain, it ought to be Defenders. -
The STF is the only Task Force I've failed, and I've failed it more than once. I really don't know what to think of it.
I'm kind of cursed. The two teams I've run it with easily made their way through the early missions, but ran into a brick wall either with Ghost Widow or Lord Recluse. The fact that neither team made it to the finish with all 8 members intact probably contributed. I hate to admit this, because I really enjoyed the early parts of the TF, but the big 5 boss fights (particularly against GW) at the end were sort of boring. It did seem very much like a gimmick fight.
IMO, so far my favorite end fights have been at the of the ITF, the Lady Grey TF, and fighting Reichsman at the end of the villain SF I don't know the name of. The ITF, minus the valley-of-lag part, stands out to me as the most fun of the various TFs. I really hope the new TFs in Going Rogue veer toward the ITF and not the STF. But maybe I'd feel differently if I ever got on a team that actually stuck through to the end. -
I respect Local Man's opinions, but personally consider Earth/Kin a fine team buffer, if not perhaps the best tool for converting an average team into a steam roller. The defense debuff in Earth makes the Kinetics powers hit more reliably and causes enemies to be easier to tag while the Kinetics makes things hit harder. It relies on your teammates a lot. A solo Earth/Kin is just alright, where a team that passes up adding an Earth/Kin to their lineup is really missing out.
But I'm known to have other crazy opinions. Mainly, lately, that too much attention is afforded to "synergy" (how powers play together) over "reach" (the total capabilities of a character when all powers are combined). Lots of power combos that don't have "synergy" per se have a lot of "reach"; in the case of Earth Control I'd say every possible combo excels at one or the other. -
Quote:Originally Posted by DrMike2000
I'm really hoping that End Drain is a big part of the set.
Existing End Drain powers are flaky and often require specific pairings of powersets to work, but this is where the mechanism can be given its full due - in a Control Set.
Existing powersets have tied End Drain to low damage and dysfunctional secondary effects, but it doesn't have to be that way. If Choking Cloud was the only hold in the game, you might think that holds are flaky and unreliable.
A fast recharging single target drain that stops Recovery for 15 or 20 seconds and drains a +2 or +3 enemy dry in one shot, with slotting is quite doable without any additional coding required.
The net result is a bit like a stun, but has some differences. It affects bosses as much as minions, it doesn't establish Containment, and it doesn't prevent an enemy from running intelligently rather than staggering drunkenly, perhaps at superspeed.
It's also really hard to balance I imagine though. Something like that would render even bosses instantly unable to fight back. We'll have to wait and see. I'm personally kind of hoping this set is the straw that breaks the camel's back and results in rolling changes to the various existing Electric sets. IMO Electric's deal should be a tendency to branch out and hit a second target (i.e. power arcing) not endurance drain. -
Quote:Originally Posted by Maiev
Alright, so not long ago I started to IO out my dominator. I was told that IO set bonuses would stack up to 5 times. Not a problem. This is what my sets look like as of right now:
Adding all the set bonuses up, I should have 58.75% increased Recharge. The power attributes panel is only putting me at 40%, though. That looks like 3 sets getting cut off, even though only two of them I have multiples of. Do the set bonuses stack only 5 times even if they're not from the same set but give the same bonus? (i.e. the 6.25% "Large" recharge)
Would I have to stack Large, Medium, and Small bonuses then?
Where did I mess up? Or does the game just not like me?
Any help would be appreciated, thanks.
I didn't bother to reconstruct your build, but basically, the rule of 5 applies to any "named" set bonus. The rules happens regardless of the set from which the bonus is obtained.
For example, if you have 3 "Large Recharge Bonus"-es from one type of IO and 3 other "Large Recharge Bonus"-es from a second type of IO, you've still exceeded the cap of 5. -
Quote:Originally Posted by Prime_Nighthawk
Thematically, EM Pulse wouldn't necessarily fit electric control. Of course EM radiation is partially composed of electric fields and can be created by manipulation of electricity. But it would make more sense to hold mobs by using direct blasts of electricity for an electric controller.
I just guessed that based on EM Pulse's appearance in the Blaster Electric APP. I doubt we'd get EM Pulse specifically, since it's already in Radiation Emission. But some kind of AoE hold is likely, since all the other sets have it, and all but 1 (Earth) is built on the same base power. -
Quote:Originally Posted by Ethric
It doesn't take a table to see that those attacks have ridiculously long animation times. And as Silverado said, long animations = low DPA.
No. Long animation means long animation.
DPA stands for "damage per animation." It can't be calculated without knowing how much damage it puts out.
I'm sorry if it seems like I'm picking on you, but seriously, complaining about DPA in a promotional video? -
While I think it's a waste of time to try to gather the "perfect" team I also think a good team leader is able to assess which types of teammates will bring more to the current lineup. For every anecdote about unusual teams working out well, there are just as many about teams wiping or being forced to lower difficulty because they couldn't make it work. Depending on what the team is trying to do (radio missions versus a TF) varying degrees of scrutiny might be necessary for the team leader. I think it's waste of time to stand around and wait for the "perfect" 7th or 8th member, but I also think a team leader who pretends certain powersets and ATs don't bring more to your current lineup than others is fooling him or herself.
The lineup used in the particular example contains 5 support characters on a very low level Task Force. Support is king prior to level 25 or so. If we changed the lineup around to 3 Tankers, 2 Scrappers, 1 Gravity Controller, 1 Trick Arrow Defender, the TF would have been more difficult. Would it be do-able? Possibly, but it would be very annoying. -
Here's a possible level-up power list. I didnt include slotting. FYI the build assumes you skip a travel power and take Ninja Run from the Ninja pack.
Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.621
http://www.cohplanner.com/
Click this DataLink to open the build!
Level 37 Natural Controller
Primary Power Set: Fire Control
Secondary Power Set: Cold Domination
Power Pool: Speed
Power Pool: Fitness
Power Pool: Medicine
Hero Profile:
Level 1: Char -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Infrigidate -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Fire Cages -- Empty(A)
Level 4: Ice Shield -- Empty(A)
Level 6: Smoke -- Empty(A)
Level 8: Hasten -- Empty(A)
Level 10: Glacial Shield -- Empty(A)
Level 12: Flashfire -- Empty(A)
Level 14: Hurdle -- Empty(A)
Level 16: Health -- Empty(A)
Level 18: Cinders -- Empty(A)
Level 20: Stamina -- Empty(A)
Level 22: Hot Feet -- Empty(A)
Level 24: Arctic Fog -- Empty(A)
Level 26: Aid Other -- Empty(A)
Level 28: Benumb -- Empty(A)
Level 30: Aid Self -- Empty(A)
Level 32: Fire Imps -- Empty(A)
Level 35: Sleet -- Empty(A)
Level 38: Heat Loss -- Empty(A)
Level 41: [Empty]
Level 44: [Empty]
Level 47: [Empty]
Level 49: [Empty]
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Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Containment
Level 4: Ninja Run
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Set Bonus Totals: -
I've never tried it. The opening levels will be a little rough solo. You'll explode in power at levels 32, 35, and 38 assuming you take Fire Imps, Sleet and Heat Loss though. Heat Loss with decent recharge and endurance mod will let you run Hot Feet without noticing any endurance drain whatsoever.
If you plan to solo a lot, you may be able to skip Bonfire and Ring of Fire and grab Aid Other (for the Imps) and Aid Self. Frostwork is the only power I routinely skip from Cold.