Optanite

Yeah. That's how I'm doing it.

I'm not too sure about this. I could build a mission that could eat a soft-capped /SR brute/scrapper alive, and I wouldn't even be trying.

I can see sets with lots of -recharge or confuse/fear being quite popular as most of the armor sets for custom critters won't have access to resistance.

If no pet powers can be affected by recharge buffs, does that mean that all pet powers were balanced by this when they were designed? Powers available to players can enhance effect (damage, heal, mez, etc) and recharge. Simply enhancing both by +100% yields a theoretical 300% increase in effectiveness. If we no longer allow the recharge to be there, the increase can only be 100%.

From a players perspective, a pets powers are merely an extension of their own, with no documentation stating otherwise in game (that I found at least). From what I've seen in the past, effects that cannot be enhanced for technical reasons, are simply inflated to make up for this, like +/-DMG buffs.

In the end, I'll be happy to see if this fixes my AI woes. So tired am I of seeing my jounin stand around doing nothing with my smoke flash, even though they have 4 attacks to cycle, and should be able to chain. On that note, I won't expect this change to fix jounin from using hide, then placate while smoke flashed. Baby steps.

Back in the day with my 50 kin/psi defender, using my nuke on every other 8-man spawn of freakshow, while keeping a full end bar, making the blasters on my team jealous, and everyone awe at the usually unseen nuke at the time.

Was doing goldrush, and I was the only healer on defense. I managed to stay alive the entire first round. The team was all saying how I was amazing. I wanted to tell them that the good team communication was what won the match, but my mic was broken.

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Fulcrum Shift has no Attack Type listed for Typed or Positional Defense powers to check against to see if they can dodge. If the caster has slotted for enough Accuracy, the only way to dodge the power is to have a buff to Base Defense (of which there are few) or to get lucky and have the power affected by the constant 5% chance to miss. Is this intended?


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This powers first effect is auto-hit from what I understand. This is the case with all powers where the power is to summon a pet based on the target. This is much like the old glue arrow, and any targetted summons by NPCs. Although the opposite is true about the other kinetic powers. Transfusion/Transferrence do the same thing but require a hit check to summon the invis pet, otherwise there would be no check on if the power would heal/recover or not. Since Fulcrum Shift is designed to affect multiple enemies, it would be unfair to have a hit-check on the first target, so this is auto-hit.

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...and they don’t seem to discriminate based on ethnicity, race, or religion.

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Although, its an all male club. Human's only.

Running a Robot/Dark

I have found body guard to be great. Overall, I feel less squishy, which is the point. Its great to be able to have some protection while I am mez'ed also because my darkest night has dropped. This is tricky as you have to have pets in defense/follow going into the mez, but well worth the auto-defense that fights back.

I don't PvP much. I might seriously PvP once I get to a level where debt doesn't matter. I played for a good 30mins in sirens call, and joined in an epic battle in the waters north of the villian base. I had one PvP death and one PvP death that resulted in debt. I also helped take down quite a few heroes. The bodyguard system made it so I was no longer just an easy target. I can survive an attack chain now, so that makes me happy as that means that the devs are taking baby steps towards making a 'so-so' fast action fun PvP game (I have high standards for PvP. I've already played tons of enjoyable PvP games).

Would it not make sense to make it so the target can only attack taunters? This would kill the 'ping-pong' effect if done right.

Glad to hear the storys/missions are interesting. If CoV had one thing over CoH, it would be missions/story. I have two level 36 heroes which all their missions from all their contacts are "The Crey are up to no good. Go teach them a lesson (anywhere, in Brickstown, in Crey's Folly)" or "The Security Chief needs your help helping with the Crey issues we've been having. Tell him I sent ya and he'll have you fight more Crey!". Street patrolling would be interesting if it triggered events/encounters, but sadly, it does not.

I look forward to more CoV story content. I enjoy all the contact missions as they are all semi-unique, usually have an interesting story (often involving me doing 'hero work'). and now even the brooker/newspaper system is going to be spiced up with Mayham Missions. Super.

Speaking of missions though, CoV 41-50, do you get non-Patron contacts for missions? Once contacts run dry, is the end game going to be newspapers and mayham missions?

Also, if anyone has completed a Patron set, does the completion just allow you to select powers at the right levels? What if you already got to 50 without doing them? Does this make it impossible to 'spec in the powers as you already selected other powers? If they are so impossible to respec, does that mean they are on a completely different system from our regular powers (Different slots/enhancements/rules?)

I ran two Mayham Missions so far. One with my lvl12 stalker, one with my lvl 33 robot/dark MM.

My stalker had an interesting time completing the mission. It was in KR. I blew up a few cars, cashed in on some parking meters (the coins that pop out pushed me around a bit), stealthed to the vault where I got ambushed, defeated the hero while using the elevator as a method to gain 'hide' when I felt the need. The pace was slow as I only had 3 attacks to cycle and I had nothing to AoE with to make a big mess. The experience was refreshing but not that exciting. I was solo though, so what can I expect?

Then, I used my MM to rob a bank in Talos Island. This was much more fun because my robots would really cause mayham. I just have to walk around and they would follow and blow stuff up. I could destroy 6+ things at once since I constantly had 6+ AoE attacks ready. I felt I had to really pay attention more to what my bots were doing as they would waste time firing off at the millions of immortal beings that live in this city (if any of them were to fight back, we'd all lose). Atleast they are good for kinetic/dark/energy drain/invulnerable Villians. I eventually got owned by the boss that came after me, which was sheer luck. I tried to heal myself from him 5 times and missed. Maybe I should have grasped the energies of the trash can instead as I bet it was less dodgy.

I didn't manage to do any speical side missions or break anything out of jail other then myself. I found it interesting that my contact gave me a new contact even though I failed. This leads me to believe that I work for a bunch of loosers. I look forward to being a contact/broker one day and I'll show them all.

Off topic things I noticed:
- Combat defense popups.
- New bubble colours.
- Buff bar options.
- alt and ctrl hotbar issues if not fully expanded.
- Seen others use new emotes
- Lobbed projectiles act odd. (eg. grenades and poison heal. Insta-travel, invisa-bullet, or arcs that defy gravity)
- Large destructable objects block their own AS LoS.
- Really dark nights in Diablo's Cape.
- Slower then normal performance.
- The cheese in the fridge smells a lot stronger.
- Had a few minions stuck in walls that were targettable and defeatable, but not fight-back-able.
- Mind Control/Confuse activation time shorten (finally!!) but Illusion Control/Decieve wasn't (doh!).
- Only Dominator 'buff' found in PvE was the ability to fire off two abilities in the time I would normally standing around waiting for Confuse to stop. This also increased my end usage/min unfortunately, but a welcome change.
- Bodyguard shows a nice display of how much damage is migrated. Migrated damage is grey ticks on pet.

I know I haven't tried these yet, but the numbers look really bad. I was expecting something along the lines of 'primary pool strength'. I guess the patron that is teaching me this bag of tricks is only doing so out of fear that I might squash them with my brawl.

When everyone was saying "Oh Noes!!" about the lack of diversity in the 41+ powers, I was hanging onto what States said, that these powers would be more useful/powerful then the Epic powers that Heroes got. Now, I am not so sure.

Guess I cannot bash it until I try it, but I can't try it until I power-level myself up to 41 as I have only a few toons in the low 30s now.

Maybe the pets will do AV/Hero level damage ... oh wait, I play a MM, I don't get another pet.

Although, I have to admit, having a damage shield and bodyguard, my MM will be able to tank more then my pets, only without mez protection.

Also, not sure why they made 4 different Patron Power threads. They are all the same!!! I guess I get to express my concerns four times in a row?

Darkspeed, you had a valid request. I think something in the simple commands listed in the power menu should allow the use of body guard. I might be mistaken though, but I think the default 'follow' icon there might sent to defense also, if not, they can just convert that premade macro.

I personally haven't tested this system, but from the lack of 'It isn't working' posts (except for 'its working while attack command is issued'), I imagine it is working as intended. Maybe they made it so when you are on defensive mode, bots will no longer seek targets you told them to attack, but just attack if in range.

I look forward and pre-welcome this change/feature.

I didn't check, but going by 'History Repeats itself', I'm wondering if Dwarf got changed too.

Dev's will never make all power pool powers have equal tactical value. Prove me wrong!

(yay! 250!)

We miss you.

This is really neat.

A few Force Fielders

I have made quite a few scrappers/tanks in CoH, but they always had one or more (usually more) of the following problems early on:

Not enough damge.
Too squishy.
Fast end drain

I made a Dark/Fire Brute, and it seemed to lack all these qualities. I get constant high damage, Resists, two self-heals, two end recovery attacks, two damage boost powers, excessive attack chain, slots to spare for defense because the attacks are already great damage. I can pop a Luck if I need more survival ability and I feel covered.

I was able to solo seawitch at level 17 (elite boss that gives a badge that everyone was saying is hard). Missions on normal mode are always fast and easy, and I end up using Rest for endurance only, and lots of times I'll go without shields to save end if there are no mez's being thrown around. With full fury, I out damage everything non-brute in a team as my damage shield ramps up really fast.

Could I do any of this with a scrapper or tanker? No. A tank could probably hold agro much easier then me as I have to get the mob in my damage shield and constantly change targets to spread the hate. I think scrappers would have a hard time keeping up with the pace I go at currently, and I get all my resists/status protection in two powers.

Scrappers and Brutes actually seem to have lots in common but are not quite the same. They both have high damage caps, same resist caps, Melee Primary and Defense Secondary. The difference is that Brutes have a larger variety of power sets and can self-boost their damage to high levels off the start, where scrappers have a slightly higher base damage and the potential to do output the most devistating attacks in the game, but this requires the assistance of many fortutide or Kinetic buffs to pull that off.

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Bug… In an upcoming patch, flying entities that are disorient will no longer behave oddly.

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I think this bug has been around for a long time. Wouldn't the patch of always been upcoming if the fix for it has been worked on this long?

I managed to get a non-combat NPCs to follow me in a mission. When I saw the ambush coming down the hallway, I walked backwards and then stealthed. The NPC seemed to be captured by the ambush mobs and the ambush mobs were happy to follow me but not attack me. I walked to the exit safely and then dispached the ambush when I got there. Once I did, the hostage was at the exit and the mission was completed.

I'll have to see if this is repeatable.

Taking things a bit literally are we? The concept is that you are not force to PvP.

Yes, to clear these annoying "PvP contact missions" you must step foot in a zone deemed PvP.

What is the worst that could happen? Well, as of now, you walk in, talk to the guy, and walk out as your PvP safety timer goes out. Later on, maybe some jerk might TP-Foe you away from safety and kill you (I assume you won't struggle). Your 'discomfort' is a small walk out of the hospital and out of the zone. Waste of time for you? maybe, but you get a pinch of exp.

This is a small period of time for your hero's walk to lvl50. You are still 99.99999% PvP free, but more likely to be 100%.

If you want to herd like before, you bring multiple tanks.. No wait.. Thats team work! Doh! They got us again!