Plasma

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Still here.

Yes, I was busy adding flavor spawns to Atlas Park, Kings Row, and Galaxy City.

I've seen some posts on the changes and additions and dialogue so thanks for the great feedback.

It was kind of interesting going back with the new animations and having some fun. Kings Row wasn't my zone, but Atlas Park and Galaxy City were so it was pretty weird going back to them again after a long absence. But a good weird.

I did not have the opportunity to go into The Hollows and Perez Park like I would have liked, but I did manage to get some time in to at least pull spawns out front of mission doors and remove some of the nastier mission doors in the HEART of the Perez Park maze. (not sure if anyone noticed that change)

The Hollows, just a few spawns removed around contacts or mission doors and extra mission doors added for variety, if applicable.

That was all I had time for, unfortunately, but I'm glad you guys like what you see.

WW

See? I'm still here!

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It would be nice to get the lowbie missions away from the deep red zones. I'm tired of needing 5 tries for the newbs in my group to huff it out to a mission door deep in the hollows.

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Also, the base camping phenomenon is not entirely based on camping to get people that just rezzed, most of the people camping the base are there because someone they were fighting fled there.

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That's not even remotely true in RV right now. There are 10-15 habitual campers that just sit there...for hours...at the edge of the Villain base and actively try to TP people OUT of the base and into their mob complete with preset Ice Patches, Trip Mines, and Illusion pets out the wazoo.

When I logged my SS/EA in yesterday (which is pretty much immune to TP Foe) I was hit with 3 failed attempts to TP me out of the safe zone before I got halfway up the "runway". 3 ATTEMPTS! I hadn't even gotten into the zone yet! Try to justify that. Hell...there's a Blaster out there with 3x range in TP Foe and Boost Range who can TP a villain from inside the villain base...he got me after an Overload crash when my TP protection was down and I was around the corner...apparenty there's enough of a gap in the position of the walls where you can target someone inside the base from the right angle. Because of this kind of garbage, I respecced a version of that toon to act specifically as a TP bot. Is it cheap? Sure, okay. But nobody is making those campers stand there. And I only bring that guy out when the ganking is really bad.

What I find most ironic about these people is that they are the biggest whiners when they get Droned. Isn't TPing a single player out of the base and into an group that out levels, out powers, and outnumbers the rest of the villains in the zone combined essentially the same thing? There's no hope of survival in either case for the one getting TPed. The Villains in RV resort to droning because they don't have the powers, or the numbers, to fight back against the gank squad at the front door. The easiest way to stop the droning is to go out into the zone and play the friggin game. Nobody requires those "heroes" to stand there and do nothing all day. There are uncaptured pillboxes out there, and if you actually moved away from the entrance...gasp...you might even find some villains out there in the zone to beat up legitimately.

[edit]After all the ranting, I forgot to add this...[/edit]

As for the rest of your post Gerswin, I couldn't agree more. Your setup sounds much more entertaining than the one currently in use

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I experienced this. No big deal, but seriously - what are the players playing those heroes thinking? The perpetual ganking isn't proving anything, and it is interfering with the testing of the zone. I just wanted to go run around and look for a signature hero/villain and see how things worked; obviously, I should do it with a hero, and I will later, but I was still surprised at the short-sightedness.

The defense for Rock Armor is also definitely wrong. (TANKERS get 16% def, so there is no way brutes get 22.5)

And don't forget to read the conclusion to the thrilling Solar Surfer saga!

<.<
>.>

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Blaster: Devices: Trip Mine: 5% for 1 Toggle
Blaster: Devices: Time Bomb: 19% for 1 Toggle

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This is completely ridiculous by the way. It's *so* hard to hit someone with a time bomb, it's unbelievable. If they detonate when a trip mine sitting next to them blows, then I could see them being at 22% with the others, but as it is, they should do 100% drops still. Out of every 20 time bombs I set, I'm lucky if one hits.

Wow. What a jaw dropping change. I never imagined it would go this far. I'll have to copy/test my ice/en blapper. Obviously, the squishies get no benefit from this, but fighting brutes tended to be a very evenly matched fight before, and I think I'm in real trouble now. *sigh*

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You can read Statesman's and Positron's 2nd Anniversary Address here.

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Dear States & Pos: Nice game. Keep up the good work. (And fix telekinesis target limit, pls )

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Beyond that, we are looking to release another Issue building up the story towards our next retail box, due in 2007. This will include going back and revamping some of the zones from City of Heroes, using everything we've learned from making City of Villains and Issue 7, plus a bunch of other cool stuff including new powersets and an epic archetype. Of course for the retail box we will be creating all-new zones and content based on the results of the forum poll we posted last month. The retail box will be an expansion to both City of Heroes and City of Villains.

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One question, will the next retail box be an Stand-a-lone Expansion or an Expansion pack that one has to have either City of Heroes or City of Villains to use, or has that been determined as of yet?

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It will NOT be a stand alone.

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Oh. My. God. We need more info than that!

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3) Datamining -- I looked at Blaster/Scrapper a few minutes ago. In terms of raw kills, Blasters are the better PvP killers, but only if they have Energy Manipulation. Without EM, they are roughly 60% of scrappers numbers. In terms of kills to death ratio, Blasters are slightly behind scrappers with EM, but competing with Defenders and Dominators for lowest value Note, that these are solo values! Things are very different in team play.

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What are you datamining for this? For example, in Siren's, you get stuff for killing people, and you lose nothing for dying. So I will often charge into the thick of a pack or port one person away and try to take them out with my ice/em, even if I know it's possible or probable I'll die in response. Even when low on health, I fight on, since defiance gives me a chance for a kill and dying means nothing.

As far as blaster secondaries, I think devices is quite servicable in pvp, although lacking buildup is a huge disadvantage. Then again, tp foe+trip mine is a pretty nice combo. One trick pony, but a NICE trick.

The others, well, both their attacks and their utility are a bit behind em. I mean, you can't compare conserve power vs burn.

There is something else though: EM is self selecting. It has a small edge over the other sets, for certain. However, players who play extensively in PvP are fully aware of such an edge, and therefore their characters (like my main PvP character) are built with this in mind. So people "dedicated" to pvp pick the best set even if the edge is small a disproportionate amount of the time. Casual players pick their sets based on concept, aesthetics, or whatever. Then they PvP. They lose more because PvP is a lark or an experiment for them, or perhaps a quest for a badge.

To verify this claim, simply data mine those PvP blasters who have /EM, and check the percentage who have Ice. Hardly proportional, eh?

Part of the problem here is that people are playing poorly against blappers. Blappers are all about front-end damage. If you survive their alpha, you should be able to get an advantage against them every second you stay alive. I've PvP's with my ice/en mostly in Siren's, but I can't imagine how I'd take on a regen scrapper, for example. If they turn on IH, for example, I have NO WAY to kill them, period, until it ends. My damage is simply not high enough to overcome their hp, and after BU+aim wear off, it's a totaly joke. Against an enemy with a click defense power, again, I'm screwed. Elude, MoG, Unstoppable are all the end of me.

In fact, any heal sort of wrecks me. Once BU+aim are gone, my damage is not so impressive any more. We get one shotted by stalkers, one and two shotted by scrappers, and overcoming the defenses of a brute is a task, let alone a tank which is hopeless.

I do think *certain* blapping powers are overpowered as toggle droppers. As much as I love it, Bonesmasher feels abusive, frankly. But that's already being nerfed in I7, no?

At this point, no one should be even considering any sort of nerfing of blasters or blapping until significant I7 data is in.

Keep in mind also that level is an important thing. Blaster's high end powers don't really make a huge difference in PvP. You can have Bonesmasher, Energy Punch, BU+aim all by like L10 or L12, and that's all you need to be REALLY dangerous. At the high end, you're getting stuff like nukes that is useless in PvP (while scrappers are getting headsplitter), and at best you get the marginal Total Focus while scrappers are getting stuff like MoG and Unstoppable. (And if you're not /EM, then you are getting crap like hot feet)

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I'm all for it, it would'nt really diminish an Ice/EM's ability, just make it harder to play. People seem to forget the reason that /EM is so good is conserver power and boost range, not bone smasher and total focus.

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People forget? No, it's just not true. Bonesmasher is the premier power from the Energy Manipulation set for PvP. Boost range is completely optional. A strong PvP build doesn't rely on range, because blasters don't do enough damage at range to kill anyone before they die. They survive on burst damage, so in PvP, they have to make heavy use of their secondary sets to be very strong. I'm sure that ranged blasters *can* be effective against certain enemies, but the universally dangerous blaster relies on high burst damage and toggle dropping.

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Here at NCsoft we share an office with Destination Games, the development house working on Tabula Rasa, and I often run into a concept artist who spends a large portion of his time drawing concept art for the game in a common area of our building. People will often walk by and gawk at some of the most amazing pencil drawings they have ever seen and chat with Brad as he casually fleshes them out. The thing I have heard him say over and over again is the same as some other people here have mentioned, "almost anyone can draw decently - if they are willing to work at it."


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(1) He said "decently", and you said, "most amazing pencil drawings you have ever seen". Those are not the same.

(2) "Anyone could do it if they worked at it" is pretty standard modesty at work, and taking it as something else is like assuming that someone who says, "How's it going?" as you pass them in the hall is genuinely concerned about how you are and would like to hear the story of your joy or misery, as the case may be.

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It was nice getting to try out my CoH CCG decks and showing others the game. It is really quite fun. Even when you are teaching and explaining everything a card does, it STILL plays faster then most other card games. And for anybody who wants to know, Synapse ROCKS!

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Haha, what a scammer. Jokes were made about avoiding Synapse at my table. Alexa and Awry even redeemed my opponent's Synapse deck for a statesman deck so he'd have a chance against my Posi. (Not that it helped; fear the rad/rad... and Posi signature power is CHEAP)

Yeah, I didn't have a lot of chances to mill and chat it up with everyone, but I was the guy with the shaved head in the black Decepticon shirt. Holla!

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I heard that Cuppa's built and she could kick anyone's [censored].

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Cuppa is really nice, but I have to say, if you're thinking about causing **** on her forum, think again. She will snap you like a twig.

So I hit the meet n greet tonight, and thought people might want some highlights.

Venue

Cyberjocks is a place in North Austin, off highway 183. They had what I'd guess to be about 50-75 systems set up. Everyone was playing CoH, CoV, Guild Wars, or Auto Assault, with a few staggered Lineage II. At one point I glimpsed a "summary" screen, and CoH was the most popular game, although GW did well. Auto assault was apparently "not up" when I checked.

There was good music bumpin, and people seemed cool. They had someone emceeing who periodically interrupted with announcements. It was dim but not dark in most spots. There were wristbands at the door, and you had to be signed up, so it felt sort of like being on the list at a club or something. Very exclusive. Hah! They gave out raffle tickets, plus tickets for drinks and pizza. Sadly, no bottled waters available for drink tickets. I dunno if they have one, but cyberjocks needs a full blown espresso bar. Those of us who are older don't want energy drinks, especially overpriced overmarketed ones

That said, cool venue. They were hocking an unlimited 8-4 spring break pass for $60. I dunno what normal rates are, but it seemed like it'd be a fun place to hang out if I were closer. Props to cyberjocks

Staff

I met Arctic Sun first. Ran into Cuppa and thanked her for picking out cool shwag for me when I scored in the mmoradio contest during E3. Then I wandered over and asked a couple ladies if I could sit and observe them starting up a game of the CoH CCG game, and it turned out to be Alexa and Awry, who were cool enough to offer some tips on the game, and even laughed at my incredibly cheesy jokes. ("There should be rares in these CCGs packs that are Hami-O enhancements.")

BTW, the CCG game is pretty cool. They grabbed me and some other guy some free cards (woot) and we duked it out. He got the statesman promo pack, I got Positron. Posi, for the record, you pwned Statesman. I laid down the debuffs on his acc, and he couldn't even hit me. What's cool about the CCG is how the game tends to reflect the actual powers.

Anyhow, props to the ncsoft crew, because I all of them I met, whether intentionally or accidentally, were very cool. It's good of them to be gracious even with such a throng in attendance.

The Schwag

I was so-so on actually going, since I'm lazy and it was a long day, but the schwag put me over the top. Bumper stickers: "Truth, Justice, and Amazing Gameplay", and "I'd rather be fighting villains." Niiice. Plus a bundle of 5-6 comics, 2 posters (one GW, one Lineage II - that did suck, though, I want a CoH/CoV poster!), and a CoV t-shirt.

The Vibe

I had to work to keep my inner fanboi in check. The whole aura, with the door bouncer, the MC, the music, etc, gave this whole thing a "omg meet the rock stars" feel to it. Someone came up to talk to Alexa and Awry about working in the industry, and all the NCSoft crew kepts posing with people for pictures.

Aside from that though, it was totally inviting.

Anecdote

<MC> Ok, I WANT TO KNOW - Who is the most HARD CORE gamer chick out there??
<Alexa, Awry, Arctic> *pause, then almost in unison* Cuppa!!

And then Cuppa yelled something about it being her. So Cuppa isn't just a moderator. She's hard core, yo.

Other notes

The PCs were generally full and I have a premium box at home, so I wasn't trying to get in on the live action, but it was cool seeing people hanging. Apparently there was some sort of simultaneous party going on in Pocket D in game. Nice touch. One thing that struck me was the disproportionately high number of Kheldians in play on the LAN, just walking around observing.

Anyhow, cool event.

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If they nerfed Huricane, it would a direct response to something from PvP, which they've said previously that they won't do.

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Actually, the original quote was something along the lines or "we'll try not to."

Melee and Range are differentiated in terms of damage, and attack type, but the statements above that there is no 'melee range' is accurate.

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Given the nerfing that was given to Regen with IH and MoG along with Phase Shift and Kheldian's Quantum Flight, these were certainly PvP nerfs. I fully expect you to nerf hurricane which is needed. Also fix the toggle droppers. Hurricane and things like that should be made Clickies like IH was with long recharge times(to be fair). I'd leave Stalker's Hide alone though. They are pretty weak without Hide and since you can buy IR goggles in a zone if your side is doing well along with all the leadership powers tossed on, this should be adequate.

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Okay, you're wrong on something. None of those things were PVP nerfs. (Well, QF might have been, I don't know anything about that power)

IH and MoG were nerfed because regen scrappers were SOLOING +3 MONSTERS.

Phase shift was nerfed because it was being used for herding.

Both were done for PvE reasons. The devs said it, and the vast majority of player comments -I- saw agreed with the reasoning behind it. (although there was still much debate on whether it was nessecary or not) As for nerfing Hurricane, I don't see any real PVE reason for it. Storm Defenders have their share of challenges as it is. PVP-wise, it's like someone said. There are ways to get around it, you just have to be creative about it.

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There's simply no reason to nerf hurricane. /storm is not that great to begin with, outside of hurricane. Almost all builds have other builds they have problems with. My blapper can kill squishies before they even have a chance to react, but tanks and brutes are tough because their hp are high, they survive my alpha assault, then buildup and aim are gone and I often get mobbed, held, stunned, etc.

You can deal with hurricane in lots of ways. Ranged attacks, jousting with melee attacks, anti-repel powers (yes, there are not many), end drain, mez effects, and so on. I'd port them onto trip mines with one characters.

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Given the nerfing that was given to Regen with IH and MoG along with Phase Shift and Kheldian's Quantum Flight, these were certainly PvP nerfs. I fully expect you to nerf hurricane which is needed. Also fix the toggle droppers. Hurricane and things like that should be made Clickies like IH was with long recharge times(to be fair). I'd leave Stalker's Hide alone though. They are pretty weak without Hide and since you can buy IR goggles in a zone if your side is doing well along with all the leadership powers tossed on, this should be adequate.

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Stalkers are very binary. They're either killing someone or they are dying.

However, they're one of the few (the only?) AT in the game that can essentially be "good" in PvP with only 2 powers. I'm not sure that's fair. A lot of people need to carefully consider their whole build to be strong at PvP, but stalkers get by pretty well with just 2 powers.

Fire Bomb - I'm not trying to insult you, and I didn't really want to get back into this thread, but Monay's post sucked me in.

If your numbers were posted to compare L1 attacks AT L1, then my comments just don't apply. But after it was made clear I meant my comments in the context of later game play, it is clear to someone thinking that they're not that relevent, for reasons stated.

Please realize I think your post was, in many respects, excellent, and I didn't intend for my comments to be construed as a personal attack. I just wanted to be clear that those numbers can't be considered relevent in the context that I was trying to say barrage was lacking.

But I posted initially more just to gripe about how useless it was to me at 45, with no way to get rid of it, when I'd have preferred to replace it with any other L1 tanker power or a pool power.... but my post was just a gripe and I didn't really put the needed info into it. I was lazy and started things off poorly. I'm going to try again to exit the thread. Sorry again.

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Owe my brain hurts!
To sum this thread :
OP: barrage is a terrible power compared to other 1st tier powers.
Other poster: Uhm no here are numbers. It's not bad really.
OP: well it's not real good in my attack chain.


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That's a terrible misrepresentation. Try:

OP: Barrage is a terrible tier 1 power
Others posters: here are the numbers, it's not that bad. Plus, [censored] noob, because EM rocks and we don't want attention
OP: Um, the BI and act time are the only important numbers, because recharge and end cost are not relevent here, but I'll [censored] now anyhow since clearly people don't want this to get raised as an issue.

Barrage *is* a horrible attack when taken in the context of how useful first tier powers are at higher levels. Whether that's justified by how good EM is can certainly be debated, but the number posted to "prove" me wrong about how bad it was remain an exercise in sophistry. They are statistics designed to mislead. And no one has really come to Barrage's defense. The responses that say "barrage is ok" fall into one of two categories:

(1) Barrage is okay, because EM is so good, barrage can have a BI of 1.00 and that's fine.
(2) Barrage looks cool, I love it!

My attack chain comments are more to put in perspective why the BI and the activation matter vastly more than the end cost and the recharge time.

Okay, well, I'm obviously not finding much support for this idea. Hey, I yield!

I wish we could post polls though, I'd love to see a statistic about how many of each tank secondary have slotted up their first attack, which is probably the best indicator of its usefulness.

Happy tanking, everyone.

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Energy Transfer, Total Focus, and Bonesmasher are three of the best Tanker attacks in the entire game. If you're going for single target burst dmg you'd be hard pressed to do better. The price Energy Melee pays for this is that it's lacking a bit a bit in AoE attacks (1 less than most sets) and it's first power is very low dmg.

And your comment about Seismic Smash being better than anything but ET is incorrect. Seismic Smash was recently buffed so that it would be brought up to the same level as Total Focus, before that it was worse. It still is if you consider that Total Focus is half energy dmg while Seismic Smash is purely smashing dmg. And then Energy melee still has ET on top of that. The energy melee set has *two single target attacks that are arguably better than anything in all of Stone melee, and most other sets as well.


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They're nice attacks, but they are all on long recharges, so "burst" is very much a key word. And I'm talking about Seismic smash of now, not before. Compare the recharge time for Smash and Total Focus.

Comparing sets is very apples to oranges, though. If a dev were to say, "Hey, we made Barrage bad because ET is good", we could go there, but it's a lot more complex. As it is, my build is strapped for powers, because my fire tank is fire/EM, and as such, end up having to take several extra powers to not completely blow as a tank. As such, I really miss having an initial attack that's usable, but even fully slotted out, I'd take Boxing over Barrage in an instant, never mind Air Superiority.

How many EM cheerleaders have actually played EM tanks, especially post-ED? Yes, it's not a bad set. I'm not saying it is. I'm just saying the first attack is useless at higher levels whereas I think that many other tanks sets have initial attacks that at least maintain enough utility long term to be worthy of comparing them to pool powers, which Barrage does not.

If we were to touch on EM's weak points: Barrage stinks. Stun is fairly redundant, since we have disorients out the wazoo already. And Whirling Hands is one of the worst tank AOE attacks. Is EM still great at single target BURST damage? Yes, it may well still be best. But other sets have other advantages, from better damage mitigation to ranged attacks to superior AOE. I'm almost certain EM does not have the best SUSTAINED single target damage, either, because its lower end attacks are generally feeble (other than bonesmasher, which is admittedly a great attack all around, maybe one of the best melee attacks in the game).

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Let me get this straight.

You're saying that the simple truth that you can do more damage with barrage over time than three other level one tanker powers is irrelevant?

That I'm 'ignorant' for pointing out these little things like 'facts' and 'numbers' that disagree with your point of view?

You will make an excellent politician some day. If you can't handle anyone disagreeing with you, much less proving you wrong, why do you post?

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I don't mind disagreement, but you haven't proved anything. Your post acts like Barrage is in some sort of vacuum where it is the only attack you have. If that were the case, it might not be the worst. However, when you are at higher levels and have several attack powers, Barrage is part of an attack chain. As part of such an attack chain, it's end cost and recharge time are far less important than they would be in a vacuum where you had only one power. But the BI and activation time remain just as relevent, because the damage it does determines its usefulness, and the activation time affects all the other powers in the chain.

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What I always like in posts like this is that people only look at the brawl index, and not factors like power recharge/activation time, or endurance cost.

So I'm going to do something I rarely do, and back up my words with a factual avalanche. Presented below is a table of every tanker melee first power's brawl index, activation + recharge time, and endurance spent.


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Your analysis is disingenuous or ignorant. Activation time and BI are what matter for these powers at higher levels. Recharge times and end costs are basically irrelevent (not for all powers; but for powers in this tier). We could poll /En tanks about trading up to a BI of 2.778 in return for 5.5sec rech and 5.4 end. I'd expect near 100% to be in favor.

Some powers still have a use at higher levels, especially in builds which are hard pressed to free up power slots to take extra attacks, but Barrage just can't find a home in a build. The damage is too small to be relevent.

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Is it because the upper tier powers are so good?

Honestly I would be VERY careful in asking for the Devs to look into this set at this point. I do not believe you or many of my fellow Tankers would be very pleased with the results. If Barrage is boosted you can be darned sure that something else will get dropped.

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That's not a bad theory. But a lot of tanker secondaries are harder to compare at the top, since they get big AOEs, like Foot Stomp or Crowd Control.

Seismic Smash, for example, is pretty comparable. Really, Seismic is actually better than anything but ET, and ET does self-damage. Likewise, fire melee gets 3 aoe attack, 2 of which are quite good. Energy, meanwhile, is stuck with whirling hands, which also sucks.

Really, while ET is awesome and Total Focus is good, they aren't good enough to justify Barrage being so bad. If we're looking at the set as a whole, I'd point to how feeble whirling hands is also, as well how an attack like stun is pretty bad. (Even compared to Stone Melee, often considered the worst secondary, Stun is less useful in EM, simply because it is more redundant; most of Stone is doing KB/KU, but EM is already disorienting right and left, so Stun is generally not worth it, unless you like to spend a lot of time in Siren's Call)