PleaseRecycle

I'm not convinced that stalkers are overpowered even given edge cases using their best sets. Maybe I just suck at stalking but I spared absolutely no expense on my elec/ice and it does indeed shred things en masse, yet it isn't that much different from the strength of my equally-fancy MA/DA scrapper in terms of either single target or aoe. Where the two absolutely differ is in durability; the scrapper can essentially ignore all enemies on an ITF, for instance, despite completely lacking DDR, but the stalker is prone to being two-shotted in under a second any time I forget to renew, or plan to tactically conserve, hoarfrost due to the super low base HP. I admit that's like the harshest circumstance available for /ice stalking short of psychic clockwork missions, but if we're going to be calling things OP surely we need to look at the "OP" scrapper and brute combinations. They are more numerous, they have comparable kill speed, often with much better aoe than stalker SJ, yet they basically shrug off any and all forms of obstacle as well. Why shouldn't stalkers do impressive damage to make up for their very real defensive deficits?

Oh, and to redeem myself a little, at least elec/ice is great for soloing cyst spawns on mission 2. That is, all of the dwarfs and novas and then the cyst and then the ambush.

I actually do prefer Villa Requin in Sharkhead for my coldhearted badge. It's kind of fiddly, though, because the Hellfrosts don't just spawn on the rocks, they also spawn up on the cliffs and there are a few spawns that are actually mixed in with the sky raiders by the airfield. So, if the vertical movement doesn't bother you it's pretty easy to get five or six Hellfrosts per lap of the island, making sure that your laps are wide enough and slow enough to allow the spawns to catch up with you. I admit I've never really tried it in cap for very long, so I'm not sure if that ends up being faster or not but it is steady and reliable which at least keeps me from getting frustrating periods of no progress.

If you have two helpers, that twenty minute figure is believable in FBZ. Any additional teammates should sit back in the bubble so that they have no impact on the spawn rates. Meanwhile, your three fake hunters should each stake a claim to points Sierra, X-Ray and Tango (I think). One lap of each of those islands typically produces anywhere from zero to six fakes, the average probably being closer to two than to three. That should work out to about twenty minutes, especially seeing as it normally takes me about an hour when I'm doing it solo. This assumes you can kill fakes in ten seconds or less without letting them bubble up.

Another option for fake farming is Dark Watcher's arc. Use low difficulty to reach the Nemesis mission and then crank it up to x8 and you're guaranteed something like twenty fakes per run. I believe it's followed up by another Nemesis mission that also has a spawn that's nothing but fakes, combined with being on a large map that will have lots of fakes in normal spawns just by statistical necessity. This strategy obviously requires you to be able to survive against and rapidly kill x8 Nemesis at your own level.

I'd say that's comparable in difficulty to hunting Marcones, since the best place to hunt Marcones is not Port Oakes at all, but one small neighborhood in northeastern Saint Martial. They spawn like crazy there and if only one person is doing the hunting they respawn very, very rapidly. Any teammates there for badge credit should hit the slots in the Giza or something so as not to interfere.

I don't use mids, maybe it needs an update? That's the old fade duration: the last patch changed it such that it now lasts 60 seconds, recharges in 210 and gives 9.375% defense to all. I don't remember what the old defense number was but any way you slice it that's a huge improvement.

Elec/dark can be played effectively in melee range so I'd say a case could be made for shooting for ranged, s/l, or even both depending on your budget. These days it's really not impossible to softcap all of the above if you don't mind springing for will of the controller, the glad armor global, coercive persuasion, and so on. Scorpion shield essentially makes the s/l softcap incidental to your goal of ranged softcapping, as many of the other things one would do, such as the 3% defense IOs, weave and such have an effect on all varieties of defense.

As for how to pursue defense in general, I'm of the opinion that you can typically have your cake and eat it too anymore. All of what I just said is true for controllers in general, but you're talking about elec/dark. The very same /dark that gets a permable ginormous chunk of defense in fade! My strategy would be thus: WotC wherever, CP in synaptic, steadfast and glad armor in shadow fall or tough, depending on whether you want fighting and how you want to slot either power. Assuming you do have weave, considering it, shadow fall and fade to be ED capped, you're already softcapped on ranged defense. Add scorpion shield and you're also incarnate softcapped on s/l defense. That barely took any focus at all so you're now free to fill the rest of the build with purples, lotgs and other recharge bonuses to your heart's content in the interest of making sure fade is actually permanent. Alternatively, you could push a little harder on ranged defense and incarnate softcap that as well. Hmm, this sounds like a pretty fun build...

That was some stream of consciousness posting, hopefully it's somewhat comprehensible.

Please explain to me how player awareness of fury has any impact whatsoever on the fact that a low level, soloing brute will be getting ~150% +damage full time simply by virtue of the fact that they're using attacks and being attacked. I don't see it, unless you're also assuming that the new player will be pausing for undue periods of time between spawns. If that's the assumption, why should we assume that they're competent in any other way? Perhaps they're going to take nothing but pool powers!

A brute is probably more straightforward than a scrapper since fury completely dominates everything at low level and masks slotting deficiencies at higher levels. Sure, a player as green as this may not exactly understand fury, but who says you have to understand it for it to be effective? Just about any primary would be good, as would most secondaries: the fact that all of them are sticky is another point toward ease of use for novices.

Toxic threads are surprisingly easy to deal with, it turns out.

Okay even by the rather dubious assertion that calling for nerfs is unproductive, discussing archetype balance in said archetype's forum is clearly not against any forum rule.

This is, however, a good illustration of how absolutely mental people would go if SS were ever present in a patch note again.

I don't suppose this was recorded in any way?

One of my first steps on character creation is /bind v "powexecname Sprint" but of course that precludes the use of v for other things.

Trays? Trays! Traaaaaaays!



Blood Red Arachnid and Arcanaville, what's up with putting sprint in slot 1? That would drive me crazy. Unless you use ESDF perhaps?

Also odd to me, though apparently I'm in the minority: not displaying your own character's name. It would make them the only floating name-less character amid a sea of floating named characters! Too eerie for me.

Sounds like it's about time they buffed MA.

It really sucks since the French community is as dedicated as anyone, but yeah. Not hard to understand the discontinuation of support. Even easier to understand the furor on the part of those affected. I feel for Zwillinger.

The only 50% attacks in elec are jacob's ladder and thunder strike. I am of the opinion that a high end elec build should not contain thunder strike, and jacob's ladder is more of a single target attack (which I guess would be a reason for it not to have a 50% crit out of hide, but that's where we're at for stalker cones). I'd say elec did just fine in issue 22.

Part of me says "Yes, those sets are too strong now," but then all of my "stalker instincts" were formed back when, in my opinion, stalkers were kind of terrible. So in a sense my feeling that those sets may be too good now is based on my old assumption that stalkers were intended to be bad. Since that's no longer true, I think they're probably fine.

Maybe she means in pvp or something? I'll admit that I wouldn't have left elec and SJ as they are for stalkers but then I always feel that the devs should err on the side of caution. It's a fair point to bring up super strength here: what melee set needs nerfs more? Obviously the difference is that SS has been around forever and heads would explode if a hand were lain on it, but as long as the stalker outliers aren't in the same league of overpoweredness, which surely they're not, they ought to be less of a concern.

How could CoH2 possibly be in their interest to develop? Right now they've got the most robust super hero game that has ever been made by anyone in terms of breadth and variety of content and systems. Why would they decide to not only start from scratch but essentially start competing with themselves in a rather narrow market segment? Better graphics? Ultra mode and the zone updates have shown that they can do that without making a new game. Ultra mode and the zone updates have also shown that there's a significant portion of the user base that's running the game on TI-86s and wouldn't be able to play a new game with newly high system requirements.

I have no idea if it was as successful as they projected, but Freedom has already significantly increased this game's revenue. In response to that they've been developing content for this game at a rate unlike any previous point in its existence. To repeat: why, then, would they dump a large amount of money into developing the same thing but with less content that fewer people could play in a now-more saturated market?

I can't wait for staff fighting's release so that I can proceed to be furious about the fact that you haven't released psychic melee yet!