Quixotik

I still think it is a level 32 Power like Unstoppable that you are giving out for free at level one, well better than Unstoppable really since MM's do more damage and get Defender powers to boot.

Maybe it should be. At level 32. "After patient training over the past 32 levels your inherent power Supremacy, has improved. You now have the Bodyguard ability."

Have you ever been to Sirens Call? You should spend some time there watching the MMs use Bodyguard and decide for yourself.

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Plagarism on the boards? Just quoting his own words doesn't count as an original post by you, dude.

Anyway, I made a suggestion of having the base drones supress Foeport (both in AND out) to prevent people from porting enemies into the drones AND stop, for example, heroes plucking villains right off the helecopter pad in bloody bay as they zone in or try to zone out (They can DO this, believe it or not, despite it being so inaccessable)

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The repeated paragraph was my post, it was just a typo that it got posted inside the quote too, sorry 'bout that. But yeah, Manuevers should supress TP Foe. Seems like Leadership is the only thing the Dev's are giving 80 percent of players to actually play PvP with for some reason so it fits. Still don't understand why there is no actual PvP pool powerset. They gave us a game, but no access to play it.

Anyway, if "Bodyguard" is to address the low HP's of MM's then just give them more HP's. That's all they ever did for Blasters who are similar in that they do high damage also. Heck, Blasters aren't even surrounded by an army of aggro-magnets. And again the reason I draw Blasters into the comparison is how can Defiance and Bodyguard be balanced? The two powers are not even remotely alike in quality of effect, time buffing the player, and availability to the player.

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an invul tank actually has a chance of fighting back if he's tpfoed though. a mm has the lowest HP out of all heros/villains, and loses their offensive power and bodyguard when tpfoed

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I agree, TP Foe has ridiculous Range. That should be cut to 60-80 feet in PvP like any other ranged attack. What makes TP Foe exempt from basic normal range in PvP and shouldn't there be a pool power resist for TP Foe? Manuevers maybe?

I don't know about you, but most of the time I get tp foed, it is into a) a drone, or b) a group of 3 or more and then you get tp'd onto caltrops, ice slick, tar patch, etc, then you get hit by major toggle dropper and then you are just like a babe for the taking. A double AS will take a tank out as long as they both hit. Doesn't matter what AT, the difference between the tank and the MM is how long it takes for you to die. You need to get around that. If you are getting tp foed by 1 person, you should be able to find out where they are camping and stay out of their range.

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I agree, TP Foe has ridiculous Range. That should be cut to 60-80 feet in PvP like any other ranged attack. What makes TP Foe exempt from basic normal range in PvP and shouldn't there be a pool power resist for TP Foe? Manuevers maybe?

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"Bodyguard", seems like a level 32 power or it has the same effect. A Super-Buff like Unstoppable or Instant Healing... except it's an auto power that you don't need to slot....... can Blasters get this too? I mean for Blasters it would just be a 40% always-on damage resistance buff, but that would be ok. Blasters can't do all the MM Status Effect attacks, but they do a little more damage on the first-strike, I think MM's do higher continuous DPS than Blasters though. It would be balanced I am sure. Yes, Blasters should get the 40% universal damage resistance auto-power, "Bodyguard", for free at level one. You can have Defiance, it doesn't work anyway.

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If blasters had Bodyguard you would like it even less than Defiance.

Blasters have no pets, therefore bodyguard would do nothing. Zip. Zero. Nada. You don't seem to even realise what Bodyguard is actually doing.

Any pets to be used with Bodyguard can ONLY be on Defensive AND Follow. So the Mastermind can't send them after you, they can only react to your attacks. If he DOES sic them on you once you attack him, bodyguard immediately stops working. It would be like having all of your powers only work on someone who attacked you mister blasterdude. How fun would THAT be?

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Heh, you missed my sarcasm I think. I have seen how Bodyguard works. (I also play 3 MMs) The Pets attack about as well with it on or off and with Taunt and Placate, etc. it is unlikely that a Blaster can hold one target lock for more than a few seconds anyway. And, I still say Bodyguard is a level 32 power. Not overpowered at level 32, but overpowered below that level. So I guess I will switch-over to my MM's for I-7, .

The sarcasm here is that the Dev's work very hard to cap, curb, and nerf Blasters. No defense, status resists, ED (removes damage from damage-only powers), Defiance (which doesn't work, as intended). Then they turn around and hand out Fury, Bodyguard, Domination, Containment, etc. that do work and very well from level one for free as auto-powers. And after all of this buffing of other AT's, game balance is, was, and always will be perfect and just how the Dev's planned it would be..... yeah, uh-huh, right.

Anyway, just wanted to use Blaster's and Defiance (worthless, never works auto-power) as a counterpoint to Bodyguard (always works, incredible boost, auto-power). I don't see any comparison. It's like two different games.

"Bodyguard", seems like a level 32 power or it has the same effect. A Super-Buff like Unstoppable or Instant Healing... except it's an auto power that you don't need to slot....... can Blasters get this too? I mean for Blasters it would just be a 40% always-on damage resistance buff, but that would be ok. Blasters can't do all the MM Status Effect attacks, but they do a little more damage on the first-strike, I think MM's do higher continuous DPS than Blasters though. It would be balanced I am sure. Yes, Blasters should get the 40% universal damage resistance auto-power, "Bodyguard", for free at level one. You can have Defiance, it doesn't work anyway.

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So in light of Recluse's Victory, the I-7 Stalkers, Brutes, and Masterminds, why don't Blasters get Status Resist powers or Defense? Or just more damage maybe. These 3 AT's can out-damage a Blaster, may have great ranged attacks and all of them get the chance at least for Status Resists and Defensive sets. As I said before, 80 feet of Range is not a Defense in PvP.

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After thinking about this overnight, the best way to address this PvP shortfall of Blaster's is to make all the current powers have 50-60% more base Range. This amount of Range would make Blasters harder to spot in a PvP setting and buy them one or two attacks if they are crafty about it, which is kind of the way you play a Blaster in PvE. At the same time this added Range would have a minimal effect on PvE since we now have "Maximum Number of Targets" and if you pick the wrong Mob you pull the whole group no matter what. Also most Ranged PvE Mobs have 120 meter attacks anyway. And maybe Blaster PBAoE's need to hit harder or with Status Effects. I am thinking of Electric Blast/Electric Melee which has very few ranged attacks.

Anyway, I made several Blasters to test during the Recluse's Victory event and they battled almost entirely in Melee. And Caltrops did not offer any defense to Stalkers when I used them.... used them alot too on the Archery/Devices I was testing and they are not working like they do in I-6. Targeting Drone also seems very weak buffing for Archery even fully slotted so it may be bugged or Nerfed into uselessness.

I do think that a 50-60% boost in Blaster attacks would give Blasters the same sneaky type of Ranged gameplay in PvP that they have in PvE. Try it and see.

So in light of Recluse's Victory, the I-7 Stalkers, Brutes, and Masterminds, why don't Blasters get Status Resist powers or Defense? Or just more damage maybe. These 3 AT's can out-damage a Blaster, may have great ranged attacks and all of them get the chance at least for Status Resists and Defensive sets. As I said before, 80 feet of Range is not a Defense in PvP.

What I continue to see in CoH/V (and especially Recluse's Victory!) is that Range is not a Defense in PvP. If you are lucky you may get a first strike with Range, but from then on the battle is Melee. Hover is useless in PvP also since you either get Held, Teleported, or melee-stunned by a superleaping Melee AT since the Range on ranged attacks in CoH/V is a joke. 80 feet. That's a non-existant distance in PvP. Human opponents defeat 80 feet of range in 1 to 2 seconds. This imbalance should be addressed and balanced in gameplay either with more damage or range or something.

Well they just don't fit with most Thug MM's. Think about it. Unless maybe it was a Thug MM modeled after Colonel Sanders or such. Megalomaniac restaurant giant, etc.

So I say at least give the Summon Thugs power a makeover. Give them the twisted faces and darker outfits maybe. If they need to be small types at least make them look evil.

I like the MM Thug powerset. So far it is the one AT that seemed most evil from the beginning. Dual Wield seems to fit the character perfectly.

The first pet power, Call Thugs, leaves me thinking.. what a bunch of whimps. I was expecting Bikers or brutes or if weaker then at least diabolical. These thugs should definately not be out so late I think. They seem to kill out of crankiness instead of ruthlessness. Bigger Thugs I think, or crazy. There is something very Walmart-ish about the Thugs. Maybe Walmart is a good place to get Thugs, never tried, but it is unlikely.

This is more of a suggestion for Dark Armor's heal, Dark Regeneration.

Dark Regeneration is vital for Dark Armor to function in PvP since it requires so many Armors to work and those Armors are weak, well under 50%, to everything but Negative Energy and Psionics. Dark Regeneration is very high endurance and must be slotted heavily for this as well as recharge and at least one heal for PvP since you usually have only one target for it to strike. However, Dark Regeneration is only base Accuracy and will not hit at all without at least 2 Accuracy SO's in PvP and 3 are better. So for PvP at least Dark Regeneration needs a boost to it's base Accuracy, maybe 10-15%. Right now Dark Regeneration misses too much for Dark Armor to function in PvP as it does in PvE. This should apply to Scrapper and Brute Dark Armors as well.

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Not putting the bow away when using other powers. Brawl is the only attack power in the game that allows you to not put your weapon away when attacking with it. Brawl also took more animation time by several multiples than any other power in the game. Doing something similar with every power which could be used in conjunction with Archery/Trick Arrow simply isn't feasible.

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Okay noted.

That being so....why can't you give us an archery/TA blaster????

So I can quit playing my TA/archery def like she was a gimped blaster instead.

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You know Trick arrow would make a better blaster secondary that defender primary its so bad.

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Ya know... I think Trick Arrow was designed to be a Controller Secondary..... which meant it had to be a Defender Primary. Still I think a modified Trick Arrow... we'll call it Tactical Arrow for now... could possibly solve alot of Archery's shortcomings.

Thanks for the changes, but it doesn't address the core problem with Archery. No Secondary Effect damage mitigation and only average damage with only one Cone attack other than the Rain of Arrows. Damage mitigation is extremely important in the ED-ified version of CoH for Blasters.

Anyway, I'll throw some solutions you're way.

1.) Make Archery higher damage than other Blaster sets.
2.) Make Archery attacks 100 meter Range or higher.
3.) Make Archery attacks cause DoT damage from wounding.

Any one of these three changes would make Archery Blast play as well as, but not better than the other Blaster Primaries because Archery has no Damage Mitigation like all the other Blaster sets do. No Damage Mitigation means the Archery Blaster takes every attack on the chin with no let up until all attackers are defeated. This can be literally 5 times as much damage, or more, sustained by Archery Blasters in fights than other Blasters face. Think about it. If I knock a target down once, it loses two attacks. I knock it down again. It gets one attack off, but loses two more. If it's a minion, it won't be getting up. Something bigger, it will get up and probably be harder to knock down, but, you get the idea. Archery gets none of that. The Archer just gets hit by every attack, mez, stun, that gets thrown it's way and dies very quickly because of it.

Thanks.

Okay, what I don't understand is why some powers like Dark Armor/Shadow Cloak are given a Zero modifier in Iakona's stat guide.

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Oil Slick is great fun, but there are...issues...with igniting it. There are multiple points of failure. The knockdown field is nice, though.

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Bleah,

I love Oil Slick but I agree it has issues. Hitting it with blazing but not having it ignite is annoying. Having controller pets destroy it without igniting it is also annoying. When Oil Slick does light up, it's really nice (once you have 3 damage enchancers in it).

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I think this is a Quality of Life issue too. Igniting Oil Slick with a Blazing Arrow seems to be like an 80% probability in the real world and may be the only reason to take Trick Arrow as your Primary since.... as many players have pointed out... the other Defender Primaries do everything TA does with fewer powers, plus they get alot of Buffs and faster activation times overall.

So yes, Fix Oil Slick so it at least functions as one would expect. At the moment heal auras and broadswords are more effective at setting Oil Slick on fire than Blazing Arrow. You are fooling alot of players who see this igniting effect as an intended/realistic function of pairing the two arrow sets.

I would take Entangling Arrow. 80 foot range base. Easily enhanced Duration and +Acc. You can make a living on the side rooting Bosses and then Blazing Arrow. Ice Arrow is the power that seems like the after-thought to me. An AoE Stun would be better.

In looking at Trick Arrow I would say it was designed as a Controller Secondary.... which meant it had to be a Defender Primary, but that is why there is no AoE Stun Arrow in the set. It could certainly use a power like FlashFire more than Ice Arrow.

And what about Force Field Defenders???

Force Fields is a powerset devoted to the defense of other players. It is very high endurance. It has no damaging powers other than the very minor damage from Force Bolt. It has an escape power, PFF. It has only one defense power for the Defender, Dispersion Bubble and this is also being overpowered by the same gameplay flaws with Defense DeBuffing attacks that have appeared in Super Reflexes, Stone Armor, and Ice Armor.

Assuming that Minions have a 61% Accuracy (65%?) and characters have base defense with no powers activated (5%? or better?) then having Dispersion Bubble activated should grant a Defense Buff of some type, but in my test vs two Penumbra Assault Minions firing Assault Rifle Bursts, it does not. The character tested is a level 14 FF/Electric Defender with two DO Defense Buff (lvl15), slotted in Dispersion Bubble. In 1 thousand shots fired there were 687 hits and 313 misses. For the test criteria, counting only began after a successful hit to cause some Defense Debuff and continued from there until the character had to retreat to heal. So even at level 14 with a partially slotted Dispersion Bubble, two even conning minions were able to use their Defense Debuff to completely negate Dispersion Bubble and hit for 68.7 percent through it. If you add a third or an Lt. it gets much much worse. And although I did not test it to 1000, two +1 Vortex Marksmen were hitting 92-95% through Dispersion Bubble as outlined above. It's even worse at level 30 where the mobs use more sophisticated attacks with status effects.

I'll test more as time goes on.

Well, I think it is futile. I think the Dev's have decided our fate and anything that can be worked out that might allow a Tank to continue to tank in what has been a reasonable fashion will be seen as overpowered and nerfed also, but I will leave you to it. Good luck.

mmm, Bookends? Yes, I think Tanks make good bookends now.

The question is, why would you play most of the Tanker powersets now and why would you waste your time on the few that still work when you know they will be nerfed also within the next month or so? All but one of my Tanks are now unplayable and this one will have it's one saving grace nerfed soon also and then it will be unplayable. Sad, it's a level 40 Tank that I have struggled to get to level 40 because playing a Tank in CoH is always being changed. This was my first created toon from CoH's 2-day headstart back in 4/04 and back then Tanks could not be defeated, but did no damage so a study in boredom. Now Tanks do minor damage and die, so a study in futility now. Hey stick around, in 10 years I am sure Cryptic will make a game.

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There was a bug found near the end of beta where it was realized that the Upgrade powers did not benefit from Enhancements in the Henchmen powers.

This was fixed and was in the version that was on test last week. Unfortunately the patch note did not go with it, AND no one told me the fix was up there.

Anyway, long story short is that the fix is now LIVE, and your Henchmen should be fully Enhanced when you use your Upgrade powers.

Sorry about this screw up. I wanted you guys to test it before it went to Live to see if it made MM's too powerful.

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Not sure if this is too powerful but I can solo on relentless (Hardest difficulty) at a decent rate. I am a merc/traps Mastermind.

Edit: I am currently 27 with all of my SO's. Once I hit 32 it may become a blood bath with all my AE's.

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MMs were able to solo at that difficulty during beta with the bug in place. It's just a matter of how fast.

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I can't. I tried Relentless after reading these posts and had to abandon the mission. Robots/FF.

I accept the trade-off of no secondary effect for the accuracy boost. After playing Archery Blast for 26 levels I will say it is a little weak because of it's two primary attacks and Fistful of Arrows needs higher base accuracy, maybe 1.27 or 1.39. Snap Shot and Aimed Arrow seem like variations of Neutrino Bolt and X-Ray Beam except that draw times cause significantly longer attack cycles, so boost the damage of Aimed and Snap Shot slightly to bring it in line with other Blaster powersets while keeping Archery Blast mostly the same as it is.

Archery Blast is weaker, not by much, but it is. And don't forget that the draw times are eating up the up-time for Build Up and Aim. For instance, my Electric Blaster can get through 4 to 5 heavier damage attacks while the Archery Blaster does 2 weak and one heavy. The failing however, is in Snap Shot and Aimed Arrow being so weak.

Ranged Shot also has an Activation Lag Bug that runs on 2-3 seconds after the shot is fired. Some call this a "Cool-Down", but there is no such thing in CoH attack cycling.

Elec/Elec Blaster lvl37
Ice/Energy Blaster lvl35
Energy/Energy Blaster lvl28
AR/Energy Blaster lvl25

Level 22 Archer/Nrg. It has weak points and strong points. Endurance usage is very high for the damage done which is only average damage levels for a Blaster. No secondary effects although some attacks get a slight boost (5% not counting the Draw-Weapon 5%) to Accuracy. You still need Accuracy Enhancements so not much value, but you hit more overall.

1. Only Lethal Damage=Weak
2. Soloing=Strong
3.Teaming=Weak to Moderate
4.PvP=Weak
5.Endurance Use Very High=Weak
6.Secondary Effect=Weak
7.Overall Damage Output=Moderate
8.Cone and AoE attacks=Moderate/Weak
9.Effect of Build-Up and Aim=Moderate

The one thing for Teaming that Archery excells in is when you get overrun. That's when the higher Rate of Fire can really shine with a skilled archer who can apply the big and little damage where they are needed to thin out mobs quickly. Other than that all the other Blasters/Scrappers will blow you away. Soloing is best with Archery Blast though. Nothing else compares.

Not sure if this question is in the right place, but it is about mission adjusting and changes in I-5.

Alot of Tanks will be unable to play as Tanks in I-5, especially if, like most CoH players, they don't read the forum boards. They will be probably be Tanks with a few extra attacks and no ability to hold a large mob's aggro... and live. Tanking missions like the Skyraider Terra Volta Trial or the Citadel TF and others will not be possible. Will those missions scale down or be scaled down?

Both good ideas, especially the second one since it encourages teams and missionplay instead of street-hunting.

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Don't forget to add "more mini-events like the giant Octopus, the Ghost Ship and the infamous Paladin."

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I am still waiting patiently for a Rikti Invasion/Attacks, where their starships appear overhead and the city section is swarmed with Rikti beaming in.

Maybe an Invasion of Monster Robots alla Winter Lord. Rikti Monster Robots!! From starships!! yeah, it could happen!!