Rigel_Kent
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Posts
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Joined
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Just as a general help to get you started:
1) Skip the shields and Frostwork, if you want to team, make a second build for that. Too much changes for defenders between soloing and teaming: which powers are useful, damage from Vigilance, end usage also from Vigilance.
2) Focus on slotting your secondaries. Damage is important but a little bit less so (due to Vigilance), accuracy is important but a little less so (due to inherent high Pistols accuracy, almost as high as Archery), so give a little more weight to recharge reduction, range in cones, and end redux if needed.
3) Don't slot for side effects on secondaries. Not worth it.
4) Infrigidate and Snow Storm is important to survive low levels solo. Snow Storm slows everything in a wide radius by a moderate amount. Infrigidate slows a single dangerous target (preferably a fire damage using dangerous target) by a huge amount. Use the two together when things get tough.
5) Infrigidate and Snow Storm need just a bit of movement slow slotting to floor things.
6) Infrigidate may or may not need recharge enhancement, because it does not stack on the same target. If you cycle it on 2 or more targets, recharge helps.
7) Slot Arctic Fog for defense for sure, and resistance too eventually. Humble as it is, that's your armor, and the damage resistance helps situationally. Stack with defense from Hover or CJ. +3% Steadfast defense is great too.
8) Consider Fighting pool and Acrobatics for more survivability and a bit of hold protection.
9) May not need Fitness pool, even soloing. Stamina is okay for 20-31 but Heat Loss obsoletes it afterward, thanks to its 90 second duration and 6 minute base recharge. Health is handy but Aid Self is better, especially since slowed and knocked enemies will almost never interrupt you.
10) Sleet changes the game for you in ways you can only learn by experience. So I won't explain what to do with it, I'll just say: Take it at 26 no matter what!
11) Do not take Stealth from the Concealment pool, Stealth turns off Arctic Fog and vice versa.
12) Snow Storm prevents enemies from flying, so Hover can serve as some protection.
13) You have too many big, important clicks to skip Hasten. Faster Sleet alone justifies Hasten in your build.
My power pool picks, in no particular order: Flight (Hover), Fighting (Box/Tough/Weave), Leaping (CJ/SJ/Acro), Speed (Hasten), Power Mastery (PBU/TI/FoN). If you take all of those, you have enough power choices left to take all six solo primaries plus seven secondaries (think ahead about which 2 secondaries to drop, I don't consider any of them must-have so pick 2 you don't like). -
It's possible that the game does a first pass through on your spawn list, looking for "random", and if it finds it, to just do the random and ignore everything else.
I can confirm that mixing customs and specific dev mobs together does what you're expecting it to do. Just pick and choose the Council baddies you want, remembering to cover your entire desired level range. Some authors do a similar thing to remove particularly overpowered/underrewarding dev mobs from custom groups. -
Least your current combat level has a relation to the game mechanics. The real immersion breaking stuff, to me, are the badges solely based on how much money you -- the real world you -- have given NCSoft and when. Anniversary badges, DVD edition badge, Passport badge, veteran badges, loyalty program badges. People can tell, with /info, whether I logged in during May 200X or which edition of the boxed game I bought? Really?
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You're a Defender for chrissake. It's the Healer AT.
Not only must you take Triage Beacon, you must put it on auto.
You must also take the whole Medicine pool. And put all those on auto.
And all three Leadership toggles. And put all those on auto.
And Recall Friend, slotted for range, so you can teleport fallen friends three miles away from combat before rezzing them. -
There are also whole classes of enemies that are 100% immune to slows, but vulnerable to ST mez as normal. Ancestor Spirits, Warwolves, etc. And whole classes of enemies that use toggles, where ST mez is a huge help, slows not so much. Vahz Murk Eidolons, Tsoo Sorcerers, etc. Ends up kind of a wash. Controllers won't be pointing at Defenders and saying we took er jobs anytime soon.
But now that you mention it, stacking would help against those few enemies that resist slows (i.e. not immune, resistance <100%). Not that anyone needs another reason to bring a cold defender to an AV fight, but being able to debuff a +3 AV's recharge speed by -34% with 3x Infrigidate stacking would be a bit nicer than Infrigidate's current value against deep purples (i.e. nada, zip, bupkis).
The main effect of adding stackability would still be to remove the nonsensical second or two of full movement and recharge speed when you recast Infrig from range (common in a low damage team, soloing, etc.). In practice, I find this second or two lets a target cover a good deal of distance, and several of the target's powers "snap" back to recharged state in that time.
And Castle could always leave it unstackable (or require to-hit check) in PvP, or lower the strength against PvP targets, if he thinks making it a proper stackable (or autohit) PvE debuff is going to make PvP unfun.
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Edit: Several debuffs in other defender primaries are also annoyingly both unstackable and to-hit required. I'm not looking to promote Cold over any other set; what I'm arguing for Infrigidate applies to Acid Arrow, Sonic Siphon, etc. too.
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Re-edit re Ryu: The Benumb trick Frosticus mentioned blows my Infrigidate trick away. Try that instead.
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Quote:Well, all I can say to that is that I wish there were more Empaths like you in the game.Originally Posted by New Dawn
I have 2 builds, one near enough for saving teams with friends who tend to team in pick n mix pugs and one for teams that I really don't have to worry about and is good/best for soloing. -
This is pure speculation, based on in-game information about [Kinetic Strike], but I suspect Kinetic Melee will be nicest for Scrappers, also nice for Tankers, not so hot for Stalkers (except the ones that solo or play like Scrappers), and a complete waste of a set for Brutes.
Rationale:
#1) Scrappers have the highest base damage multiplier and the highest self damage buff multiplier.
#2) Tankers are likeliest to be in longer fights solo, so have more time to accrue benefits from a Fury-like mechanic.
#3) Stalkers are least likely to be wanting to build up a Fury-like mechanic prior to landing their big damage attack, Assassin's Strike, since, in team play, delaying big burst damage misses out on the main benefit of burst damage, front loading. Solo or scrappy stalkers have more leeway to play with the Fury angle, but it'll still be second fiddle to hide/placate/crit/AS mechanics.
#4) Brutes are the ones already have a better Fury-like mechanic, damage buffs add, not multiply, and Brutes have the lowest base damage multiplier to add to. Also, I predict long, flashy animations, exactly the kind Brutes hate. ("Why should I use a slow Kinetic Melee punch when I can get just as much of a buff a lot faster from [Brawl]?") -
I'm more in favor of what I call a "subscription model", under which players pay a flat fee, oh, say about $15, per month, and get everything included.
Quote:Flashy, maybe, but what struck me about two of the later booster sets is that they include things that don't match the specific theme of the booster set. The super tailor (an extra slider at the tailor), the dimension shift cce (which screams Praetoria, not mutant), the bubble cce (which screams Terminator, not mutant)....Originally Posted by Tiger_Lady
I was wondering, since these latest Booster sets seem to be MUCH flashier than some of the earlier three
This raises at least one player's suspicions that included-with-subscription content is being diverted into boosters. Your idea sounds like it might rein in on that practice, by at least diverting content into old boosters instead of new ones, so I approve. -
Quote:Good thing I brought my [Spandex-safe Fire Retardant Spray].Originally Posted by IonMatrix
Ok guys not to long ago I ran into an AE lvl 50 in PI....
OP: How did you know this person was powerleveled in AE and not in the many other places popular for powerleveling -- PI itself being one? Did you check his badges? -
Quote:In a game where it's trivial, by design, to completely stop a single target from taking actions at all, I don't see -recharge flooring a single target as overpowered. (Just PvE I'm talking about, of course!)Originally Posted by Frosticus
Infrigidate not stacking might be a pvp thing, or it might be because it would be incredibly overpowered. It's not that challenging to stack infrig 4 times (if it could). That is more -rech than Heat Loss and would hit the -dam cap against fire with 3 applications.
Besides, one application of Infrigidate from a controller or defender will recharge floor an even level target; in those cases, stackability does nothing but remove the annoying 1-2 second "break free from debuff" period when recasting, aside from the situational fire damage debuff (which still isn't as good as a hold or stun) and defense debuff (the stacking of which is likely overkill). -
Quote:In theory, the worst chance Sleet will have of debuffing an enemy inside its radius for the full 75 ticks over 15 seconds is 98%. That's assuming a hardcapped 95% miss chance. 1.00-(0.95^75) = 1.00-0.02 = 98%.Originally Posted by Frosticus
The chances of it not debuffing an enemy over the duration of the rain is very low.
In practice, I've never, ever seen Sleet (or its twin Freezing Rain) fail to land a tick on something caught in its radius. And once that first tick lands, which usually only takes a few seconds, max, the ticks usually start pouring on thanks to the defense debuff. -
Quote:Agreed, not a fat geek, but weren't you both wearing green in that picture? Are you fur and leather guy, or his arch nemesis, brave Sir PETA? Where's the squeeze bottle of fake blood? Murderer!Originally Posted by Mandu
Incidentally I'm the one in green.
I could disagree with your Fort approach. But honestly, any approach other than "Fort the tanker exactly once at the mission entrance even if the's whole team's still afk" is way ahead of the curve and deserves no complaints from the likes of me. Who died and made me Empathy Queen?Quote:Originally Posted by New Dawn
Because I can't fort the entire team I hold onto one fort for emergencies.
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As an aside, I must sadly confirm that at least one poster is countering arguments in this how-did-this-get-controversial? thread with wild unproven claims attached to negreps instead of, uh, posting counter arguments.
Proof or dare? (Warning: I recommend you choose proof. My dare will involve you forming a PuG ITF with 7 random level 50 self described "pure empaths", and you are free to ask them to swap to their ... "other build" ... snicker, snicker.)Quote:Me: level 50 is a "pure empath" and they haven't even targeted an enemy since Outbreak
Negrepper: most pure empaths have the other build for when they come across better players -
Many single target debuffs introduced after PvP unfortunately are fairly broken in PvE. In PvE, debuffs take a performance hit against higher level targets, and against resistant enemies such as AVs and GMs, but make up for it by being stackable or autohit. In PvP as originally implemented, there was no such performance hit, since targets are largely the same level and non-resistant, therefore stackable or autohit debuffs were something the devs seemed to be suddenly wary of.
That said, Infrigidate, like Sonic Siphon, is close to a functional PvE power; all that's missing is either stackability or autohit. If you don't mind missing both stackability and autohit on a debuff, and all the little annoyances that come with that (granting the target 1-2 debuff-free seconds when you reapply, and the paradox of needing a to-hit roll on a massive -defense debuff), then there's no other reason I can think of to skip it.
Even without stackability and autohit, I find Aim + Infrigidate a wonderful way of saying ****YOU to MoG'ing Paragon Protectors if Sleet's debuffs glitched and disappeared. That's my own little twisted pleasure, though. You may find you derive a different one. Or you may find that an occasional twisted pleasure isn't worth spending a power choice on a less-than-functional power. It's up to you. -
Quote:Just say no to dead horses.Originally Posted by People for the Ethical Treatment of AnimalsThe Horseracing Industry: Drugs, Deception and Death
They weigh at least 1,000 pounds, they have legs that are supported by ankles the size of a humans, and theyre forced to run around dirt tracks at speeds of more than 30 miles per hour while carrying people on their backs. Racehorses are the victims of a multibillion-dollar industry that is rife with drug abuse, injuries, and race fixing, and many horses careers end in slaughterhouses. A New York Daily News reporter remarked, The thoroughbred race horse is a genetic mistake. It runs too fast, its frame is too large, and its legs are far too small. As long as mankind demands that it run at high speeds under stressful conditions, horses will die at racetracks.
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Racing to the Grave
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Given the huge investment that owning a horse requires, reported one Kentucky newspaper, simply sending one to pasture, injured or not, is not an option all owners are willing to consider. Care for a single racehorse can cost as much as $50,000 per year. When popular racehorse Barbaro suffered a shattered ankle at the beginning of the 2006 Preakness, his owners spared no expense for his medical needs, but as The New York Times reported, [M]any in the business have noted that had Barbaro not been the winner of the Kentucky Derby, he might have been destroyed after being injured. Compare Barbaros story to that of Magic Man, who stepped into an uneven section of a track and broke both front legs during a race at Saratoga Race Course. His owner had bought him for $900,000, yet the horse hadnt earned any money yet andunproven on the trackwasnt worth much as a stud, so he was euthanized. Eight Belles suffered a similar fate when she broke both her front ankles after crossing the finish line in the 2008 Kentucky Derby.
Joseph Dirico, the owner of a filly who suffered a heart attack and died mid-race at Pimlico only days after the Preakness, said of her death, I guess thats part of the game. That sentiment was echoed by the general manager of Virginias Colonial Downs, where five horses died within eight days. We're upset when it happens, he said, but it's just part of the racing game." At least six horses died at the track the year before.
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Even the Winners Lose
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An insurance scandal cost the life of Alydar, who came in second in all three races of the 1978 Triple Crown and fathered many fast horses. After being retired from racing in order to serve as a stud at a Kentucky farm, Alydar was originally believed to have shattered his leg by kicking a stall door and was euthanized when he wasnt able to maintain a splint. Ten years later, an FBI investigation revealed that his leg was deliberately broken when it was tied by a rope to a pickup truck.
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What You Can Do
In a commentary on the racing industry, a reporter for the Philadelphia Daily News remarked, It is not something they talk about much in their advertising, but horses die in this sport all the timeevery day, every single day. Help phase out this exploitative sport: Refuse to patronize existing tracks, work to ensure that racing regulations are reformed and enforced, lobby against the construction of new tracks, and educate your friends and family members about the tragic lives that racehorses lead. -
You forgot about Healing Arrow!
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Quote:Plays, maybe. Builds, no. Archetypes have a primary and a secondary, and unlike WoW, you gain no benefit ignoring most of your abilities to specialize in a few. So that's the one caveat I wish every "healer" would heed: take your secondaries, slot your secondaries, use your secondaries!Originally Posted by Eiko-chan
Empathy ... plays almost exactly in game as Priests do in WoW.
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Quote:Phrased more gently, be good to your secondary. Be open to picking more secondary powers and slotting them earlier.Originally Posted by SPiNE
go for a different primary
Tornado's damage, Defiance buff, animation, recharge, and projectile travel speed are lousy, but it does have some important things going for it. A half-decent side effect (-30% AoE recharge for 10 seconds), another half-decent side effect (50% chance for knockup), a larger than average radius (20' instead of standard Fire Ball/Ball Lightning/M30 Grenade 15'), and a full 16 target cap.
On the other hand, Psionic Lance is outshined by the numerous faster animating ST blasts already in the set, and it has a poor side effect (-15% ST recharge for 10 seconds).
Will Domination is fine in PvP, but its PvE damage is extremely low for reasons I will never understand. In PvP, it animates faster than Mental Blast, but still does more damage to make up for its long recharge and lousy side effect. In PvE, it does less damage than Mental Blast, and still has a long recharge and lousy side effect.
Mental Manipulation is also an AoE damage option thanks to Psychic Scream. Also, recharge hose synergy is deviously fun.
You may also give some thought to a */Psi offender. The good blasts take some levels to open up, but with the right primary, once they do open up, you should be pretty pleased with the damage. -
Because the Freezing Rain involves a summoned entity's lingering effects unexpectingly disappearing when that entity dies, I suspect it's a general bug that applies to all entities that are supposed to have lingering effects after despawning.
Yes, I'm talking about Oil Slick.
The bad news is, if it is the same underlying bug, that means it's going to be really hard for us to figure out when the bug hits and when it doesn't. We've been trying to nail that sucker for years!
If I had to guess, my guess would be that it depends on whether the entity despawns in the exact same game cycle as it refreshes/ticks an unstackable effect. My guess:
1) Game checks if summoned entity is going to refresh an unstackable effect on some targets this cycle.
2) If so, cancel the effect on those targets, expecting it to be refreshed at the end of this cycle.
3) Summoned entity despawns or dies.
4) The unstackable effect is not reapplied since its source is now gone or invalid. Poof. -
Quote:Yeah, I wasn't sure whether it would be good form to throw in advertising for those two arcs in a random MA thread like this.Originally Posted by GavinRuneblade
I haven't played it, but I can confirm there is at least one listed as "medium" length.
But, what the hell, they deserve it.
The January 2010 DC I was referring to was 137561 "Ctrl + Alt + Reset!", published May 2009 by Bubbawheat (@Bubbawheat). The March 2010 DC I was referring to was 374002 "Two Tickets to Westerly", published Feburary 2010 by PoliceWoman (@PW). They are the only two current DC arcs rated as Medium length, the shortest rating of any current DC arc.
Hope to see and play (repeatedly!) more arcs like these rather than the Long and Very Long slogs popular with, uh, whoever was picking the DCs in '09. -
Quote:Quoted for sooth.Originally Posted by ketch
Simply put, a controller shouldn't have to use the heals very often.
Empathy's ally focus is a big problem. Too many people out there with a level 50 and still don't know how to fight enemies. Why? Because their level 50 is a "pure empath" and they haven't even targeted an enemy since Outbreak. (And maybe not even then.)
Solution? Dual builds! I can't fathom why an Empath wouldn't make a dedicated soloing build, free up six! power slots, and load up with controls, blasts, APPs, and pool powers to complement the nice regen, recovery and self-heal auras. And when an empath solos to 50, they probably know a great deal about the game. -
The devs prior to Dr. Aeon had a taste for really frickin' long arcs, so I was pleasantly surprised when, in January 2010, there was finally one of them that wasn't w-a-y t--o--o l---o---n---g. Now, I run that one at least one time on every alt for the Admiring Badge. Sometimes more just for fun.
As of March 2010 I hear there's a second reasonable length arc that made DC, so I'll give that a try, too. -
Quote:According to Dr. Aeon on April 9th, it was going to be patched "in issue 17 or soon thereafter". No redname has said anything further about it, to my knowledge. (Issue 17 went live April 28.)Originally Posted by Rodion
A fix should be in the Going Rogue issue, which is coming in August, according to what Dr. Aeon said a while back.
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It's an excellent conversation to be having! But I have a feeling there'll be a lot more to say once Issue 18 hits open beta.
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I'll preface with this: I like all the ideas in this thread. Keep 'em coming.
That said, I've got concerns about a few of the ideas. Doesn't mean I want the idea scrapped, maybe just refined.
Quote:Reinforcing the notion of "Welcome to MA! Story or leveling, pick one" may backfire. I'd prefer to see either a 'story+leveling' 'leveling only' split, or a 'story only' 'leveling only' 'story+leveling' split.Create a distinct tab for 'story' arcs and a distinct tab for 'leveling' arcs.
I'd do so for all 5 star ratings on all arcs. Plenty of arcs with a <5 star average are propped up by lots of 5 star ratings, but weighed down by a handful of low ratings.Quote:I would 'grandfather' arcs with 5 star averages into the new system by treating their current number of 5 star ratings as Hall of Fame nominations.
Another idea: using median instead of mean. Those of you who took Stats 101 may recall that medians are used sometimes because they're less influenced by skew. And it preserves the ability to 1-star an arc that really deserves it, and have it potentially mean something, if that's an ability that's important to you.
Will not hurt farmers. Defeated by the existence of functionally identical farms, each of which takes about an hour to clear. Do the pink AV farm twice, the yellow AV farm twice, that's 4 hours of full farming XP. Will hurt story authors who playtest their own published arcs repeatedly to make sure reward levels aren't too awful, or who invite friends/PuGs/SGmates to play their own arc repeatedly, since they have to use the same story arc and don't want to unpublish/republish to avoid the penalty.Quote:the first two times you play through an arc, you get the normal amount of exp. The third time, it's 80%, then 50%, then 25%. After five times the arc is played, you get 10% exp from then on. This is reset after 24 hours.
Strangely, I'm always butting heads with other posters on this board when I say customs are too hard/too broken/make people not want to play an arc. Good to see at least someone agrees with me. On the other hand, I'm on both sides, player and author. As an author, I'm a visual thinker, and I'm good with costumes, so custom critters are going to be an important part of every arc I do. Don't penalize me for telling my stories through fashion! Let's bring XP rewards up and damage levels down on customs, instead, to make both sides happy.Quote:a filter for customs
Finally, has anyone given any thought to paid arc slots being a possible disincentive for devs to expand HOF availability? If HOF stays unattainable, what are you going to do about it? Buy arc slots, but click angrily while doing so? -
Architects can select a few different AIs for Allies. One is aggressive and will attack any enemy on sight. One is defensive and will attack an enemy only after the enemy deals damage to you or to the Ally itself. One is passive and will never attack.