Rigel_Kent
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Posts
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Joined
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Quote:Biggest annoyance of farming, to me, was that boss farms crowned the granite tanker and pure healer empath king and queen of the metagame. (Alongside fire/kin, emperor for all eternity, of course.) That made it harder for my debuffer and controller types to get PuGs -- who needs debuffs and mezzes when they scale down to insignificance against +2 or +4 bosses? Also made it harder to be successful with PuGs against non-farm tasks, due to the large number of players running three builds, rather than just one, that were specialized for farms and not necessarily good for anything else.Originally Posted by EternalDominion
What harm do the "boss farms" cause to the non-farming community?
Having to re-playtest my arcs to check XP rewards, and facing the possibility of busting 100k with forced filler mobs, though, that's a much bigger annoyance. Especially since the all-boss spawn "problem" could've been solved much more nicely, the way hazard zones do it: all-boss spawns in hazard zones are smaller. -
You mean you weren't slotting it that way before?
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When I see someone roll a Traps defender I'll let you know.
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I suspect psi blasts, suitably recolored, might work as well.
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Doesn't help that "new dev content" since MA came consists almost entirely of two ginormous sacks of decimal shifted regen.
I better take my arcs out of my sig for a while. The XP is going to be atrocious until my ideas meet dev specifications. -
Quote:Renewal of Light/"Snow Angel"Originally Posted by Frosticus
cold - something similar to energy absorbtion, but instead it rezzes you
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If you don't get any replies, try the PvP boards. There's not a lot of PvP chatter on the Blaster board.
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Agreed, you're off to a solid start. I only see two minor slotting changes I'd recommend.
The first would be to add a little range enhancement to Psychic Scream, to improve its coverage. Not super important when soloing, but when teaming, it's nice to consistently get your ten targets' worth. I like a ton of range enhancements on my Psychic Scream, but for starters, Positron's Blast: Damage/Range takes Psychic Scream from a 60' cone to a 70' cone, that might be enough for you.
The second would be to add slow enhancement to Lingering Radiation, to floor enemy movement. The AI will panic and run away if it's unable to attack for ten straight seconds, and because you have so many stackable recharge debuffs, you'll find that will happen a lot. Slow slotted LR keeps them from getting anywhere. I realize you're tight on slots, but I think swapping out two or three of your common IO's for Acc/Slow and Slow/Rech/End "1,000 inf wonders" from cheap slow sets might be all you need, no additional slots needed.
Keep an open mind for other changes if you find they suit your playstyle. For instance, you may find you don't need Stamina or Conserve Power, even when soloing or otherwise vigilance-starved. You may find you prefer ED capping the recharge enhancements in AM, trading the 5% global recharge set bonus for 8 seconds less AM downtime (which partially offsets the global recharge bonus loss). You may find at level 44 and above, when you're groping for throwaway 1-slot powers, that both Swift and Hurdle might be something you'd like, or maybe another +def pool power to mule another LotG. You may find yourself on teams that let you use Fallout+Mutation a lot more than you expected, or you may find yourself on teams that never let you use Fallout+Mutation at all, be prepared to fine-tune those two powers to your teaming needs. -
Ragnarok Online has the same security problem. Actually, it's even worse, because every couple of days, their GMs append the forbidden domain names, plus all obfuscated combinations the spammers come up with, to a massive client-side censor list. That entire list has to be run through on every incoming message, slowing your computer to a crawl as long as you're within earshot of anyone sending ten messages a second, such as a spammer. (And no, the spammers don't care that they're making the game unplayable or locking up people's computers.)
Compare to CoH, where the devs know full well that dumb text matches are defeated by 0bfvs(at:0|\| in less time it takes to re-update the censor list, so instead opt for a simple form of chat throttling (auto-ban) and giving GMs tools to deal with spammers on a case by case basis. -
Quote:I have a hard time swallowing the notion that the spammer cares that his messages may reach unwilling or even infuriated recipients. Sorry, just can't see him shedding a little tear for poor little me getting hundreds of identical copies of his spam every week even though I've never bought a thing from him.Originally Posted by Quinch
There's no profit for them in working around the "interest blocks", because someone who turns their spam filter on isn't going to give them money in the first place so there's no loss to them either way. It also reduces the number of P.O.'d spamees likely to report them, making their scam less prone to interference, since with lower reporting rate, their stolen accounts will last longer before being invalidated...
First, a central characteristic of spamming is no additional costs or work when going from small to ginormous scales. So it makes no difference to the spammer whether he's sending one unwanted spam or millions. Never has, never will. Second, it doesn't jibe with the spammer's behavior so far. He has no problem sending you the same message, unaltered, day after day after day. He doesn't bother pruning his name lists for duplicates or deleted names. He won't remove your name from his list no matter how much you beg or threaten. Changing any of that would be work, after all. In sum, he only cares about reaching a maximum number of buyers with every disposable account, and he accomplishes that by spamming as many people as possible, as quickly as possible, as indiscriminately as possible.
It is true that the spammer's disposable accounts could get banned more quickly if he switches from Email spam to an online form of spam. Most Emails go to offline recipients, and offline players can't report spam; that changes if he starts spamming online players. That's why my bet's on /gtells. He'll be able to send about as many spams as he does now, only difference is it'll all scroll past and be gone forever once you log in any one of your alts. Saves us a ton of mouse clicks and /ignore list space, which is nice, but he still gets his spams out, so no skin off his nose. If anything, he'll be pressured to spam more frequently, and multiple lines at a time, to make sure your chat buffer fills with his spam and not someone else's. -
Quote:Strangest thing just happened. My leg joint just made this sudden upward motion. It was as if my leg wasn't really under my control, but rather performed an unplanned unthinking reaction to some outside stimulus.Originally Posted by JeetKuneDo
If so...then why the changes to custom mobs?
Authors were already doing this pre Issue 16. Thank goodness for Regen secondary on Standard. Without that, my custom minions (and many other authors' custom minions) would have gone from "noticeably too hard" to "ZOMG TEH DEBT" a long time ago.Quote:Why do I get the feeling that someone is going to figure out which powerset is least irritating to fight against and that will suddenly become the fall-back powerset if you want to build an arc with full xp? -
Pre Issue 16, single target DPS scrappers are the way to solo. You can use the higher damage of a scrapper to finish missions and level faster, but you can't use the higher defenses of a tanker because it's overkill against solo spawns. You just don't need tanker level defenses against solo spawns.
Post Issue 16, you can load team-sized spawns for yourself, and that complicates the question a bit. By increasing the spawn sizes to levels where higher defenses actually pay off for you, high AoE damage tanker builds and high defense scrapper builds shouldn't lag so far behind the typical high single target damage scrapper build anymore. So if your heart is set on a */Fire tanker with Combustion, or a WP/* scrapper running fully saturated RttC, Issue 16 will make those more feasible thanks to team size scaling. -
Short answer: Yeah.
Long answer: &$@% yeah.
Two reasons PuG leaders don't hold up a mission to recruit a stormy or dark miasmist. 1) Stormies and dark miasmists are not common, a little hard to find, and often already snapped up by another team, and 2) PuG leaders are kind of dumb. -
Rad/psi defensive options:
- Floor the whole spawn's tohit, or
- Floor the whole spawn's recharge and move speeds, or
- Remove some of their damage (also works against AVs and GMs)
The catch is you can only pick three. Awwww.
Quote:Also, because you get Psychic Scream and Psionic Tornado together in the same set. And both have boosted -recharge debuff values, since defenders are as good as controllers at speed debuffing. The green clouds of stupidity on your enemies' heads from Psychic Scream may appear subtle, but don't be fooled, they're massive stackable recharge debuffs (-62.5%!). Frankenslot both psi AoEs to the max, spam them along with Lingering Radiation to keep them from running away, and you'll be out-controlling many controllers with your -recharge hose alone. Just make sure to keep your endurance costs under control.Originally Posted by macskull
Defender Psi Blast blows away its Blaster counterpart mostly because -
Quote:Three things everyone should know about defenders.Originally Posted by DeeplyDippy
defenders=healers
1: /badstorm
A lot of people in the game choose to play defenders with a "pure healer" or "pure support" concept. Statistically, these people aren't particularly good at roleplaying and aren't particularly good at playing the game either. My theory is that these people are misled by their experiences in certain other RPGs (WoW notably) that their gimped concepts are actually the correct way to play defenders.
The game is better compared to RPGs like Diablo II and Final Fantasy IV Hardtype (not Easytype), where enemies deal high amounts of damage, too high to simply sit and react to it all the time, and characters can heal themselves fairly well anyway (potions). So while healing is a viable strategy (definitely more viable than D2), and you can pull it off with fast reflexes and strong command of the interface, it's not a particularly good strategy.
2: The "purity" myth
Defenders get a primary, a secondary, and 24 power choices, just like everyone else. This means you don't have to choose between specializing in damage or specializing in healing or specializing in whatever else. Since you have a primary and a completely different secondary, you can take on at least two completely different team roles without sacrificing anything.
In FF4H, the "healer" keeps the party safe mostly with her ridiculously good buffs (Blink, Protect, Shell, Haste, Float situationally), ridiculously good debuffs (Slow, Mini), and a little bit of help from status effects (Hold, Silence, Charm, Berserk, and effects on certain arrows) and direct damage (certain enemies take 2x or 4x damage from her damage types). Try keeping the party alive with heals alone, and you'll run out of MP and Phoenix Downs in a flash. The game hates and punishes you for trying to get into a damage versus healing race all the time; the game loves and rewards you for knowing which of your many spells and arrows will immediately and efficiently disable any given enemy.
Likewise, in this game, teams will be better off if you diversify, and since you get 24 powers of your choice from primary, secondary, and power pools, it doesn't really cost you anything to diversify.
3: Fruit salad
Differences between buff/debuff sets make it hard to compare defender primaries. Usually, one primary set will excel at something the other primary set can't do at all, and vice versa. So on the Defender boards we have to try and compare apples to oranges to grapes to bananas to kiwis to pineapples to strawberries to blueberries to melons all the time. It's an inexact science.
Fortunately, since you're coming from Dark Miasma, you have an edge. Dark Miasma focuses on -tohit and -damage debuffs, but interface-wise it employs a summon, a cone, some PBAoEs, an anchored toggle debuff, and a drop (Tar Patch), so unless you were a Tar-Rain-Heal bot you should have a little head start on the learning curve for all the defender primaries.
So maybe we should start by defining your goal. If your goal is to get to 50 as fast as possible, I would've normally said Empathy or Force Fields, something where you can leech against purples, just buffing and never attacking, but Issue 16's super sidekicking ends that silly strategy. So instead, I'd go with a damage maximizing approach, and pick your secondary first, then a primary to complement it. /Sonic and /Ice are good starting points, /Archery and /AR too at high levels, unless you have another blast set in mind. -
Quote:Once you've run a few PUG missions or a PUG TF with Veng on auto, you'll never look back. There are three amazing benefits to putting Veng on auto that I don't really feel like listing right now. It's more fun to experience them yourself, anyway. Hint: While you have Veng on auto, make sure you're blasting or otherwise targeting enemies as much as possible.Originally Posted by LimitingFactor
Set Vengeance to automatic.
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I like it, though I don't see why it couldn't or shouldn't be done with an existing archetype. Giving the sets to an existing archetype as a primary and a secondary would mean people could run with your concept, or mix and match with one of their own.
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Quote:The goal of the spammer is 1) to send as many messages as possible 2) to as many recipients as possible 3) at no significant cost to himself. The spammer has never cared whether the spam is wanted, has never cared whether you're attempting to block it, has never cared whether you're willing to RMT or not. So, the spammer will not look at the filter as focusing his messages on a more receptive audience; he'll look at it as something he needs to get around in order to keep spamming everyone.Originally Posted by Roderick
As to the OP, don't forget that the mail system is NOT being removed. The people who will turn it off were never RMT customers anyways. The people who want the mails will leave the system turned on, and get the mail still.
My bet's on gtells, which can be sent to offline recipients and stored just like game email, thus fulfilling the goal of as many recipients as possible. More players are offline than are online at any given time, after all. I'm not sure the new filter works for gtells, though at least gtells are blocked for free trialers... I think.
Plenty of other channels for information to flow from the spammer to us, though. Other contenders: Global channel spam (high population channels without 24/7 privileged moderation). Atlas Park/Cap au Diable local/broadcast (huge concentration of players). Server Help, Arena, and Architect channels. Cut-and-pasted AE mission arcs with popular search keywords and the RMT site name as the title. AE mission feedback spam (same as gtells except authors can't /hide). Characters with some variation of the RMT domain name as their character name, interacting in any way with a large number of players. -
Since the OP's questions have been well answered, I thought now would be a good time to vent about /Fire.
Fire Manipulation is rife with issues. It's a shame the blaster issues thread is dead; I'd have quite a few to list for the set.
Issue #1: No real rule for target limits on PBAoEs.
Target caps for PBAoEs are inconsistent. Some PBAoEs have a 16 target cap, some have a 10 target cap, and it's basically a coin toss which is which. (See also the many faces of Psychic Shockwave.) Fire Manipulation is especially hurt by this, because it's full of PBAoEs, yet the coin came up tails for the whole set.
Instead, a meaningful rule should be adopted to decide which PBAoEs should hit 10 targets and which should hit 16. The most intuitive way to do this, of course, is to set a cutoff radius. I like 15', the radius of good old Fire Ball, a targeted AoE with a 16 target cap. PBAoEs with a radius smaller than that should hit 10. PBAoEs with a radius equal or larger than that should hit 16. Although multiple sets would benefit, Fire Manipulation would benefit significantly, as Consume, Combustion, and Hot Feet would all be bumped up to 16 targets, and Burn would be bumped up to 10 targets.
Issue #2: No invention sets for Damage over Time.
Most damage powers have side effects, such as slows, mezzes, or debuffs, that allow more choices in slotting invented enhancements. Fire Manipulation gets no such benefit.
Given the pace of the game, damage over time has fallen out of favor. Compare, for example, Gloom to standard 1.64 damage scale blasts: even though Gloom has 1.76 damage scale, it's considered a weaker power because the added benefit of 0.12 damage scale doesn't make up for the 3.5 second delay before the final hit. All eight ticks of Gloom have to hit before the enemy goes down to break even.
With Damage over Time sets, DoT powers would become more attractive. It'd also narrow the gap that opened when some sets got more IO sets and some sets (like Fire) got fewer. In Fire Manipulation's case, /Fire blasters could get access to more procs for utility, or at the very least get a cheaper source of Dam/Acc IOs.
Issue #3: Blazing Aura's numbers don't add up.
Look at the numbers for Blazing Aura: damage, tick interval, radius. Look at the same numbers for Hot Feet: damage, tick interval, radius. Yes, there's something wrong with this picture. (Too lazy to look it up? Same tick interval, Hot Feet does more damage, and in a nuke-like 20' radius compared to Blazing Aura's one-stinking-foot-outside-melee 8' radius.)
Give Blazing Aura the same radius as blaster Lightning Field (along with a 16 target cap, see Issue #1 above). It'll still be an unpopular power, for the same reasons that Lightning Field is an unpopular power, but at least it'll be on the level with similar AT powers, so newbies don't get that nasty why-is-this-power-so-nerfy surprise when they take it for the first time. It'll also open up a more viable hover PBAoE semi-blapper option for /Fire blasters.
Issue #4: Secondary effects get overlooked when damage and recharge times are increased.
This issue affects other blaster sets more severely, but for Fire Manipulation, Ring of Fire's utility took a hit when its damage and recharge time both went up but the immobilization duration stayed the same.
Just as Ice Blast has a longer lasting slow than Ice Bolt, powers should have their secondary effects increased when the recharge time increases. Otherwise, you're slowing down the whole power but only buffing part of the power; it doesn't fully even out. Since Ring of Fire's recharge time went from 4 to 6 seconds, its immobilization duration should also increase about 50%.
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EDIT: In the interest of fairness and balance, a positive note on Fire Manipulation.
Combustion rocks as a costume change power. No sarcasm; it's really good, and I still use it preferentially over the costume change emotes. -
Sorry to drizzle on the shizzle, but I just can't get behind hp and damage buffs alone as the whole solution.
Maintaining big differences between ATs gives roleplayers more choice and increases the synergistic benefits for teaming. Muddying the ATs all together to medium hp and medium damage does just the opposite.
So I'm convinced at least part of the solution needs to be giving defenders the game-breaking buff/debuff haxx the likes of which make other MMORPG devs (and players) scream in terror, even if it's at the cost of having to keep the low hp or low damage. Sure, controllers, corruptors and masterminds should still be pretty good at buff/debuff with proper slotting, but a team should literally hear the glass-crashing goodness of game balance going out the window the second a defender gets anywhere near the battle. In comic book terms, as well as controllers freeze the bad guys, defenders make it like the bad guys aren't even there. That'd be my vision for the AT. Defenders are close to that point, but not quite -- just a little bit more ought to do it. -
Quote:I'm not aware of anything changing in the game that could possibly dislodge Fire/Kin as top dog in farming. Team size settings favor solo builds like Fire/Kin. Nerfed XP on all-boss custom groups does the same. Knocking the Fulcrum Shift buff down to 20% only hurts non-farmers and corruptors. Electric Melee for scrappers and Radiation Blast for blasters are so-so.Originally Posted by Walking_Disaster
the next Fire/Kin
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Defender secondaries are thankfully easier to compare. Apples to apples.
Sonic Attack's AoE damage is okay, if you can manage the knockback and the nuke. Slotting Siren's Song for damage is also an option, to squeeze an extra 40 damage or so on the pack during your alpha, but people don't seem to like to take advantage of damage slotting in SS for some reason.
Howl: 50' 30 degree cone. 0.81 damage scale. 10 second recharge.
Shockwave: 50' 30 degree cone. 0.64 damage scale. 8 (!) second recharge.
Siren's Song: 40' 50 degree cone. 0.50 damage scale. 20 second recharge.
Note that Shockwave's fast recharge means its DPS is plenty good when the knockback is managed. The fast recharge also means that you can keep 10 enemies on their butts quite easily. And since it's a 100% chance to knockback what it hits, it's easier to keep enemies together when you move them than with scatter-happy Energy Torrent and the like. Add Amplify to the mix, and I'd put Sonic Attack at right about the middle for AoE damage potential among defender secondaries. -
Any chance the debuff durations also got increased to be on par with other 4s/8s blasts? Or did the debuffs get forgotten about again? (Mental Blast, I'm looking at you)
It's minor, but having X-Ray Beam #2 and Neutrino Bolt #2 a little more likely to hit thanks to X-Ray Beam #1 and Neutrino Bolt #1 hitting is part of the set's charm. -
Quote:Well, sure, not every team has a kin. Sometimes you're solo.Originally Posted by JamMasterJMS
On this thread you suggest every team has kins with them
Kidding aside, I'm probably undervaluing Assault's contribution to opening up Vengeance while teaming. And Assault solo is fine, of course.
Re: Dark and Storm nuking
Depends a little on the nuke. If it's your typical newbie "look at me!" Nova, yeah, the team's got problems. But every other Defender nuke is BAD NEWS for targets. Defender Blackstar is the nastiest -tohit debuff in the game bar none -- it floors +2s right out of the box with no enhancements. Atomic Blast holds stuff. Dreadful Wail stuns stuff. Psychic Wail stuns stuff and slows their recharge to a crawl. Thunderous Blast empties blue bars and shuts off recovery for 20 seconds. Blizzard knocks down more reliably than Sleet and Freezing Rain. So, given what defender nukes (other than Nova) do, I have a hard time imagining a team wiping in the 20 seconds after any defender nuke, ever.
If we're still in disagreement, we could all just hold hands and find solace in our middle ground: Vengeance is great to use after a nuke because it doesn't cost endurance.
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Temp powers will help to keep things moving when you're forced to solo. Check your friendly neighborhood Wentworth's for a revolver, baseball bat, or sledgehammer. I'll make the trek to Aim, SOs, and Cosmic Burst more bearable.
You might want to get a head start on your dual build for soloing, actually. Being able to have X-Ray Beam right away at 2, Irradiate right away at 4, and Electron Haze right away at 10 is nice. It leaves you only 3 choices for primaries until at least level 16, but, luckily, PFF, Force Bolt (or Detention Field), and Dispersion Bubble are the only 3 primaries you really need for soloing until then. How convenient.