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Posts
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Quote:I believe I've seen it asserted that Masterminds were expected by the Devs to take on the "tanking" role redside, and the later addition of Bodyguard mode made this more-or-less implicit.I always thought the parallels were pretty straightforward. Whether it's that or epics.
Tankers -> Brutes
Scrappers -> Stalkers
Defenders -> Corruptors
Blasters -> Dominators
Controllers -> Masterminds
Personally speaking, I expect the game designers tried to avoid too much direct congruence between blueside and redside ATs. I myself would have tried to achieve something different, an alternate paradigm for playing the game, instead of just flavoring the same roles slightly differently. I think the Devs hoped they were doing exactly that -- whether or not they succeeded is an exercise left to the reader (not because I'm being snarky, but because I admit I don't consider myself an expert on redside play). -
You fool! Don't you realize that Science has replaced Magic in mankind's search for miracles? You can't download Magic after Science! You now know too much!
*Just roleplaying, the above does not represent an actual technical issue -
Thank you for shedding a blinding absence of darkness on this subject!
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And if the new big bad is a giant monster, it would totally rule if, instead of footstomping near you, it actually stepped ON you.
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Joined a task force last night whose lead tank was a Dark/. I was on a Spines/Dark Scrapper myself.
When we stuck together, our two Oppressive Gloom toggles stunned all the bosses too -- especially nice against Paragon Protectors.
Since Dark Regeneration can repair any level of damage short of outright death, any situation where he could survive the alpha for a second was completely dominated.
That was entertaining in a "cruel cat toying with its victims" way. -
Quote:Well, people could run because of distaste, not fear. I'm not "afraid" of being teabagged. And if running means "completely leaving," no, I won't be there to experience any tea bagging if I run.Yep, that's what I said: people run in PVP because they're afraid of being ridiculed if they lose.
PEOPLE RUN IN PVP BECAUSE OF FEAR.
No other reason.
And you know what? You're just as likely if not more likely to get testosterone-drenched juvenile teabagging if you run. Therein lies the irony.
Your argument here is dangerously close to making other people play the game the way you want them to, and not the way they want to. -
Quote:Right. There may be some people who like fair fights and strive for them. I see claims of such on the forums and I have no reason to doubt it. However...over the years, in many different games, the majority of PVP people strive for every conceivable advantage, and ONLY fight when they are sure of a lopsided crushing. In many games, outright cheating is the norm to ensure victory (Diablo II, anyone?) Undoubtedly most of the people you see fleeing from PVP in the zones are used to exactly that model.I think the assumption is that nobody would start a fight without a reasonable expectation that he or she could win.* The aggressor in PvP has the advantage, in my opinion, especially if the the target was unprepared or distracted.
*This may be assuming too much. I've seen some boneheadedly suicidal behavior in PvP zones.
Based on longstanding statistical experience, they'd be fools or worse to even attempt to make a stand. Immediate flight is the only option -- even if it has a low chance of escape, that's all you've got in the vast bulk of PVP situations across all games and game platforms.
There's little penalty for being defeated in COH/COV, perhaps; but universally (in most players' experience of PVP) there's the likelihood of some testosterone-drenched juvenile teabagging you. No one wants to experience that.
And so you have a world where non-PVPers will not stand and fight. It is a wolrd the PVP community itself made. It is a world the PVP community itself wants. -
My Shielder is taking Grant Cover for the defense debuff resistance. Any reason to slot more than the default slot? I put a def buff IO into it and it did not appear to increase DDR at all.
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My MA/SR took Torrent from Dark Mastery. It's her ki-ai or spirit shout, able to throw a crowd into a wall. Ancient masters were rumored to be able to knock birds out of trees with their shouts.
In practical terms, it's not a widely useful power, but there are times when it's really nice to neutralize a bunch of guys for a short period -- I've especially employed it against ugly custom foes with Build-Up in Architect missions. -
Quote:EM has been used to mean Energy Melee for about six years now. Although Scrappers still don't have the powerset, the Scrapper forum has seen thousands of threads discussing Energy melee for Scrappers, so it's been used that way here too.You two realize they are probably talking about Elecrtical Melee?
In cases where confusion is possible, one might get better answers by spelling things out. -
Quote:I've just spent several weeks obsessively sucking up a whole bunch of Oblit sets at exactly 35. I'm done now, you can have the next few.I'm trying to slot FOUR sets of Obliteration, and the ones that are hardest to come by in the 30-40 range right now seem to be Damage and Accuracy/Recharge. I got multiple bids out at different levels, just waiting for something to fill.
The OP specifically mentions level 35 being hard to find. After I set the arbitrary target of 35 for my own latest exemplarable build, I noticed posts in lots of forums mentioning the same level as a goal. I think a surprising number of people want exactly level 35 sets -- not 34, not 39, not 37, but 35. This made it pretty hard for me to accumulate a bunch of them, but once I'd started, I felt committed.
IMHO demand is way higher at precisely the level the OP complains about than at any other level. -
Quote:Aw, thanks. Now you have me guessing...Like Sailboat (whose toon with a nice biography was standing next to me once at WW)
Quote:Other players' good biographies and costumes make the game delightful almost every day.
Rightly so! Great ending. -
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Heh. "Seeds, Roots, and Rain: everything you need to be a successful farmer."
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Quote:Solid selections from SS. After you add Foot Stomp you will be golden; some people add Hurl, which isn't a bad attack, but it's not at all necessary. I tend to take what you took except sometimes I take Hurl instead of Taunt.Well I haven't got a planned build yet, haven't got the hang of mids....and because most of my toons just have basic IOs, I tend to wing most of my builds.
But the powers i've taken so far are:
Super Strength:
Jab, Haymaker, Taunt, Knockout Blow and Rage.
Quote:Sheild Defence:
Deflection, Battle Agility, True Grit, Active Defence, Against all Odds and Grant Cover.
Hrm. You would be less fragile with Phalanx Fighting in there somewhere. If your list of powers is complete, you'll have to give up something else to get it...hrm, how much do you use Taunt? -
I agree with Findulias -- Foot Stomp and Shield Charge should be taken and slotted as soon as you can, unless it's a deliberate concept decision to avoid them. Those are the real fun of your powerset combo -- get 'em and go find a buncha bad guys.
Hrm...if you're taking the fighting pool that late, and also putting off the big AoEs, my next thought is, what are you taking in their place? Maybe other changes would work better for you. Can you describe or post your planned build? -
It's supposed to be underpowered defense-wise, because it gets two spectacular bonuses to offense (Shield Charge and AAO). If it was as rugged as the other Tanker sets it would be miles better than any other set.
That said, if you get the fighting pool, you can get to the soft cap pretty easily, and that alone is good enough for a lot of mainstream tanking. My suggestion is to shoot for IOs to soft-cap right after you pick up and slot Weave, whatever level you choose to do that. As soon as you have Weave slotted for defense, the soft cap is tantalizingly close, so go for it then.
In my case, I didn't feel the need for Weave until late in the build, because I got a lot of mitigation from my secondary (Axe, for knockdown). So in the forties I picked up Weave. I already had a Steadfast 3% global defense IO , so I just needed 5 or 6 percent. My preferred way was to slot the entire Touch of Death set into my crappiest single-target attack (it has questionable recharge enhancement, so I didn't want it in a good attack) for melee defense, slot the entire Blessing of the Zephyr set into my travel power for ranged and AoE defense (the -knb IO costs 100 million and you don't need -knb, but on the other hand, you get AoE defense capped for only one more slot, and you can buy the IO outright with the merits you get running the Task Force Commander Accolade). Then I threw a single common defense IO into Combat Jumping and I was soft-capped.
Net cost in slots: two. (Already had six-slotted the attack power; used the default slot in Combat Jumping; only needed to add two slots to Super Jump to hold the BOTZ set.) Even a low-level BOTZ set provides enough enhancement for Super Jump to hit the speed cap, too, so I lost no travel speed.
edit: If Touch of Death is hard to acquire (took me some time to get all the pieces) you could put Mocking Beratement into Taunt and 5 Razzle Dazzles into Jab, which takes stun sets, and get equivalent melee defense, but that makes Jab less useful. -
I accepted random PUG invites to do this trial on two occasions recently. The first time failed, frustratingly; and the second time we gloriously took the head down with a few minutes to go -- and the trial did not end!
We realized we needed to clear the Rikti ambushers and set to work. My Axe Tanker had several AoEs, so I tried to get masses of them bunched up, but a lot of Rikti resist lethal damage pretty well, so I did moderate damage to many at once. I converted as many Inspirations as I could into reds for more damage, and gave my sole wakie to a downed Scrapper and led the Rikti off his body so he could rez. (It often baffles me that some players will get tunnel vision and not try to help teammates when the team really needs every able body.)
We got them cleared with 1:02 left on the timer, and won.
That was pretty dramatic, and I enjoyed it a lot. I added a few names to my friends lists too. -
Yeah, it helps to think of them as being "consumed" when slotted. Currently there are a few limited ways to get them back out, but those are expensive and troublesome, and the number of respecs you get is pretty limited.
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And it should be exclusive of any vehicle travel power pools that may be added to the game (in the same way turning on Granite detoggles Super Jump and vice versa).
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Quote:Halberds, poleaxes, and the like may look like spears/lances and can usually be used to thrust like a spear, but their main use in battle is quite different. A halberd is a swinging weapon, using the two-handed grip for leverage and the long haft to put speed behind the head. Halberd strokes were traditionally regarded as fearsome armor-penetrators and inflicted catastrophic wounds. There are stories of halberds passing through helms, shields, and breastplate armor and stopping deep in the torso.I tend to think as the spear and halberd as interchangeable. Therefore, weapon customizatio would allow for such a thing. Also, the Bardiche and poleaxe, etc.
While in the Society for Creative Anachronism, I personally received a practice stroke from a padded, fake halberd that snapped my steel helm's leather chinstrap and permanently blotted a few minutes out of my memory. The stroke was so awesome that years later I met someone I thought was a stranger at an event who remembered witnessing it and brought it to my attention! And the SCA rules limited pole weapon strikes to 90 degrees of arc -- this was no all-out swing by any means.
The weakness of a halberd is defense -- it's all attack, but the big swing is ponderous and leaves the wielder exposed. They were often used from behind a shield wall or a line of spears/pikes for that reason.
Some martial arts emphasize swinging a spear like a bo staff, but in real warfare, spear weapons are much stronger when used in mass formations as thrusting weapons.
Quote:While these weapons are used offensively with infantry they are strongest when used defensively since it allows the wielder to take greater advantage of the extra reach provided to them as well as being able to brace their weapon against the ground. To me that screams Tanker set more than Scrapper set.
More to the point, heh, the Swiss fought offensively as much as possible -- they tried not to stand on the defensive at all, but to leverage the offensive power of shock tactics. The Swiss disliked remaining still on the battlefield and would move relentlessly forward,driving the massed points of their pikes into enemy formations at speed, with shattering results.
As a solo weapon, the pike is vulnerable to someone who can evade the point and get inside its reach; massed, there are scores of other pike points on all sides and it's vastly harder to control the range yourself in order to make the pike useless.
It's possible occasionally though; Spanish infantry equipped with short sword and shield once handed a pike formation a nasty defeat. Supposedly, the Spanish timed it perfectly and threw themselves flat just as the points of the pikes arrived, and the pikes passed over them. They rose again and closed, and the front line of pikemen couldn't back up to get their points into play because of the remorseless pressure of the rear ranks. Slaughter ensued. -
Catwhoorg is right -- axe has no inherent knockback powers. Carefully-monitored Axe dos not actually fling around anything at all except lower-level foes and most clockworks. I've just leveled up an Axer and been whaling away with the axe on all kinds of stuff and I can tell you he's right.
It's also right that the OP was poorly thought-out and researched.
Almost every time I see a knockback complaint that I know to be wrong ("Remove the knockback from fire/ice/whatever!" "Why does Ice Slick suddenly do knockback?" "Why did they nerf Freezing Rain?") it turns out to be a clockwork-based issue. Even when the poster is cagey about remembering (or admitting) what he was fighting, (although to be fair that was not the case in this thread) it ultimately seems to have been a Clockwork issue more often than not.
I think Clockwork should have some kind of a damned warning -- not dialogue, not a label, but maybe a complete cut-scene movie that stops play and explains that the darned things take extra knockback and PLEASE DON'T RUN TO THE FORUMS AND START A THREAD ABOUT IT. We face this complaint regularly, and usually the person who reflexively posts without researching the issue winds up angry and insults someone, which only makes the whole affair even more frustrating. Over and over we have this thread or its analogs...almost on a regular schedule...like, well, clockwork. -
Sounds like the Virtueverse to me. Have you seen the Virtueverse site? Great amounts of player-generated content about their notable characters.
I tried to link to it earlier today when I saw your post, and I've tried to link to it now, but nothing seems to be working -- it doesn't even time out with a 404 error. It's like a black hole.
So maybe it's dead, I don't know. I never participated in it myself; just admired the dedication and creativity involved.