Sailboat

Or at least slotting set bonuses for resistance instead of defense is. But in theory, it doesn’t have to be.

Throughout the early years of COH, resistance builds generally were regarded as more solid than defense builds, but accumulated changes have reversed that, at least in the high-performance end of the game.

My understanding of the situation is that Castle has implied that there are so many defense bonuses available that he thinks it’s a bit too easy to get significantly high defense on a character. I’m not saying, or asserting that Castle said, soft-capped defense is inappropriate for many characters…but it might be a little much seeing so many soft-capped builds that started out with no defense from powers at all. Furthermore, Castle didn’t say the Devs are considering changing the set bonuses to reduce the amount of defense available. Instead, if I understood him, he was implying that making an equivalent strength and variety of resistance bonuses available would be problematic because players could also stack in the already-existing defense bonuses and become even more mind-bogglingly strong.

I understand that, from a game-design point of view, it’s desirable not to have too huge a gap in performance. But I think it would be nice if resistance builds were possible, without being overpowered. Ideally, there should be (at least) three strategies for avoiding damage (I’ll omit discussions of healing/regenerating, which is valid, but does not bear on my suggestion): pure resistance, pure defense, and a mix of the two.

But how can we create a smorgasbord of resistance set bonuses that will allow resistance-based builds to accumulate enough to be roughly as well-protected as soft-capped defense-based characters can already be, without permitting stacked defense and resistance bonuses to grossly exceed the current paradigm?

I believe a mechanism already exists that could be adapted to achieve this.

This is difficult to explain, I hope I can make my idea understandable.

Certain IOs are flagged as “unique,” and each character can only slot one of that IO. If you try to slot another one, the game won’t let you; the slots are grayed out and it will not work. And all set bonuses obey the “rule of five” where the game checks for how many of a given set bonus you have slotted, and only allows 5 copies of that bonus to work.

Perhaps the defense set bonus IOs, AND the resistance set bonus IOs that already exist, AND the new resistance set bonus IOs that I am proposing be added, could all get some kind of similar flag on them that would recognize how many bonuses you already had slotted (like unique IOs do recognize themselves) and allow only a certain total value to be slotted (like the “rule of five” allows only a certain number of bonuses to be active).

Exactly how this would work is a question for the programmers, and exactly what proportions of defense and resistance limits would be “fair” is a question for the game designers. I won’t venture any guesses.

Would this be abusable? Yeah, probably someone will calculate some combination of defense and resistance through some oddball slotting that works really well. But people already do much the same thing with defense.

I am not proposing making defense weaker than it now is, nor making resistance stronger than defense now is. I am trying to propose a balance. I am trying to propose more interesting choices among top-end builds. Right now “slather on the defense, because you can’t get enough resistance to matter” seems to be the consensus, and it’s less interesting than if there were more (valid) choices (in how to do this specific thing, reduce incoming damage -- I am not trying to denigrate other choices such as regeneration or recharge bonuses).

I don't quite know what to think.

Without having access to the ninja run power, I've played a travel-power-less build to 40, and frankly, I felt slow and somehow incomplete when teamed, and when solo, I was sometimes deterred from traveling to stores or just stopping off to check the market, because who wants to go all that way on foot? When switching over to my characters with travel powers, I immediately felt a small difference. Admittedly this may be psychological; as a slow player with many alts, over the years I've come to associate "level 14 and a travel power" with the start of a character's transformation into a true super.

I've thought about buying the pack and putting Ninja Run on some of my characters. In some cases, it makes no sense at all character-wise. For example, Easter Island, the volcanic stone tanker, currently teleports -- how did you think the statues got where they now are? -- and would look silly. Great Goblin, the nasty little spines/dark armor Scrapper, could in theory use NR, but he has to keep Combat Jumping running anyway for Immobilize protection, and at that point it only costs one power pick and no extra slots to get Super Jump. The Last Minoan, minotaur with axe and shield, already has the fighting pool, the speed pool, the leaping pool, the fitness pool, two complete attack chains (single-target and AoE), and is soft-capped on defenses. He won't get much out of an ancillary unless he takes the third-tier power (like Fireball) but that would involve dropping THREE of his current powers, more than just dropping the travel power for Ninja Run. Some other builds are like that; there's nothing really compelling to take in place of the travel power...Caltrops? A self-res?

My truly travel-power-less build would probably be improved by NR and will take it if I decide to spring for the pack. But WWII pilot Airacobra will never give up flight (I can just hear the team chat now..."Your name is Airacobra and you don't fly?") so that's another build where NR is moot.

Some of my builds are jealous of NR's flip animation, but certainly not all of them...some are too dignified or too immobile.

I guess that's what the Devs were shooting for -- a power that's helpful for some builds and desirable for some concepts, but not desirable enough to replace travel powers on all builds either from a game-mechanical or roleplaying perspective. So I guess they hit a pretty good balance point.

Here's my take on that.

I run across these things all the time. I've thought about starting a thread like this.

I work in downtown Washington, DC. Every morning when I get on the elevator to the Metro (subway), I press a button that says "Mezz" (for mezzanine level).

My work involves lots of documents that mention Tanks (storage) which are usually on farms (tank farms) and radiation, almost always abbreviated as Rad., and sometimes shields (radiation shielding).

I will look around next time I'm at work and try to find some more.

Glad to see Trip Mine mentioned. With a lot of recharge, you can put down a sifgnificant minefield without it being too burdensome, and even on teams you can often drop one or two before a fight without slowing people down.

It's hysterical to do things like knocking a bad guy back with one mine and he lands on another mine (or more than one). Also, outside a certain range from you...60 feet, maybe? 80? Not sure...the mines will not detonate, even if someone steps right on them. You can use this by laying a tight cluster of mines and then backing way off...let a teammate (Tanker or some substitute) pile up a bunch of bad guys on top of the Trip Mines, and then you come running up. When you get into range all the mines go off at once, each one hitting all the bad guys...it's just awesome.

Blueside recipes:

28 Mocking Beratement taunt/rech/range
28 Reactive Armor rech/res
26 Steadfast Protection -knb
34 Scirroco's Dervish dmg/end

Well, you don't need to "take" anything to the tailor.

Make sure you have the recipe itself, the ingredients, and the influence. Go to a crafting table and craft -- the recipe and ingredients will disappear.

Now go to the tailor and select the wings options pulldown and you'll see the tech wings.

Good luck, and if I have misunderstood your issue, please clarify.

Last night I saw there were only 17 Psionic Threat Reports for sale Blueside. I put one up for sale (which I had purchased for 5 influence) and it cleared for 950,000 influence within minutes. That's 190,000 times what I paid for it.

I'm not really bragging about it, as it was pure luck -- none of the other sales that I saw were for anything close to that much, so maybe it was an extra-zero typo. But it wasn't completely impossible that someone paid that much intentionally, as a lot were going for 200,000 in the same time period.

Check out this thread dedicated to people helping out folks stuck for costume ideas or seeking better-looking costumes. Post in there and you'll get help.

All Blueside.

Recipes listed:

Two 29 Entropic Chaos dmg/rech
26 red Fortune def/rech
35 Dampened Spirits to-hit debuff/rech
35 Perfect Zinger chance for Psi dmg

Recipes sold:

35 Ghost Widow's acc/hold/rech: 150,000
35 Entropic Chaos chance to heal self: 2 million
35 Analyze Weakness acc/rech: 44,444

Crafted IOs listed:

29 Befuddling Aura Confuse/rng
35 Devastation acc/dmg/rech
35 Decimation acc/dmg/rech
35 Touch of Nictus acc/heal

Crafted IO sold:

35 Decimation Chance for Buildup: 5 million
30 Crushing Impact acc/dmg/end: 8 million

I have Dark Mastery Torrent on a character. But it's strictly for concept. I decided to take it after playing with the holy shotgun shells temp power -- cone knockback amused me so much.

I found a use for it -- in AE missions, when a custom boss hits Build Up, he will hit right through my soft-capped defense (MA/SR). A single hold won't neutralize a boss. But most of them can be knocked back, and then I keep them at arm's length for ten seconds until Build Up expires.

And one time I blew some baddies off a ledge while they were smashing one of the Blasters into the red. But that was the only time I ever felt like it saved a teammate from defeat.

Note that, as MA/SR, the character is primarily single-target focused anyway, and is used to chasing things Crane Kick knocks back, or using positioning to nullify the disadvantage of knockback. Scrappers with more AoE may find Torrent more disruptive.

The build predates Physical Perfection being added to the Scrapper epics. Also, I did not have room for a third-tier power like Energy Torrent. If I did have the power picks to spare, I would seriously consider respeccing into Physical Perfection and Energy Torrent.

For what it's worth, I feel that most Blasters shoot too early.

Right after they have burned off their best attacks, assuming they didn't take the alpha and die outright, all the debuffs and controls start to take effect. Now the enemies will take lots more damage and not fight back...if and when the Blaster's good attacks recharge.

The time you "waste" positioning yourself gives your team time to put their powers into effect and prepare the battlefield.