Sardan

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Now how many people in this game actually pvp on a regular basis? I'd guess around 5% and that's being generous. Now take into consideration that even when PVP IO's didnt have restrictions on the drops I got maybe 5 of them since they came out, and I PvP regularly. I expect these things to be damn near unattainable for most people when this patch hits live.

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I agree. Before, even with some PVP recipe farming going on, some of the recipes were going for over 600 million. I expect we'll see them top the billion mark pretty soon.

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Removed powers from Destructible Object mission objectives that harmed or affected players in some way. These objects should simply explode upon reaching 0 health and have no secondary effects like buffing or debuffing players or causing damage to either enemies or players.

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I understand why this change was made, but consider this a request to at least put back the knockback effect from exploding objects. As long as the explosion does no damage I don't see how that can be used as an exploit. I absolutely love the feeling of blowing something up like a Rikti bomb then being pushed way back from the explosion. It helps with immersion, like screen shake.

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Fixed PvP rewards to function once again. Now, influence, inspirations, and other normal rewards occur on every PvP kill, while PvP IO recipes can only be rewarded on rep-valid kills.

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This means no recipes in the arena right?

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Not true.

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Fixed rep-validation to function in arenas, even though it doesn't give you any reputation in arenas.

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They made the rep-validation work in arenas, so players could get PvP IOs in the arena. However, you WON'T get any REP in Arena.

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I'd say it's technically going to be possible to get PVP IO drops in arena, but it'll virtually never happen. If A kills B he gets a 1 in 100 chance at a PVP recipe drop. Then for the next 5 minutes he gets no chances. Further, if what people have been saying about the timer resetting is true, he will likely get no further chances assuming he can kill B at least once every 5 minutes. Further, since for some bizarre reason B's timer gets set for A when the kill happens, B essentially has no chances at a drop during the entire match.

This is why people are complaining that low-pop server players are screwed. If there are only 4 people in a zone and they're engaging relatively often, they'll quickly get into a mode where none of them can earn PVP IO drops unless they sit out for 5 minutes.

They need to remove the timer reset and change it so only defeating a player sets a timer, not being defeated by a player.

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Electric/SD

I just like 2 teledamage powers *shrug*

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That's the powersets of my "beastly brute" I referred to earlier. Insanely fun on teams, really horrible choice for soloing which is what the OP specified he mostly does.

I have a SD brute that's a beast but only because I poured an obscene amount of inf into his build. I think if SD just has SOs or generic IOs it's one of the weaker choices. Both SD and SR are weaker than WP or Inv or Regen until the 30s and even then you need to do things like take pool powers and/or slot sets for +Def bonuses. The beauty of WP/Inf/Regen is that they perform better at lower levels and don't require sets to perform well. Since the OP mainly seems to want a quick trip to 50 I think he'd be better off with a set that wasn't a late bloomer.

EDIT: I should add that Inv does obviously have its strengths and weaknesses. You'll want to cherry-pick your enemies if your goal is speed, but that's easy to do in the MA.

Here's another vote for SS/Will. You get a heavy-hitter attack early, and Footstomp at 32 is worth waiting for. Rage helps you hit so you can diversify slotting more into recharge and endurance reduction.

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The devs were honestly trying to improve PvP. PvPers responded by leaving. Now they can't even get feedback to fix things.

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Yeah, there's no experienced PVPers left to give them thoughtful feedback. Pity.

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Its true that defence is susceptible to the streak breaker and defence debuffs, but it also caps at 90%+ mitigation for all ATs and ignores debuffs.

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I don't understand that last comment. Defense ignores debuffs? Take a run through the ITF and let me know how that goes for you. Stand in the middle of a bunch of angry Cimeroran Traitors and all their shiny swords and then tell me that defense ignores debuffs. I believe there are some power sets with very high def debuff resists like Ice tankers, but for the average character that gets large defense numbers through set bonuses and pool powers, it's easy to get debuffed to hell very quickly once one or two lucky shots get in.

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Quick reply:

Try TV's Devouring Earth/Freakshow map. Set up a bind to take out the cairns first and you'll be happy with your melee defense.

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For any build that relies heavily on defense, you want to take out the Quartz pets first. They give the DE strong ToHit or Acc buffs, essentially negating player defense. Then take out the Cairns.

One non-Fury point with regard to overall damage is that the brute damage cap is 850% (750% + base 100%) but the scrapper cap is 500%. So if you're on a team with damage buffs the brute will be outdamaging the scrapper. I try to run with Kins for this very reason. In that scenario Fury doesn't really matter, although I believe scrapper crits still do--I think they ignore the damage cap the way controller containment does.

After succumbing to the lure of some of the um, "high yield" missions in MA, my Elec/Shield is 50. I've spent more on this guy than any other of my villains, but hey it's all play money, right? Incredible survivability with massive AOE.

The only downside is in a mish with an AV at the end you sort of stand there kicking sand on his shoes. Single target fights will keep you humble. It's pretty great teaming with Widows and Stalkers because I basically take out all the minions and LTs and they drop the bosses.

The only part of my build I'm unhappy with is that I couldn't fit in Taunt, so I find myself running ahead of teams and jumping in the middle of large spawns just to get enough aggro to keep Fury up. Instead of Taunt I picked up Grant Cover to help against defense debuffs. I like to run ITFs and you really need all the debuff resist you can get there, because a couple of lucky hits against you can lead to rapid def cascade failure.

I would add that like some others have said, while this may not be the ultimate AoE brute (I think that honor goes to a purpled out SS/Fire?), it is the most fun. Lightning Rod + Shield Charge FTW. And I just smile every time I get a big spawn clumped up around me and hit 'em with Chain Induction and watch that damage skip from mob to mob.

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you guys are right, the devs love player feedback, and jump right on it, how could i ever have not seen this was the case. i suppose that all the folks that think otherwise are just being big babies.

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Obviously you're sore over the PvP changes. But the PvP changes were a very unusual case. The problem was that even though the PVP population liked it the way it was, the overall numbers were low with nothing exciting in terms of the slope of the trendline. So they took a big gamble and changed it radically hoping to attract large numbers of "have-nots". Seems not to have worked, sadly. But to generalize that example to "the devs don't care what players think" is absurd.

Oh and I'm sure someone with better search-fu than mine can dig this up, but I remember being absolutely blown away by a post a few months ago cataloging dozens of game features that were directly the result of player suggestions.

But is it even automatically right for the devs to always listen to the players? There are times the devs have to take actions looking towards the overall health of the business even though they go directly against what players want. Obviously players didn't request things like the fire tanker Burn nerf, regen nerfs, the nerfs to Energy Melee, removal of Rikti Comm officer farms, etc. All of those things were quite unpopular but the game designers tried to make changes that would be better for the long term health of the business.

The devs are trying to improve a game that pays their salaries. Do you think that when a game like Auto Wars or Tabula Rasa failed, the dozens of people who worked on those projects high-fived each other over not having to be bothered by pesky customers any more and continued to draw salaries from some magical cookie jar? If you think the devs actually enjoy making decisions that result in even a small number of players quitting, you're living in some kind of simplistic pretendy world. Grow up.

EDIT: I'm not trying to be a fanboi here. It *IS* upsetting that years of negative feedback on things like the Posi TF and the Shadow Shard TFs have resulted in no changes at all. I am disappointed in the current state of the Hero TF and hope they make some key improvements. I'm not trying to say that the devs are infallible. I'm just saying that your extreme position of "the devs never listen and don't give a rip what we think" is absurd.

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I have it down to under 150 hours solo, normal content, heroic from 600 hours a few years ago.

I'll have to run one through MA solo and see how fast it goes not having to travel and run Fed Ex missions.

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Soloing MA would be dramatically faster than soloing through normal content. You don't need to get a travel power which means you get an attack chain much sooner, the hospital is always 15 steps form the mission entrance, and an insp vendor is even closer. The big caveat is that custom enemies use player-grade powers, so they hit harder.

Well, as long as the thread was already started, no sense starting a new one.

I'm looking to trade about 500M influence on Freedom for infamy on Freedom. Please send me a PM on the forums or a tell to @sardan in the game. If you don't want to do the full 500M, let me know how much you're willing to do. Thanks!

I'm leveling up an Elec/SD brute now. My last scrapper was a soft-capped Fire/SR and he was pretty amazing once I got that last little bit of def, so I know how worthwhile it is to spend the inf to pile on those +def bonuses. The AoE capability of Elec/SD just looks wild. I absolutely love knockdown as a damage mitigator, too.

So far my brute is only in the mid 30s with no IO sets. Be prepared for a squishier brute than if you went WP or Invuln, for sure. Shields with generic IOs isn't unplayable, but is certainly not anything to brag about. The big problem is that the AoEs attract a lot of aggro that it can be hard to deal with.

Single target damage is horrible. But that doesn't bother me, because I'm building this guy for the AoEs. Can't wait to get Shield Charge.

We NEED /e facepalm. And the new forums need an emote for it too.

Oh, and the new /e alakazamreact is pretty fun.

If you have the magic booster, /e jugglemagic and /e cardtrick are neat.

The upcoming science booster has a couple of neat emotes too.

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That should be "Their" not "Thier".

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Pwnd! Haha, its always to funy too see poeple who correct somone elses gramar or spelling but make a mistake themselfs!

Congrats!

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... unless you click on Missions, hover over the mission text and click More. You can check out the clues in (you guessed it) the Clues tab too. You don't have to be the lead to keep up with the story.

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When we ran the TF I did read the mission text. But I ALWAYS forget to read the clue text. I don't know why I have that blind spot.

But clues aside, there are aspects of storytelling in this TF that can be improved. There is NPC chatter in a couple of missions that is easily (and usually) missed as the combat spam fills the window. Cut scenes would avoid that issue. There is an important story point (intentional vagueness to avoid more spoilers) where the big bad guy defeats some good guys that is only told in an offhand way via clues, and they really need to do that either via a cut scene or by using the "nearly dead dudes on the floor who do a monologue" trick they use in the LGTF.

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This is not a farm change, but rather a change to all missions. Running on unyielding and invincible will now allow bosses to spawn in normal groups even when solo, not just specifically placed bosses in the missions which is what would happen before.

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It seems there are a lot of little changes in i15 that weren't in the patch notes. This is one I like a lot.

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In short, has the Reichsman TF been improved before launch in anyway?


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I didn't check out the TF until very late in the beta, but all the problems you mentioned were still there and are still there since it's gone live. While no dev has commented on it, I believe eventually they'll at least add a cutscene or two in.

That'd really help because if you aren't the team lead, following the story in the TF as it stands is difficult.

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/Elec is awful when it comes to survivability.

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Yea, I really think the dev's should do something to seroiusly improve the set.

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What if they used the same trick that they did with Super Reflexes? As your health drops in SR your damage resistance increases. It'd be awesome if Elec got the same treatment so that as your health dips you start to get some defense. Granted there are some situations where this wouldn't help like if a ton of Cimerorans had already debuffed your defense to hell, but overall it would add a lot of survivability.

EDIT: oh, and to the OP there's an additional option for an Elec-themed brute. You could create a Shields brute and choose the electric shield, which looks pretty damn cool. That'd free you to pick a different primary. The downside of Shields is that it's relatively squishy compared to WP until you can get enough powers and IO set bonuses to really layer on lots of defense.

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Survivability-wise my Sonic/Devices blows my other blasters out of the water.

Siren's Song a mob, wake one up with Screech, beat it down with ST attacks, wake one up with Taser, beat it down with ST attacks. I can go through a mob like that before SS wears off (they sleep for almost a minute and a half the way I have it slotted) and they never get a shot off, and if they do my ranged defense is close to softcapped, so they probably won't hit me.

I also have a Stealth IO in Hover and Cloaking Device so they don't see me before I put them to sleep.

Only downside to it is my AoE sucks.

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Just wanted to point out that the real key to what you describe is the AoE sleep of Siren's Song. You could just as easily be Sonic/anything and take Super Speed with a Celerity +Stealth IO for invisibility. I'm not saying your combo is bad, but some folks don't care for Devices so I wanted to point out there are other options.

And to the OP, you may get enough mitigation in just having /Ice that you won't need it but I find taking Aid Self from the Medicine pool helps my blasters tremendously. Sort of a split between improving survivability and just decreasing downtime. It's particularly nifty if you take Personal Force Field from Force Mastery; you pop PFF and unless the mobs have a big +ToHit (like from Nemesis Vengeance) you'll have plenty of time to heal up to full.

The only hint we have of a next project from Paragon Studios is this job posting which contains the phrase "our next MMO". So they're definitely planning another game, but who knows if it's COH2. If they're just starting to ramp up the project, it's likely at least 3-4 years away whatever it is.

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I don't like being on farm teams. I don't like being lied to by people filling farm teams. (It's happened.) I don't like playing with PL'd incompetents (or any incompetents, really.) So I guess I'm an anti-farmer.

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You fail the anti-farmer litmus test by not moralizing and pontificating about the evils of farming and demanding that farmers be banned every chance you get.

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How about this.... [clears throat]

Remember, if you support farmers, the terrorists win!