Schismatrix

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I haven't verified that report myself, so don't take it as gospel. I'm not disputing that rad will be useful against AVs, just that the changes appear to constitute a net AV buff for teams with rad, which is the last thing they needed. I'm a bit worried about running into a circumstance like I had a month ago, where a L22 Rad/Dark (which didn't yet have LR) SK'd up in a PUG with a L50 Rad/Rad and a L50 Invuln/SS tank just *barely* managed to take down a L52 Mother Mayhem AV. With two Shivans. I'm getting the feeling that in I9, that would have been a failed mission, which bothers me a lot.

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Since the only power that was "nerfed" by the AV debuff resistance changes is the one power that the Rad/Dark didn't have (LR), and most of the other debuff powers will benefit from the changes, you'd actually have an easier time in the exact same situation once i9 goes live... (Just thought i would point that out.)

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Curse you, Mental Giant!!!

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Curse you, Runcible Spoon!

*looks around bemusedly*

Oops, sorry. i forgot where i was for a second. Carry on.

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To buck the trend, I like the look of Spines as is. Not all powers should be clean-looking.

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Agreed. I think it's one of the best looking powersets in the game and partially for that reason. I love my Spines Scrapper.

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Okay i can see not being clean looking, but do you object to the idea of spines being, oh i don't know, pointy? Thorny Assault isn't all that clean looking, but damn if it doesn't look spinier than spines. (Spines usually being longer and thinner than thorns.)

i'm still hoping that someday weapons customization will be added, so that players can choose between different sorts of weapon models, which spines would be a logical subtype to have. We could have the current ingrown-toenail-grown-out-of-control spines, the Thorny Assault-like spines and even Silver Mantis-like spines.

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I don't think we're as much of a niche as people like to think.

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Seconded. Before WoW, the benchmark for MMP success was 100,000 subscribers. Admittedly, WoW is a HUGE hit. Gigantic. Perhaps biggest in the PC industry ever, but that shouldn't diminish CoH's place as one of the largest North American MMP's. We're well over that 100,000 mark.

There's no way that NCSoft and Cryptic are going to do anything but continue to give CoH everything we can. I'm still playing, designing and playtesting!

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MMP? Must be a finger snaffu. >.>

Just out of curiousity States, do you play on the Live servers, or do you only play on the internal ones? I'm guessing both, but you never know. Hmmm... I wonder if I have ever bumped into you on live... You probably don't play on Freedom though, it's a mad house, and odds are not great regardless, but still... >.>

=. .=

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i know Statesman has shown up on Guardian numerous times in the past, including leading a team of players through a task force as part of some promotion/convention type thing. i also once saw Statesman at the tram in Skyway City on Guardian once. (No, i didn't think to take a screenshot in time, but it was Statesman's costume.) However, this was well over a year ago. i've seen several Dev characters in game since then, but never Statesman outside of the Portal Corp mission against Tyrant.

As for what servers Jack Emmert plays on, that i have no clue about. i'd expect he plays at least part of the time on the live servers, though for some reason i feel that he plays Controllers more than Tankers. i've known of a number of Devs playing regular accounts on one server or another, though they'll generally never say who they really are, which is perfectly understandable.

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<QR>

Mobs are running at the START of the fight too, at least low-level ones. Was on a new Scrapper last night, engaged a typical street group of 3 +1 Hellions and one took off IMMEDIATELY, before I had even HIT anything. Have seen this on my lowbie Tanks as well.


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i've been seeing something similar to this on my (currently) level 12 Mind/Rad controller. When engaging Troll spawns in particular, using confuse on what is apparently the "designated runner" (typically a Gardvord) instead of attacking his allies the mob will instantly take off running until long out of sight. When the runner finally returns, attacking with any power or confusing the mob will make him instantly take off running again. When using non-mezzing attacks (including the permatemp attacks) the mob will occasionally make a single attack before sprinting like mad. This is even with +1 enemies who have not taken any damage or even tried attacking me at all. i've also seen this behavior with Skulls, Council, Outcasts and Hellions. Generally the fleeing mob is a lt., though i've seen minions do it. Bosses usually stay around to fight.

My 28 Ice/EM tanker has been seeing similar running behavior from most enemy types i can recall fighting recently. (Tsoo, Warriors, Council, Fir Bolg and Freaks as best as i can recall.) Generally speaking, the easiest way to make them run is to hit them with taunt. One application of taunt as i charge a fresh group is usually enough to make a lt. take off running. Most of the time targetting the runner with taunt a second time has little effect, he keeps running anyway. Occasionally the second taunt does make him pause long enough to fire off a single ranged attack before continuing to run. Note that this is even when soloing and the only attacks used at that point is Taunt and/or Chilling Embrace.

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I have to disagree, here--while the scanner missions often count towards your SGM total, they don't always. It seems kind of random, to me.

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i think i know why. The CoH shared mission completion only works if you both have the same mission and received it from the same contact. This also applies to normal missions.

There are 2 Police Band contacts in every zone, so you have a 50% chance of being able to use shared mission completion credit since the PB contact is randomly assigned. This means there is no guaranteed way to sync your PB contacts/missions even if you play with the same team constantly.

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Some of the comments i've read suggest that slotting Knockup powers with Knockback Enhancements now has no effect, that the enemies don't go any higher or take longer to get back up.

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Unfortunately, that sounds sensible, within limits. Ragdoll graphics have pretty much taken over where the duration of enemies' attempts to get up is concerned. And the matter of KD/U changing to KB is apparently a question of Knock* Magnitude, which Enhancements don't change.

(There's actually an idea in here: Allowing people to slot for Knock* Magnitude instead of range and then tying range into Magnitude. That'd allow people to pick and choose whether their KD/U powers should do KB instead. Though there's gonna be an awkward level where you can KD/U resistant enemies but KB everybody else. That'd however make for a fair tradeoff for the flexibility, IMO.)

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If that's the case currently, then the Devs should consider removing the option to slot enhancers that have no useful effect. They did it for Def enhancers in Ice Armor's power that gave 1% defense before slotting, so if KB enhancers do nothing for KU powers then those should be removed as an option as well.

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Not sure if this has been posted or not, seems way too glaring to have been missed completely. The samauri belts do some REALLY strange things sometimes, particularly while hovering or activating a teleport power like base teleport or pocket D teleport.

The armor pieces go all over the place, detatching from the belt and ending up in odd spots, and even elongating.

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Interesting. i never noticed this on test, but it occurs to me that i didn't use Pocket D or base porter on test, and none of my flying characters used Samurai armor very much. Does it happen with personal teleport powers, or just the zone-switching powers? i think i'll go dress my Warshade in Samurai armor and test this.

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I want to specifically say that I do not like the change in Jump Kick from knockback to knockup. While I can understand meleers not wanting to use the power when it knocks foes back, the solution to me would be to change Jump Kick to Knock DOWN, with Knock BACK when slotted, just like the changes that were made to Melee powers.

Why Jump Kick was changed to Knock UP, with slotting increasing the height of the knock up, I don't know. Air Superiority is already the knockdown power of choice, and thus for damage mitigation, keeping foes off their feet, Air Superiority is still the best choice. I used Jump Kick on my Blaster to knock foes out of melee, as that was the one thing Jump Kick had that Air Superiority didn't. So rather than giving me a reason to pick Jump Kick, I might as well now pick Air Superiority and at least have a 100% chance of knockdown.

[/ QUOTE ]Some of the comments i've read suggest that slotting Knockup powers with Knockback Enhancements now has no effect, that the enemies don't go any higher or take longer to get back up.

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BTW, does anyone know of a way to add a thread to favorites without posting in it?

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Very bottom of the thread, look for the "Favorite Topic (Toggle)" link.

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i see it now. No idea how i overlooked it for so long.

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http://culex.us/ig/neuronleader.jpg

Obviously a mission by Maria Jenkins. I know not all non-arc Maria Praets are ___Leader...but it sure has made me curious.

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Ok, that I have not seen before, but then it's probably been close to a year since I have done the praetorian arcs (severe case of low level altaholism ). I wonder if that's because of the downgrading to EB.

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From what i recall, both the arc and non-arc versions of the Praetorians downgrade to EB status, so i don't know why that would be a factor in their naming. Is it related to the badge awarded for defeating all of them? (Though i thought that both versions also counted for it.)

Very interesting thread. i wonder why guides that are written by people directly involved with the game's development can get the numbers so wrong when they do give them?

BTW, does anyone know of a way to add a thread to favorites without posting in it?

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...Wait...

Does that mean if you were to wear that in a PvP zone...you could go past the Arachnos drones?

*head explodes*

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I don't know about PVP but it worked very well in the mission.

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i tried running around Faultline a bit with the Arachnos disguise and it seems to function much like Superior Invisibility. It makes you effectively invisible to all mob types until you attack. i'd expect it would be just as effective for sneaking past Arachnos Drones as Superior Invisibility...

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Posi: TELEPORT BUG. C'mon, 1/4 of your travel options are nerfed for range enhancers since 5/7.

Trams. The other travel power nerf.

These are QoL issues that should and need to be addressed as well, particularly since it seems like you've had at least the TP bug "in the bag" for months now.

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i still think that the Teleport bug is a game engine issue, not the power numbers and coding stuff that Posi works on. i imagine there will be a slight fanfare when Teleport gets fixed, but until then it's out of Positron's control and thus difficult for him to comment on. Remember the last time he belatedly posted that he thought it had already been fixed because he wasn't familiar enough with the issue to test for the very thing that caused many players to consider it broken. If we had a Dev that was fond of and regularly used Teleport it might be a different story, but here we are.

i still think it will be fixed when Issue 8 goes to the Test server. One issue to break it, the next to fix it. Just be grateful it didn't happen in Issue 6.

i like these ideas. i particularly like the standalone apartment in a building somewhere that can also be accessed from the SG base. It would be even more effective and in-genre to have a portal/link that transports the character to the SG base from the apartment as well.

*heh* i guess i felt like ignoring the tone of their post to use it as a starting point to give my perspective on some of this thread's topics. That said, i agree with you regarding the manners exhibited.

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It isn't the popularity of bases so much as the fact that our programming & art team did a phenomenal job of allowing players to generate their own lairs. Maybe not enough players have experienced this content to comment on it, though hopefully Posi's changes will help.

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My characters are in small supergroups. The members of said supergroups have real lives. None of us live online. Thus, for us, bases with any function are essentially unattainable. Now, I'm sure they're great if one is in a supergroup inhabited by lifetime basement-dwellers.

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Actually, i'm on the second floor, and dweller isn't quite right since i work full time and go clubbing, but i agree that the non-obsessives can't afford a swank base unless they join an SG large enough to effectively shut them out of the base design process. There's a wee bit too much compartmentalization in the game's design concepts, and not enough looking at the overall picture IMO.

Jack/States expressing surprise at how few people used inf transfers from higher characters to fund enhancements so that players could stay in SG mode longer when the transfer limit was set to 5 figures by the Devs expressly to discourage funding lower level players it is but one example.

Or a bug fix that doesn't fix the actual problem because the Dev in charge didn't inform the programmer what the whole issue with it was. Even more amusingly the Dev in question hadn't paid any attention to it himself and thought the problem was fixed when it wasn't... (Teleport reticle being borked when range is enhanced.)

i don't want the Devs to give everybady what they ask for, i just want them to pay attention to the wishes and concerns of the players when making their design and coding decisions. Occasionally stepping back and looking at the big picture in terms of how different parts of the game are set up would be a good thing as well. (Like the aforementioned "we expected you to use inf transfers to make staying in SG mode practical at the mid to higher levels even though we previously limited inf transfer amounts specifically to discourage it.")

My level 50 D3 has Team Teleport and the description saying that it "uses slightly more endurance that Teleport", but in this case slightly actually means about double the endurance. Also, Team Teleport has significantly shorter range that Teleport. Personally i'm going to spec it out soon for Group Fly since, beyond surprise attacks in PvP, i've found Group Fly to generally have more utility. My defenders usually have Tactics, which more than compensates for the accuracy penalty.

Based on the segments with proper spelling and grammar i'm guessing that the poster is writing that way as a phonetic affectation of "urban" vernacular. if you read it phonetically it sounds like several of my friends who are very "urban". (i use quotes for "urban" because the majority of my friends were raised in/live in cities and don't talk that way at all.)

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For all those new to raiding, this is a good thread to follow to help reduce general lag for all those without a $3000 computer. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

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Ah, the revival of raid uniforms could be fun. Almost as much fun as when we'd have theme outfits, like the time that the theme was "dress like Ultraamann" and everyone showed up gold with the first letter of their name on their chest.

As pointed out in another post on this thread, having the regular raiders wear the outfits makes it easier to tell new raiders who they should emulate, and it reduces lag for those with slower comps.

i think it would be good to revive this practice.

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The semicolon means that they are two separate effects. They stack.

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Correct.

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Castle, is anything going to be done to rebalance NPC stealth versus PCs? Right now NPC stealth is far mor powerful as it will totally make you lose targeting on NPCs, yet the NPCs will never lose target on you unless you run away.

It is incredibly agravating that they can continue to follow and fight (waxing my Stalker that I've been tooling with) and yet when I'm hit with smoke grenade or they activate stealth I no longer have a target.

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It's been repeatedly confirmed by the Devs in the past that this is because NPC aggro rules are completely different. Once aggroed a mob doesn't check perception until you leave their (rather large) aggro range or something removes/lowers your position on their aggro list. Until either condition is met they know where you are at all times. It's a limitation of mob AI/perception coding that unfortunately cannot be changed at this point in time.

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I've been streetfighting some Paragon Protectors in Crey's Folly. I just noticed they still have the old Swipe/Strike/Slash animations.

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Mobs tend to keep the original powers from when the mob type was created. Nemesis still have the original Vengeance and PP's also have the original Unstoppable and MoG AFAIK. Dark Servants and Tsoo Sorcerers have Chill of the Night as well. Sometimes that's an advantage for us, sometimes an advantage for them.

FWIW: Been doing some testing with my DM/DA Stalker and DM/DA brute, and i find that at least the armor noises are quieter than they used to be. Annoying, yes, but no longer as loud in a dental-drill-boring-into-your-forehead way. There was a time when Dark Armor sounds almost drowned out the other game sounds.

So far it seems like an ok set. The end drain of all the toggles is more of an issue on AT's that need to stand there and scrap/tank it out. Most stalkers hit and fade, so they aren't usually fighting for an extended period. Have to play a bit more and see how i like the later powers, but i keep getting distracted by my Claws stalker and scrapper. (Really tempted to try a Claws/DA stalker despite the fact that Claws seems to work best for extended fights, not hit and run.)

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Pulsating sound blows goats and causes migranes. Will be deleting my dark/dark stalker very soon as I refuse to play a class that causes physical discomfort.

Energy useage seems high on them too.

I also dont like how hide doesn't remove aggro from you if you run out of range. Had some lt chase me from hell and back even after breaking visual contact and having the hidden words showing i was hidden.

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It's annoying that the constant sound is back. For the last several months my level 33 Dark Armor using brute's shields would go silent after a few seconds. i loved it and it was the only thing that enabled me to level him past 14. Back before issue 5 i had a Dark Armor scrapper that i deleted because the sounds were unbearable once i started to need more than one shield active at a time. (The fact that the end costs of Dark Armor at the time made it almost impossible to use attacks and defenses at the same time didn't help either, but it was the physical pain the sounds caused that induced me to delete the scrapper rather than wait for the implied end cost fixes.)

Please Devs, make the Dark Armor sounds go away after a few seconds of unpleasantness. Everyone will thank you, even the DA user's teammates.

if i recall, Dweller gives Immobilization resistance, which means that if you do get Immobilized it wears off faster. Obsidian shield gives protection, which mean it takes a higher magnitude to Immobilize you in the first place. Even if they give both, it just means that the protections would stack and the status effect would require a higher magnitude to affect you and that the effect would end sooner than if you just use one or the other.

For status effects there are generally two sorts of mitigation that are available: Protection and Resistance.
Protection: The magnitude of the status effect has to exceed the the magnitude of your protection to affect you.
Resistance: The duration of the status effect is reduced by your resistance.

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brutes dont get dark armor...

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Well, that will certainly affect my assessment of the veracity of your posts in the future. (Speaking as someone with a level 33 Dark Melee/Dark Armor brute.)