Sentry4

I'm not in 'ideal' forum posting circumstances right now, so I apologize in advance for not explaining everything as well as usual (and typos).

I'm going to assume you've got a working excel program or can use the one google has or something. If you want to find out how much recharge you have after dimishing returns, you need to calculate it for each power. Take the amount of recharge in the power (say 100% in phantom army), and add it with your global recharge (200% global recharge) to get a new number (300% in this example).

Now turn it into a decimal instead of a percentage, by dividing it by 100 or basically moving the decimal point to the left 2 decimal places. 300% recharge becomes 3.0 recharge.

Then we use excel to plug it into the DR equation using the recharge DR parameters. For recharge, the equation is

=X*(1-ATAN(X*0.33)*2/PI()*0.8)

In this case you could even copy and paste this into excel...
=3*(1-ATAN(3*0.33)*2/PI()*0.8)

I don't have excel with me, and don't want to have to manually do it with an ArcTan calculator, but that's the formula to find out the recharge of each individual power after DR.

To find out how much time it recharges in, simply do BaseRech/(1+rech).

With phantom army, you'd have 240/(1+3)=60 seconds, although that doesn't factor the dimished amount amount of recharge.

There's also Arcanaville's guide to dimishing returns, although again, I can't link you to it from here.

SR is really dependent on it's t9 (Elude) to stay alive. Outside of it, you'll find people having a 70+ chance to hit you. If you wanted to play a t9 character, Energy Aura is much better, hitting HP cap/getting more elusivity/getting a heal.

Martial arts by itself isn't bad, since Eagles Claw can hit really hard. I don't see SR having any advantage over Energy Aura sadly.

Broadsword is alright as well, with a big t9 that has more range and can hold a chance for -res proc. Regen is alright for survivability, alternating between Moment of Glory, Barrier and phase.



That all being said, I'll third what MrLiberty said. It won't be anything special. Melee characters are mostly for solo players, and if you're in a team setting, it's always better to grab a ranged or stalker.

That's mostly the reason a melee duo will never work out that well. 1 melee may be strong, but once it's anything more than that (2+ people), ranged will always outdue them combo wise.

Even 1 ranged with 1 melee wouldn't do as well as 2 ranged, unless that melee was a stalker.

I'd suggest a Dom/Stalker combo for you guys, so that you get a bit of melee in there while still being effective. Mind doms get telekinesis (Autohit AoE hold toggle) that lasts until the enemy is damaged, giving stalkers plenty of time to use Assassin's Strike. Martial arts on stalkers (or broadsword) isn't bad either.

The zone event went very well with many PvP Redux members showing up to contribute to either side. Thanks for everyone who got to show up.



To those who are interested in joining or speaking with our leaders, from now until June 23rd, I will not be avaliable. @Hot Secs will be covering for me and all questions or concerns can be PMed to him.

I will still check PMs on the forums when possible and try to respond quickly.

The real problem with electric is that Short Circuit is a PBAoE. If it were a 80 ft ranged attack, you can bet we would see a lot more ele/therms.

From experience playing an ele/therm cor and an ele/mm blaster, I can tell you electric's damage is sub-par and that the only power worth taking the set for (Short Circuit for drain) requires you to be in melee range. People realize this and will just kite around shooting you so that you can't drain their end.

As others have said, another primary may be better.




On a side note, has anyone run the numbers for Preemptive interface? In my testing it was worthless, but that was back when I was trying to drain regens only using Preemptive + Energy Drain on my SS/EA.

That was the 25% chance for end drain I tested it with, perhaps everyone sees it's use in the 75% chance instead.

-5% recovery is nothing, even when stacked up 4 times.

The -end is 4 ticks (on average) of -0.5 endurance. Which means every attack takes -2 endurance with 75% and -0.5 endurance with 25%.

Stacks up to 4 times, lasts 4.3 seconds.

Meaning, if we assume you attack once every second, you'll get -2 endurance every second (Max you could drain because of the stacking limit), and you'll get -0.5 end every second (with 25%).

Well then, there it is. If you want to get preemptive, 75% is far superior (and helpful).

I may run a Fire/Therm with preemeptive now. Fire/MM with preemptive would be fun to see too. Ice blast would actually be slightly faster at stacking the -end, while sacraficing some damage.

To reiterate, as the others have said, draining is somewhat of a secondary and shouldn't be your main focus. Heat exhaust forces people to use ageless, which lowers their overall survivability. Use end drain to enhance your damage instead of just trying to drain people's end.

I've found it's always best to have a big heal incase your HP goes from top to bottom. An Incan'd Life drain won't save you there, even with power boost. It also has a chance to miss. When it does, you'll probably die without a backup heal.

I would take incandescence if you were going to get Hoarfrost, as that could be your emergency heal.

I would take rebirth if you were going to get soulstorm (or any other epic without Hoarfrost), as you need an emergency heal.

Some things worth noting...

In Black Assassin's build, Life Drain isn't slotted for any heal, so Incan wouldn't be that useful with it (and it needs rebirth).

On your build, you didn't have much damage percentage in Life Drain, which means if you keep using it to survive, you're only stalling the inevitable, since you aren't killing your opponent.

Last I checked, the chance for +tohit proc was giving your enemy the +tohit instead of you. I haven't heard of any confirmation that it's been fixed, so I try to stay away from that proc.



Important note. 20% chance for 71.75 damage is only 14.35 damage on average. It's always best to get damage -enhancement- in the power and -then- add procs. Black Assassin picked Intutition +dmg, which is why he was able to proc out his attacks a bit more.

Your Abyssal Gaze for example, would do a lot more damage even if you replaced the Ghost Widow proc for a simple damage IO.

As a rule of thumb, I try to get 80% or higher on bigger attacks as a minimum, and 70% or higher on the smaller, quicker attacks.

In fact, allow me to do the math.

Abyssal Gaze does 3 ticks of 60.74 NE damage. That's 182.22 damage.

Your slotting....

45.05% dmg + 10% global bonus dmg +5% dmg enhance from PvP= 60.05% dmg slotting = DRed to 54.01% (Rounding to 54%)

182.22 Dmg * (1+0.54) = 280.61 Dmg

Squishy resistance is typically around 35-38, so we'll assume they have a lot of resistance (38)

280.61*(1-0.38) = 173.97 Dmg
Procs
Unbreak = 107.1*0.33 = 35.34 Dmg
Glad Net = 71.75*0.33 = 23.67 Dmg
Glad Jav = 71.75*0.33 = 23.67 Dmg
Ghost Widow = 71.75*0.2 = 14.35 Dmg

Your Total = 271 damage (Actual amount Abyssal Gaze would do on average in PvP with those stats)

Now, with the ghost widow proc replaced with a simple damage IO.

85.71% Dmg + 10% Dmg = 95.71% Dmg slotting = DRed to 80.8%

182.22 * (1+0.808) = 329.45 Dmg

Assuming 38% resistance on the enemy

329.45*(1-0.38) = 204.26 Dmg
Procs
Unbreak = 107.1*0.33 = 35.34 Dmg
Glad Net = 71.75*0.33 = 23.67 Dmg
Glad Jav = 71.75*0.33 = 23.67 Dmg

Other Total = 286.94 Dmg (Opposed to 271 Dmg above)

It may not look like a big change, but using it over and over it can make the difference. Sometimes fights are cut really close, -and- the slotting with the Dmg IO instead of the proc would be doing 21 more damage 80% of the time (Better than +50 dmg 20% of the time like the proc).




Note: I'm going to get asked what "5% dmg enhance from PvP" is, so to let everyone know, if you have 0% enhancement in a power, PvP gives you 16.2% in that enhancement, and this scales down the higher you go. Once you get 45% on the dot, it's giving you exactly 5% (to reach 50%). If you have any alpha with +45% enhancement, you'll notice things not slotted for it give 50% instead. The 85.71% dmg from my slotting was too high to get a bonus.


Last bit of advice,

Aim/Build up/Abyssal Gaze/Dark Blast/Life drain hits all at once for a mini-spike

If you've got some good range and you're far away from your enemy, you can fit in Pyronic for

Aim/Build up/Abyssal Gaze/Dark Blast/Pyronic/Life Drain which hits like a truck. On my Dark/EM, that single chain hits all at once and does around 1500 damage. Killing off squishies with not enough HP in a second.



Hope this helps and Good Luck

I think it would be better to compare Absorb to Resistance at this stage.

The problem with healing is that it's completely ineffective if you're at full HP, and it doesn't help with an alpha strike.

Resistance and Absorb are effective at full HP and help against alpha strikes.

If a tanker is at 2000 HP and 65% resistance, adding on 1000 "absorb" would be the same as raising it to around 70.2% resistance. Nothing to major.

Take a tanker that's at 3500 HP and 90% resistance, adding 1000 "absorb" would be the same as raising it to around 90.2% resistance. I don't know why I was expecting more.

Add 10,000 absorb and you get 92.2% resistance. That's a bit better, since it's 32% damage off. I doubt they're giving away 10,000 absorb buffs though.

Maybe if the amount of absorb scaled with the players resistance...but it's too complicated and unnecessary to implement. There's also no way they're scaling a buff from one player to work differently on each player either, I wouldn't want to even try and code that.

Absorb could also be compared to +HP, with (Absorb*(1-Res)) being the +HP added, but even then you get small amounts. The first tanker with 2000 HP would have it's HP raised to 2350 HP. The 2nd Tanker with 3500 HP would only get 3600 HP. The 3rd tanker would go from 3500 HP to 4500 HP, which is actually useful, but again, it takes +10,000 absorb to get that.

Aside from all that, I agree with Plasma that it's not balanced for resistance and defense.

Here's hoping absorb was well thought out and includes resistance, unless they do something silly like drop your defense to the negatives for the amount of time absorb survives. As in, absorb doesn't factor resistance, and everyone has a 95% chance to hit you while you're in it. If that's the case, they better make the absorb values extremely high.

Unless resistance is factored, I don't see myself enjoying this mechanic.

Oh hey Titan man! I haven't been called that name in years. I didn't realize it was you.

If you've got an questions coming back, make sure to send me a tell at @AbsolutePerfection and I'll get back to you.

Well the problem with sonic shields is that +res shields won't actually give anyone much +res because of DR curves in PvP. It's complicated math, but basically the survivability of everyone won't budge.

Energy blast doesn't have great burst and it's DPS is pretty low as well. The advantage of knockback won't affect anyone because everyone has knockback protection higher than you can slot it for.

If you were interested in PvP, you could definitely start learning on a sonic/energy. The basics can be done on any ranged character, but after that it would be strongly recommended you make another kind of character specific to PvP (Rad/Psi defender for example).

If you are interested in PvP, I'd point you to this thread.
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=290219

If you're completely sure you won't budge from your Sonic/Energy, and you're less interested in PvP but moreso in PvPing -with- your sonic/energy character, than I'm afraid it won't work out very well.

That being said, it's also recommended players make PvP specific toons for PvP, not just for effectiveness, but so people don't mind dying on toons they have no attachment with.

Hope this helps.

I would not mind switching my SS/EA brute over for some melee matches if there were enough there to fight.

If I did, I'd like to try that Claw/regen in a match too.

Last event had several 8v8 and 6v6 matches.

These matches were primarily to see the skill levels of everyone so that in the future there could be more balance. From now on, certain leaders will not be on the same team.

The winning team in every case was using some voice communication, which hopefully outlined the importance of it in any team. The difference between calling a target voice and waiting for the leader to physically lock before being able to call can be substantial.

In our next events, if the amount of people are above 16 (2 teams maximum), we will split into smaller teams and have separate events (4v4 and 5v5 for example). This way, everyone will be included.

Teams will also no longer be chosen one by one like a traditional kickball, but rather balanced and preset by our leaders.


The 8v8 match was somewhat too much too fast, and although we'll soon have enough people comfortable with it, we'll start off more slowly and work our way up.

2 level 53 Acc/Dmg HOs
Heca proc/Glad Strike Proc/Mako proc/ATO proc
With the Musc +45% dmg Alpha.

This gets the +dmg to 119.11% and the ACC to 75.93%. It has 3 damage procs and allows for a 100% followup crit (Shark or t9 big hitter).

Expensive, specific, and what I've found to be the most effective.

http://tomax.cohtitan.com/data/power...ocuous_Strikes

5 * 70.72 Smashing damage every 0.4s over 1.7s

That's 353 base damage in less animation time than the old concentrated strike or KoB.

It's somewhat like the new CS that was taken away from KM.

That's brute staff btw. Try it out.

EDIT: Scrappers in Overload will hit their HP cap of 2409, while brutes will hit their cap of 3212. There's a very big difference there.

Went through the same event as the first event, we had a little over 10 people. More actual practice this time and a little bit of a FFA event after with everyone.

Some issues with DCing at the beginning, but overall it went well.

Tomorrow we're going to talk about different roles: Damage/Support/Debuff/Disruption, more indepth mechanics, tactics, evading paths, timing holds/confuse etc.

Special thanks to Neuronia for helping. Especially for evading -everyone- in that arena event for a good amount of time, to teach people how to chase and others how they should evade.

This looks like a great issue guys.

Also, I just checked, Hybrid Control doesn't have any mez timer tags, allowing perma holds/stuns etc in PvP.

I suspected this, but with Hybrid being locked behind the new incarnate trial, my lack of time and not being anywhere on the live servers (For RedTomax), I couldn't alert you sooner.

Even if the core tree only adds magnitude onto the current mez which -is- affected by a mez timer, the radial branch does not have a timer either.

Not to mention those powers without mez timers already will get enough magnitude to perma hold.

Mind dominators with TK will love this bug.

Hopefully you can adjust some of the new powers for PvP scales (Dark Grasp Hold, Hybrid, Domination etc), like it was done for /Time (+Regen instead of heals affected by heal decay).

Thanks guys

Don't forget [Increase Density] from Kins. Wish kins were still used.

I can't exactly say I disagree with this thread. I'll link to it when people are complaining about droning.

Thanks

Hey guys, I'd like to point everyone's attention to the events coming up at PvP Redux on Virtue.

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...60#post4249860

At the top of the linked thread, the events are described and the times of each are given. The third event is a kickball event.
It's mostly for beginner players, and any veteran or experienced PvPers will most likely be leaders who will pick people who have recently joined PvP or PvP Redux.

Toons should have more than basic SOs, but are not required to have incarnate or unlimited budget builds.

Any players from freedom or any other server wanting to join or help out may do so. We'll make teams on the spot and we're hoping this can be a regular weekly event. There will be no prizes as it is more practice than competitive.

Let's show some new PvPers how fun these events can be.

Thanks

If you don't have a widow or soldier yet, I would definitely suggest one of those two.

Grab tactics from your secondaries and tactics from leadership, then add in a precep IO. You'll have 1260.6 preception (capped), where as stalkers will only have 1143 stealth. This means you can see stalkers 117.6ft away. Remember that most ranged attacks have 80ft and this means you'll see stalkers plenty far away.

If you don't have a toon to see stalkers, I'd recommend making one specifically for that. It's nice to have when necessary.

GL with it