Siolfir

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i am so impressed with the friendly responses.
what happened to the flames and the name calling?

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Go read the thread Synapse started in the Badges and Gladiators section.

It's not quite as long as the "rawr, I am Posi hear me roar" thread about MA farming/PLing, but it's going after a new group (badgers) instead of the usual suspects (PvP, farming, PLing) and was put in a section that most people miss - I only caught it by looking through the dev digest.

I read the first few pages, then skipped to the last two after a couple of hours actually playing.

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If someone asks a question about something, does it really hurt to answer it no matter what level they are?

If you'd answer a level 2 with 0 badges, then there's no excuse to not answer a level 50 other than you simply wanting to be a jerk. If they don't want to listen to your answer that's another issue, but complaining about new players with level 50s having questions just shows that you're a hypocrite that can't be bothered to be helpful out of some silly sense of vengeance.

Maybe they liked how fast they were levelling in the AE after just starting, and wanted to learn to play after they got to 50. Does it really matter?

I personally haven't noticed an increase in idiocy on teams - there are just as many "experienced" players with high level characters who don't have a friggin' clue as new players - likely far more.

Blaming it on the AE is just trying to find an excuse to not help new players with questions, and is an extremely poor showing of the community. And to respond to the "Well, they won't hang around anyway!" crowd, damn right they won't if every time they ask a question they get mocked and belittled instead of answered.

How many of the same people posting about "stupid level 50s" refused to go into PvP zones because of the exact sort of behavior you're exhibiting?

The way you describe it working is correct; it won't stack but will reset the duration if a subsequent attack lands and the proc triggers.

With my Rad/Kin Corruptor I put one in every attack - it allows me to keep the -res up almost constantly and often on multiple mobs. If you prefer just going with one, there are also plenty of damage procs that go in defense debuff powers that require a to-hit check that may help your damage more overall. Since the Corruptor has Fulcrum Shift I just removed a couple of damage enhancements for those procs, so there wasn't really a tradeoff.

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EA has two advantages over SR, and is worse in every other way.

It's not as tight a build, which can matter to some people - I planned out a DM/SR and was looking at how long I'd have to go before I'd have everything covered, then scrapped the idea and made a DM/EA instead.

The other advantage is Energy Drain - for DM it matters less because of Dark Consumption and Siphon Life, but being able to top off your endurance as needed is a huge benefit to a Brute.

As for SR? Higher defense, for the most part no defensive holes (there are two powersets that have nonpositional attacks, but there's no such thing as toxic defense and the psi defense is low), over the course of your hp bar (100%-0% health) SR has higher average resistance due to the scaling resistances (which also affect all damage), capped defense debuff resistance means that you only really worry about to-hit buffs on mobs, and a +recharge passive with slow resistance, and it even has a taunt radius in Evasion added for Brutes to keep things on you so that you're not having to chase mobs to keep your Fury up.

Does this mean that with the right power choices/IOs that EA is horrible? No - just that SR is better. My level 38 DM/EA is soft-capped to S/L/E, at 41% F/C defense, 38% N, and is waiting for slots to continue adding IOs for set bonuses to end up with all of those softcapped; she does rather well against most everything (even Carnies - most of their debuffs are typed N) but absolutely hates DE (quartz emanators) and CoT Earth Casters (stacking autohit defense debuffs ftl).

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2. Shocking Thoughts, level 15+ corr (@Siolfir)

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So I should recreate my Dummynator, then?

Like it says in the patch notes (linked above), only you see the rating you give to a specific player. It doesn't affect what anyone else sees; they either get nothing or their own rating (if they have one).

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You've concluded what I've already stated multiple times, good work.

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That your expectations are delusional?

I don't seem to recall you saying that, but okay...

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Why do you have to sort to personal attacks?

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Because none of the armor sets meet your expectations (a judgment of the sets). Thus the word, "delusional". Note also that it refers to those expectations.

If nothing meets your criteria - and by your stated criteria nothing does - your expectations are too high. To believe otherwise is delusional. Thus a disagreement with the word "poor" in relating to the second-highest resistance available, with a significant margin above the next set(s).

From Merriam Webster:

Main Entry: de·lude
Pronunciation: \di-ˈlüd, dē-\
Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): de·lud·ed; de·lud·ing
Etymology: Middle English, from Latin deludere, from de- + ludere to play — more at ludicrous
Date: 15th century
1: to mislead the mind [u]or judgment of[u] : deceive, trick
2obsolete a: frustrate, disappoint b: evade, elude
synonyms see deceive


Main Entry: de·lu·sion
Pronunciation: \di-ˈlü-zhən, dē-\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Late Latin delusion-, delusio, from deludere
Date: 15th century
1: the act of deluding : the state of being deluded
2 a: something that is falsely or delusively believed or propagated b: a persistent false psychotic belief regarding the self or persons or objects outside the self that is maintained despite indisputable evidence to the contrary ; also : the abnormal state marked by such beliefs



I won't argue that Electric Armor has relatively low mitigation. I will continue to state that it's not due to "poor resistance" - by the standards set (the other armor sets) the resistance is just fine. It needs something else to layer it with (a heal or +regen would be excellent given its performance with Aid Self), not simply "moar resist plz kthxbai".

It's not a personal attack if it's pointing out something that is by definition true; it's simply explaining to everyone else reading the thread that your judgment is impaired in this matter and can be discounted as irrelevant.

On-topic, ElA does very well against Rikti, and ElA with a heal (such as in the DM primary, which has been recommended several times) will do as well as anything else you're going to build.

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If you want tank damage to be higher so that they kill faster, fine, let's do it. But you have to give up an equal amount of mitigation to get it.

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Wait for Going Rogue and just make a Brute (or Corruptor), play it heroside. All issues resolved.

Or if you somehow still have issues with that, then you should campaign for benefits to those ATs.

/thread

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You've concluded what I've already stated multiple times, good work.

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That your expectations are delusional?

I don't seem to recall you saying that, but okay...

To reiterate: Okay. If you're not including Tough, then [u]none of the armor sets can reach that value[u].

I really don't care what you think about Electric Armor's mitigation, but you're simply deluded in your expectations because every armor set is "poor" for S/L outside of tier 9s by your criteria.

It has (relatively) good resistance values, it just has nothing to layer them with.

55-60% is acceptable, ergo Electric Armor (60% with Tough) is acceptable. Okay. If you're not including Tough, then none of the armor sets can reach that value.

Stop using words you don't mean, then.

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The lesson here is that communication is key for running a team effectively.

I've had experiences like that in CoH, actually. It's never fun, but often I've found I can wrest control of the team away from the leader just simply by continually asking, over and over what the plan is. Eventually they either kick me (which is fine with me, if they'd rather kick me than talk to me then that's totally fine, I'll go do something else), or they answer me. Once they actually start talking it's pretty easy to stick a paddle in the water and help direct a little.

Something I've found over the years and years I've played the game is that very often the people who complain about the players on their team are actually crappy players themselves who don't know how to lead effectively. With the right guidance and motivation anyone can become a decent player on a team and a standard that I try very hard to always apply to myself is the idea that if my team sucks, then I'm not doing my job.

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I approve of this message.

To the incidental conversation about whether or not the game is easy, I'll list a couple of reasons why I find it so:<ul type="square">[*]Getting to 50 is a matter of patience, not skill. You never lose experience. To quote an administrator on a MUD I used to play (where you actually lost experience for dying instead of merely slowing down the gain) "getting [to max level] is worth a bucket of warm [urination]." Quite simply, you don't need to ever learn any skill to level - whether or not you do learn it is a matter of personal preference.[*]While the intricacies of each powerset combination will take a little time to utilize to best advantage, the overall basics, team roles, and power abilities/statistics are similar enough that an experienced player should be able to pick up any AT or powerset combination and have a good idea how to complete a mission without being a detriment to a team with minimal exposure.[/list]
As for helping people out... if you notice someone doing something that's annoying or detrimental, ask them to stop and explain why. Then, if they're still not causing problems, kick them or whatever. If they're not doing things that would help (a /Cold that has but never uses the shields, for example) then point out that they could help more by doing whatever. And try not to alienate people by telling them how their build sucks; building a character may involve wasted power picks (sometimes for IO set bonuses) and generally I don't care how you build as long as you can play it well, but I will make recommendations if asked or if I notice issues (like a level 33 Fire/Dark Corruptor that skipped Fearsome Stare and kept dying during the Rain of Fire animation immediately after dropping Tar Patch).

So what's the cutoff on "poor", then? 50%? 60%? 90%? You can believe that 90% is poor resistance, but that doesn't make it accurate.

Given that there's no other measure beyond the other Brute armor sets, and it's almost as far ahead of the next-best sets as it is behind the only set ahead of it, I'd say that "poor" means that you simply think each and every Brute armor set is horrible crap and so you'd never play a Brute because they all have "poor resistance".

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To be slightly less polite about it than others have been - stop ignoring facts to try to pretend there's a problem that doesn't exist.

Closing your eyes, handwaving any facts that disagree (ie, not all ATs have to maintain the exact same DPS to defeat a specific encounter, merely enough to exceed a mob's regeneration) in order to deludedly pursue a totally invalid point (that somehow if you get low on endurance during a fight you can't possibly slow down ) shows that you don't have a clue and should just sit down, shut up, and go back to playing the game, or else prove why everything you're just handwaving off is irrelevant.

I haven't seen anything more convincing than "I want more damage for my endurance without having to slot for it". Guess what? I want purple IOs to rain down on my character's heads. They're both about as likely to happen.

Obvious blind stupidity doesn't prove a point, it shows that you simply don't have one.

I'm curious... how are you determining that Scourge is stopping in the middle of a DoT?

I've never seen that behavior.

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My vote is for DM/SR. Even with ELA's resis to energy, being hit by a Rikti's sword is going to put a hurtin on ELA with their poor S/L resis outside Power Surge.

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nitpick: Electric Armor's "poor" S/L resistance is behind only Invulnerability (where it's a specialty) and Granite Armor (where it's a tier 9 - just a permanent one).

If you want to complain about it's S/L mitigation, sure - that's because the set offers no layering and is all resistance. But it's not the "poor resistance" that's the issue.

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Resistance sets, especially ELA...., really need some sort of a "boost" in pvp, cause right now they're pretty much junk.

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Quintuple the PvP value of Power Sink (base drain of 10) and triple the %chance of -recovery (currently 30%) to player targets.

Problem solved; they can't kill you if they never have endurance.

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That problem pre-dates AE teams.

Not sure why everyone is suddenly under the impression that farming is new and only existed since the implementation of player mission. Get real, guys/gals.

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It's a question, I think, less of it having existed rather the fact that the sheer numbers of instances of this problem have in fact skyrocketed since the MA. It's the population explosion of clueless unskilled high level players that people are discussing now. No one is claiming they never existed prior. They just weren't epidemic before.

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*cough*

Uh... okay.

Can't say that I've noticed it much more than normal. Idiots will be idiots...

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That problem pre-dates AE teams.

Not sure why everyone is suddenly under the impression that farming is new and only existed since the implementation of player mission. Get real, guys/gals.

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It's really a matter of PLing instead of farming; the first may be part of the second but not necessarily.

Note that I'm not against PLing in general, but you should at least make the effort to figure things out if you're going to do it.

If you're used to having everything hotkeyed, I suggest looking at the guide to binds (a bind is a hotkey).

The format is: /bind &lt;key&gt; &lt;command&gt;
or /bind &lt;key&gt; "&lt;command with spaces&gt;$$&lt;another command&gt;$$&lt;and so on&gt;"

They're limited to a 255 character limit iirc, and they parse left to right, which means that the way the game works (since it does the whole bind at once) the last power listed in a bind is most likely going to be the only one to go off (there are a couple of tricks to get around this).

I tend to just use the standard 1-0, alt1-alt0, ctrl1-ctrl0 for power activations and bind anything that needs a mouse click to target to shift+lbutton, alt+lbutton, or ctrl+lbutton (so all I need to do is hold the appropriate key and click where I want to target), but I have a few characters that have other binds for powers.

Not everything you can do with keymapping is listed in the options menu.

Edit: link to the basic guide for binds.

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I have an AR corruptor and this is not the case with Ignite. I think it's because Ignite is considered a summon and each tick has it's own check?

Considering that I'm not sure about my other DoTs but I think have seen scourges on ticks if the first one did not scourge. Then again I could just be saying that because I HAVE seen Ignite do that.

I'll have to keep an eye out.

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Ignite works similarly to the rain powers; I simply forgot about it (as I do most of AR) when lumping things as "rain powers".

Since it makes a new tohit check 5 times a second, you'll see Scourges on the way down. It's still reliant on the health at the time it makes the check, it just checks to see if it hits for each tick of damage instead of once for the whole power.

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Just had a PVP match against a friend of mine. He has a Stone Melee/SR Brute while I have a Stone Melee/Elec Armor brute. Both level 50s. Even with my Tier 9, I just couldn't take him down.

There you go. That's about as straight forward as you can get. Defense wins.

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Assuming you turned off diminishing returns in the arena (which I'm still not sure if it works, I've heard mixed stories), it's not an even comparison. Even with DR it's not valid, it's just closer to "even".

Were you at 90% smashing resistance the entire fight (assuming the /SR was softcapped)? Or, if you were at the 41% that /Elec hits with SOs, did the /SR never go above 20% defense?

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You should be able to change all keybinds and where the power buttons are in game, and set up macros. The buttons are click-and-drag, there's a section on macros in user guides, and keybinds are under user options. If you're talking about outside software or mods, those aren't allowed in this game.

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Expanding on this a bit - outside mods that tweak the code aren't allowed, but there are map overlays and other programs (like HeroStats) that are.

The developers have tried to make the UI fairly customizable already, though; you may find most of what you want to do already available in the game.

If you're tired of Willpower and want a no-frills secondary, Electric Armor will work. Fault will provide more mitigation than most of your secondary, and you shouldn't need to bother with Tough since you can just knock everybody down and then pop Aid Self while they're getting up stunned. So why not Fire? Because of the endurance drain resistance, psi resistance, and faster recharge on the endurance refill.

It's not the minmax way to go and Electric Armor isn't all that great on endurance until you hit level 36, but it doesn't require a lot of IOs to perform well. Just make sure to slot at least one endurance reduction into the Stone Melee powers until you get Power Sink slotted, after that you can replace them with recharge reductions instead and still get away with it.

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Wouldn't Rad/Sonic defender be on the upper end of the list?

MMs are contenders, if memory serves. Blasters, Controllers, MMs, and Defenders are the ATs I hear about doing it most.

Basically, the ATs with -regen abilities. You can slot IOs for defense and resistance bonuses, but there's no easy way to get similar levels of debuff potential onto a scrapper.

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So, only /MM Blasters? What about Dominators who also get Drain Psyche? And no Corruptors?

Any AT can do it, really. You simply need to be able to solo the AV(s) in the TF - the rest of it is simply running missions spawned for 2 (assuming you /kick everyone but one person off the team after you start it; you can also go with spawns based on team size if you want more of a challenge). Whether that comes from high damage output to overcome the regen (this includes resistance debuffs), or regen debuffs so that a lower damage output is needed (preferably both), all you need is a build capable of surviving the aggro (first) and dishing out enough damage (second).