Starsman

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Note: im not saying im against all melee types getting all melee sets (altough it may take a lot of tweakage for stalkers to get most sets fit on their modus operandis) im jsut saying i sort of see the reason behind the selection, its not really random at all.

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Why did I read your first post and come away with "Please give tankers new sets, but don't hand anything over to those scrappers - they don't need anything." ?

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No clue, because i been saying they should be geting Ninjitsu.

You dont think i'd roll a Super Strenght or Fire Melee scrapper if i had the chance? I'd delete my tankers and do it tomorow if they did so.

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The point is, scrappers are overal a more physical experience than an elemental one.

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That's only because of the random division of powersets. And for the fact of the matter, scrappers do have Dark Melee/Armor which everyone seems to forget.


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I dont think its random at all. And also, i do note Dark melee every time i note this, reason is, almost all ATs have at least one exception to the rule, but not many. An example can also be found on corruptors, they are meant to be mainly elemental forces, but there is AR that defintively does nto fit that mold.

Note how States also has noted Shield Melee (or however they name it) does will be available for scrappers, it does fit the current theme of the AT.

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The only reason the devs have ever given is because of "Flavor". Well, how can Dark Melee, a scrapper set, but the right "flavor" for a Brute yet Energy melee isn't Scrapper "flavor". For a long time they said Super Strength would never be a scrapper set because of AT "flavor", yet Brutes, an AT which apparently shares some Scrapper "flavor", is okay with Super Strength too.

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Brutes are mainly elemental forces too. Dark Melee fits there. And their exception is Super Strenght.

Even so, i do agree i see little reason for Scrappers not getting Super Strenght, after all, it actually does fit inside of the Scrapper "physical" flavor. Might be the same logic behind not giving Tankers Dark Melee though. An exception.

As for the Tanker "flavor"? Its big bang. Exception to the rule? Ironicaly, fire melee.

Note: im not saying im against all melee types getting all melee sets (altough it may take a lot of tweakage for stalkers to get most sets fit on their modus operandis) im jsut saying i sort of see the reason behind the selection, its not really random at all.

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As for why not energy? Simply because there is no energy melee in the scrapper sets.


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So? Is that the best you can do? Try again.. bub. That is the lamest reason I have heard for not giving scrappers fun stuff yet.

If you were a dev explaining why we couldn't have cool new defense sets beyond.. THE ONLY FOUR WE HAVE HAD SINCE RELEASE... you would get your [censored] torn off by the community for such a lame explanation.


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I didnt say "NO DONT GIVE ANY ARMORS TO SCRAPPERS THEY THE SUXXXOOR"

In my full post i noted how they should be getting Ninjitsu. The point is, scrappers are overal a more physical experience than an elemental one. Just as corruptors other than AR are mainly meant to be elemental too.

Its basicaly the same idea why i would never see a tanker or a brute with a katana.

Now take those claws off my neck since i am not saying scrappers shouldnot get more armors, im just saying i doubt highly the devs will ever give them energy.

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Tankers don't have energy arua.. but they have energy melee.

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And thats wrong, they NEED the aura precicely because of this. Back in the day where there was no energy aura even concidered you would be able to argue it fit allright with invuln, but i never bought that myself. Now there actually exists an energy aura and tankers dont have it!

Off course, energy aura needs some reworking. I was number crunching a bit yesternight and if they just buffed it with the standard tanker 100%/scrapper 75% ideal, energy would be just as bad as Fire Armor.

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I don't see regen melee ANYWHERE in the game. Better remove regen because there is nothing that matches.


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BUT regen is a physical thing, its basicaly your body healing up, its all phisical, no elemental stuff involved there.

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Super strength is often equated with invunerability.

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Yes it fits, it also fits perfectly with Warmace and Axe


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I suppose Inv should be removed from scrappers and leave us with THREE defense sets.

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Invuln goes in hand with any weapon as it also simulates having up plate armor or body armor or so on.

Something does not has to be exactly CALLED the same to fit with a primary it just should have a synergy with something else in the set.

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Energy Aura at the LEAST. Eletric Armor would be nice too, and giving tanks broadsword in trade for.. oh.. SS or energy melee would be great too.

Please...?



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Well I have to say I cant visualize Energy as a scrapper set. Ninjitsu on the other hand...

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Why wouldn't Energy make a good scrapper set?

And no.. Ninjitsu would not be a scrapper set. Ninjitsu trades in defense for stalker specific tools. Not for scrapper use.

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Besides hide, Ninjitsu can make a great scrapper sest. Only pure "stalker" tool is it's aoe placate, and it may actually proove an interesting tool in the hands of a scrapper (note it does not hides it just placates for a short time a few enemmies).

As for why not energy? Simply because there is no energy melee in the scrapper sets. And other than Dark Melee all scrappers are very physical, im not sure if the devs will give the at more non-physical sets.

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Energy Aura at the LEAST. Eletric Armor would be nice too, and giving tanks broadsword in trade for.. oh.. SS or energy melee would be great too.

Please...?



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Well I have to say I cant visualize Energy as a scrapper set. Ninjitsu on the other hand...

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<.< you can let a kitty dream that the devs are listening can't you? it's not like we haven't posted about water/ponds/fishtanks/etc for bases since they where added to beta...

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What is better that they are listening? Or that they sometimes do seem to be able to read your mind and please you?

Now i do think they saw something very nasty on my mind and decided to neglect on purpose my favorite AT...

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A more boring and far more likely guess would be an enhancement store. If I'm wrong, I'll be happily surprised.

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Nope. Temp powers/buffs.

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O_O don't suppose the idea for this came from ppls posts in This thread! did they o.o

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I dare bet Empowering Stations have been worked on for a very long time, and most likely on the drawing boards since before CoV even went beta.

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A more boring and far more likely guess would be an enhancement store. If I'm wrong, I'll be happily surprised.

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Nope. Temp powers/buffs.

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Yaaaay!

Now if only SG bases weren't so horribly expensive!

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And didn't require CoV

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Oh yea, you do can scratch that from the pure CoH list of features for I7, i totaly forgot about that bit.

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Nope. Temp powers/buffs.

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ooh - are these Empowerment Stations some of the affordable items for smaller SGs that you've mentioned in the past?

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Doubtful

You MAY be able to use see them once if you get into the largest SG in your server, you know, the one that is forced to have a 48 hour log in rule or you get kicked because they have so much activity.

I fixed my typo before you noted it :P

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Scappers need some help there too. Only 4 secondaries to choose from.

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Agree, but the issue is bigger if you are talking about your primary. Heck even masterminds are getting a thug set to bump up their set count. Even so i do think scrappers should at least get a variant of Ninjitsu

States, i know CoV needs content to fill in the end game now. I accept that.

I have no issue with MOST of the content being CoV only.

I do however not see a reason to give Brutes yet another armor set, for a total of six, while the tankers have been complaining of their primary just having 4 options since release.

Energy aura should be given to tankers simply because we already have energy melee.

And electric armor should also be there, it fits perfectly with the elemental nature of all tankers (other than invuln).

I also know that brutes do need more offensive sets since they have less than tankers, so i do realize them, but also think warmace, axe and broadsword should be available to them, maybe with a bit diferent art.

PLEASE dont ignore the tanker's lack of armor sets any longer! I know shields are comming but that is
A) far away
B) still short of what brutes have
C) still no synergy set for Energy Melee despite it already existing.

Just giving tankers energy aura and maybe hopefuly electric/electric would alone make many think this ACTUALLY has CoH content AND at the same time will fill one of the long time tanker issues.

If the sets exits i see no reason why they cant fit a tanker with just a bit of training room testing.

You could at least give tankers energy aura to finaly have some /energy melee counterpart.

As for the news paper, please please please please please please: make it a police radio scanner!

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Hover: We might buff it some, at some point. However, it should never be an effective travel power.

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I think a lot of people would like it if it were faster than unslotted sprint with three flight speed SOs.

As for effective at travel, Combat Jumping + Hurdle can already do this to a point. Getting Hover to where it can work about as well shouldn't break anything. Not saying as fast, but it really should be better than sprint, especially with slots invested.

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It should be as fast as spritn + swift tops, IMHO. Dont know how fast that is though, but it shoud also be at least as fast unsloted as just walking, maybe just a bit slower.

Opinions aside, Positron once told me on a PM that Hover reaching Flight speed once six sloted WAS by design, not by coincidence.

ED broke that design.

How about making it the same with 3 slots, or heck, make it so that 6 slots under ED will yield unsloted flight, as was the original design intention.

Between You and Death: A Guide to Survivability

Disclaimer:

This is not an in dept guide to an specific protection, instead its meant to generaly explain how everything comes together to keep you alive. Also this guide has no math in it, if you want the one with math you can find it here


Introduction


There are multiple layers that stand between you and death, many players just account for Def and Res, and give only Resist all credit and glory, but there are quiet a few other things that can be used to prevent kissing the ground.

Keep in mind that each type of protection is like a big wall between the enemy and you, something will not get to be affected by the third wall if it was stoped flat by the second one.

Lets go through them in the order they affect you, shall we?



Holds

Holds are status effects that entirely disable the enemy so that there is no attack coming your way at all. This is the first line of defense, and here we count not only literal holds, but also “soft” holds like Sleep and Fear, or Mini holds like Vomit and Knock backs. I don’t bother quantifying this one factor as basically no melee set other than Dark Aura has it as a mean to protect itself, and its just too hard to quantify. It's not impossible simply hard and beyond the scope of this guide.


-Recharge

-Recharge slows down the recharge speed of enemies’ attacks effectively reducing the amount of hits you can suffer in any period of time. –Recharge suffers of three disadvantages:

<ul type="square">[*] The first wave of hits (the so famous Alpha Strike) is unaffected by it, as all attacks there are already charged up the moment you jump the enemy.
[*] The effect is of lower impact against higher level enemies, since it is a debuff.
[*] Although it increases the recharge time of an attack, it does not increase the activation time. Meaning that an attack that takes 2 seconds to hit, and 4 seconds to recharge will only have the 4 seconds increased, not the full 6 seconds, making the benefit a bit more random[/list]
Only melee set that relies heavily on this effect is Tanker's Ice Armor.


-Acc and Defense

Defense increases your chance to entirely deflect an attack.
-Accuracy lowers the chance of the enemy hitting you.

-Acc and Defense both act together. Since I7 they will be affecting all enemies equally and basically 10 Defense really means 20% chance to deflect. I wont get on the reason for this here, all you have to know is 1 = 2 once it comes to defense.

Defense is not extremely reliable, not because it does not work, because it works amazingly well, but because you never know at what point your luck will run out. My point with this reliablity is, if you are on the red, dont think "i can take 3 more hits" because chance may dictate those next hits be the ones to hit you and kill you. Its one of the few things in this game that is truthfully random. The differences between –Acc debuffs and Defense are:

<ul type="square">[*]-Accuracy is a debuff, and therefore is less effective against higher level enemies
[*]-Accuracy affects all of the affected enemies' attacks while Def usualy only help against specific types of damage or method of attack.[/list]
As noted on the introduction, this type of protection only works on the attacks that did go through the slow effects of –Recharge.


-Damage

Damage debuffs are rather simple: They reduce the damage an enemy can do by a percentage. If an enemy can do 100 and you debuffed his damage by 10% he will now hit for 90.

Again, as all debuffs, this protection suffers a penalty the higher level the enemy is compared to you.


Resistance

Very similar to –Damage, Resistance lowers the damage an enemy inflicts upon you. The difference is, it is lowering the already lower damage. So, using the above example, if the character has 10% resistance and is already doing 90 points of damage (since it went down on the example above,) he will now do 81 points of damage. As you can see, despite them doing the same thing, we cant just sum the two numbers.

A disadvantage of Resistance is that it tends to only cover up certain damage types, while Dmg Debuff lowers all incoming attacks.


HP and HP buffs

All damage that was going to be mitigated has been mitigated at this point. Now on you get the reminder of the damage. But there is another thing to keep into account and it’s your HP. You see, not all ATs have the same HP, and some power sets have means to boost their base hp. To understand the true benefit of HP you have to entirely forget about it as a fixed number and start to think about it in terms of percentages. All that truly matters is that the little progress bar that indicates health doesn’t go from 100% to 0%.

So, to truly measure the impact HP has on your damage mitigation you first need to know what is the HP of your AT relative to others. Here is a table that shows just that:

<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>
Tanker 175%
Brute 140%
Scrapper 125%
Blaster 112.5%
Kheldian 100%
Corruptor 100%
Controller 100%
Defender 95%
Stalker 95%
Dominator 95%
Mastermind 75%
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As you can see, Corruptors, Controllers and Kheldians are the baseline. Anything above that is considered to have a bonus, while anything below it is considered to have a penalty.

Skipping all math, an attack that lowers hp by 20% to a Controller will just lower 8.75% to a tanker that is running no armors or buffs, thats basicaly an inherent 56.25% resistance buff!


Regeneration and Heals

OK, simply told, an enemy must do more damage per second (DPS) to you than the hp per second (HPS) you can heal up.

The more regeneration and self healing power per second you get, the more DPS the enemy has to do to kill you.

Unlike all other protections this one actually becomes more useful the more mitgation you had on the other areas. Basicaly the highest DPS you can survive is equal to your HP recovery per second. And off course the more damage you mitigate with the other protections the more damage must be initiated against you to meet this HP recovery.

Now there are some differences between regen and heals you must take into account.

<ul type="square">[*] Heals are based off your base HP, HP do not affect it.[*] You always regen 0.4% of your HP bar per second so it is affected by HP bonuses.[/list]
Closing

Well this is it boys and girls! THAT is all that stands between you and death. If you look closer at your abilities you may find that you are not as weaky and woosy as you thought you were, and at the same time you may find the absurd slotting on that Resist power is not yielding as much benefit in the end as you thought it was, since you only considered two aspects of the character. Finally, you will be amazed to find out that powers you thought were just there just because, are doing a huge impact on your survivability once they stack with your defenses, (like Health for example.)


Calculator:

But how am i meant to know what is affecting me without any math?!

Well, just for that I have made a very useful Excel sheet that allows you to fill in the blanks so you can analyze your builds against the different damage types and even compare them to many default builds.

You can download the calculator here.

Be cautious while using the Buff Box once you want to add healing per second since right now the calculator bases the number you enter there off the base of the AT’s HP, while truth is the base for these buffs is a different one.

What is your character's HP value? Well you can use the same numbers i gave above and that i will repeat here:

<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>
Tanker 175%
Brute 140%
Scrapper 125%
Blaster 112.5%
Kheldian 100%
Corruptor 100%
Controller 100%
Defender 95%
Stalker 95%
Dominator 95%
Mastermind 75%
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Calculator FAQ

I got a message asking me to run a macro, do i have to enable it?

No, the macros in the Excel file are only to allow you to convert your build into an HTML file for easy web display. You dont have to enable macros to be able to use the application, only if you want to use the export buttons.

I used the calculator and I got a very odd number under CCK Score, what does this number means?

There is a baseline you used to run this calculations, the standard baseline are Corruptors/Controlers/Kheldians. As stated in the Regenerations and Heals sections, an enemy needs to exceed in DPS what the player can heal up per second. CCK is what I call the maximun ammount of DPS a naked/unbufed Corruptor/Controller/Kheledian can sustain before their HP starts declining. So CCK is basicaly how many times that can you take before your HP starts to reliably move down over time. However do note that, especially once it comes to Heals per second (not regen), it can get very tricky, because those don’t really come in constants but in bursts. A small burst in the DPS of the enemy may be enough to throw you off your feet and get you killed before that burst of healing is ready.

What if I got a CCK Score of zero?

This means you can take exactly the same DPS as a naked Controller.

What if you got a CCK Score of -0.25?

That means you can take only 75% of the DPS of the naked Controller.

What if I got a CCK Score of -1.00?

You should start thinking about getting Life Insurance

What do the bars at the right mean?

The bars are visual representation of the survivability. The area is colored in 4 shades of blue.

First shade represent the point where a Fire tanker with self heals performs against energy damage.

The second shade is the point where stone tanker performs against energy. It takes into account shields, HP buffs, the healing that comes with the HP buff and the regen.

The third shade is the point where Ice Armor tankers perform against energy. It takes into account shields, HP buffs, the healing that comes with the HP buff and Chilling Embrace, plus hitting 10 targets with 3 sloted Energy Absorbtion.

The last is the Smash/Lethal value for Invuln.

Why use Energy as the base for the visualization instead of Smash/Lethal?

Simply, because Invuln goes off the chart and makes every other damage type mitigation (even its own) too small and hard to compare fairly. You may notice it on how big the fourth area is.

Is it normal that X set goes off the chart?

Yes its normal, Ice is extremely tough against cold damage, same with Fire Aura and fire damage.

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Yes i know, but then you can resist up to 90% of that already debuffed damage for a max mitigation of 99%

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As a damage debuffer, that is not what I recall. 90% is the maximum that you can resist/debuff. They are not cumalitive.

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I suppose it would be easy to test with a Tanker, a Sonic, a Kin and a bunch of grey MOBs.

I have the KIN.

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Tested with Darkest Night and Twighlights grasp with the Ancillary dark armor power.

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OK i just did a test with Damage Resist and debuff.

I took on an enemy that did 20.71 damage normaly.
I used chilling embrase and i got 17.81. Thats 14% less damage.
Then i poped up a 5% resist inspiration. He did 16.92 damage. Thats a total of 18.3% less damage, and that is definitively not 14 + 5. It does however fit with the debuff taking effect first and the resist taking effect later, so they do not stack.

I did not test if there is a total mitigation cap though, that may be a thing for tonight.

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Brutes are more than fine as they are.

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It's Son of Statesman!

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Look up in the sky, its a plane!!! Its a bird!!! NO!!! Its STAAAAAAATESBOY! (in the tone of BIIIIIRDMAAAAAAN)




Sorry was not able to hold myself there

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If the debuff is balanced in the grand scheme, and I can't see how that could be the case, it still makes Unyielding a faustian bargain.

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Altough in part I can see how it can be the case, I cant see how come the scrapper/brute gets the SAME penalty as the tanker for an inferior benefit.

That 5% should be 3.75 instead.

Now things apart, why not just lower the numbers on one or other powers and elminate the debuff? Invince for instance has a 5% def + 1.5 def per enemy (tanker version). Once buffed that is 7.8 + 2.34. How about lower it so that once buffed its 2.8 and 2.34 for each other enemy? It would do almost the same without giving a penalty to psi and toxic.

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Brutes are more than fine as they are.

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Am i the only one that just had shivers up his spine?

I may be wrong but i THINK thats what i got with my ice tanker. I mean, after the 14% damage debuff then i would use my resitances against ice only for the reminder, not the whole.

Again, i may be recalling wrongly.

Will have to run that test again tonight.

Yes i know, but then you can resist up to 90% of that already debuffed damage for a max mitigation of 99%

The devs original intention was for everyone to fight evens. End of the tale.

Thee is one thing i find odd on the TohitDebuff/Def stacking, altough once enemies hit the floor it is rare more to be needed, its just me being nitpicky, but:

If i got this right, having 10 debuf and 15 def would be the same as having 25 def. But this also means that having 45% debuff, you may as well turn off al def granting toggles because they are doing nothing.

On the other hand, -DMG can go as far as it go, but whatever is left will also then be cut down to up to 10% of what it was. So an enemy with a 1000 points attack being -dmg debuffed by 90% of its damage and then the hero having 90% resist, will end in a 10 dmg hit.

Having 45 def and -45 to hit on the enemy will always yield just 10% chance to be hit, not 1%.

And EVEN if it was, the minimun 5% chance to hit would kick in, yet there is no Minimun 10% damage done (as far as i know, may be wrong.)

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This does not affect PvP, and it does not work in the inverse EvP (that is, critter will not be harder to hit).

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So buildup and other extreme acc bonuses are still an untouched issue on PvP?

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...however, they get -50 points for making yet *another* fundamental alternation to their game engine without warning.

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ummmmm...the change isn't even on test yet. It's coming in with I-7. Two months warning isn't enough for you?

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Maybe he works for internal beta testing and is disapointed he was not told it was being tested in house