StrykerX

Can WP softcap without crippling the rest of the build?

Meh... the fact that Superman is too nice a guy to just fry him with heat vision from 10 miles away or drop a small asteroid on his head is what gives him (and everyone else) an edge on Supes in a fight. It does sound like they made Aquaman a bit more interesting though... maybe I'll try and dig up some back issues sometime.

As for an underwater zone, I really like Lemuria in Champions (when it's not lagging too bad, but that has nothing to do with the water) but I can understand the complaints about powers working the same way underwater breaking immersion. The visual effects could be really cool, but I agree that to really do it right would be a huge challenge... and would also be totally unfair to certain builds since (for example) Fire would be virtually useless while Sonic would be supercharged.

I enjoy the visual effects enough to suspend disbelief on things like that, but I can see where others wouldn't.

A lot of it depends on your team. If you have a good tank then Cold's lower defense values are still plenty good enough and the dubuffs help out. On the other hand, if your team is mostly / all squishies with no tank (especially on smaller teams) the mez protection from Sonic or FF is way more important than any debuffs. A full team of 8 Blasters, Controllers, and Defenders is going to flatten almost anything they run into, but in a situation like two Blasters and a Defender you'll really want that mez protection bubble.

Dark Age of Camelot actually did that one better... it had three ways to avoid attacks. You had Evasion (which was basically dodging and was mainly used by light armor stealth classes), Parry (which was usable by any class that could train up their weapon skills), and Block (which required a shield). You had to spend ability points training up Parry and Block (Evasion came free on classes that got it), so to be really defensive you had to sacrifice other things. Also, some attacks like large two-handed weapons or dual wielding were more effective against some defenses than others, and you generally couldn't avoid attacks from behind. The melee combat was really good in that game... lots of cool attack chains, positional and reactive attacks, it was quite tactical. Until a spellcaster walked up and vaporized you in three seconds from long range.

The problem with doing that sort of thing in a game like CoH is that superheroes and supervillains really don't act at all realistically when it comes to defense. In real life, attacking from behind makes it easier to hit someone. In a comic book... not so much, especially if you are attacking someone like Captain America, Spider Man, Batman, or Daredevil. Likewise, there is a huge range of effects that all fall into the "defense" mechanic: actually dodging the attack (Super Reflexes), deflecting it with something (Shields), being so tough it just bounces off unless it hits a really vital point (Stone Armor, Ice Armor)... it would probably be more trouble than it was worth to make separate defense mechanisms for each. Plus it would be a game balance nightmare... immobilizing a Super Reflexes character would have to reduce his defense (can't dodge as well) while not affecting a Shield character, while a hold would affect both SR and Shield (can't dodge or block) but not Energy Aura (being still doesn't affect the force field). There would have to be advantages and disadvantages added to each set to compensate, and balancing all that would be almost impossible.

Those are the ones I'm considering. I figured my planned build (which is already getting more expensive than I wanted) has just over 3.4 end/sec recovery, but with all toggles and my full attack chain it burns over 4.4 EPS. Adding a Miracle, a Numina's, and another endmod IO to Physical Perfection would boost my recovery up to almost 4.3 EPS... that would make a huge difference in prolonged fights. I can't really afford to buy those uniques for inf, but that Scrapper is a blast to play on large teams so I forsee a lot of task forces in his future.

(I knew going back to Scrappers was a bad idea. I can live with a budget build on a Blaster but with Scrappers it's sooooo tempting to break open the piggy bank and go for a high end build... or at least a somewhat high end build since my piggy bank isn't actually big enough to purple a toon out.)

I never though of that. I'll have to try it next time I fight Malta (don't have a Scrapper quite that high yet but it'll be handy on my Blasters). Does anyone know if the "one sapper per spawn" rule applies to large team spawns? (I try to avoid Malta on teams so I can't remember if it does...)

Well, it may not drain you to zero but I'd imagine it still knocks off a fair bit of endurance. Unless you're very heavily IOed out with a high budget build /DA is already fighting at an endurance deficit... each Sapper shot reduces your fighting time. I know when my Spines/DA is fully leveled and IOed out he'll have about a minute and a half of fighting time before running out of juice... getting sapped would probably knock a good 20-30 seconds or so off of that which would be a bit annoying (especially if I wasn't starting the fight full). Not a big deal, but I would call it noticeable.

Of course if I decide to go with a no expense spared build at some point I suspect I'd laugh at being sapped, but I've got too many alts to sink that much inf into one character unless I really like him. Which, to be fair, I'm starting to, so who knows...

I'd think Storm / Energy would be worse. Hurricane and Gale will knock more things around than Force Bolt and Repulsion Field, and you also have Tornado to toss in (be sure to drop it near mobs that aren't immobilized... preferably in a position where it can wander off into an unaggroed group).

Illusion / FF might also be a good contender, though it loses points for drawing aggro to the invulnerable decoys... it's chaotic but it lacks that "we wiped how many times?!?" feel you get from a badly played Storm / Energy.

Actually it doesn't require a lot of recharge at all. You can't chain Attack Vitals -> Attack Vitals, you have to either add an attack or a short pause in between to get the next combo to start properly. Since Blinding Feint is a stackable damage / to-hit buff that's the obvious choice for filler.

Blinding Feint -> Attack Vitals is a very solid attack chain and it only needs 127% recharge in Blinding Feint and less in the Attack Vitals powers. With good recharge slotting you only need 35-40% global recharge which isn't that hard to come by (especially if you go /SR and have Quickness). BF -> Sweep does take more rechrge (around 75% global) but BF -> AV -> Sweep needs no global recharge at all and is still decent for crowds.

A lot of it depends on team composition. In my experience, non-Kin Defender damage isn't that high... it's useful, but not something that makes a huge difference in spawn clearing time. Granted, most Controller damage is also not high enough to make a big difference either, but it's not that much lower and in some cases can be higher (especially single target). What really makes Controllers more effective than Defenders (in my opinion) is their AoE immobilizes... they tend to keep things nice and bunched up even if people start tossing out knockback powers. Since Blaster AoE is what clears spawns fastest on a team and quite a few Blaster AoEs do knockback that's a big help.... it also means no scattering when things like rain powers and Burn get fired off. I believe that the added damage from keeping everything nicely grouped outweighs the added damage from Defender AoEs in many situations. Add in the utility of being able to neutralize adds long enough to avoid wipes in some cases (unconsious heroes have zero DPS) and it just seems to me that Controllers have the edge.

Now of course adding several Defenders to a team can make them so strong they don't really care about adds, but so can adding several Controllers. Really, multiple support ATs quickly make a team so powerful it pretty much steamrolls any normal content, so I'm focusing on the case of only having one or two support and the rest damage dealers or tanks. I find that any time I'm teamed with 3+ Defenders and/or Controllers (in nearly any mix of powersets) survival becomes a complete non-issue and the team speed starts to depend 100% on how many AoE Blasters we have.

(If I was voting on "least useful" for preset superteams I'd go with Tankers... with the right buffs you don't need one and you can just add more damage. But I'm looking at this from a PUG standpoint.)