Tempest_56

Here's a simple but useful question - I just got OSA on my TA/A. What's a good bind to target the Slick so I can pray to Castle that it lights this time?

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It needs to slow recharge(don't know if it does), since you can't attack very well if you are snared in a web.

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Protip: It does.

Edited for Brawlnstein's pleasure.

Any word on what Stone Spear looks like?

Hm. That power order seems a bit odd. Also, I presume Mud Port is Mud Pots? Either way, if this is accurate, it certainly isn't bad. Both Mallets and Smash? That's pretty solid.

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We'll probably get the mag 3 version.

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So? Who cares! It's a power that animates as fast as Bonesmasher, does the damage of Total Focus, has increased base accuracy and a 100% chance to hold. Even if it's only mag3 normally, that's a 100% mag6 hold with domination up attached to the highest damage attack available to doms. That would still make it the best ST attack available to doms, period.

Worst three, in my opinion (obviously):

- Port Oakes. It's a waste. Some of the other redside zones have the same problem, but Oakes is the worst - it's a HUGE map and 95% of the activity is in a small strip along the southern edge. It's missing basic features - why is there a BM in Mercy, where half the spawns are too low to even give salvage and you're too low to use most IOs, but not in Oakes? And the terrain is irritating, with a lot of vertical when players won't have travel power access. Grandville's tolerable because by then you've got Fly/SJ/a jetpack, but Oakes? Have fun walking/swimming far out of your way because you ran into something that's six inches too high for you to jump over.

- Boomtown. So let's see. It's gigantic. The terrain is identical and monotonous, with few if any landmarks. The mobs aren't even worth fighting half the time, given their low level and annoying composition. There's no reason to actually go there outside the possibility of a random story mission sending you there. It's empty space that serves no purpose.

- The Shadow Shard. Beautiful. Different. Interesting. Too big, difficult to utilize and almost completely pointless. The wasted potential is staggering.

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As an Ice/Mental player myself - nothing jumps out as out of place. You've got the three basic ST blasts you should, and the AoEs you should. Frost Breath + Psi Scream + Static Discharge is a devastating combo. You're running a little bare minimum to my eye, but you have all the crucial powers and enough +recharge to make it happen.

Putting in my suggestion here of Dark/Stone. Yes, it's rough on the endurance. Yes, it's a challenge to play. But it's so, so worth it.

RoA blows FA outta the water, yeah. FA really does need a bit of a buff to bring it up to par on that area. In theory, the difference is the crit chance - but most folks don't even know it's there, and it isn't that meaningful.

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What is wrong with that? I thought that was the point of having ignite over build up?

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Ranged blast sets don't have Build Up. They never have. You likely mean Aim. (And actually, I think Ignite is the replacement for a third ST blast - the trade-off is Aim for Flamethrower.)

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However, the wording of the warning seems to be much more "People have been trying to say someone else was on their account and got them banned. Please be aware this excuse won't let you off".

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This summarizes it well. My figuring is that it's aimed once more at the gold sellers/PL services - if you give someone your account info so that they can get you inf or level you, don't say it isn't your fault when they send off a couple thousand in game emails advertising and you get banned as a spammer.

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When you say combined, what do you mean exactly? If you mean that spamming Ignite did more ST dmg than any other atk in the set then I agree.

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No, I mean just standing there using nothing but Ignite can, over the course of say 30 seconds, deal more damage to a target than someone using AR's other powers without Ignite.

Again, using the older Mids copy:
You could fire off Ignite every 7s (3s recharge + 4s animation). So 4 times in 30s. Unenhanced, that's 1112.4 damage.

Running an unenhanced attack chain (one aimed to fill the 30s, preference given to higher DPS attacks) only comes out to 891.5 damage.

Feel free to run your own numbers if you think I miscalculated, but really - I don't think I made any unjustified assumptions. Ignite as it was was a wonderful tool, balanced around that it was tough to keep the target inside the patch. The moment you started hanging around with anybody who had an immob or consistent KD, it became probably the highest damaging power in the game. And while that's not as common for corruptors, every blaster has a power that can do that.

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Additionally in favor of EE as the utility - it's already available to Controllers (albiet in an APP). It's not considered brokenly powerful on that side of the coin, which lends support to that it wouldn't be broken on an AT of similar HP and semi-similar function.

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...didn't it have like a 5 second recharge?

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Glancing at my old copy of Mid's, 3s. If you could get somebody to hold still in it, it out-damaged the entire rest of AR combined.

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Maybe rooted?

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I don't see it happening. The mez protection is rendered at least partly obsolete by Domination, and doms don't have enough HP to make the +regen worthwhile.

Earth's Embrace is almost certainly the utility power. Nothing else would get the 'tankish' feel Sunstorm mentioned without being a shield.

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As for Martial Arts, the alternate animations we have right now are mainly punches. The idea was to provide you guys with a way to make the classic, fights with their fists and feet, super-hero that many have been asking for.

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You are my favorite dev.

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That includes a new animation for assassin's strike (Assassin's Blow?).

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I love you.

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Play on villain side a bit, specifically against the Earth Legacy Chain. There's your ranged attacks (plus Hurl).

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The problem there is that they're all basically the same thing - Propel with slightly different damage scales. I have more faith in BaBs than to give us a set with four blasts, three of which have identical animations. Both in that he has to know that would never be accepted, and that he seems to have a bit more pride in his work than to produce that level of crap.

Let's take a look at our possibilities.

Stone Melee provides a couple good candidates. Stone Fist, Stone Mallet, Heavy Mallet, and Seismic Smash give us plenty of melee powers to work with. Tremor is practically a shoe-in.

With the utility power, there's some options. Earth's Embrace and Fault are both strong candidates. Mud Pots would be interesting, though unlikely. And there's always the joke option - Dominators with Granite Armor.

For range, Hurl Boulder's assured. Propel Rocks/Boulder from the Legacy Chain is possible. Stone Spears from Earth Thorn Casters/Possessed Scientists also. There's also some from the Minions of Igneous - Gravel, Ryolite and Basalt Bomb. Maybe even the Crystal Shards from the DE. And Earth Explusion from the Tuatha. And there's always the classic Rock power.

There's more than the Legacy Chain who have earth-based powers.

I already declared it - I will be making my DA scrapper bright, neon pink. Because I think it'll be freaking hilarious, at least for the first few days. Then I'll change it back.

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Traps and TA will go together very nicely though. It'll be interesting to see how things might change.

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I look pleasantly forward to lighting OSA with Ignite on some poor immobilized schmuck.

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CUSTOM MA! CUSTOM SS! CUSTOM SPINES!

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I.. I can play a punchy MA scrapper.

I can play Spines without looking at Spines.

I can try and solo +5, 8 person missions.

I love this issue.

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Maybe next time.

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Semi-related: Castle, can you at least confirm or deny that the list shown on the site (Rad Blast for Blasters, etc) is comprehensive? Is it just a 'these are some of' list, or is that all the ones being ported? Just to direct the speculation from here, so we don't get several months of "But there could be more!" if there isn't going to be.

/Psi will go down in history beside EM and Devices. For good or ill, justified or not, people will be whining about PSW getting nerfed still three years from now.

/Ice is pretty much identical. Lost a little AoE power, but really not enough to be noteworthy.

/Fire is debatable. It's a fair bit more costly than before and the DoT seems... I dunno, I can't put my finger on it. It feels weaker, yet it's doing more damage.

/Elec lost a lot of the burst damage, but it's a good grinder still. It isn't weak by any means, but the rise of /Energy has made it less of a no-brainer.

No shocker there. It's the new "If we do missions on Invincible, of course we'll level faster!".

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The flaw in my argument? It's not an argument. It's my EXPERIENCE. It's not open to debate.

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I'm not debating your experience. I'm debating your conclusions. Given the evidence available, there is zero reason why the dominator AT changes should have affected your results. Use it as a scapegoat if you want, but you're playing in the situation quite literally least effected by the changes. Your results to previous similar situations should have been reasonably identical.

We see this every freaking issue. You've been around as long as I have, you know that. How many times the day an issue lands somebody shows up and insists that accuracy has been nerfed? There are threads talking about nerfs to Super Strength and Shield Charge, neither of which has been mentioned at ALL in any patch note. You're attributing a difference in your play results to changes that, for all visible evidence, have no relation with what you are doing.

What the cause is, I don't know. It's your experience, not mine. But blaming the dom changes is folly - in your case, there were no changes. Unless you've found alterations to the powers in /Icy that are not listed in the patch notes, they are NOT the cause of your problem.

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I never had this problem before today, so I am equally as flabbergasted.

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Okay, Mind/Icy. Now I think I see a flaw in your argument - you should be seeing almost no difference at all. The only one of /Icy's powers that was changed was ICW, which I doubt was key to fighting a lone boss. And Mind wasn't changed at all. Aside from having your base damage mods increased (which would put you on equal with the old domination buff more frequently), there were no changes to the set that should have any effect in this scenario.

Under the circumstances you outlined, there should be no mechanical drop-off at all. None of the powers you would be using were changed, and the AT changes themselves under the circumstances you outline should be only beneficial to you (since I expect at 38 you're nowhere near multi-stacking domination). Obviously, the issue lies either in a completely different source, not the recent changes to the dom AT.