Twilight_Snow

To the OP:
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So seriously Devs, do you want purple sets to be THAT rare that they cost over a billion inf? It would seem this ridiculous inflation is either do to a.) all people do is farm AE which equals no purples, b.) folks are just buying inf from those dirtbag .com sites, or c.) a little of both.


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It's pretty obvious that the dev don't intend AE to be farmed nor want us to buy from inf with real money. The AE farming is more or less a side effect of the flexibility of designing missions. Buying inf is a side effect of just having an economy.

I guess the only thing the dev can say about the purples is that they are intended to be rare and expensive. But other than that, the dev don't seem to interfere with the free market. Maybe, the dev do want the purples to be that expensive. After all, players complain about what to do about the level 50 end game. As in other mmo, the end game is about farming for better equipments, and it is better enhancements for this game.

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The Rikti come in and attack the three targets. If they succeed, the raid moves on to an adjacent zone, and the zone they were just in becomes "conquered."

"Conquered" zones will have three rikti control points for the heroes to attack. Destroying them would return the zone to normal, and the raid would stop.

While conquered, the zone would behave normally, however raid-style Rikti would spawn in the normal spawn points, IN ADDITION TO the regular spawns.

Thus, wherever normal foes are spawning, the Rikti are spawning there too (and likely attacking the regular spawns).

This would allow those doing hunts to do them, though they would risk having to fight a few rikti here and there, and it would allow people that need to talk to contacts the freedom to do so, all while maintaining the sense of being in a warzone.


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I think it's ok, and reasonable enough.

In principle, the suggested raid is not temporary. If no one participate, it can persist. I think it's a little misleading to say that it is temporary. But I agree it's pretty unlikely that nobody would take the time to destroy a couple spawn points for an extended period of time.

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NOW what do you think? Does that satisfy everyone?


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For a suggestion of this type, the replies from us are useful to further polish your idea. There will always be people who jranger because every idea has its pros and cons. It's not necessary to have everyone of us say yes.

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I don't see anything wrong with /FA. Sure the numbers are similar to /ELA but /FA as a self-heal and is focused more towards providing additional damage.


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/ELA has a god mode and is focused more towards providing additional endurance.

Maybe, an indirect route is to raise the defense to avoid getting hit. Some sleep attacks have a psionic component, so increasing psionic defense can help a bit.

Conceptually, hasten can imply that you're "moving" very fast (like moving your hands for example). I think that's why it had defense in the past.

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Yet what I cannot understand is, despite the fact Controllers offer the same amount of utility and buffs, plus have a whole primary devoted to control, plus can solo perfectly well and offer good damage... people STILL say Defenders should be bad soloers because of what they offer a team.


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Logically, it implies controllers should be nerfed if defenders are considered fine.

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I can only guess. Hasten is powerful enough as it is without a defense bonus. Could of been part of GDN.

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I checked that. The change was made at issue 5. They called it global defense decrease, instead of global defense nerf. giggle. For the global defense reduction, the patch notes says it's "to facilitate a more balanced game for higher level characters (Level 25 and up)." You can read it directly from wiki.

I think the problem of the suggestion is the possibility of a rikti raid that can last indefinitely long. Maybe a server has to wait till night time such that enough people logon. If not enough people are interested, the server might be perma owned by Rikti till the next server maintenance.

I think it would be cool if the raid can be made better. We're probably not ready to have server events that have a real consequence.

I end up typing a number into the box instead of using the slider. Hope that the issues mentioned here can be addressed some day.

Answering to a couple posts:

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My only beef with typed defense is that even after going through the trouble of capping all the damage types and having to spend so much on your toon, you are left with holes in your def. Psi is very expensive def wise to cap and causes a lot of sacrifices in your build and you still have that un defendable toxic damage.


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It seems like there are many defense types. But smashing and lethal are linked, so as fire with cold, and energy with negative energy. Therefore, soft-capping these 6 defense types should be no more troublesome than soft-capping melee, ranged and aoe.

I agree that the psi and toxic holes are kinda unfair, although the holes are probably thematic to the power set (toxic is probably designed to be a general weakness to all players). To be honest, I don't really understand why psionic attacks are pink and something you can dodge with super reflex. Maybe, all psionic and toxic attacks shouldn't have a positional attribute (don't get angry, it probably won't happen).

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While this may be true, you're trying to tell me that you can deflect an object that is traveling faster than the speed of sound, generates enough kinetic energy to break bones deep within your body even if it does not pierce flesh, can knock you clean off your feet, and is only the size of a dime.......but you can't parry to save your life against someone wielding a slow...and heavy...sludge hammer?!? How the hell does that make sense?


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It would be clearer if we can take a look at the design notes of the power. Recently, things are "standardized" such that melee are linked with both smashing and lethal. Maybe parry can use such treatment as well.

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A lot of recent posts claim that in the late game, with IOs, EA can be plenty strong. That's almost an obvious conclusion.


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I won't say it's really strong. I think EA will be better than resistance sets like electrical armor and fire armor. I'm not sure EA can be better than other sets with defense. I would say EA with IO is reasonably tough.

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It is, however, of limited value when performing set balance comparisons. For that, the current datamining principle for set balance will focus generally on actual builds throughout the levels. This will almost necessarily favor builds with limited or no IO enhancement, at least through the lion's share of the game. This is not where EA shines.


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I thought that people try to avoid including IO in set balance because there is no unique way to do slotting, builds can vary from multi-billions all the way down to a couple millions. The balance can be tipped towards one way or the other by slotting differently. Do people avoid discussing IO because of how datamining is done?

I think that EA doesn't really shine without IO. Do other power sets shine without IO?

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4. Provide psi resistance in the ally shields.


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Doesn't sound thematic to sonic. But it worth a try to see if the dev would yield a bit.


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It does sound thematic to Clarity!

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It is very thematic against confusion. It can be related to the mind, I'm not sure that it goes all the way to provide psionic resistance. If it does, maybe clear mind from empathy can provide psionic resistance as well.

When I said that it's not quite thematic, I were actually referring to the shields as I quoted above. Sonic barrier, sonic haven and sonic dispersion don't sound like a barrier for psionic attacks. If the power set can provide psionic resistance, I'm not sure that I want it in clarity which only lasts for 90 seconds. In fact, if it would be in clarity, I might not even want the resistance added.

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Could someone refresh my memory as to why we needed -Acc in Group Fly?


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Originally, both fly and group fly have -acc. I think the idea is that both powers are intended for traveling only. And maybe the ability to fight in the air with such agility is not a fair fight.

Later, the dev found that players don't like the -acc penalty. So, they changed the penalty from -acc to suppressed movement for fly(there was also an issue with player "jousting" using superspeed at that time). So, if a player don't like to change between hover and fly, but don't mind the endurance usage and a few seconds of suppressed movement, the player can fly all the time. I guess few people use group fly in combat, so the power is kept as it is.

The trip mines are pretty good for defending the reactor core in the respec trial. Maybe the time bomb can use some improvements, I bet the trip mines will be just left as it is. The game can have more contents like respec trial, then something like trip mines (and other situational powers) can be put to good use.

If it's real life, I think it's extremely powerful to be cloaked while I can still beat on a person. I remember reading a couple news about "mad" scientists trying to making invisible cloak. Light will bend around the cloak instead of being scattered, thus making the wearer invisible.

In this game, the typical playstyle is to aggro/incapacitate the mobs and then kill fast. The stealth does come in handy sometimes, but the need for a stealthy yet durable person is rare. In addition, there are multiple routes to get a job done. While stealthing and finishing the objective is elegant, the brainless rushing in and killing them all can also get an A.

If a person like the straight forward aggro style, it's pretty natural that the stealth is a hindrance, and the power set will probably be not as tough as the person wants it to be. I think energy aura is a pretty good example of a power set that is ok if you play according to its designed theme, but players don't appreciate the design and the power set becomes awful.

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The biggest problem with Time Bomb is that it's treated as nuke, which it isn't. It doesn't have Nuke damage, and controlling it is so crapshot it may as well be blind luck half the time.


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Actually, time bomb does slightly higher damage than thunderous blast, but slightly lower than nova. I think it's at nuke level.

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That depends on what you're counting. Time Bomb does 278.05 damage, while Nova does 375.36, all components considered and Thunderous Blast does 312.8. Thunderous Blast, however, is usable at range and has other serious components, like endurance drain to the targets and not a complete drain on the Blaster, from what I'm seeing in the numbers. I don't think I had it on mine.

Yes, Time Bomb is a power in a secondary, but the huge difficulty and, above that, huge delay to using it simply ensures that few people use it even for toe bombing. I use it and I like it, of course, but even I will admit it's a gigantic pain to do so.

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For nova, you do get a total damage of 375.36 if you add up all the numbers. Note that 375.36 is the maximum possible damage. There is a 75% chance for the 93.84 damage, and 50% chance for another 93.84 damage. If you factor in the probability, the average damage per mob is around 305. Not all the nukes have the same damage as they have different properties. In my opinion, the damage of time bomb is similar to a nuke. It's ok for me if you think otherwise. I agree that time bomb is hard to use.

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In this way, controllers and dominators would be able to contribute to the team during AV fight in a way other than just damage (ignoring the controller's secondary at the moment).


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The suggestion is nice. I would say that the suggestion allows status effect to contribute to AV fights. Many characters have access to hold powers, therefore I'm not sure if this helps controllers and dominators particularly.

Yeah, a bit disappointed with the increased recharge. But maybe, the power is not intended to burn mobs continuously like that.

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The biggest problem with Time Bomb is that it's treated as nuke, which it isn't. It doesn't have Nuke damage, and controlling it is so crapshot it may as well be blind luck half the time.


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Actually, time bomb does slightly higher damage than thunderous blast, but slightly lower than nova. I think it's at nuke level.

I think it is not a bad suggestion to allow a player to display the hp bars of selected pets in the pet window. Probably this should be done pet by pet such that the pet window won't end up with too many hp bars in a mastermind team.

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Or does it suck at all? Is it playable at all?


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I don't think it sucks. The characteristic features of energy aura are endurance management and stealth. If a player doesn't find these 2 tricks useful, then the power set will be a bit underwhelming.

Below is my opinion about the set.

Pros:
1. good endurance management
2. stamina-less build is possible
3. stealth fits the concept for certain people, and it does have some use. Stealth and its defense are not suppressed during combat, so it helps to limit the incoming damage.
4. resistance to repel and teleport
5. have some, but small, resistance (including toxic) and heals on top of defense

Cons:
1. defense slightly harder to soft cap
With recent improvements to IO, typed defense is not really harder to soft cap compared to positional defense. Here, I refer to the fact that power sets with typed defense usually have a theme that suggests certain weakness. For energy aura, negative energy defense is relatively low and thus harder to be capped.
2. psionic defense hole (probably a themed weakness by design)
3. relatively low defense debuff resistance
4. conserve power may be redundant
5. stealthy brutes do not look like a brute for some people
6. no taunt aura
7. can't see your costumes

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I don't really follow how being allowed to keep only a limited number of earned in-game items is being generous. I'm curious, is the notion of the permanency of Enhancements from the CoH game bible, or a dev post from 2002, or Statesman's blog, or some other source?


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I think the dev comments about respec being generous were made probably a long time ago in the pre-IO era when people were only using SO and HO. At that time, it was not really a big deal as there were nowhere to use inf except making each enh to level 50++ or making a new costumes. Enhancements being "permanent" is a design philosophy, which refers to the fact that you can't take them in and out freely.

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If the reason for not wanting Enhancements to be re-useable has to do with some psychology of wanting players to have to re-earn stuff they've already earned once under the notion that this will keep them playing longer to re-earn such rewards and thus keep them subscribed longer, then I suppose I can understand it without really agreeing with how it's implemented.


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I guess this is probably the real reason behind. You know, the dev team has a family to support, and to pay their cars and house.

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The point is to add some randomness to the gameplay. Presently the same contact gives the same mishs always there no variety. I would like to see a seemingly routine hero/villain activity turn into a full blown arc.


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Even with your suggested improvement, it's just a matter of time for people to try out all the possible newspaper story arcs. Eventually, the newspaper missions end up with no varieties also.

Actually, the problem that you mentioned about the contact is not an issue of variety, but because the content is static. The contact story arcs have a lot of varieties, but after you played them all with a few characters, you feel that you're going through the same thing all over again.

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Also you don't start out with all your contacts for a zone you have to run radio/papers to unlock them. This would serve as a great way to make those 3 or more mishs ALOT more fun.


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I think this is specific for villains. For heroes, a contact will introduce other contacts. Maybe, the villain contacts should introduce other contacts such that you don't need to do newspaper missions again.

I think sonic resonance is ok.
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3. Make sonic cage workable on teammates. Being able to cage them and save them from defeat, to me, would be more tactically useful than being able to cage opponents. Most teams actually dislike caging if they're steamrolling.


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Detention can be improved for other power sets as well, not just sonic cage. I'm not sure if I would like to be caged. There are suggestions to make it a toggle, which I think would be nice. If it is a toggle, it may need to work like phase shift which will detoggle after a certain period of time.

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4. Provide psi resistance in the ally shields.


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Doesn't sound thematic to sonic. But it worth a try to see if the dev would yield a bit.

5. A faster-recharging liquefy would be nice.

I agree with the OP that it's probably not a big deal now to hand out large inspirations through the kora fruit missions. Maybe put a couple eyeballs beside the fruits such that people can't go stealth and pick the delicious fruits.