Twilight_Snow

I think a discussion sticky for devices in the blaster forum might be a good idea. It doesn't necessarily mean that devices have a problem, but such kind of suggestion comes up again and again, and people have to repeat the same thing.

For targeting drone, my personal favorite is to make a certain percentage of damage to be irresistable. It won't improve the damage for generic mobs, but it would be a great asset for tough mobs, and also make blasters with devices desirable in teams.

For gun drone, I would love to make it a mastermind-like pet, then it would have a lot of tactical uses. You can set it to be on follow in defense mode, which mimics the original behavior of gun drone. So, this would be just an extention of the current power.

[ QUOTE ]

Time Bomb: The biggest problem with this is that you can't control when it goes off. Find a way so that you could set it off when you wanted, and it would be great.


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A common suggestion. Note that time bomb has a nuke-level damage. If you allow it to set off at the exact moment you want, it would be a nuke without side effect. Other nukes either drain all your endurance or have lower damage. The current time bomb has no end drain, but balanced by the setup time and the uncertainty of hitting. Improvements to time bomb need to consider such balance in the power design.

The OP motivated the suggestion by stating that the animations are the same and magical in nature. I think the summoning animation can be different for different pets. For the magical part, it is arguable and probably subjective. But I think that if the pet is high-tech in nature, the summoning can use an enginneering or science related animation.

I'll mention a couple things about game design rather than under-performing powersets.

1. The mission objectives usually don't require players to be defensive. This creates problems for power sets that need to setup, for example devices, traps and powers like force bubble. And the game doesn't present many difficult situations where players should use delaying powers like detention or aoe detention. The difficult contents in the game tend to be AVs, who are usually not susceptible to the tricks.

2. There is an emphasis of IO on defense bonus compared to resistance. This results in defense powersets having high performance after IO slotting, while resistance sets (like electrical armor which has no healing) seem to be underperforming.

Mine is like this.

Just for fun: I think it's ok to have microtransactions for SO. It won't really hurt anything, and more money for NCSoft.

For -recharge resistance, I don't think there are any power in the set that imply such ability. I think it's ok for moment of glory to have some -recharge resistance. I understand that regeneration has a few clicks, but hp regeneration is not completely shutdown by -recharge alone. So, I think -recharge is a legitimate approach for mobs to partially reduce your power.

For regeneration debuff resistance, I think it is ok for the power set to have some resistance against the debuff. As mentioned in other posts, such treatment is also applied to other power sets.

From a game design point of view, the resistance should not be too strong as to negate the debuff. I think the characters that care about the debuff are either regeneration or willpower. I doubt other kinds of characters care about the debuff that much. Therefore, if the resistance is too strong, you might as well take out the regeneration debuff from the mobs because the debuff would be applied to characters who either don't care or can negate it.

If I were the dev, I would probably check if regeneration has decent performance against generic mobs. When regeneration scrappers meet mobs that nail their weakness, they should fall. It's ok to consider adding regeneration debuff resistance to the power set, but probably some resistance only such that the debuff is still effective.

To the OP:
[ QUOTE ]

I took an EM/EA back at launch to 39, but that was ages and an old account ago.

I am really, really trying to get back into CoV, but the negativity (a STICKIED thread about how suxor /EA is? Good grief!) about them has made me wary.


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The sticky started long time ago. Since then, there were changes to IO that dramatically helped typed-defense sets and some minor improvements to EA. So, the sticky probably doesn't quite represent the situation of EA now.

If you spend some inf and time on EA, the experience should be quite enjoyable overall. To some people, the strong stealth may not fit their brute concepts, and conserve power may seem redundant. My personal complaint is that there are several attributes that are very thematic to energy aura but they are not added to the set.

And actually, if EA really doesn't work, it would have been improved long time ago. If you ever go through the sticky thread, while some people think that EA is bad, some of us think that it's ok and only ask for some tweaks. The sticky simply serves as a place for people to discuss without creating an EA thread over and over again throughout the years.

In the forum, the negative comments may not correspond to real situations. Also, people may have certain expectation about a set, and if the set doesn't play out as they want, they think the set has a problem. I think you can read the forum, but you've to judge by your own experience.

[ QUOTE ]

In fact, I wanted to try something fun and different, so I rolled and Elec/Elec.

Then I hit the boards for build advice and was stunned. Could all of the negativity be true? It seems like nothing but negative posts about it, the most recent guide was from I7 and now I'm thinking, either I'll run this to 50 just to show them or I'm wasting my time.


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For /elec, I think the power set itself is ok. Because of the ease to enhance defense through IO bonus, defense power sets can easily self soft-cap defense and they have some resistance to defense debuff at least. So, defense power sets have much higher performance compared to pre-IO era. For resistance sets, I think it's usually not quite clear how to optimize survival through IO bonus. Therefore, power sets like /elec may fall below the curve at high levels. I'm not sure if this is really a problem of the power set itself or some issues with the grand design of the game.

I guess people who played starting from initial release know how bad it could be for outdoor hunting. At the beginning, people hunted in Perez Park for hydras, then went to Boomtown at a higher level. In Perez Park, there were a lot of competition for spawns, and it was quite frustrating.

Then the dev halved the debt in missions, not only because of the competition for outdoor spawns, but also to encourage players to play the story arcs, as they provide context for fighting. Outdoor hunting usually is just hunting for no reason.

Now, I think people don't care much about stories or context. Maybe only xp, inf and drops matter nowadays. So, the original intention of encouraging indoor mission is no longer applicable. However, I don't think the suggestion can reduce farming, it may simply shift the farming from indoor to outdoor. Maybe, there can be more interesting outdoor events for fun in the hazard zones.

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For me, the way that I increased "my" ELA's survivability was by taking all my +HP accolades, taking and fully slotting both Tough and Darkest Night, and slotting for +HP and +Regen IO bonuses. After I did ALL of this, my ELA was finally much more survivable than before. I tried the "defense" route as well, but was not impressed, so I wouldn't suggest it personally.


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Does it work well for AVs? Will they resist most of the to-hit debuff?

In reality, if the wings don't flap, you probably need a jet engine in order to take off. You can glide after the take-off, I think. Maybe physics doesn't matter in a game.

A potential problem for the new wing option in the tailor is that the still wing maybe a bit too bulky indoor. In particular, if you are asking for a stretched wing, will it be stretched all the time when you hover?

In CoH, we don't have gold to back up our currency, but we have recipes and salvage. I think the generation of recipes and salvages needs to catch up with the influence generation. And the "destruction" of influence has to catch up with the consumption of recipes and salvages as well (after using recipes and salvages once, they are consumed, but influence can have a longer lifetime). If things can go to some sort of equilibrium, then the influence cap can be tweaked to make trading more convenient. I think the dev can figure it out, they have all the numbers in their hands.

There are some weird slotting and they also made the build too tight. The build below is a modification of your build, it is slightly more expensive but gives some room for things like patron powers.

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I remembered that when Lusca was introduced long time ago, the dock workers were scared in IP and would say something when you ran pass them. Do the workers still do it now?

I think it should be within the capability of the current system to have Lusca do a car-waving or human-capturing emote. No real stuffs are touched, just an emote, I think this should look impressive enough.

I guess in principle, the system should be able to spawn destructable objects around Lusca, for example a destructable ship. The AI of Lusca may have to be tweaked such that she can be attracted to those objects.

For traveling in the shadow shard, I think there shouldn't be much issue as long as you have travel powers. The gravity geysers are pretty fast after you have explored the map. And you can buy a jet pack in the shard. If you play in the Shadow Shard a lot, it's a good idea to explore the maps and map out all the geyser locations.

For hunting and missions in the shadow shard, you'll see Nemesis and Circle of Thorns, which are pretty standard. You'll also see Soldiers of Rularuu and Lanaruu. These two types of mobs present some challenges to a standard melee toon. In particular, the wisps have psionic attacks and eyeballs have high to-hit. The brutes might look pretty standard, but you need high dps if you solo and herd there, because the noble brutes can heal each other. If you hunt in Storm Palace, there are elementals from Lanaruu. They look like a red ball of lightning. If you're weak in endurance management, you'll be drained by them pretty quickly.

I like to take my willpower tanker to Storm Palace and do some herding there. I think willpower is quite well-rounded and perform ok there. I have some problems with the brutes because of my low s/l dps against their resistance and healing.

[ QUOTE ]

Kinetic Combat can get pretty expensive, so I only worked one into my build.

My goal is to stay cheap and I've done it.


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My build only has two sets of kinetic combat. And actually, kinetic combat is the most expensive set in my build. The rest are relatively cheap. It's known that soft-capping defense is pretty cheap. The expensive builds are enhancing other attributes on top of defense.

I guess different people will give you different answers, and there are definitely personal opinions about the power set.

Before going to technical things, there are couple things that some people don't like. For example, being stealthy doesn't look like a brute for some people. And there might be too many endurance management powers in the set, some people prefer powers more related to survival. Stealth and endurance powers are great, just that if a player doesn't make use of them, the set loses its luster.

There are many technical things. But I'll just mention a couple. There is no psionic defense which can be important for villains, but it doesn't seem like there are other outstanding abilities to make up for it. In my opinion, there are several attributes that are thematic to energy aura but they are not included in the set (you can take a glance at the first post's section B in the sticky thread to grab an idea).

Most of the previous discussions focused on the bare power set without power pools or IOs. As with all the other defense-based power set, tremendous gain in survival can be gained by accumulating IO defense bonus. That's why you find that EA is fine eventually. In fact, you can make it pretty tough if you spend some time on IO.

I think the idea behind the suggestion is not bad. In fact, it is used in the real world. There are things in this world, which I don't want to mention here, that can't be stopped no matter what. So those things are legalized such that they can be carried out in a controlled fashion.

I think the problem with the suggestion is that if farming is approved with official farmland, the farming is not really controlled or improved in any way, and farming can still goes on outside the official area. I don't see the real benefits by building an official Disney farm, apart from it being a convenient place for players.

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The idea isn't to eliminate travel powers, but more of a QOL issue.

We already have a mission transporter, base transporter, WW transporter, Pocket D transporter, and Ouro Portal...all of which make life easier but still don't eliminate the need for travel powers.

This would work just the same as the above. It would simply get you to a closer area to where you want to go.

And like I said, there can be costs associated with it's use or time limits to keep it from trumping existing travel powers.

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The mission transporter, base transporter, WW transporter, Pocket D transporter, and Ouro Portal are used to travel across different zones. You can't use travel powers to cross the zones. So of coz, all these convenience won't eliminate the need for travel powers, which are for traveling within a zone.

I think if there are enough bus stops within a zone, the transport system can potentially eliminate the need to use travel powers. It is a bit sad that heroes have to take a bus to rescue a citizen because heroes with super powers are supposed to be faster than the bus.

I don't think the slow resist IO should be discussed under the context of needing it or not. It's a set of IO for the celebration of Winter event, and I think the set is very thematic to the event.

For the end drain resist IO, I think it would be nice to have, in particular for resistance melee toons without such resistance. Maybe in the future, when the dev adds new IO sets for endurance, we could have such an IO. I think if CoH celebrates labor day, we could have a special set with an end drain resist bonus.

[ QUOTE ]

This IO is for flavor and it gives players an opportunity to add another dimension to their hero or villain. Since it's a rare or purple set, the IO would be a lot less common then your tier 9 or inspiration.


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It's probably an exaggeration to say that a rez can add another dimension. And it certainly makes me smile that the IO can add flavor. Since the suggested IO is just a plain rez, it's nowhere as "flavorful" as rise of the phoenix or soul transfer.

My concern about the IO is that resurrection is provided either by inspirations, rise of the phoenix/soul transfer type self-rez or outside help. It looks like once a character without rez inspiration is defeated, the person will need help from other people unless the character has special capabilities. While the rez IO does sound interesting, it's doesn't seem to click with the current design of this part of the game.

I think invincibility offers typed defense rather than positional defense. So, it's easier to cap typed defense. As you can see from my build above, you can nearly soft cap all typed defense but psionics.

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1. Is relying on quick attack chains to build fury the best way to go for an Energy Aura? I ask this because I know that /EA is highly susceptible to the "streak breaker" code and will likely get bashed with attacks that hit through defense thereby making prolonged fights problematic. This seems to discourage slower activating primaries.


[/ QUOTE ]
I think the streak breaker code is for human players. Mobs don't have streak breaker code. For prolonged fights, I guess it is probably an AV. While you can soft-cap defense, there is still a 5% chance to get hit. Since EA's resistance is not high, I think it can be problematic if you don't have good ways to heal yourself or some kind of support behind you.

If you really love defense, you can take a look at the build below and see if it is too hilarious. The build is tight, and I've to do something that I don't really like, but it should be quite affordable. I love the sharks, you can always swap it with something similar.

Edit: On second thought, don't be too serious about my posted build. It is potentially terrible.

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If the thread is not stickied, it would be a nice necro post.

I were thinking that we were going to move to a new forum software. I would let the thread rest in peace and not suggest to move it to the new place. Apparently, the move was postponed indefinitely.

I agree that EA is probably fine. In particular, as a stealthy brute with unlimited endurance, I think the weakness of the powerset is by design. I guess the current status of the power set probably doesn't need a sticky, maybe just let it be flushed slowly in the sewer. I bet the thread makes your eyes sore, isn't it?

The value of the thread now lies on proliferation into other ATs rather than brutes. Since heroes have conserve power in ancillary pools, it would be curious to know if it is acceptable to have two conserve powers. If not, there are a lot of suggestions in this thread that suggest alternatives.

What will happen to the original assault rifle power set?