UberGuy

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Except the to-hit thing. I don't remember _Castle_, Geko, or anyone saying anything like that, I'll have to dig up their posts again to double-check.

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You're not gonna find one.

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If you look, States specifically mentioned the new behavior being for mobs up to +5 levels.

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How many players have Tactics in their build by lvl 24?!

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Every Defender or Corruptor I've ever made

Masterwod, that's really unlikely. Attacks like this in primary powersets tend to have small debuffs - estimated on the order of 5% per attack. There are a few exceptions - for example Nightfall is estimated at around double that. Still, slotting these PPP "dark" attacks for toHit debuff, given their recharge times, isn't likely to be effective.

I'd be happy to be wrong, but I wanted to give you a best guess based on other similar powers I'm familiar with. You're unlikely to get a hard-and-fast answer - we still don't really know the debuff values on Dark Blast after two years.

Yeah, the devs have never been consistent about the "top tier" power in any powerset being an actual cool power. Look at Dark Armor, which gets a self-rez in the slot everyone else gets a "tier-9" armor.

We like to think of the top power as cooler/more powerful (because they often are) but the devs don't adhere to that.

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Ahem. My problem with Night Widows may seem a little petty, but it is mine: I dislike the idea of an enemy requiring certain inspirations or certain powers, in order to do anything against them.

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FWIW, I've defeated them w/o any inspirations before. I just got the drop on them and beat the snot out of them before they could blind me.

Knockback, etc., helps a ton.

So it's not as if you must have perception powers. They just make them particularly easier.

I can only speak to the Scrapper version, PCE. I've not had the time to try to do the arcs on test.

It's hard to say if I've ever much noticed the toHit buff. The damage buff on a Scrapper is about 5% per foe affected. So even at three guys it's not terrible in an ED world. Pre I5 you probably don't want to know how many people I could cram in it. Let's just say "Freak Tank dead from one Shadow Maul".

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A 0.5 scale would be:
Defenders = 6.25%
Blasters = 3.5%
Masterminds = 3.75%, etc

A Defender with 3 SO's would be ~9.6% to hit debuff.

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That just plain sucks.

There is no other word to describe this. It sucks. Why is an accuracy debuffing power even in the game with such tiny values?

Feh. Consider Flash Arrow blacklisted permanently.

AND FIX MY GLORFING ZAPPY ARROW!

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Yay that I was right about the Greek being read by Patagonians.

Boo that the real meaning is so... icky.

It's a 10' radius. I'm afraid I don't know the buff level. If anyone grabs the power it's easy to test the damage buff.

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Night Widows are stupidly hard though. And not the nice kind of stupidly hard like Paragon Protectors, they're just plain out too hard (considering they reward the same as the other possible bosses in the same group). They're one of the few MOBs that I'll eat an entire tray of inspirations and still lose.

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Sorry, my experience just doesn't match that. I'd much rather face a Night Widow than a "Tanker" Longbow Warden, who can one-shot every CoV AT except a Brute.

Bear in mind that Castle's probably speaking in base numbers, before any AT modifiers are applied. Which means those numbers are essentially in Greek when we're all from Patagonia.

Yeah, FWIW, I have seen this bug exactly once in two years. I've seen it affect my regular gaming buddies one other time.

Which I don't say to make less of the problem. Indeed I just mean to point out how terribly variable it really is.

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This sounds like, "my mansion's too big to walk all the way to answer the front door!"

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Well, yeah! I want the damn door to come to me!

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The problem is, the Night Widow's smoke grenade is much more powerful than the player version.

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Along with the mob version of Invincibility, Cloaking Device, Flame Thrower, and a whole host of other powers. I'd love for them to address this, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

Because I have a /Devices Blaster it pisses me off to no end when I can't hit a Longbow Spec Ops because his cloak is engaged.

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I do think that the Night Widows need buffing a little, without their smoke grenade they really do suffer from being medicore. Giving them placate or AS like the Bane Spider Executioners would be ideal.

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Masochism.

I would be intensely opposed to this change.

They would do better with a more effective ranged attack chain.

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funny, my bots have no problem "Seeing" night widows.

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If I were you I wouldn't rely too heavily on this. It screams "bug" to me, and I won't at all be surprised if it stops working that way someday.

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A smoke cloud around your character's head would be great too. In fact I'd like to see that for the player version of SG, since it's kinda hard to tell who it hit as it is now.

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Er, there is such an effect now. You have a grimy cloud of black smoke around you when SG is on you.

Your particle settings may be set too low to see it.

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Why not move the whole thing to an easier location?

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Because I don't want that huge gui element blocking my field of view. I relegate it to the upper right corner of my screen and rarely look at it. I use my "over-the-head" health and endurance bar for probably 90+% of my self-monitoring.

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TT isn't a positioning tool - it's a way to lock mobs after you've already positioned them. Same thing with fear. Same thing with sleet, yada yada yada. Dark pit is a horrible positioning tool, as confused mobs will just scatter.

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If you surprise a mob and lay TT on it that's normally plenty of positioning. Likewise with Dark Pit - follow up with TT and the stunned opponents won't get far at all.

I'm not exactly trying to argue with you here. My experience with these powers seems contrary to yours. You seem to feel that you need to position foes especially densely to use Soul Drain effectively. My DM Scrapper has zero foe positioning ability, and herding isn't guarnateed to produce a useful for spread anymore due to AI changes over the last few issues. Despite this, I use Soul Drain successfully and often on my Scrapper. I just run into spawns when they aren't ready for me and pop it off. I don't need to actively position them.

Compared to my Scrapper, my Defenders and Corruptors have two advantages that offset their "squishyness" - they can approach under stealth and they can mez foes. Where my Scrapper piles in and takes the hits while activating Soul Drain, my Dark Misama characters will get close, land mezzes and possibly roots, run in and then Soul Drain.

As to your point that only Dark and Rad can use this well ... like I said I agree. I just don't see that as a problem. The same things are true in CoH EPPs - you don't get useful synergies between all the sets and all primary/secondary builds. Some sets are so outstanding they work well with anything, but we didn't get that here in any PPP, and I think that's a valid but totally separate complaint.

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Increase the range or add a debuff/stun/etc. to make it useful for other sets (or increase the self buf so it can be more effective with fewer mobs hit) and I won't have a complaint with it.

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I'd love to see this, but because of the above things I describe, I don't see the devs thinking it's needed.

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But yeah, I do check it consistantly.

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I have much too large a screen to constantly shift my eyes up to that corner. If it were undockable from my health/XP meter, that would make it more useful.

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If you check out your status bar, you'll see an icon for the blinding. Come I7, it may even have a text component, like "Taunted" does.

To Test with you!

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Haven't faced a NW on test. That sounds good to me. I do see the current icon we get on live, but it's not very ... eyecatching. Pun unavoidable.

I usually notice the smoke, myself. I am very attentive to the possibility of NWs in Arachnos spawns.

That's a good point. I suspect it's tied to the Stalker-related perception code (it would be sort of uncool to be able to see them, since you could then use that to land location AoEs if you have them). But some sort of visual indicator would be a real improvement.

Hell, if they wanted to be really mean they could make you lose sight/targeting on your teammates; you're supposed to be blind, after all. You'd definitely notice that!

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This is so unfair that this mob does what it does. I dread Arachnos mission even more now, its not fair that she can single handedly cripple, and slaughter a whole team and not be an AV? I guess this is what would happen if they gave stalkers smoke grenade. I also believe the tohit debuff is too extreme most likely she is using that original smoke grenade that was pre-nerfed. If she gets Assasin's Strike I will quit the game.

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I'm going to pull an about-face on my usual post style here.

Night Widows are cool. Leave them alone.

What was that? People falling out of their chairs? Did UberGuy just defend a hard boss that gets teams killed?

I did.

Why? Because Nightwidows are one of the very, very few foes in CoH/V that do not turn the tide through massive damage, stupidly high defenses (though, actually, those are kinda stupidly high), or mass/chain mezzing.

They just debuff you in a really effective way. They make you blind (and also reduce your toHit). They are one of the few examples we have of a Defender-style boss/LT that's actually scary.

Solo, they are no problem for me. On teams where anyone has tactics, they are no problem. In fact I've been on teams where we faced as many as six LT versions per spawn (Arbiter Leery's "Tears of the Spirit" Arc). We did fine.

They have a gimmik. It's easy to find the counter to the gimmik, either as a teammate with Tactics or a yellow inspiration.

I would like them left alone and other more "smash you now!" and "mez you now!" bosses made more like them.

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Seriously though, fear itself doesn't do you any good when as soon as you pop SD you either 1) miss most of them because the radius is so horrible or 2) let them all return fire because you just hit them. It's not the fear that makes you safe, it's dark's formidable ACC debuff.

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Yes, I understand that. The fear keeps them in place so you can position for the SD.

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Sleet scatters the mobs (albeit slowly). They don't have to scatter very much at all to be out of the effect of SD. Same thing for tar patch. There's still the problem of how you actually get them close enough together to use it without dying before you can get the sleet, tar patch, tentacles, whatever down.

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My understanding was that sleet knocked things down. If not, it's because I don't have a /cold that I don't know what I speak of.

Dark/* provides a nice positional control via Tenebrous Tentacles, possibly mixed with Dark Pit to mess with at least minions getting back at you. So just so you know, I don't have a problem positioning foes with Dark/* or */Dark. And notably, having those powersets is why I'm interested in this PPP, since it matches both thematically and (IMO) has nice synergies. I agree that it doesn't do much for some others; that's normal, and (IMO) it's nice that there's a real functional difference in some of the Corruptor sets.

Can you estimate how much smaller than the Scrapper equivalent it is? I'd like to ask Castle about it. It seems like an inappropriate limitation for a less durable class to have a longer recharging power that's also significantly smaller in effect. A Brute or Scrapper can herd foes way, way more easlily that a Corruptor can, and their DS radius isn't huge or anything.

Edit: Thanks to Nofuture.org.uk's posting of RedTomax's power info, I can see that the power radii are identical. Scrapper, Defender and Corruptors all have a 10' radius. Based on my experience with my Scrapper use of this power, I don't see that as an issue for my playstyle.

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I'd like to know more on how SD tests.

For Brutes SD has an inherent taunt component and the range is indeed NMT 10 ft.
Unless those elements were changed for the Corruptor version, I would beware taking this power.

Being rooted for 2.4 seconds amongst 3-8 baddies while taunting AND drawing aggro is no place for a Corruptor to be.
You may be able to trigger [insert your favorite 'Nova' power here], but will you survive its 2-3 second activation time with all that attention on ya?

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If the foes can't hit you due to debuffs and/or control effects (held by Choking Cloud, feared/debuffed by Fearsome Stare, etc), there is little to fear from them. Have them stuck in place with Tenebrous Tentacles, Tar Patch or flopping in Sleet and they can't get out of the radius.

There are lots of ways to make this useful for certain powersets. And since some powersets lack good self damage boosts outside Aim (and Dark Blast doesn't even have that), this can be an attractive option if you happen to be one of those sets.

If it kept the Brute taunt I would consider that a bug. It's possible, though - the Defender version retained the Scrapper critical chance (also a bug, but one that no one complains about. )

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I saw a guy with it, You have to have the enemies RIGHT on top of you to get a good effect. It has the range of energy drain I think(most likely more shallow tho) and I don't think it provides 10% dmg and acc per enemy hit.

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Uh, the Scrapper version isn't that good. It's 5% damage per enemy hit. (And that's based on my own testing, not planner numbers).

Energy drain?