UberGuy

For what it's worth, I don't think DB sucks. Its just not real strong at single-target damage. It's wonderful at AoE (cone) damage. (It's better at ST damage nowadays if you take the much improved Life Drain.)

I took out Trapdoor at +2, but I was heavily IO-laden, and very offense focused (high +recharge and some attention to +damage, plus Assault.)

Are you equipped with IOs at all? If so, what kind of "focus" does the build have? (Defense, recharge, just frankenslotting for good enhancement, etc.)

Sorry if this is out there somewhere already, I don't remember seeing your DDD's build before.

I'm just trying to know the context for your character's abilities, before making suggestions.

Actually, there's a better reason not to: lack of a compelling reason it needs to be done.

Scrappers, not Stalkers, are my favorite AT. But I am glad for the changes that Stalkers are getting with I22, and have zero concerns that Scrappers need any change to account for them.

And yet, once the script was determined, all that challenge basically went away.

I know folks who prefer the old Hamidon raid to the new one. I only personally know the reason a few people liked the old Hami, but it's the same thing for every one of them - it was a slow process we could do on autopilot and be social while it played out.* That's right, they liked the old Hamidon because, once the strategy was understood, it was about three people actually doing something and about 100 people on follow with ranged attacks or PBAoE heals on auto-fire.

That ought to be listed somewhere under the definition of "not hard".

Hamidon was no different than iTrials in this regard. It just took a lot more digging around to find a good strategy. Why'd it take so long? Well, part of it was that the devs themselves weren't sure what would work. They had a strat in mind, but if I recall correctly, they never actually carried it out. (As far as I know, no one "in the wild" ever tried it the dev way.)

*At the I9+ version of Hamidon it's hard for most true participants (i.e., folks who aren't leeching) to be that inactive, so it's not as easy to socialize there during the actual execution.

Yep.

Can you name this content? Because I have never seen it. I have never struggled to get through anything in this game on a Scrapper or Brute. I can think of something I once struggled to get through on a Stalker, but Stalkers have been much improved since then. (It was soloing a Longbow EB who had 50% resists to my attacks, it was back before IOs, and it was on Relentless, and I refused to lower my difficulty settings.)

If that's the kind of thing he's referring to, I'm not sure it actually helps his case much.

Heh. I actually have a 53. How's that for freaky?

Edit: I've also got 5 or 6 L52 Nucs. I don't have any 53s. though.

Ditto.

Hm. Well, the key here may be "accurately and consistently", but it does break out individual buffs and debuffs by caster and instance in the main CAM. (The big detailed window, not the smaller one that's limited to 10 attributes.)

I did say "unconditional with respect to their current health". I did not mean that it is perfectly reproducible, but rather that deciding to run when debuffed/DoTted is that seems to happen irrespective of current health.

Go fight either Deathsurge or Scrapyard with a Night Widow. I have never failed to set either of them running within seconds of starting to beat on them, even when all by lonesome.

Edit: You did say "DoT alone", and a Night Widow is also laying on nasty -speed. However, this is heavily mitigated by GM resistances, so I think it's an AI issue if gross debuff is being considered instead of net. However, I do have another example: my DB/Regen Scrapper. I play this character on high settings using a rather Leeroy Jenkins "kill them fast before they kill me". I pile into spawns and AoE the minions to death ASAP, using Regen's clicks to survive the heavy initial damage. By the time I'm out of clicks, the incoming DPS has been attenuated by me attenuating the spawn size with swords. When I picked up Reactive Interface, this character's play changed dramatically. The reason was that foes were quicker to retreat from melee because of Reactive. This actually dramatically reduced incoming melee damage against large spawns, which made it easier to stay alive. I consider that highly reproducible when it's consistent enough to allow playstyle change.

When you build a tool that does not facilitate what people want to do, that's called a design failure. And they do have control over what they desgin.

They gave us a limited subset of what is possible. Imagine if the tool let you see people who were waiting and what level and AT they are, and include them in your team as you build it. And hey, what do you know, features like that actually already exist in the Arena interface.

Yes, if someone forms a team of only people they know, then they're never going to add puggers. But that's not what a lot of people do. They form a team of people they can see and "touch" and not completely random people. And that is why the LFG queue does not meet the need of a lot of the player base. Too many of them are disinterested in wholly random teammates.

The wait time is not representative of anything useful. It does not matter whatsoever if it is 100% accurate of something that no one cares about. It is broken not because it is malfunctioning, but because it is not useful.

People are not "stuck" in a mindset that prevents them from using the LFG queue correctly. The LFG queue is designed to be used in ways that are not compatible with practical team formation. This has been pointed out to the devs repeatedly since it was created, and what is being described in this thread is representative of the issues that were raised.

So "we told them so" seems appropriate, if crass.

I can run up and hit something for 1500 damage, and it won't run, but I can hit it for about 100 damage and five ticks of 12 DoT and it will run away.

They don't run away because you slaughtered their buddies. Until they get low on health, they don't run away because you hurt them. They will often run away unconditionally with respect to their current health when you hit them with a DoT or a debuff.

I never hated chasing Fury, even when it was "harder" (I never had a problem with getting it up there). I like playing a Scrapper over a Brute because they do not play the same and I like playing a Scrapper better. I like having damage that's not a low base and a high bonus, diluting other bonuses. I prefer the balance of damage to HP that Scrappers have. I like not having Gauntlet.

There's more to the differences in Brute and Scrapper than just that one has to "chase" Fury to get damage.

It sounds to me like you want to prefer the Scrapper play, but you can't overlook how much you value what you see as the benefits of taunt, so you can't justify it to yourself any more. That's fine, but don't try to turn that into a claim of wholly objective superiority. That just does not exist outside of getting stuff to hug you for AoEs, and that "superiority" is just not universally applicable across Scrapper powersets.

This is my stance. I don't want more taunt auras. Taunt in something like that should serve a specific purpose either in a powerset (such as Invincibility, AOO, or RTTC's buffs that depend on nearby enemies) or an AT (such as Brutes and Tankers having aggro sponge roles). It should not be requested specifically to solve an issue with AI.

And I do contend it's an issue at some level. I'm not like some folks around here who refuse to play something that lacks such an aura, but I feel that something is wrong that anyone feels significantly compelled to make that choice on the grounds that it affects the AI behavior the degree that it does.

There are flight behaviors I have little problem with, even though they technically affect my reward rates. Mobs that run away when at low health, or after they fail to hit me for some time that's meaningful relative to their rank makes sense to me. Mobs that run away so far they lose aggro the instant I happen to damage them with a DoT effect is preposterous and should not happen. Same with Giant Monsters who run from me when I am alone and not actually successfully affecting their health.

Castle maintained that he could not see an issue with fleeing NPCs. I can't reconcile that with the number of people I know who comment on it. Here's hoping that perhaps the new guard are more open to the idea that the game is actually doing something noticeable.

Our dev studio seems to have presented their position as very focused on the existing subscribers and/or those who held long-term subscriptions prior to Freedom's launch. I think that translates directly into the kind of thing you're describing above - being less generous with the things they sell us may have been considered off-putting to full subscribers.*

There's a risk/reward thing going on here. Assuming a relatively stable subscriber base, keeping those subscribers happy while getting them to spend a bit more on store items may be a less risky but also less profitable option than going for a more "cutthroat" sales approach that may net more total income but risks alienating that stable subscriber base.

CoH has, from past comments, been something of an outlier in the nature of its long-term subscriber loyalty. That probably factored into their choices in this area.

*(To be honest, I do think they were overly generous with some of the benefits we were able to buy at Freedom launch, like extra inventory space. By making those expensive but account-wide instead of cheaper but per-character, they probably deprived themselves of ongoing income as existing players make new characters. I say that even as I wince at the notion of paying for such increases in an on-going way.)