Umbral

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Is there a trainer in Eden?

I think she would be the least used trainer, thus making her an unpopular hussy.

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There isn't a trainer in Eden, nor is there a trainer in Crey's Folly or Boomtown. The Hollows and Striga Island shared the unique distinction of being the only hazard zones with trainers in them until the Faultline revamp was done.

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I know Martial Arts is an endurance hog, so I knew I'd need both Stamina and Quick Recovery. I took Stamina at level 20 out of habit, as that's what I take at level 20 on all of my other characters.

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The point is that MA isn't going to be an end hog until much later when you're actually running gapless. If you're burning all of those power choices and taking the worse of the two powers first, you're making your life a whole lot more difficult than it needs to be. Honestly, I'd say that you don't even need to bother with the Fitness pool at all on */WP until after you get the Fighting pool. Quick Recovery more than covers any endurance that you'll consume from your primary and secondary.

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(in fact Hack-HS-Hack-HS is your ideal chain)

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Do you mean Hack>Dis>Hack>HS, because the minimum recharge on Headsplitter is 2.8 seconds and the animation time of Hack is 1.584 seconds.

The problem with the Hack>Dis>Hack>HS chain is that it's even more recharge intensive than Hack>Dis>HS, requiring 305% +recharge in Hack in order to be seamless.

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Buh-Wha?!

How was Electric Mastery for Blasters not as good?!?

If I recall correctly they were going to remove the (awesome) hold and give us Surge of Power. Probably because their datamining suggested that not many people took the hold.

Why they would remove the hold instead of EMP is beyond me though.

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Actually, they wanted to remove EMP for Surge of Power (tier 4 for tier 4) because many Blasters that took Elec Mastery never bothered to take EMP. For all of those sets, they simply datamined for rarely taken powers and looked into replacing those with more meaningful and desirable powers to make the APPs and PPPs themselves more palatable for more players (especially the number monkeys among us).

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Of if BABs decides he wants to play BABs one day, he can go to Galaxy City without causing a paradox.

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BABs has a great story about his doing just this and wreaking great havok upon Galaxy City. IIRC, he disappeared the BAB trainer while simultaneously spawning a BAB hero under his control at the same location. From how he tells it, he ran around and beat of stuff with a number of other people in the zone, but then BABs had a problem finding where he put the BAB trainer when he was finished running around. I believe he had to resort to resetting the server to get him back in place for everyone.

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Blaze should not be affected, because of fire blasts zero mitigation. Having it super damage really fast IS its mitigation.

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The point that I'm trying to make is that Blaze does more damage than any other non-snipe blast except for Blazing Arrow (which only wins because its ticks are guaranteed) but takes the exact amount of time to animate as a tier 1 blast. It's DPA is through the friggin' roof compared to all of the others out there.

Blazing Arrow: 86.73 DPA (171.73 dam, 1.98 sec animation)
Power Burst: 59.1 DPA (132.63 dam, 2.244 sec animation)
Blaze: 143.7 DPA (170.49 dam, 1.188 sec animation)
Bitter Ice Blast: 108.0 DPA (142.64 dam, 1.32 sec animation)
Telekinetic Blast: 103.2 DPA (122.62 dam, 1.188 sec animation)
Shout: 45.67 DPA (132.64 dam, 2.904 sec animation)

Honestly, Blaze is just too friggin' good. Even discounting the 37.86 additional damage from the bonus DoT (re: secondary effect), Blaze would still be the top attack on that list with 111.6 DPA. It's not as if Blaze is only slightly better. It's that it's substantially better in such a way that no other tier 3 blast can even compete, even ignoring secondary effects.

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BiB however, considering the lines of how low its aoe is, might get a tiny increase in animation. Perhaps to 1.5 or 1.83, but nothing superly major. IF its 1.83s i'd honestly expect to see the impale animation used.

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Honestly, BIB is going to get a much smaller change than Blaze will if/when Castle gets to it, if only because it's on a 20 seconds recharge rather than a 10 second recharge. I still predict that it will get its animation changed to something slower, but not so much as I expect Blaze to get slowed down to.

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So you mean like how a Scrapper can't solo a giant monster, and how a radiation/illusion controller can?

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That's an issue with how regen debuffs (and all debuffs, for that matter) operate off of a percentage basis rather than a whole number basis. -Regen does almost nothing against small targets, but it does huge things to large targets like AVs and GMs, even through their incredibly high levels of debuff resistance. The functional DPA of Lingering Radiation when used against an even con level 50 AV is 1152.8 (1978.2 hp not regened over the course of 30 seconds; 1.712 sec animation). Considering that AVs have lower regen than Giant Monsters (AV have a lower base regen rate than they should to make them easier to defeat with suboptimal groups) and Giant Monsters have static debuff resistance values (thanks to Giant Monster coding) that are all lower than that of a level 50 AV, Lingering Radiation has an even higher contribution against those.

Stack Lingering Radiation (ignoring all of the other things that */rad brings to bear like the 30% -res) with Phantom Army (re: better than a tank because they can't take damage, get aggro just as well, and still deal respectable damage) and you've got a recipe for GM and AV soloing. The -regen that exists in the debuff sets is just that absurdly good.

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Out of curiosity, could anybody take a stab (or a hack or a slash ) at perhaps quantifying "high" versus "extreme" amounts of recharge? I'm currently waffling between the two primaries and WP as a secondary, and I'm not sure how much recharge I could cram into WP to achieve "extreme." Thanks!

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Honestly, the amount of recharge you're going to need is heavily dependent on one thing: how much DA/Parry you want. In general, a */wp build is going to want to dance around with at least 2, if not 3, which has a substantial effect upon your attack string.

Assuming a couple DA/Parry stacks are "required" to be up at all times (there will be a period wherein their stacked unless you're really good a micro managing the string), Parry>Disembowel>Headsplitter is probably about as you can expect but that's pretty much the providence of BS/SR because of the recharge requirement (Headsplitter requires 291% recharge to be seamless). Interestingly, this is also the optimized string for non-Parry attack strings because Parry and Hack as completely interchangeable, with the exception that Hack recharges significantly slower, which is ignorable at this point (it only requires 78% to be used in this chain). Both of these strings are actually still the most effective available from ~250% +recharge above however. You just have to deal with the small gap before Headsplitter each time (small being only a fraction of a second)

Katana is slightly easier on the requirements because DA>SD>GD only requires 279% in Golden Dragonfly. Forgoing DA, you're going to need to operate with GC>SD>GC>GD (only requires 250% recharge in GD) because GC>SD>GD requires 379% recharge in GD, which is going to require some substantial outside buffs to manage.

The interesting thing about both of these attack string designs is that they're largely modular. BS can switch out a Hack for a Parry on the fly without messing with any tweaks to the attack string and having a minimal effect on DPS. Katana has a bit of a harder time, but it's equally possible to simply alternate between the two attack strings (re: DA>SD>GD>GC>SD>GC>GD) while having a minimal effect as long as you've got the recharge to manage the more intensive of the two (re: the first).

As to DPS and DA/Parry contribution, numbers incoming...

Katana:
DA>SD>GD - 66.68 DPS (345.7 damage in 5.184 secs); 193% DA uptime
GC>SD>GC>GD - 74.55 DPS (403.5 damage in 5.412 secs); 0% DA uptime
DA>SD>GD>GC>SD>GC>GD - 70.7 DPS (749.2 damage in 10.596 secs); 94% DA uptime

Broadsword:
Parry>Dis>HS - 62.55 DPS (379.8 damage in 6.072 secs); 164% Parry uptime
Hack>Dis>HS - 71.62 DPS (434.9 damage in 6.072 secs); 0% Parry uptime

What these numbers don't account for, and serve to make Katana even better, is proc contribution, which favors the greater number of attacks within a similar time frame that Katana has, further increasing it's already impressive lead.

Personally, I've always found that Katana has a tendency to perform universally better when you actually put it into practice and start slotting it up. They perform roughly equally excluding anything above SOs, but, when you get involved with IOs, Katana wins out pretty quickly simply because it has fewer requirements, easier slotting, and better proc functionality to go with its naturally better numbers.

Plus, Katana is prettier.

It might also be that they didn't want to have a huge amount of signature character that exist purely to stand around and train people (that's not particularly villainous). More than half of the heroes that survived the Rikti War have the primary purpose of standing around doing nothing. I think they wanted to avoid that. Personally, I wouldn't have been adverse to heroes leveling up at similar individuals in which they are simply registering their new powers rather than being taught how to use them by someone who should in no way have any knowledge of my heroes actual powers. Ms. Liberty should have about as much expertise telling my Fire/Therm troller how to use her powers as an English Literature professor has telling me how to build a computer database.

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If I have 2 speed boost ongoing with me?
If I have 4 speed boost ongoing with me?

Right now with Hasten up and with Obliteration set on it, the recharge rate is 128 seconds base on Mids.

Is there a recharge cap?

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Inferring from your time of 128 seconds (assuming it's actually taking into account your other +recharge bonuses), you're packing ~181% total +recharge for Inferno (the bonuses you gave us only allot for 164.93% +recharge). With 2 Speed Boosts (100% +recharge), you'd have a recharge of 94.43 seconds. With 4 Speed Boosts (200% +recharge), you'd have a recharge of 74.8 seconds.

The recharge cap is 400%. This means that the lowest recharge you can get for any power is 1/5th of the original recharge time (72 seconds for Inferno).

The formula for calculating the recharge time on a power is rather simple:

(base recharge time)/(1 + rechargeBonus)

To determine how much +recharge is needed in order to get a certain recharge time, it's a similarly easy formula:

((base recharge time)/(required recharge time)) - 1

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Hrm. Yet, I coulda sworn that contacts worked on combat level.

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AFAIK, there are 3 separate "levels" that players have: combat, threat, and real. Real level is used in the absence of everything else to determine all level dependent variables and by contacts when they give you missions (talking to a contact will always use your real level, not threat or combat), among other things. Combat level is used when you're sk'd or exemplared to set where you would be otherwise (without forcing retraining and everything). Threat level is used to determine when you're fully trained and what zones you can get in to. The coding for level has to be rather interesting for CoX because of the incredible elasticity of it. This discussion is making me want to see the source code for the game even more than I usually do. T.T

My current Scrapper project (after having rounded out the rest of my AT collection) is a Claws/SR. It's remarkably survivable (even at low levels I notice the contribution of the toggles) and has an activated mez power which might fulfill your "not toggle and walk" requirement.

Powers don't recharge until they're finished animating. You can't have a seamless (re: no waiting in between attacks) attack string that only consists of a single power.

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Everytime someone complains about the huge disparity between hero and villain content - missions / zones / Task Forces - they're going to be told one of those above things.

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Every time someone complains about the disparity between hero and villain content needs to get it through their thick skull that blueside had 18 months of time in which CoV did not exist. The time difference is even more when you consider that, while they were building the engine and designing the game, the devs were still thinking about content all the while.

There's also the entire issue of what actually counts when you are making the comparisons. Villains may have fewer zones but theirs are better designed and, on average, larger. They're also lacking the ghost town zones that almost no one goes in to unless they absolutely have to (re: hazard zones). They've actually got more story arcs, but, seeing as their shorter most people ignore this, although they're nearly universally better written and more interesting to advance through (this coming from a guy who's actually run every bit of content blueside). Their ATs follow a more integrated design concept.

The problem with trying to compare redside to blueside and finding redside lacking is that it ignores the fact that many of the reasons why redside is like that is because that's what players wanted. They wanted shorter story arcs because the 12 mission slogs through repetitive content with only minor advancements in story every mission got boring quickly. They wanted fewer maps with more in them because there are simply too many largely empty maps blueside (I'm looking at you IP). They've got less content (and always will, virtually guaranteed) because it's a 3.5 year old game whereas blueside is a 5 year old game. Both of them have gotten roughly the same level of attention from the devs (in terms of new content) since they were released. Blueside just had an 18 month head start.

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Really?? I've never heard of that, I wonder if that's true? I thought they started recharging the same time they were activated (at least it seems like they do in game when you use them).

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Powers don't recharge until they're finished animating. This is why you can't use a power continuously without any gaps in the attack chain if you get the recharge under the animation time.

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No real need for the slow resist IO either, but they still made one.

Carnies are another faction this IO would help against.

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Tell that to my DM/Regen Scrapper. Slow resist is a friggin' godsend when you're survivability is contingent on getting your numerous click powers back quickly. I can't count the times that I've taken an alpha and died 30 seconds after because none of the click powers could come back up because I was slogging through recharge debuff hell.

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If I try to mod Blue Steel's posts half the forums disappear

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If you try to remod them after his posts naturally revert to their natural form, the other half also disappear.

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So, in a strictly economic sense, the game legally belongs to the company and developers who created it, but in a greater cultural sense, the game belongs to all of us and needs us to thrive.

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But the issue also arises insofar as who actually has control over the game. We cannot force any changes to canon, even if they be incredibly popular because the game world is in the control of the devs. We cannot force any changes to the game system, even if they be needed for balance and more streamlined gameplay. All that the players control is how the game operates outside of the actual gaming environment. Players have a modicum of control over whether the game continues to exist, but they have no direct control over what happens within the game outside of their own character (and even then it's only so limited because the devs' control the story and how it affects the world).

The entire debate is then based around what you think "control" means within this context. If you mean "control" from within a context of "to set the comparative effectiveness of powers and set the canon story", the game is entirely within the control of the devs. If you mean "control" from within a context of "making the game fun/playable/etc", the control is split between the devs and the players. The players will make the game playable and fun by simply being their to interact with other people (re: putting the "multiplayer" in "MMORPG"), but the devs still have the ability to affect that fun by altering powers and gameplay.

Personally, I view the player-dev relationship in any MMO the same way I view the PC-GM relationship in PnP games. I can do all the game design in the world, and it won't make my game fun if I don't have any players. My enjoyment is contingent on the joy I instill in others. In that way, even though it's my game because I designed the world, created the storyline, and am the final arbiter in all things, it's the player's game because they're the ones actually making the storyline live and making the game actually get played.

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dropping MoG.

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If you drop MoG, I'm going to kill you. MoG is, by far, the strongest tool in a Regener's arsenal. It gives you a 15 second period of complete and utter untouchability (except against psychic) which is more than long enough to get your feet back under you. Any */regen that doesn't take it is purposefully nerfing themselves.

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another thing I am sorely disapointed with MoG..... any advice for this power since it works completly different then ive read.. or at least thought I understood it...

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MoG is a short term, incredibly high survivability power. In general, it's best uses are for soaking alpha strike (re: jump in, then use it or use it shortly before jumping in) or, as I tend to use it, right before I sense the tide of combat getting ready to send a wave of damage my way (re: synced attacks from multiple enemies). Considering what it does and what */regen has available, going without MoG is completely stupid.

I would sooner give up Instant Healing than Moment of Glory.

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I am going to paraphrase Castle, you should not compare any Tier 3s to Bitter Ice Blast and Blaze because they are not what Tier 3 blasts should be. Blaze and Bitter Ice Blast are going to get nerfed hard in terms of damage when Castle gets around to.

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If you really think this, can you make the list of what gonna be nerfed hard when Castle gets around it ? Following this reasoning, I see at least a few dozen of things.

And when all those things that make sets uniques and not clones to each other gonna be drown in the swamp of normalization (ala i13 pvp), there wont be alot of "super" left in this game

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I think the point of it is that they're powers that operate significantly outside of the acceptable bounds of what is considered "normal". They're significant outliers from a basic balance perspective because they were balanced without consideration for their animation times. If you want an example of a similar power getting kicked back in line, just look at Energy Transfer. Its damage wasn't touched, but its DPA was brought back in line (though still incredibly high) by increasing the animation time. You can probably expect something similar seeing as the damage the two powers mentioned deal isn't that far out of normalcy. It's the time in which that damage is dealt in.

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The only problem with this is a TF giver can't be a trainer too; or at least hasn't been so far.

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I believe it's possible to have separate contacts both with the same name (but different IDs) in different zones (for appearances sake) with one being the trainer and the other being the contact. I can't recall this being used in game anywhere, but I vaguely recall a dev saying it was possible.

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Technically, yes... but I'm pretty sure they'd consider it immersion breaking. War Witch is only in two zones because they're different versions of the character.

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I don't know. I could easily imagine it possible to consider them to be the same Blue Steel but simply at different places at different times. We already have many of the other named heroes and villains being fought/being allied with in missions while they exist elsewhere in the game world and that's not considered immersion breaking. In fact, if you run Maria Jenkins' arc, Statesman has apparently gone missing. I oftentimes have to prevent myself from simply telling her to check the battleship in IP if she really wants to find him. :P

I would have some issue with it if the multiple instances of Blue Steel were in the same map, but, as per my suggestion, that wouldn't be the case.

The game belongs to the Devs. They can do with it as they please. We pay them money to rent the game from them. It's within their best interest to make choices that will increase the number of rentors rather than decrease that number, so players do have some effect upon it, but the game is not, nor will it ever be, the players'.

Well, first off, you're not soft capped while solo. You're accounting for an ally in range for Phalanx Fighting, which means that you're really only operating with 42.4% +def(melee) and 40.8% +def(ranged, AoE). I'mma do some tweakery to see if I can manage to get you softcapped to all without killing everything else.

Edit: Tweakery completed, lost 25% +rech but slightly more than softcapped now (re: 6% more +def)

Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.401
http://www.cohplanner.com/

[u]Click this DataLink to open the build![u]

Darkshieldguy: Level 50 Natural Scrapper
Primary Power Set: Dark Melee
Secondary Power Set: Shield Defense
Power Pool: Fighting
Power Pool: Fitness
Power Pool: Speed
Power Pool: Leaping
Ancillary Pool: Body Mastery

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Smite -- C'ngImp-Acc/Dmg(A), C'ngImp-Dmg/EndRdx(3), C'ngImp-Dmg/Rchg(3), C'ngImp-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(5), C'ngImp-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(5)
Level 1: Deflection -- RedFtn-Def/EndRdx(A), RedFtn-Def/Rchg(7), RedFtn-EndRdx/Rchg(7), RedFtn-Def(48), RedFtn-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(50), RedFtn-EndRdx(50)
Level 2: Battle Agility -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A), LkGmblr-Def(9), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(9)
Level 4: True Grit -- S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(A), Numna-Regen/Rcvry+(11), Numna-Heal(11), Heal-I(31), ResDam-I(48), ResDam-I(50)
Level 6: Boxing -- RzDz-Acc/Rchg(A), RzDz-EndRdx/Stun(13), RzDz-Acc/EndRdx(13), RzDz-Stun/Rng(15), RzDz-Acc/Stun/Rchg(15), RzDz-Immob%(48)
Level 8: Siphon Life -- T'Death-Acc/Dmg(A), T'Death-Dmg/EndRdx(17), T'Death-Dmg/Rchg(17), T'Death-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(19), T'Death-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(19), T'Death-Dam%(46)
Level 10: Active Defense -- HO:Membr(A), HO:Membr(21), HO:Membr(46)
Level 12: Hurdle -- Jump-I(A)
Level 14: Health -- Mrcl-Rcvry+(A), Mrcl-Heal(21), Heal-I(29)
Level 16: Against All Odds -- EndRdx-I(A)
Level 18: Dark Consumption -- Oblit-Dmg(A), Oblit-Acc/Rchg(23), Oblit-Dmg/Rchg(25), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(25), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(27), Oblit-%Dam(27)
Level 20: Tough -- HO:Ribo(A), HO:Ribo(23)
Level 22: Stamina -- P'Shift-End%(A), P'Shift-EndMod(29), EndMod-I(31)
Level 24: Hasten -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(31)
Level 26: Soul Drain -- Oblit-Dmg(A), Oblit-Acc/Rchg(33), Oblit-Dmg/Rchg(33), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(33), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(34), Oblit-%Dam(34)
Level 28: Combat Jumping -- Zephyr-Travel(A), Zephyr-Travel/EndRdx(34), Zephyr-ResKB(36), LkGmblr-Rchg+(36)
Level 30: Weave -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A), LkGmblr-Def(36), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(37)
Level 32: Midnight Grasp -- Hectmb-Dam%(A), Hectmb-Dmg/EndRdx(37), Hectmb-Acc/Rchg(37), Hectmb-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(39), Hectmb-Dmg/Rchg(39)
Level 35: Shield Charge -- Armgdn-Dmg/Rchg(A), Armgdn-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(39), Armgdn-Acc/Rchg(40), Armgdn-Dmg/EndRdx(40), Armgdn-Dam%(40), FrcFbk-Rechg%(42)
Level 38: Super Jump -- Zephyr-Travel(A), Zephyr-Travel/EndRdx(42), Zephyr-ResKB(42)
Level 41: Focused Accuracy -- GSFC-ToHit(A), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg(43), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg/EndRdx(43), GSFC-Rchg/EndRdx(43), GSFC-ToHit/EndRdx(45), GSFC-Build%(46)
Level 44: Super Speed -- Zephyr-Travel(A), Zephyr-Travel/EndRdx(45), Zephyr-ResKB(45)
Level 47: Phalanx Fighting -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
Level 49: Grant Cover -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- ULeap-Stlth(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Critical Hit

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The only problem with this is a TF giver can't be a trainer too; or at least hasn't been so far.

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I believe it's possible to have separate contacts both with the same name (but different IDs) in different zones (for appearances sake) with one being the trainer and the other being the contact. I can't recall this being used in game anywhere, but I vaguely recall a dev saying it was possible.

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quick question...

why swipe instead of strike... more chance for ToD proc or just a faster attack to fill chains...?

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Their DPA is pretty close (49.5 v. 56.2) but both of them pale in comparison to Focus (72.5) and nothing quite competes with Follow Up (52.17 DPA and 37.5% +dam that's stackable). Swipe is generally used rather than Strike because it consumes less time in the attack string, thereby allowing for more use of Focus (for the awesome DPA), Follow Up (awesome DPA + buff), and Slash (respectable DPA and AH proc chance). When you consider what those 2 powers do, you generally want to minimize the time you use other powers (like Swipe or Strike).