Umbral
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Although honestly, the invuln shouldn't be trying to herd either. I don't think invulnability gets much in the way of defense debuff resistance as well. Could be wrong though.
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Just like with most of your other power set knowledge, you are. Invuln gets 25% def debuff resistance from Tough Hide and Resist Physical Damage, giving them a total of 50% def debuff resistance, which is far from insignificant. -
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I know half the people here will be rolling their eyes at this, but....
Force Fields. If you're planning on being the only Defender on an 8-man team, and you expect to keep the whole team alive all the time "easily", then Force Fields has the simple mitigation that will do that for you.
You buff the team, make them into Gods and then either play around with your other toys or blast [censored] in the face the rest of the time.
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This. There is no other defender primary I've encountered that can do so much for a team's survivability. Sure, it's pretty much useless for offensive contribution (beyond Repulsion Bomb), but that's why you take Sonic Blast. -
I wouldn't put it past WotC to have copyrighted the use of Sneak Attack where it applies to any additional effectiveness when using an attack from a hidden or advantageous state.
The big problem is having the powers themselves differentiate between normal crits and crits from the hidden state. IIRC, the game views both of them in the same manner. One of them is just a power case wherein the effect is guaranteed and the other where the effect has only a chance of occuring. -
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Would you compare Invuln to Fire Armor without Healing Flames/Dull Pain?
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No, but the reason those have to be incorporated is because that's a power set to power set comparison within the same AT. When you're comparing peak damage tolerance, you don't have to factor in values like that because they come in from the rest of the team. We're not comparing a Brute and a MM in a vacuum. Quite the contrary, we're comparing Brutes and MMs in the realm of optimized performance wherein everything is capped. That would be like saying that Controllers are more survivable than Tankers because of their mez effects and debuff, even though the presence of mez effects on the team with the Tanker will affect them both identically. If anything, the situational comparison for a MM is even more rare than the one made for the Brute because it requires more +hp and the MM has less native defense and resistance to build off of. The fact of the matter is that peak performance evaluations can operate largely ignorant of power set because the entire point of them is to identify ingrained AT performance values. The Brute has a higher ingrained peak survivability (and damage) value whereas the Mastermind has higher peak support capability. -
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Now go back and do the math again, this time, account for the fact that Resistance isn't the only form of mitigation, thus brutes aren't necessarily taking 2/5ths of the damage of MM's. And in the case of pure resistance vs resistance would be an exception to the number of damage mitigation choices in comparison to one another, and not the rule.
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Considering that we're talking peak, which means that absolutely everything is at the cap. Defense, Resistance, Hit Points, everything. Debuffs are going to benefit everyone on the team, so it's a moot point. The only difference between the two at peak is hit points and resistance. Since Brutes have the higher resistance cap and twice the max hit points, neither of which the MM is capable of making up for, they fall behind. -
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Follow Up > Focus > Slash
What does it take recharge wise to get Focus to hit with that sweet triple Follow Up goodness?
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Follow Up: needs 2.94 secs, base 12 secs, requires 308%
Focus: needs 2.64 secs, base 6.4 secs, requires 142%
Slash: need 2.376, base 4.8 secs, requires 102%
Simple Formula for Recharge Requirement:
(BaseRechargeTime/RequiredRechargeTime) - 1 = RequiredRecharge -
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Well, seeing as how the devs as late as issue 9 (during the i10 beta to be exact) stated that MM's were to be intended as the "Tanks" of CoV
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I know the quote you're referring to and you're misinterpreting it. The specific intention of that dev's line was to point out that, back when they were first developing the game, the early design intent had been to make MMs the "Tankers". The problem was that, in CoV beta, players naturally diverted to using Brutes as the "Tankers" (which, at that time had no punchvoke and only the taunt auras that Scrappers had) rather than MMs. The design intent didn't stick any longer than it's first encounter with players, which is why Brutes were given the additional aggro control tools MMs never got the same degree of survivability.
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combined with the fact that MM pets have a higher threat mod than brutes
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Once again it's an artifact of the time period in which they were supposed to do so. The only reason it still exists now is that the MM pets are supposed to be able to grab aggro off of the MM without much effort. If the MM and the pet are both dealing damage to the same target, the dev design choice was to have the pet be the default target, even if the MM was the first to fire. Brutes don't need a high threat modifier because they're operating with Taunt on all of their attacks which does more than the MM pet threat modifier anyway and their going to be dealing more damage from a single source so they'll be getting aggro anyway.
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AND a higher mitigation threshold (excepting AoE's) than brutes seems to suggest that you're wrong.
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MMs do not have a higher mitigation threshold. At cap, the only differences between the two is that Brutes have a higher resistance cap (90% compared to 75%) and MMs have a greater theoretical pool of hit points from bodyguard (which was only added after release to decrease MM squishiness, further illustrating the lack of Tanking intent). Since Brutes are taking 2/5ths of the damage that an MM would, at peak, in order to achieve a greater level of mitigation, an MM would need to have 250% of the max hit points of a Brute (re: 8031.75). Considering that, even with all 6 henchmen on bodyguard would only reduce incoming damage by 75% (2 shares to MM, 1 for each hench), meaning that an MM at his/her hp cap would only require 6425.6 damage to kill, which is more than 1500 short of actually generating equivalent peak.
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I'd just looked, and brutes do in fact have a slightly higher value. It's not even a full percent higher, but it is higher. Thus they do get more defense.
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That's really funny because I just checked City of Data, which rips the info straight from the game even to the point of outputting everything as the game sees it, and their values are exactly the same. I even then logged into the game and checked and, guess what, they're exactly the same. The only differences between the sets are that Evasion got a Taunt effect added to it for Brutes and that Evasion and Quickness are switched in the power order.
You really need to learn to get your information correct. -
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Whovian: The RNG hates you. Deal with it. There has never been a reliable demonstration of super high levels of defense actually decreasing survivability. In fact, defense debuffs, which are the primary method for screwing over defense based characters of any kind, are nearly completely negated (95%) by SR if you've actually got the toggles on. Unless the enemies you're fighting are packing tohit of some kind, defense above 45% is going to do nothing for you. Popping purple insps when you've already got more than 60% is a waste. Something else to remember: softcap defense will not make you immortal. You will still be hit by attacks. Even assuming that you're running against even level minions (re: no increased accuracy so you're actually running against the 5% hit chance), one in every 20 attacks will still connect. If you've got 16 guys attacking you for 300 damage per attack once every 2 seconds (91.2 incoming dam/sec w/ scaling resists) and you're only running with base hp and Health (11.11 hp/sec), you're going to be dead in 16.43 seconds on average. Softcap def doesn't mean that you're unkillable. The Law of Large Numbers. Learn to live with it.
Spazz: MMs as the Tankers of CoV was only used in a vague and largely abandoned early design phase of CoV. It never actually hit the real world. If MMs were meant to be Tankers or aggro manipulators of any kind, they would have been given native aggro grabbing capabilities (whether for themselves or their pets) as well as the ability to take hits better, even with bodyguard turned on. As it stands, they're nowhere near tough enough or capable of enough aggro control to actually fulfill the role. Please learn to actually look at game mechanics and real functionality before you begin citing out of date developer lines. Strangely enough, Whovian got this closest to right because Brutes are meant to be the "tough" AT (as evidenced by the fact that they can be buffed absurdly) but they're not actually meant to be Tanker equivalents. The design mentality for CoV was to give everyone the ability to keep themselves alive and spread aggro out across the entire group rather than placing it all on one character. This is why Brutes have lower survivability and only a single target punch-voke.
Madam_Enigma: Scrappers and Brutes will have the exact same defense, assuming that they've taken and slotted powers in the exact same manner, because they've got the exact same self buff modifier. However, a Brute will always be more survivable than a Scrapper because Brutes have higher base hit points. As long as the two are built the same, the Brute will be slightly more than 12% harder to kill simply because s/he has more hit points, completely disregarding differences in mitigation caps. -
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Little discussion in the brute boards.
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat....=0#Post13617256
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An idiot thread by an idiot OP who is incapable of realizing the effect of debuff resists. -
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Ranged characters need a pool power for status effects.
This is especially true for Defenders and Corruptors who can give status effect protection but are totally vulnerable to it.
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By that same logic, Tankers and Scrappers should have any mez protection because they can't dish out noticeable quantities of mez effects.
The ability to deal mez effects is not a reason to be given the ability to deal with them, especially since mez effects are, in and of themselves, a defensive mechanism. You'll either be able to mez a target or resist the mez effects themselves.
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I would like to ask for a simple pool power that provides status effect protection. This same pool power can also give status effect attacks too if need be.
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There's already a pool power that does this and it's probably the closest you're ever going to get: Acrobatics. Mag 9 KU/KB protection, mag 2 hold protection, and 48.44% hold resist. As to mez effects, Fighting gives you those: Stun from Boxing and KB from Kick.
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Kind of like the self clear mind and the stun grenades. This will help ranged classes keep ranged since "Range is a defense"
, it only seems fair that ranged classes should have some way of preventing melee classes from getting close.
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You seem to be forgetting that mez effects do precisely this. Use the immobilizes and other mez effects that the ranged ATs get and, even if they hit you with one, you'll still have them at range.
You're also completely misinterpreting "range is a defense". The first would be that ranged attacks in CoX are, in general, about 20% weaker than melee attacks. They do less damage. The second is that it's impossible be hit by melee attacks when you're out of melee range. Of course, if it were possible to keep a target at range no matter what they did, you'd have a perfect defense against melee, which is completely unfair. Melee needs to have a chance, which is why it's the prerogative of the ranged character to spend as much time at range as possible before the melee individual closes the distance.
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Immunity to status effects and using status effects themselves is a good answer. 
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Immunity to status effects and being able to dish out those effects is... completely broken, especially since there is no logical means by which you can connect the two in terms of game balance. The two are completely opposed.
I heartily suggest you try to actually learn to play the game as well as figuring out what you're talking about before you start suggesting pool powers be put in game specifically to account for your personal inability to deal with an incorporated balance mechanic that everyone else has learned to deal with. Besides, the power pools don't exist to fix holes in the ATs. They exist to augment what you get from your AT power sets. -
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Well then you should have said that. :P
I'm only a lowly scrapper. Anything that requires more brain power than "Go. Hunt. Kil Everything." isn't going to have much lasting effect. We only do all of that math in the Scrapper forums because we can do math intuitively...
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I'm only a lowly defender. Anything that requires more brain power than "Go. Hunt. Kil Everything." isn't going to have much lasting effect. We only do all of that math in the defender forums because we can do math intuitively...
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I've seen the amount of math you guys do over on this forum. You guys don't even get close to the stuff that we do on the Scrapper forums. :P No offense intended, it just doesn't really apply to Defenders, especially since the Defender forum is much more focused on tactics and build rather than actual numerical comparison of any substantial kind. -
First off, if you're talking critters, you've got the wrong base tohit. It's 50% for non-players.
You're also stacking defense types. It doesn't work that way. An attack will go against the highest applicable defense type. If it's a lethal ranged attack, it will use either your ranged or lethal defense, whichever is higher.
The other big problem you've got is that you're discounting accuracy, which is an end multiplier to the modified tohit score (base%-targetDefense+attackerToHit). There is a full write up on how everything works here. Suffice it to say that depending on the target's level in relation to you and their rank, they're going to get a higher multiplier to this number.
As to how tohit debuffs operate, they're exactly like defense with the exception that they're resisted by the target's level and other debuff resistances (like AV resistance). A 33% -tohit debuff against an even level enemy with no tohit debuff resistance is going to reduce the base tohit from 50% to 17%. However, the Purple Patch is going to reduce the effect of that debuff depending on how many levels lower than the target you are. Against Archvillains and other enemies that share their debuff resistances, you're going to see even less thanks to higher levels of debuff resistance. -
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But I would at least need a team to rip apart the pylons.
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You can't solo a pylon? Pansy.
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I can solo a pylon, I have a video of myself doing just that with the other one. What I mean was if I dont want to spend three hours working down the pylons, I would need a team.
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Well then you should have said that. :P
I'm only a lowly scrapper. Anything that requires more brain power than "Go. Hunt. Kil Everything." isn't going to have much lasting effect. We only do all of that math in the Scrapper forums because we can do math intuitively... -
I prefer OG simply because it's lighter on the slot requirements, though, I'd reserve judgment until finding out what primary you're running. MA/DA is going to have better synergy with OG. BS/DA, Kat/DA, and DM/DA are going to have better synergy with CoF. Everything else is in the middle, though, there is probably a strong preference for OG simply because of the lighter slotting requirements and fewer endurance problems.
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"And then we'll all try to beat you up whenever we see you anyway and won't even revoke your mediport access when there's an Arachnos death warrant out for your arrest!"
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Well, there are a few cases that make about as much sense blueside. In the story arc "The Evil Countess Crey", you get put on the city's most wanted list but still have full access to all of your heroic resources. Hell, you can flit right by a police drone without any worry even though you're on the most wanted list while a lowly Hellion who is only guilty of loitering will get blasted to the Zigg. Longbow guys will still help you out too. Maybe that's just how the most wanted list operates... Might be why Paragon City has still yet to keep people like Nemesis off the streets. -
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So the only way this would work is if the original stun ignored enhancements and buffs.
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And that's the problem. You're going to need to have a variable duration because enhancing the mez effect is one of the basic properties of the mez controls. It would be like being unable to slot Tesla Cage for hold. It's not really a viable option for doing so because slotting is an important consideration when designing the set. -
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But I would at least need a team to rip apart the pylons.
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You can't solo a pylon? Pansy. -
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Well, if we're looking for excuses for a natural origin, put on some experimental goggles and call it a gadget power. Nobody says that natural super heroes can't use a little technology.
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Just like manticore. He is always refered to as natural, yet he uses his trusty bow.
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Don't forget his incredibly advanced arrows and his use of the Mediport system (via hacking) to teleport around. He routinely uses technology to provide himself with advantages.
The point of origins is to explain where most of a character's powers come from. If you need to give your natural character a travel power, there's no rule stopping him from stealing a Sky Raider teleporter, cracking it open, and turning it into a belt so that he can teleport across wide, open spaces. The same goes for him getting some fancy new boots that allow him to jump/fly/run really fast. The best way to put it would be that hero origin explains where you got your primary and secondary. Everything else can come after that. -
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I saw a post over in the Brute forums about an attack chain leading off with Blinding Fient. Lemme see if I can find it.
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BF>AttackVitals is probably the attack string in question. It doesn't really do much with Empower though, but that's partially because Empower isn't a particularly incredible combo.
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Yeah, this is the one. Isn't this the combo used by the Patron Saint of Dual Blades?
/e Bow
Praise Be to Shred Monkey
/e Rise
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I believe he uses a shorter one actually (BF>Ablating>Power>Sweeping), but it's impossible/really hard to get to solo without the extra 20% +recharge from Quickness in SR. You could feasibly do it with DB/Elec as well. The main reasons he avoids the Attack Vitals combo, iirc, is that Vengeful slice is atrocious for DPA. -
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I just like the idea of two groups of heroes going toe to toe. Dunno why... Lol.
[/ QUOTE ]It happened in the game...
then Vanguard kicked my regen scrapper's butt so bad.
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Tactical use of MoG ftw! -
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Farming needs to be addressed somehow. I think what people don't understand is exactly why AE farms are so much more damaging to the game.
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And I think what the OP doesn't understand is that removing an AE building will do nothing to address that problem, aside from remove the broadcast chatter from his favored zone.
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The simplest solution would be to make AE a zone in and of itself. Keep it nice and separate. -
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Bean browswing through Tomax and while useful, doesn't seem well planned out.
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Actually, City of Data is remarkably well planned out and implemented, especially for as complex a database as it is. It just requires a certain degree of proficiency and knowledge about how the game works to actually comprehend it. Saying that it's not well planned out is like claiming that an advanced physics manual isn't well planned out because you don't understand everything in it or the specific design methodology.