Umbral

I doubt we'd see it because the pets are balanced as such. They probably would have moved the recharges around when they fixed the recharge issue if they thought that recharge should have been factored into their powers in the first place. I'm pretty sure that Castle stated that the pets were balanced around the fact that you couldn't enhance the recharge of their attacks, so, if the pets are considered balanced now, there is no real reason to bring them more in line with their previously "overpowered" state.

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You're only going to notice the extra defense against enemies that have +tohit, which means AE enemies with BU type powers and Rikti Drones. That's a small enough portion of the enemies you'll face (and a small enough effect compared to the benefits they'll be getting from the +tohit powers), that you're wasting +def. Go with the lower defense and higher recharge.

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You should also consider the number of enemies that have -def powers, which is not an insignificant number. Of course, you have the possibility of using elude (if you still took it) or def inspirations to carry you through times where you may face such enemies.

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Or maybe count on the fact that */SR has 99% def debuff resistance to get through those situations. If you're packing 46% +def(all), you're going to need to get hit by more than 100% -def to have any effect. To have it actually be significantly noticeable, you'd need to get hit with ~600% -def.

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As long as you have the "new big four" (the ST bubbles, Dispersion and Repulsion Bomb), go nuts, and I won't complain.

But I consider not having Repulsion Bomb on a bubbler to be a sin now.

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Agreed. Repulsion Bomb is just... awesome, especially with a set like */sonic that is light on AoE damage. It's great to run into a group and drop Howl + Repulsion Bomb and see the entire mob flop and die.

I still hate Force Bubble though. Force Bubble can die in a shark on fire.

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Farming pisses me off really now there's practically noone to form teams with. I feel like were all sliding down the path where city of heroes will be nothing but farmers and ppl who actually want to play will be on CO

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I absolutely refuse to farm and can be found at almost any time of the night or day making and playing on full teams of 8 doing anything from TFs to story arcs to radio/bank missions. Plus, I'll never play CO. I hate Jack Emmert that much. I really do. If you're really having all that hard of a time finding teams (it exasperates me, but I can still form teams reasonably quickly and easily), join "Freedom Events" (or "Top Ten-Applicants"). I always check in those channels before I start using search to find the ATs that the team is lacking to make a well balanced team.

By the way, just finished getting my 2nd blaster to 50. In order to finish rounding out my collection, my next toon is gonna be a troller. Any suggestions? I refuse to play FotMs or replay powersets which means no */FF, */rad, */kin, or earth/*.

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O SNAP. I am proven an idiot yet again!

But to be fair, you did have one of those moments as well when you assumed that I'd only looked at the whole list and not just the Rikti.

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I was open to you interpreting the spreadsheet wrong in multiple ways. I knew you'd interpreted it wrong either way I thought you had looked at it. You shouldn't be smirking when I was suggesting that you were ignoring the specific enemy group of the discussion.

As to a suggested build, here's the one I used leveling up my FF/Sonic. If you don't want to roll */sonic (my personal favorite defender blast set and, in a majority of the cases, the numerical victor in most actual contribution calculations, dark blast is a close second though it's contribution is less considering how much +def you'll be providing), just replace the blasts with the appropriate selections from your choice of blast set.

Phil is gonna poopoo it a bit because it only takes the "required" powers. I've never been a fan of the powers I didn't take (they offend my Scrappery sensibilities), so take that into consideration. It'll provide 44.5% +def(all) to your friends and 24.1% +def(all) to yourself and only require 36 seconds every 4 minutes to reapply buffs. The entire rest of the time, you can blast away to your hearts content and maintain 80% -res on a single hard target or 40% -res to a group of enemies.

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

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

Level 50 Magic Defender
Primary Power Set: Force Field
Secondary Power Set: Sonic Attack
Power Pool: Fitness
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Leadership
Power Pool: Speed
Ancillary Pool: Dark Mastery

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Deflection Shield -- DefBuff(A), DefBuff(3), DefBuff(3)
Level 1: Shriek -- Acc(A), Dmg(5), Dmg(5), Dmg(7), RechRdx(7), RechRdx(9)
Level 2: Scream -- Acc(A), Dmg(9), Dmg(11), Dmg(11), RechRdx(13), RechRdx(13)
Level 4: Howl -- Acc(A), Dmg(15), Dmg(15), Dmg(17), RechRdx(17), RechRdx(19)
Level 6: Insulation Shield -- DefBuff(A), DefBuff(19), DefBuff(21)
Level 8: Hurdle -- Jump(A)
Level 10: Combat Jumping -- DefBuff(A)
Level 12: Dispersion Bubble -- DefBuff(A), DefBuff(21), DefBuff(23), EndRdx(23), EndRdx(25)
Level 14: Super Jump -- Jump(A)
Level 16: Shout -- Acc(A), Dmg(25), Dmg(27), Dmg(27), RechRdx(29), RechRdx(29)
Level 18: Health -- Heal(A)
Level 20: Stamina -- EndMod(A), EndMod(31), EndMod(31)
Level 22: Amplify -- RechRdx(A), RechRdx(31), RechRdx(33)
Level 24: Maneuvers -- DefBuff(A), DefBuff(33), DefBuff(33), EndRdx(34), EndRdx(34)
Level 26: Repulsion Bomb -- Acc(A), Dmg(34), Dmg(36), Dmg(36), RechRdx(36), RechRdx(37)
Level 28: Tactics -- EndRdx(A), EndRdx(37), ToHit(37), ToHit(39), ToHit(39)
Level 30: Hasten -- RechRdx(A), RechRdx(39), RechRdx(40)
Level 32: Assault -- EndRdx(A), EndRdx(40)
Level 35: Screech -- Acc(A), Dsrnt(40), Dsrnt(42), Dsrnt(42), RechRdx(42), RechRdx(43)
Level 38: Dreadful Wail -- Dmg(A), Dmg(43), Dmg(43), RechRdx(45), RechRdx(45), RechRdx(45)
Level 41: Dark Consumption -- RechRdx(A), RechRdx(46), RechRdx(46), Acc(46)
Level 44: Dark Embrace -- EndRdx(A), EndRdx(48), ResDam(48), ResDam(48), ResDam(50)
Level 47: Soul Drain -- RechRdx(A), RechRdx(50), RechRdx(50)
Level 49: Vengeance -- DefBuff(A)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Vigilance

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Hey everybody!!

I recently got my DM/SR Scrapper to 49 over the weekend and did a respec to drop a ton of IOs into it. I have my defenses to all types at 50% + and so far have 77% global recharge. My final build will be at just above 91% global recharge once I hit 50 and can slot some purples. I have the option of droppin some of my defenses into the 46% range in exchange for another 10% recharge for a total of 101% global recharge.

So should I just stick with 91% recharge and 50% defenses or go for 46% defenses with 101% recharge. Will I notice not having that extra defense versus tougher opponents or should I go for the extra rech to up my DPS for AVs and such?

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You're only going to notice the extra defense against enemies that have +tohit, which means AE enemies with BU type powers and Rikti Drones. That's a small enough portion of the enemies you'll face (and a small enough effect compared to the benefits they'll be getting from the +tohit powers), that you're wasting +def. Go with the lower defense and higher recharge.

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The sheet is the damage resistance of the enemies... so wouldn't enemies having a lower resistance be better?

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It's not damage resistance. It's percent of total damage taken. It's (1-damres), not damres. Seriously, did you honestly think that enemies took more damage from lethal and smashing than from negative energy or that the numerous Rikti have 100% resistance to multiple damage types or that drones have 150% resistance?

Seriously, reading comprehension. >.<

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Yeah, and apparently they're all immune to everything thanks to their magical powers of roleplay. Because when you let everyone determine their own powers, everyone is invulnerable, especially when everyone is a Mary Sue or Gary Stu.

No one ever appreciates the great role play of glaring weaknesses and lack of overt strength anymore... Back in my day, role play based combat was based off of cunning counter moves and intelligence not just "I'm invulnerable cuz I said so, and I kill you with a glance even though you're also invulnerable because I can because I said so".

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That reminds me of some of the classic RP arguments we'd have on the V:tM MUSHes I used to wiz on back in the day. "I cast ULTIMATE POWER!" "...really?" *banned user for an hour*

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Yeah, giving any player the ability to become as powerful as he or she wants is a bad idea. I once ran in a game wherein a single person was supposed to be an all powerful person (the point of that character's roleplay was to be along the lines of "I'm all powerful but I can't fix these problems! What use is it to have ultimate power?"). Needless to say, it didn't work out well, not only because there weren't complex enough systems to create the cascading screw ups that would be necessary for said roleplay to be done well, but also because all powerful all too often turns into " I can ignore any problems that occur".

I've stopped playing free form role play systems like that now. 90% of RPers are all to interested in combat (partially thanks to the plethora of role playing games wherein combat is the #1 problem solving method), but also because most people who like to role play suck at role play. I despise people that can't play more than one character even when they transition games. It's even worse when these players insist that all of the previous roleplay they've done should work with this new version of their old character who is exactly like their previous character in every way.

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Quick question getting back into Blaster and really loving it at the moment. The current build I am working on is being built for defense I just wanted to know should I focus mainly on just Ranged defense or should I build for AoE and Ranged defense equally, since the toon I have stays mainly at range?

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AoE attacks are rare enough that you can, in general, get away with slotting just for ranged defense, especially since, in order to softcap (which is the general goal), you're going to be gimping yourself to softcap both.

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It isn't. It's showing percent damage taken from the power source.

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Great! So, if the percentage damage taken from the power source is .80, then that's better than the percentage taken from the power source being 1.00, right?

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Low is bad.

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Wait, what? Taking 80% of the damage is worse than taking 100% of the damage? Huh?

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When you're talking about dealing damage, then yeah, the target taking 80% of incoming damage is worse than taking 100% of the incoming damage. Excellent job on that reading comprehension.

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Um.... the sheet that I gave to the OP is nothing BUT Rikti... the second link is to the full thing. Did you even look at it??? Reading comprehension indeed.

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I looked specifically at the second link and looked at all of the Rikti there. None of the Rikti have a higher modifier for negative energy rather than energy damage. Unless you're using some very strange excelomancy, it's impossible to conclude that energy is going to do more damage than negative energy.

I think you're assuming that a low number is good according to that spreadsheet. It isn't. It's showing percent damage taken from the power source. Low is bad.

(And, as I just checked, I don't have permission to access the first, so I'm afraid I can't reference that bit you included).

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And it's a PITA to even get +200 global recharge on your own, so you gotta take that into account.

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Yeah, I think the best up time:downtime ratio for IH I've seen on a */regen was 10:9 though the build gimped itself pretty hard getting all of that recharge. It's kinda pointless considering that you can generally get a 1:1 up time:downtime ration without completely gimping yourself any.

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Okay. Now that we're all packed and ready for our hunting trip, it's time to go raid the Rookery at 8:30 EDT. Keep a buddy at your back, don't shoot other Freedomites (at least when the Virtuees are looking), and shoot to kill. Remember, we're there hunting, not collecting pets.

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Beware. There's seminaked rumduggery going on in that thread now.

Man, you know, this is why I avoid Virtue. I feel like I'm giving Pikachu bad touches every time I browse in there.

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Yeah, and apparently they're all immune to everything thanks to their magical powers of roleplay. Because when you let everyone determine their own powers, everyone is invulnerable, especially when everyone is a Mary Sue or Gary Stu.

No one ever appreciates the great role play of glaring weaknesses and lack of overt strength anymore... Back in my day, role play based combat was based off of cunning counter moves and intelligence not just "I'm invulnerable cuz I said so, and I kill you with a glance even though you're also invulnerable because I can because I said so".

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Uhh... Phil, where you getting that?

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Look at the hard numbers on the spreadsheet, and the average at the bottom. Big Difference.

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And you're ignoring the fact that the OP is specifically referencing Rikti. Good job with the reading comprehension there.

And before you ask, neither can Instant Healing.

650 base recharge, 650/5 = 130 minimum recharge, 90 duration

130 > 90

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I would simply say for tankers that they were designed around the idea that they would take longer to kill things because they CAN stand there longer to take the damage, but this is true due to high mitigation and higher hp than anyone else. However, how can you do this if your endurance is burnt at the same speed as everyone else even if you kill slower? In the end, you run out of endurance before you can kill the same target a more endurance efficient at would. By boosting the base endurance you are actually giving the tanker the one tool they need to be able to stand there longer and fight longer but slower.

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Except that you're forgetting something very important: recovery is a percent recovery. By increasing base endurance, you'd also be increasing end/sec recovery significantly to such a point that every Tanker on the planet would have end recovery better a */Regen Scrapper as soon as he/she gets Stamina (1+.25+.30 < 1.4*1.25). That's more than a bit borked.

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Many would think I'm insane by looking at the number but should you ever want to truly make the tanker match endurance efficiency of a scrapper without critical, you would need to increase his base endurance from 100 to 140. Due to critical the tanker would still be 10% behind in endurance efficiency.

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As for defenders: making the vigilance kick in on his own demise is not going to help them much. How much good is an end discount going to help them if they are close to dying already? An endurance discount would be much better for them. Now, the defender has other issues, soon they will be the lowest damage AT in the entire game (doms without domination where about there too.) IF you wanted him to have the same endurance efficiency as a 1 Scale Damage AT, you would have to give him a 54% endurance discount. But that's not going to do much to his effectiveness as the defender does not have the tanker's luxury to fight for a long period of time, therefore defenders need a more in dept look than just endurance, specially given that they were the only AT exclusively designed to be team ATs.

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Stars, something else you're either ignoring or ignorant of is that the DPE numbers are determined for attacks before AT scalars are applied to the damage. This works quite well because it doesn't unduly penalize the endurance of high damage ATs, which isn't balanced, especially since everyone has essentially the same endurance capabilities. If DPE were calculated after AT scalars were applied, you'd also need to do the same to defensive toggles and powers (although this would be much less devastating thanks to the lower proportion of endurance that goes to toggles). Thankfully, it isn't.

It's pretty easy to see if you actually start comparing power sets to power sets across ATs. Slug costs as much for a Blaster as it does for a Corrupter. Swipe costs as much to Scrapper as it does for a Stalker. Thanks for trying to make the argument though. It looked decent but doesn't follow through with the actual information.

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There is a SUBSTANTIAL difference in the two. Energy is definitely better, so if you want to do the most damage, go electrical or energy blast.

But if you want it for THEME, screw damage... theme is theme.

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Uhh... Phil, where you getting that? The Rikti Lts and higher, in general, have 30% resistance to Energy damage while not having any resistance to negative energy. There aren't any Rikti that take more damage from energy than negative energy, so, yeah...

Of course, if you really want to consider overall contribution rather than damage, you're going to want to go with FF/Sonic. It's much more single target based than */Dark or */Elec, but it will allow you to generate better damage from your team thanks to huge amounts of -res that you can use as leverage for -res. Your best strategy would be just to target off of a Scrapper, Tanker, or other melee teammate. Stack a couple -res blasts onto his/her target and you'll add more damage to your team than if you were running with either of the other blasts, especially against nice hard targets like AVs and GMs.

*jumps in from Freedom, dressed and equipped as 19th century safari hunter*

Excellent job Rose! You've baited the area so that they're all tightly clustered. Only... it doesn't look anything like I expected it would... Either way, the Paragon University on Freedom is expecting at least 23 Catgrrl corpses to dissect! Tally ho!

*begins shooting anyone and everyone*

Okay. Now that we're all packed and ready for our hunting trip, it's time to go raid the Rookery at 8:30 EDT. Keep a buddy at your back, don't shoot other Freedomites (at least when the Virtuees are looking), and shoot to kill. Remember, we're there hunting, not collecting pets.

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(QR)

Think about it this way

Praetorian!Recluse and Axis Amerika!Recluse are likely dead

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I doubt Praetorian Recluse is dead. Tyrant may be an evil jackass by our standards, but he still thinks he's a good guy in his own head (at least by what we can tell from the GoRo trailer). He may have done a number of evil things, but I'm pretty sure that it's more a corruption that occurred later, as he realized the power that he could wield by taking over the world rather than a sudden dawning realization at the point of acquisition.

Praetoria isn't simply an evil version of the prime universe. It's a variant wherein, rather than supporting the existing government, those with powers took over and solidified their control. It's more in line with the old adage of "absolute power corrupts absolutely" than it is just as a simple "good:evil" translation. The only group that really supports the good:evil translation is the Carnival of Light, which we don't really know all that much about.

As to the existence of an Axis Amerika Recluse, I think it would be very interesting to contemplate. I doubt that victorious Nazis would completely eliminate one half of the most powerful duo in the world. If anything, I'd expect them to have Recluse on ice, prepared to take down Riechsmann if he ever tries to take over.

The biggest thing to keep in mind is that Axis America and Praetorian Earth existed before the emergence of Lord Recluse and Arachnos in the real world. All of the Rogue Isles and Arachnos content and back story was tacked on to everything that existed in CoH at the moment it was designed. In order to include all of the potential awesomeness that could be derived from having Lord Recluse variants in those worlds (which would have done wonders for mixing the hero and villain content together) would have to be retconned in. Personally, I think they'll use the "you just didn't see them because you haven't seen all that much of them" reasoning rather than the "they're so awesome and evil they killed their only competitors" reasoning. But that's mostly hopeful on my part. The easier way would be to just say that the only Recluse is the one native to our world because Evil Statesman is much more competent and evil than Evil Recluse could ever be.

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...and yes I am new poster. And it's negative responses that have kept me from the forums up until now. I was just sharing some ideas in a game I enjoy playing. And i figured that repeat request is what gets designers to think seriously about options for the game.

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And, as a new poster, I'm happy to tell you that the devs have specifically stated that they purposely steer clear of the Suggestions forums specifically because they know that pretty much everyone who posts ideas here doesn't know decent game design from the Champions PnP system (yes, I went there). If they wanted good ideas, they'd either come up with them themselves or read them in other forums as they become popular and crop up elsewhere.

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Weaves extra 7% def is huge on what is a Defense based set.

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Weave doesn't grant an extra 7% defense. The base contribution is 3.75% and defense enhancements follow the same lower scale as resistance which red zone soft caps the enhancement benefit at 60%. This means that, at best, you'll get 6% +def(all) out of Weave.

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Gauntlet would generate an endurance discount for each foe affected by the punchvoke effect. Thus, he'd have a larger benefit in larger groups.

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Considering how Gauntlet is implemented (by creating a second AoE at the point of impact of the initial target) having the effect feed back and generate a buff on the Tanker would be... problematic. The only way to feasibly generate this would be for the Gauntlet AoE effect to generate a second AoE that targets the Tanker and his allies, distributing end redux that way (re: every attack is a Fulcrum Shift with Taunt instead of -dam and end redux instead of +dam). I don't really see that as being a viable option for obvious reasons...

If they really wanted to give Tankers greater endurance, they could just reduce the endurance of all of their attacks or give each attack an end reduction benefit that is simply applied right back to the Tanker similar to how Blasters get +dam from Defiance. Personally, I don't really see much problem with it. Tankers are fine as an AT, imo. The only things broken about them are a couple of their powers (I'm lookin' at you Rage!).

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Vigilance currently generates a discount based on the state of the Defender's team. I wonder if allowing it to work based on the Defender's (as a team of one) own state. That is, as he gets in hotter water, he gets a bigger discount.

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This has been proposed numerous times and pretty much everyone agrees with it. It would be awesome if Defenders actually included themselves in their vigilance calculations, though, personally, I'd rather just get a more useful inherent than a bit of end redux. Some defenders love it for reasons I can't quite comprehend (well, I can, but I don't see it as a reason to love it, especially when +recov is so prolific on teams via set bonuses). I'd much rather have an inherent that provides +dam to compensate for defenders pathetic and demonstratively low damage. Defenders are stuck at .65 whereas every other AT can easily attain at least .85 naturally or via benefit from their inherent, which doesn't balance out with the fact that their buff/debuff scalar is only .25 better than all of the other support ATs, some effects of which aren't even affected by it (rech for instance).

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It must be a slow news day in Virtue today...

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actually
people are fighting over 100 inf
the rook from the rookery is back
Master run was sucessful
someone is video taping ma arcs
and someones car went kaput


Out pops a puppy...welcome all your all invited to rookery thread on virtue you bring the beer we will provide the doritos!


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hands back all the stolen lewt.,,,,

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Well... looks like we just got invited out. I'll slip into my murderin' pants, grab my Catgrrl killin' gun and head in there. Anyone else wanna join me? I don't have another Catgrrl gun, but I do have a few lolRP Gas bombs. If we're lucky, we'll have more than a few foreign specimens to deliver to the University for dissection.

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skip Grant Cover

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I would agree to everything except this. It's your only form of protection against defense debuffs. Even if you're a soloist, I wouldn't skip this.

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Actually, no. Active Defense and Battle Agility both contribute defense debuff resistance.