Wavicle

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Is the combo any good?

[/ QUOTE ]Yep. Your secondary and primary both want you to be in melee. Your primary has a few good, solid workhorse controls that work from spawn to spawn, and all your animations are pretty quick.

What you should expect is lots of fiery burny electrical death. Do you like teaming or soloing a lot? Do you have any future fantasies of PVP or farming?

As far as powers from Fire that I advocate skipping, I jump Ring of Fire, Smoke, and Cinders, seeing all as superfluous. Bonfire is not super-useful unless you like playing games with the walls and corners, and placing things to blockage enemy ambushes. It's useful, but it's certainly not a big deal to have or not have it.

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Ring of Fire can be useful against EBs and AVs.

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recently in-game though, i heard some high level /nin stalkers complaining that they aren't nearly as good as their SR characters, and nin only gets good in late levels when you heavily IO it out

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lolwut?

I can't tell you exactly what the numbers are but I can tell you this:

Hasten DOES effect its own recharge while it is running, so when it drops it recharges more slowly until it is back.

I have no idea whether Mids is sophisticated enough to account for that. I suspect not.

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It doesn't need Slow Resistance because it has Instant Healing.

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Care to explain this? It makes no sense at all.

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My guess is that he meant Integration (and I would add Fast Healing). Regen is never helpless. Weaker yes, but I can't think of a single situation in the game where Regen gets all its protection taken away.

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I believe he meant to say "Recharge Resistance" instead of "Slow Resistance", with IH being a click and unaffected by recharge debuffs.

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That's just blatantly wrong. Because IH is a click, it's affected by -recharge. It's got a longer duration, so the -recharge isn't going to have an immediate effect upon survivability, but, as soon as you use any of the click powers, you're going to have severely diminished survivability because the power is going to be coming back in a longer period of time.

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Yes. Thanks for the correction Umbral. That will teach me to post literally 3 minutes after waking up. I can only claim I might have been having a flashback to toggle IH and some severe dementia regarding the wording. heh.

My interpretation of his using "slow" instead of "recharge" would still apply, though I noticed he has recently quantified his reasoning by inferring that IH could be used to negate the effects of recharge debuffs because it has a long recharge anyway, but lasts 90 seconds - enough to get you through a fight where -recharge has been applied.

I don't know that I agree completely with this, as Recon and DP affected my DM/Regen's survivability much more than IH(click, not toggle, ) being in effect, and they are what will be most noticably affected by -recharge. I will admit to not having played my /regen toon for quite some time, and so I may be incorrect from a numbers standpoint.

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Yes, I meant it doesnt need -Recharge Resistance because it has IH, a tool to allow it to survive for a long period even when the other clicks might be down.

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Serious Answer:

All powers in PvP were adjusted so that damage was proportional to activation time. All powers.

All this stuff about attacks from Power Pools being inherently weaker since it's from a Power Pool and not a primary attack set was abandoned. All powers are on the same damage per activation formula.

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sooo....Blaze and Bitter Ice Blast do Brawl damage now?

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As far as I know, theoretically, yes. If it doesn't, it should be bugged.

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I'm sorry that is dumb as hell.

That is a terrible, terrible design.

Increase the end costs in pvp, don't lower the damage.

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That's what I was thinking. I'll probably just take Hasten from the pools, although I've heard good things about Khelds and the Medicine pool (it's particularly attractive for the Rez power).

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as far as Peacebringers go they have a good heal other without dipping into a pool power and if you want a rez just get the day job accolade. (the university and hospital badges). takes longer but you get the same effect and more powers. Several of my non defenders have gotten rez ally this way. Does not apply the same to warshades naturally.

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^^ This.


You get a self rez, you get a good ally heal, you get self heals. No reason to take the Medicine pool, ESPECIALLY with the Day Job rez available.

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It doesn't need Slow Resistance because it has Instant Healing.

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Care to explain this? It makes no sense at all.

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It makes sense if you understand the design of the Regen set.

Instant Healing is your protection in Long fights. That's Exactly what you need when Slows are pulling down the recharge of your Short fight powers (Recon and MoG).

You don't need Slow resistance because you have a Click power that makes you almost unkillable for 90 seconds at a time.

Also, strategic use of MoG can overcome almost anything.

Here's my tip:

Take Hasten from the Speed Pool.

Decide for yourself whether you need Stamina from the Fitness Pool. I've seen successful PBs with and without it.

Do not take ANY other pool powers. Load up on Peacebringer powers instead.

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Serious Answer:

All powers in PvP were adjusted so that damage was proportional to activation time. All powers.

All this stuff about attacks from Power Pools being inherently weaker since it's from a Power Pool and not a primary attack set was abandoned. All powers are on the same damage per activation formula.

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sooo....Blaze and Bitter Ice Blast do Brawl damage now?

The OP is nuts.

Regen doesn't need -Regen Resistance because it has Recon and DP.

It doesn't need Slow Resistance because it has Instant Healing.


If you're having more trouble on your Regen than on another scrapper then you should slot or play better.

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btw, I have seen plenty of characters with such a combination of recharge and animation time that they still had gaps at high levels. Peacebringers and Katana come to mind, among others.

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While I suppose it is possible to slot around, in general Kheldian forms are not going to have complete chains. They only have four attacks. And it's hard to come up with the slots to spare on Recharge on a Kheldian.

Personally, I consider that an excuse to just form change like crazy.

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Human form Peacebringers. The recharges are Very long. IOs make slotting not much harder than on other ATs.

I have several I am really proud of, but I think the best is probably my Shield/DM Tanker:


Azuria's Daughter


Here's her bio:


"Kimmy went with her mom to visit MAGI on 'Bring Your Child To Work Day' down at City Hall. While Azuria was on her lunch break, Kimmy slipped into the Vaults, which had been inexplicably left open. Kimmy was powerless against the psychic call of the shield, called Gohornu, and before her mother realized what was happening, the young woman bonded with the artifact. Coincidentally, the Circle of Thorns broke in at that very moment and kidnapped the young woman. Soon, however, the Circle learned what a mistake they had made. Drawing power from the souls of her captors, Kimmy defeated the cultists and escaped. Now, with growing mastery of the dark secrets bestowed by Gohornu, Kimmy strikes fear in the hearts of the evildoers of Paragon City as Azuria's Daughter!

Post deleted by Wavicle

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As for cookie cutter = lol

we had

50 Fire tank
45 fire scrapper
50 Ill/kin
50 ill/storm
50 fire/fire blaster
50 MA/SR scrapper
47 grav/storm

very little debuffs , very little buffs.

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Storm is massive debuffs. Assuming the stormies were doing their job, your Tanker may as well have been running with their defensive toggles off the entire fight because the AV was buried in -ToHit. Not to mention likely two applications of Freezing Rain were decreasing the AV's Resistance and Defense.

Then there's Kinetics, which is one of the best sets in the game for tipping the balance in a largely ST encounter. Not only was it decreasing the AV's damage, it was slowing the AV and how fast he could attack, while at the same time speeding up the attacks of the entire team, buffing their damage and improving their recovery.

And that team AT makeup is pretty much my definition of a cookie cutter team run.

One Tanker, two or three damage dealers, the rest filled out with force multipliers (ie, Controllers and Defenders).



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Thank god someone else noticed this.

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AVs resist tohit debuffs about 85%.

They don't much resist Resistance debuffs tho.

That team has plenty of debuffs, not too much in the way of buffs.

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Are Defs and Blasters gonna get a similar change?

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If they want to be amazing, they can roll Doms. If they want to continue to suck, they can stay where they are.

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lol


btw, I have seen plenty of characters with such a combination of recharge and animation time that they still had gaps at high levels. Peacebringers and Katana come to mind, among others.

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It's not just 'quite good' - it's a flat-out *amazing* attack now. It's more powerful than the old power blast was, has a 40% accuracy *bonus* - no missing at low levels! - and guaranteed knockback. It's like someone took a standard 8 second recharge blast like subdue or lightning bolt and gave it a massive accuracy boost and a powerful secondary effect. Not to mention that it's an extremely quick animation for such a good attack - it is the best DPA attack in energy assault nowadays. Anyone who skips the new version of power push is straight-up insane.

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Um, crazy.

With all the other changes did Energy Assault really need a FOURTH single target ranged attack? Are Defs and Blasters gonna get a similar change?

You might also try restructuring your keybinds.

I switched my bind to trigger the TRAY SLOT that the Dwarf Form button is in, rather than activating a specific bind and therefore the power directly. Seems to have solved the problem you noticed.


So just to be entirely explicit.

I use 3 buttons:

X turns off Dwarf, switches main tray to tray 1, and activates Shining Shield (and with additional key presses activates Quantum Shield and Thermal Shield).

N activates Alt2 Tray Slot 5, where I have the Dwarf Form button sitting.

M switches the main tray to tray 2, where I have my Dwarf powers.


So, I have to hit Both N and M to fully switch to Dwarf Form, but it WORKS, no lag, no second mez interruption.

My conclusion: somethings wrong with keybinds/macros and how they relate to the new Dwarf Form....or something like that.

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I IO'd out my Dwarf attacks to make a viable chain, so I took one of the options that is not Hasten (though both Kheldians have it for other reasons), and only hit Hasten for those other reasons not attack chain related. I can keep Hasten constantly running as well as any good Kheldian player, but I don't do it for attack reasons.

The point is that Kheldians cannot form an unbroken attack chain without these methods (sacrificing other slotting for recharge, using IOs, or using Hasten constantly). Tankers can. There's also the diversity and excitement of a larger number of attacks, and the need to either hit Dwarf's Taunt and/or PbAoE all the time to keep aggro.

The point was that I don't think Kheldians step on other ATs toes because of their limitations. They can emulate other ATs to a very limited point, but those modes in-and-of-themselves don't rival those other ATs.

A stancing Tanker would come a lot closer to Scrappers than a Dwarf comes to a Tanker or Nova to Blaster, simply due to having entire powersets at their disposal.

From what Starsman is saying about his proposal, though there would be ways to "make it work," it seems a bit too complicated, given the way this game generally seems to strive to simplify.

So while I personally think stances would be lovely, I simply don't think that at this time it's ever likely to happen.

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What tanker forms an unbroken attack chain using neither Hasten nor recharge slotting??

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The 'only' way to get a full chain is by 'spamming' hasten? What does that even mean? Who takes hasten but doesn't keep it up as often as possible?


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Considering that you'd need to drop out of Dwarf form to use it, I'd wager a fair amount of Khelds in Dwarf form would have periods where it's down, especially if they're trying to tank.

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Correct. Besides, with some characters, it's sometimes not worth spamming Hasten every time it's up unless you have a long recharge clicky you care to get back up again quickly to go along with it. I find Hasten spamming more annoying than it's worth unless you've got a high end recovery build, so I don't do it unless I have good reason.

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Dropping out of dwarf to hit hasten isnt that hard for a skilled kheldian player. You can easily do it in between spawns, since neither hasten nor form switching roots you, or you can do it in the midfight, more safely at some points (right after you footstomp, or when you have a lot of teammate buffs/debuffs/control helping at the moment) than others.

If you don't have powers on long recharge that you want coming back faster all the time, then why did you take Hasten?

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Which still doesn't sound like a bad penalty to me. It'll be perfectly fine both solo and teamed, especially considering Tankers have better AoE mitigation tools as part of their secondaries, as well as buffs on a team, while still being able to manage aggro like a champ.

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Actually, I recall in that post (it was long i just scratched my memory here) noting secondary effect and taunt shutdown while in the offensive mode.

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Sounds like its own headache right there.

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Probably the biggest reason why people don't play Kheldians as full replacements for Tankers or Blasters is the limited, non-progressing number of attacks. They get what they get and that's it, when it comes to those modes.

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They get enough to do full attack chains.

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Only assuming one of: having weaker attacks, using IOs, or spamming Hasten. Especially for Dwarf.

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Lastly, and ultimately (for me), I don't think going ape-[censored] offensive (but not quite Scrapper) with less defence than a Scrapper says "Tanker" to me at all. You'd have to change the name of the AT while you're at it.

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Actually it does double way. Many MMOs tanks have the mode precisely due to the mutli-tank issues, so mechanically it makes sense.

Conceptually, its not that rare when tough guy tanks go in blind rages and become much more vulnerable but devastating offensively (compared to their norm) something Rage sort of mimics for Super Strength. I'm not sure why the devs never gave Rage a persistent survivability debuff, though.

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WoW at least has the decency to call their stance-based class something other than Tanker.

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The 'only' way to get a full chain is by 'spamming' hasten? What does that even mean? Who takes hasten but doesn't keep it up as often as possible?

On a slightly related note, my experience of tankers is that they are super badass when built right and played aggressively. Furthermore, I've been seeing a TON of tankers on Justice lately.

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Really? So when (for example) I would hit mouse4 (my Dwarf bind button), if I had it set up to activate a specific power tray slot instead of having it activate the power by name, being Mezzed in the middle of the animation won't cause it to crap out and stop the change into Dwarf Form?

If that's what you're saying, then I may have to investigate this.

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That is what I'm saying, just remember that I have only told you what I saw happen, my knowledge of the underlying mechanics of how the keybinding system works is basically nothing.

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I've never found this to truly be the case. Yes, a team might not Want the second tanker, but frequently the second tanker IS valuable. There are many many rooms with several groups easily aggrod but not close enough to keep taunted easily. The second tank is very useful there.

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Definitely. Multiple Tanks can also pull those groups together to wipe them out with AoEs even quicker. Or you can split up the team to speed up a defeat all mission.

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I don't agree with these tactics being possible on most of the missions, although they can work.

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I don't know what to tell you. I've seen it, many times. Tankers are often more reliable than controllers for mob positioning and aggro management. Especially with controllers who think mostly about their own damage output.

Regarding adding a third tank, I mostly don't want 3 of any AT on my teams. But I'd rather have 3 tanks than multiple fire/kins who don't remember to speed boost the team and mostly worry about FSing their imps.

By using my workaround (keybinding the tray slot and not the power itself) I have eliminated this problem. The shift doesn't fail anymore.

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[LIST][*]In teams, a second tank is redundant and usually undesirable, taken only because the first tank sucks, because nothing else was available while forming the team, or it was a buddy.

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I've never found this to truly be the case. Yes, a team might not Want the second tanker, but frequently the second tanker IS valuable. There are many many rooms with several groups easily aggrod but not close enough to keep taunted easily. The second tank is very useful there.