Here's a screenshot of my combat stats.

I'm playing an Inv/Ice tanker. I have at least 3 SO Resist Damage enhancements on each of my damage resistance powers. And yet the best I have for damage resistance is 63.9% .

That's it.

For someone playing a lvl 24 _invulnerability_ tanker... shouldn't that be a LOT higher?? I mean you don't get the endurance bump power like CONSUME so all you have are your core Inv powers and at 63.9% that's not enough to take on a mob without the aid of a healer....

I play a fire/fire tanker. Lvl 40. Maybe you've even teamed with him. Goes by the name of Feuersturm.

Now...I knew that i5 was gonna nerf the tanks. Didn't have a prob with that.

I just got done reading the CoH Forums. Oh, yeah, I can see a lot of people have a prob with that. And I guess I do, too.

When a tank can't keep the aggro in a fight and his teammates die, he sucks. It's a mental thing to those of us who play tanks.

When a fire tank throws down 1 burn patch every 3 fights because of a recharge delay (EVEN with 2 SO's in there to speed up recharge), and with less damage (depsite being 6 slotted with SOs for damage), that's another thing that bums us out.

And maybe it wouldn't be so bad if the mobs' AI was lowered enough that they would respond to the taunts after the burn was dropped...

Any two of those would work. Hell, even one of 'em. But all three together equals the suck.

I know it just went live. I know they've been tweaking this stuff on Test. But when a lvl 40 gets his butt handed to him by 4 EVEN CON MINIONS, there's no love. Yes, I'm 6 slotted in all my shields and defenses. Burn was prety much my main weapon of choice. And I do know how to use the other powers. I was still sucking up blues like there was no tomorrow in that fight, and then had to turn off all toggles to get my stamina back after that fight, and every other.

I know they'll fix stuff. But I sincerely hope that they can fix my love for this game, because they're in danger of losing me as a loyal customer.

Gonna shuddup now. Thank you.

On the morning of the last day of August,
When the mighty herds of screamers and archers thundered across Atlas Park,
I was there.

Eternal Elaine finally made lvl 50. This is my second character to make lvl 50. I was hustling to get to 50 in hopes to get my tank into retirement before the changes of issue 5 came. whether invuln tanks still get nerfed badly or not, i wont have to worry about trying to make it to 50 on a gimpy tank.

Current Mood: happy

I thought that we were supposed to get bows in Issue 3? I'm slightly disappointed, elfwench that I am.  Ah well, maybe we'll get them in Issue 4, along with some new costuming choices...

Everyone remember when Issue 2 came out? Horrible wasn't it? The servers would randomly boot people, and it just sucked overall. I would just like to say that in a worst case scenario it will probably happen again, but assure everyone that it probably will be fixed and in order a day or three after release, just like last time. I'm excited as the next guy, and I'll certainly try to get on that day and play around, but I'll also have my backup game to pass the time (KOTOR 1 in my case). Just a friendly reminder, and I hope it alleviates some stress.

Current Mood: calm

A friend of mine asked on our SG board:

"Joe, why are you disillusioned with the [dev] staff? Something happen I don't know about? Other than the fire nerf, I mean."

My response:

Pretty much their total disdain for tankers in general, and one set (super strength) in particular. They have their vision of what the game is supposed to be, and their vision and mine don't match up, nor do their version and the numbers or my version and the numbers.

Tankers are just lame right now. They can't solo effectively, with the exception of Fire/* (until Issue 3) and one specialized build (inv/fire). Their defenses are overkill (way over 100% resistance at the high end, with a 90% actual cap on resistance) in some places, and non-existent in others (way too much psi and untyped at the higher levels), they can almost always, unless you're fighting one of the three enemies that drains resistance, be replaced by a scrapper with provoke that does more damage and has the same (actual) defense and resistance, since everyone caps out at 90% resistance and 95% defense.

And that would be fine, if they would allow people to freely pick their primaries and secondaries from a pool made for tankers and scrappers. So, a super strength/regen scrapper or a dark armor/energy melee tanker. Statesman has the attitude that a giant broadsword is scrapper-like but super strength isn't, so that's not going to happen.

Another would be reduce tanker defenses to scrapper levels, increase tanker attacks to scrapper levels, leave the criticals on scrappers and add the proposed AoE taunt to tankers. Tankers would be encouraged to slot up their defenses first simply by design, since their defenses come up before their offenses in the level progression, and they're going to be incurring the wrath of everything around them. However, they could still slot their offenses and not feel like it's a waste. That would entirely solve the problem right there.

They still won't do it, tho. Statesman has this bizarre idea that tankers are actually useful as they are, compared to a scrapper with provoke, and they're just not. I can think of a grand total of one place I'd rather have a tanker than a scrapper, and that's the respec trial. When you add in the burn nerf, the slap in the face of giving unstoppable (UNSTOPPABLE! WTF?) to blasters in their epic power pool, the laser eye beams that looked so cool in screenshots doing about as much as jab from super strength, and then add in the fact that even tho tankers have had issues since beta, issues that make 2 primaries just about unusable and only two or three secondaries actually effective, we still only got a minor tweak in Issue 2, and the next tweak is some time AFTER Issue 3, and they STILL haven't said if they're ever going to do away with that stupid self-immobilization on Unyielding Stance and Rooted, yeah, I've got some issues with the dev team.

Comments?

Current Mood: irritated

So, here's Striga Isle as shown on the map included with the DVD purchase.

( Big Pic...so click the cut )

Ah yes, nothing beats the feeling of attaining level 32 with your controller. So how'd I do it?

Well I was 2 bars into level 31 and still needed roughly 250k to level. I got a message from a fellow LJ person seeing if I wanted to team with them to get to level 32. I accepted however it was a different story when I logged into the game. About 20 minutes in I get invited to a Manticore TF. I have done all the task forces up until this point and the only one I ever had trouble with was the respec, so I figured, all right, let's do the Manticore TF. Lady Deacon sent me a tell seeing if I wanted to team and I told her I would have but this task force is looking like my best option and she was welcome to join, she didn't, but that's ok. I did get Chris Columbus to come along and thus we formed a group of 8 heroes (1 Controller(ForceField)/2 Tankers/2 Scrappers/2 Blasters/1 Defender(Empathy)). So we had a well rounded team level 31-34. I know what you're thinking, there's no way everybody will stay through the entire thing, well you would be right, but it didn't matter because it was a scrapper and a blaster, both logged out to do stuff at some point but they both came back before we got to the final mission. At some point we just wanted to get it done so we used the iviso to where we need to be and teleport people there. Took down the Crey Archvillain - Hopkins I believe was his name, without any troubles. After all that I still needed 40k to level. Luckily the defender from the TF (Forever) wanted to team. So she called on a couple of her pals and we did some missions and I leveled around 12:30 AM. Went and got Phantasm and tested it out. As Lady Deacon pointed out to me it doesn't do the best of damage right away because it's not been slotted yet, however with Hasten I can usually have 2 Phantasms out at the same time and I can put shields on them and they are affected by my leadershp skills as well. 2 Phantasms grouped up with Phantom Army and me finishing off enemies who get low on health works out real nice. Now if only they could take the elevator.

This weekend, my wife and I attended the CoH panel at Wizard World. I wrote up the info I took away from it on the official boards, and I've also asked Statesman to pop in and correct any blatant errors I've made, so maybe we'll get a surprise guest! Anyways, here's the link: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=1694755&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=&vc=1

I was going to go to the CoH forums first, but I find this community has some very knowledgeable people and the level of maturity is higher.

I started a kinetics defender last night with electric as the secondary. I was wondering if anyone who has played a kinetics defender could give me a few tips on what they liked about it, powers that aren't all that great, and complimentary travel powers..

Also, I was wondering if anyone has heard anything about bows being used for an archery powerset? I heard they were coming up in issue #3 but that might have been a rumor. I know I have been seeing a few more bows being used by villain groups like the outcasts in the hollows and of course the crane enforcer Tsoo. There was another group I found using bows but I have forgotten who they were. Saw it only once though. Any info on this would be appreciated too because I have a slot waiting for it when it comes out.

Thanks..

The Super Secret Out of Combat System revealed:

Statesman: It's skills. Yep folks, a brief description is in the Dec. issue of Computer Gaming World...

The system ended up being a lot more involved than initially thought. And I didn't want to rush Skills out the door and jeopardize it's quality. So I pushed it off to a future expansion.

However, everything in the CGW article is 100% accurate. It's a nice overview of the system. And, as always, we'll be posting more info on it as we get closer to its release. We have a general policy of posting weekly updates that discuss an upcoming Expansion (see Wednesday's Fifth Column article on the front page, for instance).

States was referencing the following article:

Skills are City of Heroes' answer to the ubiquitous MMO crafting system - except they're totally different. Characters will be able to specialize in one of four different skill trees: Detective, Science, Communication, and Scholarship. They can further specialize in various areas of expertise, such as Forensics or Security for the Detective tree. Skills are level-independent and wholly optional; your character will be able to interact with myriad objects during the game, at which point he, (Ed. note: or she ), can attempt a series of skill checks. Success brings new objectives or perhaps some extra experiance. For example, succeeding at a Security check in a bomb infested building might reveal the explosives on the mission map.

Skills are learned and improved by studying at universities throughout Paragon City. You'll earn temporary, expendable skill boosts during missions; these are somewhat similar to inspirations but can also be converted into wisdom, which is used to add permanent skill boosts at the aformentioned universities. As with enhancements, you'll find generic skill improvements as well as stronger, more focused upgrades alon the lines of dual- and single- origin enhancements. The only skill you'll need now, though, is the patience to hold out for all this good stuff.


In a followup:

Statesman: Skills most certainly will NOT be limited by origin.

Some have been posted, I include them in the interest of being thorough, and because when I go back looking for info it's easier for me to just scan for my name. :)

( Read more... )

From Statesman:

1. Tankers will get a "provoke" like AOE effect on their melee attacks. The more a Tanker lands his blows, the more and more mobs he'll attract. The bonus here is that it's not exactly like Provoke (it's not ranged) - but it makes a lot of sense. Some huge monstrosity is bashing the heads of a villain group - they're going to get more and more concerned about taking him/her out....

2. As a Tanker lands more and more blows, he'll start doing more and more damage. The longer the fight, the more powerful the Tanker becomes. I can't say that the Tanker will do as much damage as a Scrapper - but it'll certainly be more than he does now. This ability really gets to the core of a comic book Tanker. He's extremely powerful - but at the start of a fight, he holds himself back some. As the battle progresses, he lets loose....I prefer this system to a power because this way it's inherent. It's simply the nature of the Archetype. And it also sets the Tanker apart from the Scrapper's criticals

Here's the original post.

I'll let this slip...

Epic Archetypes possess Power Sets that no one else can get; they'll mix together elements of ALL categories (Ranged, Defense, Control, etc.). In effect, they have the potential to be Tank Mages.

BUT every Epic Archetype comes with a set of weaknessess to balance out their strengths...


Cool... Superman

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