Veteran Rewards Info

[Glazius]

Case in point: First char I created was a storm/elec defender.  I play more then the guys I play with, so I had to solo a fair amount.  Character concept was pretty much what you would think - someone who could control the forces of storm to kick ass.  For those of you who know about the storm defender set, you know that at no time did any ass kicking actually take place.  In short, storm defender soloing is not fun.

Really?

Drop a snowstorm on some guys, Gale them against a wall, dump Freezing Rain, Ball Lightning, run in and Short Circuit, then clean up with single-target stuff. All by like level 12. Well, if you were building yourself to team with your buddies, I could see dropping some of that in favor of O2, Mist, and Hurricane, true.

But especially with ragdoll knockback, Gale is good stuff.

--GF

[Nevermore]

It's pretty telling how many people like the Corruptor instead of the Defender.  Aside from a slightly different selection of power pools (damn, no Storm) and special ability (which is pretty weak for both archetypes) there's only one difference between the two: Corruptors got their nukes on their primary power set, at 100% effectiveness.

100% effectiveness?  Nope, Corrupter ranged damage is set at 75% of Blaster damage while Defenders are set at 65% iirc.  The bigger difference is Scourge kicks up Corruptor damage a bit, especially against targets with higher health, while Vigilance is utterly pointless.  Honestly though, Defender damage is lackluster only in comparison to Blasters.  Put a high damage ranged attack AT on the Villain side and suddenly Corruptors become "weak" as well.

As far as Dominators go, out of the 10 standard ATs Doms are the most fucked up.  Now that doesn't mean Dominators aren't serviceable; they can do ok in many circumstances.  But compared to the other ATs Doms simply underperform, largely for two reasons:  the Assault secondaries are horribly cobbled together piles of crap, and the Devs decided to have Doms revolve completely around Domination.  I don't have time to write a whole dissertation on how to fix Doms, but improving Assault and not using Domination as such a huge crutch would go a long way to improving the AT.

[Sky]

While I played an energy/energy blaster as my main, my alt was a rad/rad defender who was a lot of fun to play and great in a group. I do recall his big debuff getting nerfed because it used to debuff the shit out of things at a pretty low level. If I could keep up my buffs and apply debuffs I could solo a lot of stuff. Of course, I didn't hit a lot of the AV-level villians because I'm wicked casual and whatnot. Don't think I've done a trial or whatever.

[shiznitz]

Well, if you were building yourself to team with your buddies, I could see dropping some of that in favor of O2, Mist, and Hurricane, true.

Hurricane was great in a group. A storm defender without it isn't a storm defender. I hated it when the Tsoo used that against me.

[Typhon]

Drop a snowstorm on some guys, Gale them against a wall, dump Freezing Rain, Ball Lightning, run in and Short Circuit, then clean up with single-target stuff. All by like level 12. Well, if you were building yourself to team with your buddies, I could see dropping some of that in favor of O2, Mist, and Hurricane, true.

But especially with ragdoll knockback, Gale is good stuff.

--GF

From my experience/memory.

Snowstorm - AE slow, unfortunately the effect doesn't stack with the freezing rain slow... so actually kind of useless in this scenario, imo
Gale - knockback (possibly minor damage, but I dont' think so). unfortunately the power has an acc penalty, so the case where all three mobs are knocked back is rare, especially at lvl 12.
Freezing Rain - minimal DoT, good damage resist debuff, high fear.  decent to good damage at level 12. minimal/useless damage by lvl 20.
Ball Lighting - high end, low damage AE.  respectable at level 12, pitiful beyond lvl 20
Short Circuit - Energy Drain, -Energy Regen.  Great lockdown power.  Useless for actually doing damage.

So I've fired all of my powers and what have I achieved?  At level 12 I possibly killed acouple with this onslaught.  And at level 12, you feel fairly powerful.  By level 20 you've killed none of the mobs.  At either level (12 or 20) gale likely effected only one or two (the power just isn't compelling enough to waste enh slots on, and at most we're talking DO enhs, which means we aren't hitting alot with it).  You can now finish off one, maybe two npcs with the freezing rain debuff still applied, but you'll be finishing the last one without the debuff.  After which, you are out of end.  But with the new Rest time, maybe you can rest.

Now wait two more battles for freezing rain to reset.  And at level 12, with no SO timer redux enhs, that's at least 2 more battles.

Yeah, that's pretty much my definition of not kicking ass (However, I do understand it may be other peoples "kicking ass" - those mobs were most likely not doing a large amount of damage, possibly not doing any damage at all).  My experience was that soloing with the defender just wasn't fun, especially beyond lvl 20.

[geldonyetich]

Snowstorm - AE slow, unfortunately the effect doesn't stack with the freezing rain slow... so actually kind of useless in this scenario, imo

Everything stacks in City of Heroes except under two circumstances:
1. It's the same power cast by the same hero on another hero.  (If it were cast on a hostile target, it would stack.)  Thus, no layering force-fields on the same hero.  (At least, not without explotiing.)
2. A cap (hardcoded maximum allowable modifier) applies, removing some or all of the effect so it will not exceed the cap.

In Snowstorm & Freezing Rain's case, a cap applies itself against the movement speed of the mob.  This is because, back near release days, effects that would stack a movement speed debuff would halt the mob outright.  This would be been okay, but people were exploiting it.  So they stuck a cap in there that makes it so mobs will always move at least a little bit when it's slow effects alone.

However!  Snow Storm has a -Recharge component, and that doesn't have a cap last I checked.  So does Freezing Rain.  So, even though the mobs will be moving at the same amount of slowness with both applied, their attacks will cycle much slower than if only one effect were on them.   Massive damage mitigation potential?  Yes.

You go on to say that your killing foes is slow.  Yes, Defenders don't do very good damage.  Your ass kicking potential is mostly in defending.  If that wasn't your cup of tea, I say switch to an archetype that's built for offense.  (Granted, Cryptic giving you a whole secondary pool dedicated to attacks was a bit of a tease.)

[stray]

(Granted, Cryptic giving you a whole secondary pool dedicated to attacks was a bit of a tease.)

And that's the whole point.

[Llava]

If you throw down Freezing Rain first, Gale really shouldn't miss much at all.  Freezing Rain offers a sizable defense debuff that you neglected to mention/remember.

Ball Lightning does do good damage if you slot it, at all levels.

Short Circuit is not meant to do damage, it is meant to drain endurance.  Use this in conjuction with other electric or endurance draining powers and you can completely prevent enemies from being able to attack.  Of course, with Storm that's almost redundant.

You should be using Hurricane.  That's the power that makes it so you can live when solo.  Using Hurricane, even an unslotted Mental Blast will eventually wear anything down.  With two very nice single target damage attacks available right at the beginning of Electricity, there's not much reason you shouldn't be able to solo quite effectively, though of course it won't be as fast as a Blaster.  I do feel beholden to point out that if Blasting was the goal, perhaps that would have been a better option.  Defenders tend to Defend well, like Tankers are mostly centered around Tanking, etc etc.  Sure you CAN do other stuff, but yeah you are going to be focused primarily on what your archetype was designed to do.   That's not a problem with CoH, that's every class-based game ever.

[stray]

That's not a problem with CoH, that's every class-based game ever.

You all should know that I'm no WoW fanboy, but at least they did this shit right. Want to know what the most destructive "class" in WoW is?

The Priest.

Class with the best Burst Damage after Mage:

The Shaman

The Most Hassle Free Soloer and Most Versatile Class:

The Druid


All are "healers" (i.e. Defenders, so to speak).

[Llava]

Some info about the flight poses:

Hey guys,

The flight poses are an Issue 8 thing, not a Veteran Reward. When you enter flight (or any of its variations), after an initial take off, you will transition randomly into one of the flight poses.

Yes, I know not ideal. Ideally you'd be able to choose the animation you wanted for flight. Unfortunately the game does not work like that, so we'd have to find programmer time to make that work. If we did that, then the flight poses would DEFINITELY miss Issue 8 and might even miss I9 as well.

So instead of making something cool you don't get to see until next year, we made something cool and put it into Issue 8.

It randomly chooses an animation when you start moving.  So you're in one animation,  you stop, you start moving again and it'll randomly choose another.  Yeah, not ideal, but worst you gotta deal with is seeing an animation you don't like and just pausing for a second to get rid of it, or just ignore it.

<shrug>

[Llava]

That's not a problem with CoH, that's every class-based game ever.

You all should know that I'm no WoW fanboy, but at least they did this shit right. Want to know what the most destructive "class" in WoW is?

The Priest.

Class with the best Burst Damage after Mage:

The Shaman

The Most Hassle Free Soloer and Most Versatile Class:

The Druid


All are "healers" (i.e. Defenders, so to speak).

And how is that "right"?  It's misleading.  Someone coming into the game should be able to make a pretty educated guess as to what the "most destructive" class would be, and it ought to be either Mage, Warlock, or Rogue.

And if Defenders really want to feel amazing, get together with 7 other Defenders and try that out.  Blasters will look like a waste of space.

[stray]

And how is that "right"?  It's misleading.

I'm not sure how to answer that question.

I will say however that that game has millions of more subscribers than this other piece of shit we're talking about. Perhaps that justifies what's "right" or not. I don't know.

I should be clear though: Group dynamics in WoW play out differently. DPS is what matters, not necessarily burst or 1v1 domination. People still require Mages, Rogues, and Hunters to do the bulk of the damage in a group. If you can heal, then most of the time, you will heal.

If you don't want to group though, then you have all the tools to play the game at a reasonable pace. That's not a bad thing.

[Llava]

I will agree that WoW offers more flexibility in character building than CoH and I wish that could be addressed.

But it won't be.

A Defender who wants to build to solo can do well.  Solo.  But in a team they will find themselves, most likely, woefully lacking.  WoW at least lets you do a little of both.  But, like I said, that's how this game plays and it ain't likely to change.

As for more=right, doubtful or else we should all be playing The Sims.

[stray]

As for more=right, doubtful or else we should all be playing The Sims.

I was just throwing that out there. I honestly don't know how to answer a question like that. The only other answer is that there is no "right" way to design classes and roles.

That WoW has more subscriptions does answer one part of the question though: These design decisions aren't stopping many people from playing the game. I never heard anyone claiming that they were misled. If anything, the game is more attractive to them because of it.

[EDIT]

OK, Llava, I've come up with a simple answer for you :

Freedom. That's what makes it right.

Liberty: One of Imagination's most precious possessions. -- Ambrose Pierce

Good quote, even if it's out of context ;)


Why do we play MMO's anyways? What was the original draw? What was the first thing that made you say "Hmm!" when you first heard about or read an article on UO?

As far as I'm concerned at least, the two things that come to mind are "Lots of people" and "Higher Degrees of Freedom".

It's easy for MMO developers to deliver on the first thing, but they have, for the most part, failed on the second. Woefully failed. Most MMO's are even more restrictive than single player games. Whether that be in the character building, combat, world exploration (and when and how you can do it), etc.. And it's all very ironic, since this is a genre fit for nothing but high degrees of freedom.

This isn't to say Blizzard is offering a game with high levels of freedom though -- They're just offering one with higher levels than Cryptic. They have their fair share of unimaginative boobs working for them, but at the same time, they are at least one step closer to the ultimate goal of MMOG gaming in this respect. They've might have designed something as restrictive as "Classes" into their game (just like Cryptic did), but at least those classes deliver a wide variety of functions, activities, and gameplay options. That, in the end, is what makes them more "right" than Cryptic.

[Llava]

Touche, but at this point we're getting into the faults of MMGs as a genre rather than CoH specifically.  It's just a matter of degrees.

In terms of gameplay options for individual classes, perhaps WoW has CoH beaten.  Of course, the vastly different playstyles offered by each set and combinations thereof could present an argument for that.  But the fact remains, a Storm Defender is probably going to play a certain way, and an Empathy Defender is probably going to play a certain way.

Though I don't know that a Shadow Priest differs significantly from most any other Shadow Priest.

But aside from that, CoH offers entirely different types of freedoms not offered by WoW.  I don't think I need to mention costume design or supergroup bases.

(It's Bierce, by the way.  I always remember because his nickname was "Bitter Bierce".)

[stray]

Though I don't know that a Shadow Priest differs significantly from most any other Shadow Priest.

Some will melt faces.

Faces, some will melt.

Melt faces, some will.

[Llava]

Soooooooo... not that much, then?

I'm not sure that we could argue that WoW offers that many different ways to play over CoH then.  I think if you worked out the number of ways to play each class in WoW versus the number of ways to play an archetype in CoH, then compared the total number of "ways to play", WoW would come ahead by just a little bit.

The REAL trouble is that if you pick Storm/Electric on your Defender, that Defender is Storm/Electric forever, no matter how much you respec, whereas in WoW your Priest can go from Shadow to... Holy and Protection, right?  It's been a while.

Anyways, you can change the playstyle of an individual character much more easily in WoW, and that gives the illusion of added variety.  That, WoW definitely has over CoH.  Unfortunately, I don't think that's going to change, much as I'd love to change powersets on some of my characters.

[geldonyetich]

I don't see Shadow Priests in World of Warcraft as evidence that WoW offers a system of greater flexitbility and freedom.  All the spec tree in WoW does (or did when I last played it) was two things: 1. Gives you maybe 1-4 more powers when you've already dozens you share with everybody else that plays that class.  2. Modifies the potency of your existing powers in very specific ways.  Compare this to City of Heroes, where you can choose in two pools about a half dozen different power sets in each archetype, take whatever of those powers you want (with a choice starting at level 6 to instead take powers from the shared power pool) and slot them with enhancement slots however you like.  There is a much more pronounced difference between Defenders in CoH than there are Priests in WoW.  There exist Defenders who cannot heal, cannot buff, and cannot debuff.  It's no contest: freedom of character development-wise, City of Heroes gots WoW beaten.  It's why it's so much easier to gimp yourself in CoH, really.

I think we're overfocusing our experiences of CoH on an expectation that one is unable to play a CoH Defender offensively as easily as a WoW Priest.  I can see how that observation would cause you to draw some conclusions. 

However, if you actually looked at the decision of the developers behind WoW, I'm thinking that Priests in World of Warcraft weren't made so they could be offensively effective because the developers believed in freedom of choice.  No, I think that the developers made them that way because it was realized in beta that the defensive powers WoW offered were not diverse enough to be enjoyable if that's all you could do.  So they jacked up the damage their Priests can do and offered that as an additional fascet.  Blizzard, employing pretty good game designers, were able to think outside of the "Priest = Defense" box.  That's pretty much it.  Cryptic didn't do this with City of Heroes and their Defenders, but then, they didn't have to.  There's enough  variety of funky defensive powers in CoH that a Defender can be pretty content with just playing defense

The only failure on Cryptic's behalf I see here is that they mislead their players a bit in the character generation.  Defenders are made to offer defense, whether it's through heals, buffs, debuffs, or all of the above.  So it did nothing but point some players in the wrong direction when they provided this secondary power pool about doing damage.  I'd like to say that that was a mistake made by being rushed from beta to retail, that they learned their lesson and didn't do that again... but then we've got Dominators where they went and repeated the mistake!  Dominators dominate, holding their foes hostage, which do they do rather well.  So what's the deal with making their secondary power pool about damaging, which they do poorly?  Do they call the secondary pool the "powers you shouldn't be taking but they're there for fun" pool?  No, they call it the secondary pool and force you to take the first power in the pool.

[stray]

I don't see Shadow Priests in World of Warcraft as evidence that WoW offers a system of greater flexibility and freedom.  All the spec tree in WoW does (or did when I last played it) was two things: 1. Gives you maybe 1-4 more powers when you've already dozens you share with everybody else that plays that class.  2. Modifies the potency of your existing powers in very specific ways.

Freedom is not how many specific powers something offers. What matters is how many viable gameplay and advancement options are offered. There's a difference.

A Shadow Priest can melt faces in pvp, can solo well, and can still be an effective healer and buffer without respecing. A Shaman can Shock and Lightning Bolt people to death or be a Totem dropping, quick healing support character. All without respecing. A Druid can main tank all the way up to the raid level, go in cat form and do the rogue thing, or be the best burst healer in the game -- With, possibly, the best buff in the game (Getting good heals off will require a gear change, but you won't need to respec). That's variety and freedom.

Having a wide array of single target aoe immobility and hold skills, coupled with ENTIRE secondary powersets that barely define your character's role in the game is not variety.

[caladein]

A Shadow Priest can melt faces in pvp, can solo well, and can still be an effective healer and buffer without respecing. A Shaman can Shock and Lightning Bolt people to death or be a Totem dropping, quick healing support character. All without respecing. A Druid can main tank all the way up to the raid level, go in cat form and do the rogue thing, or be the best burst healer in the game -- With, possibly, the best buff in the game (Getting good heals off will require a gear change, but you won't need to respec). That's variety and freedom.

Having a wide array of single target aoe immobility and hold skills, coupled with ENTIRE secondary powersets that barely define your character's role in the game is not variety.

Well, early on you're right, but you're not mentioning that a Druid in healing gear is about a good a tank as a bowl of china, and a Shadow Priest in full +Shadow/Spell Dmg gear isn't that great of a healer.

True, gear synergy does exist to some extent (especially due to WoW's itemization formula) and it is a lot easier to acquire/swap from Tanking gear, to Healing gear, to PvP DPS gear, etc. then it is to have both a 50 Empathy Defender and a 50 D3. Even trying to split the difference with an Empathy/Dark Miasma Defender like I did still didn't allow much semblance of mechanical freedom.

Finally though, to be fair, I'm comparing the class with the most mechanical freedom in any game I've played to the most specialized heal-bot set-up in CoH. Still, in all my brief time in CoH and later CoV, I could never really find anything even near the dual roles of a Shadow Priest (D3 was close I hear, although it always seemed double gimped and not double awesome), much less the four-roles-in-one Druid, which ultimately exacerbated the alt addiction and made me leave.

Looking at it though, WoW does have that uniqueness where one class can be very good at more then one role because you rely so heavily on the one dimension that CoH/V thankfully lacks, gear. Not only can gear specialize in DPS or Healing, but all-rounder gear is significantly better overall if you wanted to do both then trying to mix-and-match specialized gear. Honestly... it kind of reminds me of economics a bit. Like a PPF but with magical pants. With CoH's design, you need to to have X + Y + Z = 1, no matter the power set combinations. This balancing method leads toward specialization because no one really likes being double or triple gimped.

[Typhon]

apologies for the SirBrucing.  Please keep in mind that I'm trying to explain how I think CoH fell down on the job, and maybe why some folks say they don't feel "super".  I'm using my Storm defender as an example.  I will continue to debate the effectiveness of the Storm defender because I have a fair amount of experience with that AT/combination (lvl 35) and your "just do x, y, and z, duh" text-book analyisis is different then my experience.

All that aside, my main point is: a super hero game requires an obvious amount of ass-kicking or it doesn't delivery on it's promise of being a super hero game.

Snowstorm - AE slow, unfortunately the effect doesn't stack with the freezing rain slow... so actually kind of useless in this scenario, imo

2. A cap (hardcoded maximum allowable modifier) applies, removing some or all of the effect so it will not exceed the cap.

[..]So they stuck a cap in there that makes it so mobs will always move at least a little bit when it's slow effects alone.

The movement cap is very close to where either snowstorm or freezing rain brings you with a single application of either power.  Freezing Rain causes a terror component in mobs, which now scatter to the four winds because they all take a shortest distance path out of the freezing rain.  Within 5-8 seconds all mobs will be out of the AE of freezing rain.

[..]You go on to say that your killing foes is slow.  Yes, Defenders don't do very good damage.[..]

Your ass kicking potential is mostly in defending. 

Again, it was all from my experience.  I've played that char to lvl 35.  I've done the combinations of powers you and Llava talk about.  For someone to read the discription (rain has a def debuff!) they might reasonably assume that it has a significant impact on gameplay (i.e. make the enemy significantly easier to hit).  The reality is that slotting freezing rain for -Def had little to no noticable effect and the -Res had a sizable effect - to the point that under the effect of the -Res the lowly defender could even do "good" damage.  Thus my comment that you needed the Freezing Rain to pop again to feel decently powerful.

I agree with Llava that hurricane is "the shit".  Unfortunately, after you use it awhile, you begin to feel like a border collie, rounding up stray sheep, pushing them into a corner so someone else can kill them (or much worse, you begin the slow process of killing them yourself).

I completely disagree with Llava that ball lighting does decent damage at any level other then in the low teens.  It also sucks a large amount of end.  It also has a slow recharge.  I have had 3xDam SOs, 2xEnd Redux SOs, and 1xAcc So.  I no longer do because it's not worth it.  It's good for pulling a whole group.

If that wasn't your cup of tea, I say switch to an archetype that's built for offense.  (Granted, Cryptic giving you a whole secondary pool dedicated to attacks was a bit of a tease.)

A bit of a tease?  hmph.  It's like I said above, it's all about opinion.  Being a border collie or a three-minute wonder wasn't my definition of what a super hero storm lord should be.

[Llava]

Just for the record, I have a 33 storm/rad defender.

I've always noticed the defense debuff in freezing rain.  It's pretty obvious, even unslotted.

If you're 35, I hope you're using Lightning Storm and you should probably be using Tornado too.  While Tornado can cause a little more chaos than I like, it is good for keeping a few guys off  their feet and unable to do anything while I deal with the rest.

Lightning Storm is just good  damage coupled with some nice knockback and disorient.

[Sky]

I agree with the sentiment that Typhon wants to be a blaster. Defenders rock imo, though my main was a blaster. If I wanted to layeth the smacketh, I'd play the blaster. The defender was a great alternative to that very shallow (but effective) gameplay. My blaster is only 24 and my defender is maybe 18 or so, I forget. Grind and whatnot.

[Llava]

My bad on Ball Lightning.  I went to check it, and you're right, its damage does suck.

Its brawl index is 0.8333 at first, then four ticks of 0.5.

That's a total of 2.8333, which is just a tad more than hitting each enemy with a Charged Bolt.  While Charged Bolt is good for a quick, single target power, it wouldn't be an effective AE.

I was thinking it was four ticks of 0.8333 and four ticks of 0.5, which would be a brawl index of over 5 and therefore better than hitting each enemy in the area with Lightning Bolt, which would be very good damage.

So yes, it does have mediocre damage.  Not AWFUL, but pretty mediocre.  Electrical Blast is one of those sets that's better at single target damage and utility than going crazy with AEs.  The consolation prize is the pet and Thunderous Blast, which is, to my knowledge, the only ubernuke that isn't Point Blank or DoT.  But that doesn't do anything until you get it at 38, so that's not terribly awesome.

[Llava]

The rewards for months 15-24 are posted now.

Wings at 15.

Samurai Armor costume pieces at 18.

Shoulder Cape (cape that just hangs over one shoulder instead of the whole back) and respec at 21.

New titles, personal base teleporter and posters of the comic book covers for SG bases at 24.  (Base teleporter has long casting time and recharge, apparently, but it's nice to have a hearthstone-esque power available.  By titles I mean the ones you can select at level 15.  Awesome or Mighty or Awful or Conniving, what have you.)

[geldonyetich]

Freedom is not how many specific powers something offers. What matters is how many viable gameplay and advancement options are offered. There's a difference.

So... Cryptic isn't letting people play Blasters now?

Point being, I don't think it's real fair to suggest that all game's classes should be able to play in ways distinctively uncharacteristic of that class.

That said, there are ways certain CoH archetypes can be configured to do just that.  It's given raise to weird terms like "Scraptroller" and "Blapper".

The movement cap is very close to where either snowstorm or freezing rain brings you with a single application of either power.  Freezing Rain causes a terror component in mobs, which now scatter to the four winds because they all take a shortest distance path out of the freezing rain.  Within 5-8 seconds all mobs will be out of the AE of freezing rain.

True, it makes things pretty challenging, doesn't it? ;)  There are ways to keep them in there with other powers and creative use of terrain, but that's not really how the power usually works.  Some people actually regard the 5-8 seconds they spend running to be effective mitigation, although I noticed evading mobs will often still do melee attacks.  However, I've been playing Illusion/Storm Controller lately and I can tell you of a recent observation that makes stacking Snow Storm and Freezing Rain effects a bit easier:

I noticed that, after mobs had crawled out of the Freezing Rain, the -Slow effect lasts several seconds after (at least 10-15 or so) they're out of the rain.  I don't yet have Snow Storm, so that wasn't what was doing it.  Because the -Slow effect is there, it seems likely that other effects are there as well.  I know -RES wasn't, but I think I observed a slower -Recharge and I haven't disproven that the -DEF is there.  There was a little FX on them that made it look like the effected mobs were shedding little ice particles, so this is probably deliberate.

They might have lowered the recharge on Freezing Rain since the last time you used it too, since I can throw at least one and often two during each fight.  (Granted, I'm often under the effect of Hasten.)

Being a border collie or a three-minute wonder wasn't my definition of what a super hero storm lord should be.

True.  Granted, there's not a single MMORPG in existance where I can't find a class that plays differently from what my mental definition of that class is.  Is the error in the MMORPG, or my definition?

[stray]

So... Cryptic isn't letting people play Blasters now?

Hi Geldon.

I don't think it's real fair to suggest that all game's classes should be able to play in ways distinctively uncharacteristic of that class.

When did I ever say that? From the beginning, all I've suggested is for the secondary powers on a Dominator to be just as defining as their primaries. If you give a class an entire tree devoted to something, then it really needs to come into play more often. Else don't give it to them at all.

It should never, however, play out like this (as you suggested in an earlier post):

They're [the secondary powersets] not very efficient, my advice is to lean heavier on your primary powers.

No other class has to do that. Not even Controllers.

[geldonyetich]

I don't think it's real fair to suggest that all game's classes should be able to play in ways distinctively uncharacteristic of that class.

When did I ever say that?

In using the WoW Shadow Priest example against CoH, you were.

They're [the secondary powersets] not very efficient, my advice is to lean heavier on your primary powers.

No other class has to do that. Not even Controllers.

All archetpes in City of Heroes can gimp themselves if they lean too heavily on their secondary power sets.  This has been my experience, anyway. 

No, really, this is true.  Boot up Joe Chott's hero planner and pick as many secondary powers as you can (using power pools if you're forced to pick primary powers) and you're going to end up with heroes/villains that do not do their primary role well or at all.  Scrappers that don't do damage.  Tanks that are defenseless.  Controllers who can't control.  Defenders who can't defend themselves, let alone others.  Masterminds without pets.  Those archetypes will function, but at a vastly decreased efficiency that can be described as mascochistic.

Cryptic probably should have made it clearer that all archetypes are intended to lean on their primary powers, and use their secondary powers only to support their primary function.  However, they didn't.  They gave players the freedom to gimp themselves.  Which is oddly liberating, if weird.

[Typhon]

Just for the record, I have a 33 storm/rad defender.

I've always noticed the defense debuff in freezing rain.  It's pretty obvious, even unslotted.

If you're 35, I hope you're using Lightning Storm and you should probably be using Tornado too.  While Tornado can cause a little more chaos than I like, it is good for keeping a few guys off  their feet and unable to do anything while I deal with the rest.

Lightning Storm is just good  damage coupled with some nice knockback and disorient.

Absolutely on the Lightning Storm.  I stuck it out to 32 to get that ability, and stuck it out further because of that ability.  Toranado I didn't go with at first, because of the chaos... and then realized that chaos was what I wanted the powerset to bring.  As such, tornado is a tremendous power.  I just wish it was bigger/more menacing.

Typhon doesn't specifically want to be a blaster.  Typhon wants to be the raging force of a storm.  The most entertaining times for me with the character was when I was busting things up and scattering mobs to the four winds.  Controlled pandemonium.  THAT is when the storm defender feels powerful.

Unfortunately the game doesn't really reward that type of play.  The game rewards getting the mobs in a tight little group and AEng them into oblivion.  Knockback should have been a desirable staple of the game, instead it's the sideeffect that people hate the most.

I'm not asking to have big numbers (I also have a Fire/Fire blaster and find build-up, aim, AE-insta death hugely boring).  I'm asking to smack the mobs around and to feel powerful.

Mobs should want to form into formations/tight groups (which should buff their individual powers).  Players should want to smash those groups and send the mobs flying.  Regardless of how much damage a particular attack did.  Herding should be the fastest way to get yourself killed.  Scattering/disrupting should be the path the victory.

Course, this is just what sounds fun to me.

[Sky]

Heh. I got a kick out of the mmogtards (alright, normal mmo players, many of them post here) who would bitch when my blaster would knock the shit out of things (energy/energy...blam!). I was all about knockback, I love when things fly all over, preferably leaving a sizable chunk of their hitpoints on the floor. I get the thing about knockback messing with the melee guys, but fuck...it's so much fun! But I'm also in the fun > effectiveness camp.

Fuckers weakened me. I picked up CoV for $20 last night. Still playing Gothic 2, but I'll probably resub to CoX in the next week or so. Hopefully I still have my two main character's names.

[Glazius]

My bad on Ball Lightning.  I went to check it, and you're right, its damage does suck.

Its brawl index is 0.8333 at first, then four ticks of 0.5.

That's a total of 2.8333, which is just a tad more than hitting each enemy with a Charged Bolt.  While Charged Bolt is good for a quick, single target power, it wouldn't be an effective AE.

I was thinking it was four ticks of 0.8333 and four ticks of 0.5, which would be a brawl index of over 5 and therefore better than hitting each enemy in the area with Lightning Bolt, which would be very good damage.

Yeah, it'd be better than fireball.

As it is, it's on par with fireball assuming that the fireball does extra "burning" 1.5 times per enemy. I am not sure how likely it is for each burn to occur, but 1.5 _is_ halfway between 0 and 3.

--GF

[Llava]

There are fantastic ways to use knockback.

For one,  knock enemies right back into the freezing rain when they get out.  (Oh btw, the whole list of debuffs from Freezing Rain does last for a while after they leave the rain.  That includes the slow, the -res, the -def, and the recharge debuffs.  Just saw that was mentioned earlier.  And with 3 recharge SOs my freezing rain is almost permanent- it takes maybe 5 seconds between when it ends and when it's ready to go again.)  This works with such abilities as Earthquake, Quicksand, Ice Slick, Rain of Fire, Rain of Ice, Tar Patch, need I go on?  Frequently, there'll even be guys who weren't in range of the AE in the first place and you can fix that by throwing 'em in.

Conversely, aim for walls and corners.  Yes, you want guys to be tightly bunched together for AE.  So get in a good position and shove them all into a little corner, then let the AEs fly.  This is something I do frequently on groups, but it does require indoor missions.  Outdoors, this doesn't really work.  Hurricane is also great at keeping guys in that corner once they're there.  And I'd say that's about right for a superhero storm lord- how many movie and comic scenes involve someone being thrown up against a wall and held there by a powerful supernatural wind?

[Lantyssa]

Heh. I got a kick out of the mmogtards (alright, normal mmo players, many of them post here) who would bitch when my blaster would knock the shit out of things (energy/energy...blam!). I was all about knockback, I love when things fly all over, preferably leaving a sizable chunk of their hitpoints on the floor. I get the thing about knockback messing with the melee guys, but fuck...it's so much fun! But I'm also in the fun > effectiveness camp.

I sometimes have nightmares about knockback, but that is from remembering when Unyielding was Unyielding Stance and my friend always targetted the mobs I was holding with his energy blaster instead of juggling the guys outside of my reach or knocking them into me.  (Of course this is also the one that refused to use anything besides Offensive Stance and Thunderblast [or whatever] in WoW, then got all pissy because I always pulled mobs off him with auto-attack.)  Now it is not such a big deal, and if it is done by a smart player who understand positioning then more power to them.

[Sky]

Yeah, I did try to aim them intelligently. It's also part of why I integrated Fly so deeply into my play strategy. One of my techniques was when I was waiting for my knockback main pool powers to recycle, I would fly in, then hover, smack them with my big knockback punch and then fly back to the perimeter again. Or fly into position to knock someone somewhere.

Occasional funny moments when I'd hit the wrong button and fall out of the sky. Usually instant death by my 20s.

how many movie and comic scenes involve someone being thrown up against a wall and held there by a powerful supernatural wind?

Quite frequently if you were a mutant. ;)

[geldonyetich]

I notice Blaster population has fallen off a bit lately (the population used to go Blaster>Scrapper>Tanker>Defender>Controller and now it's Blaster=Scrapper>Controller>Tanker>Defender, at least when I checked).   It wasn't due to a nerf, oddly enough, but rather the bequeathal of this "defiance" power: The more you hurt, the more damage you do.  It seems to be function less as defiance and more as encouragement for a squishy hero to place themselves in percarious situations.  Nothing like perpetual debt to hurt an archetype's popularity.  I'd only try to use it when soloing or things are hitting the fan -- less bitching at the healers for doing their job that way.

A trick I found works when I'm playing a melee character and foes are getting knocked around is to just tap the F key to go into auto-follow.  Along with the swift power and maybe a manual hop or two, I usually follow the foe to where they land quickly enough to miss nary a beat in my beatdown.  Unfortunately, my recommending this method to those who have issues with Knockback has primarily resulted in anal retentiveness.  I shouldn't be surprised, as this was the same trait that caused them to generate complaints initially.