New efforts!

[hejtmane]

The secret to Ghost Widow was defense.  She couldn't kill what she couldn't hit.  My SR scrapper used to tank her all the time.  *Any* tank, scrapper, or brute could easily tank her if you just remembered to pack some purples before that mission/fight.  Conversely, it was incredibly hard to build enough resistance to tank her**: she just hit too hard (resistance + a lot of heals could do it, if you had heals that didn't rely on hitting anything: she debuffed tohit a lot also).  I saw regen scrappers capable of tanking her, but you had to have a very strong regen build to do it.

A well-built granite tank was genuinely almost impossible to kill except for two things.  One: heavy psi damage, particularly purely-typed psi.  Two: heavy defense debuffing critters.  Outside of those two things, if you see a granite tanker die, it was a weakly slotted one or the world's most unlucky MMO player driving one.


** Dark Armor tankers could do it given their enormous negative energy resistance, once you could actually make Dark Armor tankers.  But Dark Regen was an exercise in frustration to use against Ghost Widow; without massive tohit buffs or yellows, you could still eventually die from sheer lack of ability to ever connect with DR.

The easiest time I ever had with Black widow as a group was the all scrapper STF we did on test server from the scrapper forum. Every scrapper had Maneuvers running plus I was running Grant cover as well (I was on with my fire/sd) plus all the IO's it was quite interesting. Now when we got to Lord recluse the Broad sword shield shined on that tanking job

[Noyjitat]

Black widow huh? Easy mistake I guess ;)

[hejtmane]

No kidding, we better get the game back. Was watching a video of my favorite set which is spines. I miss all the CoH music/noises.

My dream proliferation set was Ice armor to scrappers with taunt aura for a spines/ice build :'(

[adarict]

Arcana, earlier you had made a comment about Katana / Regen scrappers being especially survivable, and it reminded me of something. I was curious if you could tell if what I saw was observer bias, or had a basis in fact. My son and I both played scrappers quite a bit in the I3/I4 period. We maintained them through the life of the game, tweaking as we went. I ran Kat/Regen and he ran Broadsword Regen. He seemed to have constant problems surviving, while I used my scrapper for when I wanted easy mode. As time went on, he started outfitting with almost entirely purple sets. Mine had no purples, and mostly generic IOs. I did have some heal set items, but never had more than 3 of any one set.

Was there really a significant difference between Katana and Broadsword? I thought it was just that Katana was lower burst/max damage, but higher speed. I didn't play a Broadsword for any real length of time so I can't say I personally saw a difference. My son was much better at figuring out enhancements. He actually used Mids, whereas I just slotted whatever I found.

It was just one of those things that popped into my head while reminiscing about the game.

[hejtmane]

Arcana, earlier you had made a comment about Katana / Regen scrappers being especially survivable, and it reminded me of something. I was curious if you could tell if what I saw was observer bias, or had a basis in fact. My son and I both played scrappers quite a bit in the I3/I4 period. We maintained them through the life of the game, tweaking as we went. I ran Kat/Regen and he ran Broadsword Regen. He seemed to have constant problems surviving, while I used my scrapper for when I wanted easy mode. As time went on, he started outfitting with almost entirely purple sets. Mine had no purples, and mostly generic IOs. I did have some heal set items, but never had more than 3 of any one set.

Was there really a significant difference between Katana and Broadsword? I thought it was just that Katana was lower burst/max damage, but higher speed. I didn't play a Broadsword for any real length of time so I can't say I personally saw a difference. My son was much better at figuring out enhancements. He actually used Mids, whereas I just slotted whatever I found.

It was just one of those things that popped into my head while reminiscing about the game.

Did he use Parry the same lethal/melee buff as Divine Avalanche  if he did not and you used DA then that could explain what you where seeing

[Shidan]

Might I suggest adding a year to the dates in the timeline on the first post? Currently it gives an unfamiliar viewer the impression that something has happened recently.

[Auroxis]

A well-built granite tank was genuinely almost impossible to kill except for two things.  One: heavy psi damage, particularly purely-typed psi.  Two: heavy defense debuffing critters.  Outside of those two things, if you see a granite tanker die, it was a weakly slotted one or the world's most unlucky MMO player driving one.

Purely-typed psi mobs weren't that difficult to deal with since a good stone tanker had a minerals setup alongside a granite one. A combination of defense debuffs and psi damage (arachnos for example) could be a challenge though if you didn't have support.

[Arcana]

Too long ago for me to remember the details, but I do believe a cascade defense failure was involved.  Most likely high-level Cimerorans.

Cims could literally melt Granite tankers.  They didn't have enough defense debuff resistance to stop cascade failure, and ironically their ability to taunt everything into a dogpile worked against them there.

[Auroxis]

Cims could literally melt Granite tankers.  They didn't have enough defense debuff resistance to stop cascade failure, and ironically their ability to taunt everything into a dogpile worked against them there.

To be fair, cimerorans could melt everything that decided to herd dozens of them around it. That includes controllers due to the target cap on AoE's, and characters with high levels of DDR which while didn't failcascade, couldn't quite tank the damage that did go through.

The key to beating cims is just not herding them around if you couldn't kill them in a timely fashion.

[Arcana]

Arcana, earlier you had made a comment about Katana / Regen scrappers being especially survivable, and it reminded me of something. I was curious if you could tell if what I saw was observer bias, or had a basis in fact. My son and I both played scrappers quite a bit in the I3/I4 period. We maintained them through the life of the game, tweaking as we went. I ran Kat/Regen and he ran Broadsword Regen. He seemed to have constant problems surviving, while I used my scrapper for when I wanted easy mode. As time went on, he started outfitting with almost entirely purple sets. Mine had no purples, and mostly generic IOs. I did have some heal set items, but never had more than 3 of any one set.

Was there really a significant difference between Katana and Broadsword? I thought it was just that Katana was lower burst/max damage, but higher speed. I didn't play a Broadsword for any real length of time so I can't say I personally saw a difference. My son was much better at figuring out enhancements. He actually used Mids, whereas I just slotted whatever I found.

It was just one of those things that popped into my head while reminiscing about the game.

As hejtmane noted, the crucial defense power for Katana and Broadsword is Parry/DA.  If one of you used it more than the other, that could explain a significant difference in survivability.  Strangely, back then Parry was actually *better* than Divine Avalanche because while both powers had basically the same stats, Parry's activation - contrary to Katana's generally superior activation speed relative to Broadsword - was slightly faster than DA's.  Not enough to be a major difference maker, but still.

Common belief back then was that Katana was just a faster Broadsword while Broadsword was just a harder hitting Katana.  That's not true.  The sets were different in more ways than that.  For example, Katana had a much better PBAoE.  TLD was faster activating and had faster recharge, but because it had a DoT that Whirling Sword lacked its damage was actually *higher* than Whirling Sword (if you counted the DoT).  Faster, quicker recharging, lower end costs, but hits harder.  Not exactly "Broadsword but with less damage."  Also, while people often liked Broadsword because it hit "harder" today we'd say that Katana had the far superior DPA**, which means in a lot of little ways Katana killed a little bit faster, and that also helps survivability.


** In fact one of the case studies I wrote about when trying to advocate for using what I was calling "damage per activation-second" over things like Brawl Index for rating attack powers was comparing Katana with Broadsword.

[Arcana]

Purely-typed psi mobs weren't that difficult to deal with since a good stone tanker had a minerals setup alongside a granite one. A combination of defense debuffs and psi damage (arachnos for example) could be a challenge though if you didn't have support.

A well-prepared one would do that, but not all granite tankers did that because not all of them fully understood how vulnerable granite was to psi, being drunk on being nigh-invulnerable to almost everything else.  Many players drank the kool-aid about granite being the beginning and end of defensive prowess, and did not prepare a minerals build to deal with that.  Also, this was trickier to accommodate in the days before alt-builds.

[Arcana]

To be fair, cimerorans could melt everything that decided to herd dozens of them around it. That includes controllers due to the target cap on AoE's, and characters with high levels of DDR which while didn't failcascade, couldn't quite tank the damage that did go through.

The key to beating cims is just not herding them around if you couldn't kill them in a timely fashion.

A strong enough SR could tank herds of Cims (I could do that with my MA/SR), although the pointless part came when you couldn't kill anything back because of the super-high stacked defense.

[Pyromantic]

To be fair, cimerorans could melt everything that decided to herd dozens of them around it. That includes controllers due to the target cap on AoE's, and characters with high levels of DDR which while didn't failcascade, couldn't quite tank the damage that did go through.

The key to beating cims is just not herding them around if you couldn't kill them in a timely fashion.

I herded the wall in Cim with my kat/wp from level 48 on, meaning the opposition was +2 to +4 to me.  Not enough burst aoe to just annihilate entire groups, so I'd remain aggro capped for some time with each herd.  The trick, of course, was to get divine avalanche stacked high enough that one or two hits still left your defense soft-capped.  Every once in a while they'd stack a few lucky hits and you'd see a cascade failure, at which point you would need to back off for a moment until the debuffs passed and you could re-establish your defense.

[Pyromantic]

Arcana, earlier you had made a comment about Katana / Regen scrappers being especially survivable, and it reminded me of something. I was curious if you could tell if what I saw was observer bias, or had a basis in fact. My son and I both played scrappers quite a bit in the I3/I4 period. We maintained them through the life of the game, tweaking as we went. I ran Kat/Regen and he ran Broadsword Regen. He seemed to have constant problems surviving, while I used my scrapper for when I wanted easy mode. As time went on, he started outfitting with almost entirely purple sets. Mine had no purples, and mostly generic IOs. I did have some heal set items, but never had more than 3 of any one set.

Was there really a significant difference between Katana and Broadsword? I thought it was just that Katana was lower burst/max damage, but higher speed. I didn't play a Broadsword for any real length of time so I can't say I personally saw a difference. My son was much better at figuring out enhancements. He actually used Mids, whereas I just slotted whatever I found.

It was just one of those things that popped into my head while reminiscing about the game.

I suspect playstyle is a significant reason here.  Perhaps also the generally-longer animations of BS resulted in him using parry significantly less than you used DA.  But if I might suggest another theory: purples may not be providing as much as he thought.  Certainly the recharge bonus helps, particularly with /regen, though when you say he added them over time I wonder how many of those sets had five pieces.  A lot of heal sets provide health and/or regen with three pieces, which can be quite significant for survivability.

[Pyromantic]

I used to solo the old Positron TF on a few special built characters and had a build slotted especially for that. I have it down where I could do the entire TF solo in under 45 minutes.

I had a purpled-out plant/rad controller that I really enjoyed and plan to remake.  Never got around to it, but I thought that might be a very strong build to solo old posi.  Plenty of damage with entangle, strangler and roots slotted for damage and procs; seeds of confusion for control (with contagious confusion no less); and by level 20 you can still fit in travel power, hasten, AM, RI, EF and LR.  Definitely something I would like to try.

[Pyromantic]

Ok, I'm going a bit nutty today with missing the game.  Been looking for good gameplay videos for some vicarious living, but finding far too much clutter.  Can anyone recommend some channels with good collections?

[adarict]

As hejtmane noted, the crucial defense power for Katana and Broadsword is Parry/DA.  If one of you used it more than the other, that could explain a significant difference in survivability.  Strangely, back then Parry was actually *better* than Divine Avalanche because while both powers had basically the same stats, Parry's activation - contrary to Katana's generally superior activation speed relative to Broadsword - was slightly faster than DA's.  Not enough to be a major difference maker, but still.

Common belief back then was that Katana was just a faster Broadsword while Broadsword was just a harder hitting Katana.  That's not true.  The sets were different in more ways than that.  For example, Katana had a much better PBAoE.  TLD was faster activating and had faster recharge, but because it had a DoT that Whirling Sword lacked its damage was actually *higher* than Whirling Sword (if you counted the DoT).  Faster, quicker recharging, lower end costs, but hits harder.  Not exactly "Broadsword but with less damage."  Also, while people often liked Broadsword because it hit "harder" today we'd say that Katana had the far superior DPA**, which means in a lot of little ways Katana killed a little bit faster, and that also helps survivability.


** In fact one of the case studies I wrote about when trying to advocate for using what I was calling "damage per activation-second" over things like Brawl Index for rating attack powers was comparing Katana with Broadsword.

Interesting.  So it is quite possible, even likely, that I simply stumbled onto an attack chain that overall outperformed his fancy IOs.  :)  Honestly, I don't know what his attack chain was.  I just always found it weird when he would say he hated playing his BS/Reg scrapper because he was constantly dying, when I seldom died and almost fought on autopilot because I seldom felt like I was in any danger with my Kat/Reg.

Thanks for the possible explanation.  it was just one of those thing I thought about.  I've never been big on planning.  All of my builds have been either put together on a whim, or tweaked through experimenting with how I felt playing it.  I was definitely one of the people who just figured Katana was a faster lower powered BS, and vice versa.  It is interesting to see how significant a single power in a chain can be to the overall feel of a character in battles.

[LaughingAlex]

My fortunata never had trouble with cimerorans, but see the reason I never had problems with them was because I never let them in melee in the first place.  I cc'd the hell out of them, I blasted them with AoE's(and one of them had a massive -recharge debuff, which actually worked well against to-hit debuffing attacks.), and I used my ST's (including telekinetic blast) to shove enemies away.

I always thought about layering my defenses, rather than relying on just one thing.

And incarnate power made doing all of that not only easier but also gave me even more ways to layer against the defense cascades.

[LaughingAlex]

As hejtmane noted, the crucial defense power for Katana and Broadsword is Parry/DA.  If one of you used it more than the other, that could explain a significant difference in survivability.  Strangely, back then Parry was actually *better* than Divine Avalanche because while both powers had basically the same stats, Parry's activation - contrary to Katana's generally superior activation speed relative to Broadsword - was slightly faster than DA's.  Not enough to be a major difference maker, but still.

Common belief back then was that Katana was just a faster Broadsword while Broadsword was just a harder hitting Katana.  That's not true.  The sets were different in more ways than that.  For example, Katana had a much better PBAoE.  TLD was faster activating and had faster recharge, but because it had a DoT that Whirling Sword lacked its damage was actually *higher* than Whirling Sword (if you counted the DoT).  Faster, quicker recharging, lower end costs, but hits harder.  Not exactly "Broadsword but with less damage."  Also, while people often liked Broadsword because it hit "harder" today we'd say that Katana had the far superior DPA**, which means in a lot of little ways Katana killed a little bit faster, and that also helps survivability.


** In fact one of the case studies I wrote about when trying to advocate for using what I was calling "damage per activation-second" over things like Brawl Index for rating attack powers was comparing Katana with Broadsword.

Course, if it was realistic katana would have zero killing power against any kind of metal :).  And broadsword would be as fast as katana(and suck just as bad vs metal, and not even be called broadsword, unless the sword was a rapier....).

Joking aside, though, I wouldn't be surprised if broadsword out damaged katana with shield defense as a secondary/primary on a tanker/scrapper.  That massive damage buff from shield would likely kick broadsword to insane levels, only beaten by kinetic melee.

[Arcana]

My fortunata never had trouble with cimerorans, but see the reason I never had problems with them was because I never let them in melee in the first place.

Cims aren't tough one on one.  They become tough when you try to group them up too tightly due to the combination of them having stacking debuffs and also stacking buffs.  In effect, Cims took the force multipler trick and turned it around against the players.  In my opinion, that's actually a very good way to make enemy NPCs that are easy enough to defeat for average players, while still posing a challenge for strong players.  They aren't just AoE-bait.