And the mask comes off.

[Dareon Kale]

I enjoyed my Grav/Time controller. I was working towards perma chronoshift and farsight, but alas, the sunset caught me. I put the +chance to hold proc in Distortion Field for even more randomly frozen in time goodness. Between that, Time Crawl, and Time's Juncture, the distance from me to the mob was irrelevant. They weren't going to close the gap anytime soon.

That being said, I miss my one 'finished' toon. MA/Regen scrapper with perma Hasten/Dull Pain. He was an unkillable monster with so much recharge that I ALWAYS had a button of some sort available if things got hairy. No tank, controller just died, and the defender is sucking on fumes? Yeah, I had a button for that.

[LaughingAlex]

I had always assumed that this was deliberate for the Oranbega cave designs, which is why I would train myself in speed-running them without getting snagged on the torches.  I always thought that was a situation where I appreciated being one of the (apparently) few people who played CoH with a game controller - flight especially was smooth and sure for me.

I would never, ever say that bad map design is deliberate, more the person designing it was very artistic, but did not account for gameplay or abilities.

A good example of shoddy map design that has poor gameplay one can look at today, is the Villa's in the New Vegas DLC Dead Money.  You cannot tell where you are going.  The creator see was very heavily focused on a survival horror aspect, and made a maze, but he made it in a way that not only discouraged exploration, but also caused people to just get frustrated and irritable.  The whole intention was to make it very scary, but it was the speakers, cloud and very well hidden bear claw traps made it a rather uneventful trial and error game.  You'd run to one spot trying to find the speaker thats killing you and shoot it, if it wasn't a destroyable one.  Often you'd end up finally finding a radio, reloading a game, then knowing exactly where to run and shoot it.  OR you were stumped and looking up a walkthrough.  It wasn't scary, nore fun, due to the bad design of the maps.

It wasn't intentional, and you can see alot of signs of that.  Even more-so since EVERYTHING looked alike(even the enemies were identical to one another).

[HEATSTROKE]

I put the +chance to hold proc in Distortion Field for even more randomly frozen in time goodness. Between

ARG !!!!! Back to Mids !!!

[MWRuger]

I was once told that statistically speaking, Blasters and Scrappers did roughly the same amount of damage on teams.  Given that statistically Blasters were dead more often than Scrappers suggests that when they were alive they did deal somewhat more damage in teams overall as you suggest.  However, that's just one situation among the totality of the game, and even in that situation Blaster damage dealing was only somewhat more effective, and only when they were alive, and their overall net contribution to the team still did not outstrip Scrappers.

That statistical data point was another confirmation of my analysis that Blasters were not in fact outdamaging anything nor could they on average.  One individual Blaster might do a lot, but that would be in spite of their design not because of it.

I have to say I loved Blasters but reading through what you wrote made me rethink my time playing. I still love blasters but I now realize that I employed many strategies to stay alive that just become second nature.

1. Never stop moving ( I came from a FPS background so this was cake.)
2. Thin out the crowd. I would always weed out a few guys by pulling to avoid a whole mob. Just pull a few.
3. Slot for positional defense.
4. ALWAYS keep yellow, purple and green inspirations.
5. Bug Out if you have to. Many is the time when I bailed on a fight, retreated, waited until things were less hairy and powers had recharged.
6. Slot stealth proc as soon as you can.
7. Know your secondary inside and out. You will need some of those powers to survive.
8. Even on a team, always plan to save yourself. There might be somebody who could save you but you always relied on your own resources when you could.

But I have to say I think it made me a better player and playing blasters was always fun to me, but I can see your points, I just never realized that I adjusted for them. I always though blasters were pretty tought because, well, mine at 50 could play +4 x8 against some enemy groups.

[archaist]

3. Slot for positional defense.

I loved using the mental manipulation set and slotting contagious confusion in world of confusion. I would not care about position too much as most of the melee creeps were fighting for me. The more baddies, the better chance for the proc to go off, so I would run head long into large groups.

6. Slot stealth proc as soon as you can.

Not sure if this is what you are referring to, but one of the quirks I always had was slotting +stealth in sprint. As I would often use blessing of the zephyr set in my super speed to help hit soft cap or at the very least for the kb reduction without adding slots.

[Ankhammon]

ARG !!!!! Back to Mids !!!

Bah, humbug! No proc of frozen fun. Must make sure Chrono Shift is perma... play later. 

[Burnt Toast]

I always try to put the Lockdown proc in Distortion Field... it truly does make a difference

ARG !!!!! Back to Mids !!!

[kiario]

Hi,

Was it this weekend positron had something to reveal?

[Safehouse]

Hi,

Was it this weekend positron had something to reveal?

Lordy I hope so.

This is actually my first time hearing about this; I haven't been able to get on in ~a week.

Can someone enlighten me/us?

[Thunder Glove]

.. I've been here constantly, but this is the first I'm hearing about Positron revealing anything.

[FloatingFatMan]

.. I've been here constantly, but this is the first I'm hearing about Positron revealing anything.

Nothing on his Twitter that I can see either. Kiario's probably just making it up.

[Codewalker]

A Pure defender is one who places first emphasis on his/her team defensive capabilities. They start to see things like if times correctly, Twilight Grasp will become an autohit (if you can get the power to hit just as the mob faceplants then it hit's all but automatically).

I meant to reply to this the other day, but got distracted and forgot about it until we were talking about /Dark in the controller thread. The above statement is incorrect. Twilight Grasp is never autohit, and timing it like that would have zero impact on the actual hit chance.

The reason is simple: TG requires a live foe as a target. If you manage to activate the power, then the target is alive at the moment you activate it.

To-hit rolls happen at the start of power activation. This is most obvious with powers that have a long delayed hit like Propel -- you can see the hit roll in the combat log instantly, allowing you to "predict the future" and know if it was a hit or miss long before you see it happen onscreen.

The point is that if the target dies on the next combat tick, or even later in the same one, it doesn't matter -- the hit roll has already happened and it's already been determined if TG hit or missed.

[brothermutant]

For those of you wanting to get Chronoshift (or other awesome self buffs with HUGE recharge times), make sure you got a power that does KB (propel works, I think Lift does too) and put one of those KB IOs that has the +100%RC procs in it. I used that thing to GREAT effect on my Grav/Time troller. The +RC doesn't last long (like 10 secs I think) but I spammed propel all the time (HUGELY fun watching the weird things it would port in and throw at the baddies; pool table was fun). It was so useful, I never had to slot hasten with three RC IOs.

And I heard nothing about Positron posting anything, is that for real or what? Can't imagine he would even be involved. I don't understand the appeal of bringing in the old devs for the proposed CoX Legacy. It can't be modded and what would the devs do even?

[srmalloy]

Worst the not read ever English have I.

Y0|_| c0|_|1o| |-|4\/3 60|\|3 f|_|11 1337.

Ghu, this reminds me of a screenshot I've got tucked away somewhere from the first Winter Lord event that's still giggleworthy even after all these years. My Nrg/Nrg Blaster in Perez Park, in the air over the plaza east of the passage to Steel Canyon, having defeated one of the smaller snowman spawns and getting the message "You receive 1337 experience."

[Excidia]

The only announcement I can remember regarding Positron and September is that he tweeted that under the original proposed timeline, CoH2 would go live in Sep 2014.  Obviously that's not happening.

e-

[AlienOne]

The only announcement I can remember regarding Positron and September is that he tweeted that under the original proposed timeline, CoH2 would go live in Sep 2014.  Obviously that's not happening.

e-

That you know of.... O.o

(hehe)

[pinballdave]

I meant to reply to this the other day, but got distracted and forgot about it until we were talking about /Dark in the controller thread. The above statement is incorrect. Twilight Grasp is never autohit, and timing it like that would have zero impact on the actual hit chance.

The reason is simple: TG requires a live foe as a target. If you manage to activate the power, then the target is alive at the moment you activate it.

To-hit rolls happen at the start of power activation. This is most obvious with powers that have a long delayed hit like Propel -- you can see the hit roll in the combat log instantly, allowing you to "predict the future" and know if it was a hit or miss long before you see it happen onscreen.

The point is that if the target dies on the next combat tick, or even later in the same one, it doesn't matter -- the hit roll has already happened and it's already been determined if TG hit or missed.

Dear kind coding type smart person. At one time in CoH certain aoe defender heals DID not work between the to-hit check of the activation and the pseudopet that distributed the heal because the target was dead. I think this most frequently happened to kinetics. I also think this was fixed near the sunset.

[Codewalker]

Yes, I remember that well. Powers like Transfusion/Transference (but NOT Twilight Grasp) that spawned a pseudopet at the target would activate, but fail to spawn the pseudopet if the target died before the hit delay.

I don't remember exactly when it was fixed -- I kind of think around the same time many ally buffs were made into AoEs -- but there was much rejoicing from my Kins.

[pinballdave]

Yes, I remember that well. Powers like Transfusion/Transference (but NOT Twilight Grasp) that spawned a pseudopet at the target would activate, but fail to spawn the pseudopet if the target died before the hit delay.

I don't remember exactly when it was fixed -- I kind of think around the same time many ally buffs were made into AoEs -- but there was much rejoicing from my Kins.

AoE speed boost, such a wonderful thing, and still the complaints  I SAID DONT SPEEDBOOST ME!

[Power Gamer]

AoE speed boost, such a wonderful thing, and still the complaints  I SAID DONT SPEEDBOOST ME!

Until I installed more ram and a better gfx card, speedboost was not my friend. lol

After the upgrade, it was speedcrack for me ALL the time.